- THE GIFT OF ETERNAL LIFE

So the Son of man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)
Some things in our human lives are so basically unimportant that we never miss them if we do not have them. Some other things, even some that we just take for granted, are so important that if we do not grasp them and hold them and secure them for all eternity, we will suffer irreparable loss and anguish.
When we come to the question of our own relationship with God through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come to one of those areas which in a supreme degree is truly a matter of life and death.
This is so desperately a matter of importance for every human being who comes into the world that I first become indignant, and then I become sad, when I try to give spiritual counsel to a person who looks me in the eye and tells me: “Well, I am trying to make up my mind if I should accept Christ or not.”
Such a person gives absolutely no indication that he realizes he is talking about the most important decision he can make in his lifetime—a decision to get right with God, to believe in the eternal Son, the Savior, to become a disciple, an obedient witness to Jesus Christ as Lord.
How can any man or woman, lost and undone, sinful and wretched, alienated from God, stand there and intimate that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and God’s revealed plan of salvation do not take priority over some of life’s other decisions?
Now, the particular attitude revealed here about “accepting Christ” is wrong because it makes Christ stand hat-in-hand, somewhere outside the door, waiting on our human judgment.
We know about His divine Person, we know that He is the Lamb of God who suffered and died in our place. We know all about His credentials. Yet we let Him stand outside on the steps like some poor timid fellow who is hoping he can find a job.
We look Him over, then read a few more devotional verses, and ask: “What do you think, Mabel? Do you think we ought to accept Him? I really wonder if we should accept Him.”
And so, in this view, our poor Lord Christ stands hat-in-hand, shifting from one foot to another looking for a job, wondering whether He will be accepted.
Meanwhile, there sits the proud Adamic sinner, rotten as the devil and filled with all manner of spiritual leprosy and cancer. But he is hesitating; he is judging whether or not he will accept Christ.
Putting off the Christ
Doesn’t that proud human know that the Christ he is putting off is the Christ of God, the eternal Son who holds the worlds in His hands? Does he not know that Christ is the eternal Word, the Jesus who made the heavens and the earth and all things that are therein?
Why, this One who patiently waits for our human judgment is the One who holds the stars in His hands. He is the Savior and Lord and head over all things to the Church. It will be at His word that the graves shall give up their dead, and the dead shall come forth, alive forevermore. At His word, the fire shall burst loose and burn up the earth and the heavens and the stars and planets shall be swept away like a garment.
He is the One, the Mighty One!
And yet there He stands, while we animated clothespins—that’s what we look like and that’s what we are—decide whether we will accept Him or not. How grotesque can it be?
The question ought not to be whether I will accept Him; the question ought to be whether He will accept me!
But He does not make that a question. He has already told us that we do not have to worry or disturb our minds about that. “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37 b).
He has promised to receive us, poor and sinful though we be. But the idea that we can make Him stand while we render the verdict of whether He is worthy of our acceptance is a frightful calumny—and we ought to get rid of it!
Now, I think we should get back to our original premise that our relationship to Jesus Christ is a matter of life or death to us.
The average person with even a minimum of instruction in church or Sunday school will generally take two things for granted, without argument.
The first is that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. That is declared specifically in the Bible, and it is declared in other words adding up to the same thing all through the New Testament.
If we have been reared in gospel churches, we also generally will take for granted the second fact: that we are saved by faith in Christ alone, without our works and without our merit.
I am discussing these two basic things with you here because too many individuals take them for granted, believe them to be true; and still they are asking, “How do I know that I have come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ?” We had better find the answer because this is the matter of life or death.
The fact that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners is a matter of record. It needs no further proof. It is a fact—yet the world is not saved!
Right here in America, in our own neighborhoods, thousands and tens of thousands of people still are not saved.
Just the fact that He came to save sinners is not enough—that fact in itself cannot save us.
A friend or neighbor may tell us, “Well, I have gone to this certain church all my life. I have been confirmed, baptized and all the rest. I am going to take the chance that it will get me through.”
