QUES. 29.-Would you kindly give some thoughts on "Free Agency?" Is man a free agent, saved or unsaved? Is not a lost sinner a slave of Satan, and thus not a free agent ? Could you say of a saved man that he was a free agent, and in what sense ?

ANS.-"Free Agency" is a theological tenet the discussion of which has ever made two parties among the people of God; one practically denying that man is a lost, ruined being; the other, that he is a responsible being, fully accountable to God for all he does, or refuses to do-this tending to fatalism. The word of God maintains both, and thus makes an end of party-making.

It declares man absolutely lost in his natural state, "horn in sin," "guilty," and "condemned already," without a shadow of hope outside of Christ; he must be "born anew "-not improved, but born. But God has made the fullest provision for man in this state, Christ has been lifted up on the cross to impart, through faith, new life to men. He is the propitiation for the sins of them all, that they may be freed from their guilt and condemnation. So now He commands all men everywhere to repent-to confess their lost condition and their guilt-and by faith to lay hold of His gracious provision in Christ.

That man of his own will refuses all this is true; that by his refusal he compels God to proceed further in grace, that Christ may have a "seed" and "see of the travail of His soul," is also true. Thank God for this, else " we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrah." But God, who knows man to his depths, and who understands perfectly where his responsibility begins and ends, and who cannot be unjust, holds him fully responsible to repent, to be born anew, and to be washed from his sins. If he refuses this rich provision made for him in Christ, he must not only give account to God for all the sins he has committed, but also for his rejection of that provision which would have cleared him from all.

Notice well that everywhere in Scripture, when God's sovereignty is brought to the front, it is after man has violated his responsibility. The message being refused, the messenger turns back to God, in whose sovereign grace alone there is hope.