If God is not in control of the human will, if He is not sovereign over that, we are saying that we are sovereign. Not only are we sovereign, but God is impotent. We are in control and there’s nothing God can do about it. There’s nothing He can do to change it. This is nothing short of blasphemous.

There is lots that can be said on the question of faith and free will. But those who insist faith is synergistic or fundamentally a matter of human choice above all will run into some particular problems. Let me list just three of them.

The problem of spiritual deadness.

The first issue facing synergists and free will advocates is that the bible routinely speaks about mankind, by nature, being dead in sin. It alternatively talks about us being slaves to sin. This means that our will does not naturally incline towards what is good nor towards God.

Martin Luther said:

“…man can receive nothing unless given him from above; so that free-will is nothing!” I say that man, before he is renewed into the new creation of the Spirit’s kingdom, does and endeavours nothing to prepare himself for that new creation and kingdom, and when he is re-created has does and endeavors nothing towards his perseverance in that kingdom; but the Spirit alone works both blessings in us, regenerating us, and preserving us when regenerate, without ourselves…”

As A.W. Pink rightly put it in his book The Sovereignty of God, “A dead man is utterly incapable of willing anything.”

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