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God’s Sovereign Will, Free Will, Sin And Predestination

By Eusebio Tanicala, Ph.D.

Confusion results when God’s sovereign will, free will, sin and individual predestination are lumped together in a discussion. It is difficult to piece things together harmoniously. It is like giving a picture puzzle of 100 pieces to a Grade 1 pupil. For the Grade 1 pupil to understand and grow up, a teacher has to start with sticks numbering 1 up to 10. Believers in individual predestination love to use Romans 9:14-21 to promote God’s absolute sovereign will and justify individual predestination. Using Romans 9:14-21 should not be applied when discussing sin and salvation.

Predestinarians say that God directs all the events acted by man and all the flow of human history including the decisions of some men to disobey God.It is claimed that God’s sovereign will over rides man’s free will. On the other hand they claim that God is not to be blamed for any sin committed by any individual because it is the human individual who acted out the sin and not God. This kind of reasoning obviously is not logical

May I submit two basic lessons to understand God’s sovereign will and its relation to free will. Before any Bible student launches into the deep ocean of God’s sovereign will, free will, sin and predestination, Deal ONLY with the case of Lucifer who became the Devil. I appeal that the following questions should first be sincerely answered.

LUCIFER’S FREE WILL

1.Christ created all the invisible and visible dominions, authorities, powers and thrones including the  angelic host where Lucifer belonged (Col. 1:15-16). Was Lucifer before he sinned given free will? My answer is “Yes, he was given free will.”

2. Perfect, beautiful, cherub Lucifer willed to forsake and leave the defined abode for him (Ezekiel 28:14-17; Jude 6, 2Peter 2:4) which was a gross disobedience. Was it the Sovereign Will of God that moved Lucifer to disobey or was it Lucifer’s own free will that made him disobey God? My answer is “Lucifer’s own free will led him to disobey and sin against God.”

3. Lucifer willed to forsake his defined abode and had an ambition of lifting himself up to an equality with the Most High Yahweh God. Was this ambition willed by the Sovereign Will of God or was it Lucifer’s own free will? My answer is, “Not willed by God’s Sovereign Will but willed by Lucifer’s free will.”

4. When Lucifer exercised his free will and he willed to disobey God and thus sinned against God, was Lucifer’s decision willed by the Sovereign Will of God? My answer is “No, not willed by the Sovereign Will of God but willed by the free will of Lucifer.”

5. Was it God’s will that Lucifer contradicted and disobeyed God’s Sovereign Will? My answer is “No, God’s Sovereign Will did not will that Lucifer disobeyed God, but it was Lucifer’s own free will to disobey God.”

6. Lucifer decided to harden his heart and free will to be the eternal adversary of God thus he became Satan (adversary), was it God’s pleasure to harden Satan’s heart and free will so that God would have an adversary? My answer is “God’s Sovereign Will did not harden Lucifer’s will but it was Lucifer’s own free will to harden himself in his rebellion and God permitted him to go the direction he wanted.”

7. Was it God’s Sovereign Will that predestined and hardened the free will of Satan to eternally oppose God? My answer is “No, it was not God’s Sovereign Will that predestined Lucifer to become Satan; rather it was Lucifer’s own free will that willed to become an adversary of God.”

8. Is it God’s Sovereign Will that wills Lucifer’s free will to remain an eternal Satan? My answer is “No, it is not God’s Sovereign Will that determines Satan’s disobedience, rather it is Satan’s own hardening of his free will to eternally oppose Yahweh God.”

9. Free will has a corresponding responsibility. When Satan was judged as a disobedient sinner, was it God’s Sovereign Will that carried the responsibility of Lucifer’s disobedience and sin? My answer is “No, God’s Sovereign Will is not answerable for the irresponsibility of Satan, rather it is Satan’s free will that is answerable for his own irresponsibility.”

10. Is it God’s Sovereign Will that wills for Satan to will that the great majority of the present six billion people’s will would will to disobey God and sin against God? My answer is “No, it is not God’s Sovereign Will that wills the disobedience today, rather it is the will of Lucifer that dominates the will of the billions of people in willing to disobey God.”

11. Did God’s Sovereign Will prevail over Satan’s free will during Satan’s rebellion? My answer is “No, God’s Sovereign Will did not prevail over Satan’s free will, rather Satan’s own free will and ambition prevailed over God’s sovereign will.”

12. Is God the absolute sovereign over His own creation from the beginning up to the end of time? My answer is “Yes, God is Absolute Sovereign but it does not mean that absolute sovereignty means complete dominance and complete control all the time. God’s complete and absolute rule comes in His own time, sometimes in a later time. God’s unlimited power could vanquish and banish Satan from the earth, but He would not yet. If God does not immediately punish Satan and his cohorts after the rebellion,  it should not be the Absolute Sovereignty of God that we put under question, not His omnipotence. Rather it is God’s own time that we ask when. We merely ask, “Lord, when will you make all angels and all humans  bow down and respect your majestic sovereignty’”

YOUR OWN ANSWER

After giving my answers to the basic questions above, the Bible student should now be able to formulate his own answer to the following question: “Was God’s Sovereign Will absolute and irresistible over the free will of Lucifer before and during the rebellion, and is God’s Sovereign Will absolute over the will of Satan today?” Additionally, we ask, “Did God predestine the perfect and beautiful Lucifer to become the pangit and lying Satan who seduces billions of souls that are all going down to hell?”

