Sin is first and foremost a killer! If God had not intervened, anyone and everyone who sinned would die immediately. The only reason we sinners are not dead yet is because God stepped in and regifted us life; He did this in such a way that there was no gap between the time in which we humans sinned and the next smallest amount of time imaginable! From the outside, it simply looked like we had just kept on living.

God’s grace gave us time, our lifetime–whatever that may be, but grace does not erase all of sin’s damages; now they are seen (for what they are!) stretched out over time, our lifetime, and the entire history of our world.

In lesson 1 we saw that sin is a type of insanity. Sin deranges the entire human organism. It can do so only if it is allowed time in which to do its destructive work. The only reason we are alive and able to function is because as soon as there was sin there was a Savior.

Paul wrote in Ephesians:

Ephesians 2:1-2 NLT Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. 2 You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.

The realities of sin:

Sin causes death: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual death! If sinners received the real and full consequences of sin at the time that they first sinned, then they would have died soon after. If Adam and Eve had received these consequences, they would have quickly died, and we would never have existed.

But what if God had regifted them physical life, but not otherwise have changed their condition? Adam and Eve, though physically alive, would have been completely unable to positively respond to any gracious move that God might ever make toward them.

But it is just this problem, and others that may be like it or linked to it, that the Everlasting Covenant addresses!

The Everlasting Covenant

That covenant, an agreement between the Holy Trio, the Trinity, made in eternity past was that they would regift life to sinners and love them as much as They love Each Other!

John 17:23 I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.

And, that they would do all that needed to be done and could be done (given that they also would regift us with freedom to choose), they would do everything needed and possible to provide us a remedy so that we humans could be saved from sin and rejoin their family and live with them forever! Sin-free, with Them, forever!

But how did they choose to overcome the real problems that sin created? Even if they regifted us with physical life, we would still be unable to respond to their unfailing love! Unless they chose to not let any of sin’s damages strike us, we would be physically, mentally, and emotionally damaged, that is, our whole human organism deranged, and spiritually dead! Why? Because humans had voluntarily chosen to sin, to engage in an act of insanity and leave God’s family. Why leave the Giver of life?

Spiritually dead means there would be nothing inside us that would enable us to make new and better choices, and sin has no remedy within itself to cure us!

Ecclesiastes 8:8 No one has power over the wind to restrain the wind, or power over the day of death; there is no discharge from the battle, nor does wickedness deliver those who practice it.

But the Holy Three desired to create a remedy that would honor our freedom to choose. So how did they handle these very real and difficult problems that sinners had put them in? Specifically, how did they deal with our spiritual deadness?

The Bible speaks of God’s solution to the problem of sin:

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

When Christians speak of grace they often portray its many facets, such as:

Common Grace
Prevenient Grace
Justifying Grace
Transforming Grace
Empowering Grace
Forgiving Grace

Grace is like ice cream; it comes in many flavors! Justifying grace is when God reckons us righteous. Transforming grace is when he makes us into new creatures. Empowering grace in where God energizes us to live a new life, and forgiving grace is for when we fail to be like Christ. Why do sinners need these different facets of grace? Because we cannot do these things for/to ourselves!

This answer leads to what is called prevenient grace; the grace that comes before saving grace! Prevenient grace is well illustrated when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet even though they had yet to be converted!

It was written of Jesus, that having loved his own in this world, he loved them to the end or to the uttermost (see John 13). Even though they had not yet been converted, Jesus loved his disciples just as much as he loved God his Father! And God the Father loved these 12 men just as much as he loved Jesus (see John 17:23). They were loved even though Jesus’ 12 disciples were focused on being the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (see Matthew 18:1; Mark 9:34; Luke 9:46; Luke 22:24).

The OT reveals that sinners are born bent, twisted, crooked, burdened, without integrity, and with no desire to do what is fair and right. We constantly cross lines of good and do instead what is clearly wrong. We’re ruined, we consistently rebel against good authority; we’re confused and often create agitation for both ourselves and others around us. Neither are we faithful, but instead we are treacherous. We sin through mistakes, willful negligence and ignorance, and often sin because we did not give due consideration. And this is a just a short list of the meanings of some Hebrew words.

The NT says we are dead, enslaved, living in darkness, hard of heart, and alienated from God. And still this does not cover all that is said! In short, we’re a complete mess! Sin-damaged and spiritually dead!

John 6:44 NLT For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me,

Romans 3:9-12 NLT Well then, should we conclude that we Jews are better than others? No, not at all, for we have already shown that all people, whether Jews or Gentiles, are under the power of sin. 10 As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. 11 No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. 12 All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.”

John 15:5 NLT “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.

Romans 8:7-8 NLT For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. 8 That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.

1 Corinthians 2:14 NLT But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.

If this is what sinners are, how do we become both willing and able to follow God?

Jesus said it plainly, “For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me.” This is our starting point!

Many are confused as to what constitutes the first steps in the work of salvation. Repentance is thought to be a work the sinner must do for him/herself in order that he/she may come to Christ….While it is true that repentance must precede forgiveness…yet the sinner cannot bring him/herself to repentance, or prepare him/herself to come to Christ….The very first step to Christ is taken through the drawing of the Spirit of God; as man/woman responds to this drawing, he/she advances toward Christ in order that he/she may repent. Repentance is no less the gift of God than are pardon and justification, and it cannot be experienced except as it is given to the soul by Christ. 1 Selected Messages 390-391 [inclusive language mine]

So how might sinners be motivated and empowered to respond to the Holy Spirit’s drawing? Two solutions have been offered by religious people: 1) Absolute Predestination or 2) Prevenient Grace.

The first option, absolute predestination annihilates the need for free will, as God makes all of the choices regarding salvation. God alone chooses both who will be saved and who will be lost.

While in the second option, prevenient grace, God restores free will, thus giving people the possibility, perhaps even the probability, of choosing to being drawn to Christ.

Absolute predestination also dramatically changes one’s conception of common grace, which is a popular term used by Christians. What is meant by common grace?

Common grace is best revealed by this biblical verse:

Matthew 5:45 NLT For he [your Father in heaven] gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.

Common grace is just a handy way of saying that God, in his grace, gives good gifts of varying kinds to everyone, whether they choose to follow Him or not! But these good gifts do not exhaust God’s gifts to people. God gives many other rich gifts to Christians only, first, because He is good and He always has more to give, and secondly, because those who choose to follow God are willing to receive additional gifts and put them to good use. Christians have chosen to let God open their hearts to receive more of His gifts!

Even though all Christians would likely cite Matthew 5:45 to describe common grace it still is differently understood by religious people.

In Absolute Predestination, Common Grace:
Is given to every person.
Reveals God’s goodness.
May produce a (selfish?) type of gratitude in the sinner.
Which further condemns the sinner for his/her rebellion against God.
But common grace is NOT an invitation to be saved!

In Prevenient Grace, Common Grace:
Is given to every person.
Reveals God’s goodness.
Does produce gratitude in the sinner.
May further condemn the sinner, but only IF they persist in rebellion against God.
Common grace IS an invitation to be saved!

This so-called prevenient grace does many things for sin-damaged humans, like:

Prevenient grace gives us the ability to positively respond to God’s unfailing love! It does not position sinners like Adam and Eve before their fall, but it bridges the gap such that we can choose to rejoin God’s family and experience moral and ethical change for the better, here and now, while also waiting for Jesus to return so we might then be placed back into the same position and place as Adam and Eve were before they sinned.

Prevenient Grace:

This preparatory grace draws sinners close to God, lessens their blindness and resistance to divine remedies for sin, restores their will to accept God’s revealed truth, and this grace enables repentance.

Now prevenient grace is not a biblical term, but it is a biblical concept! Multiple examples can be found scattered throughout Scripture. The story of the Last Supper is a powerful example of the unselfish kindness of Jesus that helped break down the many barriers that prevented Jesus’ 12 disciples from being converted. But there’s more!

Scripture uses the idiom of being drawn to tell us what God is doing—He’s coming close to us and attracting us to Himself in order to overcome our sin-damaged state.

John 6:44 For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me, and at the last day I will raise them up.

John 12:32 And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”

Hosea 11:4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.

Jeremiah 31:3 Long ago the LORD said to Israel: “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.

Jeremiah 30:2 speaks of God’s grace; it is a grace that draws people to God, a grace that consists of (and is filled with) God’s unfailing love!

Prevenient grace not only draws sinners to God, it also illuminates them to see beauty in holiness, to be able to discern reality from fiction and lies.

John 1:9 The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

God carries the weight!

We cannot generate, create, manufacture, or crank out the faith we need. Faith is a gift from God to sinners!

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

Romans 12:3 Through the grace God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.

Prevenient grace even gifts back to us the ability to trust God again. Scripture teaches us that grace, salvation, and faith are all gifts from God. God is the one who meets our every need! As sinners we cannot fix our sin-damaged selves!

Ephesians 2:4-5 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.

What then are the general characteristics of Prevenient Grace?

1. It’s universal!

1Timothy 2:6 He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone.

Titus 2:11 For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people.

