Other articles I've written (such as creation vs evolution, family, logical consistency) were very straightforward compared to this. When we discuss freewill, by nature it's an important disclaimer that this is as far from a "paint by numbers" topic as we get. After we read all the verses below we must conclude there is no magic formula, no law of nature to exploit, that allows us to believe "if we do this then God will do that." But that reality isn't an excuse to avoid the subject.
There are two kinds of freedoms: 1. freedom to gratify the now, 2. freedom to live a long peaceful life. The two are incompatible more often than we'd like, hence the need for discipline. God always prefers us to choose the later but he still gives us the choice. Once we come to grips with this we may resent God for giving us this burden because sometimes we are too immature to make the right decision, but another reality is freedom is necessary for love to exist. (Remember that expression: if you love something, let it go, if it comes back, it was love.) God didn't make us to be robot slaves. He wanted people to share His love with.
Hank Fortner had a relevant observation based on 1 Samuel 8:4-22 (which is where the Israelites ask for a human king to replace God as their national leader). Hank says "God seems to be obsessed with freewill. God is obsessed with sometimes giving us what we ask for or allowing the thing we want to happen even though it's not the thing that's good for us... God allows you to make decisions that may not be the best decisions but also you have to live with those decisions." Another relevant quote is from Dr. Dan Fountain: "You can choose your actions, but you can not choose the consequences."
To continue the painting analogy, now we'll switch from primary colors to secondary. It's a common thing for our hearts to be hard. This is a Biblical term for being stubborn, which can be an extreme expression of freewill. Pharaoh was surely the most famous example. The term "harden" was used 13 times in Exodus. Sometimes pharaoh hardened his own heart in self-righteousness, and sometimes God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Here's a reasonably exhaustive list of scenarios involving the hardening of hearts throughout the Bible:
Stubborn People
Exodus 8:15 hub
Exodus 8:32 hub
Exodus 9:34 hub
1 Samuel 6:1-7 hub
2 Chronicles 36:13 hub
Jeremiah 6:28 hub
Daniel 5:20 hub
Mark 6:52 hub
Mark 8:17 hub
Ephesians 4:18 hub
The first category, stubborn people, we have no issues with. We "get" stubborn people. We aren't terribly surprised when we see 18 references to being "stiff-necked" in the Old Testament, and one more in the New (link). But as we look at all the times God intervened, we lose our clear grasp on human freewill. When He intervenes, it's not done maliciously. It seems to be very rare that God changes someone's mind for them. That example with Pharaoh was so the whole world would know His glory, and thousands of years later we're still reading about it. It wasn't in random, arbitrary intercessory prayer. God has the right to intervene how He sees fit (Isaiah 46:10, Romans 9:18) and it would be inappropriate for us to complain to God and defend pharaoh and ask if he went to heaven or hell after being used as God's pawn.
To understand pharaoh having his heart hardened by God, let's make a comparison to Jesus asking which was easier, to say "your sins are forgiven" or "get up and walk?" (Matthew 9:4-5/Mark 2:8-9/Luke 5:22-23) But with pharaoh, God had already condemned him for his choices. Rather than simply skipping to the punishment and sending a foreign nation to wipe out the Egyptians, or just skip to the end and send the Angel of Death, God chose to send many plagues to remind the world of His power (Exodus 14:4).1 Then, since anyone would cave under that kind of pressure, God hardened pharaoh's heart because the plagues weren't to make pharaoh repent, they were to show God's power. God had already condemned the Egyptians and their leader, so His repentance was neither relevant nor accepted. So when he did repent, God just hardened his heart to continue with the demonstration. Now don't make the mistake of instantly coming to pharaoh's defense. God made an example out of pharaoh after pharaoh had a lifetime of making his own leadership decisions as the ruler of a nation. This pharaoh's dad single handedly decided to infanticide all boys (implication, keep the girls for concubines or sell them for the sex slave trade to neighboring nations) and then this pharaoh had his chance. Here's a list of those choices (chances):
Stop worshiping false gods
Stop the arbitrary enslavement of God's people
Consider God's ambassador, the first time, with humility
He chose poorly, like too many of the Israelite kings who would come later (they were punished eventually too, with the destruction of their nation). And notice God's character here. While both Egypt and Israel were punitively destroyed, neither was completely. Both effectively survived well enough to still exist today. So which is easier to say, "let my people go" and then force the issue, or "your sins have condemned you and your people?" Read the full context of the judgement of God in Exodus 9:13-16.