Be careful with your answers. Don’t make God the author of disobedience and sin. When one takes the position that God determines and directs every decision and move of a person and then curses that person in hell is not the teaching of scriptures.

Your observations and reactions are welcomed.

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Posted on July 18, 2010 at 8:34 pm in Bible Study Lessons, Features, Views   |  RSS feed

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One Comment to “God’s Sovereign Will, Free Will, Sin And Predestination”

    
  1. christianclarityreview
    July 18, 2010 at 11:15 pm

    Your question is biased toward a belief in free will. God didn’t give Satan free will. There is not free will.

    Free will only makes sense in a speech/word that is not Christ and that can’t create anything. The idealized lack of creation, while providing an implied stability of being to be ‘free’ in ( when you hear non-creating speech, the speech itself doesn’t have the effect of turning you into something else as a new creature in contrast to Christ Jesus/the Word of God…), a freedom to move around and ‘be’ in that zone of non-creation as independent from God. That speech that Satan got was not Christ but was a flight from Christ. Christ Jesus is the Word of God by which all was created. Christ IS Creating Speech.

    Satan got his own speech that cannot create anything. He is then the father of lies, but created as such by God. So did God give Satan free will? No. The LIE of free will ( as an idealized complete independence from God ) can only make sense if you idealize a place as supposed truth where Jesus Christ does not exist and the power of the Word of God can have no effect on you: a zone of non-creation but implied stability within an already created environment. But that never exists. What Satan got was a complete language to speak non-creation and lies within.

    But that language has effects in reality. It is changing the creation that God created and God is using it to destroy this creation in order to make way for the new creation. God could have just started over ‘somewhere else’ and left this creation to run given enough of His Spirit as life. But notice this creation is being destroyed by fire in the future and in the same place the new creation is being instilled.

    So God simply gave Satan something within God’s overall purpose of multiple whole creations and it was never free will. The deceptions of free will that Satan has are a product of the nature of the speech God gave Him.

    If you have a problem with God creating evil, you go against Scripture. God plainly demonstrates he creates moral evil by comparing the evil He creates with the peace He creates:

    Isaiah 45:5-7 I am Jehovah, and there is none else; there is no God beside me: I girded thee, and thou hast not known me; –that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the going down, that there is none beside me. I am Jehovah, and there is none else; forming the light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evil: I, Jehovah, do all these things.

    There are other places in Scripture where God demonstrates that he brings catastrophe and calamity. But in the above revelation, he overtly compares the evil to peace: both moral things.

    God controls Satan and others via the speech He gave Satan in making that evil and does not Himself tempt anyone. It is of greater glory to God as honesty to acknowledge that God can create something not of His Own character ( evil ) than to think to do God favors by protecting His good name and saying He could not create evil because He is only Good. If God cannot do that , then He is not all-powerful and has limits. But because he did, He proves absolute power and unrestrained use of it.

    It is equally as evil to falsely compliment God within the common sense of a speech that create nothing as it is to overtly
    disparage Him in the same.

    There is a thing in which we are being made and tried. God created that whole thing.

    Isa 48:6 Thou heardest, see all this; –and ye, will not ye declare it ? I have caused thee to hear new things from this time, and things hidden, and that thou knewest not:
    Isa 48:7 they are created now, and not long ago; and before this day thou hast not heard them, lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them.
    Isa 48:8 Yea, thou heardest not, yea, thou knewest not, yea, from of old thine ear was not opened; for I knew that thou wouldest ever deal treacherously, and thou wast called a transgressor from the womb.

    Isaiah 48:9-13 For my name’s sake I will defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain as to thee, that I cut thee not off. Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. For mine own sake, for mine own sake, will I do it ; for how should my name be profaned? and I will not give my glory unto another. Hearken unto me, Jacob, and thou Israel, my called. I am HE; I, the first, and I, the last. Yea, my hand hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spread abroad the heavens: I call unto them, they stand up together.

    Job 23:10 But he knoweth the way that I take; he trieth me, I shall come forth as gold.

    Hebrews 12:26-29 whose voice then shook the earth; but now he has promised, saying, Yet once will *I* shake not only the earth, but also the heaven. But this Yet once, signifies the removing of what is shaken, as being made, that what is not shaken may remain. Wherefore let us, receiving a kingdom not to be shaken, have grace, by which let us serve God acceptably with reverence and fear. For also our God is a consuming fire.

    timothy

    In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

    
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