The question of why I still believe in Jesus, why I believe in the triune God of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit, and why I still believe in the Bible as God's Word (not merely the opinions of uneducated fishermen and farmers), and in Salvation from Sin and in Christ's Church, &c., does not concern the origins of my faith (as debated by Calvinists, Arminians, etc.). So this post is not intended for theological debate. My writing this has more to do with apologetics--the giving of reasons or arguments as to why I even began to believe in Jesus Christ in May of 1995 and why I still believe. This is my story. I can only answer for myself. You have your own story.
Let me be clear about what I mean by the word believe (faith and trust in Jesus). I was raised in a conservative Southern Baptist Christian home and we all attended Church every Sunday (morning and evening service) and Wednesday nights. By age seven I understood my need of faith in Jesus to save me from my sins. As much as a seven-year-old can understand trusting in Christ, to be saved from sins, I "believed" in Jesus. During my teens, however, there was no fruit produced from this belief in Jesus. After graduating high school, I moved away from home, intent on not living out faith in Jesus. I believed in His existence but I did not care much about Him. I was living in sin. I did not come to personally trust in Him until I was 27 years old; and what I mean by "trust in Him" is that I now believe that what He accomplished on the Cross, to atone for my sins by His blood, and in His being raised from the dead--through which God justifies me in His sight (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26; 10:9, 10). I trust that God took all of my sins and laid them on Christ and that God took all of Christ's righteousness and laid it upon me (Rom. 4:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25). What I have just described is biblical faith--what it means to believe in Jesus.
IN THE BEGINNING
Without Scripture we would have to rely on stories handed down to us through the ages--much as did the Jewish people under the Old Covenant (Old Testament / Hebrew Scriptures). People encountered God through various means four to six thousand years ago: "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways" (Heb. 1:1 NIV). The record shows that, after Adam and Eve birthed Cain and Abel, they bore Seth, and then Seth and his wife bore Enosh. We then read: "Then people began to call upon [or began to be called by] the Name of the LORD" (Gen. 3:26 NASB). God's Name is YHWH (Ex. 3:14, 15), אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה, the four-lettered Name of God; some spell the Name of God in English as Yahweh. In Latin His Name becomes Jehovah (there is no Y in Latin so Y becomes J; the W in Latin becomes V; so YHWH becomes JHVH, JeHoVaH, Jehovah). After Seth then Adam "fathered other sons and daughters" (Gen. 5:4 NASB). Mysteriously, hundreds of years later in the chronology of the Text, we read about a man named Enoch, who "walked with [or pleased] God; and [then] he [was not found, Septuagint], for God took [or received] him [unto Himself to be where He is]" (Gen. 5:23-24). Enoch is separated out from others recorded in this section as someone peculiar: he "walked," denoting faithful or trusting intimacy in fellowship, with God. That is all the information we have: Enoch, in some familial form, maintained a close and personal and intimate relationship with God his Creator.
The author of Hebrews writes: "By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: 'He could not be found, because God had taken him away.' For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God" (Heb. 11:5 NIV). We read in Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers: "Really it [the Genesis account] gives the cause of which the Greek phrase is the effect; for it denotes a steady continuance in well-doing and a life spent in the immediate presence of and in constant communion with God." How is Enoch so pleasing to God that He received him into His own presence from this life to the next without Enoch experiencing death?
Where Adam fails, Enoch, by the proactive and effectual grace of God ("for without Me," says Jesus at John 15:5, "you can do nothing" of any spiritual worth), succeeds, so that God would take Enoch unto Himself. McClaren's Expositions, regarding God's taking or receiving of Enoch, offers the following: That seems to imply that Enoch, "as it were, slipped out of sight or suddenly disappeared; as one of the Psalms says, 'I looked, and lo! he was not' [Ps. 37:6]. He was there a moment ago--now he is gone; and my text tells how that sudden withdrawal came about. God, with whom he walked, put out His hand and took him to Himself. Of course! What other end could there be to a life that was all passed in communion with God except that [culmination] and crown of it all--the lifting of the man into closer communion with his Father and his Friend?" This reminds us that we are as close to God as we long to be. We are as holy as we want to be--no excuses.
Others did not experience God in such dramatic ways. Still, God selected people whom He called prophets to call us unto Himself, because God wanted and God still wants a salvific or saving communion, fellowship, association, familiarity, loving and trusting relationship with the creatures He created in His own image and likeness. If you think God is distant from you then I assure you that is merely a false notion in your mind: He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:27). He determined our boundaries so that we would seek Him (Acts 17:28). Yet, in our fallenness, our brokenness, in our often sin-riddled state of mind, we do not always and naturally seek Him (Rom. 3:11).
If you think God is angry at you for the sheer joy of being angry at sin and at sinners then you are mistaken. "He who sees God as angry does not see Him rightly," writes Reformer Martin Luther, but rather "looks [at God] only [as through] a curtain--as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face [and hiding the true nature of God]." Do not fail to embrace the truth that the love God possesses compelled Him to save sinners (John 3:16). God did not send Jesus to the earth in order to condemn sinners but to save sinners (John 3:17). Luther viewed God as requiring sinless perfection of him and, if he failed to merit salvation, then this angry God would gleefully send him to Hell for all eternity. However, reading Paul's letter to the Romans, he learned the truth that, apart from trying to be a good and decent person and trying to perform enough good deeds whereby God is able to then justify a sinner (an impossibility), God, on the contrary, will justify the person who trusts (places his faith) in what Christ the King accomplished on his or her behalf on the Cross (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26).
If you think God has no right to be angry with you then you are far from the truth: "For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; no evil dwells with You. The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood; the LORD abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit" (Ps. 5:4-6 NASB). You must embrace Jesus Christ, the one who died for sin upon the Cross, so that you may be saved (John 3:16) from the wrath of God against sinners who defiantly sin against Him (John 3:36b). We learn this biblical truth from the author of Hebrews: For if we go on sinning willfully and defiantly after receiving the knowledge of
The situation is not that God will "damn" or condemn you if you don't love Him and believe in Jesus. You are already condemned (John 3:18, 36), already cursed (Jude 1:12), spiritual dead and cut off from relationship to God (Isa. 59:2) because of your sins (Eph. 2:1, 2, 3). Jesus atoned for the sins of those who would believe / trust in His atoning sacrifice and thereby be saved by the grace of God. "Those who believe in the Son will bask in Eternal Life. But those who disobey [refuse to trust in] the Son will never experience Life. They will know only God's lingering wrath" (John 3:36). Jesus is your safety against God's coming wrath (1 Thess. 1:10). No one on earth receives injustice from God.
Do you now imagine that I am in any sense attempting to control you, or manipulate you, by bringing up Hell and Sin and Judgment and Wrath? What would I personally gain from that? I have no idea who will ever read this brief piece. I receive no money from this blog or from any religious or publishing organization. If the apostle Paul says that Jesus saves us from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:10), and I mention that passage, am I attempting to control you or manipulate you or frighten you into submission? Submission to who? Certainly not to me--someone you do not know and cannot obey. If I quote John's words, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey [or whoever does not believe, NKJV] the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him" (John 3:36 ESV), am I attempting to scare you into trusting in Jesus Christ from some devious or questionable or suspect or corrupt motive? What could I possibly gain? You say you don't believe in Hell--you don't believe in a wrath of God to come upon non-believers--you believe that God will unconditionally save all. Well, good for you. I hope you're right. Because if you're wrong then you can't possibly change God's mind. Good luck with that.
THE BIBLE
"But," you ask, "why do you begin with the biblical account? If I, as an unbeliever, consider the Bible to be merely the words of uneducated men then why would I or should I care about the Bible?" I begin with the Bible because we, today, are not relying on mere oral stories passed down to us from prophets two thousand years ago. We have historical written documents, a collection of books, which are inspired, breathed out by God (2 Tim. 3:16 ESV), a trustworthy record of the History of God and His people, a History of God's Son offering Salvation to the creatures He created in His image, which is "able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 3:15). B.B. Warfield says: "The Bible is the Word of God in such a way that, when the Bible speaks, God speaks." Why do I think you should trust the Bible?
I trust the Bible as the inspired Word of God, authoritative in the life of the believer, because I believe, in the words of Voddie Baucham, that the Bible is "a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses" who were there and who could verify what was recorded, particularly in the New Testament, as actually happening. In other words, if what the scriptures taught were in error, there were so many eyewitnesses who could have spoken out and inform others that what was written was not in fact true and did not happen in that manner--and no one did. The scriptures "report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed that their writings are divine, rather than [merely] human, in origin."1 God superintended the writing of His Word, the graphé (2 Tim. 3:16), i.e., the Word, not the man, is inspired and works in the hearts of mortals. Consider the prophecies in the scriptures.
