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The lesson library / Lesson 13

Free will, moral inability, and renewed obedience

Explain responsible human choice in creation, the fall, regeneration, and glory, distinguishing willing action from spiritual ability to save oneself.

Humanity, sin, law, and covenant

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Arguments about free will often begin halfway through the discussion. One person means that people make real choices. Another means that a sinner can turn to God without any inward work of grace. A third means that nothing influences a choice at all. Those are different claims. Putting the same label on them does not make the disagreement clearer.

The Bible addresses people as responsible agents. They choose, intend, refuse, obey, and answer for their conduct. It also describes slavery to sin and the need for God to give a new heart. The useful question is not whether one of those sets of passages can be ignored. It is how they belong together.

Start with creation. Adam was made upright, with a real command and a real responsibility. His goodness was not yet the confirmed holiness of the final state. He could obey, and he could fall. Genesis records a fall through distrust and disobedience, not through some defect that made evil a necessary part of being human.

After the fall, people still make choices. They have not stopped thinking or planning. But the heart from which they choose is disordered. An unwillingness rooted in love of sin is different from being physically prevented from doing something one earnestly desires. Scripture treats that corrupt unwillingness as blameworthy, even while describing its depth as bondage.

Read Ephesians 2:1-10

1 You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins,
2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience.
3 We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
6 and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7 that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus;
8 for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
9 not of works, that no one would boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.

Notice that the spiritually dead people in this passage are quite active. They walk, follow, desire, and act. Spiritual death is not the claim that a person cannot understand a sentence, repair a roof, or show affection for a child. It describes alienation from God and bondage in sin. That is why the solution is described as God making people alive.

The Reformed claim about inability needs that precision. It does not mean every unbeliever is as cruel as possible. Nor does it deny ordinary kindness or useful work. It means that fallen people do not produce their own reconciliation to God or prepare a saving righteousness out of their natural resources. Their need is deeper than additional information and stronger encouragement.

Jesus says in John 6 that no one can come unless the Father draws him. That is a statement about ability. Elsewhere He rebukes people who refuse to come. That is a statement about willingness and guilt. A corrupted will can be responsible for what it loves while needing grace to love differently. The problem is not that an innocent person is being refused permission to believe.

What, then, does grace do? It does not drag an unwilling believer into a relationship that he continues to hate. It renews the person so that he comes willingly. Ezekiel’s picture is a heart of stone replaced by a heart of flesh. Philippians connects God’s working with both willing and doing. The renewed choice is truly the person’s choice, and the grace enabling it is truly God’s gift.

Read Galatians 5:13-26

13 For you, brothers, were called for freedom. Only don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants to one another.
14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
15 But if you bite and devour one another, be careful that you don’t consume one another.
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh.
17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, that you may not do the things that you desire.
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 Now the deeds of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness,
20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies,
21 envy, murders, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s Kingdom.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith,
23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
24 Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts.
25 If we live by the Spirit, let’s also walk by the Spirit.
26 Let’s not become conceited, provoking one another, and envying one another.

Conversion is not the end of conflict. Paul describes opposing desires and commands believers to walk by the Spirit. That combination matters. If conflict automatically proved the absence of new life, this instruction would make little sense. If new life made effort unnecessary, the commands would make little sense. Grace establishes a new allegiance and supplies strength for a real struggle.

A practical example is resentment. A person may sincerely want to forgive and still find the old argument running through his mind. The presence of temptation is not permission to nurture it, and it is not proof that every desire for obedience was false. The response is to bring the grievance before God, refuse rehearsed vengeance, tell the truth about the offense, and practice whatever love and justice require in that situation.

That does not make forgiveness a demand to trust a dangerous person without evidence. It means that responsible obedience must be shaped by the whole of Scripture. The will is being trained in truth, not merely pressured into a reaction that looks agreeable from the outside.

Read 1 John 3:1-18

1 See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him.
2 Beloved, now we are children of God. It is not yet revealed what we will be; but we know that when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him just as he is.
3 Everyone who has this hope set on him purifies himself, even as he is pure.
4 Everyone who sins also commits lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness.
5 You know that he was revealed to take away our sins, and no sin is in him.
6 Whoever remains in him doesn’t sin. Whoever sins hasn’t seen him and doesn’t know him.
7 Little children, let no one lead you astray. He who does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.
8 He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. To this end the Son of God was revealed: that he might destroy the works of the devil.
9 Whoever is born of God doesn’t commit sin, because his seed remains in him, and he can’t sin, because he is born of God.
10 In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn’t do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who doesn’t love his brother.
11 For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another—
12 unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s righteous.
13 Don’t be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.
14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death.
15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.
16 By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
17 But whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, then closes his heart of compassion against him, how does God’s love remain in him?
18 My little children, let’s not love in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth.

The promise of becoming like Christ supplies the direction of the whole subject. Final freedom will not mean an everlasting requirement that evil remain attractive. God is not less free because He cannot lie. The glorified believer will not be less human because corruption has been removed. Freedom reaches its proper end when the person gladly and completely loves what is good.

Until then, avoid two excuses. The first says, “I cannot change myself, so I have no responsibility to seek God.” The second says, “God has changed me, so deliberate effort is unnecessary.” Scripture gives neither permission. The sinner is called to repent and believe. The believer is called to put sin to death through the Spirit.

This also changes the tone of personal growth. Dependence on grace should remove boasting, not determination. Responsibility should produce diligence, not self-salvation. Ask for help, identify the sinful desire honestly, and practice the commanded alternative. The purpose is not to prove that the will is independent. It is to bring the willing person into faithful dependence on the God who gives life.

Consider your perspective

Responsible choice and dependence on grace belong together in this Reformed account. A renewed will is not an excuse to wait passively; God's work gives reason to pursue the obedience we could not produce as a means of saving ourselves.

Put it into practice

Identify an obedient action you have postponed until you feel more willing. Ask for renewed desire, then take the action with the help and accountability appropriate to it.

Reflect and respond

  • Which meaning of freedom is being used in a particular argument?
  • Why does renewal of desire differ from coercion?
  • How does the promise of glory affect the struggle against sin now?

Passages and further study

Scripture quotations are from the public-domain World English Bible (WEB). Historical confessions are study aids, subordinate to Scripture. This independent lesson is not an official denominational statement.