Chosen By God with R. C. Sproul, “Man’s Radical Fallenness,” 4

The Authority of Christ Over Against Human Teachers

In our last session in our study of predestination, we looked at the concept of free will, and at the end of that lecture I set forth some ideas that were originally presented by Jonathan Edwards and also by St. Augustine, some references to Luther and to John Calvin.

But as much respect as we may or may not have for these great teachers in the history of the Church, I think we would all recognize that none of them individually and all of them collectively are to be regarded as infallible teaching authorities.

And so we need to go to the next step as we examine the whole question of man's moral ability or lack of it and listen to what our Lord Himself teaches. Because though we may be prone to disagree with Augustine or Luther or Calvin or any other great teacher, far be it from us to stand in opposition to the teaching of Christ Himself.

No One Can Come to Christ Unless the Father Gives It

So in this session, I want us to give some attention now to some very crucial statements that Jesus made regarding man's ability or the lack of it. Turn our attention first of all to the sixth chapter of John's Gospel, where Jesus says in verse 65, and He was saying, "...for this reason I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it is given to him by the Father.".

Now let's look at that verse, "...no one can come to Me unless it is given to him by the Father.". The first two words in this statement, no one, or some translations read no man, no person, no one, that statement, if we apply the categories of logic to this and the laws of immediate inference and so on, we see that this statement is what we call a universal negative.

That is to say, it is all-inclusive. What Jesus is saying is, without exception, there is no human being who, whatever it is He's going to say about them, that is, can come to Him unless it is given to Him by the Father.

So this is an absolute. It's a negative absolute, and we have to understand that. Now the next word is also crucial to our understanding. It is the word can. No one can. Now the word can, or at least the word that is used here in the Greek text, is less ambiguous than the word can is in our language, because in our language the word can is often mistaken for what other word?

May. That's right, we've all been corrected. I remember when we were children and going to school and we'd put our hands up and say, teacher, can I sharpen my pencil? And she would always say, I'm sure you can, and you also may.

And she would then take that opportunity to teach us that lesson that seemed so difficult for us to learn of the difference between the word may, which suggests permission, and the word can. The word can has to do with ability.

So what this verse is saying is that to say that no man can is to say that no one has the ability to do something. If I say no one can run 30 miles an hour, that means no one has the ability to run 30 miles an hour, or 300 miles an hour.

I don't know how fast people can run. All right, now what is it that no one has the ability to do that Jesus is talking about here? No one has the ability to come to Me, He says. Now let me ask this question.

Does man, in and of himself, according to Jesus, have the ability to come to Jesus? No. No. Do some men have the ability to come to Jesus in and of themselves? No. No man can come to Jesus, no man can come to Me, unless.

Now we see a clause that follows that we call an exceptive clause, unless introduces an exception, and unless points to what we call in philosophy a necessary condition. Now what is a necessary condition?

A prerequisite, something that has to happen before something else can possibly happen. That's what a prerequisite is. And so Jesus is saying that there is a necessary condition that must be met before anyone can come to Him.

Now what does He identify in this verse as the necessary condition for anyone to be able to come to Him? Unless the Father gives it to Him, or other translations, unless it is granted by the Father. Another translation reads, unless the Father enables Him.

Now those words don't all mean the same thing. To grant means to give permission. To give means to give a gift, and to enable means to empower. All right? So there is a certain ambiguity here about what that necessary condition is.

And there's another question that is still hanging out here, and that is, if a necessary condition is provided, now we're not talking about coming to Jesus in any situation. If a necessary condition is provided in a situation, does a necessary condition guarantee that the result you want will in fact take place?

Now that's why we make a distinction between necessary conditions and sufficient conditions. A sufficient condition is a condition that if it is met, guarantees the result. It suffices. An example of a necessary condition would be in the case of fire.

