Doctrine For Difficult Days

[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 1

We know that this made a tremendous impression on John because, when he wrote his first epistle, he made this statement again. He didn’t forget about this incident:

This is He who came by water and blood — Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. (1 John 5:6)

Without going into detail, we will skip verse 7 since it is not in our better manuscripts:

And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one. (1 John 5:8)

John was present at the crucifixion. Remember it was there at the cross that the Lord said to him, “Behold your mother!” In other words, “You take care of My mother,” and John says, “When I was there I watched, and I was very close.” It seems that at the trial of Jesus, John got in closer than anyone else. And he’s also closer at the crucifixion than anyone else. He said in effect, “While I was watching, blood was coming from His head, blood was coming from His hands and His feet. Finally, this soldier came up to make sure He was dead, and he ran a spear into His side.” John says, “Out of that side there came water and blood.” May I say that John is going to tell us that our Lord was the propitiatory sacrifice for our sins. It was Christ, Paul says, “whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith” (Romans 3:25). Jesus Christ on the cross shed His blood. I think that every drop of blood went out of His body and that His whole body was covered with His blood. That, my friend, is the mercy seat for you and me. Because He shed His blood, taking your place and my place, a holy God now is able to extend mercy to us. And that’s the meaning of propitiation. It means simply that Christ is our mercy seat.

Now I want to follow through on what John has said. Let’s look at that for just a moment:

And He Himself [Jesus Christ] is the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 2:2)

John is the one who says, “I was there and I saw that soldier put the spear in His side, and there came out blood and water.” And he adds, “These three bear witness on earth and they agree.” The Spirit and the water and the blood — and that blood speaks of the fact that He shed His blood that He might be the propitiation for your sins and my sins. This is tremendous! “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

Notice something here which is very important: John said this: “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin.” Well, John, I wish I could say I didn’t sin, but I do. Now what shall I do?

And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. (1 John 2:1)

And after all, John says, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins,” referring to our sins as Christians. I need a mercy seat every day, don’t you? I don’t want justice from God. I don’t want Him to treat me on the basis of legality because I would come off a loser. I want mercy from God. That’s the thing I want from Him — mercy. And that is the thing both you and I need. He is the propitiation for our sins.

John doesn’t stop there:

… and not for ours only but also for the whole world. (1 John 2:2)

There is a mercy seat today for every person on topside of this earth. And people are not lost because of the fact they are so bad and cannot do enough to gain God’s forgiveness. That’s not the reason. They are lost because they won’t go to the mercy seat. There’s mercy for every person. God is merciful today. And the reason He is merciful is not because He’s just bighearted and sort of sentimental. No, He is not that. God is holy and righteous. And He loves. God loved long before He did anything about it — but God is not only love, God is holy. And though He might love a sinner, He cannot take the sin into heaven. But then Christ died and was covered with blood. So He is the mercy seat. A holy God now can extend mercy because Christ paid the ultimate penalty for our sin.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 1

And that’s not all. He wants to mention it again to us: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.” He loved us, and what did He do? Did He fling open the door of heaven and say, “Everybody, come in”? No, He cannot do that because He is holy.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [to be the mercy seat] for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

And so today a holy God is prepared to extend mercy down here to lost men and lost women.

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. (Hebrews 8:12)

God says, “I will be merciful to their unrighteousness.” How can a holy God do that? Because there is Christ on the cross, covered with blood, His precious blood is poured out, and there is a mercy seat. The throne of God, where a holy God would judge you and judge me — that very throne at this moment extends mercy to us.

Oh, my friend, God is not a police officer waiting around the corner to give you a ticket or to find fault with your conduct. God is not demanding. He is saying to the world tonight, “I have My arms outstretched toward you, and I am prepared to extend mercy to you because Christ died. There is a mercy seat for you.”

Now let’s see that in action. Turn with me to the eighteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, starting with verse 9, our Lord spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector [a publican]. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself….”

It’s sort of like Hamlet’s soliloquy. In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet goes out and talks to no one but himself:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep —
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep —
To sleep, perchance to dream — ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come….

