"During twenty years Jabin mightily oppressed the children of Israel, and in their distress they cried unto the Lord, whom in their prosperity they had forgotten. Adversities awakened in them a sense of their dependence on God, and brought out from their hearts a strong cry unto Him for deliverance from the oppression of their enemies." (page 343)
Notice that God used "adversities" as means to "awaken" the people to their dependence on God and bring them to "cry unto him for deliverance." The old Puritans and Calvinists, and many Arminians too, taught that sinners being "awakened" to their lost and condemned condition and the danger their souls were in, their coming under "conviction of sin," their seeing that they were sick and in need of a physician such as Christ, preceded being healed or saved or regenerated by Christ. I wrote a series on this subject of "awakening." This third article (here) in the series gives you links to the others. It also gives links to the chapters I wrote on "Conviction of Sin" in my long series "The Hardshell Baptist Cult."
Those Calvinists who deny any kind of prevenient grace are forced to push the experience of regeneration as far back as possible in God's dealings with a sinner. Thus, conviction of sin and awakening are seen as evidences of regeneration rather than steps to it. Thus they say the drawing and teaching of the Father is regeneration, rather than steps leading to it, and thus also must say that the "coming" to Christ that follows that drawing is not regeneration. However, it is clear that regeneration does not occur until a sinner has come to Christ and received him in believing in him.
In the third article in that sub-series on "conviction of sin" I cited from Elder Wilson Thompson and his book "Simple Truth" (1821). Thompson is regarded by the Hardshell Baptists as one of their foremost leaders at the time of their formation, and yet he also taught preparatory acts of God that occur before salvation. I cited these words of Thompson:
"We shall now proceed to show what men may experience and not be under the work of the spirit of grace. He may feel all that weight of guilt which the law of God charges upon him; and yet not be a subject of the spirits operation, for the law is the ministration of condemnation and death."
He wrote further:
"When the law was given, the people of Israel were awfully alarmed, with the terrific sight, the mountain covered with fire and smoke, the shafts of death flying, so that if so much as a beast touched the mountain it was stoned, or thrust through with a dart, and the people were sore afraid, yet not under the work of the spirit, for they could unite in making a golden calf to worship. Men may experience very severe and bitter sensations under the sentence of the law, and mourn with aching and heavy hearts, under the ministration of condemnation and death, and all be like the mourning of the murderer that is condemned to be hanged for his crime; he mourns for the miseries that he is exposed to, and not for the heinous nature of his crime; this sort of mourning has self-love for its parent, the thundering of the law has affrighted it; the fears of hell terrify it; and the thoughts of death and judgment fill it with dismay; so when Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment, Felix trembled. This sort of conviction leads men to act like Esau, who has sold his birth right; but when he saw that he was cut off thereby, he sought for a place of repentance in Isaac, but found none though he sought it carefully with tears; so men under this kind of conviction set about to seek for some place of repentance in God, by which the law of condemnation may be repealed, and its sentence revoked, and if they can imagine that they have prevailed on God to love them, and revoke the sentence of the law, upon conditions of what they have done, and what they now promise faithfully to do, they may conclude that they are christians, and upon their faithfully performing those conditions, all will be well with them; and thus they may have as much zeal for God as Israel had and no more according to knowledge than was theirs; in a word, if the fears of hell bears the greatest weight on the mind, we do not believe it to be the work of the spirit, or if our comforts are conditional, and depend on any thing done by us, or any of our faithful performances in future life, we do not believe it to be the work of the spirit; neither have we any right to believe, any thing to be the work of the spirit, but that which teacheth in the truth, and as we cannot pretend to show all the impressions that men may pass through, and not be under the work of the spirit; we shall in the third place proceed to speak of the impressions of those who are under the work of the spirit positively." (Simple Truth: Chapter 6)
As I have shown in previous chapters, if conviction of sin precedes regeneration, and is a preparation or step for it, then it is a case of prevenient grace. Jesus taught that people must first realize that they are sick and in need of a physician, or a condemned sinner in need of salvation, before they will avail themselves of the remedy which is Christ. That is what he meant when he said -- "they that are whole need not a physician but they who are sick." (Matt. 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31) It is also what he meant when he again spoke of the self-righteous Pharisees who thought not only that they were not spiritually sick but that they were such as "need no repentance." (Luke 15: 7)
Thompson admits that people who are never saved, and thus never were of the elect, do come under conviction of sin, do come to realize that they are lost and justly condemned, and yet who never come to repentance nor come to Christ by faith and receive his salvation. So, the question is, was this conviction of sin an instance of the grace and mercy of God, even though it did not bring them to salvation?
