Irresistible Grace

Irresistible Grace Defined as Regeneration

Let me just jump right in to what irresistible grace is. Irresistible grace means that when God moves to save a person, the sinner cannot successfully resist God's gracious will upon him and he will be regenerated.

The term, unfortunately, suggests a mechanical and coercive force upon an unwilling subject. But irresistible grace does not mean that a person cannot resist God's grace throughout his life. Instead, irresistible grace is the gracious act of God where, now get this, at the time of salvation, let me say this again, irresistible grace is the gracious act of God where at the time of salvation, God regenerates a person, which then means that the person will willingly, of his own free will, receive and trust in Christ.

It means that the person cannot successfully resist the act of God's regeneration. It is not a violation of their will since the person is changed and because of it, the person willingly trusts in Christ.

Now this is a quote coming up here from Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology. Irresistible grace is, quote, a term that refers to the fact that God effectively calls people and also gives them regeneration, both of which guarantee that we will respond in saving faith.

This term is subject to misunderstanding since it seems to imply that people do not make a voluntary, willing choice in responding to the gospel, close quote. All right, I hope I've made it clear and I'm going to be going through this again as I continue to open up this topic.

Scripture Proofs for Irresistible Grace

And I want to go through the scriptures and hopefully end with some objections and we should have time at the end of the show to take some callers, hopefully. So verses used in support of the idea of irresistible grace.

Here's the first set, John 1, verses 12 through 13. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

You see that? Born—and the context is about receiving Christ, being born again—born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. This idea of being born again is not by your will. James 1, verse 18.

In the exercise of his will, that's God's will, he brought us forth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of firstfruits among his creatures. John 5, verse 21. Jesus says, for just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom he wishes.

See that's what it is. It's to whom he wishes. First Peter 1, 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And also Colossians 2, 13. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions. Now did you get that?

When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive. When you were dead, he made you alive. Now I want you to know that irresistible grace originates in the will of God, and it is completed in the regeneration and the salvation of the Christian.

You see, God knows all things. That's 1 John 3, 20. He's all-powerful. You can go to Job 42 to Luke 1, 37 for that. And he is everywhere, Jeremiah 23, 24, 1 Kings 8, 27. Therefore he infallibly and irresistibly accomplishes our regeneration.

Human Inability and Total Depravity

This work of regeneration, this work of grace, is necessary because of the fallen condition of the unregenerate sinner. Remember, I've gone over this on the teaching of total depravity. The unbeliever is deceitful, Jeremiah 17, 9, full of evil, Mark 7, 21 through 23.

He loves darkness rather than light, John 3, 19. He cannot come to God on his own, John 6, 44. He does not seek for God, Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12. He is helpless and ungodly, Romans 5, 6. He's a slave of sin, Romans 6, 20, and John 8, 34.

He cannot receive or understand the spiritual things, 1 Corinthians 2, 14. He's dead in his sins, Ephesians 2, 1, and is by nature a child of wrath, Ephesians 2, 3. Therefore, he will never of his own sinful free will just desire or choose to receive Christ.

He won't do it because he's a man full of deceit, full of evil, loves darkness rather than light, does not seek God, cannot come to him, is a slave of sin, cannot receive spiritual things, by nature a child of wrath.

This is his condition. He's not going to come to God on his own. This is why irresistible grace is necessary. This is why God's regenerative work is necessary. This is why God must intervene and change the person by regenerating him.

And upon his regeneration, the person trusts in Christ as the necessary and free choice of that person. Furthermore, the work of irresistible grace by God is due to God's sovereign choice, since it is an act of his grace.

And I want you to understand this. Regeneration is not a process. It is an instantaneous event that happens only once. It is also known as being born again. So what does it mean to be regenerated by God's irresistible grace?

Regeneration as Being Born Again

Now remember, irresistible grace, I'm going to say this again, is the act of God where he changes a person. He changes the person so that they are then free to choose Christ, and they will. It is his regenerative work upon them, all right?

Now when we look at this stuff, we look at it, hopefully, and we'll look at even more scriptures, we're going to find out what it means to be born again, to be regenerated. Remember, God's irresistible grace deals with the time of salvation, hence being regenerated.

So John 3, 3, Jesus answered and said to them, to him, that's Nicodemus, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now born again, literally in the Greek, means to be born from above.

That's what it means. It's genatha anothen, which is literally, might be born from above. In John 3, 7, Jesus says, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The Greek here, again, it means to be born from above.

It's genatha anothen, not a big deal, but that's what it means, to be born from above. Now since we're born from above, it means that it's God's work, not man's work. To be born again means to be changed by God into a new creature.

