In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The topic of this morning’s sermon is going to about conversion and how a person comes to saving faith in Jesus. As I’m sure many of you already know, for some time now the dominate perspective in our religious context here in America has been that conversion is an act of our own free will. Sometimes, this popular perspective has been referred to as “decision theology.” “Decision theology” is the teaching that coming to faith in Jesus is something that a person decides to do for him or herself.  For example, many churches still have a time in their services known as the “altar call,” which is when people in the pews are invited to come forward to the front of the church in order to, as they say, “make a decision for Christ” or “give their heart to Jesus.” Some of you may even remember how Billy Graham, one of the most famous preachers of the 20th century, would have a specific time for altars calls at the end of every one of his services. Many congregations today, including the Baptists as well as several non-denominational churches still do the same thing. Likewise, if you’ve ever flipped through one of those little Bibles that the Gideon’s pass out, or picked up one that was sitting on an end table in a hotel room, you’ve encountered decision theology there too. In the back of almost all of those little Bibles, there is a page that literally reads in bold print, “My decision to receive Christ as my savior.” At the bottom of that page, there is a prayer, as well a as a space for a person to write their name and the date when they supposedly made that decision. 

Once again, all of these examples are representations of “decision theology.” All of them operate under the premise that to some degree or another conversion, or coming to faith in Jesus, is an act of our own free will. To some degree or another, conversion is something that we do. To some degree or another, it is a choice that we have to make.

In response to all of that, I would like for you to consider with me what the Word of God teaches us on this particular topic and especially what we hear about it in our Epistle lesson today from Ephesians chapter 2. In Ephesians chapter 2, the Holy Spirit Himself teaches us about conversion. He teaches us about whose work conversion is, and He also teaches us about why understanding whose work it is, is so important to our faith. So again, those will be our two questions that we’ll work through in this morning’s sermon. First, whose work is conversion? And second, why is understanding whose work it is so important?

Right away, in Ephesians chapter 2, the Holy Spirit teaches us without a doubt that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, cannot possibly be a work that we do for ourselves. It cannot possible be something that we cause to happen or something that we accomplish as an act of our own free will. Saint Paul begins our text by telling us, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” Here the Bible describes for us the state of our spiritual condition prior to our conversion. It describes what we are like as sinners before we come to saving faith in Jesus. When the Bible describes what we are like before we become Christians, it describes us as being dead. The Bible doesn’t say that we are sick. The Bible does not say that we are wounded or hurt. It says that we are dead. To be “dead in our trespasses and sins” means that on our own we are incapable of doing anything to get ourselves out of them. The only thing that can get us out of our sins so that we don’t have to suffer for them in eternity is, of course, as the Bible says elsewhere, faith in Jesus. So, what the Bible is telling us here, is that we cannot bring ourselves to faith in Jesus by something that we do. Even though we can decide to do many other things in our life for ourselves such as deciding what clothes to wear in the morning, or what food to eat for lunch, when it comes to spiritual matters, such as believing the gospel, we do not have any power in ourselves to make that decision. Just like a person who is physically dead cannot cause himself to get up and walk out of the grave, people who are spiritually dead, cannot cause themselves to get up and leave their darkened state of unbelief.

In fact, not only are we incapable of doing this on our own, but according to what we read in Ephesians chapter 2, and elsewhere in the Bible, we don’t even want to do this. That is what makes our spiritual condition prior to conversion so utterly dead. Saint Paul continues, “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.” Besides not having any power to convert ourselves or make ourselves believe the Gospel, in Ephesians chapter 2, we also learn that “by nature,” as in, the way that everyone is from the moment of their conception, we are actually hostile to the Gospel. As Paul says, we all carried our own desires, as in, we all did what we wanted do. It’s not as if our will was neutral like some inanimate object. Rather, it’s that our will was turned away from the Gospel. We didn’t want to believe Gospel. We wouldn’t believe the Gospel. Far from being inclined to make a decision for Christ or to accept Him as our personal Lord and Savior, prior to our conversion, our sinful nature actively fought against it.

And again, this is not just something that the Holy Spirit teaches us in here in Ephesians chapter 2, but something that He teaches us about in many other places in the Bible. For example, Saint Paul also tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, “The natural personal does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him.” Likewise, we read in Galatians 5, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” And in the book of Acts, Saint Stephen tells us, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” Finally, the Word of God tells us plainly in Romans 3, “No one is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” According to the Bible, every single person in the whole world, from the smallest baby, to the most mature adult, is in the same spiritual condition prior to their conversion. They are spiritually dead. They have no spiritual power. And that is why conversion, or coming to faith in Jesus, could not possibly be something that we do for ourselves. It could not possibly be a decision that we make for ourselves or something that we accomplish as an act of our own free will. According to the Bible, conversion is not our work.

So, whose work is it then? In Ephesians chapter 2, besides showing us without a shadow of doubt that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, is not our own work, the Holy Spirit also shows us without a shadow of a doubt whose work it is. It is the work of God Himself. As Saint Paul clearly says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.” The Bible teaches us that God makes us alive. It teaches us that God brings us from spiritual death into new spiritual life. It teaches us that conversion is not an act of our own free will, but an act of God’s gracious will, meaning that it is something that God does apart from us and even in spite of us. Conversion is something that God does for us.

