About Twelve “Almost” Christians

Now we’ll pray together before we study the Bible. We’ll just use our favorite new ancient prayer:

Lord, what we know not, teach us; what we have not, grant us; what we are not, make us. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

We’ve read from Acts chapter 19 this morning because I have decided now that instead of continuing to bounce around in the Acts of the Apostles and instead of going back to 1:1 and trying to make our way through the whole twenty-eight chapters, we are going to pick up the story from the commencement of Paul’s third missionary journey, which is essentially what we have here—back into 18 a little bit, but 19 is fine—and we’re going to follow Paul all the way to the end of the journey. Our purpose in this is clear: it is in order that some may come to hear the good news and believe and become followers of Jesus, and so that others who actually believe might be better equipped to share the good news with those who as yet do not believe in Jesus.

I came across a phrase in a paraphrase this week that was a paraphrase of Paul’s words to Timothy in his final letter to Timothy that we have in the New Testament, where he says to him, “Through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it.”[1] He’s explaining his mission and what God has chosen to do with him. And the paraphrase contained the phraseology “spread[ing] the Message loud and clear to those who[’ve] never heard.”[2] “Spread[ing] the Message loud and clear to those who[’ve] never heard.” That is essentially our raison d’être. Those are our marching orders from our commander-in-chief, the Lord Jesus Christ. So that is why we have export models from Parkside and various parts of the world. That is why we anticipate the day when a huge crowd, a crowd so huge that no one will be able to number it, will gather around the throne of God in heaven, and the people will be from every nation and language and people and tongue. And they will proclaim the fact that salvation belongs to the Lamb who sits upon the throne.[3]

Now, this morning, in the time that we have, in launching this journey in the footsteps of Paul, we’re going to look just at the first seven verses. They’re not easy verses. I’m going to give you my best on them. I remind you that you’re sensible people; you’re supposed to examine the Scriptures to see if these things are so,[4] and I’m anticipating that you’re going to read your own Bibles, not only now but later, and think many of these things out.

In these first seven verses, we have the record of Paul’s encounter with a group of approximately twelve men—you will notice the vagueness of verse 7—a group of approximately twelve men to whom we may refer as “almost Christians.” “Almost Christians.” Some years ago, we had a study here at Parkside when we gave an address to the “almost Christian,” and on that occasion, a number of people, in the providence of God, actually turned to the Lord Jesus and became his followers and his servants, and we rejoice in that. And here this morning, we have the opportunity, as a result of looking at this passage of Scripture, of being reminded again that not all who profess to be followers of Jesus are followers of Jesus, that not all who pay lip service to the things of Christianity necessarily are familiar with its truth.

And it is apparent from this passage and from human experience that very often we are very poor judges of the spiritual condition of other men and women. Indeed, Paul, upon his initial encounter with these folks, actually took them for disciples. It’s apparent as you read Luke’s record here that “he found some disciples,” and then he asked them these questions. But as you read on, you realize that they weren’t disciples at all. So Paul moves into Ephesus, and he encounters these men, who appear to Paul to be disciples.

Very often we are very poor judges of the spiritual condition of other men and women.

Now, you understand that what Luke is doing is he’s writing this narrative from the perspective of Paul, and he’s, as it were, looking over his shoulder, and he’s saying, “Paul came into Ephesus, and he meets these fellows, and they appear to him to be disciples.” He just describes them in this way. Why? Well, presumably because they were involved in Christian things; presumably because they were using Christian terminology. But instead of Paul simply assuming that, on the strength of their Christian activity and their Christian terminology, that they were actually true believers, he has a couple of questions for them.

Now, interestingly, he asks these questions. Luke doesn’t tell us why it is that he feels he must. Was it something about their demeanor? Was it something that they had said? Was it, as he spent just the initial time with them, he began to get the feeling in his spirit that although these people had the right lingo and although these people were in the right framework, that perhaps they weren’t even true disciples of Jesus at all?

