WILL, The, or Free Agency, J.H. Oliphant We have seen that sin has dominion over men in nature, and rules them as a tyrant, so that the aims and desires of men in nature are sinful.
1st. We might show that it has blinded men with ignorance. Eph. 4:18, “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them,” etc. Rom. 10:3, “Being ignorant of God’s righteousness they go about to establish their own righteousness,” etc.
Their going about is not to obtain the righteousness of Christ, but to establish their own. They are not ignorant of the being of God, for they are taught by the works of God that he exists—Rom. 3:18. But the nature of his law, the justice of God in that law, is what men by nature are ignorant of. By carefully reading Rom. 7:7-14, we will see that Paul, though versed in the letter of the law, was, nevertheless, ignorant of the law, and so is every unregenerate sinner on earth.
When Paul became acquainted with the law he experienced a death. He saw the law was spiritual, and he was but natural; it required purity and perfection, and he had neither, and under such a knowledge of the law he ceased going about to establish his own righteousness, and submitted to the righteousness of God. This is what no natural man will do if left to pursue his own course; he will believe his own goodness is acceptable; he will call in question the justice of God in requiring perfection of an imperfect being; he will argue his own cause, apologize for his sins in many ways, but when once made acquainted with the law he gets such a knowledge of sin as he never had before. “For by the law is the knowledge of sin;” without this knowledge he never will nor can see the real propriety of a redeemer; he will naturally oppose the doctrine of imputed righteousness, and if he be of a religious turn his religion will proceed upon the Pharisee’s ground.
If he has a place in his system for Christ, it is not the place the Bible assigns him; Christ with him only makes up what he lacks. But a man made wise and cured of ignorance on this subject realizes the need of a redeemer, the propriety of imputed righteousness and the magnitude and riches of God’s grace; he sees the law as spiritual and himself but natural; he is great in naught but sin, and feels and owns himself to be justly condemned; he views Christ as “a covert from the tempest;” he discards not only all his evil deeds, but (wonderful to tell to some) he discards all his good deeds, and confesses himself to have nothing to secure the favor of God.
2nd. The affections are perverted. He loves darkness rather than light.”—John 3:19. Though light and truth are desirable, yet he loves darkness better; he pursues evil by choice; verse 43; “They love the praise of men more than the praise of God.” Though Balaam was convinced that the end of the righteous was a blessed end. Yet he had no heart for their life or company. It is not natural for men to love God, but supernatural, as no stream can rise above its fountain. So no natural man will of himself love God. No doubt it is all men’s duty to love God; his great mercy to us in a thousand ways claims our love, and unregenerate men know that God has a just claim on their affections, yet they set their hearts on the creature, and not the creator, on the gift and not the giver.
There is a great variety of taste among men in nature. Some pride in riches, some in great learning, some in fame, etc., but not one of the many millions of Adam’s race voluntarily and untouched by grace, loves God. God only is worthy of love, and yet everything else, though temporal, must share the love of fallen man, while God, the great benefactor of all, must go unloved until he change the heart of the fallen
creature. That men by nature do not love God is apparent by the course of men’s lives; they toil both with hands and mind for worldly things.
The great question is, “What shall we eat and what shall we wear?” “How shall I and mine have the pre-eminence?” The Bible, though the best of books, and so acknowledged, is neglected, and the time spent in reading is devoted to something human, and often false, while God’s word is allowed to lay untouched on the shelf.
The mind is taken up with worldly things. “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is evil and that continually”—Gen. 6:5. How busy the mind is in contriving ways to promote self, and self-interest, for this life, while the great matters of eternity are allowed to go unconsidered. Often in his imagination he rolls in wealth, or sits on high places, and receives the applause of men, but never does hold fellowship with God in this way. Psa. 10:4, “God is not in all this thoughts,” he “does not like to retain God in this thoughts.” He may, in a way, think of God, but he never thinks rightly of him; he never has one correct thought of his Maker; all subjects are pried into by him, but the one needful. “The Lord knoweth that his thoughts are vanity”—Psa. 94:11.
