Gospel/Evangelism
THE LIVING GOD
By Homer Duncan
Missionary Crusader
Three million copies of this booklet are in print in sixty languages.
Do you want to know the only true and living God? Would you like to be His child so that you can know His love, His care, and His protection? Do you want to be free from the burden of your sin? Would you like to have the sweet assurance of knowing that when you die you will spend eternity in a glorious Heaven in bliss and happiness?
Tens of thousands of people in the world know God as their loving Heavenly Father. They rejoice in His love and in His care. They know that all of their sins are forgiven. In this life, they have peace and joy. Since they have everlasting life, death for them is not the end of life, but the entrance into the glories of their Heavenly Father’s wonderful home.
If you wish to share the experience of the people I have described above, take a few minutes to read the pages of this little booklet. The truths that are given in this booklet are based on another Book called the Bible. The Bible is the Book in which God reveals Himself to men. The Bible is the Word of the only true and living God.
There are many reasons why we can know that the Bible is the Word of God. We know this first of all because of its mighty transforming power. In all parts of the world, the lives of thousands of people have been changed for the better because they have read and believed the message of this Book. Vile sinners have been changed into pure and holy saints. Lives that were once filled with blackness and despair have been filled with hope and happiness.
We know that the Bible is the Word of God because hundreds of things that were foretold in its pages thousands of years ago have come to pass in the exact manner in which the Bible said that they would be fulfilled
The Spirit of God used more than forty different men from all walks of life to write the Holy Scriptures. Even though these writers lived over a period of 1600 years, everything that they wrote is in perfect harmony. This clearly shows us that it was God Himself who directed what to write.
The Bible is composed of sixty-six books; thirty-nine books are in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New Testament. The first five books of the Old Testament are called the Law, and the first four books of the New Testament are called the Gospels.
WHAT IS GOD LIKE?
Though the Heavens declare the glory of God and though many of His wonders can be seen on the earth, we learn more specifically who He is by reading the Bible. God has been pleased to reveal Himself to us through the pages of this Book. In the Bible, we learn that God is the eternal Spirit. He is holy and more pure than the rays of the sun. He is almighty; there is nothing that He cannot do. His power is demonstrated throughout the universe in which we live.
God knows everything. He knows all about the past, He knows every detail about the present; and He knows every single event the future holds. More than this, because He is the sovereign God, He works all things according to His own plan and purpose. God is everywhere. There is not a place in all of the Heavens above or on the earth beneath where we cannot find Him. He is unchangeable. He is love. Love is the very nature of His being. He loves every man, woman, boy, and girl on the face of the earth. He loves you, and He wants you to love Him
Did you ever stop and wonder where this world came from? Do you ever think of the One who put the sun, moon, and stars in place? Did you ever think about how life got started on this earth on which we live? The Bible is the only book in the world that answers these questions for us. Man may speculate about all of these things, but the Bible is the only Book in the world that gives us a reasonable answer. The Bible is the only Book in the world that tells us where man came from, why he is here, and where he is going.
THE STORY OF CREATION
The Bible tells us how and why God made all things. God made the sun, moon, and stars and put them in place. He made the earth and all that is on it. He spoke, and it was done. God made man in His own image from the dust of the earth. This is not hard for us to believe because we know that when we die, our body returns to dust again. Science tells us that man’s body has exactly the same chemicals in it and in the same proportions as does the dust of the earth. When God made the first man He took the body of clay that He had made and breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. God made the first woman from a rib taken from the side of the man. God called the first man Adam, and He called the first woman Eve.
For many years Adam and Eve dwelt together in bliss and happiness in a beautiful garden called Eden. The man and the woman were naked, but they were not ashamed. They enjoyed all of the fruits and flowers in this beautiful garden, but God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for, if they did, they would die.
THE ADVERSARY APPEARS
All was well until Satan appeared on the scene. Satan had been created by God to be one of the anointed cherubim that protected the throne of God. He was the most beautiful and most wise of all of God s creatures. Because of his beauty, his heart was lifted up with pride. He was not content to remain in the place where God had put him. Instead, he aspired to have a throne that would be above the stars of God. These wicked desires caused Satan to rebel against God, and many of the angels joined with him in the rebellion. This was the first sin that came into the universe. Because of his rebellion against God, Satan was cast out of Heaven.
