Objections to Inability and Reflection — John Murray

Faith in John 6 and Salvation

O Lord our God, we praise and bless Thy great and holy Name, that into our desperation and helplessness the Gospel comes in all its power to raise us from the dunghill, to set our feet from the water, to establish our goings, and put a new song in our mouth, even praise unto our God.

May this song be increasingly our praise to the glory of Thy great Name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now, I am here in the Philippines and came to deal with these passages in John 6, 37, 39, 44, 45, 65.

And what I have been observing at the close of the hour is that Jesus is here speaking of coming to Him in the exercise of faith, and that is surely an alternative way of expressing faith in Him, and faith in Him as having its issue in the salvation that reaches its apex in the resurrection of the last day.

And that is constituted at the resurrection of the just in the last day. These conclusions are indisputable when you compare verses 37 and 39 and 40. It is therefore of faith in Jesus unto salvation that He is speaking in verse 44, faith in Jesus unto salvation.

When He says, O man, come unto Me, except the Father will simply draw thee, and that refers undoubtedly to the factual drawing, the factual operation of the Father in the heart. And then, except it were given unto Him of the Father, refers to the effectual grace on the part of one who is able to believe in Christ.

Total Inability and the Demands of the Gospel

Now, all men are confronted with the gospel, the most elementary demand, the demand that is the only avenue to the fulfillment of all other demands. And it is precisely of that faith that Jesus is in keeping, the udunitai, the udunitai, the exercise of faith that He does in compliance with the law of God.

And so, what Jesus is saying is that it is a psychological, moral, and religious impossibility. It is the efficacious drawing which is of the nature of a gift from God the Father. Paul explains this doctrine of man's total iniquity in confrontation with the past.

If there is any one thing that we might hope to come within the compass of man's native ability in the faith of Jesus, that is, is that evangelism that is based on the assumption that the one thing man can, and appointed with the orbit to believe, direct the direct contradiction of the very person vowed to bring this man to a conscience.

Physical evidence is to the effect that man in his natural psychologically, morally, and religiously incapable of the understanding, affection, and will which will enable him to be subject to the law of God, to the gospel of God, to appreciate the things of the Spirit of God, those things well pleasing to Him.

Neither understanding nor affection or will is capable of rendering that response to and required by the revelation of God's will in law and gospel. To appreciate the things of the Spirit of God, or do the things well pleasing to Him.

Neither understanding nor affection nor will is capable of rendering that response to and required by the revelation of God's will in law and gospel. ...the objections that are actually urged against us.

And one of the first total inability is inconsistent with the commandments of God. The commandments of God are addressed to our responsibility for presupposing an ability to discharge. Therefore, the objection is our obligation to presuppose at least a modicum of ability.

Classic expression in the Pelagian anthropology, esoteriology, that any of these urges to one form or another, the commandments of God are graduated to our, they cannot be graduated or accommodated to our condition.

...any such would be a denial of God's inherent perfection cannot demand less complete and complete conformity to His likeness. Complete conformity to that law presses His own perfection for the regulation of human thought and behavior.

In this, the minimum is the maximum and the maximum is the minimum. No graduation, accommodation, adaptation. Because of what God is, our impotence is the effect of our sin. Something that is implicit in our sin.

And therefore, we are responsible for our very inability. Our inability only points us towards the condition that is involved in sin. Obligation presupposes ability. Then the presupposition of the obligation is total.

And the consequence would be that our sin in no way whatsoever impairs. Only the Pelagian is consistent in the application of the Presupposition of Obligation presupposes total ability. The denial of what sin involves in our sin.

Total Inability and the Means of Grace

Now a second objection. That if man is totally unable, if he is well-pleasing to God, totally unable to contribute anything towards his own salvation, this would be inconsistent with the obligation resting upon man to use the means of grace.

Use the means of grace. The objection, you see, is to the effect that grace can have no relevance whatsoever to the natural man. No relevance to the natural because he is totally unable to make any effective use of it.

Any use of it that is effective unto self. Well, there are two answers that I want to give to this. If men are dead in presuppositions of sin, to be convinced of their depravity and inability would be convinced only by being confronted with the demands of God upon them.

Which is the proclamation, the truth, respecting themselves as well as respecting God. To be sealed off from encounter with the demands of law and gospel, that is to say, from the means of grace, from the judgment.

The judgment of God, from acquaintance at least with the judgment of God. And it is to be sealed off from the gospel, which is the only provision to meet our helplessness. We should know it as a way of confrontation.

But second, the means of grace, reading of the word and so forth, the means of grace. And that means that they are the channels through which the gospel comes into our despair. And the sovereign grace of God becomes operative unto salvation.

