ELECTION  IS  JUST  NOT  FAIR!

For many people, the doctrine of election is one that just does not make sense, for it appears to contradict the teachings that God is Love and no respecter of persons. It is even seen as a doctrine which shuts many people out of heaven who desired entry. Thus, it is concluded that the doctrine of election is just not fair; that God would be unjust to select only some people to show His grace and mercy towards, in granting the gift of salvation, and simply leave the rest to themselves, or worse still, consign them to hell. The real reason behind such a conclusion is the flawed foundation upon which these notions are based—a foundation which says that man is not dead in sin as a result of the Fall but is merely a wounded soul, with the ability and desire to seek and choose God, intact. The concept of ‘free will’ stands in eternal opposition to the doctrine of free grace. The doctrine of free will is irrevocably linked with that of universal atonement. The result of such a devilish mix is the teaching that Christ has died for all, that salvation is an offer and not a promise, and everyone has a free will decision to make—to either choose Christ as their Savior or to ignore His ‘offer’ of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Naturally, such thinking produces an enmity against the doctrine of election and considers it as something wholly unjust and unfair, for man is seen as having no choice in the matter. It deems that a God of love would never override a man’s ‘free will’, He would never choose one man over another to show His grace and mercy to. Man in his natural lost state equipped with a carnal mind blinded by the subtleties of Satan can see only one thing and that is, that though man is lost, he can at any time turn from his carnal ways, choose God and take up His generous ‘offer’ of eternal life based on his own repentance. To understand the doctrine of election is to understand that salvation is reliant upon God’s Sovereign choice based on His free grace and not man’s choice or decision based on free will, that it is God’s love for man and not man’s ‘love’ for God which is the motivating factor behind anyone being saved. In order to properly comprehend election based purely on grace, we will not commence our study with an examination of this doctrine but with the doctrine that concerns man’s spiritual state after the Fall in the Garden of Eden. This will show whether or not man possesses some innate ability to call upon God from a supposed free will, or whether this is an utter impossibility based on man’s separation from God. Just what happened to man when he sinned for the first time against a Holy God and where did it leave him in terms of his standing before God? This booklet will proceed to bring the reader the Scriptural response to such questions, as well as a study of election itself, and show conclusively that not only is election by grace just and fair, it is the only way a man can be saved.

Adam and Eve lived a perfect, harmonious existence in the Garden of Eden. They communed with God and enjoyed all the pleasures He bestowed upon them. The animals God had created were their friends, food was abundant, water flowed freely, they basked in perfect weather, death was unknown and what’s more, God was their Benefactor, their Provider Who saw to it that they wanted for nothing. It is hard to imagine that this paradise would be the backdrop to the single most devastating and far reaching event that man has ever brought about: rebellion against, and disobedience to, God. In Genesis 2 "...the Lord commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the Garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:16,17). Since God is the Source of both physical and spiritual life, disobedience to Him would mean instantaneous separation from Him and therefore from life itself, in both its physical and spiritual forms. God had expressed His will by making it clear to the man that he could eat of every tree he wanted in the Garden but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the laying down of this law God was not withholding anything from man that was necessary to his existence. On the contrary, God was promising and assuring him an immortal life upon his obedience. But this was also a trial of Adam’s obedience upon pain of eternal separation from God. One wonders what went through the mind of Adam after God’s command, and that of Eve after Adam had informed her of the Lord’s decree, but we have enough to deal with in their ensuing actions.

The key word in the above two verses is without doubt the word ‘die’. A proper biblical understanding of the meaning of this word will unlock any mystery this verse may hold for those who believe that die may not mean die at all but contain some esoteric connotation or component. To allay any such thought, our study of the word ‘die’ as used by God in His warning to Adam reveals it to mean just what it says: ‘dead’, ‘to lose one’s life,’ ‘worthy of death,’ ‘destroy,’ ‘die,’ ‘kill,’ ‘slay very suddenly’. How much clearer could the meaning of any word be? And to quell any thought, to immediately dispel any notion that the word die may mean something other than death in other parts of the Bible and thus be viewed by some as reason enough to cast doubt on the actual meaning of it in Genesis 2, we reveal that in EVERY instance where the word ‘die’ is used in both Old and New Testaments, ALL speak of death. NONE refer to merely a state of sickness or being unwell which would imply hope of recovery, which is the baseless, indefensible definition given by those who hold to the doctrine of free will and its sister teaching of universal atonement. Man has not been left in a self-help situation, but one of total spiritual helplessness. Just as no man can halt the process of decay in his body and avert the inevitability of physical death, so too, no man can reverse his state of spiritual death and separation from God, or revive his spiritual life. There is no Scripture which will support the notion that man is not dead in and because of sin, that he is not without God or utterly without hope of reaching out to God. No Scripture can be found that even remotely suggests there was the slightest remnant of spiritual life which remained in man after he sinned in the Garden. Why do you think the Lord used such an absolute ‘game over-end of argument’ word such as DIE? No better word could have been used than die to express what would happen to man if he ate of the forbidden fruit. Any word other than die would have left room for hope and reason to believe that man could raise himself up in some way. But the specific word die was used for a specific reason and that was to express precisely what condition man would be left in, physically and spiritually, if he disobeyed God. No word expresses finality and complete loss of all hope better than die. The word die does not mean a reduction in the standard of life, that man would in some way become retarded, but the total absence of life. Physical death does not retard or hinder, it is a cessation of all activity! So too, spiritual death has not placed man in a state of spiritual retardation but in one of lifeless inactivity, incapable of any action. Man is not in a state of spiritual deceleration, but has been completely halted and is utterly irreparable. Die is the sort of word no one needs any instruction in order to understand its meaning. It is a word which immediately brings to mind such terms as no hope left, all is lost, you can stop praying now, etc. It is as simple as where there is death there is no life and where there is life there is no death. As the old saying goes, ‘Where there’s life there’s hope.’ It is equally true to say, ‘Where there’s no life there’s no hope’. You cannot be said to be dead if there remains in you even a spark of life. Therefore, God had no right to say man would die if after the man sinned he would still possess some degree of spiritual life. Now, to deny all this because of one’s long history of believing the erroneous teaching that man is not dead in sin but merely sin sick, not drowned in sin but able to reach out for the life saver which has been thrown to him, is to deny the clear word of God on the matter and, as we shall see, is to give a nod of approval to Satan’s claim that man would not die. There is no basis my friend, no Scriptural reason, to believe that man is not dead in sin but merely sin sick and able to come to God of his own free will. Nothing in the whole of God’s Word will stand with you on that.

"The nature of the death threatened can be determined only from a consideration of all that was involved in the curse actually inflicted. This we know to have included the instant withdrawal of the Divine favor and spiritual intercommunion upon which man’s life depended (see Gen. 3:24). Hence the alienation and curse of God; the sense of guilt and corruption of nature; consequent actual transgressions, the miseries of life, the dissolution of the body, the pains of hell. The consequences of Adam’s sin are all comprehended under the term death, in its widest sense. Paul gives us the summary testament that "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). The full import of the death which was threatened to Adam can only be seen by considering all the evil consequences which have since befallen man. It was primarily spiritual death, or eternal separation from God, which was threatened; and physical death, or the death of the body, is but one of the first fruits and relatively unimportant consequences of that greater penalty. Adam did not die physically for 930 years after the Fall, but he did die spiritually the very moment he fell into sin. He died just as really as the fish dies when taken from the water, or as the plant dies when taken from the soil." Man died spiritually after he sinned against God and was consequently separated from God. No one denies that physical death is being dead to life, yet curiously many denounce the doctrine which teaches that spiritual death is just as literal as physical death and means being dead to God! "If a man were dead, in a natural and physical sense, it would at once be readily granted that there is no further possibility of that man being able to perform any physical actions. A corpse cannot act in any way whatsoever, and that man would be reckoned to have taken leave of his senses who asserted that it could. If a man is dead spiritually, therefore, it is surely equally as evident that he is unable to perform any spiritual actions..." It is as simple as this: a man that is dead CAN’T... You can tack on anything you like to the end of this sentence and it will make equal sense whether you are speaking of physical or spiritual death.

The source from which this whole denial of man’s spiritual death as a direct result of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil originates is Satan. "And the Serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die" (Gen. 3:4). Incidentally, the word die here is the same word in the original Hebrew used by God in Genesis 2 and carries with it the same meaning. Satan’s statement was in direct contrast to what God had told Adam would occur if he ate of the tree. Doubt is the mother of denial and doubt is the seed which Satan sowed in Eve’s heart, beguiling her through his subtlety (see 2 Cor. 11:3) and causing her to be the first subscriber to the vacuous lie that there would be no such consequence as death—physical or spiritual—if she ate of the tree. Perhaps she was enticed into believing that Adam had in some way misinterpreted or misrepresented what God had told him. Or maybe she was manipulated into thinking that God had lied to Adam and was trying to keep something good from him for she saw "...that the Tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise..." (Gen. 3:6). The bottom line to all this is that all who believe man is merely sin-sick believe and promote Satan’s lie to Eve that she would not surely die, for they say ‘we are not surely dead’. Satan’s statement to Eve that she would not surely die was, of course, an out and out lie. Satan "...is a liar, and the father of it" (Jn. 8:44). God said man would die, meaning death, both physical and spiritual, would ingress the man’s life and he, left to himself, would never be the same again. His relationship with God would be eternally broken. Man would no longer seek God and call out to Him but he would seek to hide himself from Him. In life man sought God but in death man hid himself from God and sought no communication with Him. Satan had told Eve that she would not surely die, that on the contrary she would benefit from disobeying God and that her act of defiance would free her from God and make her and Adam as gods: "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:5). Today, the lie that man would not die has spawned the popular notion that man is merely sin-sick, wounded by the fall but not fatally, and that he has an innate power that enables him to come and choose God at any time he so desires. James Arminius, the founder of Arminianism, taught "The lost sinner needs the Spirit’s assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man’s act and precedes the new birth." This flies directly in the face of the Scripture which says "...quicken us, and we will call upon Thy name" (Psa. 80:18). It is said that human nature was seriously affected by the Fall and that it damaged relations with God but not eternally; many of the cords which bound man to God have been broken but man has not been completely cut off. All are agreed that Satan’s attempt to assure man that he would not die if he disobeyed God was a lie. His denial, in part, was comprised of the lie that man would not die physically, so what makes anyone think that Satan’s lie did not also mean that he would not die spiritually? He totally lied about the one, so how can any argue that Satan’s lie about death did not also include in it the cessation of spiritual life? No one denies that he was lying about physical death, for all know that man does not live forever, that his mortal body eventually dies. So how can anyone argue that Satan’s lie about spiritual death meant that there would not be a cessation of life there also. Satan had nothing on which to base what he said to Eve, because it contravened and opposed what God said would occur. Likewise, the person who believes in man’s fictional state of spiritual sickness and not spiritual death, also has absolutely no ground upon which to build such an untruth. It would be like having a roof but no walls with which to hold it up. It would be as crazy to believe in the non-spiritual death of man as it would be to deny the reality of physical death! Physical death is being dead to physical life and spiritual death is being dead to spiritual life. To believe and try to defend Satan’s lie is to attempt to grasp the air or to catch the wind. It is an utterly fruitless and superfluous exercise which can only lead to a sinner’s Hell. Though there are many who believe in the doctrine of free will, the principle of safety in numbers just does not apply, for error can never be justified or become truth by sheer weight of numbers. Those who hold to it simply do not realise where the principle of this teaching comes from or where this lie is leading them. Hopefully, after reading this they will have a clear understanding of the big picture.

Again, man did not immediately die physically after he sinned but the process of corruption, the dissolution and decay of his now mortal body, did begin. The use of the word ‘die’ as the consequence of man’s disobedience insists upon this. To die is to be separated. It is a separation from life. Death, be it physical or spiritual, denotes an irreconcilable and irreversible separation. Just as no man who dies physically can of his own ability return from the dead, so too, no man in his spiritually dead state can do anything to alter his condition nor can any other man restore him from his lost state. Such a reconstruction is beyond the realms of human ability. No one would dare dispute the fact that the word die in our passage means physical death. Even after the most extensive and exhaustive examination of the word, a man would be a fool to suggest that the word die in Genesis 2 does not mean physical death, so why and how could it mean anything other than death when it comes to man’s spiritual condition also? Surely if death, when pertaining to the spiritual, meant anything different to what it means in the context of the physical, a different word would have been used to describe spiritual death. If such were the case, then at the very least the word die would have been given a dual meaning. But we see in Genesis 2 that one word—die—was used to describe what man’s physical and spiritual condition would be should he disobey God. How can such a word as die have two different meanings when it is expressed in such a way as to convey one certain and indubitable outcome? How can the word die mean two separate things when it has only one meaning? How can it be said to mean death in the physical sense, and yet in the same sentence suddenly come to mean sickness in the spiritual sense? What kind of monstrous semantic surgery would have had to have been performed on the word die in order to rearrange its features so as to present two images and not one? All agree that the Fall affected man both physically and spiritually, so how can one word have a dual meaning when used in the same sentence in reference to two things? God specifically used the word die to tell what would happen to man physically and He specifically used the word die to describe what would happen to man spiritually. God used the same brush (the word ‘die’) to paint the same picture—DEATH! Granted, there are many words that have various shades of meaning and connotations which can be used in different ways but the word die, as used not only in Genesis 2 but throughout the whole Bible, has only one meaning: death! Only one thing can rightly and legitimately be inferred from a clear written statement, and that is the exact intention of the writer. Can the reader think of a way to use the word die to mean anything other than death in all its finality? Moreover, can the reader find any such example in the pages of Scripture? Even when it is used in a merely figurative way, the sense is always to express cessation, finality, loss of all hope, utter despair or end of life, die is never used to mean sickness or a feeling of being unwell. The words die, died, diest and dieth appear a total of 548 times in the Bible (462 in the Old Testament and 86 in the New). In every instance these words are used NOT ONCE do any of them carry the sense of being unwell or sick. The words carry the following meaning in the Old Testament: breathe out, i.e. expire, die, be dead, give up the ghost, perish; dead, to lose one’s life, worthy of death, destroy, die, kill, slay very suddenly; dead, the dead, their place or state, ruin; death, die, execution as a doom; cease, die, surely throw down, rot, smite out; a flabby thing i.e. a carcase, died of itself. And in the New Testament: to finish life, expire, demise, be dead, decease, die; to die off, be dead, die, be slain; to decease, be dead; ruin, damnable, destruction, die, perdition; to destroy fully, perish, destroy, die. Anyone yet to be convinced that die means death just does not want to believe it.

Of all the words God could have used to describe the consequence of man’s partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He chose one word and one word only and that word was ‘DIE’. If the word die did not mean death in the spiritual sense as well as the physical, God would have used the word die to describe what would happen to man physically and an entirely different word to describe what would happen to man spiritually, so that none could falsely accuse Him of being the author of confusion in the matter of man’s physical and spiritual state after the Fall. But there was obviously no need for Him to do this, for He placed what would happen to man both physically and spiritually under the one word, DIE! It was so important and significant a word that even Satan used it to deny what God had said would occur if He was disobeyed. Had Satan used any other word than die he would not have been opposing what God had said. God used die and so to deny what God had said Satan had to use the word die also. It is a word which cannot be mistaken in its meaning. It is a word which allows no room for life! It gives no cause to believe that there is hope. 'Die' means finality, culmination, the permanent ceasing of all activity. IT IS NOT A DESCRIPTION OF A DISEASED LIFE BUT A DECEASED LIFE! It does not suggest a present but unwell life but outright ABSENCE of life! The word ‘die’ does not imply a state of sickness, no mere deterioration, but indicates utter desolation! Who in their right mind would use the word die in reference to a sick relative or friend? No one! Then why is God accused of using the word die to refer to a state of sickness? Has anyone ever warned the reader of certain sickness if they eat too many sweets by saying they will die if they over indulge? If someone is critically ill or even in intensive care, the first thing that comes to mind is ,‘at least they’re not dead’. The term sick denotes that there is still the presence of life, albeit an unwell life. So no matter how sick a person may reportedly be, the presence of sickness, by definition, implies the presence of life. Has anyone ever described a sick person as being dead? A person in the last days of a terminal illness may be referred to as ‘as good as dead’ but they cannot be regarded as already dead. They cannot be pronounced dead until all life has expired. A person may be sick and dying but they cannot be sick AND dead! So why would anyone ever think that God would use the word die to mean sickness? The word die in Genesis 2 covers both physical existence and spiritual life like a shroud. How, in light of this, can anyone come up with the preposterous and nonsensical conclusion, especially after reading God’s statement that man would surely die if he ate of the tree, that die does not mean die but something other than death? Did it mean anything other than death in the physical sense? Of course not. Then what justification does anyone have to even suggest that it might mean anything other than death in the spiritual sense also! Can the reader find one instance in the Bible where the word life does not mean life? Surely if God did not mean to say that Adam would literally die both physically and spiritually, He would have not overlooked such an important detail, but would have chosen another word to specify that man would die physically, yet spiritually would only become unwell, corrupted yet not devastated, seriously affected in his affections for God yet not destitute of them, that man would be separated from the life of God but that his relationship with God would only be damaged yet not irreparably so. How foolish would a person be to even entertain such a thought in light of the overwhelming evidence of the biblical meaning of the word die. If die does not mean die in the Genesis passage despite all of the evidence to the contrary, then what does any word in the Bible mean? There would be no certainty to the meaning of any word and private interpretation would be the order of the day — a case of everyone attaching to a word whatever meaning they saw fit to suit their particular doctrinal bias or denominational allegiance. One could find some reason to cling to the belief that die does not mean die in Genesis 2 and 3 if there were other sections of Scripture where the word die did not mean die. But even this faint ‘hope’ is dashed because THERE IS NO SUCH INSTANCE, NO PRECEDENT, IN THE ENTIRE BIBLE WHERE THE WORD ‘DIE’ DOES NOT CLEARLY MEAN ‘DIE’! So we see that there is no biblical justification for the belief that man is not utterly dead spiritually and that he can of his own free will reach out and choose God.

Man immediately died spiritually after he sinned against God. This we know from God’s own words: "...in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:17). The word day does have several shades of meaning in the Old Testament and can refer to an age or an actual period of twenty-four hours, but it is used here to mean a point of time or a moment. So the verse reads: ‘...in the moment, at that point of time, that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’ "(Adam and Eve) experienced spiritual death immediately, resulting in their shame and their attempt to cover their nakedness (Gen. 3:7). Sin and/or the presence of spiritual death required a covering, but man’s provision was inadequate; so God made a perfect covering in the form of a promised Redeemer (Gen. 3:15) and a typological covering of animal skins (Gen. 3:21)." Before man sinned he possessed a death-free spiritual and physical existence—benefits he received from a loving God. The penalty for sin was the withdrawal of such blessings, leaving man in a state of spiritual and physical death and of eternal separation from God. The opposite of obedience is disobedience, the opposite of life is death. Both physical and spiritual death has passed on to the whole race of man and did not merely cease with Adam and Eve or with their immediate offspring. The following verses provide a clear indication of this: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5:12); "...through the offence of one (the) many be dead..." (Rom. 5:15); "...by one man’s offence death reigned by one..." (Rom. 5:17); "...by the offence of one judgement came upon all men to condemnation..." (Rom. 5:18); "...by one man’s disobedience (the) many were made sinners..." (Rom. 5:19); "..by man came death....in Adam all die..." (1 Cor. 15:21,22).

Now if for whatever reason a person, even in light of such convincing biblical evidence, remains unmoved from his position that man is only sin-sick and able of his own free will to reach out to, and call upon, the true God, surely it would be right to expect that discernible evidence for such a belief would be found in passages throughout the Bible, especially in the New Testament. One of the surest ways to learn if something is actually Scriptural—according to what God says—is to search the Scriptures with diligence, not in order to find only a verse or two or a collection of verses which are saying the same thing and then close the Bible satisfied that one’s doctrine has been verified and one’s beliefs confirmed, for such is the domain of the cultist, but to see a constant and consistent theme present throughout the pages of not only the New Testament but also the Old Testament and which are supported by other doctrines taught in the Scriptures. There is no contradiction in truth.

We shall now enter the second phase of our study of the spiritual state of man and see what the Scriptures have to say. For any who are yet to be convinced in their minds and who want more proof of man’s post-Fall spiritual condition, we trust the following will be of assistance in your examination of whether man has a free will to choose God or whether being separated from God means that man in his current lost condition is utterly without hope, not able to come to God because he has no will—no natural propensity—to come to God and is thus dependant solely upon the mercy of God. This study will show beyond a shadow of a doubt that man is completely and utterly dead in sin, dead to God, and therefore without will and without hope in this world.

