The Five Points of Calvinism - 4. Irresistible Grace

The fourth of the so-called "Five Points of Calvinism" is known in theology as irresistible grace or effectual grace.

It is at this point that the theological rubber of total depravity, unconditional election and limited atonement meets the experiential road of the sinner's life in their regeneration and conversion to Christ.

The grace in irresistible grace refers to saving grace—God's attitude and decision to treat sinners not as they deserve, which is punishment in hell, but rather to love and save them. 

Reformed theology teaches that God's saving grace to the elect is irresistible or effectual because it is manifested in a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine means that having chosen (unconditional election) a certain number of sinners (total depravity) for salvation and having sent Christ with the intention of saving those sinners (limited atonement), when the time comes in God's plan for each of those people to be saved, his grace towards them cannot be resisted by mere human free will. Irresistible grace is precisely that: it leads to the salvation of the sinner through regeration, faith in Christ and repentance from sin and is always effectual in its saving purpose.

Arminians oppose this doctrine and teach instead that God shows saving grace to everyone. They call this prevenient grace or enabling grace, but such grace that draws people to Christ and enables them to have saving faith can always be resisted and rejected according to Arminianism. Having been endowed with libertarian free will, the final decision of whether someone is saved or not rests with the sinner themselves.

Sometimes irresistible grace gets caricatured by Arminians as God "saving people against their will" or even worse as God "dragging people, kicking and screaming, into heaven."

This is a total parody of the Reformed position. We do not teach that irresistible grace forces people to believe against their will, or even that people are coerced into faith. Rather the Reformed view is that at the time God chooses, an operation of the Holy Spirit on the person supernaturally changes their will, so that they become spiritually alive previously having been spiritually dead, they will is changed from being hostile to God to being drawn to God. They are, in John's language, born again and thus enabled to repent and believe the gospel. So it is not that they are saved irrespective of their desires or will, but rather that they are given a new heart so that they then want to believe in Christ and turn away from their old life of sin and unbelief.

As the Westminster Confession of Faith says on this subject (Chapter 10.1 "On Effectual Calling"): 

All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds, spiritually and savingly, to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.

And as the Canons of Dort also testify (Head III-IV, Art. 11):

Moreover, when God carries out this good pleasure in the elect, or works true conversion in them, God not only sees to it that the gospel is proclaimed to them outwardly, and enlightens their minds powerfully by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but, by the effective operation of the same regenerating Spirit, God also penetrates into the inmost being, opens the closed heart, softens the hard heart, and circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. God infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant. God activates and strengthens the will so that, like a good tree, it may be enabled to produce the fruits of good deeds.

The words of these Reformed confessions, careful and nuanced and deeply biblical, are what Calvinists believe, not the straw men and parodies of those who either misunderstand or deliberate distort what irresistible grace means.

The doctrine of irresistible grace is closely aligned with the doctrines of unconditional election and particular redemption. Let's say John Smith was elected by the Father for salvation in eternity past, and on the cross of Calvary, the Son died to save John Smith, taking upon himself the penalty for all John Smith's sins, how could it then be that the Holy Spirit would be unable to give John Smith the gifts of saving faith and repentance necessary for him to be saved? The very idea is absurd.

The biblical evidence in favour of irresistible grace is therefore formed not only from the verses directly touching on this doctrine, but from every passage we have already looked at in this series touching on the sovereignty of God, unconditional election or limited atonement. Some of the passages specifically supporting the doctrine of irresistible grace as we have outlined it are listed here. We will not comment on every verse, but only on as many as necessary to make the links clear between the verses and the doctrine of irresistible grace outlined in this post.

Deuteronomy 30:6 - "And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live."

This verse in the Pentateuch speaks clearly about God's action on the human heart to bring about a change in the affections and will. It is difficult to reconcile this verse with libertarian free will (the concept of a human will that God cannot sovereignly control).

Jeremiah 31:33-34 - "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

Again, this passage speaks clearly of God's sovereign actions on human hearts. The covenant itself is a sovereignly administered bond. The idea of God's covenant as a bilateral "agreement" or "contract" is without biblical support. God is the one who can "put his law" within us, and make us his people.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 - "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."

