Over the last month we’ve talked about demon possession and oppression, how badly sin wants to master us, and about what choices God made when he designed us both as humans and as individuals. Whether it be an evil spirit, an evil nature or God’s providence it would seem there is very little in our life that isn’t attempting to exert control over us. Where does the will of man fit into this discussion? Does man have any choice in his eternal destiny? Any decision as to his fate?

Author and Professor R.C. Sproul in a pamphlet entitled “Does God Control Everything?” explains the concept of Concurrence. The word simply means several actions happening at the same time. In our discussion this is a helpful concept, for we can see that there is a concurrence of wills that attempt to act in our lives. There is the will of dark spirits, which is to defame God; there is the will of God, which is to bring all things into alignment with his holiness; there is also the will of man, which is tainted by sin and therefore a complex mess of wanting to please one’s self or others. All three wills exist concurrently, but only one has the divine ability to assure its ends.

In discussions with Christian friends the topic of man’s will has come up over and over. Do we have free will? There are generally two camps in Christian circles which coincide with the two possible answers. I have argued, and continue to do so, that man has never had free will because man’s will is always under duress by the three wills we have just defined. If we are not being influenced by God or by unclean spirits then we are being influenced by a sin nature that works to control us. The apostle Paul argued (Romans 6.15-.23) that we are all slaves, either to righteousness or to sin. A slave might will to be something else, but there is nothing he can do about his desire so his will is ineffectual and irrelevant.

While I believe this notion is ultimately true, it isn’t practical. If man is a slave to any number of forces then he is not responsible for any of his choices and therefore undeserving of God’s judgment. When confronted with his sinful choice Adam blamed his wife, Eve in turn blamed the serpent, and so we could argue “the devil made me do it” and it would be a valid defense. Yet that is not the case, God holds us responsible for our choices and the only way he can do so is if we are able to make choices of our own. Sometimes we make choices God himself would deem “good” while other times we make choices that are at least selfish and at times downright evil, but it is we who make those choices. So on some level our will must be free to make decisions.

I can hear my “free-will” friends cheering already, but there is more to this discussion. Before we came to Jesus we were indeed slaves to sin. That is to say that our choices were always self-serving on some level. In this state we are worthy of God’s judgment, vessels of his wrath as it were (Romans 9.14-.29). At some point, practically speaking, we accepted a new master; we put our trust in God alone for both this life and the one to come. We did so because we found God trustworthy; we found God trustworthy because of a truth I mentioned a moment ago: only God’s will has the divine ability to assure its ends. How can God’s divine will be accomplished if we have free will? To put it another way, if we have free will then couldn’t it trump God’s will, making us more powerful than our Creator?

We’ll examine this question tomorrow.