Is the free will of man a major
issue in his salvation or, even in the matter of belief, is he subject
to the mandatory will of God. Are we
free to choose for or against God or has God chosen us according to his own
arbitrary will?
The question is prompted by
certain scriptural passages that at face value counter one another but because
we are dealing with the inerrant word of the Living God, no such contradiction
can be allowed. Therefore we must look at these passages of contention to see
if they can be reconciled.
Salvation itself is not subject to the allowance or the will of man but has
been provided en toto by the will of God.
We have nothing to do in the providing of redemption, forgiveness,
propitiation, sanctification; these are ours by belief and God's gift of faith.
Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace
are ye saved through faith; and that (faith is) not of yourselves: it is
the gift of God…”
We are saved through faith which is given to us by God as a gift.
A quote of a similar nature is John 6:44, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath
sent me draw him”. We are drawn by God so that we might come to
Christ.
In John 12:32 Jesus also said “And I, if I be lifted
up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” and since it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit “to reprove
the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come” (John 16:8) it is the
Spirit’s ministry that fulfills Jesus’ statement regarding the drawing of all
men…
The Bible commands all
mankind to ”believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved”; it is a prerequisite
to salvation; one must believe the gospel (follow the Spirit's leading) before saving faith can be bestowed.
If this initial belief is of God and not man's responsibility then God is remiss in not giving that belief to all men so that all men might be saved . 2 Peter 3:9 "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance"
Most of mankind do not
believe in Christ, they are not obedient to the Spirit's call therefore will not
receive the gift of faith.
In Romans 10:9-21 Paul uses the word obedience and cites Israel’s
disobedience as his example. God offers his
‘gospel’ to all men to draw them to Christ; some take heed (believe) the Spirit’s
conviction and are given the faith to accept the gospel and are ‘born again’;
born again by the Holy Spirit as he indwells them. Others reject his conviction and in
disobedience remain unconvinced and unsaved.
In this same passage we see both confession AND inner conviction; we
confess to what we believe but it is the Spirit of God that gives substance to
what we confess, it is the Spirit that engenders faith in us. The ‘gospel’ is only words until the Holy
Spirit adds his conviction to the mix.
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that (faith is) not of
yourselves: it is the gift of God…” We cannot be saved unless we have the Spirit
of God indwelling us. If we do not have
the gift of faith (the convicting ministry of the Spirit within us) we are not
saved.
“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the
Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he
is none of his.
And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin;
but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in
you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal
bodies by his Spirit that dwells in you”
(Romans 8:9-11).
It is the Spirit of God who engenders faith in us, and it is that faith
that ‘quickens’ our mortal bodies.
The capacity to believe is a basic
characteristic of mankind from the youngest to the oldest, godly or ungodly,
and is therefore a God gifted quality set into the design and purpose of his
creation. In the Bible it is first seen
in Genesis 2:16-17 where the prohibition was given to the parents of
mankind. “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the
garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt surely die". Adam and his
wife were to trust and obey God.
Belief is the foundation of all learning. At every stage of the process our findings
are dependent on the accuracy of what goes before; we place our trust in the
accuracy of previous conclusions. Even
the atheistic evolutionist exercises belief and when he is unshakeable in that
belief it can be said he has faith in what he believes; he places trust in information used in
establishing the tenets of his belief.
The issue here is not the truth of a man’s conclusions, but the use of belief
in making those conclusions. In all
learning there is this progression, the progression from knowledge to belief.
Having knowledge of something does
not necessarily constitute a belief in that thing. Though a man may have knowledge of the theory
of evolution, it does not necessarily mean that he believes it; knowledge only
progresses to belief when knowledge is accepted as truth. We may have heard
that the world is round, but until we accept it as truth we cannot claim it as a
belief.
And although a man may have
knowledge, it does not follow that he will put his trust in what he knows. It is this trust that reveals the delicate
difference between ‘belief’ and ‘believe’, the subject of belief and the action
of believing. It is this action of
believing, or trust, which is faith.
Knowledge
progresses to faith when the object (or subject) of that knowledge is
implicitly trusted. We may understand
the principles of salvation in Christ, but unless we accept the Spirit of God's leading we
cannot in truth claim Christianity as a belief, and without his enlightenment we cannot say we have faith in Christ.
Because the progression from
knowledge to belief is true in both the secular and spiritual field of learning
(in both evolution and theology), the conclusion is that God has given all men
the capacity for knowledge and belief.
The faculty for belief is
God’s gift; the act of believing is man’s responsibility.
Saving faith is a combination of
both God’s sovereignty and man’s volition?
The evolutionist, as an example of all unbelief, uses his belief in
trusting a lie; the Christian uses his in heeding the Spirits conviction and being
led into all truth.
