Sunday School | Doctrine of Salvation - Irresistible Grace

Hey everybody. Welcome back to our never-ending series on Christian doctrine. We're 70% of the way through. We're talking about soteriology, which is a fancy way to say the doctrine of salvation. And in particular, we're walking through an acrostic known as Tulip—T, U, L, I, P—which summarizes what is essentially a Reformed framework of how salvation works. And this morning, we're making it to that letter I.

So if you've just gotten in here, you should have gotten one of these, which is our notes. Bob's running around trying to make sure we catch anybody. If you didn't, let Bob know and he'll get you covered.

And also, a couple of other technical details here. I haven't mentioned this in a while because I forgot the address, but we have an email address: chsdoctrine@gmail.com. If you don't get emails from me about that—and they don't come out very often—but whenever I have something I want to send, that's who I send it to. If you just write to that address and say, "Add me to the list," then I will send you not only this week's but the last three or four weeks. So if you're terrible at managing paper and wish you just had these on your computer, you can look at them whenever you care, then I will email these to you. And the reason it looks like Blue Fellows is because I spent the entire week converting my entire curriculum into this Blue Ridge Fellows format. So Avery, you can't look at this yet—this is a sneak peek. Even though you're not Blue Fellows, you still get some of our stuff.

So there's that. Email chsdoctrine@gmail.com if you just want to get any periodic emails sent out regarding this class, or to ask for these things specifically.

And then I fixed the QR code. Well, you can tell me if I fixed the QR code. So if you have questions—and I hope that you do—about what we're talking here in this study of Calvinism, when we're all done, when I finish Tulip, then we're gonna take several weeks and just work through your questions one at a time. And this is where you will submit those. So could somebody grab their phone and make sure that that works? Last week I did this and it didn't work because it had expired. We're good? Okay. Great. So that is where you can send up all your questions.

The TULIP Framework and Irresistible Grace

Alright. So here's where we're at. We're walking through Tulip and for each point, each letter in the acrostic, I've asked you a question—a theological question that I want you to consider.

For the T, for the first question where this whole thing begins: How bad off are we? When the fall took place, what happened to us? How corrupting, how ruinous was the event? I believe the answer to that question is that it was so bad that we will never ever, under any circumstances, voluntarily choose to worship God until he fixes that thing in us that is broken. Until he adjusts our blindness, our deafness, our deadness, our rebelliousness. The fact that we cannot, we will not, we refuse to come to him until he overrides that glitch in our operating system—we're gonna remain goners.

And as we walk through each of these points, we're asking a question. When we get to irresistible grace, the question that we're asking is this: When God calls someone, how will they respond? When God says, "You follow me," will you? Or is it merely you might? Is it definitely the case that when he calls you to follow, when he issues this inward call, that you will respond, or might you not?

And I believe the answer is that when God issues a particular, specific call by his Spirit to believe, 100% of the time you will respond, that you will believe.

I want to show you this from the scriptures. But before I go too far, let me address a couple of potential objections that I want you to consider. I want to make this plausible to you so that what the scriptures are saying here can be received.

Addressing Objections

First: Does it follow from the doctrine of irresistible grace that no one can resist the Holy Spirit? What do you think about that? It does not. You guys, we resist the Holy Spirit all the time. If you look at Stephen's speech—Stephen, who was kind of like the first deacon—he gives a speech in the book of Acts, and he says, "You always resist the Holy Spirit," and we do.

So the doctrine of irresistible grace is not suggesting that we don't ever resist him. We resist him constantly. It goes beyond that, though, to say: When God gets tired of our rebellion, can he just be like, "That's enough of that—turn to me"? Can he? Does he issue a call? Yes. Do we resist that? Yes.

But when push comes to shove, when we are in a contest with him, can he override our rebellion? And the answer is yes. The answer is that he better be able to. And the answer is that for you who walk with him and love him, he already has.

So when I say irresistible grace and you feel like, what are you talking about? People resist it all the time. One hundred percent, we agree. People resist the Spirit constantly. But can he override it? And the answer is yes, and he does. I'll show you that as we walk through this.

