"All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out." (John 6:37)
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:44)
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no
help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
64But there are some of you who do not believe...
...And he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father." (John 6:63, 65)
According to Scripture, all people are born dead in sin (Eph 2:1).
This simply means that, as a result of the Fall, people are born
without the Holy Spirit and therefore, (left to themselves and being
spiritually dead) are hostile to Christ (Rom. 8:7) and unable to understand to spiritual things (1 Cor 1:21). It does not mean they can do (or think) nothing in their fallen state, but it means they can do nothing spiritual or redemptive ... that they will always think God's word is foolish (1 Cor 2:14) until the Holy Spirit, who comes from the outside, works grace in their hearts (Ezek 11:19-20). The natural man may be alive to carnal things, but he is dead to spiritual things.
So to the question: can any person come to faith in Christ apart from
the work of the Holy Spirit, both the Arminian and the Calvinist would
definitively answer "no".
The Arminian asserts that this "prevenient grace" is ultimately
resistible by the fallen sinner. Arminian prevenient grace affirms that
man in indeed dead in sin, that is, unless the Spirit grants the type of
grace that places them in a kind of post-regenerate - pre-conversion
state so they can have the opportunity to choose whether to believe or
not. As most Arminians will admit, however, this is a logically deduced,
rather than biblical, assertion. On the other hand, the Calvinist is
convinced that the Bible teaches that regenerative grace itself opens
our blind eyes, unplug our deaf ears and gives us a new heart (Ezek 36:26, John 6:63) making God's call effectual, infallibly bringing the sinner to faith in Jesus Christ.
Arminian synergists assert that prevenient grace resolves the problem
of human boasting since God initiates with grace. But in reality this
sleight of hand does not resolve the problem at all and only begs the
question. For if God gives this prevenient grace to everybody, we must
ask: why do some respond positively to Christ and not others? What
makes them to differ? Jesus Christ or something else? The problem of
boasting is not removed, for if God gives grace to everybody and only
some believe, then the heart that believes still thinks that it made the
wiser decision by improving on grace while others did not. The person
affirming prevenient grace still must ultimately attribute his repenting
and believing to his own wisdom, prudence, sound judgment, or good
sense. So in the Arminian belief system, they are not willing to
confront the obvious question of why some believe and not others? The
only answer I have ever heard to this question in all my years debating
this was "because some believed". But, this avoids the question, because
I did not ask them what they did, but why they did it? And the "why" seems to be a question that Jesus goes out of his way to answer. (John 8:46-47 & John 10:26) Keep Reading...
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