Luke 7:29-30 “And when all the people heard Him, even the tax collectors justified God, having been baptized with the baptism of John. (30) But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.”
In this series so far, we have seen that it is the perfect will of God that all men should be saved. We have also seen that God has made provision for all men to be saved, and we have seen that God proclaims that salvation message to all men. And so, the question must then be asked, why is it that some men are saved and others are not saved? And so, in answering that question, we will see in this section that the reason why some men are saved and others are not, is because all men have a free will, and in this life, God will not override the free will of any man. In other words, God will not force any man to be saved, but rather He offers His salvation to them, and allows them to make their own choice as to whether they will accept His salvation or refuse it. And so, again in order to establish this truth, I have quoted four witnesses that all say the same thing, i.e. that man, as an act of their free will; either accepts or refuses the salvation of God. The four witnesses are the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus, and the apostles Paul and Barnabas. The first witness quoted above is the Holy Spirit, for it is He that inspired Luke to write this passage of scripture. In this passage, the Holy Spirit clearly reveals to us that it is men, which as an act of their free will, either accept or reject God’s will for their lives. For in context, Jesus was speaking about how Israel responded to the preaching of John the Baptist. And in this passage, we see that it was God’s will that they all receive the baptism of John. And so, we see that as an act of their free will, some accepted God’s will for themselves by being baptized by John while others, in this case the specific group named were the lawyers and Pharisees, rejected God’s will for themselves because they refused to be baptized by John.
Michael E.B. Maher
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