Grace and Free Will: Smoke and Mirrors?

Our topic is still grace and free will. It is a complex topic. 

The idea that we are responsible for our behavior, for our actions, and even our thoughts is a nearly universally held idea. It is the basis of most civil, criminal and even religious or moral laws. But grace comes along and intersects the cause and effect of free will and responsibility. Grace gives what we don’t deserve. It does not give us what we do deserve. 

It is the concept of grace that most non-Christian religious people and scholars find off-putting about Christianity. It just seems too good to be true. Even amongst Christians, although we say we believe in grace and that we are saved by grace, we do not act as if that is really the case. 

But grace can’t be so easily dismissed, either, because without it the question needs to be asked: How good do you have to be in order to be saved? How bad can you be and still make it to heaven? Freewill, responsibility, and obedience are directly linked to the quality and the quantity of our behavior, our actions and our thoughts. How much, how little, how good, how bad? These are the questions when you don’t factor in grace. But with grace, those issues and those questions are swept away, because it is a gift “not of yourself,” Paul said, “lest any man should boast.” 

The dilemma between grace and freewill has plagued theologians and philosophers for centuries. St. Augustine, the fourth-century church father, wrote an entire treatise entitled “Grace and Free Will,” but he never (interestingly enough) truly reached a conclusion. While we cannot fathom a world without free will, we cannot admit that the mature use of free will ever be sufficient to get us to heaven. But grace confounds us too. We are wary of over-emphasizing grace. It seems too liberating, too much like living an unregulated life.

Is there a difference between consequential decision making and what we call free will? Last week, we looked at the three “lost” parables of Luke 15. We saw in them two common themes: That something is lost, whether it a sheep, a coin, or a son; and that the lost is found. What is different in each parable is the role that each of the lost items had in being lost, and in being found; their willfulness at being lost or being found. Each of parable describes a lost soul, a lost sinner. It is clear by the comments of Jesus at the end of each parable that there is joy in heaven when the lost is found.

Consider the kind of individual represented by the coin, the sheep, and the last son. The coin has no free will, no role in being lost or in being found. The coin does not even know that it is lost. What kind of sinner, what kind of soul, is like this? The sheep, on the other hand, knows that it is lost but is powerless to do anything about it. It is lost not willfully but perhaps by natural instincts that cause it to seek greener pastures, sweeter water. Perhaps it becomes trapped in the thicket of life. What sinner is represented by the sheep, who is still a member of the fold and knows the shepherd’s voice? 

The lost son, or the so-called prodigal son, is willfully and deliberately lost. It is a premeditated, pre-planned, pre-determined loss. As his situation worsens, the young man’s thoughts return to his father’s house. Note the language: He will “arise” and go to the father. This “arising” is a consequential decision. It is the same word Jesus uses when he heals the paralytics and tells them to arise. And Jesus “arises” out of his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane—a significant and consequential decision. 

The language about the father’s vision is important as well. The father sees him from far off. He has gone to a far country. This is the same Greek word for far. The implication is that he was never out of his father’s sight, no matter how far away he went, and is visible the minute that he arises and turns around toward the father’s house. 

No matter how far from home he gets, he is never away from his father. He cannot escape the fact that he is his father son. His DNA can never change. The journey to a far country is the son’s journey. It is not the journey of the father. For the father, his son is always his son and always in his view, in his vision, in his sight. 

Can we conclude then that free will is for us—for fallen Man—not for God? What we call free will, what we exercise as self-determination, never changes the fact that we are who we are—our father’s son or daughter, with our father’s DNA. Our free will cannot change that. We can turn our back on our Father in heaven. We can spend and deplete our spiritual heritage, we can find out ourselves lost in a far country, but we are not out of our Father’s view. We are still made with his DNA, and our free will and our obedience is the same. It brings honor to God. It allows us to do things God’s way. But it is imperfect, it is hesitant, and it is unreliable. 

The lost son then comes to himself, or as other translations put it, he comes to his senses. “Coming to oneself” is coming to remember who we are, who is our family, and who is our father. This recognition is not a dispassionate decision of free will—it is borne of desperation, hopelessness. It is simply survival. We sail through life making decisions based on what we believe to be our free will—some good decisions and many bad. But in the perils and trials of life, we sometimes just then have a common goal—and a common question: Is it possible that you would give up your free will to God?

