Bondage of the Will

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Let's begin by opening our Bibles, and we're going to go to Romans chapter 3.
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It's a very common passage.
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If you've been in a Reformed church for any length of time, you will have heard this passage preached quite a few times.
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It's very common, but today we're going to try to look at it a little bit more in depth than maybe we have in the past.
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We're going to look at Paul's use of the Old Testament in Romans chapter 3 as he is expressing the sinful nature of man.
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And he begins in verse 9, expressing this to us, after having spent chapters 1 and 2 expressing that all men are in sin.
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And he did so by first showing that the pagan person, the person who is not a Jewish person, is under sin.
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He did that in Romans 1.
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He explains that for the wrath of God is being revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, that's Romans 1.18.
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And then he goes through chapter 1 expressing that sin.
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And then in chapter 2, he expresses the sinfulness of the Jews, saying, you know, you have the law and yet you still sin.
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You know, you look at the pagan people and you say, oh, they're such great sinners, but you have the law and you still sin.
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So you're no better.
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And that's why he gets to verse 9.
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And he says, what then are we and the ESV includes the word Jews here, but it is not in the Greek.
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So I always like to point that out.
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It says, what then are we any better than they and or are we any better off? No, not at all.
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For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are under sin as it is written.
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None is righteous.
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No, not one.
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No one understands.
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No one seeks for God.
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All have turned aside together.
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They have become worthless.
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No one does good.
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Not even one.
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Their throat is an open grave.
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They use their tongues to deceive the venom of asps.
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And an asp is a type of snake.
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The venom of asps is under their lips, their lips, their lips.
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Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
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Their feet are swift to shed blood in their paths or ruin and misery.
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And the way of peace they have not known.
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There is no fear of God before their eyes.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for the opportunity to again open your word together.
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I pray that as we examine not only this passage of scripture, but also the history surrounding the controversy of this passage, I pray that you would, in your sovereign mercy, give me a wise mind and an ability to understand and teach your word.
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And that you would keep me from error as I know that I am capable of teaching error.
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And I would pray that you would protect me from that and protect your people from that.
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And I pray also, Lord, that you would give us all a spirit and a desire to understand and that your Holy Spirit would ultimately be our teacher this morning.
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We praise you and thank you for all that you have done and continue to do in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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In Romans chapter 3, the Apostle Paul is culminating his lesson on the sinful nature of man.
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And he culminates it by appealing to the highest authority that he had.
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And oftentimes one of the things, this is really hard.
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I'm used to walking around and I feel very enclosed.
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Paul's authority was not himself.
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Paul's authority was not his own reason.
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Paul's authority was not the scientific method.
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Paul's authority was not the learned men of his day.
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Paul's authority was not the scholars of paganism or even Judaism.
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But Paul's authority was the same authority that Jesus appealed to.
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Jesus would go against the scribes and the Pharisees.
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And he would say, have you not read what God said to you when he spoke? And I've always found that a very interesting passage.
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Have you not read what God said? See, Jesus is appealing to the very reality that the word of God is, in fact, the word of God.
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It is it's God speaking to us.
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It's the truth.
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So when he said, have you not read what God said? He's appealing to the very fact that the word of God is the verbally inspired word of God.
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The Bible, rather, is the verbally inspired word of God.
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So when we come to the Apostle Paul reaching the apex of his argument after two chapters of expressing the reality of the sinfulness of man, he comes to chapter three and he says, now here, you want to know that you're all sinners? You want the highest authority argument for your sin? It is the word of God.
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And so he appeals back into various passages, Isaiah, the Psalms, and he looks at them and he says, look here as it is written.
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By the way, that little phrase is very important in Scripture.
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When you hear the term, it is written, it's referring to Scripture.
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First Peter 315 or Second Peter 316, rather, says that all Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching and for reproof and for training in righteousness.
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So when we see the phrase, it is written, it's referring not to just the simple writings of men, but it's referring to the inspired writing of God.
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In the language, Second Peter 316, when it says all Scripture is inspired, that word inspired in the Greek, it can be confusing in English because when you think about inspired, you think what? What do you think when you think inspired? Yeah, you wake up and see a sunrise.
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I'm so inspired, it's a good day.
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You know, I think an inspiration, if I see a good movie or a good play or read a good novel, I might be inspired to do things.
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Yesterday, a brother, Steve, from Westminster Press was here and he preached a message on world missions and evangelism.
