Monday, 27 November 2017
Are You Discouraged in Preaching the Gospel?
By Tom Wells
You know this already, but let's just remind ourselves again at the beginning of this article: Evangelism is difficult and unpredictable work.
Where there are brave and far-reaching efforts to win men to Christ, two problems arise. First, the results are always less than we hoped for. Second, they are usually less than they seemed to be at the outset. These two problems sometimes dampen our zeal to point men to Christ. They shouldn't, but they do.
I think it will help us to see that the Lord Jesus faced these same problems. After He fed five thousand the crowds dogged His footsteps. Listen to what happened between Him and them, from John 6:
The Lord, however, looked for godly motives. He knew that these men had failed to understand Him. They had had their bellies filled. To them, that was more important than His teaching, and much more important than His person. That, in turn, must have tempted our Lord to be discouraged. Was all His incomparable teaching in vain? It might have seemed that way. Jesus had to tell these men that there is other food to seek beyond the food that feeds our flesh.
Let's look back to see how bleak the situation was. Verse 28 looks as if it contains a ray of light. We would be glad to have someone ask us, "What must I do to do the works God requires?" When we keep on reading, however, we find that the ray of light was more apparent than real.
It is hard not to feel that their answer is impudent. They may have expected the manna to come from heaven again when the Messiah came. Many in that day did think so. But in speaking of the Lord's miracle as nothing, they treated Him very rudely. More than that, the fact that they went after Him across the lake shows the value they attached to it. When it came to their bellies, they were willing enough to follow Him. Once more the Lord might have been greatly discouraged.
When we read on, we see that things did not get better.
Now is the time for us to stop and to ask the Lord some key questions: "Lord, if You with all Your gifts were unable to bring these men to faith, what hope is there for us when we set out to evangelize? Can we make You more attractive than You were when You walked here in the flesh?" The story to the point where we quit reading seems to require questions like these.
That's not all.
At this point we might suppose that the Lord Himself would have been fully discouraged. After all, if we met that kind of opposition we might remind ourselves that we are mere men. But this is the Lord Jesus. If He can do nothing, how can any man be saved? So we might ask two more questions: "Lord, what hope do You have of doing anything with men like these? Aren't You ready to give up?"
He gives His answer as we read on:
It is important now to see that this is not an isolated experience on Jesus' part. What He says and does here is typical of His words and actions elsewhere.
Let us take His words first, the short and powerful statement in Matthew 11 :25-30 in which the Lord speaks to both God and man. Here is the record:
Nor is that all. To remove all doubt from Jesus' meaning, verse 27 repeats how much the whole process of coming to know God and Christ are under their control. "No one knows the Son ... and no one knows the Father ... " except by direct revelation from one of these two persons.
Does that inhibit evangelism? Not at all! Verses 28-30 immediately launch into the most unfettered invitation: Come to Jesus Christ, and be saved! How can this be? The answer is clear: The power in verses 25-27 is exercised to make the invitation in verses 28-30 effective. Once we grasp that fact, the words of our Lord fit nicely together. Before we see that, we are bound to be uncomfortable with one side of this truth or the other.
We may also see the recognition of God's sovereignty in the things the Lord Jesus did. His actions as well as His words bear witness to the sovereignty of God in salvation.
Take, for example, Jesus' dealings with the rich young ruler who asked Him what good thing he would have to do to inherit eternal life. The next time you read the passage (Matt. 19: 16ff), ask yourself this question: How did Jesus fail to win this man to Himself? See if the answer isn't this: Jesus seemed more eager to avoid false profession than to clinch a decision. Doesn't it seem that He keeps throwing stumbling blocks in the young man's way? First, Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. Would you tell a seeker that? Then Jesus tells him to sell everything that he has and give his money away. Would you tell a seeker that? The Lord Jesus did, and we might have predicted the result. The man turned away, never - so far as we know - to come back to Christ. Who would dare to do such a thing without confidence in the sovereignty of God?
But did I say that we might have predicted the result? Yes, I said that, but I was wrong, dead wrong. The fact is, the whole result was in the hands of God. No one could have predicted the outcome. As Jesus soon said to His disciples, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (v. 26). God can save anybody if He wills to do so. The hope of evangelistic preaching lies in this great truth. Jesus' actions, as well as His words, bear this out.
