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Persuasion Unto Life

Dan Lash, Pastor Weston Street Bible Church, November 2019

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The new birth does not occur as the result of a person praying a prayer, turning over a new leaf, surrendering to Christ, Inviting Jesus in or some other man-made response to God. A person is saved when he/she exposes their conscience to a particular message in the Scriptures, until that message produces a persuasion concerning its truthfulness. That message which produces this persuasion unto faith is the message of the cross:

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness,

Being saved is about hearing and being persuaded concerning the truthfulness of a message, and once being persuaded, resting your eternal destiny on the truthfulness of that message. That message is that the Lord Jesus has settled your sin debt to the Father’s satisfaction by the offering of himself in your stead. The satisfaction with which the Father views the work of the Son can, through faith, become your eternal standing before the Father. Believe that for yourself.

When a person is persuaded that the good news is true, and rests the eternal destiny of His soul in the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, he is immediately born again. Twelve times in the New Testament Paul’s evangelistic method is described in terms of persuasion. Here are two:

Acts 13:43 Now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.
Acts 17:2 Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, "This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ." 4 And some of them were persuaded; and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas.

I remember when I was a kid, the shortest Gospel tract I ever saw read as follows:

  1. You are a sinner.
  2. Jesus died for your sin.
  3. Rely on that for yourself to be saved eternally saved.

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