Turning back to your father’s house to be a servant is the ultimate metaphor of turning over your free will to God. What is a servant if not one who lacks fundamental free will, and whose whole life is at the disposal of the master? A servant wears servant clothes, keeps servant hours, and is in every way available always and at every turn for the master. The lost son has, in effect, relinquished his free will. 

But what then happens is that grace abounds: Once you turn back, you are overwhelmed by grace. You still get the sandals, you get the robe, and even the key to the safe. Free will takes you away to a far country, away from the Father’s house. Grace turns you around by relinquishing your free will and sweeps you back to the celebration party. The only truly holy thing that we can do with our free will is to give it back to God. 

But there is another character in the story, as we seek to understand the role of free will and grace. And that is the elder son: 

 “Now his older son was in the field, and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. And he summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things could be. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he became angry and was not willing to go in; and his father came out and began pleading with him. But he answered and said to his father, ‘Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you never gave me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.’” (Luke 15:25-32) 

The contrast between the two sons unfolds. At first, we notice the similarities: Both are sons, both have the same DNA, both are part of the father’s inheritance, both find themselves outside of the father’s house, both have a cause-and-effect worldview. The younger son believes that his behavior has forfeited his standing as a son. The elder son believes that his own behavior has been such that he should be able to have status above that of his sibling. 

The elder son points to his behavior as the condition for judgment, but when asked to share in his father’s grace he becomes angry and refuses. He will not submit his will to the will of his father. What is emerging here is a principle of free will and grace: The principle that to accept grace is to relinquish our free will. The condition for entry to the father’s house is to relinquish our free will. Failure to do so leaves us on the outside of the father’s house, excluded from the celebration of grace.

Jesus said:

And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. (John 3:19) 

We might paraphrase this as saying that grace has come into the world but people like free will more than they like grace. In this sense grace and free well may be opposites—one cancels out the other. We have been given free will only, it seems, to give it back to God. It reminds me of the story of Hannah and Samuel (1 Samuel 1). Hannah is barren and seeks a son. God eventually listens to her prayer and gives her a son, but only in order that she may give it back to God.

Perhaps we might say that we stole free will from God by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—the tree of free will. Inside the garden, inside paradise, no free will is needed. The tree of grace—the tree of life—is the source of life and goodness. But once we fell, once we ate of the tree of free will, then decision-making, discrimination, and judgment came into play. The world outside paradise is a world of cause and effect, of selection and of choice, of free will, of moral responsibility. Being law-abiding is our safeguard in a hostile world, but it is never perfect and never enough. We need more than our free will to get us back to God. 

As the three parables teach us, finding our way back to God is God’s work and not our work. All we must do is resist imposing our free will on God and instead let him impose his free will on us. And when we do give over our free will, God accepts it with joy and celebration. He sends the Holy Spirit to direct and to lead us. He is not indifferent to our free will. 

I’d like to propose these talking points:

1. That free will is the condition of the fall. It allows us some leverage in a world of cause and effect, but is utterly corrupt and imperfect and can never lead us back to God. 

2. That grace is the healing balm for free will.

3. That grace and freewill are opposites. One cancels out the other. If you insist on freewill, you stifle grace. 

4. That if you accept grace, you must give up your freewill.

5. That the only thing you can do with free will is to give it up to God. 

6. That this is the judgment: Everybody, at some time in life, must decide between free will and grace. 

7. That God is indifferent to free will. It is not something he will just take or leave. He doesn’t leave you alone with your own free will. Through internal and external means—through the Holy Spirit, through your conscience, through life’s circumstances—God is trying to influence your free will and decision making toward him.

David: If Donald were here, he would be speaking up first and there is a good probability he would say: “Words matter!” I will say that for him, with respect to the words “giving up” or “turning over” or “relinquishing” our free will. I don’t think that is what we do, because people can and do change their minds. It is a question of accepting God’s will or wanting to follow your own will. We never lose our free will. We can accept God’s will today and change our mind tomorrow and go back to our own will. 

