A Call to the Unconverted

Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? EZEKIEL 33:11

In 1658 Baxter published a small book that outsold almost everything else he wrote. A Call to the Unconverted was addressed not to ministers or to mature believers but to people sitting in church every week who had never, so far as he could tell, been converted at all. It went through edition after edition, was translated into several languages within his lifetime, and Baxter received reports of conversions from it for the rest of his life — including from places he had never visited. It had a companion concern that ran through all his preaching: that a great many people in English parish churches believed themselves Christians on grounds that would not bear examination. So he called people to turn, and he took equal pains to explain what turning actually is.

The verse that governs it

The whole book is an exposition of one verse, and the choice tells us a great deal about his instincts.

Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live. EZEKIEL 33:11

Baxter fastened on three things in it. God swears. As I live is an oath, and it means the matter has been disputed and God is answering the charge. God denies taking pleasure in their ruin. Baxter thought this the most commonly disbelieved sentence in Scripture — not intellectually denied, but practically disbelieved by people who imagine that God is looking for a reason to condemn them and will not be sorry when He finds one. And God pleads. The doubling — turn ye, turn ye — is the language of someone who will not take silence for an answer.

The refrain of the book is the question at the end of the verse: why will ye die? Baxter regarded it as unanswerable. The man who will not turn cannot produce an account of himself that would survive five minutes of honest examination. He is not choosing hell; he is postponing the subject, which comes to the same thing in the end.

What delay actually is

That postponement was the commonest response the book met. Almost nobody, Baxter observed, decides against Christ. What people do is agree in principle and defer in practice — intending to attend to the matter later, when the children are older, when the business is settled. He regarded this as the most dangerous condition a person can be in, precisely because it feels reasonable and produces no alarm.

And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee. ACTS 24:25

Felix is the pattern. He was moved — he trembled — and he postponed, and so far as the record goes the convenient season never arrived. Baxter’s argument against delay ran on three lines. You have no lease on the time. You will not be more inclined later, because habits set and consciences grow quieter. And you are losing, in the meantime, everything the delay costs.

But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. HEBREWS 3:13

His conclusion was blunt. A man who intends to turn eventually has already conceded the argument and is merely haggling over the date.

Earnestness without manipulation

Evangelistic urgency has a long history of going wrong, and Baxter’s manner is worth noticing. He is enormously earnest. He pleads; he repeats himself; he presses the reader with the shortness of life and the certainty of judgment. And he does it entirely by argument and appeal to the conscience. He anticipates objections and answers them. There is no working of the emotions for their own sake, no engineered crisis, no technique for producing a response in a meeting. Manipulation produces decisions that dissolve within a month and leaves the manipulated person harder than before. Baxter aimed at the understanding, trusting that if a man genuinely saw his situation he would act.

Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:11

He also wrote deliberately in plain language for poor readers, kept the price low, gave copies away in quantity, and urged wealthy Christians to do the same. In a parish where many could not read, he expected the literate to read aloud to the household, and the book is written to be heard as much as read.

Readers who know the debates of his century will notice that the book leans on the universality of the gospel call, and that Baxter defends the sincerity of God’s offer to all who hear it with more warmth than some strict Calvinists thought proper. He held a modified position on the extent of the atonement, and we shall come to the controversy in the next chapter. Whatever one concludes about the theology, his practice is the one the New Testament models: a universal, urgent, sincere call to every hearer, without hedging.

What conversion is not

The call raises an obvious question — turn to what, and how would anyone know? — and Baxter began by clearing away the false marks. The list is uncomfortably current. Conversion is not being born into a Christian family, baptised, and taught the catechism. It is not moral respectability, which many unconverted people possess in greater measure than many converted ones. It is not orthodoxy of opinion. It is not religious feeling, however strong; Baxter had watched people weep under preaching and return to their old lives within the week. And it is not the performance of religious duty, which can be maintained for a lifetime out of habit or fear.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 7:21

He regarded the passage that follows as the most sobering in the Bible for religious people, since those the Lord disowns there are not sceptics but active and apparently successful workers.

Three things that change

His positive account is unusually clear, and it gives a believer something to examine himself by that is not a feeling. Conversion is a change in three related things. A change of ultimate end: every person is living for something, and for the unconverted man, whatever his religion, that aim is finally himself. In conversion God takes the place the self occupied. A change of chief good: Baxter’s test was to ask what a man would be unable to live without, and conversion transfers that place to God.

Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. PSALM 73:25

And a change of governing master. The convert has changed sides; the will of Christ has become the authority to which disputes are referred.

To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. ACTS 26:18

God’s work and ours

Baxter held both sides firmly, and was attacked from both directions for it. Conversion is God’s work; the change described above is not within the reach of a will that is itself part of the problem.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. EZEKIEL 36:26

And conversion is genuinely the sinner’s act. He turns; he repents; he believes; and Scripture commands these of everyone who hears. To the man who said he could not turn, Baxter answered that nothing was preventing him but his own unwillingness. To the man who thought he could manage it whenever convenient, he answered that he had never yet managed the smallest part of it and had better cry to God for help.

Gradual and definite

One further point saves a good deal of unnecessary distress. Baxter did not require that a believer be able to name the date of his conversion. Many are brought up in godly homes and cannot identify a moment, and the work is often gradual and only recognisable afterwards. What he insisted on is that the change must be real and present. The question is not when did it happen? but has it happened?

He also warned against judging by early enthusiasm, drawing on the parable of the sower. The seed on stony ground springs up at once and with joy, more visibly than the good soil; yet hath he not root in himself, and when trouble comes it withers (Matthew 13:20–21). Time is the most reliable evidence, and trouble is the test, because a religion adopted for what it supplies has no reason to persist once it begins to cost. New believers should be received warmly and watched quietly, not promoted quickly — and the one who has fallen away is not to be written off. Roots can still go down.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

A caution, because this chapter can wound the wrong people. Searching self-examination is medicine for the confident and poison for the fearful. Believers of tender conscience frequently fail every test they apply and conclude they are lost, while the genuinely unconverted sail through unbothered. If you are already anxious about this, take it gently, and read the chapter Counsel for the Melancholy before you go further.

And there is an application most readers will want to avoid. You know someone who is not converted. You see them regularly, and you have never raised it, because the moment never seems right. Baxter’s question is not whether the moment is right. It is what you will say about the delay.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. If you have been putting off your own turning to God, stop postponing. Nobody has a reason that survives examination.

2. Ask what you are actually living for — not what you would say, but what your decisions reveal — and what you could not live without.

3. Do not fret over the date. Ask whether the change is present, not when it began; and if the examination crushes rather than clarifies, take it to a wise believer.

4. Name one person you see regularly who, so far as you can tell, is not converted. Ask yourself what you are gaining by your silence.

5. Aim at the conscience, not the emotions. Reason with people; do not work on them.

6. Buy a plain, sound Christian book and give it away. It was one of Baxter’s most effective methods and it costs almost nothing.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You have sworn by Your own life that You take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and I have not believed it about myself or about anyone else.

Show me what I am living for, and who wins when Your will and mine collide. If I have never truly turned, turn me. I cannot do it, but I am asking, which is the one thing I can do.

Forgive my silence towards those I see every week. Give me the earnestness that pleads and the honesty that reasons, and keep me from every technique that works on people rather than serving them.

And if I am Yours, quiet the fear that keeps accusing me, and let me rest in what You have done. Amen.