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You're listening to the Vice
Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus
of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor
and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's
Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are
an extension of the ministry of the university. Well, welcome
back to another episode of the VC hour. So happy to be back
with you guys. And I just really love this time
together. And one of the things that we
do on this show is we try to go a bit deeper into some of
those concepts. Some of those ideas that as we've
talked about in the past may seem very easy, very simple,
very straightforward. But as you really think about
it, perhaps some of the things at the edges aren't as obvious
as you might think. So you can take a word like last
week's word, regeneration. Maybe that's a word you've heard
before. But did you explore it in detail? And did you really
try to understand what all of God's word has to say about it?
Well, that's certainly something that we try to do on this show.
We want to be sure that we are reading God's Word, that we are
understanding what God's Word has to teach us, because we believe
so deeply here that the more we understand about God, the
more we will praise him for who he is. And that's a way of saying
that all theology ends in doxology, or to say it differently, The
more you know about God, the more you will absolutely praise
him, because you'll see him for who he is and how he truly works
in the world. And that's what we're going to
do today. You know, last episode we talked about regeneration,
and regeneration is that new birth, how we were one thing
and we become something else. And today we're working on a
similar topic, and that is the word conversion. What is conversion? Well, in its simplest sense,
conversion is a response to regeneration. If you were to look at the original
languages, you would see that the word that we often translate
as conversion or to convert comes from a word that means to turn,
to have headed one way or be pointed or oriented in one way.
and then to end up going in a different direction. You can see this is
a change of thought, a change of desire, a change of emotion,
and even a change of your mind. That's a beautiful thing for
us. And the Bible, of course, gives us a ton of practical examples
of this. For instance, you might think
of one of the episodes we did on Rahab. You can find a bit
about that from our episodes on the book of Hebrews. Of course,
Rahab once believed one religion pointed in one direction, just
like everybody else in Jericho. and yet confronted with how awesome
God is, she was absolutely overwhelmed by his grandeur, and she wanted
herself and she wanted her family to be part of the people of God.
There's nothing less than a conversion there. The thief on the cross
is a fantastic example. When we first meet the thief
on the cross, he is saying nasty things about Jesus, just like
the guy on the other side is as well. But by the end, he has
completely changed. And in fact, we find Jesus himself
giving the most assured assurance of perhaps anybody in the Bible.
He says, today you'll be with me in paradise. Well, what an
amazing gift that is. As terrible as the thief's situation
was, he nevertheless heard directly from the mouth of his Savior
that he personally would be with him in paradise. Of course, you
know the story of the Philippian jailer from the book of Acts.
This guy completely oriented in the wrong direction, and has
an experience in which he sees the power of God through the
life of Paul and the rescue of Paul, and in that he wants what
Paul has. You might think of the Samaritan
woman. John chapter 4, we find Jesus encountering the Samaritan
woman, and not only does she have a change of heart, but she
also wants the same for other people as well. You have to come
and hear him. He has told me every single thing
I've ever done. You might think about the eunuch
in Acts chapter 8. This eunuch is reading from the
book of Isaiah, but doesn't understand it, doesn't understand what it's
saying. But the Spirit reveals to him the truth through a man
who has been placed in his path. And in fact, there's every reason
for him to be not only converted, but to be baptized. Of course,
you know about Cornelius and his dramatic experience in the
book of Acts, Acts chapter 10. where Peter is there to help
him in his journey. And no less than Peter, because
as Cornelius was very much a Gentile from a very powerful Roman background,
took someone like Peter under the direction of God in order
to be the one who could demonstrate to everyone that the conversion
of the Gentiles actually was quite a good thing. And of course,
you know that missionary to the Gentiles, Paul, And Acts chapter
9 has his own conversion experience, and what a radical experience
that was. We could keep going on and on. There are actually
quite a few more we could talk about. In fact, we could talk
about times where there was a collective conversion, it seems. You might
think about the judges cycle, and if you remember the book
of Judges, you remember Time after time, the judges were brought
into a situation where the people had seen the evil of their ways
and were feeling that just chastisement, the correction of God, and they
prayed out to God for someone to help them out of their trouble.
