MADE IN THE IMAGE OF
GOD
or
What About Free Will, Part 2: Why No Free Will?
Charles and Sarah Faupel
So God created man in
his own image, in the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them (Genesis 1:27)
Some time
back I (Chuck) addressed the issue of free will, making the case as well as I
could that human beings do not possess a free will. What, then, do we do with the verse above
from the opening chapter of Genesis which states that we were created in the
image of God? If God has a free will
(which He does), and we were created in His image, does it not follow that we,
His creation, possess a free will as well?
This question takes us to the last section of that earlier article that
we referred to just above. We would
suggest that you read that article, entitled “What About Free Will?” if you have
not done so already, giving particular attention to the last section. In that section entitled “The Paradox of
Freedom and Our Will,” it was pointed out that true freedom can be discovered
as we surrender our will (limited as it is) to the truly free and creative will
of God. We explore that truth more fully
in the paragraphs that follow.
How is it,
then, that Adam and Eve were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27)? We would suggest that this refers to the
breathing of His Spirit into man. It is
in the sharing of His Spirit that we are able to commune with Him. This is so, even in our fallen state, though
that communion is not the perfect communion that He has ultimately in store for
us. Being made in His image does not mean that God has ceded the
accomplishment of His purposes to the freedom of our carnal will to accept or
reject Him and His will. Choices we do make, of course. The making of these choices is certainly a representation, an imperfect image, of
God’s perfect free will. But let us be
clear here: God and God alone has perfect and absolute
free will. Our will, and our ability to
choose is but a representation of
God’s free will.
We might
illustrate the distinction between God’s absolute free will and our ability to
make choices (that feel like they are being made out of a free will) with what
is currently taking place with AI technology.
News media outlets are touting this new technology as having its own
will, making its own choices that are smarter and more clever
than human beings are capable of. It is
said, for example, that these computers are capable of beating the very best of
chess players at their own game. At the
end of the day, however, these supercomputers (by whatever name they are
called) can only make decisions on the basis of that which has been programmed
into them. While the decisions they
make, in turn, generate an even greater database of information, it all began
with the information that human agents programmed into them. From this vast database of information, the
computers, through the various algorithms, “make decisions” that do indeed
astound the brightest scientists and scholars.
These computers do not, however, have absolute freedom of choice. They are limited by the constraints of
whatever information was originally keyed into their database. In a sense, they are made in the image of
man, but they are not man.
While this
analogy certainly has limitations, it is instructive. God is the only being that has an infinite
“database” from which to make decisions.
He is, therefore, the only being that possesses an absolute free
will. The choices that we make are all
predicated on the limited information and circumstances that God has chosen to
“program” into us. We are, in this way, made in the image of God, insofar as our
ability to make choices and exercise our will is concerned. We are a representation
of God’s perfect and absolute freedom of will, but only a representation; just
as AI technology and the choices it makes are a representation of human
ingenuity.[1]
Why No Free Will?
We would
begin by looking at where the illusion of free will originated. The illusion
goes back to the garden of Eden and the opportunity that was given Adam and Eve
to “choose,” in agreement with their Creator, the “tree of Life” from which
their spiritual life and union with God was meant to be nourished and sustained;
or, alternatively, having the “choice” or temptation to eat from the forbidden
tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Clearly God gave them a choice. Contemporary
Christianity teaches that Adam and Eve made this choice freely—exercising their free will against
the will of God that they would not eat of that tree. Having made this fatal blunder, the Lord God
kicked them out of the Garden and reduced them to a life of pain and toiling by
the sweat of their brow. God’s perfect
creation, and the perfect union with God that Adam and Eve knew was now severed
because of this bad choice that they made.
God would now have to go back to the drawing boards and come up with an
alternative plan to save mankind from the morass of sin that was created by the
choice of Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That alternative plan, of course, was the
sending of His Son to die a criminal’s death to atone for the sin that was
brought into the world by the choice of Adam and Eve to disobey God and thereby
disrupt the perfect world that He had created.
