We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.

Free Will in the Bible
Scripture portrays humans as having minds and wills of their own. They are, in a real (though limited) sense, creators of their own behavior and determiners of their own destinies—whether this behavior and destiny is in line with God’s will or not. This fundamental assumption is demonstrated in a variety of ways throughout Scripture. It is clearly expressed in Deuteronomy when Yahweh tells the children of Israel:
Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away…See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…. (Deut. 30:11–19)
Whether the children of Israel are blessed or cursed depends on what they choose to do. God set before them the possibilities of life and death, but they decide which possibilities they shall actualize.
Beginning in the Garden of Eden in which God creates Adam and Eve with the ability to obey or disobey him, and continuing on throughout the Bible through the New Testament where life and death are portrayed as depending on peoples’ acceptance or rejection of the Savior, the Bible portrays people as generating their own activity and creating their own destinies by the decisions they make. God’s will is unequivocally for all to choose to obey him: to choose life and not death. But, sadly, many freely reject God to their own destruction.
Scripture generally portrays free creatures as the final explanations of their own behavior, and thus as morally responsible for their own behavior. When it describes any given person making this or that decision or performing this or that action, Scripture assumes that the decision or behavior has thereby been wholly accounted for.
The Bible often expresses this free center of the human self by referring to the “heart.” Jesus says the heart is like a tree: it brings forth good or evil fruit according to its nature (Luke 6:43–44). Thus, he continues, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart” (Luke 6:45). No further explanation for the fruit is necessary. Jesus teaches that “out of the heart” all “evil thoughts,” as well as “murder, adultery, [and] sexual immorality” come (Matt. 15:19). The final explanation for human behavior is to be found in this self-determining center of the human self.
Along the same lines, Solomon is said to have done “evil in the eyes of the Lord” because “his heart had turned away from the Lord…” (1 Kings 11:6, 9). So too, King Rehoboam “did evil because he had not set his heart on seeking the Lord” (2 Chron. 12:14). Similarly, the ultimate reason Zedekiah “did evil in the eyes of the Lord” and “did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet” was because he became “stiff-necked and hardened his heart and would not turn to the Lord…” (2 Chron. 36:12–13). And the reason Jerusalem had degenerated to such a low moral point during the time of Jeremiah, according to the Bible, was because God’s people had “stubborn and rebellious hearts” and had “turned aside and gone away” from the Lord (Jer. 5:23). Hence the Lord asks them, “How long shall your evil schemes lodge within you?” and beckons them to “[W]ash the evil from your heart and be saved” (Jer. 4:14).
The Bible is as clear as it could be in teaching that humans have the capacity to thwart God’s will, at least to some degree. Luke reports that, “by refusing to be baptized by [John], the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves” (Luke 7:30, emphasis added). How could Scripture be more explicit than that? So too, in Isaiah the Lord says, “Oh, rebellious children…who carry out a plan, but not mine; who make an alliance, but against my will, adding sin to sin” (Is. 30:1). Again, how could Scripture get any clearer than that?
Image by Tony Webster via Flickr.
Category: General
Tags: Determinism, Free Will, Open Theism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Related Reading

Good From Evil
The Bible is very clear that God has nothing to do with evil. There is “no darkness” in God. (I Jn 1:5). Far from intentionally bringing about evil, God’s “eyes are too pure to look on evil” (Hab. 1:13). All evil, therefore, must be ultimately traced back to decisions made by free agents other than…

The Open View of Messianic Prophesies
Image by Lawrence OP via Flickr A number of passages speak of particular events being foreknown by God, even events resulting from individuals’ free will. For example, dozens of prophesies in the OT accurately predict details about the coming Messiah (e.g., he would be born in Bethlehem; arise out of the lineage of Abraham; be executed with…

Is God All-Powerful?
I want to answer yes and no. God is all-powerful in the sense that God originally possessed all power. Before Creation, God was the only being who existed, and thus had all the power there was. He could do anything, and nothing opposed Him. But with the creation of free creatures, I maintain, God necessarily…

Molinism and Open Theism – Part I
I’ve been asked for the umpteenth time on Twitter lately about the difference between “Molinism” and “Open Theism,” and for some reason, today seemed like a good day to begin addressing this question. I’ll do this in two parts. Today I’ll outline and critique Molinism, and in a subsequent post I’ll raise yet another critique as…

How do you respond to Isaiah 44:28–45:1?
This passage is one of the most persuasive evidences of divine foreknowledge in the Bible. The verse proclaims the Lord as the one “who says to Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose’; and who says of Jerusalem, ‘It shall be rebuilt,’ and of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall…