What is God's Will?

Free Will

Free will without God’s grace is not free will at all, but is the permanent prisoner and bondslave of evil, since it cannot turn itself to good.

Martin Luther

When we shall see the dead rise from the grave by their own power, then may we expect to see ungodly sinners of their own free will turning to Christ.

Morning And Evening, Page 505

Charles Spurgeon

Free-will, without God’s grace and the Holy Ghost, can do nothing but sin.

Augustine of Hippo

To will is human, to will the bad is of fallen nature, but to will the good is of grace.

John Calvin

Why did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

C. S. Lewis

Despite all the doctrines which proud free-will has manufactured, there has never been found from Adam’s day until now a single instance in which the sinner first sought his God. God must first seek him. God’s First Words To The First Sinner, Volume 7, Sermon #412 - Genesis 3:9

Charles Spurgeon

Free-will doctrine—what does it? It magnifies man into God; it declares God’s purposes a nullity, since they cannot be carried out unless men are willing. It makes God’s will a waiting servant to the will of man, and the whole covenant of grace dependent upon human action. Denying election on the ground of injustice it holds God to be a debtor to sinners, so that if he gives grace to one he is bound to do so to all. It teaches that the blood of Christ was shed equally for all men, and since some are lost, this doctrine ascribes the difference to man’s own will, thus making the atonement itself a powerless thing until the will of man gives it efficacy. A Jealous God, Volume 9, Sermon #502 - Exodus 34:14

Charles Spurgeon

I reject and condemn as erroneous every doctrine which extols our free will, and fights against the assistance of our Savior Jesus Christ; because without Christ death and sin rule over us, and the devil is the god and prince of the unconverted world.

Martin Luther

God, having placed good and evil in our power, has given us full freedom of choice; he does not keep back the unwilling, but embraces the willing.

John Chrysostom

God gave us a free choice because there is no significance to love that knows no alternative.

James Dobson

Our destiny is not determined for us, but it is determined by us. Man’s free will is part of God’s sovereign will. We have freedom to take which course we choose, but not freedom to determine the end of that choice. God makes clear what he desires, we must choose, and the result of the choice is not the inevitableness of law, but the inevitableness of God.

Oswald Chambers

The will is not sovereign; it is a servant, because influenced and controlled by the other faculties of man’s being. The will is not free because the man is the slave of sin.

Arthur Walkington Pink

God looks more at our wills than at our works.

William Secker

While the Savior does not reject the willing, He does not constrain the unwilling; while He does not deny Himself to whose who seek Him, He does not strive with those who cast Him out.

Ambrose of Milan

“Oh,” says one, “but men are free agents.” I never thought that they were not, although I am not sure that it is much to their gain that they are. The glorious privilege of the freedom of the will has been terribly overrated: it is a dangerous heritage which has already lost us Paradise, and will lose us all hope of heaven unless the mighty grace of God shall interpose. Strength And Recovery, Volume 30, Sermon #1805 - Zechariah 10:12

Charles Spurgeon

While the Savior does not reject the willing, He does not constrain the unwilling; while He does not deny Himself to whose who seek Him, He does not strive with those who cast Him out.

Ambrose of Milan

Do not talk to me about ‘free will’; there is no such thing. There is no such thing as free will in fallen man.

God’s Sovereign Purpose, 207

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Do not talk to me about ‘free will’; there is no such thing. There is no such thing as free will in fallen man.

God’s Sovereign Purpose, 207

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The only man who has ever had free will was Adam, and we know what he did with it.

God’s Sovereign Purpose, 208

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

All the wickedness of the wicked world is owing to the wilfulness of the wicked will.

Matthew Henry

God looks more at our wills than at our works.

William Secker

The myth of man’s free will is exploded by the simple statistic that all men by nature decide against God.

John Blanchard

Man’s will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man’s inclinations are always and invariably away from God.

R. C. Sproul