There is
something that does not quite add up in this explanation, however. If God is omniscient (which He is), He knew
full well that Eve and then Adam would partake of the forbidden fruit! We might say that Eve was “irresistibly
drawn” to partake of that fruit (Genesis 3:4-6). If God knew that Adam and Eve would partake
of the forbidden fruit, He was certainly behind the very setup with the serpent
that would draw her to eat of it. God
knew when He planted the tree that the first couple would inevitably eat of
it. The choice was not totally “free;”
nevertheless, God required them to make that choice. It was precisely in this choice to disobey
God that the illusion of free will was first born. They were now “as gods, knowing good and
evil” (Genesis 3:5). They believed the
deception that they were now as gods, including, we are suggesting, the belief
that they had a free will. It certainly looked like they were making this
decision out of their own free will!
Note that this happened after the original man and woman experienced the
perfect communion with God, naked and unashamed. It was not until they knew this union, when
their will was in such total subjection to the will of God and they knew only
His will, that they were faced with the temptation to have their eyes opened
and become “like gods” who knew good and evil. Ironically, while they
believed that eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
would make them free, they surrendered that very freedom by abandoning their
unity with their creator.
As was
suggested in the article, “What About Free Will?,” we
are only truly free as our human will is submitted to the absolute Lordship of
Christ. This is, of course, a
paradox. To the natural mind, submitting
our will to another—even to Christ—is bondage to that person. Indeed, Paul would seem to suggest as much
when he said that he was a bondservant
of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:1; Galatians 1:10).
The spiritual mind understands, however that because we were created to
be one with Him, the surrender of our will to His represents the true freedom
that we have in that unity. Our first
ancestors were created in perfect union with Christ, and did, therefore,
experience this perfect freedom. In this
way, they were perfectly made in the image of God! Their will was in perfect submission to God
because they knew nothing else. It was
not until they were confronted with the option—set up by God Himself—to partake
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and therefore be as gods unto
themselves, that they were even aware of the possibility of abandoning that
perfect union. They inevitably made the
choice to abandon their perfect union for something that the serpent made them
believe was even better.
Understanding
that their union with God was the
basis for their freedom as beings made in the image of God (as opposed to their
having a free will as the indicator of being made in God’s image), let us look
once again at the characterization of free will as so readily adopted by the
church system today. Most church-going
Christians today believe that being created in the image of God means that we
have an absolute free will, even to thwart the very purpose of God, which is
ultimately to reconcile the world unto Himself. They will say things like, “Because God created us with a free will, He
will not violate that principle and He always gives us the choice of accepting
His gift of salvation or not.” Another
rationale that we have often heard, “The
Holy Spirit is a gentleman. He will not force anyone to come to Him against
their will.” What these statements do not account for is
that sovereign God changes our will! So,
while it feels like we possess a free
will in the making of decisions, it is God affecting our very will. Having
established this premise in the aforementioned article, that there is no fair
biblical argument one can make for such a “Descartian”
(absolute) free will, and assuming
the reader may at least be able to entertain this truth with an open mind and
with a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, we would like to take this a step
further and explore the basis for why God would create such a unique spiritual
terrain to travel (no “free” human will) for us who are created in His image.
If it is true that God is indeed sovereign over His creation in the most
absolute sense, and that He indeed does know the beginning from the end in each
life--and this would include our ordained purpose and the works He has set out
for us to accomplish--what then might be the reason that God would limit our
will? We suggest that not having a free will is a necessary
passageway for humanity that would lead to the life of a perfect unity with him
and our full maturation as sons of God.
The Fall Makes Way for Our Ultimate
Life and Freedom
We have
suggested that our ultimate freedom and life can be experienced only as we
submit our carnal wills to His will.
This involves a death to our will, a death to self. A fundamental principle in God’s economy is
that life comes from death (Romans 6:4; 2 Corinthians 4:11-12; 1 John 3:14). We can only know life and experience life fully
if we have first experienced death. This
principle can be found at work in practically all areas of life. We fully appreciate acceptance when we have
been rejected. If we have never been
rejected by anyone who mattered to us, we have a tendency to take acceptance
for granted. Similarly, we know and
recognize righteousness in contrast to evil.