What Irresistible Grace Actually Means

Second, I left you with a teaser last week. When we talk about irresistible, name something that is irresistible. The smell of freshly baked cookies or something. That's a great answer. Bacon. Chocolate. Yes. Water when it's hot. The language of irresistibility is meant to confer the sense of yummy, yummy, yummy—wanna, gotta have it.

You gotta forgive me because I've spent most of my life working with twenty-year-old men. The illustration I've primarily used for the last thirty years to teach this—I'm talking to all these men, most of whom are Christians, most of whom have therefore decided to live according to a Christian sexual ethic. They're gonna walk uprightly, and it means they're gonna keep their hands off their girlfriend, even their fiancée.

On a young Christian twenty-two-year-old's wedding night, is he gonna have sex with his wife? One hundred percent. Is he coerced into doing so? No. What is in fact happening is that his finally wife is irresistible. This is what we mean when we say irresistible grace—we do not mean coercive grace. We mean when that thing that has so corrupted us and broken us is taken away, when the veil is lifted and you are finally, for the first time, actually free. And you see God in all of his delightfulness, in all of his beauty, that you recognize how desperately you need a savior, how perfectly ordered he is to meet your deepest needs, then you want him like you want chocolate cake. You want him like you want your wife. You want him because he is irresistible.

This is the doctrine of irresistible grace. To be sure, we begin in a state of profound resistance. We think the cake smells bad. We don't want this because we recognize this is gonna constrain my freedom, and what I love more than anything in this life is my freedom. But if God were to turn the kaleidoscope so that you could actually see the reality as it is, if he were to end your blindness, end your deafness, raise you from death, and you came to your senses and you saw how delightful he actually is, you would find him irresistible because he is irresistible, not because he is coercive.

Does this make sense? Irresistible grace is the doctrine that God fixes what is broken in us so that we can see what is beautiful in him. And then, and only then, of course, we freely choose him. I believe the first genuinely free choice I ever made in my entire life was to worship Christ because finally, the blinders had been taken off.

So hopefully that might dispel a couple of things that might make you think, I can't listen to what you're saying because I don't agree with you out of the gate. And let's walk through and let's show you where we're getting that from the text.

These documents are all heavily weighted to the New Testament because that's really where I want you to understand the New Testament understanding of soteriology. But they're all anchored in the Old Testament. This is all just what God has been saying all along. So look at Ezekiel 36. This is what God is offering to do.

Ezekiel 36 is one of the great new covenant promises. There are really three passages in the Old Testament that are parallels to one another: Ezekiel 36, Jeremiah 31, and Deuteronomy 30. Ezekiel and Jeremiah are better known, but Deuteronomy 30 deserves to be part of the set. In Ezekiel 36, God promises this:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. — Ezekiel 36:26-27

If you walk through that, if we were to diagram this as a sentence, it could not be any more clear. God is constantly the subject of the verb; you are merely the object. He's not offering you a new heart. He's not offering you a new spirit. The promise of the new covenant is the day would come that all those who had been offered a new spirit and offered a new heart and rejected it are gonna get one anyway. He's going to come over the wall of your rebellion and give you what you're too stupid to know that you need so that you can finally wake up and realize, Oh, good grief, this is so much better. Why did I wait so long?

That is the promise of the New Covenant. I'm gonna give it to you, right? This language pervades the New Testament. So, take a look, John 5.

Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so, the son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. — John 5

Now, you're deeply ensconced in a framing of an Arminian framework, which is very unlikely, honestly. You're probably in a semi-Arminian framework or semi-Pelagian framework, and if you don't know what that means, it doesn't really matter. We have a modified Arminianism that kind of dominates. If you're starting from that camp and you hear this language, you might reinterpret it with a language of offer. Right? The Son raises the dead and gives them life—you hear that as: he offers them life. Even so, the son offers life to whom he's pleased to offer it. But that's not what John means. What he means is he imparts it and you get it and it's yours. That he raises the dead, that it works.

Now, take a look at John 6.

All that the Father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never drive away. — John 6

That actually we're gonna come to that again because it hits perseverance of the saints, but we'll get to that in a couple of weeks. All that the Father gives me will come to me. Here's why this is an important thing I want you to consider.

Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace

I'm suggesting to you that what the scriptures teach us is that you're so far gone that there's no hope—total depravity. You'll never respond in faith. But God has mercifully chosen to actually override your rebellion. And by the way, his death—this is where I reject the classic framing of Calvinism of limited atonement. I believe in unlimited atonement. His death really was sufficient for all, but I grant clearly, it will be effective only for those who believe.

Right? Now, we get to this irresistible grace. We're asking: is irresistible grace about effectiveness? Does it work?

Now, some that are uncomfortable with this paradigm, that come from this more free will or Arminian kind of starting point, they would frame it like this. Yeah, we're really bad off—stipulated. But God did something to kind of take the edge off it for everybody. There's an equal distribution of grace. Yeah. Left to yourself, it's you're really bad off, but God is universally blanketed an offer to everybody. And when he did that, there's a term called prevenient grace. And basically, what prevenient grace means is pre-grace, prior grace. And I believe that God certainly gives us grace before we do anything. Grace before we do it. But generally, people who use the term of prevenient grace, what they really mean is: God gives a little bit of grace to everybody, enough to kind of take the edge off, and now we have a new ability. And those who choose, choose, and those who don't, don't.

They would say that, yes, God is calling people to believe, but he calls all people equally and the difference—the final analysis difference—is what you do with it. Does this make sense? Probably makes sense because probably many of you are like, "Yeah, I thought that's what the world was like." Okay? That's fine. I don't think it is what the world is like. But that's the way that it gets framed out: the call goes to everybody and then you get to answer the phone. And if you answer the phone, well then the line gets connected and everything works out great. And what I'm telling you is that's not true. I'm specifically combating that idea.

When Jesus says,

All that the Father gives me will come to me — John 6

he is clearly saying that the selection took place earlier, not later. Every single person to whom God makes the inward call will find him irresistible. Not merely some of them. That is—now, again, it's okay if you disagree with me at this point. I mean, it's okay if you disagree with me forever. But at this moment, I want to be very clear what I'm saying and what I'm not saying.

Those he calls will respond. Not because they're coerced, but because their blinders are removed and they see his inherent beauty. All of them. It's a guaranteed result. Okay? Because

All that the father gives to me will come to me — John 6

per Jesus.

Gil, I think it just reminds me—I don't remember if it was the T or the U, but basically if under that assumption that if you answer the call, you can go down that slippery slope of thinking, "I, the reason I'm saved is because I accept it. Yes, not because God pulled me out." So you run that. That's really it.

It's a very good insight, Gil. Gil is making the point that if you reject this framework, what you're left with is this: there is my wicked, evil, next-door neighbor who did not respond in faith.

And then there's me, who is a little wiser, a little more humble, a little more godly—maybe most charitably, a little bit better at recognizing a good deal when I see one. But at the end of the day, good job, Timmy. And what I think the New Testament teaches is none of that. Paul says, where's boasting? It is excluded.

And by the way, if you're like, "Well, I think he picked me because I am a little smarter, I am a little funnier. He wanted good looking people in the kingdom"—I understand that kind of rationale, right? Paul would say, no, he picked you because you were stupid. That is the answer. Paul says:

Look at yourselves, not many of you are wise, not many of you are of noble birth. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. He chose the weak things to shame the strong.

The doctrine of election is at its core humiliating. We love it, we're grateful for it, but good Lord, if it makes you boast, you're not paying attention.

An audience member asks a question about faith and works.

Wouldn't that only follow if you're assuming that faith is a work? But it's not a work.

So Andy asked the question: wouldn't what I'm saying right here only follow if you think that faith is a work? People will debate how to frame faith—is faith a work? But even if you say that faith is not a work and you say faith is simply faith, it is antithetical to work, but it's still sourced in you, then you are still the receiver of credit. If your faith is of you because you were maybe, at the most reduced level, you are more faithful or there's something about you that makes you better than somebody who doesn't exercise faith. Does that feel like an unfair framing to you?

The audience member responds.

It's just that scripture tells us that faith is not meritorious.

Well, okay. So I'm not sure that I would agree that faith is not meritorious. Faith is literally the only thing that merits salvation. I would frame it differently. I would say: is faith a gift or is faith self-generated? And I think that the New Testament teaches that faith itself is a gift. Now, we might see that a little more as we walk through these. But let's see if that question remains. And if it does, I will never dodge a question. If it does, put it into the system and then we'll get to it when we've kind of finished this whole thing. I'm gonna keep moving, and then we might be able to do more.

