Dale Partridge - The Fallacy of Free Will - Dale Partridge

00:00:00.080 In this episode of Real Christianity, I confront the unbiblical concept of free will. 0.86

00:00:04.880 That is, do Christians have the freedom in and of themselves to choose to follow Christ,

00:00:09.060 or is it God who chooses to change our hearts, makes us willing, and reconciles us to himself?

00:00:15.200 I answer those questions. All that and more, coming up right now.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge. Today's episode is titled

00:00:39.860 Romans 3, 27 through 28, The Fallacy of Free Will. Now, as you know, this show is an audio

00:00:45.540 and video ministry of relearn.org, where our mission is to bring the church back to the Bible.

00:00:51.120 Question for you, have you picked up our short 12-page PDF titled How to Study Your Bible? It's

00:00:57.540 a great resource that you can learn basically all of the fundamentals of biblical interpretation.

00:01:04.740 You can pick up a copy at relearn.org forward slash study. Okay, let's go ahead and dive in.

00:01:15.480 Over the past several months, we have unearthed together much of Romans. We've talked our way

00:01:22.540 through some of the deep gospel-centric realities of Romans 1 through 3. And Paul spent these three

00:01:29.020 chapters upholding the law, making men fully aware of their sinful state, demonstrating their

00:01:35.260 inability to justify themselves before God, and revealing that forgiveness, redemption,

00:01:40.880 and ultimately reconciliation with God is only found in faith in Jesus Christ. Now, my last

00:01:46.880 message or sermon or podcast, depending on where you're listening to, we worked through Romans 3

00:01:52.520 25b through 26, where Paul explains how God defends his righteousness through the revelation

00:02:01.280 of the gospel or through revealing the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is in the gospel, God makes it

00:02:06.780 perfectly clear that sin will either be laid upon the sinner or that sin will be laid upon the

00:02:13.240 Savior, but essentially no sin will go unpunished. If there's any doubt that God had lost his

00:02:20.920 integrity or was lacking integrity in regards to his justice upon sin, that was all clarified

00:02:28.580 at the cross. God hates sin and he will not allow any of that sin to go without being punished.

00:02:36.380 Ultimately, we learned that even though God is a God of mercy, he doesn't compromise his justice

00:02:42.300 to be merciful. And so even the ones who receive mercy, they receive that mercy at the expense of

00:02:50.380 Christ. And so no sin will go unpunished. In other words, we learned that at the cross,

00:02:56.980 in the gospel, God has found a way to execute perfect justice upon sin while at the same time

00:03:05.160 securing justification for the one who has faith in Jesus. And Romans 3.25 to 26 says,

00:03:11.540 this was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the

00:03:16.520 sins previously committed for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time

00:03:21.340 so that he would be the just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Namely, God in

00:03:27.320 one single act, one single act becomes the executor of justice and the justifier of the

00:03:33.860 executable. We can't overlook the wonder of that reality. This is a magnificent gospel truth. In

00:03:41.780 the justice of God seen at the cross, we find the salvation of sinners. It's something that you

00:03:47.860 would never expect to find. I'm going to say that sentence just one more time. In the justice of

00:03:52.940 God seen at the cross, we find the salvation of sinners. It should be shocking to you when you

00:03:59.480 hear that reality. It's like finding light in the darkest part of a cave. It's the last thing that

00:04:06.360 you would expect, but it's exactly what you get in the character of God. So ultimately the gospel

00:04:11.560 we see this beautiful collide of perfect justice and perfect love right at the center of the cross.

00:04:19.960 And so today we look at the first part of Paul's conclusion of his three chapter or three part

00:04:25.080 presentation of the gospel. And he begins with a vital truth that's painted across the scriptures.

00:04:31.120 This isn't something you would just see in Romans as something you would see from Genesis to

00:04:34.600 Revelation. And this is that man shall not boast before God. That's really a big theme of this

00:04:42.200 episode. This truth is really anchored in the previous verse that states that God is just and

00:04:50.440 the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. It's essentially eliminating man's ability to

00:04:58.860 attribute any part of his salvation to himself. So Romans 3, 27 through 28, that's our text today.

