The Only Door to Heaven - Part 2

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Today, you can continue preparing for Easter by examining who Christ really is. Learn about His qualifications as the Savior of humanity in part two of The Only Door to Heaven. Jesus said, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God, nor can he enter into it. He says, Marvel not that I said unto you, you must.

Not that you might, not that you ought to, not that you could, not that you should. You must be born again or you will never get to heaven. There is only one door and that door is the person of Jesus Christ and the way a person gets to heaven is by the experience which Jesus called the new birth.

Now, let's look at it for a moment. What in the world did Jesus mean when He said, except a man be born again? The new birth is an experience. It is a spiritual experience and a person may have many events in their life that lead up to it so that we could say that it may cover a period of time, but the experience itself is an instantaneous momentary experience when at that given moment a person recognizing their sinfulness and acknowledging that Jesus Christ died on the cross for their sin and paid their sin debt in full confesses and repents of their sin and acknowledges their need of Christ, their dependence upon Him for the forgiveness of their sin and receives Jesus Christ by faith as their personal Savior for the forgiveness of their sins and commits themselves to the person of Jesus Christ recognizing that Jesus Christ is none other than God Himself. That is what is called the new birth experience. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The truth is that the new birth experience is exactly what God says it is. It is a new beginning.

It is a new birth. Paul said if any man be in Christ he has become a new creation in Christ so that a person who is born again, not only is there a forgiveness of the sin, not only is there a wiping away of the guilt, but there is the coming of the Holy Spirit into that person's life to give them a new spirit. That is, something transpires whereby a person who is born again cannot ever be what they were because they have been born into a new life. Now they have a new spirit, a new life, and that life is the Lord Jesus Christ. That spirit is the Holy Spirit living and abiding and dwelling within them.

Now, it's interesting what Jesus said because with all of that in mind He said to Nicodemus, Marvel not that I say unto you that you must be born again. Then they get in this discussion about this experience is like the wind. You can't tell where it's coming from and where it's going. That is, you can't really see the new birth experience.

You can see the results of it. It is a new life, a whole new perspective. But then Jesus begins to tell us what is it that man must do.

That is, if this is a new birth experience whereby God does all of this for us, what is our responsibility? Now I'm going to take you through some verses of scripture and I want you to follow me, if you will, in your Bible. And I want you to notice that every single one of these verses have the same word in them. So I'm going to let you figure out what that is.

I don't think it'll take you very long. And we're going to move into three or four chapters here, five, six, seven, and eight, where Jesus is having real conflict with the Pharisees because, you see, He has one goal in mind now. And in the book, in the Gospel of John, you see this theme all the way through. All the, listen to this, all the miracles had one ultimate goal behind them. Not just to heal sickness and disease, one goal higher than healing behind all the healing. Behind all the miracles, Jesus had something in mind. It was something He wanted to happen to them. Look, if you will, in verse 14.

We'll come back to this in just a few moments. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, he says, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes may in Him have eternal life. And eternal life is life that never ends, which is the gift of those who've been born again. Verse 16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. He says in verse 18, He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Look, if you will, now, same chapter, verse 36.

Look to see what he says. He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides in Him. So he's putting believing and obeying here in the same category. Look, if you will, in chapter 5 and verse 24. Jesus says here, Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into condemnation or judgment, but is passed out of death into life. Look, if you will, in the 38th verse, same chapter.

And you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe him who sent me. And then chapter 6, all through these verses, verse 40 of chapter 6, Jesus says, For this is the will of God. What is the will of God? For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on that last day.

Chapter 7, verse 37. He says now on that, speaking of the feast day here, now on that great day of the feast, he says, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, from his innermost being, from his spirit, shall flow rivers of living water.