My friend, your odds are not that good—you do not even have a chance. If your relation to Jesus Christ is not a saving relation, then you are on your own without a guide and without a compass. It is not a chance you have; it is suicide that you are committing. It is not a chance in 10 times 10,000. It is either be right or be dead; in this case, be right or be eternally lost.
There are millions all around us who have some Bible knowledge. They would tell you they have no argument with the fact that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. They may even make a little joke about their own failures and shortcomings—they would not call them sins. They would likely excuse themselves from having to make a personal decision because they are not nearly as bad as Mr. Jones or Mrs. Smith down the street.
The point is that they may be able to recite John 3:16 or quote something nice about the whole world needing a Savior—and in an unusually tender moment there might be the sign of a tear in the eye. But they are lost. They are really far from God. They know that they are not converted because they have all known some person who had confessed Jesus Christ, been soundly converted and started living a transformed life.
Yes, they all know the difference. They know they are not converted, but they would rather not be told about the fate of the sinner when he dies.
Oh, that lost men and women would get concerned to the point of asking and finding out how they may come into a saving relationship with the Savior, Jesus Christ!
Three answers
Now, go to the average Christian brother, a converted man and probably a substitute teacher for the Bible class, and ask him: ”How can I come into a saving relation to Jesus Christ so that it works for me?”
He will probably give you one of three answers, or he may give you all three answers. If you came to me, you would get the same, so this is not a criticism of anyone. This is simply a statement.
You would get the same answer from Billy Graham and you would get the same answer from the most isolated and unknown layman who has committed his way to Jesus Christ.
First you would be told that it is a matter of faith, that you must believe what God says about His Son, as in Acts 16:31 : “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” That is the Bible answer that you would get.
Then, the person answering your question might add: “There is also the willingness to receive from God, as in John 1:12 : `Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name…’”
So there in John’s Gospel you find the close relationship in faith of believing and receiving.
But in our day, you will also be likely to get a third answer, and that is the one we are considering here. In all likelihood, if you would ask a number of Christian people how to come into this blessed saving relationship with Christ, someone is going to tell you: “Why, you just accept Christ!”
Let me say here that I do not want to make God responsible for anything I do, or anything I tell you. I have had my long talks with God and He knows how grateful and thankful I am if He can bless me and guide me and use me to do a few little things for Him. He surely knows that I am available as long as I am able to pray and think and speak a good word for Him, as long as I last.
What I am saying on this contemporary subject of “accepting Christ” is not a personal whim. Actually, I was kneeling by the little couch in my study upstairs, kneeling there with my Bible open, and I was engaged with God in doing a little repenting on my own accord—my own.
All of this came to me so clearly that I just wrote down a few notes, and said, “I am going to talk to the people about this.” You are my friends, and I tell you that perhaps I am introducing some things here that God did not say to me, but maybe you will agree that you would rather hear a sermon from the outline the man got while on his knees than to know that he had gotten it somewhere else.
Well, that is it; a popular answer in our day is that we find Christ by accepting Him. You will find when I am through that I am not being critical. Probably our expressions in language do not always tell us what our hearts know.
Not found in the Bible
You may be surprised, as I was, when I ran this thing down and found that the expression “accept Christ” does not occur in the Bible. It is not found in the New Testament at all. I have looked it up in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, and the old editors worked on that volume so long and so thoroughly that it does not skip a single word.
Strong’s concordance shows very definitely that the word accept is never used in the Bible in the sense of our accepting God or accepting Jesus as our Savior.
It does seem strange that while we do not find its use anywhere in the Bible, the phrase, “Will you accept Christ?” or “Have you accepted Christ?” have become the catchwords throughout our soul-winning circles.
I am not trying to question our good intentions. I am sure that I have used this same expression many times—but still we have to admit that it does not occur in the Bible at all.
The words accept and acceptance are used in the Scriptures in a number of ways, but never in connection with believing on Christ or receiving Christ for salvation or being saved.
