Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT
## 1 Corinthians 1
### Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Our sermon scripture today is found in 1 Corinthians, the first chapter. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. We’ll read the entire first chapter of 1 Corinthians.

Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours.

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ, that in everything ye are enriched by him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that ye come behind no gift, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful, by whom ye were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now, I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you should be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.

Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius, lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name, and I baptized also the household of Stephanas. Besides, I know not whether I baptized any other, for Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. But unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God.

It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. Unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For ye see our calling, brethren, how that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen. Yea. And things which are not to bring to not things that are that no flesh should glory in his presence.

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus who of God has made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. And then in verse one of chapter 2, and I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you, Lord God, that the Holy Spirit is in our midst, in our being, and that his job, his work is to take this word and illuminate it to our understandings. Help us to understand what it means, not with our intellect primarily, but spiritually, using our intellect. Lord God, we do pray that you would do your work. We pray that your spirit would take these truths of your scriptures and write them in our hearts and cause us to worship you for them and change our lives through that worship.

In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Together to worship God. That is our delight as well as our duty each Lord’s day to usher up spiritual praise and worship to the God of our creation and our redemption. We worship God for these great truths we’ve been studying these last few months, found in the Canons of Dort, written nearly 400 years ago now, and yet an encapsulation of the truth which is very profitable for us today to consider as we consider the sovereignty of God in all things.

We have been praising and worshiping God for these truths we’ve discovered in the scriptures and articulated by the historic church. We praise and worship the God of all creation, that he is sovereign in the world, that he is not bound or limited, that he accomplishes what he intends to accomplish, and that for his good pleasure. We praise and worship the God of election, the God who before all things were created, knew us, loved us, had put his special attention, pleasure, and delight upon us.

We worship God because of this great love that he had for us from before the creation of all things. We praise God that he has in his sovereignty also decreed unchangeably that there are also members of the human race that he will reprobate, that are subjects of the decree of reprobation, to show forth his particular manifestation of judgment and wrath upon them and the rebellious nature of all men, that we might rejoice in our salvation the more, that we might rejoice more in the manifestation of his wrath and anger against the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf, that we might rejoice the more for his grace, that we might worship him the more for his boundless love, having before us the picture of the reprobate as the picture of who we are in and of ourselves apart from the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We praise God that his word to Adam and Eve of command and of threatening judgment was a sure word, unlike so often our words to our children. We worship God, but everything he says comes to pass, that he’s not full of empty threatenings, but very real ones. And they are either poured out upon the Lord Jesus Christ for the sake of the elect, or they are poured out eternally upon the reprobate in hell as a demonstration of his justice and wrath.

And we praise and worship the God of creation, that this decree of reprobation serves the greater decree, as it were, the more central and focus of scripture, the manifestation of the love and grace of God, through pouring out his wrath upon the Lord Jesus Christ as the mediator for his elect people. And we worship God because our salvation was not made possible, was not made potential through the atonement, but that there was an actual atonement for sins on the cross 2,000 years ago.

We worship him because all the glory then for the salvation of mankind rests upon the one who is exalted to the right hand of the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ doing the will of the Father and then sending the Spirit to effectually call his people. We worship him for these great truths and we live our lives as a redeemed people changed by these truths. We rest in his sovereignty and we work in his sovereignty because we don’t have to fear that we might make the wrong decision and as a result never do anything in life.

No, his sovereign hand is upon us and as we pray and are directed by his spirit, we can do things even though they may have lots of errors in them because we trust in God’s sovereign hand over all creation. The world won’t turn out weird because of us. Rather, the world is beautified as his people act on the basis of the confidence we have that he is sovereign and we are not.

And we worship him as well as a redeemed people because we are being trained increasingly by the Holy Spirit to apply the atonement in our lives, to not deflect, to not make someone else, to not impute falsely to someone else the blame for our sins, and to not seek their atonement for our sins, but rather to say, “It’s my own, my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault, that I have sinned against God this past week in the various ways that I did. It’s not my wife’s fault. It’s not my husband’s fault. It’s not my children’s fault. My fault, but my fault, my guilt has been laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ as surely as the hand of the offerer laid upon that lamb and pressed upon it.”

