Chapter 9: Of Free Will

Understanding The Westminister Confession of Faith
Chapter 9: Of Free Will

Surprisingly on such a very big and complicated subject, the WCF has only 5 short and succinct clauses on it. I will focus here on just one aspect of free will – that of personal responsibility associated with it.

To try to put a complicated subject in the simplest form for our purpose, the basic issue is this: if God has from eternity foreordained whatsoever will happen will happen then why are we accountable for our actions? This is of course an oversimplification. But to put it more crudely it is this: God created all things and God purposed to govern the world which he created. So our “free will” is not free and what I do and say is His responsibility. That’s what some would like to think!

First let us establish one fundamental truth. Our WCF teaches distinctly, that when our fore parents were created, they were “left to the liberty of their own will,” and were endowed with power to fulfil the requirements of God.

On free choice and Adam’s responsibility, Calvin taught, “God has provided the soul of man with intellect, by which he might discern good from evil, just from unjust, and might know what to follow or to shun, reason going before with her lamp…”

From this we can say that man is endowed with reason, intelligence, prudence, and judgment, sufficient for the government of his earthly life. And to these, free will, or the freedom to choose was added to enable him to direct his conduct and actions.

We know this on a personal level: it is clear that we have a will and that will has a certain freedom. The Bible clearly teaches that man has the power of choice. Every man has the ability to choose his own words, to decide what his actions will be. We have a faculty of self-determination in the sense that we select our own thoughts, words, and deeds. Man is free to choose what he prefers, what he desires.

On this, Walter Chantry writing in, The Banner of Truth, Issue 140, May 1975, says, “No one ties fruit on a tree’s branches, not even GOD. The tree bears its own fruit. Evil men sin voluntarily … The person who is speaking and acting is completely responsible for his moral behaviour.” (Emphasis added).

And John Calvin on the same issue says in Bondage and Liberation of the Will “...we allow that man has choice and that it is self-determined, so that if he does anything evil, it should be imputed to him and to his own voluntary choosing … We locate the necessity to sin precisely in corruption of the will, from which follows that it is self-determined.” (Emphasis added).

In simple words, we sin by our own choice, and if left in our fallen state, hopeless. That is why there is grace. This should fill the hearts of Christians with humility and with gratitude.

In Him,
Rev Robert Chew