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DECISIONS DECISIONS DECISIONS
We make a great many decisions every day: good ones and bad ones. We change our minds about our decisions. That is the nature of decisions: they are often reversed. The word “decision” appears only twice in your Bible: twice in the same verse. This is amazing since so many religious people talk about “making a decision for Christ” and the importance of such a “decision.” You would think that if making a decision was so very important the word would appear frequently in the Bible, but it does not. The one place “decision” appears in the Bible is in the Old Testament. It has nothing to do with becoming a Christian. The King James translators themselves wanted us to know that the word “decision” did not mean individuals deciding something because they added two other words in their marginal note giving alternate meanings. The word appears is Joel 3:14. It says, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. {decision: or, concision, or, threshing },” (Complete with KJV marginal note). So the idea is not that people should make a decision, but that God was going to bring His determined judgment upon certain people. They were to be cut off (“concision”) or beaten as in “threshing.” So where did all this talk about making a decision for Christ come from? It did not come from the Bible. Since it did not come from God's revelation, it must be an invention of man or the devil. Jesus said, “...I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,” (Matthew 9:13). Repentance is caused by godly sorrow: “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of...” (2 Corinthians 7:10). Repentance (turning from sin to God) pleases God because Jesus came to call men to repent. It is logical that godly sorrow pleases God for it is the cause of God-pleasing repentance. But the only people that can do anything to please God are those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit and in whom the Spirit dwells. Romans 8:8-9 proves this last statement: “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Remember Jesus said, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7) and God told us that this new birth is “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” (John 1:13). The Spirit in bringing about the new birth is as uncontrollable as the wind that “bloweth where it listeth (wants), 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” (John 3:8). Being “born of God” is not the result of any action of man.
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