Replies

SR: I showed you in an earlier post that Paul makes a distinction between a Gospel preached in word only versus a Gospel preached and received in the power of the Spirit.

What's difficult to understand about that? God bore witness to the apostles' preaching with signs and wonders through the Spirit. This is an element of the equipping Jesus promised them in Acts 1, Mark 16, etc.

"Long time therefore they tarried there speaking boldly in the Lord, who bare witness unto the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands." - Acts 14:3

Here we read again of the gospel coming not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.

SR: Unregenerate sinners are carnal and cannot obey the word no matter how much you throw it at them.

But that's precisely who needs the gospel. How else can one be regenerated except by obedience to the gospel?

SR: The Lord opened her heart. Miracle of grace!

What's so miraculous about the Lord opening Lydia's heart to Paul's preaching? Here's a woman gathering with other women at a riverside place of prayer on the Sabbath. And along comes the first preacher of the gospel in that region. Of course her heart is going to be opened to listen.

Any surprise, then, that she was receptive to the gospel? She was a woman serving God according to the knowledge she had, obedient in accord with what she knew. Like Apollos and the Ephesians, she was ignorant of "the rest of the story." And like they, once she heard the gospel, she was baptized into Christ. These are those who "have ears to hear".

Not everyone is that way. Some don't have ears to hear, and so the things of God are hidden from them:

"Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; And seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, And their ears are dull of hearing, And their eyes they have closed; Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And should turn again, And I should heal them."

They've distorted their hearts, and dulled their hearing, and closed their eyes. Does that sound like Lydia? Such people WOULD need a miracle! But God won't force open a heart like that, nor shout into such an ear, nor force open such eyes. Lydia's heart, by contrast, was closed to truth only in the sense that she hadn't heard it yet.

But what did Jesus say?

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." - Matt. 7:7-8

That sounds like someone whose heart the Lord will open to pay attention to the gospel when the preacher comes by, doesn't it? It's what we find all through the Bible stories of gospel preaching. Nor is it anything new:

"But from thence ye shall seek Jehovah thy God, and thou shalt find him, when thou searchest after him with all thy heart and with all thy soul." - Deut. 4:29

Anything miraculous going on there? Or has it always been this way with God and those who serve Him?

SR: we have the word of God written on our hearts, and no more just on stone.

This, too, is the way it's always been with God and those who serve Him:

"And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates." - Deut. 6:6-9

And all that, without even a miracle! :-) Do you begin to see how God becomes such a part of one's life that He can be said to dwell in him?

So what have we got so far?

- Two ways in which God, Jesus, and the Spirit dwell/abide within us: the Bible way and some other way.

- And two ways in which the Lord opens hearts: the Bible way and some other way.

False dilemmas? No, just a choice between what's in the Bible and what isn't.

God bore witness to the apostles' preaching with signs and wonders through the Spirit.

Why should we assume no work of the Spirit occurred other than the outward miracles and the presentation of the word? As I pointed out before, the Lord opened Lydia's heart, as a condition precedent to her hearing Paul's preaching of the Gospel. And as I originally posted much earlier, many places speak of the work of the Spirit in a manner that can be understood as interpersonal, and not simply as the moral persuasion of the word on the natural mind.

This presumption against a supernatural process of conversion is begging the question, anticipating the desired answer in the forming of the question. That is a sure path to injecting a baseless human opinion into the word of God. The analysis must begin with no unnecessary assumptions. If you believe in "word-onlyism," you are sure to see it wherever you look. Any passage, even if it really was speaking of a dynamic spiritual communion between the Holy Spirit and our spirit, could be wrenched into meaning less by appending the supposed missing clause, "by the word only," which in fact is NOT there, anywhere, and is completely an invention of mortal man.

But that's precisely who needs the gospel. How else can one be regenerated except by obedience to the gospel?

Exactly. Quite the conundrum. The very man who need the Gospel is the one who will not listen to it. Unless of course the Lord opens that person's heart, as He did for Lydia, and as He did for every lost, spiritually dead sinner who ever came to faith in Him..

Of course her heart is going to be opened to listen.

No sir, there is nothing "of course" about it. It was an act of God, as all miracles are, and a necessary intervention. If it was so unremarkable, so matter of fact, why would the Holy Spirit inspire Doctor Luke to take the verbal equivalent of a yellow marker and highlight that it was the Lord who opened her heart as a precondition to hearing Paul's words? I dare say the Holy Spirit understood the situation far better that either of us, and if she was UN-supernaturally ready to hear Paul, why would He say the opposite? The words of Paul didn't get her ready to hear Paul. That doesn't make sense and it isn't what the text says:

And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.
(Acts 16:14)

Where in there does it say "but she didn't actually need the Lord to open her heart because she would have listened anyway?" What manuscript is that "missing fragment" in? If we are to examine the teaching of Scripture, I think we must begin with the assumption that if the Holy Spirit says the Lord acted in some way, that action was necessary, and so important that it is required reading for all believers. Not one word of Scripture is wasted. It is all there for a divine purpose. So if Luke says the Lord opened her heart, with the result of her attending to the preaching of Paul, then that is the order of events. The opening came first, by the power of God's Spirit, and then the words of the Gospel. It is beyond argument.

As for whether a miracle is needed as a general principle, Jesus said so:

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
(John 6:44)

There you see we do not even have the power to come to Jesus, unless God acts first, on us personally and individually. Same order of events as Lydia. Imagine that. :)

But would God ever shout? Oh yes. What was the Damascus road experience? A pleasant whisper? Or a two-by-four upside the head of Paul? God got Paul's attention rather forcefully, and was well justified in doing so. God is God, and can do as He pleases:

And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?
(Daniel 4:34-35)

BTW, I looked a little more into Campbell, and apparently he was much influenced by John Locke. As I understand it, he wanted to concoct a scheme for Christian unity, where the subjective beliefs that often were the basis of conflict could be eliminated by appealing to a strict rationalism, in which the divine workings of the Holy Spirit were reduced to nothing but moral persuasion of the natural mind, because Campbell in his rationalism could not imagine anything beyond that.

What he doubtless could not have seen coming was how that selfsame rationalism would become the basis for a complete removal of the supernatural from Christian faith. Like leaven it corrupted the whole loaf. Yet in hindsight that is his legacy, the removal of the supernatural workings of God's Spirit in bringing the elect to a supernatural faith in Christ. No doubt this is part of why some groups descended from him (Disciples of Christ, for example) are on the forefront of our deep slide into liberalism (aka national apostasy). Tragic consequences always flow from abandoning the word of God.

Peace,

SR