A Call to the “Almost” Christian

Now I’d like to invite you to take your Bible and turn to Romans chapter 10 with me—Romans chapter 10. I’d like to read verses 9 and 10:

“If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

Life is made up, for every single one of us here this morning, of a number of decisions. Some of them are immediate and immediately important. Some of them we may take time to, and they are of long-lasting significance. But on the authority of God’s Word, there is no decision that any of us could ever be called to make that could ever be such an important decision that it would alter the whole course of our human history and, beyond that, the matter of our eternal destiny. And it is my purpose this morning to address myself to this whole matter of what it means to commit our lives to Jesus Christ. And I would like to address myself primarily to issuing a call to those whom I may describe as the “almost” Christians. The “almost” Christians. And I believe that there are a number present.

These individuals are acquainted with the gospel. They have heard it many times. They could even reiterate it to others. They find it to be interesting. They may even find it to be intellectually stimulating. They regard it as something that they may listen to and perhaps enjoy, even though from time to time it may be a wee bit troubling. They are those who realize that there is comfort and consolation in the gospel for those who have troubled spirits, and they may well view it as a word of God which somehow offers everything and seems to demand nothing. Such individuals can hardly be blamed for feeling that way about things, for quite honestly, from so many pulpits in our country, that is exactly the message that they have been treated to—consistently told that Christianity makes no demands and calls for no decisions.

Now, when we open our Bibles and take that and examine it in relationship to what the Scriptures teach, we find that actually, the reverse is true. And I’d like you to turn for just a moment to Mark chapter 6, where I want to introduce you to an “almost” Christian.

Here we have, in Mark’s Gospel, a classic illustration of the kind of person I’m referring to—Mark and the sixth chapter, where we have the account, or an account, of John the Baptist and the impact which he, in his ministry, had upon King Herod. And you would have to begin reading at the fourteenth verse of what was taking place, but the verse and the portion of the verse I’d like you to notice is at the end of verse 20, which in the NIV reads, “When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled” (or “he did many things”; I think that’s the Authorized Version) “yet he liked to listen to him.” “When Herod heard John, he did many things, yet he liked to listen to him”—or, in the words of Phillips’s paraphrase, Herod “used to listen to him and be profoundly disturbed, and yet he enjoyed hearing him.”[1]

An interesting statement! One of the great preachers that God ever brought across the stage of human history spoke in a personal way to this great and powerful monarch, and the response of the monarch was to be stirred, to be disturbed, to be intrigued, perhaps to be marginally changed, and yet to remain as a waverer, to remain as a wobbler, to remain as the kind of individual who has grasped enough to know and yet has not been grasped enough to be changed. He was Herod, the “almost” Christian.

I want to lay it down as axiomatic this morning that the gospel calls for a decision. And indeed, before this service ends, I am going to call for a decision. I’m going to call for some who remain waverers and wobblers to cease from that activity today and to commit your lives unreservedly to Jesus Christ.

When John the Baptist preached, Luke records for us that people asked, “What should we do …?”[2] When Jesus preached, he also established crossroads for individuals. He said there was a broad road full of people; there was a narrow road rather unoccupied, “and few there be that find it.” He called people to “enter … in at the strait gate,” because, he said, narrow was the way that led unto life.[3] He pointed out to people that they were either walking in the light, or they were walking in the darkness.[4] He told the story of the individual who built his house upon sand and who built his house upon the rock,[5] and then he said, “Now, make up your mind which way you’re going to build.” What Jesus established as a pattern the apostles followed. And when you look at the events of the Acts of the Apostles, you discover that Peter, right on the day of Pentecost and beyond, is calling men and women to choose concerning this matter of Jesus Christ. And he was unequivocal in his call to them.[6]

If the gospel calls for a decision, let us be clear this morning that nothing short of a decision is of any value at all. You may be disturbed, you may be intrigued, you may be amused, you may be offended, you may be interested, and yet you remain, before God, unchanged by the preaching of his Word.

And whatever the ultimate explanation of Herod’s indecision, we can say this, I believe, with some certainty: that the reason he could hear so much and do so little was largely because of his unwillingness to think things through to their logical conclusion. If he had thought through to the logical conclusion of what John was saying concerning sin, concerning repentance, concerning righteousness, concerning judgment, then he would have realized that he, Herod, was in need of the solution to which John pointed. And yet Herod heard, and Herod remained unchanged.

