The Nature of Man - Phil Gons

I delivered this message at Spring Creek Bible Church on October 11, 2015, as part 3 of The Doctrines of Man and Sin series.

Prefer what I actually said? Read the transcript (lightly edited for readability).

1. Introduction

This is part three of our ten-part series on the doctrines of man and sin. We’re going to focus today on what the Bible teaches about the nature of man, who and what man is.

2. Review

In our first class we introduced these doctrines and talked about why it’s important to study systematic theology in general and these doctrines in particular.

Last week we talked about the origin of man, where man came from, how we got here, and related issues.

We learned that

God’s special revelation in the Bible is central in answering questions about origins, and all matters of faith and life.
The Bible’s clear testimony is that God created us, and all that exists outside of himself.
It also teaches that Adam was a real historical person and the father of all humanity.
While the Bible suggests a young earth and a human history of less than 10,000 years, faithfulness to the Bible doesn’t require that we insist on only 6,000 years of human history.
God created us—and all of creation—for his own glory.
God didn’t need to create, and his creating work was no sign of lack or weakness.
God created us knowing that we would rebel against him because it was part of his sovereign and wise plan to bring himself glory through the redemption and joy of his people.

3. Class Schedule

Let’s review our class schedule:

9/20: Introduction
9/27: The Origin of Man
10/11: The Nature of Man
10/18: The Image of God
10/25: The Fall
11/8: Original Sin
11/15: The Nature of Sin, Part 1
11/22: The Nature of Sin, Part 2
11/29: Modern-Day Issues, Part 1
12/13: Modern-Day Issues, Part 2

4. How are we to think about the Bible and science?

There was one part we didn’t get to last time because we ran out of time, and it makes a nice transition between the origin of man and the nature of man. It’s the issue of how we should think about the Bible and science (or other areas of study).

All truth is God’s truth. Whether special revelation or general revelation, both come from God are authoritative and infallible. As a result, both are in complete and perfect harmony. They’re not at odds. They don’t disagree.

So why does it seem like the Bible and science are at odds?

Bible vs. Science or Understanding vs. Understanding?

The first thing we have to be clear on is that we’re not comparing special revelation and general revelation, and we’re typically not even comparing the Bible and science. We’re comparing our understanding of the Bible with our understanding of the created world. It is entirely possible, and probable, that our understanding of God’s word and his world won’t harmonize. When this happens, it doesn’t mean that God’s special or general revelation is wrong or inadequate. It means that our understanding of one or both is wrong. And this is all thanks to our fallenness, which we’ll explore more deeply in the coming weeks. Our hearts and minds have been corrupted by sin and are prone to misunderstanding and misinterpreted what God has clearly revealed.

How to Handle Conflicting Evidence

The second thing we should mention is that we should deal with these apparent tensions between special and general revelation the same way we deal with the apparent tensions between special revelation and special revelation. When we encounter two passages in Scripture that seem to be at odds, we seek to harmonize them by challenging our understanding of one or the other or both passages. We do this through careful exegesis. We should take this same approach to tensions that seem to exist between special revelation and general revelation. It’s likely that our understanding of one or the other or both is wrong and needs to be corrected.

A guiding principle I mentioned last time is that we should be skeptical of anything that starts to unravel the rest of Scripture. We might find some insight from science that corrects our understanding of the Bible and harmonizes with the rest of the Bible. These are good and helpful discoveries to make. But if an extra-biblical idea cannot be easily harmonized with the rest of Scripture, we should be very slow to accept it.

Special Revelation Prioritized Over General Revelation

While both special and general revelation are truth, authoritative, and infallible, both are not equally precise and concrete. As a result, we should give priority to special revelation as we seek to harmonize the two. However, we should keep in mind that we might be defending our understanding of the Bible rather than the Bible itself.

