Like Rudy, that’s not the kind of answer any of us like to hear. When we’re wrestling with life’s struggles and questions, it feels like no answer at all—almost dismissive or evasive. But, as Martin Luther argued in The Bondage of the Will, our discomfort with that response actually proves its truth. The problem isn’t that the answer is incomplete; it’s that the incompleteness is the point. We’re meant to realize that we can’t fully understand God because we’re not Him. That’s not a flaw in faith—it’s the essence of it. God is God. You are not. And that’s exactly why you can’t understand.
Desiderius Erasmus—the Dutch humanist whom Luther was responding to in The Bondage of the Will—wasn’t trying to get into Notre Dame. But he was trying to understand how to reconcile an all-powerful, all-knowing God with the supposed free will of sinful humanity. Erasmus acknowledged God’s sovereign grace in theory but couldn’t reconcile it with human responsibility in practice. “Does God choose man for salvation entirely,” he wondered, “or does man’s choice play some part in the process?”
When it comes to the question of free will, one of the biggest struggles we face is related to the justice of God. A common question goes something like this: “How can God condemn people for their sins when their wills are bound and they cannot freely choose Him?” Even someone with a loose moral compass can sense the apparent unfairness. If we don’t have a free will to choose God, how can He hold us liable for not choosing Him? This is the question of the bound will and the unjust God.
You’re not going to like the answer, but here it is: “There is a God—and you’re not Him.”
Thankfully, Luther doesn’t just play the “God card” and leave us to puzzle out divine justice on our own. He helps us see why this answer is actually a source of comfort.
When addressing the question of the bound will and the unjust God, Luther distinguishes between “three great lights”—which he calls “a common and good distinction”1: the light of nature, the light of grace, and the light of glory.
The Light of Nature – God’s Justice Questioned
Luther begins with a pointed question: why is God’s justice the only attribute we single out for scrutiny? No one claims to be stronger than God or greater in power. No Christian I know suggests that we have more wisdom or foreknowledge than He does. We never question His omnipotence or omniscience in relation to our own. And yet, when it comes to God’s justice, we hesitate. We ask whether His justice is truly just—as if this might be the one area where our own character could edge out God’s.
Luther writes:
“But here God must be reverenced and held in awe, as being most merciful to those whom He justifies and saves in their own utter unworthiness; and we must show some measure of deference to His divine wisdom by believing Him just when to us He seems unjust. If His justice were such as could be adjudged just by human reckoning, it clearly would not be divine; it would in no way differ from human justice. But inasmuch as He is the one true God—holy, incomprehensible, and inaccessible to man’s understanding—it is reasonable, indeed inevitable, that His justice also should be incomprehensible; as Paul cries, saying: ‘Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!’ (Rom. 11:33). They would not, however, be ‘unsearchable’ if we could at every point grasp the grounds on which they are just”2
The light of nature shows that, as fallen humanity, we can never ascend to the heights of God’s justice. When we try to perceive His justice through the lens of natural, sinful reason, we inevitably distort it. As Luther puts it, “By the light of nature, it is inexplicable that it should be just for the good to be afflicted and the bad to prosper”3. Seen through this light, many conclude that God is either unjust or nonexistent. The natural person cannot comprehend divine justice by what can be seen or reasoned. Justice—as seen in this life— will never add up.
In short, the light of nature can’t make sense of the answer, “You are not God.” It leaves us only with frustration and confusion.
The Light of Grace – God’s Justice Achieved
Thankfully, this isn’t the only light we see in Scripture. Luther argues that the confusion of the light of nature finds its clarity in the light of grace—the grace revealed in the Gospel.
“Yet all this, which looks so much like injustice in God, and is traduced as such by arguments which no reason or light of nature can resist, is most easily cleared up by the light of the Gospel and the knowledge of grace, which teaches us that, though the wicked flourish in their bodies, yet they perish in their souls.”4
Jesus is both the revelation of God’s demands and His promises. He fulfills the Law in righteousness and then offers that righteousness as a gift. In other words, Jesus lived righteously for us and then gave His righteousness to us. This, Paul says, is what defines God as “the righteous (just) God.” The righteousness given to sinners on account of Christ is God’s justice achieved:
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe… It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:21–26
The Light of Glory – God’s Justice Realized
The primary answer to the question of the bound will and the unjust God is grace—God’s gift of righteousness in Christ. Yet even here, the light of grace still seems—at least to our natural senses—unjust. There will always be space for the claim of an unjust God if how we receive this grace is through mere faith. How is it fair that faith alone be the means by which we receive grace? Our wills are bound and yet we must still believe?
Luther answers:
“The light of glory insists otherwise, and will one day reveal God, to whom alone belongs a judgment whose justice is incomprehensible, as a God whose justice is most righteous and evident—provided only that in the meantime, we believe it, as we are instructed and encouraged to do by the example of the light of grace explaining what was a puzzle of the same order to the light of nature.”5
One day, God in His glory will set everything right. He will pour out judgment on all ungodliness and sin. He will call to Himself all who, by believing in His Son, have cried out for mercy and have received His grace. But all of that is “one day.” His justice will be fully realized then, but for now, faith alone allows us to grasp what we cannot yet see.
God’s Justice – The Ultimate Comfort
“There is a God—and you’re not Him.” That can be a tough pill to swallow when wrestling with the question of the bound will and the unjust God. But remember: the incompleteness of the answer is the answer. You’ll never be able to figure it out. Justice is not left up to you—and praise God for that! His sense of justice is greater than yours.
And if justice is not in your hands, then neither is your salvation. God’s ability to save is greater than yours. Your will is bound. And God is just. And how do we know?
The just God has revealed His righteousness in human history in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There, God has forgiven your sins by taking them upon Himself and giving you His righteousness. His historical and bodily resurrection assures you that a life of justice awaits beyond the grave:
“There is a life after this life; and all that is not punished and repaid here will be punished and repaid there; for this life is nothing more than a precursor, or, rather, the beginning, of the life that is to come.”6
And though all of these objective, salvific, just, merciful, and life-giving realities are grasped only by faith, it’s a far better anchor than the fiction we call “free will.”
1. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996), 314–315.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, 315.
4. Ibid, 316.
5. Ibid, 317.
6. Ibid, 316.