By R C Sproul
In historic Reformation thought,
the notion is this: regeneration precedes faith. We also believe that
regeneration is monergistic. Now that’s a three-dollar word. It means
essentially that the divine operation called rebirth or regeneration is the
work of God alone. An erg is a unit of labor, a unit of work. The word energy
comes from that idea. The prefix mono- means “one.” So monergism means
“one working.” It means that the work of regeneration in the human heart is
something that God does by His power alone—not by 50 percent His power and 50
percent man’s power, or even 99 percent His power and 1 percent man’s power. It
is 100 percent the work of God. He, and He alone, has the power to change the
disposition of the soul and the human heart to bring us to faith.
In addition, when He exercises
this grace in the soul, He brings about the effect that He intends to bring
about. When God created you, He brought you into existence. You didn’t help
Him. It was His sovereign work that brought you to life biologically. Likewise,
it is His work, and His alone, that brings you into the state of rebirth and of
renewed creation. Hence, we call this irresistible grace. It’s grace that
works. It’s grace that brings about what God wants it to bring about. If,
indeed, we are dead in sins and trespasses, if, indeed, our wills are held
captive by the lusts of our flesh and we need to be liberated from our flesh in
order to be saved, then in the final analysis, salvation must be something that
God does in us and for us, not something that we in any way do
for ourselves.
GOD’S GRACE IS SO POWERFUL THAT
IT HAS THE CAPACITY TO OVERCOME OUR NATURAL RESISTANCE TO IT. —R.C. SPROUL
However, the idea of
irresistibility conjures up the idea that one cannot possibly offer any
resistance to the grace of God. However, the history of the human race is the
history of relentless resistance to the sweetness of the grace of God.
Irresistible grace does not mean that God’s grace is incapable of being resisted.
Indeed, we are capable of resisting God’s grace, and we do resist it. The idea
is that God’s grace is so powerful that it has the capacity to overcome our
natural resistance to it. It is not that the Holy Spirit drags people kicking
and screaming to Christ against their wills. The Holy Spirit changes the
inclination and disposition of our wills, so that whereas we were previously
unwilling to embrace Christ, now we are willing, and more than willing. Indeed,
we aren’t dragged to Christ, we run to Christ, and we embrace Him joyfully
because the Spirit has changed our hearts. They are no longer hearts of stone
that are impervious to the commands of God and to the invitations of the
gospel. God melts the hardness of our hearts when He makes us new creatures.
The Holy Spirit resurrects us from spiritual death, so that we come to Christ
because we want to come to Christ. The reason we want to come to Christ is
because God has already done a work of grace in our souls.
Without that work, we would never have any desire to come to Christ. That’s why we say that regeneration precedes faith.
I have a little bit of a problem
using the term irresistible grace, not because I don’t believe this
classical doctrine, but because it is misleading to many people. Therefore, I
prefer the term effectual grace, because the irresistible grace of
God effects what God intends it to effect.
From here
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