So we know that God has imputed our sins to the Lord Jesus Christ. And full atonement has been made. And we can’t make atonement, so we don’t beat ourselves over the head the rest of our lives. And our wives can’t make atonement, so we don’t beat them the rest of their lives. And our husbands can’t make atonement for our sins, so we don’t require his death. And the world doesn’t create these things. We don’t require its death to make ourselves better somehow.

And it’s not the Democrat’s fault. And it’s not the governor’s fault. It’s not the president’s fault. Our sin is our own fault. And that sin has been atoned once and for all. And God has ushered in salvation for his elect people through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we praise the Son for his obedience to the will of the Father and his submission demonstrated through giving his life as an atonement for sin for the elect.

And we thank God that he reveals to us who we are. He reveals to us in his revelation those things we thought about other people, that they are so wicked and terrible—how could a person ever be that wicked and terrible? We come to realize through the work of the Holy Spirit that’s who we are in our fallen state. And we praise God that he has revealed to us through the scriptures we’ve looked at the last few months the depth of our depravity.

That we hate God in our fallen estate, that if the sons of Adam could vote to put God to death, they would do so in an instant, that we have the rebellion of Satan as our nature in the fallen sense. And we praised God for revealing this to us because we didn’t know it. We had deceived ourselves. We had suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness. And we had not had a full comprehension of our depravity apart from his word and the work of his spirit.

And we praise God for showing us who we are. We praise him also because he tells us that is not man’s original estate, nor is it the eternal estate, nor is it our condition as Christians redeemed in the Lord Jesus Christ. That depth of depravity—we praise God for telling us in Psalm 8 that we were created a little lower than the Deity. We are the primary image bearer of God in the creation of his. We are the crown of creation in our humanity, and we praise God for that.

It is a wondrous truth that we cannot comprehend, and our minds tend to tell us that isn’t true because of our sinfulness. And yet we agree with the spirit of God as he says in the word, “That’s who men are. And that’s who we are recalled to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is who we are in the new humanity of Christ.” We praise God. We worship his holy name for these great truths of his sovereign election.

Unchangeable. We don’t got to worry that the covenant may change somehow and the conditions are no longer met by Christ. His decree is unchangeable. The everlasting covenant has been made and will effect itself throughout history. Won’t change. Aren’t a whole bunch of weird covenants you got to try to figure out and work all these details through the way those that reject God’s everlasting covenant do. No, we praise him that his decree is eternal.

It’s everlasting. It’s unchangeable. And in that decree, he has called us to himself. We praise him for his eternal love. We praise him for the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. We praise him for the glory due to the Lord Jesus Christ who might be preeminent in all things. We worship his name. We praise God for this wonderful passage from Romans 8:

“Those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called. And those he called, he also justified. And those he justified, he also glorified.”

We find ourselves in the middle there. We know we’ve been called and justified. And we surely know them and praise God and worship him that he foreknew us. That’s the beginning of the golden chain, this for love of his people in eternity past. And we praise God that for knowledge and love in that he predestines us to a particular thing, to be conformed to the likeness of his son.

So we are moved from this election of the Father, his choice of us, his love set upon us covenantally, to the work of the Son, to which we’re being conformed, which brings in his atonement and brings in his exaltation. If we suffer, we shall also reign. We’re being predestined unto that image, bringing in the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. We worship the Father for his love. We worship the Son for his effectual work on the cross.

And we worship the Holy Spirit because those that he predestined this way, he also called. And we’re going to talk today and the next couple of weeks about that calling of the Holy Ghost.

We’re moving through what some call the five points of Calvinism. I was reading Dabney this last week and he said that, you know, to call these things Calvinism is a stupid historical error because somehow then we tell people we’re Calvinists, that we somehow tie ourselves to the 1500s. But this is the eternal truth of God we’re we believe in. And it’s wonderful to honor John Calvin in that way. But you know, the five points of Calvinism were simply the five points of what God has revealed himself to have done and affected the salvation of his elect people. And so we’ve moved through these things in the order in which the Canons of Dort have presented them, which was the original basis for the five points of Calvinism.

