Do we really have 'free will?'

In Ephesians 2, Paul describes people as spiritually "dead in trespasses" — until God makes them alive. Dr. Toby Holt tackles the question of free will and how our choices fit with God's sovereign plan. Holt explains that, apart from grace, the human will is bound by sin — we are not neutral but spiritually dead. Salvation begins with God, "who is rich in mercy," making dead sinners alive in Christ. Like the potter over the clay in Romans 9, God is sovereign, yet we still make real, responsible choices.

Questions this sermon answers:

1. Do humans have free will? We make real choices, but apart from God's grace our will is enslaved to sin. Ephesians 2 says we are spiritually dead until God makes us alive.

2. How do our choices fit with God's sovereignty? God is fully sovereign, like a potter over clay, yet our decisions are genuine and we are responsible for them. Scripture holds both together.

3. Where does salvation begin? With God, not us. "But God, who is rich in mercy," makes dead sinners alive — salvation is His gracious work from start to finish.

"But God, who is rich in mercy... even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." — Ephesians 2:4-5 (NKJV)

Speaker: In Ephesians 2, Paul describes people as spiritually "dead in trespasses" — until God makes them alive. Dr. Toby Holt tackles the question of free will and how our choices fit with God's sovereign plan. Holt explains that, apart from grace, the human will is bound by sin — we are not neutral but spiritually dead. Salvation begins with God, "who is rich in mercy," making dead sinners alive in Christ. Like the potter over the clay in Romans 9, God is sovereign, yet we still make real, responsible choices.

Do you believe that we have free will? And if so, if so, how do you define it?

I want you to think on that as we look at the text.

When you think about free will, when you make decisions in your own day-to-day life,

do those decisions seem free? Do they seem autonomous?

Do they seem without direction, without compulsion?

Is life a big buffet that you can just choose from? Is that the case?

Now on some level, when you talk about free will, everyone likes it in theory

and everyone believes they have it, in theory.

On some level, one likes free will.

It sounds attractive, and part of the reason it sounds attractive is because we want to be captains of our own fate.

We want to feel, we want to seem, we want to be autonomous.

Now, on some level, I think we understand that we're not, but it doesn't stop the desire.

You think of a free-range chicken out on the range, and there's no fences, it can just go wherever it wants.

We tend to like that view of ourselves.

Maybe not the chicken part, but definitely the freedom part. Definitely the idea that we can

freely exercise our own volition to go where we want and to do what we want. And that life,

it's an open canvas and we're the paintbrush. That's how we like to look at things.

But is it true? Is it true? Is free will a real, actual, tangible thing? Let me save us some time.

I'll get to the point right out of the gate this morning.

The answer is no.

The answer is no.

Now, I'm going to define what I mean here in a little bit.

But let me suggest this.

As desirable as free will may be, there's never been, in the history of choices and decisions that you and I have made,

there's never been a single one of them that has been truly free according to typical definitions of free will.

Free will in a libertarian, unconstrained, indeterminate sense.

In that sense, it does not exist.

And the reason that it doesn't exist, the reason we don't have a free-range will like the free-range chickens is because our will is bound.

Our will is shackled.

And if we're honest, we know this to be true.

Our will is shackled by all manner of things.

It's shackled, first and foremost, by our nature.

And that's what we're going to see in this morning's text.

Our will is shackled by our nature.

We do what our nature desires to do.

Our will is shackled by our nature.

It's also shackled by our circumstances.

It's shackled by our experiences.

Our will and desire, so to speak, is invariably bound or constrained by circumstances that we can't always control and by a nature that we didn't necessarily choose.

Freedom and the full libertarian and determined autonomous sense is not the case.

Whenever we make a decision, whenever we make a decision, that decision has already been greatly limited or defined on the basis of 10 bajillion, million, what have you, pre-existing conditions and causes.

First and secondary causes, not to mention, again, the limits of our human nature.

Now, let me speak to that last point for a moment before I go to the text.

When I was younger, I enjoyed sports.

I still do.

I'm far less mobile than I even was then.

But I've never been terribly tall.

Now, when I was young, I enjoyed playing basketball.

I was a 5'9 guy.

I did what I could on the court.

I'm not fast.

I'm not tall.

But, you know, the favorite part of basketball to me, it always has been the case.

My favorite basketball player of all time is a guy named Mark Eaton from the Utah Jazz.

He played much to the 90s.

