Is a Gradate of Northwestern University in 1911
THOSE WHO reject the doctrine of the eternal security of the believer rely heavily on the argument that man is a free moral agent, and, as such can, after he has been saved, will to go away from God and become lost just as he had previously willed to come to God and be saved. This is one of their strongest arguments.
Grace doesn't permit an exhaustive discussion of the free moral agency of man, nor is it necessary. All that is needed is to show the error of the argument as presented.
There are at least four separate and distinct fallacies in this one argument: (1) Man can reverse his freedom of action and its effects at pleasure; (2) Being a free moral agent, man is a free agent in other matters; (3) that man is a free moral agent in respect to salvation; (4) That the sovereign grace of God is limited by the free moral agency of man.
1. IS MAN FREE TO REVERSE HIS ACTIONS AND THEIR EFFECTS AT PLEASURE?
It is argued that because man can come to God and be saved, he can therefore will to go away from God and be lost. In other words, he can reverse his action and thereby the effects of his action. If it can be shown that there are conditions under which the effects of voluntary acts of man cannot be reversed by the free will of man, then the argument falls for no other proof is ever offered to support the statement that man can go away from God and be lost. There surely is no revelation from God in this matter and nothing less than that has any weight.
To Adam was given freedom to eat or not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He was therefore in the true sense, a free moral agent. He ate of the fruit in disobedience to God's command and as a result, became a sinner and his nature became sinful. Because of this sinful nature, he, as well as the whole human race, lost that state of being a free moral agent with ability either to obey or disobey God's commandment. No one of Adam's seed has ever been able to fully obey God’s law. Not one has by a voluntary deed been able to reverse the effects of Adam's act committed by him as a free moral agent.
Again, a woman may be a free agent in the mater of entering into marriage relations with a man, but thereafter, the Bible clearly states, she is bound by the law of the husband as long as he lives (Romans 7:2).
These two citations prove conclusively that freedom to act along a given line does not imply freedom to reverse that action and its effects. It surely does not then follow, that because someone has willed to come to God and be saved, he can will to go away and be lost.
2. A FREE MORAL AGENT IS NOT A FREE AGENT.
A free moral agent is a "being capable of those actions ... which can properly be denominated good or evil in a moral sense." There are matters outside of the moral realm in which a free moral agent is not a free agent. The contention that someone who has been saved can go away from God and be lost because such a person is a free moral agent, ascribes a power to will and act far greater than can possibly be included under the free moral agency of man. In fact, it really makes man, who is only a creature, an entirely free agent independent of his Creator and Saviour.
No man or woman ever willed to be born into the human race, and equally powerless is he to will to separate himself from the human race and become something else or even nothing at all. He may, by suicide, shorten his earthly existence, but he is still in the human race and shall be called as a man out of his grave. In this, he is clearly not a free agent. Yet it is argued that a saved man can will to separate himself from God. His entry into the kingdom of God was by birth. He was "born of God" into that state. It was not of his own will, for someone who is "born of God" is born "not of natural descent, nor of human decision" (John 1:13). It is true that the unsaved man wills to come to God, but it is not the willing to come to God that places him in the kingdom of God. That is by an act of God. Man has as little to do with that, as he had to do with his physical birth. As it is impossible for man, by free action to separate himself from the human race, so it is equally impossible for him, by a free act, to separate himself from God's kingdom. To whatever degree man may be a free moral agent, that freedom is exercised entirely within the limits of his humanity. There is no such thing as free moral agency of man within the kingdom of God, for those who are born of God cannot sin (First John 3:9). They have a divine nature that is in harmony with God.
Clearly, then, the contention that man is a free moral agent does not include the freedom to will to go away from Christ and God. Truly, once a son of mankind, always a son of mankind, and equally true, once a child of God, always a child of God. There is no possibility for a man, by his own will or action, to change either of these two conditions. As man cannot change this condition and God will not, for Jesus said: "Whoever comes to me I will never drive away" (John 6:37); all who are saved are secure for all eternity.
3. IS MAN A FREE MORAL AGENT WITH REFERENCE TO SALVATION?
To say that man is a free moral agent and, as such, can come to God and be saved; and can, therefore, go away and thereby be lost, implies that man is saved or lost, due to his own actions as a free moral agent. The argument, as it is stated, does not leave room for any other cause of salvation than the free agency of man. No other power greater than that of man as a free moral agent could possibly contribute to salvation, if the power of man as a free moral agent can set it aside.
As a free moral agent is a being capable of good and evil actions, necessarily to be saved, such a being must always do that which is good.
