Saturday 29 July 2017
Friday 28 July 2017
Thursday 27 July 2017
Wednesday 26 July 2017
Tuesday 25 July 2017
Monday 24 July 2017
Sunday 23 July 2017
Saturday 22 July 2017
Friday 21 July 2017
Thursday 20 July 2017
Wednesday 19 July 2017
God or Mammon
By Martyn-Lloyd Jones
IN our analysis of verses 19-24 we have seen that our Lord first of all lays down a proposition or a commandment, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth ... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." In other words, He tells us that we are so to live in this world, and so to use everything we have, whether our possessions, or gifts, or talents, or propensities, that we shall be laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven.
Then, having given us the injunction in that way, our Lord proceeds to supply us with reasons for doing this. I would remind you again that here we have an illustration of the wonderful condescension and understanding of our blessed Lord. He has no need to give us reasons. It is for Him to command. But He stoops to our weakness, mighty as He is, and He comes to our aid and supplies us with these reasons for carrying out His commandment. He does so in a very remarkable manner. He elaborates the reasons and presses them upon our consideration. He does not merely give us one reason; He gives us a number. He works it out for us in a series of logical propositions, and, of course, there can be no doubt at all but that He does this, not only because He is anxious to help us, but also, and still more perhaps, because of the desperate seriousness of the subject with which He is dealing. Indeed, we shall see that this is one of the most serious matters which we can ever consider together.
Again we must remember that these words were addressed to Christian people. This is not what our Lord has to say to the unbeliever out in the world; this is the warning that He gives to the Christian. We are dealing here with the subject of worldliness, or worldly-mindedness, and the whole problem of the world; but we must cease to think of it in terms of people who are in the world outside. This is the peculiar danger of Christian people. At this point our Lord is dealing with them and nobody else. You can argue if you like that if all this is true for the Christian, it is much more so for the non-Christian. That is a perfectly fair deduction; but there is nothing so fatal and tragic as to think that words like these have nothing to do with us because we are Christians. Indeed, this is perhaps the most urgent word that is needed by Christian people at this very moment. The world is so subtle, worldliness is such a pervasive thing, that we are all guilty of it, and often without realizing it. We tend to label worldliness as meaning certain particular things only, and always the things of which we are not guilty. We therefore argue that this has nothing to say to us. But worldliness is all-pervasive, and is not confined to certain things. It does not just mean going to theatres or cinemas, or doing a few things of that nature. No, worldliness is an attitude towards life. It is a general outlook, and it is so subtle that it can come into the most holy things of all, as we saw earlier.
We might digress here for a moment and look at this subject from the standpoint of the great political interest in this country, particularly, for example, at the time of a General Election. What, in the last analysis, is the real interest? What is the real thing that people on both sides and all sides are concerned about? They are interested in "treasures upon earth", whether they be people who have treasures or whether they be people who would like to have them. They are all interested in the treasures; and it is most instructive to listen to what people say, and to observe how they betray themselves and the worldliness of which they are guilty, and the way in which they are laying up for themselves treasures upon earth. To be very practical (and if the preaching of the gospel is not practical it is not true preaching), there is a very simple test which we can apply to ourselves to see whether these things apply to us or not. When, at the time of a General or local Election, we are called on to make a choice of candidates, do we find ourselves believing that one political point of view is altogether right and the other altogether wrong? If we do, I suggest we are somehow or another laying up for ourselves treasures on earth. If we say that the truth is altogether on one side or the other, then if we analyse our motives we shall discover it is because we are either protecting something or anxious to have something. Another good way of testing ourselves is to ask ourselves quite simply and honestly why we hold our particular views. What is our real interest? What is our motive? What, when we are quite honest and truthful with ourselves, is really at the back of these particular political views that we hold? It is a most illuminating question if we are really honest. I suggest that most people will find if they face that question quite honestly, that there are some treasures upon earth about which they are concerned, and in which they are interested.
The next test is this. To what extent are our feelings engaged in this matter? How much bitterness is there, how much violence, how much anger and scorn and passion? Apply that test, and again we shall find that the feeling is aroused almost invariably by the concern about laying up treasures upon earth. The last test is this. Are we viewing these things with a kind of detachment and objectivity or not? What is our attitude towards all these things? Do we instinctively think of ourselves as pilgrims, and mere sojourners in this world, who of course have to be interested in these things while we are here? Such an interest is certainly right, it is our duty. But what is our ultimate attitude? Are we controlled by it? Or do we stand apart and regard it objectively, as something which is ephemeral, something which does not really belong to the essence of our life and being, something with which we are concerned only for a while, as we are passing through this life? We should ask ourselves these questions in order that we may make quite certain whether this injunction of our Lord is speaking to us. Those are some of the ways in which we can find out very simply whether we are or are not guilty of laying up for ourselves treasures upon earth, and not laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven.
When we come to consider our Lord's arguments against laying up treasures on earth, we find that the first is one which we may very well describe as the argument of common sense, or of ordinary observation. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." Why? For this reason: "where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal". But why should I lay up treasures in heaven? For this reason: "where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal". Our Lord is saying that worldly treasures do not last; that they are transitory, passing, ephemeral. "Change and decay in all around I see." "Where moth and rust doth corrupt."
How true it is. There is an element of decay in all these things, whether we like it or not. Our Lord puts it in terms of the moth and rust that tend to lodge themselves in these things and destroy them. Spiritually we can put it like this. These things never fully satisfy. There is always something wrong with them; they always lack something. There is no person on earth who is fully satisfied; and though in a sense some may appear to have everything that they desire, still they want something else. Happiness cannot be purchased.
There is, however, another way of looking at the effect of moth and rust spiritually. Not only is there an element of decay in these things; it is also true that we always tend to tire of them. We may enjoy them for a while, but somehow or other they begin to pall or we lose interest in them. That is why we are always talking about new things and seeking them. Fashions change; and though we are very enthusiastic about certain things for a while, soon they no longer interest us as they did. Is it not true that as age advances these things cease to satisfy us? Old people generally do not like the same things as young people, or the young the same as the old. As we get older these things seem to become different, there is an element of moth and rust. We could even go further and put it more strongly and say that there is an impurity in them. At their best they are all infected. Do what you will you cannot get rid of the impurity; the moth and rust are there and all your chemicals do not stop these processes. Peter says a wonderful thing in this very connection: "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Peter i- 4). There is corruption in all these earthly things; they are all impure.
The last fact, therefore, about these things is that they inevitably perish. Your most beautiful flower is beginning to die immediately you pluck it. You will soon have to throw it away. That is true of everything in this life and world. It does not matter what it is, it is passing, it is all fading away. Everything that has life is, as the result of sin, subject to this process-"moth and rust doth corrupt". Things develop holes and become useless, and at the end they are gone and become utterly corrupt. The most perfect physique will eventually give way and break down and die; the most beautiful countenance will in a sense become ugly when the process of corruption has got going; the brightest gifts tend to fade. Your great genius may be seen gibbering in delirium as the result of disease. However wonderful and beautiful and glorious things may be, they all perish. That is why, perhaps, the saddest of all failures in life is the failure of the philosopher who believes in worshipping goodness, beauty and truth; because there is no such thing as perfect goodness, there is no such thing as unalloyed beauty; there is an element of wrong and of sin and a lie in the highest truths. "Moth and rust doth corrupt."
