Devotional 55: The Imperfect Freedom of This Life: Grace Mixed With Remaining Sin

The Confession Read

When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 9, Section 4

Introduction

There is a moment in every believer's life when the gospel ceases to be a theory about salvation and becomes the reality the soul inhabits. Before that moment, we speak of grace in the abstract, as theologians might speak of any doctrine. After that moment, we speak of grace as a drowning man speaks of the hand that pulled him from the water. For many of us, the moment comes when we discover — not merely with the mind but with the whole inward man — that we are not yet what we shall be. We sin. We sin against light, against love, against the very mercy that bought us. And the question rises from the depths with an urgency no catechism ever taught: If I am truly converted, why do I still will what is evil? If Christ has set me free, why do I return to the chains? If the Spirit dwells within me, why does sin still dwell there too? The Westminster Divines knew this question, and Section 4 of our chapter on free will is their answer. The Confession has walked us through the anatomy of the will in its natural liberty, its original uprightness, and its catastrophic fall. Section 3 left us in the darkness of total inability, staring at a corpse that cannot rise. Section 4 brings the morning. It describes not what man can do but what God does — and what the man God has acted upon now can do, though imperfectly and amid conflict. It is the doctrine of the regenerate will. Three truths organize this section. The first is that God, by His grace alone, frees the sinner from the bondage under which he lay. The second is that this liberation is real: the converted man freely wills and does spiritual good. The third is that this liberation is incomplete: remaining corruption ensures the believer does not perfectly or only will the good. Freedom, yet conflict. Liberty, yet war. New life, yet the presence of old death. This is the state of every true Christian between regeneration and glory, and understanding it rightly is the difference between a life of healthy struggle and a life of either presumption or despair. We trace this doctrine where all sound doctrine is traced: not first to Geneva or Westminster, but to the living oracles of Holy Scripture.

