Devotional 83: The Inability of Unregenerate Works: They Cannot Please God

The Confession Read

Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit to work in them to will and to do of his good pleasure: yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 16, Section 3

Introduction

Every Christian knows the experience of a resolution that died before the sun reached its zenith. You saw your sin with terrible clarity the night before, confessed it with genuine sorrow, and determined, with all the sincerity you could muster, that when the provocation returned in the morning, you would stand firm. The morning arrived on schedule, and so did the provocation, and before you had formed a single conscious thought about your resolution, the sharp word had already escaped your lips, the resentful thought had already settled into its accustomed chair, and the patience you meant to exercise had evaporated like dew before a flame. You were left standing in the wreckage of a resolve that was entirely sincere and entirely impotent, asking yourself a question that cuts to the bone: if I genuinely wanted to obey, and I knew what obedience required, why could I not perform it? The answer, if we are honest enough to receive it, is that the ability to perform a single good work — one work that God would recognize as truly good, one deed that springs from faith and aims at His glory — does not reside in the doer at all. It resides in Another. The Christian who attempts obedience in his own strength, drawing upon a stock of grace he imagines has been deposited in his account at conversion and is now his to spend at will, has already guaranteed his failure. He has mistaken the branch for the root, the channel for the fountain, the creature for the Creator. This is the doctrine of the Confession's third section on good works, and it is among the most humbling and liberating truths the Assembly ever set to paper. Where Section 1 defined what a good work is — only what God has commanded — and Section 2 unfolded the seven purposes good works serve in the life of faith, Section 3 now asks the question that every honest Christian eventually asks: where does the ability to perform these works come from? The answer the Divines give is unmistakable. The ability is not at all of ourselves. Not partially. Not initially. Not in cooperation with grace as though grace supplied what our native powers lacked. It is wholly from the Spirit of Christ. Nor is the initial ability, given at regeneration, thereafter self-sustaining. Every subsequent act of obedience — every patient word, every resisted temptation, every costly act of love — requires a fresh, actual influence of that same Spirit, given in the moment, for that particular act. This is not a truth the flesh receives gladly. The natural man, and the residual natural man in every believer, clings to the notion that the Christian life is a partnership: God supplies the grace, we supply the effort, and having been justified we now get on with the business of sanctification by our own disciplined will. The Confession dismantles that notion with four carefully balanced clauses, each one guarding against a specific error while opening the way to a specific comfort. And the whole section is framed by a pastoral wisdom that the Divines had purchased at great cost — the wisdom of men who had shepherded souls through Pelagian self-reliance on the right hand and Quietist passivity on the left, and who knew that both errors, however opposite they appear, lead equally to spiritual ruin.

