Perhaps the most compelling reason that we should believe in the enslaved will is the very nature of God and of His grace. Human beings tend to look at God as centered and focused on human beings, but He is not. The greatest command of human beings is to love God with all of their being and no one is to come between their hearts and God. For a human being to love human beings (either self or other humans) rather than God is simply idolatry. We can know for sure that God loves Himself more than humans because He will not give His glory to another (Isa 42:8). He will not forgive sin on the basis of anyone but Christ Himself and Christ is the Beloved Son. As a holy God He must love that alone which is holy and perfect, and He Himself alone is holy and perfect.
Nothing can please God but Himself and so a human being cannot please God apart from having God Himself work that in the human soul. This is so vital. In John 15:5 Jesus told us this: “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” It is not apart from Jesus that we love Him, but only by His work in us. The fruit of the Spirit is love (Gal 5), so love is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. But fallen human beings want to share in this work. It is hard for the proud heart to give up all hope in self. But that is exactly what faith in Christ alone demands. That is what Luther preached and that is the heart of the Gospel that changed the world during the Reformation.
In the past two posts on this topic the following quote of Luther was given. It is an amazing quote that is hard for people to wrap around in the modern day. But there are reasons for it. Here is the quote again:
Moreover, I give you hearty praise and commendation on this further account—that you alone, in contrast with all others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue. You have not wearied me with these extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and such like—trifles, rather than issues—in respect of which almost all to date have sought my blood (though without success); you, and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot.
In the words of Packer and Johnson, “the whole gospel of the grace of God, he held, was bound up with it, and stood or fell according to the way one decided it. In The Bondage of the Will, therefore, Luther believes himself to be fighting for the truth of God, the only hope of man.” This tells us why Luther was so vigorous and almost (if not more) bombastic in the defense of the bondage of the will of man. This tells us why he thought that what he was doing was defending that which the hinge turned on and was the vital spot. Luther thought that the whole gospel of the grace of God stood or fell on this issue. This is an issue that is that vital. If it was that vital then, it is that vital now. If the whole gospel of the grace of God was bound with it then, it is bound with it now. Luther fought for this issue hard and seriously because it was at the very heart of the Gospel. Believers now must fight hard and seriously for this issue because it is still at the very heart of the Gospel. After all, it is the same Gospel now as it was then and it is the eternal Gospel.
One again in the introduction, Packer and Johnson say that “the doctrine of the bondage of the will in particular was the corner-stone of the gospel and the very foundation of the faith.” Erasmus, on the other hand, thought “peace in the Church was of more value than any doctrine.” We are at the same point again today. There are no Luther’s around, but there are a lot of those like Erasmus. But this is the work of the evil one. He wants men to have a quiet religion and not cause a lot of trouble over these troublesome issues. As long as men have a general belief about Jesus and are moral, the devil has them in his unrighteous arms. He does not care if men go around crying peace, peace when there is no real peace. False prophets have cried that peace since the dawn of history and they are exceedingly numerous today as well. But the devil will really fight when men begin to preach and teach about the Gospel of grace alone. If they are going to do that, they are compelled to deal with the bondage of the will. That idol of what men call “free-will” constantly wants to do something by the strength of self rather than the strength of grace. That idol is the ‘free-will’ that men think determines their eternal destiny rather than grace.
Packer and Johnson gives us another statement that should jolt our hardened and peace-loving hearts awake: “The denial of free-will was to Luther the foundation of the Biblical doctrine of grace, and a hearty endorsement of that denial was the first step for anyone who would understand the gospel and come to faith in God.” The ramifications of that statement are enormous. If it is correct to say that about Luther, and it is, then the next question is to ask if it is biblical. Do we really want to know? If it is true, are we really ready to pray the price of what that means? Are we ready to deal with the ramifications of a statement like that? If that statement is true, then the number of believers on the planet (in our understandings) has just shrunk dramatically. To continue on with the quote from above: “The man who has not yet practically and experimentally learned the bondage of his will in sin has not yet comprehended any part of the gospel; for this is ‘the hinge on which all turns,’ the ground on which the gospel rests.” What Luther believed about this was the same thing all the Reformers believed about this. That was the Gospel they preached. God used that Gospel. Does He use the modern gospel? Maybe we simply don’t want to hear these things because they (the books of the older writers) have been published again and again for years. At some point, however, each person needs to face this issue once again. There is no Gospel without it.
God Loves... Himself 
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