Somewhere along the way, the Calvinistic view of Five Points came to be summarized under the acronym TULIP. I don’t know how. I’ve tried to search again, and I’m not sure the historians can put their finger on when and how it happened. Maybe they can and I just haven’t stumbled across it. If you know, send me a note.

But here’s what the TULIP stands for:

• T — Total depravity
• U — Unconditional election
• L — Limited atonement
• I — Irresistible grace
• P — Perseverance of the saints

A person may embrace these five points because they are Biblical while not embracing other things that John Calvin and the Dutch Reformed Church endorsed. For example, one may embrace believers’ baptism, like me, and renounce the idea of a state church, like me. So it’s dangerous to call yourself a Calvinist, because goodness, most truly Reformed people would think a Baptist like me is just a fake reformed. They think I haven’t figured it out yet, because John Calvin baptized babies and John Calvin believed in a state church, so I can’t be a real Calvinist. Fine, I don’t care about being a real Calvinist. I just want to believe the right things about what I have to believe. On these five points, I think the Calvinists got it right and the Arminians got it wrong, but we’ll have to see if that is true by looking at the Bible.

Question and Answer

If we are chosen, are we protected between our physical birth and spiritual birth?

Yes, but let me get to that when we get to it.

What would you say is the chief consolation of limited atonement?

We’re going to cover that tomorrow.

How do we reconcile babies going to heaven if they have inherited guilt and sin without having Christ?

Is this the place to answer that? Here’s a brief answer. I do believe babies go to heaven. Not all Reformed people do. That does not imply I don’t believe they’re born with depravity. I think they are born with depravity and with guilt and with sinfulness in their hearts, but there are principles of justice that I would call public justice based on Romans 1. They are without excuse because although they knew God they did not honor him or give thanks to him. It’s as though, if they had not known God, then there would be an excuse.

I’m seeing a principle there in Romans 1 that on the last day when God judges people, he wants his public justice to shine forth in such a way that nobody will be judged who did not know the truth they should have known. I don’t put babies in that category. They don’t have any knowledge that they can be held responsible for, which means God will find a way to manage justly, through Christ and his blood, the contamination and the corruption that they came into the world with.

Is it okay to have what they would normally call “simple faith,” or is it essential to our growth in growing Christlike to study on a deeper level?

It is essential for growth that you know God and know him Biblically and experientially more and more. I would not equate that with study, like lots of books, Greek and Hebrew, two hours a day — any of those things you might associate with formalized study. I’m not saying that’s essential for godliness. It isn’t. There are people who do that and they’re very ungodly people, and there are simple folks who are very godly.

But I don’t think you’d find many, if any, very godly people who don’t meditate on the law of the Lord day and night. That’s simple. They read their Bible, they think about it, they pray about it, and they walk with God. They take risks for God. They subdue their sins. They get to know God in the school of suffering. So no, I would not argue there must be formal or deep or serious study to be very, very godly. All things being equal, which they never are, you would do better to study. All things being equal, which they never are, you would do better. So for me, it has been one of the highest privileges, pleasures, and helps of my life in ministry that I have been a student of the word of God. I do not think others should follow in that path, necessarily. Surely not everybody.

If God has monergistically saved some to the praise of his glory, why not save all? I’m going to save that question until we get to those texts, because there are texts like that. It’s a good question.

Differences Between Calvinism and Arminianism

Let’s summarize the differences between the two, Calvinism and Arminianism. What are they? What do they believe on these five points that are different? So here we go. First on depravity, or total depravity. This is what Calvinists believe. This is what I believe. I wrote this:

People are so depraved and rebellious that they are unable to trust God without his special work of grace to change their hearts so that all resistance is overcome and they willingly and gladly believe.

Now we’re going to spend a whole section tomorrow on the meaning of total depravity, so if that raises lots of questions, good. We’re coming back to it. This is a summary. This is a summary statement of the differences. Arminians believe that people are depraved and corrupt, but are able to provide the decisive impulse to trust God with the general divine assistance that he gives to all people by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel. So never say of a Wesley-type Arminian that they don’t believe in the necessity of the Holy Spirit for conversion. Never say that. That’s why I think my father and I could be so close to one another. But what they believe is that this prevenient grace simply works for all people to remove enough obstacles so that they can freely choose, whereas Calvinists say he doesn’t just make it possible for them to be self-determining. He moves such that they will believe. So that’s the difference. We believe humans are so corrupt they will not believe unless they are brought to belief by God.

