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The
Evidence of Changed Lives – The Case Against Human Nature |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J.
Morgan In
our study of Christian evidences, tonight I’d like to present
the case for Christianity in very practical terms. In other words, there is a pragmatic
test. There is a great
question: Does it work? If Christianity is true, don’t
you think it ought to make a difference in the lives of those who profess it?
Don’t you think it should
make bad people good, and good people better? The great apologist, Bernard Ramm, said:
Christianity “must not only provide us with the materials of a
great philosophy, a great theology.
It must have a relevancy or tangency to human experience.” This is the presentation of the Gospel that most influences people. They may not engage us in philosophical debates or theological discussions. But Peter said that they’ll see our joy, and when they see the hope within us, they’ll ask a reason. And we should always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within us. It’s one of our greatest weapons, one of the greatest apologetics. I heard one man put it like this: If your car broke down late at night in a rough neighborhood and you saw a dozen rough and rugged men approaching you, would it make any difference to you if there were just coming out of a Bible study? I’d like to discuss this in three phases. The Justification
Change First, there is a change that takes place at justification, when we turn our lives over to Jesus Christ. “If any man be in Christ,” says 2 Corinthians 5:17, “he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” Several
years ago, I was speaking in Have
you noticed that whenever the apostle The Jews all know the way I have lived ever since I was
a child, from the beginning of my life in my own country, and also in How can you explain the fact that the greatest destroyer of Christianity became its greatest defender? How can you explain his metamorphosis, as he gladly endured a lifetime of shame, suffering, and the executioner’s sword to spread the faith he had once labored to despoil? The mind of Saul of Tarsus was brilliant. His training was superb. His passion was unquenchable. His background and heritage flowed with the Jewish blood of a hundred generations. Yet in one moment he was transformed from the greatest enemy the early church ever faced into the greatest missionary the world has ever known. What power could so change a life? The Gospel! And the Gospel’s chain of witnesses from the days of Saul of Tarsus to our own is unbroken, and it grows stronger still. We could tell stories from every generation of the Christian era. But I would like to skip from Paul’s day to our own times, looking at stories of people whose lives have been transformed by the sheer force of Jesus Christ through nothing more than their eyes falling upon the powerful pages of Scripture. Perhaps the purest testimonies are of those who are changed—not by persuasive personalities or spell-binding oratory or magnetic appeals—but by merely reading the Word of God itself, finding in it the voltage and veracity necessary to meet the deepest needs of their lives. Some time ago, I read a remarkable story about a man named is Gary Fossen. He
was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison. He felt no remorse and described
himself as an animal. One day a
clergyman came to his prison and started talking about Jesus Christ. Sometime
later, Gary Fossen grew unbelievably lonely and
decided to kill himself. A former
paramedic in a nearby cell told him how to cut himself with razor blades so
that he would bleed freely and die quickly. They smuggled in a razor, and Then he remembered the little book under his bunk. He thought perhaps he should at least read a verse of Scripture before killing himself. He turned to Romans and started reading chapter 6. He went on to Romans 7 and 8. He said, “I had never read the Bible before and the words started burning inside of me.” He knelt by his bunk and began trying to pray. He asked God to show him how to be sorry because he still had no remorse. “That night, I saw a slow-motion movie of my life,” he later said. “I saw every wicked thing I had ever done and I began to write them all down. The list went on for page and page and I wept over each one. I had not cried at all after the murders, but here I was in my cell crying.” That night forever changed Gary Fossen. “I was still in prison, but it didn’t matter. That was the end of the pain and loneliness. I would never be alone again. I am still in prison, but I thank God for His Word that is so powerful that it cut into the deep calluses of my heart and seared through all the layers of hate.” Now,
ask yourself—can Shakespeare have such an effect? Can Homer or Milton? Or, for that matter, can the writings
of The Sanctification Change Now there is a second kind of change I’d like to mention, and that’s the change brought about by sanctification, or by Christian growth. When we come to Christ our lives are changed. There’s no doubt about that. But we are by no means perfect. And so here we come to church, and we’re all forgiven but imperfect sinners. And so we become a forgiven but imperfect church. One of the greatest excuses people use for not coming to church is that it’s full of hypocrites. When someone says that to me, I say, “Yes, absolutely it is. Do you think Christians are perfect people? Don’t you realize that in every congregation there are those of varying levels of maturity. We have some very mature Christians in our church, and we have some immature ones. We have some weak ones, and we have some strong ones. And all of us are—to some degree—hypocritical, because we don’t always do what we know we should do. Every member of my church occasionally fails. And I’m the biggest hypocrite of all. I’ve studied the Bible all my life and I still fall short. Sometimes I’m selfish; sometimes I lose my temper; sometimes I think a wrong thought; sometimes I say an unkind word; sometimes I’m proud and difficult. I serve a perfect God and study a perfect Book, but I’m not a perfect person. There are areas in which I know to do better than I do. I’m a hypocrite. And if you’re letting that excuse keep you out of church, then you’d just as well die and got to hell right now, because the church in this world is always going to be full of imperfect people.” But Christ is perfecting us. He is growing us. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. We had a man working for us at our house this week, and presently he said how he and his wife had prayed about something. I said, “So are you a Christian?” He replied, “Oh,
yes. I’ve been a Christian
for a long time, but I had a lot of baggage I hadn’t dealt with from
high school. I’d held some
things against some people and I had developed a hatred for some of my old
buddies. I was a Christian, but I
was a very bitter man. Then I
went to the Billy Graham Crusade here in The Glorification Difference Finally there is the glorification difference. One day we will be perfect. Look at 2 Corinthians 5: “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” This isn’t an apologetic, of course. We can’t use this as a defense of the faith, because it’s something reserved for heaven; but it’s part of the picture. When we are justified, we are saved from the penalty of sin. As we are being sanctified, we’re being saved from the power of sin. When we are glorified, we will be saved from the very presence of sin. And this three-fold salvation makes us into different people, and that difference is a very powerful presentation of the Gospel. There once was a powerful British preacher named Hugh Price Hughes. One day, the infidel and notorious freethinker, Charles Bradlaugh, challenged Hughes to a debate. Hughes accepted with a counterchallenge: “I’ll bring one hundred whose lives have been changed by the Gospel; you bring one hundred whose lives have been changed through your testimony. Bradlaugh never showed up, and Hughes turned the occasion into a great testimony meeting. Let me end with one question. When people look at your life, do they see the evidence of the transforming power of Christ? There’s an old poem that says: You are writing a gospel, a chapter each day, By the deeds that you do, by the words that you say; Men read what you write, whether faithless or true. Say—what is the
gospel according to you? Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office. |
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