If you want to build a fire, oxygen is a necessary condition for there to be a fire. But the mere presence of oxygen does not guarantee a fire. Okay? Now, if you have a dry piece of paper and plenty of oxygen, and then you light a match and touch that match onto the piece of paper, then you'll have a fire because the burning fire from the match is a sufficient condition to ignite the dry piece of paper under those conditions, granted that the other necessary conditions have been fulfilled.

Do you understand the difference now? So all of this verse is teaching is that in terms of man's natural ability, none of us has the ability in and of ourselves to come to Christ unless God does something.

We're still not sure exactly what it is that God does, and we're still not sure that if God does it, it will guarantee that people will come. All we know is that whatever it is that God does is a necessary condition, a prerequisite.

Okay? Some have jumped to another verse here in John 6 where Jesus says, "'All whom the Father give to Me, come to Me.'". And that suggests that everybody who gets this necessary condition then indeed do come, but that's not exactly how those two verses are related to each other.

Let's see if we're sharp enough to see the difference. Jesus says that, "'All whom the Father gives to Me, come to Me.'. No one can come to Me unless the Father gives it to Him. Now, it almost sounds like that everybody that is given to Him to come are those who are included in the ones that the Father gives to the Son.

But remember, in the one case, the giving is to us. In the other case, the giving is to Jesus, so we can't equate those two statements, even though I believe they are in fact parallel. But linguistically, we can't prove it.

So we're still left with this ambiguity as to what must happen. What is the nature of this necessary condition? Well, notice that Jesus here said that He had already told them that, that He's indicating that this is a repetition.

He says, "'For this reason I have said to you.'". So He's now repeating Himself, so let's see if we can find the earlier statement that is either identical or close enough to probably be the statement that Jesus is referring to.

Well, if we look earlier in the chapter, we have another universal negative and another statement about necessary conditions and about man's moral ability. We find that in verse 44, "'No one can come to Me.'".

Does that sound familiar? "'No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.'". Now it's not quite as ambiguous. Here, the necessary condition that Jesus spells out is that the Father draws somebody.

So can we say this categorically without any fear of being contradicted, that our Lord Jesus Christ taught that it is impossible for a human being to come to the Lord Jesus Christ unless that person is drawn by the Father?

Now I might add at this point that both those of an Augustinian persuasion and of a semi-Pelagian persuasion agree that there is some kind of necessary condition that God must supply. God must draw people.

But there's still a debate, and the debate is, what does it mean that God draws? Now the classical Arminian approach to this or semi-Pelagian approach to this is that nobody can come to Jesus unless the Father entices Him or woos Him.

Again, that's usually tied into some notion of prevenient grace or the influence of the Holy Spirit to woo and to entice. And the word draw here is interpreted to mean to woo or to attract. Just as honey draws bees and lights draw moths, but the idea is that the drawing that God does is still resistible.

And those who respond to the enticement, those who respond to being wooed, are then redeemed according to Arminianism, and those who do not respond to being drawn are subsequently lost. The Augustinian interpretation of the verse is that the word to draw means more than simply to entice or to woo.

The Meaning of “Draw” in James and Acts

Now let's see how this Greek word is used elsewhere in the New Testament. If we would turn our Bibles here to James 2, chapter 2, verse 6, we will find this same Greek word used in the New Testament in the second chapter of the book of James.

In the sixth verse, I shall read the verse, but you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? I'm going to ask you to guess which word is used in this verse that is exactly the same Greek word that is translated by the word draw in John 6.

Does anybody have a guess? Drag. Now let's supply the semi-Pelagian interpretation, but you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally woo you into court? OK. Let's look at another one.

Let's look at Acts chapter 16, verse 19, which I will read. But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.

Can you guess again which verse, which word in this text is the same Greek word? Again, it's the word dragged. Again, substitute entice or woo. They seized Paul and Silas and wooed them into the marketplace before the authorities.

This text clearly indicates an act of force in dragging Paul and Silas into the marketplace. That would make you wonder why it is that the translators use the word draw rather than the word drag. And I can only guess, and I'll try to guess in a moment, but first let me just go further.

