Free Will

“The whole point about the army is that you are never alone for a moment and can never choose where you’re going or even what part of the road you’re walking on. On a walking-tour you are absolutely detached. You stop where you like and go on when you like.” C.S. Lewis

My pastor recently explained the biblical definition of free will. He said it means choosing according to our greatest and deepest desires. In other words, we will choose that which we want most in any given moment. We will choose chocolate over vanilla if in the moment when our choice is upon us we desire chocolate the most. That doesn’t mean chocolate is our favorite, or that we won’t choose vanilla even given that chocolate is our favorite. It means we’ll choose the promises of God over the lies of Satan if that is what we desire most. This choice, however, is not possible apart from Christ. The reason we can say that our sovereign God has given us free will is because He has given us a heart that wants righteousness more than anything else.

As slaves of sin, we might have believed that we had free will. In truth, everything we did was motivated by sin. Even those acts which we believed would produce goodness or which we believed emanated from our love for someone or something outside of ourselves were sinful acts; they were products of our sinful natures apart from faith in Christ. They were not committed in glad submission to God and His commands. According to Romans 14:23, “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”

Our pastor explained that there were only three people who ever had free will apart from faith in Jesus: Adam, Eve and Jesus Himself. Adam and Eve lost their ability to choose what they wanted most in any given moment when they chose to believe Satan’s lies and eat of the forbidden fruit. They and everyone after them became slaves to sin, unable to choose to do right. In such a condition, even when we think we are choosing rightly, we are motivated by our own selfish desires, our greed, pride, lust, etc.

If God’s grace hadn’t intervened, if Christ had not died on our behalf, no one would choose to love God. We must still guard against choosing unrighteousness, but we no longer are motivated solely by our desire to please ourselves. Because of God’s love for us, because of Christ’s sacrifice, we are freed from the bondage of sin; we are free to choose to act for the glory of the Lord.