And to seal men off from the means of grace and art from the very means of God. And if we say that it is useless for the natural men to attend upon the means of grace, we are assailing the wisdom, the grace, and the power of God.

They are premised, they are premised on our helplessness and hopelessness. How can we intervene for the remedy of man? What verse is this that is common? The teaching of this doctrine, or the preaching of it, is a counsel of despair to unconverted men.

Despair to the Lord. Men proclaim to men what is a counsel of grace. Proclamation of this truth is simply the proclamation to men of the condition. It is my answer to the nation of the whole counsel of God is simply the proclamation to men of the condition in which they are, as they really are.

And it is all important that we register the despair, register the despair implicit in their condition. They must know it. They must know it. And therefore they know the despair. To the interest of men to conceive to this objection of constantly the counsel of despair is what it is intended to be.

The Free Offer of Grace and Human Responsibility

Therefore to the ensign of me, it is objected that this doctrine is in contact with the free overture of grace in the gospel, with the appeal for say, and with the assertion of human responsibility. If there is a free overture of the gospel, why appeal for say?

Why confront them with the responsibility? This proposes what I agree with, that there is the free overture of the gospel, that there is the demand for faith and repentance, and that the gospel must be addressed to men's responsibility.

Nor toning down. It is quite true that the great many people cannot preach freely and fully to men, to lost men, on the assumption of total inability. They can't do it. And consequently bound to perfect something inconsistent with this doctrine, namely some area of freedom, some area of ability, respect to that which is the demand of the gospel.

And the repentance of faith. Back again to this. Is this doctrine true? Is it true? Is it the doctrine of that revelation which God has given us? If it is the doctrine of the revelation God has given us, then there is no alternative.

And if it is the doctrine of the revelation God has given us, it must be compatible with the doctrine which that same revelation embodies. Compatible with the doctrine which that same revelation embodies.

Consequently, we shall have to come to terms with this doctrine. And if it is the doctrine of Scripture, then we shall have to revise our conception of the gospel. We shall have to revise our conception of the gospel in order that the gospel we preach is one that is based on the assumption of total, the only gospel there is.

Total Inability as the Basis for Gospel Glory

It is after all this total inability that lays the basis for the glory of the gospel preach. Nothing is really more inimical, as I said already, nothing is more inimical to the interest of the gospel than the assumption that there is at some point the sovereign grace of God is dispensed.

At some point at which the sovereign grace of God is dispensed upon, that there is some area operated unto salvation that belongs to man himself, however minimal it may be, some area of power operated unto salvation.

To put it in other terms, what is the demand of the gospel? What is it? It is faith. What is the nature of faith? Archdemon. Is the archdemon of human thought in reference to the gospel? What is it? It is self.

The archdemon of self, and to put it in terms of our present, it is self. My thought is convinced of the total absence, the total absence of grace in the wilderness. Paradoxes? Well, you preaching brethren, I am afraid to lay upon the line man's total journey.

The gospel, from perspective, is when there is the conviction of the total absence of selfless grace, the power of the appreciated. The appreciated, of course, apart from the operations of God's sovereign grace, is just into that situation that the operations of God's saving grace enter.

The gospel, when we are convinced of the same, to be convinced into that conviction, the overtures of grace come with meaning. The power of anonymous, the rule material of common grace, executions and the promotings of God, are a very striking pattern.

The Alcoholics Anonymous Analogy

The principles of our alcoholic anonymity can't do anything with an alcoholic. This needs to be thought of. And resolutions, they can't do anything with them. They can't take them on. The principles of their procedure.

In this regard, we might perhaps learn just even a little lesson in that. It takes place even in the natural space. By policy, you see, it plays upon the conviction of his own total absence. His absence to this, to this, to that.

Convinced of his own total absence, then they can do a lot faster. But in that respect, they deal for thousands, if you realize it is complete reliance upon what they are going to do faster, and not upon his own sense of distortion.

That's all on the subject of the same. That brings to a conclusion my study. Yes. Sir, if a man is totally incapable in this aspect we have mentioned, then how can a natural man realize that he is a sinful?

Natural Revelation and Conviction of Sin

You mean the man who has not even been confronted with the gospel? Yes. How can he have a conviction of his own, where he cannot even have a conviction of his own total inability, in the sense that I have been developing it, unless he is something.

You see this conviction. Are you thinking about the alcoholics? No? Well, that's a purely natural thing to think of the alcoholics. But in the case of men who are not confronted with the gospel, there is indeed a fulfilling obligation of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of many men.

And if they have a certain sense of their guilt, a certain sense of their helplessness, they may have that in the outside of the veil of Christianity. And we must not overlook that entirely, the influence of natural revelation upon a man outside his appeal to the gospel.

But that kind of conviction that I am talking about now is something that cannot come from man, cannot be born in the Father without man.