Charles Spurgeon on Free Will

I suppose there are some persons whose minds naturally incline towards the doctrine of free will; I can only say that mine inclines as naturally towards the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace! Sometimes, when I see some of the worst characters in the street, I feel as if my heart must burst forth in tears of gratitude that God has never let me act as they have done! I have thought if God had left me alone, and had not touched me by His Grace what a great sinner I would have been! I would have run to the utmost lengths of sin, and dived into the very depths of evil! Nor would I have stopped at any vice or folly, if God had not restrained me; I feel that I would have been a very king of sinners if God had let me alone.

I cannot understand the reason why I am saved except upon the ground that God would have it so. I cannot, if I look ever so earnestly, discover any kind of reason in myself why I should be a partaker of Divine Grace. If I am at this moment with Christ, it is only because Christ Jesus would have His will with me, and that will was that I should be with Him where He is, and should share His Glory.

I can put the crown nowhere but upon the head of Him whose mighty Grace has saved me from going down into the pit of Hell!

Is There any Injustice in Divine Election?

From Reformation Theology

If one person or group receives the grace of God and another group does not, is there any violation of justice in this? If God passes over some, do they receive anything they do not deserve? Fact is, one group receives mercy and the other group receives justice, and no group receives injustice. And Paul demolishes human will as the basis for God's sovereign election in Christ. (Rom 9:15, 16) It is based rather on God's sovereign good pleasure in Christ. This removes all merit from me and puts the attention back on the sovereign and merciful God....

Even the very wisdom to believe is a gift of God's grace. Such that we cannot attribute our repenting and believing to our own wisdom, humility or good sense. 1 Cor 1 says, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” In other words, those who ascribe their believing to their own wisdom, and not to Christ alone, are boasting.

The Pelagian Captivity of the Church - R.C. Sproul

Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era and talked about the new Babylonian captivity of the Church. He was speaking of Rome as the modern Babylon that held the Gospel hostage with its rejection of the biblical understanding of justification.

You can understand how fierce the controversy was, how polemical this title would be in that period by saying that the Church had not simply erred or strayed, but had fallen — that it’s actually now Babylonian; it is now in pagan captivity.

I’ve often wondered if Luther were alive today and came to our culture and looked, not at the liberal church community, but at evangelical churches, what would he have to say?

Of course I can’t answer that question with any kind of definitive authority, but my guess is this: If Martin Luther lived today and picked up his pen to write, the book he would write in our time would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Evangelical Church. Luther saw the doctrine of justification as fueled by a deeper theological problem.

Read the rest of this great article HERE

Choice - Peter Eldersveld

The predicament in which we sinners find ourselves is so utterly hopeless that divine redemption is our only way out. The Bible says, what we know to be true from our own honest introspection, that we are “dead in trespasses and sins.” And such dead men cannot begin their own resurrection. They must be raised by another— by God. You cannot expect sinners who are depraved by nature to initiate the work of their own redemption. It will have to be initiated by God.

Now the Word of God proves beyond all doubt that He has indeed taken the initiative, that He is our point of beginning. The classic passage on that is Eph. 1:4-12. Among other things, it says: “He hath chosen us in Him (Christ) before the foundation of the world . . . having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will . . . in whom (Christ) also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.”

Now that doctrine of divine election is mentioned no less than forty-eight times in the New Testament alone. And no wonder, for it is one of the grandest things we know about God. His plan of redemption is not an afterthought, something He had to devise when man fell into sin; it was not occasioned by the contingencies of history, nor does it depend upon the will of man. From eternity God chose sinners to he saved, and He did so according to the good pleasure of His will without qualifying conditions of any kind. It was His doing. Its point-of-beginning is with Him in eternity, where also its end will be. This means that our salvation has its origin as well as its destiny in the everlasting God!

However, oddly enough, this glorious truth, which is one of the fundamentals of our faith, is also one of the most controversial teachings in the Bible. It makes some people stiffen with resistance and even wince with pain every time they hear it. This is particularly true among certain Christians who have a more humanistic theology. And, of course, the reason for their antagonism is quite natural. For the other side of this glorious truth is that if God chose to save some, He necessarily chose not to save others. So, He is not only a God of election but also of reprobation. And that’s the part men don’t like.