"Yes," says our Lord, "and thieves break through and steal." We must not stay with these things, they are so obvious, and yet we are so slow to recognize them. There are many thieves in this life and they are always threatening us. We think we are safe in our house; but we find thieves have broken in and ransacked it. Other marauders are always threatening us—illness, a business loss, some industrial collapse, war and finally death itself. It matters not what it is that we tend to hold on to in this world, one or other of these thieves is always threatening and will eventually take it from us. It is not only money. It may be some person for whom you are really living, your pleasure is in that one person. Beware, my friends; there are robbers and thieves who are bound to come and eventually rob you of these possessions. Take our possessions at their highest as well as their lowest; they are a subject to these robbers, these attacks. "The thieves break through and steal", and we cannot prevent them. So our Lord appeals to our common sense, and reminds us that these worldly treasures never last. "Change and decay in all around I see."
But look at the other, positive side. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." This is wonderful and full of glory. Peter puts it in a phrase. He says "to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you" (I Peter i.4). "The things which are not seen are eternal," says St. Paul; it is the things which are seen that are temporal (2 Corinthians iv. 18). These heavenly things are imperishable and the thieves cannot break through and steal. Why? Because God Himself is reserving them for us. There is no enemy that can ever rob us of them, or can ever enter in. It is impossible because God Himself is the Guardian. Spiritual pleasures are invulnerable, they are in a place which is impregnable. "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans viii. 38, 39). Furthermore, there is nothing impure there; naught that corrupts shall enter in. There is no sin there, nor element of decay. It is the realm of eternal life and eternal light. He dwells "in the light which no man can approach unto", as the apostle Paul puts it (I Timothy vi. 16). Heaven is the realm of life and light and purity, and nothing belonging to death, nothing tainted or polluted can gain admission there. It is perfect; and the treasures of the soul and of the spirit belong to that realm. Lay them up there, says our Lord, because there is no moth nor rust there, and no thief can ever break through nor steal.
It is an appeal to common sense. Do we not know that these things are true? Are they not true of necessity? Do we not see it all as we live in this world? Take up your morning newspaper and look at the death column; look at all that is happening. We know all these things. Why do we not practise them and live accordingly? Why do we lay up treasures on earth when we know what is going to happen to them? And why do we not lay up treasures in heaven where we know that there is purity and joy, holiness and everlasting bliss?
That, however, is merely the first argument, the argument of common sense. But our Lord does not stop at that. His second argument is based upon the terrible spiritual danger involved in laying up treasures on earth and not in heaven. That is a general heading, but our Lord divides it into certain sub-sections. The first thing against which He warns us in this spiritual sense is the awful grip and power of these earthly things upon us. You notice the terms He uses. He says, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." The heart! Then in verse 24 He talks about the mind. "No man can serve two masters"-and we should notice the word "serve". These are the expressive terms He uses in order to impress upon us the terrible control that these things tend to exercise over us. Are we not all aware of them the moment we stop to think-the tyranny of persons, the tyranny of the world? This is not something we can think about at a distance as it were. We are all involved in this; we are all in the grip of this awful power of worldliness which really will master us unless we are aware of it.
But it is not only powerful; it is very subtle. It is the thing that really controls most men's lives. Have you seen the change, the subtle change, that tends to take place in men's lives as they succeed and prosper in this world? It does not happen to those who are truly spiritual men; but if they are not, it invariably happens. Why is it that idealism is generally associated with youth and not with middle age and old age? Why do men tend to become cynical as they get older? Why does the noble outlook upon life tend to go? It is because we all become victims of (treasures on earth), and if you watch you can see it in the lives of men. Read the biographies. Many a young man starts out with a bright vision; but in a very subtle way-not that he falls into gross sin-he becomes influenced, perhaps when he is at college, by an outlook that is essentially worldly. Though it may be highly intellectual, he nevertheless loses something that was vital in his soul and spirit. He is still a very nice man and, moreover, just and wise; but he is not the man he was when he began. Something has been lost. Yes; this is a familiar phenomenon: "Shades of the prison house begin to dose upon the growing boy." Do we not all know something about it? It is there; it is a prison house, and it fastens itself upon us unless we are aware of it. This grip, this power, masters us and we become slaves.
However, our Lord does not stop at the general. He is so anxious to show us this terrible danger that He works it out in detail. He tells us that this terrible thing that grips us tends to affect the entire personality; not merely part of us, but the whole man. And the first thing He mentions is the "heart". Having laid down the injunction He says, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." These things grip and master our feelings, our affections and all our sensibility. All that part of our nature is absolutely gripped by them and we love them. Read John iii. 19. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." We love these things. We pretend that we only like them, but really we love them. They move us deeply.
The next thing about them is a little more subtle. They not only grip the heart, they grip the mind. Our Lord puts it in this way: "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" (verses 22, 23). This picture of the eye is just His way of describing, by means of an illustration, the way in which we look at things. And according to our Lord, there are but two ways of looking at everything in this world. There is what He calls the "single" eye, the eye of the spiritual man who sees things really as they are, truly and without any double view. His eye is clear and he sees things normally. But there is the other eye which He calls the "evil" eye, which is a kind of double vision, or, if you like, it is the eye in which the lenses are not clear. There are mists and opacities and we see things in a blurred way. That is the evil eye. It is coloured by certain prejudices, coloured by certain lusts and desires. It is not a clear vision; it is all cloudy, coloured by these various tints and taints. That is what is meant by this statement which has so often confused people, because they do not take it in its context. Our Lord in this picture is still dealing with the laying up of treasures. Having shown that where the treasure is, the heart will be also, He says that it is not only the heart but the mind as well. These are the things that control man.
Let us work out this principle. Is it not amazing to notice how much of our thought is based upon these earthly treasures? The divisions in thought in almost every realm are almost entirely controlled by prejudice, not by pure thought. How very little thinking there is in this country at the time of a General Election for example. None of the protagonists reason; they simply present prejudices. How little thought there is on every side. It is so obvious in the political realm. But alas, it is not confined to politics. This blurring of the vision by love of earthly treasures tends to affect us morally also! How clever we all are at explaining that a particular thing we do is not really dishonest. Of course if a man smashes a window and steals jewellery he is a robber; but if I just manipulate my income tax return .... ! Certainly that is not robbery, we say, and we persuade ourselves. that all is well. Ultimately there is but one reason for our doing these things, and that is our love of earthly treasures. These things control the mind as well as the heart. Our views and our whole ethical outlook are controlled by these things.
Even worse than that, however, our religious outlook is controlled by these things also. "Demas hath forsaken me", writes Paul. Why? "Having loved this present world." How often this is seen in the matter of service. These are the things that determine our action, though we do not recognize it. Our Lord says in another place: "Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man" (Luke xxi. 34-36). It is not only evil doing that dulls the mind and makes us incapable of thinking clearly. The cares of this world, settling down in life, enjoying our life and our family, any one of these things, our worldly position or our comforts-these are equally as dangerous as surfeiting and drunkenness. There is no doubt but that much of the so-called wisdom which men claim in this world is nothing, in the last analysis, but this concern about earthly treasures.
