Free Grace or Free Will

John Hendryx Responds to Visitor Struggling with Free Will Vs. Free Grace

visitor: I am struggling with the Calvinism vs. Free Will debate. Why, when one "flees to Christ" as you say is there not the possibility of NOT fleeing to Christ. Is there not a choice involved here? Fleeing to Christ is not a work is it? Turning to Christ is not a work is it? Why is choosing to believe in Christ considered a work by so many Calvinists? When I believed in Christ I gave Him ALL the glory as I then understood that NOTHING I can do would satisfy God. ONLY what Christ did saves me! But I must choose to believe, trust, follow, Flee to Him! Where am I going wrong?

response: Thanks for writing with your excellent question. This hits directly at the crux of the matter. Salvation by grace alone in Christ alone was the very issue of the Reformation that Martin Luther battled the most with Erasmus and the Roman Catholic Church in the Sixteenth Century.

What is this issue of the bondage of the will all about? It points to what the Bible says is the real condition of the natural man. If we set aside church traditions for a moment go through what the Bible asserts about fallen man it may be surprising to you. First we need to establish whether or not man has a free will, according to Scripture. But how do we do this?

The Text not only says that the natural man is a sinner, but that he does not have the Spirit of God. He is not born of the Spirit. Agreed? Jesus says, Flesh gives birth to flesh and the Spirit gives birth to spirit (John 3:3,6) and "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail.”" (John 6:63) & Paul says that “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor 2:14). We do not receive things we think are foolish and that we do not understand. The natural man does not have the mind of Christ so even if someone preaches to him until he is blue in the face, he will not respond to the gospel unless God grants belief and repentance (see John 6:65 & 2 Tim 2:25, Eph 2:8). The Bible indeed declares that no one can believe without a preacher but this is not enough by itself …. the seed of the gospel that is cast forth from the preacher must be germinated, so to speak, by the Holy Spirit, if a person is to come to Christ. Paul explains how he knows some were chosen of God. He says, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” (1 Thess 1:4, 5) This is clear evidence the Spirit is necessary, not optional for a person to be made alive so he may come to Christ..without which man would remain naturally dead to the things of Christ.

The Holy Spirit is critical for salvation, so critical that without Him, no one would ever willingly submit to the humbling terms of the gospel, not one would come to Jesus Christ. Agreed? Or do you believe the Scripture teaches that a man can come to faith apart from the Holy Spirit? All true Christians affirm the necessity of the Holy Spirit. So from this very fact, we have established that man has no free will. Again, what is meant when we say no free will? We are not speaking of someone coercing us from the outside. No. It means that we are in bondage to a corruption of nature, out of which we cannot free ourselves BECAUSE WE DO NOT HAVE THE SPIRIT and hate God by nature (John 3:19). We cannot draw from our own resources to even lift a finger toward our own salvation. Jesus says in the Gospel of John to the Jews that only the Son can set them free, but they are now children of the Devil the father of lies, who lies because it is in his nature. In Romans 6 it reads that natural men are slaves to sin, and elsewhere that that Satan has taken men captive to do his will. If Christ is to set us free then it means we were not free and in bondage.

So it is important to ask, can a person, without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, believe the gospel? Does the natural person have the capacity to understand spiritual things? According to the above passages the answer is clearly no. 'No one says “Jesus is Lord” apart from the Holy Spirit.' So the unbeliever is void of the Spirit which is another way of saying that he has no free will. He may make voluntary choices but they are choices of necessity. In other words, he necessarily chooses sin, apart from grace. Nothing he does springs from a heart that loves God. His condition, if left to himself, is hopeless. God must intervene to illumine his mind, open blind eyes, unplug deaf ears, disarm his natural hostility, change our disposition and turn our heart of stone to a heart of flesh.

So if we can agree that a man will not come to Christ apart from the Holy Spirit, then we also agree and have established that the natural man has no free will. God must act if we are to do anything toward our redemption (See John 1:13).

Now that we have established this, lets take the other part of your great question.

>>>>Why, when one "flees to Christ" as you say is there not the possibility of NOT fleeing to Christ. Is there not a choice involved here? Fleeing to Christ is not a work is it? Turning to Christ is not a work is it? Why is choosing to believe in Christ considered a work by so many Calvinists?

Fleeing to Christ only becomes a work when we think we did this apart from God’s grace. If faith is a product of our unregenerate human nature then we could boast like this:

"Thank you Lord I am not like other men who do not have faith. When you granted grace to all men, others did not make use of it, BUT I DID."

Apart from grace, what makes them to differ from other men then was their native ability to have faith. But the Scripture says the grace of God makes us differ from others, not something we had by nature that our neighbor did not. When we arrive in God's presence we will not say, "Thank you God for everything, except my faith ... I am here because I had the wisdom to believe." No, we will say thank you Lord for your mercy that I even had the faith to believe. You deserve all the glory as I would have never come on my own.

