God Loves… Himself

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news to those who recognize it as good news. Those who recognize it as good news are those who understand how bad the bad news is. The announcement of an apple and a small sandwich is not good news to those who are used to large steaks, but to a starving person the small meal is like a feast. When a person thinks that s/he has a free-will and that the good news is that God will save him or her the moment s/he makes a choice and an act of the will, the Gospel is good news but only to a degree. It is nothing pressing. But to the soul that has experientially discovered that it is in bondage to sin and self, the promises of grace to receive a new heart and new life are great news. That is the soul that feels the weight of its enslavement and the weight of its own pride. The sound of deliverance by grace alone from those enslavements is really good news.

God has surely promised His grace to the humbled; that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another—God alone. As long as he is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God; but plans out for himself (or at least hopes and longs for) a position, an occasion, a work, which will bring him final salvation. But he who is out of doubt that his destiny depends entirely on the will of God despairs entirely of himself, chooses nothing for himself, but waits for God to work in him; and such a man is very near to grace for his salvation.

Ephesians 2 is the classic passage on salvation being by grace through faith and not as a result of works at all. There is no room for boasting even if one has many works, because the saved soul is the work of God and is created for good works that God has prepared beforehand. The soul that God raises from the spiritual dead is dead in sins and trespasses and is by nature a child of wrath. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (vv. 8-9). While this text does not explicitly and with extreme clarity say what Luther said in the quote from above, for the text to be true what Luther says must be true. A person cannot be delivered from trusting or believing in his or her own works until s/he realizes that salvation is utterly beyond his own powers. A person dead in sins and trespasses (Eph 2:1-3) with a nature that is a child of wrath cannot do one spiritual thing to please God. The person is dead in sin and cannot do anything but sin. There is no contribution that the person can make to his or her salvation because the person is still looking to self for that one little thing. This person is still looking to self for one little thing which will guarantee salvation. That one little thing really becomes one gigantic thing which the person is trusting wholly in for salvation. That is a salvation by works.

It is only to the degree that we accept that our own soul is enslaved (dead) can we believe in the Gospel of grace alone. As long as we don’t think of our own soul as dead and enslaved we will look to our own soul for at least one work though we may call it something else. We should also remember that the slightest work makes grace to be no grace at all (Rom 11:6). Grace, in order to be biblical grace, cannot be added to or assisted. So Luther’s point is not going beyond the bounds of Scripture at all, but is simply explaining what Scripture teaches. It is not until the soul arrives at the point of realization and submitting to the fact that his or her eternal destiny depends entirely on the will of God that the person will despair of any hope in his or her own will or works of that will. It is not until then that a person can look to grace alone. Until a person has reached the point of having no hope in his or her own will that person will not look to grace alone to be saved. The grace of God will have no help from any work of the human will in salvation so that salvation may be by grace alone and to His glory alone.

Luther was right. The soul must despair of any hope in itself or it will look to self for one little thing. But that one little thing is poison to the Gospel of grace alone. That one little thing, as some would call it, is actually a very large thing. It is enough to make salvation to be by grace plus one work. While it seems small, in actuality it is the attempt to wrest the Gospel from the hand of God by the act of the will of man. For salvation to be by grace alone it must be the will of God alone that chooses to give grace and it must be God’s will alone that applies grace. The unbroken heart of man desires to choose for God to give him or her grace and apply that grace at his or her own choice. It is nothing but a proud heart wanting to have God do what it wants and when it wants it. That is not a humbled heart looking to grace alone, it is a proud heart looking to self alone to do what it thinks God cannot do.

Pelagian thinking regarding the free-will is simply a statement of human autonomy. The human will was never created to come up with its own love and merit in order to be able to please God. It was created to be an instrument by which the fruit of the Spirit would manifest the glory of God. The Gospel enables the soul to receive all from Christ by grace and not look to self to fulfill any of God’s demands. The Gospel of grace alone stands firm against all forms of Pelagianism. There is nothing that a soul can do to earn merit or please God apart from being emptied of self and then for God to manifest Himself in and through that soul. The soul was and is not meant to do anything good in and of its own power because there is no good it can do apart from Christ. “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The soul that believes in free-will has not learned of its own helplessness apart from Christ and has not learned that it can bear no fruit of the Spirit apart from the Spirit Himself working it in the soul.

The soul that believes in free-will must believe that it can do something apart from God that is good enough to move God to respond to it with salvation. As long as the will looks to itself for anything it is not looking to Christ alone. As long as the will thinks that it is free to make a choice and be saved, it is not looking to Christ and grace alone. This is why Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards were so strong against the teaching of free-will regarding the Gospel. It is not just an innocent difference that has little to do with anything important, it is vital to the Gospel of grace alone that comes to the soul through faith alone.

