Does God Command the Impossible?

Last Update: 2024, February 05

When interacting with Non-Calvinists, you may encounter arguments such as, “God would not command us to do what we cannot do,” or “What’s the point of preaching the Gospel if people can’t repent and believe?” Rest assured, these objections can be answered biblically. For examples, see here (external), and here (external). Nonetheless, you may still encounter NCs who will ridicule, “Repent! Oh wait, you CAN’T! Silly Calvinists!” In light of Scripture, we are called to renew our minds daily (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 5:16) so that we don’t fall into such foolish thinking and reasoning according to the flesh (Proverbs 28:26). Those who mock frequently overlook the fact that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart and yet commanded him to let the Israelites go, something he was unable and unwilling to do (Romans 9:17).

Why does God command the impossible? If He knows that sinners can’t repent without His intervention, then what is the purpose of Him commanding them to repent? To our finite minds, this action may seem pointless or even foolish! However, God has a higher purpose, and His ways and thoughts are not ours (Isaiah 55:8-9).

One example is the 10 Commandments. These commandments were not given to reveal our ability but rather to highlight our inability. They serve to direct us towards the Holy One of Israel—the sinless Lamb of God who fulfilled them flawlessly. God was aware that none of us could keep the commandments perfectly without fault (both the letter and spirit of the law), yet He commanded us to obey them anyway. One of Thomas Watson’s points is helpful here: “Though man has lost his power of obeying, God has not lost his right of commanding.”

Biblical Examples

Let us look at Deuteronomy 6:5. The commandment is to love God with all that you are. We know that this is out of reach for the uncircumcised heart (cf. Joshua 24:19), even with those that are saved, they still don’t love God with all that they are perfectly (cf. 1 John 1:8-10)! Note what Deuteronomy 10:6 says, “circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.” Without God changing the heart a person can’t genuinely love nor desire Him. Sinners are commanded the impossible because circumcision of the heart is the work of the LORD Almighty, “…the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6).

When the Scripture put forth a command, it does not always imply a sufficiency in us to obey or do it. Yes, it is our duty to do it, but the power is of God. We are to keep our hearts with all diligence, says Proverbs 4:23, yet apart from God we can do nothing (Proverbs 21:1; John 15:5)! The command is to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, yet the command ends with, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).

Obedience from the heart (Romans 6:17) is only for the Regenerate. We can’t obey from the heart unless God inclines our hearts to do what He commands.

“that He may [incline our hearts to Himself], to walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statues and His judgment, which He COMMANDED our fathers.” —1 Kings 8:58

“I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgment and do them” —Ezekiel 36:27

In some places God requires newness of heart (Ezekiel 18:31-32). Why? Because uncircumcised hearts can’t love Him as they ought. Yet it is said to be given by Him elsewhere (Ezekiel 11:19, 36:26-27).

“I will give them a heart to know me… they shall return to Me with their whole heart” —Jeremiah 24:7

“…you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” —Jeremiah 29:13

Let us not forget that “the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” (Luke 18:27). The duty is ours, but grace and power is of God (cf. 2 Timothy 2:24-26).

Commentaries

Though man has lost his power of obeying, God has not lost his right of commanding. If a master entrusts a servant with money, and the servant spends it dissolutely, may not the master justly demand it? God gave us power to keep the moral law, which by tampering with sin, we lost; but may not God still call for perfect obedience, or, in case of default, justly punish us? —Thomas Watson

“In some places God requires newness of heart [Ezek 18:31]. But elsewhere he testifies that it is given by him [Ezek. 11:19; 36:26]. But what God promises we ourselves do not do through choice or nature; but he himself does through grace.” —Augustine

“…though men are exhorted to cleanse themselves, this does not suppose a power in them to do it; this is only designed to convince them of the necessity of being cleansed, and to awaken a concern for it; and such as are made sensible thereof will apply to God to purge them, and make them clean, and create a clean heart within them: and this God has promised to do, and does do; he sprinkles the clean water of his grace, and purifies the heart by faith in the blood of Jesus, which cleanses from all sin, and is the fountain opened to wash in for sin and uncleanness…” —John Gill

“What God requires of us he himself works in us, or it is not done. He that commands faith, holiness, and love, creates them by the power of his grace…” —Matthew Henry

“We can do nothing, unless by a supernatural grace of God. It is God who gives the will, it is God who gives the power.” —John Calvin

“Your business is to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. God’s business is to draw His own to Himself.” —Spurgeon

“If God requires of the sinner, dead in sin, that he should take the first step, then he requires just that which renders salvation as impossible under the gospel as it was under the law, since man is as unable to believe as he is to obey.” —Spurgeon

If a man were bidden to sow a field, he could not excuse his neglect by saying that it would be useless to sow unless God caused the seed to grow. He would not be justified in neglecting tillage because the secret energy of God alone can create a harvest. No one is hindered in the ordinary pursuits of life by the fact that unless the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it. It is certain that no man who believes in Jesus will ever find that the Holy Spirit refuses to work in him: in fact, his believing is the proof that the Spirit is already at work in his heart. God works in providence, but men do not therefore sit still. They could not move without the divine power giving them life and strength, and yet they proceed upon their way without question; the power being bestowed from day to day by Him in whose hand their breath is, and whose are all their ways. So is it in grace. We repent and believe, though we could do neither if the Lord did not enable us. We forsake sin and trust in Jesus, and then we perceive that the Lord has wrought in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure. It is idle to pretend that there is any real difficulty in the matter. —Spurgeon (All of Grace)