And so on. He’s just talking to himself. And when a soliloquy is done by a fine actor, with expression, it’s tremendous! But may I say that the Pharisee’s prayer was a soliloquy. Our Lord says, “He prayed thus with himself.” He didn’t pray it to God. He had a big time patting himself on the back and, in essence, said, “What a fine actor I am!” And an actor was what he was.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, “God [although he addresses God, he is not really talking to Him], I thank You that I am not like other men — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.” (Luke 18:11-12)
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 1

Now that’s what a lot of people brag about today. But, you see, that kind of talk didn’t get anywhere, didn’t get out of the rafters, and it did not get to God. My friend, you never get to God when you go to Him and tell Him how good you are and all that you’re doing for others. No one gets to our holy God that way.

Then will you notice, a publican, a despised tax collector, was there.

And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” (Luke 18:13)

The only thing is, he didn’t actually say, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Literally, he said, “O God, if there was only a mercy seat for me to go to!” You see, the Pharisee was the fundamentalist of that day, and he was quite separated. Well, listen to him, and know that everything he said was true. He said, “I do this,” and he did do it, friend. And he said, “I’m not like this publican,” and he wasn’t. But he sure was proud, and he was depending on his works. He was depending on himself, not recognizing he needed to have mercy from God. As you know, most people — your neighbors and my neighbors — don’t think they need mercy from God. Oh, my friend, we all need mercy from Him. He is the propitiation for our sins. For those of us who are Christians, He is the mercy seat for our sins. And He is the mercy seat for the sins of the whole world.

But this publican stands way off and he beats his breast. He won’t even look up. He says, “God, I’m a poor publican. I have no access to that mercy seat yonder in the temple. If there was only a mercy seat for me to go to!” Why did he say that? Because when he became a publican he denied his people. When he denied his people, he denied his God and his religion, and he no longer had any access to the mercy seat in the temple of that day. Therefore when he went to the temple to pray, he couldn’t claim mercy there. He was pleading, “O God, if there was only a mercy seat for a publican to go to.” And the Lord Jesus Christ said, “That fellow went down justified.” Why? Because the Lord Jesus right there and then was on His way to make a mercy seat for him.

And our Lord has made a mercy seat for you and me. Today we don’t need to ask God to be merciful. My friend, He is already merciful! What can you do to make Him merciful? Do you think you can shed a few little tears and win Him over? Do you think you could promise to do some good little thing to persuade Him? My friend, what do you want Him to do? He gave His Son to die for you. Don’t you know that when Christ died on the cross He paid the penalty for your sins? You can’t add anything to that. He is holding out His arms to you. Don’t ask God to be merciful — claim it, my friend! Claim it!

That’s the way I stay in fellowship with Him. Bad as I am, I have to go to Him constantly and say, “Lord, I need mercy. Oh, I need mercy.” He hasn’t run out of it yet, and He has enough for you. In fact, He has enough for the whole world. Jesus Christ is the mercy seat for the sins of the whole world. Oh, how we need to get to that mercy seat! Have you been there recently?
 
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Reconciliation

We have seen that propitiation is toward God. Now we’ll see that reconciliation is toward man. Katallasso is the Greek word, and that means “to change thoroughly” or “to change completely.” In the classical Greek it meant to change from enmity to friendship.

Reconciliation is strictly a New Testament doctrine. Back in the Old Testament, the word is always atonement, which does not even have the connotation that reconciliation does in the New Testament. Nowhere in Scripture does it say that God is reconciled. That is, God is not changed completely. You see, God is immutable — God never changes.

That’s the error of the wicked. A great many people would like to believe today that the Hebrews had a crude idea of God, that according to the Old Testament concept He was a God of judgment, but that now in the New Testament era He is not a God of judgment. May I say this: The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament, and He is the God of the present hour. God has never changed. He doesn’t have to change. He never makes mistakes. He doesn’t learn things. He didn’t learn something today that He did not know at the beginning — He is immutable. He never changes.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 1

So this idea that you can change God is a delusion, friend. Reconciliation does not apply to God, it applies to man, but God brings it to pass.

