This testimony of conversion to Christ was delivered by Joseph Tirrito on Sunday, June 28, 1998, from the pulpit of Northfield Baptist Church during the Sunday Morning Worship Hour. One theme pervades it: Paul’s words to Timothy in his first Epistle, 1:15, “This [is] a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” May God be pleased to use it to bless all Bible-believers and save even a single precious soul of His elect. The Holy Spirit can use a message like this to draw anybody to Himself, whatever their position in life, however far gone they might be. As Fanny Crosby wrote so many years ago, “The vilest offender who truly believes, / That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.”
Audio cassettes of this powerful message are available for $2.00. Write to us at: Northfield Baptist Church, 17 E. Northfield Road, Livingston, NJ 07039. Or call (973) 992-0070.
It’s a privilege to be up here this morning, and thanks, Pastor, for letting me have this opportunity.
If you would, open your Bible to the same passage that we had open this morning, the same page, John 3, only I’m not going to spend too long on it, but I’ll take it up to verse 21. John 3:1-21, and I’ll pretty much be taking one or two verses at a time so that you’ll get a fair appreciation for what Jesus is saying here.
Verses 1-2. “There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: ~ The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus. He’s a religious man, he’s a teacher of the Jewish people. You might liken him to a pastor or a preacher in our day. And he believes Jesus is a great Teacher, He’s a godly Man. But he misses the whole point, because he doesn’t see that Jesus is the God-Man, the Messiah, who has come (as promised by the Old Testament Jewish prophets) to take away the sins of all those who would believe on Him.
And so, then you come to verse 3. “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” So, apparently, Jesus seems to ignore Nicodemus’s compliment because, as I said before, Nicodemus missed the whole point of Jesus’ coming. And He says flat out that if a man is not born again, he cannot even see the kingdom of God.
Verse 4. “Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Again, he misunderstands. Now he thinks that He’s speaking of a second natural birth.
Verse 5. “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” So He clarifies it. Now the “water” in view isn’t physical water that you’re baptized in. And so it’s not baptismal regeneration He’s talking about. We know this from when He speaks about “the Spirit,” and that’s the Holy Spirit. He’s talking about when He washes away our sins. Now some people may be familiar with the Epistle to Titus 3:5-6, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; ~ Which he shed on us abundantly”—through whom?—“through Jesus Christ our Saviour.” It’s all the mercy of God.
Verse 6. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” So again, He distinguishes between the natural birth and being spiritually “born again.”
Verses 7-8. “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. ~ The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”We are not to be surprised by this, He’s saying, because God is sovereign. Whoever He wants to save, He will save. And whoever is to be born again—it’s all His doing. It doesn’t have to do with our being religious, or doing good works. It’s His doing altogether.
Verses 9-10. “Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? ~ Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?” Again, Nicodemus doesn’t understand. And Jesus rebukes him for being a spiritual leader of the Jewish people while he himself does not understand salvation. Here we see—and I’ll come back to this later, personally speaking—a man to be very religious, he can know all kinds of doctrines, and that doesn’t make him a saved man in any way.
Verses 11-12. “Verily”—this is Jesus speaking again—“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. ~ If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you [of] heavenly things?” Jesus has explained it in very simple terms, yet Nicodemus doesn’t understand. Why doesn’t he understand (he’s a smart man!)? It’s a simple metaphor that Jesus is using with him. He doesn’t understand because he’s spiritually blind. He must be born again to see the truth of God.
Verse 13. “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, [even] the Son of man which is in heaven.” Jesus came down from heaven in and is yet in heaven and would ascend up to heaven again (remember, as God He is omnipresent, always everywhere). Now why did He come down from heaven in the first place? Here’s the answer:
Verses 14-15. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: ~ That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” He came to be lifted up. What that means—it’s a nice way of saying, basically, He came to be crucified for sinners! Even as the serpent was lifted up on the pole back in Numbers 21, so Jesus, the sinless God of the universe took upon Himself my sins and yours, and He would die in our place, so that if our faith is in Him, we would be saved.
