Order of Salvation - 2. Free Will

the prayer sheet and you'll see some notes to help you follow along. This is the second part of a study on the plan of salvation. And so you can see what's often called the Ordo Salutis or the order of salvation listed there. And basically we're thinking about, you know, what are the steps in God's plan of salvation? How do these different aspects of salvation relate and how are they worked out in our lives? Now, last time we looked at election. And the first in that list, and that means that God chose some for salvation before the foundation of the world, which is something that the Bible actually says quite clearly and explicitly. But as I explained last time, the debate about that point has always been, well, why? Why would God choose one and not another? Is that conditioned on something in us Or is it unconditional with respect to us and ultimately based on the free and the sovereign will of God? And I argued for the latter. You know, I think the reason why Scripture, you know, tells us that God chose us before the foundation of the world is not so that we would sort of figure out some way of thinking, well, he foresaw what we would do, how we would choose him, and then he chose us in response. But no, I think scripture tells us that to emphasize that salvation is God's initiative. It comes from God's eternal love for us, and it's God's pure grace. And as we briefly thought about last time, as we meditate on that, this is a wonderfully comforting truth, to think that God loved us before the foundation of the world that he purposed and determined that he would reach down and save us. It's a wonderful thing. And yet at the same time, as our discussion last week made clear, you know, the difficulty isn't so much with the election part, but the reprobation part. Well, what about people that God doesn't choose? You know, if God unconditionally chooses us for salvation, Well, does that mean that he unconditionally consigns others to hell and chooses them to be predestined for destruction in the same sort of way? Does it mean that some people have, you know, just no opportunity for salvation regardless of what they choose or desire? Well, I think the answer to that is no. And as I said last time, it's not a symmetrical thing. It's not like, you know, unconditional election necessitates sort of a equally, in the same way, unconditional reprobation. But, you know, to press into that and to begin to clarify, well, how can that be? Why is that? And then also, as we get ready to think about the next two steps in this order of salvation, the gospel call and regeneration, we're going to need to think about human choice and free will. So I decided last time, you know, we're going to need to take this time to do some foundation to think about How do we even understand human choice and free will? And just as a warning, we're wading into some deep waters here. I certainly will not be able to answer all your questions tonight, but I hope it at least lays some useful foundation that will be useful as we continue our way through. With that introduction, we're gonna delve in a little bit to thinking about free will and human choice. And as we do so, there's two key questions that interrelate, but I think distinguishing them is helpful and we've got to think about. So the first of these questions is, how does human choice work? Like, what does it even mean to be creatures of a sovereign God who have been given the capacity to make choices for which we are morally accountable and will be held responsible. Like how did God even intend for human choice to work? What does that capacity mean? And then the second question, is how has the fall affected that? The fact that we fell into sin, that has an impact. And so what has that done to our will? So let's start with the first question. How does human choice work? Right, as human beings, not robots, God's given us consciousness, he's given us desires, he's given us the ability to know right from wrong, and then the ability to make choices for which we're morally accountable. Now, philosophically, there's two basic views on how to understand this capacity of choice. One's called libertarianism, and the other is called compatibilism. Okay, and I've tried to give a very concise little quote to help remember, okay, what does libertarianism say? Well, according to libertarianism, choice means you're free to do otherwise. Okay, so in other words, for a choice to be a choice, there has to be some possibility that you might have or could have chosen something else instead. Right, so according to this view, you know, once something, a choice is predetermined or fixed, well then it's not really a choice. Because choice implies you could have chosen differently. Compatibilism is going to define choice as you're free to do what you want. Okay, so what it means for a choice to be a choice is that you have to have the opportunity to choose according to your own desires, right? So if I'm forced against my desires, you know, someone puts a gun to my head, well, okay, I'm not really making that choice, but choice is I'm choosing what I want. I'm free to choose according to my desires. Now, if you're still a little fuzzy on the distinction, maybe another way to