According to John 6:44 and 6:65, no man has the ability to come to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation unless and until God the Father graciously grants him this ability and effectually draws him to Christ. The word draw in John 6:44 and 12:32 means "to drag or pull by inward power or divine impulse without meeting with any resistance or opposition from the person or thing being dragged or pulled." These verses, then, do not teach that some or all men have the natural ability to come to Christ if they are only willing to do so, but rather that no man is able to come to.

Christ at all until he is made willing to do so by being effectually drawn to Him by God the Father. Based upon a misunderstanding of John 12:32, many students of the Bible believe that all men without exception are given the ability to come to Christ and are drawn or attracted toward Him in some general sense by God the Father. These Bible students also are of the opinion that all men, by an act of their supposed free will, can successfully resist or oppose this divine drawing or attracting power and thereby thwart or defeat God’s intention or purpose. This common misunderstanding is reflected in the following words from Arminian Baptist writer John R. Rice: "Hyper-Calvinists insist that man is fallen, depraved, dead in trespasses and in sin. That is all true. They say that a sinner, unaided, cannot turn to Christ, and that is true. But they ignore and fail to see this other great truth. Every lost sinner in the world is called, is attracted, is moved, so that he could repent and be saved" (The Son of God, p. 252). The same confusion is demonstrated in the following quotation from Arminian Baptist author Curtis Hutson: "Some Calvinists use John 6:44 in an effort to prove total inability . . . But the Bible makes it plain in John 12:32 that Christ will draw all men unto Himself . . . All men are drawn to Christ, but not all men will trust Christ as Saviour" (Why I Disagree With All Five Points of Calvinism, pp. 5-6). In John 12:32, however, the expression "all men" refers to all elect men without distinction, or elect men of all nations, kindreds, peoples, and tongues (Rev. 7:9), not to all men without exception. These elect men from every part of the globe are inwardly and spiritually dragged or pulled by God the Father to God the Son, and they offer no resistance or opposition as they come to the Lord Jesus Christ in repentance and faith.

The popular Calvinistic Baptist writer Arthur W. Pink states it correctly when he writes as follows: "The ‘all’ plainly refers to all of God’s elect. The scope of the word ‘all’ here is precisely the same as in John 6:45—‘And they shall be all taught of God.’ It is the same ‘all’ as that which the Father has given to Christ (John. 6:37)" (Exposition of the Gospel of John, p. 274). Elder Tom Ross, a Sovereign Grace Landmark Missionary Baptist author, adds the following truthful insight: "It is obvious from the general teaching of the Scriptures that when Christ died He did not draw all men to Himself in a saving relationship. What this verse (John 12:32) is teaching is that the power of Christ’s saving work will draw all kinds of men from among many nations. To believe otherwise you must deny what happens in Matthew 25:41 when Jesus says to the goats: ‘Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels’" (Abandoned Truth: The Doctrines of Grace, p. 150).