Irresistible Grace

The doctrine of irresistible grace or effectual grace is the fourth of the five doctrines of grace expressed in the acronym TULIP. The doctrine regards the sovereignty of God in the effectual calling and regeneration of sinners. The effectual grace of God is taught throughout the Old and New Testaments and is logically connected to the other doctrines of grace. Apart from the sovereign grace of God’s effectually drawing sinners to Christ, those descended from Adam by ordinary generation would remain in a state in which they are dead in sins and trespasses. Although the phrase irresistible grace was not used by the magisterial Reformers, the essence of this doctrine was pervasive in their preaching and writing. This doctrine is also contained in the Canons of Dort, as the members of the Synod of Dort explicitly taught and defended this doctrine in their reaction to the errors of Pelagianism and the Arminian doctrines espoused in the Remonstrance of 1610. It has been an essential doctrine in debates over Arminianism since the Reformation.

The doctrine of irresistible grace is one of the five essential doctrines of grace, commonly referred to as the five points of Calvinism that are often summarized by the acronym TULIP. This doctrine maintains that God sovereignly extends saving grace to the elect, enabling them to respond in faith and repentance to the outward call of the gospel. R.C. Sproul helpfully noted that the word *irresistible *can be somewhat misleading, arguing for the phrase effectual grace instead, and stated that “the irresistible grace of God effects what God intends it to effect.” The doctrine is rooted in the teaching of Scripture regarding the sovereign work of God in drawing sinners to the Savior. For instance, in John 6:37, Jesus said, “All that the Father gives me will come to me.” He also revealed, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). The Apostle Paul explained that salvation “depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Rom. 9:16) and that “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).

The doctrine of irresistible grace includes effectual calling and regeneration as two of the sovereign, monergistic works of God in redemption. While there is a general call that goes out to all people for sinners to trust in the Savior, there is an effectual calling by which God draws the elect to Christ. In effectual calling, God sovereignly regenerates His people by the work of the Holy Spirit, giving them new hearts. This truth is illustrated in Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones (Ezek. 37) and by Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11). The regenerating grace of God is His sovereign and effectual bringing of those who are dead in sins and trespasses to spiritual life in Christ.

Although Augustine—especially in his polemics with Pelagius—taught the essence of the doctrine of irresistible grace in the early fifth century, the doctrine was largely obscured in the medieval church and recovered in the Reformation era. The Reformers appealed to this doctrine in their defense of the biblical teaching about the grace of God in reaction to the semi-Pelagianism of the Roman Catholic Church with its sacramentalism and penitential system. In The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, his refutation of the teaching of Albert Pighius, John Calvin summarized the argument of his* Institutes of the Christian Religion*, as he stated:

Grace is not offered to us in such a way that afterwards we have the option either to submit or to resist. I say that it is not given merely to aid our weakness by its support as though anything depended on us apart from it. But I demonstrate that it is entirely the work of grace and a benefit conferred by it that our heart is changed from a stony one to one of flesh, that our will is made new, and that we, created anew in heart and mind, at length will what we ought to will.

This doctrine came to its fullest expression in the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Confession of Faith in the seventeenth century. The members of the Synod of Dort (1618–19) set out what have become commonly known as the five points of Calvinism in their refutation of the semi-Pelagianism of Jacob Arminius and the Remonstrants. The Canons of Dort state, “God decreed to give to Christ those chosen for salvation, and to call and draw them effectively into Christ’s fellowship through the Word and Spirit.”