On Election

Regarding election, Calvinism says God has chosen unconditionally people whose rebellion he will overcome and whom he will bring to faith and salvation. God has chosen unconditionally people whose rebellion he will overcome and whom he will bring to faith and salvation. For Arminians, God has chosen to bring to salvation all those whose faith he foresaw but did not decisively bring about. God elects. Arminians believe in election. They believe in election on the basis of faith that God foresees. The faith he foresees is faith that we produce decisively. The Holy Spirit removes obstacles, and then we provide the decisive act that brings us to faith.

On Atonement

Regarding atonement, Calvinism says in the death of Christ, God provided a sufficient atonement for all, but designed that it be effective for the elect, meaning that it purchased for them the new covenant promise that God would successfully bring about in his people the grace of faith and perseverance. The atonement brings about faith. It purchases faith. It obtains the New Covenant promise of a new heart for the elect.

For Arminians, in the death of Christ, God provided a sufficient atonement for all and designed that it become effective by virtue of faith, meaning that the faith itself is not a gift purchased by the cross, but the human means of obtaining the gift of purchased forgiveness. There’s lots to come back to because I’m going to wind up saying, I’ll just give you a hint, nobody likes the term “limited atonement.” The reason I don’t like it is because I believe what the Arminians believe about the atonement and so much more.

It’s not as though my little limited atonement is in the place of their big, expansive atonement. No, no, no. I totally embrace their big, expansive atonement. I’ll show you that. Then I add that massively he loved his bride in a covenant way and went after her, paid her dowry, bought her, took her, will celebrate with her forever, and the cross secures that. That’s added to this. So I’m going to argue Calvinists have a massively bigger atonement. Therefore, it is unfortunate that we call it “limited.”

On Irresistible Grace

What about irresistible grace. Calvinists say it is God’s work in us by which he overcomes our resistance to God and unfailingly brings about the act of saving faith and through that faith infallibly supplies everything we need to live joyfully with God forever. Arminians say grace is not irresistible, but is prevenient — that is, it precedes and makes possible saving faith — but we provide the decisive act of will that brings about saving faith through which God supplies everything we need to live joyfully with him forever.

Irresistible grace is also an unfortunate term, because almost everybody when they hear it thinks it means that you can’t resist grace if you believe in it. Everybody resists grace, every day! And unbelievers resist successfully, so how can I then believe in irresistible grace? All it means is that when God decides to overcome that resistance, he will. He will. So it doesn’t mean you can’t resist. It means God will let you resist, but when he decides that’s over, he will now overcome your resistance. That’s why I asked you an hour ago, “How do you believe you got saved?” That’s how I got saved. God did that. He conquered my rebellion. He overcame my resistance. He obliterated my stiff-arming him. He broke my arms and took me for his own.

On Perseverance of the Saints

What do we believe about the perseverance of the saints? For Cavinists, God works infallibly to preserve the saving faith of all who are truly born again, so that none is ever lost. If we are truly regenerated, we will never be lost. Arminians say that God works to preserve his people but does not always prevent some who were born again from falling away to destruction. If we are truly regenerated, we may still be lost. That’s sometimes called eternal security and not having eternal security. That’s a summary of those differences between Calvinism and Arminianism.

Question and Answer

If Christ’s death propitiates the sins of the elect, then how can it be that the elect are under God’s wrath before they believe?

Somebody has been reading Bruce Ware. I think I’m going to come back to that tomorrow when we tackle that issue. Don’t forget it. So here’s the issue. If the cross is decisive in propitiating God’s wrath, and if between my birth and my conversion I’m under God’s wrath, then in what sense can the wrath of God against the elect be said to be propitiated here? Either I’m under God’s wrath and it’s not propitiated, or it’s propitiated and I’m not under God’s wrath. I will tackle that when we come to the limited atonement.

If someone gets divorced or sins, is that God causing or influencing that? Or how can we blame Satan for evil if God is the one in control and making him do it?

