The freedom and bondage of the will has been the source of much contention and debate. Such men as Pelagius and Charles Finney argued that we were born neutral, Jacob Arminius and John Wesley along with Roman Catholicism argued that the will is not in complete bondage to sin but that there exists and island of righteousness from which we may freely choose God. However all of these ideas, as we shall see, as abstract from scripture, and far from making the gospel truly attractive they diminish the grace of God on behalf of sinners! Man does not have free will, rather our will is enslaves to sin, and it is God alone who frees it.
John Calvin contends that the divine image "has not been completely eliminated. Man has not become a "beast", but remains a being gifted in contradistinction to the beasts because of our will-power and ability to reason. It is true, however, that the divine similitude in man and his original uprightness no longer exist(Inst. I, 15, 4). This change away from the original orientation towards God is rooted in the fall of Adam. The first man created by God fell away from his creator and thus decided the fate of the whole human race(Inst. II, 1).
It is now necessary to consider the question how is it possible that the sin of the first man should be our sin, that is to say, the sin of the whole human race. The usual answer given is that we inherited sin from our first ancestor. Calvin recognizes that this answer is not quite correct(Inst. II, 1, 7). Adam was the embodiment of the whole human race and Calvin believed it was by the will of God that we should be represented in him. His behaviour was treated as our behaviour, "Hence, it is not so much that each one of us has inherited vice and corruption from his parents but rather that we have all been at the same time corrupted in the one Adam". We should not view Adam therefore, as a carrier of a contagious disease, called sin. More appropriately, Adam should be seen as our chosen representative by God to act on our behalf. Since Adam failed and was punished, so too are we punished and tainted with original sin.
Calvin reminds us that man, as he was corrupted by the Fall, "sinned willingly, not unwillingly or by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart"(Inst. II, 3, 5). The term used by contemporary theologians to describe John Calvin's theology of the sinfulness of fallen man is total depravity. When describing man's depraved state, Calvin quotes the apostle Paul, "no one is righteous, no one understands, no one seeks God . . . not even one"(Rom.3:11,12).
Take a look at this circle and when we sin, it places a moral blemish on the character of fallen man. In terms of the degree and extent of our sinfulness when judged by the standard and the norm of Gods perfection and Holiness? How much of this circle should I shade? All of it!Would we say that man is half sinful and half pure? Or is it more serious than that? We want to say total. Rome leaves a little island of righteousness that is left. The reformers were saying that the degree of our fallenness is complete.
Some people find this a hard doctrine to come to terms with because it means that mans corruption is total. When the reformers use the word Total depravity they mean that sin, its power, its influence, its inclination, effects the whole person. That our bodies, minds, hearts are fallen. There is no part of us that escapes the ravages of our sinful nature. Sin affects our thought life, our conversation, our actions, the whole man. R.C. Sproul recognizes the natural response to this passage,
"No one does good? How can that be? Every day we see rank pagans doing some good. We see them performing heroic acts of sacrifice, works of industry, prudence, and honesty. We see unbelievers scrupulously obeying the speed limits while cars whiz by them bearing bumper stickers that read "Honk if you love Jesus" . . . Surely there are people who do good. No! The sober judgement of God is that no one does good, no, not one."
R.C Sproul says that "the reason we have this problem is because the way the bible describes what we would call goodness and badness it looks at it from two distinct perspectives. First of all there is the measuring rod of the law which measures the external performance of human beings. For example if God says your not allowed to steal and you go your whole life without ever stealing anything. For all external purposes you could say He has kept the law externally. But in addition to the external measuring rod there is also the consideration of the heart. The internal motivation for our behaviour. God says that man looks at the outside appearances but God looks at the heart. From an biblical perspective, to do a good deed, it its fullest sense of the word requires not only that the deed conforms with the law outwardly but that it proceeds from heart that loves Him and wants to honor Him. Remember the first and greatest commandment: love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Lets talk about the heart. Is there anyone in this room that has loved God with all of their heart in the last five minutes. No one here has loved God with all of their heart since they got out of their beds this morning. And to add to that all of your soul, all of your strength, all of your mind. Even in our finest works there is a taint of sin mixed in with it. I have never done an act of charity, an act of sacrifice, an act of heroism in my life when at the time I was doing it with a heart that loved God completely, or out of a mind that loved God completely."