Firstly, it is right to assume that the intention of the majority who read this booklet is to believe only in that which God says and to reject any and every thought and idea of man’s that would establish a prejudice against, and seek to lead us astray from, the Word of God on the matter at hand. This is why we are about to delve into the Scriptures themselves, for they are the very Words of God. If you could go to God and ask Him specific questions concerning man’s spiritual state etc., He would say nothing different to you than what He has already stated in His Holy Word. In fact He would simply point you to His written Word, for this is the means He has chosen to communicate His Truth in these last days. Let us then begin our study with the Book of Romans: "...there is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one....there is no fear of God before their eyes" (Rom. 3:10-12,18). From this passage we see that no man is righteous in the sight of God, that is, no man is in right standing with God by nature. Man without God is simply unacceptable to Him and an abhorrent sight. And no man can become righteous by his own attempts at obedience in the sight of God because "...by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight..." (Rom. 3:20). We have just seen the Scriptures say that man is a totally unprofitable creature. Nothing he does or can do is of any profit to him in terms of reinstating himself back into God’s ‘good books’, gaining His favor etc. Man has been rendered useless (which is what the word unprofitable means as used in Romans 3) by the penalty his disobedience to God has drawn. No amount or degree of subsequent obedience will profit man one iota. Nothing he can do can in any way be beneficial to him or bear fruit in the sight of God for "A corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit" (Matt. 7:17ff. cf. Lk. 6:43). Paul the apostle in commenting on his unrenewed nature prior to conversion said, "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing..." (Rom. 7:18 cf. Gen. 6:5). "There could not be possibly a stronger expression of belief of the doctrine of total depravity. It is Paul’s own representation of himself. It proves that his heart was wholly evil. And if this was true of him, it is true of all others." Nothing man can do can attract the favor of God. In fact, all that man does is done, as it were, with his back toward God for he does not know God. This is due to man’s sinful nature and spiritual deadness, his separation from God, and therefore his estrangement from spiritual life itself. No less important is the fact that no man by nature is a seeker of God. This is quite a statement, for on the surface it would appear that many millions of people are currently seeking after God. They are genuine and serious in their search for God and salvation but these things do not, in and of themselves, ensure that any of them are seeking after the true God. Religions abound with sincere and dedicated followers who believe they are on a spiritual pilgrimage in search of God. But God is not playing games here. He is extremely serious and quite adamant when He declares that there are NONE who seek after Him. And who is there to deny this when it is God Himself Who has said it? God means what He says and He says what He means. So whatever it is that man is doing in all his religious enterprises, there is one thing we can be sure he is not doing and that is seeking after God. The reason that there is no man who seeks after God is that man is spiritually dead to the true God. These two teachings complement each other perfectly and form a mutually supportive alliance. Man, by nature, does not know God. He does not understand God nor the way to God hence the myriad of religions with their seemingly endless number of failed methods and plans of seeking and reaching God. Because man is said to be no seeker of God, it stands to biblical reason that he does not desire the true God, but only those gods of his own imagination. The fact that God states there are none who seek after Him is enough to send shock waves throughout the religious world, and accentuates the fact that man in his natural state is alienated from God, a hater and despiser of God, for there are none who seek or desire Him. Every image of God which man has is patently not the true God, for God says there are none who seek after Him. The word seeketh as used in Romans 3 means ‘to search out’, ‘investigate’, ‘crave’, ‘require’, ‘demand’, ‘worship’. No man, by nature, does any of these things when it comes to the true God. No man by nature requires, demands, or worships God, therefore no man by nature seeks God. All that man can do, in fact the best a man can do, is seek after false gods requiring their favor, craving their attention, whilst under the illusion that they are seeking the true God. Such is the state of the damned! Always busy, always active, always "...learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 3:7), and therefore the God of truth. No man by nature is in search of God. No man by nature craves the God of election, but despises Him. No man by nature demands to have the true God, or worships Him. How else would, or could, one describe man’s unprofitable, spiritual condition other than by a state of being completely dead to God! Just as man is utterly dead spiritually, so too, the sum total of his religious pursuits is utterly unprofitable to him. It would be laughable if it were not so serious, that in all of man’s ‘free will’ endeavors to reach God and please God and attempts to recommend himself to God, man has gained nothing for there is no fear of the true God in any man in his natural, fallen and sinful state. How ironic that with all of man’s supposed ‘free will’ there is not one who has freely chosen, in and of himself, to go after the true God, to seek Him and to worship Him! Now how, in light of this irrefutable evidence, can the notion be seriously considered, let alone honestly believed, that man by his own free will can come to God? The fact that no man seeks God is confirmed in Jesus’ own words found in John 5:40: "And ye will not come to Me, that that ye might have life" (cf. Jn. 6:44). No man by nature can will to come to God because no man can come to God. No man by nature has the ability or capability to come to God, Jesus says. No man by nature has ever sought, or can ever seek, God because in his spiritual state he is dead to God. He is lifeless. Man, as a creature spiritually alive to God by nature, is extinct. Man cannot seek that which he is ignorant of. Man in his blindness, lostness and eternal state of separation from God, cannot seek after the true God nor will any come to the true Jesus. Man will not come to God, he will not seek God, because he CANNOT. This is something of his own doing and he has no one to blame but himself. His miserable spiritual state prevents him from ever desiring the true God in and of himself. All man can do in his imperfect and utterly devastated lifeless spiritual state is seek after imperfect and lifeless gods, in whom there is no salvation.

The apostle Paul, in writing to the Ephesians, tells how God has made alive those who were once dead in their sins: "And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1 cf. Psa. 80:18). "And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses" (Col. 2:13). Notice that these scriptures are not saying, ‘And you hath He made well, who were sick in trespasses and sins’, nor are they saying, ‘And you being sick in your sins hath He made well’. The word used in both the above verses to describe man’s spiritual condition in sin is DEAD and the Lord is said to have quickened and not merely made well, the formerly dead sinner. Here we see clearly the two conditions that man can be in before God: either dead in sins or made alive unto, and by, God. The word quickened in these verses means ‘to make alive’, ‘give life’, ‘vitalize’. The word vitalize means ‘to make living’, or ‘alive’, or ‘to endow with life’. It comes from the Latin word vita meaning life and can only be used when referring to someone or something that had previously been without life, lifeless. The word quickened is primarily used in the New Testament of raising the dead to life (Jn. 5:21; Rom. 4:17, 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:22,36), but is generally used in reference to salvation, the "Impartation of spiritual life and the communication of spiritual sustenance" (Jn. 6:63; 1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:6; Gal 3:21). God is as much the sustainer as He is the cause of spiritual life. The antithesis of the word quickened is ‘to put to death’, ‘to kill’. The language here is not that of the sick being made well, not that of the wounded being recovered, but that which was once DEAD being now made ALIVE by God Himself. Paul also refers to the now saved Ephesians as once being "...by nature the children of wrath, even as others" (Eph. 2:3). Before their salvation, whilst children of wrath, the Ephesians were said by Paul to have been "...at that time...without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having NO HOPE, and WITHOUT GOD in the world" (Eph. 2:12). To be without God is to be without hope. The word without in this context is as strong and clear as the word die. To be ‘without’ something means to not have it. It means the complete absence of whatever is being spoken about. To be without Christ is to be separate or apart from Him. To be without God is to be ‘Godless’. It is to be "Destitute of God and therefore devoid of reason. To be without Divine help, forsaken by God and excluded from communion (or communication) with God." To be a child of wrath is to be without hope, which is to say, without God. To not have God is to live a hopeless existence. Man by nature is in a helpless and hopeless state. Carefully considered, such a scenario paints the most daunting of pictures. In fact, just as the Word of God shatters the rock like a hammer (Jer. 23:29), these verses demolish any notion of free will, any basis any man has ever dared to have upon which has been pinned the slightest confidence in ever thinking that he can and does by his own power and will, choose to come to God. To be without God is to truly be without spiritual life. God is the Source and the Sustainer of all life, be it physical or spiritual, and without Him there is no physical life that has not within it the seed of death and that will not die, and no spiritual life at all: "...all things were created by Him, and for Him: And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" (Col. 1:16,17). There is no hope of salvation for man without God. Nothing man can do which can recommend him to God, nothing which can attract His attention or gain His favor. When the apostles asked the Lord Jesus who it is that can be saved, Jesus answered with the following, sobering words: "With men this is IMPOSSIBLE; but with God all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26). Salvation is creation, it is resurrection (see 2 Cor. 5:17). It is not something which can be initiated by any creature but only by the Creator. Yes, with man salvation is impossible. Not even his fabled free will, according to the Lord Jesus, can help him out of such a dilemma! Clearly, Scripture says that if left to himself man has nothing in him that wants God or seeks God. Every fibre of his being is constantly pulling him away from God. Nothing he can do which will profit him in any way, no deed which can justify him before God. In fact all man’s personal efforts at recommending himself to God exacerbates his situation and further condemns him, for all his efforts are tainted indelibly with the stain of sin and are a reminder of his fallen, hopeless and cursed state. Man’s righteousnesses are all imperfect, and are seen as filthy rags by a Holy God. Only the Righteousness of Christ can recommend a man to God. Everything man does and seeks to offer as some sort of recommendation that he is worthy of salvation, has within it that which condemns him—the awful mark of sin! Just when man thinks he has done something or reached a level which he thinks will impress God and that none, including God, could deny him a place in heaven because of his efforts, the Scriptures, like a bucket of ice-cold water, bring sobriety to the man’s thinking by revealing the reality of his evil and insipid nature, thus the putridity of his efforts and his being wholly unacceptable in the sight of God. If ever there was a word to describe man’s sinful and fallen state, no other word could more fittingly be used than ‘dead’! What other word could better describe man’s spiritual state before God than ‘dead’? Man is not in right standing with God, he does not seek God, therefore does not desire God and consequently could never choose God. The Fall has plunged man into a vicious cycle where he will not come to God because he cannot, and he cannot come to God because he wills not. The Scriptures have made it perfectly clear that man has no intrinsic will that desires God, let alone the capacity to choose God. Man, in his natural state, does not want God and therefore if left to himself will remain without God for the duration of his life and into all eternity. There are none righteous, the Bible says, and so there would never be any man able to stand before God acceptable and in right standing, for there are none who seek Him. This evidence presents a case that is altogether incontrovertible and shows man to be a most miserable creature who was once the apple of God’s eye, but now in his natural state is infested with sin and a living abomination who, rather than seeking and crying out to God for help, is, by his own doing, hopelessly trapped in a maze of his own construction which has no exits, no passages of escape. "The descendants of Adam have sought out an immense number of inventions, in order to find happiness in the world, without God, which have only proved so many variations of impiety and iniquity." "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions" (Eccl. 7:29).

Now I ask the reader where, praytell, does free will fit into God’s plan of salvation? I dare say that if man is without hope, this would include any fictional free will to want God, seek God or choose God. How absurd would it be to say that though man is without God and without hope he can still choose God of his own free will!! If man is without God he is without hope. But without hope of what? Without hope of salvation! However, if man has a free will to choose God, then he is not without hope of salvation. In fact, the doctrine of free will teaches that without man God is the one without hope. Without a man’s free will decision for God, the Lord has no hope of saving anyone! If a man were placed in the middle of the Sahara desert with no water, no shade and no clothing, what hope would he have of surviving? NONE whatsoever! How much less hope does fallen man have who is surrounded, both within and without, by a desert of sin with no saving God in sight? Far worse than the poor soul depicted in the movies who is buried in the desert sand up to his neck with a bowl of water in sight but no way to reach it, man by nature is completely buried in the sand and cannot even see the water, let alone have a chance of reaching out for it, for he is suffocated in sin!! How can any man choose God whilst in such a condition? How can a man choose God if there is no man who seeks God? How can one seek that which one cannot see? If a man could, of his own free will, choose God, would this not mean that he would first have to seek God, desire God and want God? It stands to biblical reason that if there is no man that seeks God, then there is NO man that can choose God, in and of himself, and therefore no such thing as ‘free will’. In any event, what good would free will be to a man in light of the Scriptures which tell us that there are none who even seek God? This would be like having a car with a working motor but no wheels with which to transport it! Man can ‘rev his engine’ all he likes but without wheels he’s going no place. For those who are saved, the above are purely rhetorical questions. But for those who currently believe in the free will of man to choose or reject God, they are questions which require examination in the cold light of day and demand answers. The fact that there are none who seek God is something which God has ‘concluded’ after witnessing for Himself the state of all mankind: "God looked down from Heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. EVERY ONE OF THEM is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Psa. 53:2,3 cf. Psa. 14:2,3). Man by nature does not understand God nor does he understand the way to God. Therefore how can it be said that any man seeks God when it is clear that he has no inherent desire for the true God? The whole basis, or motivation, for choice is desire and a man will not choose what he does not desire; a man does not choose what he cannot want.

