God Loves… Himself

In setting out the ability and inability of man we see how pernicious the true nature of inability is. The enmity man has with God cannot just be taken away by a mere choice, prayer and/or decision. Man must be born from above in order to truly believe. This enmity is not taken away by a choice, but by a new heart. This sets out the Gospel by grace alone. Man does nothing in terms of work for salvation and does nothing but what grace enables him to do. We must never let these things slide away or we will have allowed the Gospel to slide. Man’s inability is from his enmity with God and even a hatred of God. Man will always fight with God until God changes man’s heart. Until the heart is changed, man will always be at enmity with God and will not love God. Until all the enmity has been removed there will be no faith because there cannot be love.

Here the issues are clear. Does the will move by grace and all of grace or does it move by some power of man? Can we say we are saved by grace alone if in fact there is an unaided part of the will that works in salvation? Even if there is an aspect of the will that is aided to a degree but not completely, is that grace alone? If there is an unaided part of the will that acts in salvation, then there is something in man that is not fallen and is able to love God apart from grace alone. Romans 4:5 speaks to this with utter clarity: “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.” We must stop working in order to be one that does not work. Faith is opposed to any work at all in terms of the Gospel. It is after a person is converted that faith works but at that point it works by love (Galatians 5:6). Any unaided part of the fallen will of man will be a part of the will that is at enmity with God. That would require a person to have some hate for God with part of the will and then love God with the other parts of the will.

The will is not moved by grace to any degree other than it is moved by love. We must note this carefully. God always works in His people love for Himself as that is what is best for His glory and their good. It is also because the only thing acceptable to God is love for Him in line with the Greatest Commandment. To believe that God savingly loves a person is not possible unless His love is in the person and giving that person a love for Him. It is not that we have to believe that God loves us and so believe in the Gospel and are saved, but we have to know that His love is in us and giving us a love for Him. It is not that we must force ourselves to believe that God loves us, but as I John 16-17 teaches: “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” In this text we see that we have come to know the love of God because of God who is love abiding in His people. In this case we believe because that love is in us. In this case as in all cases the love of God in a person is because of grace.

In the moving of the will or the soul to Christ, is this part of the sovereignty of God or of a free-will with ability that is not under the sovereignty of God? In this question we can see the battle in its real nature. Is man free from the sovereignty and dominion of God because of the ability of free-will or not? Is there some part of man that is powered by self and is not under the sovereignty of God? This is at the heart of the real issue. How free is man or is he in complete bondage to his sin and completely at the mercy of God to show mercy or not to show mercy? Here man wants to retain just enough power in order to decide for himself. But notice, in saying that man decides for himself man is also saying that God does not and perhaps cannot decide. If the will is indeed free, then it is free from any sort of help from God at all and of any hindrance from Satan too. There can be no such thing as free-will in salvation. The devil does not leave the will alone from any influence as he is always working to deceive. If God does not step in and move the will by grace, there will never be a soul that flees to Christ for salvation. There is no such thing as a human being that is free at any point from outside influence. The natural man is under bondage to sin and is under the complete dominion of the evil one. The will is not free from the evil one at any point until God frees it and makes it His slave.

The Gospel comes to people who are in bondage to the evil one. Part of that bondage is an illusion of freedom. As long as man is under the illusion of freedom, he will not see his bondage and be broken of all hope in himself. As long as man has hope in himself he will not fully hope in Christ alone. It is utterly vital that human beings see their true nature and their true state before the true God. As long as they don’t see this, they are in bondage to the evil one and are under some illusion. It is only Christ that will set sinners free and that is by grace alone.

This entry was posted on September 29, 2007 at 7:44 am and is filed under Miscellaneous, Reformed Evangelism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.