The “gospel” of Pelagianism leaves a person still in the bondage of self-love and independency. The pride of the natural man is like the child that always wants to do it ‘by myself.” The proud heart blinds a person to the proud heart and the real inability of self to do one good thing apart from Christ. If it every occurs to the Pelagian that s/he is to love God with all of the soul and of something what that means, the proud heart will quickly shut that out and remind itself that (a) Moral character can be predicated only of volitions and (b), ability is always the measure of responsibility. This is one way the proud and sinful heart blinds itself to what must happen in salvation. The heart must repent of its love of self as its chief love and motive in what it does to love God as its chief love and motive in all it does. The Great Command to love God with the whole soul is far beyond the natural human soul when it is seen for what it really commands. It is not just a command to do external things, but it is a command to the depths of the soul to love God with all of its being at all times. The soul that loves self will respond with enmity because it cannot do that and it cannot turn from self-love apart from the glory of grace changing it. But it can produce an external moral reformation and convince itself that the external acts are the love of God.
The “gospel” of Pelagianism then leaves the human soul in bondage to self-love and pride because it leaves it in the power of self rather than the power of Christ and the Spirit. It leaves the human soul to its choices when the true Gospel takes the human soul and leaves it in the power of the life of God in the soul. Pelagianism will leave the human soul in the power of its own ability since it says that ability is the measure of responsibility. That means, they would say, that God would not require what is beyond human ability. Oh what a weak and inept (not to mention filthy) message of a so-called gospel that is. How utterly hideous it is to leave men and women in the bondage of their own ability whether that is what we are actually saying or not. We must preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His ability to sinners by grace alone. Sinners need to be delivered from their own ability to they may look to the ability of God to save them by the ability of Christ and the Spirit. How utterly impoverished is the Pelagian so-called “gospel” that does not point poor sinners away from their own wills to the omnipotent will of God. How desperately wicked it is to leave people to their own choices and so-called “ability” and not point people to the power of the Spirit of Christ to give them a new heart. The “gospel” of Pelagianism is no true gospel at all.
We would charge a medical doctor in criminal court if a patient came to him or her in need of heart surgery or even a new heart and s/he just told the patient to will themselves to health. The Great Physician alone can deal with sinners who need new hearts rather than new choices. Yet those who claim to speak for Him today are simply telling people that they are responsible to give themselves new hearts. They tell sinners that they have the ability because they are responsible before God. They tell sinners that all they need to do is to repent and believe which comes down to a choice that the sinner is supposed to make. Even if we don’t tell sinners that, if we don’t tell them of their need for a new heart and who alone has the ability to give them new hearts, we have effectively told them nothing more than a Pelagian would do. God commands all sinners to repent, but that does not mean that sinners have the power to repent. When Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born from above (again) to enter the kingdom, He did not leave it at that or Nicodemus would have reasoned that he must have the power to do it. Instead Jesus told Nicodemus this: “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
In John 15 Jesus taught on the vine and the branch. The branch does not have a free-will to produce fruit, but instead all true fruit comes from the vine and then through the branch. Jesus said that apart from Him we can do nothing (v. 5). In other words, the only fruit that can be borne through the branch must come from the vine. No soul has the free-will to produce spiritual fruit because spiritual fruit has its source in the spiritual realm and will only come from its true origin. But even more, a branch that bears spiritual fruit must be one that was grafted in by another (see Romans 11). God must graft a branch into the tree so that it may be nourished of the root, which shows that the free-will cannot do this. The will cannot be free to do what only God can do. When the will tries to be free and mimic what God alone can do, that will is then being like Adam and Eve who believed the promise of the devil to be like God. The idol of Pelagianism, therefore, is to bow at the feet of its own will and pretend that it can do what God alone can do. The ability of free-will is not just a speculative doctrine or metaphysical nicety, but instead it is that by which men go to war with God over to see if they will worship self or God. Pelagianism, even when it is trying to cover itself by wearing the dress of Arminianism or Calvinism, is a wicked teaching that is enmity against God.
God Loves... Himself 
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