Revival's Golden Key (9 page)

Gordon Miller wrote an article in which he addresses the converts who stay in the Church—the “sinning converts” issue. He said,

A few months ago, a senior minister of a large growing church rang me about a new situation in their church... An increasing number of converts bring their old ways into their Christian lives and do things that shock their leaders. Here, after further reflection, is an extended version of my response.

The first thing to note is that this church and its ministers haven’t diluted the gospel or lowered their standards. The church is one of the best in the country with gifted, godly leaders. They fearlessly preach a no-compromise gospel and are even better at nurture than they were years ago. Yet an increasing number of their numerous converts fail to show evidence of moral change in their lives.

Again, even a “no-compromise gospel” will not awaken sinners. That’s not its function. Author and Bible teacher Paris
Reidhead
, in remarking about the ministry of Charles Finney, wrote:

Finney was in Rochester, New York, where a blue-ribbon committee of outstanding citizens was appointed by Henry Ward Beecher to study the converts who, a decade earlier, had come to Christ under Finney’s preaching. It was found that eighty-five percent of those who had made professions of faith under Finney’s preaching were still faithfully living for Christ.

In contrast, it is being reported that only one-half of one percent of those who make decisions for Christ in our evangelistic meetings today will be living as Christians two years from now. This should give you some idea of how far we’ve strayed from the Word of God
(Finding the Reality of God).
⁴

Perhaps you are thinking, “But I didn’t have the Law preached to me when I came to Christ.” Let me ask you a few questions. When you came to the Savior, did you have
a knowledge
of sin? You must have, or you would not have repented. He who repents turns from sin, and “sin” is transgression of the Law (1 John 3:4).

What then was your sin? Was it lust, adultery, or fornication? If so, then your sin was that you transgressed the 7th Commandment. Did you steal (8th), hate (6th), lie (9th), or blaspheme (3rd)? Were you covetous (10th)? Were you selfish or ungrateful to God? Did you realize that God should be first in your life (1st, 4th)? Or maybe you suddenly discerned that God was nothing like you thought He was (2nd). Did you feel bad about your attitude toward your parents (5th)? How did you know that you had sinned against God? Wasn’t it because you knew of the Ten Commandments? Someone, somewhere, somehow had said to you: “You shall not kill, you shall not steal,” etc., and your con-science bore witness with the Law. Like Paul, you too can say, “I would not have known sin except through the Law” (Romans 7:7).

Impersonal Statistics

On a Saturday sometime in 1998 near Davis, California, a female student from Sacramento and a skydiving instructor (who had made about two thousand jumps) leaped from a plane at ten thousand feet. Both were in their twenties. Tragically their parachute failed to open and their reserve became tangled in the main chute. Witnesses said that they heard the young woman screaming for help,
and felt the impact about two football fields away.
It was the woman’s first jump. Needless to say, it was her and her instructor’s last.

I have related this true story to bring a
personal
note to the horror of seeing someone entrust her life to a parachute, and having it fail. One would never forget the sound of a terrified young lady screaming, nor the experience of feeling the earth shake as her fragile body hit the ground. The cold statistic that one in a hundred thousand jumps ends in death somehow loses its reality, but (depending on your tenderness of heart) the details of one young woman’s death is heartrending. In the same way, we can speak about how many hundreds of thousands fall away from the faith, and lose sight of the reality that we are speaking about the salvation of
individual
human beings.

I can’t put into words the heartbreak of seeing so many spurious converts who have left the
Church,
and the multitudes of false converts who stay w
ithin
the Church. A. W.
Tozer
wrote, “It is my opinion that tens of thousands of people, if not millions, have been brought into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ, and they have not been saved.”

We are not talking about mere statistics, but the salvation of human beings from death and eternal damnation in hell. We must put a quick end to the fast and easy method, even though it eliminates the reproach of the gospel and
seems
to be filling our churches.

Please, don’t be tempted to ignore the devastating results of modern evangelism, and to look at those
comparatively
few who are continuing in their faith as justification for the method. Remember, for every 1,000 genuine converts, there
are
as many as 9,000 who lay mangled on the soil of hard hearts, as a direct result of the quick and easy methods of modern evangelism.

CHAPTER 8

MAKING GRACE AMAZING

A
n editorial, after reporting that 280,000 converts couldn’t be accounted for, concluded by saying, “Something is wrong.” It has been wrong for nearly one hundred years of evangelism, since the Church forsook the key to the sinner’s heart. As we have seen, when it set aside the Law of God in its function to convert the soul (Psalm 19:7), the Church removed the sinner’s means of seeing his need of God’s forgiveness.

Romans 5:20 tells us why God’s Law entered the scene: “Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” When sin abounds, grace abounds “much more”; and according to Scripture, the thing that makes sin abound is the Law.

