GOD HAS YOU RIGHT WHERE HE WANTS YOU

Curtis Pugh

Poteau, Oklahoma

                God has you right where He wants you and He is going to do with you as He pleases.  God is not trying to do something with you.  He is not trying to save you or anyone else.  God is not a failure.  He does not try!  If He wants to save you or anyone else, He has the power and the means at His disposal to do so.  No man is stronger than God.  You say, “But I have a free will.”  Do you really think so?  Then will to do something contrary to your nature.  Exercise your will and change from being a sinner and be perfect.  Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”  You with your so-called free will: let me see you be perfect.  You cannot fly like a bird.  You cannot be perfect.  You cannot cease from sinning: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23).  So you see, your free will is not so free as you may have been told.  It is bound to your sin nature.  You are free to sin because that is your nature.  Unless you have been born again your nature is enmity against God: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Romans 8:7).  You cannot even will to come to Christ and be saved.  Some preachers may tell you that you can, but Jesus said: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:44).  Some free will!  You lack even the ability to will to come to Christ and be saved!

                It does not matter that you lack a truly free will.  It does not matter that your will acts in accordance with your sinful nature.  Your will is not going to save you!  In order to be saved a person must first be born again.  Regeneration or the new birth is an inward change in a person brought about by God.  You did not birth yourself the first time you were born and you cannot birth yourself into God’s family.  In the birth process the baby is passive, not causative.  So it is with the new birth.  Jesus told Nicodemus, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.  The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:7, 8).  Just as the wind cannot be seen or controlled, so the Holy Spirit births whom He will when He wills.  Perhaps you have been told that being born again is a matter of you exercising your will.  That is absolutely contrary to the plain words of Scripture.  The Bible tells us that Jesus came to His own nation, but they received (welcomed) Him not.  But there were some – a few – who did welcome Him.  The Bible explains that the reason these few people received Christ was because they had been born of God – not of human lineage, nor the will of man nor the will of the flesh.  Read it yourself: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.  But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:11-13).  Did you get that?  God’s Word says, “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”  How much plainer could God make it?  From every conceivable aspect, no will other than God’s will is involved in the new birth.  God says so!  If you have been born again it is not because you exercised your so-called free will.  It is because God exercised His will.  You are not master of your destiny: God is.  God has “mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Romans 9:18).  God is in control of all things including whom He saves! 

                If God wants to save everybody, He will do so.  If it is God’s will to save you, He will do so.  He will not save you contrary to your will although He could.  Rather, He is able to work in you and change your will so that you want Christ.  The Bible says: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).  God does as He pleases!  The Bible says so in Isaiah 46:10: “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.”  God says that He does all His pleasure.  He does what He wants to do.  Daniel 4:35 says, “And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?”  But somebody says, “You must let God save you.”  Where did you read that in the Bible?  Someone may have told you that, but you did not read it in God’s Word!  What kind of God do you worship: one that puny men can “stay his hand?”  Is yours the Almighty Sovereign God?  The God of the Bible does according to His will in Heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.  The last quoted verse says that plainly. 

                The Bible says this about God’s children: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:4, 5).  God determined what He would do and whom He would save before the foundation of the world.  That is a Bible fact!  How do you know that you were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world?  How can you know that you have been predestinated unto God’s adoption?  How can you know that you have been born again?  Obviously not because you exercised your will, for, as demonstrated above, the Bible says your will has nothing to do with the new birth which is the beginning of salvation.  How can you know that you are saved?  First of all, have you ever seen yourself as the worst of sinners?  Have you experienced godly sorrow over your sins?  The Bible speaks of the twin requirements and at the same time the twin gifts of “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21).  Furthermore, the Bible teaches that “godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).  Jesus said, “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).  Have you experienced real and lasting sorrow for your sins?  Have you mourned for your sin?  Have you turned from sin?  Is your faith in Christ alone?  Has your life changed so that you now try to please God?  All these things happen at some point in time to those whom God has chosen to save.  Or, is your trust in some foolish religious thing that you did because somebody persuaded you and you willed to do it?  Trusting in something that you did, even trusting in the exercise of your will, is not trusting Christ as Savior.  That is faith in yourself and in what you did.  It is not faith in Christ.    God says: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).  “Before ordained” – your salvation is not in your hands.  “Salvation is of the LORD” (Jonah 2:9).