Consider the Source

We need to acknowledge the effects of sin on our hearts and minds. We’re all fallible, believers and unbelievers alike. Our hearts still have a difficult time fully submitting to God and his authority, and our minds are tainted by sin and distort our thinking. But even more so, the unbeliever is God’s enemy. He knows God, but refuses to acknowledge him and actively suppresses the truth. He’s a child of his father the devil, who is a liar. It’s crucial that we approach the ideas of unbelievers with a high degree of skepticism and discernment. His heart is deeply opposed to God and actively resisting God and his authority, and the noetic effects of sin distort his ability to interpret God’s clear and infallible revelation accurately.

This doesn’t mean that all the ideas of unbelievers are wrong and unhelpful. Far from it. Even the unbeliever is made in the image of God and retains some likeness to God. And even though he is totally depraved, that is, every aspect of his being is affected by sin, he is the recipient of common grace. Unbelievers are, therefore, capable of some profound insights and accomplishments and discoveries. There is much we can learn from them about science, archaeology, art, music, business, productivity, and so much more.

Yet we should not ignore what the Bible teaches about the fallen man and his anti-God bias when evaluating their truth claims.

Let’s look at Romans 1, which is the clearest discussion of the fallen man’s bias against God and his truth.

Romans 1:18–32: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Christians are right to be skeptical of the views of unbelievers, who

suppress the truth
futile in their thinking
foolish hearts were darkened
became fools
they exchanged the truth about God for a lie
worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator
debased mind
haters of God
inventors of evil
foolish
ruthless
give approval to those who practice them

That’s not to say that unbelievers can’t possess truth. They are still in the image of God and recipients of God’s common grace, but their are bent against God and his truth and any truth they possess and portray is in spite of their sinful condition and owing only to God’s image and common grace. So evaluate and challenge everything you hear, but especially when it comes from a truth suppressor.

5. Outline

Here’s what we’ll cover today:

What is the most central or foundational thing about us?
How many fundamental parts constitute the human person?
How does the Bible refer to our various parts?
Where do our souls come from?
How did Adam and Eve relate before the Fall?
Did Adam and Eve have free wills?

6. What is the most central or foundational thing about us?

I’d like to start where we left off last time in our discussion of the origin of man. One of the most fundamental things about us is our creaturehood. At the most fundamental level, we were created by God. There’s a fundamental difference between God and us. We’re creature; he’s creator. Next week we’ll talk about how we’re like God as we explore what it means to be made in God’s image, but we mustn’t overlook this fundamental creator–creature distinction.

It’s important for us to identify some of the key implications of this reality.

God is the owner of us and all that we have; we are owned by him and stewards of all he’s entrusted to us
God is the giver; we are the receiver
God has authority over us; we owe him full obedience
God is infinite; we are finite
God is immortal; we are mortal

God owns us.

Psalm 100:3: Know that the Lord is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Isaiah 43:1: But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

We belong to him, and everything we have belongs to him. We are stewards of what belongs to him. Our spouse is not ours. Our children are not ours. Our possessions are not ours. Our time is not ours. It all belongs to him.

God is the source, the giver.

Everything we have is from God. All of life is a gift we do not deserve. Everything we have has been received. Our lives should reflect this with humble gratitude and generosity.

1 Corinthians 4:7: For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

John 3:27: John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.

1 Chronicles 29:14: “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.

James 1:17: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

1 Peter 4:10–11: As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

God has authority over us.

As a natural corollary to God’s ownership comes his authority. He has the right to dictate and control our lives, to set the standards and require of us obedience. We owe to him perfect and complete obedience by virtue of the fact that we’re his creation.

Romans 9:20–21: But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

Jeremiah 18:6: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

God possesses all authority and right, and we exist to submit to his authority and do his bidding.

God is infinite.

God is the only limitless being or thing in the universe. Everything else has boundaries. It’s finite. It has a beginning, and most of it has an end. God is the only thing with no beginning and no end. We run out of time, energy, patience, strength, knowledge, etc. Only God cannot be exhausted.