This is the thing I want you to understand:

For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (Romans 5:10)

Let me repeat, nowhere does it say that God is reconciled. It says that God has reconciled the world. That is, God through the death of Christ has changed the world in reference to Himself. No longer is God looking at the world as being a place that He must move against in judgment immediately. That’s the reason He doesn’t move in today. God’s attitude toward the world now is that He has reconciled the world to Himself. He has not changed, but He, by the death of His Son, has changed the world to Himself so that today He can reach down and save.

Look at this again. “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” In other words, Paul is saying that when we were enemies God gave His Son to die for us, and instead of judging us, Christ bore the penalty. Now God wants to deal with us on a different basis altogether. He says to us, “I am reconciled to you.” That’s what Christ’s vicarious death accomplished. That is the reason a holy God doesn’t strike out today and judge this world.

Somebody asks the question, “Why doesn’t God do something today? It seems like He would do something about the frightful conditions in the world.” Well, the reason is simply this: God is reconciled to the world, and He is not willing that any should perish. His arms are outstretched to the world, and He’s saying to it, “I’m not demanding anything, I’m not asking anything. I am reconciled to you. I would like for you to be reconciled to Me.” And reconciliation is always toward man.

Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 5, for this is the great passage on reconciliation:

Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:18-20)

Friend, this is what the gospel is and the gospel is nothing else but this. The gospel is not God asking you to do something. He is not asking you to jump through a hoop or to come up to His standard or to do this or to do that. God is now saying to a lost world, “When Christ died, I reconciled the world to Myself through the death of My Son. My message to you is the gospel that was preached to you. And that’s what you believed. And that’s the way you were saved.”

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved…. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

That, my friend, is the gospel.

Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder and first president of Dallas Theological Seminary, speaking to a class of seminary students, used to put it like this: “You never preach the gospel, young men, until you give people something to believe. The gospel is something to believe, not something to do.”

When man sinned back in the Garden of Eden, that wonderful fellowship which God had enjoyed with man was broken; broken in two ways. God, because He is a holy God, had to turn away from this disobedient child of His, this rebellious one. And man in his rebellion turned away and ran from God. They were separated. Then what happened? When Christ died on the cross, God turned around to the world. He brought the world around and put it in a different relationship. Now He is saying to man, “Be reconciled to Me. I’m satisfied with what Christ did for you on the cross. Are you satisfied? Will you accept it? Will you be reconciled to Me?”

Today those who have accepted it declare, as Paul the apostle says, “We are ambassadors.” Ambassadors? Yes. An ambassador is kept in a country as long as that nation is maintaining relationships. God has not called His ambassadors home. “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” The gospel is not your getting God to do something, or promising God you will do something, nor your doing something for God. The gospel is what God did when He gave Christ to die, and you are reconciled when you agree with God that what He did was right.

You see, the death of Christ satisfies God. Does it satisfy you? When God and man meet at that place, there is fellowship again. We meet about the person of Christ, and now God says, “This is My beloved Son.” And you come and say, “Yes, He’s my Savior.” You and God have met now, and there’s fellowship, there’s agreement, and through Christ you are brought back into a relationship with Almighty God.

May I say, that’s the only way you can come to God. You can build your own little altar, your own little system, and you can say, “Well, I like to do it this way,” and you can do it that way. But, friend, the Cross of Christ is the only place where God says that He will meet any of us. That’s the reason the Lord Jesus, when He was here, said:

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (John 14:6)

In other words, “I’m the way. God has reconciled the world to Himself through Me, and He wants you to be reconciled.”
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 1

The other night I couldn’t sleep, so I read a review of a new book on psychiatry — not that I thought I needed it, but I felt maybe I ought to read it. In it the writer confesses that he’s a layman and knows very little of theology, but he admits that the great difficulty with the human family is guilt. And this psychiatrist writes that because man has sinned, he has a guilt complex. The doctor admits he knows little about the Bible but then says he doesn’t believe in a cheap salvation, one without some sort of works — this thing of just coming to Jesus. He suggests that to appease our consciences we should perform some flagellation of the flesh or make some sacrifice.

Oh, what little he knows about what Christ did on the cross! And when you know that, you do not consider it a “cheap” salvation. It cost God everything. It’s an expensive salvation! It’s His precious blood He shed in order that there might be a mercy seat to come to. And when we come there, we find out He is reconciled. You don’t have to do something to win Him over. You don’t have to do something to make Him favorable toward you. Christ did that. And you and I, we just come as sinners — like that poor publican described by our Lord in Luke 18 — recognizing that we are sinners. And we do not even have to say what he said, “God, provide a mercy seat for me. I cannot go to the mercy seat in the temple. I am shut out.” Thank God, no one is shut out today. Not one of us is shut out.