About seven foot three, really tall guy. He was kind of a lumbering oaf of a guy,

but he did one thing well. He could block shots like no one else. He couldn't score. He could

sort a rebound. No assist. He didn't move much. The man alive, you came near him at the rim,

His hands, he just got up and he swatted everything away. And I thought that was the

coolest thing. If I was going to watch a highlight realm of sports stuff when I was in the 90s,

I enjoyed seeing guys just swat shots, block shots, way more than slam dunks or just about

anything else. That's what I like. And for a small season, when I held some vain hope I may

get taller than I actually ever did, I thought, how cool it would be to go on and be a starting

center in the NBA and just to block shots right and left. Well, needless to say, that did not

happen. Again, there's no shocker there. Now, I could will for what it's worth. I could at that

time and even in the present, I could will all day long that it be so. I could will, free will.

Remember, I could will and desire and choose that all I want.

Where's it going to get me?

I could will all day long and be the starting center for the Chicago Bulls.

I could will all day long to grow wings and fly around this room.

That'd be cool.

I can desire that.

I can even choose that.

But I can't enact it.

I can't bring it into reality.

There's all manner of things I can will or desire or want or choose that I cannot attain.

Why?

Because my nature does not make it possible what I can actually do what I

can actually pursue is confined limited by my nature our nature drives us it

just does now some manners that's good and some manners it's not our nature

drives us if if I take a room this size and I took two plates of food out here

one was a chocolate cake and the other was a plate of celery and I said

after service it'll come up and you can grab whatever you'd like well I know

what's going to happen. The celery is of the devil. Say, if you could go back to the pre-fall

garden, there was no celery there, I'm fairly sure. But I know that chocolate cake is going to be more

desirable. Why? Because our taste buds, generally speaking, and don't come to me afterwards saying

you love celery. I'm sure someone does. But our taste buds, so to speak, desire one thing far

more than the other. It just is. And so what we think is a free will between two otherwise equal

choice is, it isn't so because our nature drives us towards one more than the other. Free will in

the strict sense of not having any causes affecting it, of being autonomous and indeterminate and the

like, it just isn't so in a strict sense. Again, it's defined a hundred thousand different ways by

philosophers and the like. If you want to dive into a definition that fits a biblical model, okay,

that's a different discussion.

But as far as the general autonomous understanding of free will, there's no such thing.

Free will does not exist.

But there is a concept called free agency, which does.

There's a concept called free agency that does.

And that's a distinction this morning.

If you take nothing else away, besides celery is bad, if you take nothing else away, take away this.

That free will in the strict, libertarian, autonomous, indeterminate sense, it does not exist.

But free agency does, and there is a distinction. We'll talk about it briefly, and I encourage you

to study it at greater length in time yet to come. So what is free agency? What is free agency? Are

we just playing semantics here? What is free agency? Well, simply put, although man's will

is constrained, he nevertheless does have certain freedoms of choice, certain freedoms of choice.

We're saying his will is constrained and confined and bound and alike by circumstances and other

causes and his nature and so forth. But he still, at the same time, has some freedom of choice. We

know that to be true every bit as much as I hope we would understand that free will in an autonomous

sense does not exist. This morning, when you went into your closet, unless you're five years old,

you probably dressed yourself. You probably chose your own shirt. Some of us did better than others.

We probably chose our own shirt that you looked in your closet and there were options, right?

There are options as what you choose. There might have been red and blue and white and yellow and

so forth and so you chose now that is an example of free agency you're able to

choose from the shirts that were available to you in your closet now

I want you to notice something while you could have chosen any shirt from your

closet you could not have chosen any shirt from my closet right in a sense

you had freedom of choice you had a free agent you could choose the yellow the

red, the blue, what have you. No one was stopping you, I trust. No one was stopping you, but

nevertheless, your will or desires, so to speak, were limited still to those options that your

closet afforded, to those options that your closet contained, and only those options. Now, that's a

very simple reference or simple example of a much more complex topic that we're going to be studying

this morning and it's a topic we'll study a little bit further as we return to the text in

Ephesians 2. If you would, if you would, and the Bible's in your pews, let's look again at verses

one through three of our text and then we'll kind of work our way through. Okay, verses one through

three. And you he made alive, meaning God, and you he made alive who were dead. Who were dead. This

is not just poetry or hyperbole or what have you. And you he made alive who were dead in trespasses

and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince

of the power of the air. We know who that is. The Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,

among whom also we once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires

of the flesh and of the mind. And we were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

There is a before, there is an after.