There are many, millions in fact, who do seek after idols and false gods believing them to be the true God but there are NONE by nature who seek after the true God. This is further evidence of man’s spiritual deadness, his separation and alienation from the true and only God. Man by nature is bereft of God. Man by nature is an enemy to God and under God’s wrath (see Jas. 4:4). The spiritual state of man has never been made clearer than in the following Scripture: "Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the LIFE of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph. 4:18 cf. Psa. 58:3). To be spiritually dead is to be spiritually blind to the true God, hence man’s continuous, and quite mad, scramble for false gods. Man is alienated from the life of God, the Life that is God. To be alienated means to be estranged, to be a non-participant. Man by nature is a non-participant in the life of God. He is dead, without God, and unless God comes to the man by grace and mercy and makes the man alive again unto Him he will forever remain in such a state. There is no spark of light left in man that desires God, for man is said to be in darkness. In fact, the Word of God says that man loves the darkness: "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (Jn. 3:19 cf. Eph. 5:8). "The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked..." (see Jer. 17:9) for in all his ways man never seeks the true God, never God’s glory, but always his own glory. Man is alienated from the true God, he is ignorant of the true God and he is blind to the true God. Left to himself, man’s life is described perfectly in the following verse: "...the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead" (Eccl. 9:3 cf. Psa. 49:20). God even says that "...every man at his best state is altogether vanity" (Psa. 39:5) and that all of mankind is as "...an unclean thing, and all (his) righteousnesses are as filthy rags..." (Isa. 64:6). "Behold, He (God) putteth no trust in His saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in His sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?" (Job. 15:15,16 cf. Job 4:18). "How then can man be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in His sight. How much less man, that is a worm? And the son of man, which is a worm? (Job 25:4-6). Left to himself, man’s life is nothing but a vain mess, a mish mash of wicked deeds and vain religious pursuits that, far from pleasing God, conspire to increase His wrath upon him. Now I ask you, in light of such overwhelming evidence, how can a man drag himself out of this quagmire, this sinful bog, and stretch out his hand towards God and say, ‘I choose you’? Be not deceived. The best a man can achieve in his mortal life on earth is nothing but utter vanity. He reaches no higher than the ground, though in his mind he is convinced his efforts have reached heaven and are there presenting a case for his admittance. There is nothing man can do which is of any profit to him in the sight of God for there is no good thing that indwells man by nature. Even man’s best deeds are all seen as nothing but filthy rags, fit only to be thrown on the dung heap without further thought. The saved man has no problem in believing this. In fact, just like the apostle Paul, he confesses it and turns from all his former deeds, his dead works, which he thought recommended him to God, and now desires only the Righteousness of Christ (see Phil. 3:4-10).

If the reader will be honest with himself and lay aside all prejudices, he will admit that there is no room for the doctrine of ‘free will’ among Bible truths such as these. Even the atheist would say, though he believes not in the existence of God, that the Bible definitely says there is nothing in man that would or could lead him to God, nothing in him that has any tendency towards the true God. It does not take a genius to see that the idea of free will is diametrically opposed to everything the Scriptures say about man’s state before God. If such a thing as free will did exist, then the Scriptures themselves would have no right in saying that man is without hope in this world. Of course man would have hope in this world if he has a free will to choose God! And if man has a hope then the fact that he has not God is of no real significance, for despite his being God-less, this is in no way a hindrance to him in choosing God at any time. There is no need for a man to be made alive again by the power of God for he is alive enough to choose God of his own power, if the doctrine of free will is true. This line of reasoning has given birth to the idea that God without man is without hope. If a man has a free will to choose God then he has a built-in hope, which survived the Fall, of one day being saved. If man by nature has a free will to choose God, then it stands to reason that some at least will choose Him, that one day some will seek God and so the Scripture that declares that there is no man that seeks God must be changed to ‘some men seek God’. No longer will that Scripture be absolute for all men by nature for all time, but would need to be changed or modified, in fact it should never have been written because, according to those who believe in free will, all those who have thus far been saved have chosen God, and therefore sought God, of their own free will. So when a man quotes Romans 3:11, he is actually guilty of a serious mistake if he does not point out that God has made an error here and changes the verse to read ‘some men seek after God’. Clearly this is all so absolutely ridiculous as to beggar belief that any could possibly fall for the lie that man is not spiritually dead but has a free will to choose God at any time he so desires. It is only the man who remains in a dead-in-sin and dead-to-God state, that believes in the existence of and need for free will, for none who savingly believe in the Gospel of God believe in the free will of man. The doctrine of free willism is inextricably linked with the satanic lie that Adam and Eve would not die after disobeying God as God had promised. If they did not die, then all their faculties to some degree would remain intact, or at least enough of them that would be needed to choose God in and of themselves. However, you will notice in examining Adam and Eve’s immediate actions after they had sinned that neither Adam or Eve went out seeking God. Neither of them went searching for God, crying out to him to forgive them and save them. No indeed, but rather their now sinful state dictated that the natural and instinctive thing to do was to flee from God. And this is the seed which is now in every man! Man is not a neutral creature. No man can be indifferent to God. Either a man is saved by God or dead to God. Either he believes and has the true God or he does not believe and stands alone or with his imaginary false gods. Despite Adam and Eve’s alleged ‘free will’, "...they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden and the Lord called unto Adam..." (Gen. 3:8,9). They attempted to hide their shame so "...they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (Gen. 3:7) rather than call on God. Who was it that did the calling? Who was it that was doing the seeking? It was not Adam and his wife who sought God, but God Who came searching for them: "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?" (Gen. 3:9). God called out to them and not the other way round. And for those who say ‘This was only one instance where man chose not for God but there are many where men have chosen God’, try and find one Scripture that will support such a claim. Adam and Eve’s actions are indicative of every man’s attitude towards the true God by nature. It is not man who comes to God but God Who comes to man.

This brings us to what will prove to be a most interesting study of such words as choose and chosen. Let us now examine the Scriptures in order to see exactly who does the choosing, man or God. Firstly, we go straight to Peter’s first Letter to view perhaps the clearest statement which properly demonstrates who the chooser is in the matter of salvation. Speaking to saved people Peter says, "...ye are a CHOSEN generation...that ye should shew forth the praises of HIM WHO HATH CALLED YOU out of darkness into His marvellous light" (1 Pet. 2:9). In one fell swoop, this verse shows conclusively that which is undebatable and non-negotiable: MAN IS NOT THE CHOOSER, he is not the one who chooses God, he is not the one who makes the first move, but GOD is the Chooser. Clearly, this verse informs us that it is God Who calls His people out and not they who call Him in. Notice also that these chosen ones are not merely called out of darkness, but into His marvellous light. "Thus the choosing is included in the calling." The word chosen in this verse is eklektos in the original and means ‘chosen out, select, favorite, elect’. It is not man that has called out to God by some mythical free will, but God Who has chosen to call certain ones out of darkness into His light. God is at the controls, not man. The saved man has come out of darkness, not because of any free will response, but by the very power of God! This is due to the fact that he has been chosen and is not a chooser. Like Lazarus, the elect are called forth by God to come out of the grave and into the light of day and just as Lazarus could do nothing to make himself alive in the tomb, let alone get up and walk out of it under his own power, so too man in his natural state can do nothing to get himself out of his sinful state and calmly walk out of the darkness of his spiritual grave into God’s marvellous light. It is God’s Power and not man’s free will by which a man is made willing to come to God: "Thy people shall be willing in the day of THY power..." (Psa. 110:3). One of the most forceful Scriptures that clearly demonstrates how a man comes to God says: "Blessed is the man whom THOU CHOOSEST, and CAUSEST to approach unto Thee..." (Psa. 65:4 cf. Psa. 33:12). Not only is God the chooser but He is also the cause behind a man’s approaching Him. It is not a case of God choosing and then the man responding with a decision to approach God, but it is ALL of God, it is God Who chooses and it is GOD WHO IS THE CAUSE BEHIND A MAN APPROACHING HIM! Such is the inability of man — such is the sovereign grace of God. If man could come to God by his own ‘free will’ then should not Psalm 110 be saying, ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of their own power’. These verses from the Psalms are clearly teaching that it is not by any power of man’s that he should come to God but strictly, wholly and solely by the power of God. Man is made willing by the power of God, which is the cause behind a man approaching God and not by a choice, made possible by his own power, which he makes at his own discretion and which is seen by God as a green light or command for Him to act and choose them for salvation. God’s Sovereign will is not subject to any man’s ‘will’. God does not appoint eternal life to those who first choose him but the Scriptures say, "...as many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48); "...And THE LORD added to the Church daily such as should be saved" (Acts 2:47). "It was the Lord Who did this. There was no power in man to do it; and the Christian loves to trace all increase of the Church to the grace of God. (God) caused, or inclined them to be joined to the Church....The word ‘church’ properly means those who are called out, and is applied to Christians as being called out, or separated from the world." God’s people are identified by the Scriptures as the ones who have been called out by God, not the ones who have called out to God. Many "Believe in a ‘conditional election’, based, as they suppose, upon foreseen faith and evangelical obedience to its objects. This, of course, destroys election in any intelligible sense of the term, and reduces it to a mere recognition or prophecy that at some future time certain persons will be possessed of these qualities....God is careful to elect only those whom He foresees will elect themselves." If you believe the true God, you have been ordained to believe so by God. It is God’s doing, not yours. Man does not choose nor does he will to choose, but has to be MADE willing by the power of God. The Scripture does not say ‘As many as believed were then ordained to eternal life’ but "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed."