God has surely promised His grace to the humbled; that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another—God alone. As long as he is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God; but plans out for himself (or at least hopes and longs for) a position, an occasion, a work, which will bring him final salvation. But he who is out of doubt that his destiny depends entirely on the will of God despairs entirely of himself, chooses nothing for himself, but waits for God to work in him; and such a man is very near to grace for his salvation.

In the quote above Luther lays down the gauntlet to his day and then our own. We must not think that we can avoid what Luther says and go on our merry way and still think of ourselves as Reformed or as children of the Reformation. The Gospel that thundered forth from the Reformers was a Gospel that destroyed a person’s hope in self. It was a Gospel that required that the sinner be humbled and broken from all hope in self so that the sinner could truly rest in Christ alone. As long as the sinner is not broken from all hope in self and is thoroughly humbled, that sinner is enslaved to his or her own so called ‘free-will.” Jesus called those who were weary and heavy-laden to Himself (Mat 11:28). He said that He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Mat 9:13; Mar 2:17; Luke 5:32). The soul that is full of self and pride will never rest in the humble Savior until the self and pride has been removed from that soul. As long as the soul is full of self and pride that soul is enslaved to the will of itself in self and pride. An enslaved soul must be delivered from its slavery, and that is true even when it is in slavery to its own self and pride. Trusting in a free-will is really trusting in an enslaved will.

A soul that looks to its own free-will as a way of deliverance is not looking to Christ alone for deliverance. There can be no trusting in the will of God in Christ and the free-will at the same time. As Luther points out, God has promised grace to the humbled. But He has also promised His opposition to the proud. For a proud person to be saved either the pride of that person must be crushed or God must change His mind. The proud soul will never trust in anything completely but will always trust in self to some degree. But the Gospel is of Christ alone and grace alone. The promises of the Gospel are always based on grace and nothing in the sinner. How can the sinner receive and rest in the promises of the Gospel when the sinner is still resting in what is thought to be his or her own free-will? Resting in what we think of as free-will is resting in something other than free grace.

The soul that rests in his or her own will in any way is a soul that is not resting in the will of God. One cannot have it both ways. The soul that still looks to free-will and holds on to it is a soul that is still hoping in self to make some contribution to salvation. That is a soul that has not been thoroughly humbled and is a soul that still rests in its own plan for salvation rather than acquiescing to the plan of God in Christ which is by grace alone. A soul that still looks to self for anything at all is still a soul that is enslaved to its own self and pride. It is not really free at all.

For Luther and the Reformers the teaching about the bondage of the will was the hinge of the Reformation and an utterly vital point. The reason Luther thought that this was true was because “The whole work of man’s salvation, first to last, is God’s; and all the glory for it must be God’s also.” The real issue of the Gospel has to do with the glory of God. If salvation comes to man on the basis of his own will, then salvation is not totally of grace and comes to man to some degree on the basis of his own merit or choice. If salvation comes to man as a result of something he has done, then Romans 11:6 comes down on us in this by telling us that a work makes grace to be no longer grace. Salvation must be by grace alone because salvation is clearly to the glory of God alone.

Erasmus, who in a sense has the same spirit as so many today, refused to say that salvation is totally of God. While there are those today who will say that salvation is by grace alone, when they hold to the freedom of the will in reality they deny it. Erasmus and so many today want man to be saved with the help of God, but not by a will that needs much if any help from God. In this there is a great lesson for us today. Erasmus, a man who desired peace instead of tension, wanted to meet Luther part of the way. He wanted to diminish the amount of power that man can exercise so that the smallness of the power that man can exercise would show that there is almost no amount of merit that man can obtain apart from God. The Augustinian tradition that the Reformers held to was that there is no work a man can do that has any possibility of earning the slightest merit before God. Nothing man can do can put God under any obligation to respond to man with grace. The smallest merit destroys grace. But Luther saw what Erasmus was doing and went after him for that. Instead of getting closer to the teaching of grace alone, Luther thought Erasmus was really cheapening his own Pelagianism. Instead of standing for a lot of hard works for salvation as Pelagianism in effect teaches, Erasmus brought salvation down to one feeble effort of the will.

This is another place that people need to consider again the implications of what a free-will means. The position of a full Pelagian is that a person must work hard to obtain salvation. But the semi-Pelagian, while seeming to hold to something of grace, is able to obtain grace by a very small act of the will that for some reason moves God to save. This is not to move closer to the biblical teaching of grace alone, but instead it still holds to a view of the human will that is not biblical and it has a lower view of God. As B.B. Warfield states, that view tries to find a middle ground between grace and works and yet retains neither. This cannot be stressed too strongly. The enslaved will must look to Christ alone to deliver it and so salvation is by grace alone to the glory of God alone. The will that is allowed to have just enough to make one choice in reality cheapens both the standards of and the grace of God. It is not a true middle position at all, but rather is a position that has nothing of either to really commend it.