But lastly, these things not only grip the heart and mind, they also affect the will. Says our Lord, "No man can serve two masters"; and the moment we mention the word "serve" we are in the realm of the will, the realm of action. You notice how perfectly logical this is. What we do is the result of what we think; so what is going to determine our lives and the exercise of our wills is what we think, and that in turn is determined by where our treasure is-our heart. So we can sum it up like this. These earthly treasures are so powerful that they grip the entire personality. They grip a man's heart, his mind and his will; they tend to affect his spirit, his soul and his whole being. Whatever realm of life we may be looking at, or thinking about, we shall find these things are there. Everyone is affected by them; they are a terrible danger.
But the last step is the most solemn and serious of all. We must remember that the way in which we look at these things ultimately determines our relationship to God. "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." This is indeed a very solemn thing, and that is why it is dealt with so frequently in Scripture. The truth of this proposition is obvious. Both make a totalitarian demand upon us. Worldly things really do make a totalitarian demand as we have seen. How they tend to grip the entire personality and affect us everywhere! They demand our entire devotion; they want us to live for them absolutely. Yes, but so does God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." Not in a material sense necessarily, but in some sense or other He says to us all, "Go, sell all that thou hast, and come, follow me." "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." It is a totalitarian demand. Notice it again in verse 24: "Either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." It is "either—or" compromise is completely impossible at this point. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
This is something which is so subtle that many of us miss it completely at the present time. Some of us are violent opponents of what we speak of as "atheistic materialism". But lest we may feel too happy about ourselves because we are opponents of that, let us realize that the Bible tells us that all materialism is atheistic. Ye cannot serve God and mammon; it is impossible. So if a materialistic outlook is really controlling us, we arc godless, whatever we may say. There are many atheists who speak religious language; but our Lord tells us here that even worse than atheistic materialism is a materialism that thinks it is godly-"if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" The man who thinks he is godly because he talks about God, and says he believes in God, and goes to a place of worship occasionally, but is really living for certain earthly things-how great is that man's darkness! There is a perfect illustration of that in the Old Testament. Study carefully 2 Kings xvii. 24-41. Here is what we are told. The Assyrians conquered some area; then they took their own people and settled them in that area. These Assyrians of course did not worship God. Then some lions came and destroyed their property. "This", they said, "has happened to us because we do not worship the God of this particular land. We will get priestly instruction on this." So they found a priest who instructed them generally in the religion of Israel. And then they thought that all would be well. But this is what Scripture said about them: they "feared the Lord, and served their graven images."
What a terrible thing that is. It alarms me. It is not what we say that matters. In the last day many shall say, "Lord, Lord, have we not done this, that and the other?" But He will say unto them, "I never knew you". "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." Whom do you serve? That is the question, and it is either God or mammon. There is nothing in the last analysis that is so insulting to God as to take His name upon us and yet to show clearly that we are serving mammon in some shape or form. That is the most terrible thing of all. It is the greatest insult to God; and how easily and unconsciously we can all become guilty of this.
I remember once hearing a preacher tell a story which he assured us was simple, literal truth. It illustrates perfectly the point which we are considering. It is the story of a farmer who one day went happily and with great joy in his heart to report to his wife and family that their best cow had given birth to twin calves, one red and one white. And he said, "You know I have suddenly had a feeling and impulse that we must dedicate one of these calves to the Lord. We will bring them up together, and when the time comes we will sell one and keep the proceeds, and we will sell the other and give the proceeds to the Lord's work." His wife asked him which he was going to dedicate to the Lord. "There is no need to bother about that now," he replied, "we will treat them both in the same way, and when the time comes we will do as I say." And off he went. In a few months the man entered his kitchen looking very miserable and unhappy. When his wife asked him what was troubling him, he answered, "I have bad news to give you. The Lord's calf is dead." "But", she said, "you had not decided which was to be the Lord's calf." "Oh yes," he said; "I had always decided it was to be the white one, and it is the white one that has died. The Lord's calf is dead. We may laugh at that story, but God forbid that we should be laughing at ourselves. It is always the Lord's calf that dies. When money becomes difficult, the first thing we economize on is our contribution to God's work. It is always the first thing to go. Perhaps we must not say "always", for that would be unfair; but with so many it is the first thing, and the things we really like are the last to go. "We cannot serve God and mammon." These things tend to come between us and God, and our attitude to them ultimately determines our relationship to God. The mere fact that we believe in God, and call Him, Lord, Lord, and likewise with Christ, is not proof in and of itself that we are serving Him, that we recognize His totalitarian demand, and have yielded ourselves gladly and readily to Him. "Let every man examine himself."
Tuesday 18 July 2017
Monday 17 July 2017
Sunday 16 July 2017
Christian Conduct - Exposition of Romans 12
BY MARTYN LLOYD-JONES
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. - Romans 12:1-2
We have seen that in the Christian life, everything must be considered in the light of our new position. I am so concerned about this because to me it is one of the most glorious aspects of the Christian faith and is certainly the key to successful Christian living. The Christian's attitude to behavior is never negative. It is never small and it is never fearful. We do a very great disservice to our Lord and Master and to His way of life if we give that impression.
Of course, a false impression has often been given. The man of the world will tell you that that is why he is not a Christian. People say, 'But you Christians are so small and your life is so little and narrow.' And I am afraid that we have often given that impression; we have been fearful. We have misrepresented the gospel and have been a hindrance to people coming into the Christian life.
But the Christian approach should always be positive; it should always be big and always glorious. If we do not give the impression that it is a glorious thing to be a Christian and to live the Christian life, we have never understood this statement: 'Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.' What a possibility! What a wonderful way of looking at everything. And there is no fear here because we are reminded at once of great resources which are ours
The Christian gospel is unique. It tells us: Be what you are; realize what you are; and proceed to show that you are what you are. Nowhere else in the world do we find such a message. And as we have seen, that is why we must always realize that no one can live the Christian life without being regenerate. Indeed, to tell anybody who is not a Christian to live the Christian life in any part or form is to teach heresy. It is the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius thought that you simply had to teach people the principles of Christian living for them to carry them out. That is false teaching which has been condemned, and always should be condemned, by the Christian church.
So I trust we are clear about this. The idea that all you have to do is to go to the statesmen of the world and tell them, `Now this is what Christianity teaches, put it into practice', is a denial of the whole teaching of the New Testament. So when popes and others address the United Nations they should not appeal to them to put Christian principles into practice. They should tell them that they must be `born again', because the people will never do it until they are, and apart from anything else, you are wasting your breath.
The main cause of the terribly confused state of the world is the foolish idea that men and women who have long since shed the Christian doctrine, can still hold on to the Christian ethic. It cannot be done. It is a sheer impossibility. That is what the apostle is saying. Each person needs this 'transformation', which, as we have shown, is comparable to the transfiguration of our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration.
