Freely Irresponsible – The Law of God: Questions and Answers

Freely Irresponsible
The Law of God: Questions and Answers

We are responsible for the choices we make.

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

“But if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.” Deuteronomy 28:15

The people of Israel knew what God desired of them: obedience. They understood that obedience to the Law of God would ensure a just society, in which love for God and neighbors would abound and the blessings of God would fill every area of their lives.

But the people did not have a heart for God. They were the heirs of a spiritual condition, as Paul explains in Romans 5, which descended from their (and our) first parents, Adam and Eve. Sin had so affected the hearts of the people of Israel that no amount of sensate experience of God, history of His faithfulness, testimony concerning His will, nor threat of His judgment could keep them from disobeying His will.

Their hearts simply weren’t in it; they preferred the sinful, pagan ways of the peoples of Canaan to the just ways of their Redeemer and Savior. They would not obey the Lord as He commanded, yet they would not be able to point to anyone but themselves as being the cause of their rebellion.

They were responsible to choose the way of obedience, but their hearts were not free to do so. Nevertheless, they were, as God saw the situation, freely irresponsible in choosing not to obey Him.

So did they have free will? Yes. And no.

They were free to obey God, and sometimes did, though never completely. But they were bound to sin and to rebel against Him, because of the sinful condition of their hearts.

But they were held accountable for every such act of rebellion and were called to repent and return to the way of obedience. And they were provided the means—sacrifices, offerings, courts, and the like—whereby such a return might be accomplished.

The people of Israel were in many ways like us. They lived in a tension between freedom and responsibility in which their experience of the grace and goodness of God, and knowledge of His will, was striving continuously with their natural inclination to selfishness and sin. The freedom they knew before the Lord was real, but within restraints; nevertheless, it was a freedom to which God expected them always to incline, even though He knew they would not.

They had a problem they could not fix which kept them from the freedom they would not choose. And they were responsible for that condition before the Lord.

Got a question about the Law of God? Write to T. M. at tmmoore@ailbe.org, and your answer might appear in this series of In the Gates columns.

Visit our website, www.ailbe.org, and sign up to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, featuring writers from the period of the Celtic Revival and T. M.’s reflections on Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition. Does the Law of God still apply today? Order a copy of T. M.’s book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, and study the question for yourself.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.