The Work of the Holy Spirit in Regeneration

This is from John Owen's book called, The Holy Spirit. Owen starts this paragraph by explaining how the Arminian's or Semi-Pelagians outline the work of the Holy Spirit in an individual's salvation. Owen then explains how this does not fit scripture or traditional theology. In the second paragraph, Owen points out that Arminians pray for conversion for themselves and others like a Calvinist. It would be ludicrous to pray for a person' conversion, if God is helpless to change that person's heart.

It is indeed pretended by some, that grace, in the dispensation of the word, does work really and efficiently, especially by illumination and excitation of the mind and affections; and if, upon this, the will exerts itself in the choice of that which is good, then the grace thus administered concurs with it, and assists it to perfect its act, and so, that the whole work is of grace. So pleaded the Semi-Pelagians, and so do others still. Now this is, in effect, to overthrow the whole grace of Jesus Christ, and to render it useless; for it ascribes to man the honour of his conversion, his own will being the principal cause of it. It makes a man to beget himself anew, or to be born again of himself; to make himself differ from others, by that which, in a special manner, he has not received.

This is not all that we pray for, when we beg effectual grace for ourselves or others. Surely he must be very indifferent in this matter, who only prays that God would persuade him or others to believe and to obey, to be converted, or to convert themselves. The Church of God has always prayed that God would work these things in us; and those who have a real concern in them, do pray continually that God would effectually work them in their hearts; that he would convert them; that he would create a clean heart, and renew a right Spirit in them; that he would give them faith, and increase it in them; and that in all these things he would work in them by the exceeding greatness of his power, both to will and to do, according to his good pleasure. This argument was much pressed on the Pelagians by the fathers; and there is not a Pelagian in the world who ever sincerely prayed for grace and divine assistance, with a sense of his want of it, but his prayers contradicted his profession. Indeed, for any person to continue praying with importunity and fervency for what is in his own power, and can never be effected but by his own own power, is absurd and ridiculous: and they do but mock God, who pray to him to do that for them which they can do for themselves, and which God cannot do for them, but only as they choose to do it for themselves. This, some men of late, as it seems, wisely observing, begin to reproach and mock at the prayers of Christians. (The Holy Spirit: His Gifts and Power, John Owen, p. 209)

How God Uses Suffering in Building His Church

Jonathan Edwards comments on 1 Kings 6:7. He notices how the Old Testament temple is a type of the Church, which is the holy temple of the Lord (Ephesians 2:19-22). He points out that God uses affliction to smooth and shape the individual blocks (the people of God) to fit together. We are being grown together into the temple of the Lord by God.

1 Kings vi. 7. “And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron, heard in the house while it was in building.” This temple represents the church of God, who are called God’s temple, or spiritual house; Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone, and all the saints as so many stones. Particularly, by Solomon’s temple is meant the church triumphant, as by the tabernacle, the church militant, by the exact finishing, squaring, and smoothing of these stones before they were brought thither, represents the perfection of the saints in glory; heaven is not a place to prepare them, they are all prepared before they come there; they come perfectly sinless and holy into heaven; this world is the place where God hews them, and squares them, by his prophets and ministers, by the reproofs and warnings of his word, which God compares to a hammer, and by persecutions and afflictions. There shall be no noise of those tools heard in heaven, but all the lively strains of this spiritual and glorious building are exactly fitted, framed, and polished before they come there.(The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 15, 16