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You just gotta believe, right? Not quite!
Romans 10:9-10
Sermon 09
May 31, 2009
An atheist was spending a quiet day fishing when suddenly his boat was attacked by the Loch Ness monster. In one easy flip, the beast tossed him and his boat high into the air. Then, it opened its mouth to swallow both. As the man sailed head over heels, he cried out, "Oh, God! Help me!" At once, the ferocious attack scene froze in place, and as the atheist hung in mid air, a booming voice came down from the clouds, "I thought you didn't believe in Me!" "Come on, give me a break!" he pleaded. "Two minutes ago I didn't believe in the Loch Ness monster either!"
You just gotta believe, right? Not quite! Faith, that’s what we’re talking about this morning, saving faith. In that context what do – Gary Busey, Mel Gibson, Ryan Gosling, Tom Hanks, Don Imus, Dolly Parton, Toby Keith, Alice Cooper and Whitney Houston – all have in common? All of them are professing Christians. All of them profess to have “faith in Jesus.”
In the late 1940s the top man in the Los Angeles underworld was Mickey Cohen. He set himself up on the West Coast as a gangster in the tradition of Al Capone, whom he greatly admired. His operations handled over half a million dollars every day from an extensive network of casinos and other gambling venues and the biggest non-syndicate bookie business west of Chicago. Along with a luxurious lifestyle, Mickey had enormous power. Several sheriff and police departments were on his payroll. Not much happened in the glittering Hollywood of that era without Mickey’s say-so.
In 1949, through an amazing series of events, Mickey Cohen came to hear the gospel. He was invited to a private home in Beverly Hills to hear a young evangelist named Billy Graham, and afterwards Mickey expressed some interest in the message. Graham and others talked with him, but Mickey made no definite commitment. Later on, however, after he had done prison time for income tax evasion, Mickey seemed to have a change of heart. A Christian friend met with him and explained God’s plan of salvation and urged Mickey to pray with him and accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. And wonder of wonders, Mickey repeated the prayer.
Had Mickey Cohen, famous Hollywood gangster, become a Christian? Several were sure he had. Once more, Billy Graham met with him and tried to explain the significance of this decision. Though Mickey seemed friendly, Graham sensed a thick wall of inner resistance. As time went by, his life showed no evidence of any real change. He dropped his Christian friends and returned to hanging around with his underworld pals again.
The man who had tried to lead Mickey to Christ finally confronted him, and told him that as a new Christian he needed to sever all his connections with the mob. But Mickey replied, “You never told me I had to give up my career. You never told me I had to give up my friends. There are Christian movie stars, Christian athletes, Christian businessmen. So what’s the matter with being a Christian gangster?”
The absurdity of what happened to Mickey Cohen dramatically underscores what’s happening to untold numbers today. Though many profess that they are “Christians,” that they have accepted Christ, they continue as they have always been. There is no life change. There is no repentance. They have not experienced saving faith.
My Bible is open to Romans 10:9-10 (p. 802). What is Saving Faith? That question posed is not so easily answered, as illustrated by so many who profess to have it yet have no indication that they actually possess it. It’s also very clear from reading the New Testament that not everyone who “believes” truly possesses saving faith.
Turn to Matthew 7:21-23 (p. 686). Jesus Himself warned that on the Day of Judgment many will claim to have worked miracles in his name, but He will say to them, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” James 2:19 informs us that the demons believe in God—and tremble because of that belief. Yet they are not saved. On the other hand when the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?” they replied, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). That’s simple enough. Believe and be saved. A multitude of verses (especially from the gospel of John) could be added that say the same thing. The problem is not with the words but with their meaning, what does it mean to “believe?” A.W. Tozer put the matter this way: “To the question ‘What must I do to be saved?’ we must learn the correct answer. To fail here is not to gamble with our souls; it is to guarantee eternal banishment from the face of God. Here we must be right or be finally lost.”
