Divine Initiative

03.30.09

J.A. Matteson

"…as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved." Colossians 3:12

Has your sojourning led you to the gentle crest of the Hill of Wonder to view with humility the transaction of Calvary? Or do you remain in the lowlands as Israel, “The LORD said…’The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, 'My own power has delivered me’” (Judges 7:2). Natural man is ego-centric regarding the spiritual, yielding an arrogant blind inclination towards self-ability when none is present.

Has grace revealed to you from the vista on the mount that Salvation is from the Lord; that more than merely providing a theoretical redemption—reserved for those who in their natural resources believe—the mercy of God assures the effectual application of the Gospel to the chosen? Have you accounted for your former misery in sin as that of a cesspool in a deep pit with walls as smooth as ice, from which you could not have escaped unaided? How do you account for your being in Christ? Perhaps you picked yourself up by your spiritual bootstraps and simply wised up, taking Jesus at His word that He is the Son of God. If that is so then certainly our Lord would affirm your thesis. But what does He say to Peter?, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17).

According to Jesus, the natural mind of man is incapable of knowing Him as the Son of God; it is spiritually blind, deaf, and dumb. The basis of your salvation was grace manifested through divine initiative. While unregenerate you where not spiritually sick you where spiritually dead, and to be dead is to be unresponsive. Take the largest floodlight you can locate and place a blind man directly in front of its blinding illumination and he will see nothing but darkness. Blast the loudest trumpet straight into the ear of the deaf and he will hear perfect silence. Walk into the darkest graveyard and passionately command the dead to come forth and you will leave alone as when you arrived.

At one moment you stood condemned in spiritual death, without Christ, at enmity with God, helpless and hopeless in the world. In the next you found yourself translated in spirit into His marvelous light, suddenly believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and rejoicing in your new life of faith. To your flesh the pathway from darkness to light, from death to life, from enmity to peace, was sublimely simple, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31), and “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9); and you do in fact believe, your faith is real. Upon the hill it happened, a beautiful heavenly realization unfolded and gripped your heart, your mind was illumined by the Spirit to the wondrous reality of divine initiative in your salvation. Initially the natural cry of your heart was “That’s not fair!” to which the Apostle asked rhetorically, “What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be!” (Romans 9:14).

The Spirit revealed that His ways are infinitely more graceful than yours, as left unaided you would still be in your sin. Regeneration precedes faith, which is a gift of God, “For to you it has been granted…to believe in Him….” (Philippians 1:29). Had you applied human reasoning to identity the divine nature of Christ the words of the Lord would be meaningless, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63), and “no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). To you, the chosen of God, the Gospel proved effectual. The general Gospel call is ineffectual and heard by the living dead as idiocy, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

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