Everyone loves to receive a gift. Especially when the gift is something we want or need. It is a sign of the giver's love. And every time we use the gift, we remember the one who thought of us and gave it.
The Bible teaches that God loves to give good gifts to us (Matt 7:11). One of his best is the gift of human freedom.
In all likelihood few other concepts have been so misunderstood. At the same time, none is more important. Without a proper understanding of human freedom, we fall prey to two destructive extremes. On the one hand, we can demote humans to the status of "robots." On the other hand, we can convince ourselves— arrogantly, but wrongly— that we are "calling the shots." The Biblical concept of human freedom avoids both extremes and enables us to receive and use the wonderful gift God has given us.
God's gift of human freedom began with our creation in Genesis 1-2. Having been made in the image of God (Gen 1:27), Adam and Eve were given the gift of freedom. But it entailed a combination of liberty and limit. All plants and animals were given to them and placed under their control. The result was a marvelous unity and harmony in the creation. But God make it clear that they were not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were given liberty, but within a special limit.
This is the basic understanding of human freedom in Scripture: We are free, but not absolutely. This combination of liberty and limit characterizes the rest of Biblical history, and it continues to do so today.
Before the fall, Adam and Eve (representing humanity) lived peacefully with that combination of liberation and limitation. But after the fall both their own personal story and the human story include tragic illustrations (i.e. the tower of Babel) of an insatiable desire to go beyond the boundary in the quest to expand the dimensions of human freedom.
When human conscience failed to provide the needed limits to human freedom, God gave the Law with its dual message of permission ("you shall") and prohibition ("you shall not"). But people broke the Law, preferring to interpret life in their own ways and live it on their own terms. Thus human freedom ceased to be the gift of God had intended and deteriorated into a curse of unimaginable proportions. But in the midst of the most tragic failures, God never withdrew human freedom.
On the contrary, we see God challenging people to make decisions. Moses reminded the Israelites of God's longstanding faithfulness and provision and then urged the people to choose life (Deut 30:19). Joshua came to the end of his life and renewed the covenant with the people of Israel, exhorting them to choose whom they would serve (Joshua 24:15). Jesus came inviting people to choose whether or not they would follow him.
These calls for decision—for or against God—only make sense if the people hearing the challenges have the freedom to choose.
That is precisely where grace comes in. No one has "natural" freedom of the will. Original sin has destroyed that option. But there is liberty of the will as God's grace gives what we might call "response-ability." Through grace we are enabled to recognize God's call and respond to it. The ability to respond and decide makes us truly responsible. We cannot say to God, "I didn't know," or "I couldn't help myself."
The gift of human freedom is the God-given ability to hear God's call, to know his will, and to decide our response. This is an ability that an outside force—such as the Law—cannot create within anyone, but that divine grace, working in all human hearts, can and does.
God risked everything by giving us the gift of human freedom, but it was the only way he could have ended up with a meaningful and glorifying creation instead of a puppet show. Moreover, it is the only way we could be authentically accountable for our attitudes and actions, thus making judgment not so much a matter of reward and punishments but of consequences that result from free choices made by "response-able" men and women.
Paul told the Christians at Galatia, "it is for freedom that Christ has set us free" (Gal 5:1). But he immediately warned them not to use their freedom as an excuse to abandon God's will and revert to living on their own terms.
When human scientists discovered the atom, we moved into a level of life where we can and must choose how to us its power—to generate electricity or to produce bombs. Similarly, the gift of human freedom comes with an amazing potential for good and the destructive ability to do great evil. The pages of history illustrate both scenarios.
Christ has come to set us free (John 8:32)—to reverse the tragedy of the fall, where liberty became license and a divine limit became a line to cross (transgress). In Christ, we are free indeed—freedby grace to keep liberty and limit in a working relationship—so that the will of God may be done voluntarily and thankfully on earth as it is in heaven.
