On Free Will and Categories of Love

(Challenging Traditional Arminianistic American Humanism

From A Former Arminianistic American Humanist)

“15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. 18 And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” (Romans 6:15-18.)

A slave of righteousness is happy to be enslaved. “As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” (Romans 8:36.) Nobody doubts what happens to sheep in the midst of wolves. (Matthew 10:16.)

Presupposition- A generally implicit assumption (though it can be made explicit) underlying a claim or a process of inference. www.filosofia.net/materiales/rec/glosaen.htm

Presuppositions are everything. They are assumptions that we all have that we bring to the table in every area of our lives regarding contemplation. Because we are sin most are bad and so the Bible systematically crushes presuppositions bringing the heart and mind into conformity to a new and joyous perspective. The Bible student whose heart is unflinchingly committed to the Bible is happy to have their presuppositions challenged and changed if need be. In my opinion the largest presupposition of our day is free will or autonomy. This human idea is nowhere taught in the scripture. It is a natural human presupposition that then slackly uses the Bible to piece itself together. It is human thought like a tree fort on shallow roots before the rain comes. It does not stand…And please don’t think I’ve not considered what I’m writing in light of John 3:16, please! I preach John 3:16 without hesitation.

Reader, if thou intendest to go any farther, I would entreat thee to stay here a little. If thou art as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again–thou hast had thy entertainment. Farewell! - John Owen (Couldn’t have said it better.)

Classes of love…If you believe we are truly autonomous creatures before God then I intend to challenge a presupposition of yours with alternate foundations. Think on this well for God gives free knowledge to thinkers. (2 Timothy 2:7.) Here is the common (I believe incorrect assumption many genuine believers make.) And please understand I believe this debate is in house. They say that in order for love to be true love we have to be free. In other words if it is not a choice to love God then it is not God’s true love plan. They see pre-programmed love as a robotic insult to human dignity likening us to any ignoble beast of the field. I used to think this until Bible study and the knowledge of sin it produced in me changed my mind to grace. This prior assumption is true in regard to my wife’s love for me, or my love for her, or my daughter to me, etc… But not so to God and I advise care how we anthropomorphize the God who created hell with as much a purpose as heaven.

When Adam was made and was in the garden did he love God? Think for a moment on how you answer that question. Did Adam love God pre-fall? If so this was a perfectly created pre-programmed love that as of yet he had no choice in. Poor Adam. If you believe that man had to be able to not love God in order for his love to be genuine then Adam could not love God with real love until he sinned. This is tacitly drawn from our previous incorrect free willed presupposition of man-to-God love in our time. In other words until Adam could go away from God his coming to God was not true love. Your unwitting and pre supposed assumption is then that until Adam knew good and evil he could not with genuine love choose good which loves God. Does that sit well throughout your heart? If this is true than it is not just true of Adam but is true among all humans dead in the sin of Adam (Pre-conversion.)

No friends, Adam loved God before the fall and get this – he had no choice in the matter. Poor Adam, he didn’t know love like we do because we got to choose it, right? No, I say he was delivered to corruption and love lost its perfection. God was over this.

See if you can get this. Here is why I say there is a world and why it is exactly the way it is:

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us (God wanted to show this), in that while we were still sinners, (There had to be sin)

Christ died (There had to be death) for us.”

(Romans 5:8.)

This is the world God designed to accomplish this best. It is the height of sin to say all things are not therefore how He preplanned them to be. The cross is no afterthought, and it was neither Adam’s nor any man’s idea.

If that is to simple for you then consider the end of all things as it relates to true love along the same free will line of reasoning. Remember, you have to have free will to love God, right? Without it love is not love, hell makes no sense, and God is unfair to send me there for their sin. Think through this and try in love not to let presuppositions rule you.

Here we go with a last question: Will a Christian love God in heaven? If your definition of love requires autonomy then we must be able to fall from heaven or sin after we’ve arrived. If I am kept in heaven by sovereign love and there is no more sin then I am not free to choose God there. Does that sound like hell? Who reading this would say there is not then true love in heaven? There must be another category of love there; perhaps what Adam knew pre-sin. I say yes there is a difference but it is not due to freedom it is due to God and His purposes. While I believe that love is different between heaven, pre-fall and here autonomy is not the deciding factor because it does not exist. God’s design for the universe is the difference. God designed the universe to be exactly how it is including evil. He is not asking you to rescue Him from the picture He paints in the Bible of His sovereignty.

“I know that whatever God does, It shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, And nothing taken from it. God does it, that men should fear before Him.” (Ecclesiastes 3:14.) This I can prove without restraint in all His revealed counsel.

Don’t ever think God is not happy –

“Whatever the LORD pleases He does,
         in heaven and in earth,
         In the seas and in all deep places.” (Psalm 135:6.)

I’ll cut to the chase. If you believe that man has to be autonomous to love God then you must create at least three separate categories of love that don’t work Biblically except under autonomy. You have to have 1) a pre-fall pseudo love that Adam and Eve were forced into, 2) a post-fall (earthly interim) chosen and genuine heart felt love, and 3) an eternal heavenly chosen genuine love that must have the option of forfeit in order to be pure according to human autonomy which is the highest design in man.

“You think you have a free will? Then stop sinning.” – Martin Luther

You weren’t even born with the option of being good. A creature with a totally free will would at least (it would seem) have had the choice.  

            6 “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” (John 3:6-7.) “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63.) That nothing is not a little something…

So what am I saying and why would I say it? First the what – men are not free! In sin they’ll never choose Jesus because they don’t want Him. They want riches, friends, heaven, or their ears itched but not the righteousness of God in Christ which hates money and loves Him. When we were in sin we were dead and a total slave to impulse. We did what seemed right to us at all times. If we are in Christ we have a new master and are no longer free either.

“19 I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free (in only one regard) in regard to righteousness. 21 What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.” (Romans 6:19-22.) If this seems unkind to be thought a slave to God then you have reason to fear God as an enemy. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:3.) It is the Christians joy to be under God. Don’t fear being used for His glory, it will produce your highest joy forever.

 If we are presented to God we are His workmen and glad for our portion. We are slaves of righteousness seeking to please our master. Jesus is not our homeboy.

Now the why – salvation belongs to our God. Learn why you chose Christ. If you are manifest in all the fruits that flourish in the gardens of God it is not merely because Christ bought you a choice on the cross. No that is very limited. That is a limited atonement. He did not merely purchase you a choice; He purchased you a new heart.

“Every student must die to two things. One is the idea that true spiritual enlightenment does not require hard work. The other is the idea that any amount of hard work can produce true spiritual enlightenment.” – Jonathan Edwards. (2 Timothy 2:7.)

My conclusion by the nature of sin and death is that men are not morally free. They are men dead and in need of a resurrection to live. Dead men cannot be told anything until they are made alive. Dead men are not free.

To God having ransomed my heart from idolatry and His power to subdue all things to Himself I am happy to say “…I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” (Psalm 84:10.)

With my new heart I am now free to love God. I do it freely!

May God give you peace… Thank you for your attention to this letter.