Now, there is, incidentally and in passing, a lesson for us in that. You remember that Paul says when he writes to the Corinthians that they are to examine themselves to see whether they are of the faith[5]—in other words, that there are certain external identifying features of the life of genuine Christian discipleship. And where these aspects are absent, then the individual must seriously consider whether their profession is real or not. Jesus himself had adopted the same approach, hadn’t he? He said, “If a man loves me, he will keep my commandments.”[6] So one of the clear indications is that obedience is an indication of genuine conversion. And we could go through a whole host of those. We won’t.

John, who listened to Jesus teach, writes not only a Gospel so that by means of the things written his readers might come to believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing this they might have life in his name,[7] but he then goes on to write three letters. And in the first of these three letters, he provides, if you like, three signs that would give to the professing disciple an assurance that they really were genuine believers, genuine followers of Jesus. It’s not my purpose to try and do a tangential exposition of 1 John, but I’ll give this to you, and you can then go read the five chapters of 1 John and see whether what I’m telling you is really there. But he gives to them these identifying marks of assurance.

Number one, a true obedience. A true obedience. There’s no surprise in that; after all, this was what Jesus said with frequency. And John writes, and he says if somebody professes to be a follower of Jesus but does not obey his commands, then there is no reason to believe their profession. Secondly, that they would be marked by a true belief—that their belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as Son of God and as Savior, as risen from the dead, as the ascended Lord and the coming King, as the Messiah of Israel and so on, that all of those things would all be part and parcel of the genuine believer’s belief. In other words, they wouldn’t just have some vague association with Jesus, some vague notion that there was a Jesus and that he was who he claimed to be. No. But their belief system was absolutely focused. And thirdly, that those who were the genuine disciples would be marked by the kind of love that doesn’t say, “Oh, I really love God!” and then at the same time hates the brother or the sister in Jesus.

John actually puts it categorically when he opens up his letter, and he says, “This is the message we[’ve] heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there[’s] no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.”[8] That’s a fairly straightforward statement, isn’t it? If I claim to have fellowship with God, who lives in unquenchable light, and yet my routine activity of life is to walk consistently on the dark side, then I’m lying to myself and everybody else, and I do not belong to the truth. But if I “walk in the light, as he is in the light,” I then “have fellowship” with my brothers and sisters, and “the blood of Jesus [Christ], his Son, purifies [me] from all sin.”[9] When I walk in the light and I realize the darkness that remains in my soul, when I realize how easy it is for me to mess up, how interested I am in wandering from God’s ways, instead of retreating to some formal external activity, I retreat to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, where all of my sins find their answer. These are the marks, says John.

And presumably Paul, when he looks at these individuals—and, of course, we can ask him someday when we see him—but he must have had something similar in mind for him to move from his initial reaction, assuming that they are disciples, to the questions which follow in turn.

It’s not very politically correct to ask questions about people’s beliefs. It’s more politically correct to assume that if anyone believes anything about anything, they must believe it correctly, and all is well. It’s such a bunch of bunk, and it’s so pervasive that if we’re not careful, we might begin to believe that as well. It’s like believing that no matter what way you exit from this driveway, no matter whether you go north, south, east, or west, driving your car, that you will all arrive at the same point. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and it just isn’t true.

Sometimes it takes others to reinforce this for us. During the week, in the mixture of mail that I receive, both snail mail and email, I had an email which began, “Dear Alistair Begg, I wonder if you are a genuine Christian.” And so I was intrigued. I thought this maybe had come from my wife, but it hadn’t. But as I read on, the letter went on at some length. And the person was asking me to really examine things to see if I was a true believer. And I was intrigued. I had to keep reading the letter. I didn’t know where it was coming from. And then, eventually, the fellow played his hand. And right into the second page, he says, “If you will read the Book of Mormon not seven times but seventy times seven, you will discover who Jesus truly is.” And he went on to say, “And I pray for your soul, that you might discover genuine truth and everything else.”

