Will we have free will in heaven?

Question 10113.

We will have free will in heaven, and we will have far more of it than we do now, but we will never sin. Those two statements only look contradictory if we have accepted a definition of freedom that the Bible never uses, namely that being free means being permanently poised between good and evil with the outcome genuinely up for grabs.

This question usually arrives in a particular form. If Adam had free will in a perfect environment and fell, what is to stop the same thing happening again? It is a fair question and it deserves a real answer rather than a shrug.

What we mean by free will

I hold, against the Reformed scheme, that human beings make genuine choices for which they are genuinely responsible, and that faith is a real decision of a real person rather than something injected into a passive object. So I am not about to solve this problem by quietly abolishing the will.

But freedom in Scripture is not neutrality. The Greek eleutheria is used of liberation from slavery, and the slavery in question is slavery to sin. Freedom is being able to do what you were made for, without something dragging you the other way.

On that definition, an addict choosing his addiction is exercising choice but is not free. And a person who cannot be made to betray a friend is not less free than one who might; he is more so.

God has free will and cannot sin

This is the observation that settles the question for me. God cannot lie. He cannot deny himself. He cannot be tempted with evil. And nobody in the history of theology has concluded from this that God is a prisoner.

God is the freest being there is, and his inability to sin is a function of the perfection of his nature rather than a restriction placed upon it. Free will and moral impeccability sit together in him without the slightest strain.

If that is coherent in God, it is coherent in glorified creatures who have been made like him. That is the whole argument in miniature, and everything else is detail.

Four states of the will

Augustine set this out in a way I have never been able to improve. Adam before the fall was able to sin and able not to sin. Fallen humanity is bent towards sin and cannot free itself. The believer now, indwelt by the Spirit, is able not to sin though still capable of it. And the glorified believer is not able to sin.

The last state is not a loss of free will but its completion. The will finally matches the nature, and the nature finally matches God’s intention. Nothing is being suppressed, because there is nothing left that wants to rebel.

Notice that the fourth state is better than the first. We do not return to Eden; we go somewhere Adam never was.

That is worth dwelling on, because a good deal of popular teaching treats redemption as a restoration to the starting position, as though God were repairing a damaged original. Scripture is more ambitious than that. The last Adam does not simply undo what the first Adam did; he brings us to a security the first Adam never possessed. Grace ends up giving more than sin took away, which is exactly Paul’s argument in Romans 5.

Why we will not fall as Adam did

Several things will be different. Adam had innocence but not experience; we will have both, with the memory of what sin cost. Adam had a good environment but no indwelling Spirit; we will be filled and settled. Adam had the tempter present; the devil will be in the lake of fire.

Above all, we will see him as he is. 1 John 3:2 says that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. The seeing does the transforming, and it is permanent.

Sin always requires a lie to make it attractive. In the presence of God unveiled, no lie can survive long enough to be believed, and free will exercised in full light will never choose against him.

What about the rebellion after the Millennium?

Someone always raises this, and rightly. At the end of the thousand years Satan is released and gathers a rebellion from the nations, despite Jesus having reigned personally from Jerusalem.

But look at who rebels. Not glorified saints. The millennial population includes people born during the kingdom in natural bodies who have never personally trusted Christ, living under perfect government without a changed heart. Their rebellion proves that environment does not save anybody, which is exactly the point the episode makes. I have written on that rebellion separately.

No resurrected believer takes part. The two groups are not the same, and the distinction preserves both the reality of free will and the security of the redeemed.

Confirmed in holiness

Theologians speak of the elect angels as confirmed in holiness, having passed the point at which defection was possible. Scripture never suggests that faithful angels are perpetually at risk of a second fall.

Something similar is promised to us. Philippians 1:6 says that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Completion means completion. A salvation that could be undone in eternity would not be finished at all.

So the security of the believer, which I ground entirely in God’s faithfulness rather than in our staying power, runs right through into glory. He does not lose people, and he does not lose them later either.

Free will and the resurrection body

Part of our present problem is physical as well as spiritual. Paul speaks of the law of sin waging war in his members, and every honest Christian knows what it is to want to do right and find the machinery arguing back.

The resurrection body will not fight us. It will be raised imperishable, in glory, in power, a spiritual body, which does not mean immaterial but Spirit-animated throughout. I have written on resurrection bodies elsewhere.

Free will exercised through a body that no longer sabotages it is a different experience from anything we have known. Most of us have never once made a choice with our whole undivided self.

Does this make us robots?

No, and the objection assumes that the only interesting choices are between good and evil. The new creation will be full of choices: what to make, whom to serve, how to worship, what to do with a world and an eternity.

Think of a happily married man who has been faithful for forty years. Ask him whether he could betray his wife and he will tell you it is unthinkable. He is not a robot. He has become a certain kind of person, and his freedom now runs in a direction rather than in circles.

Character is not the enemy of free will. Character is what a will looks like when it has finally settled.

There is an oddity in the modern objection worth naming. We assume that a person who might do anything is freer than a person who is thoroughly good, and yet we do not admire the first sort of person or want to live near them. Reliability is not a cage. In every other area of life we treat a settled character as an achievement, and only when we discuss heaven do we suddenly start describing it as a loss.

Why this doctrine is comforting

Because it removes the last anxiety. If free will in heaven meant permanent risk, then eternity would carry a permanent shadow, and no amount of present joy would quite settle it.

The New Testament never speaks that way. It speaks of an inheritance imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you. Kept. Guarded. Not held on a probationary basis.

So the honest answer to the question is yes, we will have free will, and no, we will never use it against him again. That is not a limitation on the freedom. That is what the freedom was always for.

So, now what?

If you have been anxious about this, let the argument from God’s own nature settle you. He is free and he cannot sin, and we are being made like him.

If you are struggling with a besetting sin right now, take the long view. The direction of travel is fixed. What you fight this week is on its way out, and one day the fight will be over for good.

And if you have been treating freedom as the right to do whatever you like, ask yourself honestly how free that has actually made you. Most of the unhappiest people I have known were doing exactly as they pleased.

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

1 John 3:2, ESV