"What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened" (Rom. 11:7, ESV).
"[Because], if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved" (Rom. 10:9-10, ESV).
"If anyone does not love the Lord, that person is cursed. Our Lord, come!" (1 Cor. 16:22, NLT).
"The king's heart is like a stream of water directed by the LORD; he guides it wherever he pleases" (Prov. 21:2, NLT).
"Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs [issues] of life" (Prov. 4:23, ESV).
"Only fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God'..." (Psalm 14:1, NLT).
Some who make a profession of Christ merely have so-called head belief and don't register any faith in their hearts--they have no room for Jesus in their lives (cf. Rev. 3:20)--it's all in their heads! We must believe in our hearts to have a valid, living, and growing faith and a vital personal relationship with Christ: We don't just debate or talk about Him, we talk to Him and serve Him wholeheartedly. Of course, our minds play a role: we must understand with our minds before our hearts can sense or feel any love attachment, and I don't mean mere sentimentality or maudlin feelings. Some are stoical and that must be respected, as long as they don't go to the ball game and get all excited and demonstrative there--that would prove we love sports more than our Lord. Some are just naturally reserved and inhibited and need to grow in their confidence of expressing themselves, doing what is natural to a surrendered heart.
"Change your hearts and lives! Turn back to God so that your sins may be wiped away" (Acts 3:19, CEV). We need to get our whole heart and soul saved (Acts 26:20 says, "...My message was that they should change their hearts and lives and turn to God and that they should demonstrate this change in their behavior."): our mind or intellect; our will or volition; and our feelings or emotional output. Our wills are also infected and fallen into sin, depraved, and need salvation--they are not unaffected by the fall--the will is bound by the sin nature and not free to obey God, or even to believe in Him apart from the grace of God ("Apart from Me you can do nothing," says John 15:5).
"[Because], if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved" (Rom. 10:9-10, ESV).
"If anyone does not love the Lord, that person is cursed. Our Lord, come!" (1 Cor. 16:22, NLT).
"The king's heart is like a stream of water directed by the LORD; he guides it wherever he pleases" (Prov. 21:2, NLT).
"Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs [issues] of life" (Prov. 4:23, ESV).
"Only fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God'..." (Psalm 14:1, NLT).
Some who make a profession of Christ merely have so-called head belief and don't register any faith in their hearts--they have no room for Jesus in their lives (cf. Rev. 3:20)--it's all in their heads! We must believe in our hearts to have a valid, living, and growing faith and a vital personal relationship with Christ: We don't just debate or talk about Him, we talk to Him and serve Him wholeheartedly. Of course, our minds play a role: we must understand with our minds before our hearts can sense or feel any love attachment, and I don't mean mere sentimentality or maudlin feelings. Some are stoical and that must be respected, as long as they don't go to the ball game and get all excited and demonstrative there--that would prove we love sports more than our Lord. Some are just naturally reserved and inhibited and need to grow in their confidence of expressing themselves, doing what is natural to a surrendered heart.
"Change your hearts and lives! Turn back to God so that your sins may be wiped away" (Acts 3:19, CEV). We need to get our whole heart and soul saved (Acts 26:20 says, "...My message was that they should change their hearts and lives and turn to God and that they should demonstrate this change in their behavior."): our mind or intellect; our will or volition; and our feelings or emotional output. Our wills are also infected and fallen into sin, depraved, and need salvation--they are not unaffected by the fall--the will is bound by the sin nature and not free to obey God, or even to believe in Him apart from the grace of God ("Apart from Me you can do nothing," says John 15:5).
We must realize that faith is a gift because our wills are bound by sin and since we are accustomed to doing evil, we cannot do good, no more than a leopard can change its spots or an Ethiopian his skin (cf. Jer. 13:23). Our lives are not our own and we cannot plan out our lives (cf. Jer. 10:23, NLT): "The LORD directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?" (Prov. 20:24, NLT). "We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps" (Prov. 16:9, NLT).
Yes, we need our thinking straightened out and put into conformity to God's worldview and viewpoint, eliminating all the carnality that affects it (cf. 2 Cor. 10:5). "...[B]ut be transformed by the renewing of your minds..." (Rom. 12:2, CEV). The Bible isn't just to inform us but to change our way of thinking as well as our life. We must learn to have the mind of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 2:16) in us and think godly thoughts.
