Question. Do you believe in free will? Just as importantly is the statement, well define your terms. This is one of those topics that bears a great deal of careful investigation because it's a term that's thrown around very, very easily without much thought about what it actually means, what people mean by it. And so one person may say, sure, I believe in free will, and another person says, I believe in free will too, but the two of them mean something very, very different by the statement. And so this evening, one of the things that we're gonna be careful to do is to define what we mean by free will. Another important question is, do Calvinists believe in free will? Quite regularly we are caricatured as not believing in free will. And sometimes even Calvinists themselves give the impression or talk as if though they don't believe in free will, and therefore sort of perpetuating the myth that Calvinists don't believe in free will. That's one myth in and of itself, that Calvinists don't believe in free will, but all you gotta do is take a look at these confessions of faith, all from historic Protestant churches, and you'll discover that yes, Calvinist reformed theologians, reformed churches, do indeed believe in free will. Now, what they don't believe in is free will defined in a humanistic sense, and we'll say more about that in just a moment, That's where the myth of free will comes in. Most of the time, when you run into somebody out in the street or in your neighborhood, in your community, school, your workplace, and the topic of free will comes up, nine times out of 10, they're thinking about free will in a popular, humanistic sense, not in a historic, reformed, biblical sense. And there is a difference between the two. And often if you ask somebody to define what they mean by free will, they couldn't do it. They would say something like, well, you know, man's got the ability to choose. Any reform teacher, any historic Protestant confession of faith would affirm that yes, man has the ability to choose. That that is one of the natural faculties which he possesses, this ability to choose. And so we want to try to clear up a lot of that confusion. and especially we want to identify what the myth of free will is, this humanistic understanding of free will that has done a great deal of harm to the church's understanding of many other doctrines. In fact, a proper understanding of free will is so crucial because your understanding of free will is going to affect your understanding of other great doctrines of the faith like your doctrine of original sin, that is, how Adam's sin has affected us. It doesn't have to do so much with his sin, and sometimes the phrase original sin kind of lends itself to that, and you think it's talking about Adam's sin, but it has more to do with how Adam's sin, his original sin, affects us. And so your understanding of free will is going to be closely tied to how you understand how Adam's fall has affected our will, but furthermore, Your understanding of those two things together is going to impact how you understand salvation and how you understand God's grace. And we're gonna show later on that this humanistic understanding of free will, it completely undermines the concept of salvation by grace alone. Now thankfully, most people who hold an erroneous view of free will nevertheless continue to contend for salvation by grace alone. They just do it inconsistently. and somewhat irrationally, and thank God for their inconsistency in that respect. But if they were consistent, then they would end up with a salvation which wasn't by grace alone at all. Well, let's go ahead then and just dive right in. Let's explain this myth of free will. And first of all, let's look at the humanistic understanding. And we've also called this the Arminian view of free will because All Armenians hold to this humanistic understanding of free will. Now, help me out here. Let me just see if we're on the same playing field here. We're reading off the same sheet of music. Tell me what I mean by, what you think I mean by humanistic. This goes back to an ancient philosopher that man is the measure of all things. What does that mean? Yeah, man is the center. It's what, in a technical sense, we call an anthropocentric view. That's a mouthful, but all it means is, you know, anthropology, the study of man. It just means that man is It's really the ultimate thing in the universe and everything is from man's perspective. It's an attempt to build a view of the world of life apart from God. Now usually it's referred to as secular humanism, secular meaning this world only. This world is the only reference point. In humanistic thinking, God doesn't exist and so everything is from the perspective merely of man. Some Christian theologians like to refer to humanism as not secular humanism, but sentimental humanism. Because humanists are very good at extolling the greatness of man. Now you understand, get this, they have a universe apart from God. God doesn't exist. So if we're gonna be rational, logical creatures, if God isn't there, can there be any such thing as true right and wrong, true morality? Not really. There can't be any real meaning to life. It's the old headbanger crowd that's got it right if God doesn't exist. Life is absurd. It's irrational. It's a big, sick joke. But the humanists, they're more sentimental. They take irrational leaps of faith. Yes, God doesn't exist, but we still talk about right and wrong. We talk about tolerance. We talk about purpose in life, et cetera, et cetera. It's as if, though, they try to create life a meaningful life and a purposeful life when there is no one out there that is a God that is the basis for purpose and meaning and morality, et cetera. Okay, so understand with humanism everything starts with man. Now this is the fallacy with Arminianism because in the theological system, that is the system of Christian teaching known as Arminianism after the teacher Jacob Arminius, the explaining of the Bible's message begins with man and goes out from there. And so God is understood in terms of man, not man in terms of God. You follow what I'm saying? So when they attempt to understand free will, they don't begin with God, but they begin with man. And they begin with their own experience and try to build a philosophy of free will out of their own experience. Irrespective of what God says. At least the Arminian tries to pay some homage to the Bible. He tries to get the Bible to fit. But when you begin with man, and you define God in terms of man, you define God's sovereignty in terms of man's freedom, you're bound to fail, aren't you? I mean, it's amazing. I don't know what you think about this, but sometimes I think, you know, this is just common sense. This seemed to you that you would begin with God, that you wouldn't begin with man, that God would have to be the starting point of all this, but nevertheless, to begin with man. What you find is, is you find among those Christians who we would call Arminian, that they actually have the same view of free will as the humanists who have no God in their universe whatsoever. They share this thing in common. They have the same view of free will. Now the minute I say that, I could hear an Arminian say, no, no, that's not true, that's not true, that's not true. And he would say the reason it's not true is because we do believe in the fall of man. A humanist, a secular humanist would not believe that mankind has fallen. But an Arminian would say, yes, we believe in the fall of man. However, the Arminian doesn't allow in his system the fall of man to affect man to the degree that the Bible says that it does. Therefore, he ends up with the same view of free will that the humanist has. And hence, for the purposes of our studies, I've chosen just to call this the humanistic slash Arminian view of free will. Well, what is the humanistic Arminian view of free will? Well, first