Beware of those presumptuous peddlers
and deluded hawkers!
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| Snake Oil peddler. What are they offering? |
God purposed eternal salvation for His elect people.
Christ secured eternal salvation for exactly the same people on the cross.
The Holy Spirit applies the eternal salvation to each elect personally at God's own appointed and accepted time.
No eternal salvation is ever OFFERED by God to anyone. If He had done so, no one would have accepted it. The dead in trespasses and sins have no ability to accept the offer. They are in positive and active enmity against God. God knows this. However, many preachers are ignorant of this basic elementary truth and go about offering eternal salvation, with all sincere and passionate zeal.
God Himself actively, sovereignly, and freely APPLIES the eternal salvation by His Spirit, at His own approved and appointed time, to each of His elect when they are still in their native state of sin and death. With the application of the eternal salvation, each elect is entirely and perfectly fitted for eternal glory... nothing else is lacking. 'Who He justified, He also glorified.'
The Lord sends forth His servants to proclaim the good news of what the Triune God has done for His elect by His free and sovereign grace, calling them to believe the gospel, that they may know the truth of their eternal salvation by free and sovereign grace, and experience personally the blessedness of that salvation.
The gospel is intended specifically for them that ARE SAVED: "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God." 1Co 1:18. When the gospel comes to them that ARE SAVED, it is received as the message declaring God's power of saving them in Christ Jesus.
The gospel ministry is very important... but NOT what many imagined, i.e. as an instrument of conveying eternal salvation. The gospel ministry is appointed for the benefit of God's children, those ALREADY in possession of eternal salvation by God's free grace. The gospel ministry is very important for the temporal salvation, the spiritual well being, of God's children. It is the spiritual food to nourish those who already have eternal life. Food is for the nourishment of the living, it is not the means to bring life to the dead!
Peddlers and hawkers, IMPOSTORS and DECEIVERS, go around, with great pomposity and self-importance, claiming to offer eternal salvation on God's behalf and in Christ's name, to those that are still dead in their trespasses and sins... sincerely believing that preaching the gospel is the means the Holy Spirit uses to bring eternal life to them that are dead in trespasses and sins.
Offering eternal salvation to those still dead in trespasses and sins is not only utterly foolish but gross mockery and a cruel insult to the spiritually dead. It is like sincerely offering a big Mac to a dead man! And who sent them to offer the eternal salvation anyway? What presumption, and hallucination!
Declaring the good news of the eternal salvation that has been purposed, accomplished, and applied freely and sovereignly by God is not the same as an offering of the same eternal salvation to those still in their native state of sin and death! Proclaiming the good news of what God HAS DONE for His people, and calling them to believe the truth of what has happened, is not the same as offering that eternal salvation, that God has purposed, accomplished, to those without eternal salvation, i.e. still in their native state of trespasses and sins.
God, Himself has freely and sovereignly applied that eternal salvation for the intended beneficiaries, i.e. without any aid from man, without man meeting any condition. God's children are called to believe what is ALREADY TRUE - i.e. what God has already done by His free and sovereign grace, that they may experience personally the blessing of that eternal salvation here and now.
And the 'eunuch went on his way rejoicing.'
