The Bonds of Freedom
Nowhere does this counterintuitive theme become clearer than in the New Testament. Jesus said to his disciples: "[T]hose who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matt. 16:25, NRSV). Again, to his disciples: "[W]hoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave" (Matt. 20:26-27, NIV). True, the apostle Paul spoke often and warmly of our liberty, in Christ, from the law as an external constraint or compulsion. Trusting in Christ is, according to him, the only basis for our right relationship with God. On the other hand, throughout his epistles he counsels giving up rights and freedoms for the sake of spreading the gospel and protecting others' consciences (Rom. 14 and 1 Cor. 8). Paul found real freedom in giving up his rights: "For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them" (1 Cor. 9:19, NRSV).
This gospel theme of true freedom through obedience and servanthood is so pervasive in the Bible that it cannot be missed. And yet, because of our culture's overriding emphasis on autonomy, we miss it all the time.
The Question of 'Free Will'
So what kind of obedience brings real freedom? First, and again contrary to popular opinion, it's not imposed obedience. It's not about obeying God's will because we fear the consequences of disobedience. Gospel obedience is always voluntary. The moment obedience to Christ becomes drudgery or a reluctant, cringing conformity, it is no longer gospel obedience. Only when obedience is joyful, when it stems from gratitude, does it result in true freedom, in the freedom of being who and what we are meant to be. The freedom, in other words, of a train heading along the right track.
Second, obedience that brings real freedom is motivated by self-sacrificial love. Yoder prophetically describes this sort of servanthood as "revolutionary subordination," in which every believer seeks the good of others with no hint of asserting one's own rights. In a community where everyone lives that way out of gratitude to Jesus Christ, empowered by his Spirit, true freedom abounds.
How does all this relate to the concept of free will? Does "freedom" mean nothing more than "free will"?
Obviously not. If, by "freedom," we mean gospel freedom—as in servanthood, becoming and being what God intends us to be, obedience to Christ and growing into his image—then it's clear we're talking about something deeper than mere possession of "free will."
This is something about which Arminians (believers in free will as the power of contrary choice) and Calvinists (believers in bondage of the will and God's absolute, all-determining sovereignty) can agree. As an Arminian, I have often been accused by fellow Christians of holding a shallow view of freedom. Not true. Even evangelical Arminians, "Arminians of the heart" (as opposed to "Arminians of the head"), believe true freedom transcends free will. Free will is simply a God-given capacity for choosing the true freedom offered by God's grace, or else rejecting it through our own self-centered obstinacy.
A Fractured and Beautiful Faith
Streaming This Weekend, May 24, 2013
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Bob Davies
What Jesus comes to accomplish is the possibility of freely engaging in a relationship with God that is its own reward: something not in tension with our negative freedom, but rather chosen out of it. The problem in the Garden was NOT that a certain type of freedom was actually bad. That freedom was a gift reflective of the dignity of the created creatures God made us to be. The problem wasn't the gift of freedom or it's use. That same freedom was used wonderfully everyday as Adam and Eve chose what to eat and how to spend their time. The problem on the day they chose to eat from the tree in the centre of the Garden was not the exercise of a bad kind of freedom. It was, rather, with what they chose: to eat what wasn't good and what God had warned them would cause death.
Bob Davies
The fruit in the Garden of Eden is the scriptural basis for Free Will: the gift of the inviolate freedom of the individual to choose other than God. That freedom, 'negative freedom', is a statement of the dignity God gave his created people in his garden. Free Will is the gift God has given every person. No person, state, or other human power has any right to challenge or inhibit that freedom. Our cultural trends are not towards promoting individual free will or negative freedom (freedom from), but rather are towards what we'd call positive freedom (freedom to). The attempt to use the power of the state or other means to create opportunities for people to do things (i.e. to make them 'more free'), even at the expense of the God given individual negative freedom others enjoy. The trendy freedom narrative actually held today, for example, is that the limits of poverty can be overcome by coordinated human intervention. But the only Christian answer to poverty is freely chosen charity.
gordon payne
Chapters, that is, of Genesis.