The Freedom Of The Will

"For who makes you to differ?  What do you have that you didn't receive?"  (cf. 1 Cor. 4:7).
"Apart from Me you can do nothing"  (cf. John 15:5).
By definition:  the will is the choosing faculty of the mind that makes decisions as it desires, apart from feeling any outside force--the issue is how free it is; basically, it's free to make mundane decisions but has lost ability to make divine choices to choose God apart from His work on our heart. What is important is that we still have self-determination; i.e., we make a decision for or against God voluntarily.   

Jonathan Edwards wrote a book by the above title, but he was a Calvinist, or as some call Reformed theologian par excellence, and wasn't propagating Arminianism or that grandiose idea or notion of a so-called free will  (liberum arbitrium).  "We are free but not freed," said Augustine--meaning we have retained the power to make choices and decisions, but have lost our liberty--we're voluntary slaves!  We sin and rebel against God precisely because we want to!  We are fallen creatures who have lost our inclination to good completely and totally--what so-called good we do is tainted (cf. Isa. 64:6) by evil motives and self-interest, like the applause of man.  We feel no outside force, though, which would be coercion or determinism.

Sin is rebellion against God's divine order and nature and anything that is repugnant to His holiness!  Martin Luther wrote the book, or diatribe,  De Servo Arbitrio, or, The Bondage of the Will, to refute Erasmus and the Catholic ideas of free will.  This word is never mentioned in Scripture, except for free will offerings, meaning voluntary ones.  We don't need a free will, but wills made free; we are not born free but born slaves to sin!  We get set free upon salvation and the Son is the only one who can adequately do it (cf. John 8:32,36).

In our decision making, the will is only a small part of the equation:  environment, heredity or genes, custom or tradition, pressure, etc. all play a role.  We all owe God for being born in America and most of us to Christian parents!  The thing about God being our Maker is that He designed our nature:  sanguine, choleric, melancholy, impetuous, happy-go-lucky, etc.  The point is that we didn't choose our nature!  We always act according to our nature, even whimsically or in an arbitrary manner sometimes.   As an analogy from nature:  the dove eats seed by nature; the hawk kills prey by nature; the vulture eats carrion by nature.  They will not act au contraire!   God is able to make us willing, though, and do so that we become believers (even against our former will), if He chooses to--God made a believer out of you and me, and it wasn't because we were virtuous or intelligent or even wise--we "believed through grace" (cf. Acts 18:27).

When we get saved, our whole soul and spirit gets saved: our heart, mind and will:  we become willing to do God's will; and able to comprehend God's Word, and able to love with our hearts and worship God with our spirits.  Our mind, heart, and will are all depraved--this is called total depravity (the first point of the Reformed acrostic TULIP).  If you deny total depravity you cannot maintain consistency with any of the other points in TULIP.  The will is wicked and stubborn (cf. Jer. 17:9; Isa. 46:12),   and needs redemption also--the heart of man is desperately sick and evil and we cannot know it (cf. Jer. 17:9).  God literally takes our stony hearts and makes them hearts of flesh (cf. Ezek. 36:26).

God bends our wills to His will by an act of sovereign grace ("grace reigns" cf. Rom. 5:21).  Our wills are not neutral in that they are able to weigh the pros and cons and make a freewill decision without any influence or wooing from the Holy Spirit to convict us and open our hearts to believe (cf. Acts 16:14).  Man was intended to have a mind to know God, a heart to love Him, and a will to obey Him, but this was lost at the Fall, but is restored at salvation. Note that we never ceased to be men, but ceased to be good--after the Fall man is inclined towards evil.


Acts 18:27 says that we believe through an act of grace--it's a gift per 2 Pet. 1:1 and God grants it to us according to Phil. 1:29.  God gives each of us a measure of faith according to Romans 12:3.  The people that believe in free will think that God's sovereignty is limited by our wills!  They also claim some desire to be saved while others don't--no one seeks God per Rom. 3:11!   God's sovereignty is total and He reigns and rules over all--what kind of God wouldn't be in control of all?  Our destiny is in God's hands, and He decides who will get saved, not us--it's not a matter of sincerity or of willpower!  Some very strong-willed seekers will never come to faith because they simply rely on themselves--it's not a matter of trying, but of trust.  Note the hard saying of Jesus in John 6:44 and 65 that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws and grants it.

Salvation is monergistic, not synergistic, that is, it's solely an act of God apart from our cooperation--we don't contribute to our salvation nor do any presalvation works.  We are dead spiritually and God quickens faith within us and regenerates us so that we can believe in our hearts.  We weren't elected because we believe (prescient view) but we are elected unto belief, so that "Salvation is of the Lord"  (cf. Jonah 2:9).  It is not of man and God working jointly or in concert, nor of man's sole effort, but of God alone!  We don't save ourselves--there's only one Savior!   God wants all the credit and glory and we cannot even say that we wanted to get saved apart from His grace--without which no one would believe.  The almighty and sovereign God is able to change our disposition so that we desire Christ!   Soli Deo Gloria!

The Freedom And Bondage Of The Will

Right off the bat, I want to make you cognizant of the two sorts of will in us--temporal/mundane and spiritual or moral. God has uniquely made man a moral creature because he has a mind and a will, and man alone has the ability to make moral choices for which he is responsible and will be held accountable and judged unless he is redeemed. Spiritual choices pertaining to salvation are subject to the grace of God.  We have the ability to choose (or faculty of choice intact) of what sort of cola we want, but we don't have the innate or inherent ability to choose the Way of salvation in Christ apart from the grace of God (John 15:5).  If someone says he went to the altar and received Christ all by himself with no aid from Christ or the Holy Spirit, he probably also left the altar without Christ too.

