The Bondage of the Will and Election

This is a 20 minute Issues, Etc. program that is well worth listening to if you are interested in Luther’s famous book, The Bondage of the Will. It discusses the context in which it was written, as well as touching on the key points made in his book. It also goes into the Lutheran view on predestination versus the Calvinist view of double predestination.

The basic assertion Luther made in this book was that man is in bondage spiritually, and has no volition or even ability to trust in God or become pleasing to Him. Our small catechism sums it up well:

I believe that I can not by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him: but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. (Luther’s Small Catechism, The Creed, The Third Article).

Ephesians 2:1 (emphasis mine) says “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” A dead man can not save himself, or decide to ask someone to save him. Verse 4 says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved-…” God clearly gets the credit for salvation. However, one might begin to reason, that if this is so, and a person can not “decide for Christ”, then is the opposite true? If God chooses people to be saved, does God pick out some people not to be saved? This is known as “double predestination”. Yet Jesus places the blame elsewhere for man’s damnation in Matthew 23:37 (emphasis mine): “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” Again, in 1 Timothy 1:19 (emphasis mine) Paul tells Timothy to hold “faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith.” Man’s sinful nature clearly gets the credit for damnation, for God “has no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God, so turn and live.” (Ezekel 18:32). Here, one might argue that God is telling the people to turn, so isn’t that that “doing something” to help God out? But Scripture interprets Scripture, and since it is clear that it is “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, “ (Eph 2:9 emphasis mine), we see that even the turning that God told the people to do was, and is, a gift of grace. So He gets the credit for salvation, and man’s sinful nature gets the credit for sin and damnation. Intellectually satisfying? No. Biblically consistent? Yes. God tells us what we need to know in His Word. We are not to go beyond the revealed Word of God and speculate on the why’s and how’s that He has not told us. Why some reject and some receive remains a mystery. Jesus “came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God… (John 1:11). What does God desire? To give us the gift of saving faith, for He has paid for everyone’s sins, by the death of His Son, who is “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2 emphasis mine).”

Back to our small catechism, which explains that the Holy Spirit points to this work of Christ by calling by the gospel. It is a great comfort to believers when it goes on to say that:

In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.

In this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers.

On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ.

This is most certainly true.


If you are interested in reading our synod’s doctrinal statement on election, you’ll find it here.

Issues, Etc. may be offering a series on The Bondage of the Will; if so, I will try to post links to the shows.

Note: Not sure if my link to the radio show is working, so here is the link to the show archive. Scroll down to Tuesday, September 14, and you can listen there.