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And for me, it was the most inspirational of all because all of the men preached with power, all of the men preached with conviction, but having had the opportunity now, and some of you don't even notice, I've been given the opportunity to teach at a seminary next year in Columbia, not Columbia, South Carolina, but Columbia, South America.
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There is a South American seminary that has invited me down.
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It's a reform seminary and they invited me down to teach.
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So I'm very excited about that.
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And when he preached about the church at Antioch, sending out the missionaries, sending out Paul and Barnabas, it was just like, oh, it was like he was talking right to me.
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And it was such a blessing to be encouraged by that.
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And so that's inspiring, but that's not what it means in Second Timothy 316 when it says all scripture is inspired.
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In fact, I would argue that the King James at that point at least gives us only an inkling of what the original authors intended, because the word is actually a conjunction of two words that Paul put together.
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And it is as far as we know, it is a singular use.
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It's not found in other Greek literature.
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Paul was good at making up words.
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He would take words that didn't necessarily go together.
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He would put them together and make a word.
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And the word is theonoustos.
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Theos is God.
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Theos is Greek.
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And noustos is breathe or breath.
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So we get the word spirit.
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And when he said all scripture is God breathed, literally comes from the mouth of God, that's what he's saying.
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And so when we say inspired, it's almost it would almost be better if he said all scripture is expired.
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It all comes out of God.
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It expresses from him.
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And so when the apostle Paul wants to make his argument, he says it is written.
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I'm going to appeal to the absolute highest authority, which is the Holy Bible.
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Now, at this time, there was no New Testament.
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There was no Ephesians when Paul is writing Romans.
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There was no Second Corinthians, which was his last letter.
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These don't exist yet.
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So he's not appealing to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
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He's not appealing to Romans.
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He's writing Romans.
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So he's appealing when he says it is written.
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He's appealing to the Old Testament.
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And he appeals to the Old Testament as authoritative.
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I think one of the biggest problems in the modern church is that we have somewhat abandoned our understanding of the authority of the Old Testament.
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Now, I do know and I teach, obviously, what the Bible teaches.
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And that is that in the New Testament, we see a fulfillment of some of the Old Testament requirements, the ceremonial law, which is why we no longer go out on Yom Kippur and sacrifice a lamb and paint his Passover, paint his blood on the on the doorposts of our house, because that was something that was fulfilled in Christ.
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And that's no longer necessary for us to do.
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But it doesn't make that any less true.
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It doesn't make it any less powerful.
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It doesn't make it any less typological, what we call typological, meaning that it pointed to something that was later fulfilled.
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And so we have an authoritative Old Testament and we have now an authoritative New Testament.
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The apostle Peter referenced Paul's works as scripture in his writing.
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He talks about Paul as having written scripture.
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So we know that the New Testament is authoritative.
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But at this time in the history of the writing, when he says it is written, he's referring specifically to the Old Testament.
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He's saying this is written to us that no one is good.
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No, not one.
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Now, that's not popular.
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And if you are in a witnessing opportunity and you're sharing your faith with someone and you express the idea that no one is good, not even one, you will be met immediately with a rebuttal.
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Well, I'm good.
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Because the Bible says every man will proclaim each one his own righteousness.
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And they do.
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If you ask a person, do you think you're a good person? Nine times out of ten.
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Ninety nine out of one hundred.
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Yeah, I'm a good person.
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I don't cheat much.
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I don't lie a lot.
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I don't curse a little, you know, when I'm in traffic and that guy really deserves it.
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I don't, you know, whatever.
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That's how we express ourselves.
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We're good.
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And we always use the scale of goodness comparing ourselves to what? The most evil thing we know.
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Well, I'm no Hitler.
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I'm no Charles Manson.
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And I was like R.C.
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Sproul's analogy.
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And he said, he said, if you were to have a scale of goodness and badness and you were to put people on that scale and you were to say over here, we're going to put the most evil person we can think of, maybe, I don't know who you want to say, you say Hitler or Nero or, you know, anyone you want.
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Who? So, well, obviously, Satan is the most evil character in Scripture.
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He's the most evil person, angelic person in the realm, demonic now, but the most powerful spiritual being of evil.
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But personally, you know, who has the devil most influence? You know, you put maybe whoever.
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And then over here, who would be the best? You have the scale.
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We'll make it a sliding scale.
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Who would be over here? The absolute personification of good.
