For although the first man was not impotent, inasmuch grace assisted him, yet God by this commandment shows him clearly enough how impotent he would be without grace. And if he, who had the Spirit, could not with his new will will a good newly proposed (that is, obedience), because the Spirit did not add that to him, what can we, without the Spirit, do about the good that we have lost? By this dreadful example of that first man, it was shown us, with a view to breaking down our pride, what our ‘free-will’ can do if it is left to itself, and is not continually moved and increased more and more by the Spirit of God…that this passage, and others like it (‘if though art willing’. ‘if thou do’) declare, not man’s ability, but his duty. Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will
Here is another real issue. Was the first man (Adam) really left to his own devices and in his own strength to do what God had commanded him? When God blew into the nostrils of Adam did He sustain him by the Spirit or simply leave him alone? We know from the New Testament (I John 4:7-8) that God is the only origin and source of love and that love is needed for any true obedience. Yet love is the fruit of the Spirit. So it is safe to think of Adam as having the Spirit, though certainly not in the same way as those who come after Christ purchased the Spirit for His people, and needing the Spirit to commune with God and walk in true obedience. But we also see what happened to Adam when he followed his own ways and heart. He fell. Adam was free in his obedience as long as he was upheld by the Spirit. But once he went his own way, he was no longer free in the things of God. It takes the Holy Spirit working in human beings by grace to give them the freedom of obedience. No human being has ever been free to do good apart from the grace of God.
When we look at Adam we should loose all hope and confidence in self. Adam fell into sin and that without being born a sinner. Involved in his sin, if we can look at Satan’s promise to Eve, was that he could be god to himself which was to choose good and evil for himself. That was part of what the devil promised Eve and part and parcel of that is what is promised by those who hold to a free-will. The teaching of free-will is that the soul can choose good or evil for itself. Genesis 3:5 gives us this awful picture: “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” This is the promise of free-will as well. The promise to know in Genesis 3:5 is not just to know about, but an experiential knowing and the ability that goes along with it.
Luther teaches us that the command to Adam and his failure to obey does not teach us ‘free-will’ but instead should teach us how much we need the Spirit in order to obey and to keep from falling. So again, if Adam who was not born into sin did sin when he stepped out on his own what does that teach us about his so-called ‘free-will’ and then of our own? It teaches us that we will slide freely into sin and yet are not free to be holy apart from grace. “Apart from Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).
From Adam, then, we get a clear picture of a vitally important truth. The will is not free to do good because it has no power to do good apart from grace. The commands of God, then, do not declare to us anything about our ability to keep them but simply set out to us our duty. In one sense, however, the commands of God rightly understood do declare to us something about our ability in the sense they show us our utter inability to obey by the power of our own wills. The commands of God should teach us our utter need of grace to be saved from our breaking the law, but also our utter need of grace to give us strength to keep the law.
Luther’s points here are clear and to the point. The will is not free to do good apart from grace. The will that is free from grace operates in a free (in a sense) bondage in the realm of evil. The will that is apart from grace has no ability to do good and all it does is evil. It has no power to do anything else. The will apart from grace will always do evil and nothing but evil even when it is doing outwardly good things and when it is religious. The will apart from grace (perhaps) is doing its greatest evil when it is the most religious. In that it is more like God than in anything else. May God by His grace deliver us from our efforts to be like Him by doing good in our own strength and make us truly holy which can only come from Him.
God Loves... Himself 
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