Reformed Doctrine Daily Devotions

 ⁶⁸  Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have words of eternal life.

 ⁶⁹  “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”

 ⁷⁰  Jesus answered them, “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?”

 ⁷¹  Now He meant Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray Him.”  John 6:66-71. 

Like many of Jesus’ disciples, there will be others who will also just listen to the voice in their head and rely on their own sense of what is true, and they will withdraw from walking with Him.  Or, like the twelve, there will be those who will listen to Jesus’ voice and trust Him and His words, and they will follow Him.

“The chosen” will be drawn by “Irresistible Grace”.  “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased;  listen to Him!”  Matthew 17:5

We remember Jesus’ words in John 6:44.  “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him;  and I will raise him up on the last day.

We also remember Jesus’ words in John 6:65.  “And He was saying, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.”

Here is some of what The Canons of Dordt state about “Irresistible Grace”, the “I” in”TULIP”.

Article 6. That some receive the gift of faith from God, and others do not receive it proceeds from God’s eternal decree, “For known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world,” Acts 15:18.”Who worketh all things after the counsel of his will,” Ephesians 1:11.  According to which decree, he graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however obstinate, and inclines them to believe, while he leaves the non-elect in his just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy. And herein is especially displayed the profound, and merciful, and at the same time the righteous discrimination between men, equally involved in ruin; or that decree of election and reprobation, revealed in the Word of God, which though men of perverse, impure and unstable minds wrest to their own destruction, yet to holy and pious souls affords unspeakable consolation.

Article 7.  Election is the unchangeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of the world, he hath out of mere grace, according to the sovereign good pleasure of his own will, chosen, from the whole human race, which had fallen through their own fault, from their primitive state of rectitude, into sin and destruction, a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ, whom he from eternity appointed the Mediator and Head of the elect, and the foundation of Salvation.

This elect number, though by nature neither better nor more deserving than the others, but with them involved in one common misery, God hath decreed to give to Christ, to be saved by him, and effectually to call and draw them to his communion by his Word and Spirit, to bestow upon them true faith, justification and sanctification;  and having powerfully preserved them in the fellowship of his Son, finally, to glorify them for the demonstration of his mercy, and for the praise of his glorious grace; as it is written: “According as he hath chosen us in him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy, and without blame before him in love;  having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved,” Ephesians 1:4,5,6.  And elsewhere: “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called;  and whom he called, them he also justified;  and whom he justified, them he also glorified,” Romans 8:30.