Becoming a Christian

The Bible describes sin as, Today on Truth for Life Weekend, Alistair Begg tells the story of a man who suffered from a dreadful disease and who cried out for cleansing, and he explains how his experience is similar to becoming a Christian.

Our message begins a new series titled Christian Basics. I invite you to turn with me to Luke's gospel and to chapter 5. Verse 12 of chapter 5, While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.

I am willing, he said, be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him. Amen. Well, this evening we come to the first of four studies in basic Christianity, which are going to be pretty basic studies.

We only have a very brief time for each. Tonight, in the first of these, we're looking at what the Bible has to say about becoming a Christian. And it may be that for some of us the thought of beginning with the story of a man with leprosy is a strange place to start.

But I hope it will become clear as to why. In the passage that we've just read, both in the end of 4 and then into 5, it's clear that Jesus has been moving from town to town in Judea. He's been preaching the good news of the kingdom.

The word about him has been spreading. And as he reaches one of these particular towns, he runs into a man who is covered with leprosy. So this man that Jesus meets here is, if you like, a dead man walking. He is a prisoner of his own skin.

And he knows what he needs. He needs to be cleansed and cured. Presumably, the news of Jesus had begun to spread preceding him, preceding his arrival here, the news of this itinerant preacher who had this story of freedom for the prisoners and of good news for the poor. It's therefore no wonder that, coming face to face with Jesus, Luke tells us that he fell with his face to the ground, and he begged Jesus to cleanse him. The phraseology makes it clear that he's absolutely convinced of Jesus' ability to clean him up, to cure him, and the only question is whether Jesus is willing.

And if you look at verse 13, you see there that Jesus does the unthinkable. He reaches out his hand, and he touches the man. That may seem not particularly consequential to us until we think for a moment and ask ourselves, I wonder how long it was since this man had been touched by anyone other than another leper.

No one touched a leper. The disease was dreaded. But in compassion, Jesus reaches out his hand, and he touches the man, and he declares his willingness, addressing his hopeless condition. And in a drama with just one word in Greek, katharesthetai, from which we get our English word, katharsis—there is a katharsis—takes place in the life of this man, and immediately he is healed.

Now, there's more that follows in the story, but we'll leave the story at that point, because the rest of it is not germane to our consideration tonight. We're asking the question, What is involved in becoming a Christian? And I found it helpful just to keep these three words in my mind as I thought of the man and as I thought of our question. First of all, the word condition, secondly, the word compassion, and thirdly, the word cure. First of all, considering what the Bible says concerning the condition of men and women. Actually, the cleansing of leper is a wonderful illustration of the spiritual cleansing that Jesus provides. And not only in the New Testament but also in the Old, we discover that leprosy is one of the clearest pictures, the clearest allegories that the Bible contains of the predicament of men and women as sinners. Like the leper, our lives are spoiled. We suffer not from this physical ailment, but we suffer by our natures from the leprosy of sin—the leprosy that has spoiled our souls.

Every one of us is born with an inherent bias to sin. And every day we are confronted by the ravaging nature of our condition. We see it in our resentment and our disappointments and our regret and our pride. All of these things plague men and women, spoil our lives, ruin our homes, rob us of any sense of lasting peace and satisfaction. Now, so far nobody, I think, would be prepared to argue with at least the predicament. Any sensible man or woman living their life and reading the newspapers recognizes that there is some reason why after all this time, with all the advances of technology, with all of the opportunities for the progress of humanity, that tonight we sit in a world that is ravished by epidemics that are directly related to man's inhumanity to man, we are at war with one another on every front, we are at war within our homes, we're at war within our own psyches.

More money is spent on seeking to put people's heads back together again, metaphorically, than is spent in some countries on their whole gross national product. Why is this? Well, the Bible says it is because of sin. And sin is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem. No matter your intellect, no matter your status, no matter whether you were highborn or lowborn, every one of you, like me, is just a miserable sinner.

Doesn't sound very nice, does it? But that is the Bible's description of our condition, alienated from God, justly deserving the judgment of God. In his holiness, God has decreed that sin must be punished and will be punished. And the Bible speaks of hell in such a way as to make it awfully clear that for us to die in this present condition will be to face the full force of God's wrath. And, of course, the gravity of our condition is such that just like the leper, we're actually unable to rectify our circumstances.

If there's going to be a rescue, it must come from the outside. The man threw himself at Jesus' feet and begged him, If you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus said, I am willing.

Be clean. From the condition, then, to the compassion. Jesus was filled with compassion, we're told. In fact, on one memorable occasion, as he looks out on the crowds that are milling around him, the Gospel writer records that Jesus was filled with compassion when he saw the crowds because they looked like sheep without a shepherd.

