God's Light Must Shine in Us. First.

By Justin Edwards

In studying last night I came across a passage in God's Word that illuminated from the pages. Like a gold nugget glistening from the riverbed, it drew me in with curiosity and excitement. I absolutely love it when something new is revealed to me in Scripture!

As mentioned in Monday's post, Circumcision of the Heart and the Irresistible Call, no man can come to God until God first circumcises the heart. This open-heart surgery must be performed to awaken us from spiritual darkness in order for us to see the Light of our salvation. What struck me last night was yet another testimony to this sovereign truth whereby God must first move upon us before we can, not may, respond to Him by repentant faith. 2 Corinthians 4:6,

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

In the first work of His creation, it was God who willed the light to shine forth from the darkness. So to does He will for His light to shine forth from the heart of the unbeliever. The graceless soul of man is in darkness and desperately wicked, confused, and conformed to the things of the world. But when God shines through our hearts, doing so out of the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11), He gives us eyes to see the knowledge of the glory of God in Christ Jesus! Yet, why is it necessary for God to first shine through us before we can come to knowledge of the truth? Just prior in 2 Corinthians 4:4 we see,

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

It is impossible for unbelievers to see and receive the light and truth of the Word of God. The Lord has ordained Satan to blind the minds of the lost, and this statement is absolute for every human. As such, how can a dead man live? How can a blind man see? How can a deaf man hear? None of these can just will themselves to be made alive or be cured. It is only by the miraculous work of God that they may live, see, and hear!

Those rejecting the biblical truth that the Holy Spirit must first make us a new creation before we will believe cannot work themselves around this passage. Because man is dead in his sins (Ephesians 2:1) and blinded by the god of this world, God must circumcise our hearts (Deuteronomy 30:6) and shine in us so we can be spiritually made alive (Ephesians 2:4-5). It is not that He makes salvation possible for all men because in doing so He would have to circumcise every heart, quicken every spirit, and shine through every soul of man. If this were true, it would contradict the omnipotence of Almighty God, thus reducing Him incapable of finishing every work He starts (Philippians 1:6).

Just as God created everything out of nothing, so to does He create repentance and faith out of the emptiness of the soul and the heart of the dead man. On Genesis 1:3-5, Matthew Henry wrote:

God said, Let there be light; he willed it, and at once there was light. Oh, the power of the word of God! And in the new creation, the first thing that is wrought in the soul is light: the blessed Spirit works upon the will and affections by enlightening the understanding. Those who by sin were darkness, by grace become light in the Lord. Darkness would have been always upon fallen man, if the Son of God had not come and given us understanding, 1Jo 5:20. The light which God willed, he approved of. God divided the light from the darkness; for what fellowship has light with darkness? In heaven there is perfect light, and no darkness at all; in hell, utter darkness, and no gleam of light. The day and the night are the Lord's; let us use both to his honour, by working for him every day, and resting in him every night, meditating in his law both day and night.

As I reflect on this sovereign work of God whereby He spoke "Let their be Light" in my own heart, I rejoice and praise Him! For if it were not for His mercy and sovereign will to save me, I would still be a wretch on his way to an eternal hell. I believe it was John MacArthur who I recently heard say that the doctrine of election is the most humbling doctrine of Scripture - I must wholeheartedly agree, and I thank God for His saving grace through my Lord Jesus Christ!

Soli deo Gloria!

Circumcision of the Heart and the Irresistible Call

By Justin Edwards

If not for the sovereign and effectual grace of God, not one person in all the ages of the earth would be saved from the wrath of God, and deservedly so. Each of us has broken the perfect Law of God and no one is righteous before Him in their own regard (Romans 3:10-11). In our fallen, sinful state, we are all unrighteous, unholy, and utterly separated from the goodness of God (Isaiah 59:1-2). It is for this reason each of us are dead men walking along a path of destruction leading to the epitome of God's wrath in a place called hell, but for His mercy and grace!

Because we are all spiritually dead and condemned as natural men and women (Ephesians 2:1, 5; Colossians 2:13), it takes a supernatural act of God to awaken us spiritually. Moreover, all those who are awakened from their natural, dead state will respond by repentant faith and submit their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is essentially what is known as effectual grace in that all those who are called by God will come to Him through His Son. God's saving grace is therefore irresistible and effectual, or consequential, in all those who are called by it (John 6:37).

The Old and New Testament are rife with this truth that God must first perform open-heart surgery on a person before they can respond in saving faith. One such passage is found in Deuteronomy 30:6, which destroys any argument from Pelagians or Semi-Pelagians that man can choose to love and obey God without God first making that possible. Furthermore, it shows God does not circumcise every heart because all men do not love God, obviously. This is a problem for those who reject the doctrines of grace (Calvinism) because they claim that God makes salvation possible for all men, or that He draws all men to repentance but man's autonomy (exercising free will) allows for Him to resist God's drawing or calling. To support their position, they would be forced to say God circumcises all hearts though lacking biblical evidence to support that claim.

I have been thoroughly enjoying Dr. Steven Lawson's Foundations of Grace where he journeys through each book of Scripture showing where the doctrines of grace are clearly thrust forth as eternal truths of our sovereign God. This first installment in a projected 5-book series by Dr. Lawson will be offered in a future gift giveaway here on airō as it has richly blessed me in learning more about the sovereignty of God in our salvation. I therefore invite you to read the following excerpt from chapter 3 titled, "Sovereign Grace in the Wilderness", where Dr. Lawson expands on Deuteronomy 30:6 (pages 97-98):

Doctrine in Focus: Irresistible Call

"In Deuteronomy, Moses also taught the fourth main heading of the doctrines of grace - God's irresistible call. Hundreds of years before Moses, God commanded Abraham to circumcise all the males in his household. For Israel, circumcision was a picture of what God must do to the unconverted heart. In the new birth, God must circumcise the sin-hardened heart if sinful man is to love Him with saving faith. By a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, God must cut deeply into the unconverted heart and supernaturally set it apart to Himself. This is the omnipotent work of the Spirit in regeneration. Again, then, we see that God is the sole initiating cause of regeneration. Man is passive while God is active in this vital step in the process of salvation:

"And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. - Deuteronomy 30:6

"Moses presented God's sovereign work of grace as a spiritual circumcision, a cutting away of the foreskin of the unbelieving heart. It is a penetrating work of grace that removes man's inability to believe and replaces it with true repentance and faith. Regeneration is open-heart surgery, a soul-reviving work of the Spirit that probes to the deepest level of a person's being. Concerning this work of regeneration, Anthony Hoekema writes, 'What does the Bible teach about regeneration? Already in the Old Testament we are taught that only God can bring about the radical change which is necessary to enable fallen human beings again to do what is pleasing in His sight. In Deuteronomy 30:6 we find our spiritual renewal figuratively described as a circumcision of the heart....Since the heart is the inner core of the person, the passage teaches that God must cleanse us within before we can truly love Him.' Explaining the irresistible nature of this divine work, Craigie writes, 'It is seen rather to be an act of God and thus indicates the new covenant, when God would in His grace deal with man's basic spiritual problem. When God 'operated' on the heart, then indeed the people would be able to love the Lord and live.'"

If you would like to learn more about the doctrines of grace in a controlled and amicable environment, I invite you to join John Samson at Effectual Grace as we go through TULIP over the next several weeks. Click HERE for more details.