Lest there should be some who in the weeks and months that have passed have been unprepared to think the issues through concerning what it means to cease from being an “almost” Christian and became a real Christian, I want to look with you at what Paul tells us in Romans 10:9–10. And I want to urge upon you three things.

The Absolute Necessity of Salvation

As you read those verses—and it will be helpful to have them open in front of you—you will notice that the matter is the matter of being saved: “You will be saved.” The first thing I want you to notice is the absolute necessity of salvation. The absolute necessity of salvation.

It stands to reason that before men and women will ever embrace Christ as their Savior, they must come to see him as the very Savior that they need. And the reason that some have never embraced Christ is because they do not believe they need Christ. They may be prepared to acknowledge that we have a global problem, that our world is shattered and fractured by man’s inhumanity to man. They may be prepared to pick up their newspaper and bemoan the state of affairs in our national life, with all the heinous crimes that are being performed, with the injustice that is present in the judicial system, with the violence that is present on the streets, with the disorder that is chaotic in our classrooms, and with the wrongdoing that is prevalent in our business structures. And yet, having acknowledged it globally and having been prepared to say it is present nationally, these same individuals are unprepared to face it personally. And you will never come to Christ because you’ve recognized a global problem. You will never know Jesus as your Savior because you’ve encountered a national dilemma. You will only ever come to Christ when you recognize that you are personally in need of him.

Ask yourself a question this morning: “Have I always been absolutely pure? Have I always been absolutely honest? Have I always been absolutely, genuinely selfless? Have I always loved God with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind and all my strength?”[7] And the answer must inevitably be “No, I have not.” “Then,” said the Bible, “here you see the evidence of personal sin.” And when the Spirit of God brings that to our awareness, he at the same time brings to us this great news of the one, Jesus, who came to save.

God knows, you see, the condition of your heart this morning. And so do you. And there is for many of us a great barrier to repentance and to faith. I’m referring to the barrier of self-sufficiency or of self-righteousness. If you notice, in the early verses of Romans 10, speaking concerning those who had had all the benefits of the law and all the benefits of God’s speaking clearly to them through the prophets, Paul says of those who were his own, the Jewish people—verse 3—“Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”

You will only ever come to Christ when you recognize that you are personally in need of him.

It’s absolutely fundamental this morning to realize this: that if the devil can sell you on the notion that you are really an okay guy and an okay girl, that with a little bit more effort, a little bit more trying, you can shape up and be the person you’ve always wanted to be—if you can be sufficiently convinced in your own mind of some other process of righteousness other than that which is provided for us in Jesus Christ—then you will continue to walk in and out these doors trusting in yourself rather than trusting in Christ.

Matthew, in chapter 9, records for us an incident which is highly illustrative of this very thing. Matthew 9:10–12: “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and ‘sinners’ came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and “sinners”?’”

You see, they were all messed up in their understanding of what it meant to follow Jesus. They thought Jesus had come for good guys. They didn’t realize he came for bad guys. They thought Jesus had come for the people who pulled their socks up and were largely righteous. And so he was the righteous one leading the righteous gang. And Jesus has to sort them out—verse 12: “On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It[’s] not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”

Now, for fear of underpinning it to the point of futility, let me underscore it clearly again this morning: If I stand and tell this congregation that there is the most amazing doctor who has just moved in to the city of Cleveland—that he has done such advanced research that he holds the answer, and provenly so, to the issues of terminal illness, irrespective of what they are—and I proclaim this widely and vociferously, it will only be of immediate interest to whom? To those who acknowledge themselves to be terminally sick.

And I say to you this morning, again, that the cry of the gospel, the call of Christ, is to sinners. It is to unrighteous people. It is to people who realize that at their best, they cannot complete the equation. It is to those who have tried and failed. It is to those who have believed the devil’s lie that there is no future for them, that they must now stumble through their lives. It is for those who rest in their own self-betterment and who need to be shown their need of a Savior.

You see, the Bible says that sin is rampant. It says that it’s like a terminal illness in our lives, and furthermore, it says that it’s at an advanced stage. Now, we shouldn’t think of it simply in terms of one or two deeds—adultery, murder, theft. We write them up on the blackboard, and then we say, “Am I an adulterer? Am I a murderer? Am I a thief?” And we say, “No.” And therefore, since we set the exam, we passed the exam. But unfortunately, it’s God who sets the exam.

