If you don’t believe that God foreknows and wills all things, how can you believe and rely on his promises? Here is a portion of Martin Luther’s refutation of Erasmus’ The Freedom of the Will, entitled, The Bondage of the Will:

“Still more intolerable is your classifying ‘free-will’ among the ‘useless doctrines that we can do without’….  If you do not think this topic a necessary concern for Christians, kindly withdraw from the lists; we have no common ground; I think it is vital.  If it is ‘irreligious’, ‘idle’, ’superfluous’–your words–to know whether or not God foreknows anything contingently; whether our will is in any way active in matters relating to eternal salvation, or whether it is merely the passive subject of the work of grace; whether we do our good and evil deeds of mere necessity–whether, that is, we are not rather passive while they are wrought in us–then may I ask what does constitute godly, serious, useful knowledge?…

Anyway, this is what your words assert: that there is strength within us; there is such a thing as striving with all one’s strength; there is mecy in God; there are ways of compassing that mercy; there is a God who is by nature just, and kindness itself; and so on.  But if one does not know what this ’strength’ is–what men can do, and what is done to them–what this ’striving’ is, what is the extent and limit of its effectiveness–then what should he do?  What will you tell him to do?  Let us see….  Here you speak to the contrary, saying that Christian piety consists in ’striving with all our might’, and that ‘apart from the mercy of God our will is ineffective’.  Here you plainly assert that the will is in some respect active in matters pertaining to eternal salvation, for you represent it as striving; and again, you represent it as the object of Divine action when you say that without God’s mercy it is ineffective….

So it is not irreligious, idle, or superfluous, but in the highest degree wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know whether or not his will has anything to do in matters pertaining to salvation.  Indeed, let me tell you, this is the hinge on which our discussion turns, the crucial issue between us; our aim is, simply, to investigate what ability ‘free-will’ has, in what respect it is the subject of Divine action and how it stands related to the grace of God….  We need, therefore, to have in mind a clear-cut distinction between God’s power and ours, and God’s work and ours, if we would live a godly life….

It is, then, fundamentally necessary and wholesome for Christians to know that God foreknows nothing contingently, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His own immutable, eternal and infallible will.  This bombshell knocks ‘free-will’ flat, and utterly shatters it; so that those who want to assert it must either deny my bombshell, or pretend not to notice it, or find some other way of dodging it….  Surely it was you, my good Erasmus, who a moment ago asserted that God is by nature just, and kindness itself? If this is true, does it not follow that He is immutably just and kind? that, as His nature remains unchanged to all eternity, so do His justice and kindness?  And what is said of His justice and kindness must be said also of His knowledge, His wisdom, His goodness, His will, and the other Divine attributes….

You insist that we should learn the immutability of God’s will, while forbidding us to know the immutability of His foreknowledge!  Do you suppose that He does not will what He foreknows, or that He does not foreknow what He wills?  If He wills what He foreknows, His will is eternal and changeless, because His nature is so.  From which it follows, by resistless logic, that all we do, however it may appear to us to be done mutably and contingently, is in reality done necessarily and immutably in respect of God’s will.  For the will of God is effective and cannot be impeded, since power belongs to God’s nature; and His wisdom is such that He cannot be deceived.  Since, then His will is not impeded, what is done cannot but be done where, when, how, as far as, and by whom, He foresees and wills….

I could wish, indeed, that a better term was available for our discussion than the accepted one, necessity, which cannot accurately be used of either man’s will or God’s.  Its meaning is too harsh, and foreign to the subject; for it suggests some of compulsion, and something that is against one’s will, which is no part of the view under debate.  The will, whether it be God’s or man’s, does what it does, good or bad, under no compulsion, but just as it wants or pleases, as if totally free.  Yet the will of God, which rules over our mutable will, is changeless and sure….

For if you hesitate to believe, or are too proud to believe to acknowledge, that God foreknows and wills all things, not contingently, but necessarily and immutably, how can you believe, trust and rely on His promises?  When He makes promies, you ought to be out of doubt that He knows, and can and will perform, what He promises; otherwise, you will be accounting Him neither true nor faithful, which is unbelief, and the height of irreverence, and a denial of the most high God!…  Not only should we be sure that God wills, and will execute His will, necessarily and immutably, we should glory in the fact, as Paul does in Romans….  If, then, we are taught and believe that we ought to be ignorant of the necessary foreknowledge of God and the necessity of events, Christian faith is utterly destroyed, and the promises of God and the whole gospel fall to the ground completely; for the Christian’s chief and only comfort in every adversity lies in knowing that God does not lie, but brings all things to pass immutably, and that His will cannot be resisted, altered or impeded.”

Related Articles Do Not Rely On Your Pious Duties Conditional Promises of God and Man’s Impotence The Way of Escape Don’t Fail Christ by Thinking Things YOU Do Can Keep You From Failing Him PBS Look at the Emergent Heresy