Okay, that is exactly the right kind of question to start asking once you believe that God is sovereign. A thousand questions come up if God is sovereign. I wrote a whole book called Spectacular Sins. The point of Spectacular Sins was to take seven of the most spectacular sins in the Bible and show how God had planned them all. God planned the fall. We know that because Christ was slain for sinners before the foundation of the world. When Joseph was sold into slavery, he said at the end of his life to his brothers, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). He meant Joseph’s sinfully being sold into slavery for good.

The most important one of all, of course, that our whole lives depend on, is Acts 4:27–28 where Luke says Pontius Pilot, Herod, the Gentiles, and the Jews were gathered together in Jerusalem against your holy servant Jesus “to do whatever your plan and hand had predestined to take place.” What was that? The murder of the Son of God. The greatest sin in the history of the universe is the murder of the Son of God by crucifixion. Every detail of it is planned by the Father. So whether it’s a tsunami that takes out 250,000 people, or a divorce in your life, or the cancer that your wife has, or sexual dysfunction in your marriage, or kids that are breaking your heart, or a church that just split again, God rules over those.

Satan is also acting. Job is the paradigm, right? Satan comes to God and God says, “Have you considered Job?” Satan says, “Yeah. He’s prosperous and that’s why he serves you.” God says, “I don’t think so. Go ahead. He’s yours. Just don’t touch him.” So he kills his kids. Satan kills his kids, all ten of them, and Job says, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And the writer, who’s inspired, adds, “And thus he did not sin with his lips.” Satan goes back, and God says, “See?” He says, “Yeah, skin for skin. You let me have his flesh. He won’t be yours anymore.” God says, “All right, go ahead.” So he strikes him with boils, top of his head to the bottom of his feet. He wife says to him, “Curse God and die, for goodness sakes.” He says, “You speak like one of the foolish women. Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive evil?” And then the writer adds, “And thus he did not sin with his lips.” Then you come to the end of the book in chapter 42, and it says the Lord brought all these things upon Job.

So Satan is real, Satan is active, and Satan is beating up on you big time. And it must madden him mad to hear me say he’s a lackey! He’s a chained lackey! He can’t move an inch without God’s permission. Not an inch against you or anybody else. God lets his leash out and pulls his leash in. You hear that? So yeah, Satan is real, Satan is active. There are always two purposers in your life. I don’t think Satan ever lets up and God never lets up. There are always two purposers in your life: God and Satan. The same thing is happening.

It might be beauty and peace and health, in which case Satan wants to use it to lure you away from God and make you an idolater of the beauty and God wants to make you grateful for the beauty. Or it might be cancer and Satan wants to destroy your faith and say God is not good or he wouldn’t be doing this, and God wants to test your faith and prove it like fire and metal. God and Satan are always in the same event doing different things. God is always sovereign. I’ll give you the short version of why that’s so hopeful.

Who caused the planes to fly into the Twin Towers on 9/11? Satan had a big hand in that. He’s a murderer from the beginning. He’s a liar and a murderer. So Satan is there killing 2,500 people in an instant. And all God would have had to do was blow on that plane and cause it to miss. That’s all he had to do. And he didn’t do it. What? Was he asleep? You have to be an atheist folks or believe in the sovereignty of God. It just absolutely won’t work to have an incompetent bumbler of a God who cannot see where that plane is going. Even for people who are open theists, who don’t think God knows the future, can’t he see? Therefore, God, using Satan, purposed that catastrophe for 10,000 reasons of which you might know two. And 10,000 is an understatement. Billions and billions of effects have gone out into the world. God is managing them all. There are no maverick purposes. They are all under his control.

So you may not at the end of this seminar be able to account for how God can be absolutely sovereign over human choices and over Satan, and those choices and Satan still be accountable and reasonable. But I’m going to show you from the Bible that is so. God is sovereign and we are responsible. Edwards made a valiant attempt in The Freedom of the Will to see how they are coherent. He may be right in the solution that he offered, but I don’t feel like I have to have one. I’m a tiny, tiny brain and God is infinitely bigger. He has ways of doing things that I cannot explain.

What would you say to someone who doesn’t believe studying or taking a stance in theology that deals with these issues is important?

I’d say just listen for the next little while and decide whether you think that’s true. I began the seminar that way, trying to say why this is a life-and-death issue for me personally. I don’t mean it’s a life and death issue that you have to agree or you’re dead. I mean I can’t survive the horrors of this world that don’t touch me and the little horrors that do touch me without believing that God is good, wise, and all-powerful, and can therefore turn every horrible thing for good.

