Category: Calvinism

Drawn by the Father – John 6 (Part 6 – Father’s Testimony)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman6 Comments

(This post is part of a series on John chapter 6. To read the first post in the series click here.)

John 6:37, 44 and 65

All that the Father gives me will come to me…

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him….

And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

How Did God Give People to Christ?

We have discussed the context of Jesus’ conflict with the Jewish authorities and the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant in the Gospel of John. Now all that is left is to finish un-wrapping the other two so-called “Calvinist verses” in John chapter 6.

We have seen that the Father was placing his faithful followers under the Lordship of Messiah. And since they are obedient to the Father, Christ is able to confidently say, “They will come to me.” When we consult the context of John 6:37 we discover that there is not the slightest hint of Calvinism found in it. Reformed theology has read its doctrines into the verse and then tried to validate its error by appealing to it.

Now we need to turn our attention to John 6:44 and 65. We started off by asking who God gave to Christ, now we must ask how he gave them. These two verses are closely related to John 6:37. John 6:37 tells us that the Father is giving his followers to the Son. John 6:44 tells us how he gives them, namely by “drawing” them to Jesus. And John 6:65 reiterates John 6:44 using different words.
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Drawn by the Father – John 6 (Part 5 – Getting Prepared)

Published on by Christopher C. ChapmanLeave a comment

(This post is part of a series of posts on John chapter 6. To read the first post in the series please click here.)

John 6:37, 44 and 65

All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

Preparing the Way

In the last post we concluded by giving the proper interpretation of John 6:37. We will soon turn to consider John 6:44 and its parallel verse 6:65. But before we do we should tie up a few loose ends. Whenever we have a paradigm shift in how we view different aspects of God’s word, many new questions begin to present themselves to our thinking. The questions I would like to address here are, “What about those Israelites who were not faithful to God? Did Jesus come to save them? Is there any hope for them? Does John 6:37 only apply to men like Nathanael, or also to men like Zacchaeus, the corrupt tax collector?”
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Drawn by the Father – John 6 (Part 4 – Shepherd’s Voice)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman10 Comments

(This post is part of a series; to read the first post click here.)

John 6:37, 44 and 65

All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

We concluded the last post by noting:

“Jesus came to Israel as a representative of the Father; he did not come in his own name. He came speaking the words of the God of Israel. Those that were following the God of Israel would recognize the voice of their God, but those who only pretended devotion to God would reject the Son just as they had always rejected the Father. Those who were faithful members of the Old Covenant would naturally transition to the New Covenant. Those who were submitted to the Father would gladly submit to the Son. The coming of Jesus Christ to Israel distinguished ‘the remnant’ of true Israelites from the false (Jn. 1:47, Rom. 11:2-6, Rev. 2:9, 3:9).Understanding this basic paradigm in John’s Gospel helps us to understand other passages that are often misinterpreted by Calvinism.”

In this post we will look at some of those passages as well as their Old Testament counterparts. We will also give a clear interpretation of John 6:37.
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Drawn by the Father – John 6 (Part 3 – Who?)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman16 Comments

(This is the 3rd post in this series. To read the first post click here.)

John 6:37, 44 and 65

All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

Who?

Who Were Those Given to Christ?

In the last couple of posts we gained a better understanding of the overall context of the Gospel of John and those chapters surrounding chapter 6 in particular. Now we need to ask a more specific question about John 6:37, namely, “Who are those whom the Father gives to Christ?”

In John 6:37 Jesus said, “All those the Father gives me will come to me.” Calvinists interpret this to mean that during the time between Christ’s first and second coming God gives eternally predestined individuals faith to believe in Jesus. They reason that since God from eternity chose certain individuals who would belong to him, these must be the ones that he gives to Christ. God did not grant them an inheritance among his people because they believed, but he chose them as unbelievers and in due time made them into believers. They imagine that God is taking rebellious sinners who have no faith and bringing them to faith in Christ. For them this verse teaches that God, by the means of irresistible grace, gives rebellious sinners to Jesus Christ. In order to understand the error of this interpretation we have to focus on exactly who it was that God “gives” to Christ.
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Drawn by the Father – John 6 (Part 2 – A Closer Look)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman20 Comments

(To read part 1 of this series click here.)

