HERE WE MUST BE RIGHT OR BE FINALLY LOST

By A. W. Tozer
 

    A few things, fortunately only a few, are matters of life and death, such as a compass for a sea voyage
or a guide for a journey across the desert. To ignore these vital things is not to gamble or take a chance;
it is to commit suicide.  Here it is: either be right or be dead.

    Our relation to Christ is such a matter of life or death, and on a much higher plane. The Bible-instructed
man knows that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners and that men are saved by Christ alone
altogether apart from any works of merit.

    That much is true and is known, but obviously the death and resurrection of Christ do not automatically
save everyone. How does the individual man come into saving relation to Christ? That some do, we know,
but that others do not is evident. How is the gulf bridged between redemption objectively provided and
salvation subjectively received?  How does that which Christ did for me become operative within me?

To the question "What must I do to be saved?"  We must learn the correct answer.  To fail here is not to
gamble with our souls; it is to guarantee eternal banishment from the face of God.  Here we must be
right or be finally lost.

    To this anxious question evangelical Christians provide three answers,  "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,"
"Receive Christ as your personal Saviour,"  and  "Accept Christ." Two of the answers are drawn almost
verbatim from the Scriptures (Acts 16:31, John 1:12), while the third is a kind of paraphrase meant to sum up
the other two.  They are therefore not three but one.

    Being spiritually lazy, we naturally tend to gravitate toward the easiest way of settling our religious
questions for ourselves and others; hence the formula "Accept Christ" has become a panacea of universal
application, and I believe it has been fatal to many. Though undoubtedly an occasional serious-minded
penitent may find in it all the instruction he needs to bring him into living contact with Christ, I fear that too
many seekers use it as a short cut to the Promised Land, only to find that it has led them instead to "a land
of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as
darkness."

    The trouble is that the whole  "Accept Christ"  attitude is likely to be wrong.  It shows Christ applying to
us rather than us to Him.  It makes Him stand hat-in-hand awaiting our verdict on Him, instead of our
kneeling with troubled hearts awaiting His verdict on us. It may even permit us to accept Christ by an
impulse of mind or emotions, painlessly, at no loss to our ego and no inconvenience to our usual way of life.

    For this ineffectual manner of dealing with a vital matter we might imagine some parallels; as if, for instance,
Israel in Egypt had "accepted" the blood of the Passover, but continued to live in bondage, or the prodigal
son had "accepted" his father's forgiveness and stayed on among the swine in the far country.  Is it not plain
that if accepting Christ is to mean anything there must be moral action that accords with it?

    Allowing the expression "Accept Christ" to stand as an honest effort to say in short what could not be so
well said any other way; let us see what we mean or should mean when we use it.

    To accept Christ is to form an attachment to the Person of our Lord Jesus altogether unique in human
experience.

    The attachment is intellectual, volitional and emotional.  The believer is intellectually convinced that Jesus
is both Lord and Christ; he has set his will to follow Him at cost and soon his heart is enjoying the exquisite
sweetness of His fellowship.

    This attachment is all-inclusive in that it joyfully accepts Christ for all that He is.  There is no craven division,
of offices whereby we may acknowledge His Saviourhood, today and withhold decision on His Lordship till
tomorrow. The true believer owns Christ as his All in All without reservation.  He includes all of himself,
leaving no part of his being unaffected by the revolutionary transaction.

    Further, his attachment to Christ is all-exclusive.  The Lord becomes to him not one of several rival interests,
but the one exclusive attraction forever. He orbits around Christ as the earth around the sun, held in thrall by
the magnetism of His love, drawing all his life and light and warmth from Him.  In this happy state he is given
other interests, it is true, but these are all determined by his relation to his Lord.

    That we accept Christ in this all-inclusive, all-exclusive way is a divine imperative.  Here faith makes its leap
in!  God through the Person and work of Christ, but it never, divides the work from the Person.  It believes on
the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole Christ without modification or reservation, and thus it receives and enjoys
all that He did in His work of redemption, all that He is now doing in heaven for His own and all that He does
in and through them.

    To accept Christ is to know the meaning of the words as he is, so are we in this world (1 John 4-17).
We accept His friends as our friends, His enemies as our enemies, His ways as our ways, His rejection as
our rejection, His cross as our cross,  His life as our life and His future as our future.

    If this is what we mean when we advise the seeker to accept Christ, we had better explain it to him.
He may get into deep spiritual trouble unless we do.
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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.