Here is the solution of the question with the Diatribe repeats so often all though the book: ‘if we can do nothing, what is the purpose of all the laws, precepts, threats, and promises?’ Paul here gives the answer; ‘by the law is the knowledge of sin.’ His answer to the question is far different from the ideas of man, or of ‘free-will.’ He does not say that ‘free-will’ is proved by the law, nor that it co-operates unto righteousness; for by the law comes, not righteousness, but knowledge of sin. This is the fruit, the work, the office of the law; it is a light to the ignorant and blind, but one that displays disease, sin, evil, death, hell and the wrath of God. It does not help nor set them free from these things; it is content merely to point them out. When a man discovers the sickness of sin, he is cast down and afflicted; nay, he despairs. The law does not help him; much less can he heal himself. Another light is needed to reveal a remedy. This is the voice of the gospel, which displays Christ as the deliverer from all these evil things. But neither reason nor ‘free-will’ points to Him; how could reason point to Him, when it is itself darkness and needs the light of the law to show it its own sickness, which by its own light it fails to see, and thinks is sound health? (Luther, Bondage of the Will).
At the risk of sounding redundant, this is another passage of Scripture that Luther opens up and sets before our eyes in a way that is so powerful. It is hard to imagine how anyone could possibly argue for ‘free-will’ after reading even this section by Luther, and it is also quite hard to see how anyone could not see the great danger of not standing against those who teach the pernicious doctrine of ‘free-will.’ It is so common for people to say that God would not command those who cannot do what He commands. They ask why He commands people to do things that they cannot do. So they convince themselves that since God commands them to do certain things that they must have the power of ‘free-will’ in order to obey.
Luther simply explodes that idea. In the words of a more modern writer (B.B Warfield), God commands us to show us what we ought to do and not what we can do. Paul tells us that ‘by the law is the knowledge of sin.’ In other words, God commands us to do certain things in order that we could come to know our sin. If God commanded human beings to do certain things in order that they could do them from their own ability, then that would contradict the words of Paul in Scripture. The purpose of the law is not to show men that they have the ability to do what is commanded, but to show them their sin and that they cannot do what is commanded. The commands of God do not prove ‘free-will’ in the slightest, but in fact condemns it quite clearly.
Once again we can see the great danger to souls that the teaching of ‘free-will’ brings. In effect it teaches men the opposite of what the law teaches and so it teaches them the exact opposite of what Paul teaches about the purpose of the law. The soul that listens to human reason rather than the Word of God on this matter will be brought low and it will be seen that it is trusting in a false gospel. If the law teaches ‘free-will’ in the sense that it teaches men what they can do, then the law does not teach men the full nature of their sin. But if men do not see the real nature of their sin and their bondage to it, they will not see the nature of the Gospel of free and sovereign grace that is found in Jesus Christ alone. If we teach in such a way where the law is seen to teach men that they have ‘free-will,’ then we cannot teach the pure doctrines of the helpless of man in utter need of grace and grace alone to save.
If the law teaches men in such a way that they see that they have ‘free-will,’ then instead of “by the law is the knowledge of sin,” we would have “by the law is the knowledge of some righteousness in man.” The teaching of ‘free-will’ leaves a man with some righteousness in his soul or his soul could not be free at some point and in some way. We cannot have it both ways. Either the law is given to give the knowledge of sin or it is given to reveal some sin and yet the ‘free-will’ of human souls. But since the law is quite clearly given to give the knowledge of sin, teaching the ‘free-will’ of human beings is not just a little wrong, but it is at best dangerously wrong. The law comes in to show sinners their desperate state and then the glory of grace in the Gospel. But when free-willers deny that the law shows sinners their truly desperate state and instead that it shows them that they have a little island of righteousness (‘free-will), this is a denial of the Scripture, what the Scripture teaches about depravity, but also what the Scripture teaches about the Gospel of grace alone. While so many “Reformed” men in the modern day think that it is gracious to call Pelagians and Arminians “brothers” and say that they teach the same Gospel as the Reformed do, this simply cannot be. The Gospel of grace alone cannot at the same time be of grace and ‘free-will.’ They may speak of the same Jesus in a sense, but this is not the same Gospel. We must be awakened!
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