Is God free?

Can God act against his honor?

If God is all glorious - as He claims - to act against His honor would be contrary to his character and living a lie. God will not act contrary to his nature. In fact, He can not.

So is God not free? In this sense, He is not. His choices are determined by his character. This is not a limitation of God, it simply means God is who He is and He acts accordingly.

We would never say God is not free because he freely chooses to do whatever he wills and whatever He wills, he does. Nothing outside of God can ¹prevent Him from choosing what He wills or from carrying it out. But he also wills what his character "dictates" i.e. His choices are determined by his nature; who he is, what he is like, etc.

And what is God like? He is love, life, and light, and acts accordingly. These are some of his primary attributes that determine his choices.

What about us? 

How do our choices come about? We were designed for life, not ²death so we naturally choose whatever we ³think best brings us life, good, blessing, etc., not harm or destruction.

We are also free to choose whatever we want. But, what we want is determined by what we ³believe will be in our best interests i.e. what will bring us good, not evil, life not death, light not darkness. Unlike God, we don't know everything that needs to be known, to know with certainty our choices are best for us. Since we choose to be our own god, we cut ourselves off from the Source of infinite knowledge and must base our choice on what we believe is best. But we have no way to truly know what is best in the overall scheme of things because we are not all-knowing but finite. For a further discussion on this point click here. 

Also, in our current state of rebellious distrust of God, we cannot see God as He is - or ourselves as we truly are - and therefore we do not see what is best and why God is best for us. The Bible says we are spiritually blind and dead in our sin (the essence of sin is unbelief). Outside of Christ, we are rebels and enemies of God. To act as if we are god when he is the only true God is contrary to Him and actually opposed to Him i.e. we are taking the posture of being His enemy. If this seems harsh, it's simply because there is only one God. To claim we are Him when we are not is in opposition to reality i.e. God Himself, whether consciously or not. This disposition cuts us off from seeing and knowing him as he truly is. In a word, we are spiritually blind. 

So is humankind free to choose what they want? Yes, they are. This is not our problem. What we want is. We want the wrong thing. And we want the wrong thing because we died spiritually at our rebellion and can no longer see clearly spiritually. The bible characterized us as being spiritually blind. We want to be our ⁴own god when he alone is the only true God. 

This does not work and can not work because being our own god is contrary to the reality of what is i.e. who God is and how He designed us and the rest of creation to operate. It is actually living a lie.

For a discussion on why free choice is real and necessary click here. 

For further discussion on free will click here. 

For a discussion on how our "wanter" is broken, not our "chooser" click here.

For a discussion on how we are free yet bound click here. 

For a discussion on why Calvinists and Arminians are both wrong, click here, 

For a discussion on how hell is our own choice click here.

For a further discussion of how everyone lives by faith, including atheists, click here.

_____________________________________

¹Or cause God to choose what he does. God is his own cause. Nothing outside of him causes him to do what he does. 

²Due to our rebellion from God as the true source of love and life, we cut ourselves off from him resulting in death. Now we go about seeking to fill the void created by God's absence i.e. The absence of ultimate life - God Himself.

³What we believe, is shaped by our rebellion and therefore is skewed i.e. Since we rejected God by seeking to be our own god, we have set out to obtain life apart from him i.e. we have rejected God as a viable option. However, finding life apart from God is simply not possible because all life comes from and through him.

There is no permanent life outside of God but only temporary life through creation, which is soley sustained by God i.e. The life we find in creation is indirectly life from God.

⁴The inherent problem of being our own god is this requires infinite knowledge and power i.e. We must know what is best (which requires being everywhere present to know all there is to know about all that is, in order to determine what is best) and have the ability (power) to obtain it. In short we must be all knowing (omniscient), everywhere present (omnipresent), and all powerful (omnipotent) i.e. we must be infinite in every way, which we clearly are not. When we "get" this it clearly exposes the foolishness of trying to be our own god or even believing we could be.