To begin, we must start at the beginning. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden teaches us many things. A very important lesson is in the instruction to not eat the fruit of a certain tree. Did God give this instruction, but not give the power to obey or disobey? Was the instruction valid if they had no option except to disobey? Who is responsible for their sin – God, because He forced them to disobey in His uncontrollable sovereignty or Adam and Eve, because they had a real choice and opportunity to obey? God determined they were responsible and made them suffer the consequences of their choice. Therefore free will must be a reality. God in His sovereignty, controlled His sovereignty so that Man had choice. Did free will end after the fall? Again God held Cain responsible for his actions, thus indicating free will. God apparently believes in free will. (Genesis chapters 2-4)
Why does this matter? At GCIC we believe we have free will to this day and individuals must choose to respond to God’s calling to be saved. (Joshua 24:15) We recognize God’s omniscience, but do not find God’s knowledge of the past, present and future eliminates free will. Our knowledge of Abraham Lincoln being assassinated does not mean there was no other possible actions at that time – Booth could have changed his mind – our knowledge has nothing to do with what happened. Knowledge of a particular activity does not cause it, but rather measures it. God is not constrained by time as we are – He stands outside of time observing and can intervene anywhere. Just as God observes all time we observe the past. Just as God’s observation does not remove the potentialities our observation of Lincoln does not preclude there being other potentialities. This places a great burden on us to follow Jesus’ great commission to “go and make disciples of all nations”. (Matthew 28:18-20) People have free will to choose and we must present God to them as He is – relevant to their lives; living, real, loving – the best choice.
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