John 6:37, 44 and 65

All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

What was happening in John chapters 5 through 8? What is the context in which Jesus makes the statements we are considering? If we don’t keep this in mind we will never correctly interpret these verses. Before we look at what was happening and why Jesus made these statements let’s first look at it from a Calvinist perspective.
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Drawn by the Father – John 6 (Part 1 – The Big Picture)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman18 Comments

John 6:37, 44 and 65

All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

Calvinism’s challenge:

These verses are some of the clearest verses teaching the doctrine of Irresistible Grace. In John 6:44 Jesus makes it clear that no man in all of history can come to Jesus unless the Father personally draws him. And in verse 37 Jesus says plainly that those who have belonged to God from all eternity will most certainly come. The conclusion is inescapable; only those chosen by God will come and those chosen will most certainly come. This is irresistible grace plain and simple!
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Acts 13:48 – A Calvinist Verse? (Part 4 – Answering Objections)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman7 Comments

(This is the 4th and final post in a series on 13:48. To start at the beginning of this series click here)

I concluded the last post by suggesting we understand Acts 13:48b in the following manner:

“…as many as were appointed [according to the foreknowledge of God] to eternal life believed.”

When Luke noted that those who believed had already been appointed to eternal life, the Calvinist imagines that this appointment was done without the consideration of how men would respond to the gospel. By ignoring that salvation is conditioned on a person’s response to the gospel they remain consistent with their belief in divine determinism, but they stray far from the plain teaching of scripture (Mark 16:15, John 3:18).

It seems reasonable to conclude that God is the one doing the appointing in this verse, though some non-Calvinists would argue that the Greek grammar in this verse could imply that the individuals are “appointing” themselves in the sense of “inclining” or “disposing” themselves to eternal life. But in the 2nd post on this topic I showed my reasons for rejecting that argument. In short, I tried to demonstrate that the other four times Luke used the Greek word tasso he never used it in that way.
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Acts 13:48 – A Calvinist Verse? (Part 3)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman4 Comments

(This is part 3 of a series on Acts 13:48. To start at the beginning of this series click here.)

Acts 1:8

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

In this verse Luke gives us an outline of the book of Acts. The book is not a general history of the early church, but a specific account about the spread of the gospel to the Gentile world. It starts with the gospel being publically proclaimed to a large crowd of Jews and converts to Judaism on the day of Pentecost. That day a remnant (3,000 people) of the crowd came to faith in Christ. By chapter 8 the gospel has spread into Samaria and once again the crowds are listening to, and responding to, the public proclamation of God’s word. This account is the Samaritan equivalent of what happened to the Jews in Acts 2.
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Acts 13:48 – A Calvinist Verse? (Part 2)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman5 Comments

(This is the second post in a series of posts on Acts 13:48. To read the first post please click here.)

The Greek word “tasso” translated “appointed” or “ordained” in most Bible translations is the cause of many non-Calvinist headaches, though it needn’t be. Many, in an attempt to relieve their aching head, have tried very hard to find various ways to translate this word into something more appealing. But I believe there is plenty of scriptural evidence to show that “appointed/ordained” are valid English translations for Luke’s use of the word. Given that I am almost totally unschooled in biblical Greek many might be tempted to ignore my opinion on this point, I can accept that. And if what I present is at odds with the majority of Greek scholars, I would suggest that would be wise. But thankfully, there is a biblical way to determine what Luke had in mind without knowing the ins and outs of biblical Greek.

Luke uses the same Greek word (tasso) in four places besides Acts 13:48. By looking at how Luke uses the word elsewhere we can get a fairly accurate idea of how he intends to use it in the verse we are considering. Luke uses this particular word more than any other New Testament writer. Paul uses it twice in Romans 13:1 and 1 Corinthians 16:15. Matthew uses it once in Matthew 28:16. But Luke uses it a total of five times (Luke 7:8, Acts 13:48, 15:2, 22:10, and 28:23). So before jumping into the context of Acts 13:48, let’s take a look at these other passages and see how Luke uses the word.
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Acts 13:48 – A Calvinist Verse? (Part 1)

Published on by Christopher C. Chapman14 Comments

Acts 13:42-52 (English Standard Version)

42 As they went out, the people begged that these things might be told them the next Sabbath. 43 And after the meeting of the synagogue broke up, many Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who, as they spoke with them, urged them to continue in the grace of God. 44 The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. 45 But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him. 46 And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. 47 For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” 48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. 49 And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. 50 But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district. 51 But they shook the dust from their feet against them and went to Iconium. 52 And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

The Issues with the Verse

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