So we’ve considered his divine election and predestination and his reprobation as well. And we’ve talked about limited atonement or particular redemption. It’s not limited in the sense that it makes something available to us. It affects atonement for other people. It is unlimited atonement for a particular group for whom it is designed, and we’ve talked about that and the practical implications of that. And we’ve talked about the depravity of man.

The third and fourth heads of doctrine of the Canons of Dort are bound together in what we would normally think of in terms of total depravity and irresistible grace. The T and the I of TULIP are really bound together in 17 positive statements made by the Fathers, the church officers at Dort. And those 17 statements concern both the depravity of man and the conversion of man and how he is converted, the method of the conversion of men by God.

And so we’ve talked already about the first part of that, the depravity of man. And we have seen that the Fathers and the scriptures assert that depravity is prefaced by an understanding of man’s greatness and then the depth to which men fell from that highest state. And we said there’s a very practical application of that because it tells us that we were created in righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and dominion and in community unity, and that is the image to which we’re restored in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We’ve said it’s very important to recognize that the wills were not neutral in creation. The wills were positive. Ephesians tells us that they were created in holiness, recreated in holiness in Christ. That our wills and the essence of who we are, our hearts, were created positively righteous and holy, to understand the things of God, to be positively motivated to do those things by our wills. And then in our depth of our fault, Paul, we rebelled in our wills also.

But in our recreation, the will has been also made holy and righteous. Again, that’s important because the Arminians taught that the will was just some thing that man would engage himself in. And what you was neutral, and so what we need to produce change in people’s life is education and moral reform. But we know that’s impossible. We know that the will is actually rebelling against God. And all the moral reform in the world and all the education in the world won’t change man’s sinful heart.

It’s the sovereign act of the Spirit of God that does that. And that’s what we look for in the world. And so it changes the way we try to change the world if we have a proper understanding of depravity. And I believe that as we think through these next few weeks, irresistible grace, effectual grace, or effectual calling, I think this will change the way we live our lives as well.

Now let’s move on then to a consideration of this doctrine of effectual calling as found in this first chapter of the book of Corinthians.

Now I have on your outline said that first of all we want to talk about effectual calling articulated. We find in this portion of scripture an articulation of effectual calling. And I suppose you can see it run throughout. You probably noticed that as we read it. We’ll go back over it more in specific. But first, look at verses 23 and 24.

**Effectual Calling Articulated**

And he’s saying here that we preach—verse 23—”we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.”

Now, next week I’m going to talk more about what some people call the general call. God commands all people to submit to him and to worship him. There is a general call. But here this is not speaking of that call. This is calling talking about the effectual call to believers. There’s a distinction made here between the Jew and Greek who are not called and the Jew and Greek who are called.

Okay. And now we know that as I said there’s a sense in which all people are called. We’ll talk more about that next week. But today, we’re going to talk specifically about the distinction made for us in this passage of holy scripture in which the spirit tells us that there is a distinction between some Jews and Greeks and other Jews and Greeks.

By the way, don’t want to get off into a little tangent here, but you’ve all maybe you’ve wondered why it says Jews and Greeks. Some say Jews and Gentiles. We’ve been talking about that in our Revelation class. And boy, I’ll tell you one thing. I’m a lot—I’m very happy to be preaching on First Corinthians, not the book of Revelation. That is a complex book, and I do not have the confidence in some of the things that we might try to figure out about the book of Revelation. But this doctrine we’re talking about today is so clearly out in scripture, it can be preached and it can be relied upon and it can be communicated.

