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By April J. Buchanan | Religion Columnist

We like to think of ourselves as seekers who found God. If the people we are sharing the Gospel with are already seeking God then all we need to do is convince them that He is what they have been seeking all along. Now we just need to find out “what works” to close the deal.

But Scripture says,

“as it is written, There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.” Romans 3:10-12 LSB

The immediate response we may have to that is to explain it away, rather than hear what it says and means.

If we begin with man and believe that he is seeking God then we are assuming something inherently good within man or a desire in man that may be appealed to. We then try to figure out how we can convince him that Jesus is what he is seeking.

But what we consider “seeking God” is man seeking the by-products of God.

According to Scripture, we do not naturally seek God; we seek pleasure, fulfillment, purpose, and freedom from pain. Many pulpits that look out at man who is in fact “seeking” will appeal to these desires and offer a Jesus to fulfill their desires.

Any means of evangelism and of reaching the lost that begins with man will fail. We must begin with God. We cannot understand our greatest need or how sinful we really are and that our desire is not for God until we understand who God is. When we hear the true Gospel, it is God who works in us giving us the desire for Him, changing our affections so that we now desire Him. He grants us faith and repentance.

As Jonathan Edwards said: “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.”

We are not basically good people who just need a push in the right direction. We are enemies of a holy and righteous God who will judge justly. We love to hear about God’s grace and how much He loves us because we love us too. Contrary to popular dangerous teachings that we need to love ourselves more, that has never been our problem. We love ourselves too much. We think so much of ourselves that we believe that we are the ones who seek God and that when we are ready we will “get right with God”. We don’t know how sinful we are because we don’t realize how Holy God really is.

If God is seeking and saving the lost then His means are the means we should be faithful to and we can have great confidence that if God is sovereign in salvation (and He is) then we need only obey what He has called us to do and that is to proclaim the Gospel – no gimmicks; no manipulation – and trust God with the results.

Grace and Peace

Soli Deo Gloria