3. The Effectual Work of the Spirit
James Buchanan
The great object of the first part of Peter’s discourse was to show that “Jesus is the Christ”; in other words, that the same Jesus who was born at Bethlehem, brought up in Nazareth, and was crucified on Calvary, was the Messiah promised to the fathers. He was, as His name means, God’s anointed One, His anointed Prophet, to declare His mind and will; His anointed Priest, to make reconciliation for the people; and His anointed Lord and King, whom they were bound to obey. This one truth, if established, was sufficient to demonstrate their guilt in having crucified the Lord of glory, and to change all the views and feelings they had for Him; for if Jesus was the Christ, they
1Taken with editing, from the “Illustrative Cases of Conversion” in The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit. Last month’s article began to describe the circumstances which accompanied the conversions on the day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2.
had been guilty of rebellion against God when they put Him to death! And how could they be safe if He was now on the throne?
The immediate effect produced on their minds by the first part of Peter’s sermon was a conviction of their guilt and danger – what is here described as deeply painful and penetrating: “They were pricked in their hearts”. Under the influence of this conviction they uttered that serious question: “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” They might have thought that all was over with them, that their case was utterly hopeless, that after crucifying the Lord of glory there remained nothing for them “but a certain fearful looking for of judgement, and fiery indignation”. Their language displays bewilderment, if not despair. They speak as men who do not know where to turn.
But see the freeness of the gospel. Having prepared them to receive the gracious message: having established that Jesus is the Christ of God, awakened a sense of guilt and danger and prompted a spirit of earnest inquiry, Peter at once unfolds the glad tidings of a full and free salvation, without any qualification. He excludes no one; he exhorts and encourages all; for this is the glorious message he was commissioned to deliver: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.”
This is emphatically the gospel — the gospel in all its fulness and in all its freeness. It proceeds on a supposition of their guilt and danger and addresses them as sinners. Yet, at the same time, it proclaims to these same sinners the remission of sins – through that very blood by which their hands were stained and which now lay heavy on their consciences.
They are exhorted to be baptized in token of being washed by that blood which might seem, like the blood of Abel, to call for heaven’s vengeance against them; but this was “the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than [the blood] of Abel”. Instead of saying here, “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground,” God commissions His servant to preach that very blood for the remission of sins! True, to have shed this blood was their sin, and Peter charges them with it: “Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain”. Note that it was by the very blood which they had sinfully shed that they were to obtain the remission of that and of every other sin – for this was “the blood of the new testament which is shed for many, for the remission of sins”. It was their sin that they crucified the Lord; yet His crucifixion was the means of their salvation.
And the same truth applies to ourselves. Let us remember that our guilt
was the real cause of the Saviour’s sufferings; our sins nailed Him to the accursed tree. “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin”; “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities”. As without the shedding of blood there could be no remission, so by the blood of Jesus the sins which caused His death are freely forgiven, for in consequence of that atonement, God can be the just God and yet the Saviour; the sin has been expiated, and the sinner may be saved. This is the gospel message, and it was the will of Him who died on the cross that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem”.
The sum and substance of the gospel is repentance, and remission of sins through the name of Jesus. Its perfect freeness is beautifully illustrated by the narrative of what occurred on the day of Pentecost, viewed in connection with our Lord’s command that this doctrine should be preached among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem – the city of His murderers, whose streets had recently resounded with the cry, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” That city had called forth His tears when He said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not”; “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes”.
This city was now stained by His blood. Guilty as it was, it was yet to receive the first announcement of the remission of sins, and the Lord’s command was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, when Peter freely proclaimed repentance and the remission of sins to the very men whom he charged as the murderers of His Lord. To them, without exception, he proclaimed a full and free salvation. And in this we have a conclusive proof of the perfect freeness of the gospel, for where is the man under a Christian ministry whose case is worse than that of the thousands who then received the joyful sound?
Viewing it in this light, John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, makes a powerful application of this part of the gospel narrative to remove all the scruples of those who think themselves too guilty to be saved, who do not sufficiently understand the perfect freeness of salvation. He supposes one of those whom Peter addressed exclaiming, “But I was one of those who plotted to take away His life; is there hope for me? Another, But I was one of those who bore false witness against Him; is there grace for me? A third, But I was one of those that cried out, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ Can there be hope for me? A fourth, But I was one of those that did spit in His face when He stood before His accusers, and I mocked Him when, in anguish, He
hung bleeding on the tree; is there hope for me? A fifth, But I was one who gave Him vinegar to drink; is there hope for me?”
