ONLY WHEN WE BELIEVE



IF ANY DENY THAT SALVATION be by the free and sovereign grace of God in Christ alone, it is because they do not know themselves! They do not know themselves and their real condition because they do not believe God! We are so blinded by self-righteousness and Satan that unless the Spirit give us the gift of faith, we can never know our true state and condition as sinners before God.

We can never know our helplessness except we believe Christ’s words, “no man can come to Me except the Father draw him.” We can never know what we imagine our righteousness to be unless we believe God who says that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” and “there is none righteous, no not one.” When we believe God, we know that we are “lost, blind, dead in trespasses and sins, and without strength.” We are what God says we are, not what men say we are or what we think ourselves to be.

When the Spirit of God gives a person faith to believe God and reveals to them what they truly are as sinful wretches, that same faith will cause them to flee to Christ as their only Hope of being saved from their sins! Believing God and then knowing that there is no other name given under heaven by which we can be saved, we trust Christ crucified for all our salvation and rejoice with Jonah that “SALVATION IS OF THE LORD”!

He will be gracious to whom He will be gracious and show mercy to whom He will show mercy, it's HIS RIGHT ALONE AS THE SOVEREIGN OF THE UNIVERSE. Believing who He is as the holy and just One, they rejoice and are thankful that God was gracious and merciful to them! It is by God-given faith that we find out what great sinners we are and what a great Savior of sinners Christ is!


-Gospel report by preacher Gary Shepard


Sovereign Grace Baptist church of Jacksonville, North Carolina USA

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