The words choose, choosest, chooseth, choosing and chose appear only a total of 7 times in the whole of the New Testament and in no instance are any of these words used in reference to a man choosing God. This is a highly significant and quite astonishing fact, which doubtless will come as no small surprise to those who believe in man’s free-will decision for Christ. If the doctrine of free will were true, it would be reasonable to suppose that at least one of these words in at least one verse would be speaking about a man choosing God. But there are none! The Lord Jesus Christ never once told anyone to choose Him. He did the choosing and then said, "Follow Me". Now it must be pointed out that these 5 words do appear a total of 87 times in the Old Testament however, as in the New Testament, there is no instance of any of them which speaks of a man choosing God. The only passage from the Old Testament to which a free willer can possibly turn as ‘proof’ to support his belief is the old favorite found in Joshua 24:14-22. In this passage we see Joshua speaking to the chosen people of God, Israel, saying, "Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the Flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the Flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Josh. 24:14,15). Joshua is commanding all the tribes of Israel (see v. 1) to fear the Lord and serve Him and to put away false gods. But if they thought it was evil to serve the Lord, Joshua told them to make choice among the false gods, (either those of their fathers or of the Amorites), as to which they would serve. The people answered, "...God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods....we will serve the Lord" (Josh. 24:16, 21), to which Joshua replied, "...Ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen you the Lord, to serve Him..." (Josh. 24:22). It is vital that we not lose sight of the fact that these people were ALREADY the people of God. They were not choosing to become the children of God for God had already chosen them and brought them out of Egypt. They had said "God forbid that we should forsake the Lord", the word forsake in this verse meaning to relinquish or leave. These were the children of Jacob who are referred to in Scripture, not as those who have chosen God, but as those who have been chosen of God: "...ye children of Jacob, His chosen ones" (1 Chron. 16:13 cf. Psa. 105:6). God’s people, both in the Old and New Testaments, are always referred to as His chosen, My chosen or the ones whom He has chosen, etc. (Deut. 14:2; Isa. 43:20, 44:1; Mk. 13:20; Jn. 15:19; Eph. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 2:9). The tribes of Israel had sinned and strayed and been disobedient to God, and all Joshua was saying to them was either serve the false gods or the true God. All these people had done, and all these verses are showing, is that they repented before their God. This whole passage is about repentance by a people who were already God’s people and not about them choosing to become God’s people. All God’s people stray and disobey at times but all repent and return to the Lord, not based on their free will choice of Him, but on their being HIS CHOSEN ONES (see Psa. 80:3,7,19). God will never leave or forsake His people, therefore they will always remain with Him: "For the Lord will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake: because it hath pleased the Lord to make you His people" (1 Sam. 12:22). "...I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee....I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me" (Heb. 13:5 & Jer. 32:40). The Scriptures say that God makes covenant with His chosen, not with those who ‘choose’ Him (see Psa. 89:3).

In contrast to the limited use of the words choose, choosest, etc in the New Testament, the single word chosen is used a total of 29 times in the New Testament. Again, not once is it used in reference to man having chosen God. In the Gospel of Matthew it is used 3 times. Once of God choosing Jesus His servant (12:18), and in two passages referring to the many that are called but few actually chosen (20:16; 22;14). The word chosen appears once in the Gospel of Mark. Verse 20 of chapter 13 reads in part "...for the elect’s sake, whom He hath chosen..." Notice here that the Scripture does not say that the elect have chosen God, for how then could they rightly be referred to as the elected ones, but very distinctly it is said that the elect are all the chosen of God. Again, God is the Chooser, for He alone is the One with Free Will, and His people are said to be the chosen or the elect of God. The word chosen appears twice in the Gospel of Luke. Firstly in 10:42 referring to Mary having chosen that good part (listening to Jesus’ words), and in 23:35 where we see the religious rulers deriding Christ, saying that He should save Himself from the cross if He be the Christ, the chosen of God. The word chosen is used four times in the Gospel of John. All are in reference to Jesus having chosen His apostles (6:70; 13:18; 15:16; 15:19. John 15:16 is where Christ specifically points out to His apostles "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you..." "The word here translated ‘chosen’ is that from which is derived the word ‘elect’, and means the same thing." The Book of Acts contains the word chosen a total of seven times. Acts 1:2 refers to the apostles whom Jesus had chosen. In 1:24 it is used of the choice God would make as to who would replace Judas. God speaks to Ananias in 9:15 of Paul being a chosen vessel unto Him. Acts 10:41 tells us that God raised Jesus and showed Him openly, not to all but to those witnesses God had before chosen. Acts 15:22 and 25 speak of men chosen by the apostles to go to Antioch. And Acts 22:14 is where the word chosen is used in reference to Paul being chosen by God to know His will etc. Notice that there is complete and unfathomable silence concerning any man ‘choosing’ God, a silence which cannot and must not be ignored. Further on in the New Testament we see that the word chosen appears once in the Book of Romans and is in reference to Rufus being one "...chosen in the Lord..." (Rom. 16:13). The word chosen appears three times in Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians. Twice appearing in 1:27 in reference to God having chosen the foolish and weak things of the world. It also appears in 1:28 regarding God having chosen things which are despised by the world. Chosen appears once in the second Letter to the Corinthians regarding one chosen by the churches to travel with Paul and others (8:19). In Ephesians it also appears only once. Ephesians 1:4 says, "According as HE HATH CHOSEN US in Him before the foundation of the world..." Paul is here speaking of himself and other believers as ones chosen by God in Christ Jesus before the world began. In light of this single Scripture alone, one would find it impossible to remain in the corner of free willism, for how can anyone be said to have chosen God when it is God Himself Who bears testimony that HE is the One Who has done the choosing, and that BEFORE the very foundation of the world! This is said so as to make clear that election is not based on what a man has done or on what he was foreseen would do, but solely on the grace of God and not on any work of man’s (see Rom. 9:11). Even if man could do the choosing, God has beaten him to it, as it were, and chosen men before any were even created, before the very foundation of the world. Whatever man believes about conversion, it cannot be referred to as his choosing God, for this would imply an ability to do so which contradicts what we have seen the Scriptures say about man’s spiritual state. Choosing, deciding, who will be among the elect of God, the saved who will enjoy an eternity of bliss with the Lord, is purely the domain of God Almighty!! Not only has God made it abundantly clear that HE is the one who does the choosing He has added, so that no one can rightly claim that they have made choice of Him, that His choosing was done BEFORE the very foundation of the world!! This in itself rules out any idea of free will being the determining or deciding factor in a man’s salvation. 2 Thessalonians 2:13 shows that "...God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation..." Again we see God as the one Who does the choosing, from the beginning, and not man. This is to show that man plays no active part in election, in his being elected—that election is in no way based on what man has done, should do, could do or was foreseen would do, but only upon the purpose and will of God: "Not by works of righteousness which we have done (foreseen or otherwise), but according to His mercy He saved us..." (Titus 3:5). Mercy and grace do not come in response to a good and deserving work, because of any redeeming feature, but IN SPITE OF the complete absence of any meritorious act or desire. 2 Timothy 2:4 is where we see the word chosen used in reference to a soldier endeavoring to please the one who has chosen him to be a soldier. James 2:5 talks of God having chosen the poor of this world. Peter in his first Letter speaks of those saved ones as being chosen of God and precious (2:4). And as we have already seen, 1 Peter 2:9 says that the saved are a chosen generation and not a generation of choosers. Finally, Revelation 17:14 speaks of those who are with the Lamb as "...called, and chosen, and faithful." And so we see that in all of the New Testament not a single Scripture is to be found which describes man as choosing God or that any man chose God, chooses God, chooseth or choosest God or any instance where a man has chosen God! In contrast to this, and that which stands as an eternal reminder of just WHO CHOOSES WHOM, is the multiple number of times the Scriptures proclaim the realm of choice as being solely that of God.

Further to our study and in contrast to the words choose, chooseth, choosest, choosing and chose appearing only 7 times in the New Testament, it will no doubt be extremely disconcerting for the free willer to learn that the words elect, elect’s, elected and election appear 27 times in the New Testament. Significantly, all but one are in reference to those who are chosen or elected by God to receive salvation through Jesus Christ. No reason though for the free willer to hold out any hope that perhaps this one verse is in support of his doctrine—the odd one out is merely a reference made to the elect angels (1 Tim. 5:21). Yes, even the angels that are with God are there because God elected them.

The irresistible and undeniable conclusion to our study is that no such thing as a free will choice by man for God exists in the Scriptures, for NEVER ONCE do the Scriptures refer to the saved as those who elected God, or those who have chosen God! They are ALWAYS spoken of as recipients, as those who are the chosen ones elected by God not according to anything they have done or will do, not according to their choice of Him, not according to their having desired or loved Him first, but according to His will. What room would there be for grace in a world where man could, of his own free will, choose God? Where would mercy fit in if a man needed nothing but his own free will to simply come and choose God and accept what He has ‘on offer’? And let not the free willer even begin to think that he chooses God after God has visited him with grace, because if God has made the first move it is of a surety that move, and all that springs from it, has been motivated by His love: "We love Him because He FIRST loved us" (1 Jn. 4:19) and God’s love for His people was the motivating factor in His sending His Son "...to be the propitiation for our (those whom He loved—the beloved, see v.11) sins" (1 Jn. 4:10). Everything to do with a saved man’s affections for God, including his faith, has come because God loved the man FIRST. Seeing that it is without question that God has made the first move, it stands to biblical reason that salvation is solely by Him from the very beginning and that it is by His free will that one comes to God. The saved man is not saved because he believes, but believes because he is saved. No man can come to Me, Jesus said, except—making it explicitly clear that there is no other way—the Father draws him (see Jn. 6:44 cf. Psa. 65:4). This is an unreserved statement on the Lord’s part and is an out and out denial of the existence of any free will in man which can lead him to God. It is God Who comes to a man and if it is by the free will of God that a man is saved, it can be certain that man will be saved for who can resist His will? It is God Who has made the choice and not man. It cannot be argued, as many would have us believe, that we choose God because He chose us or that He chooses us because we chose Him. Many will recall their school days where one was to be chosen from among a group of children for a sporting event. Two children were captains and they made their choice of who they wanted on their team. The children who were to be chosen did not make the choice, only the captains did. How silly would it be to say, ‘The captain chose me and then I chose the captain’! Of great significance is the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is called the "...Captain of their (believers) salvation" (Heb. 2:10). The word Captain here means ‘Originator, founder, leader, chief, first’. In Hebrews 12:2 it says, "Looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith..." Amazingly, the word for both captain and author in the original Greek is the very same word archegos! Jesus is the initiator, or the source of the faith with which a man believes the true God, and is the completer of salvation. There can only be one instance which can rightly and biblically be described by the word ‘choice’ in the matter of a man’s salvation and that is that the choice was made by God before the foundation of the world, before man was even created. One is either the chooser or the chosen. A man cannot be both. Just as a man cannot cause his physical conception or birth, so too, he cannot in any way be the author, the cause, the originator, the instigator or in any way the catalyst, of his spiritual conception and re-birth. Something which does not exist cannot will itself into existence. God gives spiritual life according to His grace and purpose, according to HIS Free Will, and not according to man’s, for he has none when it comes to the matter of spiritual regeneration. A man can have religious thoughts and desires etc., but he has nothing in him, of his own nature, which can lead him to the true God. Nothing which could be the impetus for any decision for God, no incentive or natural impulse emanating from his sinful nature that would drive him to God. As was discussed earlier, seeing that no man can recommend himself to God or be justified by God because of any work the man does, any ‘good deed’ he has performed (see Gal. 2:16), it is obvious that this rule precludes any idea that a man can choose God, thus drawing His affection and meriting His favor. One cannot overstate the fact that salvation comes when God gives, not after a man does.