There are approximately 2,500 prophecies recorded in the Bible--2,000 of which have already been fulfilled. The remaining prophecies concern future events. Hugh Ross rightly notes: "Since the probability for any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively), and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error" is less than one in 10 to the 2,000th power (1 with 2,000 zeros). By adding the notion of prophecies being fulfilled "by chance," given the obvious statistical improbability, our only conclusion is that God foretold His prophets, and others, of future events and they unfolded just as He directed the course of events throughout history.
You may sense that I am trying to prove the Bible is trustworthy and authoritative. But Voddie Baucham challenges us as believers to, rather, "answer the question of why I choose to believe it."2 No amount of data will convince someone to trust in the veracity of the Bible or even to trust in Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior. If someone is intent on not believing then he or she will find their own reasons to justifiably remain in unbelief. Such people will insist, for instance, that the prophecies in Scripture were recorded after the events mentioned (even though all of them were recorded hundreds to at times thousands of years prior). They will believe that monks altered the scriptures and corrupted original texts due to a political or theological agenda (even though Dr. Bart Ehrman himself once conceded that all the textual variants do not affect any essential theological doctrine). I choose to believe the Bible is God's Word to us because of the thousands upon thousands of corroborated eyewitness accounts of the natural and supernatural events that they record. The eye-witnesses corroborate the accounts.
Eyewitnesses saw Jesus suffering on the Cross for six hours; they saw Him breathe His last breath; they saw the soldier pierce His side, watched as water and blood flowed out from Him, thus proving He was dead; and they witnessed Him alive again from death. How can we deny all of these eyewitnesses? That would be like denying that thousands of people witnessed the Twin Towers in New York City fall on September 11, 2001, an event that was video-displayed (and recorded) for us to watch in real-time and re-watch. We cannot deny what we witnessed. Neither can the people in the first-century deny what they saw. Hence the questions: What will we do with Jesus?
Given the verified and uncontested fact in human psychology that mass delusions are an impossibility then we must conclude that, after Jesus' resurrection from the dead, when He "appeared to more than five hundred ... at one time, most of whom are still alive" and could verify the fact (1 Cor. 15:6 ESV), His appearance was substantially verified. He was crucified on a Cross as witnessed by multitudes of people; He physically died from crucifixion and was removed from the Cross and buried in a tomb as witnessed by many people; and He resurrected and was seen by more than 500 people at one given setting alone (besides the many other occasions when many others saw Him alive again).
Since we know that delusions are "a symptom of either a medical, neurological, or mental disorder," and that the idea of there being over 500 people with the same delusional disorder were present to witness Jesus alive after having died on the Cross of Calvary and buried in a tomb is improbable at best, then all these recorded eyewitnesses give validity to Jesus doing what He said He would do (die for the sin of sinners and be raised back to life) and that He in fact was who He said He was and is who He said He is (Son of God, LORD of all, Christ the King).
DESERVING OF DEATH
Given my belief in Jesus, due to the accuracy of God's Word, I am confronted with one basic fact about my humanity: I have sinned. I have committed wrong-doing against a holy God and against other people created in God's image. We all have sinned (Rom. 3:23). What can I do about my sin? I can trust that, what Jesus accomplished on the Cross, He did for me and be graciously saved through faith; or I can refuse to believe and remain in my sins. If I choose to remain in my sins then I am confessing that I do not care about what Jesus accomplished on my behalf, and I do not care how I have offended my Creator, and I do not care about my eternal soul. The sins I have committed--the sins we all have committed--are worthy of death (Rom. 1:32; 6:23). This is why Jesus had to die on our behalf. God could not merely forgive us: justice for our sins demanded payment. So God provided for Himself (cf. Gen. 22:8) an atoning sacrifice in the Person of Jesus Christ (John 3:15, 16), electing to save the believing ones (1 Cor. 1:21), those trusting in Christ and Christ alone (John 3:36; Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26).
