Irresistable Grace: It's overwhelming attraction! (part II)

So where does that leave us? Well, logic would tell us that everyone who is elect of God must be a recipient of that Atonement from birth, in other words they must be born believers, but that’s not so. We all, if we are believers, can attest to a period of time (usually many years of our lives) when we had simply no interest in God and certainly had nothing like true saving faith. Why is this?
It is because, faith is one of the things which Christ purchased on the cross, and it’s one of the things He purchased because it had to be given us, we didn’t innately have it and we couldn’t conjure it up either! To put it bluntly, faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8,9). But how does faith fit with the atoning work of Christ?
Faith in the atoning work of Christ is exactly what makes a person righteous in His sight. He is our provision, nothing else will do. No-one is justified (declared righteous in the sight of God) without faith. From Abraham to the thief on the cross, faith is the difference between the believer and unbeliever, between the saved and the unsaved. And since faith is a gift of God, He only gives it to those for whom Christ died; and those for whom Christ died are none other than those who were chosen by God in eternity past. God’s plan of redemption is utterly consistent.
But how exactly is faith administered to the unbeliever? This is the crux of Irresistible Grace; 2 people hear the same gospel message, one believes and is saved, the other sniggers or is indifferent and dies in their sins. One gets glory, the other hell. Why? Well from the sovereign point of view of God it works like this:
Man is dead in transgressions and sins (total depravity) and he can’t do anything to choose the good. He can’t choose to love God; he’s dead; that means no life! God knows this and He knows that no-one will be saved unless they come to faith in Christ, but they can’t; so what He does is, He sends the Holy Spirit into the soul of an unbeliever and by it, He begins to warm the heart. He breathes spiritual life into the dead heart for the first time. This is called in theological language, ‘regeneration’ and in the language of the bible ‘the new birth’. This warming of the heart enables the unbeliever to respond to the message of the gospel where otherwise they never would.
That’s not to say that the unbeliever is enabled to make the choice between believing and unbelieving; once the Holy Spirit has warmed the heart, the justification of that soul is inevitable, for the work of God must be effective and accomplish exactly what it intended. That's not to say that God drags men and women into heaven against their will, it simply means that the Holy Spirit comes and removes their resistance; once that is done they can't help but be drawn to God. This is regeneration. God calls all His people to Himself and because the Holy Spirit has moved in the heart, that call is overwhelmingly attractive. This is Irresistible Grace. Gracious, because it is unmerited on our part and irresistible because it can't fail to to be effective.

Continued in part 3...