It means we have a new spiritual life. Second Corinthians 5, 17, therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things passed away, behold, new things have come. And Romans 6, 4 says, therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Now to be born again, to be regenerated by God's irresistible grace, means that God lives in us. John 14, 23, Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.

God says he will live in us. This only happens to the regenerate. Now when we're born again, when we are changed by God's irresistible grace, now remember is that irresistible grace is the action of God at the time of a person's salvation.

It does not mean that somebody can't resist God's graciousness throughout his life. You got to understand what this is, because a lot of people misrepresent what irresistible grace really is, and thereby spread false rumors and misrepresent the truth.

So I want you to know, being born again, being regenerated, produces some results. For example, an awareness of God's presence, a desire to worship God, a desire to read the word and share the faith. It produces the ability to resist sin, to do good works, to choose to follow God.

Remember the unbeliever can't do these things. God has to intervene. Now just in case you wonder, was it ever taught in the Old Testament? Yes it was. God's regeneration, this being born again, was prophesied in the Old Testament.

Old Testament Promises of a New Heart

Deuteronomy 30, verse 6, moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul so that you may live.

In Ezekiel 36, verses 26 and 27, moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit 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 you will be careful to observe my ordinances.

See, God causes people to walk in the statutes. In Ezekiel 11, 19 through 20, and I shall give them one heart and shall put a new spirit within them, and I shall take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh so that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and do them.

Then they will be my people and I shall be their God. Now let's consider something here because this is not something that people think about very often in this topic. What causes us to be born again?

What is the cause of being born again? Is it our freewill choice that initiates a born-again experience? Is our freewill choice that very action that causes us to be regenerated? Does God react to our choice?

Is God waiting for us in the freedom of our enslaved sinfulness to decide that we're going to receive him, even though that's contrary to scripture, and then God must, by obligation, react and then regenerate them?

Is it that they believe before they become regenerate? We'll get into that in a little bit. Is that the case? Does that mean then that God is reactionary? Does it mean that he's waiting patiently in the wings for you and your wisdom, for the unbelievers in his wisdom to come to Christ, to decide in his sinfulness that he needs Jesus and then God says, great, now I can save that person?

Does it force God's hand for us to be regenerate? Is it something spiritual? Does it mean then that if you believe in God, then there's this automatic spiritual result and then you're changed? Or is it just simply, well, God's waiting, it's up to you, once you believe, he just enters you and you're regenerated.

That makes God a responder, reactionary. I don't see how that makes him sovereign. Now, on the other hand, is it that God causes us to be born again? If he causes us to be born again, then it's not we who believe cause ourselves to be born again and it's not us who causes God to make us born again by our free will choice.

First Peter 1 .3, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Do you get what that says? According to his great mercy has caused us to be born again. His mercy is not looking in the future to see who will pick him. It's not seeing what good quality might be in them.

It's not looking into a person and then maybe that person might believe and God hopes they do, they do finally. And God then reacts. No, that's not by God's mercy. That's by our ability, our will, our goodness.

Instead, First Peter 1 .3 says that he, according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again. Look at James 1 .18. In the exercise of his will, he brought us forth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of first fruits among his creatures.

Notice, in the exercise of his will, he brought us forth. He brought us forth by the exercise of his will. Now God, the Holy Spirit, is the one who causes us to be born again. In John 3 .3 -5, Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he? Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

So you see, the Spirit does the work in us. Now I mentioned a little bit ago about faith preceding regeneration. I want to talk about that a little bit. Here's a question. Does regeneration precede faith, or does faith precede regeneration?

Logical Priority of Regeneration Before Faith

Now what we're going to do is tackle this question from two different perspectives. One is temporal examination, and one is logical examination. You'll see what I'm saying here in a second. You see, if we're looking at it temporally, we have a problem.

Now let me give you an example of what I mean by a temporal priority. If I throw a ball at a wall, my throwing it, my throwing that ball, precedes the ball hitting the wall. So the act of me throwing temporarily precedes the ball action of hitting the wall.

Let's say the ball's 20 feet away. I throw the ball, and it takes half a second for the ball to get there. So there's a half a second of time, let's just say, before or between my first action of throwing the ball and the action of the ball hitting the wall.

That's temporal priority. That's just a sequence of events. It takes time. So if faith comes before regeneration temporally, then we have someone who is a believer for a little while who's also not regenerate.

How's that possible? To have someone who's a believer but not regenerate? Because think about it. What if the person is a believer for a second? One second, let's just say. That means for one second, he's a believer who's not regenerate.

