On the Will

Romans 9:16 "it is not of him that willeth"

(A sermon preached in Back Free Church on 2 February 2003.)

I am coming to this text this evening as part of our commemoration of the birth of Jonathan Edwards in 1703. My intention is not to preach on Edwards, but to preach Edwards' doctrines, to preach Edwards' Christ. He was, after all, one of the premier theologians in the Reformed tradition in the Christian church, and his life and work deserve to be remembered.

This year I am taking a text on one Sunday evening each month that has some significance for Edwards' life and work. My text tonight appeared on the front page of one of Edwards' most important published works, his work on man's will.

By a strange act of Providence, Edwards was dismissed from his Northampton congregation in 1751. In spite of his faithful ministry there, and in spite of the revivals that had been a feature of that ministry, he found himself in a small frontier town, in Stockbridge, as a missionary to Indians. We shall have occasion later on to examine the controversy that led to his departure; but it is important to note that in the changed circumstances in which he found himself, Edwards had opportunity to write and study, and it was during this period that he published some of his most important works.

One of these was his Dissertation Concerning the End for which God made the World, which was written between 1754-5. Like us, Edwards believed that God created the world. That is a matter beyond dispute. But Edwards reflected long on the question "Why did he do that?" He had no need of the world -- he was self-sufficient. And his love found its object and satisfaction in himself. Yet he created the world. Edwards' answer was that ultimately God created the world for his own glory.

Another important work from this period was his treatise The Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, written between 1756-7. Edwards found this teaching in the Bible that man is sinful not from the moment he begins doing sinful things, but at the point of his origin. If that doctrine needed defending in the eighteenth century, it certainly needs defending today.

My interest tonight is in a third publication, which carried the long title A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of will which is supposed to be essential to moral agency, virtue and vice, reward and punishment, praise and blame. Sometimes it is shortened to Freedom of Will, or On the Will. Edwards had been interested in this subject from about 1746, and finally his work was published in 1754. Interestingly, among those who sponsored its publication were some thirty or so ministers from Scotland.

You may be asking -- why should we dwell on a publication written in the latter period of Edwards' life? After all, he was now in his 50s, and would die just four years after the publication of this work. Part of the answer to that question is that if we really want to get a taste of Edwards' life and thinking, then the best place to look is where he has deposited his mature reflections on the Word of God. A man's mind is known best in the latter stages of his life and work, and the mature, authentic Edwards is the one we find in this work.

But there is a deeper reason still; and it is simply this: that Edwards considered this subject to be absolutely fundamental and supremely important. This is what he says in his preface:

The subject is of such importance as to demand attention, and the most thorough consideration. Of all kinds of knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves, are the most important...

This latter point, Edwards found in John Calvin, who urged the readers of his Institutes that if they were to be really wise, they must learn that true wisdom consists in knowing God and knowing ourselves. In this modern age of ours, both the doctrine of God and the doctrine of man have been undermined. Calvinism calls us back to a biblical theology and to a biblical anthropology -- to what God reveals about himself and what he declares about us.

And, Edwards goes on, if we are to know ourselves properly, we must understand the nature and function of the will. So he says this:

...the knowledge of ourselves consists chiefly in right apprehensions concerning those two chief faculties of our nature, the understanding and the will. Both are very important; yet the science of the latter must be confessed to be of greatest moment; inasmuch as all virtue and religion have their seat more immediately in the will...

So, then, we have to ask: what is the will? The answer Edwards gives is this: it is

that by which the mind chooses anything. The faculty of the will is that power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing.

Our will is the faculty of our soul by which we make our choices. And it is in constant use. From the moment we get up in the morning, deciding whether to stay in bed or get up, deciding whether to wear A or B, whether to eat X or Y -- we make choices constantly. Some choices are quite insignificant. But others are of great consequence -- who will we marry? What career will we follow? And, of course -- and this was what Edwards was supremely interested in -- will we accept or reject Jesus Christ? The will is active in all of these choices.

One of the reasons Edwards took up this subject at all was because he was aware of the way Arminians approached the whole subject of the will. If you study the long title of this work, you will see that Edwards was taking a defensive position -- arguing for the Calvinistic or Reformed view, as over against the Arminian one. So what was the Arminian view, and what was wrong with it?

Put in its simplest form, the Arminian view was that when we make a choice, that choice is absolutely free. Man is free to choose A or B in any given situation. If he does not have that freedom, he cannot be accountable or morally responsible for his actions. If these actions are determined by any other agency -- by fate, or divine election, or by any other compelling force, then whatever man's choices are, they are not free.

Edwards found this view to be self-contradicting, and he labours this point in his work. It makes heavy reading! But the main difficulty for Edwards lies in the insistence that the will of man is self-determining and totally free. No, says Edwards; the will is always determined by the motive that is strongest at that precise moment. Every choice we make is determined by our motives, desires and ambitions. In fact, Edwards goes so far as to say that

...a man never, in any instance, wills anything contrary to his desires or desires anything contrary to his will.

Now, you may disagree with Edwards on that point, but I think he is absolutely correct. And further more, I think what he is saying is simply the teaching of Jesus Christ himself. This is what Jesus said in Matthew 12:35:

A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things; and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.