So Paul says that we must not be found conforming to the 'fashion' of this world. But how do we live in this transformed way? The whole point is, according to the apostle here, that this demands positive effort on our part. It is 'by the renewing of your mind', and especially `by the spirit of your mind' [Eph. 4:23]. Now the Holy Spirit is in us as Christians, and He is always working in us, and what the apostle is telling us to do here is to listen to Him, to be guided by Him, and to put into practice what He tells us. Again, it is this two-sided Teaching: 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For [because] it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure' [Phil. 2: 12-I3 ]. Paul is really saying here: 'You have been born again, therefore renew your mind.
What, then, does it mean in practice? Obviously, the first thing is that we must acquaint ourselves with the truth. Why were these epistles ever written? It was to help us to renew our minds. That is why Paul had to write Romans and that is why all the other epistles were written. We are not merely left with our experience and the activity of the Holy Spirit within us. He is the Spirit of truth and He caused these men to write the letters in order that we may be helped and taught. You cannot renew your mind unless you are acquainted with this Word. So being renewed means acquaintance with the truth as it is presented to us with all its argumentation in the New Testament.
Secondly, we must understand the truth that we read. We must read it and spend time in reading it, and we must struggle with it until we understand it. That is why we are considering this Epistle to the Romans like this, is it not? We are trying together to understand this teaching as the Spirit leads and guides us, and as we use our minds and understanding.
In addition, of course, it means that, having known what it is and having grasped it and understood it, we then constantly apply it. This demands an effort on our part, because, unfortunately, as the result of the fall and of sin, we have all become creatures of habit. We have been so accustomed to thinking in a certain way that we tend to go on in the same way, even after we have been born again. We do not automatically begin to think in the new way. We do, of course, in a fundamental sense and yet it involves a lot of training. You will find your mind slipping back into the old grooves. You have to pull it out, as it were, and direct it in the other way. That is what Paul means 'by the renewing of your mind'.
There, then, it is in general, but let me show you now what this renewal of the mind means in particular. Here I am, a regenerate man, very good. Now I have to think in an entirely new way; I must approach all the problems of my life in a new way. But how? Well, I must start by asking myself, 'What, after all, is the object of salvation?' As Christians we are converted people. We are regenerate. We have believed the truth. We rejoice in the doctrine of salvation; we rejoice to come to the Lord's table and partake of the bread and the wine. We 'shew the Lord's death till he come' [1 Cor. 11:26]. We believe these things. That is what makes us Christians and what we are as Christians.
But the danger is to stop at that, to say, 'Right, I'm saved now,’ and then just to go on living a kind of life which really does not relate to that new birth. But the Christian man or woman must not do that but must say, `Now, I must start asking questions. Why has all that happened? Why did the Lord Jesus Christ ever come into this world? Why did He die upon the cross and be buried and rise again?' And, as we study these epistles we discover there is only one answer to that and the apostle has set it before us, in a most wonderful manner, in chapter 5 of this great Epistle.
The ultimate objective in the incarnation and all that followed was the production of a new humanity. We were all ‘in Adam', we are now to be `in Christ'. He came in order to form this new humanity and He is the Head of the new race of people. The object of salvation, then, is not merely that we may be forgiven and not go to hell. The danger, I repeat, is to stop at that and to say, 'I have been saved from this, that and the other.' But we must learn to look at this positively. Christ is 'the firstborn among many brethren' [Rom. 8:29], He is '`bringing many sons unto glory' [Heb. 2:10]. It is by contemplating that, that Christians become renewed in their minds.
Take that great statement made by the apostle in Titus 2: 11-15 where he puts it so clearly: 'For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men' - why? -'teaching us' - you see, salvation teaches us -'that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us' - what for? -'that he might redeem us from all iniquity' - but here is the positive - 'and purify unto himself a peculiar [separate] people [for his own possession] zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority.'
When we stop and ask ourselves: 'What is the ultimate 'object of salvation?' that is our answer. And then our whole attitude towards individual problems is already new and changed.
Let us go on. If the whole object of our Lord's coming and all that He did is the formation of a new humanity, then this, of necessity, essentially involves the fact that we should be transferred from one condition to another; and this is something that the New Testament writers glory in. Now there is no more wonderful statement of this than that made by this same apostle in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Colossians. 'Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son' [Col. 1: 12-13]. What a concept! That, again, is what he means here by renewing the mind: that you read a statement like that and take the trouble to understand it, and then proceed to work it out. You say to yourself, 'I am, ultimately, to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light, but I can never be that without something happening to me. It is not merely that I am forgiven, that is not enough. I must be 'translated' out of the kingdom of darkness, and transferred into the kingdom of His dear Son.'
And that is precisely what has happened to us, that is what it means to be a Christian. And it is because each of us does not have thoughts like this in the forefront of our mind and, indeed, controlling the whole of our outlook, that we fail and fall, that is why we grapple with little problems individually, as if we were still unconverted people. Here we are told how to approach the whole matter. We have been taken out of one kingdom and have been transferred into another. Now this teaching is not by any means confined to the Apostle Paul. Peter puts this quite as plainly and clearly. 'But ye' he says, 'are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises' - excellencies, virtues - 'of him who hath called [brought] you out of darkness into his marvelous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God; which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy' [1 Pet. 2:9-11].
So this is how as Christians we face our lives in this world. We do not say, 'Problem number one, problem number two, and now I must see what I can do,' and struggle against this in some negative and fearful manner. No, we go back and remind ourselves of where we are and of what has happened to us. We remind ourselves of the One 'who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world' [Gal.1:4].
Now to 'be renewed in your mind' means that you will not allow yourself to forget that; you go on reminding yourself of it. I put it like that because that is precisely how Peter puts it. He is an old man, facing death, and in effect he tells the people: All your troubles are due to the fact that you have forgotten what you know. 'He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins' [2 Pet.1:9]. He knew it but has forgotten it. The 'renewing of your mind' means that you think so positively about these things that you will never be able to forget them again.
Peter goes on, 'Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure.' He has already been saying to them, 'And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith [furnish out your faith with] virtue . . . brotherly kindness,' and so on [verses 5-7]. You must be active and positive, and in doing so you are renewing your mind. 'Give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things, ye shall never fall: for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom.' Then: 'Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them and be established in the present truth' [verses 10-12].
Now that is preaching! Do you get tired of hearing me saying the same things, my friends? Well, I am just doing what the Apostle Peter did. I am sure he was right and I am sure I am right! Our greatest trouble always is that we forget. Peter says it again in the next verse: 'Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance' [verse 13]. And I think this is the call that comes more than ever before to ministers today. Christian people are forgetting things they have known, and that is why we are in the present muddle and confusion; and the business of preaching is to go on reminding them.
Then Peter even says it once more. 'Knowing,' he says, 'that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me. Moreover I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance' [verses 14-15 ]. He says, in effect, 'You were told these things. You believed them when you became Christians. But you are in trouble now. You are unhappy and failing. Why? Because you have forgotten! But you must not allow yourselves to forget - you must take yourselves in hand. I am stirring you up. I am going to make you do it. I am going to remind you of the things you know.' That is renewing the mind, becoming what you are, and realizing what you are.