Men are wholly taken up with this world, although they have no assurance of remaining here long. The new birth, which is the gracious work of God, rectifies these disorders of men, sets their hearts on the Giver and on the Creator, and on “things above,” leads them to change their company and books, and occupy their thoughts in self-examination and often in prayer to God. Sin, as a disease, manifests itself in perverting the whole man, his love, mind, body, and all that pertains to him; while grace meets all these needs by renewing the mind, changing the affections, etc. Bodily distempers, as smallpox, measles, fever, etc., are things that men by nature try to avoid and hate, but the real malignity of sin lies most in the fact that men love the disease and hate the remedy.
The only remedy for sin is that that cures and rectifies the enmity (for “the carnal mind is enmity against God”), and sets the heart on the Lord. The cure is not affected by the joint effort of God and the sinner, for the poor sinner has no heart in the cure, no love for the remedy, and while he admits the need of a Savior, he defers the matter till some future time, and this deferring would never stop unless God interposes his own almighty power in illuminating the mind, taking away the heart of stone, and giving one of flesh, etc.
3rd. The will (being determined and decided by the mind and affections) is perverted, and on this part of the subject I desire that the writer and reader should take great pains. In order that men serve God and come to him as a Savior, there are three things necessary: 1st. They must have physical power, sufficient strength and natural ability, and this, I presume, all living men have; but little strength of this kind is needed to come to Jesus, it requires no long journey to reach him, no gold nor silver, nor yet the consent or aid of our fellow creatures; all men have a sufficient amount of natural power to come to him. 2nd. A sufficient amount of mental power, and, fortunately, the foolish of this world have a sufficient amount of mental power to come to Christ. Often men of weak and ordinary minds have a saving knowledge of Christ, while some that are extremely wise know nothing of his love and are utter strangers to his gospel. 3rd. They must have a will to come, they will not be brought against their will, and, if they have no will to come, though they may have the necessary natural power and the mental ability, they can not come.
God has given all men sufficient natural power and sufficient mental power, but all men have not the will to come to him. All men know that they should forsake their sins, and that God has a just claim on their affections, yet they “will not come to him.” Jesus says, John 6:65, “No man can come unto me except it were given him of my Father.”
One reason why he “can not” is not for lack of mental power nor natural power, for all have that, but for want of will. There is a “great difference between natural and moral ability;” the sinner’s inability to come is not natural but moral. If a man be commanded to look without eyes he is not responsible for not looking, because of his natural inability to look; if he is commanded to compute the distance to the stars, he is not responsible for not obeying because of his mental inability; but if he have mental and natural ability and disobeys on account of his own unwillingness to obey, he is culpable.
Now here is the ground upon which I rest the justice of God in the condemnation of the finally impenitent. God has made them able naturally and mentally to obey him; they have natural power to repent of their sins, to obey God’s requirements, and are sensible that they should, but they will not.
Porter in his Compendium of Methodism, says: “There is nothing in God, nothing in his election or reprobation, nothing in the sinner’s infirmities of intellect, heart, or will, to make it impossible for him to come to Christ and be saved.” He adds, “no, nothing.”
I grant there is nothing in God, or election, or reprobation, that prevents, but I deny there “is nothing in his will.” “He will not come,” and as long as he is unwilling to come, just that long he can not come. The same writer, on page 239, argues that God has made all men able to come to Christ; that there is a certain amount of grace given to every man which makes him able, and this supposed ability to come makes it just and right in God to condemn those who do not come.”
There is no criminality in not doing what we have no natural or mental power to do, but the sinner’s ability is moral, and to cure this inability he must be made willing, and if all men are cured of their unwillingness, what hinders the salvation of all? The courts of our land do not punish persons for not doing those things they have no power to do, naturally or mentally, neither do we suppose the Lord does, but a lack of will is no apology for sin among men. Nor do we believe God owes it to his creature, man, to cure this species of inability.
Did the prisoner at the bar ever plead that he should have been made willing to obey the laws, or would such an excuse be considered good? Certainly not.