Verses 16-17. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. ~ For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.Here we have the gospel in a nutshell. This is the golden text of the Bible, the key to the whole salvation plan. “For God (the Father) so loved the world (that’s you and me), that He gave His only begotten Son (Jesus, God the Son), that whosoever (that’s you and me again) believeth (trusts) in him should not perish (go to hell), but have everlasting life (in heaven).” Now this is what makes Christianity different from the religions that the world has to offer. We cannot earn our way into heaven. We must go through Jesus, forgetting about good works, about religious exercises, or anything like that; we must cast ourselves upon His mercies, trusting Him to save us. “Believe” means more than acknowledging some historical facts or some right doctrines; it means “trust.” We must trust Jesus that He died and rose again for our sins and that He’s done everything that needs to be done for our salvation.
Verse 18. “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” The one who trusts Jesus will be saved, but whosoever rejects Him is still in his own sins and is therefore under the wrath of God.
Verse 19-21. I’ll take that as a block. “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” ~ For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. ~ But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. People don’t want to come to Jesus, and that’s people in general—people, everybody, you, me—me included. Everybody. We don’t want to come to Jesus out of our own selves because it means that we have to confess that we are sinners who deserve hell, and that’s a blow to our pride, our self-esteem, our ego. But is it better in the long run to have a big ego in this life and be cast into hell on Judgment Day, or to cast ourselves upon the mercies of God in Christ as our only hope, and thereby be saved?
Now of course, the question is, how do we make all of this practical? And that’s a good question, because if we don’t make it practical, it’s meaningless. At least to us it’s meaningless; it’s still the Word of God, but we get nothing out of it and then, ultimately, we’re lost, because we can’t understand it. How do we make it apply to ourselves? The answer lies in Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again.” And it’s here that I would share my testimony to the truth of these words. This is how I came to know Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour.
I’ve always been a reasonably good person—by the world’s standard of “good,” that is. Like most people, I had understood Judgment Day to be when God would take this big balance scale and weigh all of our good deeds against our bad deeds. And depending on which came out the heavier side, that would determine where we would spend eternity. Hell was for the criminals, the perverts, the homosexuals, the Hitlers of the world, the murderers, whatever you want to call them—and after all, the “good” people far outnumber the “bad” people, and so heaven would be very heavily populated. This is also what they taught us at “church” (not this church, but another “church” here in town) and at CCD classes (which is—you could compare it to a Sunday School class here in this church—the youth religious education program).
Still, I always recall having a certain sense of uneasiness about standing before God. In fact, once in a while—and this was rare, but once in a while—I would think about far into the future, when I’d have kids of my own, that as soon as my kids were born, I would do my best to keep them from sinning, as little as possible. How I would do that, I don’t know; it’s wishful thinking, pretty much. But that way, I thought, they would have a better chance of getting into heaven.
Of course, as I now have been shown, that kind of thinking was all wrong, it was way off base.
There came a very cold February night back in 1997. I say “back in”—it’s not that far back, or maybe it was ’96—whenever it was. It was a very cold night—yes, it was ’96, because that was the year that we had all the snow. I was in seventh grade back then, and it seemed like every other day we were having off from school, because the snow just kept coming and coming and there was no end in sight to it. So I went upstairs, I went under my bed, and I turned on the radio, looking for something good to listen to, I turned on WFME, 94.7. That’s the Christian station. And it was on Harold Camping’s radio call-in show that I first heard the true gospel of the Bible. Never before had I heard it.
After this, I developed kind of an intellectual interest in the gospel. I liked to talk about it, but I compromised it very often and so I watered it down to the point where it became worthless. Why? Because, in my head there was an interest in the gospel, but in my heart there was no confidence in it. This intellectual interest in the gospel peaked when I gave a list of prophecies proving that Jesus was the Messiah to a Jewish kid in my class who had asked me if I thought he was going to heaven. And in May of 1997, after we’d been talking about these kinds of things for several months (and he seemed to have an interest in it himself) I gave him a model prayer to pray to trust Christ as Saviour. Somehow, my old CCD teacher from sixth grade (who had, in our class, had called evangelicals in New York who street-preached and ran street-corner tract tables “crazy”) discovered it, and upon reading it, she became furious at what she thought was a “bigoted” and “self-humiliating” prayer. And she turned me in to the guidance counselor, who then reported me to my parents; she also had reported me to our priest. After that, I didn’t see my King James Bible nor listen to Family Radio for about a month afterward, until we went to a Bible study in Montclair run by a priest over there. And we were told by our parish priest here in Livingston, I was told by him to be more “middle of the road” and that I should try to see my “church’s” perspective on these things.
