Since, therefore, we have lost the meaning and the real reference of this glorious term, or, rather, have never grasped them (as was claimed by the Pelagians, who themselves mistook the phrase) why do we cling so tenaciously to an empty word, and endanger and delude faithful people in consequence? There is no more wisdom in so doing than there is in the modern foible of kings and potentates, who retain, or lay claim to, empty titles of kingdoms and countries, and flaunt them, while all the time they are really paupers, and anything but the possessors of those kingdoms and countries. We can tolerate their antics, for they fool nobody, but just feed themselves up—unprofitably enough—on their own vainglory. But this false idea of ‘free-will’ is a real threat to salvation, and a delusion fraught with the most perilous consequences. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will
The concept and idea of ‘free-will’ has been lost and according to Luther was lost even in his day. Luther saw it as an empty word, that is, without any real meaning in one sense. But in using this term the false ideas that it conveys deludes even faithful people. Why should people continue to use the term since it deludes even faithful people? If it deludes the faithful it utterly deceives those who are not. Why would we want to deceive those we are proclaiming the Gospel to? While it may be the case that the term ‘free-will’ could be used if it is extensively explained both as to what it is and what it is not, it would be much simpler and more accurate not to use the term at all.
So many today want to say things like free-will and God’s sovereignty as if both things can be true. In fact, the sovereignty of God may describe His free-will, yet man cannot truly be free in the way that people naturally think of when they hear the term since God is sovereign. The whole concept of ‘free-will’ is from a humanistic idea of a people that are centered upon humanity. That is patently false and is really a form of idolatry. Human beings are created by God and for God. They can only find their true meaning and the limits of the so-called will according to who He is. There is no such thing as free-will in the universe when human beings are either slaves of the devil and sin or slaves of Christ. Those who are slaves of the devil are actually slaves of self rather than having a freedom of self. The self is in slavery to the devil and self. The devil works through the human self in order to carry out his will, while Christ lives in His people and works in them to do according to the will of God. In other words, the self is never free from the bondage of sin and the devil until it is translated into the kingdom of Christ. When it is in the kingdom of Christ, it is then a slave of righteousness. Whether the soul is the slave of the devil or of God the soul has no power to do good apart from Christ and that which comes from Christ. The will is never free, then, to do good. Christ alone is free to do good and to do it through His people.
Luther spoke of those who were in fact paupers and yet would lay claim to kingdoms and countries. He thought of those as rather harmless in one sense and yet filled with vainglory. In other words, there were people who were beggars who owned nothing and yet would try to pass themselves off as those who owned countries and kingdoms. That is much like human beings who claim to have “free-will’ in our day. God alone has ‘free-will’ in any meaningful sense of the word and yet human beings think of it as obvious that they have it. Yet it is far less for a pauper to lay claim to a kingdom and much riches than it is for a human being to lay claim to ‘free-will” which God alone has in any meaningful way. Indeed paupers filled themselves with pride in their claim to have kingdoms, but so do human beings who fill themselves with pride in their claim to have ‘free-will.’ It is nothing more than an attempt to ascend to the throne of God when it is seen for what it really is. It is man being like God.
But to go on, the idea of human beings having ‘free-will’ is a real threat to salvation. It is not that people have ‘free-will’ to choose to be saved and so to deny this ‘free-will’ is dangerous to evangelism, but to assert it is what is the real threat to salvation. It is a threat because it is “a delusion fraught with the most perilous consequences.” A person who thinks that s/he can repent and believe as s/he pleases is a person who thinks that s/he can do what God alone can do as s/he pleases. That person will trust in self rather than in God to save. That person will put off seeking God to be born again trusting in self to be able to do it when it wants to. Oh how Pelagianism and its forms (including Arminianism) are so destructive to the true Gospel. Luther, who in a sense re-discovered justification by faith alone thought of the teaching of ‘free-will’ as a threat to salvation. Yet today those who call themselves Reformed have no problem of thinking of ‘free-will’ as no real threat to truth and the Gospel. We have descended into spiritual darkness once again that at least rivals the time of Luther and the Reformation. However, in our day this teaching of ‘free-will’ is widespread and has brought about mass delusion. Perhaps we are more deceived.
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