Introduction

In like fashion with Free-Willery, the first article, I want to continue dealing with the tactics and strategies that are often employed in trying to rehabilitate this doctrine to make it compatible with what I believe is the biblical viewpoint on the will of man.

The main underlying premise of free-willery is that God would never command man to do something if man has no ability to comply. Sounds compelling, doesn’t it. How would you like to be asked to complete a task while someone else takes away all the resources you would use to complete it? How would you like it if you were then punished for not completing the task? Oh my! That would be a sight to behold! More ranting and raving than you would see at a hockey game! Swearing and cursing would abound, as the underlying premise would be, “That’s not fair! You can’t tell me to do something and then take away what I need to do it and then penalize me on top of that!”

You know, I happen to agree with this, but up to a certain point. I remember working in retail for a while as a computer technician. My team was responsible for the repair and upgrades of any PC that was brought in by the customer. Many times the repair or upgrade would require other tools that we needed to get the job done. So I would go to my management and request a particular tool or piece of software or something else I needed to repair the computer. But in the corporate world there is the infamous existence of this sort of cloud that seems to affect manager’s minds. In my department we called it c.r.a.p. which stood for ‘corporate regulated ambiguous policies’ (hopefully there’s no offense caused with this wonderfully appropriate acrostic!). Those of you who have worked in the corporate world know what I’m talking about. There are policies you are told about, that don’t make any sense at all, that don’t answer your questions, and do not help you get your job done.

So when I needed management’s permission to acquire a tool that was necessary in order to repair a customer’s PC, I was cited a paragraph or line from the company’s SOP (Standard Operating Procedure), and then sent merrily on my way without any real answer and without the resources. What do you tell a customer who comes back to pick up their computer and it is not repaired? Well, you certainly don’t want to make your manager look bad. And you don’t want to make the store look bad. Either of those options will put you in the unemployment line. So what do you do then? I referred them to the same c.r.a.p. to which I was referred. That way, they are just as confused as I was and hopefully the bewilderment as to why their computer wasn’t fixed will cover the stupidity of the whole matter. Sometimes it worked, and other times it didn’t. In either case, I was still left many times with my problem of needing resources to do my job.

Thankfully, the same cannot be said of the Scriptural understanding of ‘free-willery.’ There are no ambiguous policies or statements on the matter. What makes it ambiguous is the preconceived grid of free-willism superimposed over the text so that it is not so clear any longer. What I want to do then in this article is lay out why this premise is not true. In short, just because God commands a person to do something doesn’t mean that the person has the ability or resources to carry out that command. Now, Matthew 5:48 is enough for me to settle this argument. Jesus commands us there to be perfect just as our heavenly Father is perfect. I don’t know a Christian alive today who would tell me that we have the resources to obey that command. Yet the premise still exists, and like Free Willy, people continue to fund that premise with their intellectual and emotional energies. So for those who aren’t satisfied by the easiest of answers, I’ll shoot for one that is hopefully in-depth enough to satisfy them.

The Premise of Free-Willery

To begin, let me summarize once more the main underlying premise of free-willery in this statement: surely whenever Jesus or any of the Apostles spoke with such phrases as "whoever believes in Him" or "whoever comes to me" this means that we do have the ability to choose freely for Christ and likewise to reject Him. There are others who argue along that same vein. They say that we have commands in the Bible that God has set forth for all men to obey. Commands such as repent, be saved, have faith, believe certainly mean that we have the ability and responsibility to do these things. This sounds quite logical and completely Scriptural. Certainly, God would not ask or even command me to do something without giving me the ability to do what He has asked or commanded…would He? The logical support that is looked to in order to explain this premise is that God would be unjust if He held man responsible for that which he could not do. So, according to this line or reasoning, man does have the freedom to choose or reject Christ and His salvation when it is offered to him, because God would not have commanded it if we could not comply with it.

Indeed, it is true that this sounds most logical and biblical. This is often how the supposed contradiction or divine paradox between God's will and man's will is solved. To believe such a thing is to accuse God of being opposite of that which He has expressly said of Himself (Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Chronicles 12:6; Daniel 4:37). "God is just and no man will say otherwise," we claim. To say otherwise is to say that "the way of the Lord is not just" (Ezekiel 18:25) and how blasphemous it would be to say such a thing! Nevertheless God is just, as His Word says, and He will act justly in all that He does.

Textual Answers to Free-Willery

But a question comes to mind here. When we place the teaching of Scripture next to this objection, we have some problems. There are three as I see them, the first two being textual, and the second being theological. The first has already been demonstrated in as simple a text as Matthew 5:48 where despite the command to be perfect it is so very clear that no human possesses the resources to comply with that command. A second problem centers on clear texts like Romans 8:7-8.

“…the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject
itself to the law of God, for it’s not even able to do so; and those who are in
the flesh cannot please God” (NASB).

How in the world does Free-Willery escape the force of this text? The flesh represents an unsaved person, a person without the Spirit, according to the context. And this unsaved person “is not even able to” subject itself to the law of God or is it able to please God. So on the one hand we have a passage like Matthew 5:48 where we are commanded to do that which we will never be able to do. And on the other hand we are staring at a passage that plainly says that we have no ability to do what God desires. But there are some who still may not be satisfied. So I’ll go a little deeper, heading downward into the third problem that is more theologically centered. After this one, however, I’ve got nothing more to give. I don’t think it can get any clearer after this last problem.