of all, the will acts from a posture of indifference. The will acts from a posture of indifference. The human will is inclined to neither good nor evil, but exists in a state of moral neutrality. The mind of fallen man has no bias and no predisposition to evil. What the humanist and Arminian are trying to say is that man's will is essentially neutral in that he has equal power to choose good or evil. That he has no predisposition. What do we mean by predisposition? Of course, pre means before. And a disposition has to do with one's inclination and character, what they desire, what their desires and wants are. And a predisposition is... They hold these things beforehand. So even before they come to choices, character's already bent in a certain direction, which is in turn going to bring about certain choices. And so the humanist Arminian is saying, no, no, no, no. The will is more like it's in neutral, and that it's not predisposed one way or the other. This is important for them to contend. And they will contend that man has just as much ability to choose good as he does evil. Now, the Arminian, remember I said this is the humanistic and Arminian view. The Arminian would say, no, that's not quite it. We do believe that man has fallen, and so we do believe that he is morally wounded. And so while his will is neutral to a degree, it's not exactly neutral. He does have some predisposition towards sin, but it's not so great that he can't choose the good. With a little bit of help, he can choose the good. Now that help can come in many forms. Maybe as a pastor I need to be more convincing and being able to point out the error of his ways a bit better and then that'll help influence him toward choosing the good. But the notion that man's will is anyway certainly inclined toward choosing evil The Fall Whatever its ill effects did not render man morally incapable of positively responding to God. Now, we've already said that. I'm just reiterating it. So whatever the fall did to man, it didn't do it to the degree that mankind has been rendered incapable of choosing Godward. Three, the Bible, with all of its commands to choose good over evil, assumes man has a free will. Now, every time We talk about free will in the humanistic Armenian sense. Think indifference. And indifference doesn't mean that he doesn't care. It just means that in his disposition, there is no inclination one way or the other. This is essential to their understanding of what free will means. In their understanding, free will means that he could have chosen one direction as opposed to the other just as easily. So if I choose Christ, then in the humanistic sense of the word, if my will is free, I could have chosen the devil. Or if I chose the devil, I could have just as easily chosen Christ. That's what they mean by indifference. There is nothing within the heart, the character of man, which predisposes him to choose one way as opposed to the other with any degree of certainty. Now, I think I've mentioned it before, and just as a little side note, it might be interesting to know that in a growing number of Armenian theologians, they are now saying that God does not even know what you will choose because they are so insistent on upholding this humanistic understanding of free will, that if God knows ahead of time what you're gonna choose, that in effect makes your choice a certainty, doesn't it? Unless God's knowledge is fallible. You follow what I'm saying? If God knew from eternity past that you would choose him in time, then that's as good as a done deal. If God's knowledge is infinite and perfect, Now, you know, what that means then is that man is going, that man is going to choose God and it's certain that he's going to choose God because God knows he's going to choose him. Therefore, there's no way that person could have chosen otherwise in time, right? And so instead of backing up and saying, well, maybe there's a mistake, something wrong with our understanding of free will, No, there's something wrong with their understanding of the attributes of God. He's just not that knowledgeable after all. Poor God, he just doesn't know the future. If you corner these fellows on this, they will be quick to say, well, it's not that God couldn't know if he wanted to, but he chooses not to in order to maintain free will for man. So God has chosen not to know any of mankind's future choices, and yet he's given us a book where he details the outcomes of the future. But somehow or another, he knows none of the decisions that you and I are going to make before we make them. But these guys who are called free will theists, they contend that's true about everything. Their argument would be that in order to have genuine free will, again, in this sense of indifference, the humanistic sense, then God cannot know the future. Because if God knows your decisions ahead of time, then that makes them a certainty. And that means you could not have chosen otherwise. does violence to their definition of free will, you see. So instead of saying our understanding of free will is just not biblical, because my goodness, doesn't the Bible make it clear that God knows the beginning from the end? I mean, there's no doubt about it. So instead of backing up and attempting a redefinition of free will, they end up just saying, well, our understanding of God's knowledge is faulty. God doesn't know everything after all. A little bit of a side note. Let's continue. Number four, the possession of free will, that is indifference, is the basis for accountability. That is, if God is going to hold man accountable for sin, then man must be morally free. He must have this ability to choose good over evil. And so their definition of free will, going back up to number one, the will is inclined to neither good nor evil, but exists in a state of moral neutrality, that that definition of free will is essential in order for God to hold man morally accountable. If man is inclined in either direction, then how can God hold man morally accountable? Number five, if man does not have a free will, in their definition of the word, he is less than man, he is, in their estimation, a robot. And this term indifference, is a good term to remember. Of course, in on the front of that word does what to it? Negates it. Okay. A difference would be if he were inclined to choosing good or inclined to choosing evil. But in the humanistic sense, he's inclined neither way. Now again, to be fair, the Arminian would not go as far as the humanist does, but he ends up on the same street. He ends up with a system whereby the reason a person chooses Christ is ultimately because of himself, not because of anything else. So when the Arminian is asked the question, you're a believer and your neighbor's not, what's the difference? What causes you to differ? He's ultimately in the position of having to say, I am the difference because I chose. Even in the Arminian system where Christ can influence Christ still has to leave that will free enough so that he could have just as easily chosen against Christ as for Christ. You follow me? All right, so when you ask your friends about free will, they ask you about free will, probably they have a humanistic understanding of free will, and they've never even thought about it. The latest Gallup-Barna poll shows that Excuse me, humanism has made incredible inroads into the thinking of evangelicals. When asked, is man basically good, an overwhelming majority of evangelicals said yes. Now, anybody, any evangelical who's even remotely familiar with the doctrine of total depravity, the doctrine of original sin, the understanding of the fall of Adam, would have answered no to that question. What that indicates is that we don't have any real appreciation for or understanding of the doctrine of original sin, the fall of Adam. Therefore, we are easily fooled into adopting a humanistic understanding of free will. And why not? If