Biblical Conversion by Dr Phil Newton

December 5–6, 2022 – FBC Cedar Key, FL Pastors’ Conference
Titus 3:3–8

I came to faith in Christ during the Jesus Movement in the late 60s. To say that many came to Christ would understate the amazing movement of God that took place. But to say that many that professed Christ did not truly know Him, would understate the reality as well. It was not uncommon for young people—since it was primarily a youth movement—to gather by the hundreds in churches or open fields for rallies, testimony meetings, and “revivals,” with countless decisions taking place at the end. Strong, long, emotional appeals characterized the close of the services, whether the gospel had been clearly preached or not. Singing through “Just As I Am” countless times until that last person walked an aisle in satisfaction to whomever led the service was far more common than not. The evangelistic goal of getting someone to repeat a “sinner’s prayer” after a quick, inadequate gospel presentation, seemed the norm. It certainly was with me. Even with good intentions, I was part of the problem of reinforcing false conversions.

Many of my classmates in high school made public decisions during those days. Some were wonderfully converted and have continued living faithfully as followers of Christ. But others, some of whom even gave dramatic testimonies, did not last long.

All of that confused me as a young Christian who had no theological grasp of biblical conversion. I had grown up with the mantra, “once saved, always saved,” having equated that with walking an aisle and baptism, and sought desperately to squeeze those who professed Christ but lived totally otherwise, into that safe harbor of salvation. But the more that I read the Scripture, the more my unbiblical theology of conversion unraveled. Those passages dealing with perseverance and endurance haunted my inch-deep theology of conversion. Slowly, the Lord uprooted it.

Technically, to convert implies the response of repentance and faith that one makes to the gospel declaration. Mark Dever writes, “Conversion is literally turning—turning from sinning to repenting of our sins, turning from trusting in ourselves to trusting only in Christ to reconcile us to God” (Building Healthy Churches, Conversion, 2). Paul’s explanation of his preaching among the Ephesians makes this clear: “I did not shrink from declaring anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:20–21). J. I. Packer explains, “Repentance is a fruit of faith, which is itself a fruit of regeneration. But in actual life, repentance is inseparable from faith, being the negative aspect (faith is the positive aspect) of turning to Christ as Lord and Savior” (Concise Theology, 163). So conversion involves the response of turning away from one way of life of rebellion against God in repentance, and turning to God through reliance upon Christ alone as Savior and Lord. But that’s not something that we coax people to do.

Dever writes, “If we think conversion is something that we alone do, we will evangelize one way. If we think that conversion is something that most fundamentally God does, we will evangelize another way. . . . Anemic evangelism will starve us, and we will waste away. Careless evangelism will stuff us with false converts, and our church will become sick and unsound, dysfunctional and maybe it will even die. But a biblical understanding of conversion will encourage us to a biblical practice of evangelism” (2).

So while we call for unbelieving friends to repent and believe the gospel, what lies at the roots of biblical conversion? If we truly believe the biblical record of the human condition, that we’re “dead in our trespasses and sins,” that we are “by nature children of wrath,” that apart from Christ we have “no hope and without God in this world,” that we’re “darkened in [our] understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in [us], because of the hardness of [our] heart,” then how does one repent and believe (Ephesians 2 & 4)? Does he suddenly become smarter than he had been before? Has a very persuasive believer finally talked him into becoming a Christian? Or does God have to work to bring about his conversion? Biblical conversion depends on the work, provision, and power of God.

Let’s probe the issue of biblical conversion by looking at Paul’s explanation through seven statements on biblical conversion:

1. Biblical conversion is necessary due to human sinfulness (3)

Paul had no qualms with total depravity as a description of every person. After exhorting the churches on the island of Crete to show the gospel in their relationships, he got personal in reflecting upon their pre-conversion days and his. “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.” Not a pretty picture is it? Foolish, deceived, enslaved, hateful and hating, Paul wrote, is the norm. That’s depravity. It’s not that we’re as bad as we can be—we can always look around and find someone a bit more foolish, a bit more deceived, and a bit more hateful. Rather it means that every part of our being is affected by sin.