Scripture Foundation

The Confession's teaching on the regenerate will draws from a deep well of biblical testimony. Four passages in particular illuminate the truths this section confesses. Philippians 2:12-13 — "Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." Here is the paradox of the Christian life, stated with apostolic clarity. Paul commands the Philippians to work — active, strenuous, deliberate effort. And yet the ground of this striving is not his own native power but the prior and continuous operation of God within him. The Greek ho energōn is a present active participle — the God who is working, whose working does not cease. And what does God work? "Both to will and to do." The thelein is the desire, the inclination toward the good; the energein is the outward performance. God does not merely assist a will already inclined; He creates the inclination itself. He energizes the act from first impulse to final execution. And both the willing and the doing are hyper tēs eudokias, "of his good pleasure" — not a response to our merit but a sovereign outworking of His own benevolent purpose. This verse contains the whole logic of Section 4. God converts, translating the sinner from death to life. In that translation, He begins a work within the believer that is both the source of new desires and the power of new obedience. The believer wills freely — for the inclination now moves toward God — but the freedom is itself a gift, sustained at every moment by the indwelling Spirit. The Pelagian notion that man must initiate and God respond is swept away. The quietist notion that God does everything and man does nothing is equally excluded. God works, therefore man works. Man's working is the evidence and instrument of God's working, never its replacement or its rival. Romans 7:18-19, 21-25 — "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do... I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." No passage of Scripture has been more contested in the history of interpretation than Romans 7. Who is the "I" who speaks? Is this Paul before conversion, or Paul after? The Reformed tradition has answered with a careful distinction: this is Paul describing not the unregenerate man, who is dead in sin and does not will the good at all, nor the glorified man, in whom the conflict is resolved, but the regenerate man in the present state of grace — precisely the man of Section 4. The evidence lies in the language. "To will is present with me" — to thelein parakeitai moi — the desire for good lies ready at hand. This is not the language of the dead. The natural man, as Section 3 taught, is altogether averse from spiritual good. He does not will it; he recoils from it. But this man wills the good, and not only wills it but delights in the law of God after the inward man. The verb synēdomai, I delight with, is a word of deep and joyful agreement. He looks at God's law and his regenerate heart says yes. This is the new creation, the new man, the principle of grace implanted by the Spirit. Yet the same man discovers a counter-principle within himself. "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind." The Greek antistrateuomenon, warring against, is a military term — a law that takes the field against another law, a rebellion within the same territory. The mind serves the law of God; the flesh serves the law of sin. And the same person does both, not as a split personality but as one man in whom two principles contend. The I who delights in God's law is the same I who cries out, "O wretched man that I am." This is the Confession's "yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good." The regenerate man truly wills the good — that is the triumph of grace. But he does not perfectly will it — that is the stubborn residue of sin. Nor does he only will it — there is a contrary willing, a pull toward evil that coexists with the pull toward God. The will is liberated, but the liberation takes the form of a battle rather than a ceasefire. 2 Corinthians 3:17 — "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Here Paul captures a theology of Christian freedom in a single sentence. The Lord is the Spirit — the exalted Christ is present with His people precisely through His Spirit. And the consequence of that presence is eleutheria, liberty. Where the Spirit comes, chains fall. The mind that could not perceive spiritual truth begins to see. The heart that could not love God begins to love. The will that could not choose the good begins to choose it. Paul does not say, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the possibility of liberty if man will exercise it." He says there is liberty — present and effective. The Spirit's presence is the sufficient cause of the believer's freedom. Without the Spirit, there is no liberty. But the believer, indwelt by the Spirit, is free, however much he may lament his remaining chains. This liberty is not the abolition of the will as a choosing faculty but its restoration to its proper object. The will is free not because it can choose indifferently between good and evil — that was Adam's liberty, and it is lost — but because it can now choose the good from the heart. The Spirit does not override the will; He renews it so that it wills freely what it formerly willed not at all. Ezekiel 36:26-27 — "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them." The Confession's language about God's enabling the believer to "freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good" finds its Old Testament root in this promise from Ezekiel. The sequence of divine actions reverses every human instinct about how change occurs. First, God promises to give a new heart and a new spirit. The heart in Hebrew anthropology is the governing center of the person — the seat of thought, affection, and volition together. A new heart means a new principle of operation, a new bent. The stony heart — hard, dead to God — is removed. A heart of flesh — living, responsive — is put in its place. This is heart transplant surgery performed by the Creator, and the patient contributes nothing but his need. Second, God promises to put His Spirit within His people. The external law on stone tablets could command but not enable. The internal Spirit writes the law on the heart and empowers what He commands — the difference between the letter that kills and the Spirit that gives life. Third, God promises to "cause you to walk in my statutes." The Hebrew verb is causative — God will make His people walk in obedience. Yet this causation does not bypass human agency; the same people who are caused to walk are the ones who "shall keep my judgments, and do them." The divine causation produces human volition. This is the mystery of the regenerate will: it is more free precisely because it is more directly governed by God. Augustine said the will is never freer than when it is freed by grace.