If God Knows the Future, How Do We Have Free Will?
I am SO excited to answer this question! No, seriously. Some topics are kinda downers. I mean, when I had to tell y’all that most people go to Hell, that the devil IS out to get you, why life is hard, why God doesn’t destroy all the evil people, and that everyone suffers, no matter how innocent they seem, those were some rough topics.
But, we’ve done some more uplifting and fun ones, including what it means to love like Jesus, THE secret to an amazing relationship with God, the possibility of being labeled a religious nut, and whether or not you have to read the whole Bible. Oh! Let’s not forget the (somewhat) popular classic, What About the Dinosaurs? If you want to see them all just visit our blog page and scroll to the title you’re interested in.
However, this question, If God Knows the Future, How Do We Have Free Will? is one that’s been messing people up for millennia. It’s one of the big philosophical questions. To be frank, it’s taken me years to settle it in my mind. But thanks to the wisdom and comfort of the Holy Spirit, I have an answer that will hopefully make sense to you, just as it does to me.
The Lazy Way Out
Here’s how some preachers have dealt with this question. Let me paraphrase.
God is infinitely wise. He’s so wise that we can’t understand Him very much. Remember what is written in Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV), “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Since God is so much smarter than we are we have to accept that we have free will even though He knows what will happen. Just let this one go everybody, our tiny brains can’t figure it out. Ok, time for the potluck!
Let me be clear here. The Bible is correct in the book of Isaiah, just like it is correct in every book, chapter, verse, and word. Some aspects of God and His creation absolutely ARE beyond our understanding. But free will in contrast to God knowing the future? God has given us enough information in the scriptures and the reasoning capacity in the amazing brains He created in us to get it.
Let’s start by talking about the Sorcerer Supreme.
Enter Dr. Strange
Did you see the Marvel movie Avengers: Infinity War? No? Well, let me fill you in, or remind you if it’s been a while. Basically, the heroes are up against an enemy too powerful for them to defeat. Loss seems inevitable and if it happens, half the life in the universe will be destroyed in (literally) the snap of a finger.
One of the heroes is named Dr. Strange. He is known as the Sorcerer Supreme, and has a special magical jewel called the Time Stone. It allows him to manipulate time and see what will happen in the future. In one scene of this particular movie, Dr. Strange looks at over 14 million possible futures to see the outcomes when our heroes battle the evil villain. Out of all those possibilities, apparently the good guys only can win in one. Hey y’all, it’s a movie, that’s just how they wrote it! 😊
Now, the point is, there is only a one in 14,000,605 chance the heroes save half the life in the universe. Which means everything has to work out VERY precisely for the story to end well. If you haven’t seen the outcome feel free to check out the movie and the one that follows it, Avengers: Endgame.
In this situation, everyone’s “free will” has to be either incredibly lucky, or very well planned and implemented, for success to occur. But for us, we don’t have a band of fictional heroes. We just have the people on earth…and the all-powerful, all knowing God, the Sovereign over all things.
The Issue with Free Will
We can really break this down into two questions:
Does God really know the future?
Do we really have the ability to make our own choices?
Let’s go to the Bible to find out the answers.
· God knows how long we will live.
The length of our life has been decided. You alone know how long that is. You have set the limits for us and nothing can change them.
-Job 14:5 ERV
· God predicts historical events hundreds (or thousands) of years before they happen.
As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
-Genesis 15:12-16 NIV
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Listen carefully, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will call his name Immanuel (God with us).
-Isaiah 7:14 AMP
As you probably know, I could cite literally hundreds of verses proving that God knows the future. So yes, God knows the future.
Next, do we have free will?
God gives us time (and the freedom) to decide if we want to come to Him.
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
-2 Peter 3:9 CSB
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
-Joshua 24:15 NIV
Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.
-John 7:17 NIV
Again, I could cite many other verses showing that God has given us free will, the freedom to make our own choices.
