Freedom of the Will

Lesson Five

If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  

John 8:36

Speaking to a group of spiritually regenerated, spirit filled Christians, the apostle Paul reminds them (and us) in Galatians 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Reading further we find that Paul taught, You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. Galatians 5:13

We, having been born anew like those Galatian believers, now have the ability to choose right from wrong; good rather than evil; Christ rather than Satan. Our flesh, that is sinful nature, still inclines our wills to do wrong but the Holy Spirit inclines our will toward obedience to the commands of God. His power to direct our thoughts and actions is greater than that of Satan; and progressively so if we are in fact growing spiritually in Christ. We learn that undeniable truth if we study God’s Word and put it into practice.  John 8:31-32 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Fallen humans always act in such a way that seems beneficial in their own eyes at a particular point in time. Fallen humans act according to their inclinations, which are defined as the “whole of one’s imagination, purposes and desires.” It is clear from a biblical perspective that a person’s freedom of the will is contingent upon his or her ability. I may choose to fly, but lacking aeronautically sound wings I fall short of the ability to do so. I may choose to shoot a sub-par round of golf but lacking the ability I fail. Before being born again I had no inclination toward repentance or seeking God’s direction in my life. Now I have both the inclination and the ability to follow God’s commands.

The elect (those chosen by God) are enabled by God to receive willingly, the offer of His Son as a payment for their sin and are so inclined (by the regenerating action of God) to seek and do His perfect will as revealed in Scripture. In John 1:12-13 we are taught, Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. We are not genetic children of God (natural descent), no human (friend, relative or even we ourselves) decided that we were to become part of God’s family, and it was not our earthly father who willed that for us, but it was our Triune God and He alone who bore us into His eternal family.

Freedom of the Will

Lesson Four

if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  

John 8:36

The last Scripture quoted in the previous blog reads as follows: “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”  John 6:65  As previously explained, enabling (Didomi in Greek) amounts to three absolutely necessary things brought about by the combined work of the three persons of The Trinity: (1) Regeneration by the Father, (2) An in filling of the Holy Spirit, (3) A Freeing of our wills by Jesus so that we can react to events according to the ability with which Adam was endowed initially, and following his regeneration (Genesis 3:21),; that is to choose right from wrong.

[A] Regeneration: Ephesians 2:4-5 reads: But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Colossians 2:13 restates that undeniable truth: When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. As far as spiritual decisions are concerned, prior to our new birth, we were no more able to exercise them than a corpse in a coffin is able to do push-ups.

[B] In Filling of the Holy Spirit:  In I Corinthians 2:14-15 the apostle Paul teaches:  The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.  The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments.  “HUMAN JUDGEMENTS” relate to things which are RIGHT or WRONG; GOOD or EVIl…..PLUS spiritually significant matters NOT merely human judgments. 

[C] Freeing of the will:  The will is in bondage until set free by Christ: John 8:34, 36 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin…..So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  (Greek for free-eleutheroos-means to be liberated as a result of redemption)  (Greek for slave-doulos- refers to one who is in a permanent relationship of servitude to another). Thus, having been born again, filled by the Holy Spirit and freed from the bondage to sin we respond to the irresistible urge to receive Christ (John 1:12) as our Lord and Savior.

Freedom of the Will

Lesson Three

if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  

John 8:36

Our only hope for the ability to make the right choices in the matter of free will comes when we are born anew. It is then that God restores the freedom to choose right from wrong that existed prior to the fall of mankind, initiated by Adam. The TRUTH makes us free. This happened to one very important, famous person immediately prior to the worldwide flood that destroyed all human life on planet Earth except for eight people. As we read in Genesis 6:8: But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. (The word favor there means saving grace)  God changed the perpetual, evil inclinations of Noah’s heart and restored him to the pre-fall human state of mind: the ability to choose good vs. evil. That happens to every person who is born again. As proof of the change in his nature we read; Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. Genesis 8:20-21. The new birth always creates a desire to worship God Almighty, pray and to study His Holy Word. 

The Flood had changed everything but the unregenerate hearts of the seven other humans and their ultimate progeny. Only upon Noah did God’s grace fall. Only Noah worshiped His Savior. Until one is made spiritually alive one is innately driven by evil inclinations. The death of which God spoke in His warning to Adam (Genesis 2:17) was both physical and spiritual and until we are born again we cannot make correct, spiritually based decisions, such as receiving Christ, repenting of sin, worshiping God in spirit and in truth and putting His Word into practice. Jesus Himself taught this fact. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”  John 6:65

Enable (Didomi-Greek-to supply or furnish necessary things). In this case the necessary things are the new birth and the influence of the Holy Spirit. That is because coming to Jesus is a good thing not permitted by the inclinations of our sinful minds which THE BIBLE TELLS US are only evil all the time. In the next blog those “necessary things” will be explained.