Scripture Foundation

The fountain from which this entire doctrine flows is our Lord's own teaching, delivered in the upper room on the night He was betrayed. The hour was late, the shadows were deep, and the disciples were about to learn, in the most painful way possible, exactly how little spiritual strength they possessed. Within hours, every one of them would abandon Him. And yet it was in that moment of their impending failure that Christ chose to teach them the secret of all true obedience: "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing" (John 15:4-5). The imagery is as precise as it is organic. A branch severed from the vine does not produce less fruit. It does not produce poorer fruit. It produces no fruit at all, because the sap that forms the fruit does not originate in the branch — it flows from the root, through the vine, into every living branch, and the branch's sole contribution is to abide, to remain connected, to stay where the life is. The Greek word translated "nothing" is ouden, meaning not a single thing, not the smallest motion of genuine spiritual fruit, not one grape from a severed branch. Our Lord is not describing a partial insufficiency that grace then supplements. He is declaring an absolute incapacity. The branch apart from the vine is not weakened; it is dead. And the works of a Christian who attempts obedience in his own strength are not merely imperfect. They are impossible. Calvin, commenting on this passage with his characteristic directness, insists that Christ is stripping away every fig leaf of self-reliance. The branch's fruitfulness is not a joint project between the branch's effort and the vine's supply. It is entirely the vine's life manifesting through the branch. The branch that abides bears fruit without straining; the branch that severs itself, even for a moment, begins to wither. The point is not that Christians should try harder to abide but that they should recognize their utter dependence and act upon that recognition — remaining in conscious, continual union with Christ through the means He has appointed. The Apostle Paul takes this same truth and presses it deeper, into the mystery of the human will itself. Writing from prison to the church at Philippi, he gives a command that would be impossible if it stood alone: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). The verb is active, urgent, all-encompassing. But Paul does not leave the command hanging in mid-air. The very next words supply the reason such work is possible: "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). Two Greek verbs cover the entire territory of human action: thelein, to will, to desire, to incline the heart toward; and energein, to do, to perform, to carry out in actual deed. God works in the believer not only the outward performance but the inward disposition. He does not merely supply strength to a will that has already decided on obedience. He shapes the will itself so that it desires what He commands. The Christian who hungers for righteousness, who genuinely wants to be holy, who feels sorrow over sin and longs for purity — that very hunger is not self-generated. It is the Spirit's work in the will, and the same Spirit who plants the desire also supplies the energy to fulfill it. From the first flicker of holy longing to the final completed act, the whole movement of obedience originates in God, flows through God, and returns to God. And yet, this is the mystery that no theology can fully resolve, the command to work is no less real for being divinely enabled. Paul does not say, "Wait until God works, and then you may work." He says, "Work, because God works." The two are not in competition but in a harmony that only the Trinity could compose. What makes this doctrine so searching is that Paul applies it to himself with a candour that ought to silence every boast. The Apostle who wrote half the New Testament, who was caught up into the third heaven and heard unspeakable words, confesses his own impotence in terms that any ordinary Christian can echo: "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" (Romans 7:18). The "flesh" Paul speaks of is not the physical body but the residual corruption that remains in every believer until glory, what the older theologians called concupiscentia, indwelling sin, the principle of resistance that no amount of self-discipline can overcome. Even the regenerate will, left to its own resources, cannot carry obedience through to completion. The desire may be present — Paul says "to will is present with me" — but the performance lags behind, and the gap between willing and doing is filled by one thing only: the actual influence of the Holy Spirit, given in the moment of need. If the Apostle could not bridge that gap by his own resources, what makes us imagine we can? Paul makes the same point negatively when he writes to the Corinthians: "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God" (2 Corinthians 3:5). The word "sufficient" translates hikanos — adequate, competent, up to the task. And the word "think" translates logisasthai — to reckon, to reason, to form a judgment. Paul denies even the ability to produce a single godly thought from his own resources. If the Apostle could not think a holy thought apart from God's enabling, what ground have we for imagining we can perform a holy deed? The logic is inescapable, and it leads to one conclusion: the Christian life is a life of perpetual dependence, moment by moment, breath by breath. The believer who wakes in the morning and does not consciously, deliberately cast himself upon the Spirit for the day ahead has already begun to live as a practical Pelagian, whatever his creed may say.