And the question is, what happened?

What happened?

All right, so far this morning, we've considered briefly the issue of free will,

primarily through a philosophical framework when we're talking about free will and free agency and the like.

But man-centered philosophy is inherently limited because there are things that are above our pay grade.

There are things that we can't know.

Man-centered philosophy ends at a certain point after which we can only guess and speculate

and reliable to be wrong.

And so, if you want to understand something

as tricky and dense and difficult as free will,

you probably don't want to go to Bob or Stu or Fran or Fred

or Socrates or Plato or what have you,

just fallen people who are as apt to be as confused

as you and I are.

We need help from a transcendent source.

If you have questions about your purpose in life,

you have questions about something like free will,

you need help from someone bigger than you and I.

We need to go to our maker, our creator.

We need to go to God.

We need to go to his word.

So this morning, that's what we're doing.

We're not considering this just through a philosophical lens.

To do so would get us nowhere, at least no further than our fellow men have done.

We need to go to an authoritative source, a transcendent external source for answers.

And that's what we see here.

Now, at the outset of Ephesians 2, God, through the Apostle Paul, is providing some answers to questions about mankind's purpose, mankind's origins.

And specifically in verses 1 through 3, he's reminding us about something important about our nature.

He's saying there was a before and there's an after.

He's saying that at one point you were this and now you are this.

At one point you were fallen and now you are alive.

At one point you were dead in your sins and trespasses.

Now you've been quickened and regenerated.

A before and an after.

So he's telling us this.

He's telling us that we once had a problem and that our problem was that we were dead.

And again, this term comes up too often when Paul and the other epistle authors are talking about mankind's fallen nature to think this is just poetry.

When he says dead, he means it in a real substantive way.

Now, when he says you once were dead, that's not to imply that physically speaking that man was born and then he died and he stayed dead and physically speaking he was brought to new life.

That's not what he's talking about, but he is saying that spiritually speaking, you were dead, not sickly, not weak, dead, spiritually flatlining.

That's the implication. And this is not something we're seeing just in one text.

You go throughout Paul's letters, you'll see this all over the place.

We're not even in Romans yet. And good golly, it's everywhere there.

There is a sense in which fallen man is born in a state of fallenness, deadness, unable to choose

that which is life, unable to choose that which is of God. In verse 1 and 2, he says this explicitly.

He says, you, meaning the Christian, the believer, he made alive. He, volitionally. You didn't jump

out of the spiritual grave on your own. He did it of his volition. And you, he made alive who were

once dead in your sins and in your trespasses. Now, I'm not going to ask you to agree with Paul

on this. I hope you do, but I'm not going to ask you to agree with him on this. But I am going to

ask you to pay close attention to what he's saying. Pay close attention to what Scripture's

saying, because it's germane to our entire conversation. Now, everything we understand

about free will ultimately stems from this topic and these verses. In short, Paul is making a case,

and it's not a new case. It's a case that the church has historically understood. It's a case

that mankind comes into this world with a problem.

It comes in what we call a fallen state.

You'll see it given other labels, Original Sin, he's totally depraved, things like this.

But we know he has a problem at the very least.

And in that state, in the midst of this problem, he has an inclination.

And that inclination is to run towards sin and to run away from God.

Man is not born as a state of moral neutrality.

He runs towards what is wrong and runs away from that which is right.

And again, this isn't speculation.

This is not theology that just came about in the 16th century.

This is what Paul says.

And you, he made alive, were once dead in your sins and in your trespasses.

You may disagree with some of the conclusions that stem from that,

but it's hard to disagree with the overt, explicit words of Paul on this matter.

In any case, in verses 1 through 3, Paul is saying that we were once spiritually dead.

And then he goes on at great length to describe what that looked like.

To remind the Christian, to remind you and I of what it was like to be dead.

For some of us, God did a work in us, regenerated us, changed us.

We're born again in our youth and we don't really remember the time before that.

For others, we do remember the time.

We remember it was different.

It was different before God came to us.

We lived differently.

Specifically said that when we were spiritually dead, we made dead choices.

We walked according to the course of the world.

We followed the prince of the power of the air.

We fulfilled fleshly desires.

And we were by nature children of wrath.

These are not throwaway terms.

They all have weighty theological implication.

