The issues at hand require some very careful walking. There is no doubt that this is a hard issue and yet it is a vital issue. I would simply ask that people read this very carefully and move slowly in this section. A quote from William Cunningham is very instructive:
One of the leading forms which, in the present day, aversion to divine truth exhibits is a dislike to precise and definite statements upon the great subjects brought before us in the sacred Scriptures. This dislike to precision and definiteness in doctrinal statements, sometimes assumes the form of reverence for the Bible,–as if it arose from an absolute deference to the authority of the divine word, and an unwillingness to mix up the reasonings and deductions of men with the direct declarations of God. We believe that it arises,– much more frequently and to a much greater extent,– from a dislike to the controlling influence of Scripture-from a desire to escape, as far as possible without denying its authority, from the trammels of its regulating power as an infallible rule of faith and duty (The Reformers and The Theology of the Reformation, 525)
There must be some precision in statements in order to set out the truth of a doctrine and to set out what it is not. The subject of today’s BLOG is the Reformed view of responsibility. There is no way to set out what every aspect of every person has believed about this, and this is not to pretend that all people that have claimed to be Reformed have believed the same thing. Nevertheless, what is going to be attempted is a statement that many Reformed people in history have held. Readers are to be warned that some of what is going to be said might sound like Arminianism, but in fact it is not. Again, please read the whole BLOG and the ones to come very carefully before passing an overall judgment.
While it does sound like Arminian teaching to some, it is true that without ability of some kind there is no obligation or responsibility of some kind. What we have to do is to distinguish between a certain kind of ability and then a certain kind of inability. Distinguishing in this way sets out what the true nature of the Reformed teaching of inability is. It may sound like fine distinctions to some, but this is vital to understanding the real issue. Let me start this part of the discussion with a quote from B.B. Warfield. “We may point out, therefore, that the doctrine of inability does not affirm that we cannot believe, but only that we cannot believe in our own strength” (Shorter Writings, Vol II, p. 726). This quote helps us from the start to at least get the idea that we must distinguish between certain kinds of ability and the true nature of inability. It is not that man is unable to believe and do certain things because he lacks the ability to do so from anything of his body, but this inability is something spiritual and moral. But we still must assert very strongly that inability stresses that man cannot believe in his own strength.
We can gain some insight from the Law of God which was never given as a way of life. The Law came in to show man his sin (Romans 5:20; 7:7-8; Galatians 3:19). The Law was meant to show man his death in sin and lead him to Christ and the way of life. Man has never had the ability to keep the Law in and of himself. The Law is to be proclaimed to all men in order to show them their need for Christ as Savior from sin and of Christ as their life in order to keep the Law. The Law is preached in order that men may see that they cannot keep the Law and so flee to Christ. The doctrine of inability in this case is to show men that they need to be delivered from their ideas of strength and ability and to rest in grace and Christ. The call to men to believe is also of the same nature. We preach to men who cannot believe and yet we tell them that they are commanded to believe. Why do we command people to believe in Christ when we know that they cannot? It is because there is nothing wrong with them in one sense and so they should believe in Christ. But we also preach to them so that they can see that they cannot do it in their own strength and will go to Christ for grace to fulfill their obligation. Men are to believe because he is obligated to believe with what Christ gives him to believe. We are to believe with the strength of Christ.
For the moment we will let this rest here and pick this up in the next BLOG. What we must learn is that the commands of Scripture never teach us what we can do in and of our own strength, but what man must do from the strength and ability of Christ. Human beings do not have the ability to love God from themselves as that must come from God. Only when Christ is our life and living in us do we have any strength to please God.
God Loves... Himself 
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