What Does It Mean to Accept Christ - Part 1 — A.W. Tozer

Salvation by Christ Alone and the Necessity of a Saving Relationship

Now my relation to Jesus Christ is one of those few matters of life or death. To the average one of us who listen now, it's taken for granted that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I take that for granted, I assume that, I know that's true, I don't in any wise question it.

But it's further taken for granted, and properly, that we are saved by Christ alone without works. That I also take for granted because it's declared there, I don't question it, I don't ask that somebody come and explain it, it's so.

He did die for our sins according to the scriptures, he did rise again. The scripture does say that we are saved by Christ alone without works. Now the big question is, and right here is a hole in the bridge where millions fall through, to saving relation to Christ.

He alone saves without human merit or works. But he doesn't save everybody, therefore there must be some connection made or some relation sustained, somehow or other I come into a relationship to Christ that saves me.

Now what is that? And that is a matter of life or death. You dare not assume anything, you must know. Not to be sure isn't to gamble with your soul, not to be sure is to be dead. Just as you dare not cross the mighty ocean without a compass, to do so would be to die, so you dare not assume that you have the relationship unless you have.

It's got to be there before you dare accept it as being there. To be wrong on this is to an average preacher, or the average person, or the average Christian anywhere, how do I come into saving relation to Jesus Christ?

The answer would be one of three. People would either tell you, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, that's Acts 16 .31, or they would say, receive Christ as your Savior, that's John 1 .12, or else they would give you this other answer.

And of course those first two answers are true, they're true. Or else they would give you this third answer, accept Christ as your personal Savior. Now the word accept Christ, to the astonishment of a good many people, does not occur in the Bible.

It's not there. It's this accept Christ doctrine that I want to talk a little bit about tonight. What is it to accept Christ? Now I do not reflect on the words accept Christ, even though they're not in the Bible.

It's possible to teach truth and yet not use words that are in the Bible always, because if what you say is the sum of what the Bible teaches on a subject, then you're teaching truth, provided the people know that that's the sum of the Bible teaching.

So when you were told to accept Christ, to bring us into saving relation to him, what the teacher is attempting to do is to say, believe and receive. And believe and receive are Bible words, though accept is not a Bible word.

The Danger of Easy Acceptance

But accepting Christ has become the panacea all over the evangelical world, and it has become fatal to millions. A whole attitude of accepting, the passive acceptance of Christ, this easy acceptance, a man will preach a tremendous sermon and then say, now what should you do?

Accept Christ. Have you accepted Christ? Or we go to the bedside of a dying man, have you accepted Christ? And if he says he has, why we pat his head and the next day or two we preach that he's in heaven clanging a heart.

Well now I'm awfully afraid that there are millions of people who are perishing because they are being told to accept Christ and they don't know what's meant by it. You see, to tell a man to accept Christ, while it is relatively right, it yet, if not carefully explained, makes Christ to stand hat in hand waiting on my pleasure, meekly awaiting my verdict on him.

It makes him apply to me instead of my applying to him. It permits me to accept Christ by an impulse of my mind or my emotions, and accept him painlessly and at no cost and no inconvenience. Somebody suggested that the cross of Christ should not inconvenience people.

Well it's the most inconvenient thing in the world, this cross of Christ. It took a man by the name of Jesus in the height of his healthy human life, and took him out on a hillside and killed him there.

Now that's an inconvenient thing for him. And any cross is inconvenient. It's an inconvenient thing, this accepting Christ, if we know what we mean by it. But the accepting Christ of popular theology has no inconvenience attached to it.

Faith Proven by Obedience: Passover and the Prodigal Son

Now let's look at how it might have worked back in Old Testament times. Suppose that Moses had told Israel that awful, wonderful night, now stay in your houses and kill the lamb and put the blood on the doorpost.

And stay right there. And accept the fact that it's done, the great transaction's done. You are delivered by the Passover blood. Thank God and rejoice and establish a tabernacle. And stay right where you are.

And they would have stayed right there in Egypt, the blood on the door, God waiting to take them out, but they stayed right where they were. They would have died in Egypt. They had to get up and get out of Egypt to prove they believed in the power of the Passover blood.