My concern in this matter is my feeling that “easy acceptance” has been fatal to millions of people who may have stopped short in matters of faith and obedience.
It is interesting to note that many groups of Christian workers and preachers and evangelists everywhere are calling for revival. Spiritual life in many areas seems to be in a low state and in many cases people are passing along the word about “prayer for revival.”
But here is the odd thing: no one seems to stop and raise a question, such as: “Perhaps the reason we need revival so badly is the fact that we did not get started right in the first place.”
This is why I have questioned the wide use of the soul-winning catchword, “Will you accept Christ? Just bow your head and accept Christ!”
I cannot estimate the number, although I think it is a very large number, of people who have been brought into some kind of religious experience by a fleeting formality of “accepting Christ,” and a great, great number of them are still not saved. They have not been brought into a genuine saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We see the results all around us—they generally behave like religious sinners instead of like born-again believers.
That is why there is such a great stirring about the need for revival. That is why so many are asking, “What is the matter with us? We seem so dead, so lifeless, so apathetic about spiritual things!”
I say again that I have come to the conclusion that there are far too many among us who have thought that they accepted Christ—but nothing has come of it within their own lives and desires and habits. Will you just examine this matter a little more closely with me?
This kind of philosophy in soul winning, the idea that it is the easiest thing in the world to “accept Jesus,” permits the man or woman to accept Christ by an impulse of the mind, or emotions. It allows us to gulp twice and sense an emotional feeling that may come over us, and then say, “I have accepted Christ.”
All of you are aware of some of the very evident examples of the shortcomings in this approach to conversion and the new birth.
A Christian lady interested in the boys and girls goes out to the playground where several hundred children are engaged in their play and games. When she comes back, she reports with enthusiasm that she was able to persuade a group of about 70 children to stop their play and “accept Christ in their hearts.”
An illustration
I actually was told of a group of preachers and laymen gathered in a hotel dining room and when the issue of soul-winning came up, one of the preachers said, “It is the easiest thing in the world, and I will give you a demonstration.”
When the waiter came to his table, this brother said, “Can I have a minute of your time?”
The waiter said, “Yes, sir.”
“Are you a Christian?” the preacher asked.
“No, sir. I am not a Christian.”
“Wouldn’t you like to be a Christian?”
“Well—well, I haven’t thought too much about it.”
“You know, all you have to do is accept Christ into your heart—will you accept Him?”
“Well, I guess so—yes, sir.”
“All right, then, you just bow your head for a moment.”
So, while the man who has been placed in a corner is thinking most about his tip, the soul-winner prays: “Now, Lord, here is a man who wants to accept You. And he takes You now as his Savior. Bless him real good. Amen!”
So, the waiter gets an enthusiastic handshake, and turns away to do his job, and he is just the same as when he came into the room.
But the demonstrating preacher turns to the group and says, “It is a simple matter. You can all see how easy it is to lead someone to Christ.”
I think these are matters about which we must be legitimately honest and in which we must seek the discernment of the Holy Spirit. I hope that the waiter had better sense than the reverend because if he did not he is damned. These are things about which we cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to still be lost and far from God. This is a matter of life or death and eternity.
When we are considering the importance to any human being of a right and saving relationship to Jesus Christ, we cannot afford to be wrong.
I think there is much abuse and that it is a great misconception to try to deal with men and women in this shallow manner when we know the great importance of conviction and concern and repentance when it comes to conversion, spiritual regeneration, being born from above by the Spirit of God.
It would be a healthy sign if the whole Church of Christ would rise up and ask God for fresh air in this matter; asking God for courage to consider and analyze where we stand in our efforts to win people to the Savior.
I am not trying to downgrade anybody in his or her efforts to win souls. I am just of the opinion that we are often too casual and there are too many tricks that can be used to make soul-winning encounters completely painless and at no cost and with no inconvenience.
