The Myth of Freewill

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Avendroth.

Why This Show Talks About Controversial Biblical Topics

No Compromise Radio Ministries' host is Mike Avendroth. Oh, that's me. What I wanna talk about today is a topic that will provoke you, that will stimulate you to think and say to yourself, well, that guy can't be right.

That man is wrong. That guy goes against everything that I've ever been taught. I don't like that, but I think you'll be so interested that you'll have to listen to the rest of the show. We like to talk about things that are controversial, yes, provocative, yes, but the question is why?

Well, there are lots of reasons why. Number one, I'll pick biblical topics that are controversial and provocative, so we talk about the Bible. Number two, I think it makes interesting radio. It's interesting to listen to those things.

This is not the Firing Line or the McLaughlin Group or something like that, where we're going back and forth bantering. Rather, I want to make sure that you realize you have to stand up for biblical truth, which means you stand against biblical error, that there is truth, this is not a postmodern show where if it's true to you, it must be true.

No, there's truth and there's God's truth, and we wanna make sure we think biblically. That's the goal. Anything we think about the Bible that's unbiblical is essentially sin, and so we wanna make sure we can form our minds to God's written revelation, that we have our minds renewed by what God says.

Free Will as a Misleading Term

So today we're going to talk about free will. Today we wanna talk about the issue of free will. Free will is an assumed doctrine by people on TV, by believers, by unbelievers. You say something about free will, and you're practically stoned.

You're practically mugged. Say something that free will doesn't exist, and you get immediately the retort back, well, then, you know, God doesn't make anybody love him, and there's robots, and all these kind of talk.

Free will will push that kind of response when you say there's no such thing. And mark it very well, listeners, at WVNE 760, or those on the podcast, there is no such thing as free will. Well, maybe we should say this instead.

When you say the word free will, if you give the biblical definition, there's such a thing. But most, I'd say 95 of all people that use free will use, and they say the word free will, but they have an unbiblical definition.

I believe that free will is a vacuous term. It's an empty term. It conjures up too many ideas of unbiblical things, and that we should get rid of it. We should discard it. Here's what we're after. What did the fall do?

What did the fall, when Adam and Eve sinned, when Adam sinned, what happened? Listen to what Arthur Pink says. The freedom or bondage of the will was the dividing line between Augustinianism and Pelagianism, and in more recent times, between Calvinism and Arminianism.

Reduced to simple terms, all right? We want to think about this controversy of free will. How do we think about it? Pink says, reduced to simple terms, this means that the difference involved was the affirmation or denial of the total depravity of man, end quote.

And if you believe in free will, you are denying total depravity, and if you believe the will is bound, it's captive, it's enslaved to sin, then you affirm the doctrine of total depravity. This is the key issue of the Reformation, according to Reisinger, Packer, Johnston.

Not justification by faith alone, although that was key. Sola Scriptura, that was key. But the manifesto of the Reformation, as some say, was the will of man. Do you believe in free will? Do you defend free will?

I'd like you to just take your Bibles and open up and find all the passages for free will. I think you might find giving done, that is free will, whatever you decide to give, you can give, but I don't think you're going to notice anything in the Bible that says that the will is not enslaved to sin, that the will is not affected by the fall.

You would agree, wouldn't you, that the mind was affected at the fall, the way Adam thought, the way Adam felt was affected by the fall, and even his will, if he has a will, if he has a willer, if we have, I just think of that movie, Free Will, Free Willy, Free Willer, if he had a will, was that not affected?

His body was affected, he ended up dying. His mind was affected, he thought things that weren't right about God. We have, in Adam, a fallen sinner that was now unable to cooperate with divine grace. Salvation had to be by God alone, by divine monergism.

That fallen sinner, Adam, and you, the fallen sinner, before you were saved, if in fact you're a Christian, have no power to cooperate with the grace of God. And if you think you do have the power to cooperate, then you deny the total necessity, the absolute requirement of Christ's work on Calvary, Christ's work on earth, Christ's resurrection work.

And so, here's what we're after. We believe here at No Compromise Radio Ministry and at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, that the will was affected by the fall. So how can you say it is free? Certainly we believe man is responsible.

