The words of Jesus Christ must become that which drives the way we think of salvation as a whole: “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). It is so easy to take the meaning of what Jesus said and turn the meaning into something else. We may try to make that passage fit with other passages that we think we know but we may have swallowed a wrong meaning to that as well. We must not just believe some words of Jesus given in Matthew 18:3, we must believe what Jesus meant by those words. We must not only believe what Jesus meant by those words, but what Jesus meant by those words must happen to us if we are going to enter the kingdom of heaven. We cannot just know that He said the words, but what He meant must have happened to us or we are still in our sins.
The same thing is true of justification by faith alone. There has been a lot of squabbling within the professing Church over the meaning of justification in the history of the Church. However, a man or a woman can know the true doctrine down to the smallest teaching and still be a stranger to justification itself. It is possible, and appears to happen on a regular basis, for a person to be very close to being perfectly orthodox in the intellectual grasp of justification by faith alone and yet not be justified. A person must not just believe the doctrine of justification by faith alone as true, but a person must actually be justified by grace alone through faith alone. This is a pernicious thing that the devil has done. He deceives people into thinking that they are justified because they have an intellectual belief in justification. Paul never said that a person is justified if the person believes in justification by faith part from works, but that a person is actually justified by faith apart from works. Jesus never said that a person is converted if that person believes that a person must be converted or just believe that He can convert a person, but that a person must actually be converted in order to enter the kingdom of God.
Let us think of some examples in this regard. We would not let a doctor perform surgery on us if a man or woman believed that s/he could perform surgery and yet had never actually done it before. We would think a person would have mental issues if that person believed that his or her appendix had actually been removed just because the person believed that the doctor could do that type of surgery. There is a large difference between believing that something is needed rather than that something actually happening. There is a massive difference between believing that someone can do something and that something actually happening. There is also a huge difference between believing that something is true and that something actually occurring in or to me. We must get beyond thinking that conversion is something that has happened to us if we just believe that it is true. Conversion is something that must actually happen to us or we are lost. We must actually be converted from one thing to another.
There are many things that we convert from one use to another in the world. We even buy conversion kits to change things from what they are so that they will function in another way and be useful in that other way. I ran a search on eBay and found 77,627 items under “conversion.” There were conversion vans. There were kits to convert vehicles from gasoline to diesel and also kits to change motorcycles to tricycles. There are conversion kits for cars, planes, trucks, axles, reels, motorcycles, guns, motors, and on and on. We have some understanding of what conversion means, but we want to settle for something far less in the realm of Christianity. Let us not forget the words of Jesus: “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). People must not only be converted in a way we or they have come up with, but they must be converted from what they are by nature to become like a child in the meaning of Jesus. There must be a real change in the soul from one thing to another or that person is not truly converted.
Instead of a real change in our day we say that a person must believe. It is true that the Bible declares to us that we must believe. But what does it mean by that? Does the Bible mean that we believe in something and then God gives us salvation because we have believed? Does it mean that we believe and that a true conversion of the soul does not happen? Could it mean that a soul must be converted to truly believe? What can an intellectual belief do to convert a person or to change the person’s heart? What can repeating a prayer do to change the heart? It is not by believing something as true that the soul is changed, but it is only if God changes the heart is there a change and the soul can be a believing soul. The work of conversion is the work of God. The whole soul is what must be converted from a state of unbelief to a state of belief. The act of belief is not just an intellectual one, but it is a belief that comes from a soul that has been changed. We must be converted to truly believe from the whole soul. A true faith or a true belief is when faith comes from a truly converted soul.
