"His people are made willing in the day of His power." (Ps.110)
Regenerating grace is powerful and efficacious (actually effects) and
gives the will a new turn.
The will is cured of its utter inability to will what is good. While
the opening of the prison to them that are bound is proclaimed in the
Gospel, the Spirit of God comes and opens the prison door, goes to the
prisoner, and, by the power of His grace, makes his chains fall off,
breaks the bond of iniquity, wherewith he was held in sin, and brings
him forth into a large place, 'working in him both to will and to do of
His good pleasure.' (Phil. 2:13) Then it is that the soul, that was
fixed to the earth, can mover heavenward; the withered hand is restored,
and can be stretched out.
There is worked in the quickened sinner an aversion to evil. The
sweet morsel of sin, so greedily swallowed down, he now grows more and
more to hate. The renewed will rises up against sin, strikes at the root
and the branches of sin. Lusts are now grievous, and the soul endeavors
to starve them.
The will is endowed with an inclination, bent, propensity to good.
Now by the power and operation of God, it is drawn from evil to good,
and gets another disposition. As the former bent was natural to him, so
now this is natural. The will, as renewed, points towards God and
godliness. When God made man, his will in respect of its intention, was
directed towards God as his chief end; in respect of its choice, it
pointed towards that which God willed. When man unmade himself, his will
was framed to the very reverse, he made himself his chief end and his
own will his law. BUT when man is new made in regeneration, grace
rectifies this disorder in some measure, though not perfectly, it yet
brings the sinner back to God.
The will is disposed now to receive Christ Jesus the Lord. The soul
is content to submit to Him. Regenerating grace undermines, and brings
down the towering imaginations of the heart, raised up against its
rightful Lord; it breaks the iron sinew, which kept the sinner from
bowing to Him; and disposes him to be no more stiff necked, but to
yield. He is willing now to take on the yoke of Christ's commands, to
take up the cross and to follow Him. He is content to have Christ on any
terms.
The mind being savingly enlightened, and the will renewed, the sinner
thereby determined and enabled to answer the gospel call. So the chief
work in regeneration is done; the fort of the heart is taken; there is
room made for the Lord Jesus Christ in the inmost parts of the soul, the
inner door of the will being now opened to Him.
His first vital act is an active receiving of Jesus Christ, discerned
in His glorious excellencies, that is, a believing on Him, a closing
with Him, as discerned, offered and exhibited in the word of His grace,
the glorious Gospel. The immediate effect is union with Him.
(Jn.1:12,13; Eph. 3:17)
Thomas Boston (Scottish minister from 1707-1732)