The Bondage Of The Will

Did you get set freed by Christ or not, that is the question.

According to Martin Luther (cf., The Bondage of the Will), the will is enslaved or in bondage to the old sin nature and not free. Augustine of Hippo said that the will is "free but not freed." He wasn't playing mind games but saying that we are responsible agents to God for our choices, but don't have liberty. He doesn't force us to do evil, because we do it on our own initiative. The freedom of the will is a curse because we can only do evil according to Luther. Where did free will help Esau?

There are many Bible verses that show that man doesn't have free will as far as the ability to choose and come to Christ apart from grace and the wooing of the Spirit. "For who can resist His will?" (Rom. 9:19). "It is not of him that willeth ..." (Rom. 9:16). "Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13). "For the way of man is not in himself, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps" (Jer. 10:23; cf. Psalm 37:37).

We are biased or prone to evil, not good. Martin Luther said we have not ceased to be man, but have ceased to be good. The whole matter can be summed up in the phrase: "We don't need free will--we need wills made free!" We are inclined to evil, not good--the ability lost at the fall. We are biased. We are still human but not good-natured. The doctrine of total depravity ensures that we are not inherently good, but spoiled throughout with evil.

This is one of the oldest debates in Christendom. Heretic British monk Pelagius and Augustine debated it and so did Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam. The prevalence of the doctrine of freedom of the will in today's church is due to the influence of the Wesleyan Arminians (founded by patron saint Jacob Hermann, better known as Jacobus Arminius). Don't let anyone make you think that the enslavement of the will is a new doctrine or that it is not orthodox, because it is the original doctrine defended by the church fathers and the reformers.

In the final analysis, we don't need free will to be saved, but wills made free!    Soli Deo Gloria!

How Depraved Are We?

By Nature Children Of Wrath

VERSES FOR PONDERING AND MEDIATION REGARDING DEPRAVITY: 


"The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"  (Gen. 6:5, ESV, emphasis mine). 

"They have gone deep in depravity ...  He will remember their iniquity, He will punish their sins"  (Hosea 9:9, NASB). 

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"  (Jerimiah 17:9, ESV, emphasis mine).

"Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart"  (Prov. 21:2, ESV, emphasis mine).  

"No man can justify himself before God by a perfect performance of the Law's demands--indeed it is the straight-edge of the Law that shows us how crooked we are" (Rom. 3:20, J. B. Phillips, emphasis mine).

"The LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts"  (cf. 1 Chronicles 28:9). 

"... God withdrew from Hezekiah to see what was really in his heart"  (cf. 2 Chronicles 32:21).

"... God left him [Hezekiah] to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart"  (2 Chron. 32:31, ESV).  

"Being made then free from [the power of] sin, ye became the servants of righteousness [Christ]"  (Rom. 6:18, KJV).

NOTE THAT WE ARE SINNERS BY NATURE, BY BIRTH, AND BY CHOICE! Augustine said we are, in Latin, non posse non peccare, or we're unable not to sin--all we can do is sin!

WE ARE SINNERS NOT BECAUSE WE SIN.  RATHER, WE SIN BECAUSE WE ARE SINNERS, ACCORDING TO A FAMOUS THEOLOGICAL AXIOM.

Paul said in 1 Cor. 15:10, ESV,   "But by the grace of God I am what I am...."  We are what we are by nature, just like a pig is only acting according to its nature when it wallows in the mud after cleaned, we act consistently with the nature God gave us:  whether we are sanguine, choleric, melancholy, temperamental, even easy-going, or happy-go-lucky!  The good news is that our God always acts according to His nature and that means He acts perfectly according to a perfect nature, and He cannot act contrary to it.

"See,  this alone, I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes"  (Eccl. 7:29, ESV).  For all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory (cf. Rom. 3:23)!  If sin were a color like red, we'd be all red--you cannot be only a little depraved, no more than a little pregnant. We are radically corrupt, with no peripheral goodness to boast of in God's presence--our righteousness is as filthy rags and His gift to us, not our gift to Him. We are as bad off as we can be with our hearts totally evil and corrupt, that includes our will, mind, and affections.  They say we are totally depraved, but not utterly depraved--we're not as bad as we can possibly be, but as bad off.

