Free-will doctrine-what does it? It magnifies man into God. It declares God's purposes a nullity, since they cannot be carried out unless men are willing. It makes God's will a waiting servant to the will of man, and the whole covenant of grace dependent on human action. Denying election on the ground of injustice, it holds God to be a debtor to sinners.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the doctrine of free will, suggesting it elevates human choice to a divine level while undermining God's sovereignty.
Charles Spurgeon's quote critiques the concept of free will as it relates to divine sovereignty. He argues that by emphasizing free will, humanity is placed in a position of power over God, turning divine intentions into mere possibilities that depend on human choices. This perspective suggests that God's plans are contingent upon human action, thereby diminishing God's authority and grace by making Him subordinate to human willingness.
In practice
In a debate about the nature of free will and responsibility, this quote can highlight the theological implications of human choice.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
The outward work can never be small if the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good if the inward is small or of little worth.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man's soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture.
I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.
Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.
Not much longer shall we have time for reading lessons of the past. An inexorable present calls us to the defense of a great future.
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