Do you know of any scriptures that even remotely hint to that? Well, let's reverse this. Let's say regeneration comes before faith. This is what I'm saying, but I'm not saying temporal. I'm saying logically.

So hear this. If regeneration comes before faith temporally, then we have someone who is born again for a while, but he's not a believer. Let's say at one second that he's regenerated, and then a second later, he becomes a believer.

Then we have a regenerate person who's not a believer for at least a second. You see the logical problems here? Well, this is not the reformed position. The reformed position does not deal with temporal priority.

It deals with logical priority. So let me give you an illustration of what this means. I use a light bulb in the analogy. See, we have electricity, and we have light. Whenever the electricity is present, light is also present.

Light is there because of the electricity. Electricity is the cause of the light. So we would say that electricity is logically prior to the light, that it is the causation of the light. It's not a temporal priority.

It's a logical priority. Whenever the electricity is there, light is the necessary result. But it's not the case that whenever light is there, electricity is the necessary result. We would say that electricity is logically prior to the light.

We would not say that light is logically prior to the electricity. In other words, one is dependent upon the other, not the other upon the first. Electricity does not depend on the presence of the light for its existence, but light does depend on the presence of electricity for its existence.

That's why we say electricity is logically prior. And we would also say that whenever electricity is present, the automatic result is light. Likewise, when regeneration is logically there, logically prior, belief is the necessary result.

Regeneration and belief are tied together. We would say that in the logic of the Reformed faith, we would say that regeneration precedes faith in a logical sense, not a temporal sense. Now, here are some verses that we use to show that regeneration is before faith.

Colossians 2 .13, and when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions. You get that? When you were dead in your transgressions, he made you alive.

When you were dead, he made you alive. That's regeneration. He made you alive. It doesn't say when you were dead in your transgressions and then you made a solid effort to believe in him, then he made you alive.

That's not what it says. It says when you're dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive. This occurred when you were dead. Ephesians 2, verses 4 and 5, but God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. You see, that's what we hold to. That when we were dead, when we were haters of God, when we would shake our fist up at him and yell at him, when we had no hope, because of his sovereign grace, his sovereign love, he decided to make us alive so that we would believe.

Now, some say, though, that you must believe in order to become born again, that you must have this understanding, you must have that gospel preached. After all, the gospel, Romans 1, 16, is the power of God to salvation for everyone who would believe.

You must believe in the gospel. First Corinthians 15, 1 through 4, says that the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus for our sins. We've got to believe these things in order to be saved.

This is the idea. Really? Luke 1, 15, consider John the Baptist, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb.

Now, wait a minute. If it is the case that a person must believe in order to become regenerate, well, would you say, then, that John the Baptist was believing while in the womb? Now, I'm not saying he was.

I'm not saying he wasn't. The Bible doesn't tell us. But it does tell us that he was filled with the Holy Spirit while in his mother's womb. I think we could make the case that he hadn't heard the gospel message preached to him.

I think we could make the case that he didn't know, and that it was God who filled him even in the womb of his mother. This is support of God's regenerative work, God's sovereign choice. Consider Psalm 22, verses 9 and 10.

Yet you are he who brought me forth from the womb. You made me trust when upon my mother's breasts. Upon you I was cast from birth. You have been my God from my mother's womb. The psalmist talks about this.

The psalmist talks about God's work even in the womb. Now, this is important because if someone's going to tell me that you must believe in order to become regenerate, then they have a problem with those verses.

How would you explain, then, Luke 115, where the Holy Spirit filled John the Baptist while in his womb, his mother's womb, and Psalm 22, verses 9 and 10? You have been my God from my mother's womb. You see the problem?

Objections to Irresistible Grace

Now, of course, there are objections to this doctrine. Let me go through a few, and we'll get to some collars here in a little bit. See, on one hand, people say, well, God invites all people, so irresistible grace doesn't make sense.

If he invites them all, why would he only regenerate some in order to believe? Now, I'm going to give you an answer. You may not like this answer. God invites all people to be saved because that is what is right.

All people are obligated morally to believe in the truth of who God is. It doesn't mean they're capable. God commands everyone everywhere to repent, Acts 1730, but it is God who grants repentance, 2 Timothy 2 .25, and he doesn't grant it to everyone.

He wants people to believe. We know that's the case. He tells people to believe. You go to Exodus 20, and you find the Ten Commandments there. We are to have no other God other than God, and in Deuteronomy 6 .5, we are told that we are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind.

