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SALVATION is a gift of God’s grace and is given to any person God singles out or chooses according to his sovereign election and preference. Salvation cannot be earned by works of any kind or by obedience to any law of man or God under any circumstances. No passage of scripture suggests that, “if you do right by your fellow man, you will be saved.” Preachers who preach this kind of salvation by works are liars and the truth is not in them. Man’s good works and acts of kindness, generosity, or mercy, no matter how humanly good they are on the physical, horizontal plane, have no merit before God in the vertical plane, and will never save him. To receive salvation, man must somehow come to Christ and become “born-again” believers (Jn.3:3; Eph.2:8-10). But man cannot come to Christ through good works (Matt.7:21-23).

No person who has ever lived or who will ever live can claim ignorance as an excuse for his godless lifestyle. In the first place, we are all guilty and deserving of God’s wrath and justice from our birth because we are all born of Adam. Secondly, God has made knowledge of himself available to all. Knowledge of God is in every corner of the earth and in every created thing. Those who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge God Almighty are without excuse (Rom.1:18ff). Although God “desires” that all would be saved (1Tim.2:3-4) he will not save all —he is no fool. God will only save those individuals that repent, believe, and experience a rebirth unto eternal life (Jn.1:12-13; Acts.2:38; 1Pet.1:23). Prideful, obstinate, inflexible persons need not apply for salvation. Although salvation is free, there is a cost. For you to ultimately inherit eternal life you must do something: you must be obedient to God’s will. Disobedient people will not receive eternal life.

Every natural human being, man, woman, or child, is spirituallydead. The doors to their hearts are bolted shut against God. Unless and until God revives the object of his divine salvation, and unlocks one heart at a time for his good pleasure and through his sovereign grace and mercy, the person will stay dead. Natural man cannot respond to God’s call on his own. Natural man cannot respond to God until a quickening of the spirit happens and his heart is regenerated, enlivened, and awakened from the sleep of spiritual death. Natural man is dead: it is impossible for him to cooperate in his rescue from sin—in his salvation. “And you he made alive [quickened, KJV], who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world” (Eph.2:1-2). Only God can bring life to the dead; only he can enliven the heart.

Natural man cannot bring himself back to life. It is utterly impossible for natural man [Adamic man without the indwelling spirit of God] to resuscitate his own heart and then to incline himself toward Christ, just as it is impossible for a heart attack victim to resuscitate himself; he needs outside help. Man has no power to incline himself toward Jesus Christ, and consequently no faith and no desire to do so—he is utterly cut off from salvation. Only God can revive a dead heart. Man is predisposed to evil, not godly good. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer.17:9). Man’s natural mind always rejects God: “…the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom.8:7). It is appointed for men to die once, but after this comes the judgment, not a second chance (Heb.9:27).

The fallen condition of man’s natural heart and mind, indeed, his very soul and being, is hostile to God. Man cannot turn himself toward Christ, because, he will not. No message from the pulpit has the innate power to convict a natural dead heart or cause an unregenerate sinner to respond and be converted. Natural man cannot understand the things of God (1Cor.2:14). Only unnatural, living, regenerate hearts will respond to a call from the pulpit; dead hearts cannot be moved. (Continued...)