Over a period of the past one hundred years a distorted idea has developed concerning who has the power and who exercises the authority in the salvation of sinners. The popular notion is that Christ merely made salvation possible, that God has done all He can do and that the remainder is left up to you. Man is now his own savior. The perverted view is this, at any time a sinner is propositioned he may exercise his “free-will” and accept the so-called Jesus of the proposition and be saved. What happened to the Biblical doctrine of the absolute necessity of the flesh-withering conviction of the Holy Spirit? Have men overlooked the saying of Jesus Christ. “When He” (the Spirit) “has come, He will convict of sin…of righteousness…of judgment (John 16:8). The Gospel is glad-tidings, good-news, but before it becomes thus to the soul a man must be made aware of his awful offensiveness to a Holy God. In the words of Isaiah, he must be convicted that he is “an unclean thing” and that “all his righteousness’” (good deeds) “are as filthy rags” (Isa.64:6). Those preachers and personal workers, who are convinced that they are mighty ‘soul-winners,’ tell sinners they may be saved if they will only follow their ‘simple plan’ of salvation. They leave them thinking that without forsaking their idols, repenting of their sins, and surrendering to the Lordship of King Jesus they have a good hope of eternal life. Those who practice such methods are in fatal error and endanger the souls of men. Those who convince men that salvation is in their hands and that they have the will-power to make the final decision to seal their eternal destiny are not soul-winners, but soul-destroyers. They like the ancient Pharisees, “compass land and sea to make one proselyte, and when he is made (or ‘won’) ye make him two-fold more the child of hell than before” (Matt.23:15). The Biblical doctrine concerning who has free-will in salvation is clearly stated in the Holy Scriptures; “It is not of him that WILLETH, nor of him that RUNNETH, but OF GOD that showeth mercy”…”for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Rom.9:16; Phil.2:13). In John 1:13, it is said of those who ‘received Christ’ that they were “born not of blood, nor of the WILL OF THE FLESH, NOR OF THE WILL OF MAN, BUT of God.” The structure of the text will not allow men to make the cause of the new birth to be the reception of Christ as most are guilty of doing. Rather the cause of receiving and believing on Christ is being born of God. Man by nature is spiritually dead (Eph.2:1). Until God exercises His life giving power a person remains wrapped in the grave clothes of sin’s bondage, as did Lazarus of Bethany, until Christ called him from his tomb. Man’s only hope lies, not in his “free-will” but in God’s WILLINGNESS to raise the soul from spiritual death in regeneration.
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