Well, actually, I was glad of the letter. I was glad of the clarity. He obviously has listened to the radio program, Truth For Life. He’s decided that what we’re saying on Truth For Life is not something that he can sit with as a Mormon. Good! The message must be getting out. It’s not politically correct to refer to Mormonism as a cult, but it is a cult—as is Jehovah’s Witness, as is Christian Science. They are deviant aberrations of truth. They are not true Christianity. And while the Christians are unprepared, many of them, to call the line from our side out, I was delighted to know he was happy to call it from his side in. And as my son sometimes says, I want to write to him and say, “Hey, right back at you! If you will read the New Testament and leave aside Joseph Smith’s ramblings, then you may also discover that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and by believing, you may have life in his name.” I like the clarity of it. It’s good. It calls it, doesn’t it?

Now, the same kind of clarity, then, had to be in the mind of Paul when he meets this little group and they are apparently in the discipleship framework, and then he says to himself, “No, I’m not sure that they actually are.” And so he asks them two questions.

It is impossible to be a true believer absent the indwelling power of God’s Spirit.

Number one, in verse 2: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” That’s a fascinating question, isn’t it? Now, you need to ask of the question, “Why would he ask the question?” Well, he asks the question on the basis that he recognizes that the true believer has received the Holy Spirit—that it is impossible to be a true believer absent the indwelling power of God’s Spirit. We had that taught to us, actually, last Sunday morning, and very helpfully so.

In other words, in the back of his mind are the words of Jesus in John chapter 3, when, in speaking to a religious man who had all the accoutrements of spirituality, if you like, in contemporary terms, Jesus said to Nicodemus,

I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.” The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone [who is] born of the Spirit.[10]

Now, the same truth is what Paul describes for us in Romans chapter 8, when, in speaking of genuine faith, he says, “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.” And that’s a big “if”! You see, the question is not if you’re interested in the purpose-driven life; if you’re interested in adding structure, religious framework, to your existence because you recognize that it seems to go along with a cohesive view of the universe, and it’s sort of helpful to family life, and so on. All of those things are good. But the real question is: Does the Spirit of God live in you? “And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”[11] It’s that categorical. It’s that crucial.

Without the Spirit of life within us, our bodies are dead. We cannot sing, we cannot walk, we can do nothing at all absent that indwelling Spirit within us, the Spirit of life itself, which animates our existence. And in spiritual terms, what Jesus is saying is, “In the same way that you were born, an event over which you had no control which ushered you into an existence that you had been unprepared for and into a world in which people spoke strangely to you until you finally learned the language and became part of this big community, so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” They’re ushered into a world that they really had no preparation for. They encounter a group of people who say all kinds of strange things, look down at them, as it were, little baby Christians, saying things like “Justification, sanctification, glorification…” And the person says, “I don’t know what this is. What are they on about? What is this about?” And then, all of a sudden, one day you find yourself looking down into a baby Christian, going, “Glorification, justification, sanctification…” And the person said, “What is all that?” It’s the same process!

But these people were almost Christians. They weren’t Christians. The Spirit of God did not live in them. And if the Spirit of God does not live in you, says the Bible, you do not belong to Jesus. It’s an amazing question: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And the answer is as striking as the question. In fact, the answer might even be more striking: “No, we have[n’t] even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Wow! That takes it up a notch, doesn’t it? I mean, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” “No, absolutely not. In fact, we don’t really know much about the Holy Spirit at all. We hadn’t heard.”

Now, I think there is a little hyperbole in their response. There has to be, doesn’t there? And this is where, again, in the reading of the Bible, we need to read it in a way that takes into account the genre and the way in which people express themselves, so that they will express themselves in a more dramatic way to make the point. Again, you must figure this out, but I can’t understand it any other way. Because I don’t understand how anybody who knew about the baptism of John doesn’t know about the Holy Spirit. I don’t know anybody who’s been around the events of first-century Christianity without knowing at least that the Holy Spirit did certain things in the Old Testament and came on kings and anointed them and so on.