Now, there's a lot there we could consider.

We could take the sermon in any given number of directions,

from regeneration to election, what have you.

But I want to focus on the last phrase, where he talks about our nature.

Because that came up earlier in our conversation this morning.

He talks about our nature.

See, the word nature has implications.

You know, when you look into the natural realm,

when you look into the natural realm,

you'll notice that creatures tend to do things that are in line

with the way that they've been constructed.

They tend to do things that are in line with their nature, the way it works.

And furthermore, they really can't do things that their nature doesn't permit.

You know, down you go on 65.

I don't think you have to go very far if you go to the left here.

There's a field out there.

There's some cows out there.

Well, those cows, have you ever stopped and just observed, just kind of looked at a cow and watched a cow?

A cow just does a few basic things.

A cow, you know, it grazes.

It meanders about.

It grazes.

Maybe it moos.

It makes certain noises.

It can be more amusing than others.

It grazes.

It moos.

It sleeps.

And that's about it.

It doesn't have a very expansive range of activities.

It doesn't do a whole lot of other things.

No one's going to write a book, The Cow Chronicles, because there's not much there in Chronicle.

The cow has a simple nature.

It does simple things.

That's the cow.

Now, let's say that there's a cow out in the field right there.

And in a few moments, there's going to be a bunch of birds that are going to fly overhead.

And let's say the cow looks up.

And in a moment, the cow says, flying.

Why haven't I thought of that before?

And the cow goes running off a cliff and jumps in the air.

What's going to happen?

It's not going to end well for the cow.

Because the cow is not a bird, right?

The cow's nature is cow-like.

It is not bird-like.

And so if it tries to fly, it will not fly.

Why? Because, again, that's not its nature.

It cannot do something that its nature does not afford.

It cannot do something that is outside or external of its natural abilities.

A cow cannot choose to fly.

A cow cannot act in a way that is contrary to its nature.

The cow is constrained by its nature and even its circumstances.

Now, in a nutshell, the Apostle Paul, he doesn't mention cows here,

but he's making the same case about fallen men.

He's saying, much like the cow, when we were dead in our sins and trespasses, we were limited.

There was things we could do, and there was things that we could not do.

And among the things, chief among the things that we could not do when we were dead

is choose God of our own volition.

Come to him of our own free will, so to speak.

Now, why is that?

It's because dead means dead.

We want to be spiritually flatlining.

I use this example a lot because it helps me.

If you go sit, grab yourself a picnic chair and some lemonade,

and you go sit at one of the many cemeteries we have in town,

and you just sit there and you just look out,

and you look out and you wait for something to happen,

and you just watch and see,

and are any of these bones going to rise?

Now, you're going to be disappointed.

It's not going to happen.

That which is physically dead does not have a nature in its death that permits it to rise and to walk around.

I'm somewhat glad for that.

It does not have the ability to come out on its own and move about.

Dead means dead.

Spiritually speaking, it's the same thing.

And that's why Paul uses these words.

He doesn't say we're just wounded in the fall, we're just sickened in the fall, things like that.

We're weak sickly.

It says we were dead in our sins and our trespasses.

Spiritually dead people cannot choose spiritual life

any more than physically dead people can choose physical life.

Or any more than a cow can choose to fly.

Why?

Because nature means something.

Nature means something.

You cannot choose something contrary to your nature.

You can talk about free will all day long.

Free will, you can elevate that concept.

It don't matter.

You cannot do something that is contrary to your nature.

you and I might not like to hear that

because we want there to be no constraints.

And yet, the authoritative, transcendent source that we said we're going to go to,

that source says this, that it's not an option.

It's the clear, expressed teaching here in Ephesians 2.

Now, lest we were to think that it's only Paul that talked about these things,

lest we wanted to isolate Paul and say, well, he just was a little rough around the edges on these issues,

lest we wanted to somehow separate his testimony, know this, Jesus says the same thing.

Did you listen to what Elder West read this morning?

It's the same thing.

You remember Jesus himself.

He's arguing with the Pharisees because the Pharisees love to argue.

They came at him all manner of different times, all manner of different texts.

There was one particular argument where Jesus is just dropping truth bombs.

He's saying all manner of things that should have resonated.

If the Pharisees were able to respond, it should have resonated with them because it was good stuff.

God himself in the flesh was speaking to the Pharisees, dropping truth after truth after truth

with wisdom that no man had ever heard before.

