The Five Fold Bondage Of Man

There is a divine and supernatural light that shines through the gospel, namely the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. No human beings, apart from the omnipotent grace of God overcoming this blindness, can see that glory. When they look at it, it is foolishness to them, not glory.

This is our five-fold bondage:

• The bondage of legal guilt and divine condemnation
• The bondage of love for the darkness of self-glorification
• The bondage of hatred for the the supremacy of God
• The bondage of spiritual death
• And the bondage of blindness to the glory of Christ

And the glory of God’s grace is that, in spite of all our guilt, and all our wicked loves, and all our hatred of his authority, and all our stone-cold deadness to his sweetness, and all our blindness to his glory, this grace saves us in every way from our own utter enslaving desire not to be saved from these things.

• To the bondage of our guilt, God says, “Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). “We are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:24–25).
  
  
• To the bondage of our love for self, he says, I give you the gift of “repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, so that you will come to your senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:25–26). Repentance from evil loves is God’s sovereign work.
  
  
• To the bondage of our hatred for the the supremacy of God, he declares, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). I am sending my Spirit into your heart crying Abba Father, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord (Romans 8:15–16). Joyfully embracing the Lordship of Jesus is a sovereign work of the Spirit.
  
  
• To the bondage of spiritual death, he says, “When you were dead in our trespasses, I made you alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:5). God said to your dead soul, “Lazarus, come forth,” and the command created life and obedience.
  
  
• And to the bondage of blindness to the glory of Christ God says, “Let there be light!” and instantly the divine and supernatural brightness “shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). If you see the crucified and risen Christ as more glorious and precious than anything in the world, you are a walking miracle.
  

Luther was right about this: Unless we feel the power, and the pervasiveness, and the eternal peril of the bondage of our will, we will not see or savor or sing the glory of God’s sovereign grace.

So back to the main question: Are human beings so sinful that God’s sovereign grace must create and decisively fulfill every human inclination to believe and obey God?

Luther’s answer — and the answer of all the Reformers — was yes. And my conclusion from Scripture is that their answer is true. Pelagianism is wrong. Fallen man cannot create his own holy choices. And semi-Pelagianism is wrong. In the act of faith and the pursuit of holiness, man does not complete God’s prevenient grace by contributing his own decisive, self-determining power. The power and pervasiveness of our bondage is such that God must create and decisively fulfill the act of faith and the pursuit of holiness.

“If you see the risen Christ as more precious than anything in the world, you are a walking miracle.”
2 Thessalonians 1:11). He pictures it like this: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Paul’s working was not added to God’s working. It was produced by God’s working. So much so that he would say, “It was not I.”

And this is how he instructs everyone to live: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13). Our working is not added to God’s working. Our working is God’s working. Here’s how Jonathan Edwards relates God’s and our working:

We are not merely passive in [faith and obedience], nor yet does God do some and we do the rest, but God does all and we do all. God produces all and we act all. For that is what he produces, our own acts. God is the only proper author and fountain; we only are the proper actors. We are in different respects wholly passive and wholly active. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 21, 251)

If you are no longer in bondage to guilt and death and blindness, if you now love the light and delight in the exaltation of God’s glory more than your own, if you love his authority above your autonomy, and if you see and savor the glory of Christ in the gospel as the greatest treasure in the universe, you owe it all to free and sovereign grace. Not just because God jump-started your dead will, and waited to see what you would make of it with your decisive self-determination, but because from that day to eternity, the grace of God will be the decisive fulfiller, producer of every holy act you ever perform.

Brothers, it is a colossal mistake to preach only the believer’s new freedom and new identity in Christ, and not to preach the believer’s old bondage and old identity in Adam. Without a knowledge of their former bondage, and their daily, radical dependence, how will they ever know the meaning of grace? How will they ever feel the degree of thankfulness for grace that they ought to feel? How will they live to the praise of the glory of his grace?

God’s grace will not be glorified as it ought to be until the church, with deep understanding and exploding joy, says from the heart, “For from him and through him and to him are all things, including my faith and my obedience. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36)... John Piper on Martin Luther's... Bondage On The Will, the Sovereignity Of Grace, and the Glory Of God... Brother Glen:)

 

Those brethren who are interested in the whole article, here is the link with a sermon included... Brother Glen:)

The Bondage of the Will, the Sovereignty of Grace, and the Glory of God