Preached in Markham Baptist Church, June 19, 2005

HOW DO I BECOME A CHRISTIAN? FABLES & FACTS

How do I become a Christian? That might be a question you are asking as you witnessed these baptisms today. You heard the testimonies, you witnessed their desire to follow Jesus Christ and many of you knew these people before they became Christian and you are asking yourself, how did they arrive at this place in their lives? How did they become a Christian? How do I become a Christian?

This is the question I want to address today – indeed there are many who have wrong ideas about how to become a Christian, there are some who have placed their faith and hopes for eternity on ideas that are false - myths, mere fables - and do not know the truth that is in the Word of God. So this morning I want us to think of the fables and facts that surround the question, How do I become a Christian?

Our text is Ephesians 2:1-10. And this letter is written by a follower of Jesus Christ by the name of Paul, he is a pastor who cares a great deal for the people of God. He is writing to the Christians who live in Ephesus. We learn all this in verse one of the book, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.”

Now when we get to chapter 2 Paul is reminding the Christians in Ephesus of what they were like before they were Christians and how they became Christians. He says in verse 1 through 3 – This is what you were like before you became a Christian.

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live, when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” (Ephesians 2:1-3)

Now in these verses there are exposed several fables about how we become Christians.

The first fable is that we become a Christian by being good. This fable is widely believed by those inside and outside the church.

There are several problems with this thinking. First, what scale of goodness do we use? Do we use your scale? Or your scale? Mother Teresa’s scale? My scale? Whose scale do we use? What standard of goodness do we use?

You can see the problem. The scale of goodness slides according to who we are. We are like the little boy who told his mother he was 8 feet tall … at least according to the yard stick that he had made.

So we say, we need a common yardstick. That makes sense. And doesn’t it make sense that it should be God’s yardstick? Shouldn’t He be the one who measures goodness? After all it is His Kingdom we want to enter and His heaven, so He should set the standard. So what is His yardstick of goodness? What does He say about our goodness?

Well as we study the word “good” in Scripture we discover that it is used in an absolute sense, it means the “absence of evil”. God’s standard is 100% goodness. So this brings us to the second problem.

None of have 100% goodness and none of us can achieve it. Our text describes us saying, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins.” That means that we have missed the mark. That is what the word sin means, it is missing the mark, it falling short of the standard. You see, God isn’t interested so much in how good we are, He is interested in how good we’re not. We have missed the target, we have fallen short of God’s standard.

So we read in Romans 3:12 - “All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

Isaiah 64:4 reads, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”

There are some who say, well I’ll just try a little harder – I’ll be extra good and God will have to accept me. But look at our text. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” That means that we are so lost in sin, so enveloped by sin that it is impossible for us to be good enough to win God’s favour and to be able to call ourselves Christians.

Not only this, we learn at verse 2 that we are under the rule of Satan himself. So even if we wanted to be good we know that he would keep us from it for he seeks not obedience to God but disobedience.

No, my friends, it is a myth to believe that good people are Christians or that we become Christians by being good.

Here is the second fable: I am a Christian because my parents are Christian. People who follow this fable believe that because their parents are Christian God accepts them too, or because their spouse is a Christian they are a Christian.

But all of this is a large lie. Having Christian parents does not make you a Christian. I know this to be true first hand. I grew up in a Christian home, but I can tell you that did not make me a Christian. I was blessed with great examples. I had Christian influence in my life but that did not make me a Christian, any more than hanging around with Howard makes me a great piano player.

Suppose I were to tell you that my parents are accomplished artists. My dad is a little better than my mom, but they are both very good with brush and oils. Would you say to me, “you must be a good painter too?” That’s quite an assumption – just because my parents are artists doesn’t mean I will be. To be sure I may have learned the basics of art, how to mix colour, how to hold the brush. But that doesn’t make me an artist.

Same with faith. You may know the basics of the faith, you may be able to answer all the questions in Sunday School, you may win all the Bible quizzes but that doesn’t make you a Christian.

You cannot inherit faith from your parents. There is only one thing that you inherit from your parents – 100% guaranteed, you may inherit your father’s nose, you may inherit your mother’s dimples, but one thing for sure is that you and I inherited our parent’s sinful nature.

So Paul says at verse 3 that at one time we sought to gratify the cravings of our sinful nature, and follow its desires and thoughts. Like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath.”

Where did we get this nature? Where did we get this sinful nature? From our parents. It’s part of the human race, since the time of Adam. This is so important for us to grasp - nothing good lives in me apart from Christ. Nothing good lives in you apart from Christ.