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Jesus Christ.
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You know, the Bible says he made him who knew no sin to become sin for us.
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He was without sin.
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He's absolutely perfect.
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So we have this scale, absolutely good and absolutely just the most despicable.
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Where would I be on the scale? And a lot of people like to think, well, I'd be somewhere in the middle.
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All right.
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Or, you know, I'd be somewhere.
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The idea is I'd be shoulder to shoulder with Hitler.
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And you say, well, that's it.
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You have a bad, you know, that's not good for my self-esteem.
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I don't care.
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The reality is my sin is grievous and gravest and it is wretched.
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This is why John Newton understood this.
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Everybody sings Amazing Grace.
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Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a good old boy like me.
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No, it doesn't say that.
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It says wretch.
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And yet we don't we don't think about what that means.
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We don't think about what wretched is.
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We don't think about the idea that John Newton understood something about himself that so few people understand about themselves anymore and that there is no one good.
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And yet until we understand the depravity of the human soul, we don't understand the necessity of the grace of God.
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And that's where we're getting around to today, because all of this is simply to set up the idea of what we call Pelagianism.
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Now, I want to ask a question, because I know some of you are people I know very well.
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And some of you I know have different levels of particular biblical education.
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And some of you probably some of you I don't know at all.
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Well, I met you.
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But let me ask this question.
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How many of you have no idea who Pelagius is? OK, good.
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All right.
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That's good.
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How many of you have some idea? Good, good.
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Well, that's that's excellent.
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Well, when we talk about Pelagianism, Pelagius is often called arch heretic Pelagius.
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We'll leave that out.
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We'll just call him Pelagius.
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Pelagius was the one who went up against St.
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Augustine.
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I'll say it the right way.
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I know, Augustine.
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St.
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Augustine, Richard gives me a hard time.
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Richard is our resident scholar.
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He is a graduate of Dallas Seminary.
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He always gives me a hard time about how I pronounce things.
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Yeah, certain pronunciation.
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Yes, Augustine or Augustine, whatever.
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Augustine was the bishop of Hippo in Africa.
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And Augustine's teachings are obviously very influential in the church.
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How many of you ever heard of Martin Luther? Not Martin Luther King, but the actual the original Martin Luther, 15th, 16th century monk.
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He was called an Augustinian monk.
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Why? Because he was of the Augustinian order, meaning that the teachings of Augustine had so influenced the church that the monks of the of the church had become Augustinian monks.
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They were they were part of that order.
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Well, Pelagius opposed Augustine on the nature of the human condition, on whether or not man is by nature totally depraved or whether he is by nature able to exercise what we would call free will.
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That was the central part of the argument, whether or not man is able to exercise free will.
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Now, I want to go ahead and kind of say this because I think this is huge.
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Free will has become in so much of modern Christianity, the touchstone of of modern idolatry.
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It's like it's almost as if we hold up free will as to be more important than even the sacrifice of Christ.
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Because if you talk to anyone about salvation, if you talk, you'll hear this expression.
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Well, I made the free will choice.
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I made I decided I did this on my own.
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You know, I was I was the one who chose to follow Christ.
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I was this I made the choice.
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And it's always about us.
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It's always about the the personal investment of decision that goes into following Christ.
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So the free will aspect is huge today.
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Oftentimes when people find out that I am a reformed teacher, sometimes referred to as Calvinistic teacher, they'll say, well, Calvinists don't believe in free will.
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And that's technically not true.
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Calvinists or reformed teachers believe in what we call moral agency.
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And that means that we do believe that men have an ability to make choices and that those choices are free in the sense that men have the ability to make choices in accordance with their will.
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As Jonathan Edwards wrote in the Freedom of the Will, his famous book, he said, all men make choices.
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They just they choose what they want.
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And the problem is that what they want is not right.
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But he always he said he did say this, though, and I think the Freedom of the Will is an important book because he makes a distinction.
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And we're going to get to Luther's work in a minute.
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But in Edwards's work, sort of a balancing act between the bondage of the will of Luther and the freedom of the will in Edwards is Edward's point is this.
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He said, we always make the decision that we want to make at whatever point in time we are at.
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So we will always go with our with our we'll always do what we want to do.
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And the first question that every husband ever asks is, what do you mean always do what I want to do? I go shopping for shoes and I don't want to do that.
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My wife makes me go, you know, or the wife will say, I go fishing, but I don't want to go.
