Because popular culture tends to define God by his power, not his character like the scriptures describe him,
Take grace.
Properly defined,
But when you imagine God’s single most important attribute is his power… well, grace looks extremely different. It’s no longer an attitude. It’s a determination. You will receive God’s grace, become his child, and be on the track for heaven. Or none of these things will happen, because God’s grace will never touch you, because God doesn’t want you. No we don’t know why; he just doesn’t. No you can’t change his mind; piss off.
I know: Under this redefinition, God’s grace is still amazing… but only for its recipients. For everybody else, God seems arbitrary, and downright cold. Because only a third of the planet considers themselves Christian. (Figure
Yeah, that’s the usual problem when you
How efficacious grace works.
As you know, there are pagans who want nothing to do with God. They might believe in him; they might not; either way
What can God do with such people? He keeps loving them, and keeps drawing them to himself. But someday he’s gonna stop trying, and they’ll have to go into the fire. Like Moses and the brass snake, he told them to turn and look his way and be healed…
Now if power’s your thing, that’s just not good enough.
God’s grace, they insist, is effective. Always effective. It’s backed by God’s infinite power, so it can’t be anything but effective. It saves everyone it touches. If God touches us with it, we’re saved: Done deal, once saved always saved, for nothing God does is weak, and everything he does is efficient.
Though love is patient, kind, and doesn’t demand its own way,
What about the scriptures which state God wants to save everyone, invites everyone into his kingdom, and calls to everyone? What about Jesus’s story of the big dinner?
Luke 14.16-24 KWL - 16 Jesus told them, “Some person was making a big dinner, and invited many.
- 17 He sent out his slave at the dinner hour to tell his invited, ‘Come, it’s ready now.’
- 18 Every last one began to refuse.
- The first told him, ‘I bought a field and need to go out to see it. I ask you to excuse me.’
- 19 Another said, ‘I bought five yoke of oxen and I’m going to examine them. I ask you to excuse me.’
- 20 Another said, ‘I married a woman, and that’s why I can’t come.’
- 21 Coming back, the slave reported these things to his master.
- Enraged, the master then told his slave, ‘Go out quickly to the squares and streets of the city.
- The poor, the maimed, the blind, the disabled: Bring them here.’
- 22 The slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done—and there’s still space.’
- 23 The master told the slave, ‘Go out to the roads and fences.
- Force people to enter!—so they can fill my house.
- 24 I tell you: None of those men I invited will taste my dinner.’
Well, they skip the bit about people refusing the master’s invitation, and fixate on verse 23: “Force people to enter!” The first time the master called for dinner guests, apparently he didn’t really mean it. The second time, he really meant business. So determinists actually describe this as two different calls of God:
- THE GENERAL CALL. Where God tells everybody to turn to Jesus and be saved. But he’s not serious; he’s just saying this to make his general intentions known.
- THE EFFECTUAL CALL. Where God not only specifically calls individuals to come to him, but forces them to enter. He bends our will so we’ll do as he wants.
Efficacious grace begins with that effectual call. Those he called in this manner, he saved with his efficacious grace. He forces us into his kingdom. Not kicking and screaming, ’cause first he reprograms our minds so we want to enter the kingdom, and if anything we’d be kicking and screaming to get in.
So you only think you turned to God. You didn’t really. God brainwashed you.
Well, mostly brainwashed you. You’re still gonna sin. I would think if God was gonna go to all the trouble of erasing our God-resistant bad attitudes, he’d knock out our sin nature, or at least put some serious dampers on it. Rumor has it he hates sin, y’know.
Grace to you. (But only you.)
Christians believe in efficacious grace for lots of reasons. Not just because they love the idea that our sovereign L
After all, a lot of the reasons Christians adopt Calvinist beliefs, is because they’re searching for certainty. They wanna know what God’s up to. Calvinists claim they know, so follow them, and you can know too. You can be right
That’s what becomes the primary focus, if not the only focus, of all the teachings about efficacious grace: The blessings of God towards us, the Christians. The grace of God towards some, the Christians. The plans of God regarding all, but only the Christians get the blessings, and the rest get the shaft.
And the rest get the shaft because they deserve it.
That’s one of the really irritating bits I discovered among those who teach on effectual grace. The obvious question always comes up in class: If effectual grace saves everybody it touches, why can’t God just touch everyone with it?
Well, the teachers reply, he doesn’t wanna.
Why doesn’t he wanna?
Ah, they’ve been waiting for this point. Here’s where they bust out Romans and quote Paul:
Romans 9.14-23 KWL - 14 So what do we say? Not that there’s something wrong with God; never gonna happen.