The Scriptures have innumerable
passages where unbelieving men are commanded or encouraged to exercise their
will. Every command to believe is proof of man’s freewill. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you
will be saved” is a simple statement of fact including an
encouragement to act positively. In
effect we are being told, “You have the God given ability to believe, therefore
in the interest of your eternal soul, act upon the knowledge received”.
The Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, constantly
exhort men to take God’s word in active belief (Genesis 2:16-17; 2Chronicles
20:20; Isaiah 7:9; Jeremiah Chapter 27; John 1:12; Acts 16:31; Romans 4:23-24;
1Corinthians. 1:21; Revelation 21:8). The
evidence of these and many more passages is overwhelmingly in favour of free
will being an essential issue in our salvation. Man's will had nothing to do with constructing salvation, but is vital in accepting it.
To use as argument, as some do, that ‘Freewill is not verbally stated in the
Scriptures therefore freewill is nonexistent’ is a nonsense brought about
by an illogical approach to Scripture.
Such an illogical approach is also seen in the extreme view on the
depravity of mankind.
The fact that man is depraved in every area of being
is true, but to say as some do, that man is totally depraved and therefore unable
to make good decisions is patently untrue.
It is true that man cannot bridge the gap between longing to know God
and actually knowing him, of desiring fellowship with his Creator and actually
attaining fellowship (that can only be achieved by God as he draws men to
himself through knowledge of the truth), but we have the capability to
recognise God’s ‘drawing’, and the freedom to respond or to disregard it. God is not willing that any should perish yet
many in their search for God reject Christ and are lost
If what some Calvinists teach is true; that
the Scriptures which say “Behold
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” refers to the world of the
elect and not the entire world of men, then it must be equally true where it
says “God so loved the world that…”
Does God only love the elect? No, “he so loved the world”.
It is
true that God has an affectionate love – phileo, reserved for his Son and for
those who are ‘in the Son’, but it is equally true that God so loved – agapao (a charitable love) the lost
world of sinners, and gave his only begotten Son to be a propitiation for our
sins – and not ours only but the sins of the whole holos – whole, all, complete world – cosmos, generally referring to the world of men.
Any
doctrine that limits God’s love to the elect places a limitation on God’s character
and distorts the above quoted scriptures.
If the free
will of man has no bearing on his salvation, God’s election of some to
salvation is arbitrary, and “leaving others
to their just condemnation” (as Calvinists teach) is also arbitrary. Another
aspect of God’s character is his grace but where is grace in an arbitrary
condemnation to hell?
The word election is similar in
meaning to the word chosen and both mean exactly what they say. We have been elected and chosen by God to
eternal life and what is more, chosen before the creation. “…According as he hath chosen us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame
before him in love:” Ephesians
1:4
Since we were not in existence before the foundation of the world,
how could our volition be an issue?
1Peter 1:2 gives us the answer; “…elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification
of the Spirit, unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ…” and 2Thessalonians 2:13 “…because
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:”
We were chosen/elected in eternity
past. Eternity encompasses time. God’s view from eternity foresaw all of
history including our act of accepting his gospel as truth. The election, choosing and predestination of
believers are based on God’s foreknowledge of their “…belief of the truth”. Remember that saving faith is the mental act
of trusting God; not trust in ourselves, nor acts of self-righteousness. Salvation is God’s gift of grace and it is
attained by means of faith (trusting God), not of human effort.
An example of God’s election or
choosing is the story of Esau and Jacob.
Jacob was given precedence over his older brother even while they were
still in the womb (Genesis 25:22-26).
Faith was the issue then as it has always been, and Jacob and Esau were
no exception. Esau treated his position
in the Messianic line with contempt; Jacob desired it above all else for he
understood all the purposes behind it.
It was this foreseen faith and its ramifications that enabled God to say, “the younger would serve the
older”. The ramifications of Jacob’s
life and the lives of all those who influenced him were known by God before the
foundations of the world were laid, so God was not caught unawares; He does not
run his creation on an ad hoc basis or at the whim of men?
God can and has and will interfere
in the schemes of men when those schemes are detrimental to his plan for the
ages. He has destroyed the earth with a
flood; confounded the language of men, sent great and terrible plagues upon the
earth, and destroyed the armies of his enemies.
He has spoken to man through the mouth of an ass, removed kings from
their power, established others in their stead, chastised and disciplined his
people and when necessary removes people, even his own, from that plan through
premature death. He is coming again to
claim his Church from out of this world; he is going to judge mankind again
with terrible plagues and in the end will physically return to rule this world
with a rod of iron. Is this a God who
needs to bow to the will of man? No, and
he is able to use the volition, even the rebellion of man, to fulfil his will.
