It’s amazing how my reading posts like this dovetails with the study I’m doing on the old Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones sermons on Ephesians. And not only that how so many passages in Scripture echo the same theme about God’s Sovereign Sovereignty. That’s a term I first heard maybe some thirty years ago in Dr. S. Lewis Johnson’s sermons. It’s also where I first began to hear the term “Effectual” Call. That theme has remained a core doctrine of the faith with me all those years.
I think even finally having finished our Sunday School Class readings in the last half of Revelation has deepened my understanding of Biblical truth of being dead or alive in Christ…and the eternal implications.
Eph 2:1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
Eph 2:2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
Eph 2:3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
Eph 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
Eph 2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
I’m not sure how anyone could make this more clear than the short and simple message in Mike Ratliff’s post….
The general call goes to everyone so there is no excuse. The effectual call, as the one above to Levi, which the Pharisees and the scribes objected to, always leads to repentance and goes only to God’s elect.
Think of what our Lord was telling these people. If people cannot μετανοήσητε or repent then they will be lost. Who can repent? No one can do it. No one can keep the Law of God. In this passage, our Lord makes it very clear that all men are lost in their sins from birth. There are no exceptions.
“But I never had any sense of defeat. It was more like I was resolving nagging conflicts in my own mind. Because I kept discovering that the truths at the heart of Calvinism truly are the doctrines of grace—principles that I had always affirmed: God is sovereign, Christ died for me, God loved me before I loved Him, He sought me and drew me and initiated my reconciliation while I was still His enemy. Those are allbiblical truths, and I believed them even when I was a gung-ho Arminian.”
Furthermore, you pray for the lost, which means in your heart, you believe God is sovereign over their salvation. If you didn’t really believe He was sovereign in saving sinners, you’d quit praying for the lost and start doing everything you could to buttonhole people into the kingdom by hook or by crook, instead. But you know that would be folly.
And you pray about other things, too, don’t you? You pray that God will change this person’s heart, or alter the circumstances of that problem. That’s pure Calvinism. When we go to God in prayer, we’re expressing faith in His sovereignty over the circumstances of our lives.
Quoting Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace To You.
Rainbow Trout 