“In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.”
—Ephesians 1:13-14
NOTICE THAT a person doesn’t come to believe in Christ simply by hearing the truth. Yes, they must hear the truth, but why is it that people can hear the same truth of the Gospel and one believes and another thinks it’s foolishness? Matthew 11:25-27, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight. All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
WHAT MAKES sinners differ? God’s good pleasure! When a person trusts in Jesus Christ and another person remains unbelieving, even when they hear the same Gospel message, we can say the ultimate cause is God’s good pleasure. Ephesians 1:4-6, “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.” In 1 Corinthians 4:7, Paul tells us that God makes men to differ.
YOU SEE, it is God’s good pleasure that Christ reveals the Father savingly to some and not to others. And Scripture tells us that Christ reveals the Father by His Word and Spirit. Jesus said in John 6:44 that the Spirit gives life and draws elect sinners to Christ. In Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit raises the spiritually dead. In 1 Corinthians 2:14, the Apostle Paul teaches that “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
IN OTHER WORDS, no one becomes a believer by what they do. If a person believes in Christ, it is only because the Holy Spirit made them alive spiritually by sweetly and softly bending their will to do the will of God, “after they heard the word of truth, the Gospel of their salvation.” They then give all the glory to God alone for the salvation of their soul. Jesus said the work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ. Therefore, if the Holy Spirit dwells in a person it necessarily follows that they will also strive to glorify Christ by their words and works! That’s the result of trusting Christ!
Friday Devotional: April 19, 2024
In Christ,
Pastor S. Henry