God's will to save the people that He loves cannot be thwarted by the "free will" of man.
And yet, lost men cannot naturally come to Jesus, and cannot trust in Him. Scripture teaches us that it takes the Holy Ghost, raising poor sinners from the dead, and imparting to them understanding and faith, in order for any of us to be saved.
Paul taught the Corinthians that the natural man, lost in sin, cannot receive or know the things of God. He refused to use rhetoric or the wisdom of man to coax his listeners into agreeing with the Gospel.
Paul wanted to ensure that the faith of the Corinthian saints was by and in the power of God, and not the wisdom of man.
Our faith must be the gift of God, and not lost men's wisdom and rationalization.
Nevertheless, the Gospel is the wisdom of God, but to the natural man, it all seems to be foolishness.
That is why the Gospel must be revealed to us by the Holy Ghost. When we receive Him in the regeneration, He teaches us the things that are the wisdom of God.
Meanwhile, the natural man cannot receive the things of God, because they are discerned only by the Spirit.
If the natural man, the man in the fallen flesh, cannot know or understand the things of God, then we can understand why it is that faith must be given to us by the Spirit when we are regenerated by Him.
Lost unregenerate man thinks that the Gospel is utter foolishness, and only believers have been taught otherwise by God. That is why the saints stand fast in faith even under threats of persecution - God has given us the gift of faith to understand as wisdom what the lost world sees as foolishness.
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...