So we never “relinquish” our free will in the sense that it is gone forever, that we have given it up and will never get it back. We might hope that is the case, but the fact is we always go back, one way or the other—we can go back to God and his will or we can go back to our own will. 

I do think that’s important, because at this depth of discussion, words really do matter. I think we could be led astray if we’re not all on the same page with regard to exactly what we mean by some of these concepts.

I simply want to make the point that we never lose free will, we never really relinquish it. We can only go in favor of God’s will over our own—and vice versa.

Robin: I often have wondered, when talking about free will, what are we supposed to be free from? Is it more like a cutting away of the spiritual oneness that we had with God in the garden before the fall? Is that what we’re free from? In which case, it’s a curse, not a blessing.

Reinhard: I believe free will was given to us at creation. The creature of highest intelligence was given free will so it could respond to God’s love. Free will to me is a grace God gave us, because it does not always have negative results. It can lead us to do good things—such as to accept God, to believe in him of our own free will. So I see nothing contradictory. Free will is actually a gift of the grace of God. We just have to do the right thing with it. 

Free will enables a dynamic relationship with God. The parables describe God’s goodness, God’s love for us. Whenever someone goes back to him, there is rejoicing in heaven by the owner of the sheep, the coin, and the prodigal son. Free will is an asset that helps us move forward. We know, as believers, what we need to do. If we go the opposite way and rebel against him, that too is the result of free will, and there are times in life when we fall and do things not according to his will. But while grace is abundant and covers everything, to me, free will is given to us as part of God’s grace.

Bryan: I would say that free will is part of who we are. It was given to us at creation. Adam and Eve had free will, the power of choice. I’m not really sure what it means to say “give up” our free will. I’m not even sure that’s possible. I’m more comfortable with coaching our free will, understanding as best we can what God’s will is for us and using that to influence our power of choice. 

If we give up free will, then what’s the point of having it in the first place? It’s part of what humans are. They have the power of choice. So if we utilize what we consider or come to understand as God’s will in our lives, then that influences our power of choice. I’m more comfortable with that, because I’m not even sure what giving up my free will would even entail. I’m not even sure what that means.

Carolyn: I’m inclined to think that way myself. I feel that freewill was given to us, as it was given to Adam and Eve in the garden. But also, when Jesus went back to heaven, he said he would send somebody to help us. I think we have the free will to ask for that help, to ask that we make the right choices, and then we come under the big umbrella of grace.

Jay: I agree with Bryan. It seems, if we take this back to the garden, that man is created with this option: Sustain yourself either through the tree of life or through the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Is this the choice that was available in the garden before the fall of Man? Is this what free will is? Or is free will the result of eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? 

If human beings are created with free will and the choice to eat from the tree of life or from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God told them up front: “Do NOT make a choice. Do what I tell you to do. Eat that one. Don’t try to figure out which one you should eat, which one might be better. Just eat this one and don’t eat that one. Stay away from that one. Because that one might be better categorized as the tree of discernment. And when you eat of it, as it says In the Bible, now you’ve become like us, which means you’re dabbling in discernment. And as a creative being, you can’t do that. You’re not going to do it right 99.99999% of the time, you’re going to mess it up, almost every time. It’s not where you should be.” 

So even if free will is a fundamental principle of the universe, if choice was established at creation, God also says from the very beginning: “Even though you have the right, don’t exercise it. Don’t do it. I’m going to tell you exactly what to do. Do exactly what I tell you to do. If you don’t, you’ll end up in a mess.” So even though free will might be a principle by which the universe is created, even if God can’t be God without free will, it doesn’t make it something we should be valuing. 

That’s where I think the dilemma is: We value free will, as creative beings, and we’ve categorized it as a loving characteristic of God. He loved us so much that he gave us the ability to choose what we want to do. Maybe, but he really doesn’t want us to do anything with it. It’s not something that he wants us dabbling in, because as we dabble in this idea of free will, as we dabble in the idea of “my” will and “God’s” will, we look through the faulty lens of created discernment, we’re not going to get what God’s will is and be able to interpret that clearly. We’re not going to get what our will is, and be able to interpret that clearly either. 