Embracing our finiteness is God’s design for us. It keeps us dependent and humble and resting in him and his sufficiency. When we try to push beyond our limits, we’re dangerously close to desiring God’s infiniteness and wanting to be creator instead of joyfully rejoicing in being the creature.

We must embrace God’s gift of sleep. We need to stop and rest, eat, relax, sleep—leaving many things on our to-do lists undone. These are all God’s ways of reminding us we are his. We’re his creatures. We’re dependent on him. We’re insufficient; he’s sufficient. He’s God. We’re not.

At the core, we are God’s creatures, owned by him, owing him obedience and allegiance, entrusted by him with everything we have, and living in constant dependence on him and his inexhaustible provision. We mustn’t ever go far from these fundamental truths of the creator-creature distinction.

7. How many fundamental parts constitute the human person?

One of the key questions that theologians have debated about man is whether he’s one, two, or three parts. Those three views are called

monism (a.k.a. holism or unipartite)
dichotomism (a.k.a. dichotomy or dichometry or bipartite)
trichotomism (a.k.a. trichotomy or trichometry or tripartite)

Monism

Monism maintains that man is indivisibly one. He has no soul distinct from his whole person and has no life or existence apart from the body. This is the view of naturalists. But some Christians affirm a version of this as well, particularly those who teach the doctrine of soul sleep, that the soul is in an unconscious holding state until it’s been reunited with its body. This is the view of Seventh-Day Adventists and several other groups.

They establish this from passages that talk about the dead sleeping:

Luke 8:52: And all were weeping and mourning for her, but he said, “Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping.”

John 11:11: After saying these things, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.”

1 Corinthians 15:6: Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

While there’s a very close relationship that exists between our material and immaterial parts, the Bible does teach that we can exist and live consciously apart from our bodies.

2 Corinthians 5:6–8: So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

Philippians 1:23–24: I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

Hebrews 9:27: And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,

Luke 16:22–23: The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, 23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

Luke 23:43: And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Acts 7:59: And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Revelation 6:9–10: When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

Revelation 20:4: Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

James 2:26: For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

The Bible affirms the conscious existence of people apart from their bodies, which doesn’t work with monism.

Trichotomism

This view affirms that we are made up of three distinct parts: body, soul, and spirit. They do so on the basis of a few passages:

Genesis 2:7: then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

1 Thessalonians 5:23: Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 4:12: For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Dichotomism

The final view argues that we are fundamentally two parts: body (the material part) and soul/spirit (the immaterial part). This view is supported by the fact that soul and spirit seem to be used interchangeably or in parallelism in the Bible.

Job 7:11: “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

Isaiah 26:9: My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

I think it’s the most consistent view with the teaching of the Bible for a few reasons:

We can exist consciously apart from our bodies, as we already saw. But there’s no indication that our soul can exist apart from our spirit or vice versa.
The Bible uses soul and spirit interchangeably more often than it seems to differentiate them.
The Bible doesn’t develop a precise and neat and tidy view of our immaterial being. The biblical words for soul often refer to the whole person.
When God created Adam, he made him of two parts dust for his body and breath for his soul/spirit. Those two things together made him a living being (Gen 2:7).
If you follow the logic of the trichotomist, it’s hard to see how you avoid tetrachotomism or pentachotomism, where the heart and mind are differentiated from the soul and spirit.

Trichotomism and dichotomism are both valid positions, but the latter seems to me more consistent with Scripture and creates fewer problems.

