Yeah my humility knows no bounds. I’m gonna name this post after arguably one of the greatest Christian writings outside of the Bible. Still it works as a blog post title and I trust that Martin Luther would forgive me.

I don’t want to talk about whether our will is free or not, that’s a horse that’s been beaten before. Instead I want to unpack something I said, off the cuff, to Steve Sensenig at our lunch last week. We were talking about Reformed theology and I was explaining as best I could why it wasn’t the same as double predestination and how a lack of free will is related to that.

You see, Adam and Eve had free will. I would argue that they were perhaps the only ones and said as much to Steve. They had the ability to choose or not choose to do what God asked. His answer was something to the effect of, “Well them and Christ.” My response was that I didn’t think so.

Christ had given up his own will to that of the father. “Not my will, but yours be done.” Steve replied with the idea that Adam and Eve, provided they hadn’t fallen, would have had to do the same thing. Christ did what Adam and Eve could, or would, not do. He bound his will to that of the father’s perfect will, so even his wasn’t free.

When we accept the life of a follower of Christ, we don’t gain a free will. We are free from sin, or at least the consequences of it, that’s true. In becoming a child of God we must work to surrender our own will, the will to sin, to have our own way in things. We surrender it, we sacrifice it and give it over to God and seek to do his will. That’s a hard teaching I think, but it rings of truth to me.

What do you think?