Sovereign Grace

Free will versus God's sovereignty. Can we choose God. Work does he choose us stay with us Renewing Your Mind with RC Sproul's next we know that God is loving and applying that logic. Some people come to the conclusion that a loving God would never force us to do something against our will.

We also apply that logic to our salvation claim, the God leaves the decision completely up to us he would never violate our free will. They say are the right well to get to the heart of the matter we have to define free will as we continue now with our exposition of the thinking of St. Augustine on the question of free will and original sin we have to see at the front end the day that there is an element of irony for paradox in the way in which Augustine speaks of our spiritual condition. For example, he talks about this distinction that we've seen between a free will and liberty we have free will.

But we don't have liberty. That's paradoxical in the first instance and he goes on to explain our fallen condition and these terms, that according to Scripture, we are in bondage to sin.

And when we think of bondage or captivity. We don't think in terms of freedom. We think in terms of slavery and yet Augustine speaks of our condition as people who are freely in bondage. Therein is the paradox and the jolting irony of what he's getting at. Now to see that idea more clearly we can apply it to the way the New Testament speaks broadly about our condition as Christians, Paul, for example, when he would introduce himself in the writing of his epistles would frequently refer to himself as what a loss of the Lord Jesus Christ and the word loss in some of the older translations was translated by the English word servant. The newer translations use the term bondservant. Because undue loss was not a hired servant in the ancient culture, but was a slave, a slave that was purchased just like in the slave trade in America in the earlier days of our history where people were put up for sale on the slave block at the harbors of Baltimore and other places and then became the possession of the slave owner having no rights or privileges of a free person while Paul calls himself a slave to Christ, and yet at the same time rejoices in the freedom that he enjoys in Christ Jesus. What James calls a royal freedom and Christ himself said that if you continue in my word, you are my disciples, you will know the truth.

The truth will make you free, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

And yet at the same time. The irony is this that I must become a servant of God before I ever experience the zenith of human freedom and as long as I resist my service to God, thinking that I am free.

I am actually a slave to my own evil passions. Again another way of saying this that for Augustine. He said that man is mastered by his sinful passions and so he's a slave to his own sinfulness, but he serves his master willingly.

Now, to elaborate on that.

Let me call your attention to some biblical texts that obviously Augustine was familiar with one that is most important is Paul's letter to the Ephesians 1 he's describing this human condition in chapter 2 Paul begins the second chapter of his letter to the Ephesians with these words and you he made alive.

Now that he refers to God in 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 year, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others know what Paul is saying here he is describing the condition of being quickened or made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit of those who were previously dead, Paul speaks of that previous condition. The natural condition of fallen people is that it is a condition of spiritual death. Augustine himself made the distinction drawing on this text that the fallen person is biologically alive but spiritually dead again.

He could make choices, they can choose what he wants but since he never once the things of God is dead to the things of God, and he lives his life. According to the loss of his own flesh. Listen to what Paul says here again where he says, in our previous condition in which you once walked according to the course of this world. Remember in Romans pulses.

There is none righteous, no not one.

There's none who does good. Everyone has gone out of the way. That is, we have removed ourselves from the course that God has established for us to walk in and were walking according to a different course and that is the course that Paul calls here the course of the world. The course that follows the prince of the power of the air, it is the course that follows the loss of our own flesh and mind. Again, he's not saying that people don't do, or choose but rather than among whom we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. I can imagine there's any adult person in America who hasn't gone through the personal inward struggle of their own morality when no one of us has so had our consciences seared that the conscience has been completely annihilated. We all do things that are wrong and we know it. I can remember when I was a high school kid playing baseball. I had an uncontrollable, that my language was somewhat fierce and I used to feel bad about it because the teachers would get on me and them parse through me out again once because of some things I said them overnight and that and I was not a Christian anything like that but I still felt badly to some degree about this character weakness of mine, how many times I put my head on the pillow at night and I would make a sacred vial, I'd say tomorrow I'm going to turn over a new leaf. Unluckily use this bad language anymore. Well the next day's first thing something went wrong or out came the blue line and it continued to bother me until one point I've got very serious about this lesson, I am not going to use this language anymore and I went 17 days in a row without expletives and I was getting prouder and proud of myself if I say here I am in amending my life and all that thing is playing a baseball game playing shortstop I had routine high bouncing ground ball to me the kind that's what we call charity easy routine play. I moved up to field the ball took off the ball looked at first baseman and kicked it.