Now I asked the man from Montclair some questions, and after that, I became very suspicious of certain things my “church” was teaching, especially its denial of the Bible alone and in its entirety as the final authority in matters of faith and practice, and also its denial of salvation by grace through faith alone—which is basically what we’ve been reading here in John 3. Through all of this, God was leading me to understand the Bible’s teachings more fully, especially on those two most vital doctrines. Over the course of the next year, I became more and more certain of both of their truth and of the fact that my “church” denied both of them!
This led me to a final encounter with a priest from right over here in Caldwell. We’d been directed to him by our parish priest (the same man from before), who had been taught by him in seminary. The same week, my mother read in the West Essex Tribune, the local paper, that the Caldwell priest would be leading a three-part series of studies in mid-March on our “denomination’s” views on the Bible and salvation. It was a convenient time to take my questions to him.
The priest only confirmed my doubts that our “church” was not a Bible-believing church. He himself denied the infallibility of the Scriptures and said they were partly mythological. And so, with that in mind, my parents graciously allowed me to look for a new church, beginning in May.
And even then, my conscience began to plague me. Never before had I felt such a deep conviction of sin. I was very busy worrying about the false gospel taught by the other “church,” but, deep down inside, the true gospel had not hit home. And with all the Biblical doctrine I had come to know over the course of that twelve or thirteen months, it wasn’t enough to save me. Just like Nicodemus—here’s a man who had spent far much more time than me ever studying the Bible; he only had the Old Testament back then, but he was a “man of God,” so to speak. And yet, even all the doctrine he knew wasn’t enough to save him. And all the while, I had been trusting in my own works, and in my own knowledge, to save me. The height of hypocrisy.
In the realization of this hypocrisy, I was struck by such a terrible sense of guilt by it, that it led me to consign myself to eternal reprobation. I thought there was no hope for me. To think that all the while I had shown an interest in the gospel externally, but in my heart, I still rejected the gospel, and in my heart—nobody would have been able to notice it, but in my heart, I still hated it because I was still clinging to my own works and to my own knowledge to save me. I couldn’t believe it. One who doesn’t know Christ, and maybe even some who do know Christ, but came to Him through some other realization of some other sin, can’t understand the gravity of this kind of a sin.
And besides this—you forget about this whole thing for a while, I still had the thousands and probably millions of other sins I had committed throughout my whole life—lying, thinking evil thoughts about others, disrespect for my parents, uncontrolled anger, gossiping (I didn’t do it as much as some people, but I still gossiped enough, as most of us do, and once is more than enough) and a host of other sins. I was no better than anyone else, and considering my hypocrisy—that, having both heard and witnessed the gospel to others, I myself still rejected it in my heart—how could there possibly be any salvation for me?
For about three months in mid-1997, I despaired, feeling that there could be no salvation for me. Yet, one shred of hope remained that perhaps there was a slight possibility that God could have mercy on me. And so, I cried to God from the depths of my heart, even crying myself to sleep some nights, terrified of His holy wrath which I so rightly deserved, and wondering whether I would go to my just reward in hell some night soon, or maybe on Judgment Day, depending on which came first.
