Voluntary Slaves

Renewing Your Mind

Ligonier Ministries

Religion & Spirituality, Reformed, Study, Jesus, Preaching, Christianity, Scripture, Spirit, Bible, Holy, Theology, Christian, God, Teaching

4.8 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

No one, left to themselves, would ever respond positively to the gospel. Today, R.C. Sproul exposes our dependence upon God’s regenerating grace for our liberation from bondage to sin.

Request Ligonier’s special 500th-anniversary of The Bondage of the Will book by Martin Luther with your donation of any amount. We’ll include lifetime digital access to R.C. Sproul’s teaching series Willing to Believe and the companion study guide: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/4167/donate

Live outside the U.S. and Canada? With your donation, get the ebook edition of The Bondage of the Will and lifetime digital access to the Willing to Believe teaching series and study guide: https://www.renewingyourmind.org/global

Bring your teen to Always Ready: New England on August 2. This youth conference in Portland, Maine, aims to give clarity to students about their identity in Christ: https://www.ligonier.org/alwaysreadynewengland

Gather with Christians around God’s Word at another one of Ligonier’s upcoming events: https://www.ligonier.org/events

Meet Today’s Teacher:

R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine.

Meet the Host:

Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast.

Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What did Jesus mean when he said, no man can come to me unless the Father draws him?
0:06.4	He's certainly not talking about the lack of ability for somebody to walk down the street
0:11.2	and walk up to Jesus as he's lecturing and teaching and healing the sick.
0:16.6	When he talks about, come to me means that coming to him savingly,
0:21.5	no one can embrace him as the Son of God by his natural ability.
0:31.8	Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind,
0:35.9	and this week we're featuring R.C. Sprole's series
0:38.6	Willing to Believe, the controversy over free will. The disagreement through the ages has
0:45.8	boiled down to this. Does God choose us, or do we choose him? There are strong feelings on both
0:52.7	sides of this debate, and today Dr. Sprawl will explain
0:56.1	the view held by Luther and Calvin.
0:59.9	When we get to the role that John Calvin has played historically, theologically, in this
1:07.3	whole question of human freedom and original sin, we get to the name of the
1:14.4	theologian who is most closely associated in the public thinking of denying the doctrine
1:23.1	of free will in light of Calvin's view of election and predestination.
1:31.0	Let me say a couple of things about that before we actually explore Calvin's views.
1:37.0	The first place, Calvin, like Luther, was devoted to the study of St. Augustine.
1:47.1	And if you would read the works of Calvin, you would see that the person that Calvin quotes or cites more often than any other theologian in history
1:54.2	is Augustine himself. And I think it is accurate and safe to say that there is nothing in Calvin's view of election
2:05.3	or on his view of free will and original sin that wasn't first in Augustine and second in Luther.
2:16.5	Now that may surprise people because the Lutheran church, for example,
2:20.5	differs sharply from Calvinists on their view of election, and that's chiefly due to the change
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 1 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ligonier Ministries, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Ligonier Ministries and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.