He's doing this.

And yet, the Pharisees, they didn't respond to a single drop of it.

Why?

Because they couldn't.

Listen to what Jesus says about this.

Because he addresses that inability.

He addresses that inability.

He tells the Pharisees their problem.

He says this in John 8, 43.

Why do you not understand my speech?

Why do you not understand the truth bombs?

Why do you not understand what I'm saying?

And then he answers his own question.

He says this, because you're not able to, because you're not able to listen to my word.

Unless they misunderstand what he's saying, he adds this point.

He says, you were of your father, the devil, and it's his desires that you want to do.

He's referring to their nature, not merely to their intellect or their will or their philosophy or their ideology or their politics or any manner of these things.

He's saying, I'm hitting you with truth, you can't receive it because you're unable.

You have an inability.

A few verses later, he repeats the same point for emphasis.

He says the same thing, lest we misunderstand or forget or skip past it.

He says this, he says, he who is of God hears God's words.

Therefore, you do not hear because you are not of God.

Fallen man's will, if he is not regenerated, if he's not born again,

if the Spirit is not entered in, fallen man's will and his ears and his choices and the like are bound by his fallen nature.

It cannot be otherwise.

Fallen man has no more free will to choose God or respond to God's call than a cow has a free will to go flying.

So what must happen then?

Because that was the state we were all born into.

So what has to happen if any of us is going to have hope?

What has to happen?

If man's heart is dead and his ears are closed and his will is bound,

if Paul was right, if Jesus was right, if that's true, what must happen?

If that situation is ever to be changed, if we're ever to come to God.

Well, what did verse 1 say?

It said we must be made alive.

We must be made alive.

Spoiler alert, you cannot do the making yourself.

One greater than you must quicken your heart

and enable you to do that which you otherwise would not.

We must be made alive.

Elsewhere, Scripture says you must be born again.

It's talking about the same thing.

Paul here is saying you must be made alive,

you who were once dead in your sins.

Now, let me detour for a moment to this issue of being born again

because we get confused about that.

The theological bar is not at its highest peak in 21st century Christianity.

I wish it was otherwise, but it's not.

And so what we do with the words born again is this.

We equate being born again to a decision, to a decision we made.

If you talk to someone, and you're getting to know them and hear their testimony,

and you were to say something like, so when did you come to faith?

When were you born again?

So often when I ask that question, I'll have someone say,

well, I was born again on December 4th, 1986.

It was a Tuesday or whatnot, and I was talking to my pastor, and I pledged my faith right

then, and I wrote my name in the back of the Bible, and I was born again.

We tend to equate being born again as the volitional act we undertake to choose God,

to accept God, to let Him into our hearts.

That's what we tend to do.

We see being born again as something that finds its fruit in our own will, in our own

volition, that being born again is something we do, that someone who's dead spiritually

flatlining, just says, you know what? I've had enough of this. I'm for life. And we become

born again on the basis of just deciding to, deciding for Jesus, deciding that what he says

is true. We like that concept. That's why Arminianism rules the day in evangelical circles.

We like that concept because it gives us a greater sense of ownership and frankly,

a greater sense of pride over what we've done, that we chose and we decided and we understood

something better than our fallen pagan neighbors. We like that because we can take more credit.

Man alive, the minute your theology starts taking credit for things that belong to the glory of God alone,

it's time to take a good long look at that theology.

Because it ain't, it ain't so.

Scripture says the opposite.

I know I'm speaking to a largely Reformed Presbyterian crowd, so a lot of this is not new to you.

But nevertheless, Scripture says the opposite.

It doesn't place salvation in the realm of our free will to choose God.

And John 15 doesn't get any clearer than this.

In John 15, God says, you did not choose me, but I chose you.

You did not choose me, but I chose you.

This is the doctrine of regeneration.

A doctrine by which man is dead in his sins and trespasses until such time as God of his own volition acts.

And once God acts, that man's heart is different.

It's open to information and verses and faith and thoughts that it never before had.

The best biblical example we have of this, or at least what stands out to my mind the most,

is, of course, the Apostle Paul.

One moment, he's Saul of Tarsus, and he's on the road to where?

All right, Damascus.

I've got to get more than just one answer over here.

Damascus, that's right.

He's on the road to Damascus.

And as you know, when you picture in Acts 9, when you see what's going on in your mind's eye,

He's on the road to Damascus, and he's not sitting there on the horse or the mule or whatever he's on.

