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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Cline, Gary Schick and Johnathan Hernandez.
Gary Schick
All right. Well, our question for today is, "Does God knowing the future, negate our free will? Do we have a free will? What is the extent of that will?" Well, I can freely say I have no choice, but...actually, Jonathan, would you get us started on, kind of a tough question? Where do free will and predestination meet? Or do they?
Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, definitely. So this question definitely could be a four or five episode type of question. You know, we could really dive into a lot of theology, I guess, and debates and different things with this. You know, free will, predestination, those type of different things; we could hop into a lot of those. But, you know, I think for me, I think of this question and sometimes I think we want every answer to every single thing. We wanna know God completely, and I think that's a great thing for us to go after, cause we should go after knowing God as much as we can. You know, but I think of things like, "how can God be three in one?" You know, that's a question that I think we can go after forever and not fully, you know; our finite minds can't fully comprehend some of these things and stuff. And so, you know, I think of some of those questions. But you know, I think of 1 Corinthians 10:23, and it says, "you say 'I'm allowed to do anything,' but not everything is good for you. You say 'I'm allowed to do anything,' but not everything is beneficial." You know, we have free will to pick these different things, but how much of it is beneficial for us to actually do? You know, I can freely decide to, you know, do something that's harmful, but is it actually beneficial in the end? You know, when we see this verse it's making it, you know, why it's true that we have the right to do anything we want. The truth is, everything we do is not beneficial for us too. And then, how beneficial is it for us, or for the people that are around us too? You know, I think of that question. Even as in 1 Corinthians 10:23, if we jump to the next verse in 24, it says, "Don't be concerned for your own good, but also the good of others." You know, so I, when we think about free will we have to also think about, "if I have free will to do anything or everything, is it beneficial? Not only to me, but for, you know, the people that are around me. And if it's not beneficial for us, then should we be doing it?" You know? So I look at some of those things. Like I said, we could go for a long time on a lot of these questions. So I think we look at free will and then divine sovereignty. You know, is it human's responsibility and then is it God's responsibility? You know, where is the line, you know, in that. And so I had just a couple verses that we could look at. John 1:12, it says, "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God and to those who believe in His name." So we would look at that and we would say, "Is that human responsibility, or is that divine sovereignty?" And based off of what we just read, we'd probably say that's human responsibility. But if we go to the next verse in 13, it says, "Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." We'd look at that, and we'd say that leans more on divine sovereignty. So, you have these two back-to-back verses and one's human responsibility and one's divine sovereignty. And we could actually go to Matthew and we have the same thing in 11:25. And it says, "At that time, Jesus answered and said, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and have revealed them to the babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight. All things have been delivered to Me by My Father and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor the father, anyone knows, except the son. And the one to whom the son wills to reveal Him." We would look at that and we'd say that's divine sovereignty. And then if we jump to the next one, it says, "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And we'd say that one's human's responsibility. So, we could go back and forth on this, you know, debate, and I guess, depending on what church you're raised in, you'd have the two different Calvinist thought processes or the median thought processes. And so, that's kind of where I'm sitting. That I'm kind of in the middle on that.
Ben Cline
So you're saying that you're a Calvinist Armenian?
Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. Somewhere in the middle.
Ben Cline
So, like you said, this is one of those hot questions. And it's a hot question because we don't understand it, and so we debate it a lot. And, you know, thinking of how the question itself was worded. You know, he talks about, or the listener talks about God knowing the future. And I think another way of thinking of God knowing the future; another way to say that is that He's sovereign. That He's sovereign over all things. And what that means is that He has control and He has full understanding over all things. And those are two things that we don't have.
Gary Schick
We are always trying to get them though, aren't we?
