The Problem of the Will, Part 1

Why didn't God make humans perfect to start with?  When my friend asked me that question years ago, my first reply was, "He did." My friend clarified: "I mean, why did God make man capable of sin?" I offered my short answer: "So Christ could die for us.” My friend, of course, wanted the long answer.

Through most of my years in church the usual answer I heard to this sort of question was: because we have to have free will. If we aren’t free not to love God, the thinking goes, our love can’t be genuine love. Likewise, if we aren’t “free” to disobey—if sin is not offered as an option—our obedience is meaningless. We would be like robots or, as I heard one pastor suggest, like dogs. He illustrated his point by saying that his wife’s love for him meant more to him than his dog’s because she has a choice. (Is that the only thing made her love better than his dog’s? I’ll leave you to chew on that one.)

Of course, God wants us to love him. Yes, God wants us to obey him. Certainly we should do both. He created us in his own image, after all; it is our great glory and honor to reflect his glorious character on this earth. Yes, our wills are essential to who we are and to God’s purposes for creating us. The entire Bible is nothing if not an appeal to our wills—beckoning us to hear, to believe, and to respond to God with the appropriate love and obedience. But to say that humans have wills, and to appeal to those wills, is not the same as saying those wills are free. Furthermore, Scripture never depicts the ability not to love as essential to genuine love. Nor does it depict the “freedom” to sin as freedom at all. Nor does the Bible depict the human will as so sacrosanct that God will by no means tamper with it. (Scripture is replete with examples of God “tampering” with human hearts, e.g. Ex. 4:21, 7:3, 14:4,17; Dt 29:4, 30:6; Josh 11:20; 1 Sam 2:25, 10:9,25-26; Psalm 81:12, 105:25, 106:46; Is 44:18; Jer 24:7, 32:39-40, Ez 36:25-26; Jn 6:35-20, 65; Acts 13:48; Rev 17:17. The list could go on!)

So what is the human will, and why does it matter? What most people mean when they say we have free will is simply that we are volitional beings. In other words, we have minds and bodies with thoughts and desires. We have preferences and the ability to choose between the options available to us. But I promise you, even my dog has desires and chooses what she prefers over what she doesn’t. Love me though she does, even my dog disobeys me when it suits her. By our common definition of “free will,” we might very well conclude that my dog’s will is “free.” She has a mind of her own. She is nothing like a robot. But certainly there must be a difference between a dog’s will and the human will.

God himself—in whose image we humans were created—is a volitional being. Of all the wills that exist, his is the only one that we could truly call “free.” God is omnipotent. Unlike us, he is fully capable of doing everything he desires: “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps 115:3) and “What he desires, that he does” (Job 23:13b). Yet James 1:13 tells us that “God cannot be tempted with evil.” In other words, God is not “free” to sin. Does that make God a robot? Hardly. Similarly, the Scripture declares that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8,16). Does the fact that love is such an integral and immutable part of his character mean God’s love is second rate, like the love of a dog, who “has no choice”? Or is the love of God the Father for his Son second rate because it is the eternal state of their relationship and could never be otherwise? Certainly not!

So, if our notions of “free will” don’t apply to the most perfect Will and the most perfect Love, then we have some re-thinking to do. We need to think about the will (and the heart as a whole) the way the Bible does. The Bible sees the human will not as independent (or neutral), but as the representative of everything we are. Our will carries out the desires of our heart. It acts upon our thoughts, feelings, wants, and urges. Like waves and swells on the surface of the ocean, our wills move in response to the forces at work in the deep recesses of our souls. “For the inward mind and heart of a man are deep” (Ps 64:6b). And “The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water”  (Prov 20:5a).

The same can be said for God. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom 11:33). The wisdom and knowledge that determine his ways are unfathomable to mere men. And God’s will is utterly free; nothing hinders him from carrying out any of his desires or plans. But God is not “free” to sin. Why? Because God is holy to the core of his being. He doesn’t want to sin. He has no stomach for it whatsoever. Sin, perhaps by definition, is any violation of who he is and everything he holds dear. God cannot sin because he will not sin. Sin has no power over him, because he has no desire for it. God is perfectly free, free to do whatever he wills, powerful enough to accomplish everything his heart desires, and too holy to deviate or be tempted to deviate from his own perfect character.

Now back to us humans. God created us in his own image to reflect his perfect character and represent his perfect will here on earth. He gave us minds and hearts capable of seeing and savoring His holy character, marveling at His wisdom and infinitude, glorying in the depth of His love and the beauty of his creation (something I’ve never seen my dog doing, by the way). He created us to witness, partake in, and represent His glory and to be the focus of His love. He made us to enjoy Him, the Infinite, the Creator of all. True freedom, for a being created by God in God’s own image, is to walk in unfettered relationship with God and to joyfully and willingly represent the beauty of his character in everything we do. True freedom is not freedom to sin, it is freedom not to sin. Sin is the antithesis of this freedom. When the heart of a man begins to desire (to will) what God does not, his will becomes the slave of his sin. The will of sinful man is not free; it is bound by its own sin. From the point of view of Scripture, man’s will is not the solution, it is the problem.

Adam and Eve were created with hearts that were free to be everything God created them to be. The “opportunity” to sin did not make them freer to enjoy God. If that were the case, we must be "free" to sin in Heaven as well! Quite the contrary. Would Adam have loved God less, reflected God’s image less fully, or been less happy if the Garden had no forbidden fruit and no serpent? Why then, did God take the sinless man and place him (and his innocent will) in such a predicament? This is, I think more to the point of my friend's question.

[In my next article(s) I hope to offer a biblical response, in other words, the “long answer”.]