A sign from God

“It was a sign from God.”

A pair of coal-black eyes, embedded in a troubled expression, met mine from across the Seward Seaman’s Mission’s kitchen table. In one hand he clutched some freebies he had snagged from one of the mission’s tract shelves—a world map, a key ring of English Bible verses, a little post card. With the other he paged through an old mission photo album, looking for faces he might recognize. I sensed he was looking for something else, too.

A full kitchen table at the mission.

“I found a little—how do you say it—pamphlet in an elevator on the ship this morning, and I think it was a sign from God.” he continued. “It talked about a woman who died and stood before God. Your name had to be in this book, or you couldn’t go to heaven. And when God opened the book,” he leaned back in his chair, “God said ‘Your name isn’t there.’” He looked like he had just heard about an incoming comet or something.

“Ah, I see. That is very interesting,” I nodded. It was clear God had sent him to the mission today for a reason.

He looked down at the verse key ring in his hands: “Are these free? I need to read more so I can have understanding.”

“Of course!” I answered. “What country are you from? I can get them for you in your own language.”

He was excited when I returned with verses and a tract in Indonesian. I sat down again and asked "Ben*, do you know you have eternal life?" He thought so—he talked about believing in God. It turned out he had also received a tract in English from one of our volunteers who had invited him to the mission at the cruise ship’s terminal that morning, so he had a few of the puzzle pieces.  He knew there was something about faith. But the puzzle wasn’t clicking. There wasn’t peace in his eyes. So I asked God for wisdom.

For about an hour I drew a diagram of the Gospel story for him in English and asked him to read verses in Indonesian and tell me what they meant.

He was well aware of his sinful condition before a holy God. He knew God, as a righteous judge, must punish sin, and that the payment for sin was death, or “maut”—in his definition, an awful separation worse than death (Romans 6:23).

He understood that God, being a God of love, satisfied his own justice by sending his own Son to take the wrath that we deserved. That although the payment for sin was death, the gift of God was eternal life (“hidup”) because Jesus had paid for it. He knew it was a gift—he excitedly pointed to the drawing of a man with a gift inside the crumpled tract he had received in the ship’s terminal.

But how to take that gift?

We went over John 3:16-18. He mentally assented to the truth of Jesus’ words, “For God so loved the world [Ben] that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever [Ben] believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The condition listed here was believing, or trusting in, Jesus. But was Ben really trusting?

Question time: “Ben, if Jesus paid for all of your sin, do you still have to good things to be worthy of eternal life?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Ever since I was little my mother told me ‘Make sure you are a good boy’.” Aha. We had hit the source of his confusion. In making his works part of the equation for his salvation, he was not fully relying or trusting in Christ and what He had done on his behalf.

We went over Ephesians 2:8-9 once more, discussing what a gift, what "karunia," really meant. If salvation was a gift, it could not be "of yourselves" and not "of works," our own doing. It had to be accepted on the basis of grace for it to be a gift. The gift is free to us because it cost Jesus his life. 

Ben stared at the pictures in the Indonesian tract and I gave him time to read.

I pointed back to the diagram we had drawn. "Remember, you need spiritual life because you are separated from God in your sins." I snagged an Indonesian Bible on a rack within arms reach and we turned to John 5:24, one of my favorite verses.

Jesus says in John 5:24 that we receive eternal life the moment we believe. I further clarified.“Just like you receive physical life when you are born into this world, you receive spiritual life when you are born again. Jesus talked about that in John 3, when a man named Nicodemus came to him at night to ask questions because he was scared of what others would think. Jesus told him he needed to be born again.” 

I drew a little line on a diagram we were working on. “Here's your birthday. May 20^th, 1989." I placed a dot on the line."If you believe this message today, today would be your spiritual birthday, June 5, 2016. You cannot lose this life. It is eternal. The line goes on forever and ever.”

I flipped to a page in the tract that I knew in English asked “Is there anything that is stopping you from trusting in Christ right now?” (I hoped it said the same thing in Indonesian.) After a few long seconds, he finally lifted his eyes, shaking his head. “No.”

“Ben, before when I asked you about eternal life you weren’t confident. What is different now?”

“Well before I thought it was about believing in Christ and doing the good things. Now I know it is just Christ.” There was peace in his eyes.

I smiled and turned a few pages back to John chapter 3. “Here, you can read the story of Nicodemus for yourself.” I kept getting interrupted as new seafarers entered the mission. By the time I came back, he had read the whole chapter intently.

When an energetic Filipino from the ship’s Christian fellowship on board came over to me to ask a question, I included Ben in the conversation, sharing that we had just been talking about eternal life. Ben's face split into a big grin as he told his fellow seafarer: “I’ve just been born again!” His friend grinned back, "Welcome to the family, brother!"

"But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." (John 1:12)

*Name changed for privacy