It is said by many advocates of the ‘free will decision’ doctrine that those whom God has chosen are the ones He saw, as He gazed into the future, would one day choose Him. This would make salvation something which does not come solely by the grace of God, thus making Him not the only one responsible for salvation and with rightful claim to all the glory for salvation, but something which is offered by God and chosen by man, thus making the success of salvation conditioned or dependant on the act or work of man. According to this line of thought, salvation is not dependant on the will of God but ultimately on the will of man, free from any Godly influence. The saved are the ones "...who are called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow; He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son..." (Rom. 8:28,29 cf. 1 Cor. 8:3). "In the language of Scripture, something foreknown is not simply that which God was aware of prior to a certain point. Rather, it is presented as that which God gave prior consent to, that which received His favorable or special recognition. Hence, this term is reserved for those matters which God favorably, deliberately and freely chose and ordained....Used of persons, to foreknow with approbation, to foreapprove or make a previous choice of, as special people (Rom. 11:2 cf. 1 Pet. 1:19,20). Foreknowledge and foreordination are logically coordinate. The former emphasizes the exercize of God’s wisdom and intelligence in regard to His eternal purpose and the latter emphasizes the exercise of God’s will in regard to it. What He has decreed is what He has decided." God has predestinated those whom He fore-loved to salvation. God has entrusted a people, whom He chose before the foundation of the world, to His Son. He has done this that His Son should die for them and establish a perfect Righteousness for them. "Nothing outside of God Himself moved or influenced Him to save sinners. It was His love and purpose to glorify Himself that caused Him to save sinners." "There is no place in the Scriptures for an election which is carefully adjusted to the foreseen actions of the creature. The Divine will is never made dependant on the creaturely will for its determinations." Can you begin to see how the doctrine of man’s free will snatches the reins of Sovereignty from the Will of God. It is the Will of God that is the mover of men and no ‘free will’ of man’s. It is God Who changes the hearts of men toward Him and not man on his own (see Prov. 21:1). "...Salvation is of the Lord" (Jon. 2:9) and He does not require man’s help in the matter. As has been established, man is utterly helpless and hopeless in his natural fallen state, so how could man be the initiator or even a contributor in the slightest degree to his own salvation? Man is bound to a floating log, by his sins and sinful nature, that is careering down river towards the waterfall, with no way of releasing himself. This matter of ‘free will’ claims no small part in the ultimate salvation of a man but lays claim to that which instigates his regeneration. God’s hands are tied before and until man’s moment of free will comes and only then may God act, but only with man’s permission. Those who wrest the Scriptures say that "Faith is the sinner’s gift to God; it is man’s contribution to salvation." Man does not act because of the grace of God but, according to the free willer, it is man who makes the initial move, which God patiently awaits, to which God then responds! It is a case of "God can’t unless you will" or "God can’t if you won’t".

Why did God send a Savior if man had a free will strong enough to reach out and choose God? The reason Jesus was sent as Savior to the earth was to do what no man could do: establish a perfect righteousness before God—fully obey the law of God that had been so terribly abused and satisfy the demands of the justice of God by taking His people’s sins and nailing them to His cross. There is no condition for salvation that Christ did not meet. If man could save himself he would not need a Savior. Seeing that a Savior has been provided, it is clear that man does need a Savior so in order to find out if there is anything a man can do or must do to contribute to his own salvation, we need to examine just what the Savior has done. If what He has done to save a man leaves room for that man to contribute to his salvation, or in any way conditions that salvation on the man, then the free willer has a case. However, if what Christ has done to save the elect of God from their sins is complete—leaving nothing to chance by leaving the final decision to man or any part of salvation conditioned on man—and assuring, nay demanding, the salvation of those for whom He died, then the free willer does not have a leg to stand on. If all the glory for salvation belongs to God, then this is a resounding declaration that He has done all that was necessary for the salvation of a man, including the granting of the gift of repentance and the reception of Christ, leaving man as a mere recipient of God’s good grace and mercy. If all the glory for all of salvation belongs to God, then it stands to biblical reason that He is responsible for every part of salvation and that man has done nothing that warrants him a share in that glory. This is made perfectly clear in the following Scripture "In Whom (Christ) also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will: THAT WE SHOULD BE TO THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORY..." (Eph. 1:11,12). "The affirmation here is not merely that God accomplishes the designs of salvation according to the counsel of His own will, but that He does everything ...He has an agency in causing the emotions of our hearts. "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13 cf. 1 Cor 12:11)." Scripture declares that Christians are a chosen people that they should show forth the praises of Him Who has called them (see 1 Pet. 2:9) and not boast in anything which they have done: "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ..." (Gal. 6:14). The Bible does not call a man’s positive response to the Gospel a ‘choice’, but a case of man being made willing to receive Christ by the will and power of God alone. Man’s receiving is not that which precedes, but is always something which follows God’s making the man willing to receive Him in the day of His power. This is why salvation comes, not by a free will choice of man, but a gift given by the free grace of God. No man can be inclined towards Christ unless God has blessed the man with that inclination, not merely making his receiving Christ a potential thing dependant on man’s free-will decision, but guaranteeing it because of GOD’S purpose and will. God makes the man willing to receive and He is the cause or reason a man can and does approach Him. Really, all this is summed up perfectly by the Lord Himself when He said "No man can come unto Me EXCEPT THE FATHER..." (Jn. 6:44). Christ did not say anything about man’s coming being conditioned on, or something achievable by, anything the man could do. Christ did not say, ‘Except the man does this or that’, or, ‘Except the man meet this condition or that condition’, but the sole condition was that except the Father does something no man can ever come to the Savior. This is not some issue of semantics, but of the clarification and proper meaning of terms. A bottle does not choose its contents. It plays no part in producing what is put into it. So too, man like the bottle is merely a recepticle. And just as with the bottle not being able to do a single solitary thing to remove its cork, man has no part in something as significant as ‘removing the cork’ so as to prepare himself, to make himself receptive and submitted to, that which is about to be given him. It is all done by God. It is not man who prepares himself before he ‘chooses’ God, but God Who prepares man and makes him receptive, willing to receive not able to choose the Savior. We have given much evidence to show that there is nothing inherent in man that can dispose him to choose, or even want to choose, the true God. This act of receiving Christ, of being willing to receive Him, is initiated, instigated, carried out by and is performed, because of God. The saved man is a beneficiary of God’s benefits, not a co-administrator of director of them. All the glory for salvation belongs to God and man has no claims to it. God is responsible for ALL of salvation from beginning to final glory and there is nothing man can say he has done to contribute to any part of salvation. There is no room for a man to boast, for all the glory belongs to God. God is just as much responsible for a man’s willingness to receive Him as he is for the man’s salvation unto glory. Salvation is not some reward granted by God based on a ‘free-will’ decision of man’s but is something that God gives as part of His blessed, benevolent and unmerited favor towards the man.

The whole of christendom virtually chants, as if it were, some mystical mantra: ‘Salvation is by grace, salvation is by grace,’ and yet they do not understand what they are saying when they utter the word grace. Grace is something which cannot be merited and therefore to say that after a man chooses God, the Lord then responds by granting His grace, is ludicrous. Grace is not motivated by a deed of man but by the mercy of God. Grace and mercy, by definition, are things given in light of there being no redeeming feature of, or act by, man which could justify him. If salvation is given freely and solely by the unmerited grace of God—not according to ANYTHING man has done but according to God’s purpose and will—then what the free willer is believing in, whether he knows it or not, is a salvation not based on grace but on works, something given as a deserved wage which the man has earned the right to have and which demands that God supply. If you do something that makes another respond in a certain way, then you are the one who has prompted that person’s action. It has not come by an independent act of volition on their part but as a response to what you have done. Your act has brought on, or caused, an effect. If the free willer is right, it is no longer the Person and Work of Christ, the imputation of His Righteousness and the non-imputation of sin, that demands man’s salvation but something which man has done. Paul the apostle asks,"...who maketh thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?" (1 Cor. 4:7). "Had not God interfered and made a difference, all would have remained alike under sin. The race (of man) would have together rejected His mercy; and it is only by His distinguishing love that any are brought to believe and be saved." When a person says ‘I chose God’, they are glorying, boasting, in themselves. They are saying it is they themselves, by their choice of Him, that has made them to differ from the one who has not made such a decision. It is not free grace, but free will that is gloried in and seen as that which has made the difference. As we shall see later, NOT EVEN THE ATTRIBUTING OF THIS FREE-WILL DECISION TO GOD’S ENABLING GRACE CAN REDEEM THIS FALSE DOCTRINE. No, my friend, it is God Who makes the difference between saved and lost and not man. GRACE IS GOD, NOT YOU! All that a saved man has he readily, joyfully, admits he has received from God as a gift and not something he went out and chose or earned. The apostle John confirms this when He said, "A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven" (Jn. 3:27). Speaking to believers James said, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights..." (Jas. 1:17). In the very next verse James declares: "OF HIS OWN WILL begat He us with the word of truth... (Jas. 1:18 cf. 1 Pet. 1:23). James makes it very clear that salvation is a gift from above that God gives according to His own will, and not man’s ‘free will’. When we combine the words of Paul, "...it is not of him that willeth..." (Rom. 9:16) with those of James, "Of His own will begat He us..." (Jas. 1:18), it is made abundantly clear just whose will is responsible for a man’s salvation. And yet there is still more confirmation for those who remain unconvinced. John says that those who have received Him, who have been given the power, or privilege, to become the sons of God, who believe on His name "...were born, not of blood, NOR OF THE WILL OF THE FLESH, NOR OF THE WILL OF MAN, BUT OF GOD" (Jn. 1:13 cf. 1 Pet. 1:23). Now if these things were reversed, if the Scripture had said ‘Man is not born again by the sovereign will of God but by the free will of man’, there would be no controversy. Such words would not be difficult to understand and comprehend would they? So why, it must be asked, cannot the free willer see that salvation is not of man, it is not of a man’s will, but of the WILL OF GOD, which is what this Scripture is plainly teaching! There is no confusion in the Scriptures of just whose will is responsible for a man’s being born again: NOT OF THE WILL OF MAN BUT OF THE WILL OF GOD! End of argument. There is no controversy in the Scriptures about whose will was involved in the salvation of a man. It is not the Scriptures which create confusion, but the blinded minds of men who can only perceive what their sinful natures allow them to see. The controversy and confusion exists only in the blinded minds of lost men.