00:05:04.880 It says, where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law

00:05:13.140 of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. All right, 0.88

00:05:20.660 as we learned over the past several episodes here, legalism is the default position of mankind.

00:05:29.460 It's the default position of the flesh. We want to earn our standing with God. This is something

00:05:36.320 that we see, obviously, in the religious acts of humanity, in all of human-made religions. We want

00:05:44.100 to earn our salvation. It's difficult for the flesh to swallow the idea that man cannot do

00:05:50.000 anything to justify himself before God or procuring his own salvation. You can't even bring

00:05:56.740 a penny. You can't bring anything really to the treasure chest of grace. So salvation is

00:06:02.720 completely a work of God. Jonathan Edwards once said, quote, you can contribute nothing to your

00:06:09.720 salvation except the sin that made it necessary. Now, before I dive into what I believe is the

00:06:16.660 most common form of boasting among modern Christians. I wanted to share a few verses

00:06:23.000 standing against the sinful tendency of human boasting. So we're going to read a few of them

00:06:27.760 back to back here. Now, first, boasting, let's define it just for a second. It's really the

00:06:35.340 idea of self-congratulations. It's self-praise. And so 1 Corinthians 4, 7 says, quote,

00:06:43.040 what do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you

00:06:49.080 did not receive it? Romans 11, 36, for from him and through him and to him are all things. To him

00:06:55.860 be the glory forever. Amen. End quote. Jeremiah 9, 23 through 24, quote, thus says the Lord,

00:07:03.520 let not a wise man boast in his wisdom and let not the mighty man boast of his might. Let not a rich

00:07:08.960 man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts, boast in this, that he understands and knows me,

00:07:14.440 that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth,

00:07:18.460 for I delight in these things, declares the Lord, end quote. 1 Corinthians 1 31,

00:07:24.300 quote, so that just as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. And there are many more,

00:07:30.640 but this is just a sample of the reality that we are not to be boasting before God.

00:07:37.140 Now, the problem with boasting or the problem with being a boaster is that a boastful heart

00:07:43.100 often doesn't recognize that they're being boastful because self-love is blinding. And so

00:07:48.760 we don't even see our own boasting oftentimes. And so today I want to speak to a group of people

00:07:54.980 that are in the church. You might be one of them who believe wrongly about salvation and how it

00:08:03.180 occurs and unknowingly are boasting. Now, let me explain this. These are people who believe

00:08:10.340 that salvation is not by works of the law, meaning they're not following the law to earn

00:08:16.900 their salvation. They believe that salvation is only by faith in Christ alone. However,

00:08:24.240 these people will say, quote, you must choose to believe. You must choose to believe, end

00:08:32.940 quote. That is that they believe that man must exercise independent from God upon their own free

00:08:42.860 will, this decision to believe and exercise and put their faith in Jesus Christ. Namely, that man

00:08:51.340 has the ability within himself, in and of himself intrinsically to choose to be saved. And according

00:08:57.980 to their view, that saving cannot occur without their consent and that they must have a decisive

00:09:07.760 action in order to be saved. Does that make sense? This is how a lot of modern Christians

00:09:13.180 think about this concept. In other words, these people who say they do not believe

00:09:18.040 that salvation is by works turn faith into a moral work. Let me explain what I mean by that.

00:09:27.200 Morality is about choices.

00:09:29.260 Now, yes, it's also about actions,

00:09:31.280 but before it's about actions, it's also about choices.

00:09:35.140 It's about choices that make actions.

00:09:37.680 And there are good choices and bad choices,

00:09:40.380 and there are obedient choices and disobedient choices.

00:09:44.500 And in the issue of salvation,

00:09:45.980 they believe that they can either obey the gospel

00:09:48.540 by believing or by choosing to put their faith in Christ

00:09:53.540 or disobey the gospel by choosing to reject or not put their faith in Christ. And this is

00:10:01.700 a common way, a paradigm that the modern church looks at this. But in either scenario,

00:10:06.240 their sovereign choice, their sovereign decision becomes the catalyst for their own salvation.