I booted that was the end of my street and but that was in many ways a minor thing but all of us have struggled with the struggle of the soul where he say why do I do the things that I don't want to do these things and yet I do them well.

The reason I do them is because I want to do them more than I don't want to do them. That's the dilemma of this experience that we call free will that I choose according to my desires not only take a little path of deviation from Augustine that was consistent with his thinking and get us to think about what he's saying here everybody who's listening to this or watching this right now.

Those who are here in the classroom are here today because you chose to be here. And the reason why you're here today is that your desire to be here was greater than your desire not to be here. You may want to stand up and protest and say wait a minute, I had no idea of coming here today.

Stacy may look at me and say my husband dragged me kicking and screaming against my will and made me come the day I had other things that I prefer to do, but I came anyway that I came under duress, and so on, but also women Stacy, all things being equal, may be you had no desire to come here today, but you did have a desire to please your husband or not to have conflict with your husband and all things weren't equal, and when push came to shove, you thought well rather go there and sit through this boring lecture, then I would have to deal with the problems I might have at home and I know this is just a hypothetical situation picking on Stacy here, who obviously couldn't wait to get here this morning and it was she who had to drag her husband right but the point is there lots of things that we think we do that we don't want to do. But if we analyze them carefully.

We will see that we always do what we wanted. That's the nature of free will that we always choose according to our strongest desires. At the moment and later on in our course will see Jonathan Edwards develop that thesis in much greater detail, but for now, let me say this, that not only can we choose according to our strongest desire, we must choose according to our strongest desire and we always choose according to our strongest desire or inclination at the moment you civil if that's the case if you say that I must choose the choices that I make. Doesn't that destroy any idea of freedom was look at it again if I say that you must choose what you most strongly desire. At the moment. Does that not that mustiness destroy free will know it establishes free will. Because the very essence of free will is to have the liberty to do what you want and when I say that you not only can choose what you want but you must choose what you want. I'm saying that you who have a free will cannot not be free. This is the essence of what is not determinism because determinism describes a condition whereby our decisions are dated and controlled, forced and coerced by some external power person or force.

That's what determinism is what we call freedom in contemporary terms is self determination. Isn't that what we want in order to be free to be able to decide for ourselves what we choose and what we do rather than be determined by something else. We want the right or the capacity to be determined by ourselves. Will Augustine and all of the great thinkers through church history would agree that man has self-determination insofar as he has free will.

However, this does not mean that the choices that we make are utterly spontaneous and undetermined that they are effects without causes. In fact, we are saying that every choice that I make is in fact determined if I'm coerced that choices determined by something outside of myself and I'm not free.

If that choice is determined by me by my desires by my inclinations.

Then I am free. That's self-determination and the point of Augustine is saying here is that man still in the fall, has the ability to do what ever he wants to do, but he spiritually he's a slave not to Satan. As such, but he is a slave to himself to his own evil passions to the loss of his mind and the loss of his flesh. He follows the inclination and the desires of his own heart. Therein is his freedom therein is his bondage now. The big issue with Augustine and his opponents in that day was the issue of how a person can achieve not only free will, but liberty liberty being defined as the moral power or the moral ability to choose what is good to choose what is right to choose the things of God because Augustine is saying in and of himself. Since man's heart is only wicked continuously and he has no basic desire, but rather is by nature a child of wrath that that person left to himself will never choose the things of God.

He cannot choose the things of God. Not because he doesn't have a will, but because he doesn't have the desire to choose the things of God.

He cannot because he will not and we cannot do what we will not do so.