He's not sitting there and just contemplating religious conversion.

He's not going, you know, this Christianity sounds pretty good.

I think I'll decide for Christ.

I'll open the door to my heart or anything like that.

There's no sense of that whatsoever.

What we see is the exact opposite.

There's Saul of Tarsus, and he's going to Damascus in order to do what?

To persecute believers, to persecute the church, to persecute Christ.

And later, Christ is going to call him on the carpet on this.

He's there to persecute Christ.

And Scripture says this, that while he's on the way, while he's in route, he's breathing out threats and murder.

That's where he was on the road to Damascus.

He was a dead man doing dead things.

What happened?

Simple.

God entered in.

God knocked him from his horse.

Bright light, loud voice.

The heart was changed.

God entered in.

God changed Saul's heart.

He regenerated.

He made that which is dead alive.

And once it had been made alive, it was able for the first time to both understand and

comprehend and accept the teachings of the very Christ he was persecuting when previously

He could not.

There is no other way to understand Acts 9 correctly other than to see it was God's volition

in choosing Saul, not Saul's volition in choosing God or in choosing Christ.

John 6.44, Jesus says this,

no one can come to me unless my Father draws him.

That's an issue of ability.

No one can.

It's not permission, it's ability.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

Again, that puts the volitional act in God's basket.

It's God who draws.

It's God who quickens.

We want it to apply the free will banner high.

Scripture reminds us it has a limit.

We have free agency, but it is God who chooses, God who elects.

To imply otherwise is to imply something that is against the overt teaching of Scripture,

not something in the dust jacket, not something in the appendix.

Now, those of you who know your theology know that the implications of all these things,

they're vast, again, more than we have time to consider this morning.

The implications of what we're talking about with free will and free agency and the like

will move very quickly into questions of predestination, of election, and so forth,

sovereignty, providence. And I know that people tend to hit a wall with these issues. We all know

God is bigger. We all know God does things that affect and inform the world around us. That's why

we pray to him, because we know he can and does do these things. But it's like putting God in

bubble wrap and saying, you can do this much, but not that much. You can have this amount of effect

in my life, but I'm pretty much in charge of the rest. We have trouble with these things. We tend

to hit a wall with these issues. We tend to skip past them sometimes in Scripture. And part of it

is because we can't wrap our minds around some of the implications, some of the consequences.

We come back to one issue. It's the issue of fairness, the issue of fairness. Is it fair that

God, at least up to the point of the text that we saw this morning, that he hadn't changed the

hearts of the Pharisees, and yet he had changed the heart of the apostles? Is that fair? We have

problems with that sometimes it doesn't matter what Scripture says or how clear explicit it says

it we don't like the implications now the world around us which is less theologically astute than

the world within the four walls of the church it wants no part of any of that so it runs speedily

to embrace the ideas of free will and the like in the 90s in college the band rush was one of the

main bands on the radio one of their top songs the song free will and everyone liked it had a good

beat and that said things people wanted to hear we like this concept more than we like ideas like

God choosing God electing that stuff it offends us on some level now the Apostle Paul knew that

we wouldn't like some of these things he knew it he knew that even we as believers because he

wrote to the church he wasn't writing to the pagans and the philosophers and plato and socrates

and like he's writing to the church and he knew that even within the church we would have troubles

with this he knew that even with the church that we would look at these issues that we would look

at the idea of the bondage of the will and so forth and predestination and all that, we'd say

no, because we don't like it. He knew that. And he knew that we'd accuse God of being unfair,

ultimately. He knew that that would be a temptation. And so almost with a great sigh,

if you read Romans 9, you can almost picture him with a great sigh. He answers the accusation that

He knows is coming. Let me read just a portion of Romans 9 here. He says this,

what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not. For he says to Moses,

is I will have mercy on whomever I have mercy and I'm going to have compassion on whoever I have

compassion. So then it is not of him who wills, underline that, it is not of him who wills nor of

Him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. Verse 17, it gives us an example of a villain, a villain

who is outside of God's saving grace. He says this, verse 17, the Scripture says to Pharaoh,

for this very purpose, I've raised you up that I may show my power in you and that my name may

be declared in all the earth. Therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills. He has mercy on whom he

wills and whom he wills he hardens. Isn't that hard to understand or accept? And yet it's there.