Adam's fall has not affected us, Like the Bible seems to say, and like all those historic giants of the faith before us have indicated, then why not have a view of the human will that's something like the humanistic Armenian sense? Believe me when I tell you, and I can't say this strongly enough, this humanistic Armenian understanding of free will is the bedrock of all Arminian theology, which essentially neuters God, takes him off his throne, domesticates him, and gives us instead man on the throne. It removes God from the picture in the final analysis, and it elevates man. It gives him this disposition, or this lack of a disposition, which the Bible seems to say is just the opposite. Let's look at, before we examine this humanistic understanding of free will more carefully, let's look at another view of free will that you may not run into as much, but it's important to know. Among secularists, and that is those who either don't believe in God or God has no real influence in the way they think, in their crafting of a worldview, There is a view of free will that we might call the materialistic understanding of free will. Sometimes this is called determinism. And there are various different views on this. But basically, it begins by arguing that matter is all there is. That is, the physical stuff of the universe is all that exists. God doesn't exist. There's no spiritual realm. What you see is all there is. There's no one out there in the heavens, no one who sent his son, no one who's revealed himself through nature. We live here alone in the universe, except for whatever extraterrestrials might be out there. But the materialist says this is all there is. That's his beginning point. And then secondly, everything operates according to inexorable naturalistic laws. Unchangeable, they're as steady as the clock. Naturalistic law is all there is, and that governs everything that happens in the universe. Now, there's no great mind behind these laws. This is just the way it's evolved. It's just the way it is. Now, guess what? If that's true about the universe, it's also true about the human mind. The mind, including the will, is strictly material. That is, there's no spiritual aspect to man. And so it also operates according to naturalistic laws. And this is, of course, where genetics comes in. And so in this understanding of will, man's decisions are determined by natural law. Whatever a man chooses or does is necessary and could not be otherwise, and is determined in the same sense as the rotation of the planets. Now this guy has a real hard time understanding justice and discipline. and a whole range of things that are a result of believing that morals are real and that man does have some way of choosing and he is responsible for his choices. This is a completely deterministic view that says you are a product of your genes and it doesn't matter what your mama does to you and rearing you or doesn't do to you, you're going to make the same choices and they're inevitable. You're part of this big clock called the universe, and all its laws are at work, and your choices are, if we knew how to, they would be just as predictable as the rotation of the planets. Oh yes, well, yes, they don't have a, they don't have no free will in this. You see, now here's the thing, now think about it. If God is not there, this is more consistent with the godless universe than the humanistic view. That's why the humanistic view is often called sentimental humanism because it takes this great leap of faith and says, well even though God's not there and there's no meaning in the universe, we're gonna act like there is. We're gonna act like there is a such thing as good and evil and anyway. And we're gonna act like there is such thing as purpose. And so often you find secularists who are humanist involved in social work, The materialist involved in usually scientific work in the universities Because it's hard to sell that to the average man. You know I mean you're not going to be very popular Walking around yeah, huh? Oh, it's terribly depressing absolutely depressing But at least those guys who are in that camp are more rational in their thinking than the humanist are Because if God is not there in the natural universe is all there is, then what they say is correct. The only thing that changes that is God. All right? Now, we're not so much concerned with the materialistic understanding of free will, because that's not one that you and I are going to run into very often, and certainly among our friends who are in various churches throughout the community, that's not a view that they're going to hold. The view that they're going to hold, which is very, very popular, is the humanistic Armenian understanding of free will. So that's where we want to go next and look at that more carefully. Any questions? It's really important that you're looking along with me. All right, what's the major difference between the materialistic understanding of free will and the humanistic understanding of free will? In the humanistic understanding, there is a choice which is real. In the materialistic sense, the choice is an illusion. It's not a choice at all. It's just a natural, it's a cause and effect relationship. And the choice is an effect, which had a cause, which you may or may not even be aware of, which had a cause, which had a cause, and everything is just borne out by natural cause and effect law and relationships. Fatalism is another word that's used different ways. In its most technical sense, fatalism actually is a very, very old concept that has a religious significance to it in mythology, that the fates control everything. But the result is the same. Your choices are meaningless. It doesn't matter what you choose. It's caesarasera, what will be will be, and you have no Nothing to put into it whatsoever. Your choices are pointless, irrelevant, meaningless. And the secret to life is to just deal with it. Learn to accept it. But now often, fatalism is a word that's used without reference to mythology, but to refer to any system that says it doesn't matter what you do in the end, everything's gonna be what it's gonna be. And fatalism also is reserved in modern usage for those systems which have no mind to them. OK, so in that sense, yes. Sorry to go all around the ballpark with that, but Rob was taping it. So you got to be right. Yeah, so see, that's why when people accuse Calvinism of being fatalistic, The only point that has to be made, I mean there are many points that could be made that would argue against that, but the only point that has to be made is it cannot be fatalistic if the mind of God is behind it. Fatalism as it's used today means a determined outcome but without any rhyme or reason or mind behind it. Yeah. And so the materialistic understanding of free will certainly lends itself to fatalism. Of course, what I find interesting is that these materialistic philosophers write a lot of material in a desperate attempt to convince us that they're right. Although it doesn't matter whether they convince us or not. I never have understood that. I mean, what difference does it make whether they convince us or not? It's all pointless anyway. but they feel as if they're on a crusade. Francis Crick, you remember the great DNA guy? He would have been a materialist, philosophically, anyway. And you can understand partly why. I mean, if you're just a scientist, and I don't mean just, that's an enormous thing, but you've not really studied anything about human thought and philosophy and religion, then you can easily begin to think that your science has all the answers. And when he discovers DNA, he discovers genetics and all that, then all of a sudden he feels pushed to the conclusion that that controls everything about humanity. Even to the exclusion of nurturing, you know, you're familiar with the big debate among humanists over nature versus nurture. That is, what makes