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The sermon presents a strong Reformed doctrine of salvation, emphasizing moral and spiritual inability rather than merely physical or intellectual inability. Fallen humanity does not naturally submit to the humbling terms of the gospel, and even conscience cannot produce saving repentance without the Spirit’s illumination. The Father draws sinners through the Spirit, who exposes self-righteousness, reveals the sufficiency of Christ’s cross, and enables faith. Those who come to Christ may find assurance in God’s everlasting love, election, and preserving power.
Theological center: Salvation is by sovereign divine grace: fallen sinners are unable and unwilling to come to Christ apart from the Father’s effectual drawing through the Holy Spirit, who reveals Christ as the only Savior.
Applications: Come to Christ in repentance and faith · Reject self-reliant religion · Trust wholly in Christ · Consider the nature of inability
Primary texts: John 6:44 · 1 Corinthians 2:14 · Jeremiah 13:23
“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” John 6:44 “COMING to Christ” is a very common phrase in Holy Scripture. It is used to express those acts of the soul wherein, leaving at once our self-righteousness and our sins, we fly unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and receive His righteousness to be our covering, and His blood to be our atonement. Coming to Christ, then, embraces in it repentance, self-negation, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it sums within itself all those things which are the necessary attendants of these great states of heart, such as the belief of the truth, earnestness of prayer to God, the submission of the soul to the precepts of God’s Gospel, and all those things which accompany the dawn of salvation in the soul. Coming to Christ is just the one essential thing for a sinner’s salvation. He that comes not to Christ, do what he may, or think what he may, is yet in “the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity.” Coming to Christ is the very first effect of regeneration. No sooner is the soul quickened than it at once discovers its lost estate, is horrified thereat, looks out for a refuge, and believing Christ to be a suitable one, flies to Him and reposes in Him. Where there is not this coming to Christ, it is certain that there is as yet no quickening. Where there is no quickening, the soul is dead in trespasses and sins, and being dead it cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. We have before us now an announcement very startling, some say very obnoxious. Coming to Christ, though described by some people as being the very easiest thing in all the world, is in our text declared to be a thing utterly and entirely impossible to any man, unless the Father shall draw him to Christ. It shall be our business, then, to enlarge upon this declaration. We doubt not that it will always be offensive to carnal nature, but nevertheless, the offending of human nature is sometimes the first step towards bringing it to bow itself before God. And if this is the effect of a painful process, we can forget the pain and rejoice in the glorious consequences. I shall endeavor this morning, first of all, to notice man’s inability, wherein it consists. Secondly, the Father’s drawings—what these are and how they are exerted upon the soul. And then I shall conclude by noticing a sweet consolation which may be derived from this seemingly barren and terrible text. I. First, then, MAN’S INABILITY. The text says, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” Wherein does this inability lie? First, i…