Some people that we deal with on this “quick and easy” basis have such little preparation and are so ignorant of the plan of salvation that they would be willing to bow their heads and “accept” Buddha or Zoroaster or Father Divine if they thought that they could get rid of us in that way.
An Old Testament illustration
I think back to that time when God was dealing with the Israelites in bondage in Egypt. Suppose that Moses had said to the Israelites, “Do you accept the blood on the doorpost?”
They would have said, “Yes, of course. We accept the blood.”
Moses then would have said, “That’s fine. Now goodbye; I will be seeing you.”
They would have stayed right in Egypt, slaves for the rest of their lives.
But their acceptance of the blood was a decision of action. Their acceptance of the blood of the Passover meant that they stayed awake all night; girded, ready, shoes on their feet, staffs in their hands, eating the food of the Passover, ready for the moving of God. Then, when the trumpet blasts sang sweet and clear, they all arose and started for the Red Sea. When they got to the Red Sea, having acted in faith, God was there to hold back the sea and they went out, never to return!
Their acceptance had the right kind of feet under it. Their acceptance gave them the guts to do something about it in the demonstration of their faith in God and His word.
Consider also the case of the prodigal son in the midst of the pigs with their dirt and filth and smell. Suppose you were concerned about him, about his own rags and his hunger.
“I have good news for you,” you tell him. “Your father will forgive you if you will accept it. Will you accept it?”
He looks up from where he is reclining among the pigs, trying to keep warm, and replies: “Yeah, I’ll accept it.”
“Do you accept your father’s reconciling and saving word?”
“Yes, I do!”
“That’s fine. All right, goodbye. Hope to see you again.”
You leave him in the pigpen. You leave him still in the dirt and filth. But that is not the way it happened in the story Jesus told in Luke 15.
The fellow was in there with the pigs and the filth—but something was stirring in his own heart and mind, and he said within himself: “If I am ever going to get out of this mess, I will have to make a decision. I must arise and go to my father.”
I guess all of us know the next line:
“So he got up and went!”
Remember that?
“So he got up and went!”
Acceptance to the Jews meant strict obedience from that moment on. Acceptance to the prodigal son meant repentance in line with his acceptance.
I realize that the word accept has come close to being a synonym for the word receive. But I want to tell you what it means to accept Christ and then I want you to search your own heart and say, “Have I ever really accepted Christ? Do I accept Christ? Have I accepted Him at all?”
I want to give you a definition for accepting Christ. To accept Christ in anything like a saving relation is to have an attachment to the person of Christ that is revolutionary, complete and exclusive.
What I am talking about is an attachment to the person of Christ, and that is so important. It is something more than getting in with a crowd that you like. It is something more than the social fellowship of some nice fellow that gives you a thrill when you touch his hand. It is something more than getting in with a group that puts on their uniforms and plays softball together on Tuesday evenings.
Those things are all harmless enough, God knows. But accepting Jesus Christ is more than finding association with a group you like. It is not just going on a picnic or taking a hike. We have those activities in our church and I believe in them. But they are not the things that are as important as your acceptance of Jesus Christ. The answer you are seeking in Jesus Christ does not mean that you are just getting in with a religious group who may not be any better off than you are.
Accepting Jesus Christ, receiving Jesus Christ into your life means that you have made an attachment to the person of Christ that is revolutionary in that it reverses the life and transforms it completely.
It is an attachment to the person of Christ. It is complete in that it leaves no part of the life unaffected. It exempts no area of the life of the total man; his total being.
This kind of an attachment to the person of Christ means that Christ is not just one of several interests. It means that He is the one exclusive attachment as the sun is the exclusive attachment of the earth. As the earth revolves around the sun, and the sun is its center and the core of its being, so Jesus Christ is the Son of righteousness, and to become a Christian by the grace of God means to come into His orbit and begin to revolve around Him exclusively. In the sense of spiritual life and desire and devotion, it means to revolve around Him completely, exclusively—not partly around Him.
