Holy Spirit Part 8

Part 8 

There's No Conversion Without the Holy Spirit 

1 Corinthians 2:10–16 (ESV) — these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches  everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which  is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not  the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by  God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual  truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person  judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to  instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. 

This month I’m going to continue our series on the Holy Spirit by beginning to explore the Holy Spirit’s work of taking lost sinners and converting them into sinners saved by grace through faith. Admittedly, the description of salvation I’ve just given doesn’t really sound all that dramatic. In fact though, it’s not just dramatic, it’s miraculous.  

The power of the Holy Spirit accomplishes this miracle and no one is ever saved and converted without the power of the Holy Spirit at work on them. Naturally then, for our assurance of salvation, we should have some understanding of how the Holy Spirit does this work and how we can know (and have assurance) that He has accomplished this work in our lives.  

Personal Salvation is Known By A Promise 

The simple reality is that a great number of American Christians struggle in their faith or even abandon it entirely because they have no assurance of salvation. Most of the time this is because they have never been shown or have failed to believe the Scriptures about how the Holy Spirit does this work in our lives and how God delivers a personal promise of salvation to us.  

In the coming months we’re going to explore just exactly how God does deliver that promise to you individually.  After that we’re going to take a look at some history and look at how American Christianity got to this place where so many congregations are obscuring the truth about salvation, the work of the Holy Spirit, and assurance of salvation. 

There still are a great many people out there who think it is wrong and arrogant for anyone to be confident in their salvation. That attitude, however, is a sure-fire mark of not coming to terms with the truth that salvation is by grace alone (Romans 11:6). 

The Old Sinful Heart 

If salvation really did involve your works before God, then you probably will be well enough aware of your sin to know it really would be arrogant of you to consider yourself saved. If you aren’t well enough aware of your own sin, I encourage you to read Exodus 20:1-21 or Matthew Chapters 5-7 and see if your heart is blameless.  Compare yourself to God’s standard and it should make your inability to live in sinless perfection pretty obvious to you. Salvation (and conversion) is not about saving ourselves. We need to be saved. We cannot save ourselves from our sin. 

The problem necessitating salvation is our own heart. Even if our external actions (what the world sees) are blameless before the world, we still have an old, covetous, idolatrous heart that desires all manner of wickedness (Matthew 15:19, Mark 7:21-22, James 1:14-15, Jeremiah 17:9).  

So, the first thing we need to know and believe about salvation is that the Holy Spirit is essential to  accomplishing it. Before we start teaching about how the Holy Spirit does His work and how we can know He has done it in our lives, we first need to be established in the truth that there is no salvation without Him. We’re incapable of attaining righteousness. Everything necessary to be righteous must come from Him. 

The Problem Examined Further 

Because we’re born into this world with an old, sinful heart our best works and efforts cannot make us righteous. Everything we do is tinged and tainted with sin. That leads to an even bigger problem: The problem is that the Lord is righteous and He demands righteousness of us. His righteousness isn’t actually a problem. It’s a good thing! Our sin creates a problem, though, when it meets with God’s demand that we be righteous.  

Psalm 11:5–7 (ESV) — The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face. 

He is gracious, so He hasn’t yet settled all accounts about it, but even so, He demands righteousness. He demands righteousness, and yet, the righteousness that the Lord both demands and loves is impossible for us to attain. August 25, we noticed that truth in our sermon text.  

Psalm 14:3 (ESV) — They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does  good, not even one. 

Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, paraphrased and summed up Psalm 14 (and Psalm 53) this way-  

Romans 3:10 (ESV) — as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;  

The Lord God demands righteousness and He upholds and blesses the righteous (see Psalm 37:17,29, Isaiah 3:10, many others), but left to our own powers, we’re incapable of doing good and attaining to righteousness.  

It’s a huge problem. Sin causes death and if unrighteousness is left unaddressed it leads to damnation.  

Romans 2:8–11 (ESV) — but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.  

