So it is not irreligious, idle, or superfluous, but in the highest degree wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know whether of not his will has anything to do in matters pertaining to salvation. Indeed, let me tell you, this is the hinge on which our discussion turns, the crucial issue between us; our aim is, simply, to investigate what ability ‘free-will’ has, in what respect it is the subject of Divine action and how it stands related to the grace of God. If we know nothing of these things, we shall know nothing whatsoever of Christianity, and shall be in worse case than any people on earth…That God’s mercy works everything, and our will works nothing, but is rather the object of Divine working, else all will not be ascribed to God. (The Bondage of the Will, Luther’s Reply to Erasmus)
As we are working through some of the thoughts of Luther’s magisterial The Bondage of the Will we can see how it collides with a lot of modern thinking on justification and the way of salvation. That should not surprise us at all. The Reformation had a lot of religious tradition to break away from and much of that was the use of words and concepts that surrounded and blinded people to the truth. The same thing is true today. People use the same words as the pioneer Reformers did and yet those are being used to blind people to what the Reformers really taught. We must hasten to add that as the Reformers looked back to Augustine so we look back to the Reformers. They are used to help us look at what Scripture actually teaches. In Luther’s book he uses Scripture after Scripture to get at his points. Many of those will be looked at later on, but for the moment we are setting out some of the vital issues. Sometimes it is helpful to set out helpful issues that have arisen in history over how to look at what Scripture says on certain teachings. The battle for the Gospel was not over at the Reformation, but it has to be fought for several times each generation. The Gospel is virtually lost in America if the Gospel spoken of is what the pioneer Reformers actually taught and preached during the Reformation. That is a shocking statement, but it should not surprise anyone when a nation is spiraling downward at a rapid pace to think that the gospel (majority) that has been taught in it for decades and even close to two centuries has been removed from what the Reformation taught.
The difference between a faith that a so-called “free-will” comes up with versus the faith that God gives and then uses to save sinners is quite different. We are no friends to sinners if we do not teach them to look to God for faith rather than themselves. We are no friends to sinners if we do not teach them to look to grace rather than what their own wills can do. We are no friends to God if we teach people a way of salvation that is apart from His work of grace alone. We are no friends of God if we teach that his instrument of salvation (faith) is actually what human beings should use to apply grace to themselves. It is a different gospel. This point is at the heart of Luther’s book and the Gospel of the Reformation. It is also at the heart of the biblical Gospel which is what is truly important. The Gospel as preached by the Reformers is only important to the degree it is biblical.
Romans 8 is crystal clear that there is nothing a fleshly person can do to please God: “Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Can language be any clearer” In light of Romans 8:7-8 and then the Gospel and the enslaved will, can a fleshly will that is free (free from the grace of God) make a choice that God responds by saving it? Isn’t that the claim of the Pelagian which says that we can will good that comes from ourselves and is not from the internal work of God? This is a tough issues, but we cannot get away from Pelagian teaching of the will no matter what we do as long as we try to hang on to the un-biblical teaching of free-will.
We could even go a step down the road and say that there are only two views of the Gospel. There is the view of the enslaved will as taught by Scripture and the Reformers that must have the soul and the will saved by a grace procured and a grace applied by grace. The other view, regardless of what people call it, is simply a version of Pelagianism which teaches that the will is free and can make choices that are pleasing to God in some way. This is what Arminianism teaches which is why some refer to Arminianism as semi-Pelagianism. But even more frightening, many professing Reformed people seem to hold that view or at least are quite willing to hold hands as if there is no real difference with those who do hold that view. Machen wrote his book in the 1920’s or 30’s on Christianity and Liberalism to show that liberalism was not Christianity. Perhaps a book needs to be written today on other things that are not Christian. If Luther was right about the importance of this teaching on the will, that should be at the top of the list. The teaching of Scripture and Luther on the enslaved will and the Gospel of grace alone hits hard. Let us not water it down and make the gate wider than Christ said it was and is.
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