Christ came to the earth to save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).The sins of man demand man’s suffering in hell for all eternity. No man can come to God based on his own efforts at obeying God’s law for in all his efforts man shows that he is a sinner, for his ‘obedience’ is far from perfect. "...a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ...for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified" (Gal. 2:16). Works are something which a man can do but which are unprofitable to him in the sight of God. Man is not saved by what he does or because of anything in him, but by that which is of Christ and freely given. So we see that salvation does not come by the works of man nor by a man’s will. In all man’s ‘obedience’ there is sin. All his attempts at obeying God’s law achieve nothing because the law reveals that none of his obedience is perfect, therefore no man can be said to have truly obeyed the law. The more a man seeks to obey, the more his efforts reveal just how much of a sinner he really is: "...by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20). And so man can never establish a perfect righteousness for himself, which is the only thing that can recommend him to God. The fact that man is an unrighteous creature is inextricably linked with the fact that there is no man that seeks, or desires, God. Man’s failure to seek God, coupled with his unrighteousness, reveals a heart that is so hardened against God that the last thing anyone in their right mind could ever conclude about man is that he could one day come of his own ‘free will’, of all things, and choose God. Even if there was such a condition of salvation, that a man must choose God, no one with any sense would predicate such a choice as coming from the ‘free will’ of man. Man has no free will other than to choose SIN, SIN, SIN over and over and over again!! It may not appear as sin in man’s eyes but it most definitely does in God’s eyes. No matter how zealous for good works a man may be, no matter how religious he is, none can be justified by what they do "...for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified" (Psa. 143:2). The Psalmist says, "If, Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand" (Psa. 130:3). "We cannot justify ourselves before God, or plead ‘not guilty’. If God deal with us in strict justice, we are undone." "It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed..." (Lam. 3:22). It is not man’s good deeds or ‘free will’ choice of God that preserves man and keeps him free of the wrath of God, but solely by God’s mercy is a man made acceptable: "And BY HIM all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:39 cf. Isa. 53:11). "Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him" (Rom. 5:9). Now let not any accuse us of saying that man cannot choose to do good instead of evil; That he cannot choose to restrain his temper instead of letting someone feel the full brunt of it; that he cannot choose to help his fellow man rather than decide to ignore his cries for help; that he cannot choose to drink lemonade rather than get drunk on beer. Of course man has the ability to choose one thing over another but in his rotten sinful state he cannot in and of himself, according to the Bible, go against his sinful nature—his state of spiritual deadness—and choose God: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil" (Jer. 13:23). Man does not seek God, because he is dead to God. He does not understand Him, he does not know Him and he does not want Him, so how could he ever choose Him? Man is spiritually dead to God and therefore has no ability, no capacity, no propensity, nothing in him which can generate a love for God or which can cause him to lean towards God and make a free-will decision for Him completely of his own power. The Scriptures verify this. In sharp contrast to the false doctrine which claims a man can choose God, man, in his natural fallen state, is said by the Scriptures to be one who constantly and continually ‘chooses’ NOT to seek God. This is obvious, for God says there are none who seek Him. This means that at any given moment, be it the past, present or future, NONE have, do, or will seek God! Man, in accordance with his sinful character, remains consistent in his failure to seek or desire the true God. No serious Bible student can deny this and so all that is left is the lonely little notion that man’s positive response to God is not the fruit of God’s grace towards the man but the outcome of man’s free-will decision to choose God. There is nothing in Scripture to base this on and thus no sanction for a single soul to believe it. It is all part of a false gospel which promotes a false god who cannot save. Truth is the first casualty of a false gospel and people’s souls being forever lost in the flames of hell is the end result.

Christ came and obeyed the law perfectly, having not been born of the seed of man but by the Holy Ghost. Christ was free of sin, perfect God in the form of a perfect Man and in His obedience there was no sin present, no imperfection. He wholly succeeded in what He set out to do. Incorporated into Christ’s obedience unto death to establish perfect righteousness, was His payment for every sin of every one He died for, so that God’s Justice is now satisfied and there is no need for any punishment to be inflicted on those people for whom Christ died and on whose behalf He endured God’s wrath towards their sin. Their sins have been charged to Christ and His Righteousness charged to their account (see 2 Cor. 5:21). Before God, all for whom Christ died stand perfect forever: "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth" (Rom. 8:33). Now please tell me where does man fit into all this? The square peg of man’s supposed free will simply will not fit the round hole of God’s method of salvation. In light of all the evidence to the contrary how, it may be asked, ‘can salvation be conditioned on man?’ What is it that man must do, and therefore can do, that Christ has not done or failed to do? God has elected to set His love upon certain individuals chosen before time began. They have all been predestinated to be called and justified by grace through Christ (Rom. 8:30), and upon nothing of their own doing; Righteousness has been established for them; Justice has been satisfied on their behalf; and because of what has been done for them, not to mention the fact that God has chosen them not to receive His wrath but for the purpose of being saved, they will all receive Christ the Savior. Not because of their choice but because they are His sheep; not from anything which originates within them but because of the grace of God, the mercy of God and the Spirit of God enlightening each and every one: "...of HIM are ye in Christ Jesus..." (1 Cor. 1:30). Each one is regenerated, not of anything inherent in them but by the Holy Spirit of God. All the glory for salvation belongs to God. The ‘motor’ of spiritual life is not kick-started by man, for by nature he has no idea where the Key is to engage the motor. As a matter of fact, man by nature thinks his spiritual motor is fine and running smoothly! The regeneration of man begins with, and is maintained solely by, the will of God. Notice that everything we are saying points to God and is giving Him all the glory for every bit of salvation, leaving absolutely no room for a man to lay claim and boast of his part in salvation. THE TRUE GOSPEL BELIEVER BELIEVES ALL OF SALVATION IS ALL BY GRACE—ALL BY GOD. There is no room in the Gospel which comes from God for a man to boast of any initiating act, contributing work or deed of cooperation upon which his salvation is dependant. However, as with all man-made gospels, including the one which teaches the free will of man, there is always room for a man to boast which is why they are so popular, for they all appeal to man’s fallen nature. Thus, they are concluded to be false gospels which cannot save. With all his religious zeal, a false gospel is the only gospel a man, by nature, can come up with or reach out for. The false gospel of man’s free will is just as much a figment of man’s imagination as any other false and deceptive gospel. These gospels are the only ones which make any sense to the natural mind of man, hence their popularity and allegiance to them. The word boast as used in Ephesians 2:9 means ‘glory’ ‘joy’ or ‘rejoice’. This verse informs us: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph. 2:8,9). There is nothing for man to boast in, to rejoice in as having originated from him, when it comes to the matter of salvation. It is purely an act of grace which is received through a faith which does not even come from man but is a gift given by God, not as a reward, not as some wage, not in response to something which man has done, but as a free will gift of God. Man comes to God because of, and in the day of, God’s power and by reason of God’s will. There is nothing that man must do, believe, repent, etc., that is not given to him as a gift. A man must believe, a man must repent, but these are both gifts given from above and not things which a man can work himself up to and choose to do or pluck from the quiver of his own righteousness. Nothing can be, or needs to be, added to that which is already completed. God’s plan of salvation is a perfect plan. It is a plan which does not depend on man’s ‘free will decision’ to take part in it, for THIS PLAN WAS FORMED IN LIGHT OF THE FACT THAT NO MAN WOULD SEEK GOD OR COULD SEEK GOD!! The whole plan for a salvation by grace and mercy was necessitated and formed to give God all the glory and leave no room for man to boast in anything he has done or was enabled to do. The entire plan for salvation had to be by grace, for there was no other viable ‘option’. God had to receive all the glory and so salvation had to be all of God. If salvation was possible with man, then the glory for it would have been all man’s or shared between God and man. But as salvation is impossible with man via works, it can only be made possible by God through His grace, thereby God is the only one responsible for it and to whom ALL the glory rightly belongs (see Isa. 42:8). Those who promote free will do boast in what they have done. They are always saying ‘I have chosen Christ’, or ‘I have accepted Christ’, or ‘I have made Christ my Lord and Savior’. Now they may say that they praise God for their ‘choice’, comforting and assuring themselves that they are giving all the glory to God because they are praising Him for what they have done, but the reality of the situation is that such people glory in themselves, they exalt themselves and not God. Just as the bottle played no part in producing its contents, so too, the saved man has played no part in producing the saving faith that is now in him solely because of the grace of God. What’s more, the saved man does not wish to claim any work on his part that has contributed to his salvation. The truly saved man gives all the glory to God for having saved him, for he knows that he in no way played any part in attracting God’s grace or influencing His choice of him.

The following illustration shows just how subtle this shifting of the glory for salvation is. However fine the line between saved and lost may be, it is clear, distinct and well defined by Scriptures such as these: "The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I THANK THEE, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I FAST twice in the week, I GIVE tithes of all that I possess.’ And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful unto me a sinner’. I tell you THIS man went down to His house justifed rather than the other: for everyone that EXALTETH HIMSELF shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted" (Lk. 18:11-13). Notice here that the Pharisee thanked God that he was not like other men. He then proceeded to boast, just as the free willer boasts in his ‘decision for Christ’, of what he did, obviously believing, in light of his attitude towards the publican, that his acts of obedience in some way contributed to his gaining God’s favor, even though he believed he was attributing all the good he did, not to himself, but to God. The publican, however, did not mention even one ‘good’ deed that he had done. He brought none of his righteousnesses with him, which is the case with every truly saved person (see Phil. 3:9), but humbly asked for God’s mercy, providing evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work upon him. He was not seeking or expecting to be justified by any of his own works, whether he attributed them to God or not. The publican, along with every truly saved man, shares the same mindset as the apostle Paul: "...God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ..." (Gal. 6:14). The publican did not expect his works to make the difference between Heaven and Hell, nor did he look to anything he did, but only to God and His Mercy. To humble oneself is not a condition a man must meet in order to come to God, but is an evidence of God coming to the man. It is not man’s free choice for God that makes the difference between heaven and hell but God’s free will choice of man. Christ said this man, the Publican, rather than the Pharisee, was justifed. The word justified in this passage means ‘to render (i.e. show or regard as) just or innocent, free, be righteous’. Notice also that Christ referred to the Pharisee, who attributed his good deeds to God, as one who did not merely have things wrong and just needed a little correcting, but as one who exalted himself. If a man does not believe the Gospel wherein is revealed the righteousness of Christ, he shows by his ignorance that he seeks to establish a righteousness of his own (see Rom. 10). So too, the man who believes that anything he has done is that which makes the difference between saved and lost, even though he praises God for it, exalts himself and not God, and remains in an unjustified state. God never overlooks the error that leavens the whole lump (see Gal 5:9). The truly saved man does not say ‘Come and see what God has enabled me to do for my soul’ but "...I will declare what HE HAS DONE for my soul" (Psa. 66:16). Be not deceived. Those who adhere to the doctrine of free will, that a man must make a free-will decision for Christ before he can be saved, conditions salvation not on God’s election of grace and Christ’s atonement for sin, but on a work or act of man. Man must make his decision for Christ before salvation can be given to him rather than man’s receiving Christ being something which is the result or fruit of salvation by grace being granted a man by God’s love-motivated election of him. The free willer who insists he does not take any of the glory for salvation away from Christ because he attributes his positive decision for Christ to God’s enabling power, has been taught a lie. He is exalting himself, and not God, according to the Scriptures. Notice also in our passage just how many times the Pharisee used the word ‘I’. He said it 5 times whereas the publican made no mention of himself other than for God to be merciful to him. Notice how there is no cause to believe the publican was in any way boasting by his request, but plenty of reason to believe that the Pharisee was boasting. The free willer is in the same boat as the Pharisee. He exalts not God but himself, for he is constantly drawing attention to what he has done rather than only seeking to draw the listener’s attention to God and what He does. ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’, is all they say: ‘I chose Him, I love Him, I accepted Him, I sought Him, I found Him, I came to Him, I, I, I....’ The true believer says ‘God has elected me, He chose me, He has visited me with His glorious grace, His Son died for me, His righteousness was imputed to me, He took away my sins, He was merciful to me, He gave me the gift of faith, He caused me to repent and approach Him, He, He, He...’ I am sure the reader can see the difference between the two. One exalts himself while the other humbles himself and is justified. The free willer’s gospel teaches a salvation by works, for it allows room for a man to boast in his salvation even though, to his mind, he denies this by attributing his obedience, in the form of his free will decision for Christ, to God. Such people are LOST. In this we see that boasting is not excluded by a gospel which teaches that salvation is conditioned on a man’s works, or hinges on a man’s free will decision, but it is only ever excluded by THE Gospel Message which teaches that salvation is by grace through faith in the Person and Works of Christ Jesus the Lord, attributing all of salvation to Him and conditioning no part of it on man. Grace does not enable a man to believe, but provides, as a gift, the only faith which can and does believe the Gospel. Only THIS Gospel leaves no room for a man to boast; only THIS Gospel saves. Faith in this Gospel alone humbles the believer, excluding all boasting, for it conditions all of salvation on Christ. (see Rom. 3:24-28).