John 12:32 And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Scripture is clear that God loves everyone! Ellen White expressed it like this:

Wherever there is an impulse of love and sympathy, wherever the heart reaches out to bless and uplift others, there is revealed the working of God’s Spirit. In the depths of heathenism, men [people] who have no knowledge of the written law of God, who have never even heard of the name of Christ, have been kind…at the risk of their own lives. Their acts show the working of a divine power. The Holy Spirit has implanted the grace of Ghrist in the heart of the savage, quickening his/her sympathies contrary to his/her nature, contrary to his/her education. The Light that enlightens every person who comes into the world is shining in his/her soul; and this light, if heeded, will guide his/her feet to the kingdom of God. Christ’s Object Lessons, 385 [inclusivity mine]

Prevenient Grace enlightens and enables sinners to respond to God and rejoin His family. Why is prevenient grace universal?

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

Matthew 18:12-14 “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? 13 And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away! 14 In the same way, it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish.

Because God wants all to come to repentance and not even one to perish, prevenient grace is universal.

2. Prevenient grace is inescapable!

Jesus died for everyone!
All are drawn to Jesus!
God has brought salvation to everyone!
God loves the whole world!

Inescapable is not the same as irresistible. We may resist prevenient grace, especially God’s call for us to rejoin His family, but we cannot escape common grace or prevenient grace!

3. Prevenient grace frees our will!

Philippians 2:13 For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

Because we are sin-damaged, we do not have a free will, we have a freed will!

The fourth general characteristic of prevenient grace is:

4. Prevenient grace leads to saving grace!

Grace clearly has a progressive nature. It leads sinners/us on to better and still better things! When we react positively to God’s prevenient grace, we then embrace God’s saving grace.

It is true that prevenient grace does not forgive our sin or save us, but it gives us insight into the unfailing love of God so that we see His many kindnesses to us, and this leads us to be both convicted of our sin and gives us a desire to love God in return, and thus to become kind to others as God has been kind to us!

Now prevenient grace does not change us unfailingly, irresistibly because our wills have been freed, which has implications which we will address next, but prevenient grace likely leads to saving grace, which shows that if we do ultimately resist God’s unfailing love our resistance to God is even worse than what it might first appear.

But saving grace is just as progressive as prevenient grace; generally speaking, saving grace gives us first justification, then sanctification, and finally glorification, and these are clearly progressive states and events.

5. Finally, prevenient grace makes us responsible! Which has both a:

Positive sense
Negative sense.

Prevenient grace is simply the drawing, convicting, calling, enlightening, and enabling grace of God that comes to sinners/us before conversion. It makes adequate insight into God’s unfailing love inevitable, which then makes our repentance and faith probably, but not irresistible due to our freed wills.

Summary of characteristics of Prevenient Grace:

1. Universal!
2. Inescapable!
3. Frees our will!
4. Leads to saving grace!
5. Makes us responsible!
   1. Positive sense
   2. Negative sense

What then are the functions and benefits of prevenient grace?

1. It convicts us that God is good and we sinners are not! This leads to:

Admiration of God!
Loathing of self(ishness)!

Scripture tells us in John 16:8 that the Holy Spirit convicts us sinners of sin and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.

2. Prevenient grace also calls us to be saved and to become like Jesus.
   Drawn/Called—the idioms used to describe prevenient grace

John 12:32 And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”

2Thessalonians 2:14 He called you to salvation when we told you the Good News; so you can share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2Cointhians 5:20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”

Again, why does God need to do all of this? Why does God need to offer us common grace and prevenient grace?

1Corinthians 2:14 But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.

2Corinthians 4:4 Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.

We need Jesus, the light that lightens everyone who comes into this world!

Creation, Scripture, and Jesus, these three gifts can open our eyes to see and admire God’s unfailing love for sinners/us!

Prevenient grace leads to saving grace, which together give us power—to do what?

John 1:12-13 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave power to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

In summary, the functions of prevenient grace are:

Conviction: admiration of God and loathing of self(ishness).
Calling/Being drawn: to rejoin God’s family and become like Jesus.
Enlightened: to know God.
Power: the right and ability to respond positively to God.

Three benefits of prevenient grace:

1. It helps makes sense of Bible teachings.
2. It teaches us that God is good. He loves everyone and is actively seeking and working for their best good.
3. It highlights human responsibility, which supports human freedom and dignity.

I’ve been blessed with something Ellen White wrote about grace:

…it is impossible for us, of ourselves, to escape from the pit of sin…Our hearts are evil, and we cannot change them…Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their sphere, but here they are powerless. They may produce an outward correctness of behavior, but they cannot change the heart. There must be a power working from within, a new life from above, before men [people] can be changed from sin to holiness. That power is Christ. His grace alone can quicken [resurrect, bring back to life] the lifeless faculties of the soul, and attract it to God, to holiness. Steps to Christ, 18 [inclusivity mine]

The love of God makes Him kind even to sinners! God’s love for us while we are still sinners is the most amazing feature of His great love!

Questions

Have you responded to God’s many kindnesses to yourself and to others?

Have you asked God today if you could rejoin His family?

Have you ever heard of the term or notion Prevenient Grace? What do you think of the idea?