Reformation
Bible College
God’s Ignoble
Gambit: How Free Will Destroys the Cross
Doctrine of
Christ
By
Thomas Booher
Sanford,
Florida
May 2012
No matter
how you dice it, the fall of man necessitated the death of Christ if God were
to provide salvation. While the argument over the means of receiving salvation
has often centered on free will versus election, most have opted to take some
route through the Bible that has God allowing man to fall of his own free will,
hoping to get God off the hook for the entrance of evil into humanity. If He
creates man with the ability to choose obedience or disobedience, the choice
itself is entirely up to man. This allegedly keeps God free of the charge of
being an evil architect. Closer inspection will reveal that it is when God is
not the first cause of evil’s existence that His goodness is lost. It is free
will, and not God’s predestination of the Fall, that casts a shadow over the
character of God, because man’s choice leads God to predestine His sinless Son
to die for sinful man as a reaction rather than a God-glorifying plan.
C.S. Lewis
in his classic book Mere Christianity said
regarding the Fall, “Of course God knew what would happen if they used their
freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk.”[1]
This is the basic position of many who espouse a free will theology, and many
Calvinists even seem to falter and default to a position similar to this regarding
the Fall. Most acknowledge that God knew Adam and Eve would disobey, but chose
to use their disobedience as opportunity to send His Son to die for man and
offer salvation. The question is, how could God guarantee man would disobey if
He did not predestine disobedience since He created Adam and Eve good? There is
either autonomous free will, or God sovereignly predestining the Fall. That is
the only two options. Thus, Lewis was right when he said that God would be
taking a risk if He limited His sovereignty and left it up to man to choose
between life and death.
In his book Almighty Over All, Sproul Jr. argues
that it is God who changed Adam and Eve’s inclination so they would be willing
to eat the forbidden fruit.[2]
He is not arguing that God sinned, but that God is the Creator of sin.
Logically, this would have to be the case, since Genesis 1:1 says in the
beginning all there was, was God. Everything that exists finds it’s being
ultimately flowing from God. Those who hold to a free will position say that
God inclining Adam and Eve to disobedience is a sin itself, making God evil.
Scripture however, and not man’s feelings and opinions, should have the final
say on this matter, and Paul in Romans 9:19-24 answers the free will theologian’s
objection. These verses say that God has the power and the right to do whatever
He wishes with His creation. God has chosen to glorify Himself through
preparing some for honor and others for dishonor, some for wrath to be
destroyed, and others to receive mercy and grace. Proverbs 16:4 says “The Lord
has made all for Himself, even the wicked for the day of doom” (NKJV). God
ultimately designed the day of doom to glorify Jesus Christ. Hebrews 10:13 says
after Christ made a sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God
and waits until all His enemies are made His footstool. This happened according
to God’s foreordained plan, being foretold through prophecy for centuries, and not
as a reaction to man’s misuse of free will.[3]
Since God is
worthy of all glory, honor, and praise, it makes sense for God to predestine
the Fall. God gives glory to Jesus His
Son as a man through the Fall by
having His Son take on human flesh and redeem His bride and the creation from
sin, making Christ pre-eminent and the firstborn over all Creation (Col. 1:13-23).[4]
It is God’s prerogative to do as He pleases with His own creation and to make
His Son, who is worthy of all glory, honor, and praise, the only sinless man to
ever live and Savior of the cosmos. If this is what the Fall of man
accomplished, to make us children of God through the blood-bought redemption of
Christ according to God’s plan,[5]
then man should heartily applaud it, for God has demonstrated His vast glory
perfectly through His Creation, and has even become man through His Son Jesus
Christ!
Conversely,
the free will theologian has to concede that God’s plan to send Christ as Lord
and Savior was one He never desired to enact. Begrudgingly He would have sent
His Son, and why? Not as part of His glorious plan, but because His gambit had
backfired. He took the risk Lewis spoke about, and it failed miserably. Why the
risk? Free will theologians will say because true love requires freedom to
choose. This may be true, but God’s sovereignty over all does not preclude the
fact that man still is the one who choose to rebel. God spoke, and there was
light. He tells the planets how to orbit, and they orbit precisely as He commands.
He decreed, and man willingly rebelled. It was part of His plan, but He uses
secondary causes, like man’s will, to accomplish His grand glory story.[6]
Thus man, and man alone, is responsible for his sin.