Until a person comes to grips with at least some consciousness of his/her sinfulness, that person sees no need for the gospel. For the gospel believed changes us, turns us inside out, upside down, and radically makes us a new person. But why would someone want to be a new person? Oh, there may be some personal dissatisfaction so that he wants to change jobs or she wants to lose weight or they both want to live in a different neighborhood or have their kids in a different school. But to admit that my mind, desires, ambitions, and relationships are woven with the stain of sin and rebellion against God is hard to swallow. To admit that I’m foolish for living the way that I live without God smacks at our sensibilities. Our culture fights against that kind of Christian teaching.

Here’s where the manipulative, shallow techniques of salesmanship evangelism falter. If we try to talk someone into believing the gospel, someone else can come along and talk them out of it. That was what I saw over and over with my school friends during the 60s and 70s. A friend and I corralled one of my classmates in the backseat of my VW one night, throwing every persuasive tool in our arsenal to get him to repeat a prayer after us. He had a reputation as a wild, careless person. After an hour and a half in the backseat of that 2-door VW, I think he wanted out, so he acquiesced to repeating a prayer that my friend uttered. We then let him out of the car so that he could resume his life, which he did, with not a change evident. That event stuck in my mind. My sloppy, manipulative evangelism might get a response but it couldn’t change a heart. What did it need?

2. Biblical conversion is rooted wholly in the action of God (4, 5, 6)

Look at the point of action in this passage. Paul does describe the converts as “those who have believed God” in verse 8, but before that, he shows how and why they believed God. “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us . . . according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” God’s kindness and love appeared so that He saved according to His mercy, He washed by regeneration and renewed by the Spirit, He poured out the Spirit in regeneration upon us richly through Jesus, and then He justified us by His grace through Christ. Here is God’s action so that we might believe in Him.

Note five observations:

(1) God must act or there will be no conversion. We’re calling for sinners to repent and believe. They will not do either without God acting first. That’s Paul’s point. Salvation is all about what God does not what we do in response. That doesn’t minimize the response but it makes it certain and effective.

(2) The burden of trying to make converts is lifted from us. That doesn’t stifle our gospel conversations but gives us a renewed consciousness that we’re just delivering the good news; God alone does the saving.

But we know that in theory, but how about in practice? We’re so affected by the expectation to produce numbers that we sometimes think that we can get converts at will. I remember hearing a pastor complain about spending money to send one of his members to Japan on a mission trip. If you know anything about gospel work there, you know that it is almost like plowing in rock—very difficult. This member returned but saw no one converted. So the pastor complained and said, “I could have at least gotten one convert.” Better said, ‘I could have at least manipulated someone into repeating a prayer after my persuasive talk so that I could claim him as a convert.’ If the burden to convert rests on us we will do sloppy evangelism.

(3) Our responsibility focuses on proclamation. That doesn’t mean that we should proclaim in a bland, boring manner. We’re to be persuasive. If we believe the gospel, how can we do otherwise? But we’re not to manipulate or coax or browbeat or coerce someone to respond to our proclamation.

There are far too many stock-stories that pastors fall back on to get people to respond. One of my friends and I call them the “Little Andy White” stories. That arose from a young evangelist in our day telling a sob story about little Andy White that had some tragic death but escaped hell narrowly by a sudden conversion. It was probably made up or extrapolated from various conversations until it became the early 70s benchmark in my home area for evangelistic prowess. Teenagers would respond to “Little Andy White” while not responding to the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ. We must believe that the gospel is enough.

(4) God can be counted on to save sinners. He has proven Himself very good at bringing dead people to life, crushing stony hearts, revealing truth to foolish people, giving hope to the hopeless, liberating the enslaved, breaking in with light for those in darkness. Which means, if we believe that conversion is rooted wholly and ultimately in the action of God . . .

