Awake Thou That Sleepest!

Stephen Garrett stated (here) in regard to Ephesians 5:14:

"I see this as a serious difficulty for the Hardshells relative to this passage. Even if we apply the "command" to those who are already spiritually resurrected and alive, is Christ still not calling, with his "word" and"voice," his living children to "come forth" in a "resurrection"? Even if one makes the "resurrection," experience alluded to in the passage, a"conversion" experience, to a post "regeneration" experience, then is it still not a case where a command, exactly like the one he makes in regeneration, is made? Does the passage then not show, by any honest admission, that the command to be "converted" is the same kind of command as given in the work of "regeneration"? Is God still not commanding a "resurrection," of some sort, to take place in both regeneration and conversion? Why then is one experience "irresistable" and"efficacious" and the other not, seeing the same language is used by God in commanding both?"

I reject Stephen Garrett's general view of this passage for the reasons I will state on my blog, "The Primitive Baptist Apologist". However, I couldn't have stated the logical implications of this passage better for some ministers among the Primitive Baptists who would make moral sanctification and gospel conversion not of grace and fully optional, which is unbiblical.

However, I deny this error has been the view of knowledgeable Primitive Baptists, and I assert it is nothing less than a relapse into the hollow log heresy, which every single Primitive Baptist claims to deny.

2 Peter 1:3 clearly states that God gives all things that pertain to life and godliness, and it is God that works within the regenerate to will and do of His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12,13), perfecting them unto the image of His Son unto the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).

The degree of sanctification and gospel conversion is something in which the spirit of God leads the regenerate man's will (Romans 8:14), and yet it can be resisted to some degree, as 1 Thess. 5:19.

But there is a rudimentary sense, according to the grace of God, in which a fundamental presence of both is irresistible, not optional, and the necessary effect of the moving cause of Christ within; both in the sense of that which characterizes the regenerate in vital union with Christ in Romans 8:1, "...who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit", and as respect to a basic conviction and conversion of all the elect when exposed to the special revelation of God, as the same spirit that testifies that one is a child of God (Rom. 8:16), testifies of the truth in resurrecting power per Ephesians 1:19,20, 1 John 3:24, 1 John 4:4,6, Ephesians 5:14 above, 1 Corinthians 1:18,24, Romans 1:16, and 1 Peter 4:6.