I do not know who the worst man in the world is, but let me say this to you: he could come today to God and find mercy and find that God is reconciled to him — but he must come. Because otherwise there is only judgment. Judgment is coming, but today God is reconciled. And He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

God is longsuffering. He is patient. I do not think He will strike out of the heavens today. He might, but I don’t think He will. He is infinitely patient because He wants people everywhere to be reconciled to Him.

We have a wonderful Savior, do we not? We have a wonderful salvation, do we not? How wonderful to know today that God is not angry. He is not finding fault. He is not hard to please. He is saying, “Just be reconciled to Me. I gave My Son to die for you in order that you might be saved.”

You can come, there is mercy with the Lord.
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TO BE CONTINUED...

[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

Up to this point, the doctrines concerning salvation have had to do largely with the work of Christ upon the cross. We dealt with atonement, substitution, redemption, propitiation, and reconciliation. All of them had to do with the work of Christ on His side.

Now we are dealing with something else: first, regeneration, and following this we will cover the tremendous subjects of justification, faith, and repentance. These four doctrines are very important for us to know. They are closely related, yet there is a sharp distinction among them that must be made in order to understand our salvation. All four of them are involved, and not one of them will stand alone.

Will you notice this distinction here at the beginning: Regeneration is subjective; it has to do with the interior person. justification is objective; it is without cause — a judicial act of God. You and I are dead in trespasses and sins. Therefore we need a new nature. We need life, if you please, life from God, which is regeneration.

But we need something else — justification — because by nature and conduct we are guilty. That is, we are guilty sinners before God, and justification is that work or act of God whereby He deals with this fact of guilt. He removes the guilt from the sinner.

And then faith is the instrument. It is that which you and I exercise in order that we might stand justified before God. And repentance is included in saving faith. It’s important. In fact, it’s essential.

We will go into detail as we come to these doctrines. I’ve made this distinction, and yet mention them together, so that you might see that they are related, although each one of them is a separate doctrine.
 
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Regeneration

First let’s consider regeneration. This word does not occur many times, actually only twice in the New Testament, and the Greek word is palingenesia, which actually means “to recreate.” It means “the new birth,” and that is the word we associate with it. It is that which is essential because of the fact that you and I are dead in trespasses and sins.

Notice something for just a moment back in the first chapter of Genesis:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. (Genesis 1:26)
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

In other words, God said, “I intend to make man, make him after Our image, and this is what I will do for him: I’ll give him dominion.”

In the second chapter of the Book of Genesis you find the detailed account of the creation of man, and in verse 7 we are told:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)

This means that the creature God created had been taken out of the dirt, if you please. On the physical side we are dirt. “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). That speaks of our physical being.

But God breathed into this man. And He breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living being. That is, man now is able to commune and have fellowship with his Creator. But you see, man sinned. God had told him:

Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. (Genesis 2:16-17)

Man didn’t die physically that day. It was almost a millennium after that before Adam and Eve died. But they did die spiritually that day. That is, they were dead to God. The apostle Paul confirmed that. When he was writing to the Gentiles, to you and to me, he said:

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins. (Ephesians 2:1)

That’s the reason you and I must be born again. Because of Adam’s sin, we were dead to God, dead to the things of God. We had no relationship to Him at all.

The human family demonstrates this in a very emphatic manner. Look into the land of India today, and look into China, and look into any other nation of the world. In fact, look into our own nation today. How many people are actually in a right relationship with God and are having fellowship with Him? Very few. Well, what’s the explanation? Men and women are dead in trespasses and sins. The reason the new birth is so essential is because, first of all, we are dead.