That raises a vital question: If salvation is predicated on believing in Christ, how do you know when you’ve truly believed? Or, what does it mean to truly believe? We all understand that the word “believe” has many difference nuances. For instance, if I say “I believe it’s going to rain tomorrow,” that’s not much more than a hunch. Or if I say “I believe George Washington was the first president,” that refers to a settled historical fact. But if I say “I believe in Jesus with all my heart,” I’ve made a different sort of statement altogether, and it’s in precisely that sense we can say not everyone who “believes” is saved. Some are, some aren’t. If the words of Jesus in Matthew 7 mean anything, they must mean that there are many “unsaved believers” who will be greatly surprised at the Last Judgment. So what is Saving Faith?
1. Saving Faith includes knowledge, approval & personal commitment. Many seem to think that saving faith is faith in faith. That is, vague faith without any object. They say it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe something. People like this may say, “I’m not religious. I’m a spiritual person.” They speak of “having a spiritual base” and trusting God “as you understand him.” But when you try to pin them down on the specifics of what they believe, they don’t know what to say. This wrong idea is particularly dangerous because it takes a good idea (the need for faith) and offers salvation to anyone who has faith in almost anything at all.
One writer speaks of our churches being filled with “pious pretenders in the pews.” Perhaps it’s true. Only God knows the heart. But this much is clear. Many people do not know the answer to the question: What must I do to be saved? They don’t have a clue what Saving Faith is.
Let me share a definition of salvation or conversion this morning: Conversion is our willing response to the Gospel, in which we sincerely repent of sins and place our complete trust in Christ for salvation.The word conversion means “turning.” Spiritually speaking, it’s a spiritual turn, a turning from sin to Jesus Christ. This turning from sin is called repentance and the turning to Christ is called faith. Both are necessary for Saving Faith. You cannot have one without the other, and they must occur together when true conversion takes place.
Since the time of the Reformation, Protestants have understood true saving faith as having three parts, correlating with the Latin words notitia, assensus, and fiducia. Those words speak of faith as involving the intellect, the emotions, and the will. The faith that saves us involves all that we are in coming to Christ. Faith starts with knowledge, moves to conviction, and ends with commitment. Let’s briefly take a look at each element.
a) Knowledge alone is not enough for saving faith. Knowledge refers to the factual basis of the Christian faith. It speaks of intellectual understanding of the truth. You must know something in order to be saved. Faith is based on knowledge and knowledge is based on truth. Truth must be proclaimed before saving faith can be exercised. Saving faith is intelligent faith. It’s not intellectual suicide or a mental leap in the dark. This right believing of right knowledge is necessary for salvation. The gospel is about information that we need to know. You aren’t saved by information alone, but you can’t be saved without it.
Suppose you’re in a burning building and can’t find your way out. “Where is the exit?” you cry out. Through the smoke and haze comes the answer: “Go down the hallway, turn left, go down one flight of stairs. The exit is on the right.” Are you saved because you know where the exit is? No, you still have to make the journey yourself. But if you don’t know how to get there, or if you have wrong information, you’re going to burn to death. You aren’t saved by knowing the truth but you can’t be saved without it.
We must be perfectly clear on this point. Christian faith is not blind faith. We are called to believe in something—not just anything. True saving faith rests first and foremost in Jesus Christ. This is paramount. We must know who He is, why He came, why He died, why He rose from the dead, and how He can be our Lord and Savior.
I’m not suggesting we must pass a theology exam in order to be saved, but we must know something about these truths if our faith is to rest on the right foundation. Faith must be grounded in the facts of divine revelation. Faith rests on facts, not on thin air. Faith in the wrong thing, however sincere, will not save anyone. Knowledge is essential but it alone can never save you. Saving faith begins with knowledge but it never ends there.
b) Knowledge and conviction alone are not enough for saving faith. Just knowing the facts and approving of them or agreeing that they are true is not enough.
Nicodemus in John 3 knew that Jesus had come from God, for he said to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him” (John 3:2). Nicodemus had evaluated the facts of the situation, including Jesus’ teaching and His remarkable miracles, and he’d drawn a correct conclusion based on those facts: Jesus was a teacher come from God. But this agreement did not mean that Nicodemus had saving faith, for he still had to put his trust in Christ for salvation, he still had to “believe in Him.”