The beauty of grace is that all that doesn’t matter. With grace, it doesn’t matter if you got it right. Doesn’t matter if you got it wrong. Doesn’t matter if you were 55% right or 45% right. Grace covers anyway.

C-J: I would not want to live in a world that lacked discernment. It may not be perfect, but out of it comes creativity. It’s not in a box. It’s probably the greatest gift after salvation. It scares me to my marrow to think we should live under a dictatorship. God is the Creator and part of the creation is liberty—not of the flesh, but of the spirit, which is  God’s realm. God is Spirit. 

And so it goes back to the Holy Spirit. Each of us has a unique relationship with God because God is continually creating himself in us. Being and Becoming. The more space we give to the Becoming, the more we become filled with grace. It’s not about surrender. It’s about fulfillment. 

I would not want to live in a world where we are told: “Don’t touch that—ever. Don’t think about that—ever.” I see what happens to children who are raised in homes like that. They have no voice, they have no creativity, they have no ability to express a thought, a feeling, anything. They are a blob of protoplasm that has been beaten to death. They are breathing, but there is no life in them, because of that oppression, because of fear. I’ve seen it. 

There are no words to express the pathos of a child stripped of who he or she is. They sit there and rock. They stare at the wall. They are less than my dog in terms of their ability to communicate or thrive. They really exist, and I wouldn’t want a God who approves of that. I don’t think God would want us to have a relationship with him like that. I think it would break his heart. 

“Come to me, those who are weary; come to me, those who are hungry and thirsty; come to me and to a love that is everlasting.” This is a promise that will be kept in covenant relationship. It’s very different from: “Don’t touch. Don’t think. Don’t speak. Do not look into your own understanding.” Without the Holy Spirit, we would be in deep, deep trouble.

Jay: I’m speaking not of oppression or stifling. I think that the garden of Eden was not an oppressive or stifling place before the fall. I think there was a parent–child relationship that most people would describe as perfect. But after they ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, the Bible says pretty clearly that God said: “Now they’re like us, because they can discern.” 

That discernment is a condition of the fall. That’s what I mean. I don’t picture the garden of Eden as an oppressive dictatorship. I view it as heaven, as perfection. Human discernment comes into play after the fall, after that perfection has been broken.

Robin: In the garden, our first parents demanded their free will instead of continuing to rely on the perfectly wonderful, sustaining, gracious, will of God. Eve said: “That looks pretty good to me!” That was demanding our free will. That was pretending that we have the ability to have spiritual discernment. And without the influence of the Holy Spirit, we would have no hope, left to our own discernment. 

That’s not to say you can’t discern what to do with your gifts or your talents. We’re not talking about automatons. God did not create automatons, because you cannot love if you’re an automaton. But I just disagree with the argument that our own free will is what makes us happy. Our own free will and the demanding of it is what got us to this mess of this day.

Bryan: If it is a valid assumption that free will is basically the power of choice, then the power of choice or free will is fundamental to the plan of salvation. Lucifer had the power of choice. Angels had the power of choice. And for all we know, there may be worlds in the infinite universe that God has created that were also given the power of choice but chose the opposite path from the one Adam and Eve chose. 

So here we are as examples to the universe of what the power of choice can do or not do. To me, the power of choice is fundamental to salvation. You choose the grace, you choose salvation, or you can choose not to, and that gives you the power. The ultimate grace that God gives us is the power to either choose him or reject him, and to me, that’s fundamental to salvation. The Great Controversy—the battle between good and evil—is all about the power of choice.

Jay: Choice—choosing Christ or not choosing Christ, or choosing to be Christ-like or not to be Christ-like—is the pivotal thing about salvation, but if so, that puts salvation on us and not on God. Is salvation based upon choice or upon grace? Is grace the same as choice? If salvation is based on grace and grace is not the same thing as choice then salvation isn’t about choice. If salvation is about choice and in the choice we make, then what’s the role of grace?

Bryan: Salvation and grace, to me, are both free gifts—something we can choose or walk away from. Both of them are offered freely. Salvation comes through God but we still have to choose it. Heaven could be hell for some people. Heaven is only heaven for those who accept it and want to be there. If I don’t want to be in heaven, heaven, for me, would be hell. So it is my choice to choose what God has offered freely, which is salvation and his grace to cover my life here on earth.

