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Colin Smith: When Jesus saw that the man had answered wisely, Jesus said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

Now, I think when the teacher of the law, who was having such a warm conversation with Jesus, heard him say this, he must have stepped back. "Not far? What do you mean, not far?"

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. Today, Colin, we continue a message we began last time. Jesus has the answer to all his people's questions, and I've just tried to imagine the look on this religious leader's face when Jesus says, "Hey, you know, you may be a religious leader, but you're not far from the Kingdom of God."

Colin Smith: Yeah, and this is a guy who's been asking Jesus questions, so he assumes that he's the one that has the answers and he's testing to see if Jesus really is meeting his mark, as it were. And then Jesus says this extraordinary phrase. I find this so moving, Steve, "Not far from the Kingdom of God." So, Jesus is saying this man is very near, but he's not in. He's in the religious world.

He has a belief in God. He studies something of the scripture, he knows something about them, enough to ask a good question. But he's not in the Kingdom of God. He doesn't belong to Christ. He's not one of God's people. And of course, that raises the whole question, what does it mean for me to be not just a religious guy, a religious lady, but to actually be one of Christ's people? That's what we're getting at today.

Steve Hiller: That's exactly what we're diving into. If you can't join us, we're in the book of Mark, looking at the end of chapter 11, beginning of chapter 12, as we continue the message. Jesus has the answer to all his people's questions. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: So, we've gained four insights for evangelism. Don't be intimidated, take the initiative. Don't be distracted, stay focused. Don't be ashamed, be confident, and don't get confused, keep it clear as you share the gospel.

And we've also seen really four faces of our fallen condition. God has absolute authority, but we are rebels who resist his rule. He lays absolute claim to our lives, but we are hypocrites who avoid his command. He has revealed his power, but we are cynics who distrust his word, and he has called us to love, but we are strangers who are outside of his kingdom.

And you can see here that there is a huge chasm between Jesus and the questioners at every one of these four points. There is no meeting of minds whatsoever. The conflict is obvious and the cross is inevitable. The world is rejecting Jesus, and Jesus is rejecting the world, and the crowds of people in the temple who are listening to these questions and answers are going to have to choose and to take sides.

Because the position of the questioners who are opposed to Jesus, and the position of Jesus who is answering them so clearly, they are irreconcilably different. You have to choose between Jesus and the world, because it's still the same today.

And so, the question that really flows out of our observing these questions and learning from them is, what then is it going to mean for us to take our stand with Jesus? What is it going to mean for us to be true Christians? What does that actually look like in a situation where the world is rejecting Jesus and Jesus is rejecting the world?

And from these four answers that Jesus gives, I want simply to draw four marks of genuine conversion. What it really looks like when a person is turning to take their stand with Jesus Christ.

What that looks like first is that to be a true Christian means you end your rebellion against God. Becoming a Christian means that you recognize his authority over the world, over your life, past, present, and future.

You know, I'm sure all of us in the congregation this morning have questions we'd like to ask God. And one day God will answer every one of your questions. There'll be no more tears in your eyes and there'll be no more doubts in your mind.

But becoming a Christian involves you saying something like this: whatever the questions that I have unresolved and whatever the difficulties and struggles I'm facing right now, I will not allow my life to be one long argument with God.

Because I do not want on the last day to be standing among the rebels and the hypocrites and the cynics. I want on the last day to be standing in the presence of God among the worshipers. And that therefore is the choice that I am making now, whatever my unanswered questions.

Don't spend your life fighting God with your long list of questions and complaints. End your rebellion against God. Give up the fight. Submit to his rule and his authority in your life. That is the first part of what it means to stand with Jesus Christ, and it's life-transforming and liberating when you take that step.

Here's the second. You offer yourself to God unconditionally. Verse 17 of chapter 12. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's." That raises the obvious question, well, what is God's?