00:10:14.040 Stay with me here. In other words, what they don't realize is that they believe that a moral

00:10:22.340 work of choice must precede their own salvation. This is really what's happening here. I'm going

00:10:31.000 to say that again. They believe that a moral work of choice must precede their own salvation. God

00:10:38.220 cannot save them without their consent to exercise that decisive action to choose and place their

00:10:44.480 faith in and of themselves into Jesus Christ and to make that decision to become a Christian.

00:10:49.440 Now, when you point this out to these people in the church, they quickly say, well, hey,

00:10:56.940 faith is not a work. Well, they're right. Faith is not a work, but a moral decision to exercise

00:11:03.920 that faith is. Okay, so let me explain here. The question you have to be asking right now

00:11:09.520 is how do you separate having faith from a decision to have faith? That's an important

00:11:17.300 question. How do you separate having faith in Jesus from the decision of having faith

00:11:23.740 in Jesus? Well, the Bible gives us some good answers here. The answer to that question is

00:11:27.700 really rooted in a theological misunderstanding of the origin of saving faith. Okay, saving faith

00:11:33.880 is not something that sinful humanity possesses. You are not born with the capacity to produce

00:11:41.420 saving faith. Saving faith is something that is given to us, okay? Because we're born in a

00:11:49.080 condition of sin, our will, our desires are ruled by our highest, well, I'll say it this way. We

00:12:00.540 are ruled by our highest desires and our highest desire is self. And until you've been given a new

00:12:07.260 heart, that won't change. And this is why I often say people, we have a will. It's not free. We have

00:12:15.020 a will and it's enslaved to sin. It's enslaved to self. And the idea of having a free will is

00:12:23.040 ridiculous. It's not in scripture. You are either in bondage to sin and Satan and will to self in 0.91

00:12:29.080 the flesh, or you are a slave of Christ. In fact, that's the term that the Bible uses to describe

00:12:34.460 Christians often is a doulos. It's the Greek word for slave, a slave of Christ. And so yes,

00:12:42.240 we do as humans have what we call mathematical probability, which we often talk about as faith.

00:12:49.380 It's more like confidence or reliance. We can put our trust into taxi drivers and police officers

00:12:56.320 and bus drivers and airplane pilots or whatever it is, because we have accumulated enough data

00:13:03.420 to make a decision that we can rely upon the outcome of the situation, but we don't in and

00:13:10.800 of ourselves have the intrinsic reality of saving faith within us. We don't have the kind of faith

00:13:18.180 to relinquish the authority of our lives to Christ. That doesn't come with the system because

00:13:25.000 we're born of Adam. We're born into sin. We're born spiritually dead. We don't have the faith

00:13:30.260 to give up everything and follow Christ.

00:13:33.400 We don't have it in us to basically say,

00:13:36.900 I'm willing to die for Christ's sake right now

00:13:39.360 on my own free will to do so.

00:13:42.960 No, true faith, potent faith, saving faith

00:13:46.840 is a gift of God.

00:13:48.100 And that's exactly what the scriptures teach.

00:13:50.080 In other words, what these people do

00:13:52.440 is they misattribute, they misattribute their ability

00:13:56.360 to have faith in Christ to themselves

00:13:59.660 when in reality, their faith that they do have in Christ

00:14:05.380 is actually a gift of God, not of themselves.

00:14:09.940 And this is what Ephesians 2, eight through nine says,

00:14:12.800 for by grace, you have been saved through faith.

00:14:15.580 And this is not of your own doing.

00:14:18.720 It is a gift of God, not a result of works.

00:14:20.620 So that, purpose clause, no one may boast.

00:14:25.160 Now, I could give you the Greek breakdown

00:14:27.640 and the defense for why the demonstrative pronoun this

00:14:31.540 in the phrase, this is not of your own doing,

00:14:35.440 is grammatically referring to the faith and the grace

00:14:37.760 in the previous sentence,

00:14:39.960 but I want to avoid the technicalities.

