Matthew 23:37 is one of the passages most often cited in non-Calvinist arguments against Irresistible Grace. Jesus says, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" The non-Calvinist argument is that Jesus wanted to gather these people and they refused: God's gracious will toward them was real, and it was resisted. Irresistible Grace holds that God's saving grace toward those He intends to save always brings them to faith and cannot finally be resisted.

Jesus' Lament Over Jerusalem

Verse 37 closes Matthew 23, Jesus' last public teaching in the temple. Most of the chapter is a series of woes against the religious leaders: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" (23:13). Jesus ends the woes by tying that generation to Israel's long history of rejecting God's messengers. "I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify" (23:34), "so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth" (23:35).

Then the tone turns from indictment to grief. Jesus addresses the city by name, twice. He recalls how it treated the prophets, and He says how often He wanted to gather its children. The image is protective: a hen gathering her chicks under her wings to shelter them from danger. Then come the words "you were not willing," and judgment follows immediately: "See, your house is left to you desolate" (23:38).

Luke records the same lament ( Luke 13:34). He also tells us that as Jesus approached the city, He wept over it and said, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes" ( Luke 19:41 - 42). The hiding came after the long refusal. It did not cause it (see judicial hardening).

The Calvinist Reading

Calvinists give two main answers.

The first focuses on the wording. Jesus addresses "Jerusalem" but says He wanted to gather "your children." Calvinists commonly argue that "Jerusalem" here means the city's religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees the chapter has been addressing, and that "your children" means the people. On this reading, the leaders were the ones unwilling, not the people Jesus wanted to gather. The leaders obstructed the gathering, and the verse says nothing about any elect person resisting saving grace.

The second answer appeals to a distinction within God's will. Many Calvinists distinguish God's revealed or preceptive will (what He commands, and what pleases Him morally) from His decretive will (what He has determined will happen). People can and often do disobey God's revealed will. No one can overturn His decree. On this view, Matthew 23:37 expresses God's revealed will, His genuine pleasure in repentance, and the people's resistance to the outward call of the gospel. Irresistible Grace claims something narrower: that the inward, effectual call given to the elect always brings them to faith. So Matthew 23:37, the Calvinist says, is about a different call from the one the doctrine describes.

Both answers need a full reply, and the second especially, because it is the standard Calvinist explanation for every passage where God's desire is refused. Each depends on a premise the verse does not support.

Who Was Unwilling

The text does not separate the leaders from the children in the way the first answer requires. Jerusalem is the city that "kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it." That describes the nation's history, not a single group of officials. Jesus addresses the city as a whole and pronounces judgment on the city as a whole: "your house is left to you desolate." In Luke He says the city's enemies "will tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you... because you did not know the time of your visitation" (Luke 19:44). The children share the judgment, and Jesus gives the reason: they did not know the time of their visitation.

Even if the first answer were granted, the problem would remain. On that reading, Jesus wanted to gather people, and other people's unwillingness prevented it. Human refusal still stood in the way of the expressed desire of the Son of God, which is the very thing the Calvinist reading set out to avoid.

Two Wills and the Same Word

We affirm that people disobey what God commands; Scripture is full of examples. What we question is whether Matthew 23:37 describes a revealed command overridden by a hidden decree. Jesus does not cite a command here. He speaks of His own will and of theirs, and Matthew uses the same verb for both: "how often would I have (ēthelēsa) gathered your children... and you were not willing (ouk ēthelēsate)." The verse sets the will of Jesus against the will of the people, and in this case theirs prevailed.

The two-wills reading asks us to believe that behind this lament stood a second, decisive will. In it, God did not intend to give these people the grace that would have made them willing. If that were so, the final cause of their unwillingness would lie in that decree, and Jesus would be lamenting a refusal that God Himself had determined not to overcome. Jesus gives a different cause: "you were not willing." He places the failure in them. God says the same through the prophets: "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" ( Ezekiel 33:11). Paul applies Isaiah's words to Israel in the same way: "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people" (Romans 10:21, quoting Isaiah 65:2).

Nor is God's will refused because He lacks power. The hen does not force her chicks under her wings; she calls them. Jesus chose to gather by invitation, and an invitation can be refused. That is a choice the sovereign God made about how He saves, not a limit on His power (see free will).

What the Passage Establishes

The verse says that Jesus repeatedly wanted to gather the people of Jerusalem, that they were unwilling, and that judgment followed their refusal. It shows that God's gracious desire toward people is real, that it can be refused, and that those who refuse it are responsible.

It does not, by itself, describe how grace works inside a person at conversion, and a Calvinist can still argue that the inward call is a separate act. Answering that takes other passages. Stephen told the council, "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you" ( Acts 7:51). Stephen names the Holy Spirit as the one being resisted. We gather more of these passages in Men Resisting God.

Conclusion

Matthew 23:37 is Jesus' lament over a city He wanted to shelter and that would not come. The verse places the failure in the people's will, not in a hidden decree, and it sets Jesus' desire to gather them against their refusal, using the same word for both. It does not settle every question about how grace works in conversion. It does show that God's gracious will toward sinners can be resisted, and that those who resist it are lost through their own unwillingness, not through any lack of desire on God's part to save them.