Why did God give us free will?
The question assumes something worth testing: that "free will" is a gift God handed us for a reason. Commentators in this collection agree that God made man able to choose and answerable for his choices — but they differ sharply over whether the phrase "free will" describes anything real in a fallen creature.
Why Not a Machine
The first answer given is drawn from what man is compared with the animals. A will is what lifts him above them.
A J PollockThe lower creation is not responsible. Their lives are purely animal, governed by instinct, and therefore without responsibility. Man, the highest creation of God on this earth, was created with a will, and therefore carrying with it responsibility, and capable of communing with his Creator. If God had created man in such a way that he was unable to depart from the path of dependence and obedience, He would have created mere automatons, will-less creatures, with no power of choice. Man so created would have been merely a superior animal with no responsibility attaching to him.
Responsibility Means Failure Was Possible
If God commands, He must be speaking to someone who could do otherwise. That is what a command implies.
The Bible TreasuryThe fact that obedience to it was demanded and looked for, on God's part, from man, shows plainly that man had the power of doing what was contrary to that word, and that he was left free as to the possibility of exercising that power. This indeed, as we have seen, is inherent in the nature of responsibility, and it shows us that a responsible being is one to whom failure is possible.
Whose Will Is Actually Free
Here the writers part company with the popular phrase. One argument is that only God is free in the full sense, because only He acts from Himself and only ever acts well.
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 except what is good and holy. With the creature it is wholly different; his only place is obedience... It is one thing to be free from external restraint, another to be free internally, which no sinner is.
The same writer traces what happened to that freedom after the fall, and calls the modern picture of a neutral chooser unkind rather than generous.
J. N. DarbyMan was free in Paradise, but then he enjoyed what was good. He used his free choice, and therefore he is a sinner. To leave him to his free choice, now that he is disposed to do evil, would be a cruelty. God has presented the choice to him, but it was to convince the conscience of the fact that in no case did man want either good or God.
The Blame Belongs Where It Fell
Whatever is said about the phrase, one thing is refused outright: God is not behind anyone's evil.
Frederick W GrantIt is certain that in no way are we to think of God as determining the wills of His creatures to evil, or as involving them — whether by what is to them the accident of their birth, or in any other way — in ruin they cannot recover from. Scripture unites with our own consciences to assure us of this. There may be difficulties, and there are; but however unsolvable the mystery may be, God has given us something within us that witnesses unfailingly for Him, that man's evil and man's ruin are of himself alone.
Not "Cannot" but "Will Not"
So where does the will show itself now? In the refusal of Christ — and the distinction between a shut door and an unwilling heart matters.
J. N. DarbyMan is perfectly free to come now as far as God is concerned, and invited to come, yes, begged; and the precious blood of Christ is there on the mercy seat, so that the moral difficulty is removed by God's own grace as regards the Holy One receiving a sinner. In this sense he is perfectly free to come. But then there is the other side, man's own will and state. There is no will to come, but the opposite... "You will not come to me that you may have life."
The Freedom Worth Having
The freedom the writers do celebrate is not a bare power to pick either way. It is wanting what God wants.
JacobIf you have the divine nature you are free, because you want what God wants, but if not you want to walk in your own way, and do not love God's way, and you are not free... To be free I must love to do it, and find it my delight. How was Christ free? Because He found it a delight to do the will of God.
Summary
- Made — a creature who could not choose would be an animal, not a man capable of knowing his Maker.
- Bound — because God commands, man can disobey; responsibility always means failure was possible.
- Fallen — commentators differ on the phrase "free will," but agree the sinner is no longer neutral, so being left to choose exposes him rather than helps him.
- Guilty — God never bends a will toward evil; man's ruin is entirely his own.
- Freed — real freedom is not the power to go either way but the delight in God's way that Christ Himself showed.