Let me give you one more example from the public preaching of the Lord Jesus, His discourse in Luke 14 on the cost of discipleship. We read:
Someone may object, however, that this call is not to salvation but to something beyond salvation. Salvation, in that view, is a first step that many take, but discipleship is a higher step or a deeper commitment to the Lord Jesus.
I do not think it is possible to find that distinction in this text. Verse 25 says that Jesus spoke these words to the large crowds that traveled with Him. Such a distinction, even if it were true, would have been lost on them. These men and women could hear nothing in these words but a call for decision. Would they follow Him, or would they turn back? That was the question.
Why would Jesus evangelize in such an apparently negative way? The answer is clear, isn't it? He was not leaning upon his personal attractiveness or the beauty of His words to gain His followers. Rather, He knew His dependence on a sovereign God, and He acted consistently with what He knew. It was indeed possible to gain false followers by the sheer power of His personality, and His presentation. But real disciples could only come to Him if the Father brought them.
Finally, here is the lesson for us: discouragement in evangelism is both unnecessary and wrong. Unnecessary? Yes, because the Father has a plan that will be carried out. Wrong? Yes, because our only purpose is to carry out the Father's plan.
The Lord Jesus Himself is our grand example. "I have come down from heaven," He once said, "not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38). That's all, nothing less, but also nothing more.
That brings us back to the two problems I mentioned when we began. What were they? First, the results of our evangelism are always less than we hoped for. Second, they are usually less than they seemed to be at the outset.
As a man the Lord Jesus may have hoped to bring everyone He met to believe in Him. "Come to Me," He said to a multitude. The least we can say is this: Surely He would have been happy if all of them had really come. They did not all come, however. Most turned away from Him - forever!
He faced the other problem, too. Many seemed to come to Him at first who later proved to be untrue. But neither of these disheartened Him.
They should not dampen our spirits either. For the same God who held men in His hands in that day holds them today. More than that, He is still giving them into the hands of Christ. Not one of His elect will get away. They will all come! Often one by one. Sometimes two by two. And sometimes, in seasons of wide-scale awakening, in great multitudes. The Father has a plan and He continues to pursue it. And it shall be done!
Go on, then, with your work of telling men and women and children about Christ. If you are a teacher, set forth the Lord Jesus to your pupils. If you are a parent, earnestly lay Christ before your children. If you are a preacher of the gospel, preach Christ and Him as crucified!
Many will not come; we know that. But we know something else also: Christ will get a people from every tribe, tongue, kindred, and nation. Many will later turn away, but our Lord Jesus will have His new nation after all. The work is the work of God.
With men this is impossible. But take heart, for with God all things are possible!
Author
Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, OH. He is author of several books including: Christian: Take Heart!, A Vision for Missions, Come to Me, and Faith: The Gift of God. He is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal.
You know this already, but let's just remind ourselves again at the beginning of this article: Evangelism is difficult and unpredictable work.
Where there are brave and far-reaching efforts to win men to Christ, two problems arise. First, the results are always less than we hoped for. Second, they are usually less than they seemed to be at the outset. These two problems sometimes dampen our zeal to point men to Christ. They shouldn't, but they do.
I think it will help us to see that the Lord Jesus faced these same problems. After He fed five thousand the crowds dogged His footsteps. Listen to what happened between Him and them, from John 6:
When they found Him on the other side of the lake, they asked Him, "Rabbi, when did You get here? (v. 25).
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for Me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On Him God the Father has placed His seal of approval" (vv. 26-27).
They asked Him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" (v. 28).To begin with, most teachers would be pleased to have others follow them around. Isn't that what teaching and preaching are all about; having people to speak to? And the more the better!
The Lord, however, looked for godly motives. He knew that these men had failed to understand Him. They had had their bellies filled. To them, that was more important than His teaching, and much more important than His person. That, in turn, must have tempted our Lord to be discouraged. Was all His incomparable teaching in vain? It might have seemed that way. Jesus had to tell these men that there is other food to seek beyond the food that feeds our flesh.