And again, what we’re told in Scripture is that it’s not the things that are from outside that are the fundamental problem, but rather—and Jesus was pointing this out to the religious people, again—he says in Mark 7:20, “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’” “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, … folly,” disobedience to your parents, resentment of authority, preoccupation with yourself, a total fixation with who I am and what I want to be—does not come as a result of an environmental impact from without. It comes as a result of a problem from within.

Now, this would be fine, loved ones, if we could just leave it at that and go on. But in actual fact, the Bible says this: We deliberately choose to be that way. We deliberately tell lies. We deliberately harbor impurity. We deliberately choose to do what’s wrong. And that wrong is going to be punished.

In Hebrews 9:27, the writer to the Hebrews gives us these stirring, profoundly moving, challenging words: “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”

Hell is factual, hell is final, hell is fearful, and hell is fair. For God will merely confirm the choice of your heart on that day when you stand before him.

I want to say to you this morning, as sensitively and yet as authoritatively as I might: Jesus said twice as much about hell as he ever said about heaven. And I want to tell you on the authority of God’s Word this morning that if you remain a waverer and a wobbler and you die in your sin, you will go to hell. Hell is factual, hell is final, hell is fearful, and hell is fair. For God will merely confirm the choice of your heart on that day when you stand before him.

So I would not want anyone to live with the illusion this morning that the question of sin is marginal. I would not want anyone to be allowed to believe that they can simply be stirred and yet go out and say it doesn’t really matter. The gospel is not something that offers itself for debate and for discussion. The gospel is something which calls for definite acceptance and belief. Do you believe? Are you a believer? Are you a waverer? Are you a wobbler? Are you a Christian? Are you an “almost” Christian?

The way to find salvation is to seek it. And what makes one seek it but the discovery of one’s need of it? And only when I discover my need of a Savior will I ever seek him. And it is the Spirit of God’s work this morning to take his Word to your heart and to mine and to convince you of what you know and what God knows about your life: the absolute necessity of salvation.

The Absolute Clarity of Salvation

Secondly, I want you to notice—and in a more brief statement—I want you to notice the absolute clarity of what’s involved in being saved. It’s straightforward enough here for the youngest child who’s present this morning to be able to get a handle on this.

Notice what we’re told. First he puts it one way, and then he repeats it in the reverse way: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”—two constituent parts. He then turns it around and repeats it this way: “For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified”—which is another word for saved—“and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

Okay, so somebody says, “I’ve followed you so far. What’s involved? What do I need to do? Make it perfectly clear to me.” Well, there are two factors involved.

Number one is the matter of internal conviction—the shift within the very center of our being from the cognitive response, which is “I need a savior,” to the closure with Christ, which is this: “You, Jesus, are the Savior that I need.”

It’s interesting that Paul should address the matter of the resurrection and believing in the resurrection. Why would he do this? Isn’t there much more wrapped up in our belief? Well, of course there is. I believe this must be the case: that if you believe the resurrection, you believe it all. If the resurrection is true, then all the rest goes right along with it. It’s consistent with what he said in 1 Corinthians 15: “If Christ be not risen, then people who have died are still in their sins, and we are of all men most miserable.”[8]

So it’s hardly surprising, when he’s seeking to get to the very essence of the thing, he says men and women who believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ—that he has risen from the dead—believe also that he died to save, believe also that he is the very one who conquers death and hell, believe that he is the Messiah, believe that he is the very Son of God. “If you believe in your heart,” he says—the matter of internal conviction.

In the resurrection, it declared the fact of the Father’s acceptance of his Son’s sacrifice. It affirmed the claims of Jesus Christ. It said to the world, “He’s alive!” And it made possible our acceptance of him.

But you need to know this morning—we all need to know—that to believe in Jesus, to put our trust in Christ, means to rely upon him alone and therefore to cease to rely upon everyone and everything else that may have been important to us. When I come to trust in Christ alone, then I no longer am trusting in how many times I come to church. When I come to trust in Christ alone, then I’m no longer trusting on the basis of the family background that I’ve enjoyed. When I come to trust in Christ alone, then I am no longer bringing before him “And I’m a member of the Rotary Club, and I’m a fine man, and my wife is usually very nice to people, and we give out parcels at Christmastime. And could you please include that, Jesus, just when you’re thinking about me?”

As long as a modicum of that remains within your mind, you don’t know what it means to trust in Jesus Christ. The individual who believes in their heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead is coming and saying, “I don’t trust in any other thing. I’ve got nothing else to bring. I want to believe exclusively, cast myself helplessly upon you.”

