The sermon by Scott Brown, titled 'Of Free Will - The 1689 SLBC 9', delves into Chapter 9 of the confession, focusing on the doctrine of free will as it relates to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It emphasizes the transformative power of the gospel, highlighting how God's spirit can alter one's will, making them desire different things. The sermon outlines the states of the human will: before the fall (primitive integrity), after the fall (entire depravity), post-conversion (recovery begun), and in heavenly glory. It argues against naturalism and certain theological positions like Pelagianism and Arminianism, by stating that while man has free will, it's influenced by the state of his soul. The sermon uses scriptural references to illustrate how the will operates according to one's nature and discusses the process of sanctification as an ongoing transformation of the believer's desires. It concludes by emphasizing the grace of God in salvation and the role of Jesus Christ as the perfect substitute who fulfilled the will of God.

We're going to be inspecting here chapter 9 of the confession on free will. And when we come to this chapter, we're really coming to get a gaze upon one of the great and wonderful powers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How he actually, how God through his spirit and his converting power, he comes and he changes your will. He does a miracle. And your wanter begins to want different things.

And so this chapter in the Confession, it speaks about that power of the gospel to change the will and the state of the will in various seasons of life, whether you're converted or unconverted or if you're in heaven. And it also speaks of how God works in different people. So it's a chapter to help you understand yourself better. It's a chapter to help you understand what you see going on around you better as well. And you see the interplay of human action or will and responsibility.

And it shows us a very stark contrast between Christianity and naturalism. Naturalism argues that nature just runs on its own and without a mind that is governing it and that human beings are just subject to random forces because there is no God, there is no mind that operates the world. You can get, you can read a book from this perspective by Sam Harris, one of the modern atheists, who speaks of this fact that there is no free will, you are determined, and there really is no humanity, there's no guiding hand, there's no guiding mind in this world. But that's what this confession contradicts when it speaks of free will. And there are many who blame Reformed theology for teaching that man has no free will.

And you'll find as we read the simple words of the confession that is false. This is a Reformed Baptist confession and it states very plainly that man does have a free will. His will is not forced but rather his will works consistently with the state that it is before God, whether that person is regenerate or unregenerate or in heaven. And so what the confession teaches is that the will of man is not as a theologian GI Williamson said it's not forced by some external force greater than himself because what we find here is that man is free to do what he wills but he is bound. He's actually bound by the state of his soul, his moral state or his disposition.

Determine is the determining factor of what man is able to choose. And so I'd like to go into the confession here, chapter 9, and there are five paragraphs. We'll work through each one of them. And the first paragraph is a general statement that you see here. Now you might recognize that the language seems a little bit different maybe from the one you have.

It's one that has, it's a modern language, improved language version that the founders, founders ministry has put together. It's the same thing but it just smooths the language out a little bit and uses uses almost all the same language. So let's read it. This paragraph defines free will. God has endowed human will with natural liberty and power to act on choices so that it is neither forced nor inherently bound by nature to do good or evil.

So here A very plainly stated phraseology makes it very clear that man does have free will, and yet it's defined. Now I'd like you to turn to Matthew chapter 17 verse 12. I want to show you a couple of passages of scripture that illustrate this. Matthew chapter 17 verse 12, but I say to you that Elijah has come already and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished. They did to him whatever they wished.

In other words, their will was operating and the confession would say or qualify by saying their will was operating according to their nature. James chapter 1 verse 14, James 1 14, but each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. So, man has desires and he's enticed by those desires and he is drawn away. Now the direction of that drawing of the will will be determined by the state of his soul, rather regenerate or not, and we'll get to more detail about that. Verse 15, Then when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown brings forth death.

And then Deuteronomy chapter 30 verses 19 and 20 therefore choose life that both you and your descendants may live that you may love the Lord your God that you may obey his voice and that you may cling to him for he is your life and the length of your days and so here in Deuteronomy there's the command choose life because man does have a will that has the capability of choosing certain things so man has been given the power to act when choices are before him And these three texts make that very clear. Matthew 17, James 1, and Deuteronomy 30. So what this paragraph says is that man acts according to his nature. Man's will is an operative of his nature. And here's an illustration.

Have you ever had a dog that ate food when it wasn't supposed to? And if you leave a steak on the floor, the dog is going to eat it because he's a dog. And dogs act like dogs. And you should not get upset with the dog when he eats the steak that you've left on the floor because he's just doing what is consistent with his nature and so he chooses to do what his nature would lead him to do because he's only doing what he was wired to do. A dog is a dog and a dog will do what dogs do.