“What if we do call you to come and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ that you may be saved? Does this imply that you have a power in yourselves to do so? No, in no wise, no more than Jesus saying unto Lazarus’ dead and stinking carcass, ‘Come forth,’ implied, that Lazarus had a power to raise himself from the grave. We call to you, being commanded to preach the gospel to every creature, hoping and praying, that Christ’s power may accompany the word and make it effectual to the quickening and raising of your dead souls. We also call to you to believe upon the same account as Jesus said unto the lawyer, ‘do this and thou shalt live.’ That you seeing your utter inability to come, might thereby be convinced of your unbelief and be led to ask for faith of him, whose gift it is and who is therefore in scripture emphatically styled the Author, as well as Finisher, of our faith.” —George Whitefield

Why preach the Gospel if man is powerless to respond? Why bid the sinner come to Christ if sin has so enslaved him that he has no power in himself to come?

We do not preach the Gospel because we believe that men are free moral agents, and therefore capable of receiving Christ, but we preach it because we are commanded to do so (Mark 16:15); and though to them that perish it is foolishness, yet, “unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). The sinner is dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), and a dead man is utterly incapable of willing anything, hence it is that “they that are in the flesh (the unregenerate) cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).

To fleshly wisdom it appears the height of folly to preach the Gospel to those that are dead, and therefore beyond the reach of doing anything themselves. Yes, but God’s ways are different from ours. It pleases God “by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). Man may deem it folly to prophesy to “dead bones” and to say unto them, “O, ye dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:4). Ah! but then it is the Word of the Lord, and the words He speaks “they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). Wise men standing by the grave of Lazarus might pronounce it an evidence of insanity when the Lord addressed a dead man with the words, “Lazarus, Come forth.” Ah! but He who thus spake was and is Himself the Resurrection and the Life, and at His word even the dead live! We go forth to preach the Gospel, then, not because we believe that sinners have within themselves the power to receive the Saviour it proclaims, but because the Gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, and because we know that “as many as were ordained to eternal life” (Acts 13:48), shall believe (John 6:37, 10:16—note the “shall’s”!) in God’s appointed time, for it is written, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power” (Psalms 110:3)! —A.W. Pink

Don’t stop because you can’t do this. Of course you can’t. Only God can open the eyes of the blind (2 Cor. 4:6). But the fact that you can’t make electricity or create light never stops you from flipping light switches. The fact that you can’t create fire in cylinders never stops you from turning the car key. The fact that you can’t create cell tissue never stops you from eating your meals. So don’t let the fact that you can’t cause the new birth stop you from telling the gospel. That is how people are born again－through the living and abiding word, the good news of Jesus Christ. —John Piper (Finally Alive)

“make you a new heart—This shows, not what men can do, but what they ought to do: what God requires of us. God alone can make us a new heart (Eze 11:19; 36:26, 27). The command to do what men cannot themselves do is designed to drive them (instead of laying the blame, as the Jews did, elsewhere rather than on themselves) to feel their own helplessness, and to seek God's Holy Spirit (Ps 51:11, 12).” —JFB

Responsibility Does Not Imply Ability

Some state that the since Christ gives general calls such as, "repent for the kingdom of God is at hand" (Matt 3:2) that it implies that one has the ability to come. But does it? No it doesn't. An example may help us here: When a police officer stops someone and has them do a field sobriety test he might command them: (1) to say their ABCs backwards or (2) to stretch out their hands horizontal to their body and walk in a straight line, etc. However, the commands do not imply the driver's ability to do them. The officer stopped the violator suspecting they were driving while intoxicated. The officer is not expecting a positive result from his tests! So, the commands he gives aren't meant to establish one's ability to do them, rather to establish further probable cause as to one's inability to safety drive a vehicle.

Responsibility does not imply ability! The Bible contains numerous general calls. However, these reveal our responsibility and total inability, not our ability. Even after regeneration, we need Christ to accomplish that which God commands (Phil 2:13).
— https://thirdmill.org/answers/answer.asp/file/45607

Because God repeatedly commands us to obey him, Erasmus argued, we [must] have the capacity or “free will” to do so. Erasmus’ argument appears to make sense. After all, I would not command my dog to read a book. I wouldn’t even command him not to eat a plate of raw meat set in front of him. (Perhaps a dog somewhere could obey this command, but that dog is not mine.) We never commanded our children to fly around the room, but we did tell them to stay away from drugs, because they could make that choice.

Luther replied that God had a higher purpose in giving us his law. The second half of Romans 3:20 says we are not righteous enough to obey the law, “rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” Luther wrote, “The commandments are not given inappropriately or pointlessly; but in order that through them the proud, blind man may learn the plague of his impotence, should he try to do as he is commanded.” Luther argued that even schoolboys know that commands indicate “what [ought] to be done, and ought, for sinners, does not mean [able].” —Randy Alcorn (If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil, chp.23)