Well, in one particular respect we have got it all wrong. We are inclined to believe that God exists for us, God is waiting for us, God is there to make us happy. But in the gospel, God does not play the role of a butler. In the Gospel we are told that God, the Creator who made all things for his own praise and glory, has gone into action as mankind’s redeemer. We human individuals are impotent of spiritual response, that is, response to God in any shape or form; but God first of all sends us a Savior to make atonement for our sins, and then he sends the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and make us willing to see and respond to Christ. Now, if we do not appreciate that our salvation is God’s work in that absolutely radical sense, that is, God sends the Saviour, God gives us the gift of faith to respond to the Saviour, then we will not even be able to tell people what the gospel means. You see, we ought to be telling people that they are helpless, that they need Christ, and that they must ask God for new hearts and for the ability to trust Christ. In other words, you have got to tell them of their own spiritual inability right from the start. If on the other hand we forget this and go around saying that God is just there to help you, and that you call on him whenever you need to, that he is a sort of cosmic bell-hop, well, then we are misrepresenting the gospel in an absolutely fundamental manner. Until the gospel is understood as a message that obliges us to say that we are hopeless, helpless, lost, and ruined, requiring also that God does the work of salvation from start to finish, then we are not presenting the gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament. J. I. Packer, “An Interview with Dr. J. I. Packer,” The Founders Journal, 16 (Spring 1994) (via christisenough)
I agree full-heartedly. I hope to remember the Holy Spirit’s work in salvation and God’s Sovereignty in everything. In my limited human understanding, I cannot fathom why God would have chosen me out of billions of people to understand who He is. But I do understand that I would never have decided to pursue a righteous God and a righteous life, apart from God’s working. I was saved from the spiritual blindness of my sins; a handicap that I was born with, and the effect of which justifies my death penalty.
I don’t believe it’s much of a matter of my will to choose, but rather, it’s about my inability to choose God. Born into sin, sinning, continually sinning and knowing nothing but sin even from a young age? Why, as a sinful creature, would I ever want to choose God? It would be going against my nature. But God, in His goodness, decided that Christi Anne Salinas Agbuya would be a new creature; a new person freed from the inborn bondage of sin, now given freedom in Christ Jesus. And I didn’t choose this—He chose me. A dog has no choice but to bark; it has no power to meow, because it cannot—it is not within its nature to meow. In order for it to meow, it needs to be changed from a dog into a cat. So in the same sense, God takes the sinner, changes his nature and opens his heart toward Him, and as such, the new creation can now see God for who He is and pursue Him.
When I remember who I am, when I remember that I am one of God’s Elect, I strive even harder to press onward toward the prize that Christ Jesus has called me to. I wasn’t chosen by God to drink recklessly or to waste my time pursuing the temporary and ridiculous pleasures of the world. I was called to something above and beyond myself. Something that God has set me apart for, even before the foundations of the world, in order that I bring Glory to His name.
Frightening stuff. But it puts a burden on my heart to prepare and to study and to teach and to do whatever it is I need to do in order to be what I was called out of many to be.
I hope to rest on Christ’s mercy every day of my life. And I hope to remember how much of a sinner I was and still am, and how much I need a Saviour, and how much I am thankful to my King for coming to save His servant from deserved death. Everything sounds so harsh and gloomy, but that’s only because it is. We would be in a real hot spot (pun intended) if somebody didn’t take the fall for us. So glory and honor and power to Christ Jesus forever and ever, for what He has done, Who He is and for His glorious return.
And for choosing me to be a part of His glory in this life, and the next.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” —Ephesians 1:3-4.
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” —2 Corinthians 5:17.
“Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” —Romans 5:18-19.
button
