It is sometimes wrongly said that those who hold to Reformed
theology do not believe in man’s “free will.”
Indeed, noted RB pastor and theologian Walter Chantry has written an
article titled the “Myth
of Free Will.” The point is not that we reject that man has a will but we
affirm the Biblical teaching that man’s will has been corrupted by the fall. Thus, the title of the Reformer Martin Luther’s
influential work on this topic is Of the Bondage of the Will.
Man’s will might be renewed through regeneration, but it will not be fully
restored till he reaches heaven.
Christian theologians have spoken of four “states” or
conditions of man. Thus, the Scottish Puritan Thomas Boston titled his classic
work Human Nature in Its
Fourfold State, in which he described:
(1) Man in the State of Innocence (pre-fall man); (2) Man in the State
of Nature (fallen man); (3) Man in the State of Grace (regenerate man); and (4)
Man in the Eternal State (for the believer, glorified man).
1. God hath endued the will of
man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is
neither forced, nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil. (Matthew 17:12; James 1:14;
Deuteronomy 30:19)
2. Man, in his state of
innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and
well-pleasing to God, but yet was unstable, so that he might fall from it. (Ecclesiastes 7:29; Genesis 3:6)
3.
Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to
any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether
averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to
convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. (Romans 5:6; Romans 8:7;
Ephesians 2:1, 5; Titus 3:3-5; John 6:44)
4.
When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he
freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables
him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that by
reason of his remaining corruptions, he doth not perfectly, nor only will, that
which is good, but doth also will that which is evil. (Colossians 1:13; John 8:36; Philippians 2:13;
Romans 7:15, 18, 19, 21, 23)
5.
This will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the
state of glory only. (Ephesians 4:13)
May this meeting serve to glorify God and to edify his
saints.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
