MAY 24TH, 1893

MAY 24TH, 1893

I am unable to understand the idea of ‘free will’ in any but a divine way, and then only in the sense that He does absolutely what He wills. It is not a free choice between good and evil for He cannot do evil by reason of what He is. ‘God is love’. I do not believe that any creature ever was made with free will, i.e., to do good or evil as it chose. Such an idea is altogether beyond the place of a creature. If God ^[p. 76] makes a creature He makes it for His will and if it moves away from the place and conditions in which God has set it, it is evident that another and antagonistic will has come into operation. The creature has left its orbit. How this came to pass in the case of Satan we are not told. With man it came through temptation. He listened to another voice than God’s and will came in. I suppose the beginning of departure was self-confidence. Adam did not know that he could not stand in the presence of evil without divine support. The moment he hearkens to any other voice save God’s for direction he fell. Man then began on a new line governed by a will that was not God’s. He might under certain influences be capable of good impulses and actions (as we speak) within certain limits, but he was not ruled by God’s will but practically by the influence of what was around him. He did not refer to God because he had lost Him. Return to God is followed by return to His will; Romans 2. To the christian the Spirit is given to maintain him in God’s revealed will, which is in general the ground of man’s responsibility and in the case of Israel hereafter the law will be written in their hearts. Though man is in heart departed from God and will has come in, we have in looking at things morally to remember that other elements than will have to be taken into account. There is conscience which can be appealed to and aroused where a man may not be really converted, as Felix, and allied to this is the fear of consequences. Then there is the effect of early training and of natural affection. But all this does not alter the fact that man is not naturally directed by the will of God, and when the question is raised with him he is in principle and will opposed to God. In fact it needs a divine work of grace in him to overcome the resistance of man’s will, to draw him to Christ, and in the case of the one who has been brought to Christ, the instant he departs from the law of the Spirit he is ^[p. 77] really in contrariety to God though he might still from various influences do many things commendable before men, but he is not ruled by God’s will. And this is in principle sin. Grace is sovereign and unmerited. It overcomes the resistance of man’s will, but in order that a moral result may be produced in its objects it works through man’s conscience and sense of responsibility. We see this illustrated in Luke 15 and in the case of the dying thief.