But in any event, in the book of Revelation, in those studies we’ve been listening to, I’ve been listening to tapes by James B. Jordan, producing some material. The Greeks seem to represent the Gentiles, or the particular people at the time of the writing of the epistles who represented the gentile nations in protection of God’s people. Now you say it was the Romans, but the Romans really were kind of like Greek Romans. They had adopted Greek culture and education, etc. And even the Greek language, the New Testament was written in Greek even though it was the time of Rome. Latin is a variation of Greek. We won’t get into that, but I think if you ever store that away, that when it says Jews and Greeks, Greeks are representative of all the gentile nations as those who are to serve the church of Christ by protecting them.

So Jews and Greeks comprise all the world is the point here. And there are some Jews and Greeks that the preaching of the cross is a stumbling block unto them. And then there are other Jews and Greeks to whom the preaching of the gospel is the power of God and the wisdom of God. What’s the difference? Why is it that some people when they hear the gospel respond and some don’t?

He has taken pains here to identify both groups the same in verse 23 and verse 24. Jews and Greeks, Jews and Greeks. The difference is not in them. The difference is in God’s effectual call. The difference is in the irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit. Irresistible in that whom God wants, he gets. If God wants you, he drafts you. It’s not a volunteer army.

Now, it is in a sense. I’m going to take back what I just said in a couple of minutes. But from the perspective of how this happens, we are made willing, but the—we’re made willing because God has sovereignly elected us in Christ. He has sovereignly sent his son to atone for our sins, and the Holy Spirit applies that salvation to you because God has chosen you and loved you before the eternal—before all eternity.

The distinction between those that believe and those that don’t is the distinction of those who are effectually called by the Holy Spirit. They are completely passive in the beginning of this process. Jew and Greek. Now, it’s interesting that he says that the Jews seek for a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom.

And we can look at that as kind of what happens to people. They want to authenticate the preaching of the gospel based upon their standard. Yeah. So, the Jew says, “My standard is I want to see a sign to make sure that this is what I think it ought to be.” It’s almost like magic. He wants an external evidence so that he can by his by the fiat act of his mind decide whether this is true or not.

Now the Gentile or the Greek does the same thing but he does it through philosophy or wisdom. Okay, you have two kind of classes of representation of how people seek to authenticate something. But the commonality of the two is that they decide. You see, the commonality is they are looking and they are making a determination. Does that remind us of anything? Reminds us of the fall of man. Satan said, “You should be like God, determining for yourself good and evil.”

The basis for all the fallen world and its rejection of the cross is because they are operating in the context of Adam. They are the children of Adam. They’re looking for authentication of the message of the gospel of Christ to a standard produced in their own mind, whether it is a sign or whether it is a wisdom. And God says that those people don’t come to salvation. But those people are all of us in Adam. And so the doctrine of the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit is articulated for us here very clearly.

You know, it’s interesting because the passage starts in verses 1 and 2: “Paul called to be an apostle”—that word called there, same word that we have called here, is directly linked to the will of God. In verse one, “Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God.” The will means the choice, the purpose, the decree, the volition of God, the initiation of God, the pleasure of God. This all are synonyms for his will.

So Paul is called as an apostle and he writes unto a church of God. And you know what the word church is in the Greek? It’s those who are called out. Ecclesia, same root word as this word called. The church itself, who we are, is at the center of our being is this doctrine of effectual calling. We are the called out ones to exercise rule and authority in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a political assembly—ecclesia—in the original in the lending language.

What the stress I’m trying to put on here today is that we are called—ekles—those who are called by God out of this old humanity of Adam. And then verse two: “unto the church, the called out ones of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.”

So he stresses right in the first two verses that he’s called as an apostle. We’re the church who are called out ones, and we are called in the Lord Jesus Christ, and all of this is according to the will of the Father. So effectual calling permeates this passage of 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And indeed, as I said, it permeates the identification of who the church is because the church is those who have been called effectually by God, and the distinction between the two groups of Jews and Greeks has nothing to do with their decision. It has everything to do with the effectual call of the Holy Spirit apart from the initiation of those who would in themselves always reject God.

Now let’s talk about that a little more and I want to go over some other scriptures under this same heading of the articulation of this particular doctrine: effectual calling or irresistible grace.

