My Third Conversion (Closing With Christ) - Part 2

"Only he who has felt the heavy sword of the law hanging over him has learned to confess, 'Christ my righteousness.'" - E. J. Carnell

Not only did I believe in God, I believed in judgment.  And the question of how I would stand before God on the Day of Judgment was a question that weighed heavily on my mind.  What would be the basis for my acceptance before God?  What would be my plea before His throne?  Had I built my life on sand or upon a rock (Matthew 7:24-27)?

To answer these questions, I knew I had to examine myself.  I had to determine if my faith was real because Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (NIV).  And yet I had no idea how to discern with any certainty whether my faith was saving or merely the faith of demons (James 2:19).

Fortuitously (or maybe not), another avenue of self-examination came to my mind.  I had been told that repentance and faith were two sides of the same coin.  It seemed reasonable to me that if I could somehow determine my repentance was real, then I would know my faith to be real also.  So I began to examine my repentance by looking for its fruit as mentioned by John the Baptist in Matthew 3:8. 

But more than just examine the fruit I could discern, I also made a conscious effort to bring forth even more fruit.  I did this primarily by making an inventory of past wrongs, then apologizing and making restitution when necessary.  For example, I remembered having eaten with some friends at a local restaurant years earlier.  During the course of our conversation, we began to talk about a man named Heath (not his real name).  I’m not sure how he became the topic of conversation, but I said something derogatory about him.  What I didn’t realize was that his wife was our waitress that night.  I found this out only after the fact.  So during the course of my self-examination, this arose in my memory.  It bothered me that I had made this unjust comment, particularly within earshot of his wife.  I had no idea if she heard me or knew it was her husband we were talking about.  But the possibility was definitely there that I had offended her, and maybe him.

At first, I wrote them a letter to apologize and asked them to respond.  After a few days, when I hadn’t gotten a response, I became very anxious.  I needed to know if they had gotten my letter.  I needed to know if they had forgiven me.  So I convinced a friend to go with me to their house, but when we got there, neither Heath nor his wife were home.  Someone, maybe one of his children, told me that Heath was at his brother-in-law’s house a few miles away.  At that point, I just couldn't wait any longer.  I immediately went to his brother-in-law’s, knocked on the door, and asked for Heath.  When Heath got to the door, as you might imagine, he was both surprised and confused.  He said they had gotten my letter and were going to write back but just hadn’t had time.  He assured me that neither he nor his wife remembered anything about being offended by me.  Regardless, I asked for his forgiveness, and he graciously forgave.* 

Now, you would think I would have felt better, but I didn’t.  On the one hand, I was glad I had asked for forgiveness, but on the other hand, it was just another thing to check off of my very long “making amends” list.  You see, every time I checked something off, where I had gone and tried to right a wrong, it was like the Holy Spirit would just put something new on the list, something I had long forgotten but now it was brought back to my remembrance.  It was a never ending cycle.  I was never finished.  It was like an albatross around my neck.

Making amends also required a lot of wisdom.  It is surprisingly much more complicated and delicate than you would think.  Why?  Because often you can make things worse, or you can bring in other people inadvertently who are innocent in every respect and yet they suffer for it.  As Richard Baxter wrote in his Christian Directory,

“It is no duty to confess our sin to him that we have wronged, when, all things considered, it is like in the judgment of the truly wise to do more hurt than good: for it is appointed as a means to good, and not to do evil.”  

So you have to be very careful.  I learned that the hard way because I wasn't always careful.  When I tried to make amends for the past, I so wanted to know my repentance was real that I was reckless about what the consequences might be for others. Thankfully, the Lord kept me from doing any real harm, as far as I know.

But my efforts at amendment made me more and more miserable because I still could not discern if my repentance was genuine.  At times I was so distraught and distracted I would forget to eat.  I would lose weight.  I would have difficulty concentrating on even the simplest everyday tasks.  My prayers became more groans, sighs, and tears than words.  And like the Psalmist, I could say, "My heart has been smitten like grass and has withered away, indeed, I forget to eat my bread" (Psalm 102:4, NAS).  You see, I well knew of the faulty repentance of Saul, Esau, and Judas.  Remember Saul was aggrieved because of his sin.  Esau sought repentance carefully with tears.  And Judas even tried to undo what he had done.  Yet all their efforts at repentance were insufficient.  So by what objective standard was I to know if mine was real?

All the preaching I had ever heard about examining ourselves or making our calling and election sure never gave an exact standard.  They would tell you to look for certain fruit, but they never made it clear how to know if said fruit was real or artificial, that is, whether it came from a regenerate state.  You would think this would be important since much of what passes as fruit can be and often is found in the lives of those who make no pretense whatsoever about being Christians.