He was the one who declared, I haven't come to call righteous people to put together a religious club. I've come to call sinners to repentance. I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep.

They know me. I am the door by me. If any man enters in, he will be saved. He looks out on the crowd, and his heart is filled with compassion. And on account of that, Jesus comes to address our most basic needs. Alienated from God, we're in need of reconciliation. And stained and polluted by sin, our consciences testify to it, our minds speak to it even as I speak to you now. Stained by sin, we're in need also of forgiveness. That's why the story of the Gospel, the Christian message of the Gospel, is so tremendously compelling. God demonstrates, says Paul, his own love towards us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Peter takes up the theme in 1 Peter 3, and he says, For Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. In other words, if our condition is alienated from God, what compassion on the part of God to provide in his Son the reconciliation needed? We need a reconciler. We cannot reconcile ourselves. No more than the leper could pick his scabs away and see himself transformed. And when Paul addresses this in a passage of the Bible that I've given myself to trying to understand before I die, he says in a quite memorable statement, all this is from God, all this good news, all of this intervention, all of this grace is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation—that God was reconciling the world in himself to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.

How can that possibly be? And the answer comes in this phenomenal verse. God made him—that is, Jesus—who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Because Jesus was sinless, he could take our sins. And the gospel is the story of this great exchange—an exchange that takes place at the cross.

Jesus taking our place and bearing the wrath which our sins deserve, so that in exchange we might receive the righteousness which none of us deserves. You see, it's only when we realize that Jesus died in our place, taking our sin, that we can then make sense of his death as an example of self-sacrificial love. In fact, in reaching out to the leper, Jesus is demonstrating the way in which his kingdom comes. In touching the leper, it's almost as if Jesus is saying to him, I'm prepared to become like you, a man under judgment, in order that you might become like me in all of the freedom and forgiveness that I provide. Unless someone comes from outside to do what I cannot do for myself, then I am lost, I am enslaved, I am dead, and I am finished. And the good news is that at just the right moment, when we had no way of escape, Christ comes.

It almost makes you want to run out into the street and shout it, you know, no matter what someone would say. Finally, a word about the cure. In the case of the leper, the mere knowledge of Christ's ability to cure was not enough to cure him. And so for us, assent to certain pieces of information is not enough to save us. Giving us scent, acknowledging intellectually that certain things may be true is not the same as saving faith. Well, you say, What is saving faith? How may I know this cure in my life?

If that is my condition, and Christ is so compassionate, and he sent you and others to tell me, how is this cure affected? Well, to become a Christian, trusting in what Jesus has done on the cross as our only basis for acceptance with God, will involve at least these three elements. One, acknowledging that I am absolutely helpless and cannot rely on any righteousness of my own.

It's just one cross-reference as it comes to mind. Isn't this what Paul says in Philippians 3, when he reflects on what Christ has done in his life? He says, I consider all the things that I used to stack up in my plus account, all of the things that made me me and that I was resting in for my own well-being and for my heavenly citizenship. He said, I consider them all rubbish now, that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own. Now, to become a Christian involves not having a righteousness of my own.

In fact, there are only two religious systems in the whole world, if you think about it. One that produces a righteousness of your own, and one that says, There is no righteousness of my own that could avail me one iota with God. Therefore, if I do not have credited to my account the righteousness of someone else and based my acceptance on that, then I am without hope. Acknowledging that I am absolutely helpless and cannot rely on a righteousness of my own.

Secondly, believing that Jesus has died and has provided the very gift of righteousness that I've just admitted that I need. And thirdly, that on the strength of that, I must then cast myself upon his mercy. Apply Christ to myself, if you like. Appropriate Christ to me.

And of course, this is the very language that Jesus used, wasn't it? I am the bread of life. He who eats of me will never hunger. In other words, he says, I want you to appropriate me. I want you to receive me as I am.

I want you to welcome me as Savior and Lord and King. If there has to be the acknowledgment of my helplessness, my belief in Jesus as my only righteousness, and the casting of myself upon him, how can that possibly be done? Because if we've just understood accurately the state of our condition, we are lost, we are enslaved, and we're actually dead. You might just as well go to the graveyard in Chagrin Falls and ask people to come out of their graves as ask dead people to become Christians. Because by our nature, we're disobedient.

We're rotten to the core. It's not our nature to trust Christ. It's our nature to disobey him. Well, says the thinker, if there's going to be a Christian experience, it's going to take a miracle.

That's exactly right. The gospel is miraculous. God works within us. God works within us to create in us things that cannot be produced by our own dead, enslaved humanity. And God does this always in the same way. He does it through his Word, and he does it by his Spirit. In other words, God speaks to men and women inwardly. He imparts life to our dead souls, and he brings us to new birth. God does that.