God would hear them, and they would turn from their wicked
ways, and God would produce a judge. And for a period of time, that
judge would protect them from outside, but also protect them
inside as well. Or you might think about In Jonah,
Jonah chapter 3, having heard what I often tell people is probably
one of the worst sermons I've ever heard as Jonah's sermon
to Nineveh, the Holy Spirit nevertheless uses it. Jonah chapter 3 verses
8 to 10, But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and
let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his
evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows,
God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger. So we
may not perish. When God saw what they did, how
they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster
he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. Man, what
a picture for us. You notice here in Jonah chapter
3 that God turns to them, and isn't that exactly what he promises
time and time again? that the people who turn to him
will find that he is a God who turns to them. And it's one of
our great fears in life, isn't it? That we will try to reach
out to someone and that person will reject us, and that person
won't accept who we are, that we'll have exposed ourselves
for no reason. And yet you have assurance from God himself that
he will, in fact, accept you and accept your turning to him. Now, who does the converting?
Well, that's really the central question. That is, why does God
accept you? And it's because He's the one who's doing the
converting from the beginning. I mean, it'd be a surprise to
you, but that's what it says. Acts 11, 18, when they heard
these things, they fell silent. They glorify God, saying, Then
to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads
to life. So that granting of repentance
that leads to life comes from God. Now, is that to say that
the people are not being converted? They very much are. But who's
doing the work? That tells us that God is. 2
Timothy 2 25, God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading
to a knowledge of the truth. Paul indicates in 2 Timothy 2
that it is for God to grant repentance. Now, you may have noticed in
this that I just quoted two passages that talk about repentance. And
that's because if you study conversion, you see that the very word that
we use in the Greek for conversion is often actually so closely
related to the word for repentance that sometimes they are actually,
in fact, used interchangeably. This idea of turning away. Now there's more than one word
that's used for repentance, that's for sure, just as there's more
than one word that's used for converting, and yet you see that
they are somehow very closely tied together, so closely that
one might even say they're essentially synonymous. We have repentance
so closely tied to converting because repentance is nothing
less than a turning away from our former ways, our former thoughts,
and our former directions, and being headed instead into a new
path and in a new direction. Repentance is an important element,
or you might say an important concept, attached to the idea
of conversion. And you can't have conversion
without repentance. And that is because repentance
itself is a turning away, just as we would say that conversion
is as well. And what type of repentance,
or what level of repentance, is necessary? And the answer
is total. It is something that the scriptures
attach to our mind, to our emotion, and even to our will. You might
find, for instance, it attached to our mind in something like
Romans 3 20, for by works of the law, no human being will
be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge
of sin. That is to say that the scriptures
teach that you have to have a knowledge of sin in order to be able to
Without a knowledge of sin, there is no repentance. Well, here
in Romans chapter 3 verse 20, Paul makes it so, so clear that
the law that God provides gives us a knowledge of our sin. If
we don't have that knowledge, then there's absolutely no chance
that we will be able to repent. Just think of it this way. Can
you turn away intentionally from something that you don't even
know you're doing? Of course you can't. You have
to know it in order to be able to repent. And of course, how
do we know it? Well, it's God who has to reveal
it to us through his law. And this is one of the primary
elements when we think about one of the uses of the law. There's
other uses as well that we could talk about in greater detail
at some other time. We've talked about it briefly
before. But the fact of the matter is, it's as simple as this, that
you need to know that you've done something wrong. And how
will you know it? Well, what's right and wrong for us is revealed
through the law. The law is an expression of God's
character as he has given it to us. And so when we encounter
God's law, we see God for who he is, that he is high and holy
and set apart. Not only that, the law acts as
a mirror for ourselves so that we see ourselves as we are as
well, which is that we are sinners in need of repentance. And who
does that work of revealing to us who we are? Well, we have
to have a mind that knows our sin, and that mind must be provided
for us by God's words, the work of God in us, that we see ourselves
as we are. Not only that, but there is the
emotion involved as well. 2 Corinthians 7, 9, and 10 says
this, This is quite interesting here
in 2 Corinthians. Paul is telling us that our emotions
are involved in repentance, but not just emotions in general. Notice here it says that there
is a other type of grief. There is a worldly type of grief.
You don't have to be anybody special, and you don't have to
be particularly led by the Holy Spirit to be grieved in general. Of course, you can hear that
you have done wrong things, and it can make you sad that you
did something wrong. But a grief that you have that
does not take you to repentance is not a godly grief, but it
is a worldly grief instead. So having been convicted of your
sin, you have to have the correct emotional response. I can tell
you from personal experience, There have been times in my life,
in my capacity in the Church especially, but occasionally
also in my work, where it has been necessary for me to confront
people with their sinful behavior, doing things that are clearly
wrong, that are clearly against God's teaching. And I am in a
position where I have to show them that. I show them what God's
Word has to say about their actions, and then I call them to some
form of repentance. I can tell you that despite what
you might think, it is often true that the person who's confronted
in that way shows some type of grief. Now, sometimes, of course,
there's denial, sometimes there's anger and bargaining and all
those other things, but very often it's true that there is
some type of grief. I have seen people weep. the
fact that the Bible says that they ought to be acting in certain
ways, and they are acting in different ways, and they grieve. I can tell you also from experience,
the bare fact of them weeping, that is, them crying in front
of me, as much as it is very much moving on a human level,
does not itself mean that they have repented. They can be experiencing
a very deep grief, and yet it's not a godly grief. So they're
having some kind of emotional response to what they're hearing,
conviction of their sin or knowledge of their sinfulness as they see
God's law, realization of what that might mean for them. Certainly
sometimes it's an emotion attached to the consequences they don't
want, but I can tell you for a fact that if God is producing
that grief in them, if it is godly grief, then they are going
to be grieved into repenting. And I can tell you for sure that
a person who's very sad that they've done something wrong,
or very sad that they've been told they've done something wrong,
or very sad that they've been caught, who in turn does not
end up then repenting, Well, they're just being grieved in
a worldly way. They've been grieved in a way
that's just common to everyone. And that type of grieving, we're
told, well, it leads to death. That is, the grief that doesn't
lead to repentance, it's not like it doesn't lead you anywhere.
It does. leads you to death instead. To the point for today, repentance
does involve the emotion. Some people might think of it
being only emotion, and for that I would say no, it requires a
knowledge. But others might think that no, no, repentance is a
matter of the mind alone, and to that I would say no. We ought
to be grieved by our own sin, and there is a good type of grief,
and it is of course, as I just mentioned, the type of grief
that produces repentance. Repentance also involves the
will. And hear this from Acts chapter
2 verse 38, Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized every
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of
your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Repent and be baptized are commands. Those are things that they have
to do, and in fact that they should want to do. And if you're
being told to repent means that you're being commanded to repent,
which means that you must want to repent in response to that
command. And in fact, repentance does
involve our will, our desire to change. It's not enough simply
that you know that you've done things wrong and that there is
another way. It's not enough As I mentioned
earlier, that you have a deep grief, that you're very sad about
it, even sad enough that you are thinking about the wrongness
of your actions. But you must also want to repent. And this is the reason why we
know for sure that godly grief produces repentance, because
as we are grieved in a godly way, we have a desire, we have
the will to want to do what we ought to do, which in this case
is to repent. So conversion is very closely
tied to the idea of repentance. In fact, they often use the same
word, or I should say the same word is translated in some passages
as being conversion and others repentance. But conversion is
