Bondage of the Will

The Bondage of the Will in John 6

I want to invite you again to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John. We discussed this passage last week, but as a precursor to tonight's lesson, I want to begin by reading God's Word.

If you were not here last week, I have a handout that I would like for everyone to have. There are actually three passages in John 6 which are particularly relevant to the subject that we are discussing.

Even though they are not successive, one after the other, they do all fit within the same context. Jesus is preaching in Caesarea Philippi. He had just fed the 5 ,000 and now people are following after Him because He fed them.

He looks on them and says, you don't really believe in Me. People are surprised. What do you mean? We are following you. What do you mean we don't believe? Jesus essentially says, you are following Me because I gave you food, not because you really believe.

The three verses I think are most relevant to our subject, which is the subject of the bondage of the will. It is verse 37, verse 44, and verse 65. So I want to read those three verses in succession, even though I realize there is a greater context and where I had to have the time, I could go through and teach on the context.

But just listening to what these three passages teach, it says in verse 37, All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out. This passage reminds us that it is the giving of the Father that results in the coming to the Son.

Verse 44 says, No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. This tells us not only is it the ones who the Father gives who will come to the Son, this verse tells us the opposite, and that is no one can come unless the Father draws him.

And then this is reiterated in verse 65, and He said, This is why I told you no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father. And so Jesus reiterates in verse 65 what He said in verse 44, and the reason why He does it in verse 65 is because everyone left except for the disciples.

And Jesus says, Do you want to leave too? And they said, To whom shall we go? You know, it is you who have the words of life. And Jesus said, This is why I told you no one can come unless it is given to him by the Father.

Free Moral Agency and Human Sinfulness

And what we began last week was our discussion on the subject of the freedom of the will, and rather your lesson, the title, is On the Bondage of the Will. Oftentimes, people will use the word free will in a way that is foreign to the Bible.

People will talk about man's free will as if it is simply a fact that the Bible teaches that all men have a free will. And yet what we saw last week in the first part of this lesson is that man is sinful by nature.

Because of our relationship to Adam, we are born as sinners. The Bible says that we are sinners from the very moment of conception. It says, In sin did my mother conceive me. And so when we consider the fact that we are sinners, Jesus makes it very clear in John 8, 34, I say to you, Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

Therefore, when we begin to talk about freedom, and people talk about the free will, I want to make my initial argument, as I did last week, to remind you that the problem with this is the word free. Because what is at issue, if you look in the Scriptures, is that we are bound and in bondage to sin until we are set free by God.

And so we are in bondage, not in freedom. And that is a very important distinction that we must come to realize. Because of the sin nature which has been given to us as a result of our relationship to Adam, we are bound in sin until the Son would make us free.

Now, last week I used the term, and I'm going to change colors. I mean, I'm not going to change colors. I'm going to hold my breath. Maybe I'll turn blue. But now I'm going to change marker colors because I want to remind you of a language I used last week, but I don't want to get it confused with this.

I used the phrase, free moral agency. Now, I said, as a Reformed theologian, I use language that sometimes is steeped in some of the historical debate that surrounds subjects such as this. In the historical debate, the Reformed side of this debate has always repudiated the idea of free will and said, no, we do not believe the will is free because of what I just said, because it's in bondage to sin.

And if you were to say something is free, it must be without any kind of necessary restrictions. If something's free, it's not bound, and the Bible clearly says we're bound in sin, and so we're not free.

But that doesn't mean that we are robots, and it doesn't mean that we are somehow pre-programmed. We do make choices, and so we talk about moral agency. Now, what is moral? Moral simply means right and wrong, in this sense, right and wrong.

And agency is the sense of being an agent who is capable of knowing right from wrong. So, we have the knowledge of right from wrong, and the Bible tells us we have this knowledge. In Romans chapter 1, it says that we know God exists, and we know that because of everything that He has shown us.

And if we say God doesn't exist, we are denying something that we know is true in our very heart. If we say there is no God, that is utter foolishness. Isn't that what the psalmist said? He says, to the one who says there is no God, such a person is a fool.

It's the fool who says in his heart, there is no God. So, there is a sense in which we are agents who understand right from wrong, and we make choices that are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. Not everything that you ever do is right, and not everything that you do is necessarily wrong, in the sense that it's a violation of the command of God.

And so, we have this ability to choose right from wrong. And so, people say, well, didn't you just say we don't have free will? Didn't you just say, no, no, just stay with me. Because when I say we're a free moral agent, what I am saying is, we have the ability to choose.

