The Enormous Cost of Grace

To deny the irresistibility of God’s saving grace is to say that God can be resisted, against His will, by mere man. The Scriptures teach us that no one can thwart God’s will (Eph. 1:11) or stop His hand (Dan. 4:35), and the electing God is the calling God (Rom. 8:29-30). Thus, salvation is monergistic grace (Eph. 2:1-10); it is not a work that we accomplish in whole or even in part (2 Tim. 1:9). It is not a joint venture between the Holy Spirit and us; we do not even cooperate in bringing about our salvation. The elect are not born again because they believe; rather, they believe because they are born again by the Spirit of God (1 John 5:1).

A rather legalistic Christian once criticized another Christian’s testimony, saying: “I appreciated all you said about what God did for you. But you didn’t mention anything about your part in it.”

“Oh yes,” the other Christian said. “I apologize for that. I really should have said that my part was running away, and His part was running after me until He caught me.”

Monergistic grace comes to us at enormous cost. The good news of the gospel is that the cost of our sin was paid by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not by us. Pardon and forgiveness did not come to us at a moment of God’s weakness; they came when He was being most mighty. His righteousness, justice, and truth are maintained when He adopts believing sinners into His family. The law came by Moses, but grace comes in Jesus Christ (John 1:17). God condones no sin, not even when He shows mercy to us.

Adapted from Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism (Kindle Edition)