This does not mean that we do not have other relationships—we all do because we all live in a complex world. You give your heart to Jesus. He becomes the center of your transformed life. But you may be a man with a family. You are a citizen of the country. You have a job and an employer. In the very nature of things, you have other relationships. But by faith and through grace, you have now formed an exclusive relationship with your Savior, Jesus Christ. All of your other relationships are now conditioned and determined by your one relationship to Jesus Christ, the Lord.
Jesus laid down the terms of Christian discipleship and there have been people who have criticized and said, “Those words of Jesus sound harsh and cruel.” His words were plain and He was saying to every one of us: “If you have other relationships in life which are more important and more exclusive than your spiritual relationship to the eternal Savior, then you are not my disciple.”
First and last and all
To accept Christ, then, is to attach ourselves to His holy person; to live or die, forever. He must be first and last and all. All of our other relationships are conditioned and determined and colored by our one exclusive relation to Him.
To accept Christ without reservation is to accept His friends as your friends from that moment on.
If you find yourself in an area where Christ has no friends, you will be friendless except for the one Friend who sticketh closer than a brother.
It means that you will not compromise your life. You will neither compromise your talk nor your habits of life.
We have to confess that we find there are people who are such cowards that when they are with a crowd that denies the Son of God and disgraces the holy name of Jesus, they allow themselves to be carried away in that direction. Are they Christians? You will have to answer that.
A Christian is one who has accepted Jesus’ friends as his friends and Jesus’ enemies as his enemies by an exclusive attachment to the person of Christ.
I made up my mind a long time ago. Those who declare themselves enemies of Jesus Christ must look upon me as their enemy—and I ask no quarter from them. And if they are the friends of Jesus Christ they are my friends and I do not care what color they are or what denomination they belong to.
To accept the Lord means to accept His ways as our ways. We have taken His Word and His teachings as the guide in our lives. To accept Christ means that I accept His rejection as my rejection. When I accept Him I knowingly and willingly accept His cross as my cross. I accept His life as my life—back from the dead I come and up into a different kind of life. It means that I accept His future as my future.
I am talking about the necessity of an exclusive attachment to His person—that is what it means to accept Christ. If the preachers would tell people what it actually means to accept Christ and receive Him and obey Him and live for Him we would have fewer converts but those who would come and commit would not backslide and founder. They would stick.
Actually, preachers and ministers of the gospel of Christ should remember that they are going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and they will have to tell a holy Savior why they betrayed His people in this way.
Now, please do not go out and tell people that Mr. Tozer says you should never use those words, “accept Christ.” I have tried to make it plain that we should always invite those who are not Christians to come to Jesus, to believe what God says about the Savior, to receive Him by faith into their lives and to obey Him; and to accept Christ as their Savior if they know what it means—an exclusive attachment to the person of Christ.
Are you aware that many of the great preachers and the great evangelists who have touched the world, including such men as Edwards and Finney in the past, have declared that the church is being betrayed by those who insist on Christianity being made too easy. Oh, what a host of people have been betrayed into thinking that they were converted when all that they did was to join a religious group.
I would say frankly that moral sanity requires that we settle this important matter first of all, settling our personal and saving relationship with God. The way some of us live, we ought not to be surprised when some concerned friend or brother asks, “Are we Christians, indeed?”
In some Christian groups, the believers actually make fun and laugh at Christians in other groups who occasionally arise and sing the words of an old hymn: “Do I love the Lord, or no?”
No serious-minded person should ever laugh at any other man or woman standing under the wide expanse of heaven with death only three jumps ahead and who is contemplating: “My God, do I really love You or not? Have I been mistaken in a meaningless religious connection? My God, what must I do to be saved?”
Many of us better start asking questions today. We know that we had better not try to stand on our own reputation.
There is nothing in the whole world of more value and of greater meaning than to come back into the family of God by faith and through His grace. There is no joy compared to that which God gives us when He forgives us, cleanses us, restores and saves us, and assures us that the gift of God is indeed eternal life, to as many as will believe!