A common question I’ve been asked is: “If God knows the future, do we really have free will?” This is a good question. The omniscience of God means he knows everything, Past, present, future. But, if God already knows what choice you’re going to make, is there really any choice at all? That’s what I’ll be trying to answer today.
To start off, how do we know God is all knowing? The Bible talks about God’s omniscience in many places. For example, Psalm 147:4-5 tells us “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.” To put that in perspective, studies have calculated that the number of stars we can see reaches 7x10^23. That’s a seven with twenty-three zeroes after it, and those are just the stars we can see!
Let’s look at another verse that points towards God’s omniscience: “O LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.” Again, we see that God is all knowing.
That being said, these verses don’t say that God knows the future, do they? Isn’t it possible that God could know everything about now, but not in the future? No, that isn’t possible. God knows the future because he knows everything about the present. He knows absolutely everything about absolutely everything right now. Because he knows this he also knows the future.
Think of it like this: God knows where every star, every grain of sand, and every hair on your head is. He knows what options people are being faced with at this very moment. Add to that the fact that he knows everything about every person in the world and everything about their character. This means he knows what choices you and everyone else are about to make. Since he knows that, he knows where everything and everyone in the world will be in ten seconds from now. He therefore knows what choices every person will make in ten seconds, and so on and so on for infinity. It’s kind of like he can accurately predict the future, except predict isn’t really a strong enough word. He knows the future because he knows everything.
Now, this leads to another question: is God inside or outside of time? This is a common question that many Christians struggle with. In order to answer this question we’re going get a little deep here so try and follow me. To start, we need to define what time is. A page on a website called “got questions” (www.gotquestions.org) put it really well when the author said this: “To put it simply, time is duration. Our clocks mark change or, more precisely, our timepieces are benchmarks of change that indicate the passage of time. We could say, then, that time is a necessary precondition for change and change is a sufficient condition to establish the passage of time. In other words, whenever there’s change of any kind we know that time has passed. We see this as we go through life, as we age. And we cannot recover the minutes that have passed by.
Additionally, the science of physics tells us that time is a property resulting from the existence of matter. As such, time exists when matter exists. But God is not matter; God, in fact, created matter. The bottom line is this: time began when God created the universe. Before that, God was simply existing. Since there was no matter, and because God does not change, time had no existence and therefore no meaning, no relation to Him.”
So what is the answer to the question: is God inside or outside of time? Well, God is kind of outside of time, but that’s a really limiting way of saying it. Time is simply irrelevant to God. God does not change and has no physical matter. Time is a human concept we created to describe change. Past, present and future are human terms that simply do not apply to God. God existed before us, exists now and will exist forevermore. Additionally he will not change in any way. God simply exists. Period. He knows everything now and will have the same amount of knowledge in five-hundred years from now. To God, five-hundred years from now is the same as right now because he and his knowledge will not change. That’s what is meant by 2 Peter 3:8, when it reads “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
That all being said, he is still with us in the moment. As humans, we experience change. We get to learn, something God created just for us. He is with us through it all in a one-on-one relationship. God’s relation to time can be a confusing concept and hard to understand, since everything in our lives is constantly changing and under the ruling of time, but it is one of the many things that shows how awesome he is.
Okay, we got a little off topic here. Let’s review the four points we just went over: 1. God knows everything about everything 2. Because of this he knows the future 3. Time is irrelevant to God because it is a human term to help measure change (and God does not change). 4. God is still with us in the moment.
But, the original question remains unanswered: if God knows the future, do we still have free will? Yes we do. Just because God knows you are going to make the choice doesn’t mean you don’t still make it.
In the movie series The Matrix the main character Neo asks a similar question of the future knowing Oracle when she offers him a candy. He asks, “do you already know if I’m going to take it?” The Oracle says, “I wouldn’t be much of an oracle if I didn’t.” Neo then asks the big question “but if you already know, how can I make a choice?” The Oracle replies “Because you didn’t come here to make a choice, you’ve already made it. You’ve come here to try and understand why you made it.”
In this scene The Matrix, although a fictional story, touches on one of the biggest real life theological questions ever asked, and its answer is pretty good. Instead of thinking it as “God knows what choice you’re going to make”, think of it as “To God, you already made the choice.”. Your choices are still your choices, they effect the world in a real way. God knows how the world would be different if you make a different choice in ten minutes, but he also knows what choice you will make and how that choice effects the world.
So in closing, free will is another one of the many amazing gifts God gives us. It’s not a trick, the other choices are still there, he just knows what choices you will make and his master plan is designed with that in mind. If the choices were not ours to make then love and hate would be meaningless. God wants you to experience the great love he has for you, and he wants you to love him too. That is why God left your next choice up to you.
Cited works: - The Bible - https://www.gotquestions.org/God-time.html - The Holy Spirit :)
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