For Luther no form of Pelagianism could possibly be true because of the nature of man who is dead in sin and has an enslaved will. All that this person does is sin because this person can only be motivated by sin. The unregenerate sinner can do nothing but merit wrath. Another point that has to be stressed from Luther’s view is that for a person to do something that had merit to God the man must perform the act apart from God. But for Luther (and Scripture) there is nothing good that a human being can do that does not come from God in the first place. That utterly takes away any hope of merit for man. The only good that a man can do must be worked in the man by God. There is simply no hope for a human being to obtain merit from God on the basis of a good work or a good choice because anything good that can come from man must come from God first.

The power of the previous paragraph may not be obvious to those steeped in humanism. Let me give it another shot. The soul of a human being consists of the ability to think, to feel, and to choose. But the nature of that soul determines in some measure what is attractive to that soul. For an action to be pleasing to God that soul must love God with all of its being and intend God’s glory in the action it takes. But the soul that is dead has no spiritual life in it at all. Spiritual life is that life of the Spirit in the soul and God is the Originator of love. So the soul that does not have God has no love and no ability at all to love God. In fact, it hates Him. Once God makes a soul alive, then that soul has the capacity to receive from the Spirit and so it receives love from God and can love God in what it does. But there can be no merit in that action for the human soul because all the ability to do it came from God. This line of thinking, which is thoroughly biblical, destroys the Pelagian view of morality and merit. The enslaved will can never do the slightest thing that would please God. It is only when the will is set free from its slavery to the devil and sin that it can now do any good at all. But it is to the glory of God and not to the glory of free-will.

According to Martin Luther and the Reformers the glory of the Gospel was a display of the free grace of God. But there can be no free grace as long as sinners trust in their free-will to do the slightest thing. In one sense the very heart of the battle of the Reformation was the teaching of free-will versus free grace. The Reformers battled for free grace in order that all the glory would be God’s and that justification would be by (through) faith alone. What is not often set out in the modern day are the deep roots and destructive tentacles of free-will. Once again, here is a quote by Packer and Johnson in the introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will.

“That human choices are spontaneous and not forced he knows and affirms; it is, indeed, fundamental to his position to do so. It was man’s total inability to save himself, and the sovereignty of Divine grace in his salvation, that Luther was affirming when he denied ‘free-will,’ and it was the contrary that Erasmus was affirming when he maintained ‘free-will.’ The ‘free-will’ in question was ‘free-will’ in relation to God and the things of God. Erasmus defined it as ‘a power of the human will by which man may apply himself to those things that lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from the same.’ It is this that Luther denies…He now has no power to please God. He is unable to do anything but continue in sin. His salvation, therefore, must be wholly of Divine grace, for he himself can contribute nothing to it; and any formulation of the gospel which amounts to saying that God shows grace, not in saving man, but in making it possible for man to save himself, is to be rejected as a lie. The whole work of man’s salvation, first to last, is God’s; and all the glory for it must be God’s also.”

Here, once again, the contradiction between free-will and the sovereignty of God’s grace is seen. The will is free in the sense that human beings are not forced to make the choices they make. But the position of the Reformation was that there was no free-will in terms of the things of God. Erasmus was quite clear in the Roman Catholic position in saying that man may apply to himself the things that lead to eternal salvation. This is precisely what Luther and the Reformers fought against and it is also precisely what modern versions of Pelagianism hold to. Despite the fact that there are few that would call themselves “Pelagians” in our day, this is not the same thing as there not being many Pelagians. Pelagianism is rampant today and it is operating freely in denominations and churches under the title of “Arminianism.” Whenever we leave salvation up to the choice of man, even if our little secret is that God is sovereign in it, we are telling the person virtually nothing different than Erasmus would have.

A free-will is part of our sinful nature that we must be delivered from if we are going to be saved by Divine grace alone. What is thought of as the free-will by fallen man is nothing more than man’s desire to be sufficient for his own destiny on the earth and in eternity. The teaching of free-will leaves man free, at least in his own mind, to determine if he will repent and believe. If faith and believing are up to a free-will, then man is in charge of his eternal destiny and not God. Once again, Erasmus would have cheered for that belief, but Luther would have fought it as the doctrine of demons. The problem, at least for the modern day, is that the doctrine of Erasmus has swept the land. It is the doctrine and attitude of Erasmus that has taken the day rather than the Gospel of Divine grace alone. The doctrine of free-will is intellectually denied by some, but it is not fought against as a teaching which contradicts and overthrows the glory of Divine grace alone in salvation. Instead we have those who want to be gracious toward all in what they call “minor disagreements.” That is what Erasmus did and wanted.

