Salvation isn’t a matter of getting the words right in your prayer!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Salvation isn’t a matter of getting the words right in your prayer!<\/em> It isn’t a matter of crying the appropriate number of tears, walking an aisle, being baptized, or any other such matter of external activity.<\/p>\n Salvation is a matter of living faith in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.<\/p>\n Now, is salvation a one-time decision, or not? What does it mean to be born again? And is it right for Christian ministers to call for a decision for Christ?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The term, ‘born again’, comes from the lips of our Lord. In Greek it is ‘gennethen anothen’. The metaphor of physical birth is clearly intended to stand for a second spiritual birth in the Lord’s discussion with Nicodemus. It clearly is what Nicodemus himself understood and the Lord didn’t rebuke this aspect of Nicodemus’ understanding. Nicodemus misunderstood the spiritual nature of the second birth, not the unique, one-time metamorphosis intended by the metaphor.<\/p>\n To be born again is to have the power of the Spirit so change one’s spiritual life that the soul at one moment was dying, subject to the wrath of God and at the next is alive, expectant of the eternal life God offers in Christ. To be born again is to experience in a moment a complete spiritual reversal, to have immediately new life that endures forever, to belong at once to the family of God.<\/p>\n The possibility of instantaneous new birth lies behind the invitations of preachers, the press for a faith decision. This pressure is heard in sermons through the ages, beginning in the first century. Consider Peter’s invitation on the day of Pentecost:<\/p>\n NAU Acts 2:36 “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ– this Jesus whom you crucified.” 37 \u00b6 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” 38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Or later, after the healing of the man at the temple gate:<\/p>\n NAU Acts 3:25 “It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘AND IN YOUR SEED ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH SHALL BE BLESSED.’ 26 “For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Can anyone deny that in these messages God is making an invitation to sinners? Let’s consider the example of Paul:<\/p>\n NAU Acts 13:38 “Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, 39 and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses. 40 “Therefore take heed, so that the thing spoken of in the Prophets may not come upon you: 41 ‘BEHOLD, YOU SCOFFERS, AND MARVEL, AND PERISH; FOR I AM ACCOMPLISHING A WORK IN YOUR DAYS, A WORK WHICH YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE, THOUGH SOMEONE SHOULD DESCRIBE IT TO YOU.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And hear Paul on Mar’s Hill, pressing for a decision of repentance:<\/p>\n NAU Acts 17:30 “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Some might say these invitations are unclear. Let’s look at the invitation of someone else then:<\/p>\n NAU Matthew 7:21 \u00b6 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. 22 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’ 24 \u00b6 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. 26 “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell– and great was its fall.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What is this but an invitation? The alternatives are clearly set forth. There is pressure in these words to decide aright.<\/p>\n I don’t advocate long, drawn-out, emotional appeals. But I do advocate appeals. There must be some call – how do you suppose the Holy Spirit intends to issue the call to salvation? Is it merely by invisible internal pressure from within? If that were all that were necessary, why would God ordain preaching as the means by which men are saved (1 Cor 1.21)?<\/p>\n I am afraid there is much despising of the works of our forbears by the young experts of our day. They disparage the work of men who built the church we have today, men to whom they owe their own spiritual heritage, and even to whom they owe the foundation upon which their own conversion was built.<\/p>\n I thank God for the work of Moody, Torrey, Sunday, Chapman, and a host of others who laboured to bring souls into the kingdom. I thank God for men entered into that labour today. May we all have some of their courage as we press men into the kingdom. May we be willing to issue calls to repentance and faith. May we urge the claims of Christ on unrepentant souls and not stop to apologize that we are somehow intruding on the Holy Spirit’s work. Our work in the Spirit is the work of the Spirit through us.<\/p>\n NAU Romans 10:14 \u00b6 How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I am not going to link to outside commentaries on this one, though references abound, particularly in some quarters. My subject is the negative rap placed on ‘revivalism’ and ‘decisionism’ by some. And of course, I’d like to take a contrarian position. First, let me acknowledge that I oppose the “I prayed a prayer” approach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[41,42,88,70],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-cv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"don_sig2\"](\"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/don-sig23.png\")
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