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And maybe that's the opposite.
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Maybe the guy wants a shoe shop.
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Maybe a woman was.
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I don't know.
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I'm just I'm using a very broad analogy here.
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But the idea was that was that OK? But the idea, though, is we you know, if if if if somebody comes to me and says, I want you to do this.
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Will it be my wife, my child, whatever? I mean, I want to do it, but I may do it because I have a stronger desire not to disappoint that person.
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So the strongest desire will always win out what I want to do.
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It's kind of like the guy who puts a gun in my chest and says, give me your money.
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Well, I could say, I don't want to give you.
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You're not going to get my money.
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You are.
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And then he shoots me to take my money anyway.
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But I I made the strongest.
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I went with the strongest desire at the time.
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He wasn't going to get my money willingly, so he took it by force.
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Now, I might want to live more than I want to have my money taken.
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So he says, give me your money, puts a gun in my chest and I take my wallet out and I hand him my money and hope that he doesn't shoot me because I want to live more than I want my money.
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So I always go with the strongest desire at the time.
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So the so the argument of the Calvinist has always been or the Augustinian, because we could argue that Calvin's teachings simply were an extension of what had already been taught a thousand years prior by Augustine.
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The argument that Calvin created some idea about human will and the depravity of human will is absolutely false.
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It's absolutely a modern, what we call an anachronistic look at history.
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It's reading something back into history.
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It's not true.
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We go back to Augustine.
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We see the teachings of Calvin a thousand years prior and we see the teachings in Paul and even in Christ.
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It was Jesus who said no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by my father.
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It's very clear.
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And that word can speaks of ability.
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No one has the ability to do this thing until God does a pre thing.
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He does something beforehand.
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So the idea of free will, yes, we believe that man makes choices, but those choices are always influenced by his nature.
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Always.
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And the problem that we find in scripture is man is born with a depraved nature.
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Ephesians chapter two, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to this world.
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And you were by nature what? Children of wrath.
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Yeah, you're not by nature good.
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That that runs against the grain of every natural man, which is why I tend to know this is true.
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I know it's true for scripture teaches it, but I also know it's true because the Bible says the natural man cannot accept the things of God.
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And you know what the natural man loves? Joel Osteen.
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The natural man loves these teachers who go out and tell them how great they are and how good you are and how good of a life I can give you.
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If you just do X, Y and Z, you'll have your best life now.
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If your best life now, then you're going to hell because this isn't supposed to be our best life.
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This life is to prepare us for our best life, which is in the next life.
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The whole idea.
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Yeah, yeah, it's a placation of the soul.
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Absolutely.
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Placation of the mind.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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And I'm not just here beating up on Joel.
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I could I could mention other people, but he's just the easiest target.
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When you have the largest church in America and you're not teaching the gospel, that's an issue.
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So he's a little easy to point at.
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That's perfect.
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Yeah, well, that's what it is.
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If the natural man can listen to what you have to say.
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And be pleased with it.
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In the sense that he accepts it and applies it without conversion, then it is not the gospel because the gospel is offensive to the natural man, according to Romans chapter eight, he cannot accept it.
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He will not accept it.
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So if we have thousands of unbelievers, if we have thousands of people who have yet been converted to Christ and yet they are drinking in what we're pouring out, then what we're pouring out is not the gospel.
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So that being said, getting back to this, we are I kind of got off track there for a second.
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When we talk about Pelagianism and Augustinianism, Pelagius essentially taught that man is by nature not necessarily good, but that man is by nature at least neutral.
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The man has the capacity for good or for evil and that it ultimately is up to his free will.
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He has the capacity to do right, the capacity to do wrong, and thus it is him and his innate ability that allows him to do good or to do evil and the responsibility of man, of course, according to Pelagius, is that he do good and that if he does not exercise his free will to do good, he will essentially be doing evil and not be acceptable to God.
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So in the grand scheme of teaching and Pelagianism, it is if you are willing to do what is good, God will save you.
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If you're not willing, God will not save you.
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So it all comes down to human free will.
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Augustine came along and said no.
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Augustine said no one is willing.
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No one by nature will.
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So as a result of no one being willing, there must be an action on behalf of God which precedes our action of being willing that will cause us to do the work.
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Do you know what caused the issue between Augustine and Pelagius? It was a prayer.
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Augustine prayed a prayer in the midst of an assembly.
