- Mar 8, 2010
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James Boice.
If we are following the TULIP acronym, this is the doctrine called “irresistible grace,” which refers to the way God calls us to Jesus Christ. But again the words themselves are somewhat misleading, for they do not mean (as they seem to imply) that God will drag us kicking and screaming into his kingdom. Nor do they mean that grace is never resisted by us. Obviously it is. What they mean is that we do not resist effectively. Or, to put it the other way around, they mean that when God calls us to faith in Jesus Christ he calls effectively, succeeding in his purpose to save us. The grace of God’s calling is overwhelmingly efficacious. A good way of expressing this is to say that the Holy Spirit regenerates us, giving us a new nature, as a result of which we naturally do what the new nature does: that is, we believe the gospel, repent of our sin, and trust in Christ unto salvation
I especially like the way Boice explains it in this last sentence above.
Consider this verse, Galatians 1:15-16
But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through his grace, 16 to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood:
14 But a natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
If we are following the TULIP acronym, this is the doctrine called “irresistible grace,” which refers to the way God calls us to Jesus Christ. But again the words themselves are somewhat misleading, for they do not mean (as they seem to imply) that God will drag us kicking and screaming into his kingdom. Nor do they mean that grace is never resisted by us. Obviously it is. What they mean is that we do not resist effectively. Or, to put it the other way around, they mean that when God calls us to faith in Jesus Christ he calls effectively, succeeding in his purpose to save us. The grace of God’s calling is overwhelmingly efficacious. A good way of expressing this is to say that the Holy Spirit regenerates us, giving us a new nature, as a result of which we naturally do what the new nature does: that is, we believe the gospel, repent of our sin, and trust in Christ unto salvation
I especially like the way Boice explains it in this last sentence above.
Consider this verse, Galatians 1:15-16
But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through his grace, 16 to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood:
1 Corinthians 2:10-14,
For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11 For who among people knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of the person that is in him? So also the thoughts of God no one knows, except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God. 13 We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.14 But a natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.