In other words, the life we live is always a reflection of the heart we have! Our heart is like a chest (no pun intended!), full of treasure. Our will simply reaches into the treasure chest, and takes out what is there. It doesn't change the contents of the treasure chest -- simply puts it into view. Our will, therefore, acts in a way that is determined by whatever is in our heart. If our heart is good, our actions and our words will be good; if our heart is evil, our actions and our words will reflect that. So Edwards puts it like this:

it is that motive, which, as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest, that determines the will.

Now, let's apply this to the choice men make of Jesus Christ. Arminianism said then, and still says, "Present men with Christ, and set the simple choice before them -- take him, or reject him." Man, according to this view, is in the position of absolute liberty -- he is free to choose Christ, and he is free to reject Christ. It is the position of much evangelical preaching in our day. And underlying it is the very thing that Edwards is making his "careful and strict enquiry into" -- the assumption that unless man has this absolute freedom, he cannot be held responsible for what he does with Jesus Christ.

This is the philosophy behind much modern day mass evangelism. Crowds of people are urged to choose Christ, to make their decision. But it hasn't produced waves of Christians -- it has produced waves of backsliders, who made a choice but were never truly born again of the Holy Spirit of God. In a letter to a Scottish minister, Edwards wrote that the longer he went on in the ministry, the more he regarded this Arminian position as

one of the main hindrances of the success of the preaching of the word ... in the conversion of sinners.

This notion that man is free either to accept or reject Christ, he argued, does nothing to help the Gospel. According to Edwards it was a hindrance to Gospel preaching! Why should he believe this? Simply because he knew that when it came to making a decision regarding Christ, the human will, as in every other choice, is motivated by the heart! And if the heart is evil, then it is capable of making only one choice regarding Jesus -- it can only reject him. This is not the freedom of the will -- it is the bondage of the will. And the characteristic of man in a state of sin is that his will is in bondage.

That does not mean he has no freedom; it means that his freedom is compromised constantly by the sin that has the power of a tyrant over his heart. The heart of man remains deceitful and incurably sick. And as long as that heart is in sin's grip, there is a moral inability on the part of man. He does not, will not and CANNOT come to Christ.

This is not some aberrant Calvinistic idea -- it is germane to the teaching of Jesus itself. In John 6:35 he declared that all men may come to him -- whoever believes in him will never hunger and will never thirst. Yet in the same sermon he declared that no man CAN come to him apart from the drawing power of the Father. In other words, here are the twin doctrines about man and his choice of Jesus -- that while we remain responsible to God for what we do with Jesus, who graciously extends his overtures and invitations of grace to us, nonetheless, without the drawing power of God, coming to Christ is the one thing we cannot do.

That does not mean we cannot be held liable for our rejection of Christ, or that it is coerced in any way. It simply means this: that whether we take Christ, or reject Christ, we always do so freely, depending on whether we are under the power of sin or the power of grace. If we reject the Saviour, we do so willingly and freely, because we are under the tyranny of sin; if we accept the Saviour, we do so willingly and freely, because we have been set free by grace.

What Gospel is this?

Why did Edwards teach this way? Because of what he found in the Bible. Let's remind ourselves of the foundational doctrines of his biblical theology.

Ruin By Sin

Edwards found in the Bible the doctrine of man's complete and utter ruin by sin. Throughout Scotland there are the ruins of ancient castles and stately homes. Each ruin is a symbol, a powerful reminder, that something great once stood on this site. Man is like that. Created holy, righteous and good, a castle in which God might dwell. But sin has been our ruin and our downfall. We no longer bear the image of God in its fulness. We are still able to do many things, but we are not what we once were.

One powerful implication of this is simply that although our actions are free, ours is the freedom of an open prison -- we can move, but only within the limits of the prison. We are like animals in a zoo, always fenced in although our habitat may appear perfectly natural. We can only act in the way that accords with what is in our heart. And the reality is that our will is enslaved because our heart is governed by sin. That is our ruin.

Responsibility Before God

But this does not mean we are not accountable. Edwards knew that the Bible teaches that we are accountable not only for what we do in our prison, but for the fact that we are there at all.

That is what Jesus teaches in Matthew 12:36. Every word that men speak, he says, will be the basis of judgement. By our words we will be justified, and by our words we will be condemned. And it is always out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. So Edwards is right: absolute freedom is not necessary for moral agency, or for reward and punishment. The will may be in bondage, but the fault is not God's. He holds us accountable for the fact that we are slaves to sin.

Redemption By the Blood

Why did Christ die? In order to destroy the works of the devil; to deliver those who were in bondage (Hebrews 2:15). He died to destroy the keeper of our prison, to give us freedom, and to enable us to serve him as we were designed to do.

Apart from the cross of Christ, and the victory that he wrought over sin, death and hell, we could never be free. But the good news of the Gospel is that there is life through the death of the Son of God.

Restoration By Grace

And what does Jesus do in the experience of men and women who are savingly united to him by grace? He restores the ruin! He rebuilds the castle, and he restores in us the image of God. What sin destroyed, grace rebuilds.

Or, to use the language of the Bible, he gives us a new heart, a new treasure chest with new contents, so that we will be able to serve him and trust him. That is what Psalm 110:3 describes as being made willing in a day of his power!

If we have discovered that we can do absolutely nothing to save ourselves -- that it is not of him that willeth -- then we have made the most important discovery about ourselves that we can ever make. We are back where we started with Edwards -- to know ourselves is fundamental. And our wisdom then is to call on the one who is able to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. If the Son set us free, then we are free indeed!

© Iain D. Campbell 2003