In fact, John the Baptist had said, you know, “I baptize you with water. But the one who comes after me, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”[12] So when they say, “No, we hadn’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit,” my best explanation of this is that what they are actually saying in essence is that “we have no knowledge of the Holy Spirit in the Christian sense of the term. We have no knowledge of the Holy Spirit apart from John’s prophecy concerning it, but we did not know that John’s prophecy has been fulfilled.”

If you like, they did not realize that what Jesus promised in John chapter 7 had, in Pentecost, actually taken place. You remember in John chapter 7, Jesus is there for the feast in the temple, and “on the last and greatest day of the Feast, [he] stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone[’s] thirsty, let him come to me and drink. [And] whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’” It’s an interesting picture, isn’t it? So into the desert and into the parched nature of human existence there is a power implanted that issues in this overflow of a life that is engaged with God. What did he mean by this? Well, John tells us: “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, [because] Jesus had not yet been glorified.”[13] Now, my best guess at this is that these folks hadn’t understood that that expectation made there by Jesus had been fulfilled in Pentecost. And they’re very honest in their response: “No, we don’t know anything about the Holy Spirit in these terms.”

So Paul gives his follow-up question. “[Well,] then what baptism did you receive?” Because remember, in Paul’s mind, he’s got it clear, doesn’t he? ’Cause he’s been baptized. And he knows that when he professed faith in Jesus Christ, and Ananias came and laid hands on him, and he received his sight, and then he said, “What am I supposed to do now?” and Ananias said, “You better get yourself baptized.”[14] And he had found out that what Peter had said on the day of Pentecost was really clear, when the people were cut to the heart and said, “What are we supposed to do? If Jesus of Nazareth really is the Messiah and has died for our sins, what are we supposed to do?”[15] And Peter had said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, … for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”[16] The whole package was right there.

So Paul then says, “Okay, I’m asking you a question that links the Spirit with faith. Now let me ask you a second question that links the Spirit with baptism. What baptism did you receive?” “Well,” they said, “John’s baptism. Whatever John said was what we did.” What had John said? John said, “I am here as a voice crying in the wilderness,[17] and I urge you to turn away from your sins and get in the tub and show everybody that you’re prepared to turn away from your sins by getting in the tub.”[18] Not the tub, but you know what I mean: in the pond, in the pool, in the water. “Get in here and show everybody that you’re turning your back on all of this.”

And while this was going on and people are becoming the disciples of John, another person begins to make his journey, as it were, across the horizon. And some of the disciples of John begin to go and follow this other fellow. And other disciples come to John and say, “Hey, John, you’re starting to lose some boys. There’s a big drift over the river to… Jesus from Nazareth has got quite a following.” And what did John the Baptist say? He said, “Fine. I’m a voice crying in the wilderness. I’m actually here… I’m preparatory. I’m not the bridegroom. I’m the best man. My job is to stand up, speak up, and shut up. I’m only here in order to say, ‘Here! Here he is!’ I’m a voice crying in the wilderness. I’m a light that shines for a little while. I am a finger that is pointing. And if you’ll look across there, you will see the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Therefore, if he is the Sin-Bearer, then he is the answer to your sinful heart.[19] And you have said, ‘I am interested in turning from all of my sin. How is it to be forgiven?’ It is to be forgiven in the one who is the Lamb of God.”

Now, somehow or another, this little group in Ephesus had part one, but they didn’t have part two. They had never understood that Jesus came to blot out their transgressions; that Jesus is the one who can give somebody a fresh start and a clean page and a new opportunity; that Jesus is the one who by his death was bearing the condemnation upon him—God’s condemnation on sin—making it possible for those who trusted in him to live without condemnation, on account of what Jesus had accomplished. And when that divine transaction took place, then not only was the individual’s status changed and they became the sons of God, but the individual’s experience was transformed, because God the Holy Spirit came to live in their lives. And they were new. And they knew they were new not because they had embraced an externalism but because they had new desires. They had new interests.