For all that some may desire it; no man ceases to
exist at physical death for God has decreed human life to be eternal. We all die at God’s chosen moment and we will
all go to God’s appointed place. In life
we may plan and strive to achieve, but as we have virtually no control over the
rest of creation, our plans are subject to the only one who has that
control. There are those who seem to
prosper, yet what have they achieved if they gain the whole world and lose their
soul? There are those who are poverty
stricken, yet in recognising their spiritual poverty look to God and gain
everlasting life. We are all subject to
the ebb and flow of life, yet God is in all things working them together for
the good of those that love him and who are called according to his purpose.
Vessels of honour and dishonour: It is
this teaching above all, which I believe to be the crux of the
controversy. Can we overcome this seemingly
unanswerable dilemma; can we find an answer which leaves God’s love and grace
absolute and supreme?
“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing
formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of
the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and
to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath
fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on
the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory…” Romans 9:20-23
These verses in Romans chapter 9 are
difficult but if we go back a little in the chapter and clear up the verse on
the raising up of Pharaoh, we might make some headway. Pharaoh had the faculty for faith as you and
I have, he was born a sinner as were you and I, and he had as much opportunity
to believe in God as we had. The
following verses applied to him as much as any other.
Ezekiel 33:11.
“Say unto
them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the
wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from
your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”
2 Peter 3:9
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise,
as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that
any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
Jeremiah 18:3-7 uses the same analogy
of the potter and the clay but uses it in regards to the Lord and Israel. In verse eight we see the allowance for
repentance (an act of human will), to change the Divine will.
“If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I
will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.”
So how and why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart time
after time until it was impossible for him to repent? (Exodus chapters 6-10)
Natural and spiritual laws govern
the universe and all its creatures. Natural
laws are ordained by God and spiritual laws are the very essence of his nature;
perfect righteousness and perfectly just.
To defy any of these universal laws will bring certain
retribution. Let me illustrate…
“A half tonne lead crystal
chandelier is suspended twenty feet above the ballroom floor. The ceiling support is slowly pulling
apart. One of the foolish says, “I will
defy this law of gravity” and stands directly beneath the mass. The chandelier falls and that foolish one
crushed.”
The law of gravity will not allow
such defiance and neither does spiritual law.
If we defy what is good we will be that much more subject to our old
base nature which is at enmity with God.
The vicious criminality of today, whether it is wanton vandalism or
wanton cruelty is the end result of rejection of authority and ultimately of
God. Continued indulgence in the lusts
of the flesh, leads to a breaking down of self-control and eventual enslavement
to those lusts. Continued sexual sins
will inevitably lead to the breakdown of family life and if widespread within a
society, to the destruction of that society.
These are laws that history and our own society undeniably prove.
Pharaoh’s pride and sense of his own
authority was the probable cause of his rejection of Moses’ command, to “…let
my people go”, and each subsequent refusal to comply with God’s
authority made it harder and harder for him to submit. God brought about the hardness of Pharaoh’s
heart through the outworking of eternal law, but Pharaoh through his rebellious
unbelief, brought about his own condemnation.
God’s control over creation is complete, even to the regulating of human
rebellion and it is in this sense that Pharaoh was permitted his part in
history. Pharaoh was a vessel of
dishonour brought about by his own self-will, but with the permission of
God.
“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest
against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou
made me thus? Hath not the potter
power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and
another unto dishonour? What if God,
willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much
longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might
make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore
prepared unto glory…”
Man’s volition coexists with God’s sovereign will, and
our freedom to act in faith or in rebellion is God’s gift. He is however, able to subdue all things unto
himself and despite the free will of man; history will end as He has decreed,
to the praise of His glory.
Summary:
God is not willing
that any should perish therefore the testimony of creation is common to all, so
that all might be aware of the Creator’s existence.
The ungodly are
without excuse in their rejection of God: -
“For the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who
hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is
manifest in them; for God hath shewed it
unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead;
so that they are without excuse”:
Romans 1:18-20
The application of
grace is the ministry of the Holy Spirit:
"No
man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him…" (John
6:44). See also John 12:32, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men unto me".
This gracious act is the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit.
We cannot come to God
unless he first touches our spirit with the truth, but the onus is on us to
believe - to accept the truth, when he convicts. Although Christ says he will draw all men unto him,
the facts show that not all men come to him, therefore the final decision to
whether a person will be saved lies in his/her positive reaction to the Holy Spirit's ministry
The Scriptures have innumerable passages where men are commanded or
encouraged to exercise belief. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” is a
simple statement of fact including an encouragement to act positively. In effect we are being told, “You have the
God given ability to believe, therefore in the interest of your eternal soul,
act upon the knowledge received”.
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