WHAT IS MAN’S FREE WILL?

JOHN 1:6–13

Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God

(John 1:13).

What does it mean to have a free will? The great American theologian Jonathan Edwards said that free will is the mind choosing. What he is saying is that while there is a distinction between mind and will, the two are inseparable in action. We do not make a choice without our mind’s approving that choice.

Edwards gives us a rule that I call “Edwards’ Law of Free Will.” It is this: Free moral agents always act according to the strongest inclination they have at the moment of choice. To say it another way, we always choose according to our inclinations, and according to our strongest inclination at a given moment. When we commit a sin, it means that at that moment our desire to sin is greater than our desire to obey Christ. Even when we seem to choose something for no apparent reason, in fact we had some kind of inclination. You come into an auditorium and take a seat. Why that particular seat? Maybe because you like to sit in the front, or in the back, or on the aisle. Maybe you took the nearest empty seat because you prefer not to have to wander around looking. Whatever the reason, there was some inclination behind your decision.

The Problem of Free Will

What about coercion? Well, if a man points a gun at me and says, “Your money or your life,” I still have a choice. I may not like either one, but I will make my choice in terms of my inclination—which will be my inclination to live and lose my money, rather than die and lose my money anyway.

John Calvin writes that if we mean by free will that fallen man has the ability to choose what he wants, then of course fallen man has free will. If we mean that man in his fallen state has the moral power and ability to choose righteousness, then, said Calvin, free will is far too grandiose a term to apply to fallen man. Man’s will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man’s inclinations are always away from God.

CORAM DEO

God lets us exercise our will and make free choices. The problem is that, left to ourselves, we always choose the wrong thing when it comes to true holiness. Ask yourself the questions, “Before conversion, on my own could I have willed to love God? Who or what inclined my will toward God?”

For further study: Exodus 18:13–27; Acts 15:22–35

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