[AI translation] My Christian Brothers and Sisters! One of the characteristic features of our fast-paced age is the pursuit of topicality. In the literary, artistic, social, national and ideological spheres of life, the average man of today is only really interested in what is topical. And this is only natural, for who would have the time and the scientific training to reflect on the problems of life, even beneath the surface.So it is with the Scriptures. A new concept of value has also emerged in relation to the Bible: timeliness. Only that part of God's Word can hold the interest of modern man which answers the most urgent questions of today. When, for example, a whole country is up in arms to avenge its old enemy, who is curious about the old, not at all timely teaching of Jesus about loving your enemy? When there are great universal national questions to be answered and solutions to be found, who cares about the biblical passages that dwell on the most basic spiritual questions?
In the pursuit of topicality, the most fundamental teachings of the Bible and the most natural practices of Christian life are then forgotten and slip unnoticed into the hands of the cults. When these 'out-of-date' words and concepts do turn up, we are confronted with them as with some ancient artifact in a museum, whose shape and name we know from pictures, but what it represents we do not know exactly.
I feel, Brothers and Sisters, that this is the "timelessness" of the question I want to talk about today: conversion. When this word is brought to light from oblivion, I think that many of us are very much strangers to it, as people who have little to do with each other. That I want to speak about conversion at a time when, it seems, a thousand other issues in national and social life far outweigh it in terms of timeliness, is because I believe that the timeliness of Scripture is intrinsic, that is, independent of time and circumstances.
Which means that it is not the Word that must be applied to man, but man that must be applied to the Word, because man and all his issues are variable and transitory, and the Word is immutable and eternal. And in the Word of God, the call to repentance occurs at least forty times in various forms, which shows that from God's point of view the question is certainly very timely!
Before Jesus had even left the family circle and the workshop of Nazareth, John the Baptist was already travelling around the country, shouting the call everywhere: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And when Jesus goes public for the first time, this is the opening of his redemptive work: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The main motif of the teaching and work of Jesus and of the apostles after him has always remained repentance and conversion. In fact, Jesus once made such an unmistakable statement: 'Unless you repent and become like the child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. So the kingdom of heaven has come in vain, but without repentance we have nothing to gain.
In the part of the apostle Paul's life which I have just read, we have a very graphic description, an example of the process of conversion. In it we can also see what role God has in our conversion, and what role we ourselves have.
(1) God himself is therefore above all the agent and the worker of conversion. It is not, therefore, that the sinner simply decides one fine day to repent and put off his sins, as he did on Saturday evening, and henceforth goes about the world in spiritual solemnity. So man does not repent of himself, nor does one man repent another man, but repentance is real when God himself works it in our souls.
We see this in the story of Paul's conversion. His conversion also took place independently of his own will. He did not want to be converted, and was convinced that he did not need to be, since he was one of the most eminent members of the most religious monastic order of his time, the Pharisees. Now, too, he set out in all good conscience to persecute Christians, in the holy belief that he was doing what was pleasing to God, that he was doing his religious and national duty. He was not a wicked man, he was not a God-denier, he wanted to be very godly, but he was blinded by prejudice, and so he did not realise that in his great religious zeal he was not following God, but persecuting him, not serving him, but destroying his glory.
In his great rush, in his great endeavour, he did not perceive how spiritually torn he was in his rush to his own destruction. "And as he went, it came to pass, that he drew near to Damascus, and suddenly, with a great suddenness, light shone round about him from heaven". Suddenly, in his great striving, God called out to him, stopped him on the precipice, reached into his life, caught him in his rush, caught him in his fall, sobered him, and made him see that the path he was striving on with great zeal was not the way to heaven, but to damnation. In the twinkling of an eye, God gave Paul such spiritual light in his soul, dark with partiality, that he was stupefied, and even his eyes were blinded for a time. Jesus appeared to him, stood before him, and let him go no further.
One might say that he had never had such a great experience. He too would be converted if God were to reach into his life in a similar way. We might reply that not every man needs such a conversion as the apostle Paul. God's dealings with individual souls cannot be drawn on a map; God deals with each soul in a particular way appropriate to that soul.
Some souls are so blinded, so obsessed with the rush to damnation, that only a stormy scene like Paul's can turn them back. I have met such people. They can tell you when and how this great turning point in their lives happened. But this is the rarer and more extraordinary case.
It is much more common, especially among Christians, for someone to have heard God's call from childhood, to have happily thought of themselves as Jesus' sheep - but to have occasionally wandered away from the flock and the Shepherd, and then come back to Him again. Such a man could not give a definite account of how and when he returned. At most, he could point to certain scenes, experiences, events in his life when he felt that God was closer to him than at other times, and when he heard his call more loudly than at other times, and as if his life had a momentum towards God at such times that it did not at other times.
