Chapter I

 FREE WILL AND GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY

The Question of Free Will

I believe this booklet will be helpful in understanding the sovereignty of God and the entire question of free will. Every Christian, it seems, believes that God is sovereign in the universe. On the other hand, man’s theology also seems to deny His sovereignty when we question them on the details. God is sovereign, they tell us, yet for whatever reason, God has chosen to relinquish His sovereignty, or His control over His creation, in order to give man a free will.

To complicate matters further, many believe that one of God’s top angels decided, by his own free will of course, to overthrow God. This Lucifer, or the devil (according to the commonly held view) was also endowed with a free will, and he convinced other disgruntled angels who were jealous of or angry with God for reasons unclear, to join the rebellion. The bottom line is that it is commonly believed that both men and angels have a free will and can sin or not sin by their own decision.

We do see in the Bible that man is told to choose what is right and to shun that which is wrong. Man does have a will; there is no question about that. It is commonly believed that if man has a will at all, then it must be totally free. The problem is that we are told in John 6:44 that no man is able to come to the Father except the Father drag him. The Greek helkuo means “to drag.” It is translated in the King James as “draw.”

John 6:44

 ⁴⁴ No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

NT: #1670

helkuo (hel-koo'-o); or helko (hel'-ko); probably akin to NT:138; to drag (literally or figuratively).

You will find this same word used in other parts of the Bible, such as John 21:6,

John 21:6

⁶ And he said unto them, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.” They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.

The same idea is expressed when fishermen drag their nets. There are fish in the net, and the fish do not have a whole lot of free will to escape once they are caught in the net. The fish do not know this, but we of higher intelligence know it. You also find this same word in James 2:6,

James 2:6

⁶ But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?

Do the rich and powerful oppressors come knocking on your door and say, “You have a choice here. We would like you to come down to our court because we want to sue you.” I do not think they give anyone the free will option to decline. They put the handcuffs on you and drag you into court. That is the theme in James 2 – it means “to drag.” To drag implies that they do not have much free will in the matter. They may fight and scream all they want, but it is not their decision to make. Someone of a higher authority has already made the decision for them, and they are forced to comply.

John 12:32

³² And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

Here, Jesus uses that same word – drag. It does not sound like men have much to say in the matter. In other words, if the expression “to drag” implies the rich and powerful are dragging you into court or the net is dragging fish into the boat, then the ones being dragged are having their "free will" overruled by a higher will. Therefore we can say that if Jesus was lifted up, that is on the cross – which He was – He will drag all men unto Himself just as He plainly said He would do.

What does this do to free will? The word “draw” really does not allow much in the way of free will.

John 6:37

³⁷ All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

Whomever the Father has given to Christ will come to Him. In other words, those who decide to come to Christ by their own “free will” are the people whom the Father has given Him already. There is Someone behind the scenes Who has called these people, and therefore their response is, “I think I want to come to Christ.” They think it is all by their own free will, but yet God has played a hidden role in the background, choosing to remain anonymous.

God has chosen them, so they will in turn choose God seemingly of their own free will. God preserves this illusion of free will, and this gives us the idea that we all have decided our own course. We hold this illusion of free will in our immaturity. Once we begin to understand who God is, and see His sovereignty and His glory and understand that He really is the Sovereign of the universe, then we begin to see that our will is merely a response to His will. The more we come to know Him, the more sovereign He seems to become, and the less free our will seems to be.

So the question becomes, why do men feel the need to question God’s sovereignty and establish the idea of their own free will? What is behind this need to question God’s sovereignty? What is the motive behind it that is so strong that people feel absolutely obligated to maintain free will, and without it their entire universe falls apart? There are three basic motives for the maintenance of free will among men.

The first element is human pride and man's need to do something in himself in order to be saved. Man wants God to think that he (man) has come to Him on his own initiative, so that God will be pleased with man’s decision. In other words, “I have some participation in my salvation. It is a cooperative effort between God and me. God can do nothing without me, as much as I can do nothing without God.” We hear much about this cooperative effort. Well, I agree that on one level it appears that we need to cooperate with God – at least on the surface – and I have no real problem with that. My question is: Who is it that implanted the idea within our heart to make us cooperate with God?

The second motive behind the idea of free will is that the Adamic self-life is still very much alive. The self-life wants to maintain itself and survive. It does not want to die. It is the carnal mind, and it uses man’s ego to focus upon man. It makes man's will the originator of all his decisions. Man becomes the measure of all things, as philosophers have said. Essentially, at its core it is a humanistic view of the world.

Thirdly, and perhaps most important for our purposes, the reason for the free will idea is the need to explain the existence of evil in the world in a way that does not make God liable for it. In other words, if God is sovereign (we are asked), then why does He allow all this human suffering to take place? People always bring up all of the terrible events that happen and continue to happen. If God really were sovereign, then why does He not do something about the world's problems? Surely He cannot be held responsible!

