People are saved because God summons them. And he summons them. under the proclamation or the understanding of the gospel. Forget all the nonsense. The gospel alone.
is what God uses to awaken the sinner. Yeah. Welcome to Grace TU, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. What does it matter if you believe that man has free will and chooses to follow Christ or that God predestines people for salvation?
Is that really worth debating? Is it really a big deal whether you believe that Christ paid off the sin debt for the entire world or only for sinners who end up believing in Christ?
Well, as John MacArthur's study called The Doctrines of Grace has been showing you, where you land on key salvation issues does have some far-reaching implications for how you pray, how you worship God, how you witness, how you serve your church. And with so much at stake, make sure you know what Scripture says about these critical issues. Take your Bible and turn to Romans as John begins today's lesson. I want you to open your Bible to Romans 8, Romans chapter 8, and let's begin. in Romans 8 with some very familiar revelation from God.
Verse 28, which is familiar to all of us, is a good starting point. Romans 8. Yeah. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God. To those who are Called according to his purpose.
For whom he foreknew He also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And whom he predestined, these he also called. And whom he called, these he also justified. and whom he justified, these he also Glorified. In our doctrinal study, We have talked about foreknowledge.
We've talked about predestination. or the doctrine of election. We've talked a little about justification. But the one word that I want you to focus on with me is the word called. Called.
In verse 28. Those who are Called. In verse thirty Whom he predestined, these he also. called and whom he called these he also Justified.
Now, one of the most simple words in the English language is the word call. We all understand that word. We use it in a daily manner. It's one of the more common words in our vocabulary. We call our kids to come to dinner.
In the hope that they will respond. Or we call our husband to come to dinner and hope he will respond. We call our friends on the phone and hope that they will spurn the answer machine option. and pick up the phone. It gets a little more important when a church.
calls a pastor. hoping he will accept the offer to come and Shepherd them. But in all those cases, you can still choose to ignore them. You can resist any of those calls and go on your way and do what you want. But Scripture reveals a truth about a call.
A summons that cannot be ignored. and it cannot be resisted. It is the unyielding summons from God. What are we talking about here? We're talking about a calling of God that results in a person's salvation.
Every use of the word call with regard to salvation in the New Testament epistles refers not to a general outward call, but to a specific, inward, efficacious, saving act of God. It is, in that sense, an unyielding summons from God that you will respond to. That is why theologians have called it irresistible. Grace. I like the word call better.
And I like the idea of an unyielding summons because that emphasizes God's unyielding, saving work. rather than man's resistance. When God seeks to save, And call a sinner out of darkness into his marvelous light. The question is: can the sinner Resist.
Now, to say this bothers some people. Doesn't bother me because the Bible says it. Bothers some people. They say, oh, this isn't right. It is not right to say God is going to bring sinners to Himself kicking and screaming.
To say this is to say that you can't fight it, you can't resist it. God's going to overpower you against your will and violate your freedom. And there are many who say God will not violate. Our free will. I hear that all the time.
God will not violate our freedom to choose. And they want to say, well, look, God makes really strong suggestions. That's what he does. And uh and you know sometimes he's really convincing. And a lot of times he makes really strong suggestions through good preachers.
who are really convincing. And we can pray, and we can ask God to crank up those strong suggestions. We can ask God to open people's minds and open their hearts and remove their blindness and make them responsive, but not force them to come. We can ask God to give them opportunity and a whole lot of information and motivation. But in the end Gotta be up to them.
Notable scholar presents the reality of Irresistible grace, or this. Saving calling, this effectual calling. As, according to him, making God into a dictator. With power that crushes our freedom by dragging us into his kingdom.
Well, all of that is really needless because That's not what Scripture says. No one was ever saved against their will. No one was ever brought into the kingdom kicking and screaming. Protesting. No one was ever saved who was dragged against the grain of having dug their heels in.
That is not what Scripture teaches. No one has ever been saved against his will. No one ever will be. Everybody who is saved is saved because they will to believe the gospel. In fact, they will with all their heart and soul to believe the gospel.
