Grace Gate

Premise:  

“Does man have free-will?” is one of the most foundational questions people seek to answer.  Some of the answers to this question are also often the most misrepresented or misunderstood.  This section will seek to show that people have freedom to choose within their nature.  A sinner, who is spiritually dead in their sin, is unable to choose God; much like a lion could eat grass, but never would because it is not in it’s nature to do so.  Rebellion and enmity with God reign supreme in the nature (and therefore the will) of the unbeliever.  God can reach down and regenerate the heart, thus giving a new nature.  With this new nature a person will come to God willingly.  This section will later tie in to “(C-5) Spiritually Dead or Spiritually Sick.”

 

————————————————–

ITEM 1 OF 5

Bruce Ware on Moral Neutrality and God’s Two Wills

————————————————–

ITEM 2 OF 6

A.W. Pink on Luke 14 and John 6:44 

————————————————-

ITEM 3 OF 6

The Bondage of the Will, by Steven Houck

————————————————–

ITEM 4 OF 6

Man’s Will – Free Yet Bound, by Walter J. Chantry

————————————————–

ITEM 5 OF 6

James D. Strauss’ Critique of Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, by John Piper

——————

ITEM 6 OF 6

The Freedom of Man, by Kevin Rhyne

Are we free? Is there such a thing as free will for created beings? Was William Ernest Henley correct when he proclaimed, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”?

What was the test of Genesis 3:1-6? “I want to be free as God is free! I want to determine what is right and wrong like God does!” Isn’t that ludicrous? The clay wanting to form itself. And so they traded God for the fruit, contentment in the joy of their Creator for the discontented grasping of fabled equality with the Divine. The result: death.

This grizzly cycle is portrayed again and again in Scripture. The more aggressively Man tries to be as God is, the more foreign Man becomes to resembling anything of the Divine Nature. Watch the cycle unfold in Genesis 5. “Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.” The sad refrain “and he died…” repeats again and again in Chapter 5. Lives of men reaching to be as God is, yet falling miserably short, and each one died.

Look at the assessment of God over the condition of Man’s quest for Divine equality in the very next chapter.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Gen. 6:5

Later, after God cleansed the earth with the Flood and started over with righteous Noah, God still assessed the heart of Man as intending evil from his youth.Even those chosen by God – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, and many others – each one is recorded somewhere as failing to be free of the ambition to be as God is even while they recognized their failure to do so.

Where is our freedom if we can do what we most want to do and all we want to do is evil continually?

Fish do not know they are wet. We think we are doing such good, but even in our best actions we fall so short. There are Buddhists who feed the poor. Atheists have helped hurricane victims. There are even Muslims who can be good citizens of a non-Muslim state and really seek peace without seeking to subvert the existing government. They are out there.

We do not always act as bad as we could. But, consider this:

For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. Romans 14:23

John Piper gives an excellent analogy for this reality.

If a king teaches his subjects how to fight well and then those subjects rebel against their king and use the very skill he taught them to resist him, then even those skills become evil.

In other words, even building a school in an impoverished African nation is sin if the motive is anything less than out of a desire to honor God and showing mercy as a means of reflecting the mercy and goodness of God Who gives the resources for the action in the first place.

The point is: we are derived, created, and have no power, in and of ourselves, even to do meaningful, eternally significant good. We can’t change the color of a single hair. We can’t add a single moment to our lives. We can’t even say with certainty that we have tomorrow. All of our efforts to reach up to be as God is or, even worse, try to remake Him according to our own imaginations are a feeble attempt at freedom.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. – Demosthenes

[source]

—————————————–

Ω ENRICHMENT READING 1 OF 2:

God’s Will, Man’s Will, and Free Will, by Ernest C. Reisinger

Ω ENRICHMENT READING (HIGH DIFFICULTY) 2 OF 2:

Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards