Not Willing to Come (Jn 5:39)

Not Willing to Come to Jesus for Everlasting Life (John 5:39-40)

Unconditional Election

In John Chapter 5 there are two little known verses that are quite powerful and revealing. Jesus said this during the Old Testament times. The Church was not born yet. The Law of Moses was in effect. The only Scriptures were the Hebrew Scriptures of Genesis through Malachi or Genesis through Chronicles as most Hebrew Bibles ordered the books. Here is what the Lord Jesus said to Jewish legalists:

“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”

Many if not most Old Testament scholars today say that there was no concept of everlasting life by those who read and believed the Old Testament. The same view is held by most New Testament scholars as well.

shows that claim to be false. The Lord Jesus was speaking with very religious, yet unbelieving, Jews. While is found in the NT and is written to people during the Church Age, it reports on a time before Pentecost and the birth of the church. The people to whom Jesus spoke were OT people.

The Lord said that they searched the OT in order to find evidence that they have eternal life. They did not contradict Him. They did not say, “Eternal life, what is that?”

What He said also contradicts the Calvinist view of unconditional election.

Trying to Win Evrlstng Life by Law Keeping ()

Old Testament They Would Have Everlasting Life

()

When Jesus said “in them (the OT) you think you have eternal life,” He meant that the Pharisees and most Jews in His audience believed that by keeping the Law of Moses they would obtain entrance into the Messiah’s kingdom. Zane Hodges comments on in his commentary on :

What is probably implied here is that the Jews are searching the Old Testament so as not to overlook any commandment that it contains (note the words “in them”). Their idea would be that by minutely keeping God’s law they could obtain eternal life (note the lawyer’s question in ).[1]

Now if they were stuck in that belief and unable to believe in Jesus, then the Calvinist view of election might still be intact. (Of course, why are unregenerate people able to search the Scriptures? Can cadavers do that?) But what the Lord says next shows that they are able to understand and apply what He is saying.

The OT Shows He’s the Messiah & Source of Life

Testify That He Is the Messiah & the Source of Life

And the Source of Life

Why bring up the Scriptures if an unregenerate person cannot understand or apply them? Why practice apologetics (the Scriptures testify that Jesus is the Savior and Messiah) on unregenerate people if they can’t understand or be influenced? True, there are some Calvinists who are evangelistic and who practice apologetics. Calvinists like that are being inconsistent. But even among Calvinists who practice apologetics and evangelism, none would say that a non-elect person is capable of responding to the testimony of Scripture. Yet that is what the Lord shows in His words thus far. And what He goes on to say is even more of a show stopper for Calvinism.

The Word Unwilling Is Inconsistent with Calvinism (

Calvinists do not speak of willingness or unwillingness to believe in Christ[2] for everlasting life since in their view the unregenerate cannot be willing or unwilling to believe. The unregenerate are like rocks, with no spiritual sensitivity at all.

Dave Hunt comments that if the Calvinist understanding were true, then the Lord Jesus was making “an unjust accusation…at those who could not come unless God caused them to do so.”[3]

Remember too that according to Calvinism regeneration precedes faith and faith is a gift. So if a person is not elect, then he never will be regenerated and he will never be given the gift of faith.

George Bryson says concerning the unwillingness of the listeners:

Here our Lord specifically tells us why these men did not have the Father’s Word abiding in them. It was not because they were not elect or that they were not irresistibly or effectually called. It was not because they had not been subjected to irresistible grace. It was because they inexcusably did not believe in God’s Son. Here our Lord tells us why they could not have eternal life. It was not for any of the reasons Calvinism suggests. Rather it was because they were not willing to come to God’s Son in faith.[4]

The Lord Jesus here does not speak of faith as a gift He gives. Quite the opposite. He chides His listeners for their culpable unwillingness to come to Him in faith “that you may have life.” Clearly the Lord is saying that faith precedes regeneration. One must believe in Jesus so that he might have life.

Hodges commentary is very helpful at this point:

Their failure to find Jesus as the Christ in the testimony of God’s word was due to a fun­damental unwillingness “to come to [Him] that [they] might have life.” Very simply put, they do not believe in Him because they do not want to believe in Him. They “are not willing” (ou thelete) to allow the Scriptures to lead them to God’s Son. Their searching of the Scriptures would never bring them to Jesus, of course, if they were not open to the Scriptural witness. They refuse, there­fore, to hear the voice of His Father in their own Bible![5]

Remember that on multiple occasions Jewish leaders questioned Jesus about what the most important OT commands were. Why did they ask that?

There is no indication that they were trying to trip Jesus up. They really wanted to see what He would say.