not simply repentance. There is another component to
it as well, which is faith. That is, we receive what Christ
has offered to us by faith. Now, in the past, we've talked
about faith quite a bit as we went through all of Hebrews chapter
11. And in fact, I would encourage you, if you want a more prolonged
discussion of what it means to have faith, you might look at
that with some specific examples. But for today's episode, I just
want to briefly go over some elements of what faith is, because
I think faith is one of those words, precisely as we mentioned
before, that we use quite a bit, but we're not always sure exactly
what we're talking about. I found this with my students,
that a lot of times when I ask them, what's faith, they can
come up with elaborate and partially correct answers that are, in
fact, incomplete. So allow me to simplify it for
you, and then I'm going to give you some biblical examples of
exactly what faith is. Traditionally, we think of faith
as being composed of three parts, and this is the thing I want
you to keep in mind as you think about the word faith, and that
is knowledge, assent, Knowledge, assent, and trust. Knowledge, of course, is what
you know. We find in places like Romans 10 14 that it says this, Here in Romans chapter 10, Paul
is working through how salvation works, and he's asking, how could
you believe in somebody if you don't know that that person even
exists? You've never heard of them. And
so it does require that someone to be sent to preach the Word
of God so that you can hear it and so that you can understand
it. This presumes, then, that any belief that we have—of course,
that word belief is so closely associated with the word faith—it's
necessary to have belief that you actually have some knowledge.
Does that blow your mind? Well, I think if you've been
listening to my episodes. It actually won't surprise you that
much, because we've talked at length before about the fact
that people often assume, in some very wrong categories, that
you have knowledge in one hand and you have faith in the other,
and that the two don't belong together. But the Scriptures
actually teach something very, very different. The Scriptures
teach us that we actually have very good reasons to believe. We have very good reasons to
believe. That is, our belief is attached
to some things that we know. So God doesn't ask that we have
something called blind faith, but he actually roots our faith
in something solid, that is, in himself. And we can see him
in the way that he's worked in the world, we can see him as
he has worked in history, we can see him as he illustrates
himself, demonstrates himself in his word. So we have ample
reason to believe. And of course, Paul in Romans
10 makes it very clear The reason you believe is because you have
a knowledge of him, and without that knowledge, then you couldn't
possibly believe. Listen to this from John chapter
20. Now, this is fascinating. If you were to think about why
did John write some things and not other things, he tells you. He tells you that Jesus did a
lot of stuff, and they're not all in this book. In fact, actually,
if you look at what's in the book of John and you look at
the other Gospels, you'll see that it seems like John gives
us some stories that the other Gospels leave out. Actually,
that's incredibly helpful for us. None of the four Gospels—Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John—none of them is completely identical
to each other in the stories or the way that they arrange
the information and so forth, and this is so hugely to our
benefit. But the reasons the others arrange
them the way they do, I think we can figure out by looking
at the books themselves. But in John, we don't have to
be worried or concerned about how or why he arranged these
stories and not others. He tells us outright. He writes
them so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
If you want to have a saving faith, if you want to have a
faith that saves you, And he says it's by believing in Jesus
Christ, and in order for you to believe in Christ, he has
told you about Christ. He has written to you about who
Christ is and what he did, so in doing, you might believe. So you see, John isn't asking
you to believe in something you don't know, but instead he's
telling you so that you will know, so that you will believe. So our faith is attached to what
we know. Does that mean we know exhaustively?
