Will We Have Free Will in Heaven?

Some people believe that if we have free will in Heaven, we’ll have to be free to sin, as were the first humans. But Adam and Eve’s situation was different. They were innocent but had not been made righteous by Christ. We, on the other hand, become righteous through Christ’s atonement: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). To suggest we could have Christ’s righteousness yet sin is to say Christ could sin. God completely delivers us from sin—including vulnerability to sin.

Even now we may “participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:4). In Heaven there will be no evil desires, and no corruption, and we will fully participate in the sinless perfection of God.

What does this mean in terms of human freedom? Some people suggest our free choice is a temporary condition for the present life and won’t characterize us in Heaven. But it seems to me that the capacity to choose is part of what makes us human. It’s hard to believe God would be pleased by our worship if we had no choice but to offer it. It’s one thing for him to enable us to worship. It’s another for him to force us to do so or to make it automatic and involuntary. Christ woos his bride; he doesn’t “fix” her so she has no choice but to love him.

Imagine a husband who desires his wife’s love, and to insure that love, he injects her with a chemical to remove her free will, to make her love him. This is not love; it is coercion. Once we become what the sovereign God has made us to be in Christ and once we see him as he is, then we’ll see all things—including sin—for what they are. God won’t need to restrain us from it. Sin will have absolutely no appeal. It will be, literally, unthinkable.

The inability to sin doesn’t inherently violate free will. My inability to be God, an angel, a rabbit, or a flower is not a violation of my free will. It’s the simple reality of my nature. The new nature that’ll be ours in Heaven—the righteousness of Christ—is a nature that cannot sin, any more than a diamond can be soft or blue can be red. God cannot sin, yet no being has greater free choice than God does.

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By Randy Alcorn
Eternal Perspective Ministries
39085 Pioneer Blvd.   Suite 206
Sandy, OR 97055
(503) 668-5200
www.epm.org
www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com