There are trade offs, aren’t there? If you say God couldn’t stop the planes and therefore he’s morally innocent from the tragedy, now you have a God who is unable to take the thousands and thousands of tragedies created by that and do something infallibly good with it. If I were to sit down with a woman who lost her husband, or a husband who lost his wife, or a child who lost both parents, and here now 12 years later they would say, “Pastor John, how does your theology help me? They’re dead.” I would say, “My God and your God is able to take that and in your life do something stunning with it, because he’s God. He’s sovereign in ways you can’t imagine.” That’s what you gain. You have to deal with tragedies and you gain a sovereign God who can work all things for your good.

Irresistible Grace

I’m doing ITULP. Not TULIP, but ITULP. I’m starting with irresistible grace, because existentially according to the way I live and most people live, that’s where we meet it. We meet it at age five or six or 20 in college, and we must deal with what’s happening to us. What’s happening? That election stuff, that’s just way out there beyond my ability, but right now I know something’s happening to me, and I’ve got to decide. Do I believe or don’t believe? And what do I do? How’s it happening? That’s just totally real. I think putting that right at the front end is very helpful. So that’s why we’re doing it this way.

God’s saving grace can be resisted and will be resisted by all human beings until God acts to overcome the resistance. That’s what I mean by “irresistible grace.” When he decides to overcome your resistance to anything, he can do it without turning you into a robot. He’s God. He can do that. Here are texts showing that he can be resisted. Maybe I don’t have to do this, but I’ll just tick off a few. Seeing as you all know that as you do it every day:

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you (Acts 7:51)

So clearly the Holy Spirit can be resisted.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30).

The Holy Spirit is God Almighty dwelling within us and he can be grieved by things we do. You may ask, well why doesn’t he stop us from doing them then? He has his reasons. He can stop you from looking at pornography. He can stop you from grumbling. He can stop you from being greedy. He can and he does. But now always and not fully, and he has his reasons why sanctification is slow. And we say that just because that’s what the Bible implies. So he can be grieved.

But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people” (Romans 10:21).

A Calvinist can read that and believe it. God says, “All day long I have stretched out my hands to disobedient and obstinate people.” You find that all over the Bible. We’ll see some examples in just a minute. You might say, “Well look, you can’t have a God standing there with his hands stretched out like this and expect to call him sovereignly overcoming their unwillingness to come to him!” My dad was an evangelist. He’d stand at the front while we’re singing, “See at the portals he’s waiting and watching, watching for you and for me.” Can a Calvinist sing that? My dad would stand there, tears rolling down his face, saying, “Would you come? He’d stand there wanting people to get saved. Would you come?” We’re singing. Everybody is singing. He’s standing at the portals waiting and watching. We have a waiting God here! You don’t have a God who’s using irresistible grace to make people come. You can’t sing that song if you’re a Calvinist.

The Invitation of Jesus and the Power of the Spirit

Let me ask you this. Your college aged kid just came home for this and he’s willing to come to the revival meeting. He’s sitting about 10th row back beside his mom, and my dad’s looking this way and looking that way, and this kid is being convicted under my dad’s preaching. What’s that mom doing? What’s she doing? Tell me. She’s praying. What is she saying to God? She’s hearing that Jesus in the person of my father has his arms stretched out like this. Come. That’s Jesus. Come. “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How often would I have gathered you and you would not, so come. Come.” That’s Jesus talking through my father’s lips and through the words of the song. And what is this mother saying to God? There’s lots of things she could be saying, but she’s saying something like, “Oh God please, please, do it. Please open his eyes. Please make him listen. Please cause him to see.”

Because the way it works is that Jesus and the Father may be standing here saying come, and the Holy Spirit is going to go there and give the willingness to obey Jesus. That’s why she’s praying! What’s the point of praying if God doesn’t do that? It’s not inconsistent for Jesus to be standing at the front saying come, come, come, and us to say to the Father, “In the name of Jesus send the Holy Spirit on my son and cause him to see and want you and need you and go!” And the Holy Spirit does that.

