Fourth Sunday in Lent.
ON FREE WILL.
1. We have seen throughout how that the exercise of the Will is that which gives character to an act, stamping on it its mark of sin or righteousness, in as far as it affects the individual Conscience.
We will now look at the Human Will, and consider how it operates.
An object is presented to it, and it can determine with relation to it in three different ways.
(a) It can consent to it. If the object be evil, and it consent to it, then it becomes guilty, it sins. This is what has been insisted on throughout, that the Will of man is the determining quality making a thing to be sinful or not to the individual Conscience.
The imagination or the intelligence presents to the Will a certain picture, proposes a certain act, and the Conscience then pronounces on the right or wrong of what is presented and proposed. Then the Will forms its decision. If it consents to what is suggested, and the Conscience has informed it that this is wrong, then it makes a deliberate act of separation from and revolt against God.
(b) It can resist, it can absolutely refuse to take the course indicated, when the Conscience has pointed out that the course is contrary to what God has ordered. When the Will thus deliberately resists the evil suggestion, it not only does not sin, but it performs a good and meritorious act. It has taken the side of God, and such an act of positive adhesion to God is rewarded by God, and strengthens the Will in a right course.
When we say that an act of adhesion to God is meritorious, we do not mean that any act of man unassisted by grace can deserve a reward, but that God will reward man if he, by an exercise of free will, ranges himself on His side, just as surely as He will punish man if he, by an exercise of his free will, ranges himself against Him.