I was on a
church based mission with some students from Spurgeon’s
College. It was in Rayleigh, Essex. We’d organised a
programme with celebrity Christians – I played the piano for
Frank Topping ‘The Coronation Street Vicar’ and played
a tape of David Grant to people in the street saying ‘David
Grant is in Rayleigh tonight.’ But it was only when we
discovered a group of teenagers playing cards in the rain in a
makeshift shelter behind a supermarket that things began to
happen. ‘My ways are not your ways,’ says God. They
didn’t come into the meetings but they began to respond to
God’s message of grace and forgiveness in Christ.
A debate arose among us students as to what constitutes
conversion. I imagine they had debates like that in the early
church. Neither they not we had the benefit of the careful
explanation of conversion in ‘The Anatomy of a Healthy
Church.’ It seems to me to be based on David Pawson’s
book ‘The Normal Christian Birth’ and it identifies
four component parts to conversion. It suggests that many
Christians are if not disqualified at least handicapped by an
imperfect Christian birth. I wonder if you are converted? John
James talks about:
1. Repentance
– turning away from all you know to be wrong. God saves us
from our sins and not in our sins. Yes, God doesn’t always
reveal to us straight away the depth of our sin. A Christian
singer called John Pantry wrote this about his conversion –
and it seems to me to be most insightful: ‘So here I am a
few years on and where do I go from here? Sure I’ve learned
a little. I’ve learned a lot about myself. But if I knew
then what I know now, I don’t believe that I could have
lived with myself.’ But there is always an awareness of sin
in conversion and a turning away from all we know to be wrong. Do
you know what I’m talking about?
2. Faith in
Christ – conversion is not getting religion or becoming
interested in the church. Conversion is understanding that Christ
has dealt with the problem of our sin on the cross. We were
involved with his death. And when he rose from the dead, we are
involved in his victory and he leads us on. Our understanding of
all that is constantly deepening. And yet, from our conversion to
our death, our trust is in Christ and his sacrifice. Do you know
what I’m talking about?
3. There is
reception of the Holy Spirit. There is a lot of debate about
this. The Holy Spirit is involved with us at all stages of our
spiritual path. The new birth is a great mystery and some think
it’s mysterious to the extent that it’s not
perceptible. What I think is that there is at conversion a great
release from the burden and consciousness of our sin. That had
been the work of the Holy Spirit too to burden us in that way.
And when the Holy Spirit enables us to look savingly at Christ,
there is a change of climate. There is going to be a new clarity
about spiritual things too. A new aspect to prayer. A new aspect
to the Bible. But all of that is the outward outworking of
something hidden. Do you know what I’m talking about?
4. There is
baptism. We saw last week that nothing we do operates anything in
baptism. And yet it is a means of grace.When you are converted,
one of the first and most infallible signs of new spiritual life
is the desire to please God. To obey him where we can. Even to
imitate, to follow Christ. And what better way to do this than to
be baptised? Jesus was baptised even though strictly speaking he
didn’t have to. And when people are converted in the New
Testament they are all responsible adults and they are all
baptised straight away. If you won’t carry out this simple
step, how credible is your claim to be a follower of Christ in
the Great Tradition? Baptism is a means of grace, too, in that it
acts as a visual aid of what has happened to us in conversion. We
have died with Christ. Sin no longer has that grip on us –
we are not primarily sinners now but sinners saved by grace. We
rise again with him – we are not primarily slaves to sin but
followers of Christ. We are purified from our sins. Baptism is a
public testimony that we consider that these realities of the
spiritual life now apply to us. Baptism is a way of showing
ourselves that we are serious about the spiritual life. It’s
a powerful cordial against doubt and not least self-doubt in the
Christian life. I am a baptised person. Nehemiah – should
such a man as I flee? Do you know what I’m talking about?
Now, I’m very
much a creature of my own training at Spurgeon’s College.
They don’t always tell you what to think but they tell you
how to think. There they told us not to take bits and pieces of
Bible in order to try to establish doctrines. They told us to
preach on entire Bible passages and show what teaching comes out
of a passage. So, there’s no Bible passage that says, ‘Right,
here are the four stages of conversion.’ John James and
David Pawson both schematise.
John James does
make a good fist of drawing out the four elements in Acts Chapter
two. But I have a slight difficulty there because I feel Acts 2
since it is an account of the Day of Pentecost may well not be
normative but have a special significance. As an inauguration.
Taking it as normative might be a bit like basing an account of
British architecture on a description of Buckingham Palace. Or,
more to the point, of basing a description of modern British
family life on the family who live there. There are other ‘conversion’
passages which have a similar problem built in. The conversion of
the centurion Cornelius is one of these – the first ever
Gentile believer. The conversion of the Samaritans, too. Is
their experience normative? The first people outside orthodox
Judaism to believe. In other words, is it typical? Great
questions!
Instead, let’s look at another passage from the book of Acts
which doesn’t have that thematic weight. Acts 16:25-34
And what of the Holy Spirit? Well he was fully involved in all of
that. I know not how the Spirit moves . . . But it wasn’t an
inaugural event so it was in his usual more – self-effacing,
Christ exalting.
Well, there it
is, folks. A healthy church has healthy born again people in it.
Don’t spoil it will you?