But what I am not saying is that we have the ability to choose uncoerced, perfectly uncoerced. Because your ability to choose is affected by your sin nature. For instance, if I were to say, Paul, I want you to choose to stop sinning completely.

Go ahead.

Now, I only chose Paul because I knew he'd laugh and it'd be okay. I won't pick on anybody else. Paul's my friend and you're all my friends, but that's okay. But the point is, you understand what I mean.

If I say, you don't have the absolute freedom because you still have the flesh that you battle with. Even as a believer, even as a long time Christian, you still battle with the flesh. But you're a moral agent.

You do make choices. And those choices are your responsibility, right? If you make a choice to go out and kill someone, you will be punished, not only in the court of man, but you will also receive the condemnation of God for having done that, right?

Because you are violating God's law and you're violating man's law. So even though you're free to make choices, and you do make choices, you're a moral agent, your choices are not uncoerced. And this is where I want to clarify the word free here.

Free does not mean uncoerced in the sense that they're not coerced. It's simply free in that it's not being necessarily coerced by God. God is not forcing you to sin. Doesn't the Bible say this? Doesn't James tell us that we shouldn't, when we sin, say that God is tempting me to sin because God doesn't tempt us to sin?

And see, a lot of people think that because we believe God is sovereign, that we believe that God forces people to sin. No, we don't believe God forces people to sin. But what we do believe is that God is sovereign over all things, and there are times when God is restraining us from sin because we would sin more if He were not restraining us.

God’s Restraint on Sin in Genesis and Exodus

That's the second thing. If you look at your notes, you'll notice last week it said, what was the first thing we looked at? Mankind is sinful by nature, therefore he's not free because he's by nature a sinner.

But the second thing is that God restrains that sin nature, even in unbelievers. Did you know that God restrains the sin of unbelievers? If He didn't, this world would be unlivable. Think about the times when man was allowed to be as sinful as he chose, and even then you'd have to say God was still restraining it.

But think about the time leading up to the ark. What does the Bible say? It says they only did evil continually. And this is what the Word says. It says they just did evil continually, and that's why God sent the flood.

And think about cities. There were whole cities given over to evil, like Sodom, which was a city that God decided to destroy because the whole city was given over to its sin. And you can imagine God had been restraining, and if God lifted the hand of restraint...

Don't you see, in a sense, God lifting the hand of restraint on the United States? Think about the restraint that is being lifted when we can see a presidential candidate bring a nine-year-old boy up onto the panel and endorse the nine-year-old boy's sexual perversion.

This happened just this week, endorsing him as a homosexual, nine years old, because the man running for president is a homosexual. And so he's going to endorse the homosexuality of a boy who shouldn't even know what sex is, or at least should not be able to have the type of freedom, creaturely freedom, that he can announce himself to be gay.

You see the hand of restraint. And so that's a word I just used I want to bring up. The word sometimes used by Reformed or Calvinists is what we call creaturely freedom. We have the freedom to do as we choose in accord with the fact that we are creatures made by God.

We cannot override the sovereignty of God. As R .C. Sproul has eloquently said, God is sovereign, and God has free will. And if my will that is not completely free runs into he who is completely free, I lose every time.

God's freedom, he is going to win every time. But that doesn't mean that I don't make choices and that I'm not responsible for my choices. I am responsible for my choices, and I will be responsible for my choices.

And so God intervenes in history, and he restrains men from being as evil as they could be. I'm going to give you two important verses on this. These, I think, are just absolute, can't be debated as to how important they are on the subject of God restraining sin.

And they're both in the Old Covenant. In fact, they're both in the writings of Moses. So if you want to open and turn your Bible back to Genesis chapter 20, we'll probably be here preaching sometime in the 2030s.

Ha ha.

No, we'll probably start ramping up to a lot more speed once we get out of chapter 3. But yes, in Genesis chapter 20, this is the situation with Abraham and Abimelech. And if you remember this situation, you have Abraham lying to the king because he does not want the king to have him killed so that he can have Sarah, his wife, to be the king's concubine.

And so he says, she's my sister, which accelerates the process, meaning Abimelech, well, if she's just your sister, then she can be my concubine. Either way, it didn't really save her from the situation.

But let's read verses 1 to 7. It says,. From there, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. And he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, she is my sister.

And Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. And God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.

Now just right away, isn't it amazing how God worked in this time in history? That he could speak in the dream and the person knew for sure this was not just some, he didn't just eat bad porridge before he went to bed.

This was God speaking to him in this situation so clearly and so adamantly that it shakes him to his very core. And he knows that this is not some false God, but this is the God who created heaven and earth.