But understand this in all of its terrifying truth: God is not pleading with you to believe in His Son Christ Jesus and He is not requesting you to invite Jesus into your heart. God commands you to repent of your sins and to trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior (Acts 17:30). Your greatest sin, your unforgivable sin, is unbelief. God is not standing by, biting His divine fingernails, hoping that you will freely choose to believe. He stands over you, as your Creator and your King, and commands you to believe (John 6:29). Your unbelief is an abominable sin. This is why Jesus teaches that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin: "because they do not believe in Me" (John 16:8, 9). On your own, you stand as a defiant and rebellious sinner, mocking your Creator-Savior while you proverbially make lewd gestures in His face. He is not pleading with you, like some weakened grandfather, but is commanding you as rightful King to trust in His Son and be saved. This is why the author, with trembling hands, writes: "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31).
BORN AGAIN
The person who believes / trusts / exercises faith in Jesus is a regenerated child of God (John 1:12, 13; 3:3-8; Eph. 2:1, 2, 3; Titus 3:5). God generated us, gave us life, and He is the only one who can regenerate us, give us new life, because we do not have the power to give ourselves new life. Our sinning caused a spiritual separation between us and God (Isa. 59:2) and caused our spiritual death (Rom. 7:9)--we were "cut off" from a right relationship with God on account of sin and we spiritually died because of the sins we defiantly committed (Eph. 2:1, 2, 3). Our spiritual death requires a spiritual life and that can only happen by the power of God the father, by God the Son, in the effectual working of God the Holy Spirit. You cannot effect your own spiritual birth any more than you could effect your initial physical birth: regeneration is God's work. God, in / by / through the effectual working of the Holy Spirit, regenerates and resurrects and saves (Eph. 2:1, 2, 3; Titus 3:5)--this by His grace in Christ (Eph. 2:8) by the effectual Gospel (Rom. 1:16, 17). Salvation belongs to Him and He grants salvation freely.
I can argue that, because I experienced being born again (being regenerated), this is why I believe in Jesus and why I trust Scripture. But experiences can be deceptive. I have seen a Mormon elder cry in testimony of what his "Jesus" has done for him but that does not make Mormonism or his experience true. I have witnessed Buddhists give testimony of how the teachings of Buddhism have changed them inwardly but that does not make Buddhism or their experiences true. Voddie Baucham recounts how the Nation of Islam's false Messiah Elijah Muhammad changed (affected) Malcolm X inwardly until Malcolm discovered that his Messiah was a fraud. (He then converted to Islam.) "The lie that changed his life was still a lie. Subjective stories of dramatic transformations are not a reliable test of the truth."3 I can confess that I feel differently on the inside and other people will all-too-eagerly point out my faults, flaws and sins, noting that I am far from perfect, so as to undermine my experience and undermine the truth of Scripture. They are right: I am far, so far, from being perfect.
CONCLUSION
Make no mistake about regeneration, though, as Jesus insists: "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again" (John 3:3 NIV). You answer back: "But you said that only God can make a person born again. He has not regenerated me so He must not love me and He must not want me to be saved." On the contrary, Scripture answers you back, "He came to what was His own, yet His own [Jewish] people did not accept Him. But to all [Jew and Gentile, Eph. 2:11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22] who did receive Him, to those who believe in His Name [the Father bestowed upon Jesus the Divine Name of God, YHWH, cf. Ex. 3:14, 15; John 17:6, 11, 12, 26; Phil. 2:5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], He [Himself] gave the right to become [because we are not born automatically] children of God [Rom. 8:14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19; Gal. 3:26; 4:4, 5, 6, 7; Eph. 1:5, 11; 1 John 3:1]. They were born, not of blood, or of the desire of the flesh, or of a husband's will, but born of God" (John 1:10-12 EHV). You cannot make yourself spiritually alive, true, but if that disturbs you then run to God through Christ Jesus and you will discover a God who has always loved you and who always will. If this troubles you then call out to God! He is calling out to you.
__________
1 Voddie Baucham, "Why You Can Believe the Bible," in One Foundation: Essays on the Sufficiency of Scripture, ed. Jeremiah Johnson (Valencia: Grace to You, 2019), 23.
