Does God have free will?
Scripture does not use the phrase "free will" about God — but it says something far stronger. God acts according to "the counsel of His own will" (Ephesians 1:11), according to "the good pleasure of His will" (Ephesians 1:5), and He "does according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay His hand, or say to Him, What doest Thou?" (Daniel 4:35). Nothing outside of God moved Him to act; nothing constrains Him. His will is perfectly free — not in the limited human sense of choosing between alternatives, but in the absolute sense that everything He does flows from His own nature of wisdom, holiness, and love, and from no external compulsion whatsoever.
God's Will Is Sovereign and Unconstrained
F. B. Hole draws attention to how Nebuchadnezzar — the greatest Gentile monarch — confessed the absolute sovereignty of God's will:
F. B. HoleIt would be difficult to find a finer confession of the sovereignty of God than that made by Nebuchadnezzar, the great Gentile monarch in whom human sovereignty reached its highest expression. He said, "He does according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay His hand, or say to Him, What doest Thou?" (Dan. 4:35).
He also states the two great facts plainly:
From the beginning of Scripture history, two great facts, forming the basis of all God's dealings with men, have been apparent. First, God is absolutely sovereign. Second, man is an intelligent creature with moral faculties and responsible to his Creator.
God's Will Is the Source of All Blessing
J. N. Darby, commenting on Ephesians 1:5, explains that God's decision to bring us into the relationship of sons was not compelled by anything outside Himself — it flowed from the good pleasure of His will:
J. N. Darby"He has predestined us unto the adoption, according to the good pleasure of his will." This verse sets before us, not the nature of God, but the intimacy, as we have said, of a positive relationship. Hence it is according to the good pleasure of His will. He may have angels before Him as servants; it was His will to have sons.
And further:
The form, the character of this relationship depends certainly on the sovereign will of God. ... We must remember that our participation in these things depends on the sovereign will of God our Father; even as the means of sharing them, and the manner in which we share them, is that we are in Christ. God our Father, in His sovereign goodness, according to His counsels of love, chooses to have us near Himself.
God Works All Things After the Counsel of His Own Will
Frederick W. Grant addresses the question most directly. He argues that God's sovereignty is what gives rest to the Christian heart — and that predestination is simply the necessary expression of a will that is perfectly wise, perfectly good, and perfectly free:
Frederick W. GrantThe sovereignty of God is what alone gives rest to the Christian heart in view of a world full of evil, which is gone astray from Him. To know that after all, spite of the rebellion of the creature, things are as absolutely in His hand as ever they were ... this brings, and alone brings, full relief.
Through all, spite of all, He yet "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." "He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?"
He then explains that this sovereignty is not mere brute power — it is the sovereignty of a perfect nature:
We rest, for we know Who reigns. It is not mere sovereignty, the almighty despotism of mere will, to which we bow because we must, but the sovereignty of wisdom, holiness, and goodness, — of One in whom love is revealed in light.
And crucially:
Yet if God be (what He must be to be God,) perfect goodness, and wisdom without fault, what could one possibly desire, but that everything should be absolutely in His hand, plastic to and moulded by His blessed will, working, according to plan and forethought, His eternal purpose? It is not possible to conceive objection on the part of any, worthy of the least respect. But this is all that predestination can at all imply. It is the simple and necessary result of a really divine government, — of the supremacy of One who lacks neither wisdom nor power, nor benevolent interest in the work of His own hands.
God Was Under No Obligation
W. J. Fereday makes the striking point that God was under no obligation to save any of His rebellious creatures — and yet He did. His saving will was entirely free, flowing from His own love:
W. J. FeredayHe was under no obligation to save any of His rebellious creatures. He might have declared Himself "God our Judge" to men as to angels. But the Incarnate Son has told us: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
God Begets "Of His Own Will"
F. B. Hole, commenting on James 1:18 ("Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth"), emphasises that the new birth springs from God's sovereign pleasure, not human will:
F. B. HoleNot only is God the Source of gifts that are good and perfect and lights that do not vary but also of His people themselves. We too have sprung from Him as begotten of Him according to His own will. We are what we are according to His sovereign pleasure and not according to our thoughts or our wills, which by nature are fallen and debased.
Samuel Ridout echoes this:
Samuel Ridout"Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." The sovereign will of God has wrought in our new birth; but how? By "the word of truth."
God's Will and Man's Will Contrasted
F. B. Hole explains in Sovereignty and Responsibility that man's will, left to itself, never turns toward God — which makes clear that salvation comes from God's free, sovereign initiative, not from any human "free will":
F. B. HoleMan's will, if he is left to himself never turns toward God. The fall has given it a permanent twist away from Him. This is definitely stated in Romans 3:10-12. ... This word, "NONE," thrice repeated, closes every avenue of deliverance if man is just left to himself. God must intervene. In other words, God must exercise His sovereign action on a man's behalf.
Frederick W. Grant puts it concisely — even man's willing is the fruit of God's working:
Frederick W. GrantIt is not, of course, that the will of man is not implied in the reception of Christ, for reception is surely not in this case unwilling, but rather that, as the apostle tells the Philippians, "it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do" — "both the willing and the working" — "of His good pleasure."
Synthesis
The question "Does God have free will?" is better stated: Is God's will free? — and the answer is an emphatic yes, but in a sense far above the human meaning of the phrase.
Human "free will" is a contested concept precisely because man is fallen — his will is twisted, enslaved to sin, and unable of itself to turn to God. God's will, by contrast, is absolutely free — free from all external constraint, free from any inner conflict or corruption, and free from any obligation. He acts "according to the good pleasure of His will" and "after the counsel of His own will" — that is, from the pure outflow of His own nature of wisdom, love, and holiness.
As Grant puts it, this is not "the almighty despotism of mere will" but the sovereignty of perfect goodness. God is not free in the sense of being arbitrary or capricious; He is free in the sense that nothing outside Himself moved Him to act, and everything He does is the perfect expression of what He is. His predestination, His election, His saving work — all flow from the counsel of His own will, which is to say, from Himself. And that is precisely what gives rest to the believing heart.