Frankly, having no clear standard made self-examination an exercise in futility.  To illustrate, I once heard a preacher say, when examining your repentance, that your repentance doesn’t have to be perfect.  Now, I believe he was trying to be helpful, but he really wasn’t.  Because how close to perfect must it be?  99%?  90%?  63.2%?  3%?  Without a clear line of demarcation, it’s just a guessing game.  I wanted to ask this preacher if his repentance was real, and if so, how could he know that?   

So slowly, by experience and a lack of any true alternatives, I became convinced that working your way to Heaven and working to prove that you’ve been saved by grace are, for all intents and purposes, the same thing.  Both are a heavy weight; both lead ultimately to despair because both are law and both have to be perfect.  The pastor, Torvik, in the novel Hammer of God, was right when he said “it was an altogether hopeless task to search out all sin and make amends for it.”  You might as well demand that I flap my arms and fly to Heaven.  It was and is hopeless. 

About this same time I became conversant with an older man named James Webb.  He was some kind of preacher, although at that time not affiliated with a particular church.  As far as I could tell, he just talked to people about the Scriptures, and he had started calling and coming by to see me on a regular basis.  I had told him a little about the turmoil that I was going through, so one day out of the blue, he asked me if I loved God.  I was stunned - not because he asked me about my love to God, but because I had such difficulty answering his question.  I knew what it meant if I said no, but I couldn’t honestly say yes.  The best answer I could muster was “I want to love Him.”  At the time I was not aware of Martin Luther’s reply to a similar question.  At a point in his life when he too was trying to please God by his efforts and yet felt condemned, he was asked if he truly loved God.  Luther's reply was much more blunt and honest than mine.  He said, “Love God?  Sometimes I hate Him!”

I cannot overemphasize the jolt that Mr. Webb’s question gave me.  Because how can you, by an act of your will, choose to love something or someone you don’t love?  To illustrate, as far back as I can remember, I have always detested peas.  Not only can I not stand to eat them, I can’t stand to smell or even see them.  To me, they’re nauseating.  So if someone told me I had to love peas in order to go to Heaven, I would be at a loss.  The very best I could do would be to choke them down, gagging all the way.  But no force of my will could ever make me love them.  I just couldn’t.  The same is true with loving God.  If I could not honestly say to Mr. Webb that I loved God, how could I force myself to love Him?  The law was condemning me at every turn. 

Finally, I got to a place where I was numb on the inside.  I stopped trying to do anything because I just couldn’t.  I began to pray in my heart something like this: “Lord, if you want to condemn me to Hell, I deserve it.  I am a great sinner, and if you damn me, so be it.”  I stopped contending with God that I deserved anything but Hell.  It was settled.  Ironically, I now believe that’s what the beatitude means, where our Lord says, “Blessed are the meek.”  Meekness as described by Jesus has nothing to do with a milquetoast personality or a kind of mousy disposition.  Rather, it is when someone quits contending with God and honestly says, “If you damn me to Hell, it’s right, good, and just.”  And that’s where I was.  But understand, it wasn’t something I chose to do.  It’s wasn’t a work I performed.  It’s just something that happened because the law had slain me.  I had no righteousness, real or pretended. 

Yet, one verse of Scripture kept me hanging on.  Isaiah 42:3 says, "A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out" (NIV).  If nothing else, I knew I was bruised and smoldering.  So I hoped, albeit faintly, that the Lord would yet somehow deliver me.

In this state of numbness, I didn’t know what to do with Christ or His gospel.  Yes, I wanted to go to Him for forgiveness, but I felt it necessary to have true repentance first, and as stated above, I couldn’t find that within myself.  In a blessed old book I’ll discuss below, Thomas Boston made the following observation:

“To tell sinners, that none may come to Christ, or have warrant to believe, but such as have a true repentance, must needs, in a special manner, entangle distressed consciences, so as they dare not believe, until they know their repentance to be true repentance.  This must inevitably be the issue in that case; unless they do either reject that principle, or else venture to believe without seeing their warrant.  For, howbeit they hear of Christ and his salvation offered in the gospel, these will be to them as forbidden fruit, which they are not allowed to touch, till once they are persuaded, that they have true repentance.”

How right Boston was!

