If you clicked through to read this article, add a checkmark to your list of decisions made today. Careful though, if you choose to add that checkmark, that decision itself deserves yet another mark. And so on.

We make so many decisions every day that it is impossible to be fully aware of most of them. In 2011, the Huffington Post UK reported on a poll indicating most people are aware of making around 27 decisions a day. A year later, according to another study (Daum, 2012), the number of actual decisions an adult makes per day was estimated to be 35,000. That’s right, 35,000.

It would seem that, as a species, humankind is very adept at making choices, even if we are only dimly aware of many of them. Each choice, or decision, is an act of the will. As Jonathan Edwards observed in his great work, Freedom of the Will, “…I trust it will be allowed by all, that in every act of will there is an act of choice; that in every volition there is a preference, or a prevailing inclination of the soul, whereby the soul, at that instant, is out of a state of perfect indifference, with respect to the direct object of the volition.” (1)

So far, so obvious, right? We choose stuff, lots of stuff, all the time. We choose what we will to choose, not by random indifference, but because of prior inclinations and preferences. But things get a little more interesting when we turn our attention to that single decision – unique among the hundreds of thousands of decisions we make in our lifetimes – that will ultimately determine our eternal destiny. That decision, of course, is what to do with Jesus Christ. The one who has willingly believed in Jesus Christ for salvation will receive salvation. The one who has not believed is judged (John 3:18). So, what is the role of the will in this most important of all choices?

In John 6, Jesus unpacks this for us in simple language. He reveals to us a beautiful mystery. Namely, that it is not our will alone which is active in our salvation. There are two wills involved – the will of the one who believes, and the will of God.

It is the will of God that is responsible for choosing a bride for Christ and preserving that Bride in Christ (John 6:37, 39). The will of man is also part of this great willing of God, for He wills that we who behold and believe in the Son will have eternal life (John 6:40). So how are we to understand the interaction of these two wills? Do both operate independently? Is one actual, and the other only an illusion? Am I a puppet? Does my salvation depend ultimately on me? These and other similar questions have thinned forests from Germany to the Amazon in the writing of endless books and treatises (2). No short blog article is going to settle the debate to everyone’s satisfaction, but I do think a particular insight of Jonathan Edwards is very helpful in understanding the teaching of Jesus in John 6.

Before we get to that, a brief word on Christian charity is probably wise. One day, in heaven, all of God’s people will have the same view of these matters. But many good and godly people will arrive at heaven’s shore with differing perspectives on the role and function of the human will. The purpose of this article is not to condemn as heretics anyone who disagrees with this view but to try to lay out some helpful background to what we believe is the clear teaching of Scripture on these issues. The nuances of how one views the will are not what guard the gates of heaven, and they shouldn’t be what guards the gates of Christian fellowship either. This does not mean that we should not study Scripture with diligence and teach with conviction what is presented there. It does mean we must be careful that in proclaiming with zeal the doctrines of one passage, we do not violate the clear commandments of the Lord in other passages to love our brothers and sisters in Christ. And all of us must prepare in humility for the inevitable straightening out of our theology by our Lord when we see Him face to face. With that in mind, on we go.

As we saw earlier, the will is that part of our nature that makes choices. It is also manifestly the case that, even in our fallen state, we still have the capacity to make choices. Yet, when it comes to Jesus, we find this confounding problem – we don’t choose Him.

John 6:44 tells us plainly that nobody comes to the Father without being drawn. We don’t choose until we are chosen. Paul is even starker in Romans 3:10 when he paraphrases Psalm 14 in declaring, “There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God.” Puzzling, right? The words of John 3:16 are not in some strange language that only the saved can understand. Their meaning is simple, and the invitation to believe is clearly presented to everyone. So how is it that nobody “understands?” Coming to God to receive grace in Jesus Christ is the best news in the history of best news! So why is it that nobody “seeks” God?

The problem isn’t primarily a problem of information or natural ability, it is a problem of motivation. Edwards, in studying the will, realized that the will is not the start of our decision-making process, even if it is the part that actually makes the decisions. Something else informs, conditions, and thus controls our wills. It is a complicated subject, but he summarized it this way:

It is sufficient to my present purpose to say, it is that motive, which, as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest, that determines the will.—But it may be necessary that I should a little explain my meaning in this.

 

By “motive,” I mean the whole of that which moves, excites or invites the mind to volition, whether that be one thing singly, or many things conjunctly. Many particular things may concur and unite their strength to induce the mind; and when it is so, all together are as it were one complex motive. And when I speak of the “strongest motive,” I have respect to the strength of the whole that operates to induce to a particular act of volition, whether that be the strength of one thing alone, or of many together. (3)

We will to do what we are motivated to do. And that is precisely our problem. We are not motivated to turn to God on our own. We are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), suppressing the truth we know because we prefer unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-19), and rejecting the Light of the world to scuttle back into darkness (John 3:19). Our fallen nature is motivated to reject Christ, and thus it is unable to will to choose Christ naturally. It lacks a faculty free from the effects of sin to be able to willingly choose the good, to choose Christ. This is what Edwards called a moral inability (4). We have a genuine natural ability to choose Christ. We can understand the meaning of the words of the Gospel. We can formulate thoughts and words in our minds. We can make choices with our wills. All the pieces of the puzzle are there, except for one – we don’t want to put the puzzle together. And we never will, unless something external to us acts upon our fallen nature to create an affection for God, a motive to turn to Him.

Good news! God has been pleased to do this very thing for those He has chosen to present to Christ. Unlike us, God’s natural ability and moral ability are both unrestrained in the doing of good. In fact, in the case of God, it is the exact opposite of our natural state. God is utterly free to do good but morally unable to do evil. Scripture does not simply say that God will not lie, for example, but that He cannot lie (Titus 1:2). God is naturally [in His nature] able to sin (he is powerful, smart, and capable enough to do what is wrong), but He is morally incapable of it. What a person cannot will, that person cannot choose. Aren’t we glad that God is inescapably good? In Christ, God wills that helpless sinners will be graciously given a moral understanding of the Gospel, not just a cognitive one. They will be given a motive for Christ, not simply an argument for Him. They will have an awakening of the heart’s affections that leads with complete surety to an act of the will in believing. We will love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). We choose God, truly and from our own will, because He chose us (Ephesians 1:3-6). We come, because He draws us, not against our will, but as an act of our will responding to His work within us (John 6:44).

God is willing and able to seek the lost. The lost are at once naturally able yet morally unable to choose God. We are, therefore, utterly unable to believe. Unable, that is, until and unless God, in His grace, regenerates our dead hearts, converts our fallen nature, gives us a heart capable of loving Him, and thus starts the inevitable chain of our will’s action by establishing a controlling motive.

When we proclaim the good news about Jesus, we are proclaiming it to people who are all responsible, and naturally capable, of receiving that offer. In so doing, the world is shown its sinfulness and left without excuse (Romans 1:20). But we preach the Gospel in joy knowing that it is that very proclamation which God is pleased to use to bring about a moral ability, a spiritual aliveness, that draws people to His Son. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes (Romans 1:16).

(1) Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. Harry S. Stout and Paul Ramsey, Revised Edition., vol. 1, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2009), 140.

(2) If you want to join the fun, consider reading the two titans in the Protestant field of study on this subject: The Bondage of the Will, by Martin Luther, and The Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards. Both are happily in the public domain and can be acquired in digital format online for free.

(3) Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. Harry S. Stout and Paul Ramsey, Revised Edition., vol. 1, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2009), 141.

(4) It is also called Total Depravity, and you can hear Ben teach on this come Sunday.