Today, a young man asked his mother – who then asked Jayne and me – the following question: “Will there be free-will in Heaven? Free-will hasn’t worked out so well here on earth.”
Free-Will on Earth: Perfect Perfection
My reply was that free-will on earth has worked out perfectly. Those who don’t want to be with God are never going to be forced to be with Him. Forced love is not love; it’s something else. You see, if God forced put everybody who didn’t want to be with Him in Heaven, Heaven would then be like a prison with people hating where they were.
What If Only One?
Consider the downside to free-will (I suggest there is no downside but stay with me here): If, in the 6,000 to 7,500 years of human history, if man’s free-will resulted in only one person choosing to love God and only that one person ended up in Heaven, the perfection of love freely given would be no less than if the majority chose to be with Him. Love freely given is love. If a man forces his love onto a woman, we’d consider him sick. God isn’t sick.
“Okay, But What About My Original Question?”
About free-will in Heaven: The young man was specifically addressing with his question how a third of the angels in Heaven fell. We know almost with 100% certainty the following: Not one of the 2/3rds since fell in the 6,000 to 7,500 years of recorded Biblical history. This is an almost certainty because it’s something Scripture surely would have recorded just as it did when the first third of the angels fell with Satan leading the charge. Here are categories about the Bible:
- Many things we know for sure.
- Many things we are fairly certain of.
- Some things are in Scripture that some people think are exactly one way and other people think are exactly another way.
- Some things we don’t know one way or the other.
- A few things we know we don’t know because no discussion of those few things takes place in the Bible.
The Bible never says anything about whether humans, in their perfected, Heavenly bodies, will want to leave Heaven. The Bible never tells us of anyone who wanted to leave Heaven. Again, one would think that would be something God would want us to know if it happened. But we don’t know because the topic isn’t addressed. It falls into the fifth category above. Maybe our Heavenly perfected bodies are the reason we will not want to leave when we get to Heaven. Scripture relates sin over and over and over to “flesh.” Therefore, in a replacement “new body” it makes sense that all carnal and selfish desires evaporate. Scripture never tells about angels getting new and perfected bodies, which might explain why a third of them fell.
Don’t Waste Your Only True Resource
But there are so many topics that fall under categories 1, 2, 3, and 4 above that we should study and find out what God wants us to know about them. Those topics take a lifetime to master. So we do nothing but waste our only real resource on earth – time – by spending any time on category #5. The Bible never addresses people in Heaven wanting to sin. (In my opinion, it implies that won’t happen.) The question of free-will for people after they get into Heaven is a topic that is completely unimportant for us to worry with. We know this because the answer is not addressed and can only be known once we are there. So let’s spend our time wisely mastering the things we can know. And let’s spend time honing our knowledge of what God tells us about things we sort of know as well as those things we think we know that many believers smarter than us say otherwise.
