“What Do We Mean by Accepting Christ?”
Sunday, November 27, 1955
When we are young and inexperienced, we are inclined to believe that there are many things that are important, that a number of things matter. But as experience comes to us, whether it’s in our youth or whether it takes years to give it to us, we finally find out that there are only a few things that are matters of life and death. Thank God for that, otherwise we’d all go crazy. But there are only a few things that really matter.
For instance, to let you know what I mean by, really matter, or that are matters of life and death, think of a compass on a sea journey. Think of a ship starting to fly the Atlantic or go on the surface to cross the Atlantic, or across the Pacific without a compass, without an instrument to tell which way they’re traveling. Chances would be very strong that that ship or that airplane, would fly in circle or sail in a circle until they were either on a rock, or on a sandbar somewhere, or until the fuel had been used up and they were hopelessly lost. It would be a matter of life and death to have a compass to be able to tell direction.
And think also of the guide in the desert, a man crossing the Gobi or the Sahara Desert, or even one or two of the deserts in our own Southwest. A foolhardy person starting across the desert without water and without a guide, could make it all right for a few miles. But that he had water and the guide would be matters of life or death.
To start out carelessly across the ocean without a compass, or across the desert without a guide would not be a reckless, but rather amiable thing to do, a gamble to take, a chance to take. There would be no gamble, no chance; it would either be right or be dead. When you deal with such serious matters as crossing the ocean or crossing the desert, you cannot be careless, or either be right or be dead. You’d either provide yourself with a guide, or provide yourself with a compass or both, when needed, or it is certain death.
Now, when we come to our relation to our Lord Jesus Christ, we come to one of those matters, which in a supreme degree, is a matter of life or death. And you and I cannot afford to be careless about it. You cannot say, well, I’ll take a gamble on it. You don’t take a gamble on deserts. You either have a guide and plenty of water, or you die. You’re not gambling, you’re committing suicide. You don’t start across the trackless waste of an ocean without a compass. And say, I’ll gamble it. You’re not gambling, you’re committing suicide. And my relation to Jesus Christ is a matter of life or death to me.
Now, the average person takes it for granted, as we can take it for granted if we’ve been instructed even a little bit in Sunday school to think that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Now, we take that for granted as a matter of fact. It is declared in the Word. It is declared in so many words in one of the books of Timothy by Paul, the man of God. And it is declared in other words adding up to the same thing all through the New Testament. So, we can afford to take that for granted.
We also take for granted, if we’ve been reared in gospel churches, that we are saved by Christ alone, without works, and without merit. We can afford to take that for granted, for that also is taught all through the Scriptures, that it is by faith in Christ alone that we are saved. But now, the question that bothers me is, how do I know that I have come into a saving relation to Christ? How do I know that?
Now, this is a matter of life or death; that Christ came into the world to save sinners, is a matter of record. We don’t have to have that proved. It needs no investigation. No further word need to be said on it. For the person already knows it. Oh, he may patiently listen to it a thousand times being told to those that don’t know it. But that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners is true. And yet, the world is not saved and there are millions that are not saved right in America. And you will pass, and did pass, on your way to church, hundreds, who are not saved, and you will pass still more hundreds as you go home that are not saved. So the fact that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners is not your compass, and it’s not your water, and it’s not your guide. It is simply a fact upon which we can reckon. But it doesn’t save us.
And now on this matter I say, it’s either be right or be lost. Somebody says, Well, I’ve gone to a certain church all my life and I’ve been brought up in that and I’ve been confirmed, baptized and all the rest, and I’m going to take a chance. You’re not taking a chance. If your relation to Jesus Christ isn’t a saving relation, then you’re without a guide, or compass or water, and it’s suicide. It is not a chance. It’s not a gamble you take. It’s not one chance in 10,000, it’s no chances in ten times 10,000. You have no chance. It’s either be right or be dead, to be right, or be lost.