Satan is the great enemy of God and of man. He seeks to hinder the purposes of God; he deceives men that he may damn them. He keeps men in his bondage through fear and superstition. In order to get man to rebel against God, Satan appeared to Eve in the form of a beautiful serpent. His purpose was to get the man and the woman to believe and obey Him, rather than to believe and obey God. In order to accomplish this purpose, he sowed the seeds of doubt in her mind. He said to the woman, “Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die” (Genesis 3:1-3).
Then Satan told the first lie, “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). He told Eve that God was holding back something good from them. He said that if she and her husband would eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, their eyes would be opened and that they would be as gods, knowing good and evil. Eve carefully considered the words of Satan. She saw that the tree was good for food. It was beautiful to look at, and more than that, she believed that it would make her wise if she would eat of this fruit. She did not see any harm in doing such a thing. She thought it would not hurt to try and see what would happen. She picked some of the fruit and ate it. It was delicious to her taste. She called Adam and got him to share the fruit with her
THE RESULTS OF THE FALL
All of a sudden Adam and Eve realized that they were naked. They were ashamed and tried to cover their nakedness with aprons of fig leaves. When God called them, they hid from His presence among the trees. When God found them, He asked, “What is this that thou hast done?” (Genesis 3:13). Adam blamed his wife who in turn blamed the serpent.
Think of the terrible consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve! All of the sin, sorrow, and suffering that fills the world today was started because of their rebellion against God. Since God is holy and just, He could not overlook their sin. He must punish them. God put a curse on the serpent and made it crawl on its belly eating dust all of its days. He put a curse on the woman and caused her to bear her children with sorrow. He put a curse on the ground because of man’s sin. The thorns, thistles, and weeds that cover the earth bear mute testimony to Adam’s sin. Man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. God sent cherubims with flaming swords to drive Adam and Eve from the garden in order to keep them from eating of the tree of life.
God had said, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Death is used in the Bible in three different ways. (1) Physical death is the separation of man’s soul and spirit from his body. (2) The second death is eternal separation from God. (3) Spiritual death results when God takes His Spirit from the spirit of man. Adam and Eve did not immediately die physically when they ate of the forbidden fruit, but physical death began to work in their bodies even as it is now working in your body and mine. The moment they ate the forbidden fruit, they died spiritually. God took His Spirit from their spirit. The children that were born to Adam and Eve were born having physical life but not spiritual life. Since that time every person who has been born has physical life but does not have spiritual life. All of us are born with a fallen, sinful nature. We know this to be true not only because the Bible teaches it, but also because it is evident from our own experience. We are sinners by nature. It is the nature of men to sin just as it is the nature of birds to fly or fish to swim.
The Bible tells us that man by nature knew God, but that he failed to glorify Him as God. Man became vain in his thoughts and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto man, birds, four-footed beasts, and even creeping things. God punished man by giving him up to his sin. Man became filled with unrighteousness, fornication, murder, and all manner of wickedness. Therefore, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the wickedness of man.
Sin is the breaking of God’s holy law. God gave His law to show man what was right and what was wrong. When we measure ourselves by human standards, we think that we are not very bad; but when we measure ourselves by God’s standard, we see that we have sinned and that we have come short of His glory.
More than thirty-five hundred years ago God gave ten basic commandments which can be summarized in this way:
- Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
- Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
- Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
- Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
- Honor thy father and thy mother
- Thou shalt not kill.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- Thou shalt not steal
- Thou shalt not bear false witness.
- Thou shalt not covet.
God’s law condemns every man. For God has said, “Whosoever shall keep the law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10). Perhaps as you read this verse of Scripture, you think that God is not fair in saying that if a person breaks the law in one point, he is guilty of breaking the whole law. Let me give you two illustrations.
As a young man, I worked for a glass company. On one job we were putting large plate glass windows in a hotel. As I was driving down the stops to hold the glass in place, I accidentally cracked the corner of one of the large plate-glass windows. It was ruined and had to be replaced with another glass. I did not take my hammer and smash the glass into bits. Though I had merely broken off one corner, the entire glass was ruined and had to be replaced.