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Assembly composed this section with two enemies in full view. On one flank stood the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian traditions, resurgent in the Socinianism of the seventeenth century and in the popular moralism that had never been fully exorcised from the English church. These taught, in varying degrees, that man retains the native ability to do good works — that grace assists a will already fundamentally capable, that God helps those who help themselves, that the first step toward obedience originates in the creature and is then rewarded with divine assistance. On the other flank stood the antinomians and the enthusiasts — those who so emphasized the Spirit's sovereign work that they made human diligence unnecessary. If the Spirit must move, they reasoned, then we must wait in passive stillness until we feel Him move. Ordinary duties, daily prayer, the patient performance of one's calling — these were dismissed as dead works unless accompanied by a special, felt impulse from above. Both errors, the Divines saw, destroy the Christian life from opposite directions, and they constructed this single, carefully balanced section to kill both with one stroke. The first clause strikes at Pelagianism with a directness that leaves no room for negotiation: "Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ." The phrase "not at all" is as absolute as language permits. Not partially. Not initially. Not in cooperation with grace. Not a single particle of the ability that enables a good work originates in the believer. It comes entirely from outside him, through a specific channel — "the Spirit of Christ." The Divines chose this phrase rather than simply "the Holy Spirit" with theological precision. The Spirit who enables good works is the Spirit purchased by Christ's mediation and given only to those united to Him by faith. There is no access to this enabling Spirit apart from union with Christ. The man who is not in Christ may perform externally beneficial actions — he may be a good neighbour, a responsible citizen, a generous philanthropist — but he cannot perform a single good work in the Confession's sense of the term, because the Spirit who alone can enable such works is the Spirit of Christ, and Christ dwells only in His own. The second clause deepens the point with a distinction that is crucial for daily Christian experience: "beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit to work in them to will and to do of his good pleasure." The Divines are distinguishing between two kinds of grace — what the older theology called gratia habitualis, habitual grace, the abiding dispositions of faith, hope, and love planted in the soul at regeneration; and gratia actualis, actual grace, the fresh, moment-by-moment influence of the Spirit needed for every particular act of obedience. The believer has received the indwelling Spirit. The graces have been planted. But those habitual graces are not self-actuating. They are like a well with water in it — real water, living water — but the water must be drawn up afresh for every thirst. The act of drawing is itself enabled by the Spirit, and without that fresh drawing, the believer goes thirsty no less than the man who has no well at all. This is why the Christian life is a constant returning, a continual asking, a perpetual dependence. The man who prayed with genuine devotion yesterday cannot assume that today's prayers will flow from the same fountain without a fresh supply. The mother who was patient with her children on Monday cannot coast into Tuesday's patience on Monday's grace. Every act of obedience, however small, requires a present, actual working of the Spirit — not because the Spirit has departed and must be summoned back, but because the graces He has planted are of such a nature that they depend upon Him for every exercise, as a lamp depends upon the oil that feeds it, and the oil must be replenished daily. The third clause addresses the opposite error with equal precision: "yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit." The Divines had seen the wreckage that Quietism leaves in its wake: Christians who wait for a feeling, who wait for an impulse, who excuse themselves from plain duties because they do not sense a special leading. The husband who waits for a special motion of the Spirit before loving his wife is disobeying a command already in force and clear beyond dispute. The church member who waits for a special motion before attending public worship is neglecting a duty that requires no extraordinary impulse because the general command is sufficient and the Lord's Day comes every week whether we feel spiritual or not. The Divines close this door firmly: dependence on the Spirit does not cancel duty. It enables it. The Spirit's motion is present in the command itself. When God says, "Thou shalt," the Spirit is already calling you to obedience, and to demand a further, felt impulse as a condition of obeying is to add to God's Word a requirement He has not authorised. The fourth clause provides the positive counterpart: "but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them." Here the Divines echo Paul's charge to Timothy, where the Apostle uses the vivid Greek verb anazōpyrein — to rekindle a fire, to fan into flame what has burned low (2 Timothy 1:6). The imagery is homely: the fire is real, the coals are genuine, but they have cooled, and the believer's task is not to generate new fire from nothing but to stir the embers into flame through the appointed means. Prayer, the reading and preaching of Scripture, meditation, the sacraments, the fellowship of the saints, watchfulness against temptation — these are the bellows with which the Christian stirs the grace of God that is in him. And the Spirit who gave the grace honours the means He Himself has appointed.

