Will we have free will in heaven?

You cannot get liberty in any other way than this, for God must be supreme. He is free because He is love, and He must be sovereign in love. If 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. What will the freedom of eternity consist in? Why, in God having His own way, and all delighting in that way. Well, the freedom of eternity is the freedom of to-day. Forgiveness of sins will not make us free. Justification will not make us free. For freedom we must be formed by love. To be free we must walk in God's way and enjoy so doing. It must be a willing thing, a thing of the heart. It is not freedom to do a thing while not liking to do it. For freedom 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. (See Psalm 40:8.) What made it a delight to Him? "Oh! My Father is love, He is so good, His way is perfect." Nothing else is freedom. Whatever God my Father does must be best for me, and the best also for everybody else connected with me. He wants the best thing for me, He loves me so much. Nothing is freedom short of this. How does the Son make us free? He brings us to Himself, He lifts us out of ourselves, He renews us within so that we love to dwell with Him. He makes us to share with Himself, He seeks to absorb us with Himself that we may delight in Him, and it may become grief to do what is not according to His will, because in so doing we lose the conscious joy of His presence, which forms our life. We walk in the light of His presence, and His love gives exceeding joy to our hearts, and the bonds fall off, for there are no bonds in love. Sonship is through love, and love carries freedom with it. Is Satan free? No, he is the greatest slave of all, because he is a stranger to love. Is he who grumbles or frets free? No. Is the one who feels wronged free? No. Christ was free, for He took all things from God. (See Matt. 11:25.)

But struggle with Himself there was not, and victory over Himself would have been already defeat: He would be no more the Christ of Scripture, "tempted in all things as we are, apart from sin" (Heb. 4:15). The "yet without sin" of our common version, and still remaining in the revised, has done terrible work in lowering Christ in the imaginations of men. There is no justification of the "yet" possible. The Greek has nothing of it. It came in through the mere supposition that "without sin" spoke of final result, instead of an exception to the kind of temptation. Sin was no possible temptation to Him: there was absolutely no power of seduction in it. That did not touch the question of His freedom, but characterized it. The more unassailable by sin we are, the freer we are, not the less free. We are not perfected by loss of liberty. To walk with God is to walk in the consciousness of the reality of things, undeceived and unperverted.

If I say of any one, "He cannot do a dishonest act," do I think of him on that account, as less a free man? If there is no moral certainty about his actions, do I credit him, therefore, with a firmer will and more perfect self-control? No one can say or think so.

What a wonderful — perfectly wonderful — statement this is! Such is our nature as begotten of God. At present the fact is often obscured by reason of the flesh still being in us, and our giving place to it. But when we are with Him and like Him, seeing Him as He is, the flesh will have been eliminated for ever. There will be no qualification then. The fact will be absolute, and not only abstract. When we are glorified with Christ it will not only be that we do not sin but that absolutely we cannot sin. We can no more sin than He.

It is one of the greatest comforts to me that I shall not want my conscience in heaven. If I let it go to sleep for a moment now, there are temptations and snares, there, there is no evil, and the more my heart goes out, the more good it is. Here I dare not let it, but I must watch and pray. I shall not need that in heaven. The full blessedness of it is, the Lord being there, of course; and next, the saints being perfect. What does the heart desire that cares for the Lord's people? That they should be just what Christ's heart would have them. That will be there; He will see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. Then there is after that this comfort, that my heart can go out - here it cannot - to God and the Lamb, and to the saints in measure too; but then, roam as it will, there is nothing to roam over but a Paradise where evil never comes, and it can never go wrong.

While still here, in the conflicts of flesh and spirit, we are, in some sense, under the guardianship of conscience, that principle which judges of "good and evil." But conscience will not keep heaven in order. Our passions and our righteousness will there be one. Little do we now advance in a heavenly direction by the gracious current of affections. But what bliss, when the very energy which bears us speedily will also bear us rightly onward — when the very gale which fills the sails will regulate the rudder; the passion that engages and delights the soul being the very rule and measure of all that is worthy of the presence of God!

In that eternal life which ever was with the Father, every movement is in perfect concert with the Father's will and yet governed by the perfect law of liberty; divine life cannot be fettered. The life of hopes, fears and desires that belong to this world will have gone for ever, and His redeemed sons will be at home in the love of the Father who is at once the origin, source and governing power of all that heavenly bliss.

There is but one will consulted or regarded there; the infinitely perfect will of our Father in heaven. Happy, happy place! No struggles of the creature's will for pre-eminence there! No disobedience — no self-will! How happy that family, even on earth, where the children delight to obey their parents; or rather, in the intelligence of affection, to anticipate their wishes and fulfil them before they can be expressed. What profound happiness there is in the spirit of obedience. What must heaven be, where every movement of the affections, every word, every action is in perfect obedience to our Father who dwells there! What will earth be when this prayer is answered? "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven" (Mark 6:9-10). (Present Testimony V. 65:1853).

Three things, then, mark the condition of the heavenly citizens: "His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads." They had served Him on earth, it might be thought, and many among them indeed had served Him devotedly, even as Paul was enabled to say, "Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God." But whatever perseverance, spiritual energy, and singleness of eye had characterized such as Paul and others while on earth, their service was never perfect. There was only One, the Perfect Servant, who could say, "I do always those things that please Him" (the Father). In heaven, in the new Jerusalem, every one of the countless throng of the redeemed will respond entirely and perfectly to God's will. When, therefore, it says, "His servants shall serve Him," it means that they will serve according to the perfection of the thoughts of God. They will, moreover, see His face; they will enjoy unhinderedly the intimacy of His presence, for then, like Christ, they will see Him as He is, and be able to enjoy the beatific vision which will be the source of all their delight and their eternal joy.

But more; an angel out of heaven might conceivably repeat the sin of those who kept not their first estate, and become a slanderer of Him by the word of whose power angels are themselves upheld. The apostle is not rhapsodizing when he thus expresses his alarm. Angels have sinned, and may again transgress. The saints shall judge angels in the day of Christ (1 Cor. 6:3). The possibilities of sin are known to God only, and with its probabilities we have less concern than with the certainty that all unrighteousness is sin, and that no creature is self-sustaining nor exempt from the peril of apostasy, when considered apart from its Creator. The elect angels are preserved from falling by the same Almighty arm which is ere long to bring within the circle of their bright and multitudinous array the Church of the first-born who now walk by faith (Rev. 5:11).

274 Now I refer to an absolute will, as an image of God, though exercised in a subordinate sphere, and a contrast with a perfectly blessed state, such as Angels. It may be a title to have one without restraint from another, but till I have chosen, I have no will - what gives me one? If God and good, it is grace; if not, it is something else that is evil and self. Freewill 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. To say he was free to do evil, save as not outwardly hindered, is an abomination; now he is certainly inclined to sin, to say he is free to continue in it, equally so. He is bound to turn to good, but finds hindrance in an evil nature.