O lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. Jeremiah 10:23 KJV
The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. Psalms 37:23 KJV
Most people say that they believe in “free will.”
Sadly, as with many other doctrines in the Word of God, people pick upon one liners and catch words without properly examining the Bible for the answer. I do not deny that man has a will, however, that will is not free.
Man’s will is in bondage to his fallen nature. The only people who have a will that is free are those who have been saved by Jesus Christ.
Even then, we still have the old nature that is warring against the new nature. The redeemed of the Lord have a will that is free to choose to serve God.
I now want to define “will.” Will is the faculty of the mind by which we determine either to do or forbear and action; the faculty which is exercised in deciding among two or more objects which we shall embrace or pursue. It is the part of man that makes choices. The question is whether or not this ability to choose is “free.”
The first myth of free will I want to examine is that of circumstantial freedom. That is to say that our will determines the circumstances in our life. Man does have the ability or will to make a decision, but he does not have the power to carry it out. Joseph’s brothers hated him and sold him to be a slave. They staged his death and told his father that a wild animal had killed him. They even brought his coat of many colors covered in blood to prove it. Joseph’s brothers willed to get rid of him and not have him rule over them.
However their will did not thwart the will of God. (Gen 50:20) You may will to have good health, fortune and many other things. You can exercise, eat right and still die young. Man can do all the right things financially and not be wealthy.
Yes, we can choose and plan to do what we will, but our will is no free to accomplish anything against the purpose of God. The rich man in Luke 12:18-21 said I will, I will. He was free to plan, but not free to carry it out.
The second myth I want to look at is the myth of freedom for an unregenerated man to choose to do good.
From man’s viewpoint we say someone is good if they do something we considered good. Proverbs 21:4 tells us that the plowing of the wicked is sin. All that the lost man does is sin in the sight of God. The lost man does nothing to please God or bring glory to God and therefore he is free to choose sin because that is what his nature tells him to do. man’s will is not free to operate apart from his depraved nature. (Romans 3:9-18) (Psalms 14:1-3, 53:1-3)
Man does not become depraved and sinful because he sins, he sins because he is depraved and sinful from birth. (Romans 5:12-21)
This illustration by Walter Chantry says it well, “if fresh meat and tossed salad were placed before a hungry lion, he would be free to choose either, but he would choose the meat every time because his nature dictates the choice.” So even what we call good things done by the unregenerated man are evil because he cannot please God.
The last myth i want to look at is spiritual freedom.
Many still think that the human will makes the ultimate decision in spiritual life or death. Eph 2:1 tells us that we were dead spiritually in our sins. Since our will is not free to choose outside the control of our nature, we can see no man can or will choose God on his own. Romans 3:9-18, John 3:18, I Cor 2:11-14
John 1:12-13 says that those who believe on Christ have been born by the will of God and not man. Some may ask what about “whosever will.” The myth of free will and whosoever will do not contradict. John 6:14 says no man can come or will come unless he is drawn. The whosoever wills come not of their own free will, but the will of God.
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There are many strawman arguments that the Calvinist erects and defeats, but by defeating them he has only defeated a figment of his own imagination. --- Calvinists claim, for example, that the non-Calvinist doesn’t believe in God’s sovereignty. I can’t speak for others, but this non-Calvinist certainly believes in God’s sovereignty. God is God and He can do whatsoever He pleases whensoever He pleases. As one man said, “Whatever the Bible says, I believe; the Bible says the whale swallowed Jonah, and I believe it; and if the Bible said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe that.” If the Bible taught that God sovereignly selects some sinners to go to Heaven and sovereignly elects the rest to go to Hell or that He chooses only some to be saved and allows the rest to be destroyed, I would believe it, because I believe God is God and man cannot tell God what is right or wrong. But the Bible reveals, rather, that the sovereign God made man with a will and that the sinner can still exercise that will in receiving or rejecting Christ. This does not detract from God’s sovereignty one iota. --- They claim, further, that the non-Calvinist believes man is saved by his own will. I can’t speak for others, but this non-Calvinist does not believe that. No sinner can believe unless God enables him to do so. The Bible plainly states that Jesus enlightens (Jn. 1:9) and draws (Jn. 12:37) every man. Man is not saved by his will; he is saved by the grace of God in Christ and because of the blood of Christ. Jn. 1:12-13 leaves no doubt about this. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Verse 12 says as many as receive Jesus and believe on His name are born again, but verse 13 says this salvation by faith is not “the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Thus, believing on Christ is not some sort of “will salvation.” --- They claim that the non-Calvinist doesn’t believe that salvation is 100% of God, that by saying that the sinner can believe on Christ is to say that “he contributes to his salvation” and “thus, the work of salvation is not totally God’s” Again, while I can’t speak for others, this non-Calvinist most definitely believes that salvation is 100% of God. It is God who enlightens (Jn. 1:9), convicts (Jn. 16:7-8), draws (Jn. 12:32), and saves. Man does nothing but receive a Gift and that is not a work and is not something to boast of! As with salvation, so with Christian living, it is all of God and man has nothing to boast of. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13); and, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Salvation is all of Christ, from beginning to end. This idea that receiving a gift leaves the recipient in a position to boast is ridiculous. The recipient of a Priceless Gift does not boast of himself but of the Giver. The man who is rescued from the sea and escapes certain death does not brag about what he did for himself but about what the rescuer did, even though the drowning man perhaps took hold of a life preserver that was thrown to him or relaxed in the arms of the lifeguard. --- They say that the teaching that man can believe on or reject Christ means that one believes that the sinner is not truly depraved and that man is a “free moral agent.” I certainly don’t believe that the sinner is a “free moral agent,” and I believe that man is totally without righteousness before God, dead in trespasses and sins, etc. I simply agree with what the Bible says about man believing the gospel. The Bible says that “whosoever believeth in him shall not perish” (Jn. 3:16). That teaches me that a sinner can believe on Christ, but to go beyond this simple concept and to claim that such a position is to deny human depravity or is to make him into a “free moral agent” is nonsense. Romans 3:10-18 and Eph. 2:1-4 are key New Testament passages on the depravity of the sinner, but neither passage mentions man’s will or whether he can or cannot believe on Christ for salvation. The same is true for every passage in the Bible that deals with man’s depravity in Adam, such as Gen. 6:4; Psa. 51:5; 58:3; Prov. 22:15; Ecc. 9:3; Isa. 64:6; Jer. 17:9; and Mat. 15:9. Again, the Calvinist reads his own theology into these passages.
Calvinists even liken the non-Calvinist’s position on so-called “free will” to that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church believes that man is not utterly unrighteous in his fallen state and that he can actually cooperate with God in his justification, that salvation is by faith plus works and sacraments rather than by faith alone. The non-Calvinist does not believe anything like this. He simply believes the Scripture when it says that “whosoever believeth in him shall not perish” (Jn. 3:16) and he doesn’t try to bend such Scriptures to conform to the TULIP mold. These are only a few examples of how the Calvinist tends to misstate and misrepresent what the non-Calvinist believes.