A Theological Answer to Free-Willery

The third problem that the premise of Free-willery must face is God's immutability. Let me explain. Immutability is another word for unchangeableness. This is a necessary attribute of God, which means that it is an attribute that must exist because God exists. God, by very nature, is unchangeable. He is perfect in all He is and does. Therefore nothing about God can change, since all change is either for the better or for the worse. A closer look at this attribute of God will refute the premise of Free-Willery. This is a very important issue here, as noted above, because God cannot be unjust and He cannot change, so Scripture must contain an answer. Here is how a close study of this particular attribute of God will handle the objection.

God's very nature and omnipresence requires everything to be just as He is - completely holy (1 Peter 1:16) and perfect (Matthew 5:48). His nature is completely free from all sin and is therefore separate from all that is of or is tainted with sin. Since His nature is completely free from all sin He is therefore perfect, without any defect. This holiness and perfection is at the root and core of all doctrines of God (theology proper) because from these flow all other attributes of God. One of the attributes which flow from this holiness and perfection is His justice. Because He is holy, and because He has commanded, by nature and by command, that His creation also be holy and perfect then anything that does not comply with or yield obedience to this command is sinful. This attribute of justice says that these sinful things must be punished, for they are offensive to God, Who is the Maker and Judge of all laws. These sinful things cannot and will not go unpunished (Exodus 34:7). Now, when these things (holiness, perfection, justice) are placed alongside the attribute of immutability, we see an interesting fact. God cannot and will not change His person, nature, or ways in order to give sin anything less than what it justly deserves. In other words, because God is unchangeable, He cannot change Himself or His nature, or His ways in order to deal with the one who sins.

Now, let’s apply this theology to the situation of Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden and after their fall into sin. When we apply the doctrine of immutability to their situation we see several things.

1. First of all, God's person and nature required the two persons He created to be holy just as He was holy (though there was no command given to be holy, the command was implied and assumed by Adam and Eve because of God's very presence). Adam had the ability to take part in this perfect holiness with God because God made him without sin.

2. Second, Adam chose to disobey God and thus, sin against His revealed will. No one pushed or forced Adam to make this choice, but rather he chose of his own mind to do it (this process of temptation is discussed in James 1:13-15). This sinful act of disobedience cost Adam his very life -spiritually and physically (Genesis 2:16-17). He died spiritually in that he no longer bore the full image of God, no longer held full fellowship with God all the time, and no longer was able to be holy as God was holy.

3. Third, since God is unchangeable, in his nature, person, and law, just because Adam chose to forfeit his ability to be holy as God was holy by sinning, and just because the exact results did indeed come on Adam and Eve just as God proclaimed they would, does not mean that God was obliged or was coerced or forced in any way to change His person, nature or law. In other words, Adam blew it and paid the price, but because God is unchangeable, God could not and would not "bend the rules" so to speak, and be lenient on Adam or lessen the punishment. The punishment had to happen just as God said it would.

Now, here's the key. Because God is just, and because this law of death was a just punishment for Adam, so also is it just for God to still require Adam after the fall to continue to be holy as He is holy even though Adam gave up that ability to be holy. That is to say, that God's unchangeableness required Him to still hold Adam responsible for being holy and perfect even though Adam gave up that ability and thus no longer could comply with obedience. So then, it is completely just for God to hold the unsaved man responsible for compliance and obedience to God's command of holiness and perfection even though unsaved man does not have the ability to do it.

This is the case that is hard to accept when we read Romans 5:12. By Adam's sin death entered the new human race and spread. It reigned over the entire human race that followed him. Adam, who was the representative head of the human race, walked into sinful disobedience and suffered the results, bringing the entire future human race downward with him as well. Every person born now suffers from the effects of Adam's sin, both spiritually and physically. All persons are born dead spiritually (Psalm 51:5) and will one day die physically (Hebrews 9:27). This punishment for Adam's sin is passed down to all persons who are born after him and there's nothing we can do about it. All are born sinners by nature and so that is the reason why they sin. This sinful nature, received at conception, and the sinful acts which follow are the reasons why they are dead spiritually (Ephesians 2:1) and objects of God's wrath (Ephesians 2:4). But all of this does not mean that God is required to change His person, nature, or law of holiness because we can't meet it. So then, a command to obey something does not always mean that the one to whom the command was extended has the ability to obey that command.

A Final Illustration

This can be illustrated in a number of ways but just one will do. The book of Job affords us a wonderful example of this fact. Job 38:1-4 reads as follows: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said:

"'Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace
yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where
were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me if you understand.'"

These four verses here illustrate beautifully the point to be made. God said that He would ask Job some questions (see 38:4-39:30) and He then was going to require answers from Job in return. The Lord asked many pondering questions about the presence of Job when the Lord was doing the some of the things listed there. But we see the fact clearly illustrated that even though God required an answer from Job about these things, Job did not have the ability answer them because as verses four and five indicate by God's rhetorical questions, Job neither understood or knew the answers to the questions. He did not have the ability to give the answer God desired.

Now apply our initial question here. Doesn't the fact that God asked Job these questions mean that Job must have had the ability to answer them? I believe that the refutation from Scripture to this premise destroys the premise and leaves Free-Willery confined to his tank forever. He will just not be able to get out and swim with the rest of Scripture! So while the premise sounds logical it just isn’t biblical. Perhaps this brief examination of the oft used phrase – “God’s commands are God’s enablings” – will think a little harder and perhaps more biblical when it comes to ole Free-Willery.