Malachi 3:7
Malachi 3:7 (see also Zechariah 1:3)
“From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’”
Calvinists teach a doctrine of Total Inability, which reasons that due to Total Depravity, Israel cannot “return” to God, so that He, in turn, will “return” return to them, even though Scripture actually speaks in just this way:
Isaiah 65:2: “I have spread out My hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in the way which is not good, following their own thoughts, a people who continually provoke Me to My face.”
Isaiah 55:6: “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.”
What Calvinism requires is the reverse of the text, insomuch that God must first return to them, for them to irresistibly return to Him, through an unconscious, unilateral, secret regeneration, given only to certain, mysteriously selected individuals. So the only way that a Calvinist could really explain this passage is by pleading the infamous “Revealed Will” vs. “Secret Will” theory. However, such pleadings are rarely convincing. The more plausible explanation is that where God leads, God enables, so that when God says, “return to Me,” He is enabling Israel to do so, and that’s hardly a big leap.
