Free will

There is a paradox, not a contradiction, between free will and God’s sovereignty / plan for our lives. We certainly won’t fully understand it in this life because it really is such a complex issue. It helps me to think of it metaphorically as father and son. A father can have a plan for his son’s life, but his son can choose to ignore it. Likewise, God wants us all to come to know him and realize his love and grace but the “operative” phrase there is come to. For a someone to believe in God / come to that conclusion, he requires reason and, hence, free will. A child does have free will, but a good father exercises control over the child. He allows the child to mature and make choices. He allows his child to learn from mistakes and failures. In addition, a good father also knows enough to not allow the child to endanger himself or others. He may let his toddler touch a hot oven so he learns not to get burnt but that doesn’t mean he’ll let his child stick his hand into a raging flame to learn the very same lesson. God treats his children the same way. He has a perfect will and plan. He also has a permissive will, which allows man to learn the hard way. 

Logically, God knowing what we are going to do does not mean that we can’t do something else. It means that God simply knows what we have chosen to do ahead of time. Our freedom is not restricted by God’s foreknowledge; our freedom is simply realized ahead of time by God. There is no logical reason to claim that if God knows what choices we are going to make that it means we are not free. It still means that the free choices we will make are free — they are just known ahead of time by God. If we choose something different, then that choice will have been eternally known by God. Furthermore, this knowledge by God does not alter our nature in that it does not change what we are — free to make choices. God’s knowledge is necessarily complete and exhaustive because that is His nature, to know all things. In fact, since He has eternally known what all our free choices will be, He has ordained history to come to the conclusion that He wishes including and incorporating our choices into His divine plan.