And then, the Holy Spirit showed me that there was indeed hope. Maybe it was during one of the Christian radio programs I listened to, or maybe it was at some other time—but somehow, He finally opened my eyes to this fact: JESUS CHRIST CAME TO DIE FOR SINNERS LIKE ME! No matter how bad I was or how bad I thought I was, Jesus was able to save me! Wasn’t the whole point of Calvary to save sinners? And who was good enough to make it on their own anyway, or even with help? Nobody. God tells us in Romans 3:10-12, “There is none righteous, no, not one: ~ There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. ~ They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable;”—that means “worthless”—“there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” And in Isaiah 64:6, He led the prophet Isaiah to confess: “But we are all as an unclean [thing], and all our righteousnesses”—our good works—“are as filthy rags…” In other words, even the best of our good works are a stench in God’s nostrils, because they are our, and my, rebellious efforts to want to come to Him on our, or my, terms.
So, where could I find hope? Only in Jesus Christ, the Messiah promised by God in the Old Testament. It’s very easy to prove that Jesus fulfilled every single prophecy of the Messiah, which nobody else—past, present, or future—could, can, or ever will be able to do again. Therefore, also being sinless, He qualified to take the wrath that should have been mine upon Himself. He alone, as eternal God who became sinless Man, could pay for my sins. And He paid for every last one of them—past, present, and future. II Corinthians 5:21 tells us, “For he hath made him”—Christ—“[to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”
Jesus took all my dirty, rotten sins upon Himself and gave me His perfect righteousness! Now that’s what you call mercy. And that’s what you call a great exchange: to think that on the cross, He endured God’s wrath, the equivalent of me, and all those who would ever believe on Him, spending an eternity in hell, so that I could go to heaven! And He guaranteed this by rising from the dead on the third day!
Since being born again through His gift of faith—I can’t claim it as my own, it’s His gift—I have come to take comfort in I Timothy 1:15, which says, “This [is] a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” Friend, can you say that about yourself this morning?
How do I know that I have been “born again,” in the words of John 3? Because there is a difference in my life. Now, whenever I sin, it strikes my conscience, and causes me to turn back to God, who assures me in His Word that He will always forgive me. Now, there’s a love for God’s Word that was never there before. Now, there is a desire to spend time with God in prayer, and even when I fail to pray, there’s a certain emptiness, that I should have spent my time with God this morning, and even then He forgives me for that. Now, there’s peace in my heart. There’s an assurance of His love for me. Now, there’s a love for fellow Christians, including those at school—the few that are at school, but there are enough—and those of you right here at Northfield Baptist Church, or wherever I should meet them. Now, I am no longer ashamed to tell other people of the Christ who died and rose again for me! Where would I be if Harold Camping or any other faithful, Bible-believing, evangelical preacher of God’s Word, in order to preserve the self-esteem of his listeners, had not explained that there was hell to pay for my sin unless I cast myself upon the mercy of God in Christ? I would have remained in my sins, never have been born again, I would not be here this morning—oh yes, I would have been here, somewhere on the outside, but I would not be with God’s people this morning—and would have died some day and gone straight down, where I deserved to have gone. But Christ took my sins upon Himself, and gave me His righteousness, so I am absolutely assured of heaven when I die.
Do I slip and fall? Of course. When I do, I now go straight to God and ask Him for forgiveness, and ask Him to give me repentance from whatever sin besets me. What a comfort it is to know that I can go to Him whenever I need to, and He’s always there! And how wonderful it is to know that a day is coming, and it becomes nearer every moment, when I will sin no more, experience no pain like I experienced on Friday morning with my wisdom teeth being removed, but most importantly, will enjoy salvation in all its fullness and praise my Saviour as I ought in heaven!
In closing: There are two groups of people in this world—saved and unsaved. If you’re a Christian this morning, it’s not because you were baptized or go to church, or even because you admit that Jesus is God (which I had been doing for fifteen years, or fourteen years), but because you have been “born again” through faith in Christ. “Faith,” as I have learned from personal experience, is not acknowledging some facts or correct doctrines. It’s complete trust in this: that you are a sinner who can’t contribute any good works to saving yourself, but that you trust Jesus to have died and risen again for you. I knew a lot of doctrine in the year before I was saved, but that didn’t mean I had saving faith. It was only at the point where I could cast myself upon the mercies of God, and that only by His grace, that I had become saved.