- 15 He told Moses, “I’ll show mercy to whomever I can show mercy;
Ex 33.19 I’ll pity whomever I can pity.”- 16 Which means it’s not our desire nor striving, but God’s mercy.
- 17 The scripture says about Pharaoh, “This is why I raised you up:
- So I can show my power in you; so I can proclaim my name to all the earth.’
Ex 9.16 - 18 Which means he shows mercy on whoever he wants—and hardens whoever he wants.
- 19 So you’ll tell me, “So why does he condemn those who oppose his intentions?’
- 20 Oh, people. You who defend yourselves against God: Don’t.
- The sculpture doesn’t tell its sculptor, “Why’d you make me this way?” does it?
- 21 Or hasn’t the potter power over the clay?—
- Out of his lump, he makes a pot which is valuable… or not.
- 22 If God wanted to demonstrate anger and display his power,
- with great patience he might put up with anger-pots, created only to be shattered,
- 23 so he can reveal the riches of his glory to mercy-pots, preprepared for glory?
Here, they point out those who resist God are all part of his plan: They were “created only to be ruined.”
Yeah, they’re totally mangling the intent of this passage. Paul was addressing
Okay yes: God can do anything he wants. That’s what sovereignty really means—not that he micromanages everything, but that if he wants to do something, he will; and if he doesn’t wanna do something, he won’t. God wants everybody to repent, and not perish.
But because he’s almighty, he can harden and soften hearts when he feels he needs to. He can manipulate people’s will when it suits his purposes. He has in the past, in the scriptures, which is why Paul used the well-known example of the Pharaoh of the Exodus.
Exodus 4.21-23 KWL - 21 The L
ORD told Moses, “When you go return to Egypt, show all the signs I put in your hand.- Do them before the Pharaoh’s face—but I hardened his heart against freeing the people.
- 22 Tell the Pharaoh the L
ORD says this:- ‘My son, my firstborn, is Israel. 23 Free my son to serve me, I tell you.
- Refuse to free him, and look: I kill your son, your firstborn.’ ”
- 21 The L
The L
If God wants to show his greatness by manipulating people in small ways, he reserves the right to do that. He’s God; he’s our creator; of course he can. He can be merciful if he wants—or not.
But does this passage apply to all humanity, and talk about how God’s gonna harden every non-Christian and throw them into hell? Nope; not even close. It’s about how Paul’s upset because his people, Israel, hadn’t wholly accepted Jesus as their Messiah,
And y’know, those who imagine they’re gonna be saved by the power of efficacious grace, have reimagined grace to be this mighty force which saved ’em once and for all. Not an ongoing attitude of God’s, which regularly bridges the gap between us sinners and our Lord: A fixed event in the past which now means we merit saving, ’cause once saved always saved. Just like a promise made to Abraham, Israel, and Moses, which the Israelis imagined was due them because they were Abraham’s descendants. Yep, those who pin their hopes on efficacious grace are stumbling over the same block as the Israelis of Paul’s day.
When we imagine a world where God happily saves us Christians, and just as happily destroys the rest of humanity because it shows off his anger and power,
Besides, if God has their future all mapped out, whether we do anything for them or not… exactly why should we do anything for them or not? We’re going to heaven anyway, so it’s not like our disobedience will seriously penalize us in the kingdom. And they’re going wherever they’re going either way. We can just kick back and let destiny unfold.
If you ever wondered why there are so many apathetic, lazy,
Reject self-righteous, graceless grace.
Grace is God’s attitude towards his people, and when his people exhibit grace too, it’s
Those who believe in efficacious grace, don’t think of grace as a fruit. At all. Because let’s face it: How on earth could we exhibit efficacious grace? How could our grace transform everybody we touch? We’re not almighty! At best we could just
So efficacious grace has multiple problems: It doesn’t spread God’s grace any further, because we can’t imitate this behavior without
But most problematically, it makes God out to be an immoral monster. Y’see, if God’s grace really does transform everything it touches, yet he only cares to use it on 33 percent of humanity, why on earth are we calling him mighty and glorious, and not horribly inept at his job? I mean, if two-thirds of humanity are resisting his salvation, these numbers stand to reason… but if they can’t resist, why is God pleased by so many destroyed, wasted creations? How could we call him a good God if he’s behind so much evil?
So no, the idea of efficacious grace isn’t consistent with the scriptures, and in practice it’s not consistent with the idea of a good God. It’s not really grace; it’s fake grace. Pursue the sort of grace which truly transforms everything it touches, without having to brainwash everyone: Pursue God’s real grace.