When we say total we do not been utter depravity. Utter depravity would mean man is as bad and corrupt as He possibly could be. Now I don’t think there is a person in the world who is utterly corrupt, only by the grace of God and by the restraining power of God’s common grace in which He does not give mankind completely over to the wickedness of His heart. Martin Luther and John Calvin called this type of righteousness a Civil righteousness. Civil righteousness, if properly understood in its historic Lutheran context, is not concerned with perfection but with external obedience; righteousness that avails before God is a righteousness that is in full conformance to the Law of God, both external fulfillment and internal disposition. While this side of the grave we can only stand before God with the righteousness of Christ, this does not mean that God does not still demand perfection from us, in fact it proves that he does still demand this of us. A proper understanding of the Atonement is not that Christ fulfilled the requirements of civil righteousness for us but that he fulfilled the righteous requirement that alone can avail before God, that can stand in his court and be declared blameless. The judgement of Adam and Eve show perfectly well that civil righteousness was not what the world was created for, but original righteousness, a righteousness that can stand before God blameless, and live in fellowship with him.
The need for an atonement is related to the problem of human sin and the character of God. God is just and man in unjust. The fundamental question is how are these two parties going to relate. How are we going to resolve the conflict between a just and a Holy God who is too holy even to look at iniquity, and a fallen unjust sinful human being. How can sinful man be justified. Calvinism assumes that without the intervention of God no one will ever want Christ. Left to themselves no one will ever choose Christ. Fallen man is described in the New Testament as being spiritually "dead in sin" (Eph. 2:1), spiritually deaf (John 5:25, 8:47), spiritually unable to believe in Christ (John 6:44, 63, John 1:13) in spiritual slavery to sin (John 8:34), unable to do any works pleasing to God (John 15:5, Rom. 8:8, Heb. 11:6) with a hardened heart of stone (Ezekiel 11:19, 36:25-27). Dead men cannot make themselves come alive, they cannot create spiritual life within themselves. Calvin writes that "Man cannot ascribe to himself even one single good work apart from God's grace"(Inst. II, 3, 12), and this inability to do good manifests itself "in the work of redemption, which God does quite alone"(Inst. II, 3, 6).
The will is not free in its ability to choose God or self, good or evil. Rather, it is enslaved to its master sin (John 8:34), unable to obey God's commandments to do good (Rom. 8:7-8) and blinded by the devil (Eph. 2:1-3). In this sense, there is no such thing as free will. Our wills are in bondage until the Holy Spirit grants us a new heart with new desires in regeneration (John 3, Ezekiel 36) and causes us to choose God. Hence it is the Son who sets us free by his Spirit (John 8:32) and all glory goes to God (John 1:14) for our conversion.
For anyone to receive the magnificent Christ we must, like J.I.Packer who fervently advocates the doctrines of grace, loving plead and entreat them to trust in Christ knowing it is He who grants saving faith and repentance.
"To the question: what must I do to be saved? The old gospel [Calvinism] replies: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. To the further question: what does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Its reply is: it means knowing oneself to be a sinner, and Christ to have died for sinners; abandoning all self-righteousness and self-confidence, and casting oneself wholly upon Him for pardon and peace; and exchanging one's natural enmity and rebellion against God for a spirit of grateful submission to the will of Christ through the renewing of one's heart by the Holy Ghost.
And to the further question still: how am I to go about believing on Christ and repenting, if I have no natural ability to do these things? it answers: look to Christ, speak to Christ, cry to Christ, just as you are; confess your sin, your impenitence, your unbelief, and cast yourself on His mercy; ask Him to give you a new heart, working in you true repentance and firm faith; ask Him to take away your evil heart of unbelief and to write His law within you, that you may never henceforth stray from Him. Turn to Him and trust Him as best you can, and pray for grace to turn and trust more thoroughly; use the means of grace expectantly, looking to Christ to draw near to you as you seek to draw near to Him; watch pray read and hear God's Word, worship and commune with God's people, and so continue till you know in yourself beyond doubt that you are indeed a changed being, a penitent believer, and the new heart which you desired has been put within you." ("Introductory Essay to John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ," p. 21).
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