Sproul: Lazarus cooperated...

We read in John’s gospel that Lazarus had been dead for four days before Jesus arrived. The only power in the universe that could bring that corpse out of the tomb was the power of God. Christ did not invite Lazarus out of the tomb; He did not wait for Lazarus to cooperate. He said, “Lazarus, come out,” and by the sheer power of that imperative, that which was dead became alive (John 11:43). Lazarus cooperated by walking out of the tomb, but there was no cooperation involved in his transition from death to life.

In similar fashion, Paul says in Ephesians that we are in a state of spiritual death. We are by nature children of wrath, and according to Jesus, no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him (John 6:44).
Paul continues:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:4–7)

In our flesh, we can do nothing; left to ourselves, we would never choose the things of God. While we are in that state of spiritual death, walking according to the course of this world and obeying the lusts of our flesh, God makes us alive. After God makes us alive, we reach out in faith, but that first step is something that God alone does. He does not whisper in our ear, “Will you please cooperate with Me?” Rather, He intervenes to change the disposition of the hearts of spiritually dead people by His Holy Spirit.

Sproul, R. C. (2014). Everyone’s a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology (pp. 227–228). Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust.

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Berkoff: "The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. "

The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form. The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts. But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion. The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place w...

F.F. Bruce: ...know their father's will...

The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere, are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.” What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life. Bruce, F. F. (1984). The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the...

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