The Omniscience of God and Human Freedom/Free Will

[Buah]

If God is Omniscient and knows everything then can we be 100% free? What is the meaning of Free will? Why did God give us free will if He already knows our future? Are our actions pre-determined? God knows already those going to heaven and those going to hell? Can God sin? Can God make mistakes?
I have wondered for a long time about God’s omniscience, His all-knowingness. It appears to contradict the free will of man. If God knows what my decision is going to be, where is my free will?

The issue cam back up a few days ago, as I was reading Apostle Greg’s book. In the Chapter “Three One Things,” he says; “What surprises Him, is our lack of desire to be with Him.” And it came back to me, that there are several verses in the Bible, where God expresses that He is surprised, or that He will forget:

Isa 59:16 And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him.

Isa 63:5 And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me; and my fury, it upheld me.

(Isa 43:25) I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

Jer 31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

What verses support His omniscience? One of the strongest verses is in the New Testament:

Heb 4:13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

The verse says that all things are open to His eyes; He can see all things if He so decides. The question is, does He always look at all things, does He always decide to know everything?

Here is my take on this:

It is not that things happen or just are the way they are, and God just knows about them. No, God is not a superman, He is God. Everything God knows comes into existence by that very fact. God knowledge precedes the existence of the thing, and causes it. I think now that God will choose to fully know everything at the time of final judgment, when all decisions are becoming final. It is then that the books will be opened, and the records will appear. Until that time, God chooses not to know the final destiny of a man, leaving the option of repentance open. It appears that for sins unto death, final judgment can occur even during a man’s life time.

Man has free will, because God chooses not to know his future. The things that God does know are sovereign, they cannot be changed by man: the fact that all man can find salvation through Jesus Christ, that every knee will bow to Christ, the fact that there will be final judgment. These are global things, man’s free will is limited by the fact that he is part of God’s sovereign, global plan.

Gods forgetting a thing causes that thing to cease existing. When we repent and confess our sins, and Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness, God forgets our sins, and they do not exist any more. They are blotted out.

And here is a final thought, about how Gods sovereign will and omniscience and man’s free will dominate the final outcome at three different levels of life:
Individual man’s free will
Corporate both God’s sovereign will and man’s free will
Global God’s sovereign will

The individual is part of the corporate, and the corporate destiny is part of the global destiny, so Gods’ sovereign will influences all spheres of life

God is Omniscient and He knows all things that can be and "must" be known at any particular point in time. He knows the past, the present and the future. However, He God gave us the gift of reason and free will to make our own choices in life. God has the ability to know what we are going to do tomorrow because He is omniscient but God doesn't bother to know because He has given us the power of free will as a gift to make our own choices in life.

What do you mean by, "He doesn't bother to know because he has given us the power of free will..."? It sounds like you're contradicting yourself.

Thank goodness I am not caught up in that. G-d knowing all and taking away free will stuff. I have always been taught by many rabbis that an individual controls their life.

God chooses NOT to know? Show me scriptural evidence of this. Free will does not exist. Sin exists because God cannot have a relationship with us if we did not know what it meant to NOT be in fellowship with Him. He speaks to Adam, Eve, and Cain as a parent who knows what wrong they did and wants to teach them something. This is how God expects from us- that we are willing to learn from our mistakes.


God lost his temper with us once and almost destroyed us. He made a mistake. But if he were to wipe all existence out and redraft would he be able to live with it?

The Creation is still taking place. We are all part of that creation believer and unbeliever alike. Would we sin if we knew there were no consequences? Some would some wouldn't. In the end it won't matter.

I think you might be coming at this from the wrong way. You say everything God knows is reality, right? Am I misunderstanding? I think maybe God knows possibilities rather than certainties. He knows everything that could happen, rather than everything that will happen. If he took away free will, then he necessarily would know everything that will happen.

So free will takes some small part of God's omniscience away from him? I guess. The problem with your interpretation is that you believe God chooses what he knows. If he did that, then he wouldn't know something (the thing he chose not to know). This means he isn't omniscient. So...I don't know. Maybe you should define omniscience just so everyone is on the same page

Yes it is quite confusing, God is omniscient, but he gives us the freewill, a gift to make our own choices in life. But God did not choose the things that he should know. He knows EVERYTHING. He knows our past, our present and our future. He already had chosen His children that will inherit his kingdom in heaven. God knows everything (EVERY LITTLE THING) about our past as well as on what we will become tomorrow.

Jesus was crucified and makes all of us FREE. We are no longer separated from Him, giving us the chance to get near Him FREELY. He gives us the FREEWILL to choose whether we will accept or not the salvation that He offers to each one of us. Therefore, there is really such thing as FREEWILL.

God's omniscience and Human Freewill may contradict each other. But it actually don't. It's just that, we really can not understand, God's knowledge is far beyond the knowledge of man. We really don't have to know how God's omniscience and human's freewill work. Only God knows and there is no need for us to bother, none at all. God knows what He's doing for He is God and God makes no mistakes. And He has promised that all things work together for good right? That ensures us that God's omniscience and human freewill work together perfectly.

1 Peter 2:16 "Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God."

Galatians 5:13 "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love."

Job 28:24 "For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens."

1 John 3:19-20 "By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything."