CHAPTER XXXV: [PCUS Of the Gospel] — CHAPTER IX: Of Free Will

[PCUS Of the Gospel]

[UPCUSA Of the Gospel of the Love of God and Missions]

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1. God in infinite and perfect love, having provided in the covenant of grace, through the mediation and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, a way of life and salvation, sufficient for and adapted to the wholly lost race of man, doth freely offer this salvation to all men in the gospel.

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2. In the gospel God declares his love for the world and his desire that all men should be saved; reveals fully and clearly the only way of salvation; promises eternal life to all who truly repent and believe in Christ; invites and commands all to embrace the offered mercy; and by his Spirit accompanying the Word pleads with men to accept his gracious invitation.

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3. It is the duty and privilege of everyone who hears the gospel immediately to accept its merciful provisions; and they who continue in impenitence and unbelief incur aggravated guilt and perish by their own fault.

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4. Since there is no other way of salvation than that revealed in the gospel, and since in the divinely established and ordinary method of grace faith cometh by hearing the Word of God, Christ hath commissioned his Church to go into all the world and to make disciples of all nations. All believers are, therefore, under obligation to sustain the ordinances of the Christian religion where they are already established, and to contribute by their prayers, gifts, and personal effects to the extension of the Kingdom of Christ throughout the whole earth. __________________________________________________________________

Of Free Will
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1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil.

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2. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which is good and well-pleasing to God; but yet mutably, so that he might fall from it.

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3. Man, by his Fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.

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4. When God [PCUS converteth] [UPCUSA converts] a sinner and [PCUS translateth] [UPCUSA translates] him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and, by his grace alone, [PCUS enableth] [UPCUSA enables] him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.

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5. The will of man is made perfectly and immutable free to good alone, in the state of glory only. __________________________________________________________________