Now, my relation to Jesus Christ is one
of those few matters of life or death.
To the average one of us who listen
now, it's taken for granted that Jesus Christ
came into the world to save sinners.
I take that for granted, I assume that,
I know that's true, I don't in any
wise question it.
And then it is further taken for granted,
and properly, that we are saved by Christ
alone, without worse.
That I also take for granted, because it's
declared there.
I don't question it, I don't ask that
somebody come and explain it, it's so.
He did die for our sins according to
the scripture, he did rise again.
The scripture does say that we are saved
by Christ alone, without worse.
But now the big question is, and right
here is the hole in the bridge where
millions fall through, how do I come into
saving relation to Christ?
He alone saves without human merit or worse.
But he doesn't save everybody, therefore, there must
be some connection made or some relation sustained.
Somehow or other, I come into a relationship
to Christ that saves me.
Now what is that?
And that is a matter of life or
death.
You dare not assume anything.
You must know.
Not to be sure isn't to gamble with
your soul.
Not to be sure is to be dead.
Just as you dare not cross the mighty
ocean without a compass, to do so would
be to die.
So you dare not assume that you have
the relationship unless you have.
It's got to be there before you dare
accept it as being there.
To be wrong on this is to be
lost.
Now if you were to ask the average
man, the average preacher, or the average person
who works, or the average Christian anywhere, how
do I come into saving relation to Jesus
Christ?
The answer would be one of three.
People would either tell you, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,
that's Acts 16.31. Or they would say,
receive Christ as your Savior, that's John 1
.12. Or else they would give you this
other answer.
And of course those first two answers are
true, they're true.
Or else they would give you this third
answer, accept Christ as your personal Savior.
Now the word accept Christ, to the astonishment
of a good many people, does not occur
in the Bible, it's not there.
It's this accept Christ doctrine that I want
to talk a little bit about tonight.
What is it to accept Christ?
Now I do not reflect on the words
accept Christ, even though they're not in the
Bible.
It's possible to teach truth and yet not
use words that are in the Bible always,
because if what you say is the sum
of what the Bible teaches on a subject,
then you're teaching truth, provided the people know
that that's the sum of the Bible teaching.
So when you were told to accept Christ,
to bring us into saving relation to him,
what the teacher is attempting to do is
to say, believe and receive.
And believe and receive are Bible words, though
accept is not a Bible word.
But accepting Christ has become the panacea all
over the evangelical world, and it has become
fatal to millions.
A whole attitude of accepting, the passive acceptance
of Christ, this easy acceptance, a man will
preach a tremendous sermon and then say, now
what should you do?
Accept Christ.
Have you accepted Christ?
Or we go to the bedside of a
dying man, have you accepted Christ?
And if he says he has, why we
pat his head and the next day or
two we preach that he's in heaven clanging
a heart.
Well now I'm awfully afraid that there are
millions of people who are perishing because they
are being told to accept Christ, and they
don't know what's meant by it.
You see, to tell a man to accept
Christ, while it is relatively right, it yet
if not carefully explained, makes Christ to stand
hat in hand waiting on my pleasure, meekly
awaiting my verdict on him.
It makes him apply to me instead of
my applying to him.
It permits me to accept Christ by an
impulse of my mind or my emotions and
accept him painlessly and at no cost and
no inconvenience.
Somebody suggested that the cross of Christ should
not inconvenience people.
Well it's the most inconvenient thing in the
world, this cross of Christ.
It took a man by the name of
Jesus in the height of his healthy human
life and took him out on a hillside
and killed him there.
Now that's an inconvenient thing for him.
And any cross is inconvenient.
And it's a most inconvenient thing, this accepting
Christ, if we know what we mean by
it.
But the accepting Christ of popular theology has
no inconvenience attached to it.
Now let's look at how it might have
worked back in Old Testament times.
Suppose that Moses had told Israel that awful
wonderful night, now stay in your houses and
kill the lamb and put the blood on
the doorpost and stay right there.
