Why are some people, just here and there, not changed? ‘Oh,’ you say, ‘I know a Christian, a professing Christian, baptised as a believer, but he or she is not changed. They do the same old things as before conversion, there is no difference, there is no marked new nature. Why are they not changed?’ And the answer is simple. They never died. They never really died. You look at this passage here before us and it starts very much with death. The old person is dethroned, there has been a death. But some people they never died; they never really left the old life. They only desisted for a time. They might have been ashamed of something they did momentarily. They left alone their excesses and their worst sins just for a time because they found a new crowd, Christians, new friends, new people. And they were able to check their behaviour and to turn just temporarily from the world and from worldliness to please the new demands and the new group. They were never sorrowful for sin. They never depended entirely upon Christ.
That is why we are so anxious about some preachers who make conversion too easy and say: ‘All you have to do is put your hand in the hand of Jesus and tell him you belong to him.’ That is not repentance and faith and seeking for forgiveness and new life. That is not renouncing the past. There must be real repentance. But they make it too easy. You just sing along and it is made a very shallow thing and you accept Christ; it is just a mental assent or acknowledgement, but it is not deep, there is no repentance, and that is why there is no new life.