How does God Control Man's Will?

God has the absolute freedom to control man’s will exhaustively and without any exception. Proverbs 21:1 says: “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” Since God has totally determined how the history of man should go, He also must determine and control every part of man’s being, including his will. No part of man, physical or spiritual, moves without God’s causation. All of man’s thoughts and actions are determined by Him, including the evil thoughts and actions. Simple body movements like showing thumbs up and the habitual cracking of our knuckles and cervical spine, cannot happen without God first determining it in eternity. Even the involuntary movements of our body like sneezing and muscle cramps, cannot happen without the eternal predetermination of God.

The context of Proverbs 21:1 is indeed about a king whose will God controls in any way He desires in order to fulfil His decretive purpose. However, by no means God only controls the will of kings and not a commoner. If God controls a king’s will, how much more He will control a man who is lower in status? Of course, God controls all men’s will equally. Proverbs 21:1 is telling us that God absolutely and freely control man’s will like the rivers of water for the purpose of fulfilling His predetermined plan. The will of man is one of God’s predetermined means that leads to His desired predetermined end. He predetermined both the means and the end. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning, and the end. Nothing is independent of Him.

Proverbs 20:24 asks the rhetorical question: “Man’s goings are of the LORD; how can a man then understand his own way?” That passage does not imply that man, like a machine, robot, or puppet, is unaware or unconscious of his thoughts and actions. By definition a moral, rational being made in the image of God must have a will, knowledge of good and evil, and therefore responsibility to His creator. If a man rapes a woman, as a rational-moral creature he is consciously and wilfully sinning against God’s prescriptive will (Ten Commandments) and therefore he is at fault, though God has predetermined that before the foundation of the world. Theologians made a distinction between the ultimate cause and immediate cause of sin which I shall not discuss about it here, however I recommend Gordon H. Clark’s “God and Evil”.[1] This is how God made man and we have no right to question Him (Romans 9:20). But what Proverbs 20:24 means is that man cannot comprehend God’s ultimate purpose in predetermining all his conscious and wilful goings. All that moral and rational man can do is to think and act as disposed by God’s providence.

Man has a will, but his will is not free. Defining free will is important here. There is no such thing as free will as defined by the Arminians who believe that man’s decisions are not controlled by God, and he has the ability of the will to respond to God in any way he freely chooses. That is a denial of Proverbs 21:1. For in Him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:28). Man has no such free, independent will because no man is free or independent from God. His will is not free from his intellect either because the intellect of man immediately controls his will. He is not free from his sinful nature either, because he sins according to his sinful nature and therefore man acts on his strongest sinful impulse and volition as determined by God. From another angle and without any contradiction, God determined that moral and rational men consciously think and act with a will that is free to follow his own predetermined sinful nature. In this matter, man entirely differs from the animals which cannot sin nor is responsible to God. We cannot call lions (who eat men or other animals) murderer because God’s prescriptive will does not apply to them.

Contrary to what is often believed, even pre-fall Adam has no free will because like everyone else, his will is not free or independent of God’s control. His wilful choice to eat the fruit ultimately depends on God’s sovereign control which turneth Adam’s will whithersoever He wills like the rivers of water.

There is one thing that man’s will is free from, though. The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) says that the will of man has that “natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil”. What does it mean? Gordon H. Clark in his commentary of WCF (of Free Will) explains that “these words were written to repudiate those philosophies which explain human conduct in terms of physico-chemical law. Although the Westminster divines did not know twentieth century behaviorism, nor even Spinoza, they very probably knew Thomas Hobbes, and they certainly knew earlier materialistic theories [such as the fatalism of the ancient Stoics]. That man’s conduct is determined by inanimate forces is what the Confession denies. Man is not a machine [or robot and puppet]; his motions cannot be described by mathematical equations as can the motions of the planets. His hopes, plans, and activities are not controlled by physical conditions. He is not determined [nor forced] by any absolute necessity of nature.” This is the reason why I reject every materialistic theory of the so-called mental illness (such as bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, clinical depression, etc.,) as caused by problems solely in the physico-chemical structure or composition of the brain. I do not deny that there may be some changes in the brain, but it all starts with the wilful sin of man. If there is indeed a physical structural change in the brain, it is man’s wilful sin that caused it. A man is riotous and hot-tempered, not because he is bipolar, but because he sins against God. Sin is an addiction. The Word of God alone can help these intelligent people who have the so-called mental illnesses. The Word of God alone is the sole foundation of man’s sanity. 

