Conversion replaces the spirit of fear
with the spirit of love and peace.
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In Part Two, we did an in-depth study of the biblical experience of conversion, with the hope that each reader would come to see their need for conversion in a crystal clear way...beyond all doubts or confusion.
We saw how CONVERSION is turning away from any attempts to keep any of God’s moral laws and/or commandments, as a way to earn your way to heaven...because it is impossible to do.
Detesting my own self-righteousness before God
https://www.evangelmagazine.com/
To see the abomination of your own self-righteousness in the sight of God is to simply compare your life with the life of Jesus Christ. Have you ever done that? Jesus lived a perfect life...morally, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, and physically.
He never gave into sin even once. Therefore, Jesus earned the right to go to heaven by the time he died on the cross, because of his personal righteousness. He had lived a perfect life in every way and only perfect people can enter heaven to live with a perfect God for 5 minutes or for all of eternity.
For you to go to heaven when you die, you would have to have lived a perfect life, just as Jesus did. Do you really think you will have lived a perfect life when you take your last breath? If not, conversion is your only hope.
Therefore, CONVERSION is turning away from those futile attempts and turning to faith in what Jesus Christ did for you, when He died a hideous, sacrificial death on a Roman Cross for you individually and specifically. He took the punishment that you deserve...for violating everyone of God’s moral laws and/or commandments.
The conclusion of the Scriptures we studied (like Isaiah 53), was that the essence of conversion is how you are converted to a person....to Jesus Christ as Lord, Master, and Savior.
You are not converted to a religion or a denomination or a church or a set of ceremonial rituals or to a philosophy or to anything else you could add to that. If you are converted, you are converted to the person of Jesus Christ, and you become His forever. Through the conversion, you become a part of Him and He becomes a part of you. The Scriptures say that you become “one with Him”.
John 14:20: In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
John 17:20-23: I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in you, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent me. The glory that You have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.
1 Corinthians 1:30: And because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 6:17: But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him (The Lord Jesus).
1 Corinthians 619: Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Colossians 2:10: And you have been filled in Him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
1 John 5:11-12: And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
From Fear To Love
One of the greatest benefits of conversion is how you are converted from a spirit of fear to the spirit of love. Remember how Paul told young Timothy, that as a person converted to Christ, God had now given him the spirit of love to replace the spirit of fear (that one has as an unbeliever).
2 Timothy 1:7: For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind.
In Part 3, we will begin by considering what unbelievers do fear, because that fear is real and can play a very important part in the conversion process. Then we will break down the process or the experience of conversion into parts...that are easy to grasp...but show how the love and peace of God begin to dominate one’s life, as they replace that “fear”.
What do unbelievers fear?
They can fear many things, like their environment (what is around them, that they have no control over). They can fear what’s in their future, because no one knows what may happen to them tomorrow or the next day or week or month or year. They can fear having relationships or fear losing relationships (insecurity).
And ultimately, they can fear death and what comes after death for them. They may have heard of those verses in Hebrew 10:26-31.
Hebrew 10:26-31: If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no more sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “It is mine to avenge...I will repay. And again... The Lord will judge His people. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Here is a great opening statement of the kind of fear unbelievers can experience by Jim Klukow found at:
https://jimklukow.com/euangelophobia-8/evangelism-world-missions/
The Fear Unlike Any Other
Although unbelievers and believers suffer from similar fears, there is one fear that is dealt with differently between Christians and non-Christians. Let’s consider the unbeliever’s and believer’s perspectives on fearing God.
Most of our fears relate to our surrounding, future, or relationships. But there is a fear, unlike any other fear. It’s a fear of God. The unbeliever has an impersonal fear of God. In Hebrew, it is identified using the phrase “Yerah Elohim” translated “the fear of God”.
Yerah is the word for “fear” and Elohim is God’s name referring to His transcendence, great power, and authority to judge. Fearing God more resembles a panic-stricken fear...in that it includes the sense of condemnation (John 3:18-20). Adam and Eve first felt this fear shortly after they sinned against God. Sin broke their relationship with God and out of fear they hid from God. They were fearful of His judgment, which overtook their confidence in His forgiveness (Genesis 3:8, Revelation 6:15-17).
Jim identified several things an unbeliever can fear.
- What surrounds us, that we have no control of.
- Our unknown future.
- Instability in our relationships.
- The fear of God, which can be like a panic-stricken fear in light of God’s transcendence, His great power, and His authority to judge us.
- The guilt we feel when we know we have done wrong in the sight of God, as illustrated in the lives of Adam and Eve when they committed that first sin. Their guilt made them insecure in His presence and afraid of His judgement.
In addition to Jim’s thoughts above, I believe most unbelievers (if they are honest and transparent), have varying degrees of fear of what will happen to them or what they will face...when they take their last breath in this life. They have to wonder what awaits them, with various kinds of thoughts like these.
...Is there life after death or not?
...If there is, what will it be like? What will it be like for me?