We soon find out in life that we all have feet of clay and the adage that to err is human and that no body's perfect.  But we tend to compare ourselves with others and the run-of-the-mill sinner seems to estimate himself a saint compared to the likes of Hitler, the paradigm of evil in our times.  We have solidarity in Adam, sharing original sin and the effect of that sin in the perfect environment of the Garden of Eden.

Depravity is God's estimation of man, not our own self-estimation!  Some people indeed think they're okay in their estimation and don't even think they've sinned.  However, man is not basically good, but inherently evil and our sin permeates our very core of being.  The complete heart is depraved: the emotions in Psalm 37:4; the will in Exodus 7:20; and the intellect in Matt. 15:19.  In other words: Sin permeates our very being and our reasoning power is dead (cf. Rom. 8:7); our conscience is corrupt (cf. Tit. 1:5); our will is stubborn (cf. Rom.1:32); our desires are selfish and base (cf. Col. 3:5); and our thoughts are evil (cf. Gen 6:5).  Our minds, wills, bodies, and spirits are corrupt--our total soul and being.  We must expose the dark side to see ourselves for what we are--fallen creatures!   We have no intrinsic goodness nor intrinsic merit nor value nor dignity, but only extrinsic worth and dignity because we are in the image of God and are clay in the Potter's hands.

The trouble, someone has said, is that most people don't see how bad they are, and the catch-22 is that we must see how bad we are to be good and qualify for goodness, and we don't know that till we've tried to be good and seen the futility of the attempt without God.  Man never ceased to be man with the power of choice, but ceased to be good!   Indeed we are bad, but the good news is that we are not too bad to be saved, if we will only confess it and confession or homologeo in Greek means to say the same thing as we need to agree with God and come clean with Him.  Man's basic problem in thinking he's good is that he thinks he does good deeds (Isa. 64:6 says they are filthy rags!), and God says no one does good, no not one!  He is delusional in his self-estimation and is only being self-righteous.

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?  Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil"  (Jer. 13:23, ESV).   None of us even lives up to our own standards and perfectly obeys his own conscience:  Ovid said, "I see the better things and approve them, but I follow the worst."  All you have to do is read Romans 7:24, ESV, which emphatically says: Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?") to see Paul's struggle with evil within.  We are great sinners, but there is a Great Savior!

The point in salvation is that we cannot clean up our act and that Jesus sees through and penetrates our veneer or masquerade.  We must realize that we are never good enough to be saved, but bad enough to need salvation by grace with nothing we can do to contribute to God's accomplishment on our behalf.  We assume God grades on a curve, but we are all in the same boat known as the universality of sin and all have fallen short of the ideal standard set by God through His Son.  We can't play games with God or fool Him!  God judges our motives, and even good deeds can be done for selfish reasons or evil motive, even to gain the approbation of God.  "And he [Amaziah] did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, but not with a perfect heart"  (cf. 2 Chronicles 25:2).  Our solidarity in Adam always gives us away!

God sometimes lets man go his own way:  "But they say, 'That is in vain!  We will follow our own plans, and everyone act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart'"  (Jer. 18:12, ESV);  "'But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.  So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels"  (Psalm 81:12, ESV).

The reality, which is a paradox, is that man is not born free, but born a slave and in bondage to sin and the old sin nature; "... People are slaves to whatever has mastered them" ["... For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved"  (2 Pet. 2:10, ESV)]  (cf. 2 Pet. 2:19);  "... You belong to the power you choose to obey" [... "you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness" (Rom. 6:16, ESV)] (cf. Rom. 6:16). We "by nature children of wrath," according to Ephesians 2:3.

We need to be set free from our own wickedness and nature, and this can only be done by the power of Christ transforming our souls upon salvation.  "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36, ESV).   Paul says, "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace"  (Romans 6:14, ESV).