That prodigal son, look at him. A certain man had two sons, and one of them said unto his father, Give me the goods that follow to me. And he divided unto them, the two of them, the boys, his living. And after a few days the boy left the younger and went into a far country, and there he spent his substance with riotous living.

And when he became hungry and had nothing to eat, he went and attached himself to a swine herd, and he fed swine. And he was there in the swine pen, and he got hungry because his wages wouldn't buy enough to eat.

And it was a humbling thing for a Jew to feed swine, and one day a man appears. And here I depart from the scriptures. One day a young man appears, and this young man says to this boy, who had gone away from home and was feeding swine.

He had a bundle of tracts, this young fellow. He was just out of Bible school, and he had been taught how to win souls in nine easy lessons. And he goes up to this prodigal son lying among the swine, and he says, I have good news for you.

And he looks up and says, thank God, I need it. I need a good news. What is it? Your father is ready to forgive you. Well, the boy says, thank the Lord. Your father is ready to forgive you. Do you believe it?

And the boy says, yes, I believe it. All right, thank God. Now let's bow our heads, and you thank the Lord you're saved. You believe the Father forgives you. Yes, well, amen. Now we'll thank the dear Lord that you're saved.

And now, goodbye, don't forget to witness. And sometime I'll be around again. So the swineherd stays right there in the far country. He gets zealous and missionary, and he goes out and he starts to make converts among the other swineherds.

And pretty soon he has them all believing that the Father forgives. And they all do and say, I thank God the Father forgives. All right, and then they build a little tabernacle and call it the first tabernacle of the converted swineherds.

And they all stay right there in the far country. Nobody goes home. And that boy is still ragged and dirty and smelly. And the people, the respectable people of the neighborhood, when they pass by, elevate their nose and hurry by.

Repentance Versus Accepting a Doctrine

And they say, so persecuted they the prophets which were before us. It is the result of our holy living that they are giving us the cold shoulder. Then one day while they're singing choruses, in this first church of the converted swineherds in the far country, a young fellow comes along and asks permission to speak.

And he rises and says to them, put away your sins, you wicked. Put away your sins. Learn to do evil. Learn to do good. Cease to do evil. And be righteous and follow the Lord. And do good. And you will be saved.

And they pick him up and throw him out and say he's a legalist and that he doesn't believe in grace. Why, we're saved by accepting the doctrine. But this young fellow wanders off and the time goes on and the fatted calf gets old and dies and the father passes away and the boy stays on in the far country.

Now that's evangelism as it is preached a good deal today in America. It is believe on Christ, accept Christ and stay where you are. Now that is excused and explained by a hundred different learned ways.

But it leaves the sinner in his sins. And the man in his sins will be damned as certainly as the sun rises in the east and goes down. And if any man will come after me himself and take up his cross and follow me.

The time he stands pensively waiting. My friends I want you to note if a sinner comes to Jesus, Jesus gains and is self-contained and self-sufficient. If I stay away from him I do not impoverish him.

It is the whole thing my brethren and sisters is for if I come he does not gain for the stars in their courses are his and the seraphim and the cherubim and the principalities and powers and mights and dominions and archangels and heaven itself and the sea of glass all are his.

Self-Denial and the Cost of Following Christ

So that he cannot gain anything by my coming. But if I come himself. Evangelists have another day told people but this is just what we're afraid to tell them now. Let him deny himself. And in the dim light of modern religious notions it's an odd thing that Christ should place such an obstacle before people and that he should lay down a condition for following him a condition that's exactly contrary to human nature.

Nobody wants to deny himself. We want to preserve ourselves. And self-preservation is the first law of nature according to everything that I've heard. And yet he lays down a condition for following him that runs exactly contrary to human nature runs counter to everything that's taught us in the school contradicts the instincts of self-preservation arrays all the power of our natural self against Jesus Christ cuts down on the number of those that will come.

Our Lord plainly often turned and cut down on the number of those that would come. And in doing it he stepped up the quality of those who would come. But we, we step up the quantity and we don't care too much about the quality.

If we can just get them to come if we can just get them forward and say 2 ,912 or 506 or whatever it is came well our Lord cared little about how many came but he said if anybody will come let him come he's welcome to come.

