A Short Sermon on Predestinarian Grace and Free Will

The Bible teaches that man fell into original sin because they were left to the liberty of their wills.  The freedom of the will of man only left them in a reckless rebellion (Gen. 2:16-17) and the consequence of their freedom of sin was understood by God (Gen. 4:6-10; Jn 7:17).  After the fall of man because of the commission of sin, God would appeal to them to faith and repentance (cf. Mk 1:15). 

St. Augustine said that God must grant what He commanded.  That is, God must grant it to us before we apprehend it.  We have no spiritual strength to apprehend the spiritual goodness of God by faith alone in His absolute standard of perfection.  We are full of sin and extreme badness.  The Bible speaks of our spiritual inability (Jn 8:43) and that we are totally limited by sin (Jn 8:34). 

We are in spiritual bondage to profound sin (Rom. 6:20) and spiritual deadness (Eph. 2:1).  If man is spiritually dead in sin, he cannot avail spiritual repentance.  There is no way someone can believe left to the liberty of their wills.  There is no good or righteousness in mankind (Rom 3ff).   It is not through our good works or the work of the freedom of man (Titus 3:5).

The regenerate are controlled by God in salvational sense.  However, everything is foreordained of God (Eph. 1:11) and only those who are showered with God's mercy repent (Rom. 9:11).  We are freed by Christ (Jn 8:36) from our spiritual bondage in great sin to Satan (Jn 8:41-44).  We are not set free by libertarian free will.  That is, it is impossible for a spiritually dead sinner to cooperate with God.  The only way Lazarus was risen from the dead was not through his cooperation.   Rather it was through the exclusive power of God by the supernatural authority of the God-man.

Christians are created and ordained to do good works (Eph. 2:10) and we must not use our spiritual freedom in and by Christ alone as a license to sin like the devil (1 Pet. 2:16).  If you commit sin, bring it before God and confess it to Him; leave all sin at the Cross of Jesus Christ because He paid the full price for the sin of God's people alone.

Christians are not in spiritual bondage again (Gal. 5:1; 5:13); Christians are set free from the domination of sin and the power of Satan.  This could only happen through the spiritual work of the Spirit of God and the Word of God.  The "set-freeness" of a Christian is not because of "a-little-something" in them.  Rather it is because of the work of the Triune Godhead alone.  That is, spiritual salvation is from the will of the Father through the intercession of His dear Son in His life and death by the outworking of God's Spirit through the application of the power of His written Word. 

The greatness of the darkness in man is total depravity and radical corruption.  Jesus understood this profound, spiritual darkness in man.  No one understands the nature of man better than our Savior and Creator Jesus Christ; the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity.

The darkness of man is so bad that we cannot even choose Christ.  No decision to choose Christ ever saved anyone.   My conversion story is a story of God's predestinarian grace.  It must be born of God and born of heaven and born of the Spirit and the Word.  It will take the sovereign regenerative power of the Spirit and the Word to roll away the stoney heart of man.   It will take the spiritual application of the Spirit and the Word to a sinner to impute the unified merits of the person and work of the Lamb of God by simple trust.

Free willism cannot avail to this supernatural and spiritual prosperity in Christ because it simply lacks the divine power to come to Christ.  The Bible never says man has free will to spiritually cooperate with God.  We are in desperate need for God's intervention for His chosen people alone.  He comes to save His people.  Everyone of His people who are saved cannot boast of anything.  If there is free will, there is certainly the idolatry of man-centered boasting and glory in the works of the will.  We ought to always glory and boast in God alone for His glory alone.  If we do this, only then will we serve God rightly.

Free willism is denied by in Jn 1:13, "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" and Rom. 9:11, "...For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth..."  The Bible also excludes all work in salvation (Tit 3:5; Rom 4ff) and it is clearly not of ourselves (Eph 2:8-9).  Where is there room for boasting?  It is completely excluded.  We ought to boast in prayer of God alone through the person and work of Jesus Christ.  The day a person realizes there is no such boasting in the flesh is the day of blessed self-despair.  It is when you know you cannot "merit" God's favor even in "spiritual cooperation" like Rome teaches about expiation of sin through "indulgences" in taking time off purgatory and it is seen here "Vatican offers 'time off purgatory' to followers of Pope Francis tweets."

The error of Arminianism is the same error of Rome: something man must do to gain God's favor. Rather it is God seeking man in the spiritual garden of the world to set him free.  We ought to never add anything to the work of the Father's plan; the Son perfect life and death; and the Spirit's spiritual awakening to the apostolic gospel.  Faith is a gift but only truly a gift if it is free from the corruption of man's darkness.  Man's darkness could never cooperate with God's supernatural light.  The light of faith is only through the Spirit of life and the Word of life.  We surely need God's predestinarian grace to intervene in our reckless pursuit of the will to continually submit to extreme evil (Gen. 6:5).