(5) . . . then you are not on your schedule in conversions but on God’s timetable. So be thankful that you are a message bearer. Be even more thankful that God takes action to save sinners. R. G. Lee who pastored Bellevue Baptist in Memphis for many decades was talking to a drunkard about Jesus. The man told him, “Dr. Lee, I’m one of your converts.” Lee responded, “You must be one of mine because you’re certainly not one of Christ’s converts.” That’s a lesson to learn.

3. Biblical conversion glories in the mercy of God (5)

“He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy.”

(1) Mercy is evident when we grapple with the reality of our sinfulness. A friend that I had witnessed to in high school and who later came to believe gospel (as far as I know), mistakenly commented one time. “I guess the Lord saw something good in me and saved me.” I don’t think that my friend saw anything good in himself but he lacked the theological grid to see that the Lord certainly didn’t see anything good in him.

(2) Mercy is needed because our type of righteousness is insufficient to save. So the deeds done in our type of righteousness will not satisfy God. It does not meet the requirements of the Law. It does not satisfy eternal justice. It’s not perfect so not enough.

(3) Mercy does not partner with merit. Until a sinner is gripped by his sin he will not cast himself on the mercy of God. He’ll keep clinging to merit. He will be no different than a Muslim who thinks that Allah has a massive balancing scale upon which he places merits on one side and sin on the other.

Here we need the Law to expose our hearts, as Paul taught in Galatians 3:23–25. It is the tutor that whips and beats us, not gently teaches us, to lead us to Christ. Our evangelism needs to use the law to pave the way for the mercies in the gospel of Jesus, who fulfilled and satisfied the Law’s demands by His obedience and wrath-absorbing death at the cross.

(4) True conversion is evident when there’s no longer boasting in self but boasting in Christ alone.

4. Biblical conversion does not attempt to do what only the Holy Spirit can accomplish.

By the “washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,” God changes us so that we might be those who go on repenting of sins and go on believing the gospel of Christ. Otherwise, we slip into a quick decision and then slip out of it when things get difficult.

(1) Reliance on the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration is critical in our evangelism and in true conversion. While the unbeliever that listens to our gospel talk probably has no clue about the work of the Spirit, we do as we earnestly speak to them of Christ. They just know that someone’s speaking to them about God, sin, Christ, calling for a response. So we let the gospel do its work. Paul said that the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16). It is power first before they believe, and it is power because the Holy Spirit brings the word uttered into the dark recesses of mind and heart with flooding light and life.

Paul compared this regenerating work to God creating light in the darkness. “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). That’s what happens in regeneration bringing about conversion.

(2) Regeneration is God’s action in mercy by the Spirit to effect change in the mind and disposition in order to repent and believe the gospel. Dever writes, “We must repent of our sins and trust in Christ. And we can only do that by God’s Spirit taking words we read and hear and using them to create life in our previously dark and dead souls. We need God to give us new hearts” [p. 5]. Here’s the “But God” of Ephesians 2:4 in response to our deadness in trespasses and sins. Without the “But God,” there is no conversion.

5. Biblical conversion brings distinct, radical change wrought by the Spirit.

The apostle uses the two phrases to imply the same thing, “washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.” Can a dead man change his disposition? Can he be coaxed into doing anything? As Jeremiah wrote, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil” (Jer 13:23). John Murray was right. “For unless God in sovereign, operative grace had turned our enmity to love and our disbelief to faith we would never yield the response of faith and love” (Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 100).

(1) Decisions for Jesus then, do not necessarily equate to a new creation in Christ. Unless the Spirit brings the dead person to life, that person may be animated by inspiration and motivated to show a little religion but he will not be a new creation in Christ. Murray adds, “We may not like it. We may recoil against it. It may not fit into our way of thinking and it may not accord with the time-worn expressions which are the coin of our evangelism. But if we recoil against it [regeneration, being born again], we do well to remember that this recoil is against Christ. And what shall we answer when we appear before Him whose truth we rejected and with whose gospel we tampered?” (p. 99).

