SANCTIFICATION BY THE HOLY SPIRT

 

The sermon our pastor preached was great today. He preached on the Third Article of the Nicene Creed, speaking on the Holy Spirit and the role He plays in the life of a Christian.

One of those roles is that the Holy Spirit creates the faith a person needs to believe the gospel AND gives that person the illumination needed to understand the gospel. Salvation is a gift made up of many gifts - some of which are faith, belief, forgiveness, Christ's imputed righteousness, reconciliation with God, eternal life, repentance, and more but I'm trying to keep this short.

There can be NO salvation without the Holy Spirit FIRST giving a person the faith to believe and the understanding of the gospel. He changes the heart of whom God has chosen as His elect and that is what gives them the desire to follow after Christ.

Do you have a sense of pride about yourself because YOU made the correct decision to follow Christ? Do you often wonder why others don't exercise their intelligence and make the right "decision"? Salvation isn't dependent upon human intelligence, but upon God who has mercy on whom He has mercy and the Holy Spirit's work to bring about regeneration.

We can't give the proper credit to God for salvation if it's our "free will choice" that has the final say. Based on that line of thinking, shouldn't we be patting ourselves on the back for making the correct decision?? As John MacArthur said once (paraphrasing), while it may seem like we made a decision, that "decision" wouldn't have been possible if God hadn't acted first. Those who reject the gospel do so because they haven't experienced the work of the Holy Spirit yet in their life.

Every person in the Trinity has a specific job to bring about salvation. God was the Architect of salvation; Jesus accomplished the work of salvation by His death, burial, and resurrection; and the Holy Spirit carries out this salvation through regeneration and illumination. It's all God from beginning to end.