C-J: We would better understand it when we remember the story of the Samaritan woman. When she comes to Jesus Christ and Jesus begins to talk to her (ignoring the culture of those days) he offers her the living water. It is her choice to make, whether to take that offer and take the step toward salvation or not. Salvation is presented to everyone. It is free for everyone. Whether to accept it or not is on our part. 

Pastor Giddi: Salvation is a gift of God, but what can the gift do if I don’t want to receive it? If salvation is assured, how can we receive it without the grace of God? It is a gift from God but we need to have a willingness to take it, willingness to accept it. 

C-J: I think the Samaritan woman at the well had been ostracized, and that her shame—given her culture and time—is what Jesus was talking to her about. I believe she was a victim of circumstance. Women had no autonomy or authority at that time. They were property and they had very specific roles and purpose. I think Jesus was telling her that she had great value; that what happened was not of her design, but she was flawed by circumstance. 

But grace abounds in a relationship with the divine, which brings us back to free will: This woman had none. She was a survivor. She had had five husbands and was probably a child bride, married as young as 7 or 10 to an older man. She would have lived in different homes, perhaps in different villages, and been beaten,… The point is the grace of God. Jesus offered living water—grace. He did not look upon her as a condemned woman, a wretched woman, a harlot. He looked at her as a creation of the Divine. 

And that was done in love. He gave her the gift of living water. Living waters flow, they’re pure, they’re healing, they are restorative. When she went back, she said to the community: “I met a man who told me all that I have done.” She was saying to that community: “You participated in the perpetuation of telling me I had no value. Come and receive the truth! This man will open your eyes to love what you once saw as wretched, as having no value.” 

To me, Christ is always restoring what God had with us in the garden, which was beautiful, which was open. What parent turns away a child who says: “Daddy, I don’t understand this. Why is there hate? Why do people kill each other? Why do some people have much and others none?” How do you explain to a child: “You got lucky, praise God, love God anyway.” It’s a tough thing to do. 

Some get it right and some don’t. We are born into circumstances we have no control over, and that is grace. Some of us can understand and receive the Holy Spirit. But if you’re bipolar and your brain just doesn’t function logically or is not receptive or is firing and misfiring all the time, your understanding and receptivity are just constantly in confusion. In this discussion we’ve been talking about options in a context where everything’s working. I function in places where everything isn’t working. And that is grace. 

I remember seeing people in a church I once attended who were limited, but the Holy Spirit intervened and gave them a revelation of acceptance. And for them that was it. They just wanted to be accepted, not ostracized, not seen as different, as not fitting in.

Don: Maybe they are the coins in the parable? 

C-J: Yes.

Jay: Can we only get God’s grace if we choose to accept it? He offers it, but we can’t get it if we don’t say: “Yes, God, I accept your grace”? If that is what we’re saying, I’ll be honest—I struggle with that a little bit. It made me think of what Bryan said, that there are people for whom heaven would be hell. Who would say such a thing? 

I assume that heaven is a place grounded in love where all your needs are met. Who wouldn’t want to be in that place? I don’t know who that could be, unless it is a person who says: “I can’t just live in love, and I can’t just have my needs accepted. Instead, I’ve got to choose, I’ve got to be in control.” Is that the person for whom heaven would be hell?

Bryan: I think we get hung up on heaven as a place. I personally don’t have a clue what heaven is about other than it is the presence of God. I don’t know anything about gates of pearls and rivers of gold. Heaven is simply the presence of God. I can see there are quite a few people who would not want to live in the presence of God. 

David: The big problem is anthropomorphization. Just as thinking of heaven as a place with running streams and pretty trees and so on probably does not reflect the reality, neither does thinking of God as an anthropomorphic Being. I always go back to thinking of God simply as “goodness.” God=goodness. In that case, free willed choice is not about choosing Christ as your Savior—it is about choosing goodness over evil. 