Let's look back to see how bleak the situation was. Verse 28 looks as if it contains a ray of light. We would be glad to have someone ask us, "What must I do to do the works God requires?" When we keep on reading, however, we find that the ray of light was more apparent than real.
Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent" (v. 29).
So they asked Him; "What miraculous sign then will You give that we may see it and believe You? What will You do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat'" (vv. 30-31).Jesus answered these men graciously. He told them that they must believe in Him. They understood what He said, but they wanted to quibble. "How about a sign from heaven?" they say. And they imply more: "Just give us that sign and we'll be ready to believe in You."
It is hard not to feel that their answer is impudent. They may have expected the manna to come from heaven again when the Messiah came. Many in that day did think so. But in speaking of the Lord's miracle as nothing, they treated Him very rudely. More than that, the fact that they went after Him across the lake shows the value they attached to it. When it came to their bellies, they were willing enough to follow Him. Once more the Lord might have been greatly discouraged.
When we read on, we see that things did not get better.
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world" (vv. 32-33).
"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread" (v. 34).
Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen Me and still do not believe" (vv. 35-36).Jesus explained that He Himself was the bread for men's souls. Verse 34 looks promising, but it seems to mean no more than this: "We want bread! Give us bread!" Their denseness was as great as their impudence. This part of the discussion ends with Jesus telling them plainly that they are unbelievers: "You have seen Me and still do not believe."
Now is the time for us to stop and to ask the Lord some key questions: "Lord, if You with all Your gifts were unable to bring these men to faith, what hope is there for us when we set out to evangelize? Can we make You more attractive than You were when You walked here in the flesh?" The story to the point where we quit reading seems to require questions like these.
That's not all.
At this point we might suppose that the Lord Himself would have been fully discouraged. After all, if we met that kind of opposition we might remind ourselves that we are mere men. But this is the Lord Jesus. If He can do nothing, how can any man be saved? So we might ask two more questions: "Lord, what hope do You have of doing anything with men like these? Aren't You ready to give up?"
He gives His answer as we read on:
All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given Me, but raise them up at the last day. For My Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day (vv. 37-40).How does Jesus answer our questions? Why is He sure that His ministry will not be in vain? Here is His answer: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me!" The God who promised the Lord Jesus kinsmen whom no one could number will be as good as His word. The answer to the wickedness of human nature is not found in human eloquence or attractiveness. It is not found even in the miraculous. The answer is found in God! God will see to it. The sovereign, almighty God!
It is important now to see that this is not an isolated experience on Jesus' part. What He says and does here is typical of His words and actions elsewhere.
Let us take His words first, the short and powerful statement in Matthew 11 :25-30 in which the Lord speaks to both God and man. Here is the record:
At that time Jesus said, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was Your good pleasure.
"All things have been committed to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."
"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."What we have here is this: evangelism brought into the closest possible relation to the sovereignty of God. Verses 25-26 tell us that the Father controls the revelation of His truth. From some - the wise and learned - He hides it. To others - little children - He reveals it. On what basis? His good pleasure!
Nor is that all. To remove all doubt from Jesus' meaning, verse 27 repeats how much the whole process of coming to know God and Christ are under their control. "No one knows the Son ... and no one knows the Father ... " except by direct revelation from one of these two persons.
Does that inhibit evangelism? Not at all! Verses 28-30 immediately launch into the most unfettered invitation: Come to Jesus Christ, and be saved! How can this be? The answer is clear: The power in verses 25-27 is exercised to make the invitation in verses 28-30 effective. Once we grasp that fact, the words of our Lord fit nicely together. Before we see that, we are bound to be uncomfortable with one side of this truth or the other.
We may also see the recognition of God's sovereignty in the things the Lord Jesus did. His actions as well as His words bear witness to the sovereignty of God in salvation.
Take, for example, Jesus' dealings with the rich young ruler who asked Him what good thing he would have to do to inherit eternal life. The next time you read the passage (Matt. 19: 16ff), ask yourself this question: How did Jesus fail to win this man to Himself? See if the answer isn't this: Jesus seemed more eager to avoid false profession than to clinch a decision. Doesn't it seem that He keeps throwing stumbling blocks in the young man's way? First, Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. Would you tell a seeker that? Then Jesus tells him to sell everything that he has and give his money away. Would you tell a seeker that? The Lord Jesus did, and we might have predicted the result. The man turned away, never - so far as we know - to come back to Christ. Who would dare to do such a thing without confidence in the sovereignty of God?