00:14:41.560 I want to approach this in a more pastoral manner.

00:14:43.900 So just join along with me here.

00:14:46.420 You see, saving faith is a faith

00:14:50.780 that's built upon a contrite spirit of repentance.

00:14:56.080 Okay, this is the type of faith

00:14:57.700 that comes as a spiritual response

00:15:01.800 or a spiritual result of a new heart.

00:15:05.960 Okay, the type of faith that we're talking about

00:15:07.740 requires a repentant, contrite heart over sin.

00:15:12.500 Now, you're not gonna ever receive that type of response

00:15:16.240 until you have been given a new heart.

00:15:19.240 And so when a person hears the gospel,

00:15:21.960 and I mean really hears it,

00:15:23.520 I mean the type of person when suddenly

00:15:27.380 they are deeply convicted of the sin

00:15:29.820 that just yesterday didn't bother them at all.

00:15:32.920 I'm talking real life shaking.

00:15:36.320 All of a sudden they're spiritually alive.

00:15:38.560 They see their sin for the first time.

00:15:40.860 Radical repentance.

00:15:42.200 They're made aware.

00:15:43.580 They're trusting in the righteousness of Christ.

00:15:46.300 They need to be found righteous.

00:15:47.660 They understand this.

00:15:48.440 They have an immense desire to put everything on Christ

00:15:51.660 and they're ready to die for Jesus.

00:15:53.720 That type of faith, that type of faith is saving faith.

00:15:57.100 That's the kind of stuff that happens

00:15:58.380 at the end of a gospel presentation

00:16:01.200 when the Lord saves a person

00:16:03.520 and gives them a spiritual resurrection.

00:16:06.500 This type of faith is not natural faith to mankind.

00:16:10.700 And we know this because what does it say?

00:16:12.400 First Corinthians 2.14 says, quote,

00:16:14.180 the natural person, that is the unborn, unborn again person. Okay. The natural person does not

00:16:21.600 accept the things of the spirit of God. Did you hear that? Just hear this, please. The natural

00:16:28.760 person does not accept the things of the spirit of God for they are folly to him. And he is not

00:16:35.400 able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Okay. In other words,

00:16:42.120 saving faith becomes the evidence that God has already given a person a new heart. There's

00:16:52.620 already been a spiritual resurrection. What I'm going to say here is just follow along. This is

00:16:57.220 logical. Spiritual actions cannot precede spiritual life. If you are spiritually dead,

00:17:05.240 you cannot expect spiritual responses to occur until you've been spiritually resurrected. And

00:17:11.440 we cannot spiritually resurrect ourselves. That would be like telling somebody that you've born

00:17:15.360 yourself again. It's a very ridiculous statement. The reason Jesus uses the metaphor or reality of 1.00

00:17:22.080 being born again is because everybody can relate with it. And everybody knows that you had no

00:17:26.460 involvement in choosing to be born. And so we know John chapter three says that the spirit moves like

00:17:32.820 the wind and he goes where he wishes and he is going to save and bring that spiritual life to

00:17:37.960 those that he pleases and we have no involvement with it whatsoever. Okay. Too often we believe

00:17:43.820 that salvation works like this. We often believe that repentance plus faith equals salvation

00:17:52.080 or equals born again. We think that repentance plus faith produces a born again spirit. That's

00:18:01.080 how America thinks about salvation. That we need to make a choice to repent, a choice to have faith

00:18:07.820 and as a result, we will be born again. Billy Graham wrote a book on this that's terrible,

00:18:13.580 titled How to Be Born Again, because he follows this false way of thinking.