Absolutely we believe that they have to obey and repent and God will hold them responsible. That isn't the issue. The issue is man, because of his sinful nature, is totally unable to repent and to believe.

They're required to repent and believe. If you're listening and you're not a Christian, you must repent and believe. But if you're listening and you're not a Christian, I know something about you. You have a fallen mind, a fallen will, fallen emotions, and you are unable to repent and believe.

And so, here's what we do. Most of the times when we preach the gospel to people, we somehow leave the impression that it's totally in the power of the person to save themselves. It's like saying, well, God has done everything he can and now he's waiting for you to finish the deal.

Friends, man is spiritually dead. We must get that. I think of Jesus' words in John 5. You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is these that bear witness of me.

And you are unwilling to come to me that you may have life. Man is spiritually dead and God must work. He must be the initiator. He must be the author of salvation because there is none who understands.

There is none who seeks for God. John 6, 44, no one can come to me. Why? Because his will, his mind, his emotions are all fallen. Unless the father who sent me draws him, I will raise him up on that last day.

Ephesians 2, you're dead in your trespasses and sins. First Corinthians 2, a natural man does not accept the things of the spirit of God. He cannot understand them. So here's my question, if you believe in free will.

Free Will and the World’s Influence

All right, here's the question. Is your will free from the world's influence? Is your will free from the world's influence? We can think about an unbeliever. Does the world influence the unbeliever? Friends, I can't even watch a Big Mac commercial without wanting to eat a Big Mac.

I don't really like to eat Big Macs that much. Try not to eat fast food. But advertising is effective. How about Ephesians 2, verse two, in which you formally walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

In other words, unbelievers had a master and their master was not freedom. Their master was not arbitrary. Their master was Satan. Their master was the world. The way the world worked and the way the world sold things, they imbibed and they bought those things.

Satan energized the world system and the unbeliever follows along. They just go right along with the system. You can't say to me that you are free from the world's influence as an unbeliever because the Bible teaches the opposite.

I have another question for you if you think free will is a term that should be used, that you're completely free, that God doesn't have to do any kind of work ahead of time or that God doesn't force or any of that.

You say, no, I have free will. I ask this question to you. Were unbelievers, are unbelievers, free from Satan's will, free from doing Satan's will? This is the coup de grace here. You are going to have to pull over if you're driving down the street.

There's no way you can bear up to this. You'll have to change your definition. You'll have to hop, skip, and jump. You'll have to do what the cults do. Well, what about this verse? What about that verse?

What about this verse? Friends, just listen. Here's what Paul said in 2 Timothy 2 as he writes to Timothy the elder, the pastor. And he says, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil.

So these people don't have their senses about them and they are captive to Satan. They're like in a trap. They've got a net over them and they can't get out of it. And here's what the modifier says. Having been captive by Satan to do Satan's will.

So here's my question. If an unbeliever, according to the Bible, is doing Satan's will, how free is his will? You don't have a free will if you're doing the will of another. Unbelievers don't have a free will because the world influences their will and Satan determines what they're going to do.

Friends, we can't say to ourselves, I've got free will when the world and Satan say something else. Furthermore, what about free from sin and flesh and the flesh that dwells in you? What about your own sin nature?

If you're an unbeliever, you don't have free will because the world influences you, Satan influences you and your own sin on the inside influences you. 2 Peter 2 talks about slaves of corruption for by what a man has overcome, by this he is enslaved.

People are slaves to sin. Luther knew this when he wrote the book of the Reformation, the bondage of the will. The will is free to choose whatever it decides to according to its nature. And if the nature is of unregenerate constituency, then it'll always choose sin.

It'll always choose what an unbeliever chooses. That's what we're after. I think people choose. I think people decide. I think there's an agency where you go, I will do this or I will do that. But it will always choose sin, the will that is enslaved to the world, to Satan and its own sin, its own flesh, will always choose wrongly.

That's why we need the gospel, the good news that Jesus, according to his will. Friends, there's only enough room in this universe to have one free will, and that is God's. God is free to do whatever he pleases, how he pleases, according to what he pleases, and as often as he pleases.

God's will is alone free. But back to this sin and flesh idea. You are not, if you're an unbeliever, free from the sin that dwells in you. Romans chapter six, verse 16. Do you not know? You should know, according to Romans chapter six, that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness.