Meaningless
pain and suffering is hard to swallow. In fact, it is impossible. Even the
suffering of the souls in hell is for the grand purpose of God’s glory. One of
the great comforts for the Christian is that God works all things together for
his or her good (Rom. 8:28), including pain, suffering, and death. They have
redeeming qualities. This is what gives the Christian hope in times of pain and
persecution, torment and tragedy, when life is dim and death is at the door. To
turn the question on the free will theologians, how can God be working all things
together for His, His Son’s, or anyone else’s good, by taking a risk with the cosmos’
fate? Romans five makes it clear that in Adam all die. Since mankind died
spiritually at the Fall with Adam, how can God say that all things work together for good? Did God work the Fall of man for
Adam and all of humanity’s good? No, He could not have because He had no
control over it! Then if sin, suffering, pain, and death entered without the purpose
of demonstrating God’s glory, without any purpose on God’s part at all, how can
God really be working anything
together for good since true “good” is God being glorified? It would be more
accurate in that case to say that God is salvaging
all things for those who love God and are called according to His emergency
back-up plan. If man fell without God’s purposing it, everything that follows
is a result of man’s sin, and not God’s initiative, not God’s plan. That
thought is terrifying, dreadful, because God is not in control of His own
Creation. Rather than a perfectly constructed story designed first to last by
God for God, His Son, and His people, it is the story of how God’s gamble
didn’t pay off and what He did to try and fix his mistake.
Can such a
state give anyone hope? To be saved in such a scenario would be like the
captain of a ship, who also built the ship, tossing his passenger the only life
vest on board, the one that was meant to save his only son, after he had let
the passenger steer the ship and sink it by slamming it into an iceberg. The
passenger drifted through the cold waters and nearly froze to death, but in the
end washed ashore and survived thanks to the life vest, though only after
enduring an extended bout with pneumonia. It was the captain’s poor discretion,
letting the passenger steer the ship that he himself had built and he alone
knew how to operate, that put the passenger, and the captain and his son, in
such a plight. Yes, he warned the poor passenger not to hit any icebergs, that
if he did he would die, but if the captain had known the passenger could wreck
the ship, why did he give the passenger the opportunity in the first place?
Even further, why would he then give the only life vest to the reckless
passenger rather than his own innocent son? This is senseless, evil even, if not
planned for good.
When
theologians say man retains free will after
the Fall, they not only contradict Scripture but also say that Christ died for
every single man and woman, but that man gets a second chance to exercise free
will rightly. In other words, man chooses their eternal destiny. Max Lucado
says as much:
All complaints were silenced when Adam and his descendants were given
free will, the freedom to make whatever eternal choice we desire. Any injustice
in this life is offset by the honor of choosing our destiny in the next….Have
we been given any greater privilege than that of choice? Not only does this
privilege offset any injustice, the gift of free will can offset any mistakes.[7]
The mistake
would be, ultimately, with God, would it not? Free will is more a curse than a
blessing when it results in the damnation of the human race. It becomes
blasphemy and idolatry when it eclipses not only God’s sovereignty but
overcomes the work of Christ on the cross for His people, rendering His
sacrifice of no effect! God again is left wishing everyone to choose the good,
to choose His Son, and yet His plan fails yet again. Why does Lucado esteem
free will as the greatest privilege that we have been given when through it we
fell into sin and thwarted God’s will? I would suggest another privilege that
God’s people have been given as the greatest privilege, it is found in 1 John
3:1 (NKJV) which says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on
us, that we should be called children of God!” This is only possible because of
God’s sovereign plan and choice, not our free will. Further, Romans 8:14-17
states we will be glorified together with Christ.
In God’s
plan, we end up being children of God because Christ died for us and
spiritually marries us. This union with Christ results in His Spirit indwelling
us, and even in our glorification together with Christ! Certainly our end state
in heaven is a higher state than even Adam and Eve’s before the Fall. This is a
plan that brings not only Christ as man glory, but His people glory too, and it
cannot fail, because God is sovereign, and man is not.
[1]
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco;
Revised & Enlarged edition, 2001), 48
[2] R.C.
Sproul, Jr., Almighty Over all (Baker
Books Publishing; 1999), 53-54
[3] R.C.
Sproul, The Truth of the Cross,
(Reformation Trust Publishing, 2007), 103
[4] Jerry
Bridges and Bob Bevington, The Great
Exchange: My Sin For His Righteousness, (Crossway Books, 2007), 41
[5] John
Murray, Redemption Accomplished and
Applied, (William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1955), 43
[6]
Westminster Confession of Faith, Cha 3.1
[7]
Max Lucado, Cast of Characters: Common
People in the Hands of an Uncommon God, (Thomas Nelson, 2010), 108
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