Multiple Conversions?

Posted on by
Reply

I am not sure I would identify Dr. R. C. Sproul’s experience as “a second conversion” but I do understand the point being made. May God increase our capacity to understand and know God as He really is. David Murray with God-given insight into the person of Christ (Matt. 16:17), Jesus told him that some time in the future he would be converted which would result in him being a strengthener of other believers (Luke 22:32).

R C Sproul is another example. Again, although born again, dramatically converted, and thoroughly changed in his desires and life, Sproul underwent a further subsequent conversion which was no less dramatic. In chapter 1 of The Holiness of God, he explains how in his early Christian life, “I knew who Jesus was, but God the Father was shrouded in mystery. He was hidden, an enigma to my mind and a stranger to my soul.”

While listening to a boring philosophy lecture in college, the teacher started explaining Augustine’s views on the creation of the world. The next several pages contain the most beautiful writing on God’s creation that I have ever read. Here’s a sample:

The first sound uttered in the universe was the voice of God commanding, “Let there be!”

The command created its own molecules to carry the sound waves of God’s voice farther and farther into space.

As soon as the words left the Creator’s mouth, things began to happen. Where his voice reverberated, stars appeared, glowing in unspeakable brilliance in temp with the song of angels. The force of divine energy splattered against the sky like a kaleidoscope of color hurled from the palette of a powerful artist. Comets crisscrossed the sky with flashing tails like Fourth of July skyrockets.

The Supreme architect gazed at His complex blueprint and shouted commands for the boundaries of the world to be set.

Then God stooped to earth and carefully fashioned a piece of clay. He lifted it gently to His lips and breathed into it. The clay began to move. It began to think. It began to feel. It began to worship. It was alive and stamped with the image of its Creator.

Sproul says he had always known that God created everything out of nothing; but it was when he realized how he did it that his whole view of God changed. He went from being a functional Unitarian to being a worshipping Trinitarian. He describes it as being converted not merely to God the Son, but to God the Father.

Suddenly I had a passion to know God the Father. I wanted to know Him in His majesty, to know Him in His power, to know Him in His august holiness.

It’s beautiful isn’t it! But what can we learn from Sproul’s second conversion? Here are five lessons.

1. Don’t rule out multiple conversions
We have so much to change in our lives, especially in our view of God, that we should not be surprised at subsequent “conversion-like” experiences where God enables us to take a quantum leap in our knowledge and understanding of God. We should be thankful for every such conversion.

2. Don’t seek multiple conversions
God normally works gradually not dramatically. We shouldn’t be worried if we’ve never had such a dramatic experience. The norm for most Christians is a slow gradual process of ongoing conversion in our God-view, self-view, and world-view. Seeking out the sensational or the dramatic is only going to disappoint and discourage.

3. Don’t make Sproul’s experience the norm
R C Sproul is a unique man with a unique ministry. Looking back, we now know that God had earmarked him to carry a radical message about the holiness of God to this generation of evangelicals who, like Sproul, were (and are) also guilty of a practical Unitarianism, or a Christo-monism. With that special ministry in view, God gave Him an overwhelming experience of His holiness that would flavor everything he would subsequently do, say, and write.

4. Use Sproul’s experience to challenge your faith
Although we shouldn’t make Sproul’s experience the norm, we should ask ourselves if we too have been guilty of practical unitarianism. Maybe we have focused almost exclusively upon Christ, with no real knowledge of or acquaintance with the Holy Father. If so, then Sproul’s experience should encourage us to ask God to show us His holiness, to reveal Himself to us through His Word. Who knows what might happen. Maybe the next R C Sproul is out there and about to be readied for a worldwide ministry.

5. True conversion will make us desire God
There are many spurious spiritual experiences that are nothing but sheer emotionalism, lasting only for a few minutes with no permanent spiritual fruit. But true spiritual experience results in a hunger for God and a passion to know Him, especially in His holiness.

The Law Keeping Redeemer

Posted on by
Reply

OldTestamentNick Batzig is the church planter of New Covenant Presbyterian Church in Richmond Hill, Ga. Nick has written numerous articles for Tabletalk Magazine, Reformation 21, and is published in Jonathan Edwards and Scotland (Dunedin, 2011) In addition, Nick is the host of East of Eden: The Biblical and Systematic Theology of Jonathan Edwards. He writes:

One of the most important of all the statements about the birth of Jesus is that He was “born under the Law” (Gal. 4:4). The one who gave the Law on Sinai was, “in the fulness of time,” born under the Law. Of course, in making this declaration the question is raised, “Why was the One who gave the Law born under the Law?” After all, there was no Divine necessity for God to become man and to be made subject to His own Law. The answer comes on the heel of the statement when the Apostle explained that it was in order that Christ might, “redeem those who were under the Law.” In short, Jesus’ law-keeping was an absolutely necessary component of our redemption. Consider the following ways in which this plays out in the Gospel record:

1. At His Birth

At eight days, Jesus was circumcised according to the Law. He took to Himself the covenant sign–a bloody sign that pointed to His death on the cross. Circumcision promised the cleansing of the heart of sinful man by a bloody cutting away. The One who had the sign of circumcision was promised covenant blessings and curses. Either he would have the filth of his heart cut away by the bloody judgment that would fall on Christ or he would be cut off from the land of the living in the judgment of God. Though Jesus had no sin, and therefore had no need of the promise of the cutting away of the filth of the heart, he took to himself the sign because He would become the sin bearer for us. Paul tells us that, for Jesus, the cross was a bloody circumcision. Christ took the sign to himself as a boy to fulfill the demands of the law and to have a constant reminder that he was the one who would bear the curse of the law for His people.

At forty days, Jesus was brought into the Temple and was present to the Lord according to the custom of the Law. Mary came and sacrificed to set apart her son to the Lord. He was sanctified by the offering that pointed to Himself (though he needed no sanctification because of personal sin) because he was the sin-bearing substitute of His people. Isaac Ambrose captured this idea so well when he wrote:

There was no impurity in the Son of God, and yet he is first circumcised; and then he is brought, and offered to the Lord. He that came to be sin for us, would in our persons be legally unclean, that by satisfying the law, he might take away our uncleanness. He that was above the law, would come under the law, that he might free us from the law. We are all born sinners; but O the unspeakable mercies of our Jesus, that provides a remedy as early as our sin: first, he is conceived; and then he is born, to sanctify our conceptions and our births: and after his birth, he is first circumcised, and then he is presented to the Lord; that by two holy acts, that which was naturally unholy might be hallowed unto God. Christ hath not left our very infancy without redress, but by himself thus offered he cleanseth us presently from our filthiness.1

2. As a Boy

We are told that Jesus, at age 12, stayed behind in the Temple where He was “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.” Continue reading →