Pelagian thinking regarding the free-will is simply a statement of human autonomy. The human will was never created to come up with its own love and merit in order to be able to please God. It was created to be an instrument by which the fruit of the Spirit would manifest the glory of God. The Gospel enables the soul to receive all from Christ by grace and not look to self to fulfill any of God’s demands. The Gospel of grace alone stands firm against all forms of Pelagianism. There is nothing that a soul can do to earn merit or please God apart from being emptied of self and then for God to manifest Himself in and through that soul. The soul was and is not meant to do anything good in and of its own power because there is no good it can do apart from Christ. “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The soul that believes in free-will has not learned of its own helplessness apart from Christ and has not learned that it can bear no fruit of the Spirit apart from the Spirit Himself working it in the soul.
The soul that believes in free-will must believe that it can do something apart from God that is good enough to move God to respond to it with salvation. As long as the will looks to itself for anything it is not looking to Christ alone. As long as the will thinks that it is free to make a choice and be saved, it is not looking to Christ and grace alone. This is why Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards were so strong against the teaching of free-will regarding the Gospel. It is not just an innocent difference that has little to do with anything important, it is vital to the Gospel of grace alone that comes to the soul through faith alone.
God has surely promised His grace to the humbled; that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another—God alone. As long as he is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God; but plans out for himself (or at least hopes and longs for) a position, an occasion, a work, which will bring him final salvation. But he who is out of doubt that his destiny depends entirely on the will of God despairs entirely of himself, chooses nothing for himself, but waits for God to work in him; and such a man is very near to grace for his salvation.
In the quote above Luther lays down the gauntlet to his day and then our own. We must not think that we can avoid what Luther says and go on our merry way and still think of ourselves as Reformed or as children of the Reformation. The Gospel that thundered forth from the Reformers was a Gospel that destroyed a person’s hope in self. It was a Gospel that required that the sinner be humbled and broken from all hope in self so that the sinner could truly rest in Christ alone. As long as the sinner is not broken from all hope in self and is thoroughly humbled, that sinner is enslaved to his or her own so called ‘free-will.” Jesus called those who were weary and heavy-laden to Himself (Mat 11:28). He said that He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Mat 9:13; Mar 2:17; Luke 5:32). The soul that is full of self and pride will never rest in the humble Savior until the self and pride has been removed from that soul. As long as the soul is full of self and pride that soul is enslaved to the will of itself in self and pride. An enslaved soul must be delivered from its slavery, and that is true even when it is in slavery to its own self and pride. Trusting in a free-will is really trusting in an enslaved will.
A soul that looks to its own free-will as a way of deliverance is not looking to Christ alone for deliverance. There can be no trusting in the will of God in Christ and the free-will at the same time. As Luther points out, God has promised grace to the humbled. But He has also promised His opposition to the proud. For a proud person to be saved either the pride of that person must be crushed or God must change His mind. The proud soul will never trust in anything completely but will always trust in self to some degree. But the Gospel is of Christ alone and grace alone. The promises of the Gospel are always based on grace and nothing in the sinner. How can the sinner receive and rest in the promises of the Gospel when the sinner is still resting in what is thought to be his or her own free-will? Resting in what we think of as free-will is resting in something other than free grace.
The soul that rests in his or her own will in any way is a soul that is not resting in the will of God. One cannot have it both ways. The soul that still looks to free-will and holds on to it is a soul that is still hoping in self to make some contribution to salvation. That is a soul that has not been thoroughly humbled and is a soul that still rests in its own plan for salvation rather than acquiescing to the plan of God in Christ which is by grace alone. A soul that still looks to self for anything at all is still a soul that is enslaved to its own self and pride. It is not really free at all.
God Loves... Himself 
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