us who we are? Is it just our nature, that is, our genetics? Or is it also our environment, how we're brought up, and our experiences in life, and so forth? Well, Francis Crick would not, as I understand it, would not have been one that would have had much in his understanding of will for nurture, just all genetics. Very materialistic. All right, any other questions or comments before we move on? All right, so let me just recap then. Understand that the humanistic understanding of free will is that man's will is indifferent. And that he could have just as easily chosen one over the other. Of course, the materialistic view of free will would have said his choice of this was inevitable. He could not have done otherwise. His genetics and the laws of the universe dictated that he choose this. All right? But the humanistic one would say he could have chose just as easily. And the freedom of contrary choice is a fundamental aspect of the humanistic understanding of free will. I'm at a logical stopping point. So let's stop here. Let's take a break. The myth of humanistic Armenian free will examined. Number one, or let's just say A, the humanistic Armenian understanding of free will is fundamentally flawed at the philosophical level. Now don't get thrown off by the word philosophical. I could have just as easily said it at the common sense level. It was number one, indifference leaves man neutral with respect to choosing. If preference are in some sense equal, then man will never choose. I don't see what's so hard about that. When Brando's up here choosing between black and blue, If he had no preference for one over the other, then either A, he would never be able to make a choice, or B, his choice would be meaningless. Hence, no one could hold anybody morally accountable for choices. You follow what I'm saying? And so which is it? Either he could not make a choice, if he had no preference that was stronger than other preferences, which would necessitate choosing one thing over another, or if he did make a choice somehow or another, mechanically or whatever, then the choices would be arbitrary, they'd be meaningless, it would be for no reason. If I ask him why he chose a black or a blue, he has to begin by saying, because. And he's got some reason. Why do I choose Diet Coke over regular Coke? Because I like the taste of Diet Coke better than regular Coke. I drink it just for the taste of it, Diet Coke. But why do I prefer it over Coke? Well, that's hard to say, except maybe I've been drinking it for a long time. How did I get started drinking it? How did I choose it in the very beginning? I don't remember except I suppose I was trying to save a few calories because I didn't figure out a eat a candy bar and drink a coke so I Opted to save calories where I could and after a while began to enjoy it like it But the point is is that you're going to choose according to your preference and if preferences are in some sense equal Then man will never ever make a choice You know there is a place where people do make random choices. You know where it's what it's called Florida is where they make random voting choices. No, there is a place where people make random choices and decisions. It's called the nut house. Seriously, if a person is making random choices and there's no reason behind their choices, they're in the loony bin. That's exactly right. I worked in a nursing home for a while. And we had a number of residents, particularly on one wing, who didn't really have all their faculties. And they would do things, and nobody would attempt to hold those people morally accountable for what they were doing. Because there was absolutely no rhyme or reason to what they were doing. The things they were doing was just random. They did not have control over their thought processes. And so nobody attempted to hold them accountable. So if the materialist is right, then all sense of justice is gone, because the person who chose to kill rather than save life, it was a random choice controlled by the laws of nature. And how can you hold anybody morally accountable to that? But furthermore, even in the humanistic sense, if there's no real character preference for one direction over another, then the choice still in some sense borders on being meaningless. But furthermore, if a person is truly morally neutral, then they are inoperative. I mean, they don't make any kind of move one way or the other. When you choose something, it's because you prefer it. When you went over to the to the drink bucket or whatever we call that thing over there, and you chose a drink. You chose what you did because you preferred what you chose. Now, at the time that you made a choice for a drink, you desired what you chose the most at the moment you chose it, even though maybe this morning you decided that you weren't going to drink any more soft drinks. You made that decision this morning, and this evening you might have said, well, you know, I really didn't want a soft drink, but they were there, and everybody else was drinking one, so I drank one. So that's a case of where I chose what I really didn't want. No, because at the moment you made the choice, you chose what you most wanted at that moment of making the choice. At that moment, your desire for the soft drink was greater than your desire to avoid soft drinks. Every time an alcoholic takes a sip of alcohol, Even though he swears off of it every day, the moment he takes that sip, at that moment he wants that drink more than anything else in his life. You see? Number two, man always, man always chooses according to the strongest preference or desire at the moment. There is no exception to this. Now this is what I mean when I say that the humanistic Armenian understanding of free will is fundamentally flawed. at the philosophical or the common sense level is it fails to recognize this. You always choose, not sometimes, not occasionally, you always choose according to strongest desire at the moment, that is at the moment of choice. I defy anybody to give me an example where this is not the case. your money or your life. Now, all things being equal, you may not have a desire to give over either. But when your choices are reduced to two, you will forfeit the one you desire to forfeit the most at that moment. That's the choice you'll make. No question, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. This has been the understanding of free will which has been expounded by Christian theologians going back We would say Jesus and Paul, but excluding them, to the fourth century theologian Augustine and his debate with Pelagius, all the way up through modern time in America, the most notable theologian philosopher was Jonathan Edwards, who wrote a book called The Freedom of the Will, that very carefully explains this concept. And to date, no one has been able to answer his arguments. They're unanswerable. This is the way the human will works. The idea of an indifferent, This position behind the human will is a fantasy. It just does not reflect what is true of humanity. We always have preferences that are stronger than other preferences, and the strongest preference at the time of choosing will dictate the choice. The human will must work in conjunction with our desires, our preferences. You see now, at this point, we're not even bringing religion into it. We're just talking about a common sense understanding of how the human will works just on the basis of our own experience. If we didn't even have the Bible, we should still be able to come to this conclusion that we always choose according to our strongest desire at the moment. And the idea of moral neutrality is a pipe dream. I mean, none of us lives in that kind of experience. Man's will is a product of his desires. Remember I said these are two different aspects of man's psyche. So if you're thinking in terms of how man makes choices, how his will functions, he has this capacity, or