Will power is a wonderful thing. Having strong will power can help us lose weight, cause up to get up early, even when we go to bed late, and it can even allow us to forgive those who hurt us. On this last use of will power and forgiveness I like what Corrie Ten Boom shared: “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”1
However, will power can only go so far. And the problem is that we are in desperate need, before we come to Christ, of a total transformation of our moral being. A psychiatrist once said: “I can make a mad person sane, but I can’t make a bad person good.” And when it comes to loving a holy God, the unregenerate person is totally unable to do this. R. C. Sproul offers insight here: “Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him… To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.”2
And that’s why salvation must originate with our holy God drawing people by His grace to Himself. Our will power can never overcome the fact that we all are dead in our sins and trespasses and according to (Romans 3:10-12): “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.’”
And if no one can seek God on their own – then will power is incapable of overcoming our sinful nature. But thanks be to God for His wonderful grace. It is the only power strong enough to, in the words of R. C. Sproul, “pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.”
As many of you know, if you have been following my blog for some time, I believe that while apologetics can help strengthen the faith of Christians, it is often not very effective with a large population of souls who have hardened their hearts again God. And that is why I often stress we must combine good apologetic arguments with fervent prayer, if we are to summon God’s grace to be applied against the hardened heart. Will power to overcome our sin nature is ineffective here. Only the convicting power of the Holy Spirt is strong enough to break the shackles all non-Christians are enslaved with.
So, my advice is simple. If you want your unsaved loved one to come to Christ then share the gospel message with them, share some of the apologetic arguments I make from time to time on this website, and pray fervently for the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. Remember we are in a spiritual battle for the salvation of souls and God’s supernatural grace is the necessary antidote for a hardened heart and that fervent, believing prayer is one of the greatest ways to unleash and apply its power!