Pastor Josh continues teaching us from Romans 9 (note: due to technical difficulties experienced this Sunday morning, a manuscript reading is posted instead of the live sermon):
“Paul is not saying that humans have no free will, only that, in the clearest possible terms, free will is not the fundamental factor in divine election; it depends only ‘on God, who has mercy.’…It is important, as we speak the truth about human inability to save ourselves, that we accurately portray that our weakness is not physical, or even fundamentally intellectual, but moral. It is not as though God has commanded anything of us which we are totally incapable of, only that we will never want to do it. The weakness is in your will…Who of us, by our own free will, would claim to be able to choose absolute and eternal submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Who of us, by our own choosing, could practice perfect and perpetual obedience? But this is exactly what is promised to us in salvation. And this is exactly what God does in his mercy; he makes us fit for heaven. This salvation is not of ourselves, ‘it is the gift of God… so that no one may boast.’”