You don't do that. God does that. That's why you have to ask him to be gracious and merciful to you. Not sit in your own smug self-confidence, saying, One day, when I'm good and ready, I'll give God a chance at my life.

Don't you hate those things? Give God a chance. As if somehow or another God is helpless, standing, waiting to see whether any of us are going to decide to seek him. The way the gospel is proclaimed, it's as though Adam and Eve were seeking God in the garden. No, God was seeking Adam and Eve in the garden. It wasn't that people were running around Judea looking for Jesus. It was that Jesus was moving around Judea looking for lost sheep. And he comes tonight, and the Word of God comes home to the heart and the Spirit of God. As Thomas Watson puts it remarkably, he says, Our wills are like a garrison holding out against God until the Spirit, with sweet violence, conquers or changes it, making the sinner willing to have Christ upon any terms, to be ruled by him as well as saved by him.

What does that mean? Well, the Word of God comes in the voice of someone—maybe the preacher. The preacher preaches and comes and knocks at the door of the human heart, calling for a response, saying, as I said this morning, I implore you, I beseech you in the mercies of God, be reconciled to God. Here I come with the Bible, trying to explain it to you, pointing it to you, confirming it to you, urging you to trust its promises. And the Holy Spirit comes to the human heart with a key, and turns the key, and diffuses the ray. And what cannot be accomplished by the mouth of a man is accomplished by the work of God. It is a miracle. We used to sing an old song. It took a miracle to put the stars in place.

Remember that one? It took a miracle to hang a world in space. But when he saved my soul and cleansed and made me whole, it took a miracle of love and grace. You see why a Christian should be a humble person? Evangelical Christians, if they really are evangelical, if they believe this doctrine, we should be the most humble people on the face of God's earth, because we know, you know every sin I've ever done, but your blood has covered everyone.

Oh God, such love! In fact, it's one of the marks of genuine Christian experience, not the smug, self-satisfied proclamations of what we've done and how well we've done. Well, somebody may be asking—and I must close—how would I ever know if this miracle is in process?

Well, let me ask you. Are you beginning to see that you've done wrong and that God is rightly angry with you? Are you beginning to sense that Jesus has been sent by God the Father to bring you forgiveness?

If so, that is the work of God's Spirit. We could never believe such things, without his help. And the salvation that he provides, he provides completely, because no sin is too shameful. He provides permanently, separating us from our sins forever. He provides unconditionally, because none of us can make ourselves worthy of forgiveness.

The work of the gospel is totally uninfluenced by our status or our lack of it. And he saves us immediately. Our sins are gone. The leper was full of leprosy, in every sense a lost cause.

No amount of picking at his scabs could solve his problem. Maybe that's how you are tonight. You've been a great sinner. The loathsome nature of it all makes you feel that you've gone so far, so far, so far that Jesus would never take it all away. But I want to assure you that if your sinning conscience cries out in the leper's words, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean, you will hear him say, I am willing.

He's still willing. Bow with me in prayer, will you? When I understood enough of the gospel to realize my condition and that Christ had paid the penalty for my sin, I wanted somehow or another to respond. And you may, from your heart tonight, want to cry out to God.

And let me pray this little prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed. But through you I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment, and offering me forgiveness. I turn now for my sin and receive you as my Savior. Receiving Jesus Christ as your Savior, that's a pivotal decision that results in eternal life.

And that's the good news. It's our first message in the new year on Truth for Life weekend with Alistair Begg. Today's message reminds us that the Bible is unlike any other book. It is God's very word. It has the power to transform lives. As unbelievers hear God's word, hard hearts are open to the love of Christ and men and women are converted and become committed followers of Jesus.

For those who are believers, the Bible is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. It does what we can't do for ourselves. It transforms us into the image of Christ. This is the reason we teach directly from the Bible here on Truth for Life so that the miracle of God's transforming spirit can do its work in unexplainable and powerful ways.

And that very message is echoed in a book titled Facing a Task Unfinished. The author is evangelist Roger Carswell and he explains that we become more like Jesus as we study the Bible. And when we do, we develop an overwhelming desire for others to come to faith in Christ. Facing a Task Unfinished lays out 52 weekly devotions that include a series of scripture passages, prayers, and hymns all designed to stir in us a fresh desire for evangelism. Each brief entry is meant to be read once a week and help you spend time praying for the salvation of friends or loved ones and the needs of people in the world around us all over the course of a year. Find out more about this inspiring devotional by tapping on the image on the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org. I'm Bob Lapeen.

Hope you have a wonderful start to the new year. Be sure to be with us again next weekend as we continue the series Christian Basics. Alistair will be explaining why all of us should know what we believe and why we believe it. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.