Even when you think that the assistance of grace depends on your own humility and that it was not grace itself that made you humble then you no longer believe in 'grace alone' but that you came to Christ due to your own great humility. You are establishing a religion of grace PLUS your merit or wisdom or virtue, not Jesus alone. But when we recognize our faith in Christ is due to the fact that God has changed our heart so that we may see and understand his beauty and excellence, then we give all glory to God for all our salvation. Can you thank God for your faith? or is this the one thing that you can boast of contributing to the price of your salvation?

If all men have equal grace, as you seem to be suggesting, an important question to ask is why does one man believe the gospel and not another? Is one smarter, or have more natural sensitivity than others to spiritual things? Jesus says, My sheep hear my voice but some “do not believe BECAUSE [they] are not his sheep.” He does not say they are not his sheep because they do not believe (See John 10). So he reveals that the nature of the person determines the choice they will make. An unregenerate man will not exercise faith in a holy God. Jesus says a bad tree does not bear good fruit … but MAKE the tree good and its fruit will be good. …. The seed of the gospel which falls on our soil … Is this soil good by NATURE or by grace? God must first plow up the fallow ground of our hearts. To this Jesus says, "...every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up." - Matt 15:13. That is why Jeremiah says that he will turn our heart of stone to a heart of flesh THAT we might obey. No one believes or obeys while his heart is still stone. A blind man cannot see unless given new eyes. Shining a light into a blind man's eyes will not help him see. Nor will people respond to the word of God apart form the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

The Scripture testifies that, "It is not the man who wills or runs but God who has mercy (Rom 9:16) John 1:13 says it is not the will of man that causes us to believe but the new birth.

If God extends His grace to all men, then why do some reject him? Is it grace that makes men to differ from one another, not some good will God see in us.

Some important verses to contemplate are:

Romans 8:30 which says, “those who were called were justified” According to this verse, I ask you, how many of those God called were justified? The answer to this question is why no one resists God’s call.

And Jesus himself said, “ALL that the Father gives to me WILL come to me…”(John 6:37) Not some, Jesus says, but ALL that God the Father gives the SON will believe on him. We believe that grace is invincible because this is what the Bible teaches … and without which no man would willingly come. When your child runs out in the street and a car is coming, do you wait to see what he will do with his free will, or do you run to scoop him out of danger. Love doesn't just wring hands and hope but it gets the job done and, in God's case saves the ones He came for. (See John 6:39). Jesus says he will lose NONE OF ALL THAT THE FATHER HAS GIVEN HIM - John 6:39

Total Depravity

Douglas Wilson

Pride and Prejudice

Before I came to understand and embrace the Biblical doctrine of resurrecting grace, I was kept away by a combination of factors. One reason, of course, was my own prejudices and ignorance. Certain truths tend to rub our theological fur the wrong way, and they have had that tendency since at least the time of Paul (Rom. 9:19). But there was another reason. I had trouble because my ignorance and prejudices were sometimes reinforced by how I heard these issues presented. Consequently, I thought I understood what in fact I did not.

I write on one such topic, therefore, with some trepidation. I have no desire to mislead fellow Christians on such an important issue; our subject is the resurrection to eternal life, therefore, we must begin the discussion within the framework set by the Word of God.

Biblical Terminology

What is the condition of man prior to regeneration? How may we best describe him? The best place to start is with the Biblical description and the Biblical terms. When the Lord showed the prophet Ezekiel the valley of dry bones, He said, "`Son of man, can these bones live?' So I answered, `O Lord God, You know.' Again He said to me, `Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!' Thus says the Lord God to these bones: `Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live'" (Ezek. 37:3-5).

Before regeneration, we are nothing but dry bones. Unregenerate man is dead in his transgression and sin (Eph. 2:1-2; Col. 23). He is not sick, he is not ailing; he is dead. Now to say that he is dead in this respect is not to assert that he is physically dead, or dead in every aspect of his being. It simply means that he is dead with regard to spiritual things. He has no connection with the life of the Spirit,which comes only as a gift from God. Because man is dead, he must be born again (John 3:5-7). Because he is dead in sin, he is hostile to God and will not submit to His laws. Even further, he cannot submit to His laws (Rom. 8:7-8). The natural man is incapable of understanding spiritual things, and since the gospel is in the front rank of spiritual things which require spiritual understanding, this means the natural man has no ability to comprehend the gospel ( I Cor. 2:14).

Someone may object here and say that the gospel was designed for unregenerate men; how can we say that unregenerate men cannot understand it? In reply, I agree that the gospel was designed for unregenerate men, but I deny that it was intended to function apart from the resurrection given by the Spirit of God. Unless regeneration occurs, the gospel, like all spiritual things, remains gibberish to the natural man. As Paul says in I Corinthians 1:18, "...the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (also see II Cor. 2:15 and 4:3). Note what is foolish to him; it is the message of the cross.

Because man is in this condition, he cannot come to Christ unless he is drawn by the Father (John 6:44,65), by means of the Spirit (John 3:5-8). This means that a Biblical evangelist must preach, like Ezekiel, in a graveyard. He is not preaching in a hospital ward, trying to get the patients to take the medicine. Those who preach the gospel are not recruiters; they are heralds and instruments of a God-given resurrection. In accomplishing this, the dead men do not cooperate in their resurrection. The dead men have something they must do (repent and believe), but they do not do it until they are given life.