Ben Cline
Right. Yeah, we don't have full control, we don't have full understanding over all those things. But in that sovereignty, it's so interesting because, you know, in that sovereignty that God has, He has given us the free will to make choices. And, you know, how does that work exactly? Well, we don't know. It's impossible, I think, for us to fully understand, you know, how those two things intertwine together. But there, I think, are a couple of things from scripture that we do know for sure. One of those things is that God knows all things. I was reading through Psalm 139 and in the first four verses it says, "Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold oh Lord, You know it all." And that Psalm just goes on and talks more and more about the knowledge that God has. He knows everything about us. He knows our future, He knows our past. And, the other thing that we know for sure is that God has given us the ability or the free will to make choices. And we see that even back all the way to the first human beings on earth, right? That God gave them the ability to make choices. And what did they choose? Well, they chose something like you were saying Jonathan, "that was not beneficial." And yeah, it messed a lot of things up. And, you know, I can't blame that on them, because I can't say that, you know, I wouldn't have made the same choice. But, you know, God did give us those choices. But another thing that we know for sure is that we must choose God or be eternally separated from Him. And Romans 3 makes that very clear, like you were talking about with the responsibility that we are accountable for our choices. It says in Romans 3:19 that we are accountable to God. But you know, even though we find difficulty in trying to understand this, I think that there's a couple of warnings in this first of all. You know, one is that there are a couple of extremes that people take. One is: the extreme of emphasizing God's sovereignty so much that it eliminates our free will, at least in our minds. And that's kind of like the scenario where we're just all these pre-programmed robots that God has created that are walking around on the earth, and we really don't have any free choice. But, you know, the other extreme is: emphasizing the free will of man so much that in our minds, it means that God doesn't still have full control. And, you know, both of those things are not, you know, a biblical way of thinking of things. I came across this quote as I was reading about this. It says, "The truth is that God does not violate our will by choosing and redeeming us. Rather, He changes our hearts so that we will choose Him." And then they talked about 1 John 4:19 that says, "We love Him because He first loved us." And then, John 15:16, where he says, "You did not choose me, but I chose you." And so we have these dynamics that just make things, you know, so interesting for us to think through. But there is a point of encouragement here too. That the sovereignty of God is not meant to be something that we're, you know, to be really concerned or anxious over. It's supposed to be something that gives us comfort. And, you know, so I guess my encouragement is: even though we don't, and never will completely understand that, you know, to have comfort in that fact that God is sovereign over our lives, but that he's also given us the free will to make choices.
Gary Schick
Right. Well, you know, and it's a hard question. A lot of people struggle with it. I think the reason is, as you guys have both pointed out, and I love this, cause you come from really different backgrounds, but I think we're in agreement here. Both sides of this question are actually true. God is fully sovereign, knows the future, determines every outcome. On the other hand, we are absolutely free and act entirely as free agents. And so someone said, "Well, you can't have it both ways, there's a contradiction." Well, but there's also something in this world called a paradox. And it's a place where two outwardly opposed truths come together as one. And we see throughout scripture, as you have pointed out, and I think Jonathan, you did a great job of taking us to several scriptures where we have both truths. Man is freely choosing; God is sovereignly determining. And so it's not an either or, they're both occurring. And so we see this throughout scripture, that those predestined for good, whose actions, and those who are predestined in some ways for evil; both according to their own desire, and yet nevertheless fulfilling God's will. And so like, for example, you know, we would look at the Old Testament. We read about these pagan princes, like Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus and others, and they are freely acting on their own. They don't even know the Lord, and yet they are fulfilling to the letter, His good plan. We see it in the New Testament. We see it in Judas. Judas is fulfilling scriptures that we read about in Psalms, and yet he is completely acting on his own, and receiving the penalty for it. And preeminently, of course, we see it in Jesus Himself, who fulfills God's will in all things. And personally, I respectfully disagree with those who say, and I didn't hear it from either of you guys today, "That God, you know, He knows what we are gonna choose in the future. And then He just sort of shapes the future around our choices." I think rather, He doesn't weigh it on us, but He takes the lead in all things. We are not predestined according to our choices, but according to His will. Nevertheless, we act as free agents, and I think your scriptures pointed that out. I also think of, you know, that story between the sun and the wind. And they both said, "Well, let's see who can get that guy to take off his coat." And so I think a lot of times we think about God's predestining work as if it's somehow forced. It's a little bit like the wind. "And so he just blows harder and harder and he gets colder and colder, and the guy just wraps his coat around him tighter and tighter. And then the sun says, 'my turn' and he just warms the guy up and the guy just, 'oh, it's a warm day,' and he just takes off his coat." And so you see, there he's freely acting, but also in response to what something greater is doing. And so, we do act according to our natures, and I guess left to just that, nothing good is gonna come. So I'm glad that God is sovereign, and I'm glad that He intercedes. And actually, I think if anything, He's curbing the outcomes of what I would set in motion. And I really also love, not only what Jonathan shared, but Ben, what you were saying about the comfort aspect of this. While these truths, kind of like this was pointed out in the Trinity, it's a little beyond us. We can kind of glimpse it, you know, we can see it in different things. Nevertheless, it is given to us as a comfort. And so I just want to close with a few words here from Ephesians that put the predestining work of God in terms of a comfort to us. "In Him, we have obtained an inheritance. Having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the council of His will. So that we who were first to hope in Christ, might be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory." And it's a passage that's talking about our salvation, it's a passage about the fact that we freely embrace the salvation in Christ. And yet, that God in His sovereignty is sealing us and destining us to greater things than we could ever hope for. And so, you know, I think what it really comes down to as a comfort is, is that in Christ we don't do what we would just do naturally on our own. We don't slip. We place our hand in a hand that is much firmer than ours. And the grip is tight, for our benefit. You know, when I'm holding my kids, as I'm walking on the hike and there's kind of a steep drop, they're not saying, "Oh dad, you know, leave me alone so that I can fall off this cliff." They're saying, "You know, thank you. That you hold me fast and I can enjoy the view from the comfort of being kept safe in your arms." And I think that is the healthier way to look at what is frankly, a mystery.