If you believe in the inspiration, the infallibility, the errancy of Scripture, you have to deal with

these words. You can't leave them forever on the theological bookshelf. Therefore, he has mercy on

whom he wills and whom he wills he hardens. Now you will say to me then, and this is where he

understands and anticipates the accusation. You will say to me then, why does he still find fault?

If God has not elected a man, if God is not a chosen man, if God is hard to man's heart,

how in the world can he still find fault with that man? That's a vision comes from God. He

knows that's the problem. He knows that's the problem. You will say to me then, why does he

still find fault? For who has resisted his will? But indeed, oh man, who are you to reply against

God who are you to say that God is unfair will the thing formed say to him who formed it why did

you make me like this does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump from the

same lump of humanity so to speak to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor same

God who made a David made a goliath you know what in their life and in their death they both ended

up glorifying God? Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one

vessel of honor and another for dishonor? What if God, again, Paul is reasoning with those who

object, what if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much

long-suffering the vessels of wrath that were prepared for destruction? What if God endured

with long-suffering, the vessels of wrath

prepared for destruction, that he

might make known the riches of his glory

on the vessels of his mercy.

There are

two categories, and the

potter is the one who determines

which is which.

The potter has power over the clay.

Do you have a problem with that?

I know some do.

The potter has power over the clay.

Does that come into conflict

with your understanding,

or your desire for some autonomy over these issues?

Does it come into conflict?

And if it is in conflict,

if what you want and what you desire and what you hope to be true

is in conflict with what we've just read from God's inspired and infallible word,

then what needs to change?

His word or your understanding?

Back in the 16th century,

there was a really sharp guy, a sharp guy named Erasmus.

Sharp guy named Erasmus, and he couldn't wrap his mind around these issues either.

He studied them, he considered them, he studied them through the lens of theology,

philosophy, all manner of different things, humanism.

He was really a humanist at heart.

He studied these issues and he couldn't wrap his mind around it.

And part of his problem was that he had a presupposition.

And his presupposition put man at the apex of man's salvation.

He had a presupposition that man's ability and sovereignty is greater than they are.

And so he wrote a treatise.

And it was titled this.

It was titled, The Freedom of the Will.

The freedom of the will is what Erasmus wrote.

Well, in the 16th century, there was another man.

There was another man.

His name was Martin Luther.

And Luther, he read this.

He read Erasmus' writing.

Luther had trouble with it.

And part of the problem he had trouble with it was because what Erasmus was saying, it really didn't make sense.

It was chock full of holes.

And it still is if you want to go back and read it.

In Luther's eyes, Erasmus was bending Scripture, ignoring parts of Scripture.

He was ignoring logic.

He was bending all these things past their breaking point.

And so Luther wrote, in response to the freedom of the will, Luther wrote his magnum opus,

which is called what?

The, right, there we go.

The bondage of the will.

The bondage of the will.

And in the bondage of the will, Luther made many of the same points we make today.

He talked a lot less about cows and celery, but he made a lot of the same points.

In summary, he said this.

He said, man's hope is not in his freedom of choice.

Man's hope is not in his volitional freedom of choice.

It's in the freedom of God's grace.

That's where our hope is.

If you would, let's look at verses 4 and 5 in today's text.

And I want to linger with our remaining moments.

I want to linger on that idea of grace.

Verses 4 and 5.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us,

even when we were dead in trespasses, has made us alive together with Christ.

It's by grace you have been saved.

It is not of works.

It is not of your own will.

It is of someone external and transcendent to you

looking down and having mercy on you

in your fallen condition

and choosing of his volition to save and to rescue

and to quicken and to regenerate.

You can argue with that,

but you're arguing against Scripture.

You're arguing against Scripture.

God is rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us,

even while we were dead in trespasses.

Not sleeping, not sick, and not weak.

Dead.

Made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved.

Again, Paul regularly uses words life and death.

And these words, as we said at the outset, they're not poetry.

They're not used to just romanticize the conversion experience.

That's not what's going on here.

He uses the words because they're the most accurate words.

He uses the words because they're the most accurate words available.

At one point, you and I were dead.

At one point, you and I were dead, and we were at enmity with our maker.

Not moral free agents, not neutral in that sense, but we were at enmity with the one who has made us.

At one point, we were like Paul, or Saul, when he was on the road to Damascus.

We may not have been breathing out threats and murder, but we didn't like Christ.

And more to the point, we really didn't like his laws and his word and will and plan and decree.

