Getting Saved: Open or Dictated by the Holy Spirit?

[ashwise]

I know that to be saved you have to accept Jesus, but can you get saved any time or do you have to wait for the Holy Spirit to iniate and take that oppurtunity? The church I go stated this prinicple, and I do not remember encountering this statement in the Bible. Any thoughts?

[nebula]

Not sure what you are thinking, but if you are desiring to repent of your sins and give your life to Jesus, that is the Holy Spirit working in you.

[OneLight]

Consider the words of Paul to the Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 6:2

For He says: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

[gdemoss]

I know that to be saved you have to accept Jesus,

This part seems to get confusing for everyone. You have to accept Jesus. While this is true, some mistakenly believe it means that you simply invite him into your life and accept that he died for you. That is about as honest an assessment of salvation as believing that all you need to do to have a successful marriage is accept that your spouse is willing to marry you. When I read your post I felt the urge to clarify a couple of things in love to any who might browse the thread.

Accepting Jesus:

• One must accept that he is Lord and must be obeyed.
  
• One must accept that he was the actual Son of God.
  
• One must accept that he came in the flesh as a man so that he might taste death for all men.
  
• One must accept that his blood is the only true atonement for sin.
  
• One must accept that they must pick up their own cross and follow him by dying to self to even be his disciple.
  

but can you get saved any time or do you have to wait for the Holy Spirit to iniate and take that oppurtunity?

You can become a follower of Jesus anytime. Only God the Father can reveal to your heart that Jesus is his Son and worthy to be followed unto death. So in fact it is initiated by God as concerning the acknowledgment of the truth.

The church I go stated this prinicple, and I do not remember encountering this statement in the Bible. Any thoughts?

We love him because he first loved us and no one of himself seeks after God, it is God who calls.

Peace and love in the Holy One,

Gary

[Reformed-cross]

ashwise:

It kind of depends what perspective you are coming from.

If its mans perspective then folks will jump to the commands of Jesus. Believe, repent, come, deny, follow and such like terms. These denote the response that is expected of us from God upon hearing the gospel. To some this is all there is. To some their theology and knowledge of what the bible says is all summed up in a few imperatives and they are happy with that.

If its God's perspective then folks will jump to the declarations of God. Those who are saved are Elect, those who are sanctified are chosen, those who are called have been predestinated. From this point of view human responsibility seems un-necessary or that human involvement slights the sovereignty of God.

To others they hold that divine sovereignty and mans responsibility are held in a 'tension' where the two are seemingly at odds with each other, but necessary because both are biblical.

To me, there is no tension. God has not created a 'strained' message or a gospel that apparently contradicts itself.

No one is going to be saved unless the Father brings them to Christ. No one is going to get saved unless the Spirit does a work of regeneration in them. No one is going to be saved unless God opens their minds and hearts to the truth of Gods word whereby they are enlightened and given spiritual ears to hear the message of the Kingdom of God and spiritual eyes to see the Kingdom of God and desire that they may enter it.

No one is going to be saved unless they believe the truth. No one is going to be saved unless they have repented and called upon Jesus Christ and have denied themselves this world in order to partake of the one to come. No one is a disciple that has not counted the cost, denied himself, believed and trusted in Christ to forgive their sins and indwell them with the Holy Spirit.

Im saying that the bible teaches that God's sovereignty walks hand in hand with mans required responsibility to obey the command of God. Most reasonable and knowledgeable Christians admit this and have no questions at all with both of these necessary biblical perspectives. Each perspective contains abundant truth which connects it to the gospel message as a whole.

The extremes of either position destroy the message of the gospel.

If you lean to heavily upon God's sovereignty in which you nullify the commands to repent and believe you effectively gut the gospel of human responsibility and effectively gut the truth that men are guilty. If man is not responsible or culpable for either truth or error, righteousness or sin then it makes a mockery of the crucificiion and degrades the work of God to redeem mankind by such a cruel and terrible death of the Son of God.

If you lean to heavily upon human responsibility the hidden and secret work of the Spirit is nullified. You have effectively neutered the gospel of divine origin. All becomes a work of the will and power of men to overcome self and sin which they do not have power to overcome. It destroys the foundation of the gospel, which is not predicated upon mans willing and working but upon God's love and mercies. The power of the gospel is founded upon Divine decree not human agency.

To avoid those extremes we allow the scripture to speak to us simply. There are many texts that marry sovereignty and human agency. Do not divorce them. Do not set them at odds with each other.