Now, if I go to an average man, an honest Christian brother, saved and a good Bible teacher, and right and perfectly right in what he tells me, I would say, how can I come into a saving relation to Jesus Christ? I believe that He came into the world to save sinners. I’ve accepted that fact He is the Savior of the world. I believe that He saves alone without works and without character, or any good that I have done. I believe that. Could my tears forever flow and my zeal no respite know, these for sin could not atone, He must save, and He alone. I believe that.
But, how can I come into saving relation to Jesus Christ so that it works with me? For there are millions that believe this that are not converted at all, and are on their road to hell. And there are men sitting now, and will sit through the rest of this day and half the night in saloons, bleary-eyed, weeping into their beer, that can tell you John 3:16 glibly and can recite passages of Scripture about Christ being the Savior of the world. And if they’re in a tender moment, they may even weep as they talk to me about it, but they’re lost. And the drunkard shall not have his place in the kingdom of God. And so would other kinds of sinners.
Now, you will get one of three answers or all three answers. And if you came to me, you’ll get the same. So, this is not a criticism of anybody. This is simply a statement. You will get the same answer from me, and you’ll get the same answer from Billy Graham or the humblest little preacher that the world has never heard of. You would get the same answer wherever you went to anybody, because it’s true. They would say to you, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” That’s Acts 16:31. Nobody can tell you anything else. D.L. Moody couldn’t and Paul couldn’t. In fact, Paul said that. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. So, that’s the answer you would get
or you would get this answer, receive Christ as your Savior. And the verse back of that would be John 1:12, “as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on His name.” So you have in John 1:12, both believing and receiving.
But, you’re likely also to get a third answer, and this third answer is the one that I’m going to question today, and the one that I’m going to talk about. And I don’t want to make God responsible for anything I do, because if God will be merciful enough and gracious enough to do a few little things through me, I’ll be so star-eyed with gratitude and thankfulness, that God will never hear the last of it I think, while I’m able to speak and life and thought and being last. But I will say this, that in prayer last week, nobody around there, and I was kneeling by my couch upstairs, my little day bed there that I sometimes rest on when I get worn out, and that a multitude of people come and sit in on and tell me their woes. Well, I was kneeling there with my open Bible and doing a little repenting on my own accord, my own. And this came to me so clearly that I just wrote down a few notes and said, now this I will talk to the people about. So, I will say this to you friends that maybe I’ll introduce some things here that God didn’t say to me and if I do, then of course you’ll have to find your way out the best you can. I’d rather hear a sermon that I knew a man who had got his outline on his knees, than to know that he’d got it somewhere else. And if there’s any value there, while you have it.
But now, this third thing is this. You would go to the average person and say, now I know that Christ came into the world to save sinners. And I know that He saves by Himself alone without works, or merit, by faith. But how can I come into saving relation to Christ so that it works in me and that it works for me, and that I am safe? They would tell you believe or receive or both. And then they might tell you this third one, and that is, “accept” Christ.
Now, you may be very greatly surprised as I myself was, when I ran this thing down and found that this expression “accept Christ” does not occur in the Bible. It is not found in the New Testament anywhere. I didn’t think it was, for I could not recall any place where it was used. And so I went to the trouble of looking it up in Strong’s exhaustive analytical concordance. And by the word exhaustive they mean, they don’t skip a word. There’s no possibility of it getting by. It’s an old work and the editors have worked on it until there isn’t a mistake, so that the word accept does not occur in the Bible. It occurs in this sense, where it says He’s no acceptor of persons and so on. But it never says, accept Jesus Christ, nowhere in the Bible, in any verse that I know about. If there’s a verse there, I’ve missed it, and so have the scholars who got together the exhaustive concordance we call the Strong’s.
Now, isn’t that strange that it is not found in the Bible, and yet it has become the catchword. Everywhere men are going and saying, “accept Jesus Christ.” Have you accepted Him? Do you accept Him. Will you accept Him? Now, well intentioned people do this and I’ve done it myself a thousand times I suppose. But do you know that it does not occur in the Bible at all, the word “accept.” And I suppose that it does, the English word “accept” does cover a thought that we’re not too far off, because receive and accept are somewhat the same, but not the same. The difference is very great. If they had been the same, then where the word “receive” occurs, the word, accept, would have occurred somewhere, but it doesn’t. The word accept, acceptance and acceptor does occur in Scripture, but never in connection with believing on Christ, or receiving Christ, or being saved.
