Category Archives: Grace

Does Effectual Grace Make People Into Robots?

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Robot-EthicsVisitor to monergism.com:

Sovereignty is king, but the Holy Spirit works on ya.

Response from John Hendryx:

John Wesley may have taught prevenient grace but the Bible only speaks of two states of man, regenerate and unregenerate. Wesley had to create this doctrine, apart from Scripture, entirely with human logic (which creates a third state in-between regenerate and unregenerate) in order to maintain his theological system. However, the Bible speaks of no additional in-between state. We are either “in the flesh” (which can do nothing) or “in the Spirit”. As such, Jesus declares, “the Spirit quickens, the flesh counts for nothing … that is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me grants it…[and] “all that the Father gives me will come to me”…. John 6:63, 65,37. No one can come to faith in Jesus unless God grants it and all to whom He grants it will come to faith in Him. This does away with prevenient grace altogether. Jesus left no room for it in these clear statements.

The Bible indeed calls us to declare the gospel to all people … but, left to themselves, none of them will respond to it. All have turned aside. They remain stiff-necked in their opposition to God’s loving plea to come to Christ for life. Yet, in His great mercy, God still saves a people for Himself out of all the ill-deserving people of the earth.

Does this make us robots? .. no it makes God a God of love and mercy. If your child ran into traffic would you only save him if he first met your condition? No a loving parent would run out into the street to scoop up the child at the risk of his own life to make certain his child was safe…regardless of the will of the child at the time. True love gets the job done.

Would you consider a parent who who saved a child’s life without any conditions unloving? No that is love. To save the child’s life trumps the child’s will because the parent knows better than the child what is good for him. How much more God?

God’s love for His people is not conditional as Wesley believed.. a loving parent does not first make his child meet a condition before he will love him. Rather, a loving parent is like Jesus who met all the conditions for us, giving us everything we need for salvation including a new heart to believe (Deut. 29:4, 30:6; Ezek 36:26).

He did not have to save anyone since we all rejected him. He could have left all men to their own devices and swept them away in judgment and it would have been just. Yet he is merciful to many saving them through the blood of his precious Son Jesus. To the rest he simply gives them over to what they want – their independence from God. So some receive God’s mercy, others get God’s justice but no one received injustice.

Your prevenient grace doctrine is simply sleight of hand. It does not solve the problem of grace, it only exacerbates it. Salvation is by Christ alone, not Christ plus our meeting some condition. If it were then it would no longer be grace alone, would it? It would depend on who was more wise, humble or who has the most sound judgment and not grace alone. Why did one man with preveneint grace believe and not the other?

It was not grace, since both has grace. No, what you really believe is that it was something innately good or better in one person over the other. One had a good will and the other did not. Who makes the will good?

To conclude, man indeed has a will, but he has a heart of stone, and he will use his will wrongly until God lovingly changes that heart of stone to a heart of flesh (Ezek 36:26).

Justice and Grace

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Sproul_blog2Dr. R. C. Sproul:

In 1966, I was teaching a freshman college course of 250 students and assigned three 5–8 page papers that would be due over the course of the semester on October 1, November 1, and December 1.
I told the students that unless there is a death or they were are in the infirmary, then they would get an F if not turned in on time. When the first paper was due, 225 students turned in the paper and twenty-five did not have them ready.

The twenty-five begged for leniency because they said they were unprepared for college life.

I gave it and said, “’Don’t do it again.”

On the next due date, November 1, fifty students came without their papers and begged for grace because of homecoming.

I said, “Okay,” and gave them an extension.

That made me very popular until December 1.

One hundred students did not have their papers and said, “Don’t worry Professor Sproul, we’ll have them to you in a few days.”

I began marking those students down. Suddenly, they all said, “That’s not fair.”

I pointed to one student who had a late paper in November and December and I said, “Oh Johnson, it is justice that is what you want. Your paper was late in November, I’ll go and mark it an F.”
Complaints about fairness stopped immediately.

When we first receive grace, we are overwhelmed. The second time we get grace, we take it for granted. The third time we fail, we demand grace. The first time we demand grace, a bell should go off in our heads. God never owes me grace, and He never owes you grace.

Prevenient Grace

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As the name suggests, prevenient grace is grace that ‘comes before’ something. It is normally defined as a work that God does for everybody. He gives all people enough grace to respond to Jesus. That is, it is enough grace to make it possible for people to choose Christ. Those who cooperate with and assent to this grace are ‘elect.’ Those who refuse to cooperate with this grace are lost.

The strength of this view is that it recognizes that fallen man’s spiritual condition is severe enough that it requires God’s grace to save him. The weakness of the position may be seen in two ways. If this prevenient grace is merely external to man, then it fails in the same manner that the medicine and the life preserver analogies fail. What good is prevenient grace if offered outwardly to spiritually dead creatures?

On the other hand, if prevenient grace refers to something that God does within the heart of fallen man, then we must ask why it is not always effectual. Why is it that some fallen creatures choose to cooperate with prevenient grace and others choose not to? Doesn’t everyone get the same amount?

Think of it this way, in personal terms. If you are a Christian you are surely aware of other people who are not Christians. Why is it that you have chosen Christ and they have not? Why did you say yes to prevenient grace while they said no? Was it because you were more righteous than they were? If so, then indeed you have something in which to boast. Was that greater righteousness something you achieved on your own or was it the gift of God?

If it was something you achieved, then at the bottom line your salvation depends on your own righteousness. If the righteousness was a gift, then why didn’t God give the same gift to everybody?

Perhaps it wasn’t because you were more righteous. Perhaps it was because you are more intelligent. Why are you more intelligent? Because you study more (which really means you are more righteous)? Or are you more intelligent because God gave you a gift of intelligence he withheld from others?

To be sure, most Christians who hold to the prevenient grace view would shrink from such answers. They see the implied arrogance in them. Rather they are more likely to say, “No, I chose Christ because I recognized my desperate need for him.”

That certainly sounds more humble. But I must press the question. Why did you recognize your desperate need for Christ while your neighbor didn’t? Was it because you were more righteous than your neighbor, or more intelligent?

The $64 question for advocates of prevenient grace is why some people cooperate with it and others’ don’t. How we answer that will reveal how gracious we believe our salvation really is.

The $64,000 question is, “Does the Bible teach such a doctrine of prevenient grace? If so, where?”

We conclude that our salvation is of the Lord. He is the One who regenerates us. Those whom he regenerates come to Christ. Without regeneration no one will ever come to Christ. With regeneration no one will ever reject him. God’s saving grace effects what he intends to effect by it.

………. p. 213 Let me close the book by mentioning that soon after I awoke to the truth of predestination I began to see the beauty of it and taste its sweetness. I have grown to love this doctrine. It is most comforting. It underlines the extent to which God has gone in our behalf. It is a theology that begins and ends with grace. It begins and ends with doxology. We praise a God who lifted us from spiritual deadness and makes us walk in high places. We find a God who may be against us. It makes our souls rejoice to know that all things are working together for our good. We delight in our Savior who truly saves us and preserves us and intercedes for us. We marvel at his craftmanship and in what he has wrought. We skip and kick our heels when we discover his promise to finish in us what he has started in us. We ponder mysteries and bow before them, but not without doxology for the riches of grace he has revealed:

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! … For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33, 36)

“God Himself supplies the necessary condition to come to Jesus, that’s why it is sola gratia, by grace alone, that we are saved.” – R. C. Sproul