00:18:20.080 The Bible teaches it the exact opposite. The Bible says that you are born again,

00:18:26.700 which will result in repentance and saving faith. Because you can't have true repentance and saving

00:18:34.760 faith if you're spiritually dead because spiritual actions cannot precede spiritual life. Okay. So

00:18:41.880 this is really important. What can a corpse do? Because that's what the Bible says about our

00:18:48.640 souls prior to Christ and having the life of Christ that we are spiritually dead. What can

00:18:53.200 a corpse do? I know my preaching professor, Dr. Stephen Lawson would say, the only thing that a

00:18:59.080 corpse can do is stink. You can't do anything else. You can stink. The clear teaching of

00:19:06.100 scripture is that all humanity is born spiritually dead. And we've talked about spiritual death

00:19:13.520 before. It's the separation of the soul from God. We are not in union with God, which is the whole

00:19:23.260 reason Jesus had to be sent because he is the reconciler or the one, the mediator to bring us

00:19:31.040 and reconcile us back to God. I think about Hark the Herald Angel Sings, the lyric in there, it

00:19:36.280 says, God and sinners reconciled. This is what the gospel is about, but we're born not reconciled,

00:19:42.720 which is spiritual death. It's separation of our souls from God. And so again, spiritually dead

00:19:51.200 people cannot do spiritual things because they're spiritually dead. And they certainly cannot save 0.82

00:19:56.300 themselves. That's a crazy idea to think about. They must, by God's sovereign will, first be

00:20:04.280 spiritually resurrected. So God must act first. And that is where we get the gift through this

00:20:12.240 spiritual resurrection of faith, saving faith. Ephesians 2, 4 through 5 tells us about this.

00:20:18.600 It says, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us,

00:20:23.600 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

00:20:29.960 By grace, you have been saved.

00:20:32.120 In John 6, 44, Jesus clarifies this for us as well.

00:20:37.780 He says, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise

00:20:44.680 him up on the last day.

00:20:45.560 Did you hear that?

00:20:46.960 Just for a second right there.

00:20:47.760 no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. Okay. So we know that right there,

00:20:56.900 just if that verse right there, we know that God must act first. Now, why is this so important

00:21:04.880 that we understand this and how does it relate with our text here in Romans? I want to just

00:21:09.980 read the text one more time so you can see this. It's Romans 3, 27 to 28. It says,

00:21:13.960 where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, by a law of faith.

00:21:22.240 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

00:21:26.540 Now, let me offer you just a hypothetical story to illustrate why believing a person

00:21:32.500 can choose to have faith, saving faith, in Christ apart from being born again already,

00:21:42.100 and why this is so dangerous.

00:21:44.160 And I would even say sinful.

00:21:46.380 Okay, so I'm going to just kind of look at my notes here

00:21:49.160 and give you a little bit of a hypothetical.

00:21:50.340 If a man died and stood before God

00:21:54.080 and God asked him and he said,

00:21:58.780 John, why are you here?

00:22:02.400 John would say, well, because I believe in your son

00:22:04.700 and his atonement on the cross covered my sins

00:22:08.620 and his righteousness has been given to me by faith.

00:22:12.880 Well, then God would say, this is correct.

00:22:16.020 But what if God asked a follow-up question and said something like,

00:22:20.160 John, why are you here, but your brother Gary is not?

00:22:23.980 Both of you heard the gospel, but yet you alone are present before me.

00:22:29.540 To this, John would say something like, well, I believed and Gary didn't.

00:22:36.120 But then God might respond and say, but why did you believe?

00:22:41.260 and why did Gary not believe?

00:22:45.340 And if John holds to the belief

00:22:47.200 that we're talking about today,

00:22:48.720 that salvation is a free choice of man,

00:22:51.800 then John must say to God,

00:22:54.160 well, God, I guess that I was wiser than Gary was. 1.00

00:22:59.620 I chose to follow Christ and Gary was a fool. 0.98

00:23:04.480 And I was obedient to the gospel and Gary was not. 0.97

00:23:07.860 Charles Spurgeon once said, quote, whenever we think that we have been performing any good works,

00:23:17.440 we begin at once to boast, end quote. See, John's response, as you can see,

00:23:24.000 offers grounds for boasting. Yes, it does give credit to God for the salvation that's made

00:23:32.760 possible, but it gives ultimate credit to John for taking the moral action of choice

00:23:41.440 to make that salvation operable. Do you understand that? Ultimately, in this view of having the free

00:23:50.660 will outside of being born again, to make a decision to follow Christ, where you essentially

00:23:55.200 are the catalyst for your own new birth.

