What is freedom for a nation?

For an individual, is it relief from school pressure, mortgage, car loan, out of Jail, what does it mean to you?

Are you free from a dead line, something you dreaded?

Because we live in a so-called free country, are we free to do anything we want?

There are some laws that say we can’t just do anything, or there were, they are fading fast, we are free within limits. Freedom always has limits, because, we don’t live in a vacuum.

How does this operate in the spiritual arena?

Do we have a choice in salvation, then after salvation, can we choose or is it all determined?

Does God make you sin when you sin, or do you do it of your own free will?

Does God make you do right, or do you do it by your choice?

Now that we are free can we do what we want to do?

The notion of freedom, in any biblical perspective, is exceedingly difficult to nail down.

Not only in Christian thought is the notion of freedom more difficult than at first meets the eye. Among atheists, a debate is currently taking place as to what is meant by “human freedom.”

Are human beings so tied to the banging around of subatomic particles, whose collisions and their effects are tied to immutable natural laws, that “freedom” is nothing more than illusion? Or are there necessarily uncertainties in these statistical collisions that allow human beings to have some kind of interactive influence on what takes place in their own universe?

Romans 6:15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.

Many today hold to “criteria” over principles. Whereas principles are fixed and unbending, criteria are approximations. For example, the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes are indications of God’s will, but they are not principles that can be directly applied to every situation. Even some more conservatives believe that some actions—for example, abortion—is absolutely wrong. Yet they allow for the possibility that the demands of faith and love in a particular situation might override the absolute.

The scripture teaches that the absolute norm is the word of the living God, which is both command and promise. It is not love but the Christ who loves. And we discover how Christ loves by acquainting ourselves with the testimony in Holy Scripture.

Are you free to choose or is it all determined?

Now that we are free can we do what we want to do?

Romans 6:9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death has no more dominion over him. 10 For in that he died, he died to sin once: but in that he lives, he lives to God. 11 Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13 Neither yield you your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin: but yield yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law, but under grace. 15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.16 Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness? 17 But God be thanked, that you were the servants of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. 18 Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of righteousness.

God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in such a way that human responsibility is curtailed, minimized, or mitigated.

“The LORD does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths” (Psalms. 115:2–3). Psalms 135:6 Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did He in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all deep places.

At no point whatsoever does the remarkable emphasis on the absoluteness of God’s sovereignty mitigate the responsibility of human beings who, like everything else in the universe, fall under God’s sway.

Human beings are morally responsible creatures—they significantly choose, rebel, obey, believe, defy, make decisions, and so forth, and they are rightly held accountable for such actions; but this characteristic never functions so as to make God absolutely contingent.

“Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness … But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve … But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD ”(Josh. 24:14–15).

There is nothing in the Bible quite like those modern writings that argue, for instance, that because men and women make moral choices, therefore God must be limited in power or knowledge, whether self-limited or limited in his very being.

The Mystery of Providence

To say that something is mysterious is not to say that nothing can be said of it.

Christians learn to accept two or three profound mysteries: the nature of the Trinity, for instance, or the way the human and the divine unite in Jesus Christ.

So it is—or should be—with the mystery of providence, part and parcel of the larger tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. In practice, however, the implications of this tension bear so immediately on the way we live, pray, conceive of evangelism, think about suffering, and much more, that we may be somewhat hindered in our Christian growth before we learn to handle the tension responsibly.

God is Sovereign but we are Responsible for our Choices

Genesis 50:19 And Joseph said to them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? 20 But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it to good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

After Jacob’s death, his sons approach Joseph out of fear that he may have been awaiting their father’s death before exacting revenge. They had, after all, sold him into slavery. As the first minister of Egypt, he held them entirely in his power.
Joseph relieves their fears, and insists he does not want to put himself in the place of God. He looks back at that brutal incident when he was so badly treated, and comments, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

The parallelism is remarkable. Joseph explains,
God was working sovereignly in the event of his being sold into Egypt, but the brothers’ guilt is not less (they intended to harm Joseph); the brothers were responsible for their action, but God was not reduced to a merely contingent role; and while the brothers were evil, God himself had only good intentions.

Leviticus 20:7–8 “Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the LORD, who makes you holy.” This is only one of many passages where the command and responsibility to perform in a certain way or to be a certain thing are paired with the assurance that it is God who does the work in people

John 6:37–40 “All whom the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away”
God’s sovereignty is understood to operate in the first part of the verse: by God’s choice, certain people are given by the Father to the Son, and they are the ones who come to Jesus. Human responsibility is then seen later. “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day”.

Philippians 2:12–13 “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”

This passage does not say that God has done his bit in your salvation, and now it is up to you. However, it does not suggest that because God is working in you “to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” you should therefore be entirely passive and simply let him take over.

Paul describes what the Philippians must do as obeying what he has to say, and as working out (not working for!) their own salvation. The assumption is that choice and effort are required. The “working out” of their salvation includes honestly pursuing the same attitude as that of Christ (2:5), learning to do everything the gospel demands without complaining or arguing (2:14), and much more. But at the same time, they must learn that it is God himself who is at work in them “to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” God’s sovereignty extends over both their willing and their actions.