Our hearts are radically corrupt also and we tend to be excited by the things of the world and what the world offers (cf. 1 John 2:15), even cheap thrills that don't last and destroy our soul. The problem with man is that the heart of the matter of his salvation is a matter of the heart--he is in rebellion against God and won't love his Creator without regeneration. Once we've tasted that the Lord is good (cf. Psalm 34:8; 1 Pet. 2:3) and God's love for us we want to pass it on and get the word out about the love of God expressed in Jesus.
The most radically corrupt part of us is our will; it is in a state of rebellion against our God (cf. Isa. 59:13) and is very stubborn (cf. Jer. 18:12; Ps. 81:12), and resistant to grace, and we must thank God for His irresistible grace (cf. Rom. 5:21) that melts us, molds, fills us, and uses us for His glory. He regenerates us and takes our heart of stone (cf. Ezek. 36:26) and makes it into a heart of flesh! The biggest miracle of all is the changing of our wills to ones that want to obey Christ. Everyone is doing his own thing (Isa. 53:6). For "to obey is better than sacrifice" (cf. 1 Sam. 15:22). No man can come to Christ (cf. John 6:44, 65) apart from the grace of God wooing him and drawing him--his privilege is with God's permission and election (cf. Acts 13:48).
According to Martin Luther, free will is too grandiose a term for our will, and we must realize that very little of our decision to follow Christ was because of our wills anyway. God decided our nationality, our family, our church background, our education, our genes, our nature (i.e., choleric, melancholy, sanguine, phlegmatic, etc.), and so forth, and our wills had very little input. How do you know that if you had been born in Russia that you would believe in Jesus? Our destiny is ultimately in God's hands, and this is called predestination, mentioned in Scripture (cf. Acts 13:48, ESV; Eph. 1:5, 11, HCSB; also implied in Psalm 31:15, NLT). Jer. 20:7, NLT ("...You stronger than I am, and you overpowered me...") says that Jeremiah's will was overcome by God and He prevailed!
God is stronger than us and has the power to make believers out of the most stubborn--look at Saul of Tarsus! Note that the Reformed view is that we are elected unto faith, not because of it, which is called the prescient view of Arminians. A careful reading of Romans 8:29-30 militates against this fallacious interpretation of election. Romans 9:16 says that it is not of him who wills, but of God who shows mercy! God reserves the right to have mercy on whom He will. And no one can resist His will (cf. Rom 9:19)!
One may say that we have unlimited free will and that God's sovereignty is limited by it, and some do posit this allegation. But God's sovereignty is absolute and not limited by our so-called freedom. God is free and unable to sin, isn't He? We are free to sin and to choose our own poison, you might say! Augustine said we are "free but not freed!" We are free to act according to our God-given nature! We have lost our ability and liberty, and only have limited freedom or faculty of choice intact, but we have lost all inclination toward God and are naturally evil and depraved, not good. We have remained human since the Fall, but we have lost the tendency to love God.
The biggest miracle of all is the transformation of a hardened heart into an obedient soul who loves Jesus--he can give himself no credit, no not any. We go from being as bad off as we can possibly be (not as bad, though), to being as well off as we can be in this life, secure in Christ forever. Those who believe our will is totally free want to give themselves some credit for their own salvation and don't realize that "salvation is of the LORD," as Jonah said in Jon. 2:9.
Yes, we need our thinking straightened out and put into conformity to God's worldview and viewpoint, eliminating all the carnality that affects it (cf. 2 Cor. 10:5). "...[B]ut be transformed by the renewing of your minds..." (Rom. 12:2, CEV). The Bible isn't just to inform us but to change our way of thinking as well as our life. We must learn to have the mind of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 2:16) in us and think godly thoughts.
Our hearts are radically corrupt also and we tend to be excited by the things of the world and what the world offers (cf. 1 John 2:15), even cheap thrills that don't last and destroy our soul. The problem with man is that the heart of the matter of his salvation is a matter of the heart--he is in rebellion against God and won't love his Creator without regeneration. Once we've tasted that the Lord is good (cf. Psalm 34:8; 1 Pet. 2:3) and God's love for us we want to pass it on and get the word out about the love of God expressed in Jesus.
The most radically corrupt part of us is our will; it is in a state of rebellion against our God (cf. Isa. 59:13) and is very stubborn (cf. Jer. 18:12; Ps. 81:12), and resistant to grace, and we must thank God for His irresistible grace (cf. Rom. 5:21) that melts us, molds, fills us, and uses us for His glory. He regenerates us and takes our heart of stone (cf. Ezek. 36:26) and makes it into a heart of flesh! The biggest miracle of all is the changing of our wills to ones that want to obey Christ. Everyone is doing his own thing (Isa. 53:6). For "to obey is better than sacrifice" (cf. 1 Sam. 15:22). No man can come to Christ (cf. John 6:44, 65) apart from the grace of God wooing him and drawing him--his privilege is with God's permission and election (cf. Acts 13:48).