John 1:12-13 should overthrow that convincingly: “12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” In John 1:3 the Scripture says that “all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” The words “came into being” in both places in verse 3 is really one Greek word, ginomai. It has the basic idea of come into being as it is translated. In John 1:12 the word “become” in the phrase “become children of God” is that same word. The same word is used in the very same context. In fact, it is also used in John 1:14 where “the Word became flesh.” The point, in this context, is that a person becomes a child of God not because of his bloodline. One does not become a child of God because of the will of his own flesh or of any other human flesh. A person does not become a child of God based on the will of any human being. A person becomes a child of God only because of the will of God. The human will is not free to cause itself to become a child of God. The human will is not free to cause itself to be born again. A human soul is born again only because of the will of God. He only does this by grace alone.
If we look at the awesomeness of John 1:12-13, surely it is obvious that a person cannot just make an act of the will and so be saved. It is not in the power of the human will to do what God alone can do. The human soul is utterly dependent on the will of God to be made a child of God and He only does that by grace. The new birth is also an act of God by which Christ comes to dwell in that soul and He becomes its very life. No act of the human will can bring Christ down and move Him into the soul. Until the soul quits striving to do what God alone can do, can it be saved? Until the soul is delivered from its self-sufficiency, can it really rest in the sufficiency of God alone? Until the soul is delivered from its bondage to self in self-love, can it will love God. Until the soul is delivered from its bondage to the devil, can it bow to King Jesus? Until the soul has been delivered from its enmity to God, can it love Him as a child of God? The human will was never given this power. The very attempt to attain these things by an act of human will shows the sin of pride and self-sufficiency that human being have fallen into. Apart from repenting of the fallen state of the free-will, can a person really believe from the whole soul (including the will) the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?

The primary reason that we must hold to the will as enslaved to sin and no ability to do anything spiritual is because of the beauty of God’s grace in salvation. Any human ability in the Gospel and coming to Christ detracts from the grace of God. The grace of God is unmixed glory that shines out of the triune God in Christ with blazing glory and beauty. When humans bring in human ability or work(s) into the Gospel, it sullies the purity of grace and makes it to be something other than grace. The grace of God comes to sinners that are dead in sins and trespasses and who are by nature children of wrath (Eph 2:1-3). There is nothing in the sinner that is attractive to God or worthy to Him. There is no ability in the dead sinner. If that sinner is to be made alive and delivered from his or her deadness in sin, that will be by grace alone. The only ability as sinner has is to sin.

Ephesians 2 goes on to speak of grace, but chapter 1 has already set out that God saves sinners to the praise of the glory of His grace (1:6). He does not diminish His glory by having sinful humans help Him save them. It would be less than a pure and holy grace to do so. Did Luther really think that “The doctrine of the bondage of the will in particular was the corner-stone of the gospel” was true? Yes, for until a person understands that the will is in bondage to sin and the devil that person would trust in self to some degree. It was because God is God-centered and not man-centered. It is because God manifests the glory of His grace in sinners based on Himself rather than sinners. To assert that God saves sinners because they respond to Him destroys the biblical teaching of grace apart from works. By definition God saves by grace rather than anything found in man. If God responds to something in man or what man does and so gives salvation, then salvation is not utterly of grace and grace alone. As Romans 11:6 puts it, “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.”

Romans 9 teaches this: “15 For He says to Moses, “I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.” 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.” Verse 15 is a quote from Exodus. Verse 16 is Paul’s application of it. If God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and compassion on whom He will have compassion, then it does not depend on the will or works of man. It all depends on God’s mercy and compassion. Despite the clear teaching of Scripture on these things, man does not want to depend on grace in all things. Even those who say salvation is totally the work of grace want to leave the application of that salvation up to men. But salvation is not totally and wholly of grace unless the grace is applied by grace as well.

We move on to see again a quote of Packer and Johnson: “The denial of free-will was to Luther the foundation of the Biblical doctrine of grace, and a hearty endorsement of that denial was the first step for anyone who would understand the gospel and come to faith in God.” Here is a massive statement that we have to seriously deal with. To put it plainly, the first step to understanding the Gospel and coming to faith in God is to deny our free-will. The free-will says, though Reformed folks brain says differently, that it will act and apply grace to itself. A free-will says that God will save me if I make a choice. The free-will preacher tells those things to people. The professing Reformed simply tell people to repent and believe, but that can be using biblical words without biblical content.