Bunyan then takes Peter’s reply, “Repent and be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the Holy Ghost; for the promise is unto you and to your children,” and applies it to the conscience of every sinner: “Wherefore, sinner, be ruled by me in this matter; feign not thyself another man, if thou hast been a vile sinner. Go in thine own colours to Jesus Christ. Put thyself amongst the most vile, and let Him put thee among the children. Thou art, as it were, called by name, to come for mercy. . . . Thou man of Jerusalem, hearken to the call. . . . Say, Stand aside, devil! Christ calls me. Stand away, unbelief! Christ calls me. Stand away, all my discouraging apprehensions, for my Saviour calls me to receive of His mercy. . . . Christ pointeth over the heads of thousands, as He sits on the throne of grace, directly to such a man, and says . . . Come to Me. Wherefore – since Christ says, Come – to thee let the angels make a lane, and let all men give place, that the Jerusalem sinner may come to Jesus Christ for mercy!”
But while Peter proclaimed free remission of sins through the blood of Christ, this salvation was connected with an entire change of mind and heart. Hence the offer of free forgiveness is combined with an exhortation to “repent and be baptized”. Repentance properly means: a change of mind and implies faith in the truth which they had formerly rejected, but which they were now called to receive; sorrow for their sin in crucifying the Lord of glory; and a cheerful surrender of themselves to His authority, now that they were convinced of His exaltation.
It might seem unreasonable for Peter to call them to repent, when this implied so great a change of mind and heart – a change so far surpassing the power of unaided nature. Was it not written: “The carnal mind is enmity against God”; “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”; and, “No man can call Jesus, Lord, but by the Holy Ghost”? What was there in his words that could overcome that enmity, or cure that blindness, or impart power to repent and believe? Peter was not deterred by any such consideration. He preached boldly, “Repent and be baptized”, and afterwards, “Repent and be converted”, simply because he knew that his word, weak in itself, might be made mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.
It must never be forgotten that the truth Peter declared was rendered effectual by the grace of the Holy Spirit accompanying it. I do not speak at present of the gift of tongues, or of any other miraculous manifestation of the Spirit’s power, but of his inward grace exerted on the minds, consciences
and hearts of the hearers whereby their eyes were opened and they were turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. It is true that Peter was an inspired apostle; it is also true that the gospel which he preached is in every respect suitable as an instrument to effect the conversion of souls. It is equally true that his words were accompanied with such divine power as was plainly miraculous, but all this would not have accomplished the work had the inward, enlightening, regenerating grace of the Spirit been withheld.
It is the solemn testimony of Paul, another inspired apostle and endowed with the gift of tongues: “I have planted, and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase”. “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?” If any believed, it was because it was given to them “in the behalf of Christ . . . to believe on Him”, for “faith is the gift of God”. And if any repented it was because their hearts were softened and changed by Him who is exalted “a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance . . . and forgiveness of sins”.
Two very different operations of the Spirit of God are mentioned in the New Testament: one external, the other internal; the one temporary, the other permanent; the one confined to a few, the other common to all in every age who are savingly converted to God. The first consists in those gifts of prophecy, or tongues, or miracles, which were the appropriate evidences of God’s interposition, but were not in themselves either the sure means or the invariable symptoms of salvation; the second consists in those inward graces of faith, repentance, love, peace and joy, which are the elements of new spiritual life in the soul.
It follows that, on the day of Pentecost, there must have been another operation of the Holy Ghost, besides the miraculous gift of tongues: a direct work in the soul of every convert, applying the truth with power to his heart and conscience, subduing his will, and bringing him into captivity to the obedience of Christ. The effect of the miraculous dispensation corresponded to the impression produced on the public mind by the reading of the Scriptures: many are impressed and half-convinced, who are not savingly converted; an internal work of the Spirit is absolutely necessary to make effective His outward teaching by the Word and His outward testimony by miracles and signs.
Thousands probably left the streets of Jerusalem, on that memorable occasion, awestruck by what they had seen and heard, but still unconvinced and unconverted, while the 3000 who believed were enabled and persuaded to do so by the effectual grace of the Spirit of God. So it is at the present time. We still live under a dispensation emphatically called the “ministration of the Spirit”; and although He does not give any visible testimony by signs and
miracles, we have His written testimony – the Word, which is the Spirit’s witness to Christ. But that Word, although full of proofs of the Spirit’s teaching, will not bring about conversions any more than the gift of tongues did on the day of Pentecost, unless it is accompanied with that inward effectual operation by which the 3000 were added to the Church of the living God.
But this enlightening, convincing and sanctifying grace of the Spirit is the permanent privilege of the Christian Church; and while miracles and tongues have ceased, we are still privileged to expect that God will give the Spirit to them that ask Him. And surely the Word, now completed, and the Spirit, always promised, may yet accomplish as great a work in the experience of modern believers, as was wrought on the day of Pentecost by the first preaching of the gospel in the streets of Jerusalem.