Westminster Confession of Faith 9.1-5
II. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.
III. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has 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.
IV. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He frees him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he does not perfectly, or only, will that which is good, but does also will that which is evil.
V. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only.
Summary
The human will was created by God and given a natural liberty of will in itself. God, in creation, did not determine the will of man towards either good or evil by absolute necessity. This means that He did not force us one way or the other, nor did He create our will to be predisposed one way or the other. When God created man in Adam, He created him in a state of innocence. Man was created with the ability to do good and to live in a way that pleased God. Yet, man's will was also changeable, such that he might fall from this state of ability to do good.
When God created Adam, He put him into a temporary state of testing. If Adam obeyed God, he would have been confirmed in his state of righteousness and lived in peace with God. However, Adam did not obey God, but fell when Eve offered him the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sin entered the world when Adam disobeyed God. By way of speculation, we can assume that, had Adam not eaten the fruit when Eve offered it to him, sin still would not have entered the world. Adam, not Eve, is the one held responsible for the fall. If he had reminded Eve of God's commandment and led her away from listening to Satan, we can assume that man would not have fallen into sin, even if Eve had still eaten her portion of the fruit. This is why the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (Matt 4:1-11) is so fundamental to the Christian faith. Jesus passes the test which Adam failed. When Jesus successfully resists Satan's temptation, He does what no human being has ever done. He restores what it meant to be human; being in a state of peace and love with God, which we enter into only by faith in Jesus.
When mankind in Adam fell into a state of sin, our original state of innocence and ability to do good was totally lost. When Adam disobeyed God, we all fell with him into a state of spiritual death, in which man is now totally unable to do anything good or truly pleasing to God. As Paul says in Romans 3:10-12, "There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one." Even though we can look around and distinguish between what we would call "good people" and "bad people", we are judging with our own fallen judgment. God is all-knowing, seeing into the deepest darkness of the human heart. While certain people might conform more or less to our external, arbitrary standards of "goodness", God is not fooled by pretense or appearances. His judgment on the human soul is that we are all gone astray and that not one of us is truly good.
When the Holy Spirit makes a person born-again, He frees the sinner from his bondage to sin. He graciously enables the Christian to do that which is good. Yet, a Christian in this world still has remaining corruption of sin, so that the good he does is not perfectly done. Even the good things that Christians do are often tainted by sins. So, we might help the old lady cross the street, and we might do it because we love the old lady and want her to be safe, but we also have a certain pride in our good deeds being seen by others. Even if no one is there to see us, we might take pride in our hearts, that, if only someone had been there to see us, they would think what a good person we are. The Christian is also not wholly inclined to do good, and will sometimes willingly do that which is evil (c.f. Romans 7:13-24).
In the eternal state of glory, the Christian's soul will be totally free from the corruption of sin and will be made perfectly able to do only good and no evil. We will then be unable to sin anymore and free to serve God with our whole hearts, made perfectly into the image of Jesus Christ. A helpful way to approach this issue is to break it into phrases and sections:
Before the Fall: Man is able to do good or evil
After the Fall, without the Holy Spirit: Man is unable to do good, only evil
After the Fall, with the Holy Spirit: Man is able to do good or evil
The eternal state of glory: Man is unable to do evil, only good
+ Blessings in Christ +
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