this faculty rather, called desires, or maybe we want to call it disposition. What's the biblical metaphor for it? The heart. Of course, not the muscle in the chest, but it's man's character, his disposition, his collection of preferences, desires, and wishes. When you see a man or a woman who has, for instance, no desire to be with God's people, no desire to read the Bible, no desire to worship, what's a reasonable conclusion to come to about that person? He hasn't been born again. There's something about his disposition. Now, this, what we call desires, disposition, heart, character, those things, or that thing, is the basis of our choices. In other words, they form the foundation of what we choose. It's out of these things that we make our choices. Follow me? When you chose the particular Coke that you did, now we don't have the ability to dissect it all, but what brought you to that choice was something in here that preferred that Coke or that Diet Coke over the other soft drinks. The reason you are here tonight, as opposed to being at home, is because there's something in here which preferred to be here tonight than at home. And that preference is such that you could not do otherwise. You follow me? Now, you may have weighed the decision, you may have thought about it, but at some point, there's some aspect of your disposition, your character, that outweighed everything else at this particular moment, and your desire to be here was stronger than your desire to be anywhere else, and that's why you're here. Now, your desire, your reason for being here might not be because you wanted to learn something else about God's Word. It might have been because you felt like if you didn't come here tonight, you might You know, be embarrassed that you didn't come here tonight. Someone might say something to you for not being here tonight. And so your desire to be not embarrassed was greater than your desire something else. Maybe the free drinks. Yes, that's, you know, having free drinks. But whatever, whatever it was, there's something in here that preferred to be at this place tonight as opposed to somewhere else. And that's why you're here and you could not do otherwise. So man's will is a product then of his desires, his character, his disposition. The will never, never, never chooses contrary to the character of the chooser. And by the way, this is what makes choices moral, is the fact that they reflect your character. They're not random. They reflect who you are. It is not that we may choose according to our strongest desire at the moment, but that we must choose according to our strongest desire at the moment. That's what Jonathan Edwards had to say. In this sense, man's will is determined by his desires. So you see, there is a sense in which historically Christians believe in a view of determinism. But in this sense, your choices are determined by your character, by your desires, by your disposition. Because man's will is a product of his desires, and emphasize his desires, man can be said to be self-determined. Now one thing that we're not gonna get into tonight, because even though they're related, they really are different discussions, that is the relationship between man's will and God's sovereignty. It would be great if we had time to do that, but that's like a related but yet a different discussion from this one. Alright, the humanistic Armenian understanding of free will denies the biblical and historically held Protestant view of original sin. Now before I get to that, any questions about how the humanistic understanding of free will runs counter to what common sense tells us about how free will operates. If you could get your friends that may disagree with you about the nature of things like man's total inability to come to Christ apart from a work of grace in his heart, that disagree with you about doctrines, say, for instance, like election or sovereignty of God, if you could ever get them to agree with you that man always chooses according to his strongest desire at the moment, you'll have won half your battle. Because at that point, then, you can go to the scriptures and say, what does the scripture teach about man's desires? Fallen man's desires. And we discover something, of course, very, very dark about man's, fallen man's desires. They are wicked. They are contrary to God. They are so contrary to God that man will freely, always and forever reject Christ. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Look with me. I'm going to ask some of you to look up these passages because we need to kind of hurry. The Bible clearly teaches that fallen man's will is not morally indifferent, but his will is enslaved to his sinful disposition. And that since the fall of man, he has had no desire for the God of the Bible. Who has Ecclesiastes 9.3? Can you read that for us, please? All right, what does that verse say about the heart of man? Okay, full, it said, right? All right, Isaiah 53, six. You're just quoting it, aren't you? That's fine, that works. Yeah, we've all like sheep gone astray. And this is not just a one time going astray. This is a direction in life. Jeremiah 17, nine. Deceitful beyond cure all right Matthew 718 Who had that metaphorically Jesus speaks of the human heart as a bad tree and says a bad tree cannot bear good fruit you see A very basic Christian principle is, is that the reason we sin is because we have a sinful disposition. The reason we choose to sin is because that's our makeup since the fall of Adam. And that's all that Jesus is saying, this good tree, bad tree. Why does a lemon tree produce lemons? Because it's a lemon tree. That's its nature. The reason we sin is because that's our nature. Uh, 721 through 23. Brandon? What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts. Hang on a second. Evil thoughts. Sexual immorality. Theft. Murder. Adultery. Greed. Malice. Deceit. Ludeness. Envy. We're running out of room. Slander. My goodness. Arrogance. Come on now, we're not that bad. Are you sure it has all that in it? Just one more. Folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean. Okay, as opposed to eating with unwashing hands. All right, now, we won't turn there because it's so fresh on our minds, but in John chapter three, in Jesus' interview with Nicodemus, what did Nicodemus, Nicodemus came as a religious leader, full of religious knowledge, and Jesus point blank told him, you cannot go to the kingdom of God, you cannot even understand the kingdom of God without what? be born again. So in your fallenness, you don't even have the capacity to apprehend the kingdom of God, much less make a choice toward the kingdom. It's a blur to you. You have no appreciation for it whatsoever. In John chapter 3 verse 20, Jesus said that everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. Everyone who does evil. Are there some who do evil and some who don't? Not to excuse us at all, but we all, so we all fall in this category. So I could say, now this is as a fallen human being left to myself does evil, hates the light, and will not come into the light, for fear that his deeds will be exposed." So I hate the light. John 6. What a pivotal passage in this whole discussion about the nature of free will. Just to remind you, the context of chapter 6 is the pharisaical rejection of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. They are They have been and are rejecting him. And of course, there's this question that keeps coming up. And even after the gospels, once Jesus is ascended and the apostles are spreading the gospel, there's still this perennial, this ongoing question about, if Jesus is the Messiah, why didn't the Jews accept him? Why is this rejection among the Jews, generally speaking? And it begins here at the Pharisees. And, of course, the underlying assumption that some might have is, well, if he were really the Messiah, all of the Jews would recognize him as such, and they'd be