Well, that means we're to believe in him. He commands people to believe, yet God grants belief, Philippians 1 .29. He grants that we believe. Also, they said, what must we do to work the works of God?

And Jesus says, this is the work of God that you believe on whom he has sent, John 6 .28 -29. He requires things because he's the standard, not man. People will object. I've had this objection many times.

That's not fair if God requires something they can't do. I don't like that, and I won't believe it. Well, okay, if you don't like it, and you don't want to believe it, that's up to you. You can deny God's word.

That's fine. I ask them, would God ever require anything of you you can't do? And they say, of course not. Then why does God say in 1 Peter 1 .16, be holy, for I am holy. Can you be holy? Are you able to just be holy?

No. Notice what God says, be holy, for I am holy. Notice that he says he is the standard. People everywhere are obligated morally to believe in God and trust in God. That's just the way it is. But it is by irresistible grace that God's sovereign choice to give that regenerative work to the chosen ones whom from the foundation of the world he chose and predestined Ephesians 1, 4, and 5 to be his.

After all, 2 Thessalonians 2 .13 says he chose us for salvation. He appointed us to eternal life, Acts 13 .48. They're the ones who believed. This is God's sovereign work. Then there's some who say, well, 1 John 5 .1 says that whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of him.

This refutes irresistible grace, they say, because it shows that it's up to the people's free will choice to believe. But it doesn't. The phrase, is born of God, is found in the New American Standard and it's in the Greek in what's called the perfect passive voice.

Now, folks, look, I'm not trying to impress you. I'm not trying to confuse you. But you have to understand something, that God chose Greek for a reason. That's the language he chose. He chose to reveal it.

Let me give you an example of what passive, active, and middle voice are so you understand what's going on here. Active voice means I'm performing the action. I throw the ball at the wall. I perform the action.

Passive voice is I am hit by the ball. I receive the action. Middle voice is I perform the action on myself. I hit myself with the ball. So when God is performing the action, it's active voice. But when we receive the action, it means it's passive voice.

Now, what it says here, it says whoever believes that Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. Well, the phrase, is born of God, is the perfect passive. The perfect voice means, the perfect tense means I have been.

So I am is present tense. I will be is future tense. I have been is perfect tense. I had been is pluperfect. So I have been eating, which means I was eating in the past and then continuing in the present.

That's the perfect tense. If it's perfect passive, it means that it is an action that's already occurring in the past and is still occurring. And since it's passive, it means it occurred to us. We didn't do it.

We received it. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God already. That's basically what it's saying. Whoever loves the Father, loves the child born of Him. It doesn't refute when it says whoever believes.

And as I've gone over before, for example, John 3, 16, whosoever will believe, right? That's pas hapostoun, all the believing one. That's what it says in the Greek, literally, all the believing one. And I can get into this more, but I'm not going to.

The idea here is simply this, that God allows us to believe and we become believers. We're the ones who receive the action of God's regenerative work. That's why we're born again. That's how we are passive in it.

But we actively do choose to believe because we're born again. So irresistible grace does not violate anybody's free will because that's another objection. They say it violates man's free will. But you see, free will is the ability to make choices that are consistent with what you are by nature.

The unbeliever is exercising his free will when he rejects God because he's acting in a manner consistent with what he is. When God sovereignly changes our nature, He is not violating our free will. He is altering what we are.

He is changing us and enabling us to be able to believe in Him. This change means that we are then able to freely choose to receive Him. Therefore, God's irresistible grace does not violate a person's freedom of choice.

On the contrary, it enables a true freedom of choice. That's really important. Because a lot of people out there misrepresent the whole idea of irresistible grace and say that it's God forcing them. They misrepresent it and attack a straw man.

They're bearing false witness. They should stop. And finally, one more objection. Some people say you need to repent in order to be saved so that you can then be regenerated. Well, this means then that if people need to repent in order to be saved, well, that would be salvation by works.

Because think about it. Repentance means to turn from your sin. It means to obey the Word of God. Well, that would mean that if repentance is what is necessary in order for you to become a Christian, that being a Christian is dependent upon your ability to keep the law by not sinning and by turning from sin, then how is that not salvation by works?

Seriously. You see, God grants us repentance, 2 Timothy 2 .25, because it's concomitant with our regeneration. Concomitant means it is tied to that event. But this would also deny the teaching of justification by faith, which is clearly taught in Romans 3 .28.

We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. And Romans 4 .5, to the one who does not work but believes, his faith is reckoned as righteousness. And Romans 5 .1, having therefore been justified by faith.

