There are many people in the Christian world today who seem to think that conversion is such an easy thing to accomplish, especially in the context of gospel preaching. It is supposed by many ministers that all that must be done is to woo the person into some sort of emotional state. And in so doing, have the hearer experience some sort of emotional need in order to seek Christ and ask Him into his heart.
How far is this from the truth.
For the sinner has more problems than that of mere emotional need. The sinner has a greater problem than that of needing the acceptance and love that Christ provides.
What sinners must realize, and if you dear reader are that of an unsaved person, realize that your condition is far, far more dire than being “incomplete” in this life. Neither is spiritual sickness the problem.
The main problem is spiritual deadness. That sinners are in fact dead in sin, in enmity against God. Lost, with the fierceness of the wrath of God every burning against them.
Do you see this in yourself, dear reader?
God’s Wrath is Coming. Are you Ready?
I pray thee, repent and believe the gospel, that you may be brought from death to life. The God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ is a perfect Savior. No matter how vile and wicked you may be, He can save even such a one as you.
If only the professing Christians of this untoward generation could begin to obtain some adequate conception of the real condition of every man by nature, they might be less inclined to cavil against the teaching that nothing short of a miracle of grace can ever qualify any sinner to believe unto the saving of his soul.
If they could only see that the heart’s attitude towards God of the most refined and moral is not a whit different from that of the most vulgar and vicious; that he who is most kind and benevolent toward his fellow creatures has no more real desire after Christ than has the most selfish and brutal; then it would be evident that Divine power must operate to change the heart.
Divine power was needed to create, but much greater power is required to regenerate a soul: creation is only the bringing of something out of nothing, but regeneration is the transforming not only of an unlovely object, but of one that resists with all its might the gracious designs of the heavenly Potter.
It is not simply that the Holy Spirit approaches a heart in which there is no love for God, but He finds it filled with enmity against Him, and incapable of being subject to His law (Romans 8:7).
True, the individual himself maybe quite unconscious of this terrible fact, yea, ready indignantly to deny it. But that is easily accounted for. If he has heard little or nothing but the love, the grace, the mercy, the goodness of God, it would indeed be surprising if he hated Him.
But once the God of Scripture is made known to him in the power of the Spirit…
…once he is made to realize that God is the Governor of this world, demanding unqualified submission to all His laws; that He is inflexibly just, and “will by no means clear the guilty”;
…that He is sovereign, and loves whom He pleases and hates whom He wills;
…that so far from being an easy-going, indulgent Creator, who winks at the follies of His creatures, He is ineffably holy, so that His righteous wrath burns against all the workers of iniquity…
—then will people be conscious of indwelling enmity surging up against Him. And nothing but the almighty power of the Spirit can overcome that enmity and bring any rebel truly to love the God of Holy Writ.
Rightly did Thomas Goodwin the Puritan say, “A wolf will sooner marry a lamb, or a lamb a wolf, than ever a carnal heart be subject to the law of God, which was the ancient husband of it (Romans 7:6). It is the turning of one contrary into another.
To turn water into wine, there is some kind of symbolizing, yet that is a miracle. But to turn a wolf into a lamb, to turn fire into water, is a yet greater miracle. Between nothing and something there is an infinite distance, but between sin and grace there is a greater distance than can be between nothing and the highest angel in heaven . . .
To destroy the power of sin in a man’s soul is as great a work as to take away the guilt of sin. It is easier to say to a blind man, ‘See,’ and to a lame man, ‘Walk,’ than to say to a man that lies under the power of sin, ‘Live, be holy,’ for there is that that will not be subject.”
In 2 Corinthians 10:4, the apostle describes the character of that work in which the true servants of Christ are engaged. It is a conflict with the forces of Satan. The weapons of their warfare are “not carnal”—as well might modern soldiers go forth equipped with only wooden swords and paper shields as preachers think to liberate the Devil’s captives by means of human leaning, worldly methods, touching anecdotes, attractive singing, and so on.
No, “their weapons” are the “word of God” and “all prayer” (Eph 6:17-18); and even these are only mighty “through God,” that is by His direct and special blessing of them to particular souls. In what follows, a description is given of where the might of God is seen, namely in the powerful opposition which it meets with and vanquishes; “to the pulling down of strong holds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
Herein lies the power of God when He is pleased thus to put it forth in the saving of a sinner.
The heart of that sinner is fortified against Him: it is steeled against His holy demands, His righteous claims.