8. How does the Bible refer to our various parts?

The Bible uses many terms to talk about our component parts:

Our Material Part

body (בָּשָׂר; σῶμα): most closely parallel with our English word body
flesh (בָּשָׂר; σάρξ); term for our physical existence that often represents the desires that correspond with your physical life

Our Immaterial Part

soul (נֶפֶשׁ; ψυχή): often refers to the whole person; may refer to the immaterial part of us
spirit (רוּחַ; πνεῦμα): wind/breath; refers to the immaterial part of us and the presence of life within us
mind (νοῦς; διάνοια): there is no Hebrew word for mind; it’s the same as heart
heart (לֵבָב ;לֵב; καρδία); internal physical organ that represents our whole inner person
kidney (כִּלְיָה): internal physical organ that represents our emotions and feelings
bowels/intestines (σπλάγχνον): internal physical organ that represents our emotions and feelings
will (θέλημα): this term usually refers to the desire itself or the thing desired rather than the thing doing the desiring
conscience (συνείδησις): self-knowledge
passions (ἐπιθυμία):
emotions (N/A): there isn’t a word in the Bible for emotions

Each of these terms in the original Hebrew and Greek carries a variety of meanings and doesn’t perfectly correspond to English, as you’ll see by the various ways each of these terms is translated into English. There are subtle distinctions between them, but they don’t lend themselves to a neat and tidy organization.

We should avoid constructing neat and tidy doctrines around these terms and be careful not to equate these Hebrew and Greek terms with our English terms. A good example of this is heart. We often refer to the heart as the seat of the emotions. The Hebrews and Greeks referred to the kidneys and intestines as the seat of emotions.

Heart, Soul, and Mind

Matthew 22:37: And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

Heart and Soul

Acts 4:32: Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.

1 Peter 1:22: Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,

Heart and Mind

1 Chronicles 22:19: Now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God. Arise and build the sanctuary of the Lord God, so that the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy vessels of God may be brought into a house built for the name of the Lord.”

Jeremiah 17:10: “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”

Philippians 4:7: And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Revelation 2:23: and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.

Flesh and Mind

Ephesians 2:3: among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Body and Spirit

James 2:26: For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Flesh and Spirit

1 Corinthians 5:5: you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

2 Corinthians 7:1: Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.

There are various nuances of meaning in each of these terms, but each needs to be understood in its context, and we should be careful forcing significant distinctions between them.

The Bible isn’t meant to be a psychology textbook. It’s meant to help us understand the richness of our inner person and how it should respond to him in a full-orbed way.

9. Where do our souls come from?

If we agree that man has an immaterial part that can exist consciously apart from the body, the question arise of how that immaterial part originates. In the case of Adam and Eve, the answer is easy. God created it. But in the case of all of their decedents who came into being through procreation, God didn’t create us in the same way. He used means.

There are three primary views on where our souls come from:

Preexistence: God created all souls at the beginning of time.
Traducianism: The soul is created along with the body as part of the procreation process.
Creationism: God creates the soul at the point of conception.

Preexistence

Origen (184/185 – 253/254) affirmed preexistence, as have a few others. But there’s really no evidence for it in the Bible.

Traducianism

This view argues that the whole person, both material and immaterial parts, are passed down through procreation to children. There are several arguments made for this view:

God completed his work of creation and rested. He no longer creates.
This explains original sin, how sin is transmitted from parents to their children. If children received only their physical part from their parents and received their soul directly from God, how would they be born sinful? Traducianists affirm a seminal headship or realists view of Adam’s passing sin on to his descendants.
If God creates the soul at conception and the soul is sinful, how do we avoid the conclusion that God created something sinful. Isn’t everything that God creates good?
If explains the virgin birth. God bypassed the normal human procreation process to ensure that Jesus was born without sin.
It explains how children are like their parents, not only in physical characteristics, but in characteristics of personality.

While traducianism seems to have some pretty compelling arguments, it’s not without its problems.

It prioritizes the body over the soul and makes the soul derivative of the body.
It doesn’t explain when and how the new soul comes into being. Does the soul come with the sperm, the egg, both?
It doesn’t sufficiently account for children that differ from their parents.

Creationism

The most common view is creationism, that God creates the soul at the point conception.

