ACTS BIBLE
A bonus study under Reformed Orthodoxy
Faith is God's gift, and the command to repent is addressed to every person alive. The men who held both are among those who carried the gospel farthest.
Every reference below was read in place in this site's own Bible text. Hebrews 11 is the spine: eighteen of its clauses say by faith, and ten of them name a man who then does something.
The chapter runs forty verses and names the people God counted righteous. Eighteen of its clauses begin by faith or through faith. Ten of those name a man: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham twice, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses twice.
Every entry has the same two parts. The faith comes first, and then the man moves. Abel offered a better sacrifice. Noah prepared an ark. Abraham went out, not knowing whither he went. Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Every person on the roll of the saved is doing something.
The chapter ends with people who were stoned, sawn asunder and slain with the sword, and it says of all of them that they received not the promise (Hebrews 11:39).
Hebrews 11 never says where any of that faith came from. It opens with a definition and then assumes it. Fourteen other passages answer.
No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him (John 6:44). No man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father (John 6:65). Born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13). By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ to believe on him (Philippians 1:29). Nine more say it in other words: Acts 11:18, 13:48, 16:14 and 18:27, 2 Timothy 2:25, 2 Peter 1:1, James 1:18, 1 Peter 1:3 and Hebrews 12:2.
In Antioch, as many as were ordained to eternal life believed (Acts 13:48). Lydia heard Paul, and the Lord opened her heart (Acts 16:14). The Jerusalem church heard Peter's report and concluded that God had granted repentance unto life to the Gentiles as well (Acts 11:18). Repentance is granted. The heart is opened. In each of these the believing follows something God did first.
Scripture also puts the verb on the person constantly. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved (Acts 16:31) is said to a man who has not believed yet, and it is an order. The person really does the believing. The fourteen passages answer a different question, which is where the believing came from.
Paul stood in Athens in front of pagan philosophers and told them that God now commandeth all men every where to repent (Acts 17:30). Not one man in that crowd was a believer, and the wording covers all of them.
The rest of Scripture says it the same way. Jesus opened His preaching in Galilee with repent ye, and believe the gospel (Mark 1:15). Isaiah has God calling look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth (Isaiah 45:22). Ezekiel has Him telling a house that had not turned to turn yourselves, and live ye (Ezekiel 18:32). Paul and Silas told the Philippian jailer to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31), and he believed afterward.
Those two hold together because of what a command is. It fixes the debt. It does not measure the purse. A man who has spent what he cannot repay still owes every penny.
Paul put the objection in his own mouth before anyone else could: Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? (Romans 9:19). His answer keeps both sides standing. Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? (Romans 9:20), and then the potter and the clay. The apostle who wrote that God has mercy on whom He will is the apostle who told the jailer to believe.
Augustine put the whole of it in one prayer: command what you will, and give what you command. Pelagius read that line and objected that God would not command the impossible. The councils at Carthage and Orange ruled against Pelagius and kept Augustine.
If the command goes to everyone, and nobody can keep it, and only those God calls are saved, then what difference does obedience make to a man who is never called?
Obedience saves nobody. Without faith it is impossible to please him (Hebrews 11:6), and Scripture calls even the plowing of the wicked sin (Proverbs 21:4). Nothing a man does puts him on the Hebrews 11 list.
Judgment still has degrees. The servant who knew his lord's will is beaten with many stripes and the one who did not know with few (Luke 12:47-48). It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, and for Sodom, than for the towns that watched the miracles and did nothing (Matthew 11:22, 11:24). The Pharisees who devoured widows' houses receive the greater damnation (Matthew 23:14). Every one of them is lost, and they are sentenced differently.
No one can point at the man the question is about. Cornelius feared God, gave much alms and prayed always, all of it before Peter reached his house (Acts 10:2). Lydia worshipped God before the Lord opened her heart (Acts 16:14). Neither one's obedience could be told apart from an unbeliever's until God gave the faith.
Obedience is owed for who God is. Duty tied to a payoff turns the command into a trade God never entered. The neighbour has a stake in it as well: Gentiles who never had the law do by nature the things contained in it (Romans 2:14), and a man who keeps his hands off his neighbour leaves him alive.
Paul faced this objection twice and refused it both times. Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? (Romans 6:1) has the shape, and so does Romans 9:19. Both get the same answer. The argument needs a command to bind only when obeying it changes the outcome, and no text on this page says that.
This pairing is old. Augustine argued it against Pelagius in the fifth century. Luther argued it against Erasmus in The Bondage of the Will. The Synod of Dort, whose canons this bonus study sits beside, says God gives the faith and that the promise must be announced to all people without distinction, and sincerely meant.
Jonathan Edwards preached it. Andrew Fuller wrote The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation to answer men who had stopped offering the gospel to the unconverted. William Carey read Fuller and sailed for India.
Joseph Hussey published in 1707 that the gospel should not be offered to the unconverted, and Herman Hoeksema carried the same restriction into the twentieth century. Where it took hold, churches kept the doctrine of grace and sent far fewer missionaries, which is the shortfall Fuller wrote to answer. Fuller's book exists because that happened.
Faith is God's to give, so no hearer is out of reach and no preacher has to guess who is worth the words. Because the command is addressed to everyone, the offer can be made to everyone honestly. Obedience is owed to God for being God, which makes it worth urging on a man long before anyone knows what he is.
Carey sailed holding every line of it. John Eliot crossed an ocean to preach to people the objection says he had no reason to reach. They went because they believed God gives faith through preaching, and preaching is something a man can get up and go do.