“The man who has not yet practically and experimentally learned the bondage of his will in sin has not yet comprehended any part of the gospel.” This is a haunting statement. This quote tells us that not only must a person intellectually learn about the bondage of the will in sin, but s/he must have an experimental knowledge of that in the soul. It is not just that this doctrine is true, but that this doctrine must be felt in the weight and burden of my sin. Apart from that, a person has not comprehended any part of the Gospel. This is a massive statement that shows how much the Gospel has been hidden from our generation. Jesus invited all who were weary and heavy-laden to come to Him (Mat 11:28). This is the person that is weary of the burden of sin and it is heavy to him or her. This is the person who has given up trying to deal with his or her sin and feels the utter bondage of it. John 7:37 puts it like this: “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” Those who are thirsty for life are those who are weary of sin which is death.

One can accuse Luther of many things, but beating around the bush is not one of them. He gets to the heart of the issue and holds it before our eyes. It is not just a theoretical proposition that a person must learn about to know about his or her sin and then what grace really means, but the person must feel the weight and power of sin itself and the utter helplessness of self in sin to really know the power of sin and the need of grace.. This is the person that looks outside of self to the power of another because that person experientially knows that s/he has no power to come to Christ. That person looks to Divine help to bring him or her to Christ because they are now like a little child in the hands of the Divine Potter (Mat 18:1-4). Unless one is converted and becomes like a child, that person will not enter the kingdom. It is not just a prayer or an act of the will, that person must be converted and become like a child. This is a person that rests in grace to bring him or her to Christ and then to save him or her completely by grace. It is to experimentally learn the depths of our own depravity so that the depths of grace may be rested on in all ways. It is grace alone that gives a new heart and draws the sinner to the Father through Christ by the Spirit.

Luther’s The Bondage of the Will can be read for pleasure only if one reads it without thinking. This book, as one has said about another book, has fingers and claws with which it gets hold of you and makes you hurt. He said it was the very heart of the Gospel and the heart of the Reformation, yet in the modern day we are like Erasmus who desired peace at virtually all cost and did not think of the will as a very important doctrine at all. For Luther there was no preaching the Gospel apart from this teaching of the will. In the modern day it is thought that to preach and teach the bondage of the will is to cross the line into hyper-Calvinism or to simply go beyond the simple Gospel. Below are three quotes from Packer and Johnson from the introduction to The Bondage of the Will:

The whole gospel of the grace of God, he held, was bound up with it, and stood or fell according to the way one decided it…The doctrine of the bondage of the will in particular was the corner-stone of the gospel and the very foundation of the faith…The denial of free-will was to Luther the foundation of the Biblical doctrine of grace, and a hearty endorsement of that denial was the first step for anyone who would understand the gospel and come to faith in God. The man who has not yet practically and experimentally learned the bondage of his will in sin has not yet comprehended any part of the gospel; for this is ‘the hinge on which all turns,’ the ground on which the gospel rests.

While this may seem repetitive, it is simply an effort to drive a point home to myself and any other person that might read this. It is shocking to the modern sensibilities and our desires to be gracious for the purpose of peace that our ears can hardly hear it and our eyes can barely see it. It is almost as if the modern day has been blinded to the Gospel and that in the guise of Reformed theology at times. The Gospel that was preached during the great revival that we know as the Reformation had at its very core the bondage of the human will. It was not just something that a person nodded to after s/he was converted; it was considered the very core of the whole Gospel of the grace of God. To put it another way, the soul that fell away from the teaching of the bondage of the will was considered to have fallen away from the Gospel of the grace of God. The Gospel of the grace of God was bound to it (see the quote above) and could not stand apart from it. Yet in our day we want to have a Gospel of grace without this doctrine of the will. What we can’t seem to see is that if we waffle on the doctrine of the will we waffle on the Gospel of grace alone. If we are ashamed of the doctrine of the enslaved will, we are ashamed of the Gospel of grace alone. If we deny the doctrine of the enslaved will, we deny the Gospel of grace alone. If we think that the doctrine of the enslaved will is not necessary, then we think that the true Gospel of grace alone is not necessary. How we will hear howls of protest from those who hear that, but that is what the Reformers stood for.

If a soul comes to God by grace, then the soul must be worked on and drawn to God by grace. The working and calling of God must bring the soul to Himself or salvation is not completely by grace alone. If the will is not dead and enslaved to sin, it can do some of the work of salvation itself. But if the will can do some of the work of salvation, then salvation does not rest on grace alone. If faith is the requirement for having salvation and Christ, but faith is the work of free-will, then salvation is at least partially by a work of man and is not entirely of grace. This is why the Gospel of the grace of God is bound to the doctrine of the will. If the will is not entirely enslaved to sin and under the dominion of the devil, then the Gospel is not wholly of grace.