And accept the fact that it's done, the
great transaction's done.
You are delivered by the Passover blood.
Thank God and rejoice and establish a tabernacle
and stay right where you are.
And they would have stayed right there in
Egypt, the blood on the door, God waiting
to take them out, but they stayed right
where they were.
They would have died in Egypt.
They had to get up and get out
of Egypt to prove they believed in the
power of the Passover blood.
That prodigal son, look at him.
A certain man had two sons and one
of them said unto his father, give me
the goods that follow to me.
And he divided unto them, the two of
them, the boys, his living.
And after a few days the boy left
the younger and went into a far country
and there he spent his substance with riotous
living.
And when he became hungry and had nothing
to eat, he went and attached himself to
a swine herd and he fed swine.
And he was there in the swine pen
and he got hungry because his wages wouldn't
buy enough to eat.
And it was a humbling thing for a
Jew to feed swine.
And one day a man appears, and here
I depart from the scriptures, one day a
young man appears.
And this young man says to this boy
who had gone away from home and was
feeding swine, he had a bundle of tracts,
this young fellow, he was just out of
Bible school, and he had been taught how
to win souls in nine easy lessons.
And he goes up to this prodigal son
lying among the swine and he says, I
have good news for you.
And he looks up and says, thank God
I'm in need of good news.
What is it?
Your father is ready to forgive you.
Well, the boy says, thank the Lord.
Your father is ready to forgive you.
Do you believe it?
And the boy says, yes, I believe it.
All right, thank God.
Now let's bow our heads and you thank
the Lord you're saved.
You believe the Father forgives you.
Yes, well, amen.
Now we'll thank the dear Lord that you're
saved.
And now goodbye, don't forget to witness.
And sometime I'll be around again.
So the swineherd stays right there in the
far country.
And he gets zealous and missionary.
And he goes out and he starts to
make converts among the other swineherds.
And pretty soon he has them all believing
that the Father forgives.
And they all do and say, I thank
God the Father forgives.
All right.
And then they build a little tabernacle and
call it the first tabernacle of the swine
converted swineherds.
And they all stay right there in the
far country.
Nobody goes home.
And that boy is still ragged and dirty
and smelly.
And the people, the respectable people of the
neighborhood, when they pass by, elevate their nose
and hurry by.
And they say, so persecuted they the prophets
which were before us.
It is the result of our holy living
that they are giving us the cold shoulder.
Then one day while they're singing choruses in
this first church of the converted swineherds in
the far country, a young fellow comes along
and asks permission to speak.
And he rises and says to them, put
away your sins, you wicked.
Put away your sins.
Learn to do evil.
Learn to do good.
Cease to do evil.
And be righteous and follow the Lord.
And do good and you will be saved.
And they pick him up and throw him
out and say he's a legalist and that
he doesn't believe in grace.
Why, we're saved by accepting the doctrine.
But this young fellow wanders off and the
time goes on and the fatted cat gets
old and dies and the father passes away
and the boy stays on in the far
country.
Now that's evangelism as it is preached a
good deal today in America.
It is believe on Christ, accept Christ and
stay where you are.
Now that is excused and explained by a
hundred different learned ways.
But it leaves the sinner in his sins
and the man in his sins will be
damned as certainly as the sun rises in
the east and goes down in the west.
Now our Lord Jesus Christ at one time
passed by and he said, if any man
will come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me.
Those beautiful words of Jesus, if any man
will come after me.
Notice that he is interested and he is
inviting, he is even urging, but he's not
begging.
We have reversed things in these last days
so that Jesus stands on trial and we
sinners stand in the place of the judge.
And if we should choose to quit our
sins and follow him, we think we've done
him a service.
And in the meantime he stands pensively waiting.
My friends, I want you to note that
he passes by and if any man will
come, he shall live eternally and he shall
gain eternally.
But if any man will not, he shall
lose eternally, but Jesus Christ will lose nothing.
Remember that if a sinner comes to Jesus,
Jesus gains nothing.
