If anything was true of the Christian faith, it was these things along with total depravity and perseverance of the saints. When the traditional texts were presented as proof of these doctrinal dogmas, I could only nod in agreement, finding no fault in how Scripture was read and interpreted.
Yet a funny thing happened during my late teens and into my early twenties. The more I sunk my Christian foundation into the bedrock of Calvinism, the more fragile and volatile my spiritual life and commitment to Christianity became. A number of unspeakable evils befell my family one after another; prayers went unanswered; God remained hidden despite earnest seeking; life floundered and became dark. I despaired.
How could a God of love personally cause these horrendous evils and yet still be perfectly good? How could I trust God to be loving when he determined people to sin, and then held them accountable for what they could not have refrained from doing?
I desperately sought to hold these disparate theological tenets in proper balance, but the tension tore me apart. Intuitively I knew that if God was the ultimate cause behind evil, then he was evil; slowly, and in a dangerously creeping way, I began to hate this God of Calvinism even while I outwardly mouthed all the right doctrines.
Before he gets there, however, Walls covers some basic issues. The doctrine of irresistible grace is the focus of chapter 3. Supposedly, such a distinction allows Calvinists to preach the gospel as a genuine offer, even if the unbelievers they preach to are not elect.
What makes the effectual call irresistible is that it is God who opens the eyes of the lost, softens their hearts, restores their corrupted will, and gives them the faith to believe so that they might be saved.
Given this, Calvinists face a problem: if salvation is accomplished by God alone and is in no way dependent upon humans, what prevents the general call and effectual call from being coterminous? So, why bother preaching to them? The Calvinist logically rejects his own doctrinal system every time he makes any effort to preach the gospel or to defend it.
The elect, given Calvinism, cannot help but be ultimately miraculously or supernaturally saved by a direct infusion of saving grace. Calvinism is a false doctrine, and should be rejected by all people who hold God in awe, the Bible in respect, and the salvation of men as dear. This total doctrine is repulsive and repugnant to reflecting minds.
It ultimately dishonors God and mocks His Word. Browse Lessons Browse. Bible Answers About Denominations. Topics: apologetics , calvinism , denominationalism , tracts. Question: Irresistible Grace - is it biblical? Can you explain to me why irresistible grace is wrong? Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name!
The doctrine of irresistible grace refers to the biblical truth that whatever God decrees to happen will inevitably come to pass, even in the salvation of individuals against their own free will and choice.
In other words, this has mainly been associated with Calvinism, which teaches that the saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom he has determined to save and, in God's timing, overcomes their resistance to obeying the call of the gospel, bringing them to faith in Christ. Irresistible grace is not Biblical and wrong as we cannot make a case to support it because God has clearly revealed in His word that He, "desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" 1 Tim , "The Lord is not slow about his promise [of His coming again to this earth to judge and rule it with His saints] , as some think of slowness [of fulfillment] , but is patient with [all humans including us] , not wanting any [humans to] perish, but all to come to repentance.
In other words, this shows that grace of God has been dispersed to all humans through the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the past two thousand years, and God waits for a response from humans in reply to the grace that has been dispersed in all the world.
Every good choice of humans to accept the grace of God will bring salvation to them and their household Acts Here are the verses that prove that God is looking for man to choose the right and reject sin to be saved, " So what do we understand from the above Scriptures that speak to us, if we don't respond to God's promises or continue to believe Him through faith, we won't be saved.
But if any human will respond and follow through in faith, any one can be saved. When someone who even calls him 'Lord, Lord.. God's salvation grace is available to all, anyone who receives the grace of God through faith will be saved at the end. Those who fail to receive grace will resist grace and therefore will remain unsaved. For how could a good loving God who want the whole world to be saved 1 Tim , and have sent his son to die for the whole world John , but ultimately only select certain, elect few by irresistible grace when He Himself calls by election all humans and pleads with them to choose the Gospel and reject one self to become saved and live in friendship with Him for eternity ahead 2 Cor ?