Let me quote again: “The denial of free-will was to Luther the foundation of the Biblical doctrine of grace.” Luther was either right or he was wrong. If he was right, then our day needs to repent and preach what he preached. If we do not preach the doctrine of the will that he taught, then we are not going to preach the same justification by faith alone that he taught. If we cannot deny free-will without shame in our presentation and preaching of the Gospel, then we deny the foundation of the biblical doctrine of grace. “A hearty endorsement of that denial was the first step for anyone who would understand the gospel and come to faith in God.” Hardly anyone believes that today. We would rather just tell men to agree that they are sinners (if even that) and then to repent and believe. But how can one understand the Gospel of a whole grace unless a whole grace is needed to save the sinner?

“The man who has not yet practically and experimentally learned the bondage of his will in sin has not yet comprehended any part of the gospel.” How can this statement be true? If this is true, then what of people and “churches” who will not teach this at all? Can we call ourselves Reformed if we deny an essential part of the Gospel of grace alone that the Reformers taught? If the Bible teaches something different, then we must go with Scripture. If we preach a different Gospel than the Reformers did, then we need to quit paying homage to them and quit calling ourselves Reformed or Calvinists. If we preach a different Gospel than the Reformers, we must remember that there is only one Gospel. If this teaching is the hinge on which the Gospel turns, then if we are missing the hinge we have missed the Gospel.

Jesus said this in John 6:44: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” The word “can” is a word of ability, so no man has the ability to come to Jesus unless the Father draws him. This is a hard teaching, but it is clear that no man can will to come to Jesus freely. That man must have the Father draw him or he will not come. Later on in John 6 we read how hard that teaching was: 65“And He was saying, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.” 66 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.” Many left over His words and many will leave over them today. Many religious people left then and they will leave now. But these are still the words of the living God. We must bow in submission to them regardless of what others say or will say. If no one has the ability to come to Christ, then they need to know that. If the true way to Christ is by the drawing of the Father, then that is part of the good news of the Gospel. We need to proclaim the good news as it is set out in the Bible. It is good news that I don’t have to work up repentance and faith by my own ability. Instead, I am to look to Christ alone for the whole Gospel of the grace of God. That includes the ability to come to Christ and faith itself.

Perhaps the most compelling reason that we should believe in the enslaved will is the very nature of God and of His grace. Human beings tend to look at God as centered and focused on human beings, but He is not. The greatest command of human beings is to love God with all of their being and no one is to come between their hearts and God. For a human being to love human beings (either self or other humans) rather than God is simply idolatry. We can know for sure that God loves Himself more than humans because He will not give His glory to another (Isa 42:8). He will not forgive sin on the basis of anyone but Christ Himself and Christ is the Beloved Son. As a holy God He must love that alone which is holy and perfect, and He Himself alone is holy and perfect.

Nothing can please God but Himself and so a human being cannot please God apart from having God Himself work that in the human soul. This is so vital. In John 15:5 Jesus told us this: “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” It is not apart from Jesus that we love Him, but only by His work in us. The fruit of the Spirit is love (Gal 5), so love is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. But fallen human beings want to share in this work. It is hard for the proud heart to give up all hope in self. But that is exactly what faith in Christ alone demands. That is what Luther preached and that is the heart of the Gospel that changed the world during the Reformation.

In the past two posts on this topic the following quote of Luther was given. It is an amazing quote that is hard for people to wrap around in the modern day. But there are reasons for it. Here is the quote again:

Moreover, I give you hearty praise and commendation on this further account—that you alone, in contrast with all others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue. You have not wearied me with these extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and such like—trifles, rather than issues—in respect of which almost all to date have sought my blood (though without success); you, and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot.

In the words of Packer and Johnson, “the whole gospel of the grace of God, he held, was bound up with it, and stood or fell according to the way one decided it. In The Bondage of the Will, therefore, Luther believes himself to be fighting for the truth of God, the only hope of man.” This tells us why Luther was so vigorous and almost (if not more) bombastic in the defense of the bondage of the will of man. This tells us why he thought that what he was doing was defending that which the hinge turned on and was the vital spot. Luther thought that the whole gospel of the grace of God stood or fell on this issue. This is an issue that is that vital. If it was that vital then, it is that vital now. If the whole gospel of the grace of God was bound with it then, it is bound with it now. Luther fought for this issue hard and seriously because it was at the very heart of the Gospel. Believers now must fight hard and seriously for this issue because it is still at the very heart of the Gospel. After all, it is the same Gospel now as it was then and it is the eternal Gospel.