Now, Paul's talking to the Christians about sanctification, and now he describes who they used to be and who they are and how thanks should be given to God. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed.

And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. And so here's my premise. We throw out the word free will, and we don't have any idea what we're saying when we say it because we forget that the will must do what the nature of the person requires.

And if you've got an unbelieving nature, you are not free to make righteous decisions. You are only free to make whatever sinful, unrighteous decision that your nature will allow. And you need to be rescued.

You need somebody who's got another will to come in and interrupt you, to arrest you, to help you, to save you. And so here's what the Bible teaches. One, unbelievers are not free from the world's influence.

Two, unbelievers are not free to do their own will, they do Satan's will. Three, unbelievers do the will that's according to their own sinful flesh because they're slaves to it. Now, I've got the big question.

We're leading up to all this. This is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. And what we're doing is we're talking about free will. What is a good definition of free will? If you mean free from outside influences, then that's not according to the Bible.

If you believe free from internal influences, well, that's not found in the Bible. But here's the question. Is an unbeliever's will free from God's control? Can God do what he wants to that will with or without permission of the unbeliever?

Can God intervene in the human will? Somehow God is not able to go to an unbeliever's will because that's the sacred holy of holies, that's the island of righteousness for the unbeliever? The answer is absolutely not.

God can do whatever he wants. And if in God's free will, he decides to open the heart of an unregenerate, even though the unregenerate doesn't want his heart open, then God is free to take Lydia and open her heart so she can respond to the things of God.

Acts chapter 16. Can God intervene in the human will? Proverbs 19 .21. Many are the plans in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord, it will stand. Man can plan all he wants, but God's will and rule trumps the human will.

How about this? Ezra 6 .22. They observed the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had caused them to rejoice, and the Lord had turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.

So now God turns the heart of the king. Did the king have to give his permission? Yes, God of the universe. Yes, you may. Mother, may I? Yes, you may. Simon says, okay, now you may proceed. That is ludicrous.

We've somehow thought too human about God. That's exactly what Luther said to Erasmus. Your thoughts of God are too human. Well, what about Revelation 17 .17? For God has put it in their hearts to execute his purpose by having a common purpose and by giving their kingdom to the beast until the words of God should be fulfilled.

Wow. Proverbs 20 .24. Man stepped ordained by the Lord. How then can man understand his way? Proverbs 16 .9. The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Show me the most powerful person back in the old days, and I'll show you someone who was the king.

God just takes the king and does whatever he wants with his heart. Proverbs 21 .1. The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord. He, God, turns it, the king's heart, wherever he, God, wishes.

The Will, Desire, and the Bondage of Sin

What is the will? The will is a faculty of choice, Pink says. It is the immediate cause of all action. But we have to remember the fall. The fall has affected the will. Let's see what Matt Perlman said.

Freedom is the ability to choose according to our desires. It means making an unforced decision. Even the most ardent Calvinist would not deny that the will is free to choose whatever it desires. Even the most ardent Arminian would agree that the will is not free to choose what it does not desire, thought in R .C. Sproul's book, page 179.

So before we choose something, we must first desire to choose it. And I think what's happening here with Sproul's quote and Perlman's quote is the right thing. How can an unbeliever desire to choose God without God working in his heart first?

It cannot happen because inside the man, within the heart of the man, proceeds evil thoughts, fornications, thefts. Freedom is only a one-directional freedom for the unbeliever, and that is in the direction of evil.

The will is enslaved. It's in bondage, servants and slaves to sin. When Edwards wrote the book, Jonathan Edwards, he had a book called The Freedom of the Will, but he wrote that according to the right definition, and the will is free according to do whatever the nature will allow.

The will of man is free for evil. Unbelievers respond only with evil. It sins all it wants to. The unbeliever sins as much as he wants to, as often as he wants to, he likes to sin. And so man acts according to his nature.

Don't do this whole free will thing. He is sovereign. God is the one who only has free will. And so you probably have many questions that come from that. And you begin to ask questions. If God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases, and if God doesn't open people's hearts, they can't respond.

Therefore, God is the one who's in charge of salvation. You got it. That's exactly right. In eternity past, God chose the some, not the all. He could have chose none. That would have been to us the most just, the most common sense thing.

