In past weeks Confessions and Catechisms have been quoted many times. The point has been to show that this is what has been taught by those who wrote the major Confessions and Catechisms in history. The point is that this view is neither a new view nor an extreme point of view. It is simply what has been taught by both Baptists and Presbyterians in history. While it may be the majority (even vast majority) view today that a person must come to a point to make a choice or to have an intellectual belief in a stated view, that was not the majority view in history. In fact, in history it was considered to be a dangerous view if someone taught that a person must simply make a choice or to have an intellectual belief about some facts of the Gospel. It used to be taught that a person must be deeply convicted of sin as the way the Holy Spirit brought a person to faith and conversion.
This week’s article may be somewhat on the offensive side for some. However, the effort is to point to the fact that it is the Holy Spirit that converts sinners. It is the Holy Spirit that convicts people of sin and it is the Holy Spirit who regenerates and renews sinners. A sinner will not and cannot come to Christ in his or her own power. Christ taught us a very important truth if we are willing and able to listen: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. 45 “It is written in the prophets, ‘AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me” (John 6:44-45).
What does it mean to be taught of the Father? After Peter’s confession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God in Matthew 16:17, “Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” One part of the teaching that the Father does is to reveal spiritual truths. It is the inward teaching of God in the soul that we must recognize and even seek. This was, after all, what Paul prayed for in Colossians 1:9: “we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” There is a spiritual wisdom and a spiritual understanding that God alone can teach. He teaches spiritual things by the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 1:21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
2:7 but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; 8 the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; 9 but just as it is written, “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.” 10 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, 13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. 14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
This is not some hyper-mysticism, but it is simply recognition of the undeniable fact that Scripture speaks of an internal teaching that no man can do. But there is also another side that must be pointed at. It is the nature of the call of Christ to sinners. A lot of ink and perhaps blood has been spilled on this issue. Some say that the call to come to Christ is to be issued to each and every person without distinction. Others say that the call to come to Christ has some distinctions or qualifications set out in Scripture. What is to be our guide and how are we to come to a decision on this matter? The motive of even approaching this subject, though it will not be given a thorough treatment, is simply to show the importance of striving with men and women and being used as means to convict them of sin as a priority. While it is true that the Holy Spirit’s work is to convict them of sin, it is also the work of human beings to be used of the Holy Spirit in that work. While we carry the external message, we must pray that the Spirit would apply the internal message and even point sinners to the work of the Spirit.
Mark 2:17 And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Luke 5:32 “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
The two verses given above show us that there are some people that Jesus did come to call and some that He did not come to call. This is what is hard and perhaps offensive to some, so let me set it out that we are to preach repentance to each and every person. We are to preach the truth of who God is to each and every person. We are to tell each and every person the way of salvation. But what we must also understand is that Jesus specifically tells us that He did not come to call anyone but sinners. That is perhaps something that may be hard for some to swallow, but that is the clear teaching of those texts. We must not understand that as a way that prohibits the declaration of the Gospel to each and every person, but it must instruct us on the way we are to teach and preach the Gospel. If Jesus did not come to call the righteous but sinners, then we must be at work showing people that they are sinners.
Matthew 11:28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
John 7:37 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.
The previous two verses should also instruct us in our views of conversion and evangelism. Jesus calls all those who are weary and heavy-laden to come to Him and that He would give them rest. A person that is not weary of sin does not want rest from his or her sin, but simply wants to get out of hell. The person that comes to Christ must not just know about sin, but be weary and heavy-laden with sin. This is pictured for us by John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress. Sin was pictured as a large burden on a man’s back and which only fell off when the man knelt at the cross. The Holy Spirit has to convict sinners of their sin and show them what sin really is for them to see and feel sin as a burden. Until the Holy Spirit convicts a sinner of sin and gives understanding of what it is, the sinner may know that sin is wrong to some degree but simply go on in it. But when the Spirit has worked on that sinner, sin is no longer a pleasure but has become a burden. The sinner now understands sin to be a bondage and slavery. The sinner now sees that sin is not just a decision; it is part of the sinner’s nature. Sin is not just something that can be cast off with a mere decision; it is something that takes the Divine power to do so.
In the New Testament we don’t have a lot of people just making intellectual decisions about Christ. We have people pleading with the Apostles to tell them what to do in order that they may be saved. We don’t see that in our day because we don’t see people being brought under deep conviction of sin. We don’t see that in our day because at the slightest hint that a person sees his or her sin we stop working on their hearts about sin. But what we must understand is that many times a person needs to come to deeper and deeper points of conviction. It is also true that a person under conviction will begin to make excuses for sin which shows that s/he needs a deeper conviction. After all, Romans 3:19 tells us one purpose of the law: “so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.” True conviction has only reached its appointed goal when the mouth of the sinner has been shut except to confess that God is righteous and just to do with him or her as God pleases.
We have Jesus calling sinners who were weary and burdened of their sin to Himself and we have Jesus calling those who were thirsty to Himself. Those who were thirsty were those who thirsted for eternal life. The context teaches us this. Souls who are weary of sin not only want to be relieved of the burden of sin, but they want life. This has also been pictured to us by Bunyan who pictures the man running from the things of the world with his fingers in his ears crying out for eternal life. The soul that has been taught the things of God knows that it must have Christ to deliver it from the burden of sin but that it must have the Holy Spirit to give it life. A soul that is deeply convicted and burdened with sin cannot imagine giving itself life, but instead it knows that the Spirit blows as He pleases (John 3:3-8). A soul that is deeply convicted and burdened with sin longs to be freed from the bondage of a sinful nature and thirsts for a new heart.
The doctrine of conversion is not just something we need to hear about and then go on in our religious ways; it is something that should deeply influence all that we do. It should teach us that we start by grace alone and that we can only continue each moment by grace alone. It should teach us that in evangelism we are to teach sinners in a way that they know that it is by the grace of God that sinners can have their burdens taken away and to be given a new heart. It should teach us that we are to preach to each and every person but that the way we are to do that is to seek for men, women, and children to be deeply convicted of sin. That is, after all, what the Bible teaches.
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