Now, remember Jesus had asked his questioners to give him a coin. And he said, "Whose image is on this coin?" And remember it was the image of Caesar because they were using Roman currency. And he said, "Give to Caesar's what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." The coin bears Caesar's image. You bear God's image.

You were created in the image of God. And when Jesus says, "Give to God what is God's," he is reminding us that God lays claim to the totality of our lives, because we are made, stamped, created in his image. We're God's.

Now, sometimes Christians try and define what we should give to God. And it sort of fits our culture, you know, "Give me the checklist, give me the bullet points, tell me what I have to do. What do I owe to God? What should I give to God?"

So you will get all kinds of answers to that question and many of them very good and helpful. Depending on who you ask, you may get answers like this: "Read the Bible and pray for 20 minutes each day. Give 10% of your income. Be in a small group, get involved in a ministry or whatever it is." Now, being specific can be helpful.

But the problem with reducing what we give to God to a formula is that you lose sight of the fact that God lays claim to the totality of your life, which is the point that Jesus is making here. Life, talent, time, money, all things come from him. All things belong to him. All things are for him and we are the stewards.

And when Jesus says, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's," what he's calling us to is an unconditional self-giving of all that we are and all that we have into the hands of God to live under his sovereign rule and take it from there. That's what it means to take your stand with Jesus Christ.

You end your rebellion against God, and you offer yourself to God unconditionally. You give to God what is God's as a person made in his image.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith, and a message called "Jesus Has the Answer to All His People's Questions." And today, we're looking at four marks of genuine conversion. We've looked at two, but we're going to come back and look at numbers three and four in just a few moments, so I hope you'll stay with us.

This message is originally part of a series called "The Gospel According to Jesus," but it's been one of the most listened-to messages of this past year. We went back and we took a look at what had been the most streamed, downloaded, and requested messages, and we've taken the top 10 and bundled them together in a series called "Listener Favorites 2026." It's what's airing this month on the radio, but we're also making it available on CD.

Ask about how you can get a copy when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or you'll find ordering information at our website. Just come to openthebible.org. Let's get back to the message. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Then here's the third thing, I take it from the third question. What does it mean to become a true Christian, take your stand with Jesus Christ? Well, it means trusting God's sovereign power in all things. Remember Jesus said to the cynic, "You don't know the scriptures or the power of God." When someone becomes a Christian, it involves this great change, you do know the scriptures, you believe them, you hang your life on what they teach, and in becoming a Christian by definition you are discovering and knowing and believing in and trusting the power of God.

By the way, if you come to the Bible with a materialistic or naturalistic worldview, it will not make any sense to you at all. If you want to understand the Bible, you have to read it in the light of God's sovereign power. I think that's part of what Jesus teaches us here. Then it will make sense to you.

The birth of Christ, the miracles, the resurrection, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the new birth, which is not a humanly engineered change, but rather the power of God, the life of God coming into the soul of a man or a woman, the new heaven and the new earth, it all is predicated on God's power.

Becoming a Christian involves discovering the truth of the Bible and discovering the power of God. And this is one of the great blessings of becoming a Christian, that you know that this God of sovereign power is for you, with you, and even by his Spirit at work within you. So, when you come to know the power of God, you can look back even on your past before you were a Christian, and you can say, "You know, I see that differently now because God's hand was on me even then, planning good things for my eternal future."

And you can look at your life now, and you will see it quite differently because you know that this God is with you even though you cannot see him. And you can look forward with confidence because your future life is in his hand, and if it's in the hand of the God of sovereign power, then you are absolutely secure.

This is the God Jesus said, who sustained Abraham and Isaac and Jacob through everything they faced in their lives, and he is sustaining them still. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, present tense, still.

So, a Christian is a person then who is learning to trust God's sovereign power in all things, and it is in this way that a Christian faces every circumstance of life.

Then here's the fourth mark of genuine conversion. Loving God and the people he has placed around you. Now notice there are two commands here when Jesus says in verse 30 and 31 that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Two commands.