Repentance is not what gets us salvation. Salvation is what brings us to repentance. Repentance cannot be performed by an unregenerate person. There's no man who seeks for God. No man does good, Romans 3 .10, 11, and 12.

They can't repent. They're by nature children of wrath, Ephesians 2 .3. They're not able to understand and receive these spiritual things, 1 Corinthians 2 .14. That's what the Bible says. Don't put the cart before the horse.

Look, folks, irresistible grace is simply the act of God in His sovereignty to change a person so that he is enabled to believe, and that belief is the necessary result of the regenerative work of God in us.

This regeneration precedes our faith logically, not temporally. And in it, God receives the glory. God, who is merciful to us, saves us. My suggestion to you is that you would pray that God would change the hearts of more people.

As I've said before, I don't know how it all works. I don't know the mind of God. I do not know the criteria by which He chooses. I do not know why He does what He does the way He does. I only know what the Scriptures reveal, and I try and represent them to the best of my ability.

My job is to present the truth the best that I understand, and you decide if you're going to accept that or not, but you do so because you see Scripture. You look at the Scriptures, you judge what I say against the Word of God, and as far as unbelievers go, pray for their salvation, make disciples of all nations.

This is what I do because I know salvation is not dependent upon my wisdom, my ability to communicate, my understanding, but upon God's mercy. I pray that He would condescend to you, such a fool as myself, in the preaching and the teaching of His Word, and that in His sovereign grace, He would draw people to Himself and save them.

And I lay my heart, my hands, my feet before God. My words, my mind say, Lord, use me and save as many as you possibly can according to your will. And I just say this in Jesus' name. That is irresistible grace.

Caller Questions on Necessity, Compulsion, and Regeneration

All right, folks, if you want to give me a call, let's get to Josh from Maryland. Maryland. How are you doing, Josh?

Doing all right, by God's grace. What do you got, man? We could ask questions for a limited time, and I have five, so I'll ask a couple and call back. Hey, no problem. But I had one question about the whole necessity and compulsory in like 480 AD or whatever.

How could it? Stuff like that. Okay, yeah. Oh, so they'll say that, and I'm like, and they'll deny, and I've heard people deny, like it can stay in the Scripture grammatically, and it can actually be there, but if the Church Fathers didn't teach it, then, you know, and then they go into necessity and compulsion, and they're like, irresistible grace, you know, it can't be so because of necessity and compulsion.

Well, I'm not sure what they mean by necessity and compulsion in that. I'd have to talk to them to see what they mean by those terms in that context. But I've gone through the Scriptures that show, at least imply, let's just say, that'll be gracious, that imply God's regenerative work.

And since we're depraved and the unbeliever's a slave of sin, he's not going to come to God on his own. God has to draw him, and God has to be gracious to him. That gives glory to God. As you think about it, the other perspective glorifies man because it says that the sinful man is able of his own wisdom to be able to choose God.

And this is where the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox fail because they will often put the onus upon man's sinful free will and somehow define this thing called free will in a libertarian sense, which means that the person is free in spite of his sinfulness.

He's free in order to come to Christ on his own, which the Bible clearly says is not the case. It's only, in my opinion, the wishful thinking of those who desire, to some extent, their own sovereignty, and they want fairness of God to be according to their measurement.

They don't like the idea of God's sovereignty, that God would make some for the purpose of destruction, Romans 9, 20 through 23, or make even the wicked for the day of evil, Proverbs 16, 4. They don't like that idea, and so they soften God.

Hence, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian surfer Jesus, dressed in a woman's nightgown, standing at the door of our hearts, asking permission for us and the sovereignty of our own wills to let him in.

Dr. Cunningham. Oh, yeah, no, that's a great answer.

Thank you. And you brought up Proverbs 16, 4, Calvinist line on G Septuagint has slightly different verses, and then she completely, Masoretic text, and then Septuagint read differently for...

Well, I've not studied that particular issue that way, so I can't comment on it, but it's worth looking into.

Is it correct to say that when you are regenerated and you have the nature, you repent, and I guess as a result of repentance, not as a result, but repentance and faith are kind of in that same logical order?

Is that correct to say?

I'm not sure I was understanding what you're saying. Repentance is like faith, the necessary result of God's regenerative work. Now, the Bible clearly tells us, as I've gone over so many times, that the unbeliever is a slave of sin, a hater of God who does no good, can't receive spiritual things, things like that.

Well, he can't just turn from his sin. Repentance is a good work. And the Bible says in Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12, he does no good. So how can they repent if the Bible says he does no good? Repentance is good.