Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Americans tend to have a rosy estimation of human nature and ability. The Bible does not. The biblical language describing human nature after Adam’s fall into sin is vivid and pulls no punches. Jeremiah reminds us that we cannot change our skin color, just as the leopard cannot change its spots (Jer. 13:23). In John 6:44 and 6:65, Jesus informs His disciples that “no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” In Matthew 7:18, Jesus gives an important reason that we cannot come to Him if left to our own devices: “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit,” a clear reference to fallen humanity.
The Apostle Paul echoes Jesus in many places. Paul bluntly describes humanity as dead in sin (Eph. 2:1; Col. 2:13). The Apostle recounts that after Adam’s fall, human nature requires restoration of true holiness, righteousness, and knowledge (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10). We have darkened understandings, and our thinking is clouded and distorted (Eph. 4:17–19)—the so-called noetic effects of sin. Elsewhere, Paul speaks of fallen human nature as hostile to God (Rom. 8:7–8), unable to understand the things of God (3:11; 1 Cor. 2:14), and unwilling to seek after God to save us from the guilt of our sin, seeing no need to be rescued (Rom. 3:12). This flies in the face of the view of human nature held by many of our contemporaries.
The doctrine of total inability—that fallen humanity is unable to come to faith in Jesus Christ apart from a prior and sovereign act of God—arises from the litany of biblical passages just cited, which teach that one of the chief consequences of human sin after the fall is that our wills are now in bondage to our sinful nature. The situation is so dire that we can do nothing to free ourselves from our predicament, any more than a dead person can will himself back to life. The biblical teaching is crystal clear about sinful human nature even if our neighbors are offended by it.
Because of the difficulties that the notion of free will presents, the deeper questions surrounding the matter often default to philosophical categories. “What is free will?” “Is it compatible with God’s sovereignty?” along with a host of related questions. The presuppositions of American politics also color how people understand human willing. Since we have the freedom to choose to elect those who rule over us, many mistakenly assume that the same is true when it comes to matters of salvation. A famous Christian tract reflects this confidence in the human will, claiming: “God has voted for you; the devil has voted against you. Your vote decides” whether you’ll spend eternity in heaven or hell.
But neither philosophical debate nor democratic presuppositions offer us much help in answering the questions raised by the biblical teaching to the effect that after Adam’s fall into sin, the human will is in bondage to our sinful nature and we cannot come to Christ unless and until God “frees” our will, so to speak, enabling us to trust in Jesus Christ.
This raises the question, “How then do those who are born in sin and with wills enslaved to the sinful nature come to faith in Jesus Christ?” Coaxing will not work; neither do enticements or incentives typical of evangelists—“God wants you healthy, happy, and prosperous.” But we cannot do what we cannot do. If the Scriptures are clear that the human nature (including our wills) is in bondage to our sinful desires, they are equally clear that only a sovereign and supernatural act of God can free our wills so that we are now willing and able to choose to come to faith in Christ.
In John 15:16, Jesus says plainly, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.” Jesus explains that those who come to Him do not do so through an act of the human will but only through an act of God (John 1:12–13), drawing us to Himself (see 6:44, 65), granting us faith and its fruit, repentance. In John 3:3–8, Jesus explains this to Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, who secretly approaches Jesus at night.
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
God’s act of granting us the new birth through the power of the Holy Spirit is prior to and required for us to even begin to comprehend the things of God, much less choose to trust in Christ for our salvation from the guilt and power of sin.
The Bible is clear that God must act on us while we are dead in sin, choosing us, sovereignly giving us the new birth (regeneration), thereby freeing our wills from the bondage of our sinful nature. God draws us to Jesus through the gospel (Rom. 10:17) and changes our nature from a bad tree that produces only rotten fruit into a good tree that bears the fruit of faith and repentance. God must liberate our wills from our bondage to sin so that the promise of Jesus is realized: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
Paul, too, addresses the matter in Romans 8:28–30, where he lays out the order in which the liberation of our wills takes place:
For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
In the so-called golden chain of salvation, Paul explains that God chooses us and continues the process through calling us to faith, then justifying us, and then bringing us to final glorification. Paul clarifies in Romans 9:16 that our salvation “depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.”
In Ephesians 2:1–10, Paul recounts how in Adam we were dead in sin and enslaved to sin, and so we “walked” according to the passions of our flesh. But God made us alive in Christ (v. 5) and grants us salvation by grace through faith (v. 8), so that we now freely walk in those good works that God prepared for us to do (v. 10). In this sovereign and gracious act of God, He brings us from death to life and frees us from our former bondage to sin so that we now desire to trust in Christ, follow Him as His disciples, and strive to do His will.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul explains that “for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). Since Christ has died for us, we have been set free from slavery to the sin that formerly held us captive. But freedom from bondage to sin also carries with it the necessity of choosing to live as those who have been freed from bondage to our sinful nature. Paul reminds us that this new freedom means that you “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (v. 13). Once our wills have been set free from bondage to sin, we live in the freedom purchased by Christ, now free to serve one another. Alive unto God through faith in Jesus, we will bear the fruit of the Spirit (5:22–24).
Before God restored to us freedom in Christ, sinful behavior (walking in sin) was the characteristic pattern of our lives. That was all we knew. After freedom is restored to us through a gracious act of a sovereign God (regeneration), we are made alive, we trust in Jesus Christ to save us from sin, we come to hate the darkness of our sinful ways, and we desire to walk in newness of life. In Jesus Christ, we are free, free indeed.