TITLE: ADDICTION AND THE THREE WILLS OF GOD
Subtitle: Understanding God’s will and yours amidst addiction
By: NHA, Leadership Team Member
Choice. What a concept. That mental faculty encompassing your ability to consciously choose, decide, and direct your actions towards a specific, desired outcome. That is an amazing power you and I have. Your will to do, to act. Wow. Such autonomy.
Where does this autonomy fit in a cosmos upheld by a sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God?
For those of us struggling with addiction (and some have said everyone has an addiction), are we able or unable to choose freedom from the addiction?
Grab a cup of coffee and a snack, find a comfortable seat, and let’s answer the question. It’s a doozy of a topic, but I believe there is a concrete and favorable answer.
This post was inspired by a conversation with a friend who struggled with finding the power to leave an addiction. She felt not only powerless to withstand its temptations, but also felt demoralized that her happiness was found nowhere but in the grip of the addiction. Yet, she knew the addiction was ultimately not in her best interest in both the short and long term. She said, “I feel damned if I do, damned if I don’t. It seems that God, in His sovereign will, has determined that I am to suffer this anguish. I am like Judas Iscariat, the Son of Perdition. I am doomed to carry out God’s will in this wicked place.”
Ugh. What a sad predicament. Does my friend truly have a choice?
Working through the concept of free will and autonomy is critical to your peace and wisdom. Understanding God determines your theology, and your theology is a powerful influence upon your life. It can just as much keep you in bondage as it can free you. God has made Himself known via creation and His Word:
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been understood and observed by what he made, so that people are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)
One thing that we all can agree on, is that we cannot fully comprehend the mind and ways of God. We cannot begin to understand what God knows, nor how He handles all that happens and will happen. For He says:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
I can accept God knowing eons more than I will ever know. That’s easy, for I know plenty of people that know more than I will ever know! My interest centers on how He handles all that happens. Has God granted us the free will to make choices or if God determines our choices?
For many years, I struggled to comprehend the relationship between my will and God’s. I figured that since God is sovereign and His is never thwarted, and that I am a mere pot made by the Potter, how can my will prevail? Yet, experience suggests that my will prevails throughout my day, every day. Conversely, if my will was not prevailing, then I must be under a spell to imagine that I was exercising my will.
I suppose it is possible that I am living in some kind of la la land, an alternative dimension like in the movies, but I find such a setup does not jive with Scripture. In the Scriptures, every book, every page, denotes mankind exercising his/her will and God acknowledging the mankind’s free will.
Trusting that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, and the integrity to my existence, I sought evidence that we all indeed are exercising our will throughout every moment of our lives. More importantly, I wanted to know whether or not we are responsible for our choices.
I will share texts from Scripture along with respected theologians that have clarified the roles and perimeters of mankind’s will and God’s will.
Let me start with a relatively innocuous chapter of Scripture that I read this morning. I say innocuous because the chapter was not referenced in any book or essay on the topic of people’s and God’s wills. Yet, read the chapter and it is clear that God relates to people in the construct that we are indeed responsible for our actions. I encourage you to read Jeremiah 44 yourself; I will cite three verses. Italics are mine for emphasis. Also, all reputable translations reveal the same attributions of wills. Let’s see if people have a will of their own to choose:
“Again and again I sent my servants the prophets, who said, ‘Do not do this detestable thing that I hate!’ But they did not listen or pay attention; they did not turn from their wickedness or stop burning incense to other gods.” (Jeremiah 44:4-5)
Listening, paying attention, turning from, and burning are all choices of the people. No coercion or mindless automation is attributed or assumed.
“Now this is what the Lord God Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Why bring such great disaster on yourselves by cutting off from Judah the men and women, the children and infants, and so leave yourselves without a remnant? Why arouse my anger with what your hands have made, burning incense to other gods in Egypt, where you have come to live? You will destroy yourselves…” (Jeremiah 44:7-8)
Again, God asks the people why they are making the choices they are making. The people bring disaster, arouse God’s anger, use their hands to make things, burn (the act of) to other gods (their choice of worship), and destroy themselves. These actions are the people’s doing, not God’s. God is ever true, and therefore by His nature cannot attribute to another what He has done. To do so would be deceitful on God’s part, and as we will read later, He cannot go against His true and holy nature.
Let’s look at one more passage from Jeremiah 44 to see human will in full, undeterred force:
“We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord! We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm.” (Jeremiah 44:16-17)
Again we see people affirming their choices against God’s desire for their betterment. The people were well aware of their choices, their pasts, and their reasons for their choices. Read the full chapter and you will notice that the people were aware of God’s warning the consequences of not rusting Him, and still they made choices to go against His advice. God had shared His decreed, forthcoming will, and still the people said no, that they will go their own way. Free will in full play, and God allowing it. This is a case of God’s decretive will at work in spite of His creation’s freedom to exercise their own, God-given, free will.