2 Ibid., 22.
3 Ibid., 21.
Let me be clear about what I mean by the word believe (faith and trust in Jesus). I was raised in a conservative Southern Baptist Christian home and we all attended Church every Sunday (morning and evening service) and Wednesday nights. By age seven I understood my need of faith in Jesus to save me from my sins. As much as a seven-year-old can understand trusting in Christ, to be saved from sins, I "believed" in Jesus. During my teens, however, there was no fruit produced from this belief in Jesus. After graduating high school, I moved away from home, intent on not living out faith in Jesus. I believed in His existence but I did not care much about Him. I was living in sin. I did not come to personally trust in Him until I was 27 years old; and what I mean by "trust in Him" is that I now believe that what He accomplished on the Cross, to atone for my sins by His blood, and in His being raised from the dead--through which God justifies me in His sight (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26; 10:9, 10). I trust that God took all of my sins and laid them on Christ and that God took all of Christ's righteousness and laid it upon me (Rom. 4:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25). What I have just described is biblical faith--what it means to believe in Jesus.
IN THE BEGINNING
Without Scripture we would have to rely on stories handed down to us through the ages--much as did the Jewish people under the Old Covenant (Old Testament / Hebrew Scriptures). People encountered God through various means four to six thousand years ago: "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways" (Heb. 1:1 NIV). The record shows that, after Adam and Eve birthed Cain and Abel, they bore Seth, and then Seth and his wife bore Enosh. We then read: "Then people began to call upon [or began to be called by] the Name of the LORD" (Gen. 3:26 NASB). God's Name is YHWH (Ex. 3:14, 15), אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה, the four-lettered Name of God; some spell the Name of God in English as Yahweh. In Latin His Name becomes Jehovah (there is no Y in Latin so Y becomes J; the W in Latin becomes V; so YHWH becomes JHVH, JeHoVaH, Jehovah). After Seth then Adam "fathered other sons and daughters" (Gen. 5:4 NASB). Mysteriously, hundreds of years later in the chronology of the Text, we read about a man named Enoch, who "walked with [or pleased] God; and [then] he [was not found, Septuagint], for God took [or received] him [unto Himself to be where He is]" (Gen. 5:23-24). Enoch is separated out from others recorded in this section as someone peculiar: he "walked," denoting faithful or trusting intimacy in fellowship, with God. That is all the information we have: Enoch, in some familial form, maintained a close and personal and intimate relationship with God his Creator.
The author of Hebrews writes: "By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: 'He could not be found, because God had taken him away.' For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God" (Heb. 11:5 NIV). We read in Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers: "Really it [the Genesis account] gives the cause of which the Greek phrase is the effect; for it denotes a steady continuance in well-doing and a life spent in the immediate presence of and in constant communion with God." How is Enoch so pleasing to God that He received him into His own presence from this life to the next without Enoch experiencing death?
Where Adam fails, Enoch, by the proactive and effectual grace of God ("for without Me," says Jesus at John 15:5, "you can do nothing" of any spiritual worth), succeeds, so that God would take Enoch unto Himself. McClaren's Expositions, regarding God's taking or receiving of Enoch, offers the following: That seems to imply that Enoch, "as it were, slipped out of sight or suddenly disappeared; as one of the Psalms says, 'I looked, and lo! he was not' [Ps. 37:6]. He was there a moment ago--now he is gone; and my text tells how that sudden withdrawal came about. God, with whom he walked, put out His hand and took him to Himself. Of course! What other end could there be to a life that was all passed in communion with God except that [culmination] and crown of it all--the lifting of the man into closer communion with his Father and his Friend?" This reminds us that we are as close to God as we long to be. We are as holy as we want to be--no excuses.
Others did not experience God in such dramatic ways. Still, God selected people whom He called prophets to call us unto Himself, because God wanted and God still wants a salvific or saving communion, fellowship, association, familiarity, loving and trusting relationship with the creatures He created in His own image and likeness. If you think God is distant from you then I assure you that is merely a false notion in your mind: He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:27). He determined our boundaries so that we would seek Him (Acts 17:28). Yet, in our fallenness, our brokenness, in our often sin-riddled state of mind, we do not always and naturally seek Him (Rom. 3:11).
