Imagine you are a prisoner of war like the American soldiers above, being held in Japan during WWII. If you’ve read Unbroken, you know the story of Louie Zamperini who was captive for two years in horrific conditions. The movie stops short of telling the whole story, but Hillenbrand’s book recounts Zamperini’s second deliverance, from his bitterness and pain. The Allied victory won his physical freedom. The Lord Jesus Christ won his spiritual freedom.
Picture yourself locked in a cell, completely bound to the whims and twisted desires of your prison warden. If he says get up and march, you get up and march. If he leaves you in solitary for three days, that’s where you live. If he demands that you race for the guards’ entertainment, you run.
Many people today – especially in the U.S. – believe they are free. They are able to make decisions in terms of education and employment, housing, marriage and family – so they feel independent and autonomous. But are people really free?
“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.” Titus 3:3
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Ephesians 2:1-3
“Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.'” John 834
Martin Luther had a lively debate with Erasmus, the liberal spokesman for the Catholic Church, about “free will.” This is my favorite quote from Luther’s expansive Bondage of the Will. While Luther attributes every miracle, every experience of the Holy Spirit, every ounce of progress in sanctification to God’s grace alone, Erasmus claimed some merit or place for “freewill.” So Luther challenged the great orator to demonstrate one small accomplishment of freewill apart from the enabling grace of God.
“You are at liberty to work a miracle as small as you please. No, by way of provoking your Baal to exertion, I jeer at you, and I challenge you to create even a single frog in the name and by the power of Freewill — the impious Gentile magicians in Egypt were enabled to create many of these. I will not put you to the trouble of creating lice, which they also were not able to bring forth. I will set you a still lighter task: take but a single gnat or louse (since you tempt and mock my God with your fleer about healing a lame horse)…
But we give you still more. We do not demand miracles, the Spirit, or sanctification. We return to the dogma itself, demanding only that you at least show us what work, what word, what thought, this power of the free will stirs up or attempts to perform, in order that it may apply itself to grace.”
The Bondage of the Will, Martin Luther, p. 84,87
Can your “free will” kill a single gnat? Luther argues it cannot. Even that achievement must be attempted in God’s grace alone. I share that mainly to make you smile, but Luther makes a substantial point. Erasmus arguably set the stage for the Enlightenment two centuries later through his elevation of human freedom. Today we have taken that humanism to whole new levels with our exaltation of the Self.
If we are to grow ourselves and help others, we have to begin with a realist appraisal of the problem. And the Bible diagnoses the human condition in exceedingly stark terms. Apart from Jesus people are blind, lost slaves who are spiritually dead. Only the Holy Spirit can open blind eyes. Only He can lead lost people to the truth. Only Jesus can open prison doors and set the captives free. Only Jesus can raise the dead. And none of the credit for those miracles goes to human free will. All of it goes to the free grace of the Lord Jesus.
Think back to that prison cell you were in before Jesus set you free. The chains that help you captive were forged by your own selfish desires. The cell itself you inherited from Adam. And the prison warden was the devil, coaching your sinful flesh to shout and whisper all manner of deceitful things, including the continual promise that you were free. It’s all very The Matrix, isn’t it? “It’s the world the devil has pulled over their eyes,” said Morpheus to the just released Neo. “Welcome to the desert of the real.”
Or to quote a different movie, “The best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”
Listen to what Jesus said about his ministry.
“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Luke 7:22-23
When we realize what our friends and neighbors are up against with the world, the flesh and the devil it should move our hearts to deep compassion and fervent prayer. Jesus is still in the business of opening blind eyes, seeking and saving the lost, setting prisoners free and giving life to the spiritually dead. Pray boldly and faithfully – and keep pointing people to Jesus, the only One who can save them!