I thought I'd do a little series of posts that walk the reader through the Christian life from its beginning, middle, and ongoing persistence into eternity from this world. Currently, I am preparing to preach a series of messages at our church's Sunday night service on the doctrine of Christian sanctification. In that series I define sanctification as follows: Sanctification speaks of the Christian life lived from its beginnings in regeneration until the believer’s homegoing at death or the rapture of the church. It has been my intent for quite some time to dig deeper into this Biblical truth, since sanctification is what the Christian life is all about! With that said, today's post and the next couple will detail how the Christian life starts. In today's post we will first look at what I am calling "the richness of the beginning of the Christian life".
The richness of the Christian life’s beginning.
This diagram summarizes most of what takes place when the Holy Spirit calls a sinner to be born again in saving faith. We could say this is "ground zero" for the beginnings of the Christian life! What follows is an exposition of what all occurs in a moment of time in the soul of the sinner as he or she is called by the Holy Spirit to saving faith.
A. Miracle call to salvation.
This “general call” of the Gospel is commanded to all people everywhere to “believe, repent, and follow Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins” (see Matthew 11:28; 22:9-10; Luke 14:16-24; Acts 16:31; Romans 10:13; 2 Corinthians 5:16-20; 6:1-2; 1 Timothy 2:4 and many others). Within that “general” or “external call” is the working of the Holy Spirit to affect specific hearts of specific sinners internally to open their otherwise closed hearts and minds. This work of the Holy Spirit, the “internal call” is brought to our attention by Jesus in John 6:37-44 (especially verse 44) and by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:26-27 as well as many other Scriptures (Ezekiel 36:25-27; Matthew 11:15; 13:9,43; Mark 4:9; Luke 8:8; 14:35; Acts 2:37; 26:18; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; Hebrews 3:1-6; Revelation 22:17 and several others). That’s the miracle call of salvation.
B. Marvelous consequence that is salvation.
When the Holy Spirit affects a sinner with conviction of sin and opening of the heart and mind, such a work is called “the new birth” (John 3:3,5; James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:4-5), regeneration (Titus 3:5), and a new creative work of God (2 Corinthians 5:17) just to mention a few descriptions. Consequently, what follows from the New Birth (or what we could say is near-simultaneous with it) is saving faith (Ephesians 2:8-9) and repentance (Acts 2:37-38; 2 Timothy 2:24-25). Once the individual exercises those God-given gifts of faith and repentance, they undergo conversion.
C. Majestic graces for our salvation.
What follows immediately upon one’s faith and repentance are three enormous bestowals of Christian identity. There is union with Christ, spoken of by Paul in over forty places in the New Testament alone (Galatians 2:20 a chief example) and explained by Jesus in John 15. In addition to union with Christ, the born-again Christian is credited with Christ’s righteousness, known also as “justification by faith” (Romans 3:25-26; Galatians 3:16). The third grace bestowed, and perhaps the crowned-jewel, is that of adoption, making God our Father and Christ our elder-brother according to the flesh (see Romans 8:14-16; Galatians 4:4-6). Everything I just wrote in these last three paragraphs give detail to the above diagram. Truly the beginning of salvation is a wondrous work of God!
More next time.....