One of the obstacles to freedom from addiction is the failure to understand your will in relation to God’s will. If God is sovereign, how can we possibly have free will? Theologian R.C. Sproul used to say, “there is not a single maverick molecule in the universe.”
You chose what to wear today. Even if another person selected everything from your undergarments to your shirt and shoes, you ultimately clothed yourself with the attire. If someone threatened to do harm to you if you did not read this post, ultimately, you chose to read the post (hopefully you read without duress!).
Or do you believe that God made these choices by influencing your mind? In other words, because He is sovereign over all creation, is it possible for you or anyone to make choices, or for anything to happen apart from His causing it to happen?
Believe it or not, that is a plausible question. If God predetermines and causes ALL that comes to pass, then we are indeed puppets. If every molecule, every synapse transmission, every protein rebuild, even down to Planck length and time (the Planck is the theoretical limit for the shortest meaningful distance in the universe), then we are indeed mere chess pieces moved only by God’s initiative and doing. That is, God is the causality of everything.
However, our cognitive and physical experience suggests that we possess free will. I am fairly certain that this morning my clothes selection was not coerced or automated. Unless I (and you) are under a spell unawares.
What about God’s omniscience, you ask? How does that attribute affect free will?
There are a few main views of what God’s omniscience entails. I am not going to delve into them in this post (you’re welcome). If you’re interested in searching, it can be both intriguing and head-spinning! Three main views are Simple Foreknowlege, Open Theism, and Classical Theism. The differences between the views relate to God’s position in relation to time, whether He operates outside of time or along the linear path of time (as we do).
My understanding of Scripture is that God is outside of time. God’s knowledge is not a sequential foreseeing of future events, but a timeless, eternal grasp of all moments— past, present, and future— as if they are all now.
In regard to events being predetermined, this would mean that there is no causal determinism. Causal determinism is the idea that every event is necessitated by preceding events and conditions within the laws of nature. Essentially, that everything is predictable. Maybe not for the smartest of people or the best AI, but for God, who has the capacity to comprehend all (again, I almost emit flatulence at the concept). This idea leaves no room for free will or coincidences.
We must always be mindful not to eliminate any of God’s attributes when trying to understand a particular aspect of His nature. God’s omnipresent nature suggests that God sees your free choice as present, not as an event that was pre-determined from the distant past.
Revisiting C.S. Lewis’s illustration of God’s relationship to time: while we live along a linear timeline, God is present at every point along the timeline, similar to how a sheet of paper is at once along every point of a line drawn on it. Could not our will be like the timeline, all within the will of God?
God’s knowledge doesn’t cause your decision; He simply always knows your decisions. Being all-knowing and all-present, God knows all possibilities and all contingencies, whether He causes or manipulates them or not. This does not compromise your free will.
We can’t fathom this. Sheesh, I blow a fuse trying to consider a handful of possibilities for a single instance.
I am reminded of the Suzanne Collins’s brilliant dystopian novels, The Hunger Games. Contestants battled for their lives within a dome. Even though the Gamesmakers manipulated the environmental and logistical circumstances, they did not control the wills of the contestants.
Like the Gamesmakers in The Hunger Games, God sees all. Unlike any of His creation, He also knows all. Does His knowing all mean that He acts presently knowing what we have yet to do? Does being omniscient and omnipresent negate the possibility of human free will? Do these attributes and the presence of evil suggest that God lacks omnipotence, that He does not control all that comes to pass? These are good questions to ask, and even better to find answers to.
In his article, “Discerning God’s Will: The Three Wills of God” (link), Sproul notes the complexity of the will of God:
“Augustine once remarked, “In some sense, God wills everything that happens.” The immediate question raised by this comment is, In what sense? How does God “will” the presence of evil and suffering? Is He the immediate cause of evil? Does He do evil? God forbid. Yet evil is a part of His creation. If He is sovereign over the whole of His creation, we must face the conundrum, how is evil related to the divine will?” (Sproul).
I encountered teaching that resolved this seeming discrepancy. I learned that there are three aspects to God’s will:
- the decretive will of God: God brings to pass whatever He pleases by His divine decree.
- the preceptive will of God: The preceptive will of God relates to the revealed commandments of God’s published law. We may have the power to disobey the precept. His law remains intact whether we obey it or disobey it. The sinner in hell will be forcibly restrained from stealing. The saint in heaven, in the glorified state of perfected sanctification, will be totally disinclined to theft.