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Divines composed Section 4 as a bridge between two abysses. On one side lay the abyss of total inability, described with unsparing clarity in Section 3. On the other side lay the abyss of glorification, where the will shall be made "perfectly and immutably free to good alone" — the subject of Section 5. Between these two absolute states, the Confession places the mixed state of the believer on earth. And the precision of the language reveals the precision of the theological purpose. The opening words, "When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace," establish two things. First, conversion is a divine act. The sinner does not convert himself; God converts him. The active verb belongs to God. This is the consistent testimony of Scripture: Lydia's heart was opened by the Lord, the Philippian jailer was apprehended by grace, Saul of Tarsus was arrested on the Damascus road. The human response of faith and repentance is real and genuine, but it is produced, not initiated, by human power. Second, conversion is a translation from one state to another — from the state of sin to the state of grace. The change is not merely a change of status, though justification is included. It is a change of condition, a new position before God that carries with it new powers and new possibilities. The man in the state of grace is no longer what he was. The old state has been left behind as truly as Israel left Egypt. "He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin." The word "bondage" recalls the language of slavery that pervades Scripture's description of the unregenerate state. Jesus declared that "whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin" (John 8:34), using doulos, a bondservant. The natural man serves sin not as an employee serves an employer but as a slave serves a master, with his whole being at the master's disposal. Freedom from this bondage is the breaking of an internal domination. The chains that bind the will to sin are not on the hands but in the heart. And God, in conversion, strikes those chains off. The man who was non posse non peccare, not able not to sin, is restored to posse non peccare, able not to sin. The ability to choose the good, lost in the fall, is restored — not fully, not without struggle, but truly. The phrase "by His grace alone" is the sola gratia of the Reformation. The Divines were writing in an England where Arminianism was ascendant in the court of Charles I and the Remonstrants had systematized conditional election and resistible grace across the Channel. To say "by His grace alone" was to deny that any human contribution, any preparatory work, any native receptivity plays a part in the liberation of the sinner. Grace is not a boost to a will that is struggling to rise; it is the resurrection of a will that is dead. And the grace that converts is the same grace that enables — it is not given at conversion and then withdrawn so that the believer proceeds by his own power. The next clause — "enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good" — guards against the charge that Reformed theology turns men into puppets. The Divines insisted that grace enables, not coerces. The regenerate will is not dragged toward the good like a prisoner in chains; it is renewed so that it moves toward the good as naturally and spontaneously as a healthy man moves toward food. The adverb "freely" is crucial. The believer does not obey God against his will but with his will, because his will has been made willing. The grace of God does not destroy the nature of the will as a free faculty; it heals it. And the healing is such that the healed will freely chooses what it formerly freely rejected. The final clause — "yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil" — prevents the doctrine of the regenerate will from passing over into perfectionism. The same Confession that insists on the reality of renewal insists on the incompleteness of that renewal in this life. The believer has remaining corruption. The word "remaining" implies that something has indeed been removed — the dominion of sin — but something stays. And the something that stays affects the will. The believer does not perfectly will the good: his love for God is genuine but not whole, his obedience is sincere but not complete. And he does not only will the good: there is a contrary willing, a pull toward sin, a principle of resistance that operates alongside the principle of grace. Paul's cry in Romans 7 is not the cry of an unregenerate man lamenting his bondage; it is the cry of a regenerate man discovering that the war has not ended — it has only begun. Historically, the Divines were navigating between three errors. The first was Pelagianism, which denied that the fall had affected the will's capacity and therefore saw no need for an internal work of grace on the will at all. The Confession's insistence that God "freeth him" and enables "by His grace alone" sweeps this away. The second was perfectionism, whether in its medieval monastic form, its Anabaptist form, or its later Wesleyan form. The Confession's "not perfectly" and "remaining corruption" foreclose any claim to sinless perfection in this life. The third was antinomianism, which, having taught that the believer is freed from the law's condemning power, inferred that he is freed from its guiding power as well. The Confession's affirmation that the believer is enabled "freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good" establishes that grace produces holiness, not license. The regenerate will moves toward the law of God, not away from it.