And that's exactly what the the confession is saying is that what is key to our understanding of ourselves and everyone else is that we act according to our nature. And this helps us really to see what is the difference between Pelagianism and its baby brother, Arminianism. The Pelagians said that man's will is not fallen and so because man's will is not fallen he can choose whatever he wants, he can do whatever he wants to do. That is contradicted in these statements in this confession. And this confession makes it very clear that man's will is fallen and it does have an impact on choices.

And now what you'll see here in the coming clauses of this confession is that it teaches that there are four states of being where man's will operates. Four states. And this is really critical. The first state is before the fall. There's a way that man's will operated before the fall.

And then secondly, there is the way a man's will operates after the fall when he is unregenerate. And that speaks in paragraph, spoken of in paragraph three. And then the third state is the will of man in the regenerate. Once a person has turned to Jesus Christ, his will has actually changed, it's transformed. This is the beauty of the power of the gospel.

God changes what you want in your heart, and he makes you want different things so you actually choose different things. But it wasn't you who did it, it was God who changed your will and made you able to choose good things. And then the fourth state is the state of heaven when man's will is perfected and man and it always chooses and wants what is good so those are the four states of man's will in various conditions that he might find himself. Thomas Boston, the Puritan theologian, he gave some different terminology that I'm going to use as we talk about this further. In the first state of being before the fall, he called it the state of primitive integrity.

In the second state of the fall, after the fall, he called it entire depravity. And then in the third state of the receiving of the gospel and the transformation of the desires of the will, he called that the recovery begun. And then finally in heaven he called it the consummate happiness or misery because the will may experience eternal misery in hell or it may experience consummate happiness in heaven. So those are the four states of the will. So that's why we should say yes man does have a free will but that will is actually governed by various states that God has ordained.

So let's go to the second paragraph. The second paragraph says this, humanity in the state of innocence had freedom. So now we're talking about pre-fall in the Garden of Eden. In that state, humanity in the state of innocence had freedom and power to will and to do what was good and well pleasing to God. So in the garden life was so great your wantor wanted to do what was good and you you you acted according to your nature and the purity and the beauty of the kingdom of God was what you desired except one thing.

And this is described in the second sentence in this paragraph, yet this condition was unstable so that man could fall from it. So in God's providence, he ordained that there was what the writers of the confession call instability. There was an opportunity to fall, and that's precisely what has happened. And so before the fall, in the state of innocence, the will of man was free to do the will of God. You know, this is why theologians speak so glowingly about how what God has done in salvation is he's turning back the clock to turn you back to the garden, to take you back to the garden.

There are many indications in Scripture where this is what God is doing. He's taking you back to that state of being, except it's even better than the Garden of Eden, and it's called heaven. But he, by his power, working through his word and the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ, he begins to reverse the defiling power of the fall over your life, and this is what it means to be converted. And so in man's sinless state, he desired to do what was good, yet there was an instability in his soul, and that instability made him susceptible to the fall. And so when he did that, sin entered into the world.

Now, I'd like to look at a couple of passages of scripture that speak of this. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 29. Ecclesiastes 7 verse 29. Truly this only have I found that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. And then in Genesis chapter 3 verse 6, we read, So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

She also gave to her husband with her, and he also ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. So this just describes what happened during the time of the fall. So when in the garden man man lived in this primitive integrity and then experienced entire depravity and That takes us to the third paragraph where the authors speak of the human will after the fall. And so we move into this state, this tragic state of the will that was affected by this original sin.

Humanity, by falling into a state of sin, has completely lost all ability to choose any spiritual good that accompanies salvation. In other words, man is dead in his trespasses and sins. He's not sleeping and he needs to be woken up, he's dead. And he has, in being dead, he has no ability to choose salvation. And this again brings us to the sharp contrast between the Pelagian and the Arminian proposition that the will of man is not fallen.

This confession says, no, the will of man is fallen and it is so fallen, it is dead, and it is incapable of choosing salvation. And that salvation is of God alone. We heard a very touching testimony about that today about the fact that this person was unable to choose God, but God overwhelmed her will and changed it. And then in the second phrase here, the second sentence, Thus, people in their natural state are absolutely opposed to spiritual good and dead to sin so that they cannot convert themselves by their own strength or prepare themselves for conversion because salvation is a work of God. And here, you know, we find this being really an expression of Genesis 6, 5 where the Lord says that every intent of the heart was only evil continually.

This is the state of fallen man. In Romans 5, chapter 6, chapter 5 verses 5 and 6, where he says, The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has given, who was given to us, for when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So in our state of rebellion, our state of incapability, God sent his Son to die when we were without strength. He did it in a moment of time that was needful for our souls.