- the permissive will of God: God let’s/allows us to carry out our choices. However, that God “allows” or “permits” evil does not mean that He sanctions it or approves it.
The permissive aspect of God’s will does not excuse or relinquish you from responsibility of your choices. As Sproul states:
“Whatever God ‘permits’ He sovereignly and efficaciously wills to permit. If I have a choice to sin or not sin, God also has a choice in the matter. He always has the ability and the authority to stop me from exercising my will. He has absolute power to restrain me. He can vaporize me instantly if it is His pleasure. Or He can keep me on a long leash and let me do my worst. He will only permit me to do my worst if my worst coincides with His perfect providential plan.”
The example of Joseph and his brothers’ treachery is an example of people doing evil but God ultimately orchestrating it for His good purposes. The brothers are not absolved of their evil intents and actions.
One way that helped me to wrap my head about our will/God’s will is to see God as outside of our existence, even as He is amidst and within us. I can apply C.S. Lewis’s illustration of God and time in his book Mere Christianity:
“If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.”
Another thing to consider regarding God’s will is His passive and His active will. Even when He is not actively influencing our choices, He is always sovereign, “actively” in full dominion of Creation. I experienced this as a parent: while my child was pushing the limits on the swing set and I seemingly stood passively by, I was actively fully aware and ready to step in and slow her down or, at the least, ready to either catch her if she were falling or to attend to her if she fell and got hurt. I could even potentially minimize her injury from a fall by intervening. I was actively passive, all the while allowing my child to completely exercise her will.
Augustine offers a neat illustration of God’s will and mankind’s will coinciding whether they are at odds or not:
“Man sometimes with a good will wishes something which God does not will, as when a good son wishes his father to live, while God wishes him to die. Again it may happen that man with a bad will wishes what God wills righteously, as when a bad son wishes his father to die, and God also wills it.… For the things which God rightly wills, He accomplishes by the evil wills of bad men.”
If you are unsettled insofar as to where the responsibility for your sin lies, I encourage you to research the concept of God’s will. A concise explanation is found in this article by the conservative theologian, R.C. Sproul: Discerning God’s Will: The Three Wills of God (https://www.monergism.com/discerning-god’s-will-three-wills-god). The three quotations above were borrowed from this text.
I have been paying close attention to clear instances in Scripture in which responsibility for sin is assigned. Just this morning, as I was reading the Book of 2 Chronicles, I saw three verses assigning full responsibility to the sinner (italics mine for emphasis):
The other events of Jehoiakim’s reign, the detestable things he did and all that was found against him, are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah. And Jehoiachin his son succeeded him as king. (2 Chronicles 36:8)
Zedekiah also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him take an oath in God’s name. He became stiff-necked and hardened his heart and would not turn to the Lord, the God of Israel. (2 Chronicles 36:13-14)
The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. (2 Chronicles 36:15-16).
Notice the actions attributed to people and those attributed to God. There is a clear distinction between the wills of people and the will of God. Am I cherry-picking? Far from it— as drama goes, this is a fairly bland chapter and yet there are at least these three verses that clearly assign responsibility for choices made. Here and throughout the Old Testament, people sin and God repeatedly offers reconciliation.
Do you know of any setting in which forgiveness and reconciliation are offered by the one who caused the offense? How could God ethically offer to forgive if the “guilty” are not responsible for the guilt? If I manipulated you to steal my car, wouldn’t it be unethical, let alone awkward, for me to say I will forgive you if you return my car to me?
On the other hand, if, by your own volition (i.e., your free will) you steal my car, then it would make sense for me to offer forgiveness if you return my car.
To clarify further, here are a few more obvious Scripture examples indicating mankind’s free will. In Deuteronomy 30, Moses invited the people to make a choice whom they would follow and worship:
“But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. (Deuteronomy 30:17-20)
Joshua’s invitation to trust and follow God:
“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14-15)
In these two verses there are six action verbs. Six choices taken or offered, with no hint of outside influence or help.
Years ago, a meme circulated: “the devil made me do it!” Some have elevated the blame, adding God as the blame for their sin. They cite God’s omniscience, foreknowledge, sovereignty, omnipotence, and His ability to intervene. Since Satan is under God’s dominion (see the book of Job, Luke 22:31-32), it is reasonable to abdicate any responsibility for our actions. But I think our consciences know better. Speaking of Satan, why would Jesus say the following to Peter if Peter had no free will?
“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.” (Luke 22:31-32)
You think the devil is tough? Who can resist God? No one, and God makes that clear throughout Scripture. But that is not the issue. God never asks us to resist Him. He invites us to enjoy Him. Choose to trust Me, He says time and time again. Does He invite us in vain, in mock teasing? Absolutely not. He has given us the freedom to choose whom and what we will pursue. We can choose.