The reason I ask you at the beginning is if that was you, how you got saved, and that boy comes out, his mother with tears streaming down her face with joy, and he falls down on his knees in front of my dad, confesses his sins and is born again. Tomorrow if somebody asks him, “How did you get saved?” Is he really going to say, “Free will. Just free will! God showed up and then I decided it was my wisdom and I overcame my resistance. I enabled myself to see the light. I enabled myself to see him as compelling”? I’ve never heard a Christian talk like that. They must be somewhere because there’s a theology that backs it up, but I have never heard any Christian talk like that, which is why I love people more than I love theology.

He’s going to say, “God blew me away. During that hymn, I went into that room a God hater. I was just a pain in the rear end for all those years to my mother, and God slew me. He just took it all away.” That’s the way we talk! That’s the way we talk! He took away all my rebellion. He made himself look beautiful. I saw my desperate need for a Savior. All these huge things are going on inside of me. Did you make that happen? You didn’t make that happen.

So Irresistible Grace is God’s work in us by which he overcomes our resistance to God and unfailingly brings about the act of saving faith, and through that faith infallibly supplies everything we need to enjoy him forever.

1. The Gift of Faith and Repentance

I have six arguments for why what I said is true. They’re all Bible, okay? This is no other sources, just biblical texts. So faith and repentance are a gift of God.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

So the grace and the faith are a gift. The faith here is part of the gift. So God is giving the faith. That’s what happened to that young man. Romans 12:3 says:

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Faith is God’s allotment, God’s gift. This is one of the clearest ones of all. It’s repentance this time. Boy this is important. If you have any kind of ministry in your life at all, lay ministry, or vocational ministry:

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will (2 Timothy 2:24-26).

It’s texts like that that made me cry when I was 22 years old at seminary during that fall. Oh my goodness. It says, “God may grant them repentance.” He may not and he may. Boy, if you have somebody you think is demonized in your life right now, somehow really oppressed by the Devil, really controlled in some bizarre way by the Devil, this is one Biblical strategy that’s not too weird. There are weird ones, like exorcism. I’ve been involved in a few weird deliverances, and they’re scary and you don’t want to ask for them, but if God gives them to you don’t be afraid.

But this I do every day. Don’t be quarrelsome, be kind, teach, be patient when wronged, and be gentle when you correct others. And through that kind of loving word ministry, God may grant repentance. What is repentance? Metanoia? It’s a changing of the mind. The devil was cool and now he’s horrible. It’s repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. Here’s the demonic part: “That they may come to their senses.” It’s like they’re inebriated, right? You know people like this. It’s like they’re drunk, just totally out of touch with reality. And then it says, “They escape from the snare of the devil who had held them captive to do his will.” So how do you get people liberated from the devil? Teach them. That’s what it says. Teach them and love them and pour the truth on them, and don’t be quarrelsome with them. The decisive actor is God. He may grant repentance.

So repentance is a gift. None of you repented on your own. The question here was, “Do you need to think about these things, are they that important?” If you don’t know that, what are you going to praise him for on Sunday morning with regard to your conversion? How are you going to lift your hands and say, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” You’re not. You’re not. You’re going to have a mental framework that’s resisting that. You’ll think, “Don’t thank him because you made the decisive choice. You made the decisive choice.” Of course you’ll thank him for the cross and for offering, but you will not thank him for being the decisive one who broke in on your life. I want you to praise him for what he ought to be praised for. So it’s a gift.

Conditions Under a Sovereign God

Here’s the one I said about the Old Testament. This is just so fascinating. I want you to see it, because there’s a paradigm about how to read the Bible here and how to understand conditional statements in relation to God’s sovereignty. Here we are. Hezekiah, Old Testament king, is calling for repentance because the people are in a mess. He says:

So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, “O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see. Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him” (2 Chronicles 30:6–9).

People think Calvinists can’t talk like that, right? Because Calvinists think God’s always running ahead, and so you can’t say, “If you do this, God will do this,” because that sounds to put you in the driving seat. See? But we’re Bible people. We’re Bible people. That’s the way you should talk. It says:

If you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him (2 Chronicles 30:9).

You have “if” and “that.” You have all those indications that you have to move here or God’s not moving. Right? That’s what it says. You must do this or God won’t respond with redemption and with deliverance. And that is the way you should preach it. I remember, just before I came to Bethlehem I preached at the Baptist General Conference Annual Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It was the summer of 1980. Now I’m a seven point Calvinist, and I was preaching to these several thousand people that had gathered together. It was on Hebrews. And a guy came up there and said, “Well John, you’re about to become pastor of Bethlehem. I just want to give you some warning. Your Arminianism might be a problem in this conference.” That’s what he said because I preached like that! If you come, he will bless you. If you come, he will save you!

