We may include three inner activities in the power of the will. The most obvious is the power to choose between alternatives. God created us different from the animals in that we do not act just by instinct; we can choose to act contrary to it. Thus, we may have the instinct to run away when we are afraid, but we can overcome our fear to help another in the same circumstances. Every day we make choices between doing one thing or another, working on this project or that, eating fish or beef, going to this store or that one.
Underlying these choices are desires or inclinations. We desire to eat, to read a book, to run three miles, or whatever. These desires lead us to make our choices. Sometimes, however, we may have conflicting desires. We may want to go to bed because we are not feeling well but at the same time have a desire to get some work done. Then we have to make a choice between our desires, rejecting one in favor of another.
Deeper than our desires and creating these desires in us are our affections or feelings. To some extent these affections or feelings are spontaneous. A mother naturally loves her child. The sight of a beautiful landscape may arouse in us delight and amazement. Even though feelings are often spontaneous, we can govern them. We may become very angry with someone, but, by an act of will, restrain the expression of our anger because we know that it would not be appropriate to let it rip. Some loves can become idolatrous, if they are more important to us than the love of God. We must govern our affections and feelings to keep them in line with the law of God. The tenth commandment is, “You shall not covet.” Hating a brother in Christ and pride are sinful. We must recognize that God’s law governs our hearts as well as our minds, wills and actions. The Scriptures even command some feelings. Paul says in Philippians 4, “Rejoice, and again I say rejoice.”
When we talk about the freedom and bondage of the will, we mean particularly the power of choice.
God’s will is sovereign and free. He can will and do whatever pleases him. There is never any lack of ability in him to do what he chooses to do. No outside influences can restrict or hinder his will. His power is great enough to overcome all opposition.
Man’s will is subject to creaturely limitations. From the natural point of view, we are subject to both internal and external hindrances. I might desire to do a ten foot high jump, but I know very well that I can’t, so I don’t make that choice. Or external forces can stop me. I may want to take I-95 to get to Washington D.C., but if there is road construction happening, I may be prevented from exercising my power of choice.
But more importantly, my will is always subject to the sovereign direction of God’s will. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever he wishes (Prov 21:1).” My will is not sovereign nor absolutely free, like his. My will, even though free to choose, is still governed by his will.
All that is from the natural point of view, but we also need to consider the spiritual or moral freedom and bondage of the will.
Our wills must be subject to God’s will. We don’t have full freedom of choice in the spiritual and moral realm. God commands us to choose according to his commandments. We may not do our pleasure, but must do his.
Because we are creatures, this is not a limitation of our freedom, but the definition of it. God tells us that freedom for us consists in choosing to do his will. Choosing against his will is not an expansion of freedom but death. Just as there is a natural law for the fish to live in the water and to die out of it, so there is a spiritual law for us to live in the will of God or to die out of it. “The day you eat of it you will surely die.”
Yet God created us in the beginning to be able to choose contrary to his will. He did not limit our wills by placing internal restrictions on them, but instead by giving commands which we could either obey or disobey. Thus, he enabled us to serve him antithetically, both by choosing his will and by rejecting what is contrary to it. In Adam we chose to disobey and died. The Devil persuaded Adam and Eve that they would become like God, that their freedom would be extended far beyond its present bounds, but they found that he had lied. Instead, they lost their life and even the freedom God had originally given them.
What we mean by the bondage of the will is this, that our fallen wills are now dead in trespasses and sins, no longer able to choose the good. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:7-8).” We cannot choose to please God, to obey his commands, to love him or our neighbors. That power of choice is lost.
Furthermore, all our desires are corrupted and all our affections perverted, so that we do not want to please God or to obey him. We love darkness rather than light, and we seek only the satisfaction of our own desires and freedom from God rather than in God.
This does not mean that we have altogether lost the power of choice, but rather that our wills are constrained by their own corrupted character. The natural inclination of the will is against God, and we have no power in ourselves to change it. We cannot choose God or good, and we cannot change ourselves. We are dead in trespasses and sins, subject to corruption. Before regeneration we all conduct ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind (Eph 2:3).
When we are In this state of corruption and death, God does not force our wills by compelling us to sin. He governs them by his sovereign will (we are only creatures), but we freely choose to sin. We love it and we do our pleasure. And when we choose him, this is not because we can do so, or because we can change our corrupt wills, but because he sweetly and powerfully bends our wills to his. He changes our corrupt wills and gives us again the freedom of service to him.
Augustine described the four states of human nature as able to sin (creation), not able not to sin (fall), able not to sin (regeneration), and not able to sin (heaven). We may speak of a fourfold state of our wills: able to will sin (creation), not able to will not to sin (fall), able not to will sin (regeneration), not able to will sin (heaven). When the grace of God gives us the last of these, we will have attained perfect freedom and abundant life.