In speaking of the Reformers, in the Introduction to Luther’s The Bondage of the Will, Johnson and Packer said this:
On other points, they had their differences; but in asserting the helplessness of man in sin, and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them, these doctrines were the very life-blood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther’s great work underscores this fact: ‘Whoever puts this book down without having realized that evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain.’
This needs to be emphasized over and over. The doctrines of man’s helplessness in sin and the sovereignty of God were considered to be the very life-blood of the Christian faith. Could it that that evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will? If that is true, then evangelical theology is at an exceedingly low ebb in the modern world. Even where people say they believe it, they don’t believe it as something vital. While people will speak of preaching a gospel, if they leave this out they are not preaching the same Gospel as the Reformers did. The theology and Gospel that the Reformers taught was built on the twin truths of the utter helplessness of man in sin and the sovereignty of grace. There is no pure grace apart from a sovereign grace. Apart from those twin truths the Gospel of grace alone has little if any meaning. A person helpless in sin that does not deserve anything but eternal hell cannot be saved by anything but a sovereign grace (the only kind of true grace).
What we have in modern America is a failure to teach the utter helplessness of man in sin. This means that there is no true background to set out the real nature and glory of grace in salvation from its purchase by Christ to its application by the Spirit. While grace is used in words, the very nerve of grace has been cut when the enslavement of the will is not preached and taught. God saves sinners to the praise of the glory of His grace (Eph 1:6) and He will not share His glory with anyone. The very attempt to share in His glory in salvation is sin because one definition that Scripture gives us of sin is that it is to fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23).
The Gospel is a Gospel of pure and glorious grace apart from any work or any contribution of the human being at all. As an older writer said, the only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin we are saved from. Since the Reformation we have turned faith into a work because anything that comes from the human will apart from the Holy Spirit is a work of the flesh. If we concede that the act of the human will is free then we have to say that it is also free from God. But if the will is free from God, then it is doing something good and acceptable apart from the Christ and the Spirit. The office of faith is to receive grace, for as Romans 4:16 sets out it is by faith in order that it may be in accordance with grace. Yet, if we look at Romans 11:6 we see that if there is one work involved that makes grace to no longer be grace. Grace is at 100 percent or it is not grace at all.
If the will is not enslaved to sin then the will can do one work apart from the work of God in the soul and free from Christ and the Holy Spirit. This destroys the biblical teaching of what true grace is and so it destroys the truth and purity of the Gospel of grace alone. When that happens, evangelical theology has fallen. The doctrine of free-will is not compatible with the Gospel of grace alone. It is either free grace or free-will and not a combination of the two. Not only does the twain not meet, but they cannot meet because they are complete opposites. A will that is free is a will that is free from the internal working of grace and so that will cannot be saved by grace alone. The will cannot operate freely apart from God and His grace and yet work by grace alone. The will cannot do its work by a choice of the flesh and yet work by the fruit of the Spirit at the same time. A work of the will which is free from the fruit of the Spirit by grace is a will that functions and operates by the flesh.
Surely it is easy to see that the doctrine of the enslaved will is essential to evangelical theology. The Gospel of grace alone can be proclaimed to an enslaved will, but grace alone cannot be proclaimed in truth to a “free-will.” The “gospel” that is proclaimed to a free-will depends on the choice of that will that is apart from a pure and undiluted grace. Romans 9 is quite unpopular today, yet verse 16 and other verses set out the Gospel of grace with great clarity. “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.” There it is. It does not depend on the man who wills, but instead it depends on God who has mercy. Verse 18 goes on to say this: “So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.” That verse is necessary to understand grace. For salvation to be by grace alone, it must depend on the will of God alone. Free-will cannot say that salvation depends on the will of God alone, but instead it depends on man. That is not pure grace and so it is not the Gospel of grace alone.
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