Now, this easy acceptance has been fatal to millions of people. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. Isn’t it strange Brethren, that everybody is yelling about revival, and you can’t get among a bunch of preachers until somebody says, “let’s have a revival,” and they have a prayer meeting for revival. And we’re all saying the same thing. And you would always get agreement among the brethren, the ministers everywhere of all denominations, that the church is in a low state. All last week, Vance Havner said he took it for granted that we needed a revival and brother, he was right. And he’s right not only here, but all throughout fundamental circles. But here is the odd thing. Nobody ever stopped to question and say, well, maybe the reason we need a revival is that we didn’t get started right. Maybe this whole doctrine of accepting Christ is wrong. It’s certainly not biblical. It’s not found in the Bible. And yet it is the catch word. It’s the thing people say. And it’s in the books, and it’s in the tracts, and it’s in the mouths of the soul winners. Would you accept Christ? Bow your head and accept Christ.
Well, it’s my opinion, that tens of thousands of people, if not millions, have been brought into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ, and they’ve not been saved. It has not brought them into saving relation to Christ. And the result is, they are acting like religious sinners, instead of like born again believers. And that’s why we need the revival. That’s why everybody says, what’s the matter with us? We’re dead, we’re dead. Perhaps one reason is that we have thought we accepted Christ, or have accepted Christ and nothing came of it.
Now, the whole attitude here is wrong about accepting Christ, because it makes Christ stand hat in hand, waiting on our judgment. He stands respectfully, with hat in hand before the desk, and we’re hiring Him. And we look Him over and read a few verses and say, “I wonder if I should accept Him or not. What do you think Mabel. Do you think that we ought to accept Him;” and so, poor Christ stands hat in hand, tossing His hat from one hand to the other hand and wringing it, looking for a job, and He is to be accepted.
And here’s stands the proud, Adamic sinner, rotten as the devil, and filled with leprosy and cancer, but he is judging whether he will accept Christ or not. The Christ that holds the worlds in His hand, the Jesus that made the heaven and earth and all things that are there in; through Whom and by Whom and for Whom all things are created and were created for His glory, they are, and do exist. And it is He that holds the stars, the seven stars in His hand and He is the Lord and head over all things to the church. And at His Word, the graves shall give up their dead. And the dead shall come forth alive forevermore. At His Word, the fire shall burst loose and burn up the earth and the heavens and stars and planets shall be swept away like a garment. He is the one that does it.
And yet here He stands, and we little, upright clothespins, we animated clothespins that we are, but that’s what we look like, and that’s what we are. We from our little place, we look at Him, this glorious, tall, mighty Jesus Christ. And we decide whether we accept Him or not. How grotesque can it be? And yet, that’s what it is, as though He were applying to us, and instead of we applying to Him, No my Brother. The question ought not to be whether I’ll accept Him. The question needs to be whether He will accept me. But We will accept me. That we know and we don’t have to worry or disturb our minds about that. And him that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. But the idea that I make him stand, and I render a verdict, whether He’s worthy of my acceptance or not, is a frightful calamy. And it’s libelous, and we ought to get rid of it.
And then He does this thing. It permits us to accept Christ by an impulse of the mind or the emotions. It allows us to gulp twice, and feel a wave of feeling over us, and say, “Well, I have accepted Christ.” I have accepted Christ. A woman goes out onto the lot where several hundred children are playing and she comes back and says, “Do you know that there were seventy children who accepted Christ out there. I went over where the kids were playing in the park and seventy children accepted Christ.”
