Question: What does the Law of God teach about free will?

“And now, Israel, what does the LORDyour God require of you, but to fear the LORDyour God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORDyour God with all your heart and with all your soul…” Deuteronomy 10.12

The freedom Israel required to obey the Lord and know His blessings was a matter of the heart. The question of free will resolves, in the end, to a question of the heart, the affections, hopes, aspirations, desires, and longings to which people are inclined and by which they are led.

Israel was commanded to act from hearts wholly inclined to the Lord. Indeed, as our text makes clear, they were to watch over their hearts with the kind of vigilance that would ensure that what issued from them was in line with the divine economy and will (Prov. 4.23). They would know true freedom to the extent they acted freely, from the depths of their being, according to the teaching of God’s Law.

Mere external obedience is neither true obedience nor complete freedom. Even the enemies of God know how to obey Him, but in a self-interested and incomplete manner (cf. Ps. 81.15). Obedience that leads to life must flow from the heart.

As long as the heart is in need of “spiritual surgery” people will not be free, and they will not know and enjoy the freedom God intends for them, while, at the same time, they remain responsible for their sinful choices and actions. A truly “free” will is one that is free from the constraining and controlling power of sin, and that acts gladly according to the will of God. Israel would express such freedom from time to time, but only incompletely, and never wholly from within.

And they were helpless to perform the operations necessary to liberate their hearts from the grip of sin, so that they might freely and gladly obey God and enjoy Him and His blessings.

The healing they required in order to fulfill their calling would have to take place within them, while coming to them from without.

T. M. Moore

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