Friday, December 5, 2008

Question #3: Will we have free will in heaven?

This is a great question. And unfortunately, it's one of those questions that no one truthfully knows exactly how to explain. Kind of like the whole Trinity thing. We know the Bible teaches it, but how it's going to happen? Well, we just don't know. But here are a couple of options to consider...

Revelation 21:4 and 21:27 indicate that in heaven there will never again be sin or anything related to sin. That obviously means that those of us who are there won't be sinning...ever. So, does that mean God takes away our free will so that we can't sin? I've heard it explained in two different ways. One is that when we are transformed into our new eternal bodies, God will honor the choice that we have made in this life to spend eternity in a sinless, unbroken fellowship with Him. And He will basically "seal" us or "actualize" us within those choices making us incapable of sinning. In that way of explaining it, I guess you would be answering "no" to the question of whether we will have free will. 

The other way of explaining it is this: At the moment we accept Jesus, we are given the Holy Spirit and a new nature (see Ephesians 4:20-24, 2 Corinthians 5:17, & 2 Peter 1:4). This new nature is in total agreement with God's laws and wants nothing else but to obey. But at the same time, we still possess a sinful nature that wants the exact opposite (see Romans 7:14-25). But upon leaving this life, the old sinful nature passes away leaving only the new divine nature (see Romans 6:4-7). The work that God started in us in this life is finally completed (see Philippians 1:6). The Bible indicates that Jesus has free will but at the same time, did not sin. And if you remember from Sunday, 1 John 3:2 says that in heaven we will be like Jesus. So if God the Father and Jesus the Son can both possess free will yet not sin, then the same will be true of us in heaven when our sin nature is finally done away with. So in this case, the answer is "yes, we will have free will in heaven but not sin."

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