As Saint Paul continues in our text 2, “By grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works.” Every single part of our salvation from start to finish is a gift that comes from God. That includes, of course, Jesus dying on the cross to make atonement for our sins, but that also includes the faith that is necessary to trust in Jesus and receive the forgiveness of our sins that He purchased there. God gives both of those things to us. And He gives both of them to us by grace. In fact, that is exactly what Saint Paul is talking about in Ephesians 2 when he says, “this is not your own doing.” The “this” that Paul is referring to when he says “and this is not your own doing,” grammatically refers back to the word “faith.” Faith is not of your own doing. Faith is the gift of God. Faith is the thing that comes not as a result of our own works but is itself the work of God that He works in our hearts. Our will is not what causes conversion, our will is what is converted by God. He changes our will. He changes our will by giving us a new will.

And again, this is not just something that the Holy Spirit teaches us in Ephesians chapter 2, but something that He teaches us all over the Scriptures. Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12, “No one can say Jesus Christ is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” In the book of Acts it says, “When they heard these things, they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” Also, from the book of Acts we hear about Lydia and how, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” And Jesus, of course, tells us Himself in John 15, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Just as God spoke the universe into existence and the whole world was created out of nothing simply by the power of His voice, so also our faith in Jesus is created by Him out of nothing too. As the Scriptures also tell us in Ephesians 4, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

The Bible teaches us that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, is the work of God Himself. It is a work that He does by grace. It is something that He accomplishes for us and gives to us not because of our own merit or worthiness but according to His own mercy and love. God causes us to believe in Jesus. God causes us to have faith when otherwise we would never be able to and we wouldn’t even want to. God makes us alive, even when we were dead.

So, lastly then, why does understanding this teaching matter so much? Why is it so vitally important to our faith that we know and believe that conversion is not our work, but the work of God Himself? There are two main reasons why understanding this is so important to our faith and both of them relate to what Saint Paul says at the end of Ephesians chapter 2. After describing our spiritual condition prior to conversion and teaching us how even though we were dead in our trespasses God Himself makes us alive so that we are saved us by grace and not our works, Saint Paul adds, “so that no one may boast.” The reason why it is so important to our faith that we understand that conversion is God’s work and not our own work, is because it keeps us from boasting. 

On the one hand, it keeps us from boasting in ourselves. It keeps us from relying on ourselves for our own salvation and thinking that we are ultimately responsible for our it. And that, of course, is a good thing, because if even the littlest bit of our salvation relied on something that we do instead of what Jesus has done for us, then we would never be able to have real certainty that we were actually saved. If there was even one thing that we had to do for ourselves and by ourselves to get ourselves into heaven, then we would always doubt whether or not we had really and truly done that thing. And that is exactly what can happen to people who have been taught that in order to be saved you have to make a decision for Christ. They can begin to doubt whether or not they truly and really did make that decision. 

On the other hand, this teaching about conversion gives us the confidence to boast in Christ. Yes, the Bible tells us not to boast in ourselves, but it never forbids us from boasting in Jesus. In fact, as Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” When we know that our conversion is God’s work and not our own, that alone gives us real confidence in our salvation. That alone enables us to have true peace in our hearts knowing that every part of our salvation from beginning to end relies on the Jesus who loves us and not ourselves.

When we Lutherans condemn the teaching of “decision theology,” it is important for us to be clear that we are not saying that everyone who goes to a church that teaches decision theology is automatically going to hell. Merely going to a particular church is neither the direct cause of a person’s salvation nor their damnation. Just like you don’t get into heaven simply by attending services here at St. John, you don’t necessarily dam yourself by attending a different denomination. And yet, at the same time, going to one of those churches that teaches decision theology puts a person soul in danger. That is because they are hearing false doctrine. If a person actually does believe that the reason why they are going to heaven is because they made a decision to be saved, and that their salvation relies on an act of their own will, then they will not be saved, because no one is saved by their own works. Even if many other things that the church teaches are true, just one falsehood can lead a person astray. And that is a big falsehood. It literally relates to how a person is saved.

When we Lutherans condemn decision theology we are doing so because we do not want people to trust in themselves for their salvation. We do not want people to be worried that they haven’t done something that they need to do in order to get into heaven, like make a decision for Christ, even if they already have true faith in Jesus and trust in Him for forgiveness. How can anyone even make a decision for Christ, who doesn’t already believe in Christ before that? That makes no sense. No, we want people to trust in Jesus alone. We do not want people to rely on some decision that they made for Jesus, but on the decision that Jesus made for them. We want people to rely on God’s grace.

Dear Christians, the Bible teaches us that conversion is not our work, but the merciful work of God. And what a wonderful teaching of God’s Word that is! May the Lord Jesus who teaches it to us, cause us to believe it and cherish it always. May He never let us forget and may we never doubt what we learn in the Scriptures and what we memorized from the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and kept me in the one the true faith.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.