What can man boast of? Most free willer’s say that God visits people with His grace, presents the Gospel to them and they then make their choice whether to accept God or not. Some free willer’s say that man’s choice is made even before God’s grace appears on the scene. All free willer’s say that God has sent Christ His Son to die for everyone and now, having done all they can, the Father and His Son Jesus sit and wait in hope that someone will choose to accept them and what they have done! God is awaiting man’s decision about His ‘offer’, according to the free willer. The choice, it is said, is completely up to man. He is free to choose for God or against God. Some go so far as to say that God has cast his vote for man, Satan has cast his vote against man and now man has the deciding vote as to where he will spend eternity. What kind of a God is this whose vote carries with it no more weight, or influence, than that of Satan or even man’s! This is the Sovereign King of the universe? God will not influence man either way but just makes His ‘offer’ and hopes for the best. God cannot influence man. In fact, they say God is a gentleman and would never go against the will of man, He would never try and influence a man’s will one way or the other. My friend, YOU HAD BETTER HOPE THAT GOD INTERFERES IN YOUR LIFE AND SAVES YOU FOR IT IS ONLY BY GOD’S WILL THAT A MAN IS BEGOTTEN OF GOD!! "Of HIS OWN WILL begat He us..." (Jas. 1:18). The doctrine of free willism makes man the sovereign over his own destiny and turns God into a helpless onlooker. Man being left with the ultimate decision that will determine his fate is something which is akin to Satan’s lie to Eve rather than to anything God has taught. If you believe in the free will of man then you cannot believe in the Sovereignty of God. If you believe in the free will of man then you cannot believe in the free grace of God. You cannot believe that it is God’s grace alone that makes the difference between saved and lost. You cannot believe that God has the free will to choose those He wants saved, when you believe that every individual man has the exclusive right and ability to make this choice by his free will either for God or against God. Just as salvation is either by God’s grace or your works (see Rom. 11:6), so too, it is either by God’s will or your will. God’s grace is not subordinate to man’s will and God’s will is not subservient to a man’s works. Salvation is not conditioned on a man’s works but on God’s will. The Sovereign God has rule over everyone and everything and His will is not subject to anyone else’s will, but only to His own purpose and glory. He has mercy on those He has chosen to be merciful to and has no mercy for those whom He has not chosen. The doctrine of free willism changes man from being a creature without hope into one with such power and authority that it can determine its own fate, whilst turning the Almighty God into the one who has no hope of saving anyone by His will.

A serious ramification of the false doctrine of man’s free will and its sister teaching, universal atonement, is the corruption of the saving work of Christ on the cross, emptying it of its true worth and supplanting it with a lie. The whole essence of atonement is ripped apart and replaced by a corrupt version. This counterfeit atonement, along with all others, makes Christ’s death no longer about His dying for the sins of His elect—all whom God had given Him—His shed blood no longer that which ensures that the penalty for sin is paid and that no one for whom that precious blood was shed will spend a single moment in hell, but rather His death is turned into something which was done on behalf of all men, every individual ever born! The success of this atoning death rests, not on the blood of Christ which was shed for sin, but on man’s decision to accept or reject what Christ has done, Who, like the Father, can only sit and hope that people will not reject what He has done for them. The Scriptures know absolutely nothing of such a system of ‘salvation’. From the sacrificial types of the Old Testament to the teachings of the New Testament on the eternal redemption accomplished by the blood of Christ (Heb. 9:12), nothing of this type can be seen. This author has written several booklets which go deep into detail concerning the death of Christ and whom that death was for and are readily available upon request, so we shall not go into this in any great detail here. Suffice it to say, the Old Testament sacrificial system was ordered by the Lord (see Lev. 16). The annual sacrifices of the high priest were ordered by God to be performed, not for every individual in the world, the success of which being determined by their individual choice to accept what was done on their behalf, but they were ordered to be done only on the behalf of God’s temporal people, Israel. The success of the high priest’s annual sacrifice was dependant on its being performed to the specifications and directions given by God and upon HIS acceptance of them. These Old Testament sacrifices were merely a type of what the Messiah would do for His people. "By the typical system, God was not only educating His people for the ‘good things to come’, but was also preparing human language to be a fit medium for the revelation of His grace in Christ. It is to the types we must turn if we would define aright the sacrificial terms of the New Testament....the doctrinal statements of the Epistles are frequently couched in the language of the types, and can only be rightly interpreted in the light which they furnish." Christ was to sacrifice His very life on the behalf of all those whom God chose to give unto Him and not for every individual or even those who ‘would’ choose Him: "As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to AS MANY AS THOU HAST GIVEN HIM" (Jn. 17:2 cf. Matt. 11:27). Again, the success of this sacrifice, just like that of the Old Testament high priest, depended on God’s acceptance of it. After all, it was God to Whom the sacrifice was being made. It was to God that Jesus Christ offered Himself, God accepting what Christ had done solely on the basis that His effort was in direct accord with God’s will, and that Christ’s sacrifice was perfect, meeting every demand that God’s justice and law decreed needed to be met in order for a man to be saved. Also, when turning to the Old Testament to learn about Christ’s sacrificial death, we see that the sacrifice which God directed the high priest to make, which was a type of what Christ would do, was a substitutionary sacrifice. The success of this sacrifice did not depend on its acceptance by those for whom it was made, but was wholly dependant on God’s accepting it. CHRIST’S SACRIFICE WAS OFFERED TO GOD, NOT MAN (Heb. 9:14). It was offered to God on the behalf of those whom God had ALREADY chosen, therefore its effectiveness was not dependant on a man’s free-will decision to accept it but on Christ and His sacrifice and the One to Whom it was made. Writing to believers, Paul said "...Christ...hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice TO GOD for a sweet smelling savour" (Eph. 5:2 cf. Gen. 8:20,21). Again, like the Old Testament sacrifices, Christ’s sacrifice was not for every individual in the world but solely for those whom God had elected and in turn had given to Christ to perform sacrifice for. Christ so loved the Church that He gave Himself exclusively for it: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it" (Eph. 5:25; see also Acts 20:28) The Church, of course, is Christ’s Bride made up of all God’s elect, or called out ones. Jesus states: "I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep....I lay down My life for the sheep" (Jn. 10:11,15). In writing to a fellow believer, Paul the apostle spoke of the Savior "Who gave Himself for US, that He might redeem US from ALL iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar (special, one’s own) people, zealous of good works" (Titus 2:14). In illustrating the love of God for His people, the apostle John, writing to Christians, said: "...He laid down His life for US..." (1 Jn. 3:16). And Paul the apostle, speaking to Christians, said: "Christ hath redeemed US from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us..." (Gal. 3:13), thus eternally linking Christ’s death with guaranteed redemption for all those for whom He died. The effectiveness of Christ’s sacrifice depends, not on a man’s choice to receive it, but on the sacrifice itself being performed to exact specifications. As Christ’s sacrifice was a substitutionary sacrifice, this meant that "...by means of (Christ’s) death...they which are called (those for whom He died) (will) receive the promise of eternal inheritance" (Heb. 9:15). Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, ensuring the Father’s acceptance of what the Son had offered and purging from dead works the consciences of all those for whom He died (see Heb. 9:14). Christ did what He did on the behalf of all those whom God had predestined to receive His grace and He accomplished all that He set out to do for them, thus making certain their reception of His work for them—not by their free will choice but by the grace of God, by His free will, that they, in time, be saved.

One of the questions the person who believes in free will often asks in light of his claim that election is unfair is: ‘If God does the choosing then why didn’t He choose everyone?’ Such a question is rather foolish and comes from a less than astute mind, for in asking it one shows that one has missed the point entirely: if God has done something, is it not right that He has done it and has He not the right to have done it? If we play the Devil’s advocate for a moment we may well ask, ‘What right has God to choose any man for the purposes of salvation for they are all sinners, none are righteous and there are none who seek or desire God?’ Who is man anyway that he should turn and shake a fist at God and complain that He has not done what the mind of natural fallen man is convinced would have been the fair thing for Him to have done. ‘Why hasn’t God chosen everyone, or at least more than would be lost?’ is another favorite ‘argument’ put forth by the free willer. Does not God, as Absolute Sovereign, have the right to do as He wills? And who amongst us would dare accuse God of doing anything which is unfair or unjust? If the reader supposes that I am arguing incorrectly here, that I am simply making a presumption based on a false interpretation of the Scriptures, and thereby justifying my belief that God has sovereignly elected some to salvation, and trying to prove this by assuming that God has done it, placing it under the banner that anything God does is just and right, therefore concluding that election must be right, will no doubt be surprised that my argument, far from being incorrect, is sourced from the Scriptures themselves.

Romans 9 is a chapter in the Bible which has been known to be completely ignored by some Arminian (free will) ministers as they ‘work their way through’ the book of Romans each Sunday morning. And after reading its contents, there is little wonder. The doctrine of sovereign election is so foreign to the mind of man and he is so at enmity with it, he even resists it when it is seen clearly in the Scriptures themselves. He ignores it and acts in denial of it. As is so often the case, when man has no answer for