“Free” Will and Love An argument for free will is…

“Free” Will and Love

An argument for free will is that it is through free will that we can freely choose to love God. That without free will we cannot choose to love Him free of any influencing factors determined by Him that would cause us to love Him.

In thinking about free will along those lines, and the gamble and risk God would take in creating us, knowing that the potential was there for us to choose to love Him but that we could also choose sin and evil in opposition to Him, and that the consequences of choosing sin and evil would be eternal torment; does it not seem like a selfish choice on God’s part? That for the sake of a few who would choose to love Him, He would gamble and put at risk multitudes who would not choose to love Him and who as a result would be in torment for all eternity?

If we argue that He did not know, or that He did not anticipate such a result, would that not make God limited? If He did know, does it not show selfishness?

That does not seem right.

The truth is that He did not in fact give us free will hoping that by doing so at least some of us would freely choose to love Him.

The truth is that His is the initiating choice. Not ours.

And the Bible seems to agree; for it does not say that we FIRST chose to love Him, and then He loved us. Rather, it says that He FIRST chose to love us, and then we loved Him.

“We love him, because he FIRST loved us.”
– 1 John 4:19 King James Version (KJV)