But did I say that we might have predicted the result? Yes, I said that, but I was wrong, dead wrong. The fact is, the whole result was in the hands of God. No one could have predicted the outcome. As Jesus soon said to His disciples, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (v. 26). God can save anybody if He wills to do so. The hope of evangelistic preaching lies in this great truth. Jesus' actions, as well as His words, bear this out.
Let me give you one more example from the public preaching of the Lord Jesus, His discourse in Luke 14 on the cost of discipleship. We read:
Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them He said: "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brother and sisters, even his own life - he cannot be My disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow after Me cannot be my disciple" (vv. 25-27).
"Any of you who does not give up everything that he has cannot be My disciple" (v. 33).Is this the kind of evangelism that we feel comfortable with? Wouldn't we be tempted to say (if the speaker were not Jesus Christ!), "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?"
Someone may object, however, that this call is not to salvation but to something beyond salvation. Salvation, in that view, is a first step that many take, but discipleship is a higher step or a deeper commitment to the Lord Jesus.
I do not think it is possible to find that distinction in this text. Verse 25 says that Jesus spoke these words to the large crowds that traveled with Him. Such a distinction, even if it were true, would have been lost on them. These men and women could hear nothing in these words but a call for decision. Would they follow Him, or would they turn back? That was the question.
Why would Jesus evangelize in such an apparently negative way? The answer is clear, isn't it? He was not leaning upon his personal attractiveness or the beauty of His words to gain His followers. Rather, He knew His dependence on a sovereign God, and He acted consistently with what He knew. It was indeed possible to gain false followers by the sheer power of His personality, and His presentation. But real disciples could only come to Him if the Father brought them.
Finally, here is the lesson for us: discouragement in evangelism is both unnecessary and wrong. Unnecessary? Yes, because the Father has a plan that will be carried out. Wrong? Yes, because our only purpose is to carry out the Father's plan.
The Lord Jesus Himself is our grand example. "I have come down from heaven," He once said, "not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38). That's all, nothing less, but also nothing more.
That brings us back to the two problems I mentioned when we began. What were they? First, the results of our evangelism are always less than we hoped for. Second, they are usually less than they seemed to be at the outset.
As a man the Lord Jesus may have hoped to bring everyone He met to believe in Him. "Come to Me," He said to a multitude. The least we can say is this: Surely He would have been happy if all of them had really come. They did not all come, however. Most turned away from Him - forever!
He faced the other problem, too. Many seemed to come to Him at first who later proved to be untrue. But neither of these disheartened Him.
They should not dampen our spirits either. For the same God who held men in His hands in that day holds them today. More than that, He is still giving them into the hands of Christ. Not one of His elect will get away. They will all come! Often one by one. Sometimes two by two. And sometimes, in seasons of wide-scale awakening, in great multitudes. The Father has a plan and He continues to pursue it. And it shall be done!
Go on, then, with your work of telling men and women and children about Christ. If you are a teacher, set forth the Lord Jesus to your pupils. If you are a parent, earnestly lay Christ before your children. If you are a preacher of the gospel, preach Christ and Him as crucified!
Many will not come; we know that. But we know something else also: Christ will get a people from every tribe, tongue, kindred, and nation. Many will later turn away, but our Lord Jesus will have His new nation after all. The work is the work of God.
With men this is impossible. But take heart, for with God all things are possible!
Author
Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, OH. He is author of several books including: Christian: Take Heart!, A Vision for Missions, Come to Me, and Faith: The Gift of God. He is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal.
Sunday, 26 November 2017
Wanted: Worshipers - Inquire Within
By Tom Wells
A common criticism of present-day evangelicalism is that it is man-centered, not God-centered. We do not have space here to examine how far that is so, but the fact leaps out at us in our feeble attempts at witness as we try to convey to others "what Christ can do for you." We know men love themselves, and we try to use that fact as a bridge across which we may bring them the Savior of sinners. So "you" runs the danger of becoming the heart of the message, with Christ coming in a significant but distinct second. But Jesus Christ is the heart of our message. We do not preach the gospel unless we seek to display the glory of Christ.