Peter has already reminded his readers of what has happened: 'Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust' [2 Pet.1:4]. 'You have got out of that corruption,' he says, 'well do not conform to it, then. Do not behave as if you were still in it.'
Or take again another wonderful statement of all this by the Apostle Paul at the end of Colossians 2. Having worked out his great argument about the cross up to verse 15, he says, 'Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect to an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.' Silly people - they were going back under the law. Though they had been emancipated, they were going back to those things. 'Which are,' he says, 'a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head, from which all the body and joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Wherefore' - here it is - 'if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances . . .' [verses 16-20]. He says: What is the matter with you? You are muddled; renew your minds! 'Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh' [verse 23].
And, indeed, the Apostle Paul has had to say the same thing to the Corinthians: 'And I, brethren, could not speak unto you unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you vying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?' [ 1 Cor. 3: 1-3 ]. You are born again but, he says, you are living as if you were not; you are thinking as if you were not; you are desiring as if you were not. You are contradicting yourselves.
And so the first thing we must realize is what we have been translated from; and then, positively, we must remind ourselves constantly of what we have been translated to: 'From the power of darkness . . . into the kingdom of his dear Son' [Col. 1:13]. But look at it in this tremendous statement in Philippians 3:20-21. Here is the positive aspect: 'For our conversation [our citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.' The apostle is contrasting that with certain false teachers: 'For many walk, whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind [think about] earthly things' [verses 18-19]. But our conversation, our citizenship, the realm to which we belong, is not there, it is in heaven. We belong to the kingdom of God.
And, of course, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is saying exactly the same thing in that great eleventh chapter, there he puts up, one after another, the great heroes of the faith - Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses and all the others. What was their secret? It was that while they were in this world, they were looking 'for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God' [Heb. 11:10]. They realized that they were just passing through this world and that they longed to that other city.
Now if you want to expound Scripture, use Scripture to do so and I am giving you, therefore, the biblical commentaries on this one phrase in Romans 12:2. One of the best expositions of this verse and of how it works out in detail and in practice is the fifth chapter of the second Epistle to the Corinthians. It is all summed up in one great statement in verse 17: 'Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature [a new creation]: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.' Here Paul is describing the new way of thinking. He says in effect, 'Because I am a new creature, a new creation, in a sense, nothing is as it was before; I see everything differently.' Here is one respect in which this is true: 'Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more' [verse 16]. This is a tremendous statement. Paul did not see himself as he used to. He saw himself once as a very fine man, a very godly, good man, pleasing God, a Pharisee, better than most other people, but now he says, 'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief' [ 1 Tim. 1:15 ]. That is a new way of thinking, is it not?
The apostle not only saw himself in a different way, he saw others differently: 'no man after the flesh'. When Paul - Saul of Tarsus - used to look at other men the one thing he asked was, 'Is he a Jew or isn't he?' That was the controlling principle -Jews and non-Jews, people of God and 'dogs', with no good at all in them. But he did not think like that any longer; he had been renewed. And you and I, too, are to work this out. We are no longer to be governed by likes and dislikes and prejudices. We are renewed in our minds because of what has happened to us. And as the apostle delighted in the fact that he was the apostle to the Gentiles, as he had been boasting in chapter 11 of this great Epistle, so you and I must see everybody else in a new way. And this will solve many of the problems of our daily lives.
But the trouble is, is it not, that often, as Christians, though we are born again, we react as we used to react to people and to what they do and think and say. We must not do that. We must, for example, see them not so much as difficult people - if that is what they are - but, if they are not Christians, as slaves of Satan, and we must be sorry for them. Our Lord looked out upon the masses and saw them 'as sheep having no shepherd' [Matt. 9:36] and His heart was filled with compassion. And we must be like that. When we have this new way of thinking we do that, but we must make a positive effort. We must no longer just react instinctively to these people but must say to ourselves, 'Wait a minute, how do I look at all this?', and then remember that they are just the slaves of the devil; they still belong to the kingdom of darkness; they are 'not a people' [1 Pet. 2:10]. 'Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh.'
This renewal of our minds not only changes our view of ourselves and other people, it changes our entire view of life in this world; and this is very important. We are in a unique relationship to this world. If our citizenship is in heaven, we are only 'strangers and pilgrims' here. That is how Peter puts it: 'Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul' [1 Pet.2:11]. And you and I must make ourselves think like this. We are in this world, but we are no longer of it. We are journeymen, we are sojourners, strangers and pilgrims - again, it is all put perfectly there in that mighty statement in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The writer gives us these people's philosophy, as it were: 'These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth' [Heb.11:13].
Of course, that is the constant appeal of the New Testament. Paul writes to the Ephesians, 'This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind' [Eph. 4:17]. You cannot do that, you have not 'so learned Christ' [verse 20]. Do not go on living as if you were unchanged; you are changed. He brings it out again in the fifth chapter of that same Epistle: 'Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes, you were at one time, once upon a time -'darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord' - well - 'walk as children of light: (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret' [Eph. 5:7-12]. The world is not ashamed to speak of them in public any longer, is it? But you and I should be ashamed, and we must have nothing to do with it. 'But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light . . . Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is' [verses 13-17].
So the New Testament is full of this very argumentation, and I have often summed it up, as I have worked through this Epistle, in this way: You were, but you are no longer, thank God; now you are! That is exactly what Paul is saying here: 'Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.' You must realize that you belong to this 'chosen generation', this 'royal priesthood', this 'holy nation', this people who are to be a special possession for the Lord, 'who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light' [1 Pet. 2:9], that you may show forth what He has done and thus minister to His glory and to His praise.
Now to forget all this will simply lead to conformity to the world, or, to put it another way, if we do conform to the world, it just means that we have forgotten it all. It is a matter for the mind. The problem, I repeat, is one of thinking correctly. You know, says Peter, I am amazed at you: 'He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins' [2 Pet. 1:9]. To conform to the world is not only to forget all these glorious things which we claim to believe, but it is also at the same time to contradict them, and we must never be guilty of that.
Then there is another great argument that is inevitable when you begin to think in this way. Here I am: I have been called out of the darkness and its kingdom and I have been translated into God's kingdom, and have been looking at myself functioning in this kingdom. But wait a minute, let us look ahead for a moment - let us consider what is awaiting us. Let us consider why God has done this to us. What is it for? Why has He given us the Spirit? Oh, it is in order to prepare us for that which is our destiny. The apostle has put this before us many, many times, has he not? There is a wonderful statement of it in the chapter where he puts it like this: 'Moreover whom he called did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified' [verse 30]. 'Whom he did foreknow, he also did, predestinate' - why?- 'to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren'[verse 29].
Now that is how we must think. We must say to ourselves today: 'I no longer belong to the darkness; I no longer belong to the 'no people'; I am of the people of God; I am in His kingdom.' But what for? It is in order that I may be prepared for this glory which is coming. In other words, I do not live just from day to day, hand to mouth, allowing the world to influence me while I react to it. No, no, I have a total view. I realize that I am a pilgrim on the way to eternity, one of God's children going in the direction of home. I must keep my eye on that and walk in the light of that.