And if he refuses to come, Jesus loses
nothing.
For Jesus Christ is God and God is
self-contained and self-sufficient and beholdeth the
world in his hand.
And if I come to him, I do
not enrich him.
If I stay away from him, I do
not impoverish him.
It is the whole thing, my brethren and
sisters, is for me.
I am the gainer and the loser.
He is neither gainer nor loser.
If he, if I come, he does not
gain, for the stars and their courses are
his, and the seraphim and the cherubim and
the principalities and powers and mights and dominions
and archangels and heaven itself and the sea
of glass, all are his.
So that he cannot gain anything by my
coming and he will not lose anything by
my not coming.
Remember that.
But if I come, he says, let him
deny himself.
Now this is just what we dare tell
people these days.
This is just what the evangelists of another
day told people, but this is just what
we're afraid to tell them now.
Let him deny himself.
And in the dim light of modern religious
notions, it's an odd thing that Christ should
place such an obstacle before people, and that
he should lay down a condition for following
him, a condition that's exactly contrary to human
nature.
Nobody wants to deny himself.
We want to preserve ourselves.
And self-preservation is the first law of
nature, according to everything that I've heard.
And yet he lays down a condition for
following him that runs exactly contrary to human
nature, runs counter to everything that's taught us
in the school, contradicts the instincts of self
-preservation, arrays all the power of our natural
self against Jesus Christ, cuts down on the
number of those that will come.
Our Lord plainly often turned and cut down
on the number of those that would come.
And in doing it, he stepped up the
quality of those who would come.
But we, we step up the quantity and
we don't care too much about the quality.
If we can just get them to come,
if we can just get them forward and
say 2,912 or 506 or whatever it
is came, well, our Lord cared little about
how many came.
But he said, if anybody will come, let
him come.
He's welcome to come.
I came to die for him, and I'm
rising to plead for him.
And if he will come, let him come.
But in coming, let him deny himself.
Let him do exactly contrary to that which
is said by the world to be the
natural thing to do.
Now, I wonder if this Christ who laid
down this obstacle, who put this huge hurdle
in front of the kingdom of God, I
wonder if that's the same Jesus, the same
Christ that now we have got to excuse
him and edit him and amend him.
We have to coach and beg and plead
to gain followers for him.
Is this the same Jesus that gives everything
and asks nothing?
Is this the same Jesus that smiles and
goes along with covetous businessmen and crooked politicians
and carnal entertainers and half-saved cowboys?
Is this the same Jesus?
I don't think so at all.
Paul talked about another Jesus, and I think
there's another Jesus loose among us.
And he's not the Jesus of the New
Testament, nor the Christ of God.
For the Christ of God is not begging
businessmen, neither is he camping at the dirty
door of some half-converted sex dancer and
begging her to come and putting up with
anything and making any kind of an excuse
for if she'll only come.
He simply says, come if you want to.
Come if you will.
Anybody that will, let him come.
Come unto me.
But he doesn't beg and he doesn't coach
and he doesn't compromise and he doesn't in
any wise change his terms.
He makes the terms and you accept them.
A great many people come to the altar
and howl, and we say, well, he's under
-convicted, he's having a wonderful time there.
What he's doing is trying to get the
Lord to meet his terms.
Well, the Lord will never meet your terms,
Mister.
He will die and go to hell before
he'll ever meet your terms.
He lays his terms down and you meet
them.
He is God and you're a sinner.
And you meet his terms.
Young people meet his terms.
Kids meet his terms.
We all meet his terms.
And whether it be presidents or kings or
queens, they all meet his terms.
And they must.
He positively never compromises.
Let him come unto me.
Let him deny himself.
Let him take up his cross and follow
me.
Now that is to accept Christ.
Now what is to accept Christ?
Well, let me define it for you a
little more closely.
Acceptance of Christ is to form an attachment
to the person of Christ, to the person
of Jesus Christ.
It's not to fall in love with a
tender-faced Jesus.