Conviction means to know something, and then to be persuaded that it’s true. The most common word for believe means “to have confidence in, to regard as completely reliable.” That Hebrew word comes over into English as “Amen,” which literally means “Yes, it’s true.” Saving faith involves saying “Amen” to the facts of the gospel.
But a man may go to a doctor who tells him he has cancer. “But there is good news,” says the doctor. “We have just discovered a chemotherapy that can cure your cancer. Do you believe it?” “Yes,” you answer. Are you cured? No, not until you roll up your sleeve and let them stick in the needle and pump the lifesaving medicine into your veins. Conviction is essential because you must be personally convinced of the truth, but that alone cannot save you. There is one final, vital element in true saving faith.
c) I must volitionally choose to trust in Jesus Christ to save me personally. What we are really talking about is eighteen inches. Eighteen inches, that's the distance between the head and the heart. Unfortunately, that’s also the difference between saving faith and eternal perdition. God’s Word is clear, too many people miss heaven by just 18 inches.
In addition to knowledge of the facts of the Gospel and approval of those facts, I must choose to depend on Jesus to save me. In doing this I move from being an curious observer like Nicodemus, someone who is interested in the facts of salvation and the teachings of the Bible, to someone who enters into a new relationship with Jesus Christ as a living person. I move from spiritual death to spiritual life.
Let’s define saving faith: Saving faith is total trust in Jesus Christ as a living person for forgiveness of sins and for eternal life with God. Saving faith then is not just a belief in facts but it’s a personal trust in Jesus Christ to save me. While much more is involved in saving faith than just forgiveness of sins and eternal life, those are the two primary issues that are the focus of someone who initially comes to Christ.
This definition emphasizes personal trust in Christ, not just belief in facts about Christ. Because saving faith in Scripture involves this personal trust, this word trust is probably a better word than either believe or faith. The reason is that we can believe something to be true without any personal commitment or dependence involved in it. I can believe that Madison is the capital of Wisconsin or that 5 times 5 equals 25, yet have no personal commitment or dependence on anyone when I simply believe those facts.
The word faith is one of the most abused words in contemporary culture. It’s often used to refer to an irrational commitment, even to something where there is strong evidence to the contrary, a sort of irrational decision to believe something that we are quite sure is not true! For example, if your favorite baseball team continues to lose games, someone might encourage you to “have faith” even though all of the facts point in the opposite direction. So in these two popular senses, the words belief and faith have a meaning contrary to the Biblical sense.
The word trust is closer to the Biblical concept, since all of us are familiar with trusting others in everyday life. The more we come to know a person, the more that we see in them a pattern of life that warrants trust, the more we find ourselves able to place trust in that person to do what he/she promises, or to act in ways that we can rely on. This fuller sense of personal trust is indicated in several passages in the Bible in which initial saving faith is spoken of in a very personal terms, often using analogies drawn from personal relationships. Look at John 1:12 (p. 750). “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” Much as would receive a guest into our homes, John speaks of receiving Christ.
John 3:16 tells us that “whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That preposition is so vital. John does not say “believes Him” (that is, believes that what He says is true and able to be trusted), no John says “believes IN Him.” The Greek phrase could be translated “believes into Him” with the same sense of trust or confidence that goes into and rests in Jesus as a person. Faith is not intellectual assent but demands a moral element of personal trust.
With this understanding of New Testament faith, we know that when a person comes to trust in Christ, all three elements must be present. There must be some basic knowledge or understanding of the facts of the Gospel, there must be a conviction that the facts of the Gospel are true, particularly the fact that I am a sinner in need of salvation and that Christ alone has paid the penalty for my sin and offers salvation to me. It also includes an awareness that I need to trust Christ for salvation and that He is the only way to God, and the only means provided for salvation. This approval of these facts of the Gospel will also involve a desire to be saved through Christ, yet all of this still does not add up to saving faith. That comes only when I make a personal decision of my will to depend on, or put my trust in Christ as my Savior.