That's the moral inability of which Augustine speaks. And so, for Augustine to be liberated from this condition of moral bondage absolutely requires the intrusion of God's grace into his life that that grace is not only something that facilitates liberty but it is a necessary condition for liberty again. We go back to the words of Jesus when he was debating this question with the Pharisees, when he said no man can come to me unless it is given to him of the father, no man, that's a universal negative can that describes power or ability. No man can can do what come to Christ unless the word unless points to again a necessary condition; own something that has to happen before this artifact can take place.

No man Jesus said can come to me unless it is given to him by the father. It requires an action of God, a gift that God gives freely to people to enable them to come out of this state of bondage. So, for Augustine, the key and necessary ingredient for lever toss or liberty is the liberating grace of God.

Now back to Ephesians to work.

Paul was talking about the situation. Remember that he began chapter 2, by saying and you he made alive, when you were dead and later on he says but God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead at what time. After we became alive no. While we were dead in the state of spiritual death when we were dead in trespasses. God made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God not of works, lest anyone should boast. The questionnaire is what is the antecedent of it.

It is the gift of God.

What is the gift of God, faith, Augustine says that it's only by faith that a person can be removed or moved out of this state of spiritual death and moral corruption. And so then people will stop say all will that all I need to do to get liberty is to believe Augustine say yes and no. That is true in the one hand, that the necessary condition that you have to have to crawl out of this walking according to the course of this world is face but it is an ability you don't have the power to create within yourself. That's why he says it is by grace through faith and the faith itself is a gift of God that God provides the faith that is the necessary condition that has to be met in order to be liberated.

That's why for Augustine the whole work of liberation is God's work in God's work alone is not a cooperative venture between us and God because what has to happen is that we have to be raised from the dead and if I can use the analogy of Christ raising of Lazarus who was in the tomb for four days and was in a state of decomposition. When Christ raised him from the dead. How much assistance was rendered by Lazarus.

There was nothing Lazarus could do.

Lazarus was dead.

He was utterly passive. The active power that was at work to bring him from the state of death biologically to the state of life, biologically, was the power of Christ. God alone can raise people from biological death to biological life and by illustration. That's the point of Paul's making here that the same thing is true for spiritual death that we are dead on arrival in this world spiritually and the only thing that can release us from this captivity is the immediate active power of God when he changes the heart and changes the disposition of the soul and is that supernatural work of grace that alone can free us from this condition.

Now this immediately raises the issue of election and predestination. Augustine obviously didn't miss that word in his opponents missed that because for Augustine, God doesn't give this gift to everybody in the mystery of God's own plan and purpose. He gives some the gift and others he leaves to themselves. Some people get justice. Other people get grace. Augustine's point was that is by grace and grace alone that anybody is ever grace from spiritual death and enters into we read in second Timothy chapter 2 that God is the one who grants repentance. What an incredible gift that is Weaver Dr. RC scroll teaching from his series willing to believe that you're listening to Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Lee Webb, thank you for joining us today. This series examines how the church has wrestled with the issue of free will. Looking at the views of important thinkers like Augustine along with Luther and Calvin Edwards infinity and through the lens of Scripture we see how some of those men were right and others wrong.

We like to send you all 12 lectures in the series on three DVDs just contact us today with your donation of any amount to linear ministries or web address is Renewing Your Mind.org and her phone number is 800-435-4343 I mentioned earlier that repentance is a gift and the leg in her teaching fellow Dr. Burk Parsons writes about that in table talk magazine. He says it is an act that the Holy Spirit works in us, resulting in an act that flows out of us.

Although it is our act, it does not originate from within us. Understanding how free will corresponds with God's sovereignty is important for all of us as believers and that's why we like for you to have the series again. It's titled, willing to believe. Call us today with your gift of any amount at 800-435-4343. You can also go online to Renewing Your Mind.org and in advance let me thank you for your generosity will next week will hear from RC again along with regular teaching fellows Robert Godfrey and Sinclair Ferguson. Their messages will point us to the glory of God and the comfort we find when we trust it all starts Monday here on Renewing Your Mind