One again in the introduction, Packer and Johnson say that “the doctrine of the bondage of the will in particular was the corner-stone of the gospel and the very foundation of the faith.” Erasmus, on the other hand, thought “peace in the Church was of more value than any doctrine.” We are at the same point again today. There are no Luther’s around, but there are a lot of those like Erasmus. But this is the work of the evil one. He wants men to have a quiet religion and not cause a lot of trouble over these troublesome issues. As long as men have a general belief about Jesus and are moral, the devil has them in his unrighteous arms. He does not care if men go around crying peace, peace when there is no real peace. False prophets have cried that peace since the dawn of history and they are exceedingly numerous today as well. But the devil will really fight when men begin to preach and teach about the Gospel of grace alone. If they are going to do that, they are compelled to deal with the bondage of the will. That idol of what men call “free-will” constantly wants to do something by the strength of self rather than the strength of grace. That idol is the ‘free-will’ that men think determines their eternal destiny rather than grace.

Packer and Johnson gives us another statement that should jolt our hardened and peace-loving hearts awake: “The denial of free-will was to Luther the foundation of the Biblical doctrine of grace, and a hearty endorsement of that denial was the first step for anyone who would understand the gospel and come to faith in God.” The ramifications of that statement are enormous. If it is correct to say that about Luther, and it is, then the next question is to ask if it is biblical. Do we really want to know? If it is true, are we really ready to pray the price of what that means? Are we ready to deal with the ramifications of a statement like that? If that statement is true, then the number of believers on the planet (in our understandings) has just shrunk dramatically. To continue on with the quote from above: “The man who has not yet practically and experimentally learned the bondage of his will in sin has not yet comprehended any part of the gospel; for this is ‘the hinge on which all turns,’ the ground on which the gospel rests.” What Luther believed about this was the same thing all the Reformers believed about this. That was the Gospel they preached. God used that Gospel. Does He use the modern gospel? Maybe we simply don’t want to hear these things because they (the books of the older writers) have been published again and again for years. At some point, however, each person needs to face this issue once again. There is no Gospel without it.

A BLOG/website with the title of God Loves Himself must never stray far from the main theme of the site, especially since that is the deepest theme of the whole Bible. As quoted in the introduction of the O.R. Johnson and J.I. Packer introduction of Luther’s Bondage of the Will, one man called this book “the finest and most powerful Soli Deo Gloria to be sung in the whole period of the Reformation.” To quote Warfield again, speaking of this same book, “it is…in a true sense the manifesto of the Reformation.” This is not just any doctrine that is set out that for a person to intellectually believe or dismiss with no important result. This teaching is at the heart of the glory of God in the Gospel of grace. This can be seen by Luther’s statement below (quoted once again).

Moreover, I give you hearty praise and commendation on this further account—that you alone, in contrast with all others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue. You have not wearied me with these extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and such like—trifles, rather than issues—in respect of which almost all to date have sought my blood (though without success); you, and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot.

It may seem surprising that Luther thought that the list of extraneous issues included such “trifles” as the Papacy, purgatory, and indulgences. Indeed it was the issue about the indulgences that was the main theme with his 95 theses that were used to get the Reformation going. His death was desired by the pope over such issues. But he saw those as trifles as compared with this great doctrine of the bondage or enslavement of the will. The doctrine of the will was and is the essential issue of the Reformation as touching the Gospel and the glory of God. How we understand the Gospel of grace alone depends on how we understand the depths of man’s enslavement to sin. The issue of God’s glory in the Gospel is vitally linked with how free His grace is versus how free the will is.

We must understand this point in the thinking of Luther and his understanding of Scripture if we are going to understand the issue of the Gospel that was used in the Reformation and is so needed in our day and any other day as well. While many want to limit the Gospel to believe in Jesus, though others will say repent and believe, Luther thought that people must understand from the depths of their being just how depraved they really were. This is not an intellectual doctrine alone; it is one that must reach the depths of the soul. A person cannot understand the doctrine of depravity in a real sense apart from seeing and feeling it as true of him or herself. Until a person arrives at the point of seeing and understanding him or herself from the deepest parts of the soul that s/he is utterly undone unless God shows grace, that person will not really understand the nature of grace itself in the Gospel.

Many Protestants today oppose quite stringently the teachings about the Pope, purgatory, and the indulgences. They do this thinking that they are quite in line with the Reformation. What they don’t see is that they are dealing with mere trifles as compared to the teaching of the enslaved will which they quite ignore. Luther said that this is “the hinge on which all turns.” By that, we can safely say, he meant that this is the hinge on which the Gospel turns. The Gospel of grace alone to the glory of God alone must also be declared. God saves by grace alone in order that it would be His glory alone that shines. There is no other Gospel. There is no other hinge on which the Gospel turns. If we deny the enslavement of the will in reality, whether we deny it in our creed or not, we deny the hinge of the Gospel itself. When we practically deny the enslavement of the will we deny the heart of the glory of God in the Gospel. If this is the “vital spot” as Luther said, then to deny this is to deny a vital spot of the Gospel. We are not dealing with trifles here.