The reason this was important to them is because they thought that if they kept the most important commandments, then they would live forever in the kingdom of the Messiah!

Good () & Bad () Ways to Search the Scriptures

(Bad) & (Good)

The expression searching the Scriptures is only found twice in the NT: and . Both refers to Jews who search the OT Scriptures, the only Scriptures existing during the ministry of Jesus and the early ministry of the Apostles.

“When they [Paul and Silas] arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” ().

The Jews of did not receive the word with all readiness. They were unwilling to come to Jesus that they might have life. Here was the long-promised Messiah. He was reaching out to them, offering them the free gift of everlasting life. And they were not willing to receive it. They were close minded. They had read the OT many times and they were convinced that good Jews will get into the kingdom—and that they were good Jews. They knew the OT commands and felt they kept them well enough to get into the coming kingdom. They didn’t need Jesus, whom they considered an imposter. He wasn’t teaching works salvation. Therefore, they rejected Him with no prayer and no additional searching of the Scriptures to see if what He was saying might be so.

The Jews of Berea were polar opposites. They too were probably shocked at the teaching of Paul and Silas. This justification by faith alone teaching probably offended them. The idea that Messiah had to die and rise again was new to them. But instead of being unwilling to come to Jesus, they received the word with all readiness to believe. They searched the Scriptures to see if what Paul and Silas said was true. The result was, “Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men” ().

They believed because they received the word with all readiness and then they searched the Scriptures. That is what the word Therefore is telling us in . The Jews of did not believe because they were unwilling to do what the Jews of Berea were willing to do.

Comparing the two texts shows that searching the Bible is only effective if the one doing the searching is open to the truth. Is he willing to come to Jesus that he may have life? Both the OT and NT teach that Jesus gives everlasting life to those who believe in Him. Yet most of the Jews of the first century rejected that teaching. So do most people who call themselves Christians today.

Are you willing to come to Jesus? Are you open to the truth? Calvinists don’t think that is important, or even possible. But the Lord and His Apostles surely thought it was both possible and vital.

The Calvinist Explanations of Are Inconsistent with Unconditional Election

Unconditional Election

John Piper uses this passage to tell born-again people that they should love the entire Bible, not just the New Testament (Desiring God website, Oct 4, 2009 message). But he does not discuss at all the issue of the unregenerate listeners being able to search the Scripture or of the fact that they are not willing to come to Jesus to have everlasting life.

In a sermon called “God’s Absolute Sovereignty” at the Grace to You website, John MacArthur quotes to show human responsibility. He says both God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are true and how that can be “cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God”

(http://www.gty.org/resources/articles/A167/gods-absolute-sovereignty). That statement by MacArthur contradicts Calvinism. How can the unregenerate be responsible to believe in Jesus when according to Calvinism they cannot do that?

Calvinist Leon Morris says concerning , “you refuse to come to me for life…stresses the activity of the will” (John, NICNT, p. 331). That is following the same line as MacArthur, without explaining how that is compatible with Calvinism.

Calvinist D. A. Carson also speaks of “the Jews refusal to come to Jesus for life” (John, p. 264), though he too fails to explain how this unwillingness fits within Calvinist doctrine.

J. Ramsey Michaels, also a Calvinist, makes this outstanding comment on : “By rejecting him [Jesus], they strangle the life-giving power of their own Scriptures” (John, NICNT [replacement of Morris’s commentary], p. 332). However, that comment is not consistent with Calvinism.

I could not find a Calvinist who explains how fits Calvinism. At best they say that there is a mystery at how the unregenerate are responsible for their unwillingness to believe in Christ when according to Calvinism they are constitutionally unable to believe.

Contradicts Unconditional Election

What the Lord Jesus said in contradicts Calvinism.

The issue of willingness or unwillingness is a non-issue according to Calvinism. The only thing that matters is whether one has been elected by God. If so, then they will be regenerated and then given faith in Christ as a gift.

But that was not what the Lord Jesus taught. He taught that unbelievers were capable of believing in Him. He taught that the issue was willingness or unwillingness.

is a show-stopper for Calvinism.

[1] Zane C. Hodges, Faith in His Name: Listening to the Gospel of John (Corinth, TX: Grace Evangelical Society, 2015), p. 116.

[2] Coming to Jesus in John’s Gospel refers to believing in Him. In His Bread of Life discourse the Lord said, “He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” ().

[3] Dave Hunt, What Love Is This? Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God, Second Edition (Bend, OR: The Berean Call, 2004), p. 118, emphasis his.

[4] George Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism (Santa Ana, CA: Calvary Chapel Publishing, 2004), p. 202-203.

[5] Hodges, Faith in His Name, pp. 116-17, emphases his.