Another way of being called stubborn was being "stiff-necked."
To add tertiary colors to our picture of reality, it's important to point out that humans aren't the only ones with freewill. God has it too. (Where else would we get it?) To understand what human freewill looks like, we must remember, appreciate, and balance divine freewill, too.
This shouldn't be surprising because the Bible does not describe some idol, some inanimate object that we foolishly convince each other to give our worship to. We worship a living God, who is active in our lives and has been throughout all human history.
Prayer is an important part of life. The prophets did it. Jesus did it (a lot). It's said that God has three answers to choose from: yes, no, and later. There are different kinds of prayer, too, including but not limited to:
Communion (all day all the time)
Listening (waiting for God's will)
Petition or Supplication (lifting up your needs)
Praise (give glory to God)
Agreement (corporate prayer)
Thanksgiving (count your blessings, name them one by one)
Spiritual Warfare
Internal (your mind is the battlefield, or repentance and forgiveness)
External (dealing with Satan and demons)
Intercession (on behalf of others)
Arguably the type that is most relevant to freewill is intercessory. Go ahead and pray intercessory, but here's a perspective. Don't expect God to change someone's mind, rather expect Him to give them "extra credit" opportunities to make better choices, for themselves. Or God might do something that removes their choice. Of course God can change that person's mind, but consider how many times there were antagonists in the stories in the Bible, and people prayed that God would simply fix the problem by changing their mind. How often did God respond to those prayers with a "yes"? (Hint: not many. Remember Exodus 14:15.) More often I think God wants us to do something rather than that He fix our problems for us (James 2:14-20, Jeremiah 17:10). Trust God in our actions, not just in our prayers. Given that there are over 300 stories in the Bible and only about 2 dozen times He's recorded as changing someone's mind, whether I'm absolutely right or not, I have a point.
Remember that everyone has had at least some of their prayers answered by God with a "no". Even Jesus: Matthew 26:39 / Mark 14:36 / Luke 22:42, plus Luke 22:44. Paul certainly described the famous "no" he received from God in 2 Corinthians 12:8-9. Exodus 3:7 was an example when God answered "later," because it took quite a while before God rescued his people from slavery. A couple generations even. And don't forget when John the Baptiser was put in prison (Matthew 11:2-6 / Mark 6:17-29). Ironically, John 11 (the story of raising Lazarus after being dead 4 days) was an example when He answered "later" and "now" in the same chapter (taking place days apart) but most people at the time didn't get it either time. Don't be surprised when God answers your prayers in ways that don't make sense to you at the time (Isaiah 55:8-9).
We can't talk about freewill without talking about the opposite. I can't find any reference to predestination in the Old Testament. Which tempts me to summarily say it doesn't exist, but yet we can't dismiss the New Testament.
Since Jesus talked about the elect, then whether we like it or not, and whether we understand it or not, it's a real thing. He didn't ever talk about predestination, though Paul uses the term "predestined" 4 times. Two considerations:
Remember that God created time so He is outside of it. When humans elect someone we do so only knowing their potential and we don't know what they will actually do until they do it. God isn't like that. He knew everything we'd ever do before we were born. In the context of God's omniscience, the concepts of election, predestination, and freewill are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Christians are not proficient at using the theological terms elect and predestination. Yes we can spell them, but do we really understand them as much as we do other terms like baptism, forgiveness, and repentance? I think not, because we don't spend any time on them. Our English translations use these words and we Americans have cursory exposure to them, but what words were used two millenia (100 generations) ago and what did they mean to the people who spoke and originally heard them? There's an expression for this, it's called lost in translation. I'm not saying we can't know what was being communicated, I'm just saying there's a good chance it's more complex than most of us (even pastors) have put the time in to understand, and forcing our opinion in isn't going to be helpful.
If you're one to whine at God because life and the universe are complicated and I couldn't explain it to you in a single article, remember Romans 9:18-20.
All too often we use our freewill for foolishness. It's amazing how often we intuit the opposite of wisdom. But that's not God's desire for us. Be wise, not a fool.