And so we say that men in nature are unwilling to come to Christ, to have him reign over them, and their inability to do these things lies principally in their unwillingness to do them. “If they were willing the things would be done.” Nor is God under obligation to make them willing. What court ever felt bound to make his subjects willing to obey the laws in order that he might of right punish them for not obeying? If they were willing, then in heart they would be parallel with the laws, and the punishment could with safety be remitted; and so if the sinner is willing his service is accepted of God.
The sinner’s will is free from any external restraint. There is nothing in God that prevents him from coming; he voluntarily and freely prefers “darkness rather than light;” he willingly lives in sin, and knowingly acts the part of a traitor against God. He is sensible that God has a just right to his heart and service, and yet his free will withholds these from God. It is not reprobation that keeps him from God, but his own evil heart; nor election, for the great end of election is salvation and not damnation. He is the sole author of his own ruin. “The carnal mind is enmity against God.”
If it be enmity, it will not change itself, and if ever made willing, God must make it so. Some speak of free will as if they understood the sinner is able to change his will this way or that at his own option, to move his will this or that way, as you move your foot; such is not my view of free will. The will, like every other faculty of man, is perverted, and against God. There are certain things we naturally hate, and never can love them until their nature is changed into harmony with ours, or until ours is changed into harmony with theirs.
So there are certain things we naturally love. The mother naturally and freely loves her child and can not do otherwise. So men are naturally opposed to God, and this opposition being natural, they will not lay it aside. We do not naturally love or serve God; it is spiritual. “He that loveth is born of God”—John. Some have urged that if the will be so settled against God, he can not come to God; if the moral bias against God be such that no human being can, or, rather will overcome it, it follows that accountability would cease; that if the bias to, and habit of, sin be so fixed in sinners that they can not avoid it, then all blame is removed from the sinner.
The argument runs that in order for blame to attach to a sinner he must be capable of resisting temptation, i.e. his will must not be so settled in sin that he can not do otherwise; and so on the other side, in order for men, angels, or even Christ, to be entitled to credit for uprightness, they must morally be capable of sinning, and so on this ground Christ, it is claimed, was capable of sinning, for, say they,
“If he were not, who should honor him for his faithfulness;” and so if the sinner were not capable of loving God, who could or would blame him for not loving him?
In order to prove that Christ was capable of sinning, the various places where he is said to have been tempted of the devil are referred to. The argument runs: “You could not be tempted to fly to the moon, for you have no ability to do so;” “neither could you be tempted to do anything that you have no ability to do, so Christ was tempted, and the fact that he was tempted proves him to have been capable of sin.”
This seems at first sight to be sound, but by a little examination it will be seen that the whole system is built on a misunderstanding of the nature of the sinner’s ability do good, and the Savior’s inability to do evil. Christ evidently knew how to sin, and had sufficient natural power to do so, but morally he had no power. Holiness occupied the throne of his heart, and no power could dethrone it; it was his fixed bias to holiness that rendered him impregnable.
“It is impossible for God to lie.” This impossibility grows out of his own innate purity; it is his essential glory that he is so good that he can not do evil, and it is certainly true that the stronger the bias to good in man be, the more virtuous he is. If a man be so inclined to honesty that he could not meditate murder or theft, it would be to his honor.
The mother can not destroy her child, because she has no moral ability; she has the physical power and knows how, and yet she can not do the deed, and it is greatly to her honor that she can not. The virtuous woman could not meditate living the life of the prostitute, and we esteem it a virtue in her.
It may with safety be laid down as a maxim or an axiom, that the stronger the bias to good in any being the more virtuous. The best men on earth are those who are the most firmly fixed in the habits of virtue, and in our Savior there is no possibility of the overthrow of his own native holiness. We love those best who are most firmly biased to good.
Now, with reference to evil, the same manner of reasoning is good. Milton represents Satan as saying:
“What! Though the field is lost, all is not lost;
The unconquerable will, and steady revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield * * *
To wage by force or guile eternal war.”
