 The
Proclaimer
God's Power To Save
The Bible nowhere
teaches that God operates by a direct impact of the Holy Spirit upon the
heart of any man to convert and save him. Such an idea is wholly
unwarranted by the Scriptures; it is plain superstition. Paul says, “I am
not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto
salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek” (Rom. 1:16). God, Christ and the Holy Spirit operate on the heart of
man to convert him through the gospel. God has placed within the gospel all
the power to convert and save man. It is the only means therefore which can
be used for the accomplishment of this end.
The gospel is the
perfect revelation of the mind and will of the rational God and his Son,
Jesus Christ, made known by the Holy Spirit through the apostles. It is
addressed to man, God’s rational creation, and is perfectly suitable to
change, turn and convert man into exactly what God desires him to be.
Man is an
intellectual, emotional, and volitional being; he thinks, reasons, loves,
hates, purposes and determines. Through the gospel God attacks the citadel
of man’s understanding, and through it reaches down to take possession of
his whole being. Through the preaching of the gospel the mind of man is
changed from unbelief to faith, “For faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by
the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). Through the gospel he is informed of the
love and goodness of God and Christ, and is caused to love them in return.
He learns also of the evil of sin and of the dreadfulness of its
consequences, and in repentance changes his will with regard to sin and
purposes to reform his life and live in righteousness. He then obeys the
gospel as he is “baptized into Christ” for the remission of sins (Rom. 6:3,
4; Gal. 3:26, 27; etc.).
When this has
been done the whole man has been completely changed in every faculty of his
being; he has been converted, turned to the Lord. He was, to begin with, an
unbeliever, living in sin, out of Christ and under condemnation. He is now
a believer, in love with the Lord, having ceased from sin and purposed to
live right, he is in Christ a new creature, and happy in the hope of eternal
life. And all of this was accomplished in the most rational manner through
the gospel, the power of God to save.
It is not
necessary for God to operate directly upon the heart of man through some
miraculous manifestation of the Holy Spirit. In fact, never has such a
thing been God’s power to save man. There is not one example in Scripture
of God directly operating upon the heart of a man to save his soul, for in
every example of conversion found in the New Testament the gospel had to be
preached for man to be saved.
There are several examples of conversion where miracles occurred such as the
day of Pentecost (Acts 2) and the conversion of Saul (Acts 9) and Cornelius
(Acts 10). But God did not tell these individuals directly what to do to be
saved for on each of those occasions God used men to teach those converted
to the Lord. The Apostles taught the 3,000 on Pentecost, Ananias taught
Saul of Tarsus and Peter taught Cornelius. Today God operates upon the
hearts of men in exactly the same way – through the preaching of the
gospel.
-- Clark Dugger
The Proclaimer
|
