Commanding What Is Impossible: Repent, Believe, Come¶

"Now he commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt 11:28). "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger" (John 6:35).

These are the church's standing sentences. They are addressed without qualification to whoever is in front of the preacher. The question is what they presuppose about the people who hear them.

The Reformed position¶

The Reformed answer begins with a distinction that is genuinely important. Obligation does not depend on ability. A command reveals what is right, not what is possible; God's right to command is grounded in his ownership of the creature, not in the creature's capacity. The Westminster Larger Catechism can therefore say that the fallen sinner is bound to repent and believe, and the inability does not cancel the bond.

The second move is the distinction between natural and moral inability, classically formulated by Edwards. Natural inability is a physical or constitutional incapacity — a man who cannot lift a stone. Moral inability is an incapacity of inclination — a man who will not lift the stone because he hates it. The unregenerate, on this account, is not physically prevented from believing; he is disinclined, and his disinclination is his sin. Hence the command is sincere: God really requires what the man really ought to do, and the man's failure is really his fault.

The third move is the distinction between the command and the gift. God commands all to believe; God gives faith to the elect. The command is the rule of duty for everyone; the gift is the secret work of the Spirit for some. Owen, Hodge, and Warfield all insist on both, and Andrew Fuller's The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785) made the case that particular redemption is no reason to withhold the universal command. Frame argues that "ought implies can" is simply false as a moral principle: obligation is grounded in God's authority, and the fact that a sinner cannot obey is the essence of his ruin, not an excuse.

This is a serious argument, and it has a long history. It is also the argument that John Gill and Herman Hoeksema pushed in the other direction: if the non-elect cannot believe, why command them? The Reformed mainstream answered Fuller, not Gill.

The tension¶

1. The inability in question is not the sinner's disease alone¶

The moral-inability defense works when the inability is only the agent's own corruption. It becomes something else when the system adds that God has decreed from eternity that this person will not believe, and that God withholds the grace which alone could change his inclination. Then the inability has two sources: the sinner's hatred of God, and God's decision not to heal it. The command is addressed to a man who is both unwilling and, by decree, left so. It is one thing to command a sick man to walk; it is another to command a man whose legs you have decided not to strengthen, while telling him his inability is entirely his own fault.

2. Culpability explains punishment; it does not explain sincerity¶

The standard reply is that the inability is culpable, and therefore the command is just. But the question is not whether the command is just. It is whether the command is sincere — whether the one who issues it desires the obedience he requires. A judge may justly command a man to pay a debt he cannot pay. We do not call the command an offer of help. The Reformed want the command to be both a just demand and a genuine summons to salvation, and the decree makes the second harder than the first.

3. The invitations are not commands¶

"Come to me, all who labor" is not legislation. It is a welcome. A welcome presupposes three things: that the one welcomed is wanted, that coming is possible, and that the one who welcomes will receive him. The Reformed reading must convert the welcome into a command in order to keep it universal, because a welcome that is not backed by a willingness to receive is not a welcome. But once it is a command, the "all who labor" no longer tells us anything about God's heart; it tells us about our duty. The text says "come"; the system hears "you ought to come."

4. Jesus' own lament is the test case¶

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem... how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" (Matt 23:37). Here the unwillingness is the obstacle, and the desire is thwarted. If Jesus speaks for God — and the Gospel insists he does — then either God's saving desire can be resisted, or the desire is not a saving desire at all. The two-wills distinction says the latter: it was a preceptive desire, not a decretive one. But the sentence does not read as a command that was disobeyed. It reads as a grief.

5. The command to "all people everywhere" is either good news or a trap¶

Paul tells the Areopagus that God "commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30), and in the same speech says God made the nations "that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him" (17:27). The Reformed reading of the Areopagus speech must treat the universal command as law — a demand that condemns — while Paul presents it as the summons of a God who is near and can be found. If the command is only a disclosure of guilt, then the "all people everywhere" is a universal setup: God demands of every person an obedience he has decreed most will never render.

How Reformed theologians have tried to resolve it¶

Calvin insists that the command is serious, that the sinner's inability is his own fault, and that God's grace is not owed. Turretin formalises the natural/moral distinction and argues that the command presupposes obligation, not power. Owen affirms duty faith while distinguishing the command from the gift, and treats the inability as moral and therefore inexcusable. Hodge argues that the sinner is free in the compatibilist sense and therefore responsible, and that the command is the expression of God's moral government. Warfield treats the universal command as the proper expression of God's righteousness. Murray defends duty faith and the free offer together. Packer argues that the gospel command is genuine because God's will of command is a real revelation of his requirement. Piper grounds the command in God's authority and treats the inability as culpable. Frame argues that obligation does not depend on ability and that the free offer is sincere. Helm defends the coherence of a universal command within a particular decree.

The weakest point in all of these is not the logic of obligation. It is the move from "the command is just" to "the command is sincere."

Why the tension remains¶

"Moral inability" is a stipulation, and renaming a thing does not change it. The question is not what we call the sinner's condition but what God has done about it. If God has decreed that this man will not believe, and has withheld the grace that would change his heart, then the command is addressed to a fixed outcome. The system can say the man is guilty. It cannot say, without qualification, that God wanted him to obey.

What this does and does not prove¶

This does not prove that ability is the ground of obligation. The casebook affirms that God may command what we cannot do in our own strength, and that grace is necessary for obedience.

What it proves is that "duty" answers a question about justice, not about sincerity, and that the Reformed account of the universal command is coherent only if the decree does not fix the hearer's response. If it does, the command is a summons to a door that has been locked from the inside by God.