Nothing. I know this is bad psychology. I know there are those who preach against it. Bishop Spong, for instance, was in Toronto just the other month. He was here promoting a new book he has written and he was preaching around the city and one of those messages was recorded by TVO. I was folding laundry yesterday and I was flipping through the channels and there he was preaching. And in the space of 10 minutes I can tell you that he denied the virgin birth, the ascension of Jesus, the perfect creation, the fact of the fall, and that we are all lost in sin.

He said that it is bad psychology to tell people that we are sinners and lost in sin. He quoted the favorite hymn, “Amazing Grace”. You know the line – “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” And Bishop Spong said how bad it was to tell people that they are wretches. To tell people that nothing good lives in them is bad for their psyche and ego.

And I said to myself, “Okay Bishop, that may be. What do you have to offer in its stead?” And do you know what he said? He said we should believe the theories of Darwinism. Darwinism???

He said, yes. He said Darwin’s theories have proven that there was no fall, and though we make mistakes, what is happening is that humanity is progressing! We are on a journey to goodness.

If he only knew H.G. Wells, who loved Darwinism, preached Darwinism, included Darwin’s theories into his books but as he got older, as he watched the world, he discovered that we are not progressing! As H.G. Wells, watched one world war, a second world war, he saw all that he preached and believed go up in the smoke of interment camps so that the last play H.G. Wells wrote – was not a flaming testimony to the progression of man, but a pessimistic play reflecting his own sad state entitled, “A Mind at the End of its Tether.” He saw not the progression of humanity but the regression of humanity.

Ah, but it’s bad psychology to tell people that we are lost in sin, that we are sinful and cannot progress out of it! So what are we to do?

My friends, I would buy into Darwinism if it was a viable solution. But I have never heard anything so foolish and so factually false. What does this theory do? It glorifies self. It glorifies humanity. It says there is something good in us.

Whereas Christianity glorifies God. It lifts up God and says all good is in God, all good resides in God. It is because of God that I am saved.

It is because of God’s love that I am saved. And this is great psychology, for even though I am lost in my sin God reaches down in love and picks us up and makes us new. That’s great theology and brilliant psychology - to know that I am loved even though I am regressing. Yes, a thousand times, yes! God loves you in the midst of your sin.

It is a fallacy to believe that you are a Christian because your parents are Christian. Because you inherited a sinful nature from them.

It is fable to believe that we are Christian because our parents are Christian. We have only inherited a sinful nature from them. “Flesh gives birth to flesh” Jesus says in John 3:6.

But the Spirit gives birth to Spirit. You see that’s why Jesus said we need to have an experience that is like being born all over again. We need to change our parentage, we need a new nature in us. We need to be born again.

This brings us to Fable 3. This fable says I became a Christian when I was christened. We don’t christen children in our denomination, because if you look through Scripture you will not find that word “christened” at all. There is no such word, it means to be Christianized, and no one is Christianized. You cannot be christened into the faith.

In our denomination we practice believers baptism and there are some who believe that being baptized makes a person a Christian. But that is a myth. There are many people who believe that there is something that they can do to win God’s favour, whether it be good works, or being baptized or walking down the aisle when Billy Graham gives the invitation. But that is a myth.

It’s like saying if I eat enough dog food I’ll become a dog. It’s not true. You can eat all the dog food you like but you will never become a dog. But if someone was to come alongside you and with a snap of the fingers turn you into a dog, then you would crave dog food. You would love to eat dog food. But eating dog food right now doesn’t make you a dog.

So what are the facts? How do I become a Christian? If I can’t do anything good enough, if my parents faith doesn’t help me, if there is no ritual or super-spiritual thing I can do in church that will make me a Christian what can I do? We are lost! We are in big trouble. We are completely and utterly at a loss. What are we to do?

A…B...C…D…

A stands for something to Admit. We need to admit that we are lost, that we are as the text says, dead in our sins. We have fallen short of the standards that God has set.

This is the first step, and it is often the most difficult because it is the most humbling even humiliating that we have to admit our need for Jesus Christ. He Himself said that those who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick. “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

In other words what He meant was, just as you won’t go to the doctor unless you are sick so you won’t come to Christ unless you are a sinner and know it and admit it.

Because of our sin we have come under the just judgment of God, that what our text says in verse 3, Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. God is holy and pure and He cannot be where sin is. Just as two negative magnets repel from one another and can never be joined, so it is with sin and God.