We see something of the necessity and the nature of the new birth when we come to our Lord’s first recorded interview, which He had with a religious man. This was not an accident. You see, if this had been Zacchaeus, there would have been folks who would have stepped up and said, “Of course Zacchaeus needs to be born again. He’s a publican, a rotten sinner.” Or suppose that the man Jesus spoke to had been from over in Gadara, the country of the Gadarenes. People would have said, “Well, I can understand. That fellow was demon-possessed. Of course he needed to be born again.”
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

But Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a leader of the Pharisees, religious to his fingertips. He was following the Old Testament precisely. And yet our Lord said to that man:

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)

May I say that the expression He used is very interesting. It is genosthe anothen. It means “to be born from above.” If you want it literally, “to be born from the top.” You’ve been born down here physically, but you are dead to God. Now you need to be born in the spiritual sense. You need to have life, and that’s regeneration.

A man told me about taking his son, whom he thought was color-blind, to the doctor. He was put through all the tests at the clinic, and it was determined that the boy was indeed color-blind. The parents seemed to be distressed over it, for the father told me, “I said to the doctor, ‘Is there any cure for this at all? Is there any way in the world that we can change this?’” And the doctor made this strange statement, “The only thing in the world you could do for him is to have him born all over again.”

Well now, isn’t that what the Lord Jesus said to this man Nicodemus when he came to Him, wanting to talk about the Kingdom of God? Our Lord says, “You can’t see. Unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” In other words, “You do not have eyes to see the Kingdom of God. You can’t understand about the Kingdom of God because your brain is dead as far as the things of God are concerned.”

My friend, this fact is being more and more impressed on my mind. I’m not invited as often as I was formerly to speak to groups like the Rotary Club and the Lions’ Club. But I’ve detected the few times I have gone that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to present the gospel to unsaved men — actually, to intelligent men. When I was in the East I spoke in a little town to a group of men who represented the top businessmen of the community. It was amazing. They were sharp men. Certainly they were not dummies, and yet they were the densest men spiritually that I had ever addressed! I recognized that I was speaking to a bunch of dead men sitting there.

May I say, that’s the thing which disturbs and rather frightens me today. Oh, the spiritual deadness that there is! Men are dead in trespasses and sins. And our Lord said to this man Nicodemus, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

There are those who will interject here, “Our Lord also said, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God’” (John 3:5). Some folks interpret “born of water and the Spirit” to mean that you have to be baptized by water before you can be saved. It’s hard to believe, but there are two denominations which are built on the assumption that you must be baptized by water before you can be saved. Consider what God’s Word means when it says here:

Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (1 John 3:5-6)

Notice that He dropped the word water in verse 6, but He did mention it in verse 5. What did He mean? May I say to you that water speaks of the Word of God. Anywhere you turn in the Scriptures, you find that water, when used in a symbolic sense, refers to the Word of God.

For instance, Paul, writing to the Ephesians concerning the husband and wife relationship, said:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word. (Ephesians 5:25-26)

The Word of God is the water that he’s talking about.

The Lord Jesus, talking to His own yonder in the Upper Room, said:

You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. (John 15:3)

James, in his epistle, wrote:

Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. (James 1:18 )

You’ll also find that Peter wrote about this:

… having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever. (1 Peter 1:23)

And you’ll find in the Book of Acts that many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand. (Acts 4:4)

Our Lord is certainly emphasizing the importance of the Word of God for the new birth. I personally take the position — and I think I can substantiate it — that never is there a genuine conversion apart from the Word of God. We have to use the Word of God. There is no substitute.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

This is the reason that all of the good courses in evangelistic work tell you never to argue. You never win people by arguing. You may win the argument, but you will lose the person. It’s the Word of God only that can convict people. It’s the Word of God only that can cleanse. It’s the Word of God only that can be used in regeneration, because

faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)

Unless they hear the Word of God they cannot receive it, they cannot believe, and they cannot be born again. The Word must be used.

When I was a student at Dallas Seminary, some of us fellows used to go down to the mission on Ackard Street. A gray-haired lady known to everyone as Mother Moore lived right there and ran that mission on skid row, and many times she did it alone. My, what a witness that woman was!

One day when I was there I heard a testimony from a man who was a graduate of either Yale or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a top engineer. He had worked on Boulder Dam but was finally discharged from the job, not because he didn’t have ability, but because he stayed drunk all the time. And when he was thrown off that job it was difficult for him to get another, so he began just bumming around — and he stayed under the influence of liquor. When he got to Dallas, he did what a lot of these bums do, he headed for the mission, knowing that he would at least have one or two nights there.