However, the problem of man is that he doesn't see his own sin and must be convicted (only the Holy Spirit can do this too), because man instinctively justifies his own sin and fails to see his shortcomings, but tends to think too highly of himself, in the best possible light, and that he is basically good, and not inherently evil through and through with no inherent goodness intact.

As Christians, we have been set free from bondage to Satan and our sin nature and don't have to obey sin or be its slave.  "... [A]nd let no iniquity get dominion over me"  (Psalm 119:133, ESV).  "Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me!"  (Psalm 19:13, ESV).    Soli Deo Gloria!

Evil's Facade...

"... [Y]ou hate all evildoers"  (Psalm 5:5, ESV).  "... I will fear no evil..." (Psa. 23:4, ESV).
"The fear of the LORD is the hatred of evil..." (Proverbs 8:13, ESV).
"What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil..." (Isaiah 5:20, ESV).
"Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good"  (Romans 12:21, ESV).
"Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight"  (Psalm 51:4, NLT).  "Will those who do evil never learn?" (Psalm 14:4, NLT).
"There will be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing evil..." (Rom. 2:9, NLT).
"... 'All who belong to the LORD must turn away from evil'"  (2 Tim. 2:19, NLT).
"The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"  (Gen. 6:5, ESV). (According to St. Augustine:  Man has the inability not to sin or non posse non peccare in Latin.)

Man is not basically good, but inherently evil to his core and is radically corrupt through and through and must be redeemed by God to be able to do anything good; in his fallen state, he cannot do anything but sin and evil.  "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"   (Jer. 17:9, ESV).  Isaiah 1 says:  We are to cease to do evil, and learn to do good! ("Depart from evil, and do good..." (Psa. 37:27, ESV).

Evil doesn't advertise or promote itself by that moniker but tries to convince one of its good intentions to bring about the greater good as the end result.  If something is not done God's way, it's the devil's way.  God is able to work with evil and tolerates its existence because He can turn it into good (like curses into blessings), and there is a lot more evil to work with!  What evil is, is not what people would suppose:  It's goodness without God in the picture or the equation (like humanism that deifies man and makes him the measure of all things, the starting point of the equation, and dethrones God as dead and no longer relevant.  God turns evil into good:  "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good"  (cf. Gen. 50:20).  There is no yin/yang or an equal balance of good and evil; however, Satan masquerades as an angel of light (cf. 2 Cor. 11:4).

We must become familiar with our common foe, or we will become like him, a do-gooder, who is trying to save humanity his way.  There is only one person who is good, God.  We do not have the power to harness the power of evil for good, like in Star Wars where they use the powers of the dark side.  Christ annihilated evil and defeated it in toto at the cross and we are only here to proclaim His victory and to claim His authority.  There is no such thing as pure evil, for evil, depends on good for its very existence; it's the privation of good; the deviation from good; the negation of goodness; and the perversion of goodness.

Satan was once good with no evil, but then pride was found in his heart and he fell and was booted out of heaven and his place of authority.  Satan is not coequal with God, such as a yin/yang type working arrangement, but only a servant of God who must obey.  There is now a cosmic battle or angelic conflict going on between Satan and his minions, and Christ, the church, and the elect angels on the other side.

We all have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in a sense, and are not innocent in God's eyes and are responsible for the light we have to be faithful and fruitful.  It is good to be innocent of evil as much as possible and to be wise to what is good.  Don't practice the occult nor magic arts and don't experiment with evil in any way, shape, or form.

It all started when Satan challenged authority and asked Eve, "Hath God said..?"  By her own volition Eve took of the forbidden fruit and the result of the so-called proverbial apple saga still goes on as it epitomized all sin in that one act of obedience--they only had one rule to obey and couldn't do it!

Today's youth are concerned more about what works than what's true, and they believe the test of an idea is not its truth value, but its results.  The sorry result is that something can work and not be true or good, e.g., Yoga, or TM.  These are not forbidden activities in Scripture, but nevertheless evil in that they circumvent the goodness and wisdom of God.  Christianity is not true because it works, it works because it's true!   Youth are concerned if something works for them and is practical or pragmatic, while God demands obedience and loyal faithfulness not to experiment with other religions or philosophies.