It is determined not to submit to His law, nor to abandon those idols which it prohibits.
That haughty rebel has made up his mind that he will not turn away from the delights of this world and the pleasure of sin and give God the supreme place in his affections.
But God has determined to overcome his sinful opposition, and transform him into a loving and loyal subject. The figure here used is that of a besieged town—the heart. Its “strongholds”—the reigning power of fleshly and worldly lusts—are “pulled down”; self-will is broken, pride is subdued, and the defiant rebel is made a willing captive to “the obedience of Christ”! “Mighty through God” points to this miracle of grace.
“…and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places…”—Ephesians 1:19-20
There is one other detail pointed by the analogy drawn in Ephesians 1:19-20, which exemplifies the mighty power of God, namely “and set Him [Christ] at His own right hand in the heavenly places.” The members of Christ’s mystical body are predestinated to be conformed to the glorious image of their glorified Head: in measure, now; perfectly, in the day to come. The ascension of Christ was contrary to nature, being opposed by the law of gravitation. But the power of God overcame that opposition, and translated His resurrected Son bodily into heaven.
In like manner, His grace produces in His people that which is contrary to nature, overcoming the opposition of the flesh, and drawing their hearts unto things above.
How we would marvel if we saw a man extend his arms and suddenly leave the earth, soaring upward into the sky. Yet still more wonderful is it when we behold the power of the Spirit causing a sinful creature to rise above temptations, worldliness and sin, and breathe the atmosphere of heaven; when a human soul is made to disdain the things of earth and find its satisfaction in things above.
The historical order in connection with the Head in Ephesians 1:19-20, is also the experimental order with regard to the members of His body. Before setting His Son at His own right hand in the heavenlies, God raised Him from the dead; so before the Holy Spirit fixes the heart of a sinner upon Christ He first quickens him into newness of life.
There must be life before there can be sight, believing, or good works performed. One who is physically dead is incapable of doing anything; so he who is spiritually dead is incapable of any spiritual exercises. First the giving of life unto dead Lazarus, then the removing of the grave-clothes which bound him hand and foot. God must regenerate before there can be a “new creature in Christ Jesus.” The washing of a child follows its birth.
When spiritual life has been communicated to the soul, that individual is now able to see things in their true colours. In God’s light he sees light (Psalm 36:9). He is now given to perceive (by the Holy Spirit) what a lifelong rebel he has been against his Creator and Benefactor:
That instead of making God’s will his rule he has gone his own way;
That instead of having before him God’s glory he has sought only to please and gratify self.
Even though he may have been preserved from all the grosser outward forms of wickedness, he now recognizes that he is a spiritual leper, a vile and polluted creature, utterly unfit to draw near, still less to dwell with, Him who is ineffably holy;
And such an apprehension makes him feel that his case is hopeless.
There is a vast difference between hearing or reading of what conviction of sin is and being made to feel it in the depths of one’s own soul. Multitudes are acquainted with the theory who are total strangers to the experience of it: One may read of the sad effects of war, and may agree that they are indeed dreadful; but when the enemy is at one’s own door, plundering his goods, firing his home, slaying his dear ones, he is far more sensible of the miseries of war than ever he was (or could be) previously. So an unbeliever may hear of what a dreadful state the sinner is in before God, and how terrible will be the sufferings of hell; but when the Spirit brings home to his own heart its actual condition, and makes him feel the heat of God’s wrath in his own conscience, he is ready to sink with dismay and despair.
Reader, do you know anything of such an experience?
Only thus is any soul prepared truly to appreciate Christ. They that are whole need not a physician.
The one who has been savingly convicted is made to realize that none but the Lord Jesus can heal one so desperately diseased by sin;
That He alone can impart that spiritual health (holiness) which will enable him to run in the way of God’s commandments;
That nothing but His precious blood can atone for the sins of the past and naught but His all-sufficient grace can meet the pressing needs of the present and future.
Thus there must be discerning faith before there is coming faith. The Father “draws” to the Son (John 6:44) by imparting to the mind a deep realization of our desperate need of Christ, by giving to the heart a real sense of the inestimable worth of Him, and by causing the will to receive Him on His own terms.
—A. W. Pink, Studies on Saving Faith: It’s Communicationi
Read more of “Studies on Saving Faith” here.
Footnotes
- Pink, A. W. (19). The doctrines of election and justification. “… materials found herein were first published in 1932, 1933 and 1937 …”; Includes indexes. Swengel, Pa.: Reiner.” [↩]
