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This is truly, Good News!
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Those who have, explicitly or implicitly, accepted Christ Jesus as
Lord as well as Savior, have also renounced, explicitly or
implicitly, free will.
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Proper acceptance of the Gospel is irrevocable.
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Praise the Lord!
Letter
on Free-will
STEM
Publishing: [/ By ]J. N. Darby. [(John Nelson Darby /] <10009E>
185 [/] Elberfeld, October 23, 1861.
[/] http://j.mp/0Will1Darby or
http://www.stempublishing.com/authors/darby/DOCTRINE/10009E.html
Very
dear brother, [/] I had a little lost sight of an important subject
of your last letter but one, solely through the multitude of my
occupations. This fresh breaking out of the doctrine of free-will
helps on the doctrine of the natural man's pretension not to be
entirely lost, for that is really what it amounts to. All men
who have never been deeply convinced of sin, all persons with whom
this conviction is based upon gross and outward sins, believe more or
less in free-will. You know that it is the dogma of the
Wesleyans, of all reasoners, of all philosophers. But this idea
completely changes all the idea of Christianity and entirely perverts
it.
If
Christ has come to save that which is lost, free-will has no longer
any place. Not that God hinders man from receiving Christ — far
from it. But even when God employs all possible motives, everything
which is capable of influencing the heart of man, it only serves to
demonstrate that man will have none of it, that his heart is so
corrupted and his will so decided not to submit to God (whatever may
be the truth of the devil's encouraging him in sin), that nothing can
induce him to receive the Lord and to abandon sin. If, by liberty of
man, it is meant that no one obliges him to reject the Lord, this
liberty exists fully. But if it is meant that, because of the
dominion of sin to which he is a slave, and willingly a slave, he
cannot escape from his state and choose good (while acknowledging
that it is good, and approving it), then he has no liberty whatever.
He is not subject to the law, neither indeed can be; so that those
who are in the flesh cannot please God.
And
here is where we touch more closely upon the bottom of the question.
Is it the old man that is changed, instructed, and sanctified?
or do we receive, in order to be saved, a new nature? The
universal character of the unbelief of these times is this — not
the formally denying Christianity, as heretofore, or the rejection of
Christ openly, but the receiving Him as a person, it will be even
said divine, inspired (but as a matter of degree), who re-establishes
man in his position of a child of God. Where Wesleyans are taught of
God, faith makes them feel that without Christ they are lost, and
that it is a question of salvation. Only their fright with regard to
pure grace, their desire to gain men, a mixture of charity and of the
spirit of man, in a word, their confidence in their own powers, makes
them have a confused teaching and not recognize the total fall of
man.
186
For myself, I see in the word,
and I recognize in myself, the total ruin of man. I
see that the cross is the end of all the means that God had employed
for gaining the heart of man, and therefore proves that the thing was
impossible. God has
exhausted all His resources, and man has shewn that he was wicked,
without remedy, and the cross of Christ condemns man — sin in the
flesh. But this condemnation having been manifested in another's
having undergone it, it is the absolute salvation of those who
believe; for condemnation, the judgment of sin, is behind us; life
was the issue of it in the resurrection. We are dead to sin, and
alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Redemption,
the very word, loses its force when one entertains these ideas of the
old man. It becomes an amelioration, a practical deliverance from a
moral state, not a redeeming by the accomplished work of another
person. Christianity teaches the death of the old man and
his just condemnation, then redemption accomplished by Christ, and a
new life, eternal life, come down from heaven in His person, and
which is communicated to us when Christ enters us by the word.
Arminianism, or rather
Pelagianism, pretends that man can choose, and that thus the old man
is ameliorated by the thing it has accepted. The first step is made
without grace, and it is the first step which costs truly in this
case.
I
believe we ought to hold to the word; but, philosophically and
morally speaking, free-will is a false and absurd theory. Freewill is
a state of sin. Man ought not to have to choose, as being
outside good. Why is he in this state? He ought not to have a will,
any choice to make. He ought to obey and enjoy in peace. If he ought
to choose good, then he has not got it yet. He is without what is
good in himself, any way, since he has not made his decision. But, in
fact, man is disposed to follow that which is evil. What cruelty to
propose a duty to man who has already turned to evil! Moreover,
philosophically speaking, he must be indifferent; otherwise he has
already chosen as to his will — he must then be absolutely
indifferent. But if he is absolutely indifferent, what is to decide
his choice? A creature must have a motive; but he has none, since he
is indifferent; if he is not, he has chosen.
Finally,
it is not at all thus: man has a conscience; but he has a will and
lusts, and they lead him. Man was free in Paradise, but then he
enjoyed what was good. He used his free choice, and therefore he is a
sinner. To leave him to his free choice, now that he is disposed to
do evil, would be a cruelty. God has presented the choice to
him, but it was to convince the conscience of the fact, that in no
case did man want either good or God.
187
I have been somewhat oppressed with sleep while writing to you, but I
think you will understand me. That people should believe that God
loves the world — this is very well; but that they should not
believe that man is in himself wicked, without remedy (and in spite
of the remedy), is very bad. One does not know oneself and one does
not know God
.
. . The Lord is coming, dear brother; the time for the world is
departing. What a blessing! May God find us watching and thinking
only of one thing — the One of whom He thinks — Jesus our
precious Saviour. Salute the brethren. [/] Your very affectionate
brother, J. N. D. [My emphasis.]
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