flocking to him, these religious leaders especially. And, of course, that's kind of their prideful attitude as well. Well, you know, we're the Pharisees, we're the sect of Jewish sects, and surely, if he were the Messiah, we'd recognize him, and he's not, and we're going to ruin his ministry by exposing him and by not accepting him. Well, Jesus says, verse 43, stop grumbling among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up at the last day. Jesus says, no one, those of you who think that in your own will you're rejecting me, please understand that you don't even have the moral capacity to come to me. Your hearts are that evil. The reason you're not coming to me is because you are that wicked in your hearts that you don't have the capacity now to see truth when it's standing in front of you. He was not saying something to make us feel sorry for these Pharisees. all these poor guys, they don't have this ability, they lack this free will, they don't have it to be able to come to Jesus. No, he wasn't saying that at all. His point was to make us see how condemned these men are, that their disposition, their character is so wicked that they would never want to choose the truth unless God intervenes and does something in their hearts. Oh, let me just add this, and I've mentioned this before, this word draw, is not the best translation. It is not woo. It is not influence. It is compel. It is to actually bring a man or a woman to Christ. Look at John chapter 8 verse 44. You belong, Jesus speaking again to these Pharisees, you belong to your father the devil and you want to carry out your father's desire. That's your character. Jesus is essentially telling these men, your hearts, and by the way, this is true of all fallen men and women. It's not just unique to the Pharisees, but they provide an object lesson. He's saying, your hearts are so, because of your relationship to Adam and his fall, you're born with this sinful, you are so incredibly sinful in your hearts that what you desire to do is the will of Satan. Now you may not even know Satan by name, but that's what your inclination is, is to go and do what he would want to do, not what God would want to do. Romans chapter three, verse nine through 12. Now Paul, in this passage, is concluding his section on the sinfulness of man, and he's gone about methodically indicting all groups of men, Jew and Gentile alike, as being sinful and standing in condemnation before God. He says, what shall we conclude then? Are we any better? That is, the Jews any better than the Gentiles? Not at all. We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. Interesting little prepositional phrase that many of us overlook. To help you understand it, let me ask you a question. What does it mean to be under the influence of alcohol? Right, the alcohol is controlling you, the choices you make, the things that you do. To be under that means to be controlled by it. This has the same connotation. To be under sin doesn't simply mean to be guilty of sin. It means to be controlled by it. It means that the fallen man, apart from Christ, that his heart is such that it is full only of desires contrary to God. No desire toward God, just contrary. Let's read on. All are under sin, as it is written, now this is Paul's Old Testament scripture he's bringing in now to make the point that all are under sin. There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. Now, this is a universal statement, isn't it? Now obviously the exception is those who have been born again. But man in his fallenness is in this category of no one seeking God. We often talk about friends of ours who are unconverted as seeking God, but the truth is, is that apart from a work of grace in their hearts, they're not seeking God. They may be seeking the things that God could provide, like peace, happiness, joy in life, et cetera, but the God of the scriptures, he is not one whom they are seeking. And Paul could not be clearer on this. And we've told you before, you know, The best example of this is Adam and Eve after the fall. What did they do? Did they go running trying to find God? Lord we've done this terrible thing, where are you? Where are you? What did they do? What did the scriptures say they did? They hid themselves. God had to go looking for them. What happened? At the point of their sin all of this changed. Now the six million dollar question is what kind of disposition, heart, did Adam and Eve have prior to the fall? Wouldn't we like to know? If I knew the answer to that, I could write a book and we could all retire because I will have answered something that no theologian in the history of the Christian church has ever been able to answer. The Bible just doesn't tell us. It tells us about man's heart after the fall, but not for. So the big mystery is, why did Adam choose to sin? We could say, well, Satan tempted him. Well, that doesn't really answer the question. Was there a desire in his heart? The Bible makes it clear that God didn't put the desire there, so that doesn't really answer it either. What about Satan? We don't know. It's called the mystery of iniquity. We don't understand, we don't know. What the Bible is clear about, though, is the nature of fallen man's heart. And the moment Adam and Eve sinned, they ran from God, they fled from God. And the Bible's depiction of sinful man is that of a fugitive. He does not want to find God any more than the bank robber desires to find a policeman. He is traumatized in his sin by the threat of a holy God. Hence, he runs from God. He doesn't run to God. Now, is this somehow contrary to his will? No. He is acting freely because he is doing exactly what he wants to do. His choices are in harmony with or according to His desires. None who seeks God all have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves. Their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways. In the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Romans chapter eight, verse seven. The NIV reads, the sinful mind is hostile to God. The literal translation is the flesh is hostile to God. What is the flesh in Pauline usage? That is the Apostle Paul in his writings when he uses the term flesh and Jesus many times. What are they referring to? Do they mean Jesus and Paul? Do they mean the physical body? Is that what's hostile to God? Yeah, it's this. It's all of that in a fallen man. It's another metaphor. And that's why the NIV translates it as sinful nature. This is the sinful nature. And what Paul is saying here is that All of this, the seat of our preferences, desires, which dictate our choices, that it is hostile to God. Now let me ask you, does that sound like the Bible's teaching the moral neutrality of the human will? Does the Bible really teach that we are, when it comes to the human disposition, that we're indifferent? And that we could just as easily choose one direction as the other? I don't see it, not so far. I see just the opposite. The Bible is hammering home the point that this is a mess. And I've so graphically illustrated that. It's a mess. Full of hatred, envy, malice. Hostile, Paul says to God. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those who are controlled by the sinful nature, who are they? Those under sin? They cannot please God. Does that mean they may not please God? No, they lack the moral ability to please God because this is the condition of their heart. Are you with me? 1 Corinthians 2.14, Paul has been contrasting the wisdom of God with the wisdom of man. It seems that in Corinth, some divisive brothers have called into question Paul's ability to preach and perhaps comparing him to the eloquent philosophers that traveled about the Roman Empire and made their way through Corinth that were very persuasive. They were the ancient equivalent to the Old West snake oil salesmen, only they weren't hawking ointments and toxic, what do you call it, Liniments and stuff they were instead they were hawking ideas But they began to think about the Apostle Paul, and he didn't come to them that way he came to them with simplicity of speech a straightforward message Not to suggest that he was ineffective as a speaker or necessarily boring But he didn't rely upon all this eloquence of speech. He just had a very simple message to proclaim And apparently some have begun in Corinth to say, well, you know, Paul's not all that hot. He didn't come. He wasn't like these speakers that we're used to, et cetera, et cetera. And Paul writes back to them, making them aware of the fact that the gospel doesn't rely upon effective preachers, those who are effective in and of themselves. Instead, the gospel relies upon the power of the Spirit to change man's heart. You see, no amount, no amount of persuasive speech is going to do squat, there's another good word for you Brandon, is going to do squat for this, for this condition of the heart. Now God in His sovereignty may choose to use the preacher's words, especially the gospel, that's what He uses, to change men's hearts so that they believe But I don't care how many classes in preaching you've had, that alone is not gonna do anything about that. And Paul's trying to bring this point home to them. And he says, look at chapter two, verse 14. He says, the man without the spirit, by the way, that's this man right here in this diagram. This man without the Holy Spirit. does not accept, now this is crucial, it doesn't say he's hard to get to accept, does he? Does not, very clear language, does not accept the things that come from the spirit of God. So the man in this condition does not accept. Does that mean that he doesn't have free will? No. Because it's not that he's... Now, you've got to get this picture straight in your mind. This man that we've diagrammed up here, it's not that he's sitting before Paul saying, oh, I want to be a believer in Christ so much, but I just can't because my will is not what it ought to be and I just can't do it. Oh, if God hadn't left me in this condition, I could be a believer today. I really want to be a Christian, but God's just preventing me by the way He's made me. Have you ever known anybody like that? All unbelievers I've ever met were willing unbelievers. They willingly chose to reject Christ. Why? Because that's what they wanted to do. They chose freely according to their desires. The freedom of choice comes in that their choice was in harmony with their hearts, their desires, they chose what they wanted to. The man who does not have the Spirit of God, he may reject Christ, he makes his choice, he chooses poorly but it is his choice. And Paul explains, he says, he says the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God and the reason is because they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. I've said this to you before, the Greek word behind the English word understand here doesn't mean to imply that the man in this condition, the sinful heart man, that he does not have the ability, the brain power to understand what the gospel message is. That's not the word. The word is to judge, to discern the value of. And so what Paul is saying is that the man in this condition, he understands what you're saying. He just thinks it's stupid. That's how he values it. He doesn't have any desire for things of God. That's a foolish message to him. The idea of a man dying upon a cross for the sins of humanity and that somehow making us right with God. To the Greeks this was foolishness. To the Jews it was a stumbling block, Paul said. And the whole thing that makes the difference, this thing that makes the difference between the man for whom the gospel is foolish and the man for whom the gospel is life. is the Spirit of God." Now, what is it that the Spirit of God does that makes the difference? changes this old heart, makes it new. We call that being born again. He gives this man here a new heart with new desires that for once in his life actually now can really see the beauty of Christ. It makes sense. And that man now wants nothing but Christ. He is all in all to that man. because God has freed him from his slavery to his fallen sinful nature and given him a new heart. Alright? Look at Ephesians chapter 2, a passage again that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Paul is recounting what the Christians at Ephesus were prior to their conversion and what they are now. Chapter 2 he says, You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of the world. I want you to notice how he describes the sinful heart before conversion. You were dead, spiritually dead, in your transgressions and sins. Now, that's not physical death, of course, but it's a spiritual condition that is described as being dead toward God. There's no positive response toward God, that's the idea. You followed the ways of the world, the world in opposition to God. And the ruler of the kingdom of the air, of course, which is Satan, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. And I've said this before, but what an awful statement. I don't mean in the sense that it's not true, I mean in the sense to realize how awful it is that those in this condition, sinful hearts, unregenerate, Satan and his dominion are actually in some sense or another at work in them I don't mean they're possessed per se but in some sort of mysterious way There is a there is a there is a deepening of this depravity in them There's an intensifying of this condition as man continues living well Paul says all of us also lived among them at one time." Now look at how he says this, gratifying the cravings of our flesh, or of our sinful nature, and following its desires and thoughts. We follow the desires and the thoughts of this evil disposition. Do you think the desires and the thoughts of this evil disposition were, oh I love Jesus, oh I'd like to be a Christian, oh I'd love to believe on Christ, I'd love to follow God's law, Are those the desires of an evil disposition? No, I hate God. I don't have anything to do with Him. I want to do my own thing, go my own way. And Paul says, prior to conversion, we followed this. This is our evil disposition, and this takes us always and without question away from God. He continues, like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. Now, verse four. Because of his great love for us. The longer I'm a Christian, the more this is becoming my favorite passage in the Bible. Because I was one of those kids who was saved very early in life, nine years old. And sometimes it's not easy to appreciate the fact that you had this at nine years of age. It had not flowered into much yet, but it was all there. And you can see it in children who are unconverted. The older they get, the worse it gets, the more their antagonism toward God becomes. And to think that I was in that condition, although it was in somewhat of a seed or seminal form, it was there. And yet God, by His mercy, not because of anything that I had done, Not because I earned it or deserved it or anything like that, but by his mercy, he made me alive. He gave me a new heart. Now look what Paul says. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when, this is the timeline, even when we were dead in transgressions. This is what causes Paul to explain, it's by grace that you've been saved. Remember I said our understanding early on in the introduction, our understanding of free will will ultimately determine our understanding of God's grace? If I think that in this condition, or if I don't think I'm in this condition, and that I came to my own senses and chose Christ, and as a result of that God gave me a new heart, then I have something of which to boast. And grace is no longer purely grace. However, if I realize more biblically that in this condition my desire would never be for Christ, left up to me I would always choose contrary to Christ, freely But that's my will. That's my heart. I would choose contrary to that. But God, out of His love for me, did not leave me in this despicable condition. But by His grace, by His mercy, reached down and breathed into me new life. Alright? He gives us a new heart with new desires. And now I see Christ for all that He is and His beauty and I can't have anything but Him. I won't. He made us alive. Paul says, this is by grace. And why did God do it this way? For one, it's the only way to do it, but secondly, no one will be able to boast. Remember I asked you early on, what makes you differ from your neighbor? You're a believer, he's not. Is it because you were smarter than he was and you saw your need for Christ and he's not so smart and he's got some problems, you didn't have those problems and you came to Christ and he didn't know? So that leads to pride, doesn't it? You came to, your heart was just like his, but you came to Christ because God, the preaching, the gospel, and the work of the Holy Spirit made you alive. He gave you a new heart. And with that new heart, you saw Christ for who he was, and you believed on him. By the way, I don't know of any Christian that would argue against the idea of God giving us a new heart. Everybody says God gives us a new heart. Well, if the Arminian view of free will is right, why do they need one? What's the point of it? I need a new heart in order to believe on Christ. And see, this is why we say that the Bible teaches that the new birth, being born again, actually precedes faith and repentance toward God. If you have repented toward God and placed your faith in Christ, it is because God made you alive. God didn't make you alive in response to your faith and repentance. Your faith and repentance are a result of that new birth. What about free will? Well, just as I had freely rejected Christ previous to new birth, I now freely receive Christ. Why? Because, again, my choices are According to my strongest inclination at the moment, my choices are in harmony with my character disposition desires. Are you glad that God gave you a new heart with new desires? Because if you didn't, you'd be freely choosing your way straight to hell. No one comes into the kingdom contrary to their wills. But they come because God gives us a new heart that then desires to make a different choice. But that choice will then be in keeping with the disposition, the new heart that God has given us. Very quickly, because my time has slipped away, you've got here, and actually I did not plan to try to read these tonight, I've given you, there are three sheets here of Protestant confessions of faith, dating back to the Reformation and up to the present. And in your own time, I want you to read through these and see how The clear, unambiguous, overall testimony of the Protestant church has been exactly what we've been saying tonight. We are not some sort of historical anomalies here coming out of nowhere with these ideas. This is what the church has always believed. It's here. So you take a look at that and that'll be helpful to you. Let me conclude with just a couple of questions. I don't have time to talk about the difference between natural and moral ability, and that would be helpful, but I just don't have time. I would like to say very quickly that some argue that if the Bible requires us to do something, that must mean we have the ability to do it. It requires us to believe in Christ, therefore we must have the ability to do it apart from some work of Christ in our hearts. But that fails to overlook a major historical biblical fact, namely the fall. God's law is given to Adam before the fall, It doesn't change after the fall. Man still has a responsibility to respond to God positively even after the fall. The fall doesn't change God's requirement. The fall doesn't change God's law. The fall changed us, but not the requirement. And so God is completely just and still requiring of man what he's always required of man. The fall is our fault. All right, question. If we have a free will in the humanistic Armenian sense, Why would many Baptists who hold that fight tooth and nail over the fact that we cannot lose our salvation? In other words, why do Baptists who hold the humanistic version of free will hold that we cannot lose our salvation? Am I not free once I'm saved to then reject Christ? Am I not given that choice anymore? Am I not free to do that? I know what they would say. They would say, well, in a sense, yes, but you would never want to reject Christ once you've been saved. Why is that? Well, it's because you've been given by God a new heart. Well, is that not what we're saying? You follow me? I mean, that's only we're saying that God can give you a new heart which results in you coming to Christ to begin with. They're only arguing that the new heart doesn't kick in until after you've come to Christ. Now furthermore, when you get to heaven, are you going to lose your free will? But how many expect to get to heaven and face the possibility of apostatizing and being kicked out of heaven and going to hell? Well, if you believe in the humanistic understanding of free will, you have to come to that possibility. You have to believe that that's a real distinct possibility. And yet the Bible talks about glorification, being fully sanctified, and listen, do you think that we're going to lose free will? we will always, even in heaven, be choosing according to our heart's desire. But remember I said God gives us a new heart, okay? But at conversion, there is still remaining sin, hence the struggle in the Christian life. But through sanctification and ultimately glorification when we get to heaven, guess what? Because at that point is a totally new heart in every respect of the word. There's no remaining sin left, no evil inclinations left whatsoever. We'll always only choose according to our desires. And God will make sure that's the case. That's the basis of free will. Then finally, can God sin? I guess He doesn't have a free will then if He can't choose contrary. Poor old God just doesn't have a free will. We're so concerned about having free will ourselves but then God doesn't have one according to the humanistic definition because He doesn't have the power of contrary choice. He doesn't have an indifferent disposition. Do we see that as a weakness in God or think that God doesn't have a free will? No. We would say that well God can't sin because it would be contrary to His what? His nature. And we applaud that as a strength. Thank God that His nature is such that He cannot sin. We don't think that's a weakness in His character or somehow a weakness in that He doesn't have free will. No, we see that God in fact is the only truly free creature in every sense of the word. He always chooses according to His disposition and His will. My time is up when I'm being upstaged by a precious little baby girl, so I better stop right now Yes, it might work all right. Let's pray together. We'll be dismissed father. You've been so good to us tonight, and We thank you for our time together and Lord together We've covered a lot of territory and yet father I pray that the truth of your word will sink into our hearts, and we will understand more clearly the fact that that we were slaves to our will. Our wills were in bondage to our sinful disposition, our sinful hearts. Lord, left to ourselves, we would always have chosen contrary to you. We would have freely chosen to reject you all the way to hell, but Lord, by your grace and your mercy, You stepped in and You gave us a new heart. You made us alive, giving us a new disposition, new desires, opening our eyes to the truth and the beauty of Christ. And Father, we are forever thankful that You've done that. And I pray, Father, that You would continue to work in our hearts to continue to root out and remove any remaining sin in our lives, that we might become more and more like Your Son, Jesus Christ. We pray in His name, amen.