There is No God Seeker (Romans 3:11)

Posted on September 20, 2011 by John Samson

“I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.” – Romans 10:20

Here in this verse, God declares that He revealed Himself to those who were not even seeking or asking for Him. That is something to really think about.

Who was this group that God revealed Himself to?

Well, we might think it is some distant African tribe or all of the many atheists who at one time professed that there was no God at all. However, the startling biblical answer to the question is that its all of those who have come to have faith in Christ.

Romans 3:11 says “no one seeks for God.” Literally the text reads, “there is no God seeker.”

We tend to be blind to this truth, especially when we might have heard numerous testimonies of (now) Christian people who say they were seeking for God all their lives – seeking Him in many different spiritual experiences, even through searching out many different religions.

While it is certainly true that these people sought many different experiences and were involved in other religions, what the Bible teaches is that none of us by nature wish to know the God of the Bible. We are born DOA (dead on arrival) spiritually speaking, yet we walk a course mapped out for us by the Prince of darkness. We are by nature children of wrath rather than children of God and unless God intervenes, we will never seek to know the one true God. That is the clear teaching of the opening verses of Ephesians chapter 2. All our religious “searchings” are really attempts to run and hide from Him. Like Adam in the garden of Eden after he had sinned, He hid from the presence of the Lord. That is our inner disposition towards God until God moves upon the heart and draws us to Himself. Before that we might want all the trappings of what a relationship with God brings – forgiveness, freedom from a guilty conscience, feelings of happiness and assurance, peace within; but we just dont want to go to God to get these things. We often mistake a desire for these things as a desire for God. Hear again the word of the Lord, “there is no God seeker.” (Romans 3:11).

Though the Bible commands us, “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near,” (Isa. 55:6) none of us by nature will actually ever do that. We have the responsibility, just not the interest.
Continue reading →

Miscellaneous Quotes (24)

Posted on September 19, 2011 by John Samson

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” – Galatians 6:14

“The Christian not only glories in the cross, he glories in the cross alone. He glories in nothing else… There is an exclusiveness about it, which means that to the Christian this is the chief thing in history, the most important event that has ever taken place. It means that to him there is nothing which comes anywhere near it in significance. It means that he rests everything upon this, that this means all to him, that he is what he is because of this. He glories in it.

I want to ask a question to all Christian believers. Are you glorying in the cross? Or are you just saying, Of course, I always believe, I always have believed, I was brought up to. Can you speak like that about the cross?

The test of the Christian is that he glories in it, he exults in it, he boasts of it. It is everything to him, without it he has nothing. He owes all to this, this cross is the center of his universe in every respect. This is what is meant by boasting.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross: God’s Way of Salvation (Crossway, 1986), 54-55

“The love of Christ, being the love of God, is effectual and fruitful in producing all the good things which he wills to his beloved. He loves life, grace, and holiness into us; he loves us also into covenant, loves us into heaven. . . .

How many millions of sins, in every one of the elect, every one of which were enough to condemn them all, has this love overcome! What mountains of unbelief does it remove! Look upon the conversation of any one saint, consider the frame of his heart, see the many stains and spots, the defilements and infirmities, wherewith his life is contaminated, and tell me whether the love that bears with all this be not to be admired. And is it not the same towards thousands every day? What streams of grace, purging, pardoning, quickening, assisting, do flow from it every day! This is our Beloved.” – John Owen, Communion with God

“Upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die; another’s life, another’s death, I stake my whole eternity.” – Horatius Bonar
Continue reading →