This is the God of Abraham. And he says in verse 4,. Now Abimelech had not approached her. That means they had not been intimate. So he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Good question. Abimelech stating his case.

Are you going to kill me? Did he not? That's Abraham. Did Abraham not say to me, she is my sister and she herself said he is my brother in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.

I have done this.

Then God said to him in the dream. Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart. There's a good important point. See, even an evil king, a ungodly, unrighteous king did something right.

Right.

But why did he do what was right? It was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Did Abimelech make a choice? Yes, he made a choice. Was he free in that choice?

Well, we can discuss the qualms of creaturely freedom another time. But the point I'm making is he desired her, which is why he brought her into his house. He wanted her, but he did not choose to lay with her.

And why?

God says, because I kept you from doing that. I kept you from going into that room. Have you ever in your life had a situation where God kept you from something that could have been absolutely destructive?

Every one of you, if there was a teenage boy, you better answer yes. Because at some time in our teenage foolishness, and boys are not necessarily any better than girls, all of us would have to say in our foolishness, there have been times where God has kept us from sin.

And this is a time when Abimelech was told very clearly, I did this. I kept you from this. Therefore, was Abimelech completely free? Not completely. Because God's freedom, when it ran into Abimelech's freedom, God won.

God's sovereignty overruled, and he kept Abimelech from sinning against him. Now, if you would, we'll stop there, the story goes on, but we'll stop there. Go to Exodus 34. This passage is so easy to read past, many people never even see it.

But this passage, Exodus 34, God is giving a reiteration of the Sabbath command, that the people of God are supposed to keep the Sabbath, and he's talking about the feasts that they are supposed to keep.

One of the feasts that they are supposed to keep would take the males away from their families to go and celebrate this feast as only the males would go. And they would leave behind their women and their children, which at that point, they would become susceptible to the dangers of the people that were always around who would want to fall upon them, prey upon them, and take what is theirs.

It's sort of like me, and again, I don't mean to make it too personal, but when I go out of town, I call my father. And I say, Dad, you know, I'm going to be gone for a couple of days. Check in on Jennifer, you know, because she's there, she's got the kids, Cody's away in the Air Force now, and so just check in, call her, make sure she's okay.

If she has a need, and of course, Chris Belcher lives right around the block from us, I say, Chris, you know, come by and check on her. Because she's my wife, they're my children, I love them, and I'm not there to provide the normal protection and security that I would normally provide.

And so that's sort of a simple example of what's happening here on the large scale. Imagine all the men of the church went to a conference. All the men of the church are going away. And we didn't all live in houses 40 miles from each other, but we all lived in a little commune.

And that little commune was always susceptible to people breaking in and trying to steal, take, destroy, rape, and all kinds of things. And you might say, well, that's foolish that the guys would go away.

Let me read to you what God says here. We'll start in verse 21. Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. You shall observe the feast of weeks, the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the first feast of ingathering at the year's end.

Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord, the God of Israel. For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders. No one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord, your God, three times in the year.

Notice what it says. While you're gone, they're not going to covet your land. While you go, and your women and children are at their most vulnerable. As you go, and when your families are left without their natural protection of the father and the husband and the home.

When you go, I got it. They're not even going to covet your land at that time. You know what that tells you about God's ability to adjust and affect the will of man? Not only would they not do it, not that God's going to put a wall up or some kind of a hedge.

They're not even going to want to do it during those times. What an amazing God we serve that He can even adjust the will of man. If it's for His purpose, He can cause him not to even covet. I don't know why that's not so amazing to everyone who reads it.

People read right past it and don't even see it. No one will covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord three times in a year. Now, do they want to covet the land? They always wanted to covet the land.

They still covet the land today.

They still fight today.

Yes, sir. Covet means to want something, to desire it. And it really means to want something in an ungodly way. Like if you see something someone else has and you say, boy, I really wish I had that instead of them.

That's coveting. And that's the way the people around Israel wanted their land. They wanted to steal it. They wanted to take it. But not three times a year. Three times a year. It was like God said, no.

Now, somebody might ask this question and maybe this question pops up in your mind. Why doesn't God just do that all the time? Because he's not as willing to do so. Can he? Does he have the power to do that?

Yes, absolutely.

But this is a promise to the men of Israel. Don't fear going to present yourself before me because if you fear, you're showing you don't believe that I have the power to make these men not even covet your land.

Again, were the people around Israel free? Well, they had the ability to make choices, but God's freedom is stronger than their freedom. And God said they will not covet the land. If God restrains the sinful nature of man, then that means he is not completely free.