Here is another simple illustration. A chain may have a hundred links in it. In order to break the chain, you do not have to smash and separate every link. The chain is broken when one link is broken.
In the same way, we do not have to break all of the commandments before we are guilty of breaking God’s law. We break the law when one commandment is broken. The law was not given to save men but to show them their need of a Savior.
When a man breaks the law of his country, he is punished by the officers of the country. When a man breaks God’s laws, he will be punished by God. Sin must be punished. The Bible clearly teaches that all unforgiven sinners will spend eternity in the lake burning with fire and brimstone.
Must all men be hopelessly condemned forever because they are sinners? Is there not some way whereby sinful men can be reconciled to a holy God? If God loves all men, will not He provide a way whereby they can be saved? Blessed be God! He has provided the perfect way of salvation for all men. He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). This wonderful salvation that God provides is in and, through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
The Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. He is one with His Father. Before the foundations of the world were laid, He was daily His Father’s delight. “When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Jesus was born in the little village of Bethlehem in the land of Judea nearly two thousand years ago.
In many respects, Jesus is different from all other men. He is different because He is the God-man. He did not have a human father. Joseph was His foster father; but Mary, His mother, was found with child of the Holy Spirit before Joseph and Mary came together as husband and wife. Jesus is the only man who was ever born of a virgin. Jesus remained truly God while also becoming truly man, hence the God-man. He is, therefore, the only mediator between God and men. Because He was begotten of God, He can reach up with one hand and take hold of a Holy God. Because He was born of woman, He can reach down with the other hand and take hold of lost, sinful man. He alone can bring sinful men to a Holy God.
It is interesting for us to notice that the birth of Christ was of sufficient importance to cause all time to be measured from the date of His birth. B. C. means Before Christ, and A. D. represents the Latin words for the year of our Lord. Each of the four Gospels tell us of the wonderful life that Jesus lived for thirty-three years on the earth. Even though His public ministry lasted only a brief span of three years, He accomplished all that God had purposed for Him to do. He did good to all that He met. He healed the sick; He made the blind to see; He caused the deaf to hear; He cleansed the lepers and even raised the dead. He walked on the waters and stilled the raging storms. He multiplied a few loaves and fishes and fed a great multitude of people.
Words of grace flowed from His lips. His words of wisdom are universally recognized as being the highest precepts known to man. His entire life was controlled, empowered, and directed by God.
The wickedness of men is seen in that they hated Jesus because of His words and because of His deeds. He came to the Jews as their King; but they cried, “Away with Him. We will not have this man to reign over us.” He was despised and rejected of men. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He chose twelve men to be His disciples. One of them denied Him; another betrayed Him into the hand of His enemies. As He faced the terrible ordeal of dying on the cross for the sins of the whole world He sweat great drops of blood. He prayed to His Heavenly Father, “if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). He was condemned by the Jewish Sanhedrin because they feared that He would take their place. He went through a mock trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.
Men spit in his face. They stripped His clothes from His body and laid cruel lashes on His back. They pressed a crown of thorns into His brow. His body was nailed to a cruel cross that was planted between heaven and earth. Even as the milling multitudes mocked and derided him, He prayed. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). As His lifeblood flowed from His veins, He cried, “I thirst” (John 19:28). For His thirst, “they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth” (John 19:29). The sun hid its face from this horrible sight, and there was darkness over all the land (Luke 23:44-45). He cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30), and then said, “‘Father, into your hands, I commit my Spirit.’ Having said this, He breathed His last” (Luke 23:46). His body was carefully wrapped in linen clothes and was placed in a tomb where never a man had lain.
Before His death, Jesus had told His disciples that He would be raised from the dead after He had been in the grave for three days and three nights. The Jewish leaders knew that Christ had told His disciples this, and now that they had put Him to death they feared that His disciples would come by night and steal His body and claim that He had been raised from the dead. To prevent this, they had Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, seal the stone that was placed over the mouth of the tomb and place a guard of Roman soldiers to see that no one in any manner disturbed the grave.