Whenever we have doubt as to the precise meaning of a word in the Scriptures, the first thing we do is that we go to the Greek, but then after we go to the Greek, we're still dependent upon the science of linguistics and lexicography in order to have an understanding of the meaning of that term at the time it was used in the writing of the documents.

I think it's safe to say that in the academic world, the most highly respected linguistic and lexicographical source that the Church has ever had for the meaning of Greek words is Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.

In Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, the word that is being translated draw here in this text is defined by Kittel as meaning to compel by irresistible superiority. I might add that the framers of the dictionary were anything but Calvinistic, but they recognize that the classical, that is, the meaning in the Greek language of this verb is to compel.

Again, we ask, though, if that's the case, if the linguistic and lexicographical evidence is so heavily weighted to mean something that is compelling, why would translators in various translations use this term draw when they translate the same word drag elsewhere?

Well, when you have a word like this, oftentimes how you choose to translate it will be determined by the context. It will also be determined somewhat by your theology. And maybe, I'm just guessing, it could be that the translators just felt it would be offensive to English readers to read and hear, no one can come to me unless the father drags him, or unless the father compels him.

That may be the reason why they chose not to do it. But again, most translators and teams of translators are not that arbitrary when they're working on translations of the Bible. They try to be as honest and as careful as possible in rendering the Greek into English.

And I've puzzled about this for a long time, and I think I have found the answer, because I'll tell you a story to illustrate it. I was invited to debate the subject of predestination at an Arminian seminary.

That is, the seminary was self-consciously and by its own doctrinal standards Arminian. We had a warm and friendly relationship with that seminary, and they knew that I did not advocate Arminian theology.

And they thought it would be a good thing to have a debate there in front of the whole student body and the faculty, because they wanted their students to be exposed to the other side, which I represented.

And my opponent, friendly opponent, I should say, in this particular debate, happened to be the head of the New Testament department. And as we were discussing this question, he came to this verse and cited this verse, "'No man can come to me unless the Father draw him,' and he was interpreting it to mean attract or woo.

And I quickly pointed to his attention something that I really didn't think I needed to, since he was the New Testament scholar and I'm not. I said, what about the use of it in James 2 and in Acts 16, and he granted that those texts did indeed use the more forcible interpretation of the verb and that the verb was capable of being translated to drag.

He granted that. And I asked the question, I said, well then why are you insisting that draw is less compelling than drag? And he said, because we have an instance of where this verb is used in classical Greek language, like in some play by Euripides or something I had never heard of, where he said this is the verb that the Greeks used when they drew water out of a well.

And he said to me, and I was completely nonplussed. I had no idea of that. He said to me, so you see, Professor Sproul, he said, it's a perfectly legitimate use to use the word draw, he said, because nobody drags water out of a well.

And the place broke up, you know. And I was caught, you know, embarrassed. I didn't even know that that occurred. And I said, I grant that you don't drag water out of a well, but sir, how do you get water out of a well?

Do you stand up at the top of the well and say, here, water, water, water? Do you woo water out of a well? Do you entice water out of a well? Or must you do something that will compel that water to go against gravity and get it up there where you can use it?

And now they laughed the other side, and we went on to another verse. But this, I think even that obscure reference in the Greek language underlines the fact that the force of this verb is the force of divine compulsion.

And if that is true, then I would say that verse and that verse alone is sufficient to end the debate forever with respect to man's ability or lack of it to incline himself to choose Jesus Christ, because Jesus Himself says that no man can do it unless the Father compels him to do it.

And that is pure Augustinianism, only stated much earlier than Saint Augustine. But if that isn't sufficient with respect to man's ability, let's look earlier in chapter 3 of John's Gospel, where John describes the encounter that Jesus has with the Pharisee, the theologian Nicodemus, in which he says in verse 3, "...Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless...".

