In the early 400s Augustine prayed, “God command what you will but grant what you command.” Pelagius took exception to this and proclaimed that man didn’t need God’s help but could do on his own what God commanded. He was condemned at Carthage in 415 A.D.

One thousand years later, the same church that condemned Pelagius now taught the same heresy, and Erasmus wrote a book, The Freedom of the Will, to promote it. This compelled Luther to write a book, The Bondage of the Will, against this because it was a direct assault on God’s sovereignty, and Luther would have none of this. To him the sovereignty of God was not to be messed with, and if free will theology was allowed to stand, God was under direct assault. After all, if God isn’t sovereign of all, He’s not sovereign at all.

Luther proceeded to pick apart Erasmus’ position one piece at a time, and he didn’t use kid gloves in doing so. You can almost hear his words thunder off the pages as he states his positions on man being either under bondage to Satan or freed and under bondage to Christ. There is no room for the freedom of the will of man. It’s either Satan or Christ, and that is by God’s sovereign choice, laid out before time began, commonly referred to as the doctrine of election. Thus Luther said that “the human will is, as it were, a beast between the two. If God sit thereon, it wills and goes where God will: as the Psalm said, ‘I was a beast before thee, nevertheless I am continually with thee’ (Ps. 73:22-23). If Satan sit thereon, it wills and goes as Satan will. Nor is it in the power of its own will to choose, to which rider it will run, nor to which it will seek; but the riders themselves to contend, which shall have or hold it” (Section 25, The Bondage of the Will). Luther clearly proclaimed that God chose His people in His grace and mercy, and the rest received justice. No one can complain.

As strongly as Luther proclaimed these truths, here we are five hundred years later, and I fear they are becoming lost in most churches today as free will seems to be the common theology, and the doctrine of election and God’s sovereignty is being glossed over or completely ignored.

Either man is sovereign or God is, and Luther proclaimed the biblical truth that God is. Lord, give us the grace to do the same.

Steven Moen
Bethel Free Lutheran Church
Minot, ND

Order your copy here: Ambassador Publications Online Store