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Have You Got it Nailed Down?
Posted by Brian Thornton on December 3, 2007
If you are not sure of the date of your conversion, you may just be in for some eternal trouble. If you cannot pinpoint the exact time of when you were transformed from darkness into light, then you better start trying to figure that out. You need to get that nailed down! How can you know for sure that you are a Christian and not know the exact time of your having repented and believed? Any true believer will be able to tell you at what point they were converted. If they can’t, then it is probably true that they were never saved in the first place.
Do you know people who believe this? Have you ever heard people who preach this? I have. I can remember going to conferences and special events where the audience was warned over and over that if they could not pinpoint a specific time and date in the past for their conversion, that they needed to get that nailed down now so that they could be sure they were saved. I even remember listening frequently to a song from White Heart on the subject called Nailed Down, which encouraged its listeners to “get it nailed down”.
I have known some who celebrate their “spiritual” birthday each year. They obviously know the exact date of their conversion. I know others who may not celebrate it quite that emphatically, but who know not only the date and year, but the exact time of the day it occurred! I know of people who are not sure of the date, but they do know how old they were when God saved them (I am one of those people). I also know of others who can only give a round-a-bout period in their life when they know they were effectually called (Mark Dever says his conversion was sometime between the ages of 10 and 12).
I fear that some people tragically put more faith in the date of their conversion than they do in Christ Himself. And I fear that others are troubled and perhaps question their salvation from time to time because they cannot bring to their mind a specific point and time in the past when they know their salvation took place.
In my reading through an exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith by Sam Waldron, I began reading section 15 of the Confession yesterday, which starts with this statement:
“Such of the elect as are converted at riper years, having sometimes lived in a state of nature, and therein served divers lusts and pleasures, God in their effectual calling giveth them repentance unto life.”
Waldron says on pp. 197-198 that this doesn’t mean the Confession was saying those saved earlier in life did not have to repent, but that those who are saved later in life usually experience a crises, or what many would call a Damascus Road experience. Here is what Waldron says:
“Why…distinguish between the repentance given to those who are converted at riper years and the repentance given generally to all believers?”
The Confession makes this distinction out of a desire to distinguish repentance as a crises experience from repentance as an ordinary grace. All believers are marked by the ordinary grace, but not all believers will know, or need to know, repentance as a crises experience.”
He then goes on to explain what this means:
“They [framers of the Confession] were saying, ‘Though we insist emphatically on personal conversion, we understand that the experience of a child raised in a Christian home may be quite different from that of one who is converted without the benefit of Christian nurture as a child.’ Both converts will experience repentance, but both may not have a crises conversion experience.”
Next he discusses what this means in practical terms:
“Do not doubt your salvation merely because you lack a crises experience like that of some respected brother or sister in the Lord. Do not demand of others a certain type of conversion experience as a necessary mark of true grace. An emotional earthquake, radical, external changes in one’s lifestyle, knowing the exact time of one’s rebirth, an extended work of conviction by the law, immediate sudden joy – all of these may accompany conversion, but none are necessary marks of true repentance.”
Thomas Twitchell said
This was good. I am glad Waldron makes the distinction. I was feeling lonely. I think that there is a lot to the entire salvation experience that we just tend to lump together. When I survey the NT, I have yet to pin down the “born-againess” of the disciples. What happen to Paul surely didn’t happen to any of them. And, instead of there being a set pattern, the form of their following Christ is quite diverse. Some are called, others adjoin, others leave and become “secret disciples”. It’s a mixed bag. And just when conversion takes place is only one question, when were they regenerated is another.
In the end though, I think we all have to come to that point of Isaiah. Six chapters in he has this remarkable experience. I am not saying that it will be dramatic like that, and in fact there may be many such occurances greater or lesser, but the one thing remains. At some point we come face to face with God and our depravity is exposed for what it really is. Now, a child raised in a Christian home, is not likely to sense that, and so, it may be many years before that illumination comes. For those like me, there may be several of those heart wrenching awakenings of the awareness of depravity. Some, like my wife, who confessed at seven, came only thirty-five years later, to the knowledge of her depravity. And, what a blessing. Liberating, actually, and more joyous.