Salvation is Not Quite Impossible 

When we hear Holy Scripture say “no one is righteous” we can be tempted to either 1.) despair and give up the idea that we or anyone could be saved or 2.) conclude the Scripture is a jumbled mess of contradictions. We don’t need to entertain either of those conclusions though. There’s more to this story.  

What the Psalmist and Paul (again, both of whom wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, see 1 Peter 1:10- 11, 2 Peter 1:21, 2 Timothy 3:16-17) tell us that no one is righteous, what they are speaking of is the unsaved world. Before someone is reborn of Spirit and water he or she is unrighteous and dead in their trespasses and sins  (John 3:3-8, Ephesians 2:1-5). They don’t have life until the Spirit of Life gives and creates it in them (John 5:24).  

That’s the state we all started in.  

1 Corinthians 6:11 (ESV) — And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 

Now it’s important to note that in 1 Corinthians 6:11 the word “justified” means “made righteous” or “declared righteous.” The Greek word that the Holy Spirit had Paul write could just as easily have been translated “declared righteous” as “justified.” My point is, here in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul very clearly says that it was the power of the Holy Spirit that did the work justifying all who believe (thus making them righteous), even though we were born into this world in rebellion against God (see 1 Peter 3:18 and Romans 5:6).  

Born Again By The Spirit 

Ezekiel 11:19 (ESV) — And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 

Ezekiel’s choice of “stone” and “flesh” can be a little confusing here, since in so many other places in the Bible “flesh” is associated with sin and death. Here, in this verse though (and in Ezekiel 36:26) the heart of “flesh” indicates a heart that is alive (as opposed to the dead heart of stone). Ezekiel was making a promise to all  believers on behalf of the Holy Spirit-the Giver of Life. The promise was that the Holy Spirit would call believers to life and in the process give them new, righteous hearts.  

This promise of new life in the Spirit is a wonderful promise, but it’s also an often under-appreciated one.  

People can be shocked, confused, or even offended when we confront their legalism or self-righteous attitudes  and point them instead to Jesus and His Holy Spirit. We all struggle to believe that we need the Holy Spirit to be saved, because we struggle to believe that we cannot save ourselves, because we struggle to believe that our old heart is really all that bad. “I pay my taxes and have no criminal record, I’m probably good in God’s eyes” is an easy lie for us to fall for.  

It's probably, more or less, a lie that Nicodemus believed too, until Jesus confronted him.  

John 3:5–7 (ESV) — Jesus answered [Nicodemus], “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 

It’s a marvelous truth that we must be (and can be) born again by the Spirit of God. It’s one that our hearts resist believing but it’s one that the Holy Spirit leads us to believe when we trust in His Word.  

And, it’s one that He leads us to believe by the power of His Word. 

Naturally Lost, Divinely Saved  

The Scriptures I opened this article with (1 Corinthians 2:10-16) lay out the truth that naturally we cannot believe any of this. The “natural man” Paul speaks of there is guided only by his old, dead, sinful and unrighteous heart. But the Holy Spirit leads us to believe these things anyways, doing the miraculous work of leading men and women who are incapable of even believing the truth to believe it and live it out. Belief is required for salvation, but even our belief is a Holy Spirit wrought work of God.  

John 6:29 (ESV) — Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 

The Holy Spirit does this by doing more than just coercing us to “live better” (though He does preach to us that  we should live less sinfully). The Holy Spirit saves and converts us by making us alive (Ephesians 2:1-10), making us a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) and giving us a new heart (Psalm 51:10).  

This cannot be done by man alone. Apart from the Holy Spirit, not one of us is righteous. Apart from the Holy Spirit none of us can comprehend the things of God and salvation (1 Corinthians 2:9-14). Yet by the power of the Holy Spirit, even we, who once walked in unrighteousness and death (Colossians 3:6-7) now believe unto righteousness and stand before God blameless as long as we continue in faith (Colossians 1:21-23).