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Pelagius heard the prayer and was so offended by the prayer that it sparked the outrage in the ultimate underlying debate.
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The prayer was simply this.
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God, command what thou wilt.
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And how do we say it? Give what thou commandeth.
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Command what thou wilt and give what thou commandeth.
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Essentially, give the ability to do what you are commanding us to do.
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And Pelagius said, no, that's wrong.
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If God commands it, we already have the ability to do it.
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He said, if God says do it, then we must already be able to do it because God would not command us to do that which we're not able to do.
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And I've often said that's wrong.
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God commands us all through scripture to do things we're not able to do, which makes us rely on grace.
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For instance, are you able to go through your whole life and obey the Ten Commandments? By your own nature, I just go through one or two of them.
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Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.
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That's the first four commandments distilled down into one.
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Jesus said all the commandments rely on two.
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Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
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Love your neighbor as yourself.
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And if you take the Ten Commandments and distill them down, that's it.
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The first four is love your God.
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The last six, love your neighbor.
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So do we do that? How many of us have never made an idol? You say, well, I've never carved an idol out of metal or wood.
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Have you never had an idol? Have you never worshipped something other than the true God? We all have.
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We have all created idols, if not in our, if not in wood, hay or stone, we've created idols in our mind.
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I love it when I talk to people about Jesus and we're talking and the person says, well, my God wouldn't send someone to hell.
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And I said, you're right, because your God doesn't exist.
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Believe in an idol.
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You've created a God in your mind who is like you because that's the God that makes you happy.
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And because you're an idolater, he doesn't is actually a girl who told me that she said my goddess wouldn't send someone to hell.
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And I said, you're right, because she doesn't exist.
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You're right.
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You're absolutely right.
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I agree with you because you've created an idol and she couldn't send anyone to hell because she doesn't exist.
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Yes, go ahead.
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Augustine's prayer foreshadowed Paul in Philippians says, work out your God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure.
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Absolutely.
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It is God who works within us both to will and to do his good pleasure.
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That is such an important passage, because when we do wrong, when we do evil, it is a part of our nature that we are expressing.
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But when we do good toward God, it is God who is working within us to will and to do that good.
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And so when I do evil, I am responsible.
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But when I do good, I am grateful because I thank God for giving me the ability to do that, which is good.
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So when we see Augustine, keep looking at it like that.
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Is that spelled right? This doesn't matter.
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But I keep looking at it like I spelled it wrong.
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That's what it is.
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I spelled it Augustine for Richard's sake.
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OK, so Pelagianism and Augustinianism was a divide in the early church.
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It continues into the Reformation time as a divide, and it continues today as a divide.
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Oftentimes, you'll hear people say that the real divide in the church today is between Calvinists and Arminians.
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And that's not true.
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Most people don't even know what that means.
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And even those who do know what it means, they think that...
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Yes? Just to make the point that historians have made the distinction that Arminians was semi-Pelagian.
27:08
I was getting there.
27:09
I was getting there.
27:11
You're right, though.
27:12
That's where I was going.
27:13
Because the argument that it's Calvinism versus Arminianism is really wrong.
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The reality is we have something called semi-Pelagianism.
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Semi-Pelagianism is not Arminianism, really.
27:27
You could make the case that Arminius was a semi-Pelagian, but semi-Pelagianism even further goes than Arminius.
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Arminius argued that man is totally depraved.
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He argued that man is, by nature, sinful, but that God gives prevenient grace, which allows all men to basically become neutral.
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So he basically said, yes, we're all sinful, but we all get this grace that's supplied to everyone, and everybody then is made neutral.
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So by God's grace, we're neutral.
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See, Pelagius argued that it wasn't grace.
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Grace is unnecessary.
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We're, by nature, neutral.
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So there was a difference, a slight difference.
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But it is worth commenting on the fact that Arminius at least recognized the nature of sin and that there had to be grace to solve the problem.
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Pelagius didn't even believe in grace as a necessity.
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Oh, well, yes.
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Actually, in the writings of Arminius, Arminius never himself argued for the ability to fall completely from the faith, but it was his followers who ultimately came to that conclusion.
28:30
So you could argue that it's the Remonstrants who made that argument.
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Most Arminians today, well, I want to say there's a divide because if we talk about Wesleyan Arminianism, which is found mostly in the Methodist Church, typically there's a belief in the fact that you could fall away.