What has all this to do with the subject of worship? A great deal, as we shall see.
Take the experience of the Samaritan woman in John 4. She has come at noonday to draw water from the local well. There a Jewish man asks her for a drink. She is surprised. Jews, as John says in verse 9, do not associate with Samaritans. Neither as a woman nor as a Samaritan does she expect to converse with passing Israelites. Not that she is unwilling - she doesn't turn her nose up in disdain. Instead she asks the obvious question, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" It is hard for us to imagine what kind of answer the woman expected. But what she got is plain enough: an introduction into the glory of Christ. Listen to Jesus' reply: "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water" (v.10).
At first, of course, this was lost on her. To her, living water probably meant running water. There was such water at the bottom of this well, but it was obvious that the man had nothing to draw with - neither pail nor rope. One fact did strike her, however: this man was making some kind of special claim for Himself. Why not follow up on that? "Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself ... " (v. 12)? That would keep the conversation flowing and give the man a hero to compare Himself with, if He cared to.
He did care to:
The woman gropes for a category to put Him in. "Sir," she says, "I can see that You are a prophet" (v. 19). High praise indeed - from a Samaritan! But not yet high enough. A little more conversation will bring them to the apex of this discussion. Then Jesus will say, "I who speak to you am He," i.e., the Messiah, the Christ of God (v. 26), and the woman will run to tell her townspeople of a man "who told me everything I ever did" (v. 29). [1] Her tentative addition, "Could this be the Christ?" probably reflects the conviction of her own heart, tempered by the fact that her fellow Samaritans know her well enough to treat her skeptically.
Sandwiched into this conversation that reveals the glory of Christ is a discussion of worship. It opens with a remark by the woman: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." (It has often been thought that this is a diversionary tactic on the woman's part: Jesus has struck just a bit too close to home by referring to her multiple husbands. The quicker we leave that subject, the better!) Jesus, however, treats her question as the occasion for serious teaching on the subject:
Each of these points is worthy of further study, but there is one more point here we will concentrate on: Samaritans will shortly be among the true worshipers. "A time is coming," says Jesus, "when you [plural, meaning you Samaritans] will worship the Father .... " From a first century Jewish perspective, this idea was revolutionary.
In an important sense this is the point toward which the conversation has been moving from the outset. Let's examine this issue more closely.
Why did Jesus force this woman into some grasp of His own character and person? "Well," says someone, "I suppose He wanted this woman to be saved, and there is no salvation without knowledge of Christ." Quite so. But what does it mean to be saved? According to the New Testament it cannot mean less than to become a worshiper of God.
Here it is necessary to distinguish between formal acts of worship and the attitude of the worshiping heart. When the woman raised the question she probably had the former in view. On nearby Mt. Gerizim the Samaritans acted out their understanding of formal worship. Jesus recognizes a certain legitimacy in this idea of formal worship, though He denies that the Samaritans' worship conformed to God's requirement in any way. Nevertheless that is not His main point.
I never tire of citing the words of the Puritan, Thomas Watson: "We glorify God when we are God-admirers." Here we are in a different world, the world of attitudes and affections. Here we are reminded that worship is not the aggregate of formal acts. In this context, worship is a response to greatness. Here there is the marriage of attention and spontaneity. The heart fixed on God. rises out of itself in adoration and praise.
There is nothing wrong with formal acts of worship. They may be likened to the protocol one might learn to meet the Queen of England, such things as how to bow or curtsy, for example. But surely such a meeting would produce something else, the awe inspired by a significant presence. (Oddly enough, that very awe might interfere with a proper carrying out of the protocol!) And it is that awe that Jesus commends to us.
It is that awe that Jesus commended to the Samaritan woman; He did so by displaying His own greatness. "But wait," someone may say. "Isn't there some confusion here? How is the display of Jesus' greatness likely to lead this woman to worship the Father?" That is a fair question; let's see the answer.