According to Martin Luther, free will is too grandiose a term for our will, and we must realize that very little of our decision to follow Christ was because of our wills anyway. God decided our nationality, our family, our church background, our education, our genes, our nature (i.e., choleric, melancholy, sanguine, phlegmatic, etc.), and so forth, and our wills had very little input. How do you know that if you had been born in Russia that you would believe in Jesus? Our destiny is ultimately in God's hands, and this is called predestination, mentioned in Scripture (cf. Acts 13:48, ESV; Eph. 1:5, 11, HCSB; also implied in Psalm 31:15, NLT). Jer. 20:7, NLT ("...You stronger than I am, and you overpowered me...") says that Jeremiah's will was overcome by God and He prevailed!
God is stronger than us and has the power to make believers out of the most stubborn--look at Saul of Tarsus! Note that the Reformed view is that we are elected unto faith, not because of it, which is called the prescient view of Arminians. A careful reading of Romans 8:29-30 militates against this fallacious interpretation of election. Romans 9:16 says that it is not of him who wills, but of God who shows mercy! God reserves the right to have mercy on whom He will. And no one can resist His will (cf. Rom 9:19)!
One may say that we have unlimited free will and that God's sovereignty is limited by it, and some do posit this allegation. But God's sovereignty is absolute and not limited by our so-called freedom. God is free and unable to sin, isn't He? We are free to sin and to choose our own poison, you might say! Augustine said we are "free but not freed!" We are free to act according to our God-given nature! We have lost our ability and liberty, and only have limited freedom or faculty of choice intact, but we have lost all inclination toward God and are naturally evil and depraved, not good. We have remained human since the Fall, but we have lost the tendency to love God.
The biggest miracle of all is the transformation of a hardened heart into an obedient soul who loves Jesus--he can give himself no credit, no not any. We go from being as bad off as we can possibly be (not as bad, though), to being as well off as we can be in this life, secure in Christ forever. Those who believe our will is totally free want to give themselves some credit for their own salvation and don't realize that "salvation is of the LORD," as Jonah said in Jon. 2:9.
We do not cooperate at all (nor do any so-called presalvation effort or work to please God), but salvation is totally monergistic or a one-sided act of God, it's not synergistic or a cooperative venture in which we help God save us. We are passive in our regeneration, and this results in active faith and repentance. Salvation is not of man and God, nor of man alone, but of God alone! It is not of anything we have done (cf. Titus 3:5) or can do that we are saved--it's grace all the way, from beginning to end. No one will boast in God's presence (cf. Eph. 2:9)!
Those who think free will means we can do anything we want or that eternal security is a violation of it, must wonder about our state in heaven, where we will not be free to sin and can only do good! The problem is that man is a voluntary slave (i.e., we feel no outside force or fate)--he wants to sin and chooses to do it freely--God doesn't force anyone to believe against his will, but He can convert the unwilling by an act of irresistible grace. In heaven, we won't want to sin, and that's the miracle of regeneration and glorification. God has free will, but cannot act out of character, and being holy, that eliminates all evil and sin. As believers, we still have the power to sin and the power not to sin, we don't have to sin but have two natures fighting each other and the one that wins is usually the one we feed the most and give into.
The only saved believers are those who live out the gospel and love Jesus in their hearts, desiring to obey, serve, and worship Him. It isn't a matter of acquiescence or assent; this is only the first step! We must trust Christ, rely on Him, and surrender our wills to His! But we cannot do this without the grace of God enabling us. We believe through grace (cf. Acts 18:27). The miracle is that we want to obey and serve Christ--we don't feel we have to, but that we want to--showing a real conversion experience.
There are several passages of Scripture that point to man's stubborn, fallen will or volition (which is the deciding factor in our decisions between heart and mind). "So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels" (Psalm 81:12, ESV). "... We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart" (Jer. 18:12, ESV). "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9, ESV). "O LORD, why do you make us wander from your ways and harden our heart, so that we fear you not?" (Isa. 63:17, ESV). Note that the will is part of the heart in Scripture, though we commonly interchange and even confuse heart and emotion. In Scripture, the heart contains the intellect (cf. Matt. 15:19), the emotional being (cf. Ps. 37:4), and the will (cf. Ex. 7:22). The heart is thus the seat of man's inner personality and character. God doesn't make us do anything we don't want to do, though He is "at work within [us] both to do and to will of His good pleasure" (cf. Phil. 2:13).
