A Christian is, first of all, a Christian. And now, a Christian is a believer. Many things have changed in the Western world since the 1960s, and the significance of the statement “I am a believer” is one of those things that has dramatically changed since the 1960s. Before the 1960s, if you had said, in most company, “I am a believer,” everyone would have assumed that what you were saying was “I am a Christian.” It was an expression – to be a believer – that was not used very much outside of the world of people trusting in Jesus Christ, believing in Jesus Christ and seeking to live as his disciple. That went through a dramatic change in the 1960s. I know because I lived through the sixties.

The Goal of Faith⤒🔗

When I was a young college student, I had a very dear friend who was not a Presbyterian. The first thing you need to know about him is he was not a Presbyterian, and that’s fine. The second thing you need to know about him is that he came from a church background that taught their congregation to know the Bible really well. And when you are 18 and you come from a congregation that knows the Bible really well and you meet a young fellow student who confesses that he is a Presbyterian, one of the things you assume is he therefore does not know the Bible very well. And it so happened that I had been reading the Bible since I was nine-years-old. Although I did not really understand it, I had amassed a fair amount of Bible knowledge. I remember one day my friend said to me, “You know, what people need is the counsel of God.” Now, that is an expression from Acts 20. Paul speaks about being in Ephesus and he uses that expression “the counsel of God." The slightly mischievous part of me slipped into the conversation, “Don’t you mean ‘all the counsel of God?,’” because that is what Paul says in Acts 20. I was pulling his leg; I just wanted to see his reaction, and it was one of total astonishment. How could anyone who was a Presbyterian know that text in the Bible better than he did?

Now, I say that to say that this young man knew the Bible very well, but unlike the friend I made within the next 10 years (a young Welshman by the name of Derrick Thomas) who at that stage of his life was probably engrossed in listening to Wagner, this friend basically was listening to all the popular radio channels. And so he bounced up to me one day (it must have been early 1967) and he said, “Do you know what the bestselling song in the United Kingdom is?” Of course I did not know, and I said, “What is it?” He said it is (I wonder if any of you know; this was one of the top 30 selling singles of all time) the Monkees song “I am a believer." He was thrilled. Well, here are the words: “I thought love was only true in fairy tales, meant for someone else but not for me. Love was out to get me; that’s the way it seemed. Disappointment haunted all my dreams. Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer, not a trace of doubt in my mind. I’m in love, I am a believer! I couldn’t leave her if I tried.” And, in a sense, that in the popular culture was the marker point of the transition from "being a believer" meaning only one thing to "being a believer" meaning almost anything.

(Transcription of audio file from 11:40 to 11:47, 11:57 to 12:10, 12:15 to 12:33 omitted.)

And so people would say, you know, they believed in Glasgow Rangers, the great Scottish soccer team! Or I remember Mrs. Thatcher – Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady – when the majority of her cabinet voted against her (and this led to her demise as the leader of the Conservative Party), she referred to one of the younger members of the cabinet (who I think is still a member of parliament; his name is Peter Lilley), and she said about Peter Lilley she was devastated that he had gone with the majority against her. “Now,” she said, “Peter Lilley, he was a true believer!” And I remember thinking, “In the early 1960s nobody would ever say about anybody else that they were a true believer unless they meant only one thing: that they were someone who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

(Transcription of audio file from 14:22 to 14:29 omitted.)

So what is the difference? Actually, this passage here, I think, explains to us that there are several differences between saying, “I am a believer” in any or all of these senses, and saying as a Christian, “I am a believer.” The first difference is this: there is a completely different difference; there is a completely different goal in view. And of course, that comes out at the high point of this passage, when the Philippian jailor asks his great question, “What must I do to be saved?” Answer: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved – you and your household.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ” is Paul’s answer to the question “What must I do to be saved?” Now, I think it is probably important to make clear that he clearly doesn’t mean, “What must I do to be saved from the fate that awaits me because the prisoners have all escaped?” because Luke makes it very clear none of the prisoners had escaped. The man’s life was secure. So he was not asking that kind of question. What is actually interesting is that he was asking this question against a very interesting background, that we will see in just a minute. But the answer “Believe” met the goal “to be saved,” so all genuine Christian faith has in view this very simple thing: I realize I need to be saved, and I am beginning to discover that there is an answer to the question “What must I do to be saved?” Answer: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Object of Faith←⤒🔗

Now that, of course, takes us just a little further on. The goal of being a believer is that you will be saved, but saved from what? Well, the answer to that question is found in the object of Christian faith. Notice what Paul says here to the Philippian jailor: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” The most obvious thing about Paul’s statement here is that he is talking about something personal. He is not talking about the things that we believe, he is talking about a person in whom we believe. One of the interesting things in the New Testament, as you may well know, is that when Paul speaks in that way he uses language in a very distinctive fashion. When he speaks about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, he uses language in a very distinctive fashion, because, he is saying three things about Jesus as the object of our faith. The Lord…Jesus…Christ.

‘Christ’, as you know, is our English form of the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word "Messiah," if you follow me. It means "the one who has been anointed." And, as many of us here in our church are very familiar, the Old Testament had three particular individuals who were anointed in the service of God: the priest to bring sacrifices for sin; the prophets to speak the Word of God; and the king to rule over God’s people. And Jesus is the one who fulfils the ministry of each of these individuals in the Old Testament economy. He is the Priest, as Hebrews teaches us, who sacrifices Himself for our sins. He is the Prophet who speaks God’s Word to us. He is the King who comes to reign over us. And so, when Paul says to this Philippian jailor, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” he is speaking to a man he sees needs light for his darkness. He needs a word from God to come into his life and he needs pardon for his sins. And this man has nowhere to look for a sacrifice for his sins, given the way he has lived. He very evidently needs someone to become the one who not only gives him light and in this marvellous way brings the Word of God and the forgiveness of sins, but someone to rule and direct his life. That is what it means to believe; it means to yield to Him in these ways.

