The Freedom of God

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” -John 3:6-8

Although the Bible clearly teaches that man is a morally responsible agent, it does not emphasize the freedom of man's will. On the contrary, the writers of Scripture repeatedly tell us of the bondage of man's will. The fine line in Scripture is that even though man is free to choose what he wills, in reality man's will is still in bondage. Man's will is a slave to his desires. In the fall, man lost all ability to desire spiritual things. In life, there are mainly two kinds of desires- natural desires and spiritual desires. As Paul tells us in I Corinthians 2, the natural man cannot accept the spiritual things that come from God, for because are spiritually discerned. Man is born a morally dead agent. It is not the matter of imploring your enemy to come to you, it is the matter of imploring a rotten cadaver to rise and come to you. In order for a man to be brought to faith and see and savor the glory of God in Christ, we must first be made alive by the Spirit of God. So regeneration and the new birth is a necessity to come to Christ.

In this text of Scripture, we find Jesus explaining to Nicodemus how man is to enter the kingdom of God. It is not, as Paul puts, of him who wills or him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. And in this text, Jesus tells us of the One who truly does have a free will- God. Jesus tells Nicodemus, "The wind blows where it wishes... so is everyone who is born of the Spirit of God." God always acts freely and justly and out of His own concerns and interests. God is under no obligation to extend mercy to Whom He pleases. So the implications of this text are (1) that the new birth is needful to enter the kingdom (vs. 6), (2) that the new birth grows out of the sovereign goodness of God and not by any necessity outside of Himself, and (3) that no one is excluded from this grace, neither by personal merit nor demerit. God's mercy does not depend on our ability or inclination to come to Him, because without His work of regeneration in our heart, there is no taste of His goodness and glory, and thereby no desire to come to Him. Left to himself, man will never be able to taste the goodness and the glory of God. God is not a respecter of persons. God is able to save all whom He will for His glory. Because God will always freely do what He wills, no man is too evil or too opposed to God for His goodness to lead them to repentance. His glory, when we are freed by the Spirit of God to see it as it truly is, is self-authenticating, and will grow a delight in our hearts to help us by faith see His glory and to bring our hearts to repent of those things that blaspheme and defame His glory. Let this truth of the freedom of God bring our hearts to delight in His glory and righteousness and become the axe that destroys the root of human pride. Let us not say that "I by my own might have delivered me," but that "salvation belongs to the Lord." Let us praise Him for grace upon grace.