It was late, and I was ready for bed. “Let’s just watch some of it,” my roommate suggested. A sermon at this hour? I would almost certainly fall asleep.

I didn’t. Two hours later, eyes wide open — what had we just heard?

“Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church in America” — a bracing, prophetic, fiery call for straying churches to come back to biblical Christianity. Paul Washer, addressing fellow pastors at a conference on revival, preached on urgent issues facing Christians in America. One of the strongest calls urged ministers to be clear on the utter necessity of the new birth — what it truly is, what counterfeits challenge it, and how its presence (or absence) shows in our lives. Unclarity on conversion means unsound evangelism and unscriptural teaching.

How many were deceived? Was I among them? The stakes were eternal.

Created, Not Decided

By pressing in on the neglected doctrine that salvation requires a new creation in the heart, Washer confronted cheap salvation — or what he dubbed “the idolatry of decisionism.” “Men think they are going to heaven because they have judged the sincerity of their own decision.” He pleaded with pastors to be clear that regeneration is the mighty work of the Spirit of God — not to be substituted with the sinner’s prayer.

Men today are trusting in the fact that at least one time in their life they prayed a prayer, and someone told them they were saved because they were sincere enough. And so, if you ask them, “Are you saved?” they do not say, “Yes, I am, because I am looking unto Jesus, and there is mighty evidence giving me assurance of being born again.” No! They say instead, “One time in my life I prayed a prayer.” Now they live like devils, but they prayed a prayer!

He goes on,

I want you to know, my friends, salvation is by faith alone! It is a work of God. It is a grace upon grace upon grace. But the evidence of conversion is not just your examination of your sincerity at the moment of your conversion. It is the ongoing fruit in your life.

As I listened, I was struck by how fatally shallow my own version of Christianity now appeared.

Christian in Name

The church I then attended did not talk this way. I was forced to consider: Perhaps we called ourselves Christians merely because we hoped it to be true. Because Christianity was better than the alternatives. Because we carved out time every weekend to fill a mall-sized church, to enjoy the concert, to hear inspiring sermons. Perhaps we cared more about church culture than new hearts.

In our view, the difference between a Christian and non-Christian was whether he decided to invite Jesus into his heart and said a prayer to ensure it was so. And from then on, how one lived seemed to matter very little, if it mattered at all. How many were falsely assured? How many on that day would hear, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23) — and not despite what they heard at church but because of it?

Christianity had become a hobby. I wish I had asked myself sooner, Is my Christianity preparing me to die? Am I truly born again? Am I ready to stand before my Creator?

“Regeneration is the mighty work of the Spirit of God — not to be substituted with the sinner’s prayer.”

Those questions reveal much. Are our Bible studies and services real enough, solid enough, scriptural enough, spiritual enough to steady our hearts as we enter River Death? If I never knew Jesus, never followed him, a decision decades ago won’t still my soul when mountains move into the heart of the sea. Is Christ really my life? Will death really be gain?

I wanted heaven, happiness, endless paradise without sickness and death — who didn’t? But did I really desire God?

What Do You Want?

Washer warned me that day,

My dear friend, everybody wants to go to heaven — they just don’t want God to be there when they get there! The question is not, “Do you want to go to heaven?” The question is this: “Do you want God? Have you stopped being a hater of God? Has Christ become precious to you? Do you desire him?”

I hear that books on Christ rarely sell well — was this my kind of Christianity? The kind that reads books on manhood, dating, fatherhood — but never ones simply about Christ? Would my life of hurried prayers, an hour or two on Sundays, and a pinch of morning devotions, sealed with some sincerity and soothed by Christian radio, really last in suffering?

Reader, will this brand of Christianity really bear the weight of tragedy? Of death? Of final judgment?

How fearful the discovery at the end of The Pilgrim’s Progress: “Then I saw that there was a path to hell, even from the gate of heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction” (272). With Washer, Bunyan shows us a life filled with religious activity — prayers, sermons, Bible studies — that can lead to hell just as surely as a life without it. A life with the appearance of godliness but without its power. The man Ignorance came all the way to the gates of the Celestial City, only to be cast into hell. Bunyan shows us that not all who profess Christ have Christ.

I assumed otherwise, until God used Washer’s sermon, among other means, to strike and stir me.

Weighty Gospel

Christ gave under-shepherds to guard the church, equip her, and warn her when she begins flirting with the world. When her men prove faithful, Christ beautifies his bride through their words. But if they preach cheap salvation — skipping conditions, muting warnings, and reducing salvation to etiquette and learning the lingo — they blur vital distinctions. Suddenly, everyone’s “on a Christian journey,” no matter the evidence to the contrary. And the church embraces “easy believism,” the idea that one can be saved without true repentance, real love for God, or a changed life. Fruit no longer speaks of trees. The distance between heaven and hell becomes the breadth of a single choice and prayer and signed card.

Saints, don’t be satisfied with a cheap salvation, a shallow gospel, a false assurance. Pastors, preach justification by faith alone, the new birth, and the gospel that wakes the dead.