So we have admit our need of forgiveness. We need somehow to be forgiven to be given a new start in life. Will you take that step?

I am afraid that more people are kept out of the kingdom of God by pride than any other cause. We have to humble ourselves and admit our need. We cannot earn our own salvation, we cannot secure our own forgiveness. We need the forgiveness of God, which means we need Christ.

B is something to Believe. A Christian is one who believes that God through Christ has done everything for us so that we can be forgiven, restored with new life, and has adopted us into His family, so that we are now able to do good works because He lives in us through faith.

Look at our text - after painting this horrible picture of what we once were Paul now says in verse 4 these wonderful words: “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith.”

We need to believe that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. That He came and took our human nature upon Himself. Lived the perfect life on earth. This God man, was God made flesh, that He went deliberately to the cross in order to bear our sin and its just reward. He became our substitute. He took our place, He endured the judgment for us. God in Christ, substituting Himself or us in order that we may be forgiven.

Now you may not be anywhere near believing that yet. So you need to get into a group to think these things through. You are not ready to commit yourself to Christ until you have investigated the evidence of these things and see the reasonableness of them, and come to believe them.

You need to continue until you come to the place that you realize that it is Jesus Christ who saves you. We must see that Jesus is the proper object and focus of our faith. We have seen there are lots of people who have faith, faith in their good works, faith in their parents’ faith, faith in their rituals. But faith is not enough – it must have a proper focus. Our faith is to rest on Christ alone, so that no one can boast says our text at verse 8 - “for it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”

I love the story of the evangelist who had a woman come up to him and say, “Do you mean that there is absolutely nothing I can do to save myself? “That’s right.”

“You mean there is no good work, no ritual I can perform that will save me?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, God help us.” And the evangelist replied, “That’s the point.”

How do I become a Christian? The fact is that there is A, something to admit - I’m a sinner; I need a Saviour. I don’t where I’m going to get one from, but I need one.

B, something to believe - Jesus Christ is the Saviour I need. He is the Son of God, He was raised from the dead.

C, something to consider. Jesus not only wants to be our Saviour but also our Lord and Master. And you can’t have Him as your Saviour if you are not prepared to have him as your Lord and Master as well. Jesus stands before us as Saviour and Lord. You cannot respond to bits of Christ - you have to respond to the whole of Christ. Lord and Saviour. Both. That means that He wants to be given rule over your life. He wants us to surrender our lives to Him our heart, our will, our future, our career, our leisure, our family, our sex life, our money, every part of our life comes under the Sovereign Lordship of Jesus Christ if we are going to surrender our lives to Him.

This is what it means to repent. It means “to change the mind” – agreeing that sin is sin – and this leads to a change of direction in life. Repentance is not simply saying sorry to God, it means to stop doing the wrong things.

We have to consider that. We have to do what He called, count the cost of discipleship. Mind you, there is not better Lord and Master to have, I can testify to that. When He said, “Take my yoke upon you,” he added, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light and I am meek and gentle in heart.”

So.. A,B.C. I admit I am a sinner, in need of a Saviour. B, I believe Jesus Christ is the Saviour I need because of who He is and what he has done. C, I’ve considered He wants to be my Lord as well. Admitting, believing, considering.

D. There is something to Do. We have to translate that theory into action. That is, to come to Christ just as I am. And to commit myself to Christ and ask Him to be my Saviour and my Lord.

You know in my life God and Jesus Christ have always seemed to be there because of my Christian parents and my involvement in my church. God was always a part of m life. But nevertheless there came a day when I had to say Lord Jesus Christ I need you as my Saviour, forgive me of my sin, I seek to make you Lord of my life. Come and live in me today.

And so you need to make that decision. Jesus Christ risen from the dead stands outside the door of your heart knocking, desiring to come in. You have to decide whether you will open the door or not. It is a serious thing to put it off if you are ready, but it is also a serious thing to take this step if you are not ready, and you know if you are ready or not.

If you are, here is a prayer you can pray silently, not out loud, but silently under your breath, sentence by sentence after me.

Let us pray - Lord Jesus, I admit that I am a sinner, that I have put myself ahead of You and others. I admit that I need you as my Saviour. I believe that You came to this world to save sinners. I believe that because You died on the cross I am forgiven in God’s eyes. I receive You as my Saviour. I commit myself to You, be the Lord and Master of my life. Thank you for saving me, I will seek to give You all the glory and honour from this day forward. Amen.