On the first day of the week before the break of dawn, some women came to the tomb that they might anoint His body, but they found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. The women ran and told the disciples what they had seen. Two of his disciples, Peter and John, ran to the tomb to see what had happened. John, getting there first, hesitated to go in, but Peter went in and saw the empty grave clothes. Jesus’ body had been wrapped round and round with long strips of cloth. The grave clothes had not been unwound and left in a tangled heap, but they were still wrapped together as they had been when placed about the body of Jesus. But, now they were empty. The body of Jesus had slipped out of them and the grave clothes were left as an empty shell.
The disciples departed wondering what had happened. Mary Magdalene was a woman out of whom Jesus had cast seven demons. She loved Jesus very tenderly, and after the other women had gone she stood in the garden by the tomb weeping. She saw a man whom she supposed to be the gardener and said to him, “’Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.’ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.’ ” Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that He had said these things to her” (John 20:15-18).
That afternoon two of the disciples went toward their home on a country road near Jerusalem. As they walked along, they talked about the things that had taken place in the last few days. Jesus drew near and walked with them, but they did not recognize Him. As they walked, the Lord Jesus expounded unto them in all the Scripture the things concerning Himself. When they got to their house, they invited this stranger to come in and eat with them. He did so and as He broke the bread their eyes were opened and they recognized Him as Christ the Lord. He vanished from their sight. They immediately got up to go back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples what they had seen. When they got back to Jerusalem, they found the disciples gathered together, and as they were telling them about the appearance of Jesus, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them. He said, “Peace be unto you.” But they were terrified and thought they saw a ghost. Jesus showed them the wounds in His hands and in His side. He ate some broiled fish and a piece of a honey comb. Then He taught them from the Scripture concerning Himself.
Thomas, one of Jesus’ disciples, was not present when Jesus made this first appearance. When the other disciples saw Thomas, they said, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas said something like this, “You fellows are excited. This is just your imagination. You cannot make me believe. I will not believe unless I see the nail prints in His hands and unless I can put my hands in the wound in His side.”
A week later the disciples were gathered together again. This time Thomas was with them. The doors were shut and locked for fear of the Jews. Once again Jesus stood in their midst and said, “’Peace be with you.’ Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.’ Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ (John 20:26-28).
The Apostle Paul tells us that later Christ was seen by more than five hundred brothers at one time. He appeared to Paul on the Damascus road. Luke, the physician, tells us that, “He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs” (Acts 1:3).
The death and resurrection of Christ are the heart of the Gospel. “That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). He “was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25).
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE CROSS
Far more was accomplished by Christ’s death on the Cross than mortal men can comprehend. In dying on the Cross, Christ put away all sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He died for the sins of the whole world. He died for the sins of every man from Adam to the last man that will be born. “For Christ also hath once suffered for sin the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Through His death our sins have been cast behind the back of God, they have been buried in the depths of the deepest sea, they have been removed as far as the East is from the West, they have been blotted out like a thick cloud.
Christ not only died for our sins, but God made Him to be sin for us. When Jesus hung on the Cross, He cried, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” In that awful hour, He was forsaken of God because He was made sin of us, and a HOLY God cannot look on sin. On the Cross, Jesus cried, “It is finished.” That means “paid in full.” He paid the sin debt of the whole world. Because Christ has done this for us, you and I can have the forgiveness of sins. Yet if our sins are to be forgiven, we must accept the pardon that has been provided for us.
When a criminal is pardoned by the officials of the State, he must either accept the pardon or else pay the penalty for his crime. We as sinners are in the same position before a Holy God. We must either accept God’s pardon or else pay the penalty for our sin.
The Apostle Paul was mightily used of God to herald the Good News of salvation to many parts of the earth. He made his first great missionary journey in what is now the nation of Turkey. When he came to the city of Antioch in Pisidia, he preached that all men could be made righteous by believing in Christ. How can a Holy God be just and yet justify guilty sinners? God cannot and never has saved one person simply because He loved him. If God justified men on the basis of His love for them, He would not be a holy and just God. The penalty must be paid for sin. When the Lord Jesus died on Calvary’s Cross, He fully satisfied the demands of a Holy God. Because of Christ’s atoning death, God is now free to justify the worst sinner in the world. For this reason, man cannot be justified or made righteous by what he does or by what he does not do. He is justified by faith in what Christ has done for him at Calvary’s Cross.