If you think God is angry at you for the sheer joy of being angry at sin and at sinners then you are mistaken. "He who sees God as angry does not see Him rightly," writes Reformer Martin Luther, but rather "looks [at God] only [as through] a curtain--as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face [and hiding the true nature of God]." Do not fail to embrace the truth that the love God possesses compelled Him to save sinners (John 3:16). God did not send Jesus to the earth in order to condemn sinners but to save sinners (John 3:17). Luther viewed God as requiring sinless perfection of him and, if he failed to merit salvation, then this angry God would gleefully send him to Hell for all eternity. However, reading Paul's letter to the Romans, he learned the truth that, apart from trying to be a good and decent person and trying to perform enough good deeds whereby God is able to then justify a sinner (an impossibility), God, on the contrary, will justify the person who trusts (places his faith) in what Christ the King accomplished on his or her behalf on the Cross (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26).
If you think God has no right to be angry with you then you are far from the truth: "For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; no evil dwells with You. The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood; the LORD abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit" (Ps. 5:4-6 NASB). You must embrace Jesus Christ, the one who died for sin upon the Cross, so that you may be saved (John 3:16) from the wrath of God against sinners who defiantly sin against Him (John 3:36b). We learn this biblical truth from the author of Hebrews: For if we go on sinning willfully and defiantly after receiving the knowledge of
the [Gospel of] truth [Gal. 2:5; Col. 1:5; the Gospel of our Salvation, Eph. 1:13], there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins [Jesus is our one and only sacrifice for sins], but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the Blood of the Covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted [the Holy Spirit] of grace? For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay." And again, "The Lord will judge His people." It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:26-31 NASB).If you think God is being unfair, in requiring faith in what Jesus accomplished on the Cross of Calvary, or else He will "send you to Hell" then consider this: You, in your sinful state, are already headed to Hell on your own. You are already running toward Hell with all your might. God is stepping in front of your sprint toward Hell to offer you His salvation every time you encounter the Gospel. Will you now spite Him for this grace that could save you? Why, why are you so bitter, so resistant? Would you be equally as bitter to someone who saved you from being hit by a bus, or a train, or from drowning? Why does the notion of "salvation" so offend your senses and your intellect?
The situation is not that God will "damn" or condemn you if you don't love Him and believe in Jesus. You are already condemned (John 3:18, 36), already cursed (Jude 1:12), spiritual dead and cut off from relationship to God (Isa. 59:2) because of your sins (Eph. 2:1, 2, 3). Jesus atoned for the sins of those who would believe / trust in His atoning sacrifice and thereby be saved by the grace of God. "Those who believe in the Son will bask in Eternal Life. But those who disobey [refuse to trust in] the Son will never experience Life. They will know only God's lingering wrath" (John 3:36). Jesus is your safety against God's coming wrath (1 Thess. 1:10). No one on earth receives injustice from God.
Do you now imagine that I am in any sense attempting to control you, or manipulate you, by bringing up Hell and Sin and Judgment and Wrath? What would I personally gain from that? I have no idea who will ever read this brief piece. I receive no money from this blog or from any religious or publishing organization. If the apostle Paul says that Jesus saves us from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:10), and I mention that passage, am I attempting to control you or manipulate you or frighten you into submission? Submission to who? Certainly not to me--someone you do not know and cannot obey. If I quote John's words, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey [or whoever does not believe, NKJV] the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him" (John 3:36 ESV), am I attempting to scare you into trusting in Jesus Christ from some devious or questionable or suspect or corrupt motive? What could I possibly gain? You say you don't believe in Hell--you don't believe in a wrath of God to come upon non-believers--you believe that God will unconditionally save all. Well, good for you. I hope you're right. Because if you're wrong then you can't possibly change God's mind. Good luck with that.
THE BIBLE
"But," you ask, "why do you begin with the biblical account? If I, as an unbeliever, consider the Bible to be merely the words of uneducated men then why would I or should I care about the Bible?" I begin with the Bible because we, today, are not relying on mere oral stories passed down to us from prophets two thousand years ago. We have historical written documents, a collection of books, which are inspired, breathed out by God (2 Tim. 3:16 ESV), a trustworthy record of the History of God and His people, a History of God's Son offering Salvation to the creatures He created in His image, which is "able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 3:15). B.B. Warfield says: "The Bible is the Word of God in such a way that, when the Bible speaks, God speaks." Why do I think you should trust the Bible?
