Is Conversion Necessary

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2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

I. IN ORDER TO SALVATION A RADICAL CHANGE IS NECESSARY.

1. Everywhere in Scripture men are divided into two classes, with a very sharp line of distinction between them — sheep lost and sheep found, guests refusing and guests feasting, wise virgins and foolish, sheep and goats, men "dead in trespasses and sin" and alive to God, men in darkness or in light, "children of God" and "children of wrath," believers who are not condemned and of those who are condemned already, etc., etc.

2. The Word of God speaks of this inward change as —

(1) a birth (John 1:12, 13 ; 1 John 5:1).

(2) A quickening (Ephesians 1:19; Ephesians 2:1).

(3) A creation, as in our text, and this also is no mere formality, or an attendant upon a rite (Galatians 6:15; Ephesians 2:10; Ephesians 4:24).

(4) A translation (Colossians 1:13).

(5) A "passing from death unto life" (1 John 3:14; John 5:24).

(6) A being "begotten again" (1 Peter 1:3; James 1:18). Can you conceive of any language more plainly descriptive of a most solemn change?

3. The Scriptures speak of it as producing a very wonderful change in the subject of it.

(1) In the character (Romans 6:17, 22; Colossians 3:9; Galatians 5:24).

(2) In feeling. Enmity to God is exchanged for love to God (Colossians 1:21). This arises very much from a change of man's judicial state before God. Before a man is converted he is condemned, but when he receives spiritual life we read "there is therefore now no condemnation," etc. This altogether changes his condition as to inward happiness (Romans 5:1, 11).

4. It is further represented as the chief blessing in the covenant of grace (Jeremiah 31:33, cf. Hebrews 10:16; Ezekiel 36:26, 27 .

II. THIS CHANGE IS FREQUENTLY VERY MARKED AS TO ITS TIME AND CIRCUMSTANCES. Many souls truly born of God could not lay their finger upon any date and say, "At such a time I passed from death unto life." Conversion is often so surrounded by restraining grace that it appears to be a very gradual thing, and the rising of the sun of righteousness in the soul is comparable to the dawning of day, with a grey light at first, and a gradual increase to a noonday splendour. Yet, as there is a time when the sun rises, so is there a time of new birth. If a dead man were restored to life, he might not be able to say exactly when life began, but there is such a moment. There must be a time when a man ceases to be an unbeliever and becomes a believer in Jesus. In many cases, however, the day, hour, and place are fully known, and we might expect this —

1. From many other works of God. How very particular God is about the time of creation! "The evening and the morning were the first day." "God said, Let there be light: and there was light." So in the miracles of Christ. The water turns at once to wine, the fig-tree immediately withers away, the loaves and fishes are at once multiplied in the hands of the disciples. Miracles of healing were as a rule instantaneous.

2. From the work itself. If it be worthy to be called a resurrection, there must manifestly be a time in which the dead man ceases to be dead and becomes alive.

3. From the conversions mentioned in Scripture. Paul was one moment an opponent of Christ, and the next was crying, "Who art Thou, Lord?" and this conversion was to be a pattern (1 Timothy 1:15, 16). Let us look at other instances. The Samaritan woman, Zacchaeus, Matthew, the three thousand at Pentecost, the Philippian jailer. It would be much more difficult to find a gradual conversion in Scripture than a sudden one.

4. From experience. The matter is one about which I feel it a weariness to argue, because these wonders of grace happen daily before our eyes, and it is like trying to prove that the sun rises in the morning.

III. THIS CHANGE IS RECOGNISABLE BY CERTAIN SIGNS.

1. A sense of sin. True conversion always has in it a humbling sense of the need of Divine grace.

2. Faith in Jesus.

3. The change of his principles, objects, desires, life. A convert once said, "Either the world is altered or else I am." The very faces of our children look different to us, for we regard them under a new aspect, viewing them as heirs of immortality. We view our friends from a different stand-point. Our very business seems altered. We learn to sanctify the hammer and the plough by serving the Lord with them.

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