So here we go:

All that the Father gives me will come to me and none I'll drive away.

Acts 5, listen to this:

God exalted him—that's Jesus—to his own right hand as prince and savior, that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.

Now, the reason I wanted to move into this is this is adjacent to your question. When we think about Christianity as an exchange, we give something to Jesus and Jesus gives something to us, right? What he's giving us is righteousness. He's crediting us with all of his excellence. And what we're offering to him is our badness, which is the most ridiculous trade. I give you all of my wickedness and you get crucified for it, and you give me all of your perfections and I get to live forever because of it. I mean, it is the exchange of exchanges.

But we will sometimes think that what I'm really offering to him are two things: faith and repentance. And that's accurate. That what is it that we offer to him? What do you have to do to get all this? In order for all of this to be yours, you gotta do two things—you gotta believe, you have to repent. But here's the insanity of this: the very things that are required of us, he provides to us.

God Grants Repentance

And if the idea that he grants you faith is a bridge too far, then this is gonna choke you to death. Just listen to this language here. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance. Repentance itself is a gift. Your very ability to come to your senses and bend the knee before him—even that. The most irreducible thing that you must do, you can't do, you don't do, you wouldn't do unless he gave you repentance.

He's gonna repeat it in the next thing. Acts 11:

When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God saying, "So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life."

God grants repentance.

Maybe the most vivid depiction of this is in Second Timothy. For my money, this is the most exploded view of how salvation works. You just get on an airplane and it takes off and you land someplace. You don't have any idea what's going on. Somehow, fuel is getting turned into the jet engine, something's happening with Bernoulli's wind coming over the wing, whatever. You don't know how it works, but you just end up where you're going. You get in your car, you turn the key, the thing starts and it just moves. But if you lift up the hood, a bunch of stuff is actually happening that makes the car move. A bunch of things are happening that lets that airplane get lift. This is Paul lifting the hood. This is how salvation works.

Listen to this language—it's completely insane.

The Lord's servant must not quarrel. Instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth. — 2 Timothy 2:24-25

He's talking to Timothy, a pastor, saying this is how you do your job. This is how we walk through the world with non-Christians. We're nice to people and we're able to teach. We understand this clearly enough that we can explain it clearly to somebody else, and we're not resentful of the fact that we need to explain this again. We expect to be opposed, and we gently instruct.

I'm gonna explain this as clearly as I can, as patiently as I can. I'm gonna try to find illustrations that land. I'm gonna be nice about it. I'm gonna do all this stuff in the external, outward world. But here's what I'm really hoping the entire time. Every word coming out of my mouth—those who oppose me must gently instruct in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth.

When I'm having a conversation talking to somebody about Jesus, I wanna explain things. I wanna be logical, I wanna be vivid, I wanna be emotional, I wanna use all the skills of rhetoric. But what I actually know is that under the hood, where the real work is happening, my only hope is that God will give repentance. If he does, we win everything. If he doesn't, my eloquence is pretty irrelevant. The hope is that God will grant them repentance.

Look what happens when that occurs. They come to their senses because they've been dead, they've been deaf, they've just been ensconced in their own foolishness. And when they come to their senses—finally—here's the magic of it all: they escape from the trap of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will.

This is Paul's broadside against the claim that human beings ever had a free will. You're free to obey your master. If you are a slave to Satan and a slave to sin, then you're free to sin. Fish are free to swim. They're not free to walk on the shore. They are free to act according to their nature. But God mercifully goes to these enslaved sinners who, by the way, like their enslavement and would have it no other way. And he grants them repentance. He gives them the ability to be like, "God, what have I done?" When they do, the lights come on, they come to the knowledge of the truth, they come to their senses, and now—and only now—can they escape.

In the same way that the one thing required of us, being repentance, is gifted us. The one thing required of us: faith. Faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin. Faith is a gift. Repentance is a gift. Those of us who have been given the gift of faith should never look down upon those who have not.