They seem to feel under obligation to defend the character of God against the stigma and responsibility of election and reprobation. The fact that God very plainly assumes this responsibility does not seem to impress them at all. They believe it is better to have men choose God than to have God choose men. And so they take the ultimate decision, as to who will be saved, out of the hands of God and place it in the hands of men, who must then make the choice themselves. And thereby they make man the point-of-beginning—and ending, the Alpha and Omega of his own salvation. He can frustrate God if he wants to.

Now, personally, I am deeply grateful that the Bible presents a God who chooses the sinner, rather than a God who must wait to be chosen. I know that teaching confronts us with some very real and difficult questions which we shall never be able to answer, but I would rather live with those questions than try to escape them by adopting humanistic notions that conflict with God’s own revelation of Himself. The fact that we cannot comprehend the mystery of His mercy does not disprove it.               Read entire article HERE

Hat Tip to The Highway

"Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live?" - John Hendryx

From Reformation Theology

"Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live?"

 Question: How can you reject free will. Does not Moses say to the Israelites "Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live?" (Deut 30:19)

Response: Yes it is indeed true that God commands the Israelites to "choose life", But when read in the context of the whole chapter, Moses reveals that the power to obey this command comes from regenerating grace:

"And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live." (Deut 30:6)

In other words, God commands people to obey, but he also supplies all the grace needed to do so. The command to believe does not itself contain the power to do so. God commanding obedience (what we ought to do) does not mean a person can do this apart from grace. God must set them free from innate love of sin and natural hostility to God, if they have any hope of moving toward Him. Left to ourselves we are too proud to let go of our self-complacency and self-righteousness and so we will never rightly understand our woeful, guilty, and lost condition, unless God grants it.
So why did not all Israel believe? Because not all were children of promise. Some God left to their own boasted free will, letting them do what they wanted. In Romans 9: 6-8 it says of Israel:

"For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring."

This means that spiritual circumcision was not given to all physical descendants of Abraham but to the children of promise in their midst. The rest were commanded but refused to obey. Some get mercy but the rest get justice.

In 2 Chronicles 30:6-12 we also are given a glimpse of what takes place behind the scenes of how it is that some people believe the gospel while others do not:

So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, “O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. 7 Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see. 8 Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. 9 For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.” 10 So the couriers went from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them. 11 However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. 12 The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of the Lord.

Why did some believe? According to this passage, it is because God had mercy on them and gave them a heart to follow God's command to repent. Notice that the rest scorned and mocked God's word.
May the Lord grant us all eyes to see this truth.

Free Will - Confusion Abounds

 From the Reformed Apologist -

The nature of man, whether pre-fall, post-fall and unconverted, post fall and converted, or glorified, does not affect the discussion of whether any moral being can act contrary to how he does. No moral being can have libertarian free will (LFW).

LFW is simply the power of contrary choice. Put another way, it is the ability to choose with equal ease between alternatives out of pure contingency and no necessity. Consequently, if one is endowed with LFW, he can choose contrary to what God knows he will choose. (In fact, if God has LFW, then he too can choose contrary to what he knows he will choose!) My position on the matter is straightforward. LFW is a philosophical surd. If it is true that one can choose something different than he will choose, then the future God believes will come to pass might not come to pass; and even if the future does come to pass as God believes, he will not have been thoroughly justified in his belief. He would have just been lucky, or at best very insightful.

A brief word about the relationship between the truth of a future choice, God’s knowledge and the grounding of that truth is in order. God’s knowledge of a future choice does not ensure its fruition. Rather, it presupposes the deterministic nature of its fruition. Knowledge is receptive not causative. Accordingly, that a choice cannot be contrary to what it ends up being is not a matter of God’s foreknowledge but rather it is a matter that it is true that the choice will come to pass. God knows it because it is true, for God knows all truth. The grounding of that truth is of course God’s determination. In sum, God determines that it will be true that X chooses Y in circumstance Z, therefore, God knows it as true.

