God Is Free

God is free. God is not conditioned by anything other than himself. He permits good things to happen with divine pleasure and enduement, as well as evil things. But God is self-determined either way. Does this mean that God is free to approve sin? By no means! God is not free to be unloving, unwise, to ignore hard facts of reality, to be unfaithful to what is or ought to be, to be uncompassionate or unmerciful. God cannot deny Himself and His own character. He is free to be Himself--His personal, eternal, living, intellectual, ethical, emotional, volitional self.

God is free from all evil, loves all truth and goodness. He values purity and detests impurity and inauthenticity. God cannot approve any evil, has no pleasure in evil (Psalm 5:4), and cannot tolerate evil (Habbakuk 1:13). He abhors evil and cannot encourage sin any way (James 1:13-14).

God cannot deny himself, and he does not choose to do everything by his own immediate agency without intermediate angelic and human agents. Although he determines some things to come to pass unconditionally, (Isiah 12:24-27), most events in history are planned conditionally, through the obedience of people or their permitted disobedience to divine precepts (2 Chronicles 7:14; Luke 7:30; Romans 1:24). In any case, God's eternal purposes for history are not frustrated but fulfilled in the way he chose to accomplish them (Ephesians 1:11).

Gordon R. Lewis

God knows that He is the ultimate being, there are none that can compare with Him. In no way is He asking something of us that is not in accordance with reality. God desires our worship for our sakes so that we would not succumb to despair like other finite gods. 

God has not only the strength to effect all His purposes by the way He purposes them but also the authority in the entire realm of His kingdom to do what He will. He is subject to no one. By virtue of His attributes--wisdom, justice, and love, or example--He is fit for the ruling of all that He created and sustains. God is sovereign Lord over all things.

God is not lacking anything in Himself (Acts 17:25), but He desires to give of Himself for the well-being of those loved, in spite of their being unlovely and undeserving. God not only loves but is in Himself, love (1 John 4:8).

Creation was free act of the free God, and expression of God's character which finds its primary focus in love (1 John 4:16). God is sovereign Lord over all things. He is the source of all that is. In creation and in God's continuing sustaining and providing for creation, He is working out His ultimate purposes for humanity in the world. Human life can be meaningful, intelligible, and purposeful even in the face of evil or anything else in all of creation.