If the gospel is a statement about the glory of Christ and it is, according to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:4-there is something more we need to know about that glory. The glory of Christ is the glory of God. Listen to Paul in verses 4-6:
It is not just any glory that Jesus Christ displays; it is the glory of One who came from the Father, the glory of One who is filled with the attributes of God, such things as grace and truth. In other words, those who see Christ see what the Father is like. This explains Jesus' words to Philip:
In John 4:23 Jesus speaks of "the kind of worshipers the Father seeks." That raises the question: just how does the Father seek worshipers? Let me say two things about that.
First, let's clear away a possible misunderstanding about this "seeking." Jesus does not mean to suggest that such worshipers already exist in the world, and His Father is looking around to see if He can locate them. Given the fact of endemic sin, there are no men, women or children who naturally worship God. Paul's word stands: "There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God" (Rom. 3:11). God's seeking, whatever it is, must be far different from this.
Second, Jesus' own activity is the answer to the question, "How does God seek worshipers?" Throughout the conversation with the Samaritan woman God was seeking her in His Son, the Lord Jesus. "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10). His seeking is the seeking of the Father.
What does that mean to us today, we who live long after the Savior's bodily presence on earth? In what way does God seek sinners now? Oddly enough, the bodily absence of Christ does not change the way the Father seeks sinners today, nor does it change the reason for which He seeks them. Let me explain what I mean.
In opening the book of Acts the author, Luke, tells us that his Gospel recorded "all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven" (Acts 1:1-2). The word "began" is suggestive. Luke probably means to tell us that the book of Acts is a continuation of the ministry of Jesus. It is but a small step further to realize that that ministry continues until this very day. [2] The Father still seeks men and women through His Son wherever the gospel that centers in His Son is preached.
And He still seeks sinners for the same reason, to make them worshipers, or "God-admirers," to use Thomas Watson's phrase.
We may see this focus on worship in the model prayer given to the church in Matthew 6:9ff. What is the first thing we ask? We ask the Father to "hallow" His name. What does that mean? It means that we want to see God's person set apart from the ordinary things of life and to be put in the high place it deserves. It is another way of saying, "Glorify Yourself, Father," or "Cause men and angels to worship You!" The model prayer starts with this request; this is first; all else comes afterward.
This is evident also throughout the Epistles that reflect on the activity going on in the first-century church. While words literally meaning "worship" are uncommon, the idea is everywhere as the Christian's natural reaction to the grace of God. God's electing grace allows "no one to boast before Him" (1 Cor. 1:29). Is that the end of all boasting, then? By no means - "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord" (1 Cor. 1:31). What else is this but worship?
That command, intended no doubt to characterize all of the Christian's life, is but the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg whose massive dimensions come into sight when we review the frequent use of the word glory in the letters of the New Testament. For example: "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever! Amen" (Rom. 11:36). Paul's point could not be clearer: God's constant activity is a perpetual call to glorify Him. Think on His act(s) of creation, and worship Him! Reflect on His endless maintenance of what He has made, and praise Him! Consider the end for which He made all things, and magnify Him! "To Him be the glory forever!"
And one thing more.
Paul not only thinks grace produces praise in the individual, he thinks of himself as gathering a grand choir, a new race of musicians whose talents are dedicated to worship. All this (he writes of his taxing ministry) is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God (2 Cor. 4:15).
What is Paul saying? He pursues his ministry - a ministry of grace - for the good of his hearers and readers. With what effect? Increasing numbers of people are touched by grace, and they return thanks to God. The thanksgiving grows as each is added to the choir until the voices spill over in exuberant worship. This is no accident - not at all. It is the goal Paul has in mind. It is not only his goal, it is God's goal.
Long before Paul, Jesus aimed to add the Samaritan woman to that choir of praise. It is, in fact, the reason "He had to go through Samaria" (John 4:4). It has been said, "A seeking sinner and a seeking Savior cannot fail to meet." But the news is better than that; The sinners God seeks through Jesus are not seeking Him at all. But He succeeds in bringing them to Himself. And when He does so He adds them to His choir of praise and worship forever.
End Notes
Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, OH. He is author of several books including: Christian: Take Heart, A Vision for Missions, Come to Me, and Faith: The Gift of God. He is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal.
