Free Will?

One of the great American myths that we have is autonomous free will. It's not just American, but it thrives in America. Autonomy literally means the absence of an outside governing force. The idea that man can govern their own lives is despicable. It spits in the face of Scripture and laughs at the sovereignty of God.

Jonathan Edwards once said in his great opus on the freedom of the will that man can only choose to do what his nature allows. If you have a fallen, sinful nature then you will only act fallen and sinful. Let's see what the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith has to say about Free Will.

Chapter 9: Of Free Will
1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is neither forced, nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil. ( Matthew 17:12; James 1:14; Deuteronomy 30:19 )

2. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God, but yet was unstable, so that he might fall from it. ( Ecclesiastes 7:29; Genesis 3:6 )

3. Man, by his fall into a 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 that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. ( Romans 5:6; Romans 8:7; Ephesians 2:1, 5; Titus 3:3-5; John 6:44 )

4. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that by reason of his remaining corruptions, he doth not perfectly, nor only will, that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil. ( Colossians 1:13; John 8:36; Philippians 2:13; Romans 7:15, 18, 19, 21, 23 )

5. This will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the state of glory only. ( Ephesians 4:13 )

Soli Deo Gloria!