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

“And the LORDyour God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORDyour God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” Deuteronomy 30.6

These words from Moses were intended to create in the people of Israel a longing for the day when God would give them the heart they needed to love and serve Him.

The people could not have understood what “circumcising the heart” entailed. They only knew it was what God commanded and what they required in order to be truly free to love and serve Him. As long as their hearts were clouded and blocked by sin, they would only ultimately act in self-interest and thus be responsible before God for their acts of disobedience.

They needed something to happen withinwhich they could neither understand nor perform. And now, Moses promised, a day would come when God Himself would accomplish this for them. Coming from without, god would act within His people to circumcise their hearts. Then, free from sin, the people of Israel would love, serve, and obey Him gladly.

The people could have had no idea when that day might come, whether soon or far off. What they learned to do in the interim, as they waited, was to keep vigil over their hearts by submitting them to the searching of God’s Spirit and the guidance of His Law (Prov. 4.23; Ps. 139.23, 24; Ps. 119.112). Thus, even though their hearts were not yet circumcised, they could know a greater measure of the free will for which they had been created and redeemed as they yielded to God, His Spirit, and His Law.

God would circumcise the hearts of His people by sending His Spirit, not merely to oversee them, or to hover around them or temporarily stir within them, but to dwell in them, and to bring a new heart – a heart free from sin’s power – so that they might obey His commandments and know His blessing (Ezek. 36.26, 27).

And even after that – after the coming of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the outpouring of His Spirit – the inward struggle with sin continues (Rom. 7.14-25), Yet, as they are filled with and walk in the Spirit (Eph. 5.18-21; Gal. 5.16-23), those in whom the Spirit comes to dwell may know the true freedom of the sons and daughters of God and be increasingly transformed into the image of the One Whose truth has set them free(Rom. 8.20, 21; 2 Cor. 3.12-18; Jn. 8.32).

T. M. Moore

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