No, of course. In fact, I'm not sure I know
much of anything exhaustively. But God has given us sufficient
knowledge of himself as he's revealed himself in the world
that he created, the handiwork of his hands. but also in his
scriptures, so that we have sufficient knowledge so that we should believe. Not only knowledge, but also
assent. You might go to places like John chapter 5, verses 46
and 47. If you believed Moses, You would believe me, for he
wrote of me. But if you do not believe his
writings, how will you believe my words?" So ascent really is
tied most closely back to this idea of belief. You believe something
to be true. You know it, that is, you have
the content of what has been taught to you, and you believe
that it's true. If you believe Moses, believe
me, for he wrote of me. And here at John 14 11, believe
me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, or else
believe on account of the works themselves. So you have heard
these things, you have the knowledge, now you've been called on to
believe as well. Notice in both cases, whether
it's John 5 or John 14, there is a content that you ought to
believe. The content is the thing you
have to know, The belief is the assent that you put into it.
And then finally, we have trust. That is, when we assent, we trust
believing in something, believing upon something, or believing
into something. In this case, it's the work and
the person, the work of Christ. John 3 16, we all know this one
so well, don't we? For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish
but have eternal life. John 14 1, let not your hearts
be troubled. Believe in God, believe also
in me. When we believe something, this
is not a mere assent. But in fact, we are relying upon
something. It's not just the content that's
being talked about here, but it is an utter reliance upon
a trusting in, upon, or into someone. Acts 16, 31, they said,
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and
your household. If you believe, you'll be saved. 1 Timothy 1, 16, I receive mercy
for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ
might be displayed. His perfect patience as an example
to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. Believing in Christ. I don't
just know it, I don't just take it to be true, but I'm resting
upon His person. That is trust in Him. 1 John 5, 13, I write these things
to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, you may know
that you have eternal life. Notice here in 1 John 5, this
idea is that eternal life is attached to the name of the Son
of God, that we rely and trust in Him. That's where our object
of faith is. We are putting our faith, we
are resting in the work of Christ. Now, how is it described in Hebrews
11? That's a question that comes up quite a bit. Again, I did
a whole episode on this, the first episode on the series.
You can, if you're listening to me on radio ABC 993 FM, you
could listen to me instead on vchour.buzzsprout.com. If you miss one of my episodes,
go there and you can hear me, or you could just Google VC Hour
and you'll see all of my episodes there. We're on everywhere that
you get podcasts, you can find our episodes, including the ones
on Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews 11 is interesting because
it says that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence
of things not seen. But those two words, substance
and evidence, are a bit tricky to translate. Pretty much everyone
will agree that that's the case, and so you might find that they
may be better described in terms of certainty and demonstration. So it might read something like
this, a certainty of things hoped for, demonstration of things
not apparent, not obvious. And you see that flavors it a
little bit differently than what some modern English translations
would have us to believe. In fact, New Testament scholar
S. M. Baugh makes a good case that
these work in parallel simply to mean proof that faith, in
a way, is the proof of what we had hoped for and the things
that we have not seen. They are themselves the proof.
You have to remember, of course, that the author of Hebrews is
writing to a people who want sensible signs, signs that they
can see and taste and touch. They, in the past, had had regular
visible sacrifices. They could see them, they could
taste them, they could touch them, they could smell them, and so
forth, and those sacrifices for the believer had ceased. Why?
Because Christ had come, and Christ is the superior sacrifice. We do have still the Lord's Supper,
it's certainly in effect and is itself a sensible sign, just
as baptism is a sensible sign, but both of those things remember
in a sense something that happened in the past. The emphasis instead
is on a true certainty of faith, and that is what the author of
Hebrews is trying to say. As much as in the past you had
sensible signs, you had sacrifices that were regular and prolific,
there were so many of them, Even then, those were the occasion
for faith. You should have been doing them,
I should say, by faith. And what is the certainty of
faith? Well, the certainty of faith
is the object of the faith, which is Christ. That is, your faith
can be as strong as you want it to be, but if the object of
your faith is worthless, then your faith is worthless. So what
is the object of your faith? Well, the object of your faith
ought to be Christ and Christ alone. You see, he's the one
who is worthy of your faith, and so the true certainty of
our faith is found in the person and in the work of Jesus Christ. Interestingly, the faith has
a future component, a past component, and a present component as we
see it in Hebrews chapter 11. Old Testament saints were looking
forward to a Christ who was to come. They were saved the same
way that we are saved. Instead of looking to the past
or the present, they were looking to the future of a Christ who
would come. They had a promise of a mercy that they were to
receive. We see this suggested in passages like Hebrews 11,
13. These all died in faith. not having received a thing's
promise, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and
having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on
the earth." See, there's a future component. If you imagine that
the people in the book of Hebrews that had been described at this
point did not get the full realization of what they had been promised.
