OUTLINE:

The Whole Man
When we talk about “heart issues” relative to salvation, the “heart” refers to the WHOLE MAN. Colloquially, we might say that a person’s “heart just isn’t in it” to signify an inferior commitment/willingness.

The Whole Man
The actual facts about God’s salvation plan are what you make a decision based upon. BUT, you STILL have to make a decision about Him and His Son, specifically!

The Thief On the Cross
(Lk 23:39-43)
The story about the two thieves on crosses is really a magnificent illustration of conversion, beginning with repentance and then completing the process with saving faith.

God Saves, Man Is Involved
A naturally-minded man cannot understand the things of God (1Co 2:14), such as man being called to repent, believe, have faith for salvation, while God is the only one able to grant them! In salvation, God’s and man’s wills are fused supernaturally, causing a naturally-minded man fits!

God Saves, Man Is Involved
This is absolutely why the disciples, contemplating salvation from the “difficulty” of human perspective, asked that famous question, “Then who can be saved” (Lk 18:26)?

God Saves, Man Is Involved
It is never right to say that man is passive in salvation; nor is it ever right to say that God is passive in it, either. Both parties are active, accountable. God ensures it.

God Saves, Man Is Involved
Just because salvation forensics are grace gifts from God doesn’t mean that man isn’t held accountable to God’s demands regarding said things.

Repentance is a beautiful thing in God’s eyes.

Increasing Gratitude
Repentance leads us to gratitude. We give thanks when we realize how depraved we are (and continue to be in the flesh). As God reveals more sin to us, we repent more, and we are that much more grateful…and so on.

Arrogance Is Unteachable
Lack of repentance is arrogance. This was David’s example in Ps 51, where God granted David’s repentant heart and then led him back to Himself.

Trust Is the Key
A humble person trusts in God while an arrogant person trusts in themselves (or some other god - spouse, false prophet, idols, etc.). Deliverance is a function of trust.

Understanding Salvation
Just because we can theologically, and even practically, make distinctions between repentance and faith, they are eternally, intrinsically bound together.

Understanding Deliverance
Because a man’s heart is affected by God’s grace - and though he must repent and have faith - only a whole person is able to function in either, and therefore intrinsically, both at any given point in time, where the end result is salvation/deliverance.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ
The reason that repentance is part of the Gospel proper is because God is dealing directly with the OBJECT of repentance and faith - the human heart!

The Gospel of Jesus Christ
God is looking for the WILL of man, which intrinsically involves the whole person. A person must be “given to” in order to be “quickened to.”

The “Robe of Righteousness”
A person who refuses to be “dressed” by the King will be thrown out of the wedding ceremony! (ala Mt 22:13)

Mt 13:23
“And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.”

1Co 3:7
So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

The Whole Man
Treat man as a whole, not as bits and pieces, for God sees the heart of man (the whole of him) when He makes His judgments about him.