Was not that Moses' secret, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews? How did Moses do what he did? He did it, 'as seeing him who is invisible' [Heb. I I:27]. Why did he choose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than 'to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season' [verse 25]? The answer is that, 'he had respect unto the recompence of the reward' [verse 26].
That is how the people of God live. They do not merely face one or other particular problem and ask, 'Shall I do it or shall I not?' and call upon the aid of psychology. Not at all! That is the world's approach. The people of God say, 'Who am I? What am I doing? Where am I going?' They have their eye on 'the recompence of the reward' [Heb. 12:25]. And if you have your eye on that, you will soon deal with your problems. Our Lord Himself, according to the author of Hebrews, did that: 'Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame' [Heb. 12:2]. And, of course, the Apostle Paul has put all this before us in most eloquent language: 'I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us.' That is it. He goes on, ’… ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body' [Rom. 8:18, 23]. That is what we do.
The apostle uses the same argument exactly in 1 Corinthians 15:33-34 'Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness, and sin not.' Why? Because we are going to rise and we are going to be like Him. This is the whole argument of 1 Corinthians 15. Ethics and the doctrine of the resurrection are inextricably mixed up. They belong together. I would remind you of that great statement at the end of Philippians 3. 'We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ'- who shall come from heaven, and who, when He comes shall change this, the body of my humiliation -'that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.' That is my destiny. That is where I am going. If I am a Christian, that is the truth about me. And the moment I keep these things in my mind so that they govern my thinking, my attitude to every particular problem is changed and all these other matters fall into position.
Finally, as long as you are governed by this new thinking, you will realize in a very acute manner that you have no time to waste. The time is short; eternity is coming. You had better start preparing yourself. As John says in his First Epistle: 'And now, little children, abide in him'- why? -'that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming' [1 John 2:28]. What a terrible thing it would be if, when we saw Him as He is, the predominating feeling were to be shame! How terrible if, though we said we believed in Him and were grateful to Him for coming, we had lived 'according to this world'. We would see then what we had missed, how we had misunderstood it all, how unworthy we had been. We would be 'ashamed before him at his coming'.
No, no, let it not be that. Let us rather prepare for His return and go on then to what John says in the third chapter: 'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew him not' [1 John 3:1]. If the people of the world criticize you, thank them. They are telling you, in other words, that you belong to Him. They did not know Him and they do not know His people. 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like; for we shall see him as he is' [verse 2]. Then -'And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure' [verse 3]. It is inevitable logic. So you do not just start with the question of purification, you see yourself meeting and looking into His eyes, and you say, 'I must get on with this. I must purify myself, even as he is pure.' That is the motive.
Or again, as the Apostle Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:10-11: 'For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.' That is it.
Or, as we are, after all, studying this great Epistle to the Romans, let us move on to chapter 13 where Paul, perhaps, at his most eloquent as regards this particular matter, writes, 'love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. And that, knowing the time, that now it is nigh time to awake out of sleep' - why? - 'for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed' [Rom. 13:10-11]. Every day that passes means that we are a day nearer to His coming and the ultimate completion of salvation. In verse 14, Paul says, 'The night' - and it is night at this present time, is it not- 'The night' - the night of sin and evil, the night of the darkness of this world. But, thank God, we know that: 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand.' And as you see that, you apply this logic: 'Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting, and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof' [Rom. 13:12-14).
All these passages show what Paul's injunction means: 'Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.' You think in this way, you struggle, you strive to do everything you can to make yourself do that, and you never allow yourself to slip back into the old way of thinking. You are renewed in your mind, in the spirit of your mind, in the controlling principle of all your thinking and your entire outlook. This is the way in which the Christian faces the problem of how to live in a world such as this.
Friday 14 July 2017
The Pelagian Captivity of the Church
Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era and talked about the new Babylonian captivity of the Church. He was speaking of Rome as the modern Babylon that held the Gospel hostage with its rejection of the biblical understanding of justification. You can understand how fierce the controversy was, how polemical this title would be in that period by saying that the Church had not simply erred or strayed, but had fallen — that it’s actually now Babylonian; it is now in pagan captivity.
I’ve often wondered if Luther were alive today and came to our culture and looked, not at the liberal church community, but at evangelical churches, what would he have to say? Of course I can’t answer that question with any kind of definitive authority, but my guess is this: If Martin Luther lived today and picked up his pen to write, the book he would write in our time would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Evangelical Church. Luther saw the doctrine of justification as fueled by a deeper theological problem. He writes about this extensively in The Bondage of the Will. When we look at the Reformation and we see the solas of the Reformation — sola Scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria, sola gratia — Luther was convinced that the real issue of the Reformation was the issue of grace; and that underlying the doctrine of solo fide, justification by faith alone, was the prior commitment to sola gratia, the concept of justification by grace alone.
In the Fleming Revell edition of The Bondage of the Will, the translators, J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, included a somewhat provocative historical and theological introduction to the book itself. This is from the end of that introduction:
These things need to be pondered by Protestants today. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognised by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own. Has not Protestantism today become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimise and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters?1Historically, it’s a simple matter of fact that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and all the leading Protestant theologians of the first epoch of the Reformation stood on precisely the same ground here. On other points they had their differences. In asserting the helplessness of man in sin and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them these doctrines were the very lifeblood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther’s works says this:
Whoever puts this book down without having realized that Evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain. The doctrine of free justification by faith alone, which became the storm center of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformers’ theology, but this is not accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed by Augustine and others, that the sinner’s entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only, and that the doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace. The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a more profound level still in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration.2That is to say, that the faith that receives Christ for justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God. The principle of sola fide is not rightly understood until it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia. What is the source of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received, or is it a condition of justification which is left to man to fulfill? Do you hear the difference? Let me put it in simple terms. I heard an evangelist recently say, “If God takes a thousand steps to reach out to you for your redemption, still in the final analysis, you must take the decisive step to be saved.” Consider the statement that has been made by America’s most beloved and leading evangelical of the twentieth century, Billy Graham, who says with great passion, “God does ninety-nine percent of it but you still must do that last one percent.”
What Is Pelagianism?
Now, let’s return briefly to my title, “The Pelagian Captivity of the Church.” What are we talking about? Pelagius was a monk who lived in Britain in the fifth century. He was a contemporary of the greatest theologian of the first millennium of Church history if not of all time, Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. We have heard of St. Augustine, of his great works in theology, of his City of God, of his Confessions, and so on, which remain Christian classics.
Augustine, in addition to being a titanic theologian and a prodigious intellect, was also a man of deep spirituality and prayer. In one of his famous prayers, Augustine made a seemingly harmless and innocuous statement in the prayer to God in which he says: “O God, command what you wouldst, and grant what thou dost command.” Now, would that give you apoplexy — to hear a prayer like that? Well it certainly set Pelagius, this British monk, into orbit. When he heard that, he protested vociferously, even appealing to Rome to have this ghastly prayer censured from the pen of Augustine. Here’s why. He said, “Are you saying, Augustine, that God has the inherent right to command anything that he so desires from his creatures? Nobody is going to dispute that. God inherently, as the creator of heaven and earth, has the right to impose obligations on his creatures and say, ‘Thou shalt do this, and thou shalt not do that.’ ‘Command whatever thou would’ — it’s a perfectly legitimate prayer.”
