Why I am a Christian

A Clear; Compelling Account Of The Basis Of The Author'S Belief

John Stott

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781844748549
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

In a dark little chapel many years ago, a solitary schoolboy went in search of God, and later gave his life to Christ. It turned out to be the most significant decision he was ever to make. If it were not for Christ, he reflects, his would have been on the scrapheap of wasted and discarded lives. Instead, his life has been used to lead countless others around the world to that same new life, and into a deeper understanding of the One who gave his life that we might live.
Now John Stott tells his spiritual story, and gives the reasons for his first life-changing step of faith on the path he has followed since that day. It was not so much that he found Christ, as that Christ found him. Not because the Christian faith is attractive, but because it is true. Not because he deserved to be saved, but because Christ took his sins, and ours, on himself. It is because the answer to the paradox at the heart of our humanness, because the key to true freedom and fulfilment, are to be found in Jesus Christ alone. And he who extends the greatest of all invitations to each one of us waits patiently for our response.

Chapter 1

THE HOUND OF HEAVEN

Rapid travel and the electronic media have made us all aware (as never before) of the multiplicity of religions in the world. So how on earth can we decide between them? There is a Babel of voices competing for our attention. To which are we going to listen? We are presented with a veritable religious smorgasbord. So which dish are we going to choose? In any case, do not all religions lead to God?

It is against this pluralistic background that I want to answer the question: Why am I a Christian? Some readers will expect me to answer like this: ‘I’m a Christian because I happen to have been born in a largely Christian country. My parents were nominally Christian, I went to a school with a Christian foundation and I received a basically Christian education.’ In other words it was the circumstances of my birth, parentage and upbringing that have determined the fact that I am a Christian. And that is, of course, perfectly true. But it is only a part of the truth. For I could have repudiated my Christian inheritance. Many people do. And there are many others who become Christians who have not had a Christian upbringing. So that is not the complete answer.

Others may expect me to reply something like this. ‘On 13 February 1938, when I was a youth of nearly seventeen, I made a decision for Christ. I heard a clergyman preach on Pilate’s question, “What shall I do with Jesus, who is called Christ?” Until that moment I didn’t know I had to do anything with Jesus, who is called Christ. But in answer to my questions, the preacher unfolded the steps to Christ. In particular, he pointed me in the New Testament to Revelation 3:20, in which Jesus says: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” So that night, by my bedside, I opened the door of my personality to Christ, inviting him to come in as my Saviour and Lord.’

That also is true, but it constitutes only one side of the truth.

The most significant factor lies elsewhere, and it is on this that I intend to concentrate in this first chapter. Why I am a Christian is due ultimately neither to the influence of my parents and teachers, nor to my own personal decision for Christ, but to ‘the Hound of Heaven’. That is, it is due to Jesus Christ himself, who pursued me relentlessly even when I was running away from him in order to go my own way. And if it were not for the gracious pursuit of the Hound of Heaven I would today be on the scrap-heap of wasted and discarded lives.

FRANCIS THOMPSON

‘The Hound of Heaven.’ It is a striking expression invented by Francis Thompson, whose story has been told, and his poem expounded, by R. Moffat Gautrey in his book This Tremendous Lover.1

Francis Thompson spent a lonely and loveless childhood, and failed successively in his attempts to become a Roman Catholic priest, a doctor (like his father) and a soldier. He ended up lost in London until a Christian couple recognized his poetic genius and rescued him. Throughout these years he was conscious of both pursuing and being pursued, and expressed it most eloquently in his poem ‘the Hound of Heaven’. Here is its beginning:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat – and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet –

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’2

At first R. M. Gautrey was offended by the poem’s title ‘The Hound of Heaven’. Is it appropriate, he asked himself, to liken God to a hound? But he came to see that there are good hounds as well as bad hounds, and that specially admirable are collies, which range the Scottish Highlands in search of lost sheep. He also saw that the theme of searching sheepdogs (or, more accurately, of searching shepherds) occurs in both the Old and the New Testament. Thus, the last verse of Psalm 23 reads:

Surely goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Gautrey points out that the Hebrew word here translated by the mild verb ‘follow’ should be rendered more forcefully; for instance, ‘goodness and mercy have hunted me, haunted me, dogged my steps all the days of my life’.3 ‘It is a pursuit, patient but purposeful, affectionate but relentless.’4

Then Jesus himself took up the metaphor of the shepherd:

Then Jesus told them this parable: ‘Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.” I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.’

(Luke 15:3–7).

Gautrey sees the poem as divided into five stanzas. The first he calls the ‘Soul’s Flight’, for the poet sees himself as a fugitive from the demands of discipleship. The second is the ‘Soul’s Quest’, in which the soul seeks satisfaction everywhere, but cannot find it. The third stanza he entitles the ‘Soul’s Impasse’, since he has discovered that life without God is meaningless. Fourthly, in the ‘Soul’s Arrest’, he finally surrenders to the love of Christ. Christ speaks to him:

‘Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me?’5

In every stanza we hear that footfall of ‘this tremendous lover’, until finally the hunt is over:

‘All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms . . .

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’6

Francis Thompson was expressing what is true of every Christian; it has certainly been true in my life. If we love Christ, it is because he loved us first (1 John 4:19). If we are Christians at all, it is not because we have decided for Christ, but because Christ has decided for us. It is because of the pursuit of ‘this tremendous lover’.

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If we love Christ, it is because he loved us first.

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For evidence that the initiative is his, I invite you to take with me a fresh look at the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, and then at three Christian biographies. Then I shall come back briefly to us, to me, who am writing to you, and to you who are reading.

SAUL OF TARSUS

First, Saul of Tarsus. His conversion is the most celebrated in the whole history of the Christian church. Some people, however, are troubled by it. ‘I’ve had no sudden Damascus-road experience,’ they say. But consider. Saul’s conversion was not sudden. Does that surprise you? Of course, it is true that suddenly a light flashed from heaven, and suddenly he fell to the ground and Jesus spoke to him. But that suddenness of the intervention of Jesus was not by any means the first time that Jesus had spoken to him. On the contrary, it was the climax of a long process. How do we know that? Let me refer you to Acts 26:14: ‘We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”’

The Greek word kentron could be translated ‘spur’, ‘whip’ or ‘goad’. Quite frequently in classical Greek, from Aeschylus onwards, it was used in a metaphorical sense. Similarly, in the book of Proverbs we read:

A whip for the horse, a halter for the donkey,

and a rod for the backs of fools!’

(26:3)

In speaking to Saul, Jesus was likening himself either to a farmer goading a recalcitrant bullock or to a horse-trainer breaking in a rather rumbustious young colt. The implication is clear. Jesus was pursuing, prodding and pricking Saul. But Saul was resisting the pressure, and it was hard, it was painful, even futile, for him to kick against the goads.

This raises the natural question: what were the goads with which Jesus Christ was pricking Saul of Tarsus? Although we’re not told specifically, we can piece together the evidence from the book of Acts and from autobiographical flashes in Paul’s later letters.

1. Jesus was goading Saul in his mind. Saul had been educated in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, probably the most celebrated Jewish teacher throughout the whole of the first century ad. So, theologically, Saul was well versed in Judaism, and morally, he was zealous for the law. With his conscious mind in those days, he was convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was not the Messiah. To him it was inconceivable that the Jewish Messiah could be rejected by his own people and then die, apparently under the curse of God, since it was written in the law that ‘anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse’ (Deuteronomy 21:23). No, no. Jesus must be an impostor. So Saul saw i...