Knocking on doors or kicking down walls? Irresistable Grace

You may have heard the saying that “The Holy Spirit is a gentleman who won’t come in uninvited”. Not so, says the Five Points of Calvinism. If we are dead in our sin, not just weakened by it, then if the Holy Spirit waits for our invitation to come in to our lives, then he is going to be waiting a long time.

A lot of our thinking about conversion is associated with a famous image. Jesus is standing at the door of my heart and he is knocking. He has to knock and wait because the handle is on the inside, only I can open it. The image doesn’t actually come from Revelation 3. When Jesus says “Behold I stand at the door and knock”, no door handles are mentioned and the quote isn’t actually to do with individual conversion but a whole church that has become lukewarm to him. Rather, it’s associated with Holman Hunt’s Light of the World painting.

So, the I in TULIP stands for Irresistible Grace. God’s grace, his poured out love and goodness, his free gift is something that arises from his sovereignty. In fact, if God is simple, if each attribute offers a perspective on the others then his power is love and his love is powerful. It’s overflowing, overwhelming. As I said, it has to be. Whilst we might balk at the idea of something that can overcome and conquer our free will, if the very problem is both our inability through being dead in sin and our defiance because of sin, then the last thing we want is grace that is dependent in any way on a change in our will. Furthermore, if grace could be resisted and it was only those who chose to be saved, then God would be choosing us because of a glimmer of good in us.

Even Arminianism recognises this point and so, John Wesley talked in terms of two stages to grace. He argued for Prevenient Grace coming first, this grace, he argued was irresistible, it was the grace that woke us from our slumber, awakening the conscience to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. However, the grace of salvation was something that the person post Prevenient Grace could either accept or reject was resistible. I suspect that a lot of his thinking was based on observations of conversions and the accounts of people struggling once under conviction until peace came during the revival that came through the Wesleys and Whitfield. However, I don’t think it really solves the second part of the problem I mentioned above, it still suggests that salvation is dependent on some good in us.

So irresistible grace is connected to regeneration, the idea that God, through the Holy Spirit resuscitates us, breathing new life into us. From a Reformed perspective then, regeneration precedes faith, even faith itself is a gift of God.

Cory Asbury’s song, Reckless Love, has come in for a lot of stick. Rightly we would take issue with the suggestion that God’s love is “reckless” but I think that the sense that it looks like an extravagant risk to human eyes and that it is costly is probably what he intended there. However, leaving that word aside, a lot of what the song describes in terms of this strong, overwhelming love that sought us, fought for us and won us when we were far off and hostile to God captures the idea of Irresistable Grace well. Certainly, the idea of a God who in love kicks walls down to rescue us is better than the idea of the Holy Spirit as the passive English Gentleman is better.

Before I spoke a word, You were singing over me
You have been so, so good to me
Before I took a breath, You breathed Your life in me
You have been so so kind to me

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights ’til I’m found, leaves the 99
And I couldn’t earn it
I don’t deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God

When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me
You have been so, so good to me
When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me
You have been so, so kind to me

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights ’til I’m found, leaves the 99
And I couldn’t earn it
I don’t deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God

There’s no shadow You won’t light up
Mountain You won’t climb up
Coming after me
There’s no wall You won’t kick down
Lie You won’t tear down
Coming after me

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights ’til I’m found, leaves the 99
I couldn’t earn it, I don’t deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God

Songwriters: Ran Jackson / Cory Asbury / Caleb Culver

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