The Alternative of Prevenient or Assisting Grace. What alternative is there to affirming irresistible grace? The most common alternative to irresistible grace is usually called prevenient or assisting grace.¹⁰⁷ In assisting or enabling grace, God through the Holy Spirit convicts, convinces, and impels the unsaved toward repentance and faith. God can exert powerful influences through the Holy Spirit to incline unbelievers toward faith and obedience without literally forcing them to do so or changing their wills (John 15:26–27; 16:7–15; 1 Thess 1:5).

Humans cannot save themselves. This situation was depicted powerfully in an 1850 painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, “The Ninth Wave,” which hangs in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The painting on an enormous canvas depicts the aftermath of a sunken sailing ship. Only the mast of the ship remains afloat. The survivors of the sunken ship cling to the mast of the ship, buffeted by high waves. Like much of earlier Russian art, the painting communicates a powerful spiritual message. Like most sailing ship masts, this mast is in the shape of a cross. Only those who cling to the cross will be saved. No one can save themselves. It is only by the grace of God that the mast can save them, though they must take hold of it.

While driving home from preaching one Sunday night years ago, I experienced a terrible wreck. The car rolled off the road out of my control, making me feel as if I was being tossed round and round like clothes in a dryer. The airbag crushed my glasses, so I could not find the brake as the vehicle rolled. Since I knew I had been going at interstate highway speed and never touched the brake, I simply waited for the last crash that I thought would end my life. However, when the vehicle stopped rolling, I was alive but in pain. I crawled out of the car into the ditch. I was hurting and alone on this cold night in a remote area. But drivers who saw the wreck called 911, and an ambulance came to get me. I couldn’t even get up myself because of the pain. They put me on a stretcher and took me to the hospital. There the doctors ministered to me, diagnosed the problem, and put me on a path toward healing. But before the medical staff helped me, they first asked me to sign a consent form. I had to consent before I could receive care. I was delighted to receive from them what I could not do for myself!¹⁰⁸

Eternal salvation has some similarities to my physical rescue. We cannot save ourselves. We can do no good “works” to rescue ourselves (Eph 2:8–9). The only thing humans can do is assent to be rescued, or at least not resist being rescued. Giving one’s assent to be saved is not a “good work.” Unfortunately, in the world of salvation, all too many refuse to accept Jesus’s gracious offer of salvation. Most do not even recognize they are drowning and reject all efforts to warn them. Some foolishly think they can save themselves, but they cannot. In the end, because of their rejection of the persistent witness of the Holy Spirit and the salvation proffered through Christ, God reluctantly allows them to drown eternally in their own sins (Matt 12:32; Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10; Rom 1:21–32; 5:6–21).

Billy Graham put it so well:

There is also volitional resolution. The will is necessarily involved in conversion. People can pass through mental conflicts and emotional crises without being converted. Not until they exercise the prerogative of a free moral agent and will to be converted are they actually converted. This act of will is an act of acceptance and commitment. They willingly accept God’s mercy and receive God’s Son and then commit themselves to do God’s will. In every true conversion the will of man comes into line with the will of God. Almost the last word of the Bible is this invitation: “And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely” (Rev 22:17). It is up to you. You must will to be saved. It is God’s will, but it must become your will, too.¹⁰⁹

We have it from God’s own Word—God chooses how he wants to exercise his sovereignty. We should understand sovereignty from God’s perspective, not from a sinful human perspective. If we truly believe in the sovereignty of God, we must be obedient to the criteria he has laid down. We should let God be God and rule the world and bring about salvation as he has sovereignly established in his Word.

Irresistible Grace Gives God More Glory

Non-Calvinists are happy to affirm the strong emphasis that glorifying God should be our primary vocation, as John Piper has articulated so well.¹¹⁰ However, while agreeing that God’s people should give him the praise he rightfully deserves, we should be mindful that (a) God does not need our praise, and (b) our praise does not make God more glorious. God is glorious! His shekinah glory radiates from him every moment of eternity. There is nothing you or I could do to make him more glorious. We can and should simply join in the heavenly chorus giving him the praise and glory he rightfully deserves. Praising God is one of our responsibilities and privileges as believers, but he is already perfectly glorious. The key question is, what gives God maximal glory?

