Great Quotes from A.W. Tozer (“Accepting” or “Receiving”?)

“The Bible knows absolutely nothing about passive reception, for the word receive is not passive— it is active. We make the word receive into accept. Everyone goes around asking, “Will you accept Jesus? Will you accept Him?” This makes a brush salesman out of Jesus Christ, as though He meekly stands waiting to know whether we will patronize Him or not. Although we desperately need what he proffers, we are sovereignly deciding whether we will receive Him or not.”

 

Time to Analyze! Two Prominent Quotes on Personal Salvation! MY RESPONSE …

In a recent post, I gave the following two quotes and asked for your response:What do you think of these two quotes? A.W. Tozer, well-known Christian Missionary Alliance pastor, and Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary, seem to agree here.
1. With what parts of their quotes do you agree? Why?
2. With what parts of their quotes do you disagree? Why?

Here’s my response:
I’ve used the Tozer quote many times, especially his emphasis that we need to continually seek the Lord. The Michael Horton quote was new to me.

Just a few thoughts:
1. I certainly agree with Horton that everyone already has a personal relationship with the Lord, either as a condemned criminal awaiting final judgment or as a justified coheir with Christ. But when Christians invite their unsaved friends to confess their sins, repent, and trust in Jesus, aren’t they saying in effect that they will move from the category of an enemy of God to a friend of God? True, the Bible never uses the expression “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” but isn’t that one way, perhaps the simplest way, to express the gospel?
2. I don’t like to criticize Tozer, but he challenges the idea of “accepting” Christ. But isn’t conversion affirming as true the giving of Himself for our sins, the acknowledgement that we were sinners under God’s judgment, that we needed to believe certain truths that we had not believed (“received”) prior to asking Jesus to forgive us? Doesn’t Scripture say, “just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him” (Col. 2:6)? We read in John 1 that the world and its inhabitants did not recognize the Lord Jesus, “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (v. 12).

There is a believing and a receiving that take place when one hears the gospel. The gospel is that which Paul preached to the Corinthians, “which [they] received and on which [they] have taken [their] stand” ( Cor. 15:1). Hebrews warns us against living the same lives we did before conversion: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,” (Heb. 10:26). Peter writes to those “who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours” (2 Pe. 1:1).

YOUR THOUGHTS?