Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07058 Deathbed conversions are genuine when the faith behind them is genuine, and the New Testament gives us no reason whatever to treat a late turning as second class. God is not running a loyalty scheme in which long service earns a better standing. That said, the question usually carries more than one concern…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07057 The dying thief is the single clearest illustration in Scripture that salvation is by grace through faith and nothing else. He had no time to be baptised, no opportunity to join a church, no chance to make restitution to anyone he had robbed, and no prospect of a single good work. He had…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07056 Faith and repentance are two words for one turn. That is the heart of the answer, and getting it right saves a great deal of unnecessary anxiety, because a good deal of pastoral damage has been done by treating them as two separate transactions that must be completed in the correct order. The…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07055 There is always a moment of salvation, even when nobody can identify it. That is the short answer, and it holds two things together that people often set against each other: the instantaneous nature of what God does, and the very gradual experience many believers have of coming to realise it. This question…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07054 Christian conversion is the moment a person changes hands. It is not a church membership process, it is not a decision card, and it is not the gradual improvement of a decent life. It is the point at which someone stops trusting themselves and starts trusting Jesus, and everything after that flows from…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07053 The elementary doctrines of Christ are listed in Hebrews 6:1-3, and the passage has puzzled readers for a long time. The writer tells his readers to leave these teachings behind and press on to maturity, which sounds alarmingly like an instruction to move beyond the basics of the faith. That cannot be what…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 07052 Saving faith is the hinge on which everything in the Christian life turns, and it is also the thing people most commonly misunderstand. Some treat it as a leap in the dark. Some treat it as a feeling they have to work up. Some treat it as agreeing with a list of propositions…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07051 True repentance is one of those words the church uses constantly and explains rarely, which is a pity, because a great deal of unnecessary misery grows in that gap. Some people think it means grovelling. Some think it means getting your life sorted before God will have you. Some have been told it…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07050 Few things trouble a tender conscience quite like the fear of falling away. I have sat with believers who could recite the promises of God perfectly well and still could not sleep, because somewhere at the back of the mind sat a suspicion that one cold enough season, one serious enough failure, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7047. Being in Christ is Paul’s favourite way of describing a Christian, and I suspect most of us read straight past it. He uses the phrase, or one of its near relatives, more than a hundred and sixty times. He does not usually call people Christians. He calls them those who are in Christ…