Christian theologians and philosophers have proposed two opposing solutions to this third question. One group says that they do not really understand God’s purpose for evil, but they know that God will work all things out for good (Romans 8:28). The other solution is that God is not really responsible, that it is all caused by mankind and the devil who inspires them. Jeremiah had something to say about this:

Jeremiah 31:18-19

¹⁸ I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; “Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God. ¹⁹ Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.”

By the Spirit, Jeremiah heard Ephraim praying “as a bullock” that was plowing a field that God would turn him because then he would be turned. To turn means to repent, to go in another direction. In other words, the farmer is the one responsible to turn the bullock in the right direction as it is plowing the field. The problem is that this particular “bullock” is the tribe of Ephraim, or the nation of Israel in general, and they were not accustomed to being obedient to God, the Farmer.

Ephraim goes on to say that after God turned him, he turned, or repented. The passage does not say that Ephraim repented and then God turned him, as if God were reacting to His “bullock.” God is clearly shown to be “at the reins,” so to speak. He is the One in control of the bullock. So Jeremiah is showing that God has to initiate everything – otherwise it will not be accomplished.

None of us will be saved unless God has initiated it first. No man can come to the Father, except the Father drag him. If God has ordained some event from the beginning (call it “predestination” if you want – the “P” word); if He has determined something and ordained it, then it is going to happen, BUT it will seem as if we did it all by ourselves.

Jeremiah 17:14

¹⁴ Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.

Again, who is the cause and what is the effect? Man’s flesh cannot initiate any good thing. In my flesh is no good thing. James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above.” One of the greatest gifts God can give us is the gift of repentance. Romans 2:4 that “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” If God leads us to repent and begins to drag us to the Father, then we should stop taking credit for our repentance and begin to praise and thank God for giving us this good and perfect gift.

If God does not turn us – which causes us to respond by turning to Him – we simply will not turn to Him. So between this reality and the word “drag,” we can ask the question: Is this really free will? Man would always like to take credit for his turning to God, his acceptance of Jesus Christ as his Savior, as if his salvation is based upon his own free will decision. To many theologians this is the only thing that gives salvation any legitimacy. They believe that if God exercises His will or interferes in any way with man's decision to come to God, then somehow this goes against the nature of God.

1 John 1:11-12

¹¹ He came unto his own, and his own received him not. ¹² But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

Thus far it sounds like man has free will. But then John says in verse 13,

¹³ Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

It is not the will of the flesh; it is not the will of man; it is not blood lineage. It is done only by the will of God. Of all the gospel writers, John makes the clearest case for God’s sovereignty. Was John unaware of the debate over free will? No, for this issue was debated just as hotly in his day as it is in ours. There were three Judean schools of thought in those days. The Essenes believed that God was totally sovereign. The Sadducees believed that man had total free will. The Pharisees were in the middle, believing that God “helps” people to do good. These same schools of thought have come down to us today.

Of course you recall in Ephesians 1:11 that God does all things by the counsel of His own will.

Ephesians 1:11

¹¹ In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.

To absolve God of any responsibility for evil in the world, many Christian theologians today feel the need to take back most of God’s sovereignty. First they attribute the sovereignty to God, and then they take it all back and give most of it to the devil and to man. Free will, when taken to its logical conclusion, removes all sovereignty from God leaving Him totally impotent to do anything but stand on the sidelines and threaten people with ever-increasing punishment. He stands there and hopes and hopes and hopes that somebody will listen, but He is impotent to actually do anything. Little wonder, then, that so many Christians live in fear of the devil, rather than by faith in God. While they express faith in God with their lips, they go home believing that God is in serious need of help to accomplish His goals on earth.

I think that most people agree that God did not have to do it this way, if He had so chosen at the beginning. But, most of them say that God did do it this way, because, for some mysterious reason not explained in the Bible, He had to preserve man’s free will. Some go so far as to insist that God had to preserve the free will of angels also. Remember we are taught often that the devil sinned by his own free will.

It is interesting to me that God has to stand on the sidelines wringing His hands, hoping that people will turn to Him. He stands there in despair when things do not go His way, but the devil has no such constraints. “The devil made me do it,” because (they say) the devil is not a gentleman, but God is. God set the rules limiting Himself and His own will in the affairs of men, so He cannot do anything about our decisions. However, the devil has free will, they say, even if God does not. The devil has not set any rules for himself, so he is free to impose his will upon everyone.

When the spirit of God inhabits your body, you still sin because of your own free will, right? But when the devil inhabits your body and you still sin, then you have no free will – the devil made you do it. Why is this? We are told that the devil can override your free will, but then God cannot. Is that not interesting? Is it any wonder that in the end the devil wins at least 99% of humanity?

Who is Really Sovereign Here on Earth?

Has the devil taken sovereignty, and has God abdicated? Is that the kind of God we serve? When you stop and think about it, to leave free will intact in man creates a very scary situation in the world, because if God is on the sidelines and cannot override man’s free will, then how can God prophesy anything? There are books out there today that even agree with that premise. They say, “That’s right, even God does not know what is going to happen yet because man has not decided, and the devil has not decided.” It is all a tactical matter, and God has no control over the situation.

