Ch.7. Conversion Getting In.

Part I The Spirit and the Hearing of the Gospel.

Although the Goal of Salvation is the calling Out a people for god's Name, people enter this community on a one at a time – Almost every aspect of Getting-in is a Work of the Spirit, beginning with the Proclamation and Revelation of the Gospel.

1. Christ's saving work begins in the heart of the Individual by the Holy Spirit. For Paul the new Eschatological perspective includes Jews and gentiles all on the same grounds – members of the people of God. How to GET -IN and STAY – IN is included in Paul's Soteriology.
   Conversion Biblically means making disciples from former pagans. Jesus has commanded, “Go make disciples”, not “Go, make converts.”
2. The Spirit nad GETTING _ IN. - This includes :- hearing the Gospel, faith, the various images of real conversion, the Gift of the Spirit and baptism in Water. So here is the Process:
   a) Hearing the Gospel. This precedes faith in the heart. Rom 10:14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

Rom 10:15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!"

b) Faith comes by Hearing. 1Th 2:13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. Cp 2 Thess 2:13-14 Eph 1:13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
The Gospel as the TRUTH must be believed i.e. trusted, as revealed by the Spirit.

3. The Spirit and Preaching.

   In 1 Cor 3: Paul contrasts his own ministry with that of Moses and indirectly with “other peddlers of another Jesus”.
   In doing so, he refers to his own ministry as a “Ministry of the Spirit” (of the new Covenant, empowered by the Holy Spirit and results in others receiving the Spirit. It is accompanied by “Far greater glory” which is the Work of the Spirit. It unveils the glory which is in the face of Jesus Christ.

It involves CONVICTION of the truth of the Gospel and also signs and wonders resulting in changed Lives.

1Th 1:5 because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.

1Th 1:6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, 1Th 1:7 so that you became an example (model Christians) to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.

Rom 15:18 For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed,

Rom 15:19 by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ;

Cp. 1 Cor 2 :1-5; 4:1-21; 9:1-2

1Co 2:4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,

1Co 2:5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (empowered words and powerful deeds) 2Cor 5:13

cp. Eph 6:17 Speak forth the Word of God into the darkness of this world.