“For as he calculates in his soul, so he is. ‘Eat and drink!’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the morsel you have eaten, and you will corrupt your pleasant words.” (Proverbs 23:7-8) The New King James version lists this verse in a way that is more relatable to our topic here, which states, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” Conversion is a work of God within the heart, mind, and soul of a man. Our hearts must undergo this divine conversion. Think of conversion in a simplistic, natural sense, we convert many things; centimeters to inches or feet; ounces to pounds or kilograms; fluid ounces to pints, quarts, or gallons. However, is this conversion of simply changing the way we look at something, or measure something, the conversion that we have in mind when thinking of divine conversion? Certainly not. It is God who is at work in you to convert you; He is the one to bring about a change of your spiritual standing; He is the one to change your affections; He is the one who changes your heart; He will change your life. As we return to our opening verse, we see it is the heart that is the epicenter of our thoughts, our actions, our affections, our feelings and emotions. “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil. For his mouth speaks from the abundance of his heart.” (Luke 6:45) “You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.” (Matthew 12:34) “Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” (Proverbs 4:23) “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.” (Matthew 15:18) As we know from our previous articles, every single one of us are born with a sin nature; we are dead in our trespasses and sins. It is within this fallen, sinful, and rebellious nature that we seek to please ourselves rather than God. Even if we seek to do good apart from the work of God within us, we fall short of the glory of God. We see this truth given us in the book of the prophet Isaiah. “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, carry us away.” (Isaiah 64:6)
Furthermore, we see these truths repeated to us time and time again throughout the word of God. “as it is written, ‘THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME WORTHLESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.’” (Romans 3:10-12) “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” (Isaiah 53:6) We see then that there is absolutely nothing we can do to please God through our own efforts; furthermore, we are destined for eternal separation from the goodness, kindness, mercy, grace, and all that is good about God; in a very real place called hell. We are all deserving of such as we’ve turned aside from Him; being made in the image of God (imago Dei), we have misrepresented God, we’ve blasphemed His name, character, and nature through our thoughts, actions, and words. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) “and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.” (Romans 8:8) “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:16-18) We have no power within ourselves to convert ourselves, this is the work of God alone. Our conversion attempts are nothing more than mere moral reform, which profits us nothing, as we’ve discussed in previous articles. This is the reason Jesus came to earth, died in our stead, and rose again, having conquered sin, death, and the grave. “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) He is our penal substitute, the One who took the punishment that we deserve for our sins. By His perfect life and all according to the grace of God, He in turns imputes to us His perfect righteousness; this, what we call a double imputation; our sins were imputed to Him, His perfect righteousness was imputed to us; this, that we could be viewed as righteous before God. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Receiving these truths and recognizing we are hopeless apart from Christ and His work, is a good place to be. The Spirit of God brings about such knowledge through the word of God and works within you this urge to seek God in your hopelessness. “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord;” (Acts 3:19) “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;” (Romans 10:9) Conversion is the work of God whereby He removes from us the old sin nature and in it’s stead replaces it with the new nature that Christ has provided. It is only when we come to Him humbly, confessing our sins, turning away from them and unto Him, seeking His ways, that our entire perspective will change. The Holy Spirit comes and dwells within us, transforming our entire way of life. “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38) “Or do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought at a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) Conversion is, in a sense, the restoring to the relationship God intended us to have with Him. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) This is no mere attempt to morally reform your own life, this is an altogether change of direction regarding the way you once lived, now walking in the new life you have in Christ. You were going one way, headed towards death and damnation; now you’ve been converted; you’re now walking in step with the Spirit by the grace of God, living in obedience to Jesus’ Lordship, and carrying out the will of God for your life. This divine conversion, this work of God in your life, changed your heart from sinfulness to righteousness; from hell-bound to heavenward.
Holy Scripture gives us many examples of people converted by the grace of God. The most prominent one that sticks out to me is of course the Apostle Paul, known as Saul before the grace of God met him on the Road to Damascus. “For I am the least of the apostles, and not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (1 Corinthians 15:9) “of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches of Christ,” (Ephesians 3:7-8) This Apostle had been devoted to persecuting, martyring, and destroying the true church, but when the grace of God met him on the Road to Damascus Saul was converted, becoming Paul, and was from there on out dedicated to serving the Lord and His church, the one he once sought to destroy. Think also of the demon-possessed man of Gerasene, who was possessed by Legion, (as the word of God stated, “for we are many”). This man was not possessed by merely one demon, but a legion of demons. When Jesus cast out the demons into the pigs, this man was transformed, made of right mind, and began begging to follow Jesus. “And they came to Jesus and observed the demon-possessed man sitting down, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had the ‘legion’; and they became frightened. And those who had seen it recounted to them how this had happened to the demon-possessed man, and all about the swine. And they began to plead with Him to leave their region. And as He was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed was pleading with Him that he might accompany Him. And He did not let him, but He said to him, ‘Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you.’ And he went away and began to preach in the Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him; and everyone was marveling.” (Mark 5:15-20)
This conversion is accomplished through the faith that God has graciously given. “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who draws near to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6) See, we are saved from our old sin nature; or, to be more precise, we are saved from the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and the presence of sin. This not to say that we are perfectly sinless, but we are being saved from the presence of sin; as we will be raised with Him in glory to an entirely sinless state, brought into His kingdom which is free from the presence of sin and the effects of sin. All of this is the grace of God toward us. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) God is the one who graciously gifts us the faith to believe upon Him, but we must exercise this faith. Exercising that gift of faith results in conversion. Conversion is not something one must claim, for it will be made evident from the fruit of the Spirit. Divine conversion starts within the heart and begins to permeate outward and affect everything we think, say, and do. “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26) So mere profession that you’ve been converted, does not make it so. True genuine conversion that God has wrought within becomes obvious as a person drastically changes direction, allegiance, and loyalty. It is a move from self-worship to worship geared toward the One worthy of all worship, praise, honor, and glory. As your heart is transformed, the actions follow until the entire life has been converted from sin-filled to God-honoring. “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died has been justified from sin.” (Romans 6:6-7) So, let me close with an exhortation from the word of God. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)