Now we’re at verse 10. It says:

So the couriers went from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them. However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of the Lord (2 Chronicles 30:10–12).

Now look very carefully at the word “also.” What is also referring to? Let me show you something. That’s my Bible program. It means “also.” You needed to see that, because everything hangs on that word. Stay with it. The hand of God was “also” (in addition to 2 Chronicles 30:11) on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king had commanded. So that means he was also in the Asher and Manasseh and Zebulun men, which means this didn’t come out of nowhere. God had given them the heart to do it.

Now we’re back in the revival meeting with Jesus at the front saying, “Come, come, come.” And the Holy Spirit settles down powerfully on that young man’s life, changing him so he comes. That’s what’s going on here. This is just so vastly important. Whenever you read in the Bible, “If you humans do this I God will do that,” don’t conclude that doesn’t mean he doesn’t intend to enable you to fulfill the condition. He did it right here. He enabled them to fulfill the condition he was giving through Hezekiah. Hezekiah says, “If you will humble yourself, if you will turn, then God will bless you.” Which makes it sound like it’s all yours to do. It’s not. God will circle around.

God says to Hezekiah, “Tell them they must repent. Hezekiah, my people are rebellious. I’m not going to bless them while they’re rebellious, so you tell them they must repent.” So Hezekiah delivers that horizontal word in 2 Chronicles 30:6–9. Now, what we want is for our heart to go back like this to that word and say, “You are so right. We are so bad. We are sorry and we repent and we turn and we want God.” That’s just not going to happen unless God enables you. That’s what 2 Chronicles 30:10–12 says he did. He gave them one heart to do what the king and the princes had commanded.

God tells a preacher, like Bill Piper, “You go preach to that church and tell them they must repent.” My dad kept saying, “This is so hard. They never would repent.” Like Jonah you know. Then he just starts preaching and a mother, who’s been praying for 20 years, has the bowl full in heaven of her 10,000 prayers, and God says, “Just one more and I’ll pour it out.” She prays one more and she takes 10,000 prayers and goes woah, and this kid goes, “Whoa! Where’d that come from?” He’s saved. He’s saved. These people were saved.

2. The Necessity of Drawing

Argument number two: We can’t come to Christ unless God draws us.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:44).

Let me go back here. I taught at Bethel for six years from 1974 to 1980. I had a lot of opposition from the students when it came to things like this. I remember using John 6:44 one day in class to argue that nobody can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him. He says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” A fellow named Bill, who was very bright, went on to become an Episcopalian priest. He just raised his hand and said, “I think he draws everybody, so that’s a true statement. Nobody can come to me unless the Father draws them, and he draws everybody.” That’s the first time I’d ever heard anybody say that. I said, “I’ll think about that.” That’d be a good Wesleyan Arminian argument that prevenient grace is given to everybody and nobody can come to me unless the Father does some drawing, but he doesn’t draw them decisively.

I went home and this is what you should always do. You should always read the rest of the chapter. Here’s what happens. Now we’re down at verse 63. Jesus says:

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

So I thought, that argument won’t work. This is Judas. Jesus is saying the reason Judas hasn’t come is because the Father hasn’t drawn him. That’s what he’s saying. He knew who would not believe. He knew who would betray him. He says, “For this reason, I have said to you no one can come.” It’s Judas who is exhibit A. Judas does not come to me because he can’t come unless it is granted to him from the Father. God could’ve saved Judas just like he saved you. You weren’t any easier to save than Judas. Dead is dead. And he didn’t. He was a son of perdition. It was already decided long ago that he would not be saved and God wasn’t obliged to save him.

3. Effectual Calling

Here’s the third argument.

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:22–24).

God’s effectual calling overcomes resistance. Now how do I get that from this text? So you’ve got two groups of people. You’ve got Greeks, and they’re seeking for wisdom, and you’ve got Jews, and they’re asking for signs. We preach — instead of signs and wisdom — Christ crucified, to which the Jews respond by stumbling over it like a block. And the Gentiles respond by calling it “foolishness.” But there’s another group of people among the Jews and among the Gentiles who don’t respond in either of those ways. To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, they look at Christ crucified and say this is the power of God. This is the wisdom of God. It’s like the kid we mentioned. He walked in, and when he walked in he was saying this is stupid. This is foolish. He’s stumbling over it. And we walked out saying, “My Lord and my God.”

