Does God have free will?
God's freedom is not a side question — it stands behind everything Scripture says about His purpose, His mercy, and His right to act. Writers in this collection answer plainly: free will, in its full sense, is His and no one else's, though that freedom is never freedom to be other than good.
Free Will in Its True Sense
The phrase "free will" is usually argued over as a human possession. One writer turns it around, and locates it where it actually belongs — in the One whose right to please Himself is inseparable from what He is.
J. N. DarbyFree will belongs to God only, in its true sense — the right to please Himself, identified, as it is, with the essential goodness of His nature; it belonged to man, in a finite way, within the limits of obedience.
Creator and Creature Are Not in the Same Position
The difference is not that God is stronger. It runs deeper: He originates, while everything made is moved by something outside itself.
The Bible TreasuryIn God only can we rightly speak of free will. He is absolutely free to do as He sees fit, and never pleases to do anything except what is good and holy. With the creature it is completely different; his only place is obedience. God can create, the creature is acted on by motives.
Take Away His Freedom and Nothing Is Left
Remove God's liberty to act and you have not trimmed one attribute — you have emptied them all. Knowing everything and being able to do everything mean nothing if He is not free.
J. N. DarbyGoodness or love, all-knowing and all-powerful, involve in them perfect wisdom; only all this supposes a God, with a free will to exist, before any attribute can be assigned to Him. If not free to act, being all-knowing and all-powerful are simply null.
Free, Yet He Cannot Deny Himself
There are things God cannot do. This is not a limit placed on Him from outside, and not a promise He has made to behave; it is what He is.
James McBroomWhile it is clear there can be no limit to His power, we know He is governed by His love, and, in the area of moral realities, there are certain things He cannot do. "He cannot deny Himself" (2 Tim. 2:13). "God cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:13)... From these, and other passages, we learn that God is so governed by His nature that He cannot do anything opposed to justice. It is not that He obligates Himself to use His almighty power in line with the principle of justice, but that justice is so deeply part of His moral nature that He cannot act otherwise.
Another writer puts the same point to a man who wanted God to set His law aside in order to forgive him: God can do anything He likes, but He can never contradict His own being.
No Rule Outside Himself Binds Him
Nature has laws because He wrote them. He Himself has none above Him.
William KellyThere are no laws discoverable or possible that can bind God, in whom alone is perfect wisdom and power in providence. There are laws which He has imprinted on all above our eyes and below our feet, and around us; but the highest, truest law of all, if it should be called law, is that God is free, not bound, to act, free to act as and when He will.
People often resist this. One writer traces the resistance to an attempt to fence God in — and shows what changes once you see what His unfenced freedom chooses to do.
F. G. PattersonHe has a right to do as He pleases, which man has not. Man would seek to bind God to certain laws of his own, and so restrict His sovereign will, refusing to let Him act outside them. But once we know that all our blessing hangs on His absoluteness — and that this absoluteness is pleased to display itself in mercy, in which He delights — everything is changed.
What His Freedom Chooses
If God's will were only raw power, it would be frightening. Scripture calls it "the good pleasure of His will," and one writer insists the phrase means more than sovereignty.
J. N. Darby"The good pleasure of His will" is not, simply, sovereignty — it is the good pleasure of His will. God is acting in His love, displaying the will of His grace, taking up poor, wretched, vile sinners, and unfolding on these objects of His mercy all the riches of His own goodness.
And where His will moves in judgment rather than mercy, it is still not caprice:
Hamilton SmithWhether acting in sovereign mercy or in judgment, God acts according to His will... but in either case He acts righteously.
Summary
- Only His. Free will in its true sense belongs to God alone — the right to please Himself, tied to the goodness of His nature.
- Only obedience. The creature's place is not freedom but obedience; God originates, the creature is acted on.
- Only Himself. No law outside Him can bind Him, and the one thing that governs Him is His own nature — so He cannot lie, and cannot deny Himself.
- Only good. His absolute liberty never chooses evil; whether in mercy or in judgment, He acts righteously.
- Only grace. That unbound freedom delights to show itself in mercy — which is why our whole blessing rests on His absoluteness, not on our claim.