Do not favor one text of sovereignty....because...the Sovereign God has declared a man is to act and to obey. Do not favor human agency....because.... the inspired writers have declared "a man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven".

It is the interweaving of human workings and Divine workings that good scripture students can get confused or have their whole little theological world overturned. Just remember that the details on how God has brought the two together will not overthrow the main points. Human responsibility will never overturn the Divine agency and Divine agency will never overturn human responsibility.

Within the human mind these two clash again and again, in God's mind they do not clash and so far from clashing, they are revealed to us within the sacred pages as the "whole" truth.

R.E.

[xero]

God knows everything that is was and ever will be so He knew all who were saved from the beginning. God is awesome!

[Fez]

I know that to be saved you have to accept Jesus, but can you get saved any time or do you have to wait for the Holy Spirit to iniate and take that oppurtunity? The church I go stated this prinicple, and I do not remember encountering this statement in the Bible. Any thoughts?

This might help answer your question. It is from a talk I am doing for my home group.

So you are a Christian or you are seeking Jesus as your saviour? You will often hear people say “You have to have faith”, faith to believe, faith to be saved, faith to pray, faith to heal, FAITH.

Some Christians, when asked “Are you saved”, will answer “I hope so”, or “I think so”, or “Only God knows”.

Often this is because they do not understand what saving FAITH is.

So what is saving FAITH? Let me try and explain.

FAITH simply put, is the response to Gods calling in which salvation occurs. Without such FAITH, regardless of what God has done there can be no salvation. It comes about through the unity of word and spirit. Paul said it best when he wrote.......

1Co 2:4 “and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,

1Co 2:5 “that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God”.

FAITH then is not grounded in a human decision to believe, it is God in action. If it was a human decision, salvation would be up to man, not God. But. God reaches out to us, and offers us redemption in Jesus; the initiative is totally God’s. Man only needs to receive what God has done!

This reception is the response of FAITH. Complicated? Not really.

An example would be that God’s grace is the SOURCE and FAITH the human instrument. Again Paul says it best.....

Eph 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

Eph 2:9 “not a result of works, so that no one may boast”.

So, salvation originates in God’s grace, it is God’s gift. Salvation is channelled through FAITH, with God’s grace being the primary reality, the foundation of saving FAITH.

Ok let’s get serious

No one therefore, can make himself believe. It is not a matter of working up to FAITH. It is not a leap in the dark in the hope what the bible says is true and one might be saved.

It is also not (and here is what many unbelievers and some Christians don’t understand), a decision based on human reasoning and attempted proof. It has a far more solid basis than rational evidence. One cannot achieve FAITH by reaching out and hoping to secure God’s promise by passionate human effort. (Down this roads lies confusion and legalism – don’t go there, you will get lost).

This is where many of us go wrong. Faith is not a human effort to believe, but the inward assurance and conviction that results from God’s presence and action.

So to conclude the first part of what is FAITH.

FAITH is mans response to God’s enabling. Faith is made possible by God, but the FAITH, the believing, is not God’s but mans. Man is fully engaged in the activity of FAITH.

You cannot “increase” your FAITH by working at it; you can only open your heart to receive what God has already provided you, and thus grow in faith.

And the bible tells us that the FAITH He provides is limitless, it has to be, it is from God, and God is limitless. God offers you limitless FAITH and all you have to do is accept it!

Here we need to understand that every one of us is in a different place in our walk of FAITH. FAITH has a beginning as we have seen. We respond to God’s enabling us, which is the first step, but being limitless, FAITH is a journey that has no end point, until we one day rest with Him. It therefore makes sense that we are all at different points of the journey.

But wait, there’s a lot more!

FAITH essentially has three elements which are Knowledge, Agreement, and Trust. Let’s look at them one at a time.

1 Knowledge

FAITH begins in the acceptance of God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ. It is a matter of hearing the Gospel, understanding the Gospel and then believing. Note I say hearing, not reading (not yet if you are seeking to accept Jesus as your savoir).

As Paul wrote to the church in Rome...

Rom 10:17 “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”.

The word of Christ must be spoken (a duty of every believer), heard (until the whole world hears), and understood if FAITH is to eventuate.

Peter’s sermon on Pentecost is a good example of proclaiming the word. Peter says, “Men of Israel hear these words” He then tells them in Acts 2:22-36, of the life of Jesus, His death and His resurrection. They must hear about and know about Jesus if they are to come to FAITH and salvation.

