”And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” Romans 10:14
M |
UST one hear the Gospel preached in order to come into salvation?
The plain answer to this question, is very simply, yes. I don’t state that as an opinion, for my opinions really don’t matter. What matters is what the word of God says – and any truth we hold to must be founded upon the word of God. From reading the scriptures, it can be seen that God repeatedly stresses in several places that it is by the preaching of the Gospel that He is pleased to save sinners. A few simple references will demonstrate this.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it [the gospel] is the power of God unto salvation…” Romans 1:16.
“For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” 1 Corinthians 1:21
“Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.” … “But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” 1 Peter 1:23,25
Now here are just three verses which demonstrate that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, that it pleases God by the foolishness of the preaching of that gospel to save them that believe, and that we are born again (regenerated by the Spirit) by the word of God, that word being preached unto us in the gospel. There are many other passages of scripture which emphasise the same things.
It is certainly true that God is sovereign and can do as He pleases. He certainly isn’t confined in His power to having to use the actual preaching of the Gospel through the lips of mere men in order to save people. However the fact is that He has chosen to do His work this way. It has pleased Him to save sinners through the preaching of the Gospel. He could, and He is able to, just save sinners Himself by the direct inworking of the Holy Spirit without the use of the gospel whatsoever. But what God is able to do and what He pleases to do are sometimes two different things. The fact is that scripture repeatedly stresses that God is pleased by the foolishness of preaching (the gospel) to save them that believe. That is His appointed means. Why? Because it confounds the wise for God to take poor weak base men and to speak His word through their lips to the saving of others (see 1 Corinthians 1), because God is pleased to make known the truth of His salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ in this way. Very simply, in God’s great wisdom He has chosen to work this way.
However, some people have reacted to this truth with a certain wariness based upon essentially good (though misguided) motives, and because of an overemphasis of other truths. What they rightly recognise is that salvation is entirely of God, that until man is born again of the Holy Spirit he is dead in trespasses and sins and unable to comprehend the truths of God aright, that man can only believe the Gospel when God regenerates him and gives him faith to believe it. Man doesn’t comprehend the truth with his natural mind. He has no strength or ability in himself to turn to God and no faith by nature with which to believe. In seeing all these points some then conclude that the preaching of the Gospel itself cannot save, because man first needs to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit before he can understand and believe that Gospel. Thus they emphasise that regeneration (the new birth) is a sovereign act of God, entirely ‘without means’ (without the preaching of the Gospel), and as a result of that new birth man is given faith to then believe the Gospel when he hears it. Some of these peopel have thus divided things into two stages in which they stress regeneration by the Spirit without means, and then (afterwards) ‘gospel conversion’ where a person, already regenerated, hears the gospel and believes it with the faith which they have been given by the Spirit in regeneration.
Now, all that sounds plausible, and is certainly based upon certain truths. 1 Corinthians 2:11-16 emphasises that the natural man (before the new birth) cannot understand spiritual things, so until he is born again by the Spirit he cannot fully comprehend the truth of the Gospel. Some things may make sense in the natural intellect, but not properly. However whilst that is true, and whilst man cannot believe the Gospel until God regenerates him (causes him to be born again of the Spirit), because naturally he has no faith (faith being a gift of God), nevertheless that does not alter the fact that God has said that it is by the preaching of the Gospel that He is pleased to save His people. Romans 10:13-17 emphasises the necessity of the preaching of the Gospel and the fact that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”. In order to believe the Gospel heard, one must be sovereignly born again of God. But God is pleased to quicken/regenerate sinners to life actually under or as a result of that preaching of the Gospel. This is how He is pleased to work. The work is entirely of His sovereign mercy and grace, but the Spirit of God chooses to work through the preaching of the Gospel, through the lips of those men whom He calls and sends to preach it, in order to quicken sinners to life. He sovereignly sows the word of God as a seed, and when He is pleased He causes that seed to bring forth life in the hearts of those whom God has chosen in Christ.
The order goes something like this: A dead sinner hears a God-sent preacher preach the Gospel. Initially being dead in trespasses and sins the sinner cannot truly understand that Gospel – he remains dead under it. He may comprehend many facts of the Gospel in his head, in his natural mind, but really they just remains facts, mere head knowledge. He never comes to see Christ by faith as He really is, and know the power of His grace, or experience eternal life in Christ by His indwelling in the heart by the Spirit. No, such a sinner merely hears the outward word of the Gospel in his ears, he hears various facts, and may comprehend them to a degree, even ‘believe’ them (with a natural persuasion) as being right, with his natural intellect, but nevertheless his heart isn’t changed, he remains spiritually dead…. And such a state can go on for many years. With others, if they are not the elect of God, that is the state they will remain in until the day they die. Some people sit under the preaching of the Gospel all their life but are never saved by it, because it isn’t the outward word alone which saves. This is important to recognise. The Son of God must speak to us inwardly by His Spirit in order to quicken us unto life.