get at it is this question. Is the will constrained by the nature? Is the will constrained by the nature? Libertarianism is gonna say no, and compatibilism is gonna say yes, right? So by nature, I mean, you know, that's who we are in our desires, our character, our heart. And then the will is the capacity through which we make choices. So compatibilism is going to say that the choices of my will always flow from my nature. They come from the desires, from the heart. And that, of course, implies, well, I'm never going to choose contrary to my own desires. I'm always just going to choose what I really most want under the circumstances and the situation I'm in. So in my case, I will always choose to drink water. instead of orange juice. You know, I don't like orange juice. That's what my desires are. So even though it's a very consistent choice, it's a choice. And then, or another example, if you ask me to do you a favor, but I don't feel like it. Well, the only reason why I might do it is because there's another part of me that does want to do it. You know, maybe I want to avoid disappointing you. Maybe I just feel like I really need to be a good friend. I should do this. You know, maybe I want the option to ask you to do a favor for me in the future. But the point is, you know, my will isn't just choosing that independent of my nature and my desires. There's some reason in me, in my own desires and nature that I would choose that. And therefore, even though I might not know what I would choose in any given situation, and even though you might not know, according to compatibilism, well, God knows what I or you would choose in any given situation because he knows our heart perfectly, and he knows all the situations. It's not like our choices are sort of indeterminate, unpredictable, random. They flow from the heart. In fact, beyond that, we could say that God not only knows, but he actually controls all the circumstances, and God is the one who controls all the things that shape who I am. And therefore, God is even able to foreordain, or plan, or control exactly what I'll choose in every situation, even though I'm still the one making the choice. So that's why under compatibilism, the idea is that God's four ordination and human choice are compatible. There's no necessary conflict between them. All right, so that's compatibilism. Now, libertarianism, on the other hand, is gonna argue that the will is not constrained by the nature. So it's the idea that when God makes us moral agents and he gives us the capacity to choose, He has endowed us with this special power of self-determination located in the will. So on this view, regardless of who we are or what our nature is, In order for a choice to be a choice, there always has to be the possibility that we could choose otherwise, right? The will is fundamentally free and indeterminate. So this is where the idea of libertarian free will comes from. And just as an aside, this view is particularly attractive to a number of Christian philosophers who are trying to defend Christianity against the problem of evil. So apologetically, one of the big attacks against Christianity and against theism in general is the idea that an all good, all powerful God is incompatible with evil existing. Because if God is all good, surely he would not want there to be evil. And if God is all powerful, surely he could prevent there being evil. And so how do you explain that kind of God existing and evil existing at the same time? Well, from a libertarian point of view, these philosophers can respond, well, evil's not here because God intended it. It's not here because God planned it. But evil exists because the only way God could create morally accountable beings is if he gave us the power of choice, which necessitates the freedom to do otherwise, and thus the possibility of sin. So on that view, God can create a perfect world. He can create humans and angels who are good by nature. But if he's going to allow free choice, he can't prevent the possibility of sin. And in fact, that is how the world has fallen into sin. In other words, libertarianism says that the will is not constrained by the nature, and choice cannot be predetermined, right? Choice is the freedom to do otherwise. And compatibilism says that the will is constrained by the nature, and choice is compatible with predetermination, because choice means being free to do what you want. I want to pause there. I understand that's sort of some heavy philosophy. And just open up any questions about what these terms mean, the distinction between them. We're going to kind of assess next, but. I just want to say, I really admire you trying to take on the problem of being like, out of the problem of free lunch lunches in 20 minutes. You do it so clearly. Thank you. Thank you for the encouragement. Kerwin? So what you just said about doing a favor that you don't want to do. You started off with that example about free will with a person putting a gun to your head. Wouldn't that still be compulsorism? Because then your desire to survive outweighs your desire to stay by your principles at that point. Yeah. Yeah. So on some level, the choice you make, given the situation you're in, but if you're forced, certainly if someone is physically