I mean, watch your children grow, and watch them have their first crush on the girl up the street or their friend in high school. Watch your son or your daughter go out on their first date. And if they don’t tell you where they’re going—which, of course, they should—you will get an inkling of it. All of a sudden, the boy’s car is clean: the passenger side; the mat, he’s out there shaking it. You say to yourself, “Why’s he shaking that mat? What’s he doing with that?” And then he comes down the stairs, and he just looks just that little bit tidier. “And is that my cologne? What is that? What’s going on here?” It’s a new affection. It’s a new affection. And when that affection, when that friendship grows to love, it is a life-transforming encounter.

And when we think in terms of genuine discipleship, there’s all the difference in the world between the embrace of an external existence and the chattering of Christian terminology and “the expulsive power of a new affection”[20] set within our hearts, so that we’re saying to ourselves, “Why do I like these songs? I’ve always hated these songs! Why do his sermons seem more understandable? They’ve always been completely double Dutch to me! And you know what? He seems to be speaking much shorter than he used to. I remember they went on forever and ever, but no, there’s something gone wrong with him.” No, there’s something gone right with you! You have been made a new person. But only by the work of the Spirit of God.

Paul shows up. The group of twelve or so are there. They appear to be disciples.

“Did you receive the Holy Spirit?”

“No.”

“How about your baptism?”

“John’s baptism.”

“Well,” says Paul, “you need to understand that John was pointing forward.” And what he actually does, starting where these people are, is explain to them what he’s been doing in the synagogues all the time. You remember he goes into the synagogue, and he takes up the Bible, and he says, “Now, I want to argue for the next few weeks with you about the fact that the Messiah had to suffer.” And so he goes through the Old Testament, and he shows the passages on the suffering of the Messiah. And then, when he has brought them to a conviction regarding that truth, then he lowers the boom on them, the coup de grâce, and he says, “And this Jesus is that Messiah.” That’s essentially what he’s doing here. “He told … people”—John did, verse 4—“he told … people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, … Jesus.” And what they needed to know was that Jesus had poured out his Spirit, and life was available in him.

Now, verse 5 is equally straightforward: “On hearing this,” they said “Fine,” and “they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.” This is quite an encounter, isn’t it? You’d almost think that God had planned this! Little group of guys who’ve got half the picture, sitting there, all talking to one another, having their little times. Along comes the apostle Paul. First glance, it seems like they’re all in.

Then he says, “Maybe they’re not all in. Maybe I should ask them a couple of questions. Tell me, did you receive the Holy Spirit?”

“No, no, no, no. We don’t have that package.”

“And what about your baptism? How did that go?”

“Well, we were baptized according to John.”

“Well, don’t you realize what John was doing? That he was pointing to the Lamb of God who is to come?”

And somebody said, “No, we didn’t realize that. But you know what? That makes perfect sense.”

And another one said, “That explains the missing piece. We couldn’t put this jigsaw together. You have just dropped the last piece in for us.”

And someone else says, “And I’ll tell you something else: that explains my struggle!”

And his friend said, “What struggle?”

And he said, “My struggle to be like Jesus. I’ve been trying like crazy to be like Jesus. I have been trying so hard to be a Christian. That’s why I come to these meetings, so that I might get souped up and shaken up and ready to go, so that I might try my best.” The almost Christian is always trying their best. It’s always an uphill struggle—until they realize that genuine, believing faith is all about who Jesus is and what he has accomplished rather than about who we are and how well we’re trying and doing.

