A Will in Bondage

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? JEREMIAH 17:9

The second book of the Institutes opens with a warning. There is a kind of self-knowledge, Calvin says, that is flattering and deadly: the kind that dwells on our gifts and our dignity and leaves us swollen with pride. There is another kind that is humbling and wholesome, and it is the one we need. We must know what we were made to be, and we must know what we have become (Institutes 2.1.1–3). Only then will we despair of ourselves and look for help where it can be found.

What we were, and what we are

Calvin never begins with our sin. He begins with our glory. Adam was created in the image of God, with a clear mind, an upright will and every faculty ordered towards his Maker. That, Calvin says, is our true nobility. We should remember it, not to be proud of it, but to grieve over what we lost.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. GENESIS 1:27

And we lost it through pride. Calvin sees the root of Adam’s fall not simply in eating forbidden fruit, but in unbelief — refusing to trust God’s Word — and in the ambition to be more than a creature. From that one act came the ruin of the whole race. Calvin, following Augustine, calls it original sin: a hereditary corruption and depravity of our nature, spread through every part of the soul, which makes us liable to God’s wrath and brings forth in us the works Scripture calls the works of the flesh (Institutes 2.1.8).

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. ROMANS 5:12

Corrupt in every part

When Calvin speaks of human depravity he does not mean that people are as wicked as they could possibly be, or that they can do nothing good in any sense. He freely admits that unbelievers can be honest, brave, generous and wise, and he praises the gifts of pagan poets, lawyers, physicians and philosophers as gifts of God’s Spirit (Institutes 2.2.15). Such gifts should be honoured wherever they are found.

What he means is that sin has reached every part of us. There is no untouched chamber of the soul where the mind is still pure, or the will still free to turn to God. Our reason has been darkened, our affections disordered, our will turned away. Even our best actions are mixed with self-love.

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. ROMANS 3:10–11

He put it with characteristic bluntness in his sermon God Will Have All Men to Be Saved, in the Ochorus library: “We are so contrary in our nature, and such enemies to God, that we cannot but resist him: we are so given to evil and wickedness, that we cannot so much as conceive a good thought.”

Bound, but not forced

This is where Calvin’s teaching on the will comes in, and it is often misunderstood. He does not say that we have no will, or that we are forced to sin against our will. The will still wills. We choose freely what we want. The trouble lies in what we want. Calvin draws a careful distinction from Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux between compulsion and necessity (Institutes 2.3.5). A sinner is not compelled to sin by some outside force. He sins willingly, and gladly. But he sins necessarily, because his will is in bondage to his own corrupt desires. He is free to do what he loves; he is not free to love what he should.

Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. JOHN 8:34

This was why Calvin disliked the phrase free will. He did not object to the idea that human beings make real choices. He objected to the pride that the phrase so often carried, the idea that we can, by our own power, turn to God whenever we choose. Such an idea, he thought, robs God of His glory and leaves the sinner trusting himself.

The law as a mirror

How does a person come to see this? Calvin’s answer is that God uses His law. In Institutes 2.7 he describes three uses of the moral law. The first is to act as a mirror, showing us our sin, as a glass shows the spots on a face. The second is to restrain the wicked by fear of punishment, so that society is not overrun. The third, which he calls the principal use, is for believers: to teach them daily the will of God and to spur them on in holiness.

Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. ROMANS 3:20

The first use belongs here. The law shows us what God requires, and in the same moment shows us that we have not done it and cannot. It stops our mouths. Calvin says in his sermon on All Scripture that we must be pricked to the heart and confess ourselves guilty if we would be taught in the school of God. That is the law’s first gift: it strips away every excuse, so that we flee to mercy.

Grace that sets the will free

All of this could sound hopeless, and Calvin means it to, for a moment. But the purpose is to point us to the only remedy. If the will is bound, then only God can free it. And He does. Calvin loved the promise of Ezekiel, which he quotes in his sermon God Will Have All Men to Be Saved.

And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh. EZEKIEL 11:19

God does not merely offer help to a will that is already willing. He makes the unwilling willing. He does not destroy the will; He heals it, so that we come to Him freely because we now want to. Everything good in us, from the first stirring of faith to the last act of obedience, is His gift.

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. PHILIPPIANS 2:13

Holding this with care

Calvin’s doctrine of sin is severe, and some readers will feel it leaves little room for the goodness that remains in human beings. It is fair to remember that he insists, as we have seen, on honouring every human gift and on the image of God that remains in every person. It is also fair to say that his tone can be harsher than Scripture’s, and that the language of worms and filth in his sermons can wound more than it heals.

But the heart of his teaching is sound, and it is liberating. The one who knows he cannot save himself stops trying. He stops pretending. He comes to God empty-handed, and finds that God fills empty hands.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Remember that you were made in the image of God. Give thanks for the dignity of that, and grieve for how you have defaced it.

2. Read Romans 7:14–25 and ask honestly where you have found your own will to be in bondage.

3. Let the law be a mirror: read the Ten Commandments slowly, and confess the sins each one shows you.

4. Notice where you rely on your own power to turn to God, as if you could choose Him whenever you like. Ask Him instead to turn you.

5. Honour a gift of God you see in someone who does not believe. Thank God for it.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You made me upright, in Your image, and I have turned away from You and cannot turn myself back.

Show me my sin in the mirror of Your law, and let it drive me not to despair but to Your mercy.

Take away my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. Make my unwilling will willing, and heal what I have broken.

Whatever good is in me, let me confess it as Your gift, and give You all the glory. Through Jesus Christ. Amen.