Mar 18
4
Men commonly teach that the Holy Spirit is striving to call all sinners to life and faith in Christ but that the Holy Spirit can be resisted unless man allows the Holy Spirit to save them. They use this scripture, among others, to support their claims. If God the Holy Spirit is trying to call all sinners alike to life and faith in Christ yet some die without faith, what does the Spirit’s work have to do with anyone’s salvation? Nothing! The stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, do always resist the Holy Ghost—that is true. It is because, “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2: 14) But that does not mean that God the Spirit can be prevented from creating a new heart. God always effectually, irresistibly calls whom he will. If the grace and power of God can be resisted then God is not the distinguishing factor or the Savior in salvation.
Yet, God says the Holy Spirit is the deciding factor, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”; “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” (Jn 6: 63; 3: 6-8)
Does puny little weakling man really think he can resist God the Spirit? God! God! God! You cannot stop the wind God sends! None can stop a hurricane! “Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north….And it is turned round about by his counsels: that they may do whatsoever he commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth. He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for his land, or for mercy. (Job 37: 9, 12-13) So none can stop God from working his will in men through his word, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Is 55: 9-11)
Will-worshippers object, “God would not save me against my will?” But man’s natural, polluted will is not for God to save him at all. Dead sinners are willing to be saved by the god of their imagination over whom they reign but not by the true and living God! If God does not give us a new will we will never bow and believe him. But God the Holy Spirit is able to create a new will which wills for God to do what pleases God to bring all glory to God, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.” (Ps 110: 3) Ask the apostle Paul, “beyond measure I persecuted the church of God…But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.” (Gal 1: 13, 15-16)
Do you see that if God the Holy Spirit is trying and failing then the Spirit’s call has nothing to do with anyone’s salvation? Such absurdity makes man is his own savior. Will-worshippers have to save their god, but God alone saves his people!
Clay Curtis.