Good morning,
This is one of the most foolish of all lies!
(Be sure to LISTEN to the Audio, as you READ the text below.)
Some of you think perhaps, because you have been attending a place of worship from your youth, and have been doing your best to lead a reputable and respectable life–that you shall obtain salvation as a matter of course. But it is not so. Saving grace can only come to you as the gift of divine mercy.
I have heard it said, and I have been horrified when I have heard so gross a falsehood: that there is something spiritually good in man; and that the object of the Christian minister in delivering the gospel is to take away the ignorance and folly that may overlay this innate worthiness, and so to bring out and train up the precious spiritual life which lays latent within every human heart.
This is one of the most foolish of all lies! By nature, there is nothing spiritually good in man whatever. The carnal mind is at enmity against God. We could rake through the ash heap of human nature forever, and never find the priceless jewel of spiritual life concealed within it.
Man is dead in sin. How long will you search the sepulcher before you shall discover life within the ribs of death? You may ransack the moldering bones in yonder cemetery for centuries, and never discover the seeds of spiritual life within the ashes of the departed.
If man were but faint; then we might perhaps, by a sort of ‘spiritual friction’ or electricity, arouse him to life. If he were lying in a state of coma; then we might by some ‘gracious surgery’, at length rekindle the embers, and make the life burn forth in its strength.
But when we are informed over and over again in the Scriptures, that man is not only dead, but that he is corrupt; then where is the hope of finding spiritual life within him? The living and incorruptible seed of grace is not produced in men by efforts of their own, or through the imitation of good example, or through early instruction, or through gradual moral reforms. For many a day might you preach a sermon on spiritual life into the ears of the corpse, before you shall thereby cause the skeleton to make any effort towards vitality.
Spiritual life is a gift–wholly a divine gift. It is given according to the good will and purpose of God. If the Lord gives this spiritual life to some and not to others, then He is perfectly free to do as He wills with His own. God is a debtor to no man. He owes nothing to sinful man but wrath! Divine Justice owes me nothing but damnation.
Sovereign grace alone can bestow spiritual life. If God chooses according to His good pleasure to give a new and spiritual life to His elect, then who can find fault with Him?
“Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated!’ What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Certainly not! For He says to Moses: ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then, it does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on Gods mercy!” (Romans 9:13-16)
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Tom Stearns, WASI Chaplain, 907 715-4001 chaplain@alaskaseniors.com
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