Salvation: God’s Will Over Man’s Will!

John 1:12-13
12 But to all who did receive Jesus, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

It is said that two wrongs don’t make a right. However, ever so often we come across Arminians who believe it is by our human will that a person believes in Jesus and possesses salvation. So, given the vacillating nature of our human will, the Arminian secures this lie with another lie (confirmed in John 6:39), which is that Salvation is losable because it is after all secured by the vacillating will of man. Now for man to be able to choose God, it must mean that man inherently is not totally depraved and knows what is good when he sees it. So, this is another lie (confirmed in Rom 3:12), which goes into securing man’s ability to choose Salvation. Now if man can choose salvation, it must mean Salvation is an open invite, which is another lie (confirmed in Acts 13:48). Also if Salvation is an open invite, then it means that man wilfully keeps the love of God presented to us in Jesus Christ waiting on him, till he is ready to accept Christ but then this is another lie (confirmed in Eph 2:1 & Mat 13:13) because the Bible says that man is dead in his sins, and concerning the Gospel it is said that man hears but cannot hear, looks but cannot see and listens and does not understand. Such are the five lies of Arminianism, which tries to suppress God’s sovereignty in Salvation. Why is this so? It’s because the Arminians typically cannot trust God with their salvation, and as vacillating as their nature could be, they feel more secure believing the onus of their faith is in their own hand, than in the hands of God.

Mat 15 (the reprobate heart)
11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”
…
17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled?[d] 18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person.

Jer 31:33 (the regenerate heart)
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

2Cor 5:17 (the regenerate heart)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

You may ask me, does man have such a thing as free will? Well, the answer is yes obviously but it doesn’t supersede the sovereign will of God in Salvation. In the fall (Gen 3:2-6), man became a law to himself, forsaking the law of God and receiving a righteousness of self. In doing so man was sold into the slavery of sin but in Christ (Mat 11:28-30), man is reconciled back to God, going from being enslaved to sin to being enslaved to the righteousness of God. By his own will a man cannot change his own heart because his heart is the source of his being, from which his will which delights in wickedness springs forth. The free will therefore follows after the heart. So, in the reprobate state when the man’s heart is a stone (Ezek 36:26), his will delights in lawlessness/sin (Mat 15:19) but when he is saved, God gives the person a new heart (Jer 31:33), which matures delighting in God, His will and His righteousness (Ps 37:4). It is for this reason it is said that David was a man after God’s own heart, because he delighted in God’s law (Ps 40:8), which was the very nature and character of God, that was written on David’s heart to follow after.

I need to mention that just because God’s will supersedes man’s will, it does not mean that God makes man sin (James 1:13-15). Man sins by his own free will and God simply lifts his restraining hand and hands man over to his lusts (Ps 81:12/Rom 1:24). It is therefore man’s free will that makes man culpable of his sin, but man being the hypocrite he is from fallen Adam, blames God when he is tempted by his own sinful desires, & when it comes to salvation, he somehow sees his own free will as the instrument by which he chooses God’s salvation, as though his reprobate will ever had the desire for anything that is genuinely good.

Ezek 36
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Ephesians 2
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

If you care to notice, there is great similarity in the above 2 verses of scripture. We see salvation is by grace through faith, it is 100% the work of God in us (Phil 1:6) and we cannot boast of those things which God has brought about for us to do because those things are the works of God’s Holy Spirit in us. By ourselves, we would have no desire for God and to know him. We would all be just like the world, who couldn’t care less about God and doing the right thing, unless it served their own vested interest. So, don’t say that it was by your will and you chose to believe in God because that would be like a wolf saying he loves to eat grass. From the fall, all of mankind loves sin and hates the truth about God. So, as I have proved to you from the Bible, Salvation is not by the will of man but by the will of God, who gives us a new heart, from which springs a new will/desire that freely enjoys doing the good will of God.

Psalm 3:8
Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people!