Why preach the Gospel if man is powerless to respond? why did the sinner come to Christ if sin has so enslaved him that he has no power in himself to come? Reply: We do not preach the Gospel because we believe that men are free moral agents and therefore capable of receiving Christ, but we preach it because we are commanded to do so (Mark 16:15); and though to them that perish it is foolishness yet, "unto us which are saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:18). "The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor. 1:25). The
sinner is dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1), and a dead man is
utterly incapable of willing anything, hence it is that "they that are
in the flesh (the unregenerate) cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8).
To fleshly wisdom it appears the height of folly to preach the Gospel to those that are dead, and therefore beyond the reach of doing anything themselves. Yes, but God's ways are different from ours. It pleases God "by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" (1 Cor. 1:21). Man may deem it folly to prophesy to "dead bones" and to say unto them, "O ye dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord" (Ezek. 37:4). Ah! but then it is the Word of the Lord, and the words He speaks "they are spirit, and they are life"
(John 6:63). Wise men standing by the grave of Lazarus might pronounce
it an evidence of insanity when the Lord addressed a dead man with the words, "Lazarus, Come forth." Ah! but He who thus spake was and is Himself the Resurrection and the Life, and at His word
even the dead live! We go forth to preach the Gospel, then, not because
we believe that sinners have within themselves the power to receive the
Saviour it proclaims but because the Gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, and because we know that "as many as were ordained to eternal life" (Acts 13:48) shall believe
(John 6:37; 10:16-note the "shall's"!) in God's appointed time, for it
is written "Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power" (Psa. 110:3)!
- A. W. Pink (The Sovereignty of God, Chapter 8: The Sovereignty of God in the Human Will)
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