Can We Open the Window?

Do we have the power in ourselves to let the light of God’s grace into the darkness of our sinful hearts? Today, R.C. Sproul exposes the fatal flaw in the idea that our salvation rests on our own ability to cooperate with grace.

The open window analogy of the Roman Catholic Church is this: Man is living in this room and this room is flooded with darkness. Now, the sun is shining in all of its brilliance outside and all it takes for man to have light in that room is to go over there and open the window. It’s not like the grace isn’t available. It’s there and it’s powerful. And if you open the window, that light will flood the room and the darkness will be expelled. Man cannot stand in the middle of the darkness of the room and say, “Let there be light.” Man doesn’t have the capacity, man doesn’t have the power to make the room bright. Only God can do that. The Roman Catholic Church will insist that only God can do that. But the point is that that light is outside the window. And all man has to do is walk over, unlatch the window, and open it up.

Now, my question’s this: how can a man, who loves the darkness, who hates the light, if he knows outside that window is the bright dazzling refulgence of daily sun—he hates it, despises it, utterly disinclined to it, dead to it, loves the darkness—what in the world is going to move that guy to open that window? I’ll tell you what that guy’s going to do. Unless God smashes that window down, that man will spend the rest of his life banging up boards on that window, doing everything in his power to keep even the slightest glimpse and crack of light to see through. Do you understand that? He loves darkness, and men choose what they love. And they have a man choosing willingly, voluntary, cooperating with that which they hate the most. Won’t work.