Adam was created "good" and was made a free moral agent. He and Eve before the fall, were the only members of the human race that could truly be called free moral agents. But Adam (and this includes Eve) exercised his free moral agency by disobeying God's commandment, and thereby was placed under the condemnation of that commandment. This condemnation is death and everyone descended from Adam is in the same position, for "death came to all men" (Romans 5:12). The unsaved are described as dead in transgressions and sins; and are energized by Satan as children of disobedience (Ephesians 2: 1, 2). They are blinded by the god of this world (Second Corinthians 3:14). Not until God has shone in their hearts by the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit (John 16:7-11) can they intelligently exercise saving faith. No-one can come to Jesus Christ unless the Father draws him (John 6:44). This is God's picture of man. Is that the picture of a free moral agent who can will to come to God and be saved? Scarcely!
Notice that the free moral agency of Adam was in the matter of obeying or disobeying God's law. Through Adam's disobedience, his nature became sinful and that sinful nature, by the law of birth, was passed on to all men. This sinful nature makes man incapable of those actions that are good in a degree demanded by God's law, and therefore he is not a free moral agent. Paul, speaking of his old nature which came from Adam, said: "I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin." He also said: "What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." He saw himself brought into captivity to a law of sin which was in his members (Romans 7:14, 19, 20, 23). This is the true picture of the Adamic nature of every man - every so-called free moral agent. Because of this, it could be said: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Only one has been able to "reject the wrong and choose the right" (Isaiah 7:15). He was the Seed of the woman and not of the sinful Adam. (see Genesis 3:15)
Thus it is impossible for man by any free action on his part to live so that he is good in the sight of God's holy law. In other words, man cannot be justified by the works of the law. He is not saved by any good action that he may take as a free moral agent.
If a man is not saved through his acts as a free moral agent, then the conclusion that he can go away from God and be lost, certainly does not follow. Thus for the third time the argument has been shown to be fallacious.
4. IS THE SOVEREIGN GRACE OF GOD LIMITED BY MAN'S WILL?
To say that man can will to go away from God and be lost is to make the sovereign grace of God subject to the will of man. This must be so because it is clearly revealed that grace reigns to eternal life (Romans 5:21). If man can will to go away from God and be lost, then grace does not reign to life - grace is not sovereign. To many there seems to be a clash between the so-called free moral agency of man and the sovereign grace of God. This is not true.
As has been shown, after Adam had sinned, man was no longer a free moral agent in the sense that he was able to do good and thereby fulfill the demands of God's holy law. Therefore, because of the demands of God's righteousness, man is lost. But God made a special provision whereby man can satisfy the demands of God's righteousness as expressed in his holy law.
This provision is in the person of his own Son who paid the death penalty of the broken law. This being done, God again gave man freedom to will. This second freedom to will is with respect to his Son. Man can either reject or accept him. Those who reject him remain in the position of being guilty and under the condemnation of the law. The one who accepts him as the one who paid the penalty of the law for him, through faith, establishes God's law. The law is thus held inviolate and God's righteousness is vindicated. Each and everyone who in this way accepts Christ acts as a free agent under God's commandment.
It has already been pointed out that when Adam exercised his freedom and broke God's commandment, he thereby became possessor of a sinful nature which made it impossible for him to act freely and be restored to his former status and condition. So also by contrast, when someone has of his own free will accepted Christ as the propitiation which satisfies the demands of God's holy law, he is given a new divine nature which makes it impossible for him to will to return to his former state.
It is at this point that man's free agency in the matter of fulfilling God's law comes to an end. In fact, by so acting as a free agent, man confesses that he is not a free moral agent. By accepting Christ as the sacrifice of atonement for his sins, a person admits that he is not free to do good himself and thus satisfy God's law.
It is also at this very point, when man exercises saving faith, that the sovereignty of grace begins to operate. Until a man has accepted Christ and thereby established God's law, he is under the demands of God's righteousness. When these demands are satisfied, the floodgates of grace are opened and grace becomes sovereign and reigns to bring eternal life (Romans 5:21). It is, therefore, the righteousness of God that limits the sovereignty of his grace. Man, by accepting God's provision for satisfaction of his own righteousness, places himself at the mercy seat where nothing but the grace of God can touch him. Thus man's freedom of will is related to God's holy law and ceases to exist in the matter of life or death (saved or lost) when the sovereignty of grace begins.
Surely nothing can be ascribed to the free moral agency of man that can in the slightest interfere with the operation of the sovereign grace of God that guarantees the eternal life of everyone who has been saved.
Is any further proof needed to show the unbiblical position of the argument based on the free moral agency of man?
Thus the case of the backslider, when considered in the bright light of God's own revelation instead of in the dim light of human reason, becomes a strong and intensely specific argument for eternal security. Nor is that all, it contradicts the charges that those who accept eternal security teach that it makes no difference how a saved one lives.
You have read a chapter from the book _"SHALL NEVER PERISH" by J. F. Strombeck you can read the entire book at,
Shall Never Perish - By J. F. Strombeck
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