Remember, that's the whole subject, right? Is man completely free? I say no. One, because he's got a sin nature. Two, because God restrains the sin of men, the sinful nature. God restrains the sinful nature of men.

God Hardens Hearts and Judges the Wicked

Number three on your sheet is the one that's a little hard for some to take. Because not only does God restrain the sinful nature of some men, but God also hardens some men in their hearts. Now, I want to be very careful because treading on this subject can cause not only a lot of consternation, but it can cause a lot of confusion and can even lead to arguments.

But let us be very clear that the Bible is, without a doubt, absolutely and unflinchingly, unembarrassingly willing to say God has hardened the hearts of some men. And I've heard people say, in this very church, I've had people tell me, God doesn't harden people's hearts.

Okay.

I think I'm going to go with the Bible on this one. Because there are just too many passages for that to even really be a debate. It's like the word predestination. I don't believe in predestination. The Bible says predestination.

I just don't believe it.

Okay.

Now, we may disagree as to what it means, but you just can't tell me you don't believe in predestination. It's in the Bible. We can debate how it works and the functionality of it, but just don't tell me you don't believe it.

It's like saying, you know, it's just ridiculous. And the same thing with the idea of God hardening the heart. It's just there. And if you want a few verses, here's some verses to write down, and we can look at them if you'd like.

The first one is in Joshua 11, 20. Now, this isn't the first one. This is just the first one I'm mentioning. There are ones that come before this, especially in the book of Exodus when it comes to Pharaoh.

But we're going to talk about him in a moment. But for now, looking at Israel's enemies, Joshua 11, verse 20.

Listen to what it says.

Speaking of Israel's enemies. I'll let you get there. I'll get a sip of my drink. I see some of you turning your Bibles. Joshua 11, verse 20. Now, you guys have been studying Joshua, haven't you?

Those of you who come to Sunday school?

Andy's class?

Maybe only a few of you. It was all in Andy's class.

Yeah, you have, huh?

Judges.

Oh, judges. Oh, you finished. You finished, Joshua. Okay, so this is a little further back. But notice what it says in verse 20.

It says,.

Who are we talking about? Well, it tells us in a few verses higher. It says in verse 18. And again, these are the enemies of Israel. God hardened their hearts. For what reason? In order that they should be devoted to destruction.

And you say, well, that's unfair. That God would harden their hearts so that they would be devoted to destruction. Is it unfair? Is it unfair for God to harden a heart? And some people get out of that by simply saying, well, their hearts were already hardened.

And that is true in one sense. Because we have a natural tendency and proclivity against God. We are naturally opposed in His enemies. So, in a sense, there is a sense where there's already opposition.

God is not increasing what's already there in the sense of increasing the opposition. And someone says, well, if God's not increasing it, how is He hardening it? What does it mean to harden the heart?

The best way I can describe the way God hardens the heart is if you think about a ball of clay. That is malleable because of the water that is within it. If you think about clay on a spinning pot maker.

I don't know what they're called. What are they called?

A spinning pot maker. Okay, we'll go with that.

What's it called?

It's a kiln.

Well, the kiln is the heater. Somebody on Facebook is going to laugh at me because I can't.

It's a potter's wheel.

Yes, it's a potter's wheel. Thank you. The lump of clay is malleable only because it has moisture within it. As the moisture is removed, the clay hardens. And when we've shaped the vessel into whatever form it's going to be in, we put it in the kiln because the kiln completely removes all of the moisture that was there.

And when it comes out of the kiln, the moisture's gone and all that's left is a perfectly shaped pot or vase or whatever it is that we have created. So this wet ball of clay was malleable until such time as the moisture was removed.

Somebody says, well, what in the world are you talking about? Well, when the Bible talks about God hardening the heart, I believe what that means is that He is removing His restraint on their sinful nature.

Remember what we said in the last point. God restrains the sinful nature. And we see that in Abimelech. We see that in Exodus 34, in those who would covet the people. And we see this all over. God restraining the evil hearts of men.

But how does someone like Hitler rise and kill so many people and have that in his heart to do? How does someone like Ted Bundy go in the direction that he is going, even though in all sense was raised a normal life by normal parents and whatever that means?

We have the lifting of the restraint. It is not as if God had to make the evil worse. The evil was present and what was keeping it from having its full expression was God's restraint. And when we get to salvation and we study the doctrine of salvation, we are going to talk about something called common grace.

The Bible says God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. That is what we call common grace. All people experience the goodness of God and the fact that he causes the sun to rise and fall on the good and the bad.