Paul sees in God’s sovereignty an incentive to encourage the Philippians on their way. “Work out your own salvation,” he tells them, “for it is God who works in you.” God’s sway in their lives is, for Paul, not a disincentive to action, but an incentive: get in step with what God is doing.

Living Responsibly under God’s Sovereignty Prayer as an example

It is very easy to show how the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility can tie people up in knots when it is applied to prayer.

Many say that human “free will” includes absolute power and insists that God’s omniscience cannot include knowledge of our future free decisions (or else, they would not be truly “free”), If you believe that prayer changes things, the whole position is established.

J. I. Packer argues that our habit of praying that God would save this person or that proves that when we are on our knees we really do think that it is God alone who has the power to bring about salvation. That is doubtless true, but opponents may be pardoned for asking why it is necessary to pray at all, since God’s
election has already established who will and who will not be saved, and all the praying in the world is not going to change God’s sovereign decree.

Christians who have so elevated God’s sovereignty at the expense of his personality that they cannot quite see what the point of prolonged intercessory prayer is at all. They know, of course, they should engage in prayer: that point is too unmistakable in the Bible to be missed. But after they have said, “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,” there does not seem to be much point in intercession about details—not, at least, in intercession directed to a sovereign God.

It is important to see what is happening in both cases. In both instances Christians are drawing inferences about prayer that the Bible does not draw. They are permitting one aspect or the other of the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility to function in ways that never occur in Scripture.

One side argues that prayer brings results, it “changes things,” and therefore the future cannot be entirely mapped out under God’s omniscience and sovereignty. God himself cannot be sovereign. The other side argues that since everything is under God’s sovereign sway, and the future is already known to him, therefore our prayers must never be more than an acknowledgment that his will is best. They cannot achieve anything, or make any real difference; God’s will must be done in the very nature of who God is, and our prayers simply bring our wills into line with his. And thus God becomes less than personal: he no longer responds to and answers prayer.

In his prayer recorded in John 17, Jesus begins with the words, “Father, the hour has come.” In John’s Gospel, the “hour” is above all the Father’s appointed time for Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and exaltation—in short, for his glorification. With the cross now immediately impending, Jesus sees that the “hour” for his glorification has arrived. So he prays, “Glorify your Son …”

It is the connection between the two clauses that is important for our purpose. The “hour” marks God’s own time for the death/exaltation of his Son. That is God’s sovereign plan. But Jesus does not therefore conclude there is no point praying. Rather, he prays in line with God’s sovereign plan. The logic is: “The sovereignly determined time for the glorification of the Son is here, so glorify your Son.”

This is remarkable. God seeks out believers who will pray in this intercessory way. He expects to be pleaded with along these lines. It is true (though inadequate) to say that he sees prayer as a means to the end, the preservation of the people.

Thus both God’s sovereignty and God’s personhood, rightly applied, become an incentive to pray.

God’s sovereignty functions to assure us that things are not getting out of control.

Coupled with his love, God’s sovereignty assures the Christian that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” Romans 8:28,

We repeatedly learn from Scripture that the scale of time during which God works out his purposes for us is far greater than our incessant focus on the present.

The ultimate “timescale,” of course ends up in the new heaven and the new earth. God is getting his people ready for heaven. I do not pretend that elementary truth “solves” everything. But the vantage from the End certainly transforms our assessment of many things.

If God is the God of the Bible, then for him there are no surprises, no insuperable problems.

Far from breeding fatalism, in the Scriptures that truth breeds confidence and faith. It teaches us to trust. It teaches us to read and reread Hebrews 11.

Much mental suffering is tied to our false expectations. We may so link our hopes and joys and future to a new job, to a promotion, to certain kinds of success, to prosperity, that when they fail to materialize we are utterly crushed. But quiet confidence in God alone breeds stability and delight amid “all the changing scenes of life.”

The modern, frequently unvoiced view of God is that he is in charge of the big things, the major turning points; it is less clear that he is in charge of anything beyond that.

The biblical view of God’s sovereignty is that even now, at every second, he sustains that universe.

God is a personal God who responds.

That is one of the great lessons of the psalms; it is one of the grand assumptions of the prayers of Paul. We have already observed a number of instances in which David, oppressed by illness, enemies, defeat, tragedy, guilt, turns to the Lord and begs him not to hide his face. The Lord responds, and the psalm ends in a shout of triumph.

We have always been told, God normally had three answers: yes, no, and wait. It seems safe enough: God can’t lose, no matter what happens. But that is not God’s answer to Paul. God’s answer was this: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

Eventually Paul does not merely put up with this answer: he exults in it. His heart’s cry is that in his own life and ministry he might experience the same power that raised Jesus from the dead (Phil. 3:10). Here he learns the secret of it: God’s power is made perfect in Paul’s life when Paul himself is weak.

The degree of our peace of mind is tied to our prayer life (Philippians 4:6–7). This is not because prayer is psychologically soothing, but because we address a prayer-answering God, a personal God, a responding God, a sovereign God whom we can trust with the outcomes of life’s confusions.

We learn, with time, that if God in this or that instance does not choose to take away the suffering, or utterly remove the evil, he does send grace and power. The result is praise;