No one is ever saved without being willing. It is an act of the will to believe. Question is. What made them willing? Or better who?
Made them willing. W was it then? Was it the preacher? That's what we would have to conclude in that kind of system.
Somehow, it's them in the end, and somehow, though they were not willing, they became willing. They found somewhere they could get a hold of a bootstrap and pull themselves up out of unwillingness into willingness. The preacher Smash their resistance. And by his Preaching He made them willing. There's a little verse tucked into Psalm 110.
You don't have to look it up. Just. Note at Psalm 110.3 it says this. Your people will be willing. in the day of your power.
Really good. Your people will be willing in the day of your power. No sinner is ever going to be willing. until the power of God comes upon that sinner. There's nothing in the sinner to make him willing.
There's nothing in the sinner, even under the best of. The preacher's effort. It is only when the power of God makes him willing that he becomes willing. Am I sure about that? Absolutely.
No sinner has the capacity to be willing. Can I prove that to you? Look at Romans 2. Chapter three. Just a couple of passages here.
Verse 10. There's none righteous, no, not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks for God. That's pretty complete, isn't it?
All have turned aside. Together they've become useless. There's none who does good. There's not even one. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of aspers under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery in their path, and the path of peace have they not known, and there's no fear of God before their eyes.
I would say that's a pretty sad condition. That's a broad way to say the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Nobody seeks God. Nobody on their own is willing. Ephesians 2:1.
Here's why. Ephesians 2:1, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins. Dead people don't respond. You formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit working in the sons of disobedience. You lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just like everybody else.
That's you. It's hopeless. 1 Corinthians 2:14, the natural man understandeth not the things of God, they're foolishness to him. 2 Corinthians 4, 3 and 4. If our gospel is hidden, it's hidden to them that believe not.
And they believe not because the God of this world has blinded their minds, lest the light of the glory of the gospel should shine onto them. We went through this in great detail. This is what we mean by total depravity: the utter inability of the sinner to be willing. No sinner left to himself is able. No sinner left to himself is willing to understand, willing to repent, willing to believe, willing to choose God, Christ, and salvation.
Corruption is far too profound and too spiritually systemic. We can't choose that. We can't Seek it. The sinner only becomes willing in the day of divine power. God must display his sovereign power in summoning us and giving us the will to believe.
He must make us willing. Your people will be willing in the day of your power. But it's not that the sinner comes kicking and screaming and protesting and trying to resist. Because when the summons comes The sinner is made willing. In fact, it is The passion of his heart.
When the gospel comes. The sinner is so eager. to respond. As lost sinners? People have the freedom of the will.
That's right. Their will is free. Look at them. Look at the sinners. They operate.
Freely. And what do they do? They choose to sin. They just kind of pick and choose which ones. The lost sinner has the freedom of the will.
In salvation, we also have the freedom of the will. But instead of choosing sin, we choose Christ. And the difference is because we have been summoned with a divine call. Jonathan Edwards said, What we choose is not really determined by the will. As if it existed independently.
What we choose, said Edwards, is really determined by the mind. And what it is that the mind thinks is best. And by the way, the mind is not neutral and the mind is not objective. The mind is corrupt.
So what the mind thinks is best. Is what we choose. We are free to choose what our mind thinks is best. And apart from God and apart from Christ, our mind is corrupt and it thinks that sin is best. Edward says, when confronted with God, The mind of the sinner never thinks that following or obeying God is a good choice.
The sinner's will is never to choose God. Nothing is stopping him. But his mind doesn't regard submission to God and the gospel as desirable.
So, that unless God changes the way we think, our mind will always tell us to rebel against God in the gospel. Which is precisely what we do. The sinner will resist. Until A kind of grace comes. out of heaven.
A heavenly call I don't like the idea of irresistible grace. Because irresistible is negative, and I'd rather see it as an unyielding summons by God than something negative. Secondly, because irresistible grace is redundant. If grace is all of God, then it is irresistible. Because it says in Romans that God says, I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, also in the book of Exodus.