A preacher sits with some other preachers in a hotel dining room and he says, “oh, soul winning is easy.” And I’ve seen an ad in the paper incidentally recently that says, “at last soul winning made easy. Buy my book. Well, there’s this preacher who says soul winning isn’t hard. And somebody said, I find it hard. He said, it’s simple if you know how to go about it. He said, Do you want me to show you how soul winning is easy, how I can win the soul. He said, Yes, I’d like to see you do it. Well, I said to the waiter, waiter, waiter came over. He said, Are you a Christian? He said, No, sir. He said would you like to be? Yes, sir. Well, all right, then would you accept Christ? Well, yes. All right, bow your head a minute. The waiter stood there thinking about his tip, and the fellow said, “now Lord, here’s a man that accepts Thee and he takes Thee now as his Savior. Amen. He shook his hand and the waiter walked away just the same as he’d come and the preacher said, “see how easy it is. It’s a simple matter. He had accepted Christ.” Now, I hope the waiter had better sense than the Reverend, because if he didn’t. He is damned. You can’t afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to be dead. When it’s a matter of a compass on an ocean or a guide on a desert; and when it’s a matter of my saving relation to Jesus Christ, I can’t afford to be wrong. When my life depends upon it, I can’t afford to go to a careless doctor.
We had a doctor when we first came to Chicago. He listened to your heart by putting his ear on your chest. He never used instruments, never used any of the modern scientific developments. He just stuck his ear on your chest. He looked at your forehead and tell you that you had high blood pressure. You can’t afford to fall into the hands of a quack when your life is at stake. You can’t afford to be wrong; to be wrong is to be dead.
Well, there’s so much of this that I think that we need to rise against it, and the old church of Christ needs to get up and ask God for fresh air and oxygen and courage, and analyze this and get it before the people as Finney used to do. We accept Christ on a lot by some lady walking up and say, “Sonny, would you like to accept Christ?” Why, He could have said anything. He would have accepted Buddha, Zoroasterism or Father Divine in order to get rid of her. And painlessly and at no cost and no inconvenience. That’s the trick of the day. Get them converted with no cost and no inconvenience.
Now, that might have worked like that in Israel, say, Israel in Egypt. Suppose that Moses had said to Israel, “Do you accept the blood on the doorpost? And they would have said “yes, we accept the blood.” Alright, goodbye and we’ll be seeing you. And they could have stayed right in Egypt, slaves for the rest of their lives. But their accepting the blood of the Passover meant that they stood awake all night, girded, ready, shoes on their feet, staff in their hands, eating the food of the Passover, ready to go. And when the trumpet blasts sang sweet and clear, they rose and started for the Red Sea. And when they got to the Red Sea, a miracle happened; it opened up and they went out never to return. Their acceptance had feet under it. Their acceptance gave them the guts to do something. They went forth and did something!
Now, suppose the prodigal son had had a man come to him and found him lying there, all rags and smell, an old sow lying over there and an old pig lying over here and a litter of little pigs laying over there and they’re all piled up keeping warm. And here’s this fellow, lay on his arm nibbling on a carob seed. And the fellow comes up and says, I have good news for you. Your father will forgive you if you’ll accept it. Will you accept it? He looks up and says yep, I’ll accept it. Do you accept it? Yes! Do you accept your father’s saving word? Yes, I do. Alright, goodbye. Hope to see you again, and leave him lying there in the gutter or in with the hogs. But, it didn’t happen like that. The fellow got to thinking, and he said to himself, if I’m going to get out of this hog pen and get back among respectable people, I must rise and go to my father. Do you know what the next line is? So he arose and went. Remember that? So, he arose and went. Acceptance to the Jews meant strict obedience from that moment on, and acceptance to the prodigal son, meant repentance in line with his acceptance.
Now, I’m going to use the words “accept” because I don’t object too much to them. I know the word, accept and acceptance and accepting. I know they’re not biblical, but yet I know, as I’ve said, they do come close to being a synonym for receive. But I want to tell you what it means to accept Christ. Then, I want you to search your own heart and say, “I have I accepted Christ? Ever? Do I accept Christ? Have I accepted Him at all?
