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TOPIC: Spurgeon - C.H. - Is Conversion Necessary (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Section 3 of 4
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This change from enmity to friendship with God arises very much from a change of man's judicial state before God. Before a man is converted he is condemned, but when he receives spiritual life we read "there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." This altogether changes his condition as to inward happiness. "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ"; which peace we never had before. "And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement."
O brethren, conversion makes a difference in us most mighty indeed, or else what did Christ mean when he said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Does he after all give us no rest? Is the man who comes to Jesus just as restless and as devoid of peace as before? God forbid! Does not Jesus say that when we drink of the water which he gives to us we shall never thirst again? What! And are we to be told that there is never a time when we leave off thirsting, never a time when that living water becomes in us a well of water, springing up unto everlasting life? Our own experience refutes the suggestion. Does not Paul say in Heb. iv. 3, "We which have believed do enter into rest." Our condition before God, our moral tone, our nature, our state of mind, are made by conversion totally different from what they were before. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Why, beloved, instead of supposing that we can do without conversion, the Scriptures represent this as being the grand blessing of the covenant of grace. What said the Lord by his servant Jeremiah? "This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after these days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (Jer. xxxi. 33.) This passage Paul quotes in the Hebrews x. 16, not as obsolete, but as fulfilled in believers. And what has the Lord said by Ezekiel? (Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27.) Listen to the gracious passage, and see what a grand blessing conversion is; "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh; and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes; and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." Is not this the blessing of the gospel by which we realize all the rest? Is not this the great work of the Holy Ghost by which we know the Father and the Son? And is not this needful to make us in accord with future glory? "He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. xxi. 5.) There is to be a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth shall pass away; and can we believe that the old carnal nature is to enter into the new creation? Is that which is born of the flesh to enter into the spiritual kingdom? Never can it be. No, a change as wonderful as that which will pass over this world when Christ shall re-create it, must pass over each one of us, if it be not so already. In a word, if we be in Christ Jesus we are new creatures; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Do you know anything about this? I trust that a great number of you have experienced it, and are showing it in your lives; but I fear me some are ignorant of it. Let those who are unconverted never rest till they have believed in Christ and have a new heart created and a right spirit bestowed. Lay it well to heart, that a change must come over you which you cannot work in yourselves, but which must be wrought by divine power. There is this for your comfort, that Jesus Christ has promised this blessing to all who receive him, for he gives them power to become the sons of God.
II. Secondly, I now remark that THIS CHANGE IS FREQUENTLY VERY MARKED AS TO ITS TIME AND CIRCUMSTANCES. Many souls truly born of God could not lay their finger upon any date, and say, "At such a time I passed from death unto life." There was such a time, however, though they may not be able to fix upon it. The act of conversion is often as to many of its circumstances so surrounded by preceding works of restraining grace that it appears to be a very gradual thing, and the rising of the sun of righteousness in the soul is comparable to the dawning of day, with a grey light at first, and a gradual increase to a noonday splendour. Yet, as there is a time when the sun rises, so is there a time of new birth. If a dead man were restored to life, he might not be able to say exactly when life began, but there is such a moment. There must be a time when a man ceases to be an unbeliever and becomes a believer in Jesus. I do not assert that it is necessary for us to know the day, but such a time there is. In many cases, however, the very day and hour and place are fully known, and we might expect this, first, from many other works of God. How very particular God is about the time of creation! "The evening and the morning were the first day." "God said, `Let there be light,' and months afterwards there came a little grey dawning, and a solitary star." Oh no, you say, you are quoting from imagination! I am. The Scripture has it, "God said, Let there be light: and there was light." Immediate work is God's method of creating; all through the six days' work he spake and it was done, he commanded and it stood fast. There is generally a likeness between one act of God and another, and if in the old creation the fiat did it all, it does seem likely upon the very face of things that in the new creation the fiat of the eternal Word should be equally quick and powerful in its working. Look at the acts of God in the person of Christ when he was here among men. The water turns at once to wine, the fig-tree immediately withers away, the loaves and fishes are at once multiplied in the hands of the disciples. Miracles of healing were as a rule instantaneous. In one instance the Lord puts clay on the blind man's eyes, and sends him to wash; but lengthen the operation as much as you like, it is still very briefly summed up in "I washed and do see." Yonder, a paralytic man is lying on his bed. Jesus says to him, "Take up thy bed and walk," and he does so at once. The leprosy was cured with a touch, devils fled at a word, ears were unstopped instantly, and withered limbs restored. He spake to the waves and the winds and they were calm at once; and as to the resurrections which Christ worked, which are his acted parables of regeneration, they were all instantaneous. Jesus took the little girl by the hand, and said, "Talitha cumi," she opened her eyes and sat up. He bade the bier stand still on which was the young man: he said "Young man, I say unto thee arise;" and he arose straightway. Even the carcass of Lazarus, which had begun to corrupt, yielded at once to his word. He did but say, "Lazarus, come forth," and there was Lazarus. As the Master worked on men's bodies, so does he constantly work upon men's souls and it is according to analogy to expect that his works will be instantaneous. Such they constantly are, for are they not daily before us?
We might also look for many instances of vividness if we consider the work itself. If it be worthy to be called a resurrection, there must manifestly be a time in which the dead man ceases to be dead and becomes alive. Take the opposite process of dying: we commonly say that such a man was long in dying; that is a popular description, but strictly speaking, the actual death must be instantaneous. There is a time in which there is breath in the body, and another time in which there is none. So must it be in the reception of life; that life may seem to come by slow degrees into the soul, but it cannot really be so; there must be an instant up to which there was no life, and beyond which life began. Is not that self-evident? Is it wonderful that that instant should fix itself on the memory, and in many cases be the most prominent fact in a man's whole history?
It is called a creation. Now creation is necessarily a work which happens in an instant, for a thing either is or is not. There is no intervening space between non-existence and existence; there is the sharpest conceivable line between that which is not and that which is. So in the new creation, there must be a time when grace is not received, and a time when renewing it is, and we may naturally expect that in so grand a work there would be, in many cases, a marked boundary line at which the work begins.
But, brethren, we need not talk of what we might expect; let us look at the facts. What are the facts about the conversions mentioned in Scripture? We hear much of educational processes which supersede conversion, but they are among the many inventions unknown to apostolic history. The bishop tells us that he does not find a single case in the Bible at all resembling the case of John Bunyan. It is very curious how very differently we read. I at once turn to Paul, but the bishop says he is not a case in point, for he did not feel the burden of sin fall off his back. I cannot guess how the bishop knows what Paul endured during his three days' blindness, but my own notion, gathered from Paul's after sayings and doings, is very different. The man was one moment an opponent of Christ, and the next moment was crying, "Who art thou, Lord?" For three days he was blind and fasted; was he not then feeling the power of the law, and casting away his own righteousness? And when Ananias came to tell him more fully the gospel, and to bid him arise and be baptized, and wash away his sins, was there no removal of sin? Did he remain as before? There were two things spoken of, he was to be baptized, and also to receive another, and spiritual washing: was the first real and not the second? The apostle always speaks of the whole thing as if he had cast away his own righteousness and counted it but dung to lay hold on Christ, and he continually glories in having peace with God, though he did not claim perfection in the flesh. He had not attained perfection, but he had attained salvation. He calls himself the chief of sinners, but this was as a retrospect; surely Bishop Fraser does not really mean to insinuate that the great apostle still remained the chief of sinners. If so, I must say the morality of his teaching is not such as one would expect from him.