Free Will- a review of the Heidelberg Disputations 13-18

The source I have been using in my discussion of the Heidelberg Disputations divides them into four sections. With disputation #18 we end the second section, about free will:

13. Free will, after the fall, exists in name only, and as long as it does what it is able to do, it commits a mortal sin.
14. Free will, after the fall, has power to do good only in a passive capacity, but it can do evil in an active capacity.
15. Nor could the free will endure in a state of innocence, much less do good, in an active capacity, but only in its passive capacity.
16. The person who believes that he can obtain grace by doing what is in him adds sin to sin so that he becomes doubly guilty.
17. Nor does speaking in this manner give cause for despair, but for arousing the desire to humble oneself and seek the grace of Christ.
18. It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.

This is yet another piece of the puzzle as Luther moves between the Law of God to the Love of God. As if it wasn’t enough to prove in the first section (theses 1-12) that man’s works will always be insufficient to merit God’s love, he continues in this second section to argue that even if they were, mankind would be completely unable to do any good works because of free will. Free will, after the Fall, forbids mankind from doing any good except accidentally or unintentionally. But this isn’t a reason to give up on God- rather once you begin to give up proving yourself to God you are starting to understand what it would really take to receive God’s favor- his mercy alone, which is something we could never deserve but only could receive freely through his condescending grace.