It is by definition Irresistible. If God decides to be gracious, then it's all of Him. And enough said.
So, I don't like the word irresistible because it's negative and it's redundant. And thirdly, it overqualifies or underdefines grace. Grace is much more than irresistible. The Bible doesn't call this irresistible grace, it calls it a heavenly calling, a calling to holiness, a calling to sanctification, a calling to justification, a calling to communion with the saints, a calling into the body of Christ. And that word just underdefines that.
How about just Calling it a saving call. Might mess up your little acrostic a little bit. That's okay. This is God's gift to us. Ephesians 2:8 and 9.
Do you remember that? Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works that no one should boast. The whole thing is a gift from God.
The whole thing comes as a gift from God. to us. I love what it says in Philippians 1:29. For to you it has been granted. For Christ's sake, Not only to believe in him, but to suffer for his sake.
It's been granted to you for the sake of Christ. to believe. The call brought you to faith. The call brought you to understand. It brought you to conviction, repentance, faith.
Clearly, this is a saving. Call. And nothing less than that. Makes any sense. of the scripture.
It's like uh 13, 48, where it says, as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. How did those that were appointed to eternal life believe? Because God called them out of their ignorance, He called them out of their confusion, He called them out of their darkness, called them out of their iniquity, called them out of their sin. And the call was an efficacious call activated by the power of God that brought them into the light, into the truth, into repentance, and into faith. It's like Lydia in Acts 16, 14.
It said, the Lord opened her heart. I love that. The Lord opened her heart. That is the. Efficacious call.
The Lord opens the mind and the heart. And the one who is unwilling becomes willing. Acts 18:27 says, Paul helped greatly those who had believed through grace.
So we could just call it grace. It is the grace that actually saves. It is the grace that actually saves. The sinner can't change his will, can't move his will toward God. Do you remember John 1?
Verse 12. 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 not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of. God, nobody would will that unless God first willed it. And activated it. It isn't because the sinner comes to his senses.
It isn't because the sinner is persuaded by clever preaching or an emotional appeal. Those are all deceptive illusions. It isn't because you're so nice or you've made Jesus look so nice. People are saved because God summons them. And he summons them.
under the proclamation or the understanding of the gospel. Forget all the nonsense. The gospel alone. is what God uses. to awaken the sinner.
And he makes him willing. whereas he has never been willing before. I am a Part of a A group of pastors and theologians called the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. And happily a part of it. It is a formidable group of.
leading theologians around the country, and I'm very honored to hang around them. In 1996, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals put out what was called the Cambridge Declaration. This is what it says. Unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of fallen human nature. Good statement.
Unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of fallen human nature. The only reason we think that we can will to be saved is because our thinking is corrupt. Goes on to say. This false confidence now fills the evangelical world. From the self-esteem gospel to the health and wealth gospel, from those who have transformed the gospel into a product to be sold, and sinners into consumers who want to buy, to others who treat Christian faith as being true simply because it works.
God's grace in Christ is not merely necessary. God's grace in Christ is not merely necessary, but is the sole efficient cause of salvation. We confess that human beings are born spiritually dead and are incapable even of cooperating with regenerating grace. Further? The statement says, we reaffirm that in salvation we are rescued from God's wrath by His grace alone.
It is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual death to spiritual life. And we deny that salvation is in any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques, or strategies by themselves cannot accomplish this transformation. Faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature. End quote.
Now I love hymns. that was given a Bible from the year 1672. And in the back of it, somebody has taken 150 psalms and put them to meter and rhyme. I'm determined to write some more hymns. In the years ahead.
I just, I love great music, and one of my favorite writers, Charles Wesley.
Now, you got to understand the Wesley brothers. They were anti-Calvinists. And you know what? The Calvinism they were against was pretty bad stuff. Calvinism had gotten corrupted in the days of the Wesleys, and it was harsh and unbending and.
