Do We Have Free Will to Choose Christ?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, here's a big question we get frequently from listeners, and it comes in various forms,
00:00:09.000 | but essentially the question is this, "Is there such a thing as free will?"
00:00:16.000 | Let me pose the question really specifically so that it's not maybe quite that broad,
00:00:22.000 | but I think we'll go right to the heart of the matter.
00:00:24.000 | Do we have free will in choosing Christ as our Lord and Savior and treasure?
00:00:31.000 | I think that's what the center of the debate is about, and then people can generalize beyond that about,
00:00:36.000 | like, do you have free will to eat a banana?
00:00:38.000 | But I'm just talking about, do we have free will to choose Christ as our Savior, our Lord, our treasure?
00:00:50.000 | And, of course, that depends on the definition of free will.
00:00:53.000 | So let's start with one, and I think this is a definition that those in the debate would agree with.
00:01:00.000 | I know that in my debates with Greg Boyd, for example, he would use this for what he's defending people having,
00:01:08.000 | and I think people don't have in this regard.
00:01:11.000 | So here, you have a free will—this is the definition—you have a free will when you have ultimate self-determination.
00:01:19.000 | With this definition, you have free will in choosing Christ if the ultimate cause of the choice is your own self-determination.
00:01:31.000 | So the point is the word "ultimate."
00:01:34.000 | There may be a lot of factors that share in determining your choice of Christ,
00:01:42.000 | but only one of those factors is ultimate or final.
00:01:47.000 | Free will, on this definition, demands that you be that factor, not anything else, including God.
00:01:56.000 | God's not the final, ultimate factor in the choice.
00:02:01.000 | You are—or here's another way to say it—you have free will when your will is the decisive cause of your choosing Christ.
00:02:13.000 | And the word "decisive" here has the same function as "ultimate."
00:02:18.000 | There may be many causes that influence your choosing Christ, but for you to be free, in this definition,
00:02:27.000 | the decisive cause, the one that finally decides your choice, must be your will, not anyone else's will, including God.
00:02:39.000 | So that's what the debate is about.
00:02:42.000 | When you get to heaven, if God asks you, "What's the deepest, decisive reason you believed on my Son?"
00:02:52.000 | What will your answer be?
00:02:54.000 | Will you say, "The decisive reason for my choice was your grace,"
00:03:03.000 | or will you say, "The decisive reason for my choice was me?"
00:03:08.000 | Now, be sure to notice carefully, the question is not, "Did we make a choice?"
00:03:14.000 | The question was not, "Was our will active and necessary?"
00:03:18.000 | The question was not, "Was our choice real?"
00:03:21.000 | The answer to all those questions is, "Yes, you made a choice.
00:03:25.000 | Your will was active and necessary. Your choice was real."
00:03:29.000 | That's not the question in the debate.
00:03:31.000 | The question is, when your will chose, what was decisive in bringing that willing about?
00:03:39.000 | What was the decisive influence or the decisive cause?
00:03:43.000 | And the Bible answers, "God's grace," and others say, "Your own power of self-determination."
00:03:49.000 | So I'm arguing here now that in choosing Christ, we don't have that kind of free will, that is, the power of self-determination.
00:03:59.000 | And here are three kinds of texts that I would commend for people to think about.
00:04:03.000 | Number one, we are so morally corrupt, we can't do good.
00:04:09.000 | We can't believe.
00:04:10.000 | Romans 8, 6 and 7, "To set the mind on the flesh," or the mind of the flesh is death,
00:04:15.000 | but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace, "for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God."
00:04:22.000 | It does not submit to God's law, and it cannot.
00:04:25.000 | So the mind of the flesh, apart from Jesus Christ, cannot submit to God.
00:04:29.000 | We love our self-exaltation and cannot submit.
00:04:33.000 | Or 1 Corinthians 2, 14, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit, for they are folly to him, and he's not able."
00:04:42.000 | He's not able. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
00:04:48.000 | So these texts in the Bible says we cannot perceive and submit to God because we are so corrupt.
00:04:55.000 | Number two, we can't choose Christ. It's finally a gift of God.
00:05:00.000 | So 2 Timothy 2, 24, "The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.
00:05:12.000 | God may perhaps grant them repentance."
00:05:17.000 | So repentance is required, and we can't do it on our own.
00:05:21.000 | The decisive cause is, "God may grant repentance."
00:05:26.000 | Or Philippians 1, 29, "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but suffer for his sake."
00:05:35.000 | So believing in Christ is a gift. It's granted to you because you can't produce it on your own.
00:05:42.000 | And Paul says, "So then it depends not on the one who wills or the one who runs, but on God who has mercy."
00:05:48.000 | And the third text type is, "What is this experience like then when we choose by another's power?"
00:05:58.000 | 1 Corinthians 15, 10, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.
00:06:05.000 | But on the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me."
00:06:12.000 | So there's a picture of, "I do choose, I do work, I am laboring, but no, it is God at work in me."
00:06:20.000 | He's the decisive underneath cause bringing it about.
00:06:24.000 | Same thing in Philippians 2, 12, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for God is the one who's in you working and in you willing.
00:06:31.000 | So your willing is caused by his willing, and your working is caused by his working."
00:06:36.000 | So here's my conclusion, Tony.
00:06:38.000 | If we are left to our free will, that is our power of ultimate self-determination, we will, all of us, use it to reject Christ.
00:06:49.000 | We are so spiritually dead and numb and blind and rebellious against Christ.
00:06:54.000 | We love the darkness so much that we don't have the moral ability to see and prize and choose Christ over this world.
00:07:03.000 | The sovereign grace of God breaks in on our lives, overcomes our rebellion, overcomes our blindness and our deadness,
00:07:11.000 | and makes us able to see Christ as compelling and beautiful so that we freely choose Christ.
00:07:18.000 | Which, of course, I know leaves unanswered the question of, "Well, then how in the world are we accountable or responsible?"
00:07:26.000 | But on this APJ, I just wanted to say, "No, we don't have free will in choosing Christ if you define free will as ultimate self-determination."
00:07:40.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:41.000 | Yes, so are we responsible or accountable then?
00:07:44.000 | We'll be back tomorrow to address that question.
00:07:46.000 | Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
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