Watson wrote further:
"Means admit of a similar exposition. The Lord has gone out; before us also in them. He not only gave us His Gospel, but ordained means by which it would become savingly efficacious to all His chosen. Isa. 55, 11. No sinner, so to speak, can even travel along here, only as the Lord goes before him." (page 357)
That is correct. The Gospel must be reported to a sinner before he can be saved. Further, providing such means of salvation is an act of grace, and a grace that precedes salvation, and so prevenient grace in this sense is scriptural. As I have stated in preceding chapters, I do not think the Arminian or Wesleyan or Catholic idea of prevenient grace is right for this reason: they think preceding grace enables a sinner to believe that gospel because it liberates the depraved sinner from the bondage of sin enough to free his will. Those Calvinists who say that regeneration precedes faith are operating from the same difficulty. Both think that a sinner must be given ability to believe before he can believe. The Arminian view says this ability is given before regeneration via prevenient grace via the gospel, the Hyper Calvinist says it is regeneration that gives the ability to believe and therefore occurs prior to faith.
John Owen, the great Calvinist theologian of the Puritan era, in his work titled "The Nature, Causes and Means of Regeneration" (available to read here), rejected the idea that power to believe must first be given before a sinner can believe. He said (emphasis mine):
"The Scripture says not that God gives us ability or power to believe only,—namely, such a power as we may make use of if we will, or do otherwise; but faith, repentance, and conversion themselves are said to be the work and effect of God. Indeed, there is nothing mentioned in the Scriptures concerning the communicating of power, remote or next unto the mind of man, to enable him to believe antecedently unto actual believing. A “remote power,” if it may be so called, in the capacities of the faculties of the soul, the reason of the mind, and liberty of the will, we have given an account concerning; but for that which some call a “next power,” or an ability to believe in order of nature antecedent unto believing itself, wrought in us by the grace of God, the Scripture is silent."
I cited this in chapter eight of this series. How will theologians answer this question: "does a sinner believe in Christ and repent of sins because he has the ability to do so previously given to him?" The Arminian says yes, some saying sinners have this ability naturally, others, such as the classical Arminians such as John Wesley, say this ability is given to those who hear the gospel and experience some operations of the Spirit. Calvinists and Hyper Calvinists who teach the "born again or regenerated before faith" view likewise say that ability to believe and repent is given before believing and repenting. Both are wrong, as Owen and other Calvinists have stated.
The power to believe and repent comes from without the sinner, not from within, coming from God himself, and is exerted when the Spirit and the word are in operation upon a sinner. So Paul says that the Thessalonians believed when the gospel came unto them in power and in demonstration of the Spirit. (I Thess. 1: 5) He also told the Ephesian believers that they were made believers by the working of God's mighty power. (Eph. 1: 19)
In my series on Awakened Sinners I cited from Thomas Boston and his famous work "Human Nature In Its Fourfold State" where he said the following on "Regeneration" (which you can read here):
"Some have sharp convictions for a while: but these go off, and they become as careless about their salvation, and as profane as ever, and usually worse than ever; "their last state is worse than their first," Matt. 12:45. They get awakening grace—but not converting grace; and that goes off by degrees, as the light of the declining day, until it issues in midnight darkness."
He also wrote:
"There may be a wonderful moving of the affections in souls that are not at all touched with regenerating grace. When there is no grace, there may, notwithstanding, be a flood of tears, as in Esau, who "found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," Heb. 12:17. There may be great flashes of joy; as in the hearers of the word, represented in the parable of the stony ground, who "with joy receive it," Matt. 13:20. There may be also great desires after good things, and great delight in them too; as in those hypocrites described in Isa. 58:2, "Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways – they take delight in approaching to God."