Now to my Christian brothers and sisters, those who have been born again through personally trusting Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, I would say this: Jesus’ last command to us after He rose from the dead and before He went back to heaven was this: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). I would not be standing here today or be born again if I had not heard the gospel. “Faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” says Romans 10:17. Countless millions, including myself, have come to know the gospel through Christian radio. Others have come through gospel tracts, Bibles left in hotel rooms, sermons by pastors in our Bible- believing, fundamental churches, missionaries in foreign countries, and most importantly, by one-on- one witnessing. There’s no substitute for that. There’s no substitute for saying to a close friend in the natural course of conversation, “You know, I once had the same problem you’re having,” or, “You know, there’s a reason why I find the Bible important,” and giving your testimony of how Jesus has saved you. This past April, the high school band took a weekend trip to the Annapolis Music Festival down in Annapolis, Maryland. And during a regular conversation over lunch with two friends from the band, one was Jewish and one was an atheist, somehow the conversation was turned around so that God opened the door for me to witness to them. And I had no part in it; I don’t know how it happened, but somehow that conversation was turn around. At one point, one of them asked me why I was so “religious,” I think that was the word he used; that somehow I was different from most other people he knew—“nicer” was the word I think he used. And at that point, I responded to him, “Religion has nothing to do with it. It’s Jesus Christ who makes the difference.” And later that night, God gave me the second opportunity to talk with them in plain, regular conversation when we were back in the hotel room; they were sitting on the bed, basically doing nothing, we’d had a long day, and I was just barely able to keep Martyn Lloyd-Jones on on the radio and be following along in the King James Bible left in the night-table drawer by the Gideon Society, when we started to talk about the Bible again. I still pray to this day that the Lord will give me even one more opportunity to talk to even one of them and to share with even one of them what Jesus has done for me and what He can do for them. Let all of us have the same missionary spirit of the Apostle Paul, of the Apostle Peter, and in more modern historical times, if I can use that word, of great men like Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Spurgeon, Dwight L. Moody, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones—men whose only passion in this life was to faithfully share the Word of God and thereby lead men to saving faith in Christ.
Which brings me to the second group of people. My friends who don’t know Jesus Christ this day as personal Lord and Saviour—maybe you go to church from Sunday to Sunday, maybe the last thing you would want to be called is a Christian. And yet, now you have heard what Jesus Christ has done for me, and I want you to know that He can do the same thing for you. He will save you from hell, from your sins; He stands ready to give you His grace, and even to give you the faith with which to trust Him, if you will only ask Him for it. Don’t wait another minute to ask Him to save you. We’re at a busy intersection here; who knows what could happen when you’re leaving this morning? A month from now, you’re at the doctor’s office, and you get some blood work done, and you find out that you only have thirty days left. It’s a very sobering thought. Think of what could happen to you without any warning—you could have a heart attack tonight and quietly die in your sleep, and the next thing you know is that you’re standing before God, giving Him an account of all your sins, including the fact that He sent someone to warn you, and to tell you there was a Way of escape, but you refused to go to Him by that Way?
Who is that way?
John 14:6—“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Trust Him today, as I have, and you will have this same peace in your heart, this same desire to please Him, and most importantly, the blessed assurance that your sins have been forgiven and washed away by the blood of Christ, and you can never, ever be threatened by hell again. Jesus is no respecter of persons. He will do the same things for you that He has done for me. Why? Because He loves all those who in childlike faith cling to Him; He loves them with an everlasting love. Remember that verse from before, in closing, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever”—that’s me and you—“believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
In closing, shall we pray for a brief moment:
“Heavenly Father, thank You for letting me have this opportunity this morning. And might it be, that if there’s some person here in this building who does not know Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Saviour—maybe they’ve gone to church for a long time or even been baptized, or maybe they claim no relationship with You—but might it be, by Your sovereign grace, that this day they would come to know this blessed Jesus, this same Redeemer, as their own? Will You bless this Word to their hearts? But Thy will be done, and Thine alone be all of the glory, for great things You have done in even saving me. In Jesus’ blessed Name we pray with praise and thanksgiving for what we trust that You will do. Amen.”
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