Training · The 1689 Baptist Confession
Free will
What human freedom is, and what happened to it in four states: innocence, sin, grace and glory.
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Do people have free will?
Yes. God has given the human will a natural liberty to act by choice, so that it is neither forced nor determined by any necessity of nature to do good or evil.
People are often surprised that the confession begins here. It never denies that we choose. Its argument is entirely about what a fallen will chooses when it is free to choose whatever it wants.
Confession 9.1
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What could Adam and Eve do before the fall?
Will and do what was good and pleasing to God - but changeably, so that they could fall from it.
This is the only one of the four states of the will in which a person is genuinely poised between the two. Every state after it is weighted, one way or the other.
Confession 9.2
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What did the fall do to the will?
It left it wholly unable towards any spiritual good that accompanies salvation, so that a natural person cannot convert himself or even prepare himself for it.
Note the boundary. The confession does not say a fallen person can do nothing good in any sense - it says the one thing they cannot do is turn themselves round. The disability is specific, and it is the reason the next chapter has to exist.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I'll raise them up on the last day.
John 6:44Confession 9.3
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What does God's grace do to the will in conversion?
It frees it from its bondage to sin and enables it freely to will and do what is spiritually good - and freely is the operative word.
The person is not made to act against their will. Their will is changed, so that they now want what they did not want. The confession also adds, plainly, that because corruption remains they do not perfectly or only will what is good.
He's rescued us from the grip of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Colossians 1:13Confession 9.4
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Once grace has freed the will, does the person only ever want what is good?
No. Because of the corruption still remaining, the confession says they do not perfectly or only will what is good, but also will what is evil.
That sentence is a check on the one before it. Conversion is real and it is not complete, so the same person genuinely wants what God wants and genuinely wants other things - which the confession elsewhere calls a war between the flesh and the Spirit. Anyone surprised to find that in their own life is being told here that the confession expected it.
Confession 9.4
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When is the will made perfectly and unchangeably free towards good alone?
Only in glory. In this life the freed will still wants what is evil as well as what is good; the change is completed when the person is made perfect.
The freest a will can ever be, in the confession's account, is when it has lost the ability to choose evil. That is worth sitting with, because it reverses the usual assumption that freedom means keeping every option open.
Confession 9.5
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What are the four states of the human will?
Innocence, where it could choose good but was able to change; nature after the fall, where it is unable towards any spiritual good; grace, where it is freed and enabled but not yet perfectly; and glory, where it is made perfectly and unchangeably free towards good alone.
Laid out like that, the question of whether the will is free turns into a question of which will, and when. It is never denied that people choose. What changes from one state to the next is the range of what they are capable of wanting.
Confession 9