Irresistible Grace and Effectiveness

When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and they honored the word of the Lord, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. — Acts 13

That same "all" in Acts 13 might remind you of the "all" of John 6. So what I want you to hear is that irresistible grace is about effectiveness. Does it work? When God calls someone to believe, do they respond in faith? And the answer is they do. Not because they've been coerced into it, but because they are now enabled to see how delightful he actually is. Of course they eat the cake because it's delicious.

One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshipper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. — Acts 16

It's a curious detail that Luke would go out of his way to say: it wasn't because she was smarter than anybody else, and it wasn't because she was less wicked than anybody else. It's because God in his mercy said, "Hey, Lydia," and he called her, and having done so, it worked because it always works.

Lydia: A Worshipper of God

Gil, I don't understand the detail of him saying she was a worshipper of God and then the Lord opened her heart. Okay, this is great. Very good.

So Gil's question is: what does it mean she was a worshipper of God? What that means is she's a Gentile. So at the time, prior to Jesus showing up, you've got Gentiles and you've got Jews. The vast majority of worshippers of Yahweh are Jews. But there were some—I don't know if she's Roman; Thyatira, maybe I should know where that is. I don't know. Whatever. Let's call her Roman. I might be wrong about that, though. Whatever it is, she is not a daughter of Abraham, but she has observed the worship of Yahweh, the followers of Abraham. She's like, "I want to be one of them." So if she were a man, she would have had to be circumcised to join the club. She's a Gentile in the club. But it didn't follow that she understood who the Messiah was. It might be that she understood they're gonna bring a Messiah. She might have been reading the scriptures. But what "a worshipper of God" means is that she essentially has the same status as a Jew who hasn't heard of Jesus.

But then she hears of Jesus, and she's like, "Yeah, this guy is the fulfillment of this thing that I've been grafted into." So she's not saved at that point just because she's a worshipper of God, right? No. That's right. She's in anticipation—maybe, depending on how developed she is in her Judaism, she is anticipating that there will be a Messiah. Good enough?

Now, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna pause right there. I want you to flip the page. This front page is all text and we're probably gonna run out of time here. So we'll do some more of the text next week. But on the back, I just have a few statements from a couple different people, and I want to pick the C.S. Lewis one. We're gonna start with the C.S. Lewis one.

I got Piper, Lewis, Sproul, and Calvin. And I don't know if you would understand this or not, but Piper is a Calvinist, Sproul is a Calvinist, Calvin is a Calvinist. C.S. Lewis is not. Not even close. C.S. Lewis, my great hero, is not a Calvinist. However, God bless the man because he is incapable of describing his own conversion anyway apart from Calvinism. It's fascinating. His autobiography is fantastic. It's called Surprised by Joy. And in it, there's a much lengthier passage. This is a very painful passage for me to excerpt so briefly because I love this passage. So I'm gonna read you a little bit. This is Lewis.

So he is oppositional to Calvinism, right? Doesn't like it. And yet he knows full well how his own salvation works. Here's what he says:

He must picture me alone in that room in Modlin, night after night, feeling—whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work—the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me.

He's been in this months-long process. He was actually raised Anglican, rejected it entirely, became an atheist, lived a pretty riotous life, and intellectually was trained on the rejection of the gospel, in which he lived until he was about forty. J.R.R. Tolkien of Lord of the Rings and a handful of other believers in his life basically confronted him with this, and he just—he's so brilliant, he's just so smart that logically, the more that he thought about things, the more that he realized that everything he'd built his life on was wrong. What he wanted more than anything else was just to be left alone. And God would not leave him alone. He continues:

In the trinity term of 1929, I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed. Perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

He's admitting: I didn't want this, but it became inescapable. Elsewhere he writes and calls God the Hound of Heaven for the way that he pursued him and chased him. And then comments on it. This is such a beautiful capture. He says this:

I did not see then what is now the most shining and obvious thing: the divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape.

The words "compel them to come in" have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them, but properly understood, they plumb the depth of divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and his compulsion is our liberation.

He writes this as a man who does not like the doctrines of God's sovereignty and salvation. And yet, he recognizes that apart from God sovereignly overriding my rebellion and rejection of him, I had no hope. The fact that he was willing to compel me to look at him afresh is the kindest, the most gracious, the softest thing that he could have possibly done.