Theological Depth

Owen, whose treatise on the Holy Spirit remains one of the most thorough explorations of the believer's inner life in the English language, addresses the apparent tension at the heart of this section with a carefulness born of decades of pastoral ministry. The Spirit, Owen argues, does not work in believers as upon stocks and stones, moving them without their own will and activity. He does not overpower the faculties He has created; He restores them to their proper operation. He does not believe for the believer; He enables the believer to believe with a faith that is genuinely the believer's own. He does not obey for the believer; He enables the believer to obey with an obedience that flows from a renewed will. The Spirit's working is not a replacement of human agency but its restoration to the purpose for which it was created, the purpose Adam enjoyed in Eden, when his will was free to obey because it was perfectly aligned with God's, and yet remained truly his own will. This is the answer to the objection that the Confession's doctrine turns men into puppets. A puppet is moved by strings from without; the believer is moved by a life from within — a life that is genuinely present in his soul, genuinely operative through his faculties, yet continuously dependent for its operation upon the Spirit who imparted it. The same sun that shines upon clay hardens it, and the same sun that shines upon wax melts it: the difference lies not in the sun but in the material upon which it acts. So the same Spirit who leaves the unregenerate confirmed in their rebellion activates the regenerate to willing obedience — not because the Spirit's operation differs in itself, but because the soul upon which He operates has been made new, and the newness of that soul, though real and abiding, requires His continual presence to express itself in holy acts. Turretin develops the doctrine with the scholastic precision characteristic of his Genevan academy. He distinguishes between potentia and actus, the power or capacity for good works given once in regeneration, and the actual exercise of that power in particular deeds. The capacity is given once; the exercise must be given afresh each time. A man who has been given sight possesses the capacity to see whether he opens his eyes or not, but he cannot see in the dark, and the light by which he sees must shine upon every object he beholds. So the regenerate man possesses the capacity for good works — the unregenerate man does not, and his works, however outwardly commendable, are not good in the Confession's sense. But that capacity cannot produce a single holy act without the present, actual illumination and empowerment of the Spirit. The distinction protects both the reality of regeneration as a once-for-all change and the necessity of continual dependence as the shape of the Christian life from regeneration to glory. Hodge brings this theology down to the level of daily experience with his characteristic attention to the means of grace. The Spirit works through means, and the chief means are the Word of God, prayer, and the sacraments. The Christian who neglects these means and then wonders why he has no power against sin is like a man who refuses to eat and then wonders why he is weak. The Spirit is not obligated to work apart from the channels He has appointed. The man who skips his Bible reading and then prays for patience should not be surprised when his prayer seems unanswered, for the Spirit ordinarily works patience through the Word that commands it, the meditation that digests it, and the prayer that pleads for it — not through a direct infusion that bypasses the believer's conscious engagement with Scripture. The means do not operate mechanically; they are not magical. But they are the ordinary channels the Spirit has chosen, and He has not promised to meet us in any other way. Watson, ever the physician of souls, applies the pastoral scalpel with his characteristic blend of comfort and warning. If good works depend wholly on the Spirit, two things follow immediately. First, pride is excluded. The Christian who has performed some notable act of obedience — who has forgiven a deep wrong, or given generously at real cost, or borne a lengthy trial with patience — cannot congratulate himself. The ability came from Another. Paul's question echoes down the centuries: "Who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" (1 Corinthians 4:7). The question is unanswerable, and its silence is the silence of a pride struck dead. Every good work is a gift, and you do not boast about gifts you have received; you give thanks for them. Second, despair is excluded. The Christian who feels utterly unable to obey, who looks at tomorrow's temptations and knows he has no strength for them, is exactly right about his own resources and exactly wrong if he stops there. The ability does not reside in him, but it resides in the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit is not reluctant. He is not stingy. He is not waiting for the believer to prove himself worthy before He helps. He delights to make weak men strong, to supply what they lack, to enable what they cannot perform. The mother who cannot find patience for another hour of a toddler's defiance, the husband who cannot find love for a wife who has wounded him deeply, the pastor who cannot find words for a suffering family — these are not candidates for the Spirit's rejection. They are candidates for His enabling. And His good pleasure is to enable them. Augustine, in a prayer that echoes through all subsequent Reformed theology, captured the whole doctrine in a single sentence: "Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt." The command is real, and the obedience is real, but the ability to obey is a gift received afresh at every step. The Christian life is not a partnership of equals but the life of a creature who, having been made alive by grace, lives every subsequent moment by the same grace that gave him life in the first place.

