Here is my response to the question: How can we have free will if John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit before he was born?
God knows who all the elect will be before they are born. John the Baptist was going to be God's man (just like Jeremiah in 1:5). I believe that it is God's perfect foreknowledge of our future faith that seals our election. As time plays out, we freely choose to trust God, and God knew absolutely that would be the case, and on that basis, had us marked out before birth. But that doesn't squash the free will that we actually exercise in time.
The Calvinist might say that our lives are like a movie which God is the writer, director and producer. So we really don’t have any free will because we are all actors playing the part given to us, reading the script as written by God, moving as God directs us on the pre-planned stage. Not only has God seen the whole movie in His mind (foreknowledge) before it airs, but also, He orchestrates every little part to His liking.
On the other hand, I see our lives as more of a “Reality show”. God has set up the “stage” for the show, but we aren’t paid actors, so when the cameras roll, it is almost totally up to us what we do on screen. There is a direction we must follow (based on the fact that God selected our parents, race, nationality, IQ, environment, starting economic level, etc.) but there is no script. At any point God can intervene with a new “twist” to set things in a different motion all the while the characters still are free in their choices of what they decide to do. And yet in God’s foreknowledge, He has seen the whole show even before it airs so He knows exactly what will happen in advance.
Since God KNEW John the Baptist would follow Him, even without the Spirit's filling, God didn't change John the Baptist's eternal destiny by giving him a head start through filling him with the Spirit inside his mother’s womb! (And filling is a temporary phenomenon, according to Ephesians 5:18, though I suspect JB's was of a different character.)
Romans 8:29 and 1 Peter 1:2 both say that foreknowledge comes before election. That clinches it for me. No one is ultimately and totally free except God, yes. Even though the angels had a lot of freedom, they didn’t have as much as God.
Our freedoms as humans are limited by many factors. But Romans 1 and 2 say that no one has any excuse not to believe in God and pursue Him .... which implies that all have enough freedom to do so .... and that eliminates any claim of "not fair" against God when judgment comes. You could argue that God can fairly create and condemn people without any chance, but that person will never agree that it was fair, and how can God be glorified when you have billions of people cursing Him and hating Him forever in hell because they think He wasn't fair to them? I can't comprehend that one! But if they all know, yes, I had my chance, and it's my own fault I'm in hell, then God is glorified and "shown to be right" in the eyes of all humanity.
All of God's decisions are eternal in the sense that they were made before time via omniscience. But, the question arises, what about God’s hardening of Pharaoh's heart? God "secured" the hardened heart that Pharaoh had already hardened on his own. The scripture says Pharaoh did it first, then God confirmed it. I think God gave Pharaoh the superhuman ability to keep on hardening his own heart when all others would have collapsed and given in under the pressure of the judgments ...... but the decision to harden his heart in the first place was Pharaoh's own. And God knew that would be so from all eternity. Then God somehow enabled him to be as stubborn and stupid as Pharaoh already wanted to be (but would have caved on his own.)
If the object of God's wooing love CANNOT have the option of saying no, the choice to accept it has become manipulation. An analogy would be the Stepford Wives brainwashing -- they think they're happy, but they are only a pawn in a sinister plot to force them to be happy and compliant. I think that "irresistible grace" could be described that way. Yet Scripture says that we can resist the Spirit (Acts 7).
It has to be possible to fight back against the Matrix, to resist Big Brother (1984), to be, like Frodo, determined to resist the luring power of the ring and choose to do the right thing even when it fights all your instincts. Take away that free will, and you destroy the essence of humanity, and destroy the image of God in man (which in part is the ability to choose and create and decide). In other words, when people seek to elevate God's glory by squashing man's freedom, they end up smashing and defacing the glory of God's character that is designed to shine through His image in man.
Obviously, God knows what influences us and what woos us. He can convict each individual (John 16:13-14) effectively. And yet, most people continue to shun Him and reject His offer of relationship. I think that wretched choice on man's part highlights the awful depravity of man. We really are without excuse (Romans 1).
If, at the judgment, the unsaved can say to God, "It’s not fair to send me to hell because You never chose me and enabled me to trust You. You never loved me and wooed me as much as You did others" -- then they WOULD have an excuse, and God's glory would be tainted by the complaints. But if each condemned soul can honestly say, "Yes, I willfully rejected God's grace and chose to rebel out of my own foolish and stubborn free will, so that I could serve my own desires instead of serving God, and so I fairly and rightfully and justly deserve my fate in hell" --- THAT is what will give God pure glory for being good and right and fair. That is when Romans 3 shines through, to "let God be true, and every man a liar."
The very fact that a person can look God's love in the face AND reject it freely is what makes hell the only option left for them. If you are a Christian now, you can't fathom ever making that choice because as one of God's children, doing that is unthinkable to you. But as God shows Himself to be real to everyone through creation and conscience and reason, and shows everyone evidences of His goodness and love (Acts 17), and as He comes to everyone and invites them to be a part of His wedding feast (Luke 14) and invites them all to come and drink (Isaiah 55) and the Spirit says to all, "Come" (Revelation 22), and STILL they reject Him and break His heart and from a sinful, selfish, untrusting heart, say “NO!” -- then with tears in His eyes, He will have no other choice to say to these whom He desired to be saved, "Depart from me, I never knew you."
And at the same time, when some say YES to God, from a free and uncoerced will, showing that God IS the most worthy thing in the universe, and without manipulation and brainwashing, choose to love Him back, as a parallel to every human love story we've ever known, just as God describes our relationship in terms of husband and wife (in both OT and NT), THEN God is glorified, because we could have said no, but didn't. Why? Because being with Him IS more valuable than silver and gold and fame and power and pleasures of every sort. And our free choice to love Him back proves that -- to the angels and demons, and to the unsaved, forever. And so in the lake of fire, they'll have to feel not anger and bitter toward a God who didn't love and pursue them and show Himself to them ENOUGH to convince them, but rather, they'll feel regret and self-loathing for having been so stupid, short-sighted and selfish in their temporal pursuit of making themselves their own god instead of worshipping their Creator (Romans 1).
And that’s why I believe the Bible teaches that we have free will.
Amen and amen.