Then one night in my study, I began looking at a book called The Marrow of Modern Divinity written by Edward Fischer (at least he is believed to be the author).  I didn’t know it at the time, but The Marrow had caused quite a controversy among Presbyterians in Scotland a few centuries back.  The famous preacher Thomas Boston had accidentally discovered this book and found it to be very helpful.  He defended it and was apparently involved in having it republished during his lifetime.  The copy I acquired contained notes that Boston had written which served as a running commentary on the contents of The Marrow.

Like Boston, I too discovered the book accidentally.  I had gone to a conference at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.  They allowed attendees at the conference to purchase books in their bookstore at half-price, so I bought anything and everything that looked even remotely interesting.  The Marrow was just one out of many books I purchased.  I perused it a couple of times, but it mostly sat on my bookshelf.  It wasn't until I was broken and without hope that I really started to read it.  (This is just one reason I believe in God’s providence.)

In The Marrow the author liberally quotes Martin Luther and other Reformation theologians, but the book itself is actually a theological novel about an evangelist who is dealing with someone who is a legalist, another who is an antinomian, and another who is a neophyte (a genuine, unprejudiced seeker).  In the story, the evangelist goes back and forth talking to all three men, but it gets to a point in the discussion, after the evangelist has cleared away many objections, where the neophyte wants to believe upon Christ but feels he lacks the strength to do so.

The Evangelist asks him, “But tell me truly, are you resolved to put forth all your power to believe, and so to take Christ?”

Neophyte responds:

“Truly, sir, methinks my resolution is much like the resolution of the four lepers, who sat at the gate of Samaria; for as they said, ‘If we enter into the city, the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit still here, we die also; now, therefore, let us fall unto the host of the Syrians; if they save us, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall but die,’ 2 Kings vii. 4 . . . now, therefore, though I be somewhat fearful, yet am I resolved to go unto Christ; and if I perish, I perish.”

I thought something like this as I read Neophyte’s words:

“This is me.  I can’t make myself one iota better.  Despite all my efforts to ‘prove’ my repentance and thus my salvation, I have found myself to be a spiritual leper.  Yet if I just sit in this stupor, I’ll perish.  But If I attempt to go back to my own efforts to earn or prove my salvation, I’ll also perish.  So like the lepers, I too am resolved to go to Christ just as I am and hope in His mercy.  And if I perish there, I will perish at the foot of the cross.”

Surprisingly, the evangelist’s next words were:

“Why, now I tell you the match is made; Christ is yours, and you are His, ‘this day is salvation come to your house,’ (your soul I mean:) . . . O therefore, I beseech you, stand no longer disputing; but be peremptory and resolute in your faith, and in casting yourself upon God in Christ for mercy; and let the issue be what it will.  Yet let me tell you, to your comfort, that such a resolution shall never go to hell.”

Startled, I said, “That’s it!  That’s it!  The match is made.  Christ is mine, and I am His!”  I had closed with Christ.

Now, I need to cautious about what happened next.  It was not a vision or some extra-biblical revelation.  I suppose it was more like what you see in your mind’s eye when someone speaks about Christ’s crucifixion, or you hear of His feeding of the five thousand or running the money changers out of the Temple.  You see something like a vague picture in your mind.  At that moment, I was thinking of Revelation 22:17, where it says, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”  It was then that I saw Christ standing before me extending to me a golden chalice full of water, specifically, the water of life.  This water contained everything pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).  It was righteousness (that imputed righteousness that Dr. Mahoney had spoken about years before).  It was repentance and the forgiveness of sins because Christ has been exalted to “give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel” (Acts 5:31).  It was also love to the brethren, love to God, adoption, the Holy Spirit, and even Christ Himself. 

Christ was offering all of this to me, freely, without cost or effort or conditions.  I didn’t deliberate as to whether I already had these things to some degree or another.  It was being offered to me now in totality.  So I took the cup, and I guzzled it down like a man dying of thirst.  It went up my nose and ran down my neck.  I now think I know what our Lord meant when He said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6).  I had no righteousness of my own, but Christ gave me His.  He is my righteousness.

I don’t recall the exact date this happened, but I was in my early thirties. You would think I would have been dancing, shouting, and skipping about.  But instead I went straight to bed and fell asleep.  For the first time in years, I laid my head down on a pillow without the sting of conscience reminding me of this or that sin.  And I slept.  As Psalm 127:2 says, "He giveth His beloved sleep."

*May the Lord remember Heath’s kindness to me that night and the kindness of others who likewise showed me mercy.
                                                                                                               
Note: This was the final installment of a four-part series. To view the first three parts, click on the links below.

My First Conversion
My Second Conversion
My Third Conversion (Closing With Christ) - Part 1