Confusion abounds, even in Reformed circles:

John Frame once noted:

“I don't know how many times I have asked candidates for licensure and ordination whether we are free from God's decree, and they have replied ‘No, because we are fallen.’ That is to confuse libertarianism (freedom from God's decree, ability to act without cause) with freedom from sin. In the former case, the fall is entirely irrelevant. Neither before nor after the fall did Adam have freedom in the libertarian sense. But freedom from sin is something different. Adam had that before the fall, but lost it as a result of the fall.”

I resonated with John’s observation the very first time I read his lament. This is a very serious matter. These men to whom John refers may have very well been ordained and licensed in Reformed denominations (or have gone on to teach other men at seminary; or if they've really arrived, have their own Blog!) - yet without any appreciation for the implications of their religious philosophy as it pertains to free will. So many Reformed people (including Reformed ministers as John rightly observes) are willing to assert that Adam prior to the fall.......

Read rest of post HERE

The Prayer of The Arminian (Concerning His Free Will) by Charles Spurgeon

…Any one who believes that man’s will is entirely free, and that he can be saved by it, does not believe the fall…

But I tell you what will be the best proof of that; it is the great fact that you never did meet a Christian in your life who ever said he came to Christ without Christ coming to him. You have heard a great many Arminian sermons, I dare say; but you never heard an Arminian prayer – for the saints in prayer appear as one in word, and deed and mind. An Arminian on his knees would pray desperately like a Calvinist. He cannot pray about free-will: there is no room for it.

Fancy him praying,

“Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists Lord, I was born with a glorious free-will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself; I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves. Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but I do. There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as I am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not-that is the difference between me and them.”

That is a prayer for the devil, for nobody else would offer such a prayer as that. Ah! when they are preaching and talking very slowly, there may be wrong doctrine; but when they come to pray, the true thing slips out; they cannot help it. If a man talks very slowly, he may speak in a fine manner; but when he comes to talk fast, the old brogue of his country, where he was born, slips out. I ask you again, did you ever meet a Christian man who said, “I came to Christ without the power of the Spirit?” If you ever did meet such a man, you need have no hesitation in saying, “My dear sir, I quite believe it-and I believe you went away again without the power of the Spirit, and that you know nothing about the matter, and are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.” Do I hear one Christian man saying, “I sought Jesus before he sought me; I went to the Spirit, and the Spirit did not come to me”?

No, beloved; we are obliged, each one of us, to put our hands to our hearts and say-

“Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes to o’erflow;
‘Twas grace that kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.”

From Spurgeon’s Sermon, Free Will – A Slave

Courtesy of Monergism

Calvinism & Evangelism

From Fundamentally Reformed

Perhaps you are familiar with this parable concerning the difficulties of affirming both man’s free will and God’s all-encompassing sovereignty.

A sign above the door to Heaven boldly proclaims “Whosoever will may come!” However, once through Heaven’s gates, an astute observer will notice that the flip side of the sign says, “Only those predestined before the foundation of the world may enter.”

There is more than a little truth to this parable. The first sign deals with salvation from man’s perspective. To the awakened sinner, the first sign gives hope that if he will but look, he will live. Calvinism pulls the curtain back on the awakened sinner’s soul and sees God’s Spirit at work in regenerating the sinner, and granting him repentance and faith, due to the second sign.

As I see it, Calvinism deals mostly with what goes on behind the scenes, so to speak, in respect to salvation. But let me stress that Calvinism is not prying into secret areas of God’s will. No, Calvinism responds to numerous Scripture texts. While they don’t claim to understand everything, Calvinists are bound to believe the five points due to their regard for Scripture. This is not something they enjoy “making up from thin air” so to speak.

A proper understanding of man’s part and God’s part in salvation will do much to help us sort through the sticky issues surrounding Calvinism and evangelism. Historically, some Calvinists (hyper Calvinists, actually) have claimed that we have no responsibility to evangelize since God will irresistibly draw His elect with or without our help. Furthermore, they have claimed that we cannot confidently tell anyone necessarily that if they will but believe and come, that they will be saved. Such hyper Calvinists, then, denied the first sign.

So it is due to extremists from   (Read rest of post here)