Fact I: Salvation is a mighty, creative act of God in the soul of a sinner. This omnipotent act of God in the sinner is described as a new life, a new birth, a new creation, a resurrection from the dead. Such sinners, (Bless God!), have passed from death unto life, and out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son. They "were darkness," but are now "light in the Lord." What plain and graphic terms describe this "workmanship of God" in quickening sinners!
Fact 2: This mighty activity of God in the sinner is just as mysterious as it is powerful. "How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Such is the nature of this activity of God in saving sinners that: (!) One may think, profess, and even swear that he has experienced it, and not know God at all! (Matt. 7:22, 23, Herein is described most of modern religion in America!) (2) One may truly be a subject of this glorious, soul-saving activity of God, and yet occasionally question, whether there is any true grace in his heart at all! Listen to John Newton--
"If I love, why am I thus?
Why this dull, this lifeless frame?
Hardly, sure, can they be worse,
Who have never heard His name!"
Fact 3: No believer I have ever met can mark the exact time when God began that glorious work in his soul, nor drive down a stake marking the exact time he began to believe. And we should not try to determine, either by something experienced, or by some doctrine believed, when we became Christians. The question is not when we became Christians, but are we Christians now.
The question is not when, or even what we believe, but do we right now, "believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God" (Acts 8:35-37; 16:31; John 5:1).
"This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3; I John 5:20). THIS KNOWLEDGE will make you leave your fishing nets and follow Him (Matt. 4:18-20), cling to Him when the multitudes turn away (John 6:65-69), and cause your "heart to burn within you.....as He opens the Scriptures to you" (Luke 24:32). This is THE soul quickening, soul converting, soul preserving, soul transforming truth (Matt. 16:16, 17; John 1:14-18; 6:69; 8:32-37; 11:27; II Cor. 4:6; I John 5:20).
Fact 4: It is not the knowledge of this or that doctrine, nor the knowledge of all doctrine, which saves a sinner, but "the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ...in the sinner's heart" (II Cor. 4:6; Gal. 1:11-16), in Whom, through Whom, and by Whom the believing sinner graciously submits to all truth as it is revealed to him by his Master (John 8:47; 10:27).
- John Newton
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