I trust the Bible as the inspired Word of God, authoritative in the life of the believer, because I believe, in the words of Voddie Baucham, that the Bible is "a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses" who were there and who could verify what was recorded, particularly in the New Testament, as actually happening. In other words, if what the scriptures taught were in error, there were so many eyewitnesses who could have spoken out and inform others that what was written was not in fact true and did not happen in that manner--and no one did. The scriptures "report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed that their writings are divine, rather than [merely] human, in origin."1 God superintended the writing of His Word, the graphé (2 Tim. 3:16), i.e., the Word, not the man, is inspired and works in the hearts of mortals. Consider the prophecies in the scriptures.
There are approximately 2,500 prophecies recorded in the Bible--2,000 of which have already been fulfilled. The remaining prophecies concern future events. Hugh Ross rightly notes: "Since the probability for any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively), and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error" is less than one in 10 to the 2,000th power (1 with 2,000 zeros). By adding the notion of prophecies being fulfilled "by chance," given the obvious statistical improbability, our only conclusion is that God foretold His prophets, and others, of future events and they unfolded just as He directed the course of events throughout history.
You may sense that I am trying to prove the Bible is trustworthy and authoritative. But Voddie Baucham challenges us as believers to, rather, "answer the question of why I choose to believe it."2 No amount of data will convince someone to trust in the veracity of the Bible or even to trust in Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior. If someone is intent on not believing then he or she will find their own reasons to justifiably remain in unbelief. Such people will insist, for instance, that the prophecies in Scripture were recorded after the events mentioned (even though all of them were recorded hundreds to at times thousands of years prior). They will believe that monks altered the scriptures and corrupted original texts due to a political or theological agenda (even though Dr. Bart Ehrman himself once conceded that all the textual variants do not affect any essential theological doctrine). I choose to believe the Bible is God's Word to us because of the thousands upon thousands of corroborated eyewitness accounts of the natural and supernatural events that they record. The eye-witnesses corroborate the accounts.
Eyewitnesses saw Jesus suffering on the Cross for six hours; they saw Him breathe His last breath; they saw the soldier pierce His side, watched as water and blood flowed out from Him, thus proving He was dead; and they witnessed Him alive again from death. How can we deny all of these eyewitnesses? That would be like denying that thousands of people witnessed the Twin Towers in New York City fall on September 11, 2001, an event that was video-displayed (and recorded) for us to watch in real-time and re-watch. We cannot deny what we witnessed. Neither can the people in the first-century deny what they saw. Hence the questions: What will we do with Jesus?
Given the verified and uncontested fact in human psychology that mass delusions are an impossibility then we must conclude that, after Jesus' resurrection from the dead, when He "appeared to more than five hundred ... at one time, most of whom are still alive" and could verify the fact (1 Cor. 15:6 ESV), His appearance was substantially verified. He was crucified on a Cross as witnessed by multitudes of people; He physically died from crucifixion and was removed from the Cross and buried in a tomb as witnessed by many people; and He resurrected and was seen by more than 500 people at one given setting alone (besides the many other occasions when many others saw Him alive again).
Since we know that delusions are "a symptom of either a medical, neurological, or mental disorder," and that the idea of there being over 500 people with the same delusional disorder were present to witness Jesus alive after having died on the Cross of Calvary and buried in a tomb is improbable at best, then all these recorded eyewitnesses give validity to Jesus doing what He said He would do (die for the sin of sinners and be raised back to life) and that He in fact was who He said He was and is who He said He is (Son of God, LORD of all, Christ the King).
DESERVING OF DEATH
Given my belief in Jesus, due to the accuracy of God's Word, I am confronted with one basic fact about my humanity: I have sinned. I have committed wrong-doing against a holy God and against other people created in God's image. We all have sinned (Rom. 3:23). What can I do about my sin? I can trust that, what Jesus accomplished on the Cross, He did for me and be graciously saved through faith; or I can refuse to believe and remain in my sins. If I choose to remain in my sins then I am confessing that I do not care about what Jesus accomplished on my behalf, and I do not care how I have offended my Creator, and I do not care about my eternal soul. The sins I have committed--the sins we all have committed--are worthy of death (Rom. 1:32; 6:23). This is why Jesus had to die on our behalf. God could not merely forgive us: justice for our sins demanded payment. So God provided for Himself (cf. Gen. 22:8) an atoning sacrifice in the Person of Jesus Christ (John 3:15, 16), electing to save the believing ones (1 Cor. 1:21), those trusting in Christ and Christ alone (John 3:36; Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26).
