The Holy Spirit In The Process Of Salvation Series

And I’m going to credit the Holy Spirit Himself with that and trust that what I’m going to share with you this morning is what God wants for us. I’m certainly not going to attempt to just repeat the sermon that I watched – I tried doing something like that once earlier in my ministry and it was a complete disaster. But I’m convinced that some of the ideas in that message are so relevant for us that I’m going to incorporate them into my message this morning.

My original intent was to walk us methodically and logically through the process of salvation so we could see how the Holy Spirit is involved in each step of that process, including the time when He permanently takes up residence in our lives. I’m still going to touch on that briefly. But what I really want us to be able to do this morning is to look at our own lives and determine, based on the clear teaching of Scripture, whether we truly are followers of Jesus who have the Holy Spirit living in us.

So let’s begin with a brief summary of how the Holy Spirit works in the process of salvation. I’m going to go through this pretty quickly without a lot of commentary, not because it isn’t important, but because I want to spend more time dealing with what is most important.

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE PROCESS OF SALVATION

1. He draws

Before we enter into a relationship with God through faith in Jesus, the Bible is clear that we are spiritually dead and blind:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

(Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV)

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

(2 Corinthians 4:3-4 ESV)

And since we were all dead and blind at one time, we were incapable of creating spiritual life on our own. A dead person cannot resuscitate himself and a blind person is incapable of restoring his own sight. Jesus made it quite clear that without God’s intervention in our lives, we are incapable of even being drawn to Him:

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

(John 6:44 ESV)

So when we are dead and blind, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and initiates the process of salvation by drawing us to God:

In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”