Many of the people who espoused Calvinism were anything but Christians. But Charles Wesley, who wrote so many hymns, From an Arminian or anti-Calvinist viewpoint, believing in the freedom of the will and the freedom of the sinner to choose. In spite of his theology. Knew better. Because listen to what he wrote.
You'll recognize it. It's from A hymn that he wrote called An Can It Be. This is what it says. Long. my imprisoned spirit lay.
Fast bound in sin. and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off.
My heart was free. I rose, went forth to follow thee.
Now only a Calvinist could write that. What? Come on, Charles, fess up. You're a prisoner in darkness and night, but until God shined the light and broke your chains, nothing. Could change.
This is the glory. of this great Truth. Bow your heads with me. This great truth, Father, thrills our hearts to the very core. That you have stooped down to call us.
Because you chose us for glory. We bless you, we praise you, we thank you. And may we live lives worthy of this heavenly calling. Having been called to holiness, Call to fellowship. Called into the body.
Called into intimate union with Christ. called to be messengers. May we walk worthy. of this calling. And we praise you in your Son's name.
Amen. You're listening to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. Today, John continued his series titled The Doctrines of Grace.
Well, friend, I trust you've enjoyed digging into these doctrines of grace, election, the atonement, absolute inability, and the rest. But perhaps you're wondering what difference will grasp these doctrines make in my day-to-day life? Here's what John had to say about that. It makes all the difference. It eliminates fear, and doubt, and questioning, and discouragement.
If you understand that you were totally depraved, unable to save yourself, unable to do anything, and unwilling to do anything to change the trajectory of your life, headed directly to hell forever. If you understand your condition and you understand that God chose you. Before the world began, and that Christ actually died for you, specifically bearing your sins in His body on the cross, and that God called you to Himself in a way that was irresistible, and then gave you new birth, and life, and transformation. and changed your heart, and changed your mind, and changed your will, and that this is forever Knowing that is the most overwhelming realization that any human being can ever have. That it's not a matter of me trying to struggle to know God, trying to overcome my sinfulness.
And then, once I've struggled to know God, to try to hang on to God and wonder whether I've got enough tenacity and faithfulness to hold on or whether I might lose all of this. Fearing of sin and temptation, fearing that something might come into my life. Fearing Satan, that Satan might do something to me, or demons might do something to me. When you understand the doctrines of grace, it is a locked-down understanding of your eternal salvation. And what greater gift is there than that?
And even when you go through a trial, instead of doubting your salvation, When you go through that trial and your faith holds, That trial becomes an affirmation of the true character of your faith. That's what the New Testament tells us. the testing of your faith. has a perfecting work. It doesn't weaken you, it strengthens you because no matter what comes at you, you see that your faith holds and your faith stands.
This is the most encouraging Complex of doctrines that any believer could ever understand. That's right, friend. And John's study on the doctrines of grace can clear up any confusion you might have about man's depravity, God's election, Christ's atonement, God's effectual call to salvation, and the enduring faith of all Christians. You can download this study for free at our website, gty.org. And John's new book by the same name, The Doctrines of Grace, is a great compliment to this study.
It will help you dig deeper than ever before into these hard teachings. To get a copy of John's book, The Doctrines of Grace, for yourself or get one to give away, contact us today. The phone number to call 8005 GRACE and our website gty.org. The Doctrines of Grace costs twenty dollars and shipping is free. This book offers an in-depth look at what Scripture says about human nature and God's work in salvation and the eternal security of every believer.
It's an ideal resource to review with someone you're discipling. Again, to order the doctrines of grace, call 855 GRACE or shop online at gty.org. Keep in mind that there are thousands of free resources available at gty.org, including helpful articles from John and the staff on the Grace to U blog. You can also read daily devotionals. You can catch up on any episodes of this broadcast that you may have missed.
You can listen to Grace Stream. That's a continuous loop of John's teaching through the New Testament, starting in Matthew chapter 1 and going through Revelation 22, and then it all starts over again. You'll find all of those things and more at gty.org.
Now, for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378 and join us next week for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