So to you, you don't have the full realization of what's been
promised to you. Now, if the promises are not
true, then there really isn't any faith. And yet the promises
are true. So while they had not yet fully
received what had been promised, they would receive it. Christ
Jesus. And so they were relying upon
the goodness of God for a future blessing. Not only is there a
future component to faith, but believe it or not, the Scriptures
teach there's a past component to faith as well. For instance,
the cause of creation is an object of faith. Hebrews 11 3 says,
by faith we understand that the universe was created by the Word
of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that
are visible. You and I are know by faith that
the universe came into existence by the powerful work of God himself. So one element of our faith is
a looking backwards on things that happened in the past. Specifically,
the example here is God as the cause of creation. It's very
reasonable to believe that God is the cause of creation, and
we receive that by faith that it happened by the very Word
of God. Not only that, but of course there is a present component
to faith. Every person that's mentioned
in Hebrews 11 did certain things in their present, as in the moment
they acted by faith in their present, and as in our present,
we act by faith today. So that faith isn't just in something
that happened in the past. but not also just something that
happens in the future, but it affects us even now. Of course,
the scriptures also teach that it is an instrument of salvation.
Hebrews 10 39 says this, we are not of those who shrink back
and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their
souls. Our salvation is worked out for
us through faith. Acts 16, 31, believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and you will be saved. As we're saved by grace,
the scriptures teach, and through faith. Ephesians 1, 13, and 14
say, In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the
gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed
with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.
John 1.12, which we've heard about just recently, says, the children of God, who were
born, not of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of the will of God. So even as you receive
him by faith, it is yet God who is acting. Where does faith come
from? Well, we're told in the Scriptures that faith is a work
of God by His Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12 says, no one
can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. It's a very
simple statement to say, but if you say it by faith, that's
because the Holy Spirit has caused you to say it. Even your faith
is something you receive from him. It is by the Word of God.
As we mentioned earlier, Romans 10 tells us that we have faith
as a result of the preaching of the Word of God. The culmination
of that is verse 17. Faith comes from hearing, and
hearing through the Word of Christ. 1 Corinthians 121 says this,
For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through
wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to
save those who believe. That is, especially the preaching
of the Word of God is a thing that helps us to have faith. The Holy Spirit uses the Word
of God, especially the preaching of God, to bring to life faith
in us. Now, there's a number of things
that are often confused with faith. There's a good number
of people who think that faith is just bare knowledge. That
is, they have a knowledge, they know the Bible, and they assume
that the knowledge of the Bible, or the knowledge of who God is,
is itself faith. But just to know something is
not to believe it, nor is it to trust in it. So simply knowing
is not enough. There are many men and women
who are scholars of the Bible in the sense that they know a
lot of things about the Bible, but nevertheless are not believers.
They do not believe the things that they know. And so bare knowledge
is simply not enough. You must have, instead, a true
and lively faith. Not only that, but you can actually
believe the knowledge is true without trusting in it, and that
also is not faith. I know that may come as a surprise
to you, but just knowledge and assent is not faith. How can we know that? Well, imagine
what demons believe. I think you probably know the
passage, don't you? James chapter 2 verse 19 says, You do well, even the demons
believe and they shudder. This might well be a reference
back to one of the early creeds in the Old Testament who says
the Lord our God is one. So you believe that God is one.
