With full consent against our will

I think one of my most referred to verses is John 6:44…

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. (NIV)

It says so very much. I often find myself wondering just how it is that anyone can read that verse and still think they ‘chose’ Christ.

And I think my favorite version of that verse is when it’s taken from the original language because in the original languages the word dragged is used in place of the word draw. I know most people don’t know that. Unless they’ve seen that verse written with the word drag instead of draw they don’t realize that there is a difference.

To be drawn to something is to be gently pulled toward it, but to be dragged…that usually implies force.

Not all that long ago someone told me that they did not chose to believe the way they do. They told me of how they were disdainful of God one night and woke up desiring Him the next morning. I can’t think of a better example of being dragged to Christ than that.

Anyone that believes we chose Christ should heart that persons testimony. There was no choice in an overnight change. We don’t generally go to sleep despising something and wake up longing for it. Not on our own.

And yet…despite the fact that we are dragged to Christ…brought to Him when we would have never chosen Him on our own. We are brought to Him willingly. The Lord changes us so that where we once may have wanted nothing to do with Him…now we want Him more than anything. We long for Him. We desire Him.

Ralph Erskine (1685-1752) described it (salvation) this way, ‘with full consent against his will.’ I absolutely love that. We are brought to salvation with full consent against our will. In our human selves that doesn’t even make sense. There is no way for anything to happen with full consent against your will. You may give your consent to something you don’t want…completely unwilling to do it but knowing you must and so you give your consent…but you still give consent for it. You agree to it.

I think of the times my children had to undergo surgery. I signed those papers despite the fact that I did not want them to go through surgery but I knew that they must undergo surgery to heal what was wrong with them, and so I signed the papers, unwillingly, but with full consent.

That isn’t the same kind of consent against our will. That is knowing we really don’t want this to happen but that it needs to happen and so our knowledge of what will happen if ‘this’ doesn’t happen overrules our wants until we give consent. In salvation it is something we would never choose, would never consent to, and so we are brought to salvation completely against our wills.

We are taken captive by the Lord until our will is no longer our own but the Lord’s and as we are now completely in the Lord’s will we are in full consent of the salvation He places upon us against our will.

Oh, the convoluted situation that is. It defies everything we know.

There is nothing like that on earth except maybe the person that willingly agrees to do something they do not want to do while having a gun held to their head.

And there is your salvation. The Lord is holding us under His will, His bondage, as sure as the person held at gunpoint and forced to do what they do not want to do. Only when salvation is given, we are held against our will but are in the will so that we want the salvation we would never have wanted if we were left to our own devices.

We are people, living in the flesh. Our flesh wants a new car, it wants another pair of shoes, a new computer, a new movie, a new book, even a new driveway…what we don’t want is to give up all of our own wants so that we can aspire to live to please a God that tells us we must lay down our lives for others, that we must embrace hardship and give all that we have away.

What human minds wants to trade all the goodies of this world, all the aspiration to better ones self, to have a nicer home, a newer car, for a God that says we should sell all we own and give it all to the poor? A God that says we must give our life to find it?

In the flesh we do not want that, we could not want that. Our world even encourages us to want more of the things of this world by making us believe that we deserve to have more and better. But to gain salvation we must follow a Lord that didn’t even have a place to lay his head. And we are to be like Him.

We would never, NEVER, seek that on our own. It is human nature to look out for self and those we love.

And so the Lord drags us from the love of this world, changes our heart, and places salvation upon us. And he does so with our full consent, because he changes our heart so that we want Him instead of all the things of the world, and He does it against our will because if He had asked us before He changed our hearts if we wanted to give up all for Him we would have said no.