So I would ask you to consider this: Which would you rather God love more—your self-determining autonomy or you? You is the right answer. What Lewis is saying is that he loved me more than he loved my ability to stay in rebellion against him. And for that, Lewis praises him.

This is the doctrine of irresistible grace. When God graciously, mercifully overrides our rebellion, we finally find him delightful, even though up to the very last moment we were kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting our eyes in every direction for a chance of escape.

How Irresistible Grace Works

Here's how Piper puts it: What God does then is take the blind, dead soul that has zero spiritual light or interest and he opens the eyes. What you see is Christ—no longer foolish, no longer stupid, no longer boring, no longer disinterested, no longer false. You see him and his cross as compelling and powerful and wise and beautiful and wonderful, and you cannot not receive him. That's what it means to see him as compelling. That's what I mean by irresistible.

At that moment, your resistance is conquered. You were resisting God all your life until the Holy Spirit opened your eyes and granted you an irresistible sight. And when you make that choice, you feel so free. Up until that time you were enslaved. Up until that moment you were bound and dead and in chains of darkness. He rips the chains off and he opens your eyes, and out of freedom—for the first time in your life—you do the right thing. You embrace him because he's beautiful.

This is the doctrine of irresistible grace, and I think it is richly demonstrable by scripture.

But we're very close to being out of time. We've done the left column on the front and the left column on the back. We're gonna save the right column for next week. We have about two minutes. If anybody's got a two-minute question, we'll do that. If not, we will end this class early for the first time in human history.

Catherine?

On Prevenient Grace

It's about prevenient grace. When you said people think that it's just God flowing it out to everybody—well, when I learned about that, it made me remember all the times I drove across Boston completely drunk out of my mind and did my parallel parking and ended up in bed and don't even remember. When I heard what prevenient grace was, I thought he was there. That had to be prevenient grace because I should be dead. There were so many times like that.

Okay, this is great. So Catherine's asked a question about prevenient grace and is pointing to a time in her own life where the mercy of God was clearly in effect long before she knew him.

It might be helpful to distinguish between three different things: common grace, and then prevenient grace as an Arminian would describe it, and prevenient grace as I would describe it.

Very quickly: Common grace is simply the idea that the sun shines and the rain falls on the wicked and the righteous alike. God is gracious to every person who's ever lived. The fact that your lungs can assimilate oxygen is a grace. Lots and lots—I mean, everybody in the world experiences things they don't deserve. God is gracious to absolutely everybody in a thousand instances. For all we know, Catherine, you had a guardian angel keeping you when you were driving drunk through the streets of Boston. Who knows? It'd be fun to see the video recaps of that in the world to come. So common grace abounds.

Prevenient grace is generally used to describe a grace that is relevant specifically to salvation. To a certain extent, keeping you alive long enough to come to Christ trends towards your salvation. But usually, when an Arminian is talking about prevenient grace, what they're describing is something like a thing that reduces the impact of total depravity. I have Arminian friends who would say, yes, I agree with total depravity, but we've all been cleaned up enough that we can now go do something. That is sometimes what people mean by prevenient grace.

It's like, you're not cleaned up so much that you're saved, but you clean up so much that salvation becomes an option that you could choose if you'd like to. That is often what people mean by that. And I would say, well, obviously I don't think that is how it works, but I do think absolutely that God gives grace prior to faith. Absolutely the case. I think he gives saving grace prior to faith.

And in fact, there is a question I may have asked you this already, can't remember, but does faith proceed regeneration or does regeneration proceed faith? This is kind of like a fork in the road. Do we believe and then we come alive? Or does he make us alive and then we believe? What is the sequence of faith and regeneration?

If you're in a more of an Arminian free will camp, you're gonna say faith is what makes us come alive. And I'm gonna say coming alive is what helps us have faith. I think that regeneration comes first, and then we believe. But the grace of making me alive when I was dead in my sins is a grace that precedes faith.

But I have to say, I did not have any idea of God. I didn't want anything to do with him. For sure, I hated it, and I would tell people—even if they didn't say anything—I would say, don't even think about it. I think he would have been fun to know you when you were a pagan. I think that'd be interesting.

But something—even in that time, to be sure, you and everyone else was receiving grace. Like every breath you took was a mercy. God sustained you, held your atoms together while you were cursing his name. Amen.