Eric Landstrom, “Is Resistible Grace Effectual?”

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Here is a point of Wesleyan-Arminian theology that most Calvinists don’t know about: While both Calvinists and Wesleyan-Arminians like myself hold to the doctrine of total depravity, the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism is that the grace in Wesleyan-Arminianism is BOTH resistible AND effectual.

When grace is embodied and acted upon, the person is saved. But what does rejected grace do?

The grace that God gives to all persons either:
  1. Glorifies the Lord through the good deeds, thoughts, and actions that are reflective of His image and reveal that He is the source of all that is good.
  2. Or reveals our Lord’s genuine, constant love and mercy toward those who ignored and rejected His ministry of grace throughout their lifetimes.
As such, at the Judgment Seat, the grace the Lord rained upon all persons ultimately either:
  1. Glorifies the Lord in and through a people whose thoughts and actions reflect the image of God; or,
  2. Upholds the justice and righteousness of condemnation, where the condemned stand self-convicted of the fact that the Lord continually reached out to them to draw them unto Himself, but they rejected all of His servants and even rejected His continual inward witness to the bitter end.

When resisted to the bitter end, the grace received throughout one’s earthly life is not an empty footnote—it becomes the very basis of condemnation.

At the Judgment Seat, the condemned will stand entirely self-convicted. The historical reality of God’s grace—the repeated, inward promptings of the Spirit, the quiet convictions, the external witnesses—will stand as an irrefutable testament that the Lord genuinely, lovingly, and mercifully reached out to draw them to Himself to the bitter end. Their condemnation is rendered flawless because they are exposed as individuals who actively chose to starve in the presence of an open banquet.

Those who resist the grace so lovingly provided spend their lifetimes building mansions they will never occupy and planting vineyards they will never harvest. They race toward judgment under the terrible weight of a self-imposed blindness. Thus, both in salvation as well as in judgment, resistible grace is effectual in Wesleyan-Arminian theology.