|
A PERSONAL REVELATION
The Bible is God's revelation. It tells us
how God saves sinners and how saved folk ought to live to please Him. It
tells us about future events and historical ones. It is a fountain of
knowledge. No person is truly educated who does not
have a working knowledge of It. But
the Bible will not save anyone. It can
make a person wise to salvation, but it cannot save.
Salvation begins with the new birth. Jesus
said, “...Ye must be born again,”
(John 3:7). This new birth involves a personal revelation. God Himself must
come to the lost sinner. God must be revealed in a personal experience to
the sinner. The proof of this is found in the words of Jesus. He said,
“And this is life eternal, that they might
know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent,”
(John 17:3). Again, in Matthew 11:27, the Lord Jesus said,
“...no man knoweth the Son, but the Father;
neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son will reveal him.”
The words of Zophar ring true in Job 11:7-8,
“Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto
perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell;
what canst thou know?” God cannot be known
except He reveal Himself. The Bible reveals facts about God, but man cannot
search and find God. God cannot be experimented with, put under a microscope
or in a test tube and analyzed. He must make Himself known. Remember. Jesus
said no man knows “...the
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.”
Eternal life is knowing
“the only true God, and Jesus Christ”
as stated in the quotation from Jesus furnished above. Add to that this
fact: the Son must “reveal him.”
That work is a personal, spiritual, internal making-known of God to the
spirit of a lost sinner.
So then, no one can save himself. No one
can find out God. No one can birth himself anew. In fact, nowhere in the
Bible does God tell us what a lost sinner can do to birth himself anew.
Neither is there anything that a lost sinner can do to please God and
motivate Him to birth the sinner anew. “So
then they that are in the flesh cannot please God,”
(Romans 8:8).
Lost sinners dare not trust in themselves!
They are unable to remedy their lost, spiritually dead condition. Ah! But
Jesus came to give His life for His sheep! He came that sinners might be
made alive. He came to reveal the Father to whomsoever He wills. The new
birth does not come by man's will: the Bible is clear on that! It says of
those thus born again, “Which were born,
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God,” (John 1:13). Do you know God in this
revealed way? |