"Awakening Grace" is prevenient or preceding grace; And, not all who are awakened or convicted of sin come to be saved. Thomas Boston was a Calvinist and yet he seems to have affirmed that regeneration precedes faith. I find that bewildering since he clearly put conviction of sin before regeneration and believed that many are convicted and obtain awakening grace but who are never regenerated.
Elder J.R. Respass (1831-1895), a leader of the "Primitive Baptists" and editor of the periodical "The Gospel Messenger" (which was later edited and owned by Elder Sylvester Hassell), wrote the following about the parable of the sower and seed or of the four soils:
"Brother B.B. Stallings, of Humbolt, Tenn., writes us that some people in his section use this parable to teach the doctrine of "falling from grace;" but to our mind it teaches the opposite doctrine, or rather the absolute necessity of grace in the salvation of sinners. The Jews were well acquainted with sowing wheat and barley. They knew from experience that it was necessary to have the ground broken by the plowshare to raise it; and that, therefore, the Saviour was telling the truth when he taught them that grain sown by the way or road-side would be unfruitful, because men would walk on and tread it down, and the fowls would devour it; and that seed sown on stony, hard and unbroken land would yield nothing; because, though it sprang up quickly, it could take no root, and that when the hot sun necessary to its maturity should shine upon it, that it would be scorched, and soon wither away. They knew, also, that seed sown among thorns, in a briar patch, for instance, would make nothing, because the thorns would choke it. All these things they knew from natural experience as farmers or husbandmen. They knew that the land must be enclosed or fenced, cleared of thorns, bushes and briars, and be broken up before the seed was sown; enclosed from the fowls and the tread of men; cleared of thorns and briars that would choke it; and broken up so as to absorb and retain moisture, and the roots have depth of earth to strike down into the moisture when the hot sun poured down upon it. But, like people now, they did not perceive the truth when applied spiritually. No sensible Jewish farmer would have undertaken to make a crop of wheat otherwise than as taught by the Saviour in this parable. Nor would he have undertaken to break his land until the first or "former rain" was sent by the Lord upon it; because the land, especially in that country, by the dry, hot summer sun grew, like the sinner's heart, very hard, so that it could not be broken until softened by the first rain. But land softened by the rain, broken by the plow, enclosed from the fowls and cleared of thorns, and sown, will be unharmed by the fowls, the feet of men, the cares of the world or the heat of the sun, and will yield thirty, sixty and one hundred fold. Any thing short of this thorough preparation will be fruitless. So in the way-side, stony and thorny ground hearers the Saviour shows the lack of grace, rather than the falling from it. And another thing perhaps he taught, and that is, that the fault was not in the seed sown, or the word preached, but in the sinner's heart. "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life."--John v. There were many of these kind or hearers in the Saviour's day as well as in this; and doubtless the Saviour spoke the parable for the comfort of his people then and his people now; that they should not be discouraged when they should see many, who had received the word with a temporary joy, turn back for love of the world, its honors or riches, or to escape persecution; that they should know that such professors had not received the word in a contrite and broken heart, and hence they neither understood it nor kept it. He asked his true disciples when many so-called disciples went back and walked no more with him on account of his hard and unpopular doctrine, "Will ye also go away?" but they answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life."--John vi. Thus the hot sun of trials and persecution that withered up the shallow letter hearers, only caused his good-ground hearers to take deeper root in Christ, making them feel more and more the necessity of Christ in their salvation; and thus they brought forth an hundred fold, whilst the others brought nothing to perfection. This briefly, Brother Stallings, is our understanding of Christ's teaching in the parable of the sower." (Written by John R. Respess in the GOSPEL MESSENGER, May 1885)
Notice the words "thorough preparation." He also sees the breaking of the soil to be the work of the law and which must precede the receiving of the seed before it can produce fruit. He does say that this law work, this conviction of sin, shows a lack of grace, but I assume he means a lack of saving grace, not a lack of common or prevenient grace. "Preparation" of the soil to receive the seed of the word must be seen as an instance of grace. He speaks of things that must be done to the soil "before the seed was sown" and these things must be good or bad. If good, if a means to a reception of the word and salvation, then an instance of preceding grace.
In the next chapter we will give a more thorough look at what the Puritan Calvinists had to say about divine preparations that precede actual salvation and are instances of common or prevenient grace.
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