forcing you, It doesn't matter what you're trying to do. That's not a choice. That's not what God is doing in the Bible, or is it what God is doing in the Bible? I would argue not. All right. So we'll get there. All right. Well, let's kind of start to evaluate. And the place I want to start is just to acknowledge both of these views lead into theological mystery. Okay? Even if we lay aside the whole debate between Armenians and Calvinists, we lay aside debates about predestination and election. You know, if we just come to this question with like basic Christian orthodox views that everybody agrees on, you're still going to come to some theological conundrums and have to claim mystery. Okay? So starting with the compatibilist view, The mystery basically comes down to the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Now that's the key place where there's gonna be this very hard to explain tension, right? Because if God can predetermine our choices, well then it's a lot harder to explain how is God not at all culpable for the sinful choices that his creatures make. All right, if God's sovereignty extends and his foreordination extends over all those things, well, then in some way, you gotta explain how he's not responsible. And that's certainly more challenging from the compatibilist perspective. On the other hand, libertarianism also ends in mystery. For them, the mystery is gonna be between the foreknowledge of God and the free will of man. Because if God's omniscient, which all Orthodox Christians have always held to, then God knows the future. He knows everything that will come to pass. But if God knows the future, well then there's a pretty important sense in which the future is fixed. If God foreknows it, it's not like there's some chance the future is gonna be different than it actually is. And if the future is fixed, well then, my future choices must be fixed as well. But once you say that my future choices are fixed, well, now you have this clash between the libertarian understanding of free will, because the whole idea is that free will is defined as, or the capacity of choice itself is defined as, you have the possibility to do otherwise. So this fixedness of the future brings God's omniscience and human free will, human choice into conflict. And so that's where the libertarian is gonna say, there's a mystery. But I can't explain that. Okay, so both end in mystery. And that shows us that whichever path we go down, we are beyond our capacity to fully understand. And I think that number one means that we should be humble, right? This is not something that any of us have all figured out. We should certainly not be condescending in how we look at people who disagree with us. Number two, I think it means that we need to be very careful in the deductions we make. I think this is an issue where it's very easy to, you know, make deductions from biblical principles that seem very logical and very plausible and yet aren't necessarily right. So we need to be cautious with that. And then number three, I think the fact that there's mystery here, it shouldn't unsettle us. You know, there's actually a lot of places in Christian theology where there's mystery. Think about the doctrine of the Trinity. Think about the incarnation. You know, part of the reason we worship God is because he far exceeds our capacity to understand or even fathom. You know, it shouldn't surprise us. A God who can fit into the recesses of our minds is quite a puny God. But we come to scripture and we expect there will be things that are mysterious we can't fully explain. However, I don't think that that means we're just at a dead end here. I don't think that means we can't sort of evaluate these two possibilities from scripture or that scripture doesn't lead us one way or the other. And so, just very briefly, I'm going to open it up. Any thoughts on why we might lean toward one of these views versus the other? Compatibilism, libertarianism. Anything in scripture that maybe would clarify or help? Okay. And what do you mean by that? I mean that we can't do anything. Our nature is to go against God's will. OK. That happened from the fall. Good. Yeah. The only thing that, you know, when God reveals it to us, only then in that conversion can we start to direct our lives into that, into the Holy Spirit. OK. Good. Can anyone think of a, or you, a verse about that? Okay, so if you look ahead on the notes, yes. There's a bunch of verses later on the sheet. I think even a more general, that it gets at the same principle, but recently Keith has been preaching on, you know, like a good tree bears good fruit. but a bad tree bears bad fruit, and out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." So there's a place where Jesus is very clearly emphasizing the nature is where the fruit comes from. So the fruit of our lips, the choices we make about what we say, it's not sort of this independent thing that's out here. It comes from the heart. Right, so it seems like Jesus is saying the will is very much constrained by the nature, which is in line with compatibilism. Well, we weren't naturally a bad tree that turned into a good tree. We were a non-producing good tree, if you believe in election, right? Well, we can, we'll come back to