Mother Moore always talked to the men when they first came in, and so she wanted to talk to this engineer — but not in the manner he anticipated. He had been through that ritual before elsewhere, so he knew what was coming when she said, “Now after you get cleaned up, you come down before dinner. I want to talk to you.” He went upstairs to the showers with a feeling of self-satisfaction. That poor old woman down there, when she starts trying to convert me, will I tie her up intellectually! I will make her look very foolish! This highly educated engineer could see that she was not what you’d call a member of the intelligentsia.

When he went downstairs, he saw it was the same old routine he had been through before, and he knew all the answers. Mother Moore began to present to him the plan of salvation. Now he had been able to tie up many of the smart boys, because they would argue with him. But she didn’t argue. He’d say, “Well now, I don’t believe this because of this.” But she’d say, “Well, but the Bible says…” and she would turn to another verse. Then he’d say, “Wait a minute.” And she’d say, “Yes, but the Bible says….” He’d say, “Yes, I know, but I want to put in this,” and he would insert a contradiction, and she would say, “Yes, but the Bible says….”

Later in his testimony he said, “You know, I never could get that old woman away from the Bible. If I had for one minute, I would have tied her up, but she wouldn’t let go of it.” Then he said, “That’s what finally got me. I found out I couldn’t answer it. All of a sudden, I discovered that the Bible was answering me! It was giving me the answers, and if I was honest at all, I would have to accept what it said.”
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

That man came to Christ by the use of the Word of God. And I do not believe that our clever books nor our clever tracts, and certainly not our clever arguments, win people to Christ. Nothing does but the Word of God. Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot be born again! Born of water, yes, the Word of God. But don’t bring H2O into this verse! The Bible is the water that our Lord is talking about; it’s the Word of God.

There are three outstanding conversions in Acts: the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, and the conversion of Cornelius. In the conversion of all three of these men the Word of God was used. Always the Word of God is used, or there can never be a conversion. And that is exactly what our Lord was talking about to Nicodemus.

Now let me present that which to me is conclusive, and I do not believe there is a rebuttal to this at all. I turn to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian believers. The Corinthians were babes in Christ, carnal believers, and they were arguing over who was their greatest instructor. Each was saying, “I am of Paul” or “I am of Apollos” or “I am of Cephas” or “I am of Christ.”

Notice this very carefully — if Paul thought baptism by water meant salvation, he sure slipped up here!

For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. (1 Corinthians 4:15)

Their contentions were causing divisions among them, you see. And Paul says, “Listen, you may have many instructors, but you have only one father — I am your father. The way I begot you was through the gospel. All of you believers there in Corinth are my children because of the Word of God I used. That was what brought you to a saving knowledge of Christ and made you children of God.” But wait a minute. Paul had already told them back in chapter 1, verse 14, “I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius” — then he was reminded of another — “the household of Stephanas” (verse 16). But their new birth came when he preached the gospel. Apparently the water of baptism was not essential to salvation, because Paul said he was thankful that he had baptized only a very few. “And if there were any others, I have even forgotten about it. But I do know this, I preached the gospel to all of you, and you were saved.” Baptism was not essential for salvation, you see.

Let me emphasize that regeneration, palingenesia, means “the new birth,” “born from above,” if you please. This is God’s work. Do you remember what was said in the Epistle of James?

Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. (James 1:18 )

May I say this to you today, and would you pay careful attention, because we hear a great many wild-eyed ideas about witnessing: The work of conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit! Look carefully again at what James says here: “Of His own will He brought us forth.” The Holy Spirit is sovereign in this matter. You don’t tell the Holy Spirit whom to convert; He will tell you.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

I get so many letters from folks who write, “I witnessed to So-and-so and he didn’t accept Christ. What’s wrong?” If this is your question, you ask God — He’s running it, not I. You ask Him. He is sovereign in this matter. “Of His own will He brought us forth.” And you and I need to remember that He is the One who is leading the parade. We are following.

