Bible Truth #259 - Arminian Prayer

Whether the Arminian will accept the following label or not is irrelevant. Every Arminian is a synergist. They believe that the human "free will" must cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the salvation experience, i.e. they believe that a lost man has to accept the drawing of God to Christ. The Arminian believes that a man can choose to reject salvation when God “offers” it to them. I will not claim the following, it is from http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/prayer_synergist.html

Here is a prayer that would be consistent with the synergist's theology if he really believed that faith is a product of our sinful human nature and not the result of grace alone:

“God, I give you glory for everything else, but not my faith ... This is the one thing that is my very own that I produced of my fallen natural capacities. For this little bit the glory is mine. So I thank you Lord that I am not like other men who do not have faith. When you extended your grace to all men some did not make use of it, BUT I DID. While You deserve glory for all I have Lord, my faith was the one part that I contributed to the price of my redemption, apart from and independent of the effectual work of Your Holy Spirit.”

WOW! IS this not what Arminians believe? Don’t they believe that a lost man, in his spiritually dead, totally depraved sinful nature can generate from nothing the faith it takes to believe? The idea that the Arminian believes he chose God before God chose him exalts the flesh. “I thank you Lord that you made grace and the free gift of salvation available to all men. I don’t know why most don’t accept it BUT I DID.” That theory exalts man and is false.

I write again that God’s Word says the following about every sinful, lost, spiritually dead, totally depraved man:

- every imagination and thought he has is ONLY evil, continually (Genesis 6:5)

- it is impossible for him to do good (Jeremiah 13:23)

- it is impossible for him to make a decision to believe in Christ (John 1:13)

- it is impossible for him to come into the Light because he hates the Light (John 3:20),

- it is impossible for him to come to Jesus unless God draws him, and if God draws him, Jesus raises him up (John 6:44)
- it is impossible for him to come to Jesus unless the Father enables Him (John 6:65)

- it is impossible for him to understand Truth (John 8:43) because he doesn’t belong to God (John 8:47)

- it is impossible for him to do a righteous act - e.g. “accept Jesus” (Romans 3:10)

- it is impossible for him to understand ANYTHING of or from God (Romans 3:11)

- he is hostile toward God (Romans 8:7)

- it is impossible for him to please God (Romans 8:8)

- it is impossible for him to believe the Gospel because it is foolishness to him, he can’t understand it (1 Corinthians 2:14)

- he is demon-possessed (Ephesians 2:2), this is one reason why he is God’s enemy and can’t please Him.

- he has no hope (Ephesians 2:12, 1 Thessalonians 4:13).

Since all this is true and he’s not going to do anything to help in his own salvation at all, how can a LOST man be saved? The answer is easy - the first thing that happens in the salvation of a soul is that God quickens the dead man’s spirit and saves him. Without God acting first, according to the verses above, the unredeemed, natural man is going straight to Hell.

We become children of God NOT by human decision (John 1:13).