We might ask ourselves, how much free will did the Apostle Paul have when he was converted. A light came and threw him on his back, the light shined in his eyes, and a voice out of heaven spoke to him. Put yourself in his shoes. Would you have said “no”? Paul called himself the chief of sinners in 1 Timothy 1:15. God saved the chief of sinners by throwing him down on the ground, conscripting him, and saying, “You will follow Me from now on,” totally overruling Paul’s free will. This may be treated like an exception to the rule. But ask yourself one thing: what if God did that to every human being in the world? How many non-Christians would the world have today?

If the rules of free will have been established, then apparently God set aside those rules when it came to the Apostle Paul. This is not fair. How can anyone believe that God really does want to save all mankind, and yet He reveals Himself to only a few? If He really loved all mankind, would He not do with all men as He did with Paul?

The fact of the matter is that if God wanted to save everybody on this very day, He could do so very easily. All He would have to do is to repeat what He did to the Apostle Paul. Throw everyone down and say, “I am Jesus, the One that you are persecuting.” Who would argue with Him? In fact, look at some lesser situations. Every time there is a genuine revival meeting, where the Holy Spirit moves in power, you see them turning to Him and repenting. Why does God not do this all of the time? We would not have the situation in the world today if He did, but He has chosen not to do so.

When the world comes along and says that it does not believe in a God who would allow all of these evil things to happen, they may have a point because God could stop it at any point that He so chose. But the church does not like that solution. Their solution is that God is not responsible because God is basically helpless. Be assured: God is not helpless; God is sovereign, and He can change the effects of evil any time He wants. The world is often more justified than the Church, because they at least assume that God must really be sovereign if He is God at all. The Church often wants to water down His sovereignty to the point where God is totally impotent, a helpless giant in the sky.

The question is not resolved by removing sovereignty from God; the question is resolved by understanding why God does things the way He does. That takes more study and work and knowing who God is in order to understand the real solution to the world's problems.

Sin is Reckoned as a Debt

We know that all sin is reckoned as a debt. When we sin, we obtain a debt to the law. The law has set up its liability laws so that if you sin against your neighbor, you owe them restitution. Therefore, it is reckoned as a debt. This is why Jesus taught the disciples to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Luke’s version of it says, “Forgive us our SINS; for we also forgive every one that is INDEBTED to us.” God reckons sin in terms of debt.

In man’s way of thinking debt continues forever and ever. It is always eternal punishment. But God’s laws are not that way. (And man has the nerve to say that the Old Testament God was merciless and unloving!) We are like the man in Matthew 18 who owed ten thousand talents, a huge debt that he could not pay. So the man, his wife, his children, and all that he had, were sold for payment.

Matthew 18:23-25

²³ Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. ²⁴ And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. ²⁵ But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.

Think about this. Adam was given a wife, children, and dominion over all the earth. This represented “all that he had” – the whole earth. When he sinned, all that he had was sold to sin, and sin held the debt note until Christ paid that debt. Because Christ paid our debt note, we have now become His servants just as Paul described himself in Romans 1:1,

Romans 1:1

¹ Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God . . .

The Jubilee Ends All Debt

How long was the debt to last for the man in the parable of Matthew 18? There is a year of Jubilee that limits all liability for debt. This is God’s law. We do not have the authority or the sovereignty that would allow us to sell ourselves into debt so far that the year of Jubilee could not free us. We do not have that right; nor did we ever have that right or authority, because we do not own us. You do not own yourself. You have limited authority over yourself, and when you marry, you relinquish to your spouse even more of your authority.

Ownership is ultimately from God. God owns; we have only limited authority. When we talk about ownership – such as when we say that we own our land or we own our house – we must recognize that in the eyes of God we do not really own the property. God owns all the land (Lev. 25:23). We have authority over it that is always limited by God’s sovereignty and His law. God has laws that limit our liability for debt. When we go into debt, there is a time in which to pay the debt. But there is a Jubilee year that limits the liability for all debt.

That is done out of God’s sovereignty. It is a comfort to me to know that when all the evil is happening out there in the world, all this debt to sin is being incurred by so many people, it makes no difference if they owe a trillion dollars or six dollars. The Jubilee can handle all of it. There is no amount of debt where the law of Jubilee no longer applies to you. The Jubilee will cancel a six-dollar debt and a trillion-dollar debt equally well with one stroke of the pen. It is called God’s law, and His law is so merciful.

So we raise the question: Could God save every man by the same method that He saved Paul? Or, were the rules of free will set aside in the case of Paul? Did Paul receive preferential treatment? If God demonstrated His ability to turn the chief of sinners and cause him to repent, why does He not do it more often? So if God does not exercise His sovereignty and save everyone now as He did Paul, who is liable for lost souls?

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