And it is important to realize both the consistency or the continuity between them, and also the contrast between them. How are we to love God? Well, we are to love God with our heart and soul. That means it involves our affections, our emotion. We love him.

And we are to love him with our mind. That means we care about his truth passionately. David says time and again in the Psalms, "Oh, how I love your law." And he didn't even have the New Testament. He's talking about the Old Testament. He says, "I love the truth of God." And zealous for the truth of God, that it be proclaimed, and that it be believed, and that it be preserved, and that it be passed on to others.

As you evaluate and develop your own thinking, you will be drawn to thoughts and ideas and approaches that exalt God, and you'll be turning away from thoughts and ideas and approaches that diminish God. You'll turn away from things that make man more and God less. You'll turn towards things that make God more and man less. You love him with all your mind. Your whole worldview, your whole thinking.

And then you love God with all your strength, which means that we deploy our strength to engage in the work that God is doing in the world. And it's not so much a matter of saying, "God, will you come and bless our work?" It is us saying, "Lord, we want to make ourselves available for your work."

And this is part of how we love God. It's a good question to ask, "How is your strength," that is all your strength, your gift strength, your time strength, your financial strength, every strength of your life, "how is your strength being utilized for the advance of the Gospel, the work of Jesus Christ today?" Because that is part of how you love him by the deploying of your strength in his work.

And so, a wonderful question for us, a great challenge that we face as a church together, "How can the total strength of this body be most effectively deployed for the advance of the Gospel, because that is how we show that we love him?" To place at his disposal and to deploy for his gospel all that he has trusted to us, that is how we show that we love him.

So, how do you love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength? Now, here's the second command. You're to love your neighbor. Now, I want you to notice the continuity. Love God, love your neighbor. The same dynamic.

I want you to notice the contrast. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor how? As yourself. So both continuity and a contrast here and they're both important. We are to love God above ourselves and above all others.

We are to love God unconditionally, with every fiber of our being, with every power at our disposal, with no limitations, mind, heart, soul, strength. You cannot love God too much.

But then Jesus says, "We are to love our neighbor as ourselves." Let me ask you this question: is it possible to love yourself too much? Yes, it is. We've all said about someone, "You know, she loves herself way too much," you know? "He thinks way too much of himself." It's possible to love yourself too much. Here's another question. Can you love yourself too little? Yes, you can love yourself too little. We've probably all said of someone who's not caring for themselves, you know, just not eating or not sleeping or just working themselves to death it seems. We say, "You know, he's he's really not looking after himself," you know, as he should. And we're concerned out of love for that person.

And the truth is that even among the congregation here, some of us need to care for ourselves more, and some of us need to care for ourselves less. And knowing the difference is a matter of wisdom, and this is an area frankly where we can help one another. If a person who loves you and cares for you says, "Now, you need to take better care of yourself," you listen to them. May be a word from the Lord to you.

And if a person who really cares for you says, "You know, you're really thinking about yourself too much here," then you listen to them. It may indeed be a word from the Lord to you. So let's help one another gain wisdom over this matter because this is not easy, we can err in either direction, and self-love needs to be regulated. It can be too much or it can be too little, and it's easy for us to think of examples of both.

Now Jesus says, "Love your neighbor in the same way." This also is in need of regulation. Because if you love your neighbor too much, and that is possible, you might make an idol of that person. That's what would happen. Or you might make yourself a slave to that person. You might become a sort of doormat, as if that person were God in your life, and that is idolatry, and that is displeasing to God, and it is not what Christ calls us to hear.

On the other hand, if you love your neighbor too little, you might become insensitive to a person God has placed next to you, not caring about them as you ought, not looking out for them as you should. So, in this matter of our relationships with other people that God has placed around us, which of course is the meaning of the word neighbor here, we need great wisdom.

