HOW DO YOU SAY YOU BECOME A CHRISTIAN?
WHAT’S RIGHT? WHO’S RIGHT?
CONTROVERSY, HAVE YOU NOTICED, IS PREVALENT, COMMONPLACE

Controversy, fair and balanced points of view?
It’s only on FOX News, the Church doesn’t have it.

I have heard "hate speech" from preachers on the subject of salvation, as well as "hate speech" from preachers on the KJV only folks. I use the term "hate speech" because they have such harsh words for those who hold the position that is not theirs.

There has been no subject that has received such reaction from people as the subject of "HOW DOES A PERSON BECOME A CHRISTIAN?"

• One dear saint while I pastored Madison Baptist said, "Pastor, please! I don’t need another heart attack from the discussion of election.". There is no subject that is more rejected from both points of view as to how a person can become a believer in Jesus Christ.


• While pastor/teacher at FBC in Altoona, KS. The topic of election was always the hardest for people to understand.


• When I taught the discipleship class at Bigelow Church for a month, the topic became a very hot issue at the time. And after that class, I spent the next three years on the study of the Doctrine of Grace.
  

What is your point of view on how you become a Christian? What I am saying is, how do you say you became a Christian?

This is the way I became a Christian! This is how I remember how I became a Christian... How has your understanding of becoming a Christian changed since you have been saved? What I understood at seven years old is different now, as to what happened when I was saved..

"Why am I what I am as a Christian? There is only one answer, I have been "highly favored" by the grace of God. I give Him all the glory. "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (I Corinthians 1:31). Is this your view of salvation? Are you giving the entire glory to God, or are you reserving a little for yourself? Are you saying that it is your belief that saved you? If so you are detracting from the glory of God. The glory is entirely His - "to the praise of the glory of His grace in which he has highly favored us in the beloved."
- Martin Lloyd Jones (from An Exposition of Ephesians)

Justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. This is the article by which the church stands or falls. There is no gospel except that Christ’s substitution in our place whereby God attributed to Him our sin and credited to us His righteousness. Because He endured our judgment, we now walk in His grace as those who are forever pardoned, accepted and adopted as God’s children. There is no basis for our acceptance before God except in Christ’s saving work, not in our flag-waving, church devotion or moral decency. The gospel declares what God has done for us in Christ. It is not about what we can do to reach Him. We reaffirm that justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. In justification Christ’s righteousness is assigned to us as the only possible satisfaction of God’s perfect justice. We deny that justification rests on any merit to be found in us, or upon the grounds of an infusion of Christ’s righteousness in us, or that an institution claiming to be a church that denies or condemns sola fide can be recognized as a legitimate church.
- - - Adopted from the Bible, but in part from the Cambridge Declaration

• One said the other day, "I hate that text which says, "Jacob I loved, but Esau have I hated." "Why" said a friend; "what is the difficulty to your mind?" The reply was, "I cannot see why God should hate Esau." "No," said our friend. "I am not at all surprised that God hated Esau, but I am greatly amazed that God loved Jacob."
  
  transmute \trans-MYOOT; tranz-\, transitive verb:
  1. To change from one nature, form, substance, or state into another; to transform.2. To undergo transmutation.