What Will This Change Involve?
Danger Will Robinson!
Conversion is not just living a good moral life. Some people say that conversion is simply living a good life. It is a serious and even rigorous attempt at moral reform through the making and keeping of new resolutions and commitments.
- Of course, if a professing Christian makes no progress in moral reform, then we have Biblical reason to seriously question whether their verbal profession is either genuine or saving. But mere attempts at moral reform don't save anyone.
- Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:19-20).
- There are plenty of outwardly moral Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims. But trying to establish an outward morality of our own, even if we use God's law as our standard, will not please God.
- What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works (Rom 9:30-31).
But if Christian conversion is neither mere mental assent, nor a mere commitment to moral reform, then what exactly does it involve?
