Jonathan Edwards Selected Shor (continued)
instantaneous or gradual?
4. Whether the divine assistance or influence, by which men may obtain true and saving virtue, be sovereign and arbitrary, or whether God, in giving this assistance and its effects, limits himself to certain exact and stated rules, revealed in his Word and established by his promises? 13. Eph. 1:19-20, "What is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward, according to the working of his mighty power," or the effectual working, as the word signifies — These words, according to the effectual working of his power, we shall find applied to conversion, to growth in grace, and to raising us up at last. You have them applied to conversion, Eph. 3:7, "Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God, given to me, by the effectual working of his power." So likewise to grow in grace, Eph. 4:16, "The whole body increaseth with the increase of God, by the effectual working in the measure of every part." — And to the resurrection to glory at the last day, Phil. 3:21, "He will change our vile bodies, according to the effectual working of his might power, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself."
And that the power of God in conversion, or in giving faith and the spiritual blessings that attend it, is here meant, may be argued from the apostle's change of phrase, that whereas in the foregoing verse, he spoke of the riches of the glory of Christ's inheritance in the saints, he does not go on to say, "and what is the exceeding greatness of his power towards them," (i.e. the saints), which surely would have been most natural, if he still had respect only to the power of God in bestowing the inheritance of future glory. But, instead of that, we see he changes the phrase, "and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe;" plainly intimating some kind of