Friends, salvation, or the new birth, is a million miles from merely joining a church or a superficial profession of Christ as your Saviour.

Did you ever stop to think that most of us in a nominal way accept Jesus as our Saviour? But He won't accept us until we repent, ask Him to forgive us, and turn from our sins.

"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3).

"Except ye repent, ye shall perish." (Luke 13:5).

We realize that many of us come into the world with splendid natural characteristics, mental uprightness and a sense of honor, etc., but this is not salvation.

Many of us come into the world with gifts and talents and are endowed with a love and desire to work and serve in the Kingdom of God, but this is not salvation. All of this is possible by the natural birth. In the face of all our natural graces and good works, God has said, " . . . All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). His word also says that man's "heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9), "the tongue can no man tame" (James 3:8), and we "must be born again." (John 3:7).

Salvation is not an experience we grow into. But of course we grow in grace after we have received grace. Salvation is an experience that comes in the twinkling of an eye; it is the gift of God; it is a divine miracle that lifts man from sin and transforms him into the likeness of Christ. It comes when man forsakes all known wrong in his heart and life and calls upon Jesus Christ to forgive and save his soul.

When man thus approaches God, he comes into vital touch with the living Christ, whose power makes him a new creature, changing his nature, his purposes and desires, and the individual knows all about it. Praise God! He knows when he came into the presence of the Saviour and when the work was done.

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new." II Cor 5:17.

Friends, it is one thing to join a church and make a profession of Christ; it is another thing to confess one's sins to God, forsake them and get to Christ.