What does he mean by that? So he interprets that. This he spoke of the Spirit, of the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed in him were yet to receive, because Pentecost did not come yet. For the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. He says, Those who believe in him, what? He says, out of their innermost being, out of their spirit, shall flow rivers of living water. That is, the Spirit of God will flow through and out of the life of one who has been born again. Now, what Jesus is saying here, but as many as believed in him, the Bible says in John chapter 1, became the sons of God. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. For God so loved the world that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So the new birth experience is the result. That is, it happens in a person's life when they express faith in Christ.

Let me ask you a question. Believe what? What does it mean to believe in Jesus? Does that mean simply to give intellectual assent to the fact that you believe that he was born, born in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, grew up as a young man, became a great teacher and became the savior of the world and all the things that your grandmother and your grandfather and your mother and your dad taught you? Is that what the new birth is all about? Is that the way a person experiences the new birth, by simply believing that all these things happen?

Not really. Here's what Jesus wanted them to believe. He says, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.

I am the Father of one. My friend, if you do not believe that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, you've never been born again. If you do not believe that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh as he came here upon earth, if you do not believe in the deity of Christ, that Jesus Christ is God, you're lost. You say, you mean to tell me that I've got to believe that Jesus is God? Let me ask you a question. If he were not God, who was he? Now watch this.

I know what you're thinking. You're saying, well, Jesus was a great teacher. Jesus was a great man.

Jesus was a great philosopher. He was a great benefactor. He was a great healer. He loved the children. He had friends. My goodness, he was a wonderful man.

Oh no. Listen. Either you believe that he's God or you've got to believe that he is the biggest liar and the biggest fraud and the biggest fake and the biggest counterfeit who ever walked this earth because, you see, he claimed to be God. Now, either he is God or he's a fake. You can't say, well, I believe all that about Jesus, but I don't believe he's God. How can you believe he's a good man if he's running around claiming to be God? How can you believe that he's a good man if he used some kind of supernatural power whereby people were healed and things happened to them? If he's not God, he's a fake. And if he's not God, you have no business believing in him. But if he is God, does he not have the right to say, I am the door. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.

Do you understand what we do? There's a whole world of people out there who you're friends and people you work with. If you ask them, they'll tell you Jesus was a great God. Well, if you trust him as you say, you know, I'm coming to that part. Well, if you believe he's such a great fellow, why don't you trust him? Well, you know, I just don't believe that's the only way. Well, then Jesus is not a very good man. Jesus said there's only one way. He's a liar or he's God. That's what you need to understand. Jesus Christ is a big fake, a big liar, or he's God.

Either forget him or turn your life over to him. If you have refused to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is God, you are lost. You are not going to get into heaven.

There is only one way no matter what you say. God himself who created heaven and provided his son Christ to atone for your sins said there's one way and his name is Jesus Christ, the son of the living God who fulfilled every single Jewish prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah, all the shedding of the blood of all of those lambs. Christ is the fulfillment of that. Either Jesus Christ is God or he's a fraud.

Where does that put us? You say, well, I do believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. And I do believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sin. And I do believe that he paid my sin debt in full. I do believe that he's God's only begotten son.

And I do believe that if I ask him to forgive me of my sins, that he will do that. I do believe. But what does it mean to believe? A lot of folks who say, now we've decided what we've got to believe, but what do you mean believe? I've always believed.

It's very interesting. You take the Bible through the New Testament and you can go through every time the word believe is used. That is wherever Jesus or the apostles challenge somebody to believe. Every single time a person expresses faith in Christ, there is a change that takes place.

You see, now think about this. If you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the son of God and you really believe that he's God, believing is more than in the mind. It is a commitment of a person's life.

Now let me make something very clear. Jesus Christ comes into our life through the Holy Spirit. That's the new birth experience. In all of that, you and I may live godly and holy before the Lord. And to believe in Jesus Christ is not merely to give intellectual assent to him as a person, but to acknowledge in our spirit that he is God. And being God, we confess and repent of our sins to him. And confessing and repenting of our sins to him, we choose to follow him as our Savior and our Lord. There are a lot of folks who are worried about eternal security. I'm not worried about that. Because I know that if you've been saved with the grace of God, you're eternally secure. Now the problem is this. They look at people out here who say they've been saved and living like the devil.