It’s the second part of the prayer that Pelagius abhorred when Augustine said, “and grant what thou dost command.” He said, “What are you talking about? If God is just, if God is righteous and God is holy, and God commands of the creature to do something, certainly that creature must have the power within himself, the moral ability within himself, to perform it or God would never require it in the first place.” Now that makes sense, doesn’t it? What Pelagius was saying is that moral responsibility always and everywhere implies moral capability or, simply, moral ability. So why would we have to pray, “God grant me, give me the gift of being able to do what you command me to do”? Pelagius saw in this statement a shadow being cast over the integrity of God himself, who would hold people responsible for doing something they cannot do.
So in the ensuing debate, Augustine made it clear that in creation, God commanded nothing from Adam or Eve that they were incapable of performing. But once transgression entered and mankind became fallen, God’s law was not repealed nor did God adjust his holy requirements downward to accommodate the weakened, fallen condition of his creation. God did punish his creation by visiting upon them the judgment of original sin, so that everyone after Adam and Eve who was born into this world was born already dead in sin. Original sin is not the first sin. It’s the result of the first sin; it refers to our inherent corruption, by which we are born in sin, and in sin did our mothers conceive us. We are not born in a neutral state of innocence, but we are born in a sinful, fallen condition. Virtually every church in the historic World Council of Churches at some point in their history and in their creedal development articulates some doctrine of original sin. So clear is that to the biblical revelation that it would take a repudiation of the biblical view of mankind to deny original sin altogether.
This is precisely what was at issue in the battle between Augustine and Pelagius in the fifth century. Pelagius said there is no such thing as original sin. Adam’s sin affected Adam and only Adam. There is no transmission or transfer of guilt or fallenness or corruption to the progeny of Adam and Eve. Everyone is born in the same state of innocence in which Adam was created. And, he said, for a person to live a life of obedience to God, a life of moral perfection, is possible without any help from Jesus or without any help from the grace of God. Pelagius said that grace — and here’s the key distinction — facilitates righteousness. What does “facilitate” mean?
It helps, it makes it more facile, it makes it easier, but you don’t have to have it. You can be perfect without it. Pelagius further stated that it is not only theoretically possible for some folks to live a perfect life without any assistance from divine grace, but there are in fact people who do it. Augustine said, “No, no, no, no . . . we are infected by sin by nature, to the very depths and core of our being — so much so that no human being has the moral power to incline himself to cooperate with the grace of God. The human will, as a result of original sin, still has the power to choose, but it is in bondage to its evil desires and inclinations. The condition of fallen humanity is one that Augustine would describe as the inability to not sin. In simple English, what Augustine was saying is that in the Fall, man loses his moral ability to do the things of God and he is held captive by his own evil inclinations.
In the fifth century the Church condemned Pelagius as a heretic. Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Orange, and it was condemned again at the Council of Florence, the Council of Carthage, and also, ironically, at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century in the first three anathemas of the Canons of the Sixth Session. So, consistently throughout Church history, the Church has roundly and soundly condemned Pelagianism — because Pelagianism denies the fallenness of our nature; it denies the doctrine of original sin.
Now what is called semi-Pelagianism, as the prefix “semi” suggests, was a somewhat middle ground between full-orbed Augustinianism and full-orbed Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism said this: yes, there was a fall; yes, there is such a thing as original sin; yes, the constituent nature of humanity has been changed by this state of corruption and all parts of our humanity have been significantly weakened by the fall, so much so that without the assistance of divine grace nobody can possibly be redeemed, so that grace is not only helpful but it’s absolutely necessary for salvation. While we are so fallen that we can’t be saved without grace, we are not so fallen that we don’t have the ability to accept or reject the grace when it’s offered to us. The will is weakened but is not enslaved. There remains in the core of our being an island of righteousness that remains untouched by the fall. It’s out of that little island of righteousness, that little parcel of goodness that is still intact in the soul or in the will that is the determinative difference between heaven and hell. It’s that little island that must be exercised when God does his thousand steps of reaching out to us, but in the final analysis it’s that one step that we take that determines whether we go to heaven or hell — whether we exercise that little righteousness that is in the core of our being or whether we don’t. That little island Augustine wouldn’t even recognize as an atoll in the South Pacific. He said it’s a mythical island, that the will is enslaved, and that man is dead in his sin and trespasses.
Ironically, the Church condemned semi-Pelagianism as vehemently as it had condemned original Pelagianism. Yet by the time you get to the sixteenth century and you read the Catholic understanding of what happens in salvation the Church basically repudiated what Augustine taught and Aquinas taught as well. The Church concluded that there still remains this freedom that is intact in the human will and that man must cooperate with — and assent to — the prevenient grace that is offered to them by God. If we exercise that will, if we exercise a cooperation with whatever powers we have left, we will be saved. And so in the sixteenth century the Church reembraced semi-Pelagianism.
At the time of the Reformation, all the reformers agreed on one point: the moral inability of fallen human beings to incline themselves to the things of God; that all people, in order to be saved, are totally dependent, not ninety-nine percent, but one hundred percent dependent upon the monergistic work of regeneration in order to come to faith, and that faith itself is a gift of God. It’s not that we are offered salvation and that we will be born again if we choose to believe. But we can’t even believe until God in his grace and in his mercy first changes the disposition of our souls through his sovereign work of regeneration. In other words, what the reformers all agreed with was, unless a man is born again, he can’t even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it. Like Jesus says in the sixth chapter of John, “No man can come to me unless it is given to him of the Father” — that the necessary condition for anybody’s faith and anybody’s salvation is regeneration.
Evangelicals and Faith
Modern Evangelicalism almost uniformly and universally teaches that in order for a person to be born again, he must first exercise faith. You have to choose to be born again. Isn’t that what you hear? In a George Barna poll, more than seventy percent of “professing evangelical Christians” in America expressed the belief that man is basically good. And more than eighty percent articulated the view that God helps those who help themselves. These positions — or let me say it negatively — neither of these positions is semi-Pelagian. They’re both Pelagian. To say that we’re basically good is the Pelagian view. I would be willing to assume that in at least thirty percent of the people who are reading this issue, and probably more, if we really examine their thinking in depth, we would find hearts that are beating Pelagianism. We’re overwhelmed with it. We’re surrounded by it. We’re immersed in it. We hear it every day. We hear it every day in the secular culture. And not only do we hear it every day in the secular culture, we hear it every day on Christian television and on Christian radio.
