You describe the power of ‘free-will’ as small, and wholly ineffective apart from the grace of God. Agreed? Now then, I ask you; if God’s grace is wanting [lacking], if it is taken away from that small power, what can it do? It is ineffective, you say, and can do nothing good. So it will not do what God or His grace wills. Why? Because we have now taken God’s grace away from it, and what the grace of God does not do is not good. Hence it follows that ‘free-will’ without God’s grace is not free at all, but is the permanent prisoner and bondslave of evil, since it cannot turn itself to good. This being so, I give you full permission to enlarge the power of ‘free-will’ as much as you like; make it angelic, make it divine, if you can!—but when once you add this doleful transcript, that it is ineffective apart from God’s grace, straightaway you rob it of all its power. What is ineffective power but (in plain language) no power? So to say that ‘free-will’ exists and has power, albeit ineffective power, is, in the Sophists’ phrase, a contradiction in terms. It is like saying ‘“free-will” is something which is not free’—as if you said that fire is cold and earth hot. Fire certainly has power to heat; but if hell-fire (even) was cold and chilling instead of burning and scorching, I would not call it ‘fire’, let alone ‘hot’ (unless you meant to refer to an imaginary fire, or a painted one). Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will
The doctrine concerning the freedom of the will cannot be separated from the concept of the power of the will. The will is not free to carry out what it desires if it does not have the power to do so. The natural man hates the teaching on the bondage of the will and anything that does away with his freedom, but Scripture is what sets out the truth of the matter and not the desires of fallen man. If the Bible says that those in the flesh or those whose minds are set on the flesh is death and hostile toward God, then that is the truth of the matter and not what human beings desire to be the case.
Romans 8:6 puts the matter out of reach in many ways for those who assert freedom of the will. “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 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.” The text gives us two options for the soul. That mind that is set on the flesh is a mind that is in spiritual death. The mind that is set on the Spirit is a mind that is set on spiritual things and partakes of the fruit of spiritual things (life and peace). Verse 7 starts off with the word “because” and gives us a reason that verse 6 is true. That reason is that the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God and does not subject itself to God. The last part of verse 7 tells us why the mind does not subject itself to the law of God, “for it is not even able.” The mind set on the flesh is not free to choose as it will, but instead it has no ability to do so.
The heart wants to rise against that and assert its freedom. It does not want to admit that it has no ability to subject itself to the law of God. It reasons that it does not lie, steal, and does not commit adultery. In doing so, it thinks, it loves God. But the soul is to do what it does and not to do what it does not do out of love for God. The simply doing and not doing according to command does not mean that the soul loves God. It may simply mean that it does not want to be punished for doing or not doing against a particular command. The mind set on the flesh is hostile to God and does not love God in what it does. The mind that is hostile to God cannot love God and has no freedom or ability to do so because it has no power to love what it hates. The soul that is set on the flesh cannot please God in any way, shape, form, or fashion in reality.
Until a human being has some grasp of what original sin (his or her own) and the bondage of sin that entails a human being (self) does not understand the Gospel. Salvation is not just from some sin and hell in the future, it is from a heart that is hostile to God and hates God. Salvation is from a sinful nature that cannot please God in any way. A heart that is hostile to God and dead in its sins and trespasses is a heart that is not free to love and obey God. This heart cannot please God in any way and that includes an act of belief or faith. The soul is not saved because it believes, but it is saved when and only when the hostility of it toward God is taken away. Only then is there an ability and power in the soul to please God when it is grace that is working in the soul to do so. Only then is the soul a true image of God. The enslaved will is a necessary teaching as the dark background upon which the glory of sovereign grace is displayed so that human beings may behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
God Loves... Himself 
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