It is also true that we can appreciate light only when we have
experienced darkness (whether this be in the natural
realm or in the spiritual realm). The
beauty and power of light is understood in contrast to darkness. Conversely, the void of darkness is only
fully experienced by those who have lived in the light.
I (Chuck)
have a colleague who was blind from birth.
He learned to function in a sighted world, even to the point of riding a
bicycle. Once, when on a professional
trip to New York City, it was my job to warn him when impending obstacles might
be coming up, including approaching a curb when crossing the street. Totally forgetting my assigned duties, we
were crossing a Manhattan street when he suddenly stopped and said, “I think we should be approaching the curb
about now.” I looked down, and there
was the curb! He had learned through the
years that most streets are domed to drain off water. So, he counted the steps going uphill until
he reached the middle, and counted the same number of steps going down on the
other side. In this way, he knew when it
was time to step up to the curb. I
discovered that he really had no need of me!
He declared to me one day that he had no desire to get his sight. Blindness was normal for him and he could not
imagine what it would be like to be walking in light.
The same
principle operates in our spiritual life.
Those who never know light have no desire to leave their place of darkness. It is only as we are exposed to the light of
God’s overwhelming love for us that we can even desire to know and walk in that
light. This is why Jesus said, “No
man can come to me, except the Father which hath
sent me draw him” (John 6:44). More importantly for
purposes of this article, it is also true that we cannot fully experience the
life and freedom of perfect union with Christ unless we have first known death
and bondage. The fall of Adam and Eve
set the stage for the working out of God’s master plan by putting into motion
this divine principle that life comes from death. The incredible truth that we must get our
minds around, is that as we submit to
the death of our own self-life we will know life and freedom in an even more
powerful way than did Adam and Eve because we have first experienced death and
bondage! Life and freedom in our
union with Christ could never be fully realized as God intended from the
beginning if we had not first been born into death as a result of the Great
Fall. What a thought!
The Fall Makes Way for Our Sonship
We must
understand that Adam and Eve had to disobey God in order for God to accomplish
His ultimate purpose. While they made
this choice under the illusion of a free will, God Himself had orchestrated the
serpent’s temptation of Eve. In order to
fully appreciate this, we must understand that God’s ultimate purpose is to “reconcile all
things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having
made peace through the blood of His cross” (Colossians 1:20). All things on earth or things
in heaven refers to the entire cosmos—and we
would go so far as to proclaim that this includes Satan himself!
We would
then ask the question, “If the world was already in perfect communion
(conciliation) with God, why would a re-conciliation
be necessary?” Stated differently, “Why
would the fall of Adam and Eve be necessary to re-accomplish what God had already accomplished in the paradise of
Eden? We have already suggested that
such a re-conciliation was necessary so that we are able to fully experience
the power of His life in contrast to the death and separation that we have
known apart from him. Beyond this,
however, we must understand that God further purposed that He would have a
company of sons that would co-reign with Him, and be partners with Him as He
restores all of creation to Himself.
God’s reign is one of love and service, even to the point of humiliation. This was demonstrated at Calvary. If He is to have a company of sons that would
partner with Him in this way, they too must enter into this kind of love
through humility. The only way that we
can know the kind of humility that prepares us for this sort of
servant-priesthood and servant-kingship is by being brought to the depths of
our own depravity. We must know sin,
just as Jesus knew sin by being lowered into the realm of deprived humanity and
thereby taking on the sins of the world.