Scripture tells us that’s all Jesus really wants: Love God—love goodness—and love your fellow human being. That’s all he asks. That’s all God asks. He wants us to be good rather than evil. I tend to agree with Connie that having the choice is important. While we are free to choose evil, the empirically observable fact is that, for whatever reason, we do tend to choose goodness over evil. If we didn’t, there would be total anarchy and chaos and the universe and the world would disintegrate, just fall apart. The only reason the universe does not fall apart is because goodness prevails, goodness predominates. There can be no other reason. 

In religious terms we would say God is all-powerful, God can defeat evil. But our choice in all of this is to help God—goodness—to Become, or at least to become manifest, but we can only do it if we have a will of our own. It is a question of exercising our will in the direction of goodness and that’s what we tend to do. As long as we do that, God—goodness—is happy and prevails in our little corner of the universe.

Robin: Jesus said that we will be known by our fruits. So it’s a question of how we behave toward others. There are people in this world (plenty of them, unfortunately, and most of them seem to live in Washington, DC!) who have no sense of community, who have no sense of love and grace and helpfulness and self sacrifice. I think people who are convicted by the Holy Spirit and constantly turn away are the people for whom heaven would be hell, and they wouldn’t want to live in that type of environment. He also said that his sheep hear his voice and follow Him. 

As far heaven being a place, he says he goes to prepare a place for us (John 14:1-3) and will come back and receive us to himself, so that where he is we might be also. But he does say it is a place, not just the spirit of heaven, which is the environment of the Father.

C-J: To deceive means to not perceive. If you’re truly deceived, you don’t know the difference between good and evil. Some people choose it consciously but I think a lot of people really don’t understand, not just because they don’t have a theological context in their life, or want one; they just lack a perception of being able to recognize what is truth. 

We think of place in terms of three dimensions, but we can go to a “place” when we listen to music, when we’re creating, when we’re reading, when our imagination takes us there. My research about the context of the scriptural writers concludes that they believed in three levels of heaven, in literal rooms and mansions, and in empowered authority within those three heavens. To me, that’s mythology designed to help them understand the clouds on the high mountains and the thunderstorms and all the things they saw in the tangible world but could not explain. 

But we know through metaphysics and astrophysics that there are other, hidden, dimensions, and we know that imagination is a very powerful tool for wellness, and how we imagine ourselves becoming, and what we desire in our relationships, or establishing a home, or where we place our guard rails—do we always live in the same town we were born in, or are we adventurous? I don’t get so caught up with “place” because place is very flexible. 

Dimension is also very flexible. It can also be an illusion, as created in a painting. So when we take words literally and keep them in a context only of what we perceive, we limit ourselves in our perception of what I believe the Holy Spirit wants to create in us so that we can go out and manifest the fruit and fully actualize ourselves here in this dimension, this awareness. 

This may sound like mumbo jumbo but I think sometimes people of faith get so caught up in the literal, even though it’s a good springboard. I too love the word of God, and it is my springboard; but my relationship with God is visceral to me. I think that goes back to the Holy Spirit and is what causes community. If we all took the Word literally, we would lose context, we would lose relationship. It would form boundaries that are unsurpassable. 

Don: Your observation about deceit and that a condition of free well is making decisions without being deceived takes me back to the garden: Was Eve deceived? Was she exercising free will or was she being flim-flammed? That is something more to consider. The idea that God is indifferent to our free will just goes contrary to story after story in the Bible, which we’re going to discuss before we finish this subject. 

Take any number of people in Scripture and look at their relationship with God. You don’t see God being indifferent to their decisions. You see Saul on the road to Damascus being struck down and blinded by lightning. He has an overwhelming sensory experience that forces him to change his free will, to change his choices. We see Baalem with his donkey and Jonah in the whale, both trying to flee God’s will. We see Adam and Eve being told (as Jason pointed out) not to eat a certain fruit, to stay away from a certain tree.

It is perplexing that God would on the one hand give free will and say: “Make whatever choices you wish,” and then forbid certain choices. It seems we need a little bit more contemplation and thought about the subject of grace and freewill. 

David: If the Good Samaritan had not had the power of discernment, would he have done what he did?

Don: We’re left hanging with a question. We’ll pick it up again next week. Think about these things. And think about your own free will and what you what you can do with it. 

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