Free Will?

What is the relationship between our will and God’s will? Just how “free” are we to act contrary to the will of God? The subject of the human will and how it functions in a universe that is governed by a sovereign God has been well treated by greater minds than mine (if you want to explore the subject more fully I would encourage you to pick up a copy of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will and Jonathan Edward’s Freedom of the Will). However, let me offer a few frail observations using the book of Jonah offers a helpful starting place to examine this complex subject.

Firstly, in this brief book we discover that human beings are very capable of making decisions that are contrary to the will of God. In the story, Jonah determines to go in the opposite direction than the one directed by God. At another point, mariners, with Jonah on board, struggle to row their boat back to shore in the face of the threatening storm though they had been told that the way to save their lives was to toss Jonah over the side. Both of these incidents demonstrate that human beings are capable of using their will in ways that are contrary to the will of God. This is important to keep in mind when we assert the sovereignty of God. We should not think that because he is governing all things to his good end that this turns humans into robots. The book of Jonah illustrates otherwise.

But does this mean that man’s will is “free”? In the two instances I related above, the best we can say is that humans can act against but not overcome the will of God. Both Jonah and the mariners are eventually brought to the place intended for them by God. Clearly, their will is not truly free. Though they try, they are not able to accomplish what they want to accomplish. In Jonah, God is the superintending agent who is bringing his will to pass no matter how hard anyone tries to prevent it.

There is another way in which the story of Jonah demonstrates that human will is not completely free. When Jonah exercises his will in a manner contrary God’s he becomes subject to other forces that are in place. Try this exercise to get a sense of what I mean. Hold a book aloft in your hand. As soon you remove your hand, what happens? The book falls to the ground. Why is that? Because the book is subject to the law of gravity and only your hand causes it to be anywhere else than where it is destined to be, on the floor.

In a similar manner, the Bible describes the world, and every human being in it, as being corrupted by sin. As we push off from the safe harbor of God’s will, like Jonah, we are inevitably battered about by the winds of sin that are resident with our heart. This is to say that our will is not some neutral, independent force within us. Like gravity working on the book, our will responds to our desires. When God’s desires are not our desires then we will use our ability to act in ways that our innate sin drives us to act.

Lastly, we see in Jonah, that even though we are capable of conceiving and acting upon choices as individuals we are not free to act as independent agents, operating within our own private sphere. As we exercise our will we must be mindful that our choices, though we might make them as individuals, are not solitary. They are felt by others and seen by God. This is inescapable for this is the way we are made. Being made in the “image of God” we reflect the one in whose image we are made. The God who has made us, and given us his will to obey, dwells in relationship as three-in-one.

So, in the end we would have to say that our free will is not so free. It is certainly not free enough to evade God’s will. The one who sits in the heavens and laughs at the futile schemes of men (Psalm 2) will have his way.