I read several scriptures here. Jeremiah 31:18: “Ephraim is heard praying thus, ‘Turn thou me and I shall be turned.’” Jeremiah 31:18.

John 1:13: “They are taught that believers are born, quote, ‘Not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.’” You see, God effectually calls us, not as a result of our will, but rather of his own will.

In John 6:44, Christ says this: “No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” Okay? Unless the Father who has sent me effectually calls him by the Holy Spirit, it is the spirit of God that does this work. Unless the Father draw him through the operation of the Spirit, no man comes to me. He doesn’t say no man comes to me unless he chooses to come. He says no man comes unless the Father draw him.

And that is through the operation of the Spirit. That word draw is not a mild term. It is a strong term, like a strong magnet pulling the iron filings toward itself. John 15:16. It is not resistible is the point there. It’s an irresistible drawing, irresistible calling.

John 15:16: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go forth and bring forth fruit.”

Ephesians 2:10: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which Christ hath ordained that we should walk in them.” Okay? All these stressing the sovereignty of God in the calling of Christians.

Romans 8:28: “We just read, ‘We are called according to his purpose.’” In John 10:3 and 27, Jesus says that it is sheep—it is his sheep rather—whom he calls, and when they hear the call they shall come. Okay? So you don’t hear it and not respond. It is an effectual calling by the Holy Spirit. His grace to the elect is irresistible on the part of those sheep. They hear it and they do respond.

Acts 2:39: “Peter said that the promise of salvation is to as many as the Lord our God shall call.” The designation is this effectual call of God. That is who the promise of salvation goes out to. Okay. It is the specific and compelling activity of the Holy Spirit whereby the elect of the Father who have been atoned forth through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ are brought into this saving relationship with Christ.

And so there is this transition in the Canons of Dort of the members of the Godhead. The Father unconditionally elects some to salvation. The Son, in relationship to that everlasting covenant, comes to make atonement for those whom the Father has elected, and he does his work, and then the Spirit is sent by the Son to effectually call those for whom the Son has atoned and who the Father has elected.

And so the Holy Spirit is really the emphasis in this third and fourth head of doctrine, and particularly the fourth one in terms of irresistible grace. The third being a designation of the depravity of us. But the point is, here is the work of the Holy Spirit. We, as I said before, there are various references in the New Testament where the church is referred to as the called. That’s our designation as Christians.

We are the ones who have been called. In John 6:37, our Savior says that all those whom the Father has given to him shall come to him. Okay? No one will be missing at the end of the day. Later in that verse, in that same chapter, he says that in verse 39, that none of those shall be lost. The call is effectual indeed.

In verse 44, as I just read from John chapter 6: “No man can come to the Father except the Father with sent me draw him. But everyone whom the Father draws and teaches does indeed come to me.” Verse 45 of that same text. There’s no room in the calling of God. And the calling by grace is not resistible. There’s no room for error. There’s no room for us to resist the grace of the Holy Spirit as he makes effectual the salvation which Christ has obtained for us.

Picture of this in Acts 16:14 is Lydia. Why does she come to faith? Because the Lord opened her heart. The Spirit did his work on her heart. Her heart was closed, her heart was shut off actively, suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness. And she didn’t decide to change it. The Lord opens her heart by the Holy Spirit. And so she comes and exercises belief because God had caused her to have faith and to be regenerated.

2 Corinthians 4:6: “God has shined in our heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” So God works this, as it says in Philippians 2:13: “He works this. He works rather in us both to will and to do according to his good pleasure.”

So by effectual calling we mean that grace of the Holy Spirit whereby the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ is effectually accomplished in the life of the believer. He is transformed by the Holy Spirit working at the deepest recesses of his heart, and he is regenerated by the gift of faith.

To quote from one of the authors of a book on the five points of Calvinism, simply stated, this doctrine asserts that the Holy Spirit never fails to bring to salvation those sinners whom he personally calls to Christ. Never fails those whom he personally calls to Christ. He inevitably applies salvation to every sinner whom he intends to save. And it is his intention to save all of the elect.