We didn't like that stuff, and so we rebelled against it.

That's what sin is.

Sin is not liking laws that God has given us and doing something different.

So at one point, that's where we were.

At one point, we were much like Apostle Paul, excuse me, Saul at that time.

We were fallen people living in fallen ways.

But what's wonderful and amazing and unearned is the fact that at some point,

for reasons I can't articulate because I don't know them,

God chose you and I and other brothers and sisters in Christ.

He chose a Saul of Tarsus.

He chose some of the folks that would be the least likely to choose

and who, of their own accord, would never have come to God.

And yet he did this.

God is rich in mercy, even when we're dead, made us alive.

That's what we see here in verses 4 and 5.

And once we're made alive, the Westminster Confession puts it this way,

at that moment we were enabled and persuaded to come to Christ.

And we need both.

We're enabled and persuaded to come to Christ,

to come to the same one that we had previously been rebelling against.

In verses 4 and 5, we see that that outcome is made possible

not because of our own volitional will

or our own works in climbing a ladder on our knees to get to God,

but on Jesus Christ descending as a ladder,

jacob's ladder, so to speak,

and coming down into our circumstances,

into the crucible of our pain,

bearing our sins, dying for us.

That is what Scripture says.

Salvation is not of him who wills or who runs,

but of God who shows mercy.

It's from Romans 9.

No matter how much Erasmus tried, and he tried.

Man, I'll have some dense reading.

No matter how much he tries, though, I'll tell you this.

He cannot, he cannot insert or contort or bend free will into those verses.

He can't do it because it can't be done.

And that's why Luther, again, he almost accuses Erasmus of being childlike in his theology

because he's bending and contorting a square peg and trying to put it around a hole.

And Luther, in effect, says it don't work.

It don't work.

No matter how much Erasmus the human has tried,

He couldn't place man's decision at the apex of man's salvation.

Couldn't be done.

You may not like the theological consequence of those things,

but what I'm laboring to do this morning by going to these various texts

is to demonstrate that although you don't like it,

is the expressed teaching of Scripture.

It's not found in some missing Gnostic Gospel.

It's not found in the dust jacket.

It's not found in the appendix.

It's found from one end of Scripture to the other.

God choosing, you know, you want to find it in the Old Testament?

Well, he chose Israel and he didn't choose Moab.

He chose Israel, he sure didn't choose the Philistines.

This is just the way God is, the way God's acted over time.

God does these things, even if we don't like it.

To be honest with you, he doesn't care if we like it.

That's not the object.

The object is to bring glory to himself.

And he does so by being the captain, the captain of his decree and not yielding some autonomy to us.

Now, there is a difference, as we said at the outset, between free will and free agency.

There's a difference, and we do not have the time to go into all that at length this morning.

On another occasion, perhaps we will.

But that, if you wonder how our choices and our actions are enfolded into God's decree,

that's a different issue, different sermon.

But there is a wealth of material and verses that apply to that as well,

that give us some idea, some sense of how what we choose and how we live and how we act

is used by God deliberately, intentionally,

and enfolded into a decree that's been in existence before we have.

God does this.

And there's other sermons that we can spend time on

where we'll speak about it at greater length.

In closing, I just want to encourage you.

This morning, again, we've opened a lot of doors,

and we have not gone into every room.

We've opened up a lot of doors,

and I want to encourage you, if any of this has piqued your curiosity further,

that we can always talk.

I love to talk about these matters.

We can talk about these things, and there's a wealth of material I can point you to.

There are answers to the questions you may have,

the anxieties you may have about these very issues.

So I want to encourage you not to let these things rest,

if they're weighing on your heart or your mind or your soul, but to pursue them.

Again, one area to pursue is that distinctive between free will and free agency.

As we close this morning, let me just remind you that it's not a bad thing that God's in charge.

It isn't.

It is not a bad thing that God's in charge.

It's not a bad thing that God decrees the end from the beginning.

It's not a bad thing that God's will, and not ours, drives tomorrow.

It's not a bad thing, and that's because he is a good God.

He's a good God who does good things.

He's a just God who does just things.

God's will, his decree, stems from a holy and just and good and perfect character.

And while today we might not fully understand the road ahead,

well, today we might not fully understand all that he has done and all that he will yet do.

Our faith is not vested in our understanding of providence.

Our faith is vested in the character of a providential God.

Let me pray for us.