However, for the elect, there comes a time in God’s sovereignty, by the preaching of the Gospel when God is pleased to sovereignly regenerate that man unto life, give him a new heart, and grant him faith to believe the truth which he is hearing. Now the word ceases to be just the outward words of man, but become living words of the Holy Spirit which come in power. Having been alarmed by the Gospel to the truth of the day of judgment, having been awakened to his own sinful condition before God, having been convicted of that sin, now, being born again, by the word of God (as spoken by the preacher yes, but also by the Spirit inwardly within the heart), this elect child of God is given faith and by that faith he comes to truly see Christ in the Gospel and believe on Him, embracing Him for salvation, for deliverance from the wrath to come. Now the words which he used to hear in the Gospel which were once just in the ‘dead letter’ are now living words. What was once a mystery is now revealed, is now made known, and the elect, being born again, knows what it is to know Christ, the power of God, as revealed in him in the Gospel.
So you see, those who question the importance of the preaching of the Gospel in salvation are right to recognise that regeneration is a sovereign act of God the Holy Spirit, and they are right to recognise that the Gospel when spoken by man can remain as simply the ‘dead letter’ of scripture, words which fill the natural mind, but never enter into the heart in life. However, it is wrong to separate what God has joined together. It is wrong to see these things and separate the new birth by the Spirit from the preaching of the Gospel, or the word of God. It is wrong to react to errors such as the modern emphasis on ‘easy believism’ and man’s supposed ‘free will’ and natural ability to believe, by not only rejecting those errors but also rejecting an emphasis upon the preaching of the Gospel for salvation as though that presupposes some natural ability in man to believe it. It does not. The scriptures teach, repeatedly and in many places, that salvation is entirely the work of God, but that God uses the foolishness of the preaching of the Gospel to save them that believe. Who are they that believe? The elect of God, chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world, and redeemed by Christ at the cross, to be sovereignly born again of the Spirit in due course… by the word of God, “and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” 1 Peter 1:25. God uses the preaching of the Gospel to save His people. Not every one that hears the Gospel with the outward ear will be saved, for man by nature is dead in trespasses and sins, yet God is pleased to take the outward words preached by those whom He sends to preach it, and speak them quietly by His Spirit into the hearts of His own, quickening them into life, and granting faith that they might believe that word unto the salvation of their souls.
In Ezekiel 37 we read of the vision of the valley of dry bones and how God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy unto the bones that they might live. Was there any ability in Ezekiel to bring dry bones unto life? Or were the words of a mere man able to do such a thing? No, only the power of God can work such a miracle. Yet, God was pleased to show forth His power in this case by having His prophet speak unto the bones. Through that speech God mightily worked in the vision to bring the bones to life – the whole vision being a picture of the Gospel and its proclamation unto dead sinners, ‘dry bones’, who are totally dependent upon God’s free grace to quicken them unto life. The power to do this does not lie in the preacher or in the eloquence of his words, but in the Gospel preached when applied by the Holy Spirit in power to the hearts of the hearers – living words which bring life. “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” John 5:25.
This is God’s usual and normal way in which He is pleased to save sinners – through the word of God, through the preaching of the Gospel, not “in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance” 1 Thessalonians 1:5. That Gospel which sets forth the Person and the Work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That Gospel of which Paul was not ashamed for “it is the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16). Some may contend for exceptions to this ‘rule’ and point to exceptional conversions such as that of Saul on the Damascus Road (Acts 9), and it is certainly true that God can, and has, saved certain people in such exceptional ways by a direct preaching of the Gospel from on high, in certain circumstances. God is, after all sovereign and all powerful. But nevertheless this isn’t His usual way, or the way in which He is usually pleased to work. We can’t take the exceptional experience of one of the twelve apostles to overturn what God repeatedly states in the scriptures about the preaching of the Gospel. It pleased God by the preaching of the Gospel to save them that believe, and this is why God has through the ages continually sent forth preachers of that Gospel to proclaim it in power, by the Holy Ghost, that fallen, elect sinners might hear of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of Sinners, be born again by the word of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and with God-given faith believe on the Lord Jesus Christ even unto the salvation of their souls. No wonder then that Paul writes, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth”.
RELATED AUDIO MESSAGES
“My Sheep Hear My Voice” John 10:27-28
“I have preached righteousness in the great congregation” Psalm 40:9
Leave a comment