(2) Regeneration is not moral improvement or increased involvement but new life, an inward change in mind and disposition to believe Christ and follow Him. That new believer doesn’t understand the theology of it but he or she does experience the effects of the new birth. This work of the Spirit bears the fruit of the Spirit. It stands in contrast to the works of the flesh. It’s a new creation. It’s life from above. It’s a change of citizenship and Lordship. It’s life where there was deadness; light where there was darkness. It is what John means when he writes, “The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself” (1 John 5:10). It is, as Henry Scougal’s book that impacted an unconverted George Whitefield is entitled, “The Life of God in the Soul of Man.”

(3) Regeneration is the new covenant promise. It’s the heart of stone becoming a heart of flesh; it’s God’s Spirit in a person; it’s God’s law written on the heart.

6. Biblical conversion trusts in the justifying work of Christ alone.

Understanding and relying on the work of the Spirit in regeneration does not mean that someone is saved apart from the justifying work of Christ believed. But Paul shows the hidden work of God that manifests itself when one repents and believes the gospel. In doing so, God has “poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

(1) Justification implies that we can add nothing to what Christ has done. It is justification by God’s grace through Jesus Christ our Savior—period. Justification is cross-work, with Jesus bearing away the Law’s condemnatin of us.

(2) Justification, while affecting us morally no doubt, is primarily a legal act that affects our standing with God. We’re counted righteous in justification. Our standing rests in what Christ alone has done. That’s why we keep preaching the gospel.

One of our young ladies sensed the convicting work of the Spirit, so she talked with her parents separately. Both told her the same thing, you need to look to Christ. They had faithfully taught her the gospel and she knew that meant to put her confidence and trust and hope in the work of Jesus in His death and resurrection. Not quite satisfied, she spoke to two friends in our congregation that had recently come to faith in Christ. She asked a young lady, what must I do to be saved, and she told her that she needed to look to Christ. Later she asked a young man, and he told her the same thing. She told me, that after all of them told me same thing, I got the point. I looked to Christ and He saved me.

(3) The certainty of justification is critical to assurance. Without the work of Christ alone accomplishing redemption for us, then we are left to piecing together anything that we can find to have assurance. Yet God’s intention is for us to ultimately find our assurance through faith in Christ.

(4) Justification is certainty of the hope of eternal life. Regeneration begets repentance and faith so that justified by grace through Christ, hope is engendered in daily life until the unfolding of every promise in eternal life.

(5) So, to properly proclaim the gospel, central attention must be given to what Christ has done—that’s gospel clarity. We do so depending on the Holy Spirit to regenerate the sinner, who with the new mind believes in Jesus and new disposition repents of sin.

7. Biblical conversion affects the way that we live toward God and each other (8)

“This is a trustworthy statement: and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men.”

(1) Beware of cheerleading corpses in an effort to have activity in church. Without true conversion that’s what happens. So there’s the need to find all kinds of exciting and creative programs and activities, to entertain the emotions while bypassing the mind with gospel clarity.

(2) Give attention to conversion rather than presuming it. One common mistake in pastoral ministry is starting in a church or even planting a church, and assuming that the members are all converted. So, we jump in and begin to explain the demands of the gospel upon our Christian walks, and the unconverted react. Some get angry and are ready to toss you out. Why? Because you’ve been cheerleading corpses to do what they do not want to do, they react to you. Their hearts have not been renewed so that they are inclined to do the will of God. You’re frustrating them because a gospel foundation has not been established among them.

That doesn’t mean that preaching the gospel will be done in peace. There’s still battle going on. But at least you’re making clear the way of God through Christ.

(3) Teach the gospel as foundational to our deeds and works. Reinforce regularly this gospel foundation so that power for good deeds starts at the cross. In that way, the church’s actions and the members’ boasting is not in themselves or their deeds but in Christ alone. Otherwise, you create legalists who are trying to make themselves holy—and they’re quite proud of it!

Biblical conversion—that wrought by the Lord evidenced in repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, must ever be the priority of our ministries.