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Salvation Without Conviction

ByPastor Wynn

Where is the power of the modern-day church? Why are souls not being saved? Why are churches being splintered by pettiness and carnality? Could it be that the majority of professing believers have never truly been born again?

The day in which we live is a day when conviction has been replaced by pragmatism. Biblical truths have been exchanged for societal fables (cf. II Timothy 4:4). 

Conversions have been declared, even when there has been no conviction.

The demand for conviction does not counteract the fact that salvation is by faith alone. However, why would a person place their trust in Christ, without being convicted that they were wrong in their prior belief? Thus, saving faith is always preceded by conviction. As someone has said, without conviction—there is no conversion.

When genuine conversion takes place, there will be evidence of that conversion. There will be a changed life (II Corinthians 5:17). Yet, so many today claim to have trusted Christ, and there is no changing of their lives. There is no forsaking of known sin, there is no desire to walk with God, there is no hunger for the things of God. Such a profession is foreign to genuine, biblical conversion.  A.W. Tozer, in his book The Pursuit of God, summarizes this issues very well.  He writes the following:

The doctrine of justification by faith–a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort–has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God.  The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless.  Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego.  Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver.  The man is “saved,” but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God.  In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.1

How tragic and true!  May our churches return to preaching the Gospel that convicts and coverts a man!

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1A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 1948), 17.

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