This is the last entry on chapter 2. It ends on a good note. God comes to the rescue.
1. Though man’s understanding and love for heavenly things is dark and dead; his conscience has God’s law written on it. (Rom 2:14-15). What is the purpose of this natural law in the consciences of men? “The purpose of natural law, therefore, is to render man inexcusable” (Pg., 282).
2. “Natural law is that apprehension of the conscience which deprives men of the excuse of ignorance, while it proves them guilty by their own testimony” (Pg,282).
3. “Man is so indulgent toward himself that when he commits evil he readily averts his mind, as much as he can, from the feeling of sin” (Pg., 282). That is, man attempts to run away from the conscience which would judge between right and wrong, and runs to the lust of his evil desires.
4. He sins in ignorance; only in so far as he conveniently chooses to forget what he knows is right. When he desires and commits sin, he lies to himself while wiping his mouth. [Prov 30:20]
5. Man the sinner not only breaks the commandments of God, but cannot lovingly understand either the 1st or the 2nd table of the law. Though his conscience shouts at his evil deeds, greater attention is given to “evil desires that gently tickle the mind” (Pg., 284).
6. Calvin asks this question. “Does our diligence, insight, understand, and carefulness so completely corrupted that we can devise or prepare nothing right in God’s eyes? Scripture says yes. [1 Cor 3:20; Ps 94:11; Gen 6:6; 8:21; Ps 119:34, 12, 18, 19, 26, 33, 64, 68, 73, 124-125, 135, 169; Col 1:9-10; Phil 1:9; Ps 51:10]
7. But if a man cannot understand heavenly things, can he then choose those things?
8. What is the will? Calvin writes, “Choice belongs to the sphere of the will rather than to that of the understanding” (Pg., 286). This will is subject to the cravings of man’s appetite, by which is meant “inclination of nature” (Pg., 286).
9. This nature in man always craves the “good.” Not meaning God, righteousness, holiness, virtue or justice; but the good in the sense “as to condition when things go well with him....the desire for well being” (Pg., 286-287).
10. The power of free will does not come from this fallen appetite. For a man to have free will he must be able to “discern good by right reason; that knowing it he choose it; that having chosen it he follow it” (Pg., 286). But this understanding or reason is also corrupt. Thus, the entire man is enslaved to sin. Free will, that is the ability to choose with the mind and heart that which is truly good, namely God, is dead.
11. Calvin gives this summery. “To sum up, much as man desires to follow what is good, still he does not follow it. There is no man to whom eternal blessedness is not pleasing, yet no man aspires to it except by the impulsion of the Holy Spirit” (Pg., 286).
12. No man can will or do anything good without the Holy Spirit, who does not originate in sinful man but is given by God’s grace to his elect.
13. Calvin: "We are all sinners by nature; therefore we are held under the yoke of sin. But if the whole man lies under the power of sin, surely it is necessary that the will, which is its chief seat, be restrained by the stoutest bonds” (Pg., 288). [2 Cor 3:5; Gen 8:21; Jn 8:34; Phil 2:13; Ps 51].
14. Though conscience pricks and leaves man inexcusable, the mind of man is “miserably subject to vanity” (Pg., 285). For sinners to understand heavenly things, they need the grace of God’s illuminating and regenerating work.
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