I want to give you a definition for accepting Christ. To accept Christ in anything like a saving relationship, is to have an attachment to the person of Christ that is revolutionary, complete and exclusive, and I’ll explain what I mean. It’s an attachment to the person of Christ. I want you to get that. It is not getting in with the crowd that you’d like. It’s not getting the social fellowship of some nice fellow that gives you a thrill when you touch his hand. It’s not getting with the gang that put on their, what do you call them, and go out and play baseball Tuesday evening. Oh, they can do that harmlessly enough God knows. And isn’t getting out with a picnic or going on a hike; Oh, they can do that. We have those kind of activities for our youth here, and I believe in them. But that’s not what accepting Christ means. That can happen, that can happen among the Unitarians and the Jews and the unbelievers and the literary societies. That isn’t accepting Christ. That’s simply getting in with a religious group who may be no better off than you are.
Accepting Christ is an attachment to the person of Christ that is revolutionary, in that it reverses the life and transforms it completely. It’s an attachment to the person of Christ; it’s complete, in that it leaves no part of the life unaffected, in that exempts no area of the life of the total man, the man’s total being. To accept Christ means an exclusive attachment to Jesus Christ, meaning that Christ is not one of several interests. But, He is the one, exclusive attachment, as the sun is the exclusive attachment of the earth. And the earth revolves around the sun, and the sun is its center and the core of its being in the hub of its activity, and the life and light and heat and hope of the earth.
So, Jesus Christ is the Son of Righteousness, and to become a Christian means to come into His orbit and begin to revolve around Him exclusively. Not around Him today, and around another sun tomorrow, and around a third one the next day, and then back to Jesus again. Not partly around Him, but it means to revolve around Him completely, exclusively. And all other relationships, and you will have other relationships. It’s an impossibility in a complex world such as God has created, that I can have only one relationship. I have many relationships. You’re a man, forty years old, you give your heart to Jesus, you’re converted, you’re a married man with children, you’re a citizen, you have a job, you have a number of relationships. You have relationship to your wife as a husband, to your children as a father, to your country as a citizen, to your employer as an employee, and to the government as a taxpayer. You have numbers of relationships. You’re a cousin to this one and an uncle to that one and so on.
So, you have other relationships except Jesus Christ, but He is the exclusive one to Whom you attach yourself. And all these other relationships are conditioned and determined by your one relationship to Jesus Christ the Lord. The earth has relationships to other beings besides the sun, because the moon revolves around the earth. But if the moon quit tomorrow, the earth would still go right on revolving around the sun. There are planetoids and other heavenly, little heavenly bodies that fly around, and some come down to the earth. They call them falling stars, and they’re hunks of metal that come down and burn up. And sometimes they go and bury themselves in the earth–meteorites. You all read about them. Some of you have seen them.
Alright, the earth has relationships to other beings beside the sun, but it has no exclusive relationship to any other being beside the sun. The sun is the source and center and magnetic heart of its exclusive life. And all these others are incidental. This may sound awfully harsh and cruel, but Jesus Christ said it and said it in words harsher than mine. That if you have attachments that are central and more exclusive than the attachment you have to Jesus, you’re not a Christian at all. If you have a new wife, and that wife to you is the sun and hope and dream and all you’re looking for. Now she may be everything you think she is. But if she clouds the face of Jesus, then you are not a Christian. And you’re not a Christian if any relationship you have to your government, to your job, to your wife or husband, to your children, to your aunts or uncles, to anybody anywhere, is more exclusive than the attachment you have to Jesus. You’ll have these other relationships, but they are incidental to the one, exclusive relationship, Jesus Christ the Lord. To accept Christ then, is to attach myself to His holy person, to live or die forever. And He is first and last in all, and all other relationships are conditioned and determined and colored by my one, exclusive relation to Him.