We mean that the work of the Spirit is effectual in bringing men to Christ. And it is always effectual. This work is sovereign. It is God’s choice, not man’s choice. And this work is supernatural because it creates a whole new creation in the heart of the believer. We’ll talk more about that in two weeks on Easter Sunday.

The Spirit is active and man is passive in the initial work of grace in the context of man’s soul. When we were dead in sins and trespasses, he hath quickened us together with Christ. And so the scriptures teach over and over and over that this is an irresistible grace. It is the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit to the elect.

A picture of this by way of illustration in Luke 15:3 and following: the parable of the 99 sheep and the one who is lost. And he leaves the 99 that are found, and he goes and finds the lost sheep. And what does he do with the sheep? When he finds it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. He picks it up. He doesn’t say, “Come along with me if you will.” He picks it up and lays it on his shoulders. He draws us. He inevitably moves us toward him. He works at the depth of our heart to change our heart sovereignly. We are passive, and he is active.

You read some historic articulations of this doctrine. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, question number 31:

“Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit whereby convicting us of our sin and misery and lightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel.”

We read from the Canons of Dort. Actually, let’s do the Westminster Confession first. Well, let’s read the Canons of Dort first.

Article number 10 of this third and fourth head of doctrine says it this way. We’ll read three articles of the Canons.

Article 10 says this: “But that others who are called by the gospel obey the call and are converted is not to be ascribed to the proper exercise of free will or by one distinguishes himself above others equally furnished with grace sufficient for faith and conversion, as the proud heresy of Pelagius maintains. But it must be wholly ascribed to God who as he has chosen his own from eternity in Christ, so he calls them effectually in time, confers upon them faith and repentance, rescues them from the power of darkness, and translates them into the kingdom of his son, that they may fill forth the praise of him who have called them out of darkness into his marvelous light and may glory not in themselves but in the Lord according to the testimony of the apostles in various places.”

Now, article 11 from the Canons:

“God carries out his good pleasure in the elect and works in them true conversion in the following manner. He takes care that the gospel is preached to them. And powerfully enlightens their mind by the Holy Spirit secondly means—he has the gospel preached to you. Secondly, he powerfully enlightens the mind by the Holy Spirit so that they rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God. By the efficacious working of the same regenerating Spirit, he also permeates into the innermost recesses of man. He opens the closed and softens the hard heart. He circumcises that which was uncircumcised and instills new qualities into the will. He makes the will which was dead alive, which was bad good, which was unwilling willing, and which was stubborn obedient. He moves and strengthens it so that like a good tree it may be able to produce the fruits of good works.”

Then in article 14:

“Faith is therefore a gift of God, not because it is offered by God to the will of man—it’s not a gift that’s offered, but because it is actually conferred on him, instilled and infused into him. It is not a gift in that God confers only the power to believe and then awaits from man’s free will the consent to believe or the act of believing. It is a gift in that he who works both to will and to work brings about in man both the will to believe and the act of believing, and indeed all things in all.”

And then finally in article 16:

“Man through his fall did not cease to be man endowed with intellect and will. And sin, which has pervaded the whole human race, did not deprive man of his human nature but brought upon him depravity and spiritual death. So also this divine grace of regeneration does not act upon man as stocks and blocks, and does not take away the will and its properties, or violently coerce it, but makes the will spiritually alive, heals it, corrects it, pleasantly, and at the same time powerfully bends it. And as a result, where formerly the rebellion and resistance of the flesh fully dominated, now a prompt and sincere obedience of the Spirit begins to prevail, in which the true spiritual renewal and freedom of our will consists.

“And unless the admirable author of all good should deal with us in this way, man would have no hope of rising from his fall through this free will by which he, when he was still standing, plunged himself into ruin.”

The point of these great articulations is twofold: that the Spirit irresistibly calls us, effectually calls us, but he does it not by—let’s see—not by completely, as it says, “acting upon stocks and blocks.” The Spirit of God penetrates our closed heart and creates in the context of our heart, our will, a new nature. He regenerates us. He causes us to be born again. He gives us the gift of faith.