We can see the work of God’s Law illustrated in civil law. Watch what often happens on a freeway when there is no visible sign of the law. See how motorists transgress the speed limit. It would seem that each speeder says to
himself
that the law has forgotten to patrol his part of the freeway. He is transgressing the law by only 15 mph, and besides, he isn’t the only one doing it.

Notice what happens when the law enters the fast lane, with red lights flashing. The speeder’s heart misses a beat. He is no longer secure in the fact that other motorists are also speeding. He knows that he is
personally
as guilty as the next guy, and
he
could be the one the law pulls over. Suddenly, his “mere” 15 mph transgression doesn’t seem such a small thing after all; it seems to abound.

Look at the freeway of sin. The whole world naturally goes with the flow. Who hasn’t had an “affair” (or desired to) at some time or another? Who in today’s society doesn’t tell the occasional “white” lie? Who doesn’t take something that belongs to someone else, even if it’s just “white-collar” crime? They know they are doing wrong, but their security is in the fact that so many others are just as guilty, if not more so. It seems God has forgotten all about sin and the Ten Commandments—the wicked “has said in his heart, ‘God has forgotten; He hides His face; He will never see it’” (Psalm 10:11).

Now watch the Law enter with red lights flashing. The sinner’s heart is stopped. He places his hand on his mouth. He examines the speedometer of his conscience. Suddenly, it shows him the measure of his guilt in a new light—the light of the Law. His sense of security in the fact that there are multitudes doing the same thing becomes irrelevant, because every man will give an account of
himself
to God. Sin not only becomes personal, it seems to “abound.” His mere lust becomes
adultery of the heart
(Matthew 5:27
,28
), his white lie,
false witness;
his own way becomes
rebellion;
his hatred,
murder
(1 John 3:15); his “sticky” fingers make him a thief—“More-over the law entered that the offense might abound.” Without the Law entering, sin is neither personal, nor is it veritable: “For without the Law sin is dead [the sense of it is inactive and a lifeless thing]” (Romans 7:8, Amplified).

It was the Commandment that showed Paul sin in its true light, that it is “exceedingly sinful” (Romans 7:13). Paul spoke from his own experience because he sat at the feet of
Gamaliel
, the great teacher of the Law, and therefore saw sin in its vivid
colors
.

The Offense and the Foolishness of the Cross

According to the Scriptures, “[the real function of] the Law is to make men recognize and be conscious of sin [not mere perception, but an acquaintance with sin which works toward repentance...]” (Romans 3:20, Amplified).

To illustrate this point, imagine if I said to you, “I have some good news for you.
Someone has just paid a $25,000 speeding fine on your behalf!”
You would
proba-bly
answer me with some cynicism in your voice, “What are you talking about? I
don’t have
a $25,000 speeding fine!” Your reaction would be quite understandable. If you don’t know that you have broken the law in the first place, the good news of someone paying a fine for you won’t be good news; it will be foolishness to you. My insinuation of unlawful activity will even be offensive to you.

But if I were to put it this way it may make more sense: “Today, the law clocked you traveling at 55 mph in an area designated for a blind children’s convention. You totally ignored ten clear warning signs saying that the maximum speed was 15 mph. What you did was
extremely
dangerous. The fine is $25,000 or imprisonment. The law was about to take its course when someone you don’t even know stepped in and paid the fine for you.
You are very fortunate.”

Can you see that telling you the good news of the fine being paid, without telling you that you have broken the law first, will leave you thinking that the “good news” is nothing but nonsense? However, clearly making known your transgression gives
sense
to the good news. An unclouded explanation of the law,
so that you can plainly see your violation,
helps you understand and appreciate the good news.

In the same way, telling someone the good news that Jesus died on the cross for his sins makes no sense to him: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing” (1 Corinthians 1:18). There-fore, it is also quite understandable for him to say, “What are you talking about? I haven’t got any ‘sins.
’
I try to live a good life,” etc. Your insinuation that he is a sinner, when he doesn’t think he is, will be offensive to him.

But those who take the time to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and open up the spirituality of the Law, carefully explaining the meaning of the Ten Commandments, will see the sinner become
convicted by the Law as a transgressor
(James 2:9). Once he understands his transgression, the good news will be neither offensive nor foolishness, but the power of God to salvation.

What 'Sin' Are You Talking About?

When David sinned with Bathsheba, he broke
all
of the Ten Commandments. He coveted his
neighbor’s
wife, lived a lie, stole her, committed adultery, murdered her husband,
dishonored
his parents, and thus broke the remaining four commandments in reference to his relation-ship with God. So, the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to reprove him (2 Samuel 12:1-13).

There is great significance in the order in which the reproof came. Nathan gave David (the shepherd of Israel) a parable about something that he could under-stand—sheep. He began with the natural realm, rather than immediately exposing the king’s sin. He told a story about a rich man who, instead of taking a sheep from his own flock, killed a poor man’s pet lamb to feed a stranger.