that. We'll talk about regeneration. But, Katie? reasoning, I think compatibilism is more because we're starting with God from that principle. We're starting with God's omissions. And what can we deduce from that? If we start at libertarianism, then we're thinking, OK, what can we think about ourselves? And what do we think about God based on ourselves? And so I guess that's not tied to scripture, but just. No, I think that's a great principle in theology. Do we start with sort of God, or do we start with human freedom? Yeah, that's great. I think of experientially and biblically from experience what we see God doing throughout Scripture. I see God violating man's will from a libertarian perspective. People cannot choose otherwise. Like, Pharaoh had his heart hardened by God, and yet we see simultaneously that Pharaoh is hardening his heart against God. It's like the two realities are coexisting, like you said, with compatibleism. And then Jesus carries that on in the New Testament when he says, you cannot hear my words. I mean, it's not, that doesn't imply much choice. Right, yeah, and I think a way to think about it, like both views sort of end in some mystery, but a key question is, well where does the Bible seem to put the mystery? You know, I don't feel like there's a lot in scripture that's kind of, you know, human free will versus God's omniscience. That doesn't feel to me so much like the tension, but there's a lot about God is really sovereign and man is really responsible. It just kind of like stacks those up, you know? And so I think scripture kind of leads us to feel like, yeah, there's a mystery there that scripture's unapologetic about, but... I just feel like those men, too, in the different battles with Israel, they didn't just go slaughter. Well, I'm choosing not to go slaughter my fellow comrades, right? I mean, the Lord ordained that they were all going to slaughter themselves, and that's exactly what they did. This might relate, but so in Joshua, in chapter 24, where Joshua tells the people to choose this day whom they would serve, and he said, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Then the people tell him, therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God. And then Joshua said to the people, you are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God, which I feel like that passage often is quoted, but maybe not in the whole context. He is saying that they're not able to serve him because it is about God's holiness and character, but that's also implying that the desires of their heart, their heart is so hardened that they are gonna fall back towards their sin. Even after they've just declared, we will choose to serve him. Yeah, good. Hayden? Well just let me, in the interest of time, a couple others. You know, as we think about eternity, you know, I think scripture holds out to us this hope that, you know, we will be glorified and, you know, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and no more will there be any sin or death. Like, there will be a perfect creation forever. And that implies there will never be another fall. There will never be another possibility of any creature there falling into sin. That's another thing, from a libertarian perspective, how do you explain, if the reason that the fall happened in the first place, we explain that on the grounds, well God just in giving choice, he had to give the possibility of sin, well how is that different? in the new creation. And so I think that's another reason that compatibilism is, no, no, God is sovereign. He can ensure that there is no more sin. Another point would be scripture assures us that God himself cannot sin. And of course, God has, if anyone is free, it's God. If anyone has the power of choice, it's God. And yet Titus 1.2 tells us God cannot lie. And 2 Timothy 2.13 says God cannot deny himself. You know, and I think that would lead us to think, well, you know, libertarian free will would say it's always possible that, you know, someone can do otherwise. But I think scripture says for God, he himself is actually constrained by his own nature. God's actions are always consistent with who he is. He does whatever he pleases. His will comes from his nature. And then quickly, one other point, as we think about the sovereignty of God, You know, libertarian free will does basically assume that the human will is outside the full sovereign control of God. So, you know, God may be sovereign everywhere else. You know, I think you might say, well, God maybe intervenes at key points to ensure that certain things come to pass, like the crucifixion or the exodus or the exile. But he's not really sovereign over all the choices of all the people and all the details of life. And I think, you know, the Bible just, it doesn't seem to limit God's sovereignty that way. You know, Jesus emphasized that the hairs on our heads are all numbered, not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from God's will. Proverbs says, a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Proverbs 21 says, the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. Like the rivers of water, he directs it wherever he wishes. Ephesians 1.11, we've been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. The point