And if you look at Romans 8 chapter 7 you find a very similar idea, 8-7, Because the carnal mind is enmity against God or at war 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 And then Ephesians chapter 1 verse 5, even when we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. It's only by grace that man is saved. It's not by the brilliant choice of his will, but it's because of grace and of grace alone. And then Ephesians Chapter 4 verse 21, he speaks of this fact that we have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, and then he says that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.

So the only hope for the fallen soul is to be created, to be recreated according to God by the power of the Holy Spirit. So this is this is the state of the will of man in the fallen state. It is incapable of choosing what is good. It does choose but it doesn't choose rightly. Its wantor has been corrupted and it wants things that are harmful to them.

And this is the tragic state of the unconverted. They can't help themselves. They beat their heads against the wall over and over again. And until their hearts are changed by Jesus Christ there really is no hope at all because they cannot choose God." And so that's that. Now then you we come to the state of the will after conversion.

This is the fourth paragraph. So we've gone over these states that Thomas Boston uses to describe as primitive integrity before the fall, entire depravity, and then now we come to recovery begun. And this has to do with salvation. So paragraph four. When God converts sinners and transforms them into the state of grace, he frees them from their natural bondage to sin, and by his grace alone enables them to will and to do freely what is spiritually good.

Yet, because of their remaining corruption, they do not perfectly nor exclusively will what is good, but also will what is evil. So this is a declaration of the reality of the Christian life that while on the one hand God transforms your will, you're freed from the bondage of sin and the power of sin and death has been broken and you're no longer a slave to sin but yet there still is remaining sin in you every Christian recognizes this and cries out to God and repents and despises the remaining sin in his life, but he does have the ability to choose what is good like he did not have before he was converted. And so this blessing is poured out upon the will of man, that there actually is the ability to choose what is good for the very first time in a person's life after they're converted. And so the regenerate, the regenerate man is different in this sense. He is able to do what is good and also still has the ability to choose what is evil.

And that's where all the Christians' problems come from. He's been born again, and he is able, by the change that's taken place in his heart, to choose what is good. So now, what happens to this person who has a different will is his goodness begins to fill his heart and the goodness begins to work, push out the evil, the remaining corruption of sin that's in his life. This is called sanctification. This is called this long process of cleansing your life.

It's a work of the power of God by the transformation of your will which makes you choose different things which begins to be a blessing in your life. And so when you read Moses' words, choose life, you know what that means because you know there are always two choices before you and which one has under it a strong desire, the desire for good or the desire for evil. And in the Christian there's a progressive desire to choose what is good and it's a really long process isn't it? And I you know I often despair about how slow the process is But when you look back over time, you see, you know, I see it, I see how God has been changing me. And I don't want all the things that I used to want.

And I don't do all the things I used to do. I still struggle with sin, but God is taking me, you know, step by step, because He has changed my will and now I'm able to actually choose what is good. It's a reflection of what Paul said to the Philippians when he said that God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So God inhabits your heart, he makes you alive, and He makes your will to do things that are a blessing to you. But it's God who does it.

And so this converted person does both good and evil. And this makes it very clear that the Christian is placed in a battle zone, a battle zone of evil and of good, of light and of darkness. But thanks be to God that he has given a different will to strengthen the choices that are made. And so the power of darkness has been broken and you've been taken to a different kingdom. So Let me show you Colossians chapter 1 verse 13.

This describes what this paragraph is speaking about. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of his love in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, conveyed into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, conveyed into the kingdom of the Son of his love. How about that? So this person who's been converted, their will exists in the midst of a new kingdom, the kingdom of Jesus, the kingdom of the Son of his love, the Son that came out of his love Because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever who would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life and So being transported into the kingdom of the Son of God's love is the sweetest thing that can ever happen to a human being. And that's why Colossians 1.13 speaks of it this way.

And then John chapter 8 verse 36 speaks of it using different language. He says in verse 32 of John 8, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. And then he says in verse 36, therefore if the Son makes you free you shall be free indeed. And so this is the power of God working his will in you. So there are these two forces that exist in the regenerate.

Now the Romans chapter 7 verse 15 verse 18 and verse 19 all speak of this battle that goes on, this tension, this war against the flesh. Verse 15 in Romans 7, for what I am doing I do not understand, for what I will to do that I do not practice, but what I hate that I do. This is this tug of war of wills that exists in the Christian. And then he says, I find then a law that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members." So there's the fight, there's the battle that the Christian is in.