Another picture used by the Scripture to communicate this truth is the picture of slavery. Just as a dead man is not free to walk about, so a slave is not free to walk off. Jesus teaches us that everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin (John 8:34). Paul reminds the Roman Christians that they were at one timeslaves to sin and free from the control of righteousness (Rom. 6:20). In Titus 3:3, he says that we were all at one time foolish and slaves to various passions. Unlike physical slavery, it is impossible to escape from this bondage since the slavemaster is our own twisted nature -- our own passions and lusts. Wherever we go, there we are.

Theological Terminology

In discussions such as this, extra-Biblical theological terminology is both a blessing and a hindrance. It is a blessing because it enables us to pin down our definitions with better precision. This is necessary because there are many evangelical Christians who are not willing to submit to certain truths of Scripture, but they are constrained to agree with the phrases of Scripture. So they would agree, for example, that man is dead in his sins because Ephesians says so. But they would then hasten to add that "dead" doesn't mean dead and that we mustn't press such figures of speech too far. As such a discussion progresses, the defender of Biblical truth is constrained to use other words and phrases that will communicate the Scriptural concept.

The hindrance lies in the fact that such extra-Biblical phrases are not inspired and may not always communicate effectively. For example, the doctrine of the total depravity of man sounds like we are asserting the absolute depravity of man, i.e. that man is as bad as he could possibly be. This is quite obviously false. Man is constrained and held back from such an absolute depravity by the common grace of God.

The doctrine of total depravity is this: man is totally unable to contribute to his own salvation in any way, because he is dead in his sins. For example, the resurrection of Lazarus was not a joint effort between Christ and Lazarus. Lazarus came forth because he was raised, not in order to be raised.

What Denial Involves

The denial of man's total inability will ultimately undermine our faith in the necessity of the new birth and the evangelical proclamation. How so?

Scripture teaches us that faith is pleasing to God. It also teaches us that we are to live our Christian lives the same way we began our Christian lives (Gal. 3:1-6; Col. 2:6). Now if unregenerate men, on their own, are capable of saving faith, without having been regenerated by the Spirit of God, then they should be able to continue to exercise that same kind of faith, after they are saved, without any help from the Spirit of God.

If a man can become a believer on his own, then he can continue to believe on his own. And if he can continue to believe on his own, then what did regeneration accomplish? The Bible teaches us that the Christian life begins with faith, continues in faith, and concludes in faith (Romans 1:17). The foundation of all godliness is faith, and a denial of man's total inability means that unbelievers are capable of laying that foundation for all godliness on their own. Even if one argues that the Holy Spirit regenerates a man after he believes, such a regeneration is superfluous. What is it for? What does it do? In this view, it most certainly does not enable the man to believe or trust God. It hardly does honor to the resurrecting Spirit to say that His job is to tag along.

The apostle Paul rebuked the Galatians when they forgot that they began by hearing with faith and then sought to finish the job by human effort. In considering his response to that error, I doubt he would have thought much of the confusion that reverses the order -- beginning by human effort and then finishing by the Spirit.

Put bluntly, it amounts to this: If I am saved, sanctified, and glorified through faith (which the Bible teaches), and faith is possible apart from regeneration (which a denial of total inability asserts), then salvation, sanctification, and glorification are possible without regeneration. And that reasoning undermines the necessity of the everlasting and eternal gospel.

Carts and Horses

God gives eyes, and then we see. God gives life, and then we live. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (II Cor. 4:6).

Contrast this Biblical way of thinking with the alternative. I saw, and so God gave me eyes. I came alive, and so God gave me a resurrection. Light came forth from my heart, so God said, "Let there be light." This is obviously incorrect; it is God, Paul says, who commanded light to come out of darkness. It isGod who commanded that it shine in our hearts.

Notice the comparison in this passage between the gift of new life and the creation of the material universe. It bears mentioning that the material creation was ex nihilo -- from nothing. Paul asserts the same about the new creation; it too is from nothing.

The creation does not help the Creator out in the work of creation; the Creator acts unilaterally. The dilemma for evangelicals who want to deny total inability is this: either God must begin the resurrecting work of salvation because unsaved men are dead, or unsaved men are capable of beginning the process of their salvation on their own by means of saving faith. If the former, then we say welcome and shake hands. If the latter, then it follows that unsaved men can finish what they began, and we are confronted with a false gospel. In other words, there is no consistent stopping place between Reformed theology on the one hand, and a Pelagian theology on the other. Of course, plenty of evangelicals do not wind up in one camp or the other, but that is to be considered a triumph of inconsistency.

Conclusion

The Bible does not permit us to boast in our salvation at all: "You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God -- and righteousness and sanctification and redemption -- that, as it is written, `He who glories, let him glory in the Lord'" (I Corinthians 1:30-31).

If a man has been raised from the dead, there is much cause for rejoicing; there is no cause for pride. And when all human boasting is removed, what remains? Nothing of ours, but there is an infinite ocean of grace. My earnest hope and prayer is that more and more Christians will set out on that ocean, until there is no land in sight.