Spiritual gifts part 40: God, be merciful to me the sinner!

Pastor-Teacher
John Farley
Sunday,
October 17, 2010

Spiritual Gifts Part 40: “God, be merciful to me the sinner!”

Point 2. The Giver of the Gifts: The Person and Work of God the Holy Spirit.

Efficacious grace.

This is when God the Holy Spirit takes the faith alone in Christ alone of the spiritually dead unbeliever and makes it effective for salvation.

1. The ministry of efficacious grace is necessary because of real spiritual death.

2. The person in the status of real spiritual death is able to believe in Christ. God has provided that open door, Joh 10:9.

3. Here are the three works that God performs to provide salvation to individuals. [Common Grace, Call of God, Efficacious Grace].

1. He cannot understand what is heard in the Gospel.

1. The unbeliever decides to listen to the Gospel.

2. God the Holy Spirit makes the Gospel clear, understandable, and compelling to the unbeliever.

3. God the Father invites the unbeliever to believe in Christ. (don’t confuse this with election)

4. The spiritually dead person believes in Christ.

5. God the Holy Spirit makes the helpless, useless, inoperative faith of the spiritually dead person and makes it effective for eternal salvation.

1. Common Grace = the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in making the Gospel clear, understandable and compelling to the unbeliever.

2. The Call of God = the invitation of God the Father to believe in Christ.

3. Efficacious Grace = the work or ministry of the Holy Spirit in making the faith in Jesus Christ of the spiritually dead person effective for eternal salvation.

1. Common Grace
2. The Call of God
3. Efficacious Grace

1. Common Grace = the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in making the Gospel clear, understandable and compelling to the unbeliever.

Believe in Christ, and you will be credited with the perfect righteousness of God.

Persist in your unbelief, and you will join satan in judgment.

Elegcho:
to confute, admonish:
convict, convince, tell a fault, rebuke, reprove.
by conviction to bring to light, to expose:

To bring a person to the point of recognizing an error - to convince, to point something out to someone for the purpose of enabling them to change their mind about it.

There are three areas of evangelism in which the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit functions in common grace: sin, righteousness, and judgment.

2Co 5:19
namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them,

1Co 15:3
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

Since Christ was our substitute and was judged for our sins on the cross, “sin” here refers specifically to one sin only, the refusal to believe in Jesus Christ.

The personal sins of the unbeliever are NOT an issue in evangelism.

The issue is faith alone in Jesus Christ.


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