The Gamble Life or Death

If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense, and leap by faith into what He says. Once you obey, you will immediately find that what He says is as solidly consistent as common sense.
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 relationship to Christ is such a matter of life or death and on a much higher plane. The Bible believing man knows that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners and that men are saved by Christ alone altogether apart from the works or doing good deeds.

That much is true and is known, but obviously the death and resurrection of Christ do no automatically save everyone. What is the game plan? How does the one come into a saving relationship 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 and eternally lost.

To this anxious question evangelical Christians provide three answers, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” “Receive Jesus Christ as your personal Savior,” and “Accept Christ or making a Commitment to follow Christ.” Two 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 not three but one.

If we use the expression “Accepting or Committing to Christ” 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, a conscious choice and emotional. The new believer is intellectually convinced that Jesus is both Lord and Christ; he has set his will to follow Him at any cost and soon his heart is enjoying the exquisite sweetness of His fellowship.

The all the attachment is all-inclusive in that it joyfully accepts Christ for all that He is. 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 wager to believe.

The attachment to Christ is all-exclusive. Jesus becomes not one of several rival interests in the game of life, but the all in all exclusive attraction forever.

That we accept Christ in this all-inclusive, all-exclusive way is a divine imperative. Faith makes its leap into God through the Person and work of Christ. It believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole Christ without changing His game plan. The plan is presented in the Bible and is the inspired plan of salvation that God offers the world without reservation.

The one going all-in spiritually by being reborn receives and enjoys all that Jesus 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 go all in with Christ is to know the meaning of the words “as he is, so are we in this world” (I John 4:17). We accept His friends as our friends, His enemies as our enemies, His ways as our ways, His rejection as our rejections. His cross as our cross, His life as our life and His future as our future. Once and for all we are all incorporated in Him for eternity.

JESUS’ ALL-IN PRAYER OF ITENERANT EVANGELISM

“I am not praying for these alone but also for the future believers who will come to me because of the testimony of these. My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are, Father that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me.” – John 17:20-21