A Review Article by David Engelsma
Resistible GraceThe federal vision teaches that the saving grace of God in Christ is universal within the sphere of the covenant, but that this grace can be resisted and lost. Everyone who is baptized, particularly every child of believing parents who is baptized, is savingly united to Christ, although many later fall away and perish.
<span style="background-color:#FFFF00">Non-elect covenant members are actually brought to Christ, united to Him</span> and the Church in baptism, receive various gracious operations of the Holy Spirit, and may even be said to be loved by God for a time. In some sense, they were really joined to the elect people, really sanctified by Christ’s blood, and really recipients of new life given by the Holy Spirit. The sacraments they received had objective force and efficacy (Lusk, p. 288).
The threshold <span style="background-color:#FFFF00">Non-elect covenant members are actually brought to Christ, united to Him</span>, new life in the Spirit, and covenant membership in the family of God is actually crossed when the child is baptized (Lusk, p. 109).
God truly brings those people into His covenant, <span style="background-color:#FFFF00">into union with Christ</span>. They are in Him, to use Jesus’ words in John 15. They share in His blessings (think of Hebrews 6). They experience His love, but that covenant relationship is conditional. It calls for repentance and faith and new obedience. God’s choice was not conditional, but life in the covenant is (Barach, p. 37; the emphasis is the author’s).
