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1. How Does God Save a Sinner?

By Dr. Paul M. Elliott
Saved sinners are described as "those who had believed through grace" (Acts 18:27)

From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part one of a series

We begin a series on the true nature of salvation, according to Scripture.

Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus.

This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John.

So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

And when he desired to cross to Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace; for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. (Acts 18:24-28)

The Problem of Deceitful Hearts and Defiling Tongues

How does God save a sinner? How does belief, how does saving faith, come about? How can a heart that "is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jeremiah 17:9) be the heart with which "one believes unto righteousness" (Romans 10:10)? How can the tongue that is "a fire, a world of iniquity" and "is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body" (James 3:6) be the tongue that is set within the mouth by which "confession is made unto salvation" (Romans 10:10)?

In the church today you can hear many different answers to these questions. But most of the answers that you will hear are incorrect according to God's Word. Why is that? It is because those answers have a wrong focus. What is underneath of all those wrong answers is a fundamentally wrong view of the way that God works in saving a sinner.

"Those Who Had Believed Through Grace"

In this series I would like to focus our attention on how God does work, according to His Word; how God does bring salvation about. We find the essence of the matter in verse 27 of the passage in Acts 18 above, which describes saved sinners as "those who had believed through grace."

What exactly does that mean? How does that passage, which is consistent with the message of Scripture from beginning to end, differ from much of what is taught and practiced in churches today - evangelical, fundamentalist, Reformed, or whatever other name or label they may bear?

In order to understand the answer, we need to understand several things: the supernatural character of Scripture; the contrasting naturalistic thinking of most churches today regarding Scripture and salvation; the totally supernatural character of true salvation in contrast to false representations of the Gospel; and finally, how God's Word tells us He accomplishes and applies that salvation to hopeless, helpless sinners.

We Rest On God's Promise

We present this series with confidence in God's promise concerning the effectual working of His Word:

Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.

"For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void [empty, or without the intended result], but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

"For you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands." (Isaiah 58:6-12)

May the Lord use His Word to deepen His blood-bought saints' understanding of the true nature of their salvation, that they may "go out with joy, and be led out with peace." May He likewise use His living, powerful, incisive Word to convict those who are on their way to Hell, to "seek the Lord while He may be found [and] call upon Him while He is near."

  

Next: The Supernatural Character of the Word of God

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