Stephen Charnock wrote in the 1600’s on the Existence and Attributes of God. In it he had a very powerful section (about ninety pages) on practical atheism. He said that people denied certain truths about God in practical ways while they held to them in their heads. He said that in many ways it was worse for a person to be a practical atheist than to be one in reality. Perhaps, then, we should take that to heart and understand that those who hold to creeds that uphold the enslaved will and yet deny it practically are worse than those who deny it openly. Certainly it is far more dangerous for people to say they believe it and then deny it in a practical way than those who simply deny it. Those who say they believe it and then deny it practically are far more deceptive than those who simply deny it. One greater than Luther told us that “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44). If we deny the enslavement of the will, in creed or practically, we are saying that men can come to Him apart from the work of the Father. We should and must believe Jesus.

The trumpet of the Gospel that blasted forth from Luther and the Reformers is virtually unknown today. The power of that Gospel was also the Gospel that changed the world in the New Testament times before the Reformation. There are many who go forth preaching things about Jesus, but they miss the Gospel. There are many who go out telling people that they are sinners in need of a Savior, but they miss the Gospel. There are many who sound forth the teaching of grace, but they miss the Gospel. There are many today who want to call themselves Reformed or Calvinists, but they have missed the Gospel itself. There are many gospels that are not the Gospel.

Interestingly enough, there are many who call themselves Reformed who fight the heart of the teachings that came forth in power during the Reformation. The Gospel of the power of God can be hidden beneath the outward teachings of Calvinism and so the real power of the Gospel is not preached. The Gospel itself can be hidden beneath the cries of preachers to repent and believe, no matter how loudly they proclaim it. The Gospel itself can be hidden beneath the cries of men who attack what they call hyper-Calvinism and go forth preaching a false Gospel themselves because what they call hyper-Calvinism is really the truth of the Gospel.

Perhaps this sounds arrogant to some who read it, but so be it. Luther and all the Reformers were thought to be arrogant. The Lord Jesus was hated and abused for being Truth and preaching truth. The Reformers who preached the Gospel of Christ were abused and hated as well. It is no surprise that the true Gospel will be hated by unbelievers whether open sinners, religious people, and even those who claim to be Reformed. It should not surprise us when the truth of the depravity of men is preached that even very religious people don’t like it. What should surprise us is when all men speak well of us. Jesus said “Woe to you when all men speak well of you” (Luke 6:26). 1 John 4:5 tells us that “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.” This is true even of those who are very religious. Paul tells us that “all who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (II Tim 3:12). Being gracious may simply be a way of avoiding true godliness. The Gospel of Jesus Christ will not go forth apart from abuse and persecution from religious people. The Gospel of Jesus Christ will not go forth apart from that hated teaching of the enslaved will of sinners who can do nothing but sin apart from God giving grace. Yet that is the Gospel that thundered forth in the New Testament, the Reformation, and real revivals. The Gospel will not thunder forth again until the truth of it is captured and proclaimed. Until it does, the Gospel of grace alone cannot be understood or declared.

Luther’s Bondage of the Will can and has been translated as The Enslaved Will. His book on that topic was not written as some metaphysical musing, but was his effort to defend the heart of the Reformation and of justification by faith alone. While many today will agree that justification is by faith, fewer will agree that it is by faith alone. Even fewer will declare the connection between the enslaved will and the Gospel preached by the Reformers as the New Testament teaching. The Gospel preached by all the Reformers was that the very heart of the Gospel was the enslaved will of sinners. That meant that the Gospel of grace alone could be taught. Erasmus thought that the doctrine of the will was rather insignificant, but Luther saw it as the very heart of the Gospel. Here are his words:

Moreover, I give you hearty praise and commendation on this further account—that you alone, in contrast with all others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue. You have not wearied me with these extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and such like—trifles, rather than issues—in respect of which almost all to date have sought my blood (though without success); you, and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot.

That was and is Luther’s response to all who diminish the importance of this doctrine and the necessity of what it means to know the sin of the heart. The thinking of so many today is that we can simply go tell people to repent and believe and not deal with the real sin of a person’s heart. But when that is not done, the Gospel will not be set out in truth. Until the nature of the disease is seen, the cure will not be seen. Until the rotten and corrupt hearts of sinners are set out for what they are, they will not see the need for a real Savior. It is because this book of Luther’s was the very heart of the Reformation that Warfield termed it “the manifesto of the Reformation.” There is no preaching of the Gospel of the Reformation without the teaching of the enslaved will. We do not preach the Gospel to sinners until we have opened them to the depths of their corruption and their desperate need for Christ to save them from their own hearts. This is, after all, what the old catechisms teach us is at the heart of irresistible grace.