The Power of God In The Salvation of His People # 4

The Power of God In The Salvation of His People # 4

Unbelief is far, far more than entertaining an erroneous conception of God's way of salvation - it is a species of hatred against Him. So faith in Christ is far more than the mind assenting to all that is said of Him in the Scriptures. The demons do that, but it does not save them. Saving faith is not only the heart of my acceptance before God - but it is also the heart being weaned from every other object that competes with Him for my affections. Saving faith is that "which works by lover", a love which is evidenced by keeping His commandments. Therefore, where there is a believing heart which is devoted to Christ, esteeming Him high above self and the world, a mighty miracle of grace has been wrought in the soul.

6. The Power of God in Communicating a SENSE OF PARDON

When a soul has been sorely wounded by the "arrows of the Almighty" (Job 6:4), when the ineffable light of the thrice holy God has shone into our dark hearts, revealing their unspeakable filthiness and corruption; when our innumerable iniquities have been made to stare us in the face, until the convicted sinner has been made to realize he is fit only for hell, and sees himself even now on the very brink of it; when he is brought to feel that he has provoked God so sorely that he greatly fears he has sinned beyond all possibility of forgiveness (and unless your soul has passed through such experiences, my readers, you have never been born again) - then nothing but divine power can raise that soul out of abject despair and create in it a hope of mercy!

To lift the stricken sinner above those dark waters that have so terrified him, to bestow the light of comfort as well as the light of conviction into a heart filled with worse than Egyptian darkness, is an act of Omnipotence! God alone can heal the heart which He has wounded, and speak peace to the raging tempest within.

Men may count up the promises of God until they are as old as Methuselah, but it will avail them nothing until a divine hand shall pour in "the balm of Gilead." The sinner is no more able to apply to himself the Word of divine comfort when he is under the terrors of God's law, and writhing beneath the strokes of God's convicting Spirit - than he is able to resurrect the moldering bodies in our cemeteries. To "restore the joy of salvation" was in David's judgment an act of sovereign power equal to that of creating a clean heart (Psalm 51:10).

All the doctors of divinity put together, are as incapable of healing a wounded spirit as are the physicians of medicine of animating a corpse. To silence a tempestuous conscience, is a mightier performance than the Saviour's stilling the stormy winds and raging waves, though it is not to be expected that any will grant the truth of this who are in themselves strangers to such an experience. As nothing but infinite power can remove the guilt of sin - so nothing but infinite power can remove the despairing sense of it!

7. The Power of God in Actually CONVERTING a Soul

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" (Jere. 13:23). No, indeed, though he may paint or cover them over. So, one out of Christ may restrain the outward acts of sin, but he cannot mortify the inward principle of it. To turn water into wine was indeed a miracle - but to turn fire into water would be a greater one. To create man out of the dust of the ground was a work of divine power - but to re-create a man so that a sinner becomes a saint, a lion is changed into a lamb, and enemy transformed into a friend, hatred is melted into love - is a far greater wonder of Omnipotence.

The miracle of conversion, which is effected by the Spirit through the Gospel, is described thus, "For the weapons of our warfare (that is, the preachers) are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:4-5).

Well has it been said, "To dispossess a man of his self-esteem and self-sufficiency; to make room for God in the heart where there was none but for sin, as dear to him as himself; to hurl down pride of nature; to make stout imaginations stoop to the Cross; to make designs of self-advancement sink under a zeal for the glory of God and an overruling design of His honor - is not to be ascribed to any but to an outstretched arm wielding the sword of the Spirit. To have a heart full of the fear of God, which was just before filled with contempt of His wisdom; to have a hatred of his habitual lustings that had brought him in much sensitive pleasure; to loathe them; to live by faith in and obedience to the Redeemer, who before was so heartily under the dominion of satan and self- is a triumphant act of infinite power that can subdue all things to itself".

~A. W. Pink~

(continued with # 5)