Free will in heaven?

[Michael Hawk]

Hi guys,

Someone asked me this the other day and I did not know how to respond.

Will we have our own free will in heaven? If so, does that mean we could possible sin like the former angel Satan in Heaven? Or will we have no free will and be perfect all the time?

Thank you for the responses.

 

[theophilus40]

We won't really have free will until we do get to heaven.

Because of the sin nature we are all born with we often want to do things that are evil and if we want to obey God we must suppress those desires and not act on them. When we were born again we received a new nature that always wants to do those things which please God. When we die or when our bodies are transformed by the rapture our old nature will be eliminated and we will no longer be able to even want to sin. When that time comes our wills will be absolutely free because we will be able to do anything we choose to do.

 

[Max Shade]

The desire for sin will be sanctified. It isn't that you couldn't, it is that your desires would drive you away from rather than toward sin. You here people complain about struggling with sin (men complaining endlessly about sexual sin and how tough it is) & it feels like their nature is driving them to look, leer, impure thoughts, wrong actions, etc. that same strength of drive to sin will be reversed, it'll be hard, counterintuitive, well nigh impossible to sin, with no inclination . . . It'd be like stepping in front of a train (which suicidal people sometimes do) but with no pain, no sorrow, perfect health, no aging, surrounded by love, it'd be hard to be suicidal wouldn't it? Free will is an inherent part of being human, and you will still have it, you just won't be inclined to misuse it.

 

[Yadid]

In the presence of the Lord, sin will be the furthest thing from our minds. Were told we will "Know", just as we'll be fully known. We will see sin for what it is. C.S. Lewis said;

“Son,'he said,' ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why...the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

 

[Inkachu]

There will be no evil, no temptation, no Satan to entice us away from God anymore. Remember that no person in Heaven has ever sinned; it was only an act of Lucifer and his angels, and as far as we know, that was a one-time event, innumerable eons ago. I don't think we'll lose our "free will" but in a sense, we won't need it anymore; without evil to tempt us, there will be no temptation, therefore there will be no sin.

 

[humblewatchman]

Consider Revelation 12 and Isaiah 14, and Job 1.

Satan accuses us all day long before God, and he and his angles come and go from heaven, but that shall all come to an end someday. I agree that we wont have any negative influences in heaven eventually. I also think that we will not be mindless or robotic in our admiration for God. I think our free will won't be eliminated, but instead completely fulfilled as true love is revealed fully to us.