Freewill is in the Bible Part 2.

 

A week or two ago I wrote an article outlining that freewill is in the Bible. I am coming back to this topic today. It is very simple to demonstrate that this concept is in the Bible. A good example of a passage that could be used to demonstrate that God recognizes the concept of “freewill”, by which I mean the ability to choose between good and evil, is from the book of Joshua. In this book the prophet, Joshua son of Nun, stands up and challenges all the Israelites who are gathered before him, and this is what he says at one point,

“14 Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:14-15).

This is one of the most famous passages in the whole Bible, and it sets the tone for much of the rest of the Scriptures, especially the phrase, “…choose this day whom you will serve…” How many people have this on the wall in their homes? Lots. This could be called the perennial question of the scriptures. Who will you CHOOSE to serve, God, or the false gods of this world? This is the most important question you will ever be asked, and the passage makes no indication that this is something that people cannot make a decision on. The passage throws down the challenge, "Which God will you use your free will to follow?" And the people are forced to make a response.

Someone might note here that verse 19 indicates that the Israelites cannot choose, because it says, “You are not able to serve the Lord…”. But look what it says in wider context,

“19 But Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. 20 If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.” 21 And the people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord.” 22 Then Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” 23 He said, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.” 24 And the people said to Joshua, “The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” 25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem” (Josh. 24:19-25).

The people whom Joshua says are “…not able to serve the Lord…”, not only prove him wrong by choosing to serve the Lord, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him,” but their choice is used as the basis for a voluntarily-entered-into-covenant between this people and God. Clearly when Joshua says they are not able to serve the Lord he is goading them, or challenging them, to provoke a response and a choice. He wants them to show him he is wrong here. It was their exercise of their freewill which is a witness against them that they are responsible for this choice. This passage, alone, makes a mockery of the idea that people cannot choose the things of God. The whole point of the Bible is that it is written to reason with people to encourage them to make the right choice. This passage is a powerful example of this. 

Of course, what is an even more foundational passage on this issue is Genesis 2 to 3, the passage of the Bible which does the most to explain to us human nature as it exists in this fallen world. We are told there that Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, and that they were not to eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:15-25). But we are then told a little later on after they ate from the tree, this,

“22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen. 3:22-24).

These two chapters tell us something very clear about humanity, that we have the capacity to choose to reject God, and we did. Adam and Eve ate from the tree (Gen. 3:6). But these passages also tell us that the fall did not take away the ability for humanity to choose between good and evil, in fact, it did the opposite, it gave people experiential knowledge of just how to do this. Genesis 3:22 clearly states that humanity's ability to choose between good and evil is retained, and now is practiced and experienced. How does good judgement come about? Experience. How does experience come about? Well that comes from poor judgement. This is the first example of this in the Bible, learning about good and bad from experience.  

And this ability to choose between good and evil is again seen when Cain is told to resist sin lest it have him. If he could not say no to sin then why did God himself say to Cain, “And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7). That Cain gave in to sin is not proof that Cain could not have rejected the temptation to murder his brother, what God said to him is proof God saw in him the ability to say no to sin. In other words, he still had the ability to choose between good and evil. This ability to choose is foundational to the Biblical concept of original sin, and the concept of human responsibility. To undermine this is to make God the author of human sin, when Genesis chapters 2-4 go out of their way to show he is not.

This also might be a shocking thing for some Christians to hear but the phrase ‘sovereignty of God’ is not once used in the Bible, but the phrase ‘freewill’ is used often. If you type “freewill” just like this in the search bar on the Bible gateway website for the ESV translation, you will find there are 23 results for the phrase. If, however, you type in “sovereignty of God” in the same search bar you will find there are zero results. Now, don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that because the phrase is not used that the concept is not in the Bible. I would not make such a silly, facile argument. The word trinity is not used in the Bible but the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all clearly there and have equal divinity (c.f. Matt. 28:19-20 for instance). We simply must evaluate both the phrases and the concepts according to the scriptures. If you type in the word “sovereign” you will find in the ESV there are precisely four uses of the word, one of which is an added title for Romans 9. So. the concept of sovereignty, in some sense, is there.

The question is, as we discussed in the last piece, what does it mean? Well, the answer is simple, a sovereign is simply a king, he is the highest authority. No Christian denies that God is the highest authority, the King of kings. He is the sovereign above all other sovereigns. But what we should question is the extra meaning imported into the word sovereign from some schools of theology. We will come back to this in a future post. But for now, let’s focus on the fact that the term "freewill" is used 23 times in the ESV. Here are some examples of its usage,

Exodus 35:29 – “All the men and women, the people of Israel, whose heart moved them to bring anything for the work that the Lord had commanded by Moses to be done brought it as a freewill offering to the Lord.”

Leviticus 7:16 – “But if the sacrifice of his offering is a vow offering or a freewill offering, it shall be eaten on the day that he offers his sacrifice, and on the next day what remains of it shall be eaten.”

Leviticus 22:21 – “And when anyone offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord to fulfill a vow or as a freewill offering from the herd or from the flock, to be accepted it must be perfect; there shall be no blemish in it.”

Psalm 119:108 – “Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your rules.”

Of course, this is only four examples out of 23 in the ESV, but I want to drill down on one example that is not in the ESV, but that you will find in the NKJV. In the ESV Leviticus 19:5 says this, “5 When you offer a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted.” “When you offer” is a phrase that is consistent with freewill, but there is no explicit mention of freewill in this passage, or is there? The NKJV version makes it abundantly clear that there is, “5 And if you offer a sacrifice of a peace offering to the Lord, you shall offer it of your own free will” (Lev. 19:5). This verse makes it clear “freewill offering” is not just some title of a category of offerings, it is, rather, a term referring to the phrase we recognize as freewill, “you shall offer it of your own free will” or of your own free choice. That is what we call an iron clad affirmation of the idea of freewill in the Bible. 

Except for one seemingly embarrassing fact, the ESV translates the phrase “so that you might be accepted…” This appears to undermine our usage of this phrase, correct? Especially at first glance. However, it does not do away with all the other passages we have mentioned, so maybe it is not that important a verse to lean on? And secondly, because it can be translated more ambiguously it appears to be a verse we should leave to the side anyway. But that is only at first glance. A more careful look shows that this verse not only strengthens our case, but makes it incredibly ironclad.

First, let’s note that neither the ESV nor NKJV translate this verse wrong. Strong’s concordance tells us that, the words is “râtsôn, raw-tsone' From H7521; delight: - (be) acceptable (-ance, -ed), delight, desire, favour, (good) pleasure, (own, self, voluntary) will, as . . . (what) would.” This shows that “of your own freewill” and “so that you may be accepted” are both fair translations. Neither translation is being questioned as the legitimate one in this instance. Rather what we should note is that this word shows us that the idea of “freely chosen” and “acceptable” overlap so much in the Hebrew that in some instances they even had one word for both concepts. You cannot separate these two ideas in the Bible. A sacrifice that is acceptable is one that is done of one’s own free will. This is actually a deeply important part of the Bible's concept of worship. 

Take this passage for instance, Isaiah 29:13-14,

“13 And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, 14 therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.”

What is this passage saying? That God despises worship that does not come from the freely chosen heart of man. When our heart is far from our lips, that is when we profess worship of God, but do not show it in how we live and do not really choose him, he condemns us for his. Worship that is acceptable is worship that comes from the heart, through ours lips and into our actions. It is a whole of life offering to God. In other words, worship that is acceptable to God is that which follows his commands and is done by our own freewill, or choice. After all, without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6), right? Hence why these two concepts of “freewill” and “acceptable” overlap so deeply. So, the ESV reading of Leviticus 19:5 does not weaken our argument it solidifies it.

Acceptable does not just mean what we choose, we must follow God’s guidelines, of course. But nor is it acceptable if you follow the guidelines without the genuine choice of your heart. The two must come hand in hand. God wants us to choose him. He wants us to use our capacity for good to say no to evil, and what is a greater good than choosing God? Nothing, of course. 

Like my last piece, I do not expect that this article will fully convince every determinist that our will to choose the things of God is real and genuine. But I think it does prove that those who hold that the Bible affirms free will have a thoroughly biblically grounded and reasoned argument that takes into account a broad sweep of scripture on this issue. The ability of man to choose between good and evil is not just the chief assumption of scripture, it is explicitly labelled as foundational to the experience of man after the fall. It is the character of the man as compared to the beast. Any attempt to take it from the man appears to fly in the face of a lot of the Bible, including how it wants us to understand the fall and sin.