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But in Baptistic Arminianism, which is often found in the Southern Baptist Church, they believe that you can't fall away, but they're still Arminians.
28:57
So it really is sort of a twofold thing there.
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It's getting a little nuanced.
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And sometimes it's who you talk to, you know, depending.
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You talk to some Methodists and they believe you can.
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Some Methodists believe you can't.
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But typically, Wesley's perspective was that you could fall away.
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And Wesley was the consummate Arminian.
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His teaching is very Arminian.
29:21
All right, let's finally get to the book I gave you because we're only, what, five minutes from the end of class now.
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How long have I been talking? 30 minutes.
29:30
Well, I'm a big mouth.
29:32
Yeah, this class ends in about seven minutes.
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All right, the reason why I did all this kind of preliminary work is I want you to read this, not because we're going to have a test on it, not because I'm going to come back and teach next week because I'm sure Byron will be back with your normally scheduled programming.
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But I have this book.
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We are now members, not members, but we're recipients, rather, of Chapel Library's materials.
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Chapel Library is terrific biblical material.
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We have a whole table out there.
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It's filled with free stuff that comes from Chapel Library.
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And I've just kind of made it my new plan that I'm going to be teaching through some of the stuff that they give us on Wednesday nights.
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After I finish my series right now, I'm teaching on worship.
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I'm going to start looking at some of this material and we're going to go through it.
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Like one of the things is Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church by Paul Washer.
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How many of you know who Paul Washer is? Yeah, buddy.
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Listen to Paul Washer.
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He is the man.
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And his Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church is a great little book.
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It's just like this, about this size.
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And I want to teach through it because it's such great material.
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But this is one chapter from the bondage of the will.
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Now, as I said earlier, Jonathan Edwards wrote on the freedom of the will.
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But a couple hundred years before Edwards, Luther wrote on the bondage of the will.
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Now, Luther was having his own Pelagian debate with another man named Desiderius Erasmus.
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By the way, Erasmus should be important to us, not just because he has the greatest quote.
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What was the quote? What was Erasmus's quote? I buy, I use my money to buy books.
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And if I have any left over, yeah, I buy food and medicine.
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If I have any left over, I spend all my money on books.
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Erasmus is the reason why we have the King James Bible, by the way, at least in part.
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Erasmus was the one who produced the Greek New Testament, which would later be called the Textus Receptus or the Received Text, which is what the King James Version was based on when it was written in 1611.
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So Erasmus is hugely important in biblical history.
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Erasmus was representing the Catholic Church, arguing essentially for the freedom of the will.
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Luther, of course, being the reformer, Luther being the opposition, arguing for the bondage of the will.
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So in this little book, I just want to read the major headings to us, kind of show you what it's about, and I encourage you to take some time this week, maybe it's a devotional time if you have family worship, like our family at night before we go to bed, we come together and we worship together and we have a study of some kind.
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This would be a great opportunity, especially if you have older children, which you guys do, to talk about things like this.
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But the first argument is the universal guilt.
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This is on page three.
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Yes, please take them.
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Yes.
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Page three, the universal guilt of mankind proves free will to be false.
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And Luther's argument essentially is based on Romans 1, 17 through 19, that if man was free, then the idea that man would all be universally guilty doesn't stand.
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We all stand universally guilty because we are universally bound in sin.
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Now, the next one is on page five.
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Argument number two, the universal rule of sin proves free will to be false.
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This is an extension of argument one.
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Argument one is that all men are guilty.
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And argument two is that all men universally sin and it proves free will to be wrong.
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And this is something I have talked about Armenians before.
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They say, I believe man has absolute free will.
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I say, do you believe man has free will enough to keep himself from sin perfectly? No.
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Then you don't believe in free will.
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Then you don't believe in absolute, unconditional free will.
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If man doesn't have the capacity to keep himself from doing wrong forever, totally, well, all men make mistakes.
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Why is that? Why is that? Why is that an absolute? Why is all men making mistakes in absolute? Why? Why? Because we're bound in sin, according to scripture.
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All right.
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Number argument three is on page seven.
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Free will is not able to gain acceptance with God through keeping the moral and ceremonial law.
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So essentially, the argument here is that the law itself can't save us.
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And by trying to obey the law, we cannot be saved.
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And it doesn't, you know, our free will doesn't make us able to do that.
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Moving on to number nine.
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This is one of the most important things I think Luther says in here.
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Argument number four, the law is designed to lead men to Christ by giving a knowledge of sin.
