In the context, Edwards is seeking to show unbelievers various motives for coming to Christ. In the following, he underscores the fact of their salvability:
4. The possibility of obtaining. Though it be attended with so much difficulty, yet it is not a thing impossible. Acts viii. 22. “If perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.” 2 Tim. ii. 25. “If peradventure God will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” However sinful a person is, and whatever his circumstances are, there is, notwithstanding, a possibility of his salvation. He himself is capable of it, and God is able to accomplish it, and has mercy sufficient for it; and there is sufficient provision made through Christ, that God may do it consistent with the honour of his majesty, justice, and truth. So that there is no want either of sufficiency in God, or capacity in the sinner, in order to this. The greatest and vilest, most blind, dead, hard-hearted sinner living, is a subject capable of saving light and grace. Seeing therefore there is such necessity of obtaining the kingdom of God, and so short a time, and such difficulty, and yet such a possibility, it may well induce us to press into it. Jonah iii. 8, 9.
Jonathan Edwards, “Pressing into the Kingdom of God,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1992), 1:656.
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