The bottom line is that we don't need free will--we need WILLS MADE FREE. "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed." There is no outside force making us do something we don't want to, for that would be determinism, and we are against that. God's coercion is love. (He is able to quicken faith within us and overcome our unwillingness to make us willing.) We make a willing choice, that's it. God is able to change our dispositions, though.
We have a will, it's just not free to do good apart from God, it can only do evil. But we are free moral agents, which means we are responsible for our decisions and a choice is given us--we are not chatty dolls or automatons or robots without a will. The point is that the will is enslaved to the old sin nature and corrupted through and through, and cannot do any good apart from the grace of God.
When we are born again our nature changes. Faith is the result of the new birth, not the cause of it. Regeneration precedes faith according to the great theologian J. Edwin Orr. We don't believe in our own strength and then God owes us regeneration. Otherwise, we make God our debtor. God is no one's debtor. He doesn't have to give grace to anyone; it's a miracle anyone is saved.
"The Lord directs a man's steps, how then can he understand his way?" "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free ." " We are born not of the will of man, nor the will of the flesh ...." It is not of him that wills ...." Jer. 10:23, Prov. 20:24, Ps. 37:23, Prov. 16:9 and Prov. 21:1 all make it clear that God is in control ("The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, He turns it whithersoever He wills"). Jer. 10:23 says, "The way of man is not in himself, it is not in man who walks to direct his steps." The Council of Trent in 1545-63 pronounced a curse (anathema) on those who refused to accept the doctrine of free will and of our "cooperation" with God unto salvation. We contribute nothing to our salvation, says Luther, because Jonah 2:9 says, "Salvation is of the Lord." (It doesn't say that salvation is of the Lord and of us.) Soli Deo Gloria!
We have a will, it's just not free to do good apart from God, it can only do evil. But we are free moral agents, which means we are responsible for our decisions and a choice is given us--we are not chatty dolls or automatons or robots without a will. The point is that the will is enslaved to the old sin nature and corrupted through and through, and cannot do any good apart from the grace of God.
When we are born again our nature changes. Faith is the result of the new birth, not the cause of it. Regeneration precedes faith according to the great theologian J. Edwin Orr. We don't believe in our own strength and then God owes us regeneration. Otherwise, we make God our debtor. God is no one's debtor. He doesn't have to give grace to anyone; it's a miracle anyone is saved.
"The Lord directs a man's steps, how then can he understand his way?" "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free ." " We are born not of the will of man, nor the will of the flesh ...." It is not of him that wills ...." Jer. 10:23, Prov. 20:24, Ps. 37:23, Prov. 16:9 and Prov. 21:1 all make it clear that God is in control ("The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, He turns it whithersoever He wills"). Jer. 10:23 says, "The way of man is not in himself, it is not in man who walks to direct his steps." The Council of Trent in 1545-63 pronounced a curse (anathema) on those who refused to accept the doctrine of free will and of our "cooperation" with God unto salvation. We contribute nothing to our salvation, says Luther, because Jonah 2:9 says, "Salvation is of the Lord." (It doesn't say that salvation is of the Lord and of us.) Soli Deo Gloria!
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