True saving faith always ends in personal commitment. Sales people understand this principle. After the presentation is made, at some point people have to sign on the dotted line. If they say, “I know that’s a good product,” you haven’t made a sale. If they say, “I believe I need that,” they are closer but you still haven’t made a sale. But when they say, “Where do I sign?” you’ve just closed the deal.
We could illustrate the three elements of faith by comparing it to courtship and marriage. When a young man first develops a relationship with a young woman, he says to himself, “I like what I know about this person and I want to know more.” As the relationship progresses, he realizes that he has fallen in love and the thought comes to him, “I want to marry her.” That’s conviction but he’s not married yet. He is not married until he stands before the minister with his beloved by his side and in the presence of God and witnesses says, “I do.” Then and only then is he married. Knowledge, conviction, choice.
The critical question then is what will you do with Jesus? “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”
2. Saving faith and repentance are two different aspects of the one act of conversion. Wabush, a town in a remote portion of Labrador, Canada, was completely isolated for some time. Recently, a road was cut through the wilderness to reach it. Wabush now has one road leading into it, and thus, only on one road leading out. If someone would travel the unpaved road for six to eight hours to get into Wabush, there is only way he or she could leave—by turning around. Each of us, by birth, arrives in a town called Sin. As in Wabush, there is only one way out—a road built by God himself. But in order to take that road, one must first turn around. That complete about face is what the Bible calls repentance, and without it, there’s no way out of town.
Want a flesh and blood example? Two men opened a butcher shop and prospered. Then, an evangelist came to town, and one of the butchers was saved. He tried to persuade his partner to accept salvation also, but to no avail. “Why won’t you, Charlie?” asked the born-again fellow. “Listen, Lester,” the other butcher said. “If I get religion, too, who’s going to weigh the meat?”
The very first word Jesus spoke in his public ministry was the word Repent. The word repentance literally means “to change the mind.” It has to do with the way you think about something. You’ve been thinking one way, but now you think the differently. That’s repentance—the changing of the mind.
Suppose a man wants to learn how to parachute. So he goes to a skydiving school and they show him how to rig up his gear, pull the ripcord, and land safely. Finally, the day comes when they take him up in an airplane. He’s scared to death but he’s afraid to back out. The moment comes when he is to jump. He goes to the door of the airplane and sees the ground 7,000 feet below. His legs grow weak, he’s getting sick, and somebody behind him is trying to push him out of the airplane. At the last second he says, “No. I’m not going to do it.” “Go ahead, you can do it,” his instructor shouts. “I’ve changed my mind,” he replies. “I’m not going to jump.” And he doesn’t. That man has repented. He’s changed his mind in a decisive way.
That illustrates how repentance works. Repentance is a change in the way you think that leads to change in the way you live. When you really change your mind about something, it’s going to change the way you think about it, talk about it, feel about it, and ultimately what you do about it. True repentance and saving faith go together. They are like two sides of the same coin. To repent means to change my mind about whatever is keeping me from coming to Christ. To trust Christ means to wholeheartedly reach out to him by faith so that He becomes my Savior and Lord.
Let me define Repentance for you. Repentance is a heartfelt sorrow for sin, renouncing of it, and a sincere commitment to forsake it and walk in obedience to Jesus Christ. Biblically, when someone comes to Christ – they change. They leave sin and run to Christ. And when someone says that they are a Christian and still clings to their sin, it should frighten us…and it should frighten them. They are living like an unbeliever. There’s no reason to believe that they know the Lord. It’s an indication that in spite of what they say, they are very likely still outside of the faith and headed to Hell.
In contemporary Christianity we’ve neglected this vital half of conversion. As we study the New Testament we find that repentance is emphasized as well as believing. On the Day of Pentecost Peter’s first word to those who were convicted of their sins was, “Repent” (Acts 2:38). There is no salvation without repentance. Acts 3:19 makes this vividly clear, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”
Saving faith then demands a change in how we think, how we understand ourselves before Christ, and a change in the course we are pursuing. Repentance is a turning toward God. The Hebrew mind understands such turning to be a returning to God, an about-face. When the Jews heard the prophets summon them to repentance they immediately saw three vivid pictures that the prophets were continually holding up before the people.