When Adam and Eve sinned by rebelling against God, they became the enemies of God. By an act of their own will, they became sinners. In sinning, they received a sin nature. All of their children and children’s children were born with this sin nature. Each of us is born with this sin nature. We are, therefore, at enmity with God. We are separated from God because of our own sin. Our sinful heart condemns us and we fear to come to God.
When the Lord Jesus Christ died on the Cross, God was in Him reconciling the world unto Himself. Because of this reconciliation wrought out at Calvary, we can now have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ is our great Redeemer. He has redeemed or bought us with His own blood from the market place of sin. Christ is the mighty Deliverer. He can deliver us from the fear of death because He took the sting out of death when He died in our place on Calvary’s Cross. The love of God was demonstrated at Calvary. God proved His love for all men when He gave His only begotten Son to die for their sins. Jesus proved His love for us by dying in our place.
OUR NEEDS AND GOD’S PROVISION
Every person in the world has two great spiritual needs. He needs to have his sins forgiven and he needs to have everlasting life. Both of these needs are fully met through the Lord Jesus Christ. He is a wonderful, all-sufficient Saviour. God can freely forgive the worst sinner in the world because the Lord Jesus Christ has died for the sins of every man. When the Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, He became the Lord of Life. When by faith we receive Him as our Lord and Saviour we receive eternal life.
We receive life by receiving Him. We receive spiritual life just as we received physical life. We were born physically to get physical life; we must be born spiritually in order to have spiritual life.
When Jesus lived upon the earth, a good, moral, religious man by the name of Nicodemus came to see Him one night. He said unto Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with Him” (John 3:2). Jesus was not moved by his flattery but told Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Even though Nicodemus was highly educated, he did not understand what Jesus meant by being born again. Jesus explained the new birth to Nicodemus by recounting an experience of the Children of Israel when they wandered in the wilderness. God’s people had rebelled against Him, and as a judgment, God had sent poisonous snakes into their midst. The people were dying on every hand. They came to their leader, Moses, and asked him to pray that God would take the snakes from their midst. When Moses prayed, God told him to make a serpent of brass and to put it on a pole and set it up in the midst of the camp. God then promised that if anyone would look on the serpent of brass he would be healed. Moses did as he was commanded, but some of the people thought that this was foolish, and refused to look. Others in simple faith obeyed God, and the Bible says, “And it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived” (Numbers 21:9).
Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be forgiven of our sins and be born again in the same way that the Children of Israel were cured of the serpent bites. Jesus was lifted up on the cross to die for the sins of the whole world. When we look to Him by faith, seeing Him dying in our place, we are born into the family of God. We are born again when we receive Jesus Christ into our hearts by faith. When we receive Christ, we are married to Him. When a man and a woman get married, they receive each other and enter into a new relationship. They accept new responsibilities toward each other. In the same way, when we receive Christ as our Saviour, He receives us. In receiving us He assumes the responsibility of being a wonderful all-sufficient Saviour But this also means that when we receive Him we are to let Him live His life through us. Jesus Christ is not only Saviour but also Lord. We should honor Him as the Lord of our lives.
Many people in all parts of the world glibly profess to receive Christ. They call themselves Christians, but because they know nothing of the power of the risen Christ in their lives, they bring reproach on His name.
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH
The Bible teaches us that we are justified or made righteous in God’s sight by faith. What is faith? Every day we exercise faith hundreds of times in temporal things. When we ride on a bus or a train, it is an act of faith because we are trusting the bus or train to take us where we want to go. Walking is an act of faith, for when we walk we throw our body forward, trusting that our leg and foot will support our body. When we sit on a chair or a stool, it is an act of faith, for we trust the chair or stool to hold us up.