Okay, fine. Don't you know that demons believe
that and shudder? That is, they have a knowledge. They know who
God is. They know what God is. Do they believe it's true? They
absolutely believe it's true. Do they trust in it? No, not
at all. And for that reason, we know for sure that the demons
are not saved. They do not have faith. Take
this, one of the earliest and best proclamations of who Christ
is comes from Mark chapter 1. verses 23 and 24. We don't find
it earlier than this in the Gospel of Mark. I don't think we have
anything as good as what this unclean spirit says. Immediately
there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,
and he cried out, Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are, the Holy One of God." That is such lofty
praise of this Jesus of Nazareth. I don't remember if we talked
about this before, but to be of Nazareth is to be nobody from
nowhere, and yet he says he's the Holy One of God. So this
unclean spirit had a knowledge of the person of Christ that
it seems like even Jesus' own disciples at that point didn't
know. And yet this unclean spirit is an unclean spirit. He has
knowledge, he believes it's true, but he is not trusting in the
person or the work of Christ. Acts 26-27, this one's about
a man. King Agrippa, do you believe
the prophets? I know that you believe. Well,
that sounds pretty good, doesn't it? I mean, this King Agrippa
normally would think, hey, you believe the prophets? I know
that you believe. You'd think, hey, that's a good thing. I mean,
how could it be bad that he believes? Well, he has a knowledge, and
he has some assent that what is being said is true, but is
that for his salvation? That is, is he saved by it? If you were to read that passage,
you'll find that the quote doesn't end there, does it? No. In fact,
unfortunately, he goes on to say something else. King Agrippa,
do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe, he says.
And Agrippa said to Paul, in a short time, would you persuade
me to be a Christian? That is, he's very closely persuaded,
but he's certainly not fully persuaded. He has some knowledge,
he has some assent, but he doesn't have trust. He's not a Christian. He says so himself. So belief
without trust is simply not enough. Belief without trust is not faith. And finally, the thing I think
probably most often associated with faith incorrectly is faithfulness,
that is, works. You should know that while faith
does save you, it is contrasted with works. Works, in fact, do
not save you. Galatians 3.11, it is evident
that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous
shall live by faith. This idea that the righteous
shall live by faith is not a New Testament concept, it is a whole
Bible concept. And here Paul in Galatians is
quoting from the Old Testament. Romans 3.28, "...therefore we
conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of
the law." That is, it is not faithfulness which will save
you, it is faith, by grace through faith. Romans 4.5, "...and to
the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies
the ungodly, his faith counted as righteousness. Some might
take the saying that we are saved by faith to mean that's one of
the components but is not a sufficient component. Here Paul in Romans
4.8 says no, that's the whole thing, that's the whole kit and
caboodle. To the one who does not work but believes in him
who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
So we find that works are fruits and evidence of a true and lively
faith, that is they are a product of of the work of God in us,
but faith is not itself faithfulness. In fact, if you are putting your
reliance upon your faithfulness, well, you're relying on yourself,
aren't you? And is that what God would have us to do? To trust
in ourselves, believe in ourselves? No, he calls us to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ in order we can be saved. Well, this is
conversion for us. It is repentance and faith. Praise be to God. He does the
work of regeneration in us, and it produces repentance, and it
produces also faith in us, open hands that receive what God has
given, knowledge, assent, and trust. Thanks be to God. We can
trust him. As long as Christ is the object
of your faith, you can be sure you will not fail because the
object of your faith will not fail. Thanks be to God. You're listening to the Vice
Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus
of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor
and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's
Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are
an extension of the ministry of the university. you
What is Conversion?
Series Soteriology
Conversion is a term which has fallen onto hard times in modern usage with some even viewing it negatively. Hear the VC teach on how the Bible speaks of it, and why its so helpful even to this day.
| Sermon ID | 5212364447652 |
| Duration | 39:01 |
| Date | |
| Category | Podcast |
| Language | English |
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