In our conversion experience, God never forces us to do anything we don't want to do (coercion) and our destiny is not a fate that we have no input into (determinism), but God is able to make us willing and able to believe. He can make the unwilling willing (cf. Psalm 110:3; Phil 2:13; Psalm 51:12, NLT)! Man's will really has two dimensions, which must be distinguished: the mundane and the spiritual or moral. Man retains all mundane ability and power of choice, such as what his favorite foods are; however he loses the ability to choose God independently--grace must lead the way and melt his heart into obedience.
Martin Luther called this the bondage of the will and wrote De Servo Arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will) to counter Erasmus' Catholic version of free will. It has long been Roman Catholic tradition that man chooses Christ totally of his own free will without God's interference with it. Martin Luther said that this doctrine confuses the gospel and that one doesn't grasp man's bondage in his will, he fails to apprehend the gospel. When you realize that you don't need free will, but wills made free, you understand grace in salvation; we are not born free, as people think, but born in bondage and must be set free by Christ (as John 8:36 says, "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed").
In the final analysis, all that matters is that the person's heart is in the right place and that one love the Lord, not that his doctrine be impeccably correct or that he can split hairs! We must keep the main thing the main thing and not get sidetracked just being content to be doctrinally correct. Soli Deo Gloria!
Those who think free will means we can do anything we want or that eternal security is a violation of it, must wonder about our state in heaven, where we will not be free to sin and can only do good! The problem is that man is a voluntary slave (i.e., we feel no outside force or fate)--he wants to sin and chooses to do it freely--God doesn't force anyone to believe against his will, but He can convert the unwilling by an act of irresistible grace. In heaven, we won't want to sin, and that's the miracle of regeneration and glorification. God has free will, but cannot act out of character, and being holy, that eliminates all evil and sin. As believers, we still have the power to sin and the power not to sin, we don't have to sin but have two natures fighting each other and the one that wins is usually the one we feed the most and give into.
The only saved believers are those who live out the gospel and love Jesus in their hearts, desiring to obey, serve, and worship Him. It isn't a matter of acquiescence or assent; this is only the first step! We must trust Christ, rely on Him, and surrender our wills to His! But we cannot do this without the grace of God enabling us. We believe through grace (cf. Acts 18:27). The miracle is that we want to obey and serve Christ--we don't feel we have to, but that we want to--showing a real conversion experience.
There are several passages of Scripture that point to man's stubborn, fallen will or volition (which is the deciding factor in our decisions between heart and mind). "So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels" (Psalm 81:12, ESV). "... We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart" (Jer. 18:12, ESV). "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9, ESV). "O LORD, why do you make us wander from your ways and harden our heart, so that we fear you not?" (Isa. 63:17, ESV). Note that the will is part of the heart in Scripture, though we commonly interchange and even confuse heart and emotion. In Scripture, the heart contains the intellect (cf. Matt. 15:19), the emotional being (cf. Ps. 37:4), and the will (cf. Ex. 7:22). The heart is thus the seat of man's inner personality and character. God doesn't make us do anything we don't want to do, though He is "at work within [us] both to do and to will of His good pleasure" (cf. Phil. 2:13).
In our conversion experience, God never forces us to do anything we don't want to do (coercion) and our destiny is not a fate that we have no input into (determinism), but God is able to make us willing and able to believe. He can make the unwilling willing (cf. Psalm 110:3; Phil 2:13; Psalm 51:12, NLT)! Man's will really has two dimensions, which must be distinguished: the mundane and the spiritual or moral. Man retains all mundane ability and power of choice, such as what his favorite foods are; however he loses the ability to choose God independently--grace must lead the way and melt his heart into obedience.
Martin Luther called this the bondage of the will and wrote De Servo Arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will) to counter Erasmus' Catholic version of free will. It has long been Roman Catholic tradition that man chooses Christ totally of his own free will without God's interference with it. Martin Luther said that this doctrine confuses the gospel and that one doesn't grasp man's bondage in his will, he fails to apprehend the gospel. When you realize that you don't need free will, but wills made free, you understand grace in salvation; we are not born free, as people think, but born in bondage and must be set free by Christ (as John 8:36 says, "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed").
In the final analysis, all that matters is that the person's heart is in the right place and that one love the Lord, not that his doctrine be impeccably correct or that he can split hairs! We must keep the main thing the main thing and not get sidetracked just being content to be doctrinally correct. Soli Deo Gloria!