Now, don’t get stalled by the unique and public and visible demonstration of the inrush of the Holy Spirit here in verse 6: “Paul placed his hands on them.” Throughout the Acts of the Apostles, there are these encounters, particularly post-Pentecost. Do you remember in Acts chapter 8, when the gospel goes to Samaria, the Spirit of God, like the wind blowing, gives unique signs?[21] And the evidences of the Spirit’s work are expressed here. Any careful reading of the Acts of the Apostles makes it obvious that there is no real way of universalizing this or putting it together in a way that we can build a pattern on. It is so multivarious. It may well be that these particular evidences were necessary in order to convince this little group—and the bystanders—that what had taken place here on this day was their integration as full members into Christ’s body.

But let me finish by pointing out to you not what we see as evidence of the Spirit’s work in a sporadic and intermittent way but what is clearly the evidence of the Spirit’s work in Christian experience always, all the time, everywhere. There are four things that are here, and I’m not going to expound them, so don’t get upset. Let me tell you what they are: repentance, faith in the Lord Jesus, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. No matter where you go, you will discover that these are, if you like, the hallmarks of Christian initiation; that the perceived order of these things may vary a little, but all four of them belong together. They are universal: repentance, faith in Jesus, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Now, just a word by way of application to close. Somebody’s sitting and saying to themselves, “Well, what possible relevance does this have? I’m not a disciple of John the Baptist. This is an interesting anecdote, but I don’t really know how it relates to me.” No, I’m pretty convinced that I’m not speaking to disciples of John the Baptist right now, but I’m equally convinced that I am speaking to some who, like this little group of twelve or so, are almost Christians. I’m speaking to individuals who are almost Christians—individuals who have been awakened to the truth of who Jesus is. They would not want to deny it; they would not want to argue against it. Who may actually also have been wakened to their own sense of sinfulness—that they’ve no longer seen sin as some generic problem, but they see sin in its ugly terms in their own lives. And they may even have come, under the teaching of the Bible and their own reading, to agree with what the Bible says—namely, that sin deserves God’s punishment.

But it is at that point that things go dreadfully wrong. Because it is at that point that self-effort kicks in. And the person says, “Well, okay, I am a mess, I have sinned, I am a sinner, I do deserve God’s judgment. So let me handle this the way I handle everything else: let me get down to it, and let me get it fixed. What do I need to do? Tell me the things I need to do. I’m going to start by attending Christian activities, I’m going to continue by using Christian language, and I’m going to pull my socks up and do a very good job.” And such self-effort leads to one of two things: pride, whereby we convince ourself we’re doing very well, or despair, as we acknowledge that no matter how well we’re doing, we just can’t do well enough. And that individual has never come to see that in Christ, our condemnation is annulled, our sins are forgiven, and in Christ, God comes to live in us by his Spirit.

In Christ, our condemnation is annulled, our sins are forgiven, and God comes to live in us by his Spirit.

Well, how about you? I think the average person coming into this room—especially on a Sunday morning like this, in the east side of Cleveland—walk in and say, “Well, I was there. There was a big crowd of them. Three times the group came in and left again. They’re all singing the songs; they seem to be fairly attentive. Apparently, there’s just thousands of Christians in that Parkside Church.” Apparently.

But the Spirit of God searches our hearts, and asks us these questions, and says, “What about you? Did you receive the Holy Spirit?”

And you have to say, “Well, no, I’ve been trying to read my Bible and do good things. I even started a prayer journal. But no, I haven’t received the Holy Spirit. I’m as on my own as I ever was.”

“And what about your baptism? Have you been baptized? Did you ever profess faith in Je—”

“No, I haven’t. I don’t like that. I saw one of those, and I’m not doing that! I have no interest in that.”

“And are you relying entirely on Jesus for your salvation, so that if you died this evening and stood before the bar of God’s judgment, and someone said, ‘Why should I welcome you into heaven?’ or ‘Why would you be acceptable to God?’ you’re able to say, ‘Well, actually, in myself, I’m completely unacceptable to God, but because of all that Jesus is and all that Jesus has done and because I am resting in him as my Savior, I approach this gateway boldly’?”