WCF anticipated the evolutionary theory of morality i.e., there is no absolute morality. Morality is solely the result of pragmatic societal likes and dislikes. Richard Dawkins defines morality as something that “serves the desire of a species living together in close proximity”. He continues: “We do not need a perfect version of morality to meet the societal want. Any version of it is better than no version at all…. Morality exists because there is a desire for it to exist. It increases the quality of life. We see this throughout human history. As morality reaches higher and higher standards and these standards become accepted, we in turn make higher demands of our moral code. We then begin to see that morality is a process of positive feedback. Just as building the first bridge meant not having to walk as far and freed time for us to pursue desires instead of needs, developing moral codes allowed us to have less fear of others within society which allows us more time to think about what we want instead of guarding against every stranger we encounter…. Morality, like any other humanity pleased an aesthetic and evolved, as we demanded more from it.”[2] Richard Dawkins is basically saying that morality is relative to the majority vote in society. If societies agree on infanticide because it serves their purpose based on their natural evolutionary inclination and desire, then it is right and becomes a part of the moral code, according to the evolutionists.

Proverbs 16:9 says: “A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” Proverbs 19:21 says: “There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the LORD, that shall stand.” These two passages show that a creature made in the image of God can make conscious, rational and moral thoughts and choices. That ability, of course, is given by God so that every willful thought and action of man will ultimately achieve the end that God desires. John Gill, in his “The Cause of God and Truth”, has a good point regarding the will of Christ in His human nature, the elect angels, and the glorified saints:

“God is a most free agent, and liberty in him is in its utmost perfection, and yet does not lie in an indifference to good and evil; he has no freedom to “that which is evil…his will is determined only to that which is good; he can do no other…and what he does, he does freely and yet necessarily…. The human nature of Christ, or the man Christ Jesus, who, as he was born without sin and lived without it all his days on Earth, so was impeccable, could not sin. He lay under some kind of necessity…to fulfill all righteousness; and yet he did it most freely and voluntarily: which proves that the liberty of man’s will…is consistent with some kind of necessity…. The good angels, holy and elect, who are confirmed in the state in which they are…cannot sin or fall from that happy state, yet perform their whole obedience to God, do his will and work cheerfully and willingly.… In the state of glorification the saints will be impeccable, cannot sin, can only do that which is good, and yet what they do, or will do, is and will be done with the utmost freedom and liberty of their wills; whence it follows that the liberty of man’s will…is consistent both with some kind of necessity and a determination to one.”

By the quote “the liberty of man’s will”, John Gill does not mean that man’s will is free and independent from God’s exhaustive control. He meant to say that man’s will is never free from his sinful or holy nature as that been predetermined by God (because by definition a man is a willing creature) and therefore he will consciously (i.e., having the liberty of the will) follow it. The glorified saints (who are still moral and rational creatures) will have a sinless nature as sovereignly given by God and yet He has also predetermined that rational-moral man shall consciously, willingly and responsibly choose to obey God perfectly.

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[1] God and Evil: The Problem Solved. Gordon H. Clark. https://www.trinitylectures.org/god-and-evil-the-problem-solved-p-86.html. A review can be found in this link: https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/clark_evil.html

[2] Richard Dawkins. A refute to morality from God. https://richarddawkins.net/2013/09/a-refute-to-morality-from-god/