Let me tell you a true story that illustrates saving faith. Many years ago a man announced that he would ride his bicycle on a tight rope stretched across the top of a high waterfall. On the appointed day, people came from far and near to see this spectacular sight. Everyone knew that if this man-made one little slip he would be plunged to his death. They watched him as he carefully put his bicycle in place on the rope. As it slowly moved forward, he swung on it and began his perilous trip above the raging torrent. The crowd held its breath as he moved along. He safely reached the other side, turned the bicycle around, and came back to the starting point. He made the round trip several times. Each time he did, the crowd cheered wildly. Then he asked, “Do you believe that I can carry a man on my back across the falls?” The crowd cheered and cried, “We believe you can do it.” Then he asked, “Which one of you will get on my back and ride across with me?” Now the crowd was silent. They drew back with fear. Then one man stepped out of the crowd. He said, “I believe you can do it.” He got on the rider’s shoulders and together they slowly made the trip safely across the falls and returned.
This man, so to speak, had saving faith. The entire crowd said that they believed that he could carry a man across the falls, but just this one man was willing to actually make the trip. People everywhere believe in God. Yes, the devils believe and tremble. Many people believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. They believe that He died on the Cross for their sins and that He was raised again on the third day, and yet they are not saved. Their faith is only intellectual. It has never touched their hearts. They have never completely cast themselves on the mercy of God.
You would think that everyone in the world would gladly receive such wonderful salvation, but only a small part of the people in the world are saved. More than half the people in the world are not saved because they have never heard the name of Jesus. You are not among those who have not heard the Gospel. When you stand before God in the Judgment Day, you cannot say, “I did not know this; no one ever told me.” For in reading this booklet you have found the way of salvation. If you refuse to come to Christ, you will have to answer to God as one who knew the way of life but yet rejected it. I trust and pray that even now in simple childlike faith will receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.
LET US REASON TOGETHER
If you have not come to Christ, what is your reason for not coming to Him? Rather I should say, what is our excuse for not coming to Him, for there is no valid reason that men can offer for not accepting this wonderful gift of God’s love. God has an answer for all of your excuses. He wants to reason with you about them.
Perhaps you say, “I would like to be a Christian, but I do not fully understand.” It is good to understand. but we are not saved by understanding, but by faith. The Bible says. “Through faith we understand.” If you say, “I do not understand; therefore I will not believe,” you will never be saved; but if you act on the faith that you do have, God will give you greater understanding. When food is spread before us, there is much about it that we do not understand. We do not fully understand how the seed that is sown in the ground becomes a plant that we can eat to nourish our body. Even if we know the chemical parts of water, we do not fully understand how it quenches our thirst, and yet we drink water every day. There is very little that we understand about electricity, and yet we use it and benefit from it every day. We do not understand how a radio works, but we benefit by listening to it.
Some people think that they are so bad that they cannot be saved. Perhaps they are guilty of many terrible crimes. They have murdered, lied, stolen, committed adultery, and blasphemed the name of God. They have been unkind to their family; they have been cruel to animals; they have lived only to gratify the lust of the flesh. If they continue in this condition, they shall indeed spend eternity in the lake of fire; but Jesus Christ died on the Cross for all of the sins that they have committed. If they will repent of their sins and believe on Christ, they, too, can be saved, for Christ came into the world to save sinners. He did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32). “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He is able to save the vilest sinner who will come to God through Him.
Other people think that they are so good that they do not need to be saved. They have this mistaken idea because they measure themselves by other people instead of measuring themselves by the standards of God. They see that people all about them are living sinful lives, and they think that because they live better than some of these people they are sure to get to Heaven.
Often self-righteous people compare themselves with weak Christians and find fault with the many mistakes that the Christians make. They justify their own failures and condemn the same sins in the lives of others. From the human standpoint, some men are better than others and some are worse than others; but in God’s sight regardless of how good or how bad a person may be, they have come short of His requirements for salvation. God sees all men in sin; He sees them all in unbelief. God says that the very best that the natural man can do is as filthy rags in His sight.
There are those who have the foolish notion that if they have more good works than bad works, they will go to Heaven when they die. Good works do not cancel out bad works. In fact, the unregenerate man does not have any good works in the sight of God. The sinner is spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. A dead man cannot produce anything but dead works. When a man is charged with some crime in the courts of the land, he must answer for the crime he has committed. He does not expect the judge to forgive him of the crime no matter how many good things he may have done in the past. If each of us were to live a perfect life from this day forward, we would still have to answer for our past sins.
