The past two newsletter articles have been an effort to show that the Holy Spirit is really at work today and His work is utterly necessary to Christianity and to conversion. Christianity is not simply a system of rational doctrines and morality, but it is the life of God in the souls of human beings. Col 1:27 sets this out with great clarity: “to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The great mystery that was hidden from the ages was that even the Gentiles would have Christ in them. The dwelling place of God would be the soul of both Jew and Gentile. I Peter 2:5 puts it this way: “you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” God does not just provide sinners with a sacrifice and then wait upon them to apply it to themselves. After salvation He does not just set on His throne waiting for them to decide to do what is right. The souls of believers are the dwelling place of the living God. He is alive and He works to change souls in conversion and then He lives in them. Conversion, then, is when the Spirit takes souls who are full of self, the things of the world, and the devil and then makes them dwelling places of God.
The confidence that a soul is converted is not according to whether a person has said a prayer or made a commitment at some point, but whether the soul has Christ living in that soul by the Spirit. This is what Paul stressed: “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you– unless indeed you fail the test?” (II Cor 13:5). There is the absolute necessity of a great change in the soul. The soul must be raised from spiritual death and become the possessor of spiritual life. It is Jesus Christ who is life Himself and only the Spirit can bring life to a dead soul. The soul must be taken from darkness to light. Christ Himself is the Light and only the Spirit can bring that light into the soul. These are not things that come to the soul by believing some facts, but these are things that must happen to the soul. These are the acts of God upon and in the soul. But can human beings see these works of God in the soul in converting souls? Are there evidences of what the Spirit does?
Understanding the facts of the Gospel is a very different issue than having the soul actually conformed by the Spirit and actually performing the promises of the Gospel in the soul. It is quite a different thing to hear that Christ is the propitiation for sinners than it is to have Christ actually remove the wrath of the Father from the soul. John 3:36 should be read as the present activity of God rather than just a verse that describes things. “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” This wonderful text of Scripture is not just focused on human beings, but instead it is focused on the actions of the living God. The one that truly believes in Christ even now has eternal life in him or her. 1 John 1:1-2 gives a picture of what this is: “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life– 2 and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us.”
When we take John 3:36 and I John 1:1-2 together, we see something far more than simple doctrinal statements that we must intellectually believe. What we see is that eternal life is something that is in the soul. Eternal life is to share in the life of God and that when the body dies the soul with eternal life will share in that life of God for eternity. We see in I John 1:1-2 that eternal life is Christ Himself. To have eternal life is to have the life of God which is Christ Himself in the soul. I John 5:20 also points this out: “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” It is Christ who is the true God and eternal life. It is Christ who is the Word of life and it is Christ as the Word of life that was manifested and proclaimed as the eternal life that was with the Father and then manifested. To have eternal life is to have the life of God in the soul. Salvation and eternal life is not just to believe certain facts and then not go to hell, but it is to have fellowship with the living God through Christ because He is in fellowship with the Father and to be in fellowship with God is eternal life. After all, John 17:3 sets out for us very clearly that eternal life is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ.
In the modern day we no longer have the idea that redemption has been accomplished and needs to be applied by the Spirit, but instead redemption is thought of as accomplished by Christ and all that a sinner needs to do is to have an intellectual agreement with it. The soul must not only believe that justification is by grace alone through faith alone, but the soul must be brought off of all trust in itself in order to receive the indwelling Christ who will only be received as grace alone. The soul must not only be delivered from all of its own works, but also its own merits and righteousness in order to truly receive and trust in Christ alone. The soul must actually be delivered from the power of sin by the work of the Spirit in conviction and then applying Christ rather than just to believe an objective proposition. The soul must actually be saved rather than just an intellectual belief that it has been or will be saved. The soul must have Christ living in the soul rather than just believe that He does that to people. These things cannot just be intellectually believed as true, but they must truly happen to the soul and change the soul. It is the Holy Spirit who must actually carry these things out in the soul.
Below are some verses which show that God must actually work in the soul in conversion for a person to actually have Christ dwelling in him or her and be the possessor of eternal life. All of these things listed in the verses below are far beyond the work and power of human beings in their own souls and in the souls of others. As you read these verses simply ask yourself as to who can do the necessary work that is needed to do the work in the human soul in order that it would be converted. We must face up to the reality of things. If these things need to be done, then either the human soul has the power and ability to do it and it is left up to the human to do them or the Holy Spirit must work these things in the soul of human beings. If it is the latter, then perhaps our views of salvation and of evangelism need to be examined. In the 1800’s a radical change took place in the mindset of how people were and are converted to and by God. Asahal Nettleton wept when he saw the changes that Charles Finney brought in with his new measures. He thought that it would virtually overthrow the Gospel in our land. Perhaps we have been so influenced by those new measures that we no longer even see the way the Gospel was preached during the times of great revival. Perhaps those new measures did virtually overthrow the true Gospel in our land and what we think of as the Gospel has been greatly diluted.
2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
Romans 8:7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Colossians 1:21 And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,
Ephesians 4:18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;
Ephesians 4:23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
In coming weeks we will look at the work of the Spirit in converting the soul. The history of the Church is rich in the writings of godly men who traced the work of the Spirit in the souls of human beings. But even more importantly, the Scriptures are rich with the Spirit’s testimony to His own work in sections of Scripture which describe that but also in giving us records of those who were converted. There are driving questions that we must keep before us and then dwell on their meaning and application. One, who is it that applies redemption? Two, if the soul has to be converted by the Spirit, then what does that mean? Three, could it be that our day has confused what the Bible means by faith and believing with nothing more than an intellectual act that an unregenerate person can do? Four, does believing the Gospel only mean believing the facts of the Gospel or does it mean that the soul has been changed by the Spirit and so one from a spiritual nature believes what has truly happened to the soul? Five, what is the distinction between believing that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is true versus actually being justified by grace alone through faith alone? Six, is there an activity of the Spirit in conversion to tear those souls from their own sin and self-righteousness? The answers to these questions and others like them will hopefully be provided from Scripture in coming weeks. The Gospel needs to be recovered in our day and that includes among conservatives and the Reformed. The Gospel of the glory of God is not the predominant gospel preached in our land, but it is the only Gospel that the Bible teaches.
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