Puritan Application

First, begin every day with a conscious, deliberate acknowledgment of your utter dependence. Before your feet touch the floor, before the first temptation reaches your mind, before the first provocation tests your patience — confess to God what the Confession teaches: that you have no ability in yourself for any good work this day. If the Spirit does not supply His actual influence, you will fail in everything you attempt for God's glory. This is not morbid self-deprecation; it is the most bracing realism a Christian can practice. The man who thinks he can handle the day's trials in his own strength is the man who will fall before breakfast. The man who knows he cannot is the man who will pray. And the man who prays will receive what he asks, because the Father gives the Spirit to those who ask Him, and He gives Him gladly. Second, do not despise the ordinary means of grace. The Spirit ordinarily works through the Word read, preached, meditated upon, and sung. He works through prayer, both secret and corporate. He works through the sacraments, which are not empty signs but effectual means by which faith is strengthened and Christ is communicated to the believing recipient. The Christian who is dry and weak and looks for some extraordinary visitation of the Spirit while neglecting his Bible, his prayer closet, and the assembly of the saints is like a farmer who prays for a harvest but refuses to plow. The Spirit is not at your command to supply through extraordinary channels what you could have obtained through the means He has already provided and commanded. Open the Book. Bend the knee. Sit under the Word. Come to the Table. These are not works by which you earn the Spirit's assistance; they are channels through which He has promised to flow, and He is faithful. Third, resist the temptation to wait for feelings before you obey. The Confession explicitly forbids the notion that we are excused from duty unless we experience a special motion of the Spirit. Your duty to love your spouse is not suspended when you feel cold. Your duty to speak the truth is not lifted when a lie feels safer in the moment. Your duty to assemble with God's people is not canceled when you feel spiritually dull and disinclined. The Spirit's motion is present in the command itself. When God says, "Thou shalt," the Spirit is already calling you to obedience, and to add to God's Word by requiring a feeling He has not promised is to make yourself the arbiter of when God's commands apply. Obey the command you have, and trust that the Spirit who gave it will enable what He requires — often not before you obey, but in the very act of obeying. The feeling you were waiting for may come, but it will come as a companion on the journey, not as the engine that starts the car. Fourth, let your failures drive you to Christ rather than to despair. The doctrine of total dependence can be twisted into a counsel of hopelessness: if I cannot do good without the Spirit, and I consistently fail, perhaps the Spirit is not in me at all. But this is to reason backward from experience to promise, and the Christian life always reasons the opposite way. The promise is that Christ gives the Spirit to all who are His, and that the Spirit works in all who are Christ's to will and to do of God's good pleasure. The experience is that we still sin, sometimes grievously, and that our obedience is always partial and often weak. The conclusion is not that the promise is void but that we have not availed ourselves of the provision. A child who refuses to eat and then faints from hunger does not conclude that there is no food in the house — he concludes that he must eat. So the Christian who has fallen must not conclude that the Spirit has abandoned him. He must conclude that he has neglected the means by which the Spirit strengthens, or attempted obedience in his own strength, or both. Go back to the Word. Go back to prayer. Go back to Christ, who is the Vine and who has never yet refused sap to a branch that truly abides in Him. Fifth, give all glory to God for every good work you perform. This is the practical test of whether you have truly learned the doctrine of this section. When you have been patient under severe and repeated provocation, who gets the credit — your self-control or the Spirit's enabling? When you have resisted a temptation that has defeated you a hundred times before, who gets the glory — your improved discipline or the actual influence of the Spirit of Christ? When you have spoken a word of gospel comfort that proved to be exactly what a suffering brother needed to hear, who is praised — your wisdom or the Spirit who gave you the word in that moment? The heart that takes credit for its own obedience has not yet understood the first clause of this section. The ability is not at all of ourselves. Not ten percent. Not one percent. Not a single particle. Wholly from the Spirit of Christ. The only proper response to a gift is gratitude, and gratitude returns the glory to the Giver. The believer whose good works are noticed should feel what the moon feels when it reflects the sun: no temptation to pride, because the light is not its own; only the sober joy of having fulfilled its purpose by displaying a brightness that comes from elsewhere. Sixth, take courage from the Spirit's willingness. The Confession says the Spirit works in us "of his good pleasure" — echoing Paul's Greek phrase hyper tēs eudokias, according to His delight, His benevolent purpose, His glad resolve. The Spirit does not enable obedience grudgingly, as though He were a reluctant benefactor worn down by our importunity until He finally relents. He delights to make us holy. He takes pleasure in strengthening weak hands and confirming feeble knees. The same Spirit who brooded over the waters at the first creation, bringing order out of chaos, broods over the disordered soul of every believer, bringing Christlikeness out of the raw material of a redeemed but still imperfect heart. His work in you is not a burden to Him. It is His joy. You may come to Him with confidence, not because you deserve His help, and you never will, but because He delights to give it. The Spirit is not a miser with His grace; He is a fountain, and fountains do not need to be persuaded to flow.

Prayer

O Spirit of Christ, without whom we can do nothing, we confess before Thee that we have too often attempted obedience in our own strength and have failed utterly. We have made resolutions that crumbled at the first temptation, undertaken duties that collapsed under the weight of our insufficiency, been proud of our successes as though they were our own achievement, and been despondent in our failures as though Thy help were withheld. Forgive us, we pray Thee, for the Pelagianism that lurks in every Christian heart, the persistent and foolish illusion that we can will or do any good thing apart from Thee. We bless Thee that the ability we lack resides wholly in Thee, and that Thou art not reluctant to supply it. Thou art the Spirit of Christ, given freely to all who are united to Him by faith, and Thou dost work in us to will and to do according to Thy good pleasure. Grant us this day the actual influence we need for every duty that lies before us. Enable us to love where love is hard, to speak truth where falsehood is easy, to forgive where resentment is sweet to the flesh, to trust where every circumstance counsels fear. Let not a single moment of this day pass in which we attempt to live from our own resources rather than from Thy continual supply. Keep us, we beseech Thee, from the opposite error no less deadly: the negligence that excuses disobedience by pretending to wait for a special motion. Thou hast commanded, and that command is motion enough. Give us grace to obey even when we feel nothing, to perform our duties even when devotion seems dry, to stir up the grace of God that is in us through the diligent use of every means Thou hast appointed. Let us not neglect Thy Word, nor absent ourselves from public worship, nor approach Thy throne without prayer, nor pass the Table of our Lord without receiving the strength Thou offerest there to every believing heart. And when we have done all, not perfectly, never perfectly in this life, but sincerely and by Thy enabling, let us say with Thy servants of old that we are unprofitable servants. For the willing and the doing were both Thy work in us from first to last, and the glory belongs to Thee alone. Receive it, O blessed Spirit, together with the Father and the Son, one God, world without end. Amen.