As we are then brought through the gehenna fires we are confronted by our
desperate condition as it is even then being purged from us by that purifying
fire. Only then can we begin to
experience the humility that qualifies us as a first-fruits company to co-reign
with Christ. As this is being
accomplished in us, the rest of humanity is inevitably touched by the love of
God. It is in this way that the
reconciliation of all things will be accomplished through these adopted sons (huiothesia, referring to the adoption of mature sons), whom He had predestinated
for adoption from the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-5). Our Lord Jesus Christ was, of course, the
first or pattern son whose obedience took Him to the cross (1 Peter
1:18-20). It was not God’s intent,
however, that Christ’s death and resurrection was to be a one-time event, that
simply by giving some sort of mental assent to its purpose,[2]
would bring humanity to be reconciled to Himself. God purposed, rather, that there would be a company of matured sons, speaking and
acting under the Lordship of their elder brother and pattern son, who would,
through their humble obedience to the Holy Spirit, be partners with Christ in
this glorious endeavor, taking their marching orders from their Head, Jesus Christ
(Romans, Ch. 8). This maturity unto sonship that prepares God’s elect for such a mission takes
place through the taking up of our own crosses in the fallen world in which we
find ourselves. As we said earlier, in
God’s economy, life comes from death.
The fall of Adam and Eve is the very death that eventually gives rise to
Life. Those of us who are called to sonship must individually experience this death as well if
we are to come into His Life that will ultimately transform and reconcile the
world to Himself.
His elect are led through a series of experiences that will strip them
of their own carnal will and the drive to satisfy the desires of their
flesh. Through this process, we are
confronted with our own fallen nature, as He applies the fire of His
purification in our lives. None of this
could take place had Adam and Eve refused to partake of the fruit of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil. They (and
we) would have always known perfect communion with God, our wills being
perfectly aligned with His. But we would
not have experienced the suffering, the purging, the death to self—the
preparation for our participating with Him in bringing about the restoration of
all of His creation that He had ordained from the foundations of the
world. Adam and Eve’s choice was indeed
a setup by God to accomplish His ultimate purpose.
Conclusion
Made in the
image of God…what a privilege is ours!
But just what does it mean to be made in the image of God? Most Christians that we speak with insist
that it means that we have a free will, just as He has a free will. This is a belief largely promoted by the
church systems today. However, this
position both idolizes the human creature, while at the same time overlooks
what we believe to be the most important aspect of what it means to be made in
God’s image.
It idolizes
the creature because by insisting that human beings have a free will—extending
even to thwarting God’s will that all
shall be made alive in Christ—it makes the human will more powerful than God’s
will. God is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to
repentance” (2 Peter 3:9); however, most free-will advocates insist that all
will not come to repentance, and will
therefore burn in eternity in hell because they decided to give God the finger
and refuse His gift of salvation. To
state it differently, for those who insist upon absolute free human will, the
cross is not sufficient unto
salvation, but something in addition to the cross is required. That something is our “freely” choosing to
accept Christ by whatever formula a given theological tradition deems necessary
or appropriate. This added requirement
renders the cross powerless and its efficacy is made subject to the whims of
human will. Anathema!
Moreover, by
insisting that being made in the image of God means having a free will, we miss
what it truly means to be made in His image.
We are made in His image by virtue of the fact that He has breathed his
very Spirit—His very essence—into us!
This has incredible implications.
Because we are comprised of His spiritual DNA, we are one with Him. He is our very life. We are truly inheritors of His divinity.
The problem,
of course, is that we fail to experience this unity and divinity in this earth
realm in which we now function. This is
because there was a great separation that took place when our spiritual ancestors
partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But this Fall was
known and intended by God when He planted that tree in the garden. This is so because in God’s economy,
separation and death must occur
before oneness and life can be experienced to the full. And He is first bringing His sons through the
purging fires that constitute the very birth canal that births the resurrection
life in us. This is an incredibly
privileged position that we have, despite the fact that these purging fires are
extremely painful things to endure. It
is painful because our flesh is being burned up as the tares in our life are
being separated from the wheat and then burned.
Our wills are thereby being conformed to His will and as this takes
place we experience fully our union with Christ in contrast to the separation
that had been our life. Indeed, as this
purging and being brought into conformation with His will takes place, we lose
our sense of a sin consciousness that has so bound us in our separation from
God. We also experience His divine life
fully in contrast to the death that we had known in our separation from
God. This is, moreover, a privileged
position because as God accomplishes this work in us, we are being made into
His priests and kings to partner with Christ in restoring the world to Himself. Hallelujah!
1/2024