Theological Depth

The Reformed tradition has not been content merely to assert the doctrine of the regenerate will; it has explored its inner workings with care, exploring fresh terrain. Several theologians illuminate the truths of Section 4 with particular clarity. Stephen Charnock, whose discourses on the person and work of the Holy Spirit were preached in the years surrounding the Great Ejection of 1662, develops the Spirit's enabling work with precision. Charnock insists that the Spirit does not work upon the will as an external force moving a stone. He works within the will as the principle of a new life. The stone, when thrown, moves because it was thrown, not because it has acquired a principle of motion. The living creature moves because it has life within it. So the Spirit does not push the believer toward good as a stone is pushed; He dwells within the believer as the source of a new spontaneity toward God. The reason the saint wills the good freely is that the Spirit has become, in Charnock's phrase, "the immediate principle of spiritual life in the renewed soul." The willing is genuinely the believer's willing, but it is caused by the Spirit's indwelling, just as the branch's bearing fruit is genuinely the branch's bearing fruit but only because it abides in the vine. Charnock further clarifies why the believer's freedom remains imperfect. The Spirit dwells in the believer truly, but not yet fully. The flesh — the principle of indwelling sin — still occupies territory in the soul, and while the Spirit's presence guarantees eventual victory, it does not prevent present skirmishing. The Spirit is a conqueror who has taken the citadel but must still clear the streets. Sanctification is a process, not an event, and the regenerate will reflects both the reality of conquest and the incompleteness of occupation. William Gurnall, the Puritan pastor of Lavenham whose single published work fills three volumes on Ephesians 6, brings the doctrine of the regenerate will into the field of spiritual warfare. Gurnall's treatment of the believer's conflict is notable for its combination of realism and hope. He pictures the believer as a man who has been freed from prison but must still walk through enemy territory to reach home. The chains are off, but the enemy patrols the road. The will is liberated, but the liberator has not yet destroyed every ambush along the way. Gurnall's insight is that the conflict itself is evidence of grace. The unregenerate man does not experience the war Paul describes in Romans 7 because the unregenerate man has only one principle within him — the flesh. His will may vacillate between sins, choosing gluttony over lust or pride over sloth, but it never vacillates between sin and God. The appearance of a contrary principle — the inward man delighting in God's law even as the flesh resists — is the surest sign that the Spirit has begun His work. The believer who mourns his double-mindedness should take heart: the very mourning is the voice of the new nature. The corpse does not grieve over its corruption; only the living man feels the contradiction of indwelling sin. Gurnall writes, "The saint's very groan over sin is the breath of the Spirit within him, and the struggle against sin is the pulse of the new life." Gurnall also offers a sobering account of why the believer must not presume upon his liberty. The will, though freed from sin's dominion, is not yet freed from sin's presence. The old tyrant, deposed from the throne, still walks the corridors of the palace seeking to regain what he has lost. The believer who forgets this will soon find himself surprised by a temptation he thought he had mastered. The regenerate will is free, but its freedom is the freedom of a soldier in an ongoing campaign, not the freedom of a veteran returned to peacetime. The enemy is within the walls, and until those walls are transformed into the New Jerusalem, the watch must never end. Herman Witsius, the Dutch covenantal theologian whose Economy of the Covenants is a central work of federal theology, approaches the regenerate will from the angle of the covenant of grace. Witsius sees the liberation of the will as a covenantal benefit purchased by Christ and applied by the Spirit to the elect. To be translated into the state of grace is to be brought under the covenant of grace, where Christ is the federal head and the Spirit is the resident ambassador. In this state, the believer has new abilities — not in himself, but in his Head. The freedom to will the good is a covenantal freedom: it is the freedom of a man adopted into a new family, whose inheritance includes the Spirit's enabling power. Yet Witsius also emphasizes that the covenant of grace, in its present administration, includes the discipline of remaining corruption. God does not immediately remove all sin from the regenerate because He intends to teach them dependence, to exercise their faith, and to make them long for glory. The conflict of the regenerate will is not a flaw in the covenant; it is a feature of the covenant's pedagogy. Every stumble drives the believer to Christ. Every failure sends him back to the promises. The very imperfection of the will's liberty serves the purposes of the perfect covenant.