This important passage in Ezekiel directly attests to the truth of irresistible grace. It is God who gives a new heart and a new spirit to people and this is clearly not an image meant to be interpreted as something done cooperatively between God and the sinner. It is a sovereign act of God that changes hearts. How then could God have to have the sinner's heart cooperating with him before he can put a new heart in that sinner? That would make no sense of the passage. The verse even goes as far as to state that God "causes" people to obey him. Utterly incompatible with the Arminian view of grace or the human will. 

John 1:12-13 - "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."

This memorable verse in the prologue to John's Gospel speaks directly to the issue in hand. God's children are not born "of the will of the flesh nor the will of man" directly contrary to Arminianism. Opponents of Reformed theology teach that the new birth follows the act of saving faith. Reformed theology recognises that the new birth must precede saving faith. The concept of new birth—a supernatural act of God—preceding anyone coming to faith strongly implies the irresistibility of saving grace.

John 3:3, 5, 8 - "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God...Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God...The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

I cannot see how one can teach that being born again follows coming to faith in light of this passage. According to the Arminian, a person comes to faith, thereby entering the Kingdom of God, and then is born again by the Holy Spirit. According to Jesus, a person cannot even see let alone enter the Kingdom of God until he is born again. This strongly implies that faith follows the new birth. And this in turn then suggests that saving grace is irresistible. God does not consult dead sinners to see if they would consent to being born again. He no more does that than Christ consulted with Lazarus to ensure he consented to coming back from the dead. No, God commands dead sinners to come to life and believe, just as Christ commanded Lazarus from the grave (cf. John 11).

John 5:21 - "For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will."

John 6:37-40, 44 - "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day...No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day."

This passage sets forth a kind of golden chain of salvation in the words of Jesus himself. It is clearly compatible with irresistible grace and incompatible with Arminian resistible grace.

The argument runs as follows. "All that the Father gives me will come to me." This implies that God's grace cannot be resisted by those given to Christ by the Father. "I should lose nothing of all that he has given me." Similarly, none of those given by Father to Son can be lost. How could Jesus claim this if the Father aims at saving everyone, but cannot ensure that anyone would believe? In Jesus' argument, that anyone comes to faith follows from the fact that they have been given to Christ by the Father. This is the exact opposite of the Arminian argument. Verse 44 is also an important verse. It not only teaches human inability, by implication it also teaches irresistible grace, since it implies that it is not everyone who is drawn by the Father here, but those who come to faith. Christ says the same thing about those drawn in verse 44 ("And I will raise him up on the last day") as he has already said about those given to him by the Father and those who believe. They are the one group. And none of them can resist God's saving grace.

Acts 11:18 - "When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, 'Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.'"

The verse teaches that repentance, that is the ability to repent, is something granted to people, not something they can produced in themselves.

Acts 16:14 - "One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshipper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul."

This verse speaks of an act of God on the heart on Lydia so that she would "pay atttention" and accept the gospel message.

Romans 8:30 - "And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified."

In this golden chain of redemption, if there is an unbreakable link between predestination, calling and justification, then this calling must be effectual or irresistible. Otherwise it would be possible for some predestined for glorification to reject God's grace.

1 Corinthians 12:3 - "Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says 'Jesus is accursed!' and no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit."

This verse teaches that for someone to genuinely believe "Jesus is Lord" requires a work of the Holy Spirit.

2 Corinthians 5:17 - "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

This verse is reminiscent of the Ezekiel 36 passage. Someone who is "in Christ" (i.e. a Christian) is a new creation, The process of regeneration or new birth is that radical. 

Ephesians 1:17-19 - "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of his great might."

This part of Paul's prayer for the Ephesian church. His prayer only makes sense if God can genuinely change hearts, have spiritual eyes opened, have minds changed, and so forth. It speaks of God's power to achieve these things. Again this is understandable from the point of view of irresistible grace, but not from the alternative where God's is dependent on what the sovereign human will decides. In that kind of world, there is no point in Paul praying as he does here.

Ephesians 2:8-9 - "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

Philippians 1:29 - "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake."

Both of these verses teach that faith is not something produced by man, but it is a gift from God. In the Ephesians passage, the "gift" is the whole of salvation by grace through faith, but that includes faith as a gift. The Philippians verse says explicitly that faith is something "granted" or "given" to us, not produced merely from within us.