According to Scripture, man is totally depraved. That means that sin has affected every part and faculty of man's nature. It has blinded the understanding, corrupted the heart, and polluted the mind. Neither has the will escaped. It too, is under the dominion of sin and Satan

What actually is the will? The will is the faculty of choice, the immediate cause of all action. Choice necessarily implies the refusal of one thing and the acceptance of another. In every act of the will there is a preference — the desiring of one thing, rather than of another. It would be wrong to say, therefore, that the will is sovereign or free. It is rather the servant of whatever influences and determines it. That this is indeed a fact is clearly taught by Scripture. According to the Bible, it is not the will which governs a man, but the heart. Out of the heart are the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23).

Here is an individual faced with two alternatives in the moral sphere. Which will he choose? The one which is most agreeable to himself, that is, to his heart — the innermost core of his being.

Before the sinner is set a life of godliness and a life of godlessness; which will he follow? The latter. Why? Because this is his choice. Does that prove his will is sovereign? Not at all. Why does the sinner choose a life of sin? Because he prefers it, and he prefers it because his heart is sinful. The human will is biased toward evil, and therefore it is free, but in one direction only, namely in the direction of evil. The sinner's will is enslaved because it is in bondage to and the servant of a depraved heart.

In what, then does the sinner's freedom consist? The sin­ner is free in the sense of being unforced from without. God never forces the sinner to sin. But the sinner is not free to do either good or evil, because his evil heart is ever inclin­ing him toward sin. The sinner is free, but in one direction only — he is free to sin, free to fall.

This means that fallen and unregenerate man cannot please God by anything he does. He can please us because we use imperfect standards. But weighed in the balances of God's judgment, no act of the natural man is acceptable to Him. Some of man's actions may be relatively good, but none of them are really good. All of them are affected by the depravity of the fallen human nature from which they proceed. That may seem a very hard doctrine, yet it is plainly taught in God's Word.

The superficial preaching of the last one hundred years or so is largely responsible for the wrong views now held on the bondage of the will. By far the majority of preachers today convey the impression that it lies wholly or partly in the power of the sinner whether or not he shall be saved. God has done His part, we are told, the rest is up to you. All you need do is open your heart and let Jesus in.

But what can a lifeless man do? As Paul says in Ephe­sians 2:1, man by nature is dead in trespasses and sins. When addressing the unsaved, preachers often illustrate God's send­ing of the Gospel to sinners with the example of a sick man in bed with a bottle of medicine on a table by his side. All he has to do is to reach for that medicine and take it. But in order for this illustration to be in any way true to the pic­ture the Bible presents of a sinner, that sick man in bed must be described as one who is blind (Ephesians 4:18) so that he can­not see the medicine, his hand paralyzed (Romans 5:6), so that he cannot reach for it, and his heart not only devoid of all confidence in the medicine, but filled with hatred against the physician himself (John 15:18).

No, Christ did not come to help those who were willing to help themselves, but to do for His people what they were unable to do for themselves: to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house (Isaiah 42:7).

But maybe you say, why preach the Gospel if man is powerless to respond? Why invite sinners to come to Christ if they cannot come? My answer is: We do not preach the Gospel because we believe that man is able to accept Christ, but we preach it because Christ has commanded us to do so (Mark 16:15). Certainly, preaching the Gospel is to them that perish foolishness, yet, unto us which are saved it is the power of God unto salvation (1 Corinthians 1:18). Man may think it useless to prophecy to dead bones and to say to them, as Ezekiel did: O ye dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord (Ezekiel 37:4), but because it is God's Word which we speak, it is a life-giving Word.

Wise men, standing at the grave of Lazarus, might think it the height of folly to address a dead man with the words, Lazarus, come forth. But because it was Christ Who spoke these words, Lazarus did come forth out of his grave.

We preach the Gospel, not because we believe that sin­ners have within themselves the power to receive the Savior it proclaims, but because the Gospel itself is "the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth" (Romans 1:16). We know that as many as were ordained to eternal life shall believe at God's appointed time. For it is written: Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power (Psalm 110:3).

It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that faith is worked in sinners' hearts. Man contributes nothing whatever to this miracle of regeneration. Certainly, after he has been born again, he begins to cooperate with the Spirit of God in the daily battle against sin. But before he is made alive, he is as Paul says in Ephesians 2, a child of wrath, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

I am aware that to stress these things is not popular today. Actually it never was. When Luther first began to preach that salvation is of the Lord alone, all hell broke loose in Europe. As it turned out, the real issue at stake was, does man have a free will, or not?

In a debate with John Eck, Luther stated:

we condemn man's free will, his strength, his wisdom, and all religion of man's own devising; in short, we say that there is nothing in us that deserves grace.

It was at this point that Erasmus, who had initially taken Luther's side, drew back. Fearing the displeasure of man, Erasmus, compromised by writing a treatise in defense of man's free will in salvation. In reply, Luther wrote his mighty treatise The Bondage of the Will. Erasmus, rather than attempting the hopeless task of showing that the Bible teaches freewill and not election, had sought to avoid the issue by complain­ing, as many still do today, that predestination is a useless doctrine. Luther, sweeping aside his evasions, demands to know whether the doctrine is of God or not?

Where, alas! Erasmus, are your fear and reverence of God, when you roundly declare that this branch of the truth is at best useless? What? Shall the glorious Creator be taught by you, His creature, what is fit to be preached?

Luther then goes on to show why the doctrine of election is to be preached:

While a man is persuaded that he has it in his power to contribute anything, be it ever so little, to his salva­tion, he remains in carnal self-confidence; he is not a self-despairer, and therefore is not duly humbled before God; He believes he may lend a helping hand in his salvation, but on the contrary, whoever is truly convinced that the whole work of salvation depends on the will of God, such a person denounces his own will and strength; he waits and prays for the operation of God, nor waits and prays in vain.

Did you hear that? That is how God saves sinners! By caus­ing them to wait and pray for the operation of the Holy Spirit. How different this is from modern preaching. Modern religion presents a God Who waits for man to open his heart; he almost begs the sinner to let Jesus in.

Luther knew his Bible. He knew by experience what it means to be humbled by God and wait and pray for His mercy. Such people never wait and pray in vain.

The God of Luther still lives. Are you convinced of your sinful state and condition? Has the Holy Spirit taught you that your heart too, is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked? Have you, as a result of this, learned to pray with the publican of old: God be merciful to me, a sinner? If so, that prayer won't be in vain either. For, as Jeremiah says in Lamentations 3:25 and 26:

The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him.
It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.