A soul is born a child of wrath (Eph 2:3) and must be converted to be a child of the love of God (I John 3:1). A soul is born dead in sins and trespasses (Eph 2:1-3) and must be converted in order to be made alive. A soul is born into a fleshly state (John 3:3-8) and must be converted to become a spiritual being. A soul is born as a child of the devil (John 8:44) and must be converted to become a child of the living God (Eph 1:5). A soul is born entirely full of pride and self-centeredness (II Tim 3:2) and must be converted to become humble and God-centered. A soul is born in bondage to sin (Rom 6:16-20) and must be converted to be a slave of Christ. A soul is born in the kingdom and dominion of darkness (Colossians 1:13) and must be converted to be in the kingdom of Christ where He reigns in the hearts of His people. A soul is born hating God and at enmity with Him (Gen 3:15) and must be converted to live in love for Him. A soul lives in hatred of others (Titus 3:3) until it is changed and loves its neighbor as itself. These are not things that we just believe facts about; but the soul must be converted for these things to be true in that soul. Conversion is something real that God works in the soul and changes it to be His dwelling place. Conversion changes the very loves and desires of the soul. We must become new creatures in Christ Jesus or we will perish forever (II Cor 5:17). We must be cleansed and changed to be temples of the living God.
There appears to be a lot of confusion about salvation and conversion in the modern day. It appears to be the massive majority that says that a person must simply believe in order to be saved. In one sense it is true that a person must believe in order to be saved. But there is a lot more that goes on as well. We must not bury the doctrine of true conversion and leave salvation in the realm of intellectual belief alone. It is a converted soul that truly believes rather than a soul that believes a fact and makes changes. We are told that Jesus died for us and if we will but believe that we will be saved. But what happened to conversion as Jesus and Paul taught? Did Jesus teach conversion at one point and then teach that a person must believe at another point as if there were and are two different ways? When we focus on belief apart from biblical conversion we are no longer talking about a biblical form of belief. We end up thinking that if we can talk a person into saying a prayer or intellectually convince someone then that person will be saved. Jesus said that we must be converted or we will not enter the kingdom and that we must be born from above. He also said that we must believe. We must not dismiss any of these teachings.
It is dangerous to tell souls that they must pray a prayer or confess with their mouths apart from teaching them the utter necessity of conversion. The unregenerate soul can do any external thing that a believer can. If we do not get into the nature of the soul and the necessity for it to be converted we will be teaching people a false gospel. A soul that is saved by grace through faith is the soul that has been converted by grace alone. A person with Pelagian doctrine (whether actual or practical Pelagianism) is confident that the power of salvation is in his or her own hands. A person that is Arminian (whether actual or practical) will believe that salvation is up to his or her choice in the matter. Certain kinds of Reformed people believe that God will save no matter what and they don’t need to worry about it while other Reformed people believe that if they have come to believe certain doctrines then they are saved. But all of these people in some way would deny (whether actual or practical) the biblical doctrine of conversion. God must change the soul at His mere pleasure and by His grace. He does so not based on whether a person believes it or not, but by His grace. A person will come to a belief from the depths of their changed heart when they are converted, but just because a person intellectually believes is not an infallible sign of conversion.
The Pelagian person may think that by being morally good and doing certain religious things that s/he will be saved. The Arminian person will think that s/he can say a prayer or do some act of the will and so be saved. One Reformed person sits around in sin waiting on God to save him or her from the sin while another Reformed person believes that if one believes in justification by faith alone one will be saved. The differing camps may even argue about justification and free-will along with other teachings. Meanwhile they are all thinking of something other than conversion. We speak against the traditions of others, but some of the deadliest of traditions are those that sneak in and take hold in the realm of salvation. Those traditions are among us today and we must get back to Scripture. Unregenerate souls that are given over to love of self (regardless of their theology) will do anything to be saved from hell while keeping their pride and self-love. Modern theology and evangelism are designed to do exactly that. The Bible, however, says that a person must repent of self (Luke 9:23-26) and that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Pride is opposite to faith (Hab 2:4) and so to truly have faith or to truly believe the proud soul must be converted by God to be humble. While some argue that this sounds like works, it is exactly the opposite. It delivers from works. God must humble the soul and God must break the soul from its pride or the soul will not be truly converted. Conversion by the hand of God is needed for the soul to be saved from self.
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