here seems to be that God not only foreknows exhaustively, but he foreordains exhaustively. And that requires compatibilism. So for all those reasons, I think that the compatibilistic view, while there's still mystery, there's things we don't fully understand, I think that sort of better explains the scriptural data. And it means that when God made us, he created us to be people who would know him and love him. And therefore we choose to obey him and serve him and glorify him. And that's what he created us for. But of course, instead of doing that, you know, so we thought about how our will is supposed to work. Well, instead of that, we chose sin. And so now I want us to think, well, how has the fall affected human choice? And the key point here is it's not that the fall has eliminated our power of choosing. We still make choices based on our desires. The problem is our desires themselves are fallen. Our heart itself does not love God, does not serve and follow God like we ought. You know, for those who were present at the Reformation celebration, you may remember Keith talked about Luther and Erasmus and how Erasmus wrote the freedom of the will, and then Luther responds to the bondage of the will. And, you know, when you look in Scripture, for the phrase, you know, free will. Like the only place I could find it is when it talks about free will offerings, right? And so just sort of a voluntary sacrifice. But it's clearly not talking about sort of the, you know, man's capacity to choose good. That's really not the point there. But again and again, as Luther emphasizes, when we turn to Scripture to say, how does Scripture talk about our will in this fallen world? It's not emphasizing freedom of will. It's emphasizing bondage. And I've listed a number of verses there. Jesus himself in John 8 says that he who sins is a slave of sin. But if the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the Father draws him. We don't have the capacity to choose to come to Christ. The Father has to initiate. He has to draw. He has to do something. Paul says, the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Those who are not in Christ, who haven't received the Spirit of God, they can't choose to do what is pleasing to God. And that's because Ephesians 2 says, you were dead in trespasses and sins. Just again and again, it's emphasizing our bondage and our lostness in sin, our inability to choose what's right. And again, the key here is if we understand compatibilism, that inability does not translate to it's not a choice. Because the whole point is that a choice is we're still free to choose what we want. We are still totally able to make a real choice for which we are accountable because we are choosing what we want. The tragic reality is that we don't want God. And so, as we think about, well, how do we apply this? Well, number one, we rightly proclaim the gospel to everyone. We rightly plead with everyone to repent, not because we think that fallen humans sort of have the ability, but because there's a real offer. We are pleading with people. If you would just turn like God is offering forgiveness, we don't know who the elect are, that doesn't matter. There's a real opportunity being presented, a real offer of the gospel presented to all. Inability does not mean they're not making a choice. They are still choosing whether they are going to repent and follow Christ or not. But then secondly, all this tells us that it reminds us God must do something to draw and to bring it and to enable and to produce change. And so if we're gonna be faithful evangelists, not only do we indiscriminately, passionately share the gospel with everybody, we have to be people who pray. We have to be people who realize God is the one who changes the heart. And just like Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones, I mean, we shouldn't think, well, if I can just be winsome enough, if I can just be persuasive enough, then everyone would believe, like, no, God must do a miracle. And so if anything, this should drive us to be equally committed to prayer as we are to preaching. And then a final application for us, it should lead us to just profound gratitude ourselves, realizing that our choice to follow Christ, our faith in Christ, is something that owes to God's grace. It wasn't fundamentally because of us. It was God who drew us and how grateful we should be. Now, we're going to kind of delve into those points a little more deeply next time when we talk about gospel call and regeneration, but I hope this sort of helped lay some foundation that will clarify as we get there. Used up the time, so I'm gonna go ahead and pray to close, but I'd be glad to talk to any of you afterward. So let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this time to study your word, to reflect on topics that are weighty and beyond our ability to fully comprehend. But God, we do praise you and thank you for the gift of our salvation. We thank you for the privilege we have to proclaim this salvation to others. And Lord, we thank you for times like this when we can pray for others, because we recognize that ultimately you alone can change the heart. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, and now please stand and we will sing.