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That's expressed in Galatians 3.19.
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The law is the schoolmaster which leads us to Christ.
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It's the tutor which drives us to Christ.
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This is why in evangelistic attempts.
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How many of you guys know Ray Comfort? Okay.
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Ray Comfort teaches the Way of the Master evangelism outreach program.
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And what he teaches people to do is basically take people to the law of God and help them to see their sin.
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Because the law of God is the schoolmaster which leads us to Christ.
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When we see ourselves under the law of God, we see ourselves as necessarily sinful and in need of God's grace.
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All right.
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The next page over, page 10, argument five, the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ proves free will to be false.
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And Luther's argument there is simply to say that if we have to believe in Christ to be saved, we can't will it ourselves.
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We can't will our own salvation.
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We can't will ourselves to be good enough.
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And thus the necessity of faith in Christ proves free will to be false.
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Argument number six is on the next page.
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You can see it.
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There is no place for any kind of merit or reward.
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And again, that is you'll be able to read through there and see what he's saying about the free will.
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Argument number seven is on page 12.
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Free will has no value because works have nothing to do with man's righteousness before God.
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That's hugely important from Luther's perspective, because in the Roman Catholic teaching, merit is something that we have the ability to do.
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We can merit God's favor.
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We can by the exercise of our will do things which cause God to look at us favorably.
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And scripture says that that's not true.
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Grace is by nature, by its very title, grace is a free gift not given by something that we earn.
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Argument number eight, a whole fistful of arguments.
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And of course, you can go through those.
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And then argument number nine on page 14.
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Paul is absolutely clear in refuting free will.
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So again, where does Luther appeal? He appeals to scripture.
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He appeals to the Apostle Paul.
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And argument number 10.
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The state of man without the spirit shows that free will can do nothing spiritual.
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Page 16.
36:50
Oh, wow.
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These go on for a while.
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You can read this.
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I'm not going to continue just reading these to you, but you can read all the way through all the way to number 19, which is on page 22.
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And I would encourage you to, I would encourage you to.
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Because these are some important, important truths that Luther expresses.
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Now, we have a couple of minutes.
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I'll open up to any questions.
37:14
I've talked for a long time.
37:16
What questions would you maybe have about the subject of plagianism, free will, Lutheran Erasmus? And if I don't know the answer, I will try to tell you I don't know.
37:34
Yeah, yeah, yes.
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And here's the here's the here's the thing that I think is very important.
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And I did forget to mention this.
37:47
I'm glad you mentioned that.
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The bondage of the will is Luther's writings, but it's in response to Erasmus's writings.
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You can I don't have it, but you can get Erasmus's writings.
38:00
Isn't that right, Richard? You can get both where you can see the back and forth between the two.
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But the bondage of the will is Luther.
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This is what Luther wrote in response to the writings of Erasmus.
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And by the way, I mentioned this before when I was teaching through history earlier this year.
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Luther and the other reformers were not politically correct.
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They said some things that we would consider now to be downright rough.
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They would call a spade a spade.
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They would call it.
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They would say it like it was.
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They was they were just right on top.
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I mean, the they would call the the pope a dog and everything else.
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I mean, you know, so so when you're reading through the arguments of Luther, if you do read something, you say, wow, that seems kind of harsh.
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They didn't have the they didn't have the same.
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They didn't have the same sort of standards of PC.
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They didn't have the PC police.
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They said they told it like it was and they were sometimes very harsh.
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But you know what? The reality was the serious stuff was.
39:13
Yeah, and Luther.
39:14
I'm sorry.
39:15
Go ahead.
39:16
Neither Luther or Erasmus wanted a break from this.
39:24
Yeah.
39:25
So you could make the argument that if Erasmus hadn't gotten into the dialogue with Luther about the will, there never would have been a reformation.
39:35
Yeah, well, you have you have Luther's debate with Eck that was, I think, preceded this.
39:41
I'd have to look back into the historical.
39:43
That was big as far as the as the debate that that happened.
39:49
Luther's Luther's ninety five theses.
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You're right.
39:51
They were not an attempt.
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There's nothing in my thesis about Sola Fide.
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There's nothing in the ninety five.
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You know, we typically call the reformation argument Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Christus, all those all those Latin phrases.
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The ninety five thesis is about the misuse of indulgences in the church.
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Ninety five reasons basically why the indulgence system is unbiblical.