What does that word indicate? What's coming? A necessary condition. Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now what has to happen, according to Jesus, before a person can see the kingdom of God?

He has to be born again. So regeneration precedes seeing the kingdom of God. Is that a legitimate interpretation of this passage? In fact, nobody can see it at all unless they are first what? Born again.

Regenerate. All right. Now he goes on to say, Nicodemus is puzzled. How can a man be born when he is old? He can't enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he? Jesus said, "...Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.".

So regeneration is a prerequisite for entering and seeing the kingdom of God. Semi-Pelagians have people choosing Christ before they are regenerate. Semi-Pelagians have people in their human nature cooperating with provenient grace, responding to this wooing and enticing and attracting of God the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit is not yet in them, having regenerated them. So the bottom line is, the Arminian position has people who are not yet born again, seeing and choosing the King of the kingdom of God.

Boggles the mind, doesn't it? That's why the axiom of Augustinian theology is this. Regeneration precedes faith. Regeneration is seen as a necessary condition for faith. Even as Paul elsewhere teaches in Ephesians 2, when he says that while we were dead in sin and trespasses, God has quickened us, that is, made us alive in Christ, okay, when we were dead, and then tells us that, therefore, it is by grace you are saved, through faith, and that is not of yourselves, but is the gift of God.

And so we see faith is the gift of God that is the result of the Spirit's work of regeneration within us, that God Himself supplies the necessary condition to come to Jesus. That's why it is sola gratia, by grace alone, that we are saved.

Now, Jesus says, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you that you must be born again. Jesus is saying, why should this surprise you?

You're a theologian, Nicodemus. Don't you understand the fundamental point of man's fallen nature, that that which is born of the flesh is flesh? And elsewhere He tells us that the flesh profits what?

Nothing. But if we believe that God entices us to Christ, and all we have to do in the flesh prior to our regeneration is cooperate or assent to that, if we can, in fact, cooperate and assent to prevenient grace, to the end that we enter into the kingdom of God and are redeemed forever, and we're doing that while we're still in the flesh, then I ask you, what would the flesh profit?

Not just something, everything, your eternal salvation. Oh, Paul speaks about this himself in chapter 7. Oh, I'm sorry, it's chapter 8, verse 7. Let's start at verse 5. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.

But those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do it.

Now here the Apostle tells us something about man's moral inability in the flesh. He says that man in his fallen state, in the flesh, is hostile to the law of God, and he does not obey the law of God.

He is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed what? Can he be? So that fallen man, the Apostle is saying here, is he not, cannot obey the law of God. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

I might add to you that if God only wooed us to Christ and left it to us to make the final decision, I can't think of anything that would please God more than that we would respond positively to that enticement and to that willing.

But the Apostle here tells us that in the flesh, there's nothing that man can do to please God. But now here is the crushing point. Verse 9,. "'However, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.'".

How do we know if somebody's in the flesh or in the Spirit? "'You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.'". The next word is crucial. "'If what does "'if' indicate? A necessary condition. That's right.

"'If, indeed, the Spirit of God dwells in you.'". Now, how many regenerate people have the Spirit of God dwelling in them? All of them. Okay? So if you are regenerate, then you are no longer in the flesh.

If you are in the flesh, you are not regenerate. Is that clear? So when he speaks about those in the flesh, he is speaking of unregenerate people. And it's unregenerate people who cannot please God, who cannot obey God, who cannot do or be subject to God, who experience this dreadful situation of moral inability about which we have been speaking.

But, "'If, indeed, the Spirit of God dwells in you, but if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.'". He goes on to say, however, if anyone does have the Spirit of Christ, then he does belong to Christ.

And so that the crucial prerequisite for salvation is a work of the Holy Spirit that is the necessary condition, the prerequisite for faith to be present. That's why we insist that the first step of our justification, that which quickens us from spiritual death and makes us, enables us to come to Jesus at all, is the gracious work of God the Holy Spirit and is never the fruit of the flesh.