He could have chose all, but he chose some. Then he takes Jesus and he has Jesus die for the some, not the all, the same ones that he chose. And then in time, the spirit of God takes the some, not the all, and gives them a new heart, a new nature, a new will.

God has to do that because sin affects people. You say, well, that means then somehow people can't obey. So they're no longer responsible. Well, that's not true either. God to Adam said, you're responsible to obey.

And then he fell. He was still responsible to obey and do things in the garden to treat his wife a certain way, but he was no longer able. But God didn't say, no, I don't require that of you. No, what did he do?

He sent another who was able to obey in the place of Adam. And that second Adam's name was Jesus Christ. And so God still requires people to repent and to believe and to trust and to follow and to turn, yet they are not able to do it.

And so what does God do? God lays down the law of perfection and then gives his perfect one, Christ Jesus. What does the Heidelberg Catechism say? Is not God unjust in requiring of man in his law what he cannot do?

Answer, no, for God so created man that he could do it. But man upon the instigation of the devil by deliberate disobedience has cheated himself and all his descendants out of these gifts. And so it is required to obey, but people are not able.

Fallen men and women do not have a desire for Christ Jesus. Why? John 3, 16, men love the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. It does not lie in the power of the sinner, the unbeliever, to yield himself willingly up to God.

So God has to regenerate first and then the man or the woman responds with faith. God, through regeneration, through new birth from being born again from above, gives the spiritual life that enables the unbeliever to do what he must, repent and believe.

But he gives this to them because they couldn't do it on their own because of their bondage to sin. I ask you this question. Can you ask and answer this question appropriately? Here is the question. I have come to, have you ever met a Christian who has said this?

I've come to Jesus without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. So it isn't anything to do with free will then, is it? It's the free grace of God. That's why Romans 9, 16 says, so then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God.

It depends on God who has mercy. People don't get to heaven because of their free will. A, because there's no such thing as free will that's a slavery, and B, it's because of God's will. That's what the text says, Romans 9, 16.

And don't do the whole Charlie Brown deal where the teacher's wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. No, find out, find out if this is true. John 1, 12, why do people only read 1, 12 and not 1, 13? John 1, 12, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born, verse 13, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

It's of God's will, and so to be born again, it's not of your own will. You have to be able to have God work first because you can't work, you're dead. What did the Baptist of Philadelphia Confession of Faith in 1742 read?

Man, by his fall into state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So as a natural man, being altogether averse from good and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto.

End quote, chapter nine. So what's happening here? Here's what's happening. If you believe in the total depravity of man, you will not believe in free will that is free from external and internal influences.

You will have to believe that it's gonna be God who's going to have to work first. You're going to be believing in grace. You're going to not be able to say to me, oh, this is robotic and all these other things because the Bible never talks about that.

It talks about potters and clays. You're going to have to say this to yourself. I have an unbelieving friend. I have an unbelieving mom. I have an unbelieving spouse. I have an unbeliever who's at work and it's not going to be my arguments.

It's not going to be my debates. It's not gonna be evidence that demands a verdict. It is going to be God who has to work first because left to themselves, those unbelievers will always respond with their will that says sin, evil, corruption, wickedness, depravity.

So God would, according to your own will, if it is according to your will, would you make this person born again? Friends, you believe in the bondage of the will when you pray for the salvation of your friends, don't you?

You don't say God arranged it so of their own free will, they would choose to decide to follow you. You say, save them, regenerate them, make them born again. You know, you know that that is exactly right.

Regeneration is an internal work. It is a divine work. It is a non-cooperating with man work. It is monergistic, God alone working. It is God's will, not the will of blood. It is God's will, not the will of the flesh.

Why? Because those wills are corrupted. Not God's will, but man's will. It has to be God's will. This is Mike Gabendroth, the Snow Compromise Radio Ministry. There's no such thing as free will. If you mean free from Satan, free from the world, free from other influences and free from God's will.

God's will, when he knows he's chosen you in eternity past, he sends his son to die on the cross and then the spirit of God regenerates according to his will for his glory alone and only for his glory to the praise of the glory of his grace.

Mike Gabendroth, there's no such thing as free will.

Snow Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Gabendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.