While our believing in our hearts is a personal affair, it’s not a private affair.

So, it’s internal conviction, and secondly, it’s external confession. There’s not only that belief at the very center of our being, but there is that confession. And he says it is confessing with our mouths, which is, of course, a reference just to public declaration. He says when you begin to believe in the Lord Jesus in your heart, then you will confess it with your mouth, and it is your public confession which gives verification of the change that has taken place inside.

And this is why, you see, loved ones, there is no place for secret discipleship. There is no place for people sitting in here on a Sunday morning saying, “Oh, yes, I’m a Christian. It’s just I don’t tell anyone about it. Oh, yes, I’m a believer, but I’m never going to confess it. Oh, yes, I believe in my heart, but I don’t want anyone to know.” You’re not a Christian! You’re an “almost” Christian! You’re a waverer! You’re a wobbler! You’re a Herod.

I say again to you this morning: How long can you sit out there on that fence? How long can you live this way?

An open acknowledgement of our attachment to Jesus Christ. That’s why in a moment, I’m going to give you a chance to make an open acknowledgement to your attachment to Jesus Christ—a reminder to us that while our believing in our hearts is a personal affair, it’s not a private affair. It’s crazy to say that there’s a fire when there’s no flame and there’s no heat. Bring your children into the room; say, “Come on and sit down by the fire.” Well, there’s a fireplace, but there’s no fire, ’cause there’s no flame, no heat, no nothing. You’ve said, “Well, I’m a Christian.” But there’s no show. No flame. No heat. No change. No nothing. It is an external confession of our lives which verifies and confirms our internal conviction that Jesus is Lord.

The Incredible Urgency of Salvation

So, we’ve noticed the absolute necessity of salvation. Decision-making is axiomatic to Christian conversion; nothing less than a decision is of any value at all. Secondly, we’ve noticed the absolute clarity of what’s involved: belief from within, profession from without. And finally, I want you to notice the incredible urgency which attaches to this matter.

If God has shown you your need and given you in your heart a desire to turn to Jesus Christ, then I say to you this morning: You turn your life over to him now, today, this morning, without any further ado. And the reason I say that is because of this: There are not a few here who in the past have been moved. They have been prompted. They’ve been disturbed. They’ve been intrigued by faith. Perhaps it was when you came along and listened to your children sing, and out of the lips of your tiny ones you heard the words of Jesus, and the Spirit of God said, “You know, that’s it. You’re the dad, but you’re not saved. You’re the leader, but you don’t know Christ.” Your children are singing the gospel to you, and in your heart, you had that insistent prompting of the Spirit of God, and you walked out the door and did nothing about it.

Others of you have stood at the graveside of a friend, and deep within your soul the Spirit of God said to you, “When will you commit your life to Jesus Christ?” And you were moved, but you went away.

Others of you went and visited a friend or a loved one in the hospital. And as much as they could disguise it, you didn’t really like that smell that was in there. And it chilled you a little bit, because you were unfamiliar with it, and it suggested to you that you weren’t ultimately in control of your life. And as you went walking back to the car park, and as you got into your car and you started it up and you began to drive towards your office or your home, the Spirit of God was at work within your heart saying, “Settle the matters of faith. Settle the matter of Christ.” And you went away, and either by design or by default, you began to distance yourself from these crucial concerns.

Others have adopted a pattern which is actually observable: a cycle of events where something like this morning happens, and boy, does it stir you! But you still don’t get converted. What you do is this: You walk out, and you say, “I really am going to have to sort a few things out.” And so you establish an external pattern of living, and you try your best to move things and change things—a little bit like what I think is alluded to by Herod where it says that he listened to John the Baptist preach, and “he did many things.” I wonder what the many things were he did? I think he went and changed things. I think he tried to shape up. I think he tried to be nicer to his wife, and I think he decided that he would be a better kind of monarch for a while. But eventually, the cycle came around and hit him and showed him that he was bereft of the salvation which John the Baptist came to offer. The change was external and human. It was not internal and divine. It is a matter of great urgency.

The time is coming, loved ones, when it will all be too late. There may be no “next time” in your history. There may be no “next time” in my opportunity to proclaim the gospel. You don’t have to be old to hear what I’m saying. Don’t sit there as a teenager and presume upon all your tomorrows. Don’t sit there in junior high and say, “It’s something for my dad and my uncle and my grandpa.” Listen, youngster, loved one, teenager: Hear me out! If the Spirit of God is at work within your heart, showing you your sin, showing you your need of Christ, then “now is the accepted time; behold, [today] is the day of salvation.”[9] The tragic events on the road to Alpine Valley illustrate the truth I’m telling you. You may be nineteen, you may be fifteen, you may be on the ski team, and in a moment, you may be in eternity. Will you continue to waver and wobble? Will you remain an “almost” Christian?