Now, to accept Christ then is, would you like to put these down? I wish some of you would put them down and pray over them. Accepting Christ is, accept His friends as your friends from that moment on. When you accept Christ, you accept His friends as your friends. And if you’re in an area where He has no friends, you’ll befriend him except for the one friend that sticketh closer than a brother; and you will not compromise your life nor your talk nor anything when you are not. Can you imagine an American as some of our Americans have done, go to Europe and start condemning their country and toting up to the land where they are, Oh, brother, an American out of the borders of these United States of America should be just as much an American as anywhere.
They said there was an orator in the time of Henry Ward Beecher who went to England. And he was under such an inferiority complex. This was a little new country, and England was old and had tradition, and had the poets and the great writers and artists. And so, he felt so inferior, this great orator, he reflected on his own country and apologized for America, and talked them up and talked America down. And then Henry Ward Beecher went over, you remember. You’ve no doubt read his sermon that he preached there in that great hall where there was jumping, shouting Englishman around about him. They were jumping and shouting. Don’t think they weren’t brother. And he had to fight his way through, and he delivered a lecture that will stand in the annals of time as being one of the most magnificent things ever uttered by the voice of a man. Never for a split second did he talk America down. Never for one breath, or one syllable did he talk America down in order to to talk England up. He only appealed to English fair play when they start to yell. He’d say, you Englishmen are Englishmen; you believe in fair play. Listen while I talk. And then he tore into them. And he came away from there with the respect of every Englishman of the blood, and with the thanks and respect and gratitude of his own native land.
And yet I find people that are such cowards, that when they were in the crowd, who don’t believe in the Son of God, or who live so as to disgrace the holy name of Jesus, they allow themselves to go that way. Are you a Christian? You are not! A Christian is one who has accepted Jesus friends as his friends and Jesus enemies as his enemies by an exclusive attachment to the person of Christ. And if they’re Christ’s enemies, they’re my enemies, and I ask no quarter from them. And if they’re Jesus’ friends, they’re my friends. I don’t care what color they are, or what denomination they belong to. It means to accept His ways as your ways. You’re not looking in the magazine to find out. You’re not going on and listen to the radio panel discussion to know how to live. You’re not reading books to know how to live. You’ve taken His ways as your ways. You’ve taken His Sermon on the Mount as your guide for your life. You’ve taken His apostolic words as your words; His ways shall be my way.
Oh, God bless little Ruth. Isn’t that a wonderful thing what she said? She said, wither thou goest, I will go, and where thou dwellest, I will dwell, and where thou dies, there will I die. And there will I be buried. And God forbid that anything should separate me from you. That’s approximately what she said and wasn’t it beautiful? No wonder every second parent names their baby Ruth. That beautiful story made Naomi and Ruth two beautiful, loved names, because it was an attachment. It was an attachment. She said I live where you live, I’ll die where you die and I’ll be buried where you’re buried, and God in heaven forbid we ever separate. Brethren, that’s what I mean. His ways are my ways.
To accept Christ means that I accept His rejection as my rejection. And whoever rejects Him rejects me. And I mean, to accept Christ means that I accept His cross as my cross. And I accept His life as my life. Back from the dead I come and up into a different kind of life. The kind of life He lived. It means that I accept His future as my future. When a woman stands up alongside of a man she accepts his future. He may be called to Germany. He may be sent to some city where she wouldn’t ever want to live, but she’s accepted his future as her future. Exclusive attachment, leaving all others, they say.
Exclusive attachment, that’s what it means to accept Christ. If the preachers would tell people that, we’d have fewer converts, but when we got them, they’d never backslide. They’d stick. But as long as we say to them, will you accept Christ? Gulp, yes, I accept Christ. Alright now, here’s a tract. And he thinks he’s in; he’s not in at all. He thinks that he will get the benefit of Jesus’ saving grace by saying, I accept Christ, but he will not be a disciple. He will not carry the cross. He will not inconvenience himself. He will not turn his back on the world. He will not accept Christ enemies. He does not go among Christ friends. He does not take Christ ways. And still, he thinks he’s a convert. We preachers will stand before what the Plymouth Brethren call the Bema, the judgment seat of Christ, and tell a holy Savior why we betrayed his people that way.