All of the above truth cannot go in the same direction, until they all agree that God does not work without man, man cannot work without God. Thus only when both God and humans work together, people get saved and people are also saved through them and their testimony for Him, nothing is impossible to us humans when we are in partnership with Him Luke ; Matt When people respond to God's drawing towards Him through the Gospel by the Holy Spirit, it is the grace of God extended towards those unsaved by God that get utilized without wasting it in vain.
But when an unsaved resist the Gospel without responding to God's initiation, the grace of God is wasted towards him or her 1 Cor Lazarus being raised from the dead cannot be compared with a unsaved man being converted, because Lazarus was already a saved man who died physically because of some sickness John , it was a pre-demonstration of how the Lord himself will raise Himself from the dead and also other believers who will be raised in the times to come to be made alive for the Glory of God John The greatest problem with Calvin and the proponents of irresistible grace is that, none of them has concentrated on the message of the proclamation of the Gospel, that is why they bent themselves to thrown their weight on God's sovereignty and have washed their hands of human responsibility, unlike the first century apostles who went on preaching and teaching the word of God in all the world demonstrating the Kingdom of God so that all people in all the world might be able to believe the Gospel and be saved for eternity Mark , If the great apostle Paul who was used by God to bring millions and millions of souls in to the Kingdom of God in the first century says with urgency, "Indeed, preaching the gospel is no reason for me to boast; it is an obligation that has been imposed upon me.
And woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. That shows the folly of such thinking that is unbiblical and wrong to mislead people in to a false sense of security and lethargy in fulfilling the great commission of the Lord Mark ; Matt When we value the Gospel which looks foolish to the natural man 1 Cor , God saves us according to the promises He has given us in His word.
In other words, if we choose God, we become God's chosen though we may be looked as though we are foolish from the side of the world, from God's side we have become wise in trusting Him and Jesus Christ becomes our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption from God 1 Cor So God's election is a call to the whole world, of which those who chose God become chosen of God to be conformed to the image of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ Rom , Though the secret thing of God's foreknowledge of who will be saved and who will not be saved is something that God knows already in His omniscience Deut ; Matt , 36; Luke ; Rom , only the revealed things belongs to us of which the Gospel of grace through faith is one among them that we may keep the covenant to which we are invited and rejoice to reap the blessing of God on earth as it is in heaven Eph ; Matt ; Eph ; Matt ; Let us not trespass in to the unknown territory of the mysteries of God and lose the blessing of the present in the know area to which we are called to experience.
The preaching of the Gospel through His messengers is not just a general call but a specific call through which God pleads with people to accept the gospel message that is preached, so that they can be saved. This specific call of God can be resisted and rejected to remain unsaved or accept it and be reconciled to God to be saved by Him, all those that receive the Gospel humbly by faith will be saved Matthew ; Romans ; 2 Cor When Jesus speaks about the call of God in John , it is this call of the Gospel which He speaks about and not a surreal inward call other than this which is not mentioned in the Scripture.
Gospel is the power of God to salvation, saving everyone who believes, apart from it, none can be saved Rom ; Acts Other verses like 2 Corinthians ; Acts ; Acts and Romans which are promoted as irresistible grace can be seen to be wrongly proclaimed, because it is not the 'whole counsel of God' as it does not contain both the goodness and severity of God in balance, rather while the goodness is speculated by those who preach irresistible grace, to repeat it again and again to make it to become another different gospel, the severity is hushed up to be kept as though it is not present at all Acts ; , 31; ; Rom ; But the bottom line is, faith in God's goodness leads to repentance, unbelief in God's goodness or partial belief in goodness without severity leads to death and God's judgment without mercy.
When God initiates his goodness through the Gospel, it is passed on through his messengers so that humans may respond to it by faith and receive the grace of God to get saved. When humans resists and reject the goodness of God by rejecting the Gospel message, severity of God is faced by them because of rejecting the goodness of God. This is the reason before the worldwide Tribulation starts and the time for the wrath of God of to be released from heaven comes, because of severe human resistance on earth against the proclamation of the Gospel, God will send a angel to finally proclaim the good news to the whole world one last time to make up their mind to either receive his goodness of salvation, or reject it to face his wrath so that none may say that they never were given the opportunity to get saved through the Gospel Rev
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