What made the difference? The call of God did. Well what was that? Billy Graham stands up in front of 50,000 people. My father stood up in front of 500 people. They both called with words. They said, “Come. Come to Jesus. To everyone who comes, he will not cast you out. He says, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1). That’s the general call, and thousands of people don’t do it. All of these people did. The “called” say it’s the power of God and wisdom of God.

Theologians have always distinguished between the general call of God that I’m issuing right now and everybody can hear, and the internal effectual call of God in and through the word saying come. It’s like Jesus calling to Lazarus in the tomb: “Lazarus, come forth!” Now that was the kind of call that makes this text work. The call created the response. Lazarus was not dead after the call. The call raised the dead: “Lazarus, come forth.” Back to my first question: How did you get saved? Answer: God said, “Rise from the dead,” and you did. That’s how you got saved. All of you who are saved got saved that way.

The call might have been through the Bible reading, might have been through radio, might have been through Billy Graham, might have been through your mother at her knee when you were six, or it might have been through reading a book. The general call was happening in all those ways and God Almighty decided now is the time, and he says, “Live, John Piper. Live, you dry bones!” And they move.

4. The Enablement of the New Birth

Argument number four: The new birth enables us to receive Christ:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God . . .

It really is a perfect tense here. So prior to your believing, you were born. That’s how you know you were born. You heard the joke, if somebody comes up to you and says, “Are you alive?” You say, “Yes.” They might say, “How do you know?” You don’t say, “Well, I have my birth certificate here somewhere. Let me show you. Here it is. The doctor signed it. He signed it. January 11, 1946.” Nobody does that. They say, “I’m breathing. I’m alive.” So if somebody asks you if you are a new creature in Christ, you don’t fish out your card from the Billy Graham meeting, do you? You don’t. You say, “I love him! I trust him! He’s my God. Once he was stupid, a stumbling block, foolishness, and boring, and now he’s everything to me. I’m alive! I didn’t make myself this way. I’ve been raised from the dead! That’s how I know I was born again.”

5. New Covenant Promises

Argument five: The new covenant promises grace that will triumph over resistance. Here’s the first covenant, the Mosaic Covenant.

And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear (Deuteronomy 29:2–4).

The Old Covenant mainly left people without the supernatural aid to fulfill the conditions given in the law, but there was a promise given in this book. Moses said:

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 (Deuteronomy 30:6).

Someday there’s a period coming when God will circumcise your heart. According to the New Covenant, God will take out the heart of stone, put in the heart of flesh, and he will write the law on your heart and you will love God. That’s coming. These are all these New Covenant promises that I referred to.

6. Who Can Resist His Will?

I’m going to wrap this up with argument number six.

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? (Romans 9:14–20).

Answering back in that verse is a negative word. There are some questions that are perfectly legitimate to God, and there are some questions that he’s very offended by. When God said to Zechariah, “Your wife is going to have a baby even though she’s old,” he said, “How can I know that? She’s old.” The angel said, “You won’t talk for nine months, buddy.” He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that question. When he said to Mary, “You’re going to have a baby before you ever have sex,” she said, “How could that be?” And he answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Most High will overshadow you, and the child born in you will be of the Holy Spirit and you will call him the Son of God.” Why did he like her question and not Zechariah’s? The answer was her attitude. She said, “I am your handmaiden. Whatever you say.” Zechariah had his back up, saying, “It can’t happen.” This man here has his back up. I could argue this from the word used here, but I think you can see it. Paul continues:

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory . . . (Romans 9:20–23).

What if that? Would you have an answer for that? Would you be able to talk back to that? In other words, if God deemed it wise and good that he would display the riches of his glory more fully by ordaining that there be those who are lost, then who are you, O man, to answer back to God? What you have to maintain at this point is that when that happens, when there are vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, he does it in such a way that those vessels of wrath are really guilty and really responsible, and in the last judgment they will not have any objection to raise against God. If you say, “I don’t see how he can do that,” I say, “Well, you don’t need to see how. You just need to see what the Scripture says and embrace it.”