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The sermon presents salvation as a work begun, sustained, and completed by the Holy Spirit rather than by human effort. Regeneration precedes genuine conviction, conversion, and faith because spiritually dead sinners can neither initiate nor produce spiritual life. The means of grace—preaching, prayer, and Scripture—are commanded and valuable, but they save only as the Spirit uses them. The sermon culminates in an urgent gospel appeal: guilty and helpless sinners should look to Christ, who bore their sins and grants forgiveness, while those already born of God should rejoice in their salvation.
Theological center: Salvation is wholly initiated and accomplished by the Holy Spirit, who regenerates sinners and produces faith in Christ’s substitutionary atonement.
Applications: Rely on the Holy Spirit · Examine Your New Birth · Look to Christ for Salvation · Seek Mercy While There Is Time
Primary texts: Galatians 3:3
“Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” Galatians 3:3 YES, we are just so foolish. Folly is bound up not only in the heart of a child, but in the heart of even a child of God. And though the rod may be said to bring folly out of a child, it will take many a repetition of the rod of affliction upon the shoulders of a Christian before that folly is taken out of him. I suppose we are all of us very sound as a matter of theory upon this point. If any should ask us how we hope to have our salvation worked in us, we should without the slightest hesitation aver our belief that salvation is of the Lord alone, and we should declare that as the Holy Spirit first of all commenced our piety in us, we look alone to His might to continue and to preserve, and at last to perfect the sacred work. I say we are sound enough on that point as a matter of theory, but we are all of us very heretical and unsound as a matter of practice. For alas! you will not find a Christian who does not have to mourn over his self-righteous tendencies. You will not discover a believer who has not at certain periods in his life to groan because the spirit of self-confidence has risen in his heart, and prevented him from feeling the absolute necessity of the Holy Spirit—has led him to put his confidence in the mere strength of nature, the strength of good intentions, the strength of strong resolutions, instead of relying upon the might of God the Holy Spirit alone. This one thing I know, brethren, that whilst as a preacher I can tell you all that the Holy Spirit must work all our works in us, and that without Him we can do nothing, yet as a man I find myself tempted to deny my own preachings, not in my words, but to deny them in fact by endeavoring to do deeds without looking first to the Holy Spirit. Whilst I should never be unsound in the didactic part of it, yet in that part which concerns the working of it out, in common with all who love the Lord Jesus, but who are still subject to the infirmities of flesh and blood, I have to groan that I repeatedly find myself, having begun in the Spirit, seeking to be made perfect in the flesh. Yes, we are just as foolish as that. And my brethren, it is well for us if we have a consciousness that we are foolish—for when a man is foolish and knows it—there is the hope that he will one day be wise. To know one’s self to be foolish is to stand upon the doorstep of the temple of wisdom. To understand the wrongness of any position is half way towards amending it. To be quite sure that our self-confidence is a h…