One of my favourite words in the Bible

In a little village in Germany in 1483 Martin Luther was born. Martin Luther was, under God, the instigator and one of the biggest drivers of the protestant reformation in Europe - with its subsequent break from the Roman Catholic Church. By the 15th Century Roman Catholicism was dominant religion in Europe. After school Luther went on to university and studied law. He decided to become a monk in one of the strictest orders in the Catholic Church. Priests taught Luther and the general public that one could save yourself by prayer, fasting and penance. The result being that Luther’s teachers were wearied by constant prayers, fasting and penance! Luther later wrote: “If ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I”. Yet he faced a long spiritual crisis, anxiously anguishing over how sinful man can come to a holy God. Luther finally experienced great joy and his eyes were opened to understand a radical, biblical truth. He wrote later, “I felt myself to be reborn, and to have gone through open doors to paradise.” What happened? What truth did he grasp?

Free Will vs. Total Depravity

Can we choose God? Would we ever want to choose God? Do we have free will?

These questions have caused controversy amongst Christians throughout church history. The reformed doctrine of Total Depravity speaks to this.

Total depravity is the teaching that contends that, since the Fall of Man (Genesis 3), every area of a human beings live is fallen and scarred by sin; no area is left untouched. Sin has tainted our wills, our emotions, our minds, and even our physical beings. The result is that, as Romans 3 says, no-one is righteous before God or understands spiritual things. We naturally seek religion or seek to run our own lives or seek gods of our own making that approve of our sinful lifestyles.

Do we have free will? Martin Luther would say no. Luther would ask you, “Does a lion have free will?” You might answer that he does: the lion could choose to hunt a warthog, or an antelope, or not to hunt at all. But take that hungry lion and put a pile of meat to his one side and a pile of vegetables to the other. Which food will the lion eat? Does the lion have free will to choose either pile? The lion, you see, does not have free will. His will is in bondage to his nature. His will is in bondage to his pre-programmed disposition. You may hypothetically argue that the lion could choose the veg, but in reality he never will. Thus, Luther wrote his book: The bondage of the will.

Human beings since Adam have a prior disposition towards sin, and evil and a prior biased away from God. Our wills are not free. Our wills are in bondage to sin and our fallen state. Romans 3 also says that no-one seeks God. The truth of this doctrine should not lead to pessimistic fatalism, but rather (as God intends) should lead to the sinner flinging him or herself onto the grace of God ultimately demonstrated at the cross; or in the words of the old hymn writer, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling”.