God's role in our conversion, then, is to call out to us, to stop us, to make us see that we have lost our way, that we have wandered, perhaps that we are pursuing Him, as Paul did, rather than serving Him. God does this by putting Jesus in front of us in some way, and Jesus blocks our way, as we saw in Paul's life. But we should not expect this placing of Jesus in our way to happen in our lives in the same tumultuous way that it happened in Paul's life. I have experienced many times in my own life that, while reading a book or studying the Bible, Christ has stood before me and called me to turn back, to turn around, because I am not supposed to go that way.
I recently visited a young girl in hospital, who had been there for nearly half a year, hovering between life and death, who said quite emphatically that it was her illness that had brought her to a God she had not cared much about before. I know of couples who have testified that the death of their eight-year-old son turned their eyes in earnest to God. Anyone whose spiritual eyes are not blind to see, not only sees Jesus in the Bible or in church preaching, but even in the failures and adversities of his life, who comes to him to turn him back from the path that was not his.
So none of us here can say that if we had an experience like Paul had, he would be converted, because God has intervened in everyone's life in some way, if only we were not careful, if only we were not satisfied. God can really do no more than to set Jesus before us in some form, and to let us know that the direction in which we are going is the direction of His repentance and our damnation, but also to let us know that He is not angry with us for all this, that He has forgiven us all that we have done against Him, and that the way of return is free. All the spiritual goods, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, peace with God and man, peace of mind, what we call in summary the kingdom of God, is here beside us, God has brought it very near to us, it is behind us, and to enter it, to make it ours, we have only to turn back, we have only to repent. Hence the urgent exhortation on the lips of Jesus: 'Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near to you.
2) So if God's role in repentance is to call us and give us the opportunity to return, then our role can only be to take advantage of that opportunity: to perform the great turning back.
The path of every man's life can only go in two directions: either it moves closer to God, or it moves away from God - in other words, either towards God or towards Satan. Repentance on the part of man consists in stopping on the path away from God, turning back, and starting towards God. No matter how close I am to God, once I turn my back on him and take even one step away from him, I have already left the kingdom of God and I need conversion. Conversely, no matter how far I am from God, no matter how far I have fallen away from God, but once I turn my back on Satan, I have made a 180 degree turn and taken even one step closer to God, I have already entered the kingdom of God. So, every time a man needs to turn back, he is not moving closer to God in the journey of his life, but moving away from God.
So far, this is very nice and very simple - but the difficulty is that most people do not know whether they are drawing near to God or moving away from God in the course of certain actions. Paul himself was convinced that it serves the glory of God to persecute and exterminate the followers of Christ. He wanted to use God's cause, to serve God, and in his prejudice he did not realize that he was doing the opposite of all this.
Recently, we have all read in the newspapers about an American scientist who has invented a magnifying device that allows you to see objects under a lens magnified a million times. Not content with that, the scientist is said to want to increase the power of his device tenfold. There are tiny, tiny enemies of the human body, germs, which need to be magnified ten million times to be successfully fought.
It is interesting that in our spiritual life we try to do the opposite. The enemies of our souls, even if they are the greatest sins, we try to see as small and insignificant as possible. If we were once to examine our souls through some kind of spiritual microscope, I am convinced that we would be horrified at the many spiritual germs and harmful germs. Then we would see how bias has blinded us, that when we have "used" Christianity the most, "served" God and the church the most, we have done the most damage. There is such a spiritual microscope, the law of God, the Ten Commandments and its explanation, the Sermon on the Mount: if one looks through it, he sees everything in his soul.
Repentance now consists in turning away from all that I have discovered in my life as being unpleasing to God, that is, as sin, turning my back on what I have been facing and moving towards the God from whom I have been moving away. The apostle Paul's example of conversion also shows what it means to move towards God, to draw near to God. The apostle Paul, crushed under the weight of the vision, says to Jesus, "What do you want me to do, Lord?" - so he realised that what he wanted to do, though it was the best of intentions, was not what God wanted him to do. He realised that his best efforts and his most honest endeavours were against God. So he turned around, he turned his back on his ambition, on all that he wanted, and he was ready to do what God wanted him to do.
The way of approaching God today is still marked by this question. So what is important is no longer what my circumstances command, what my instincts and impulses desire, what my well-conceived interests or my vanity or my career require, - but: what Lord, you want me to do. In the last degree, conversion means to submit my will completely to the will of God. Or to put it in a metaphor: the unconverted man wants the oars of his life's boat in the hands of Jesus, and the rudder in his own hands - the converted man, on the other hand, takes the oars in his hands and hands the rudder over to Jesus. Is this what it means, Lord, what do you want me to do?
We have just said that it is not timely to talk about conversion today, when we have many other pressing issues to resolve. I am convinced, however, that only a man who is moving towards God, a converted man, can begin to resolve crises. For to go towards God is life, to go away is death. If a man serves his country or his Church while distancing himself from God, no matter how good he may have wished to do, no matter how hard he may have tried to use it, he can only lead it to ruin and destruction.
It is precisely because such acute social and national issues need to be resolved that there is no more timely issue today than conversion. It is not I, therefore, who say this, but my Lord Jesus Christ who cries out to us and asks us all:
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Mt 4,17)
Amen.
Date: 15 January 1939.
Lesson
ApCsel 9,1-18