Oh, how we need to follow the Holy Spirit in this matter! That’s the reason I believe we need more prayer for doing evangelistic work than for anything else we do. You need to pray, really pray about it, and ask the Lord to open up the door for you. Maybe you have a neighbor next door to whom you witnessed, but she slammed the door in your face! Well, did you pray about it before? Did the Holy Spirit lead you to do that?

“No, I wanted to witness.”

Well, I know, but you are to let the Holy Spirit lead you in this matter. “Of His own will He brought us forth.” And, my friend, that just happens to be very important. “Born of the Spirit” is His work. He is God, and you and I need to follow along in this matter and trust the Holy Spirit to do the converting.

I’d like to give you a personal illustration of this. When I was a young preacher in Nashville, there was a young man whom I was determined to lead to the Lord. I went after him, and I really antagonized him and drove him away. Months went by, and one night he knocked at my door and asked me, “Would you explain to me the plan of salvation?” After I had quit, given up, there were other people praying for this man, and there came the day when the Holy Spirit could take over and get rid of some of us who wanted to run ahead of God in the matter. What a thrill it was when that man knocked on my door and asked to hear the plan of salvation! I got a big piece of paper and put it down on the living room floor. He wanted to know about the dispensations, and since I like to explain those too, I had him down on the floor with me. I charted them out, explaining how God saves us today by grace.

May I say to you, let’s quit trying to take the place of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is God’s work, and when we are born again, it opens up a new world, a brand-new world.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God…. (2 Corinthians 5:17-18 )

A new world opens before us. And when it says that old things are passed away, it means relationships — not little habits, but relationships. We no longer are joined to Adam; we’re now joined to Christ. This world becomes a new world to us. When you are born again you become a child of God. We are joined to Christ, and we are in Christ, if you please. We have a new life, and that new life is a very wonderful thing. I want to give you two Scriptures in this connection.

Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)

We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. (1 John 5:18 )
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

When we are born again we are given a new nature, and that new nature can never sin. That may be the reason some Christians are having such a hard time — including this preacher. Do you know why? It is because when we were born again we were given a nature that cannot sin and won’t sin. And when you and I lapse back to living in the flesh and in sin, the very fact that we are having trouble is probably the proof we are children of God. The man in the world can get by with sin, but if you are God’s child, you can’t get by with it for long. Your new nature won’t let you, because that new nature is of God and knows your life is wrong.

That may be the reason you toss and turn in your bed and cannot sleep. And this is the reason you said, “Oh, why did I do that thing? I’ll never do that again.” That new nature won’t sin. It’s when you drop back into the flesh and live in it, committing sin, that you can expect to have problems and difficulties. And that’s the reason you’re not satisfied with your life.

My friend, you can see that regeneration is a tremendous word!
 
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Justification

We have come now to the most important word of all. Have you noticed that some of the words we have considered are used very seldom in Scripture? You find very little concerning reconciliation, propitiation, and regeneration. But justification is a word that you’ll find again and again and again. The fact of the matter is, it occurs about 229 times in the Bible, and in one epistle, the Epistle to the Romans, it occurs 92 times! To be justified before God simply means to be right before God.

We are hearing today what I first heard in college when the sociology teacher and the psychologist asked the question, “What is right?” How do you know what’s right? One person says this is right, somebody else says another thing is right. How do you know what is right? My friend, that which is right is what God says is right. And if anyone is to be righteous, he or she has to be right with God. Now you may disagree with God’s standard, and you may not like some of the things that He likes, but to be right with God is to agree with His standard and to meet it. You and I cannot be accepted until we have done this.

May I say that to be justified before God never means to be made righteous. God never makes a sinner righteous because the word justified means “to be declared righteous.” It’s a legal term. For instance, you are arrested and brought up before a judge, and the charge is read against you. The judge hears the evidence and the judge says, “Not guilty.” That doesn’t change you, but it does change your standing before the law. You may have been guilty before you were arrested. Now you have been declared “not guilty,” and you are turned loose. That is what being justified or declared righteous is.

And that’s also what it meant back in the Old Testament. I have been reading a most profound book, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross by Leon Morris, an Englishman. It is one of the finest books I’ve read, and he has two chapters on justification. I have been greatly blessed by reading what he has to say concerning this. He points out that justification carries this same thought even back in the Old Testament. Abraham had it. When God told him He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, this is what Abraham said: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). It’s an Old Testament concept, you see, this matter of being right and doing right.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

Notice Deuteronomy 25:1, which concerns a legal matter:

If there is a dispute between men, and they come to court, that the judges may judge them, and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked….

