Real Objective Change

When I was in seminary, I found myself in an odd discussion with a fellow student about whether anything objective or real happened inside or to an individual when he becomes a Christian. I think it is odd because how could anyone think that nothing happens to a person when they believe. I suppose he thought it was equally odd because I couldn’t see his point and it was just as obvious to him as mine was to me.

Let me explain my position, it hasn’t changed all that much. I’m now a paedobaptist so I think certain things happen when a person is baptized, but I wasn’t back when I had the initial discussion and for our purposes here, I won’t be talking about what happens in baptism. I want to talk about what happens when someone believes that Jesus is the savior of his soul, the life giver, the Lord of the Universe—in short, he believes the Gospel of God.

Also, let me assure you that in what I’m about to say, I do believe that people are active agents in what happens to them. So, when I say, as I’m about to, that God graciously gives, grants, graces us with faith, I’m not saying that people don’t hear a really great presentation of the Gospel and choose to believe it. I believe both happens at the same time. People choose and God causes at the same time (Phil 2:12-13).

So, a preacher comes to town and preaches the Gospel. A man hears the Gospel and believes that the preacher said. He bows his head and raises his hand and the preacher says, “You’ve believed the Gospel, you’re saved. Welcome to the family of God.”

What just happened? Well, preaching, listening, understanding, believing, trusting, bowing and hand-raising, and praying. So, did the guy get saved? Did he get saved because he raised his hand? Prayed? Believed? Got preached to? The Bible says, “So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). So, apparently, the answer is, Yes. Hearing was involved, preaching was involved. Believing was involved. A case for hand raising could be made for being involved.

What just happened? Who saved the man? Why did he need to be saved? How did he save him? What were the grounds of his salvation? What did he get saved from? What did he get saved to? These can be really long answers, but I’ll try to keep them short.

The man got saved. God saved him. He needed to be saved because his sin had separated him from the love and life of God. God sent Jesus to take the punishment and judgment for his sin. Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection were the grounds of salvation. He was saved from a life of continued sin and eventually damnation for eternity. He was saved to life in Jesus, with God, for the present and on into eternity.

I think we’re probably good now. We all agree so far. Let’s go the next step.

The Bible says that we think what we think, say what we say and do what we do because out of the heart the mouth does these things (Lk 6:45). It also says men, apart from Christ, are rebellious and thus have evil hearts (Rom 1-3; cf. 3:23). So, if what we think, do and say comes from our heart, and in order to be saved, we must believe, how can we believe, in the first place, if we have evil hearts?

Let me go through the event again: a preacher comes to town; preaches to a sinful, rebellious, dirty hearted (no, dead heart) man; the man with the black heart hears the Gospel proclaimed and believes what he hears. How can that be? The answer is it can’t. A man with an evil heart cannot please God by obeying or believing or any other way. The fruit of an evil heart is only evil. The Bible says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Heb 11:6). And since the man has an evil heart that only produces evil, he cannot have faith. That is, he cannot believe the Gospel.

So, how to people get saved?

The Bible says that God cleanses and gives new hearts (Eze 11:19; 36:26). Hallelujah! Isn’t that good news? But what induces God to give hearers of the Gospel new hearts? The Bible says it is all of grace. He chooses those he wants to save and those he rejects (Rom 9:18). He does everything for his glory. The point is that giving hearers of the Gospel new hearts is what theologians call a monergistic act. It means he does it without our consent or participation. We don’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, sometimes we don’t even want it. God does it because he loves us, and he is good.

But here’s the thing, God does a work in our heart before we believe. The Bible calls the event being “born again” and theologians call it regeneration and it comes before we believe. Without it, we couldn’t believe.

How are doing now? If you agree with me that something inside the individual man changed at salvation, the is discussion over. The point is that we couldn’t have believed as long as we had evil hearts.

There is an important point to make about the view that nothing changes. Let’s go back over the scenario; a preacher comes to town; preaches the Gospel about Jesus; the fellow hears, understands, believes; the preacher assures him that his sins are forgiven, and he’s saved. Now let’s suppose nothing happened inside the man at his conversion. Wait! Can we call it a conversion? Well, he changed his mind. He thought one way, now he thinks another way. He did think of himself as his own man, able to make his own choices, for whatever reasons he wanted to, now he believes in Jesus and that faith colors everything he does from here on out.

Problems? First, the Bible still says he can’t make decisions to believe in God if he has an evil heart. If nothing changed, he still has an evil heart. Second, if nothing fundamental changed he believes he is Christian because he believes certain things about history. If this is true, he could be wrong, he could change his mind later, or he could simply get tired of all the do this and do that stuff and fall away or drift off. Third, if he still has a yucky heart, his transformation is for self-pleasing reasons. His faith is shallow, and he will spend quite a time wondering why if he is a Christian, things are so difficult. Why is living the Christian life so hard? Fourth, if the man becoming a Christian is solely because he now believes, he changed his mind like he decided to drive the truck this morning instead of walking, this is no different from the man who believes, has faith in, trusts that he is actually a woman? If becoming a Christian is a matter of changing what you think, you aren’t any better than people who have been convinced that up is down or good is bad or today I’m a Hottentot. There is nothing real to believe in. It is what the philosophers call fideism. Faith in faith.

I don’t know any mature Christians who believe that something doesn’t happen at conversion. That’s why they call it conversion. The man was a sinner, sold into sin, loving sin, living in sin, slathered in sin, he ran into Jesus and has been transformed. Has been transformed. He was changed. His heart was dark, now its light. He hated God, now he loves God and the things of God. He was transformed. He was converted. He was redeemed, regenerated, given faith, adopted, and sanctified. And now he will persevere, be glorified and transformed into the image of the Son. All because something did change inside him that day he heard that preacher. God did a work inside him.

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