Freedom of the Will

Lesson Two

if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  

John 8:36

The choices one makes are determined by the inclination of one’s mind or heart. In the first lesson we saw that Adam and Eve had been created with freedom of the will and the ability to chose the right from the wrong. In other words, Pre-fall humanity had the freedom to choose for or against God’s will. God had warned Adam, who in turn taught Eve, that disobedience to God’s only law would result in death; God had said, you will certainly die. The result of their disobedience was immediate spiritual death, an inability to do the will of God, and also ultimate physical death. Having been created to live eternally, they would now die within a finite period of time. Thus all of Post-fall humanity would only be inclined to evil in disobedience to God’s will. The Bible clearly teaches that, though some may feel that they do good all the time. From a human point of view, good deeds and things right versus things done in a wrong manner, have differed from age to age. There was a time when abortion was considered evil; now a majority of humanity regards it as a right of choice.  Ever since the fall human inclinations are evil and immutable from the day of our conception unless God intervenes. Genesis 6:5-7: The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.  So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

God lamented this lack of mankind’s spiritual inclination in Deuteronomy 5:29: Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever! In Jeremiah 7:23-24 God complains:  But I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you.  But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. The apostle Paul teaches us that we are spiritually dead from our birth and only inclined toward evil. Ephesians 2:1-2: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

Freedom of the Will

Lesson One

if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  

John 8:36

18^th century cleric Jonathan Edwards, who is said to be one of the greatest theologians and philosophers America has yet produced, defined “The will as simply the mind’s faculty of choosing.” We will choose what we want at any particular point in time, though a fraction of a second latter we may regret the actions that come about as a result of our choice. Whether or not we act upon that choice also depends on our ability to do so. The choices that humans have made throughout history differed before the Fall of Adam, after the Fall and after one has been born anew. That is the context in which we should view either the freedom or the bondage of our wills. Over the next few weeks this blog spot will address the state of the human will under each of those three separate conditions.

Pre-fall: When God created Adam He gave humans a free will; freedom to chose right from wrong; to choose good from evil. This is revealed to us in Genesis 2:15-17: The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Using his free will Adam chose the wrong instead of the right; the evil instead of the good. As a result of his disobedience, Adam, his wife Eve (who also chose to disobey God’s singular command) and all of their off spring became sinners, fell from grace and fellowship with their loving, Creator God and lost their ability to choose things considered divinely good as opposed to that which God considers evil. As proof of their fallen state, when the two heard God moving about in the Garden of Eden they hid from Him; they were even afraid of the One who had been their friend. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.  But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”  He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” Genesis 3:8-10.

Christianity is a One Way Street

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:5-6

King Solomon, the wisest of all humans, once wrote There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. Proverbs 14:12 The way of which he spoke is the wrong path to salvation, a path strewn with good works which have been done for the purpose of attempting to appease God’s wrath for our sin; those works are patently futile. There is a right way and the 1^st century church knew where to find it because they believed what Jesus had told the disciples; that which John recorded in the 14^th chapter of his gospel. In fact, before they were called Christians the faithful were known as people who “belonged to the Way” (Acts 9:2). The apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians’ church reminding them of what they had received and what were to tell non-believers regarding the proper way to salvation: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who was martyred (hung by the Gestapo) for his stand against the evils of Nazism and Hitler’s Third Reich wisely said, “If you board the wrong train it is no use running down the isle in the opposite direction.” Some people sitting in pews each Sunday are simply playing church, trying to strike a balance between the sin which we all possess (Romans 3:23) and some futile good works. Unknowingly they have simply boarded the wrong train; one that will inevitably derail and send them into a Godless eternity.

Only the work of Christ, living the perfect life none of us can attain and then going to the Cross to receive God’s judgment for carrying our sin, can satisfy the Holy God Almighty against whom we have sinned since our birth. When we avail ourselves of hearing the spoken Word of God taught so clearly each Lord’s Day at Old North Church, then God will speak to our hearts and show us the way. 600 years before Christ’s first advent he prophet Isaiah taught this fact; Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Isaiah 30:21

The Carpenter, the Hammer and the Nail

Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain.

Psalm 127:1a

When ever you or I decide to move out on our own to build a ministry (no matter what the size) and it is not within the Lord’s perfect will that we do so, we are bound to fail. We do not build His church and we do not control which ways He desires to meet people or construct earthly ministries. He once told the apostle Peter how He would erect His church and He made it patently clear with these words: And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Matthew 16:18  Jesus was highly familiar with the art of building. He spent the first 30 of His 33 years on earth working with His foster father Joseph as a carpenter. In fact when his ministry did begin, that was the identification by which He was known to His neighbors, who were real skeptics. Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Mark 6: 3

The word “rock” used in Matthew 16:18 has been misinterpreted by some Christians, who think that the church was built upon the apostle Peter; a study of the original language tells us otherwise. The apostle was born with a Hebrew name of Cephus. The name Peter in Greek is petros, which means a piece of rock; a stone; a single stone, in other words a mere pebble. Conversely, the word rock is petra, which means a rock; a cliff; a projecting rock; mother rock; huge mass; solid formation; fixed; immovable; enduring, like the rock of Gibraltar in Spain’s southern coast. The fixed, immovable and enduring rock of which Christ spoke in the passage cited above and upon which the world wide Christian church would be built was Peter’s confession of faith. It is Christ that determines how, by whom, where and when that confession occurs. He is the church’s carpenter/builder.

The Bible teaches us that we are merely the instruments, the hammer, if you will, that He uses in the building process. The apostle Paul explains it this way: In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work. 2 Timothy 2:20-21. The large house is the church and we are the instruments. The so called common uses are our self motivated and humanly driven ministries and those called special are God inspired, which are empowered and directed by the Holy Spirit.

The building would fall apart if it were not for the nails that hold its parts together. In our analogy the “nail” is the revealed word of God, the Holy Scriptures. For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12. Do you get the point? (Excuse the pun). Each truly productive ministry is Christ centered and held together by the infallible, inerrant and inspired Word of God. Apart from knowing the above facts, many ministries are doomed to failure and the work is done in vain