It is to realize that this tender-faced
Jesus is also Lord and God, that God
has made him Lord over all things and
head of the church, and that he has
the keys of death and hell, and that
he will sit upon the throne judging all
mankind, and that God has given all power
into his hand.
This mighty Lord Jesus, it's to form an
attachment to him that is revolutionary, reversing and
transforming the life.
If your Christian conversion did not reverse the
direction of your life, if it did not
transform it, then you are not converted at
all.
You are simply a victim of the accept
Jesus heresy.
And then, what is it to accept Jesus?
It is to form an attachment to the
person of Christ that is not only revolutionary,
but it is complete.
That is, you can't compartmentalize your life.
A lot of us try to compartmentalize our
life, and we say, Jesus, you can have
the front room, and the living room, and
the den, and the upstairs bedroom, but the
bedroom to the back and the bedroom to
the front and the den, you can't have.
You can't go to the basement.
You only can stay in certain parts of
my life.
Well, now, that kind of horrible base dealing
with the Lord Jesus Christ cannot but cause
us to be lost at last.
For me to accept Christ means that I
am to accept him in every part of
my being, and that I am to form
an attachment to him, an emotional, an intellectual,
a volitional attachment, which is complete, leaving no
part of the life unaffected.
If he cannot save, cannot control you, he
cannot save you.
And if he cannot control all of you,
he cannot control any of you.
And then, it's to be an attachment that
is exclusive.
I mean that Christ is not to be
one of several interests.
They tell us that in some countries, I
shall not name them, for these tapes get
around, I understand they're going to Japan, and
I'm not going to mention names of countries.
But I am going to tell you this,
that there are some places where they will
accept Christ and enthrone him just as you
enthrone a statue somewhere in your home, but
they make him one more of several vital
interests.
He is one more of several.
There is a church on Riverside Drive in
New York City, across from that other tomb,
Grant's Tomb, and they have a tympanum, a
sort of an affair up above it, you
know, an arch around, and they have concrete,
or maybe it's cut stone, more likely cut
stone, seeing the money that was put into
it, heads of various great men.
And they have Moses there, I think, and
they have Socrates there, and they have Isaac
Newton there, and they have Jesus there.
And they have, I suppose, Washington there, and
a few more.
Jesus is there.
He is one of several interests.
Mark you, my brethren, a Christian is one
who specializes.
He's an exclusivist.
He believes in Jesus Christ exclusively.
He believes in him as Lord exclusively, and
that excludes all other possible interests, possible saviors.
It excludes all other possible hopes.
The Christian who truly is born anew and
has accepted Christ rightly has accepted him exclusively,
so that he is to you what the
sun is to the earth.
He is that which you revolve around.
He is the central sun, and you are
in orbit, moving round him, held by the
bonds of his love and lightened by the
light of his face.
And while you do have other interests, they
are minor and they're secondary, and they take
their place down the scale.
Christ is first.
The Lord Jesus Christ is first, and for
him I surrender everything.
To him I give all.
To Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Savior,
he can command me.
He's ahead of my wife.
He's ahead of my children.
He's ahead of my ambitions.
He is first, and everything else is last.
Anything else is not New Testament Christianity, brother
and sister.
Anything else is a compromise, and it leaves
people half-saved, confused, frustrated, bewildered, and in
the dark.
Jesus Christ is your exclusive Savior, and all
other relationships are determined and conditioned by this
one overwhelming, almighty relationship.
Don't we see this in the stories our
missionaries tell us?
Don't we read it in Fox's Book of
Martyrs?
Don't we see it in the story of
men and women down the centuries who have
taken Jesus Christ and had to walk out
on their families to take him?
Who have taken Jesus Christ and had to
give up their jobs to take him?
Who have taken Jesus Christ as their Lord
and Savior and have to do things that
shorten their lives in order to take him?
If you are not sufficiently given to Jesus
Christ and exclusively attached to him, that you
would be willing to put your life on
the block for him, I cannot see how
you can claim to be a Christian.