See, the biggest danger here at Parkside is that lots of people can just slide along with the group—caught up in the crowd, singing the songs, saying the piece. Somehow or another, we think that if you hang around long enough, you’ve got membership in the club, you know—in the Jesus club. Well, I’ve been hanging around for twenty-two years in America, and they never gave me membership yet, until I put up my hand and said, “Please, could I become a member?” And then they put me through my paces, and then, very graciously, they said yes. Have you ever put up your hand and said, “Lord Jesus Christ, please, could I become a member of your discipleship team? Would you forgive my sins and fill me with the Holy Spirit? Because I’m making a hash of this.”

I say again: the room is filled with almost Christians.

We can do no better in a picture than take what Archbishop William Temple said on one occasion. Remember, he said, “You can give me a Shakespeare play and ask me to write a play like that, and I can’t do it. You can show me a painting by Turner and ask me to paint that, and I can’t do it. And you can show me the life of Jesus of Nazareth and ask me to live a life like that, and I can’t do it. But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write those plays. And if the power of Turner could come and live in me, then I could paint those paintings. And if the power of the risen Lord Jesus could come and live in me, then I could live that life.”[22]

See, we often ask the wrong questions. The real question is “Do rivers of water flow from my life?” Not “Have I signed up? Have I been baptized? Have I done whatever they told me?” but “Is there any evidence that the Spirit of God actually lives in me, that I’m a new person?” And if not, then maybe I’m just an almost Christian. And almost Christians will almost get to heaven. But close isn’t going to be close enough.

Father, look upon us in your mercy today, we pray. Help us to search our own hearts before the all-seeing gaze of your Word. Help us to see in the person of Jesus the one who bore our sins and took our punishment. Help us to give up our self-reliance or our cozying up to the Christian group and the Christian lingo, lest we live on the fringes of faith without ever being embraced by your love. Some of us, Lord, are just a step from you. And in some instances, it is fear: “What will people think? Can I keep it up?” Some it is pride: “I don’t want anyone to know.” Some of it is “I’m a private person. I don’t need anybody finding out.” But Lord, we pray that the power of your love may break every barrier down and that there will be people throughout Parkside in these days who are prepared to say, “Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but through you I’m more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope.[23] And I thank you for paying my debt and bearing my punishment and offering me forgiveness, and I turn from my sin and receive you as my Savior. Fill me with your Holy Spirit, I pray.”

Hear our prayers. Let our cries come unto you. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

[1] 2 Timothy 4:17 (NIV 1984).

[2] 2 Timothy 4:17 (MSG).

[3] See Revelation 7:9–10.

[4] See Acts 17:11.

[5] See 2 Corinthians 13:5.

[6] John 14:15, 21, 23 (paraphrased).

[7] See John 20:31.

[8] 1 John 1:5–6 (NIV 1984).

[9] 1 John 1:7 (NIV 1984).

[10] John 3:5–8 (NIV 1984).

[11] Romans 8:9 (NIV 1984).

[12] Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16 (paraphrased).

[13] John 7:37–39 (NIV 1984).

[14] See Acts 9:17–18.

[15] Acts 2:37–38 (paraphrased).

[16] Acts 2:38 (NIV 1984).

[17] Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23 (paraphrased).

[18] See Matthew 3:5–6; Mark 1:4–5; Luke 3:3.

[19] John 3:26–30; 1:29 (paraphrased).

[20] Thomas Chalmers, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection” (1855).

[21] See Acts 8:15–17.

[22] Referenced in John Stott, Basic Christianity (1958; repr., Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006), 128.

[23] Attributed to Jack Miller. See, for example, Katherine Leary Alsdorf, foreword to Every Good Endeavor, by Tim Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf (New York: Penguin, 2012), xix. Paraphrased.