What is divine freedom? Is God free?
The question touches something at the very heart of the gospel. In Scripture, God's freedom is not merely that He can do as He pleases, but that through the cross He has become free in righteousness to act according to His own heart of love toward sinners.
The Problem: God Was Not Free to Reveal Himself
Before the cross, there was a profound constraint upon God — not upon His power, but upon His nature. He is holy and righteous, and sin stood between Him and the creatures He loved.
Edward Dennett puts this with striking clarity:
Edward DennettGod was love, but He was not free in righteousness to reveal Himself to His people. But when Christ came all was changed ... It was there in the death of His beloved Son that He told out all that He is, His righteousness against sin, His love in providing the sacrifice; yea, every divine attribute was displayed in the cross, and in all the perfection of their entire harmony because there every question of good and evil was for ever solved.
The moment that our blessed Lord had "yielded up the ghost," the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. It was God, who had been waiting, and, may we not say, yearning to reveal what was in His heart; and He thus stepped in to declare that He was now no longer hidden, that He was set free in righteousness to come out to seek and to save that which was lost.
The Cross: The Ground of God's Freedom
The cross did not merely save sinners — it liberated God to act in grace without compromising His righteousness.
F. W. Grant traces how the blood of the sin-offering opened the way:
F. W. GrantSin being removed, God is free to draw near to men, free to admit men to draw near to Him: divine love is unhindered.
J. Crain, writing on Romans, unfolds the same truth from the standpoint of justification:
J. CrainHe is now exercising His righteous title to justify, to cancel sins, to release from the charge of guilt. It is, as we have seen, through Christ's shedding His blood that this righteous title to remit sins exists ... He has a good right to be gracious, to act in grace, and all are free to profit by it, on the condition of faith.
The free, sovereign grace of God ... God, then, can righteously cancel the charges of sins against sinners. This is founded on the sacrificial death of Christ.
God's Sovereign Freedom in Election
Divine freedom also means that God is sovereign — free to choose, to show mercy, to act according to His own will rather than according to human merit or works.
Norman Anderson writes on Romans 9:
Norman AndersonMercy and compassion serve His own will ... Mercy is sovereignly bestowed without any question of deserts.
Charles Stanley draws this out more fully:
Charles StanleyTo deny the sovereign right of choice to God, would be to set aside God altogether ... If God left us all to our own free will, and dealt with us as we deserve in absolute righteousness, we should all have perished, and thus Christ would have died in vain. Surely, then, it should bow every believer's heart in worship, that "He has mercy on whom He will."
The Boundless Grace Set Free
When Christ rose and ascended, divine freedom burst its banks. A. J. Patterson captures this moment in connection with the risen Lord's commission:
A. J. PattersonChrist had risen; triumphant over all His foes. The boundless grace of God was set free to bless all men in righteousness through His work on the cross. The old enactment of Matt. 10 must now be changed. The sphere was too narrow for this grace to flow out.
Divine Freedom and the Believer's Liberty
There is a further dimension: the freedom God possesses, He shares with His own. W. T. P. Wolston unfolds this in his lectures on the Church:
W. T. P. WolstonIf there be one thing more than another that marks Christianity, it is that which is brought before us in the words of our Lord in the eighth chapter of John's Gospel, and in the writings of the Spirit of God in 2 Corinthians 3 — namely, that the saint of God today is called to freedom, divine freedom, divine liberty; and that is why I say that I believe the Assembly of God is a free Church ... If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
And G. V. Wigram, commenting on the woman taken in adultery (John 8), speaks of the Lord Himself acting in this divine freedom:
G. V. WigramHow adorable is the Lord in the bright light and divine freedom which His conduct here evinced.
The Lord Jesus, in that scene, displayed what divine freedom looks like in practice — the freedom to forgive, to silence accusers, and to set a sinner free, because He Himself would pay the price on the cross.
Divine freedom, then, is not simply that God is omnipotent and can do whatever He wills. It is something far deeper and more wonderful. Before the cross, God's own holiness and righteousness constrained Him — He could not come out in the fullness of His love because sin had not yet been judged. At the cross, every divine attribute was satisfied: righteousness was vindicated, holiness upheld, and love poured out. After the cross, God is free — free in righteousness to justify sinners, free to draw near, free to bless without limit. His sovereign freedom means He chooses whom He will in grace, not on the basis of human merit but from the overflow of His own heart. And the freedom He has won, He gives to His people: the believer is called into "divine freedom, divine liberty" — the liberty of sons who share in the atmosphere of the Son Himself.