Free Will
There are
some days that I really enjoy the fact that God has given us free will. I don’t mean that sentence in the manner you
might expect. Most people say a sentence like that because they are enjoying
the freedom from which they think they benefit.
I mean that sentence in exactly the opposite. I am grateful for free will because of the
freedom that it brings to God. Free will
that results in us enjoying our freedom will only result in sin – that’s
nothing to be grateful for. But free
will that results in freedom for God, now that is something for which we should
be grateful!
Let me
spin this out for a second and show why we should focus on celebrating God’s
freedom that is a natural side-effect of us having free will. You see, because we have free will, we also
have accountability and responsibility.
We choose our actions, and that means that by definition we also choose
our consequences. This much is really
common thought, and in this paragraph I haven’t really spoken anything new or
amazing. But it is the right place to
start when talking about free will.
Since we
have free will and we are responsible for our own choices, God can invite us to
make whatever decision we think we desire.
Not that it is God’s idea – and not that God is enticing us to make
those decisions and plunge headlong into sin.
He’s not encouraging us to sin in the slightest. But He is absolutely free to talk about the
invitation knowing that it is our choice to pursue our free will to the end if
we desire. That is how free will grants
freedom to God – and that is worth celebrating.
Job 41
gives us a great example of this. I had
to laugh as I was reading this passage, especially when I got to God’s
invitation for Job to wrestle with the Leviathan in Job 41:8. God’s comment about how it will conclude is
so spot-on-true that it is actually funny.
God says, “Lay your hands on him – remember the battle! You’ll not do it again!”
You see,
our free will gives God the freedom to show us the natural consequences of our
thinking. That is really worth
celebrating. Because we have free will,
God can look at us and push us to the end of our logic. That’s what God is doing with Job. God has basically been making this chain of
logic over the last three chapters:
- If Job thinks himself righteous enough to judge God’s character, then Job must be able to explain creation.
- If Job thinks himself righteous enough to judge God’s character, then Job must be able to subdue creation.
- If Job thinks himself righteous enough to judge God’s character, then Job must be able to judge over himself and the lives of the people around him.
Clearly
Job cannot explain creation because he wasn’t there. Clearly Job is not capable of judging over
creation because Job can only see the external.
And if Job cannot wrestle the Leviathan into submission then clearly Job
is not capable of subduing creation.
Therefore, Job must not really be righteous enough to judge God’s
character and he needs to be humbled for trying.
It is
because of our free will that God can make this logical progression. If we were simply automatons that obeyed
God’s every command, then we would never think of doing anything except what we
are ordered to do. Our life would be
about fulfilling the request of the maker like some robot. There would be no thinking, no rationalizing,
no loving, and no expressing of God’s character through ourselves. But because we have free will, we can
think. We can rationalize. We can love.
We can express God’s character through ourselves – with His help, of
course.
Because of
our free will, God can come to us when we push our free will too far and He can
show us the natural conclusion of our free will. When our heads swell because we have drunk in
our free will too deeply, God can look to us and say, “Really, you think you’re
all that? Go wrestle Leviathan. Let’s see how easy that goes for you, and
let’s see if you ever forget that humbling experience.”
Free will
often gets us into trouble. But it is
our free will that lets us also see our need for God. It is our free will that God uses to come
back into our life and show us the error of our ways when we make
mistakes. I love free will because it
allows me to experience God like no kind of robot could ever do. I also love free will because it allows God
to be free and to teach me when I am in desperate need of a “teachable moment”
– as is the case with Job here.
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