Becoming a Christian isn't a matter of making a decision to get a little religion or to clean up your life.

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg takes a look at what happens when someone is truly converted.

He's opening the Bible to Colossians chapter 1, looking at verses 21 through 23.

Christ pardons those who believe, although we have sinned and although we deserve his condemnation. Without this,

we would be excluded from God's presence forever. And in the cross, he displays and he satisfies

his perfect justice by executing the punishment that sinners deserve upon his only beloved son

and without that God would not be true to himself. Cecil Francis Alexander, the wife of a

Presbyterian minister who wrote hymns in order to teach young people theology. So she wrote for the doctrine of the

atonement, there is a green hill far away outside a city wall with amazing verse for boys and girls

to understand. There was none other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate

of heaven and let us in.

No, the cross is where reconciliation is provided,

and the church is where reconciliation is to be proclaimed.

Actually, the church is where reconciliation is to be displayed, but we'll leave that

for another time. It is where it is to be proclaimed. It is to be declared. Aye, there's the

rub, isn't it? Because the message of reconciliation, which again,

two Corinthians five, is entrusted to us as ambassadors of Christ, is a muted declaration

whenever the church in any generation loses a deep-seated conviction concerning the truth

and the power and the relevance of the gospel. And I say to you as a

young person, unless you are convinced in your heart of hearts concerning the truth and the power

and the relevance of the gospel, there will be no reason for you, there will be no propulsion for you

to go out and make much of that in your life

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