Arguments in favor of this view are

The Bible suggests that God plays a similar role in the origin of all human souls as he did with Adam:
1. Ecclesiastes 12:7: and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
2. Isaiah 42:5: Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it:
3. Zechariah 12:1: The oracle of the word of the Lord concerning Israel: Thus declares the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him:
4. Hebrews 12:9: Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
Creationism better preserves the bipartite nature of man as having a distinct soul and gives the soul a place of equality alongside the body.

These are complex matters that don’t directly affect the core of our faith. It’s not essential that we understand them fully and take a dogmatic stand. Both creationism and traducianism offer reasonable explanations for how our souls come into existence, but neither without its problems and weaknesses. I lean toward creationism, but am content to ultimately say I don’t know.

10. What was the relationship of man and women before the fall?

God created mankind as male and female. What do we know about that relationship as it existed before the fall, and what implications does that have on how we relate to each other today?

Adam was created first.
Eve was created from Adam.
Eve was created as a helper suitable for him.
Both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image.
God gave them both the responsibility to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.
Man is given the responsibility to leave and hold fast to his wife.
God held Adam accountable for his family.

The biblical teaching on gender relationships points in the direction of several things:

Men and women are equally the image of God, but have different roles and responsibilities.
God intended human sexual and marital relationships to be monogamous and heterosexual. Homosexuality and so-called homosexual marriage are against nature and against God’s design. So is polygamy.

Some people try to argue that women’s role in relationship to Adam was the result of the Fall, which is reversed in Christ.

They argue this from two main texts:

Genesis 3:16: To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

The first text, they argue, establishes that a wife’s submission to her husband is the result of the fall, not by virtue of God’s design for women before the fall.

The next text, they think, establishes that the gospel of Christ does away with these roles that were put in place as part of the curse.

There are several problems with this line of argumentation:

It ignores the other clear indications of leadership and responsibility assigned to Adam before the fall.
It assigns more to the curse than the text intends. The curse was Eve’s desire to rule over Adam. Before the Fall, Eve joyfully and willingly helped Adam. After the Fall, it became a struggle. She desired independence.
The NT continues to teach submission of women to their husbands even those who were united together in Christ. This would make no sense if the gospel undid the effects of the curse.

Later in our study we may delve into this issue in more detail.

God’s design was for Adam and Eve to marry, procreate, live in faithful heterosexual monogamy, and exercise dominion over the earth.

11. Did Adam and Eve have a free will?

Any discussions of free will need to take into consideration the various states of man:

Before the Fall
After the fall, but before redemption
After redemption
In glory

Since we’ve not yet gotten to the fall and sin, we’ll focus here primarily on the nature of Adam’s and Eve’s will before the Fall.

What is the will?

The will is part of the complex of our inner person. It operates in conjunction with our intellect, emotions, and desires.

It’s the part of us that makes decisions.

What is free will?

Part of the reason free will is such a debated topic is that it’s poorly defined and means different things to different people.

There are at least three sense we can talk about free will:

Freedom to act willingly
Freedom to do anything
Freedom to act spiritually

Free to Act Willingly?

In one sense, all that’s necessary for the will to be free is that it acts voluntarily according to its desires. In that sense, all human wills are free. We really want to do everything we do. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t do it.

You might say, “What a minute? I didn’t want to get up this morning, but I did. I chose to against my desires.” Very well. But you only chose to act against that desire because there was a stronger desire inside of you.

We always choose to act according to our strongest desire at the point of decision.

Free to Do Anything?

In another sense, the will is not free. It’s bound by our desires. And desires aren’t things you can turn on and off like light switches. In a very real sense, we are controlled by our strongest desires.

“What a minute? There are plenty of things I really want to do more than other things that I can’t do. For example, I want to dunk a basketball or fly, but I can’t.”

Very well. Our will is bound and limited by our nature. I can’t choose to be omnipresent or to fly by flapping my arms. In this sense, all human wills are not free. They can’t choose to act outside of the bounds of their nature.