When we are left to ourselves we don't choose Christ.  That is the problem, man chooses evil and God did something about it by choosing some (the elect) to be saved by predestination because of His purpose and grace--not because of anything we did (or it would be on the basis of works and merit and election is unconditional and made before we did anything).  God could have chosen to condemn everyone (He didn't have to save anyone!), but He decided to show mercy on whom He will show mercy and condemn those He chooses to pass over and withhold grace.  Some receive grace and some justice, but God is unjust to no one.  Grace and mercy are forms of non-justice, but not of injustice.

God is sovereign over all of creation and made us of a certain temperament and character without our input.  There is no maverick molecule, so to speak, in the cosmos.  We act according to our nature (choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, bipolar, extrovert, introvert, antisocial, etc.).  As an analogy, why do you think a dove prefers seed and a vulture feasts on carrion?   So little of the factors of a decision is based upon our choice because God is able to manipulate all circumstances to bring about His will so that His sovereignty is not limited by our freedom.  Jesus said in John 15:5, "Apart from Me you can do nothing."

We cannot even believe apart from the grace of God (Acts 18:27 says,  "...he greatly helped those who through grace had believed").  "For it has been granted unto you to believe..." (Phil. 1:29).  Faith is a gift and not a work, or we would be saved by works and have merit before God to boast of.  We don't conjure it up but it comes "by the hearing and hearing by the Word" (Rom. 10:17).  Our ultimate destiny, therefore, is in the hands of God.  He decided whom to save apart from our input. This is a hard teaching to accept and Jesus said in John 6:44 that no one can come to the Father unless the Father "draws" him.  The wooing or enticing of the Spirit is essential, necessary, and sufficient. We cannot come to the Father unless it has been granted,

Martin Luther wrote The Bondage of the Will and said that freedom of the will is too grandiose a term to describe our state.  We don't need free will to be saved, but wills set free--we are not born free or innocent, but in bondage and enslaved to sin and our sin nature.  Philippians 2:13 (ESV) says, "For it is  God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."  God can make the unwilling willing at will per Psalm 110:3.

I do not believe in determinism, which is robotic coercion.  We are not puppets on a string.  God never forces anyone to do something against his will--He simply changes your will willingly--we are all voluntary slaves to sin.  We have input and are responsible moral agents for our choices.  We didn't cease to be men at the fall, but ceased being good--our inclination to good was lost and we are basically evil and sinful fallen creatures, not basically and inherently good.  Augustine summed up our state by saying we are free, but not freed (we have lost our liberty). The freedom of the will is a curse and poison because we are bound to choose against Christ apart from His divine intervention.   We all act according to enlightened self-interest and according to our God-given nature.  God doesn't force us to do anything we don't want to do (i.e., there is no outside force) which would make us robots or automata. We do have self-determination, which is real freedom, in that we make decisions ourselves.  The miracle is that God is able to change our heart and transform a heart of stone into a heart of flesh (Ezek. 36:27).

If we were really free, we would be able to say:  "Henceforth, I will only desire only good and not sin." (We are slaves to sin our will is fallen too and needs to be set free by Christ by grace.)  This is where our freedom ends and we suffer the consequences of our own nature.  The sinner retains the faculty of choice and will not be able to blame God for his bad choices--he will have no one to blame but himself at the Great White Throne Judgment.   Soli Deo Gloria!

On The Enslaved Will

Martin Luther said that the freedom of the will is a grandiose term and fit only for God. Our wills are enslaved to the old sin nature and inclined to evil. They are biased and prone to evil, not good. Luther said that man has not ceased to be man, but ceased to be good. We are only free in the sense that God doesn't force us to do evil--we do it on our own volition. St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, said that we are "free, but not freed." This is not a mind game, but only stressing that we don't have liberty, though we are responsible moral agents. We concur with our evil and no one forces us to do evil, which would be determinism or coercion. We are voluntary slaves to evil. God doesn't force anyone to do something he doesn't want to do. There is no outside force pulling strings.

There are many Bible verses that stress the lack of freedom to respond to Christ on our own without the wooing of the Spirit. "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." "It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God who showeth mercy." "Who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. " "The way of man is not in himself."

The freedom of the will so to speak is a curse, since we are free to do evil. Augustine said that we are non posse non peccare, which means we can only do evil. Luther said the will can only do evil, too.

According to Martin Luther, the will is enslaved 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(see John 6:44, 65), and the wooing of the Spirit. "For who can resist His will?" (Rom. 9:19).  "It is not of him that willeth ...." "Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." "For the way of man is not in himself, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps" (Jer. 10:23).

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.

This is one of the oldest debates in Christendom. The British monk Pelagius and St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo debated it and so did Luther and Desiderius 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. Don't let anyone make you think that the bondage 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.   
Soli Deo Gloria!

Is The Will In Bondage?

According to Martin Luther, the will is enslaved to the old sin nature and not free. St. Augustine, Bishop 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?" "It is not of him that willeth ..." "Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." "For the way of man is not in himself, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps."

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.

This is one of the oldest debates in Christendom. 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. Don't let anyone make you think that the bondage of the will is a new doctrine or that it is not orthodox, because it is the orthodox doctrine defended by the church fathers and the reformers.    Soli Deo Gloria!