The first is that of an unfaithful wife returning to her husband. She has violated their marriage covenant. She has disgraced herself and humiliated her spouse. She has rendered their marriage the butt of cruel snickering and bad jokes. Yet, her husband’s love for her, however wounded, remains undiminished and his patience unexhausted. As she turns to him she returns to longstanding love.
The second picture the Hebrew prophets paint is that of idol-worshippers returning to the worship of the true God. In the Hebrew language, the word for “the idols” is “the nothings.” Idols are literally nothing: vacuous, insubstantial. Yet nothing is never merely nothing. In some sense nothing is always something. Nothing, never merely nothing, is always something; paradoxically, something with terrific power. Think of a vacuum. By definition a vacuum is nothing and yet is possessed of such power that it sucks everything around it into it. When idol-worshippers turn from idols to the true and living God they return to truth, reality, substance, solidity; in a word they return to blessing so weighty that nothing can inhibit it or frustrate it or dissipate it.
The third picture from the Hebrew Bible is that of rebel subjects returning to their rightful ruler. To rebel against rightful rule, fitting rule, appropriate rule, is always to move from order to chaos. We must be sure to understand that groundless rebellion is revolt against legitimate authority. When rebel subjects rebel against proper authority, they plunge themselves into disorder and chaos. When they return to their rightful ruler they return to trustworthy wisdom, to that which ensures their blessing, their greatest good.
To repent, then, is to return to longstanding love, to truth, to legitimate authority. It is completely contrary to Scripture to speak about the possibility of having true saving faith without having any repentance from sin. When you commit yourself to the Lord, you commit yourself to forsake sin.
Conclusion: So how do know if someone has truly experienced saving faith and has repented of their sins? A few years ago, a Virginia man answered that question so powerfully with his life. On the surface, Daniel Crocker was the typical suburbanite…a wife, two kids and a good job as a warehouse manager. But Crocker had a dark secret: Nineteen years before, he had taken the life of a Kansas woman named Tracy Fresquez. Over the years, the burden of this secret became intolerable. Eventually, Daniel Crocker turned to God for forgiveness, became a Christian, became active in a Bible-believing church, and he and his family grew wonderfully in their faith. But he could not bring himself to tell the police about his terrible crime.
It was when Daniel began ministering to a prison inmate that he came under conviction. One day after Daniel returned home from a prison visit, he prayed with his wife, Nicolette. Daniel then began planning how to go about surrendering to the authorities. For assistance, he turned to Pastor Al Lawrence, the assistant pastor of a local church. Pastor Lawrence was an ex-offender himself and he counseled Crocker and helped prepare him for prison life.
Pastor Lawrence told the Washington Post why Crocker was taking this extraordinary step: "[Crocker's] faith," he said, "told him he had to deal with that part of his life that he's been skirting over the years." For Crocker, the hardest part was telling his children, nine year-old Isaac and eight-year old Analiese, why he had to leave them. As the children tearfully begged him not to go, Crocker, himself in tears, told them: "I have to do this. I'd be a hypocrite if I raised you by the Word of God and I didn't [turn myself in]."
So Daniel Crocker boarded a plane for Kansas where he was met by startled prosecutors and charged with first-degree murder. Prosecutor Paul Morrison says that while Crocker will receive credit for turning himself in, "he also did a horrible thing" for which he ought to be held accountable.
The Apostle Paul writes that "godly sorrow leads to salvation and brings no regret." By contrast there's "worldly sorrow," grief over being caught, not over having sinned. Paul warns that this kind of sorrow "produces death."
The Crockers' remarkable story is a timely lesson in what it means to have saving faith and repent. The kind of repentance Paul describes produces changed hearts and changed lives. It doesn't ask "what can I get away with?" but rather "how do I make things right?" It’s a living faith that fulfills 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Friend, have you experienced saving faith? Have you trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Has there been a change? Have you repented of your sin to follow Jesus?