How then can we reconcile God knowing the future with us having free will to make our own choices?
What “Free Will” Actually Means
“Free will” doesn’t mean how we often define it in our minds. We think free will means we can do whatever we want. I assure you that’s not the case. In any situation there is a limited number of options for you to choose from. At the ice cream shop if you’re considering having some ice cream, you can either have someone (maybe you, maybe a generous other person) buy the ice cream or not. Two options. Well, I guess you could attempt to steal it. Probably not a good idea, but that still only adds a third option.
Now, you might say, “I could just walk away.” True. That’s the choice to not buy the ice cream. I’m sure you could come up with a few others, maybe some that aren’t technically one of the three. But no matter what, the number of options is limited. It’s not infinite. That’s the often-unconsidered truth about free will. It’s never truly free, because the number of options is always finite.
We don’t ever have complete free will, but we often have freedom of choice.
God Knows the Future
So, here is the big philosophical dilemma. If God knows the future, then He knows what we will choose to do.
If God already knows what we are going to choose to do in every situation, then we don’t have free will (or freedom of choice) since our choice is already predetermined because of God’s foreknowledge.
Wait. Is that last sentence true?
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been in a situation where you know someone so well that you knew exactly what they were going to do? My lovely bride and I have been married over three decades. So, in a lot of situations when she sees me presented with a choice, she can reliably predict what I will do. In some situations she has pretty much 100% confidence in what my choice will be. When that happens, and I make the choice she knew I would make, did I still have the freedom to choose? Could I have done something different? Of course, the answer is yes. Now, I want to make sure we get this next point.
Her foreknowledge of what I almost certainly would do had no effect on my ability to choose!
She didn’t make me choose that option. She just knows me well enough to predict with great certainty which option I would select.
Is that how God both knows the future and still gives us freedom to choose? Perhaps.
Another Perspective
A few years ago, God revealed this idea to me. Throughout our lives we literally have billions of opportunities to choose. Sometimes we have two options, sometimes three, and sometimes we’re at a restaurant where the menu seems to go on forever. 😊At each of these points of inflection in life you make a decision. When you make a decision, your life is impacted in some way, it may be small, like enjoying a burger over a salad (or vice versa) or it may be large, like deciding whether or not to say yes to a marriage proposal. But choices in life happen all day every day.
If you could visualize it, you’d see a seeming array of endless lines of possibility, leading to an apparently infinite number of outcomes.
But that’s not what God sees.
He sees every single possibility. He sees every potential outcome. And He sees the line of choices you have made and will make. Billions of choices and trillions of potential outcomes, and He sees each, and which way we will go at every point.
So, from God’s perspective the future is known. But from our perspective there are almost limitless potential outcomes. Here’s another point we need to get.
God’s foreknowledge of what we will do in the nearly infinite realm of possibility did not remove our freedom to make the choices that He already knew we would make.
Ok, read that one again if you’d like. Spend a little time thinking through it.
It really is just a matter of perspective. God isn’t making you select certain choices. And unless you decide to become a Jesus follower and obey Him, He’s not causing you to take a certain path. God neither forces you to Hell or Heaven. He always gives you the choice. Remember the statement from Joshua 24:15: “…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…”.
Choose for yourselves.
A Final Word
Let me wrap up with this. Don’t allow the dilemma of free will stop you from always choosing God. You and I, as sincere Jesus followers, should want to follow Jesus. Just as Jesus gave His disciples an invitation to follow Him, He gives us the same invitation.
Silly philosophical debates have distracted and tripped up Jesus followers, and potential Jesus followers, for over 2,000 years. Do you have the freedom to choose? Yes. You’re not a slave or robot bound by someone else’s whims, not even God’s. He didn’t want people who had no choice but to follow Him. He wanted people who would make the choice love Him for Who He is.
So do so. Choose the follow the greatest commandment as stated by Jesus:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
-Mark 12:30 NIV
Love you Jesus follower!
-Troy
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