He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. And so we know common grace. And one of the actions of common grace is the restraining of the natural desire for sin. And when God chooses to harden a heart, he does not have to make it harder.

All he has to do is remove his hand of restraint. And that which was already desiring to be hard is hardened. And so it is not an active thing, whereas if God is taking like... I used to do some work with epoxy.

Epoxy is a two-part mixture where you have to add in a second part to make it hard. Because if you don't, it's just going to be like a gel. And you have to add that second part to make it hard. God is not adding something to the heart to make it hard.

He's not adding a hardener. But he is removing the restraint. And that natural hardness is what is setting in. And we see that in Israel's enemies. And here's the thing that's really not funny but very important about that.

Is they're doing what they want to do.

Go ahead.

Amen. Absolutely.

I know where I would be. And I know where I could be. If God had not protected me. And if God had not kept me from so many things. And so, yes, the restraint. And so, can we say that God hardened the heart of a person?

Yes, because it is still his choice to remove the restraint. It's still his choice to do so. But he's not forcing them to do evil. He's simply removing the hand of restraint that would keep them from doing evil.

And he's letting them have exactly what they want. They have that moral agency. God was holding them back. And now he says, you're free to do what you want. And when man is free to do what he wants, he does evil continually.

All of the sin that we do is on us. All of the good that we do is on God. That's the amazing thing. If we do good, it is because God has moved us to do good. But if we do evil, it is because that is the natural state and desire of our heart.

This is why we don't lay sin at the feet of God. Because he is the restrainer of the hearts of men. Now, with that, I want you to turn to Romans 9. Because this is a very important passage. And it deals with the hardening of the heart.

And I feel like if we don't mention it, I'll lose all my Reformed credibility. Because if you're going to talk about the hardened heart, and you don't go to Romans 9, then you just lose it all.

People in Paul's faith claim that God was unrighteous to harden up the heart.

That's right. So this is Paul's answer to that. I've been listening to some debates on this very subject. On the subject of the bondage of the will. When I was preparing for this lesson, making my preparations, I came across a couple of debates on the will.

And I tell you, Romans 9 is just the killer. It's the area that they all stumble over, Romans 9. Even Dr. Brown, who is not a Reformed theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, he was asked during a debate, what do you think is the strongest passage, even though you're not a Reformed person, what do you think is the strongest passage to support Reformed theology?

And he said Romans 9.

Absolutely.

So Romans 9, we don't have time to read the whole chapter. But I want to begin right at verse 14. Now this is right after the Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. Don't want to get into that right now, because that would take us on a different track.

But what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part?

By no means.

For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. Now, that's a tough passage. But notice what he is saying. He is saying that God's choice to be compassionate and merciful, or God's choice to harden, is His choice to make.

It is His will to do it. And you say, wait a minute. That makes God unjust. Look at verse 19. You will say to me then, why does He still find fault for who can resist His will? But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?

Well, what is molded? Say to its molder, why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make His power known, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy which He prepared beforehand for glory?

Is it not the prerogative of the potter to do what He will with the clay?

Yes.

Now that doesn't satisfy a lot of people because people want to have power over the potter. They want to demand that the potter do it their way. And here's the thing I always remind people. If they say, I think it ought to be this way, I say, then what you're really saying is you think you would be better at being God than God.

This portion of Scripture is no easy portion. But it says certainly one thing without dispute in that it is God's prerogative to harden whomever He wills. But remember though what I explained about hardening.

If God hardens a person, all He's really doing is giving him what he wants. Because if hardening is simply the removal of restraint, and that's what all men want is to be free, then really all it is is God turning a man over to the desires of his heart.

God Opens Hearts to Believe the Gospel

Last, and we will get through this tonight. God opens the heart of some people to hear the Gospel. Hallelujah! This is the good news. Because as we have seen, God certainly restrains the sin of all men.

And He does harden the hearts of some men, which means He lifts the restraint on the hearts of some men. For what purpose? To increase their judgment, to demonstrate His power. How did He demonstrate His power in Moses?

By showing him mercy. How did He demonstrate His power in Pharaoh? By hardening his heart. And He demonstrated His power by ten plagues followed up by a split sea. He demonstrated His power in a man who could not give up his own desires to hate God and God's people after God lifted the restraint of his heart.

All he wanted to do was hate God's people. And God said, here you go. But the story doesn't end there. God opens the hearts of some people.

To hear the Gospel.

And I'll give you three passages. You can take these and I'll read them to you. But as far as... You don't have to turn there for sake of time. Just write these down. Acts 16, 14. Paul is preaching. And it says,.