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.

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 Baxter asked what it means that God should take an oath about His own disposition towards sinners. It means the matter has been disputed, and that 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.

Why will ye die?

The refrain of the book is the question at the end of the verse, and Baxter turned it over and over, because he regarded it as unanswerable. Nobody has a reason. 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. Baxter’s method throughout is to reason with the reader rather than to work on him. He anticipates objections and answers them. He asks what the reader is gaining by delay, what he expects to be different next year, whether he supposes he will have more inclination then or less, and what he intends to say when asked to account for the delay.

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 2 CORINTHIANS 6:2

Earnestness without manipulation

There is a distinction here worth noticing, because evangelistic urgency has a long history of going wrong. Baxter 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. There is no working of the emotions for their own sake, no engineered crisis, no technique for producing a response in a meeting. The difference matters. Manipulation produces decisions that dissolve within a month, and it leaves the manipulated person harder than before, because he has now been inoculated. Baxter aimed at the understanding and the conscience, 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

Persuade is the word. It assumes a mind that can be reached.

Written for people who could not read it

One detail about the book’s circulation is worth recording, because it explains Baxter’s whole approach to publishing. He wrote deliberately in plain language for poor readers, kept the price low, and gave copies away in quantity. He urged wealthy Christians to buy stocks of such books and distribute them, and he did the same himself with a good deal of his own income. In a parish where many could not read at all, he expected the literate to read aloud to the household. The book is written to be heard as much as read — the sentences are direct, the arguments repeat, and the address is personal throughout.

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? ROMANS 10:14

A note on his doctrine here

Readers acquainted with the debates of Baxter’s century will notice that this 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 of his strictly Calvinist contemporaries thought proper. He held a modified position on the extent of the atonement, and it shaped his evangelism. We shall come to the controversy in chapter six. It is enough here to say that whatever one concludes about the theology, Baxter’s practice is the one the New Testament models: a universal, urgent, sincere call to every hearer, without qualification and without hedging.

There is an application of this chapter that most readers will want to avoid, and it is the obvious one. You know someone who is not converted. You see them regularly. You have never raised it, because the moment never seems right and you do not want to damage the relationship. Baxter’s question is not whether the moment is right. It is what you will say about the delay.

What delay actually is

Baxter devoted considerable space to the commonest response his book met, which was not rejection but postponement. Almost nobody, he observed, decides against Christ. What people do is agree in principle and defer in practice — intending to attend to the matter later, when life is less pressing, 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. The assumption that the matter can be attended to later depends on a future nobody has been promised. You will not be more inclined then. Every year of postponement makes the thing harder, not easier, because habits set and consciences grow quieter.

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

And you are, in the meantime, losing everything the delay costs — the peace, the usefulness, the years that might have been spent well. His conclusion was blunt. A man who intends to turn eventually has already conceded the argument and is merely haggling over the date, which is a remarkably poor thing to be doing with a life.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name one person you see regularly who, so far as you can tell, is not converted. Write the name down. 2. Ask yourself Baxter’s own question about your silence: what are you gaining by the delay, and what do you expect to be different next year? 3. If you have been putting off your own turning to God, stop postponing. Nobody has a reason that survives examination. 4. Aim at the conscience, not the emotions. Reason with people; do not work on them. 5. 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.

Forgive my silence. There are people I see every week whose souls I have never once mentioned to them, and I have called my cowardice discretion.

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 there is any part of me still postponing, let me settle it now. Amen.