The Bible offers statements throughout the Old and New Testaments affirming we are responsible for our actions. James 1:13-14 emphasize that God does not tempt anyone and that individuals are responsible for their own choices:
“When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.” (James 1:13-14)
I mentioned Judas Iscariot at the outset of this post. Was Judas free of blame for his betrayal? And if Judas was not at fault, isn’t it possible that some or all of us might also use God’s predetermined plan as an alibi?
Although it seems Judas was doomed because Jesus foreknew what Judas would do, Judas still acted of his own intent and free will.
We see this often in daily life. We know the danger that lurks, yet we or others plunge forward despite the certainty of harm.
Our inability to resist God’s will is a definite roadblock. Who can resist God’s will? Did He not harden people’s hearts, such as Pharaoh (Exodus 7) and in Romans 9 (“So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills” (Romans 9:18)? It can’t be my fault if I sin because God has hardened my heart.
Bible interpretations suggest that God’s hardening isn’t a direct, forceful imposition of a predetermined outcome, but rather an allowing of a person’s continued resistance to divine grace. It is God’s response to human choices. Concerning Pharaoh, the biblical text states that Pharaoh hardened his heart first, and God allowed Pharaoh to carry out his sinful intent, and God allowed Pharaoh’s heart to harden to its unfortunate conclusion. There was no coercion by God, nor did He cause Pharaoh to sin (refer back to Jame 1:13-14 above).
When it comes to our giving in to our affections for ungodly, unhealthy behavior, that is on us. Scripture has hundreds of instances of God beseeching people to forsake their sinful ways and instead follow and trust Him. God would be unrighteous to call a person to follow Him when they are unable, and especially to suffer someone for sins they had no choice other than to commit it.
We allow ourselves to become slaves to sin. True, we have quite an appetite for sin due to our depraved, sinful nature. But, as the Apostle Paul said, “Thanks be to God, who has given us victory:
“It is sin which gives death its power, and it is the Law which gives sin its strength. All thanks to God, then, who gives us the victory over these things through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15:57)
You can trust that this victory is sure and secure, or you can doubt and continue in your sin. Is resisting easy? No. Is transformation easy? Not at all. This is no surprise. All of life is the same— transformation is hard. If we are overweight, transforming to fitness is hard, laborious work. If we want to learn a new trade, it takes studious effort. If we want to rid of a lifelong habit, you know how difficult that is. Is it any surprise that changing from a sinful way of thinking to a God-glorifying way of living is going to take all of your effort and faith. Notice the willful choices and actions in the following verses:
“So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:26-27)
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” (2 Corinthians 9:24)
“The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.” (2 Timothy 2:6)
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” (Ephesians 6:10)
Put on the armor and fight the sin. Hebrews 12 talks of the discipline to obtain the prize of knowing God and His peace. How often have we heard people say, “I wish God would just make the struggle go away”? Of course! We all would love God to snap His fingers and voila! All is well! We know He doesn’t work that way. If you don’t know that, then you haven’t paid attention to His ways as revealed from Genesis to Revelation.
We may be fully, instantly justified when we choose (there’s that nasty word again) to follow Christ, but sanctification is a slow, lifelong process. I believe God makes that so in order that we may learn to trust Him, to have opportunity to put our faith in action. Trust is not a thing; it is a choice that you make. God wills— desires— that you know Him. He has made it possible. So, please, trust Him. He is worth all you are and have to give.
If you are not in the practice of reading Scripture, I encourage you to read regularly and steadily through the Bible. Read the text word for word, all along asking God to reveal Himself accurately to you. You will gain a tremendous insight into the grand scheme of life.
Also, for the sake of readability and sustaining the reading of this massive book (over 2,000 pages!), it helps me to read a paraphrase, such as the Living Bible. This provides me with an overview and makes for easier reading day after day. In this way, I get the grand gist of God’s hand throughout history, as well as the gist of the plethora of fallible (and thus very relatable) characters God has dealt with. I reference literal translations for deeper study.
I also dive into studies of topics related to human nature and God’s nature. I do these casually, as almost a pleasure read, a little bite at a time, almost as a side hobby. The rewards are immense, including a sense of peace for the present, and a joyful hope for the future.
Thanks for reading. If you have any suggestions, recommendations that can help me better understand the will of mankind and of God, I’d love to hear them.
Your comrade,
NHA
Citations:
Sproul, R.C., August 1993. Discerning God’s Will: The Three Wills of God. https://www.monergism.com/discerning-god’s-will-three-wills-god
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