Moral Problems with Monergism. Many Calvinists believe that only monergistic salvation gives God the maximal glory. According to Matthew Barrett, “Monergism preserves God’s glory”:¹¹¹

If God’s work in calling and regenerating the sinner is conditioned upon man’s will, then God cannot receive all the glory in salvation. But if God works alone, effectually to call and regenerate dead sinners, then He does receive all of the glory in our salvation. . . . [O]nly monergism can do justice to the glory of God in salvation.¹¹²

Let there be no doubt what monergism entails. It entails God’s culpability for reprobation because he predestines a few to heaven and most to hell. Hear the words of John Calvin himself:

God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity, but also at His own pleasure arranged it.¹¹³

We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction.¹¹⁴

First, how do Calvin’s words align with God’s Word? Calvin’s words stand in sharp contrast to the words of God recorded in Ezek 33:11: “Tell them, ‘As I live—this is the declaration of the Lord GOD—I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked person should turn from his way and live. Repent, repent of your evil ways! Why will you die, house of Israel?’” as well as the repeated assertions in the New Testament that God desires that all persons be saved (Matt 18:14; 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9; 1 John 2:2).

Second, is God’s refusal to save the majority of persons praiseworthy for God? I think not! Imagine a fireman who goes into a burning orphanage to save some young children because they are unable to escape by themselves and can be saved only if he rescues them. Only the fireman can save them because he has an asbestos suit. He comes back in a few minutes, bringing out three of the thirty children; but rather than going back in to save more children, the fireman goes over to the news media and brags about how praiseworthy he is for saving the three children. He believes he should be glorified for saving a few. Indeed, saving the three children was a good, heroic deed. But the pressing question on everyone’s mind is, What about the other twenty-seven children? Since he has the means to rescue the children and, indeed, is the only one who can save the children since they cannot save themselves, do we view the fireman as morally praiseworthy? We would not. In fact, probably he would be charged with depraved indifference homicide. He had the means to help them, but he would not. If we do not find that praiseworthy in a human, why would we find it praiseworthy in God? If God deliberately decided not to save (i.e., give irresistible grace to) anyone in your family (your parents, siblings, spouse, or children), indeed, if he took a pernicious pleasure in dooming them to destruction, would that make him more glorious for you? For most of us, it would make him less glorious.

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Questions about Conflict within God’s Will. Second, the notion of irresistible grace also creates questions about the character of God that present him as less glorious. The two callings (the outward and inward, effectual and ineffectual, serious and not serious callings) correspond to two apparently contradictory wills within God (the revealed and secret wills of God). The revealed will of God issues the Great Commission that the gospel should be preached to all nations, but the secret will is that only a small group of elect will be saved through irresistible grace. The revealed will commands the general, outward call to be proclaimed, but the secret will knows that only a few will receive the effectual, serious calling from the Holy Spirit. The God of hard Calvinism is either disingenuous, cynically making a pseudo-offer of salvation to persons whom he has not given the means to accept, or there is a deep inner conflict within the will of God. If he has extended a general call to all persons to be saved, but has given the effectual call irresistibly to just a few, the general call seems rather misleading. This conflict between the wills of God portrays him as having a divided mind. In response to this challenge, Calvinists appeal to mystery. Is that a successful move? No, because God’s revealed will is not a mystery; it is revealed in his Word.

The Remonstrants, against whom the Synod of Dort was directed, raised the concern that the hard Calvinist perspective advocated by the Synod of Dort portrayed God as riddled by inner conflict. The Remonstrants later affirmed in a response written after the Synod of Dort:

8. All those whom God calls to salvation, those he calls seriously, that is, with an upright and altogether unfeigned purpose and will to save. And we do not agree with those who hold that God externally calls some whom He does not will to call internally, that is, does not will that they be actually converted, even before they have rejected the grace of the calling.
9. There is not in God such a hidden will which stands over against His will which is revealed in the Word, that He according to that will (that is, the hidden will) does not will the conversion and the salvation of the greater part of those whom He through the Word of the gospel, and according to the revealed will, is seriously calling and inviting unto faith and salvation; neither do we here acknowledge, as some speak, a holy dissimulation, or a double person in God.¹¹⁵

