The False Narrative of Choice

 This always seems to come up in discussion, and it is the strangest thing.  The vast majority of Christians today believe that they have a choice in the ability to follow or not to follow God.  Lutherans have a unique and Biblical view of the matter, but even many Lutherans today follow a more generic Protestant stance of believing that we must choose to have faith and follow.  I'll come to the Biblical rationale shortly.  First, why do so many insist that they make a choice to follow Jesus?  Quite simply, it's because to say we do not, means we have no control or say in the matter.  True "free will" existed only at the creation.  Adam and Eve were truly free to decide all matters.  One such matter was the matter of choosing good or evil.  Good was obedience to God, evil was not.  Now I don't intend on getting into a discussion of all of this being God's plan and by God's design - that's a discussion for another time.  The simple fact is that when Humanity at it's infancy was given complete freedom to choose, to quote the knight from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," "they chose poorly."  The result is what we term the human condition, or human bondage.  Humanity now found itself in bondage to sin, which meant that we follow evil, and not God.  This is the natural state of humanity, and even the briefest look at human history should confirm this to be true.  

Now fast forward through the history contained in the Old Testament.  You see the same pattern of turning away from God, up to the point of entering the New Testament and God's plan of salvation.  It is here that we need to go "theological," or at least "Biblical."  While many verses apply in describing both this human bondage as well as our lack of choice to follow God, there are a couple that stand out.  The first, when it comes to what Luther termed "the Bondage of the Will," is Romans 3:10ff, where we read "As it is written: 'There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away..."  When it comes to the Scriptures, the plainest meaning is the one we need to emphasize, meaning that we all, by nature, are bound to walk away from God.  Later on, Romans says that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"  (3:23).

God's plan of salvation is a simple one:  Natural law (the laws God established and governs by) dictate that sin brings death.  So if there is to be salvation from our bound state, we simply need to choose to "follow Christ," right?  This is where the human bondage really tricks us into believing a lie.  In the upper room in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the disciples a great many things.  After referring to them as the branches off of the vine (himself), he tells them "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last." (John 15:16).  That's a pretty condemning passage on our ability to choose to follow Jesus.  Lest we think he was only speaking to the disciples, Let's look at another broad reaching passage on the nature of salvation, this time from Ephesians:  "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast."  This is often used as the "benchmark" verse on salvation, but it seems that too often we overlook verse 9, which clearly articulates that even the faith we need to believe day after day is not something we "choose" but rather comes to us as God's gift.  It is the final nail in the coffin of the false narrative of choice that so many feel the need to cling to in today's age.  

The late Rev'd Dr. Gerhard Forde wrote about this at length in his book "Justification by Faith:  A Matter of Death and Life."  He says "'we do have a choice, don't we?  Now perhaps we can begin to see why the best answer to that persistent question is 'yes, indeed, we have a choice, but the problem is that we have already made it.  The die has been cast.  Our answer to God is 'no.'  We are simply not free in those things that are above us.'" (Forde, 1990, p. 73)  This is what swings us right back to that age old problem of the human bondage of the will, where "there is no one righteous, not one."  I would highly recommend Forde's book for a great synopsis of this most essential reformation battle on the human will's state.   Quite simply, to claim "free will" to choose to follow Christ and then to continue in sin as we are all prone to do means we continue to reject God after all and we remain bound in our natural state as sinners in rebellion toward God.  The ONLY way for us to truly have free choice, once "choosing" to follow, is to never ever sin again, thereby demonstrating that we have indeed made a true and correct choice to follow Jesus.  And yet we all still sin.  There is no escaping that in this life.  There is no example in history of anyone having chosen to follow who has not therefore abstained from sin.  So we really do not have a choice to choose to follow Jesus after all.  Our sin prevents it.  

In fact, despite the continuing debate that raged then and continues to rage even today, it was precisely that debate that led to the Small Catechism's answer to the question regarding the 3rd Article of the Creed, on the Holy Spirit.  When asked "What does this mean for us?" (to believe in the Holy Spirit), the answer quite simply comes, "I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.  But the Holy Spirit calls me through the Gospel, enlightens me with it's gifts, and sanctifies and keeps me in true faith.  In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it united in the one true faith.  In this Christian church day after day he fully forgives my sins and the sins of all believers.  And on the last day he will raise me and all believers to eternal life.  This is most certainly true."

It's a tough sell because it truly removes the last bit of authority we try to claim for ourselves and places it squarely at the foot of the cross, where it  belongs.  If the promise of salvation to us belongs to God alone (and it DOES belong to God alone), then just as Ephesians states, we believe only as the Holy Spirit enables us to.  So what of the lost?  Seems awfully deterministic or even fatalistic!  Well, that's where good works and the great commission come in!  The verse most often left off when people love to quote how we are saved by grace through faith is "for we are all God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works he has prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2:10).  One of those works is to do the electing on God's behalf.  We call it "the Great Commission." Or to put it bluntly:  Get out and make disciples!  We are saved by Grace, through faith, which is the gift of God.  We are saved FOR works.  Which means for us:  Go and make disciples.  Go and be obedient to the will of God.  But we do it not for merit, but because of what God has already done for us.

When it comes to our choosing to follow God, so what if it is God who gives us the ability to believe and follow?  What's wrong with that?  It's really quite freeing!  It means I can't boast on the good I may or may not have done in life, but it also means I no longer have to worry about whether I've been good or even faithful enough to "earn" my salvation as well!  The parable of the workers in the vineyard is a great analogy for this.  In Matthew 20, Jesus tells of the various workers hired at the beginning of the day, and throughout the day, and all promised the same wage.  To put it simply:  there is but one reward for faith, and that is eternal life.  And even in the parable, the workers are asked by the landlord (God) to come and work first, emphasizing once again the nature of our own faith, which comes to us as God's gift.

I hope that this explanation really does show us just how "good" the Good News of Jesus really is, AND how false the narrative of "choosing Jesus" is as well.