Thus again, FAITH comes through hearing the true word about Jesus. This does not mean having a wide ranging knowledge (this may come later), but a simple understanding that through Jesus there is salvation.

Again it is here that many unbelievers and some Christians fall short. Often they try to understand too much. But what is required is a simple belief, a simple understanding. This simple understanding does not make the believer simple; it opens the door to eternity in Christ. It is really that simple!

It is important to stress the knowledge component of FAITH because it is where many people are led astray. And we need to understand that knowledge itself is not sufficient for salvation. (The Pharisees believed this, and Jesus was quick to inform them of their error).

Now believers and seekers need to hear this! One may be well informed of the things of God, including His work of redemption in Christ, and still be far from God!

As James wrote....

James 2:19 “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder!”

So knowledge in and of itself has no saving significance. But knowledge is the beginning point of FAITH, because there must be a basic understanding of the gospel message for salvation to occur.

If you are seeking Jesus, please understand that you do not have to have “all knowledge’, but rather a simple understanding of Jesus, and the salvation that comes only through Him.

Again, it’s not complicated, it’s simple!

2 Agreement (Assent)

FAITH continues with assent to the word of the gospel. It is saying yes to what is proclaimed!

Here we must be careful. Assent of FAITH is an acknowledgement that the Word is truth. It is not an acknowledgement of any doctrine of any church. Saving FAITH is not directed to a doctrine or the word of any man, it is solely the assent to Jesus Himself in the Gospel.

We also need to understand that the word FAITH occasionally refers to the Gospel itself, and here it is not a saving FAITH that is referred to.

For instance in Galatians 1:23 Paul writes of people saying of him – “he who once persecuted us is now preaching the FAITH he once tried to destroy”. In other words Paul, then Saul, had tried to destroy the church and those who believed, which is a different reference to salvation FAITH.

3 Trust

Now we come to trust. FAITH begins in knowledge, deepens in assent and is completed in trust. Trust is the critical and final part in saving FAITH.

FAITH as trust is complete reliance of God’s promises. It is total confidence in God’s grace through Jesus. FAITH means to believe in.

FAITH as trust is the knowledge and acknowledgement of the word of God that everything is from God. It is not therefore solely a trust in the written words of the bible; it is complete trust in Jesus Christ, made known to us by the God inspired, inerrant words of the bible.

John tells us in John 1:1 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, and goes on to say in verse 12 – “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name”

Conclusion

So FAITH then is a personal commitment that surrenders all to Jesus, which gives up any reliance of self, and looks wholly to Jesus.

The climax of faith is a personal relationship with Jesus. It is we in Christ and Christ in us.

It is an intimate relationship with Jesus in which we have been told about Him, have agreed with what is written about Him, and have come to trust Him completely.

Simply put then, FAITH is complete trust in Jesus for every breath we take, enabled by God, and strengthened by knowledge which grows as we hear, read, study and understand His word, and most importantly, as we enter ever deeper into a personal relationship with Him.

[saved34]

I have to agree with Reformed. Although our views are not 100% compatible, the gist of what he is saying has to be the truth. You would have to throw away a great many verses in your Bibles to deny the Election of God, likewise, you would have to completely ignore verses that clearly lay out the responsibility of man. There is a reckoning of both that scripture clearly teaches. I think the one who desires to be saved should not question what is happening, but simply trust in the words of our Lord. "He that comes to me, I will certainly not cast out".

Joh 6:37 "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.

[childeye]

I think reformed did a good job of answering the question as I understand it. However I would say the Holy Spirit intiates everything. The response from man is limited in ability to differing predispositions, as outlined in the parable of the sower. Moreover nothing eternal can be built upon that which is not founded upon the Truth of God, hence if a man has no truth he cannot recognize truth to begin with, The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and the Truth is the Holy Person of the Character of God. To come to know Christ is to come to know yourself.

[enoob57]

If you believe in Him and Who He 'IS' and you put Him off ... I don't think you really believe the Gospel for the price He had to pay Personally for you to have this availability-> it was the most horrific ordeal a Living Being has ever gone through ... for example for 33 years He said and lived not to Himself but to God His Father and the needs to those around Him just to be able to go through the Atonement of man sins.... When you fully accept Him as a Person and realize the price that was paid for you will not be able to say no to Him any longer! Love, Steven