Rev. Aaron Long: Conversion
Column
Faith & Fellowship
The Christian life is a life of conversion. Salvation isn’t just a one-time thing but a lifetime of being conformed to the image of Christ. Yes, when we accept Christ, we are saved but throughout the course of our life God is working on us, changing us, transforming us.
In order to be transformed, to be converted we must accept some basic facts. We must stop relying on our understanding and start trusting in what God has said, what God has done. The only way we can truly be Christian is to put ourselves completely in the hands of our loving Savior Jesus. These concepts aren’t complicated, they are difficult, they are simply written out in the God breathed bible and taught in the visible church.
John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world.” From this we know that God is personal, He is involved in our lives. God created everything that exists, and created all of it for a purpose, and God created man as the apex for all of His creation and in a relationship with Him. Man was created to be tied to God, to live and love God and to serve Him as man’s greatest pleasure.
Problem is man broke this relationship. God had only given Adam and Eve one rule, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and yet, with the prompting and temptation of the serpent, or ads we better know him, Satan, Adam and Eve ate from that tree. Through this sin of breaking the law of God sin and death entered the world and the relationship between God and man are broken.
God wanting to restore the relationship sent His Son Jesus to die for us on the cross, paying the sin debt. Jesus is 100% God to bear sin, and 100% man to pay for sin. Jesus is the Son, the second person of the Trinity. He restores our relationship with God because all of us, one and all, are sheep that have gone astray.
Christianity is a relationship of trusting into Jesus, not just an intellectual assent. The demons themselves intellectually accept the facts of the faith, Christians actively believe everything God has said in the bible and teaches through His visible Church and also trust against the world, the flesh, and the devil in what it says and actively live it out within the Church. There are no truly saved Christians outside the visible church except in exceptional circumstances. There are no lone ranger Christians.
Our salvation doesn’t come from doing, there is nothing we can do in and of ourselves because nothing we do will ever be good on its own. Our salvation comes from believing and trusting in what Jesus has done. Inside of Jesus there is salvation and eternal life with Jesus. Outside of Christ is nothing but damnation and eternal hell for those who reject the love of God shown through Jesus Christ.
As we follow Jesus, we give up this world and its materialistic demands and desires and through the power of the Holy Spirit we are transformed, we are conformed to the very image of our Lord Jesus Christ.