In the nineteenth century, there was a preacher who became very popular in America, who wrote a book on theology, coming out of his own training in law, in which he made no bones about his Pelagianism. He rejected not only Augustinianism, but he also rejected semi-Pelagianism and stood clearly on the subject of unvarnished Pelagianism, saying in no uncertain terms, without any ambiguity, that there was no Fall and that there is no such thing as original sin. This man went on to attack viciously the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and in addition to that, to repudiate as clearly and as loudly as he could the doctrine of justification by faith alone by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. This man’s basic thesis was, we don’t need the imputation of the righteousness of Christ because we have the capacity in and of ourselves to become righteous. His name: Charles Finney, one of America’s most revered evangelists. Now, if Luther was correct in saying that sola fide is the article upon which the Church stands or falls, if what the reformers were saying is that justification by faith alone is an essential truth of Christianity, who also argued that the substitutionary atonement is an essential truth of Christianity; if they’re correct in their assessment that those doctrines are essential truths of Christianity, the only conclusion we can come to is that Charles Finney was not a Christian. I read his writings and I say, “I don’t see how any Christian person could write this.” And yet, he is in the Hall of Fame of Evangelical Christianity in America. He is the patron saint of twentieth-century Evangelicalism. And he is not semi-Pelagian; he is unvarnished in his Pelagianism.
The Island of Righteousness
One thing is clear: that you can be purely Pelagian and be completely welcome in the evangelical movement today. It’s not simply that the camel sticks his nose into the tent; he doesn’t just come in the tent — he kicks the owner of the tent out. Modern Evangelicalism today looks with suspicion at Reformed theology, which has become sort of the third-class citizen of Evangelicalism. Now you say, “Wait a minute, R. C. Let’s not tar everybody with the extreme brush of Pelagianism, because, after all, Billy Graham and the rest of these people are saying there was a Fall; you’ve got to have grace; there is such a thing as original sin; and semi-Pelagians do not agree with Pelagius’ facile and sanguine view of unfallen human nature.” And that’s true. No question about it. But it’s that little island of righteousness where man still has the ability, in and of himself, to turn, to change, to incline, to dispose, to embrace the offer of grace that reveals why historically semi-Pelagianism is not called semi-Augustinianism, but semi-Pelagianism.
I heard an evangelist use two analogies to describe what happens in our redemption. He said sin has such a strong hold on us, a stranglehold, that it’s like a person who can’t swim, who falls overboard in a raging sea, and he’s going under for the third time and only the tops of his fingers are still above the water; and unless someone intervenes to rescue him, he has no hope of survival, his death is certain. And unless God throws him a life preserver, he can’t possibly be rescued. And not only must God throw him a life preserver in the general vicinity of where he is, but that life preserver has to hit him right where his fingers are still extended out of the water, and hit him so that he can grasp hold of it. It has to be perfectly pitched. But still that man will drown unless he takes his fingers and curls them around the life preserver and God will rescue him. But unless that tiny little human action is done, he will surely perish.
The other analogy is this: A man is desperately ill, sick unto death, lying in his hospital bed with a disease that is fatal. There is no way he can be cured unless somebody from outside comes up with a cure, a medicine that will take care of this fatal disease. And God has the cure and walks into the room with the medicine. But the man is so weak he can’t even help himself to the medicine; God has to pour it on the spoon. The man is so sick he’s almost comatose. He can’t even open his mouth, and God has to lean over and open up his mouth for him. God has to bring the spoon to the man’s lips, but the man still has to swallow it.
Now, if we’re going to use analogies, let’s be accurate. The man isn’t going under for the third time; he is stone cold dead at the bottom of the ocean. That’s where you once were when you were dead in sin and trespasses and walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. And while you were dead hath God quickened you together with Christ. God dove to the bottom of the sea and took that drowned corpse and breathed into it the breath of his life and raised you from the dead. And it’s not that you were dying in a hospital bed of a certain illness, but rather, when you were born you were born D.O.A. That’s what the Bible says: that we are morally stillborn.
Do we have a will? Yes, of course we have a will. Calvin said, if you mean by a free will a faculty of choosing by which you have the power within yourself to choose what you desire, then we all have free will. If you mean by free will the ability for fallen human beings to incline themselves and exercise that will to choose the things of God without the prior monergistic work of regeneration then, said Calvin, free will is far too grandiose a term to apply to a human being.
The semi-Pelagian doctrine of free will prevalent in the evangelical world today is a pagan view that denies the captivity of the human heart to sin. It underestimates the stranglehold that sin has upon us.
None of us wants to see things as bad as they really are. The biblical doctrine of human corruption is grim. We don’t hear the Apostle Paul say, “You know, it’s sad that we have such a thing as sin in the world; nobody’s perfect. But be of good cheer. We’re basically good.” Do you see that even a cursory reading of Scripture denies this?
Now back to Luther. What is the source and status of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received? Or is it a condition of justification which is left to us to fulfill? Is your faith a work? Is it the one work that God leaves for you to do? I had a discussion with some folks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently. I was speaking on sola gratia, and one fellow was upset.
He said, “Are you trying to tell me that in the final analysis it’s God who either does or doesn’t sovereignly regenerate a heart?”
And I said, “Yes;” and he was very upset about that. I said, “Let me ask you this: are you a Christian?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Do you have friends who aren’t Christians?”
He said, “Well, of course.”
I said, “Why are you a Christian and your friends aren’t? Is it because you’re more righteous than they are?” He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to say, “Of course it’s because I’m more righteous. I did the right thing and my friend didn’t.” He knew where I was going with that question.
And he said, “Oh, no, no, no.”
I said, “Tell me why. Is it because you are smarter than your friend?”
And he said, “No.”
But he would not agree that the final, decisive issue was the grace of God. He wouldn’t come to that. And after we discussed this for fifteen minutes, he said, “OK! I’ll say it. I’m a Christian because I did the right thing, I made the right response, and my friend didn’t.”
What was this person trusting in for his salvation? Not in his works in general, but in the one work that he performed. And he was a Protestant, an evangelical. But his view of salvation was no different from the Roman view.
God’s Sovereignty in Salvation
This is the issue: Is it a part of God’s gift of salvation, or is it in our own contribution to salvation? Is our salvation wholly of God or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves? Those who say the latter, that it ultimately depends on something we do for ourselves, thereby deny humanity’s utter helplessness in sin and affirm that a form of semi-Pelagianism is true after all. It is no wonder then that later Reformed theology condemned Arminianism as being, in principle, both a return to Rome because, in effect, it turned faith into a meritorious work, and a betrayal of the Reformation because it denied the sovereignty of God in saving sinners, which was the deepest religious and theological principle of the reformers’ thought. Arminianism was indeed, in Reformed eyes, a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favor of New Testament Judaism. For to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle than to rely on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other. In the light of what Luther says to Erasmus there is no doubt that he would have endorsed this judgment.
And yet this view is the overwhelming majority report today in professing evangelical circles. And as long as semi-Pelagianism, which is simply a thinly veiled version of real Pelagianism at its core — as long as it prevails in the Church, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I know, however, what will not happen: there will not be a new Reformation. Until we humble ourselves and understand that no man is an island and that no man has an island of righteousness, that we are utterly dependent upon the unmixed grace of God for our salvation, we will not begin to rest upon grace and rejoice in the greatness of God’s sovereignty, and we will not be rid of the pagan influence of humanism that exalts and puts man at the center of religion. Until that happens there will not be a new Reformation, because at the heart of Reformation teaching is the central place of the worship and gratitude given to God and God alone. Soli Deo gloria, to God alone be the glory.
Notes
- J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, “Introduction” to the The Bondage of the Will (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming Revell, 1957) pp. 59-60.
- Ibid