"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

"But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto H e called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." - II Thessalonians 2:13, 14 [KJV] The first work of grace is to kill rather than to make alive; to wound rather than to heal; to bring down rather than to lift up; to reveal the law rather than the gospel. For "balm is useless to the unfeeling." Salvation with all its superabounding grace is but an empty sound to those who have never felt themselves cut off from all help or all hope. So, in a sense, there is a calling under and through, if not by the law, in the first teaching and operations of the Spirit of God, bringing the soul under its condemnation as a ministration of death. But when the law has done its office, and the sinner is slain by its killing power,

"There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel's veins,  And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains.  The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day;  And there have I, as vile as he, Washed all my sins away.  Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood Shall never lose its power  Till all the ransomed Church of God Be saved to sin no more.  E'er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,  Redeeming love has been my theme  And shall be till I die.  When this poor lisping, stammering tongue Lies silent in the grave,  Then in a nobler, sweeter song I'll sing Thy power to save."      -Wm. Cowper