“Well,” says someone, “I don’t know. I’m just going make a mad rush for it at the last minute.” Oh, you are, are you? Well, let me remind you that the gate is narrow, and few find it. You going make a mad rush for it like they did on the tarmac at LAX in the USAir 737-300? Are you going to make a mad rush for the door like they did—a chaotic stampede in a quest for life that ended in inevitable death for so many? And let me ask you: Why in the wide world would you ever choose to do that? If you know your need and you know that Christ came to save you, why would you ever wait?

Well, you say, “Alistair, this is a bit heavy.” Yeah, it’s really heavy. But I want to end this morning by saying: Beware of the folly of Herod. Herod had a genuine interest. Herod liked to listen to the preacher. Herod would have been quite happy at the Chapel on a Sunday morning. But Herod eventually capitulated to the crowd. You can read it when you go home, in Mark 6. Herod’s big problem was this—that when he was with John the Baptist, he did this: “Yes, John the Baptist.” And when he got home to Herodias, his wife, he said, “Yes, Herodias.” And John the Baptist had told them, “You shouldn’t even be living with Herodias. That’s adultery.” It’s remarkable that Herod didn’t smack his head off right away, isn’t it? But the grace of God was at work, giving Herod the chance to change. So he listened. He was moved. He liked it. But the crowd was enough to shut him down, the way the crowd will be enough to shut some people down this morning.

Because in a moment, I’m going to ask you to stand right where you are as an “almost” Christian and say, “I want to commit my life to Jesus Christ.” And the crowd will be enough to stop you. Because your family are here, and you think they think that you’re already saved, and if you stand up, they’ll know you’re not. Because you’ve been singing in the choir for two and a half years, and you had to be a Christian to get in the choir, and now you’ve found out in the last two and a half years: You’re not a Christian; you’re an “almost” Christian. And the pressure of the crowd will be enough to keep you in your seat. Your business colleagues are here, and you don’t want them ever to think that you’re one of these crazy guys committing his life to Jesus Christ.

The crowd was enough to close him down. The call for public acknowledgement left him in his wavering. And yet it was publicly that Jesus Christ hanged upon the cross. It was publicly that people spat on his bleeding back. It was publicly that he cried out, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what [to] do.”[10] So why would it be anything less than public affirmation that we might look for in seeking to follow after him?

I say in conclusion, with the words of a preacher from of old: If the wondrous love of God in Jesus is not sufficient to attract you to him, then I place such value on the worth of your souls that I’m happy to alarm you with your need—to remind you that to spend eternity without God will mean eternal remorse. It will mean eternal misery. It will mean eternal wretchedness. And you can have eternal remorse, eternal misery, and eternal wretchedness by just agreeing with me, being somewhat moved, and walking out unchanged.

What do I have to do to become a Christian? Believe in my heart that God has raised him from the dead, and give public profession and confession of it with my mouth. And then I’ll go to heaven. What do I need to do to go to hell? Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Will you bow with me in prayer?

I’ve spoken about as clearly and as straightforwardly as I can. And I believe that there are some seated here today who just would want to know how, in their hearts, to respond to the promptings of the Spirit of God to cease from being “almost” and to become a Christian. I’m going to pray just a simple prayer, and in your heart, you may choose to pray this along with me. God’s not interested in the words as much as he is in the cry of our hearts.

Dear Lord Jesus, I confess that I am a guilty, lost, and helpless sinner. I want you to save me, to take your rightful place as Lord of my life. I want to turn from my wavering and from my sin to live for you. I want to thank you for the promise that if I believe in my heart and confess with my mouth, that your Word says I will be saved.

[1] Mark 6:20 (Phillips).

[2] Luke 3:10 (NIV 1984).

[3] Matthew 7:13–14 (KJV).

[4] See John 8:12; 12:35–36.

[5] See Matthew 7:24–27; Luke 6:46–49.

[6] See, for example, Acts 2:38.

[7] See Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27.

[8] 1 Corinthians 15:17–19 (paraphrased).

[9] 2 Corinthians 6:2 (KJV).

[10] Luke 23:34 (KJV).