I came to die for him and I'm rising to plead for him and if he will come let him come but in coming let him deny himself let him do exactly contrary to that which is said by the world to be the natural thing to do.

Now I wonder if this Christ who laid down this obstacle who put this huge hurdle in front of the kingdom of God. I wonder if that's the same Jesus the same Christ that now we have got to excuse him and edit him and amend him we have to coach and beg and plead plead to gain followers for him.

Is this the same Jesus that gives everything and asks nothing. Is this the same Jesus that smiles and goes along with covetous businessmen and crooked politicians and carnal entertainers and half-saved cowboys.

Is this the same Jesus. I don't think so at all. Paul talked about another Jesus and I think there's another Jesus loose among us. And he's not the Jesus of the New Testament nor the Christ of God. For the Christ of God is not begging businessmen.

Neither is he camping at the dirty door nor of some half-converted sex. For if she'll only come it doesn't in any way you accept them. A great many people come to the altar and howl and we say well he really he's under conviction.

He's having a wonderful time there. But he's doing his turns as he turns down. And when people meet his feet he never compromises. Let him come unto me. Let him deny himself. Let him take up his cross and follow me now that is to accept Christ.

Accepting Christ as a Complete Attachment to Him

Now what is to accept Christ. Well let me define it for you a little more closely. Acceptance of Christ is to form an attachment to the person of Christ to the person of Jesus Christ. It's not to fall in love with the tender-faced Jesus.

It is to realize that this tender-faced Jesus is also Lord and God that God has made him Lord over all things and head of the church and that he has the keys of death and hell and that he will sit upon the throne judging all mankind and that God has given all power into his hand.

This mighty Lord Jesus is to form an attachment to him that is revolutionary reversing and transforming the life. If your Christian conversion did not reverse the direction of your life if it did not transform it then you're not converted at all.

You are simply a victim of the accept Jesus heresy. And then what is it to accept Jesus. It is to form an attachment to the person of Christ that is not only revolutionary but it is complete. That is you can't compartmentalize your life.

A lot of us try to compartmentalize our life and we say Jesus. You can have the front room and the living room and the den and the upstairs bedroom. But the bedroom to the back and the bedroom to the front and the den you can't have.

You can't go to the basement. You only can stay in certain parts of my life. Well now that kind of horrible base dealing with the Lord Jesus Christ cannot but cause us to be lost. At last for me to accept Christ means that I am to accept him in every part of my being and that I am to form an attachment to him an emotional, an intellectual, a volitional attachment which is complete leaving no part of the life unaffected.

If he cannot save, cannot control you he cannot save you. And if he cannot control all of you he cannot control any of you. And then it's to be an attachment that is exclusive. I mean that Christ is not to be one of several interests.

Christ as the Exclusive Lord and Savior

They tell us that in some countries I shall not name them for these tapes get around. I understand they're going to Japan and I'm not going to mention names of countries but I am going to tell you this that there are some places where accept Christ and enthrone him of several vital interests.

He is one more of several. There is a church on Riverside Drive in New York City across from that other tomb, Grant's Tomb and they have a tympanum some sort of an affair up above it. You know an arch around and they have concrete or maybe it's cut stone more likely cut stone seeing the money that was put into it heads of various great men.

And they have Moses there I think. And they have Socrates there and they have Isaac Newton there. And they have Jesus there. And they have I suppose Washington there and a few more. Jesus is there. He is one of several interests.

Mark you my brethren. A Christian is one who specializes. He is an exclusivist. He believes in Jesus Christ exclusively. He believes in him as Lord exclusively and that excludes possible interests possible saviors.

It excludes all other possible hopes. The Christian who truly is born anew and has accepted Christ rightly has accepted him exclusively so that he is the central sun and you are in orbit of his face. Secondary my savior his first.

Anything else is not New Testament Christianity brother and sister. Anything else is a compromise and it leaves people half-saved confused. Christ is your Savior are determined and conditioned by this one.

Our missionaries tell us in Fox's book of martyrs centuries who have taken Jesus Christ and had to walk out on their families to take him. Who have taken Jesus Christ and had to give up their jobs to take him.

Who have taken Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and have had to do things that shortened their lives. Who were not sufficiently given to Jesus Christ exclusively attached to him. You cannot see how you can claim to be a Christian.