Friday, November 25, 2011

Implications of Free Will on the Doctines of Grace:John Piper on Irresistible Grace

John piper addresses a misconception of resisting God's grace.

Basically what Piper is addressing here are two issues.


  1. Can God's grace be resisted?
  2. Can he be resisted such that his will in any particular circumstance be thwarted?
The importance of distinguishing these two separate questions are vital. Dealing with the first question: Of course God and his grace can be resisted. Every human will that ever existed (apart from Christ himself) has resisted, or will resist God in that he or she  contravenes the law of God. There is none that are righteous and each goes his own way, as such they resist the decree of God. One need only turn to the book of Acts of the Apostles where Stephen is being stoned to death as a record of God being resisted.
You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” Acts 7:51-53
Earlier on we see that there is a sense in which those enemies of Christ could not resist  God:
And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. Acts 6:10
But resisting God's will is one thing, overcoming God's will is totally another.  Can an ant resist a bulldozer? Well yes he can, he may even appear to be successful- until the driver puts it in gear and moves forward!

One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” Romans 9
Now here Paul is speaking of resistance in such a manner that points out that though God is resisted daily, hourly, and every second of the day, no one ever resisted in the sense that God could not do as he pleased in any day, at any hour or by any second he so chooses. And to emphasize the point it is as if Paul shrugs his shoulders and emphatically says: " Who is able...who is able to resist his will?

Isaiah 46:10 - Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times [the things] that are not [yet] done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure
Isaiah 55:11 - So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper [in the thing] whereto I sent it.
Daniel 4:35 - And all the inhabitants of the earth [are] reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and [among] the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?
In summary then, human freedom is such that we who are "sinners by nature" do resist God incessantly. It is in the nature of freedom that God has given, whereby we are able to resist God, and that even sometimes, or rather oftentimes- "successfully" if  God so wills. But that in no way detracts that to resist God in some sort of irrevocable or final and ultimate sense is not a liberty that comports with the word of God. Human freedom then is circumscribed always and everywhere by the ultimate omnipotence of God.
Behold, the LORD'S hand is not so short That it cannot save; Isaiah 59:1
For more on the subject of irresistable grace see here.