Josiah Corey
Minda Corey
Title: How do we have free will if God is sovereign?
Word count: 790
How do we have Free Will if God is sovereign?
As a Christian, many questions might pop in your head like, how did God make the earth in only six days, or like how do I know that I am saved? One very interesting and complicated question is, “How does mankind have free will when God is sovereign and all knowing?” Though this question does sound confusing, when broken down and explained, you start to understand it better and how that all really works. I hope the separate definitions can give you a better view of the subject as a whole, and I hope you go away from this with a better understanding.
First off, we will begin to discuss what free will is. Before the fall of man, Adam and Eve had the free will to do what they wanted. However, because they decided to forsake God and eat the fruit from the tree of good and evil, sin spread all throughout the world. Because of this, we are born into the world natural sinners, making being perfect impossible, and we now have an inability to choose God, he has to choose/ predestine us. Nowadays, humankind has everyday choices to make, whether it is sinful or not sinful, life-changing or not. This is called free will. Within free will, we can do whatever we want to do by our nature, so that means that we can't decide to jump to the moon only by one hop, that would near to impossible to do, and would be against our worldly nature. The type of free will I am talking about is the decisions you make every day, like whether you want to eat lunch today, ride a bike to school, or whether you would like to wear cowboy boots and a scarf at the family picnic or not.
Within Free Will, there are two types of free will, unregenerate free will and regenerate free will. Unregenerate free will is when the lord does not save that person, and they have no remorse or regret for their sin. In this case, they would choose the world over the Lord. Regenerate free will is when that person is saved by the Lord and has remorse and regret for their sin. They would choose the Lord over the world because he chose them first. So now that we have free will covered and what it is, let us talk about God’s sovereignty.
The sovereignty of God means that God has complete control and power to do whatever he desires. That can mean that if he wanted to create a new planet, he could. If he wanted to create an animal that is 60 feet tall, he could. What I am trying to get at here is that God can do what he pleases. Take in for example how God created the heavens and the earth. He did this through his own willing power and greatness. By God doing these wonderful things, he has demonstrated how powerful and great he is. Along with being sovereign, he also can decide what happens and what doesn't happen on earth. We shall always remember that God is good and that everything we do in our lives is for God’s purpose. However, because he has this power to do, as he desires, does not mean that he likes what sin is doing on earth.
However, because God knows our decisions and what we will do, how do we have free will in all of it? Well, God lets us have the free will to do what we want so that he can hold us responsible for our sins and actions on earth. If God told us what to do, would we have free will, no! Therefore, even though God knows what is going to happen to us spiritually and non-spiritually, we still have the free will to make choices every day on earth.
In conclusion, we have free will on earth because it is all in God’s plan. He knows what will happen two minutes from now and he knows what will happen 20 years from now. Because the fall of man, we have been given a free will to choose what we do non-spiritually, the only thing we cannot choose to do is choose God. We must all remember that God does all things for good and for a purpose. Though we may never truly understand how this all works together because our human minds can’t comprehend what it all is, we must all know that again, God knows what he is doing, and it is good.
1st para: Pretty good opening! You have some missed quotation marks and commas, however it is organized pretty well. This is an improvement!
ReplyDelete2nd para: So this one was kind of jumbled and your point was both clear and confusing. With better organizing of your supporting statements, it would have been fine.
3rd para: pretty good, but over use of commas.
4th para: I think you could have explained this concept a little more clearly.
Your last two paragraphs were just janky. You drop the organization altogether and just kind of talked in circles. This is an old habit of your flaring back up. YOu need to watch for this.
Content review: It is clear that you understand your definitions, but you did not present the answer to your actual question (refer back to the circle talking).