A lot of those folks have never been saved. Let me ask you a question. Let's go back. We put all this together in a moment. How in the world can you be born again? New life. Christ living on the inside, the Holy Spirit living on the inside to gift you, that is to give you those spiritual gifts, teach you, encourage you, comfort you, whose responsibility it is also to convict us of our sin, to convict us of the righteousness, the adequacy of the life of Christ to atone for our sin, and to convict us of the judgment of God to come. I'll tell you how you can know whether you've ever been born again or not. Not how many churches you've joined, how many times you've been baptized, immersed, sprinkled or poured on.

How many times you go to church, how faithful you are, how much you give or how much you pray, how many times you read the Bible. The ultimate criteria of whether you've been born again or not is this. That the Spirit of God is indwelling you. And if you have been born again, you have God's Spirit in God's life, when you sin against God, you are going to be convicted, smitten in your heart and convicted of your sin. If you can sin against God and you're not convicted, you're not smitten with conviction, you're not upset about it, you're not grieved about it, and you can go on in your way, more than likely you are not indwelt with the Holy Spirit, you have not been born again, and you are going to hell no matter how many times you go to church, no matter how many good things you do, without the presence of the Spirit of God, which is God's guarantee of the new birth, you're not going to get there.

Now, I say that to say this. There are a lot of folks out here running around who are living in sin, disobeying God and claiming to be saved. Now, let me explain something. A person who is saved can get into sin, trapped by sin, get into an evil habit that may go on for weeks and months and may even longer than that. A person who does not know how to be freed and liberated. So understand how a person can get trapped by sin. But I want to tell you something, no matter how trapped and no matter how into sin a person gets, if they've ever been born again by the Spirit of God, the same Jesus Christ who came to indwell them the day they were saved, they're still living on the inside, the Holy Spirit is still there, and he's still doing his work of convicting of sin, of the righteousness of Christ and the imminent judgment and discipline of God that is coming upon their life.

What I want you to see is this. There's only one door into heaven and Jesus said, I'm it. And the way you get there is expressing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the faith in Jesus Christ isn't simply a mental assent to, it is, listen, it is a commitment. Faith in Jesus Christ is a commitment to one in whom you believe is God and whose life becomes your life and transforms you. Doesn't mean you'll not sin, but you will never be able to sin again, happily, undisturbed, without conviction.

That's part of what comes with the great gift of God's grace, the warning bells, the Holy Spirit convicting us of our sin. So I want to ask you a question. Do you really believe that Jesus is God? Would God lie?

No. Well, Jesus said, except a man be born again, he cannot see nor enter the kingdom of heaven. Do you believe that? Well, if he's God, he told the truth, sure. Have you ever been born again? Well, I believe in Jesus. What do you believe? The belief of the Bible is a belief that carries with it a commitment of one's life, not just some intellectual assent to the fact that He is.

And I want to challenge you right now wherever you are and whoever you may be. You know that your righteousness will never match God's requirement for holiness. You'll never get to heaven but by one way, and that's by acknowledging that His death at Calvary took your sin. And you desperately need Him, and there's no other way but through Christ.

Confessing your sin to Him, asking Him to forgive you, and telling Him that you're placing your faith in Him as your Savior, your Lord in your life, and that you choose from this day forward to follow Christ. I plead with you to do that. Listen, you don't have to get His attention. He's all ears when you're confessing your sin to Him. You may not fully understand it all.

You don't have to. Your understanding will grow as you commit your life to Him. I want to plead with you in Jesus' name because there is only one way. Jesus said, I am the door. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the life. And Jesus said, you want to go to heaven when you die and you're going to die? You want to go to heaven? You must be born again. Thank you for listening to part two of The Only Door to Heaven. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.