It is commonly taught that it does not matter what a person believes as long as he is sincere in what he believes. Is it not strange that people think this way about spiritual and eternal things when they realize the folly of doing so in temporal matters? If we are going to take a journey to a distant city, it would be the height of folly to head out in any direction saying that it did not matter which way we went as long as we were sincere. Many people have lost their lives by taking poison when they thought they were taking medicine. They were sincere in what they were doing, but they were sincerely wrong. The Bible says “there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12).
Perhaps you say, “I do not need what you are talking about because I have my own religion.” Religion is the effort on the part of man to make himself acceptable to God. There are hundreds of religions in the world. They can be divided into two groups: (1) pagan religions and (2) pseudo-Christian religions. In every case, they tell man that he must do something in order to be saved. Religionists say prayers, make pilgrimages, burn candles, make sacrifices, bathe in holy waters, perform ceremonies, turn prayer wheels, wear robes and vestments, fast, mutilate their bodies, and even sacrifice their children in an effort to please their god.
Unregenerate men are spiritually blind, but religionists are doubly blind and bound by Satan. Religion holds people in captivity through fear and intimidation. The Bible says, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). Truth has nothing to fear from the light. It welcomes investigation. The leaders of false religions warn their followers against reading the Bible and other Christian literature because they fear that they will learn the truth.
Those who have their own religion should ask themselves some honest questions. “What has my religion done for me? Has it given me everlasting life? Has it given me peace with God? Has it given me the assurance of salvation? Is my religion something vital that has changed my life? Can others see that my life has been changed?” If you cannot say “yes” to all of these questions, you had better start seeking for God’s way of life. Christianity is more than a religion. It is a life. It is the very life of the risen Christ imparted to the believer, enabling him to be what God intended that man should be.
Perhaps you say, “I would like to be a Christian; I want to go to Heaven when I die, but I know that I am not able to live the Christian life.” My friend, you are right about this. You cannot live the Christian life. I cannot live the Christian life. The best that any man can do is live a cheap imitation of the Christian life, and this will never save anyone. The secret is this: we do not live the Christian life in our own strength. The same Christ who died on the Cross to save us now dwells by faith in the heart of all who will believe in Him. When any person seeks to live the Christian life in his own strength, he will miserably fail. It is not the purpose of God that any man should live in this way. The most unworthy believer can live a happy, victorious life when he learns to let Christ live in and through him. Jesus said, “apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). And the Apostle Paul said, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).
Some people say that they cannot live the Christian life because they love their sin more than they love the Saviour. The Bible says that the pleasures of sin are for a season. Stop and reason with yourself and see how foolish any kind of sin is. Sin never satisfies; it only burns like a canker. Perhaps we can get away with sin for a while, but sooner or later we will be caught and will have to pay the penalty. Some criminals may not be punished at the hands of men, but someday they must face the Holy God. Will a short life filled with sin recompense for eternity in the lake burning with fire and brimstone?
There are those who are so busy making a living or making money that they do not have time for Christ. What fools they are! Some day they must take time to die. “The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: and he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, this will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take shine ease, eat, drink and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be; which thou has provided?” (Luke 12:16-20). How foolish is the person who lives for this life only.
Many are kept from coming to Christ by the things of this world. There are many things that are not evil within themselves, but they become evil when the heart is set on them. People have the mistaken notion that they will be happy if they can accumulate much of this world’s goods. The things of this world can never satisfy the longings of the human heart. King Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. He held back nothing from the desires of his heart. Listen as he describes his experience. “I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits; I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees; I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me; I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got me men singers and women singers; and the delights of the sons of men as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem, also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour; and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do; and, behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:4-11).
Some people are not Christians because they count the cost and are not willing to pay the price. In one sense salvation does not cost us anything. A gift cannot be earned or paid for or it would cease to be a gift. In another sense, salvation costs us everything. In those lands where the majority of the people are already Christians, the new convert is not usually faced with much persecution. But in many lands it costs much to be a Christian. When a person becomes a Christian, he may lose his friends, his family, and his job. He may be beaten and cast into prison. He may have to lay down his life for the Lord Jesus Christ.