Puritan Application

The doctrine of the regenerate will is not a piece of theological furniture to be admired from a comfortable distance. It is the diagnosis of your daily experience and the map of your spiritual geography. Let us draw out its practical force for the soul. First, let this doctrine settle the question of assurance for the tender conscience. Many sincere believers have been thrown into doubt by the discovery that they still will and do what is evil. They read Section 3, with its uncompromising language about total inability, and they look at their own hearts and see things that look very much like both. They conclude that perhaps they remain natural men after all. To such souls, Section 4 speaks a word of comfort. The Confession does not teach that the regenerate man wills only good. It teaches that he wills good truly, but not perfectly, and not only. The presence of remaining corruption is not evidence that you are unregenerate; it is evidence that you are in the state described by this very section. The man who never feels the conflict, who never cries out with Paul, "O wretched man that I am" — that man should question his conversion. But the man who feels the war, who grieves over the evil he still wills, who longs for the day when he shall will good perfectly — that man is precisely the man of Section 4. The corpse does not wrestle; only the living man fights. Take heart: the very war that troubles you is the evidence that you belong to the army of the living God. Second, let this doctrine guard you against the twin errors of presumption and despair. Presumption says, "I am freed from sin's bondage; therefore I may sin freely." But the Confession says you are freed from sin's bondage to will and do the good — not to continue in evil without consequence. The freedom of the regenerate will is a freedom for righteousness, not a freedom for license. The same grace that liberates obligates. If the Spirit has enabled you to will the good, then to will evil knowingly and deliberately is to grieve the Spirit who dwells within you — a reality more sobering than any threat of law could be. Despair, on the other hand, says, "I still will evil; therefore I am not truly freed." But the Confession says the freedom is real though incomplete, genuine though contested. The man who refuses to believe he has been freed because he still feels the chains is like a prisoner whose door has been opened but who refuses to walk out because his legs are weak from years of confinement. The weakness is real; the freedom is also real. Do not deny what God has done because He has not yet done all that He will do. The Spirit who began the work will complete it, and the completion will not be the refutation of the beginning but its consummation. Third, let this doctrine teach you the daily discipline of dependence. The regenerate will is enabled "by His grace alone." The grace that enables is the sole efficient cause of every act of spiritual good. This means that the believer begins each day as a beggar, with no stock of spiritual capital carried over from yesterday's obedience. The grace that enabled his prayers yesterday must be sought afresh for today. Sanctification is not a reservoir but a river, and the river flows only as the fountain flows. God has ordered the Christian life so that we can never outgrow our dependence. The most mature saint must pray as earnestly for enabling grace as the newest convert — indeed, more earnestly, because he knows his weakness better. The branch does not sustain its own life; the vine sustains the branch. Your part is to abide, to remain, to draw — the posture of one who looks to Christ for everything, knowing that everything apart from Christ is nothing. Fourth, let this doctrine make you patient with yourself and with other believers. The confessional acknowledgment that the regenerate man does not perfectly will the good should temper every expectation we bring to the Christian life. Your sanctification will not be complete until glory. You will stumble. You will discover pockets of resistance you thought had been conquered long ago. This is not cause for giving up; it is the normal Christian life. John Flavel compares the believer to a man climbing a muddy hill: two steps forward and one step back, but the net movement is upward because the hand of God is upon him. Be patient with your own progress; God is patient with you. He knows your frame; He remembers that you are dust. Equally, be patient with the imperfections of your brothers and sisters. The church is a hospital, not a museum of finished saints. The evidence of the Spirit's work in a believer is not sinlessness but the direction of the life — a trajectory, however halting, toward God. Learn to discern the trajectory rather than demanding the destination. The destination will come, but it will come for all of us at the same moment: when we see Christ as He is and are made like Him. Fifth, let this doctrine direct your gaze forward to the hope of glory. Section 4 is deliberately placed between Section 3, which describes the will in its state of total inability, and Section 5, which describes the will in its state of perfect liberty. The present state is transitional. The conflict will not last forever. The day is coming when remaining corruption will be not just weakened but removed, not just dethroned but destroyed. The will that now limps toward God will one day run. The heart that now loves God imperfectly will one day love Him perfectly. The mind that now serves the law of God while the flesh serves the law of sin will one day serve God with every faculty in unbroken harmony. This hope is not meant to dull the pain of the present struggle; it is the proper Christian motivation for continuing in it. The athlete runs because he sees the finish line. The soldier fights because he sees the victory. The believer perseveres because he sees the day — guaranteed by the covenant, secured by the blood, applied by the Spirit — when the will shall be made perfectly and immutably free to good alone. Keep that day before your eyes. When the conflict is fiercest, lift your gaze from the battlefield to the throne. The One who sits upon the throne is the One who began the work in you, and He who began it will complete it. Not because you are faithful but because He is. Not because your will is strong but because His grace is sufficient. The state of grace is a state of sure and certain progress toward the state of glory. What you are now is not what you shall be, and what you shall be is already determined in the eternal purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.

Prayer

O most gracious and sovereign God, who alone canst turn the heart of stone into a heart of flesh and loose the bonds that bind the will, we praise Thee that Thou hast not left us in the state into which we fell. The ruin was ours, and the recovery is Thine. In Adam we lost the freedom that he possessed, and we added to that loss the guilt of our own willing rebellion. But Thou, in the riches of Thy mercy, didst send Thy Son to be the Mediator of a better covenant, and Thy Spirit to apply the benefits of His death and resurrection to our dead and helpless souls. We thank Thee for the reality of the work Thou hast begun within us. Before Thy Spirit came, we willed nothing but what displeased Thee. We loved our chains and called our bondage freedom. But Thou hast set us free — not free to sin, but free to righteousness; not free in our own strength, but free in the power of an endless life. Every genuine desire for holiness, every sincere act of obedience, is the work of Thy Spirit within us, to whom be all the glory. Yet we mourn, O Lord, that we do not yet will the good perfectly. The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and we find within ourselves a law that wars against the law of our minds. We confess with shame that we have this day willed what is evil. Forgive us, for the sake of Christ, whose blood cleanseth from all sin. And let not our remaining corruption become the occasion of our despair but the occasion of deeper dependence upon Thee. Grant us daily supplies of the Spirit's enabling grace. We cannot take a single step toward heaven without Thee. Be Thou our constant fountain. When we wake, let our first thought be toward Thee. When we lie down at night, let our confession be to Thee and our hope rest in Thee alone. Make us patient, O God, with the slowness of our own sanctification, and patient with the imperfections of our brethren. Bring us at last to that blessed state where the will shall be made perfectly free, where remaining corruption shall be no more, where we shall serve Thee day and night in Thy temple without weariness and without sin. Hasten that day, for the glory of Thy great name and for the joy of Thy redeemed people. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.