Some Calvinists attempt to downplay this criticism by advocating the “well-meant offer” or “free offer” of the gospel to the lost. As the Synod of Dort affirmed in Doctrine 2, article 5:

Moreover, the promise of the gospel is, that whosoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish, but have everlasting life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God out of His good pleasure sends the gospel.¹¹⁶

However, such a claim appears to be not only logically contradictory but also mean-spirited to proclaim a false offer of salvation to persons who have no possible chance to receive it because they were not one of the lucky ones to get irresistible grace. Obviously, portraying God as having a divided mind and will is not the way we want to go. It seems disingenuous for God to offer a definitive, serious calling to some but not at all offer a serious calling to others. This does not make God appear more glorious!

Irresistible Grace Is Impersonal. The biblical image of God is based on God as love (1 John 4:7–8) and God as holy (1 Pet 1:16). A God who says he loves all people and desires to save all people but intentionally saves just a few is not the God of the New Testament. The God of the Bible deals with persons as persons, as F. Leroy Forlines articulated; for us to be in a relationship with God, we must be dealt with as persons rather than as machines:

In the relationship of the physical to the physical, or the relationship of the parts of a machine to one another, we are dealing with cause and effect relationships. . . . When a hammer hits a nail, the hammer is active and the nail is passive. The hammer causes the nail to be driven into the wood. The nail had no choice. A force outside the nail caused the nail to be driven into the wood. Interpersonal relationships do not submit to such a simple analysis. Influence and response provide more appropriate terms. . . . [T]he inability of one person to cause another person to do something grows out of the nature of what it means to be a person. . . . There is no such thing as a person doing or not doing something without having made a decision. . . . [I]t has been a mistake over the centuries to focus the conflict between Calvinists and Arminians on whether fallen or redeemed man has a free will. The real question is: Is fallen man a personal being, or is he sub-personal? Human beings are personal beings, by God’s design, and were made for a personal relationship with a personal God. God will not violate His own plan.¹¹⁷

The same concern pertains to the distinction that Calvinists make between the “universal” (ineffective) call and the “particular” (effective) call. Suppose we had a “will changer” machine or pill that turned its victim into a mindless robot who always did what he or she was instructed. The 1975 cult movie The Stepford Wives told this story, often repeated with variations in various science fiction story lines. The Stepford, Connecticut Men’s Association had the technology to turn their wives into subservient, robotic women who existed only to please their husbands. If taken to court, the Men’s Association members would definitely not be held up for praise. They would be accused and tried for crimes such as kidnapping, enslavement, and brainwashing. We would not consider the men to be glorious. We would consider them to be depraved. Is this not how Calvinists are portraying God? He is changing people’s will so they will glorify him? Why would the omnipotent Lord of the universe even care about that? To even suggest such a thing is to view the Bible from a radically anthropocentric point of view in which God desperately needs people to give their approval to him, even if he has to force them to do so. Love is only meaningful when it is chosen. Therefore, if we are concerned about God’s greater glory, it would be in a world of free persons, not persons whose will was mechanically overridden.

What understanding of sovereignty gives God greater glory? Does this notion of sovereignty as total control bring the greatest glory to God? No. Suppose a couple desires to have a baby. They have at least two options. Option one is that they can go down to Walmart and purchase a doll. That plastic doll, for every time they pull its string, will say, “Daddy, I love you!” Now that is total control. They can have that doll say, “I love you” anytime they want. They just pull its string; the doll has no decision but to react the way it has been programmed to react. Option two, however, is to have a real baby. Now, they know from the beginning that the baby is going to be more trouble. Babies do not come home from the hospital housebroken. They cry all night. They break their toes, and they break your hearts. But when that child of his or her own volition says, “Daddy, I love you,” it really means something. The parents are more glorified with a real child than with a doll that could not have praised them had they not pulled its string. So, then, which gives God the greater glory—a view that the only persons who can praise God are those whose wills he changes without their permission, or the view that persons respond to the gracious invitation of God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit to praise God truly of their own volition?