It's a battle of the will and the Christian is pulled in the direction of sin, but God has broken the power of sin and actually gives him the ability to choose what is good. And what this means is that not everyone is as bad as he could be but every man is depraved in what he does because there's none good no not one and and so that brings us to this recovery begun This is the state of the Christian, the will of the Christian. And then finally, there's this last state of the will in heavenly glory. It's paragraph number five. Only in the state of glory is the will made perfectly and unchangeably free toward good alone." And this is that time when one sees the face of Jesus Christ, is transformed into his image, and is absolutely filled up with the knowledge of his will.

And this person becomes a perfect man to the measure and the stature of the fullness of Christ. In the eternal state, you become like Christ. Won't that be a good day? The struggle will be over and you will will what is good. And it will absolutely be well with your soul in that final state.

So do you see how this confession explains that man does have a free will but his free will is governed by particular constraints that are defined by the state of his soul at any given moment. So we do have a free will. Now here's a conclusion. Man has a free will to choose according to his nature. Just like a dog, we'll do what dogs do.

Those who are unconverted will do what the unconverted do according to their will. Those who are converted will do according to what a converted person does and those who are in heaven will do according and choose according to the will that has been given to them. So there it is. And the question is, can the will of man be changed? Can the leopard change its spots?

And the answer is absolutely, the leopard spots can be changed. The leopard can't change his own spots, but the leopard's spots can be changed by repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he changes your wantor. He breaks the power of sin and you want different things and so you choose different things. Okay, let me give you some applications.

First of all, praise God. Praise God for what he has done in your will if you have been converted. Imagine if you were just like you were before. What would have happened to you? What would be the state of your life right now if God hadn't changed your will?

You know, I shudder to think of it for any of us, but this is the blessing of the power of God of salvation. He gives you a different wantor and it really makes a difference. And after a few years life really is sweeter and sweeter like you never dreamed. He begins to heal your life. He transforms you into the image of his son and puts you into his kingdom and he cares for you there.

It's the power of the gospel. What a blessing it is to be in the household of God and to be cared for there and desiring things that you never could even desire before. And secondly, examine yourself. Has your will changed? Or do you still desire the impure things of this world with all of your heart?

I can't remember who it was who said that you can describe what it means to be converted and not converted by using the illustration of a pig and that there are two pigs. The first kind of pig is going down the road and he sees a mud puddle and he heads straight for the mud puddle and wallows in it and gets out and just loves it and he heads for the next mud puddle. But there's another pig right behind him and that pig sees the puddle tries to skirt around it falls into the puddle and gets out as quickly as he can. The first pig though, he sees that next mud puddle and he wants to get in that mud puddle. He likes that mud.

He likes the filth and he is going to make a beeline to that mud puddle. But the second pig, he doesn't really like that mud puddle, but he still has some desire for it and so he goes a little bit too close to it and he falls in and he gets out as quickly as he can and in the next mud puddle he gets far around it and the next puddle he is so far around it that he there's no way he could fall in. That's a picture of a Christian and a non-Christian. One has had the power of sin broken and the other one not. Both of them get dirty.

One of them loves the filth and the other one is continuing to hate that filth. So the question is, do you know the state of your soul? Because you will do what is consistent with your fallen nature. Examine yourself. You know, There's a song I love.

I hope this doesn't offend anybody. It's a Johnny Cash song. But it's called A Newborn Man. I'm a newborn man. I'm a newborn man on a rock-eye stand.

He put a light on me. He put a light on me. That's what he says. Well, you know, that's a picture of being born again. Everything is different.

And it's such a blessing. Another application is this. You know, we need to understand this when we're witnessing to people. Our confidence is not in their will to choose, but in God's power to save. And there's no point in getting angry with somebody who's hardened before God because God hasn't changed their will.

When he changes their will, they will hear and they'll be saved. But it will be God who will do it, not your persuasion. And then finally, Jesus Christ freely chose to do the will of the Father, and He chose everything that was good so that when you as a Christian do not choose everything that is good, He becomes your perfect sacrifice. He was punished for the sin that you deserved, even though he always did his Father's will. He died for sinners who haven't always done the Father's will but whose will has been changed.

And their will is being transformed into his likeness. And progressively over time they want more and more to do the will of their Father just like their Savior Jesus Christ. So what I love about this part of the confession is it really speaks of the power of the gospel to transform the centrality of Jesus Christ and his righteous will that always wanted to do the will of God and always did the will of God, even though we never could. And he stands as our substitute. He is our savior.

He did what we could never do so that we could live with him forever, for all eternity.