“Free will” is a concept that most Christians accept as an axiom of the faith.  People assume it is an a priori truth, that is, one that requires no authentication, for it would be an obvious reality.  However, it may surprise people that the concept has absolutely no Biblical teaching to support it; the term is never mentioned in Scripture outside the references to “free will offerings” in the Old Testament which referred to sacrifices and offerings that were made beyond that which the law required.

Any term needs analysis to determine what is meant by it, especially when we cannot use Biblical context to help in the determination.  We certainly need careful analysis with a concept on which people use to build their whole theological systems, in fact their very lives and eternal expectations.

The term is the subject of an exhaustive, in fact, definitive study done by Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan scholar, whom many consider to be the greatest American scholar of them all.  This work is entitled On the Freedom of the Will. Edwards shows that people use the term “free will” to mean a choice made by them without any external influences.  Any influences that come to bear on our choice would in fact mean that, in the purest sense of the word, our will would not be “free” but shaped by those influences.

It is important to ask what people really mean when they use the term, and if we ask them, ultimately they will agree with Edwards: they mean that they make the decision to come to Christ without any external stimuli influencing that decision.  It is made, as we would say “out of the blue.”  People will insist that it is their free decision, their free choice.

But Edwards shows that such a concept is a fiction that doesn’t exist in the world of reality.  No one can make a choice “out of the blue.”  People are forced to admit that they may have been influenced by godly parents, a youth group, friends, family, sermons and the like.  To the extent that these influences exist, their decision was not totally “free.”  Yet it was a choice that they willingly made.

“Free will” in its absolute sense is a non-truth, a falsity.  We make decisions according to our desires, and our desires are shaped by external influences.  We decide to eat something because we are hungry and we desire it.  We decide to marry someone because we are attracted to that person, and we desire to live with this individual.  Thus it is with every decision we make.  We make the decision willingly, but out of the desires of our hearts.  Will IS desire! These desires come about because of situations, influences, and circumstances over which we exercise little or no control.  They are situations in our lives that shape us and determine what we want.

Of course, what people mean by “free will” is especially that God will have nothing to do with their choice to be saved.  They want to be free from God’s control over their lives.  Yet Scripture teaches that God determined the times we would live and the places where we would live (Acts 17:26).  To insist that it was chance that determined all the situations in our lives would exalt chance to the role of a god, and chance in fact is nothing; it is only a mathematical possibility of something occurring.

The Biblical truth is that God is sovereign over all created reality and nothing happens apart from His purpose.  He works all things according to the counsel of His will, Paul asserted in Eph. 1:11, and in that very passage states that we are chosen and predestined. Thus God is sovereign over our salvation. God has not chosen to leave the matter of salvation in our hands.  If He did, no one would be saved, given the sinful desires of the unregenerate heart.

God may use Christian parents, churches, sermons, friends, family, and even the sin in our lives to lead us to Christ.  Somewhere along the way He will bring us through the glorious experience of the new birth that will open our eyes and enable us to perceive spiritual reality.  We will develop a desire for God, a longing to be saved, and we shall come to Christ.  Do we do so freely?  Of course, we choose freely, but, as St. Augustine said, “of necessity,” meaning according to the plan of God.  “Free will” then is demonstrated to be true in that we are always free to choose according to our desires.  It is not true that God did not ordain the circumstances of our lives that shaped those desires; He did.  It is not true that we can ever choose contrary to the eternal purpose of God for our lives; we can’t.  It is not true that we can willingly and freely choose to do what we do not want to do; that is a contradiction in terms.  And no one can choose Christ when the sinful desires of his heart cause him to want the ways of the world (Eph. 2:3, John 8:44).

(For further study on this subject we recommend Jonathan Edwards On the Freedom of the Will, Martin Luther’s On the Will in Bondage (not at all a contradiction), R.C. Sproul’s Chosen by God, the audio series The Sovereignty of God and part IV of the church history series Erasmus and Luther: The Great Controversy of the 1500’s. These last two resources you may find on this web site under Audio and Study Series.  The books will be available from Ligonier Ministries.)