The Highway Forums Announcements What's New on The Highway website? "Calling and Repentance" by Abraham Kuyper

In order to hear, the sinner, deaf by nature, must receive hearing ears. “He that hath ears let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”

But by nature the sinner does not belong to these favored ones. This is a daily experience. Of two clerks in the same office, one obeys the call and the other rejects it; not because he despises it, but because he does not hear God’s call in it. Hence God’s quickening act antedates the sinner’s hearing, and thus he becomes able to hear the Word.

The quickening, the implanting of the faith-faculty, and the uniting of the soul to Christ, apparently three acts, are in reality but one act, together constituting (objectively) the so-called first grace. In the operation of this grace the sinner is perfectly passive and indifferent; the subject of an action which does not involve the slightest operation, yielding, or even non-resistance on his part.

In fact, the sinner, being dead in trespasses and sins, is under this first grace like a soulless, motionless body, with all the passive properties belonging to a corpse. This fact can not be stated with sufficient force and emphasis. It is an absolute passivity. And every effort or inclination to claim for the sinner the minutest cooperation in this first grace destroys the Gospel, severs the artery of the Christian confession, and is not only heretical, but anti-Scriptural in the highest sense.

This is the point where the sign-post is erected, where the roads divide, where the men of the purified, that is, the Reformed Confession, part company with their opponents.
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There always has been and always will be a divide among professing Christians concerning how a sinner comes to Christ. At the root of all of this is, of course, the biblical teaching concerning God himself. But more specifically the nature and ability of a sinner. Abraham Kuyper delves into the later and explains what is necessary for the natural man to be able to come to Christ, receive justification and then all other necessary aspects of the fullness of salvation including final glorification and eternal bliss. The subject man seem familiar to most of you, I'm going to assume, but his approach and explanation is quite unique and many have found most helpful. Perhaps you will find it to be so as well.

To read Abraham Kuyper's article now simply click on the following link: Calling and Repentence.

For later reading at a more convenient time and/or to read all past Article of the Month articles visit htttps://the-highway.com/ and scroll down and click on the "Article of the Month" logo.

In His service and grace,