You love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength, and you love your neighbor as yourself. Let me quote you Bishop Ryle here, who makes this point, I think very, very helpfully. He says, "The marvelous wisdom of this distinction is clear and plain. We may easily err in our affections towards others, either by thinking too little or too much of them. We therefore need the rule to love them as ourselves, neither more nor less. But we cannot err in our affection towards God when it comes to excess. He is worthy of all that we can give, therefore we are to love him with all our heart."

See, these words of Jesus are not sentiment. They're his command and they're absolutely practical. And there is a continuity and there is a contrast. You're to love God with all your heart, and your soul, and your mind, and your strength. You're to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

What are the marks then of genuine conversion? What does it mean to become a real Christian? It means that you end your rebellion against God, that you offer yourself to God unconditionally, that you trust in God's sovereign power, and by the Holy Spirit within you, you begin to love God and the people that he has placed around you.

And here is the marvelous miracle of God's grace that is involved in becoming a new creation in Jesus Christ. It's not just a human redirection of life. It is a new creation by his divine power. To become a Christian involves God in his incredible grace taking rebels and making us friends who live gladly and joyfully under his rule in our lives.

To take hypocrites and to make of us disciples who are wholly devoted to him. To take cynics and to make of us people who know God's power and believe in his word. And then to take us outsiders, strangers, and to bring us into his kingdom of love. That's what real conversion looks like, that is what it means to be taking your stand with Jesus Christ, and it is his incredible grace that makes that possible.

Steve Hiller: Really a helpful message today as we look at four marks of genuine conversion. Our message is called "Jesus Has the Answer to All His People's Questions." And if you missed any part of today's broadcast or a previous broadcast, you can come and listen online. Our website is openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, that's openthebible.org.

Open the Bible is a listener-supported ministry. It is your generosity that allows us to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching each day. And as you give a gift to Open the Bible this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of a book written by Brad Weatherall called "Saved to Sin No More." And Colin, who is Brad Weatherall and why should we read this book?

Colin Smith: Well, you know, I've often said that we should choose books not by the title but by the author. And the reason for that, of course, is that when you read a book, you're actually reading a person. You're reading what has come out of that person. So, who has written a book is really very, very important. And I'm just so glad to have the opportunity to introduce Brad Weatherall. His name may not be widely known. He is my successor as the senior pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church. I've served that church for 30 years. I've worked with Brad for more than 15.

I stepped down from being the senior pastor just over a year ago to focus full-time on the ministry of Open the Bible. And so Brad is someone that I feel very, very close to and very, very confident in. He has a deep, authentic walk with the Lord. That's always the first thing you want to know about someone who you're going to read. He has a wonderful gift of preaching and a wonderful gift of writing. This is his first book, and he's chosen to write on a subject that he's studied very deeply, and it's this wonderful truth of union with Christ.

I think this, Steve, may be the most important and least understood doctrine in all of the Bible. People often kind of look a bit quizzical, "Union with Christ? What's that?" Well, folks are going to love this compelling and clear introduction to what I think is one of the most encouraging truths in all of the Christian life.

Steve Hiller: Well, the book is called "Saved to Sin No More: How Union with Christ Empowers a Life of Holiness." And we want to send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for financially supporting Open the Bible this month. You can call and give over the phone. Our number is 1-877-OPEN-365, or give online at openthebible.org. Again, our phone number is 1-877-673-6365, and the website is openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: This is Pastor Colin, and I love the story of the thief on the cross because it's the best story we have to help people understand grace. You know, many people have the idea that if a person was to get into heaven, they'd get there by living a good enough life. Well, the thief on the cross hadn't lived a good life and he wasn't in a position to start living a good life either. But Jesus said to him, "Today you will be with me in paradise." Well, if the thief could get into heaven, so can everyone you know and will ever meet.

"Heaven, How I Got Here" is a compelling 60-minute film in which Stephen Baldwin portrays the thief on the cross in a one-person play. We've seen God use this film to help many trust in Jesus as the thief did. So, who is there in your life who needs to understand grace? For more information or to watch this film for free, visit openthebible.org/heaven. That's openthebible.org/heaven.