And with faith and regeneration in one package as a gift from him, he then has caused us to be born again to a lively hope. And now our will, renewed, renovated, recreated, resurrected from the dead by the Holy Spirit, acts and believes and acts out the conversion—that really pictures the turning of his whole life from beginning to end as he moves closer and closer to conformity to God’s image.

So what I want is the beginning of these next couple of talks on irresistible grace. I want you to understand that I’m saying a couple of things here. One, that it is the Spirit who does this sexually and irresistibly. But two, he does it in such a way as to work on the inner recesses of our heart. Not—this is where the Catechism, the Westminster Confession, says he doesn’t do violence to the will of the creature.

He rejuvenates that will. He recreates that will in righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and he moves that will then, as we see then, to conform to the requirements of the gospel.

**Effectual Calling by the Holy Ghost**

Now I want to say a few other things based upon this passage from First Corinthians. We have seen that we have begun to see an articulation of this doctrine of effectual calling. And we want to say secondly that First Corinthians 1 teaches us the relationship of effectual calling to the glory of God.

Why does he choose in his omniscience to work in this particular way? And that’s what it is. There is no other way. The way that God has decided is the best, most perfect way to work. And why? Well, we’re told. We’re not told all things in scripture. One of the articles that the Canons of Dort about this particular truth is we can’t understand this in total, but we can understand elements of it. And we can understand why he moves this way because 1 Corinthians tells us:

Verse 18: “The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘So now we’re going to find out why. I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. Yet it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

“For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. We preach Christ crucified.”

The context for verses 23 and 24, beginning and end, tell us that the reason for the effectual calling taught in those two verses is that God might be preeminent and receive the glory in everything. It says that he does this for the purpose of destroying the wisdom of the wise, for not letting the wisdom of man take any part in its salvation or claim to do so.

Verse 25 that follows the articulation in 23 and 24 of effectual calling says this: “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren,” but we don’t necessarily till we do stop and think about it. And he says, “Meditate upon this. Effectual calling is manifested in your particular church. How not many wise men after the flesh, nor many mighty, nor many noble are called.

“Now, he’s not saying wisdom, strength, or nobility is wrong. That’s what we’re called to be in Christ. We have an unction from the Holy Spirit. We know all things. But that’s not how we get here. And he manifests that’s not how we get here. But we get here through the effectual calling, irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit, not our wisdom, not our looking for the correct signs as the Jews would have done, but instead relying upon the Holy Ghost’s sovereign intervention, his complete activity, our complete passivity.

He does this—the wisdom of men, his pride might be debased. He goes on to say: “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. He’s chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And the base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen. There’s that effectual calling, choosing again. And all things which are not to bring to not things that are. Why? Verse 29: that no flesh should glory in his presence.

I said we’re called here to worship God in the special presence of God that corporate worship is. And it aids our worship. It enables our worship to understand that we have been effectually called, irresistibly called through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Because if we don’t know that, and if we rebel against that doctrine, and if we think that it was our choice that got us into the presence of God, we come before God glorifying in our own abilities.

If everybody has received common grace and everybody has the ability to choose, and we’re the ones that chose, not irresistibly called and dragged and dragged by the Holy Spirit, but rather as a result of our choosing, we meet in his presence, and no matter what kind of righteous face we may put upon it, we’re glorifying in ourselves and in our flesh.

God says that he has used this particular method, the wisest and best method, to bring men to salvation: the work of the Holy Spirit in the deep recesses of our heart to bring us to conviction of sin, to cry out that God might show mercy upon us. He does this so that no flesh should glory in his presence.

But of him, verse 30: “are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God has made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification, redemption,” that Jesus might be preeminent in all things. Right? That’s why we’re predestined. That’s why we’re foreknown for love of the Father. It’s why we’re called.

Verse 31: “that according as it is written, ‘He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.’”

Ah, we glorify, we glory in the Lord today, don’t we? We understand this doctrine. We worship his holy name that he has effectually called us by the Holy Spirit. And you know, we worship him too because this changes our evangelism.