Even God isn’t free to choose something that’s not consistent with his nature. For example, God cannot choose to sin. He can’t choose to stop being omniscient.

In the first sense, everyone is always free in all of their choices. In the second sense, no one is completely free. We’re all operating within the bounds of our natures.

Free to Please God?

What most people have in mind when they talk about free will, though, it whether we can choose to do the things that please God: love him, obey him, trust him, etc.

Did Adam and Eve have free will?

Like all people, Adam and Eve had a free will in the first sense. Like all people, Adam and Eve didn’t have a free will in the second sense. The real question is whether Adam and Eve had a free will in the third sense.

The answer to this is found what the Bible teaches about Adam and Eve’s nature. In Genesis 1:31 after God created man we read that “God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Ecclesiastes 7:29 says that “God made man upright.” Man’s nature before the fall was morally good. Therefore, he was free to choose to love, believe, and obey God. That was consistent with their nature.

So, yes, Adam and Eve had a free will in the third sense.

Is free will compatible with God’s sovereignty?

The Bible teaches that man’s actions are free; that is, there are voluntary outworkings of his own desires. But the Bible also teaches that God is sovereign and that that sovereignty has no limits. It extends to the free acts of his creatures.

1 Samuel 2:25: If one person sins against another, God may mediate for the offender; but if anyone sins against the Lord, who will intercede for them?” His sons, however, did not listen to their father’s rebuke, for it was the Lord’s will to put them to death.

Proverbs 19:21: Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

Proverbs 20:24: A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way?

Proverbs 21:1: The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.

Psalm 105:25: He turned their hearts to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants.

Ezra 6:22: And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.

Isaiah 63:17: Why, Lord, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes that are your inheritance.

Lamentations 3:37–38: Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? 38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?

Romans 11:8: as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.”

Revelation 17:17: for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.

There are two ways people try to reconcile these two strands:

God isn’t really sovereign over men’s hearts and wills. They try to explain away all the passages that seem to teach that God can and does act upon men’s hearts and minds so as to guarantee that they make certain choices.
Man isn’t really free. Others affirm the passages that teach God’s sovereignty over men and their decisions and instead deny that true human freedom can exist That instead they act against their wills or are mere robots.

I don’t think we have to choose. We simply need to shape our understanding of freedom so that we don’t compromise God’s exhaustive sovereignty. If we define free will as acting willingly, in accordance with one’s desires, we can affirm that men act freely even when God is sovereignly working in our desires and hearts.

12. Conclusion

Let’s summarize what we covered today:

All of God’s truth—in the Word and the world—is perfectly consistent with itself.
We need to distinguish between special revelation and general revelation one the one hand and our interpretation of them on the other hand.
We should interpret science in light of Scripture in the same way we interpret Scripture in light of Scripture.
We should consider the source of idea that conflict with the Bible.
At the most fundamental level, we’re creature: we’re owned by God, receivers from God, stewards of God, servants of God, dependent on God.
We’re made of two fundamental parts: body and soul/spirit. The soul/spirit can exist consciously apart from the body, but the body can’t exist without the soul/spirit.
The Bible refers to our material and immaterial parts in various terms, many of which don’t perfectly parallel our English terms. Instead of trying to carefully differentiate them, we should capture the main point that we owe God obedience, love, faith with all that we are.
Our souls ultimately come from God. Whether he creates them directly or uses the procreation process, we are nonetheless created by him.
God created mankind as male and female and designed for them different roles and responsibilities in the home and the church. His design for human sexuality is faithful heterosexual monogamy.
Adam and Eve were free to love and obey God, but not free from God’s sovereign providence over all things.

13. Resources

TBD

14. Review Questions

TBD

15. Next Week

Next time we’ll be looking at what the Bible teaches about the image of God and what implications that has for our daily lives.