Many, many people wonder why God didn’t create humans so that we couldn’t sin against Him. Since He’s perfect, why couldn’t He make US perfect? Why did He make people who hurt each other, make mistakes, and choose not to believe in Him? Why create people who might not go to heaven? Those are fair questions, and they’re important. How we handle them makes a big impact on our faith.
God isn’t just perfect: He’s how we define perfection. He created everything (Genesis 1:1), so He is the ultimate standard of what’s good or bad, right or wrong. God is also unique. Only God is uncreated. Only He "must" exist; everything else exists only because He created it (Exodus 3:14). Everything God creates is different from Him. Nothing God creates can be the same kind of "perfect" He is. That applies to people too—including our minds and hearts. We aren’t God, so we can’t avoid all mistakes the way He can. Our minds will never be exactly like His—and neither will our choices.
Some people claim God did create us "perfect." But the Bible never says that. When God had created everything except people, He called it "good" (Genesis 1:25) Then He made humans and called things "very good" (Genesis 1:31). Of course, God could have made people who couldn't choose to sin. But remember, anything that’s not up to God’s perfect standard is still imperfect. Nothing God creates can be exactly like Him. To make sure human choices are always perfect, God would have to create us without the ability to choose. But that would make us like robots or machines. And machines can’t love; they do what they’re programmed to do. Thanking a microwave for heating up your dinner doesn’t make the microwave feel appreciated. Pulling strings on a puppet to make it sign "I love you" doesn’t make it love you nor does it make you feel loved.
For reasons we may never understand, God created beings who could really love Him—by choice. That means giving us autonomy over all our decisions, and since not all our choices are good, we will sin and make mistakes. But God doesn’t leave us there (John 3:16-17). He offers a way to forgive those sins—a way that works for literally anyone who wants it (John 6:37). And after we make that choice, He’ll get us closer and closer to His perfection (Romans 12:2). Then, in heaven, He’ll finally take away every tiny possibility of sin. But that only happens after we’ve made a choice—here on earth—to follow Christ.
So, what about heaven? In heaven, yes, we will be free of all sin (1John 3:2). And we’ll be there, praising God (Revelation 7:9). Does that mean we’ll have no free will in heaven? Nope. We become incapable of sin because we chose to follow Christ. Our eternity with God comes AFTER we’ve decided to love and honor God in our earthly lives (1 John 3:1; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18)—AFTER God created us with free will and let us use it—so it doesn’t erase the value of our love and obedience. God will change our eternal perspectives so that we won’t even want to sin (Revelation 21:4).
A common objection says, "If God is all-powerful, why can’t He give us free will AND the ability to always resist sin?" But that confuses "power" with "grammar." Just because we can put words into a sentence, that doesn’t mean we’re making sense. We can’t draw a "square circle," because "square" and "circle" mean different things. That’s not a question of power or possibility. It’s because the phrase "square circle" is meaningless. Someone might ask, "What does the number nine smell like?" We can’t answer that because the sentence doesn’t mean anything. Even saying "a number has no smell" makes no sense, because "number" and "smell" have nothing to do with each other. For the same reason, we can’t answer a question like, "Ghghghghghghghghghghg?"
In the same way, God creating people with free will AND an inability to sin is meaningless. We can either have the complete ability to choose or not have it—not both. Our ability to choose sin and our ability to choose loving God are a "bundle" that can’t be separated. It’s a package deal. For His own reasons, God chose to make people who can choose (Romans 9:20). While we don't understand ALL the reasons, we know it has something to do with love. And it means we have a chance at amazing help from God in this life and eternal joy after death.
A question that has meaning, but is even harder to answer, is WHY God wants us to have free will, which allows us to have power over the decision to love OR reject Him. We’ll probably never get an answer to that—at least not in this life (Isaiah 55:8-9). To know exactly what God is thinking would require being God Himself. Though we can't think like God does, He doesn’t leave us totally out in the cold. He gives us enough of a mind and enough evidence to know what we need to know (Romans 1:18-20; Matthew 7:7-8). Once our understanding hits its limits, there will still be questions about how God thinks and why He makes certain choices.
All we know, for sure, is that we CAN choose (1 Corinthians 10:13; 2 Corinthians 6:2), our choices matter (Hebrews 4:13), and we don’t need to be perfect to be welcomed by a God who is (Hebrews 4:15-16).
God is perfect, and only HE can be perfectly perfect. Anything He creates can’t be as perfect as He is. Creating sinless human beings would require taking away all our choices. We’d be robots, and our love for God wouldn’t mean anything. So God created us as "very good," giving us the ability able to make choices. God promises that, when we get to heaven, those who trusted in Jesus Christ will be "perfectly" free from sin. But that only comes AFTER we’ve freely made the decision to believe.
Jeff is a staff writer with Got Questions Ministries and used to be a mechanical engineer. When he's not accidentally setting things on fire in his workshop, or petting strange dogs, he loves helping people better understand God’s Word and how it applies to our lives. Jeff's calling is to untangle the "big picture" of Christian faith, making it easier to understand.