...Agnostics claim that it is impossible to know whether there is life after death.
...Atheists claim that there is no God and no life after death...so why worry about it. Death is simply the cessation of the existence of any particular individual...life is just over.
...For most people (who are not Christians yet), death and what happens after death remains an unsolvable mystery.
What do you believe? Why do you believe it? How do you know what you believe is the truth? Do you have any proof that what you believe and are trusting in is true? Are you willing to take the eternal risk, that your belief is true?
Christianity is the only “faith system” that offers proof that its claims regarding life, death, and the after-life (eternity) are verifiable. Because the tenets of the Christian faith are verifiable, anyone can know these things as truth before they die.
Therefore, they can make wise decisions, that prepare them for their death and their life after death. This is possibly the greatest and most meaningful blessing one can have in this life.
- They can face death knowing their future after death.
- They get to go through life, living with the peace and assurance of their eternal existence.
- So, this brings us back to the necessity of conversion before death. Christian Conversion is the experience that brings one into the verified biblical tenets of eternal life.
So, let us take a moment and summarize conversion again. These three things happen inside the experience of conversion.
Conversion affects all three dimensions of you, as a human being. What are those three dimensions? They are your spirit, your soul, and your physical body.
- Your spirit (pneuma > πνεῦμα): Your nature...you either have a sinful nature or you have a spiritual nature. Born-Again (converted) Christians have a spiritual nature, because they have Christ’s Spirit living in their spirit.
- Your soul (psuché > ψυχή): Your soul, in simple terms, is your mind, your will (volition), and your emotions (your mental assets, your intellect, your ability to feel emotional things, your personality, your psychological makeup, etc..)
- Your body (σῶμα > sóma): Every aspect and element of your physical body...your earth suit.
1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul explained your trinitarian makeup in. Your spirit, soul, and body are all mentioned in this one verse.
1 Thessalonians 5:23: May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember, you were made in the image of our Trinitarian God (Genesis 1:26: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness”).
Note: “Our image” and “our likeness” refer to the Trinity or the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
It is interesting though, that your conversion takes place in your spirit or inside your spiritual nature. When you ask Jesus Christ to save you from your sin and yourself, Christ, through His Holy Spirit comes into your spirit and crucifies (puts to death and destroys) your sinful nature referred to as the body of sin. After He has crucified your sinful nature and removed it, then He becomes your spiritual nature. Your nature and His nature are now one. Now you have a truly spiritual nature, because you have His nature.
John 14:20: In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
1 Corinthians 1:30: And because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption...
1 Corinthians 6:17: But he who is joined to the Lord Jesus becomes one spirit with Him.
Conversion is perfectly described in the following three passages. The words in parenthesis are my explanatory notes.
Romans 6:6-7: For we know that our old sinful nature was crucified with Christ, so that the body of sin might be destroyed and done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free (made pure) from sin.
Romans 6:18: You have been set free (made pure) from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone (the old sinful nature), the new is here (the holy and righteous nature of Jesus Christ)!
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In this piece, we have examined the spiritual things that happen in and through conversion. We have also identified some of the things unbelievers fear when they are not converted...when they are in a state of spiritual lostness. And we touched on the good news of how those fears are transformed through conversion into love, peace, joy, and assurance toward the future in this life and in eternity.
No one outside of the Bible, possibly described or expressed the benefits of conversion, better than the blind hymn writer Fanny Crosby. Please enjoy reviewing the words to her incredible hymn named “BLESSED ASSURANCE”.
- Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.- Refrain: This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.
- Refrain: This is my story, this is my song,
- Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels, descending, bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. - Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.
“Blessed Assurance” comes from conversion. Fanny experienced her conversion at the age of 30 and was so blessed through her relationship with Jesus Christ, she went on to write over 9,000 hymns and poems to express her love and gratefulness to Jesus Christ...before she died at the age of 95. The Lord Jesus wants you to have that same “Blessed Assurance” by trusting Him alone for your salvation and eternal life.
Next time in Part 4, which will finish this series on conversion, we will examine and enjoy select true stories of people who were converted in the Bible and during the last 2,000 years of history. These are very interesting and dynamic testimonies. You will be blessed and inspired by seeing who they are and how their conversions happened. I look forward to sharing them with you.
Until then, thank you for your time and please share any feedback you might have for me.
Yours in Christ,
Gene
719-351-4380
gene@gobblefamily.com
Do you have some thoughts, feelings, or questions about what you read today in this specific devotional/commentary?
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Gene – How are you? 🙏. Enjoyed reading the 38th devotional. It is right on target. Praying it will bear much fruit for the Kingdom. Take care. Love in Christ, Sandy
Hebrews 10th chapter has always been a worry for me and actually for all of us who know we have sinned deliberately after rebirth. Some would argue that it is speaking primarily to the Hebrews who heard the Word and accepted the Word, but went back to the Jewish laws. For me, I ask for forgiveness and then cling to the Grace so freely offered through His precious blood.