And "the Lord" for Paul is not just us saying, “Jesus is my Lord." "The Lord" for Paul is Paul saying, “Jesus is the Lord!” He is the Lord of all things. He is God. So here is a striking thing: believing as a Christian means recognizing that the Christ is none other than God Himself, and has come in order that God’s Word may come to my mind, that God’s grace may come to my sin, that God’s rule may come over my life.

And, of course, He is called "Jesus," as you remember every Christmas time. We read these words and it does not always dawn on us the reason that he is called Jesus is because what He came into the world to do was to save His people from their sins. “What must I do to be saved?” Answer: Jesus is the answer! And what you need to do is to believe in Him.

The Character of Faith←⤒🔗

So the goal of faith is salvation, the object of faith is the Lord Jesus, and the character of faith (as I hinted there is something to learn here too) is expressed by the preposition that is used here – not just to believe that Jesus is Lord and Christ, but to believe upon Jesus. Often in the New Testament there is another preposition used – to believe into the Lord Jesus – and the most interesting thing about that preposition is that it is not used in classical Greek. It is a totally revolutionary idea that when you come to believe on the Lord Jesus, you actually come to believe right into the Lord Jesus, so that everything that God has stored up in Jesus immediately becomes yours and begins to be worked out in your life.

But for this man, I think the right preposition to use was “believe on the Lord Jesus." Here is a man who is confused and who is burdened and yet probably, because of what had been happening in Philippi and the reason these prisoners were in his jail, had some sense of what the gospel message was. And now, as God has been working in his life, Paul says to him, “Now my son, lay all of the weight of your need and your guilt and all your fears, come and lay it all on the Lord Jesus Christ, because since He is Lord, Jesus and Christ, He is able to bear every burden.” That is what the Lord Jesus Himself had said, isn’t it: “Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

The Pathway to Faith←⤒🔗

And then there is a fourth question that I think this passage answers for us. The goal of faith, the object of faith, the character of faith, and it marvellously answers the question: “What is the pathway to faith?” And that is something that we are discovering in this series. (Transcription of audio file from 24:08 to 24:24 omitted.) I actually love to read Paul’s later letter to the Philippians when he is writing back to these people and just imagine these three particular people in the room – the prosperous Lydia, and this girl whose life has been misery, and this man who has been a kind of fairly low-level civil servant. And then Paul is speaking about the gospel, what the gospel does, and just imagine them eyeing one another across the room (because they did not have a church with pews and stained glass windows. They were probably still meeting in Lydia’s front room) and just kind of as they made eye contact saying, “Remember how that happened for you, and how different it was for me?”

For Lydia, when she walked away from that little meeting at the riverside, if you had just watched her you probably would not have noticed anything different. And maybe you could have seen something on her face, an easing of the wrinkles perhaps, because she had actually now found what she had clearly been looking for for years. And as Paul had opened up the Old Testament scriptures and said, “Now I want you to see how all of this is leading to the coming of the Lord Jesus as our Saviour and friend,” it was as though she had discovered the end of the book and it had been missing it all her life. And the Lord opened her heart so quietly and graciously, just sitting there in the corner, and she came to faith in Jesus Christ.

And then this young girl, whose life was so miserable in such bondage. She was a character for an academic study of abused women in the first century. She was abused in every conceivable way, and being used. And what an amazing thing that as this demon sought to destroy the ministry of Paul and his companions, the Lord was actually using what that demon was doing to become the occasion for the gospel power to begin to work in her life, and in the name of the Lord Jesus she was wonderfully delivered. Now, many of us in this room know people not too dissimilar, who have been in some deep bondage and in a mighty way and in a sudden way God has broken into their lives and delivered them.

And then there is the jailor. What an earthquake to have in your jail. Some people need earthquakes, don’t they? I have sometimes said about situations, “There are only two things that can change this situation: one is a Holy Ghost revival, and the other is an explosion.” And the marvellous thing about Philippi was there were both! There was a Spirit-sent awakening, but literally there was an explosion. Any of you, incidentally, feel the earthquake the other week? I was sitting in a seminary faculty member’s office in Philadelphia when the building began to shake. I have experienced that a few times in my life, but it is always very mild. But when the place begins to collapse…I wonder if you know anybody who has needed everything in their life to collapse before they’d been willing to be drawn to faith in Jesus Christ. Actually, it is just possible that for some people the best thing that could ever happen to them is that everything collapses around them.

See how differently the Lord does it? There is no sameness in the way the Lord Jesus does things, except this: He brings us to the same salvation. I thought it wouldn’t be right for the ministers to sing, “I thought love was only true in fairy tales,” so I rewrote the song. It goes like this (and this may be true of you): “I thought faith was only true in fairy tales, meant for someone else but not for me. But the Lord was out to get me. That is the way it seemed. Disappointment haunted all my dreams. And then I found His grace, now I am a believer! Not a trace of doubt in my mind. I found grace. I am a believer, and I would not leave Him for this world!” Well, are you a believer? Maybe you did believe in Mrs. Thatcher like Peter Lilley once did, or you believe in the Glasgow Rangers, or you believe in the Republican Party, or all kinds of other things – but do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? That is a true believer.