Sunday Hymn: Great God, We Sing That Mighty Hand

Great God, we sing that migh­ty hand,
By which sup­port­ed still we stand:
The op­en­ing year Thy mer­cy shows,
That mer­cy crowns it, till it close.

By day, by night, at home, abroad,
Still are we guard­ed by our God,
By His in­ces­sant boun­ty fed,
By His un­er­ring coun­sel led.

With grate­ful hearts the past we own;
The fu­ture, all to us un­known,
We to Thy guard­ian care com­mit,
And peace­ful leave be­fore Thy feet.

In scenes ex­alt­ed or de­pressed,
Thou art our joy, and Thou our rest;
Thy good­ness all our hopes shall raise,
Adored through all our chang­ing days.

When death shall in­ter­rupt these songs,
And seal in si­lence mor­tal tongues,
Our help­er God, in whom we trust,
In bet­ter worlds our souls shall boast.

—Philip Doddridge

Theological Term of the Week: Free Agency

free agency
The ability to make one’s own decisions as to what one will do, choosing as one pleases in light of one’s own sense of right and wrong and the inclination one feels;1 sometimes called free will.

• From scripture:

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. (James 1:14 ESV)

But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.  (Matthew 17:12 ESV)

• From The London Baptist Confession:

Chapter 9: Of Free Will

1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is neither forced, nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil. 

(Matthew 17:12; James 1:14; Deuteronomy 30:19) 

2. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God, but yet was unstable, so that he might fall from it. 

(Ecclesiastes 7:29; Genesis 3:6) 

3. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. 

(Romans 5:6; Romans 8:7; Ephesians 2:1, 5; Titus 3:3-5; John 6:44)

4. 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 corruptions, he doth not perfectly, nor only will, that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil. 

(Colossians 1:13; John 8:36; Philippians 2:13; Romans 7:15, 18, 19, 21, 23) 

5. This will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the state of glory only. 

(Ephesians 4:13)

• From Concise Theology by J. I. Packer, page 85:

Free agency is a mark of human beings as such. All humans are free agents in the sense that they make their own decisions as to what they will do, choosing as they please in the light of their sense of right and wrong and the inclinations they feel. Thus they are moral agents, answerable to God and each other for their voluntary choices. So was Adam, both before and after he sinned; so are we now, and so are the glorified saints who are confirmed in grace in such a sense that they no longer have it in them to sin. Inability to sin will be one of the delights and glories of heaven, but it will not terminate anyone’s humanness; glorified saints will still make choices in accordance with their nature, and those choices will not be any the less the product of human free agency just because they will always be good and right.

Learn more:

1. Michael Reeves: Do we have free will?
2. John Murray: Free Agency
3. Steven Nichols and Robert W. Godfrey: What does it mean to have free will?
4. Gene Edward Veith: Free Will in Bondage
5. J. I. Packer Inability: Free Will vs. Free Agency

Related terms:

• fall of humanity
• image of God
• inability
• sovereignty of God
• total depravity

Filed under Anthropology

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Sunday Hymn: As with Gladness, Men of Old

As with glad­ness, men of old
Did the guid­ing star be­hold
As with joy they hailed its light
Leading on­ward, beam­ing bright
So, most glo­ri­ous Lord, may we
Evermore be led to Thee.

As with joy­ful steps they sped
To that low­ly man­ger bed
There to bend the knee be­fore
Him whom Heav­en and earth ad­ore;
So may we with will­ing feet
Ever seek Thy mer­cy seat.

As they of­fered gifts most rare
At that man­ger rude and bare;
So may we with ho­ly joy,
Pure and free from sin’s al­loy,
All our cost­li­est trea­sures bring,
Christ, to Thee, our heav­en­ly king.

Holy Jes­us, ev­ery day
Keep us in the nar­row way;
And, when earth­ly things are past,
Bring our ran­somed souls at last
Where they need no star to guide,
Where no clouds Thy glo­ry hide.

In the heav­en­ly coun­try bright,
Need they no cre­at­ed light;
Thou its light, its joy, its crown,
Thou its sun which goes not down;
There for­ev­er may we sing
Alleluias to our king!

—Will­iam C. Dix