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By the way, the indulgence system is not dead.
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They still sell indulgences.
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You can still purchase them.
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I don't know if you know what an indulgence is, but an indulgence was what was effectively sold as a papal authoritative paper that you could get, which absolves you of your sins.
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And they have it now.
40:34
I saw recently where you could get a certain level of indulgence as a result of retweeting the pope's tweet.
40:43
Look it up.
40:44
I'm not making it up.
40:45
It's it's so ridiculous.
40:47
But it's it's there's just dumb stuff.
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Dumb stuff.
40:53
Yeah.
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Indulgences is all about understanding the inappropriate understanding of purgatory.
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And of course, you had Jan Tetzel.
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When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.
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Well, how many of you would for a piece of silver not want to see his mother's soul taken from the fires of purgatory and brought to the arms of the blessed virgin? You know, that's the false teaching of philanthropic person.
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Yes.
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And and, you know, I mean, we believe that that that your free will extends to you doing what your nature is.
41:45
You know, if you if you're born again, then you have a new nature and you do good things to follow it.
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What about the person that does a lot of good things? And and I know our righteousness is filthy right.
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But I'm just saying, I wasn't going to say that.
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What causes them to do that? Do you think God is using that person for the good of society? Or it's just it's not really problematic, but it's an interesting thing.
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I have an analogy.
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I've never told you the pirate ship analogy.
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This has always helped me.
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Maybe it'll maybe it'll help answer the question.
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If not, I'm sorry, but I'll use it.
42:27
I always use because people ask that question all the time.
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Why do people do good to one another if they are by nature sinners and they do no good? Because people do good to one another.
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In fact, some people do very good to one another as unbelievers.
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I know some of the finest people that I know don't proclaim Christ as far as fine in the sense of human human and humanly speaking.
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Wouldn't cheat.
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I trust them with my wallet.
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I trust them with just about anything I have.
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But I always use a pirate ship as an analogy.
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On a pirate ship, when pirates live together on the ship, they live under a code and they live under a code of ethics.
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And the ethics are that while we're on the ship, we treat each other with a certain amount of respect.
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Captain is in charge.
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We show each other a certain amount of discipline.
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We don't take each other's things.
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We live together.
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We together clean the ship.
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We together clean the food.
43:27
We together cook.
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We together live as as positively as possible because we have to live together.
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And yet the whole time I'm on the pirate ship, I live as a maritime criminal.
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I live in a sea where I am opposed to the authority of that sea.
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I'm opposed to the authority around me.
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I'm opposed to all law except the law of the ship.
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And to make my life more positive while on the ship, I will do better and good to those around me because they will do good back to me and there will be a positive experience on the ship.
44:07
But I'm still a criminal.
44:10
So when I look at the world and I see people do good, I say this is the nature of man to comfort himself.
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And we comfort ourself often by doing good to others.
44:20
What is the what's the natural thing that we say? It makes me feel good to do good to other people.
44:25
And it does.
44:26
It makes people feel good to do good to other people.
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And thus people do good to other people because it does make us feel good.
44:33
And some people say, no, he's totally philanthropic.
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He doesn't have any personal value invested in doing good.
44:38
We all do.
44:39
We all like the feeling of of helping others.
44:42
And we all like the idea of doing that, which is good.
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And I think that I think that one of two things is happening.
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One, we do it because it does make us feel good.
44:55
But two, it also magnifies the fact that we have not lost completely the image of God, which was given to us in creation.
45:04
Every person expresses the imago Dei, the image of God in some form or fashion.
45:11
And in fact, I've often said that the writings of men who are absolutely opposed to God, the writings of Nietzsche are incredible.
45:19
They're horribly unbiblical.
45:21
They're horribly sacrilegious.
45:23
But they demonstrate the image of God even in a man who was opposed to God.
45:29
So I think that the answer is that we are made in the image of God.
45:33
We live in a world wherein we have to do certain things and certain things please us.
45:37
But they don't necessarily please God.
45:39
That which is not a faith is sin.
45:42
So I hope that answers that.
45:44
That makes sense.
45:45
OK, all right.
45:46
All well, it was great to have everyone in class this morning.
45:49
Let's end with a word of prayer.
45:51
Father, thank you for the opportunity to hear your word and to talk about your word together.
45:58
I pray that this has been fruitful for your people and that it has been encouraging that we would understand better what your word has to tell us.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
46:09
Amen.