“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3
CONVERT = to change from one position, opinion, etc., to another.
Just as faith without works is dead, a sinner’s belief in Christ apart from conversion is fruitless. From Cain on, man has insisted on believing in God, without being converted from his way unto God’s way. Man’s purpose driven religion prioritizes coming up with a religious mixture suitable to man, that requires no real conversion from sin and self unto faith in God’s righteousness.
The first principle of non-converted religion is denial. Not self denial, but a denial of all that is disagreeable to self. Like Cain, man continues to deny that his likes and dislikes are wrong and sinful, unto rather denying any and all religion that does not accept him on his own terms. The denying of any and all preaching of God’s Word that disagrees with man’s views and preferred interpretations, amounts to rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit that would convict him that man’s ways and thoughts are not God’s ways and thoughts.
By man denying that he has a sin condition that comes short of the glory of God, he allows for no conviction of sin that will lead him to real repentance. Without a Holy Spirit-wrought broken and contrite spirit over his lost condition, there will be no complete change of mind about one’s self before God, unto the acknowledgment of God’s truth.
Without coming before God as the publican did (Luke 18), “God be merciful to me a sinner“, unto being justified through repentance and faith, the sinner asserts himself as if he is one of God’s own, like the Pharisee, glorying in what he is in and of himself, but without being justified from his sin before God.
A very subtle position has emerged in highly esteemed fashion, that propagates a supposed salvation by grace, that ignores conversion. Rather than take the Biblical position, “that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11), they receive any and all as they are, in the name of God’s love. They hold no position true to conversion, that those who identify with Christ are to bring forth fruits meet for repentance.
The most disgraceful of all ideas is that since we are not under the law, being under grace, that it is all right to live contrary to the principles set forth in and by God’s laws. But anything that abandons conversion, is not true to grace. To approve of living contrary to God’s laws, is a defiance to the authority of the inspiration of all scripture, not only rejects God’s righteousness, but also violates grace, which elevates the sinner to justification from sin and imputed righteousness, that the sinner cannot attain to himself, being sinful. (Romans 6:1-2)
Under grace, the transgression of God’s law is still sin. 1 John 3:4
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