Was Simon Mangus a Christian?

Forgive the formatting, this is from Tim Keller and John Stott:

Verse 13 says that “Simon believed and was baptized”, yet Peter says later that his heart is
“not right with God” (v.21), which means that he is not a Christian. Some would say that Simon
had been converted, but had fallen away from grace, had lost his salvation. But Peter’s words in
verse 23, “For I see you are (lit.) in the gall of bitterness and captive to sin” has the sense of
“now I perceive your true state”. The best way, then to read v.13, is the Simon intellectually was
convinced of the truth of Christ, but there was no real change of heart, no new birth.

Why? Verse 19 shows that his interest was “this ability”. He saw the power to heal people
physically and spiritually, and he wanted that power for himself. He had been a magician, and the
work of a magician is to have power. Now in the gospel he saw a greater power, and he just
wanted this for himself, too. In other words, Simon’s fundamental and basic heart attitude had not
changed at all. He had just gotten into Christianity because he hoped to use it as a more effective
way to rise up and get power over people. He was still, in a sense, trying to save himself and keep
control of his life. The way he had always done that was through gaining power over people. Now
he wanted to do this through this new religion.
This is subtle and a great warning to us all. Some of us feel that we need approval in order to have
happiness and value. So we may appear to “convert”, but we may be getting into Christianity just
to get this nice group of people to love and approve of us. So our real “salvation” is not Christ, but
the approval of other Christians. There has been no real heart change, no real abandoning of our
good works for faith in Christ’s work for us. We are just doing the old self-salvation in a new
way. Or, here’s another example, closer to Simon’s pattern. Some of us feel that we need power
over others in order to have happiness and value. We may always feel that we need to be running
things, be telling others what to do. So we may appear to “convert”, but we may be getting into
Christianity just because we see a new place where we can run things and pontificate and tell
people how they ought to live. So our real “salvation” is not Christ, but power over others. There
has been no real heart change, no real abandoning of our good works for faith in Christ’s work for
us. We are just doing the old self-salvation in a new way.
So this mistake of Simon is much easier to do than you think! It is being done in the church all the
time!
Did he repent? We cannot be sure, from his reply in v.24, but John Stott does not think his reply
indicates that he did.
“Simon’s response to Peter’s rebuke is not encouraging. He showed no sign of
repentance....Instead of praying for forgiveness...What really concerned him was
not that he might receive God’s pardon, but only that he might escape God’s
judgment...Simon’s tears [may] have been tears of remorse or rage, but not of
repentance.” Stott, The Message of Acts, p.151.
In other words, Simon seems only concerned that he might be hurt, not that he has hurt God. That
is not a good sign!