Spiritual gifts part 37: God provides an open door to the unregenerate to believe in Christ

Pastor-Teacher
John Farley
Sunday,
October 10, 2010

Spiritual Gifts Part 36: Born spiritually dead, we are candidates for grace.

The Doctrine of Spiritual Gifts

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

The Doctrine of Efficacious Grace

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.

Without the Holy Spirit, in total depravity as unbelievers, we would be deaf to the Gospel, and our faith would be mute - voiceless.

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.

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

PSA 51:5

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.

We are born physically alive and spiritually dead.

God the Father imputes soul life at the moment of physical birth.

At birth, God imputes Adam’s original sin to the genetically formed sin nature in the cell structure of the body.

Adam’s original sin plus a sin nature equals spiritual death.

God condemns each human being at the moment of birth because of the factor of Adam’s original sin having been charged to our account, ROM 5:12-19.

PSA 58:3
The wicked are estranged from the womb;
These who speak lies go astray from birth.

Condemnation must precede salvation.

Our personal sins were not imputed to us when we were condemned.

Our personal sins were imputed to Christ and judged on the cross, 2CO 5:19.

God’s genius and integrity are at work in having Adam’s original sin imputed to us and our personal sins imputed to Christ.
 

Only in that way could He condemn us and yet preserve us alive to believe in Christ.

We are spiritually dead, not because of our own sins, but because of Adam’s sin.

Born spiritually dead, we are born candidates for grace.

Spiritual death is a legal status,
a position, and
a condition.

Spiritual death is a legal status of condemnation, as well as a position of separation from God.

Finally, spiritual death is a a condition of total depravity, meaning total helplessness combined with a sin nature that is anti-God.

Spiritual death means helplessness to have anything to do with God.

a. Total depravity includes the trends toward both moral and immoral degeneracy.

b. Total separation from God.

a. Total depravity includes the trends toward both moral and immoral degeneracy.

b. Total separation from God.

c. Total helplessness to establish a relationship with God.

d. Dichotomy - having only a soul and a body, but no functioning human spirit, he cannot understand spiritual phenomena.

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

They have a soul. That soul has self consciousness, a conscience, emotion, mentality, and a will.

That soul can make decisions.

Can a person in the status of real spiritual death - total depravity - believe in Christ?

The hyper-Calvinist viewpoint says no.
It says that God has to regenerate a person before he can believe in Christ.

The Bible says that God justifies the ungodly.

ROM 4:5
But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,

asebes means the wicked, someone who is destitute of reverential awe toward God. It is used in 2PE 2:5 for the world of totally depraved people who perished in the flood.

2PE 3:7
But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

The Bible also says that God justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

ROM 3:26
for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Therefore, since God justifies the ungodly, and God justifies the one who has faith in Christ, the ungodly one can have faith in Christ.

God justifies the ungodly (unregenerate, totally depraved) one who believes.

The Bible does not support the claim that God regenerates first and then the new child of God believes.

Too many scriptures have it precisely the other way around:
GAL 3:26; JOH 3:16; JOH 5:24; JOH 6:40; JOH 6:47; JOH 20:31; 1TI 1:16.