Here Satan is represented as having an unreconcilable bias to sin, no love to God, and by reason of his moral bias to sin he is “unreconcilable;” but does the fact that he can not but meditate sin excuse him from blame? By no means; if his inability to love or serve God grew out of any mental or physical derangement he would not be blamable, but it is in his moral bias to evil that his inability lies. No argument can reach him.
I do not say that God has no power to cure his inability. Jer. 13:23, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots, then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.” Here, to do good is put as impossible; if this impossibility were physical or mental there would be no blame attached. I grant; but it is moral, and therefore there is blame in the case.
If your son fails to obey you for want of natural power, he is excusable, but if he apologize for disobedience, saying I hate you and love your enemy, I know that I live upon your bounty, and am fed and clothed at your expense, but my aversion to you was so great that I could not obey you. This excuse might be true, but such inability only makes the sin the darker. Some persons may be so fixed in habits of vice, as theft, murder, adultery, etc., that it may be said they can not cease from such sin, but this kind of a cannot is no apology for sin.
Now in this way we urge that unregenerate sinners are incapable of coming to or obeying God; they know it is their duty, and that to live and die in sin is attended with ruin, but still their native aversion to God holds them in sin; by nature they would sooner die than cast themselves at the feet of Jesus as helpless wretches.
From this reasoning I get another axiom, “The greater the bias to sin any being has, the more worthy of censure and blame he is.”
4th. But have I not in this and the previous chapter shown man to be averse to God? Are we not crowded with evidences to this fact daily? Look at the kind of lives the great masses of men live. See them wholly given up to serve self in one way or another. Listen to the conversation we hear in public assemblies, in the streets, and say if man’s heart is not wholly set upon earthly objects and not on the Creator. Reader, if you have a heart to “entertain a Savior God,” let me quiz you about how it ever came to pass that your heart was made a fit temple for God to dwell in.
How was this ever brought about? What hand first loosened the bands of sin and gave you to see your need of a Savior? Whence have you this great willingness to bear or suffer anything for Jesus’s sake? Let us be sure to trace these great mercies to their true source, and when we do we will sing:
“Twas the same hand that spread the feast
That sweetly forced me in,
Or I had still refused to taste
And perished in my sin.”
“Thy free grace alone
From the first to the last
Hath won my affection
And bound my heart fast.”
Oh, can you ever forget God’s great mercy to you in leading you to see your lost state, when you on bended knees confessed your sins and prayed for mercy? Who changed your heart and will? You ever must say that by the grace of God, I am what I am. “It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure”—Paul. “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power—David.
5th. But if you are an unregenerate man, what do you think of this matter? Do you not feel inwardly an aversion to God, his ways and word? Do you not prefer for the present to live in sin without God? Do you not feel the force of the words, Ye will not come to me that ye might have life?” These words describe your case. Your affections are here on earth. God has demonstrated to you that he has a just right to your service, and if you were now summoned to death you would be left entirely without excuse. It is your own obdurate, perverse will that lies between you and all good. You are an accountable being, and know it.
Oh, think what arguments prove too weak to move you. Though the work of death is all around you, it moves you not. Though the Bible points to a state of endless torment, and you in the depths of your heart believe it, yet you venture another day, another week, or year, and so years of sin and rebellion are multiplied. The solemn, awful warnings of death unheeded; the threatenings of the eternal God are tampered with; the sweet message of the gospel treated as a fable. Oh, think how fearful the spell that binds you. The earth yields her harvest under the influences of warm showers and balmy air, but you, as the barren rock, or the thorny field, yield no love to God who alone is worthy of love.
The heavens declare the glory of God—every star, every planet and constellation is full of speech. The whole earth is vocal with God’s praise; every living thing and creeping thing, in its way, points us to God and praises his great name. Yet poor, sinful, evil man denies him his service, prefers darkness to light, evil to good, though that evil be connected with endless torment, and that good with endless life. What must be the awful, killing power of sin if it thus chains men down to the constant and unvarying love of evil? (J.H. Oliphant Principles and Practices of the Regular Baptists 1885)