But understand this in all of its terrifying truth: God is not pleading with you to believe in His Son Christ Jesus and He is not requesting you to invite Jesus into your heart. God commands you to repent of your sins and to trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior (Acts 17:30). Your greatest sin, your unforgivable sin, is unbelief. God is not standing by, biting His divine fingernails, hoping that you will freely choose to believe. He stands over you, as your Creator and your King, and commands you to believe (John 6:29). Your unbelief is an abominable sin. This is why Jesus teaches that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin: "because they do not believe in Me" (John 16:8, 9). On your own, you stand as a defiant and rebellious sinner, mocking your Creator-Savior while you proverbially make lewd gestures in His face. He is not pleading with you, like some weakened grandfather, but is commanding you as rightful King to trust in His Son and be saved. This is why the author, with trembling hands, writes: "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31).
BORN AGAIN
The person who believes / trusts / exercises faith in Jesus is a regenerated child of God (John 1:12, 13; 3:3-8; Eph. 2:1, 2, 3; Titus 3:5). God generated us, gave us life, and He is the only one who can regenerate us, give us new life, because we do not have the power to give ourselves new life. Our sinning caused a spiritual separation between us and God (Isa. 59:2) and caused our spiritual death (Rom. 7:9)--we were "cut off" from a right relationship with God on account of sin and we spiritually died because of the sins we defiantly committed (Eph. 2:1, 2, 3). Our spiritual death requires a spiritual life and that can only happen by the power of God the father, by God the Son, in the effectual working of God the Holy Spirit. You cannot effect your own spiritual birth any more than you could effect your initial physical birth: regeneration is God's work. God, in / by / through the effectual working of the Holy Spirit, regenerates and resurrects and saves (Eph. 2:1, 2, 3; Titus 3:5)--this by His grace in Christ (Eph. 2:8) by the effectual Gospel (Rom. 1:16, 17). Salvation belongs to Him and He grants salvation freely.
I can argue that, because I experienced being born again (being regenerated), this is why I believe in Jesus and why I trust Scripture. But experiences can be deceptive. I have seen a Mormon elder cry in testimony of what his "Jesus" has done for him but that does not make Mormonism or his experience true. I have witnessed Buddhists give testimony of how the teachings of Buddhism have changed them inwardly but that does not make Buddhism or their experiences true. Voddie Baucham recounts how the Nation of Islam's false Messiah Elijah Muhammad changed (affected) Malcolm X inwardly until Malcolm discovered that his Messiah was a fraud. (He then converted to Islam.) "The lie that changed his life was still a lie. Subjective stories of dramatic transformations are not a reliable test of the truth."3 I can confess that I feel differently on the inside and other people will all-too-eagerly point out my faults, flaws and sins, noting that I am far from perfect, so as to undermine my experience and undermine the truth of Scripture. They are right: I am far, so far, from being perfect.
CONCLUSION
Make no mistake about regeneration, though, as Jesus insists: "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again" (John 3:3 NIV). You answer back: "But you said that only God can make a person born again. He has not regenerated me so He must not love me and He must not want me to be saved." On the contrary, Scripture answers you back, "He came to what was His own, yet His own [Jewish] people did not accept Him. But to all [Jew and Gentile, Eph. 2:11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22] who did receive Him, to those who believe in His Name [the Father bestowed upon Jesus the Divine Name of God, YHWH, cf. Ex. 3:14, 15; John 17:6, 11, 12, 26; Phil. 2:5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], He [Himself] gave the right to become [because we are not born automatically] children of God [Rom. 8:14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19; Gal. 3:26; 4:4, 5, 6, 7; Eph. 1:5, 11; 1 John 3:1]. They were born, not of blood, or of the desire of the flesh, or of a husband's will, but born of God" (John 1:10-12 EHV). You cannot make yourself spiritually alive, true, but if that disturbs you then run to God through Christ Jesus and you will discover a God who has always loved you and who always will. If this troubles you then call out to God! He is calling out to you.
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1 Voddie Baucham, "Why You Can Believe the Bible," in One Foundation: Essays on the Sufficiency of Scripture, ed. Jeremiah Johnson (Valencia: Grace to You, 2019), 23.
2 Ibid., 22.
3 Ibid., 21.
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