For example, to the innocent bystander or outside observer Yoga may seem innocent enough, but Yoga is a Hindu art that means union with God, and you learn to get in touch with one of their gods.  People are lured and enticed into Eastern philosophy and religion, by such innocent-like practices that have mass appeal to man as being "good."

Heed the following caveats of 1 Thess. 5:22 (ESV), Job 28:28 (ESV), 1 Pet. 3:12 (HCSB); and Rom. 12:9 (ESV) respectively:  "Abstain from every form of evil";  "...'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding'";  "... BUT THE FACE OF THE LORD IS AGAINST THOSE WHO DO EVIL"; "... Abhor what is evil; hold fast what is good."  Soli Deo Gloria!

Our Dark Side

Mark Twain is quoted by Swindoll as saying that we are all like a moon that has a dark side no one sees. This is true. We all have "feet of clay" (having weaknesses not readily apparent), and are vulnerable to sin because of our very nature. We cannot clean up our act before we can come to Jesus; we must come as we are, but we cannot stay that way. We must see how bad we are before we can become good. It's not how bad we are, but how bad off we are. It is like the distance of a deaf man to a symphony or a blind man to the Mona Lisa. We cannot bridge the gap. Jesus sees through the veneer and we cannot fool him.

Humanism means man is the measure of all things; basically, down with God and up with man and think man is basically good, but we an inherently bad. You must realize that we are not sinners because we sin, rather we sin because we are sinners. It is our constituted nature to sin. We can deal with sins in the plural, but our problem is sin in the singular--our old sin nature inherited from Adam. This is God's estimation of man, not man's estimation of man.

The totality of our nature is permeated with sin and our image of God is marred and defaced morally. "No one knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good," says C. S. Lewis. The paradox is that we must see our bankruptcy--the truly bad person thinks he is alright! We must realize how bad we are before we can be good!  The way up, by paradox, is down.

We are sinful in toto and in solidarity with Adam completely. Someone has said, "We cannot escape our birthright." We cannot ingratiate ourselves with God, because we "have feet of clay." That means we have hidden vulnerabilities. We are permeated with sin through and through--there is no vestige of righteousness.

R. C. Sproul writes of a man who never lost his faith in the basic goodness of man despite being held captive in Iraq--this is sheer ignorance! Compared to Saddam Hussein the run-of-the-mill sinner looks like a saint; however, he is just as bad off from God's viewpoint and they both must come to Jesus the same way in childlike repentance and faith.   Soli Deo Gloria!

Total Depravity

We are totally depraved, not utterly depraved--man is wicked but not as wicked as he possibly can be.. We are as bad off as we can be, but not as bad as we can be. God restrains has put limits on our iniquity and Ps. 76:10 says that God uses the wrath of man to praise Him. Man is non posse non peccare, which means he can only do evil. He has lost all ability to do good in God's sight because his motives are wrong and every part of his nature is infected with the sin virus.

Compared to Saddam Hussein the "run-of-the-mill sinner" looks like a saint, said one misguided soul according to R. C. Sproul. Man's will, emotions, and intellect are wrong. "All our righteousness is as filthy rags." "For those who are in the flesh cannot please God." (Cf. Rom. 8:7) We cannot reform ourselves or change by a free act of the will ("Henceforth, I will do only good"), as Jeremiah said, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard its spots? Then neither can you do good who are accustomed to evil." "The whole heard is sick, and the whole heart faint" (cf. Isaiah 1:5).

We are volitionally defiant (we are voluntary slaves to evil) and cannot  will to do good apart from the grace of God." Every intent of the heart of man is only evil continually," says Gen. 6:5. All of our faculties are pregnant with sin, and you cannot be just a little pregnant; you either are or you aren't. Sin has affected our whole being, and there is no "island of righteousness" left. We are permeated with the sin virus.   Soli Deo Gloria!