Irresistible Grace
The comfort that comes from knowing Christ’s atonement accomplishes fully and absolutely what it was intended for extends to comfort when responses from unrepentant sinners are less than favorable. To know that God will save those whom He has chosen, that God will redeem those whom He died for, causes the evangelist to rest in the Holy Spirit, knowing that He will overcome the reprobate’s heart in the way that He sees fit. Sinners who are “dead in their trespasses and sins,” who have hearts that are stone, who do not desire spiritual things because they are foolishness to them, will not and cannot come to Christ for forgiveness, with the caveat that God will overcome the will of man and make His glory, His person, His forgiveness irresistible when He chooses. This method of salvation is not a miniscule reference point, but an aspect that affects the evangelists practice and heart and glorifies Christ most.
In speaking of an informative passage that concerns the salvation of man Spurgeon was set on explaining its relationship even to the decision making process of the unbeliever’s conversion. The One who has called us with a holy calling did so, “not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Timothy 1:9). Since “salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9) and because “no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44), it stands to reason that God’s purpose and grace are the only things which can cause salvation, from beginning to end. No facet of the unbeliever, turned believer can be based on man, not even his choice—it is all of grace. His forthrightness concerning this truth in preaching and writing is evident in calling anything less “a manifest absurdity,” and when talking to those who were not yet saved, mentioned their utter and complete inability to come apart from the irresistible grace of God who makes us willing in the day of His power:
“If ever you are saved, my dear one, you will have to confess that you never deserved or merited one single blessing from the God of grace. You will have to give all the glory to His holy name if you ever get to heaven. Note that even in the matter of the acceptance of this offered mercy, you will never receive it unless He makes you willing. He does freely present it to every one of you, and He honestly bids you to come to Christ and live. However, I know that you will never come of your own accord, unless the effectual grace that first provided mercy makes you willing to accept that mercy by the working of the Holy Spirit. Thus, our text tells us it is “according to his own purpose and grace.”[1]
Giving “all the glory to [God’s] holy name” was central for Spurgeon because he saw it to be central to the purpose for which the Father created the world. Boasting was to be excluded in all of one’s claims for acceptance with God (Ephesians 2:8-9). Humbly offering empty hands to our Savior and simply clinging to His righteousness was the only means to be saved. And even doing this is a work of God’s grace, for man is unable to come because his will is in bondage to sin and therefore will continue to stiff-arm the God of salvation until His heart is illumined.
One could argue, “If no one can be saved apart from God’s revelation and manifestation of Himself, why preach? Only the Spirit can accomplish this work.” It is true that only the Spirit can accomplish this and no amount of persuasion, eloquence, or logical arguments can bring about belief, but just as God ordains ends, He ordains means to those ends. So, in Acts Paul and Barnabas and others preached, very well knowing that only those who were appointed to eternal life believed (Acts 13:48). And Paul exhorted Timothy the centrality of the grace of God in belief when pressing him to ministry. This is no coincidence. “…Paul, in order to excite Timothy to boldness and to keep him constant in the faith, reminded him of the great doctrine that the grace of God reigns in the salvation of men…Paul did so with the design of maintaining Timothy in the boldness of his testimony for Christ.”[2]
[1]Charles Haddon Spurgeon., Grace: God’s Unmerited Favor (Whitaker House: New Kensington, PA), 39, 51.
[2]Ibid., 34.
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