From the very beginning of the Christian era, men have gladly paid a high price to be followers of Christ. Multiplied thousands have gladly laid down their physical lives that they might receive eternal life. All of Christ’s disciples, except John, died as a martyr. Stephen was stoned; Matthew was slain in Ethiopia; Mark was dragged through the streets until dead; Luke was hanged; Peter and Simeon were crucified; Andrew was tied to a cross James was beheaded; Philip was crucified and stoned; Bartholomew was flayed alive; Thomas was pierced with lances, James the less was thrown from the temple and beaten to death, Jude was shot to death with arrows; Mathias was stoned to death; and Paul was beheaded.
These rivers of blood did not cease to flow with the close of the Apostolic Age. In every century men have gladly died for their faith in Christ. Men are dying for their faith in many parts of the world today. When those who are not Christians watch the Christians die, they see a calmness and serenity that they know they do not have. The Christian can go through the awfulness of death because he knows that to die is gain. He knows that in death he moves out of this body of weakness and humiliation and goes immediately into the presence of the Lord.
All sober-minded people wish to go to Heaven when they die. Yet thousands of people who had the best of intentions about going to Heaven are now in Hell. They waited too long to make their peace with God. Thousands of people have been swept into eternity by some unforeseen, unexpected calamity.
When we are well and strong, we think that we have plenty of time to prepare to die. But none of us knows when that fateful hour will come. Death is the most certain thing in all the world; life is the most uncertain. Not only has our loving God made every provision whereby we might be saved but also by His Spirit, by His Word, and through His faithful servants He pleads with us to come to Christ before it is too late. Now is the only time one can be sure of. Tomorrow may be too late. God says, “Behold, now is the accepted time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord” (Isaiah 1:18). God tells us not to boast of tomorrow, for we do not know what a day will bring forth (Proverbs 27:1; James 4:13-14). God warns that if we are often reproved but still harden our hearts, we shall suddenly be destroyed and without remedy (Proverbs 29:1).
The eternal destiny of your own soul is not to be taken lightly. You must decide one way or the other. There is no middle ground. You must accept Christ, or you must reject Him. If you decide to wait, you are temporarily rejecting Christ. Not only are unseen hosts interested in the decision that you make, but they are seeking to influence you in that decision. Satan, who is doomed and damned, wants you to be doomed and damned with him. He seeks to hold you back. He fills your mind with doubts and fears. He tells you to postpone the decision. He reminds you of what others will say and think.
The Spirit of God gently and lovingly invites you to come to Christ. The all-powerful God has done all that He can do to save you. The Lord Jesus Christ, the wonderful, all-sufficient Saviour, waits with outstretched arms to receive you. Thousands of saints have prayed for you. The angels of God will rejoice together when you come to Christ, but the decision to receive Christ must be yours.
You must come to Christ by a definite act of faith. I suggest that you pray a simple prayer something like this, “O True and Living God, I know that I am a sinner. I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins; I believe that He was raised from the dead. I here and now accept Him as my Lord and Saviour.” When you come to Christ in this way, you can know that He will receive you, for He has promised, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).
The Bible says, “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name” (John 1:12). By receiving Christ, you have been born into the family of God. The New Birth is not the end of salvation but merely the beginning of it. Having received Christ, you are now a new-born babe in Christ. But you do not want to stay a spiritual baby. You want to grow in grace. You want to learn of God’s will and purposes for your life. A daily feeding of your soul by reading the Word of God is the first essential for you as a new Christian. We can no more live without spiritual food than we can live the physical life without physical food. If you do not have a Bible and are unable to obtain one, contact us and we will help you to get one.
Prayer is the breath of the soul. You must learn to pray without ceasing. If you are to know the power of God in your life, you must stay in fellowship with God. Sin, however, can interrupt our experiential fellowship with Him. Thankfully we are able to confess our sins to Him and He is faithful to forgive and restore on account of the blood of Christ. You need the fellowship of other Christians. If there is a Bible-teaching church in your community, be regular in attendance. Tell others of what Christ has done for you
Keep your eyes on Jesus. Learn to walk with Him. Rejoice in Him, and praise Him for all that He has done for you. May He lead you on from victory to victory. May the Lord’s richest blessings of grace rest on You.