Well, this is to receive Christ, Brother. This is to believe on Christ. This is to accept Christ. I don’t say now, you shouldn’t go out and you ever use the word accept, provided you know what it means. For it means to believe in and receive Christ as my Savior, but in to do it, it means an exclusive attachment to the person of Christ that makes His friends my friends, His enemies my enemies, His ways, my ways, His cross my cross, His Life my life, and His future my future. And if things should turn out in this country, that it should be dangerous to follow Jesus, my future is His future. And whatever they do to Jesus, I’ll go along; they’ll do it to me.
In light of that, how many of us are Christians? These dear young people, I never see a young kid never, boy or girl, but what I feel all good inside. Mine are growing up now and, I love young people, love them. Maybe that’s the reason I can still preach to them, even if I’m 180 years old. I feel like it. But I love them, and I don’t want to betray them. And I don’t want to see them betrayed. I’m spiritually indignant when I see them being betrayed. Cheated and made little fools of by people who don’t know what discipleship means. This it is to believe in Christ, my young friends. Are you a believer in Christ then? This it means to accept Christ. And have you, and do you accept Christ, and have you accepted? This it is to receive Christ, and have you received and do you receive? It means more than this, but it means nothing less than this.
And all the great evangelists that ever have touched the world to bring revival; now there have been evangelists that don’t bring revival, just evangelism. But all the revivalists, such as Edwards and Finney, and others like him, all have come back to this thing. They said the church is being betrayed by having a Christianity made too easy. And we have a whole host of people who think they’re converted, when all they’ve done is join a religious group. And when people began to see that, deacons and elders and board members and teachers and Sunday school teachers and superintendents and preachers that thought, for half a lifetime, they were converted, came under terrible, blinding conviction. And down on their faces they went before God and got converted. And then the revival is on.
So this is the thing that matters my friends, your relation to Jesus. Have you accepted him really? If you have not, then there’s no gamble, no chance, no 90/10 chance, no 50/50 chance, no chance at all. It is either be right about it, or be dead. Be right about it, or be lost.
Now if this is true, and I think it is true. In closing this, moral sanity requires that we settle this first of all, it requires it. My God it requires it. If I thought I had a cancer eating at me, nothing else would be important. Somebody would say, how about that pair of shoes you’re going to buy? What do I care about a pair of shoes? What about that vacation you were planning for next summer? I don’t care. I may not be here next summer. What about that insurance you’re going to take out? You can’t take out insurance against cancer. Nothing would matter, but that I’d settled it and found out if I did have, and if I did have, could it be helped. Some things are matters of life and death. If to be careless, is to be dead.
So, my dear friends, we Christians ought to settle this. Are we Christians indeed? Have we yet formed an exclusive attachment to the person of Jesus Christ that’s greater and more binding and more beautiful than the attachment of a bride to her new husband that excludes everything else? Alright, if we have, then thank God we can get up and say, Tis done, the great transactions done. I am my Lord’s and He is mine. He drew me in, I followed on charmed to confess the Voice Divine. But if we can’t say it, then all we dare do is to sing that song that our holiness friends make fun of. Isaac Watts wrote it. Do I Love the Lord or No? And a lot of friends make fun of that song and laugh at it. No serious-minded man will laugh at another man who stands under the wide expanse of heaven with death three jumps ahead of him and says, My God, do I really love Thee or not?
You better ask yourself that question today. And I ask you, please don’t go out of here and forget this message. Don’t go out of here and stand on your reputation and the fact you joined the church twenty years ago and that you’ve been a member. Don’t stand on that. Look up and say Jesus, do I love Thee or no. In the light of all this, am I truly a Christian? If you are, your happy heart will soon be assured. If you’re not, you can be, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. He’ll receive you to His heart and you’ll receive Him to your heart, and by an exclusive attachment to His person forever, His personality passes into yours, and yours into His. And there’s an identification with Jesus in His death and His resurrection and His life at the right hand of God. You can go out knowing that you’ve been saved.
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