Friends,
Many years ago, I engaged in a Bible study with a friend concerning the gospel. I held to “free will” as an inviolable human attribute… as natural and at-home as breathing. In my thought-life concerning our relationship with our Creator, I held that, though God was omniscient, he must, in some miraculous way, craft for Himself a sort of “selective omniscience” whereby our free will would remain inviolate. Oh, but how little I understood at the time of the pernicious nature of sin and the profound stain on our human nature wrought by the first Adam and confirmed by my own acts. My will was far from “free”. It was bound in slavery to sin, serving myself as supreme, not grasping the depths of the mercy of God in Christ. That Bible study, in the Gospel of John, brought me to see the true nature and depth of my slavery and the true nature and depth of the mercy of God in Christ. It was not by reading Calvin that I became a Calvinist. No, I became such by reading God’s Word and having my eyes opened by the Holy Spirit that I might understand grace and grapple with the unsounded depths of our salvation in the cross of Christ.
Looking back on my past life, I can see that the dawning of it all was of God—of God effectively. I took no torch with which to light the sun, but the sun enlightened me. I did not commence my spiritual life—no, I rather kicked and struggled against the things of the Spirit. When He drew me, for a time I did not run after Him—there was a natural hatred in my soul of everything holy and good! Wooings were lost upon me—warnings were cast to the wind—thunders were despised. As for the whispers of His love, they were rejected as being less than nothing and vanity. But, sure I am, I can say now, speaking on behalf of myself, “He only is my salvation.” It was He who turned my heart, and brought me down on my knees before Him. I can in very deed, say with Doddridge and Toplady—
C. H. Spurgeon
“Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes overflow.”
And coming to this moment, I can add—
“Tis grace has kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.”