You see, it’s a legal term. When two men are at odds, one is right and one is wrong. They are to come before the judge, and the judge is to declare one of them righteous and the other one wrong.

Now, friend, God exercises that prerogative. He must judge you and me as guilty sinners; there is no other alternative for Him. He has done that. He says that you and I do not meet His standard; we have never kept His law; we are in rebellion against Him; we are sinners and are guilty before Him. And He says that the penalty is death: “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). God goes on to say this, “You are guilty, the penalty must be paid, and I cannot be lenient with you.”

Oh, if we could only see that! God, when He forgives you, my friend, is not being lenient with you. It’s not that He’s letting down the bars. It means this: Christ bore the penalty. So now God can justify a guilty sinner and declare the guilty sinner “not guilty,” because the penalty has been paid by Another. We are now right before God because God has declared that we are righteous in His sight. Jesus our Lord was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification. (Romans 4:25)

The picture is of a courtroom. The Judge (God the Father) looks down at mankind and He says to us, “You are guilty. The penalty is death — eternal separation from Me.” But, you see, the Judge (God in the person of His Son) leaves the bench, and He comes down to where the prisoner is. He says to the prisoner, “Move over.” He then looks back at the Judge on the bench and says, “I will pay the penalty.”

The Judge says, “That’s satisfactory to Me. You can take the penalty. You are worthy and You are able.” So God the Son takes the penalty. The Lord Jesus bears the crushing load of our sin in His own body on the tree — delivered for our offenses and raised for our justification. Now a holy God can look down on a sinner, and He can declare that sinner righteous, not because of anything within the sinner, not because of anything that he has done.

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. (Romans 3:28 )

God now can look down at a lost sinner, and He can say to that sinner, “You are no longer guilty. I make over to you the righteousness of Christ so that you can stand in My presence, and there can be no charge brought against you.”

Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. (Romans 8:33)

So today a sinner stands in God’s presence saved! Not because of some compromise that’s been worked out in the back room, or because God has somehow or another opened the back door and slipped us in. That’s not the way we get to heaven. We come in the front door. We come in like Christ comes in! We stand complete and accepted in Him.

Now you have the same right in heaven as Christ has or you don’t have any right there at all. You are in Him completely, 100 percent saved, or you are lost, out of Christ, 100 percent lost, and it doesn’t make any difference how many merits you are trying to earn. We are not saved by our character.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Salvation: Part 2

For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:14)

Jesus Christ, by the offering of Himself, has made us 100 percent acceptable to God, so nothing else is added to that.
 
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Faith

The only thing that God asks of you and me is faith. Faith is more than intellectual assent. It includes that, but it is also personal trust in God. Faith does, however, rest upon knowledge.

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)

The only condition of salvation is faith — it’s to believe God. It rests upon one foundation: the integrity of God. We believe Him. We take Him at His word; we believe in God.

He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)

It’s the same old illustration we have everywhere that “saving faith” is mentioned. It is always used with a preposition, either the preposition eis, “into,” or the preposition epi, which means “upon.” To be saved means to put your trust either “into” or “upon” Christ. You can stand by a chair from now until judgment day and say, “I believe this chair will hold me up,” but faith is not exercised until you sit in it, trust your whole weight to it — believe into it, if you please, or believe upon it — and when you do that, then the chair is holding you up.

At this moment you say you believe in Christ. But how do you believe in Christ?

You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe — and tremble! (James 2:19)

The demons believe and tremble, but they are not saved. Is this faith? And among some Bible-believing folks in our day it has become just sort of a little intellectual assent to something. Oh, friend, that’s not salvation. It’s not until you and I come and trust ourselves to Jesus Christ that we are 100 percent saved.
 
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Repentance

Faith alone saves. Somebody says, “What about repentance? Don’t we need to repent?” Well, the word for repent, metanoeo, means “to change your mind.” And all the repentance God asks for is in the word believe. You see, in the New Testament, salvation is made a matter of believing.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
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