00:23:59.040 John can boast about being wiser

00:24:01.120 and being more obedient than Gary

00:24:03.840 for making the correct moral decision

00:24:06.680 to activate his salvation

00:24:07.800 through directing his belief toward Christ.

00:24:10.760 He could do that.

00:24:11.560 He can actually boast.

00:24:13.580 In a very real sense, when we boast,

00:24:15.740 even if it's obscure,

00:24:17.200 like in the smallest corner of our heart,

00:24:20.400 we steal a portion of God's glory.

00:24:23.540 We reassign a portion of honor to ourselves, which is reserved for God alone. And so John

00:24:34.540 3.27 says this, a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.

00:24:44.980 You can't even receive one thing unless it's given to you from heaven. That's just a pretty

00:24:49.740 important reality to take in consideration here. That is everything that we do have, including our

00:24:57.420 faith is a gift of God. And that's why Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. And he who

00:25:04.260 began a good work in you will finish it. This is why we can trust that we're not going to lose our

00:25:07.760 salvation because we're not going to lose our faith because we believe in the doctrine of the

00:25:11.060 perseverance of the saints that says that God will sustain us because he is the sustainer and

00:25:17.540 the captain of our faith. And it was a gift of God and that we are his child and he will sustain

00:25:22.860 us. And this is why I'm so frustrated at these people during their baptisms, wearing these

00:25:29.260 t-shirts that say, I have decided. That's literally what it reads in the front of these baptism

00:25:33.780 shirts. I have decided. And it causes everybody that's around them to applaud them for their

00:25:40.160 decision. Good job, John, for making that decision. Instead, those t-shirts should absolutely say

00:25:46.620 God saved me. Because then the applause goes not to John, but it goes to God. Oh, God is so

00:25:53.580 merciful for saving that sinner. John, man, praise God for that reality. And so the correct answer,

00:26:01.740 the correct answer to the question that God originally asked John, which was, why are you

00:26:07.600 here and Gary is not? Okay. The correct answer to that question is this, because it pleased you to

00:26:14.500 save me. It's your will that I am here. If it were up to me, I would have not trusted in your son,

00:26:23.380 but you chose to sovereignly pour out your grace and your mercy upon my soul and to give me

00:26:29.880 repentance, to give me faith, and to cause me the ability to even choose to follow your son, Jesus.

00:26:36.320 And for that, I will praise you forever. See, what it does is it changes our understanding of grace.

00:26:44.500 It amplifies and magnifies mercy.

00:26:48.880 It makes us realize that we didn't choose God,

00:26:52.180 but God actually chose us.

00:26:54.300 It makes us appreciate salvation even more.

00:26:58.440 And this is important because again,

00:27:00.700 the text is, where's your boasting?

00:27:02.800 It's excluded.

00:27:04.600 And so we cannot boast.

00:27:05.900 We need to understand that God is sovereign over salvation

00:27:09.220 and that free will truly is a fallacy.

00:27:12.860 So hopefully this episode was helpful for you guys,

00:27:14.980 that it was edifying,

00:27:16.040 helping you understand again the basics of salvation theology,

00:27:19.640 which is called soteriology.

00:27:21.640 The Greek word for salvation is soteria.

00:27:24.280 And so soteriology is the study of salvation.

00:27:27.160 So my hope is that you would continue to be strengthened

00:27:31.180 and have greater biblical and theological literacy.

00:27:34.020 And that is the mission is to bring these people

00:27:37.420 that follow our podcast back to the Bible

00:27:39.660 and strengthen their relationship with God.

00:27:42.040 On that note, thank you for listening

00:27:43.660 to this episode of Real Christianity.

00:27:45.600 My name is Dale Partridge, and I'll see you next time.

Dale Partridge - January 20, 2023

The Fallacy of Free Will - Dale Partridge

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