The Write Place

The truth is always more beautiful than our fictions.

Much ink has been spilled over the nature of salvation in its process.

The question of the will has dogged the human heart as from the day of the fall. How can there be a commandment you cannot keep yet some believe? At first glance we are tempted to treat God as an equal in this regard. After all, it would be unfair of me to force my will on someone else. And if God commands something we can’t do, how is that fair?

Yet notice something in the whole counsel of scripture.

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord
And remove the foreskins of your hearts,
Men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,
Or else My wrath will spread like fire
And burn with no one to quench it,
Because of the evil of your deeds.”

Jeremiah 4:4

This seems very much to exclude divine effort. The freedom of the will seems intact in a libertarian fashion. The will cannot and must not be moved or touched one way or another. It must be free to do whatever it wills, at any point and anytime. So far it seems, so good.

However, we have not answered how the will wills it.

⁶ “Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your ^[a]descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, so that you may live.

Deuteronomy 30:6

The sacraments follow the Gospel, pointing to the work of God in illustrative form. Circumcision was, like baptism is today a sign and seal of what God has done to purify a sinful people and make them Holy.

So who is it? Man or God that performs this circumcision of the heart? It is plain that God performs the circumcision, when we consider how we get a clear view of what he is doing.

³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Genesis 1:3

When God first created the world, he did so by the word, and through the Word (that is Christ the eternal Logos). Something powerful rests in the declaration of the word of God. There is something creational in it.

Only if this is a work of his power through the preaching of the word can this gift of salvation make sense. Without the intervention of God, it is impossible.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ²

Ephesians 2:1

Dead mean tell no tales, they also don’t change unless they are acted upon. They are helpless, incapable of bringing life into their bodies. The whole of them is helpless.

⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

Ephesians 2:8

When God speaks, things happen. When he intends life, his word creates life. When the Gospel is preached it is not merely the Christian who is heard, it is as though God is speaking bringing about the new creation one soul at a time, and condemnation on those whom he leaves to their sin. We receive our saving faith, we do not produce it. Which is unfair, because we all deserve hell.

What are the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption?
The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption are, His ordinances, especially the Word, sacraments, and prayer; all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation.

Westminster Shorter Catechism Q88

Notice, all three of these, the Word, sacraments, prayer point towards the Gospel.

³³ “For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Jeremiah 31:11

⁹ For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, ¹⁰ and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. ¹¹ In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,

Colossians 2:9-11

Salvation is not coerced; it is a rebirth by the hand of God. The will is made willing when new life is spoken into it by God through the preaching of the Gospel to all the world. God does not need your permission, neither would you have given it, neither does he need to ask you to make you able to. God produces new life that creates faith, and he will never fail where he intends to save.

With a God like that, what need do you have of smoke machines and faux glory clouds? With a God like this, do you need to worry about your unsaved loved ones who cannot resist his plan of salvation? What hope would you have if they can? The means is right in front of you, it is the preaching of the Gospel.

The church has what it always needed, the God of scripture and the preaching of his Gospel. God has made those who call on his name his new creation in Christ, and this is why they call on him. Just as at the first, God creates by the power of his word.

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.^[a] The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2 Corinthians 5:17