Jesus said that God must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. And it has become commonplace to contrast spirit and form as if they were incompatible in worship. "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life" is a text that out of context (2 Cor. 3:6) can be used to justify slapdash leading of services and other Christian activities. Spontaneity and lack of preparation are equated with spirituality. Leviticus 6-7 denies this: care and attention to detail are indispensable to the conduct of divine worship. God is more important, more distinguished, worthy of more respect than any man; therefore, we should follow His injunctions to the letter, if we respect Him.
A glance at the performing arts dispels the illusion that a great and spirited performance can be achieved without practice and attention to detail. Indeed great actors and musicians spend hours studying and rehearsing the works they are to perform, so that they can recapture the spirit of the author and convey it in their performance. Audiences expect performers to aim at perfection in the concert hall. Worship is also a performance, a performance in honor of almighty God. As no orchestra can give of its best without a competent conductor and meticulous rehearsal, so no congregation is likely to worship our holy God in a worthy manner without careful direction by a well-instructed minister.
- Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (1979)The gospel, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:4, is a statement about the glory of Christ. If that strikes us as strange, it may be a measure of how far we have wandered into bypaths in our preaching and teaching, of how much we have debased the coin with which we were left to trade.
A common criticism of present-day evangelicalism is that it is man-centered, not God-centered. We do not have space here to examine how far that is so, but the fact leaps out at us in our feeble attempts at witness as we try to convey to others "what Christ can do for you." We know men love themselves, and we try to use that fact as a bridge across which we may bring them the Savior of sinners. So "you" runs the danger of becoming the heart of the message, with Christ coming in a significant but distinct second. But Jesus Christ is the heart of our message. We do not preach the gospel unless we seek to display the glory of Christ.
What has all this to do with the subject of worship? A great deal, as we shall see.
Take the experience of the Samaritan woman in John 4. She has come at noonday to draw water from the local well. There a Jewish man asks her for a drink. She is surprised. Jews, as John says in verse 9, do not associate with Samaritans. Neither as a woman nor as a Samaritan does she expect to converse with passing Israelites. Not that she is unwilling - she doesn't turn her nose up in disdain. Instead she asks the obvious question, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" It is hard for us to imagine what kind of answer the woman expected. But what she got is plain enough: an introduction into the glory of Christ. Listen to Jesus' reply: "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water" (v.10).
At first, of course, this was lost on her. To her, living water probably meant running water. There was such water at the bottom of this well, but it was obvious that the man had nothing to draw with - neither pail nor rope. One fact did strike her, however: this man was making some kind of special claim for Himself. Why not follow up on that? "Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself ... " (v. 12)? That would keep the conversation flowing and give the man a hero to compare Himself with, if He cared to.
He did care to:
Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (vv. 13-14).No doubt Jacob was a great man, but he drank from the well because he often became thirsty. Jesus offers water that satisfies forever. So much for the comparison with Jacob. It is evident from her reply that the woman is both intrigued and confused. "Sir, give me this water that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water" (v. 15).
"Go, call your husband and come back," says Jesus (v. 16).
"I have no husband," she replies (v. 17a).Is this conversation going anywhere? Has it reached an impasse, a dead end? No. It is rising to a fuller revelation of the glory of Christ. Jesus says to her:
You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true (vv. 17b-18).Here is a man who not only makes claims for Himself, but He backs them up by an unearthly insight into the affairs of a stranger.
The woman gropes for a category to put Him in. "Sir," she says, "I can see that You are a prophet" (v. 19). High praise indeed - from a Samaritan! But not yet high enough. A little more conversation will bring them to the apex of this discussion. Then Jesus will say, "I who speak to you am He," i.e., the Messiah, the Christ of God (v. 26), and the woman will run to tell her townspeople of a man "who told me everything I ever did" (v. 29). [1] Her tentative addition, "Could this be the Christ?" probably reflects the conviction of her own heart, tempered by the fact that her fellow Samaritans know her well enough to treat her skeptically.
Sandwiched into this conversation that reveals the glory of Christ is a discussion of worship. It opens with a remark by the woman: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." (It has often been thought that this is a diversionary tactic on the woman's part: Jesus has struck just a bit too close to home by referring to her multiple husbands. The quicker we leave that subject, the better!) Jesus, however, treats her question as the occasion for serious teaching on the subject:
Believe Me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth (vv.21-24).Looking at the scope and depth of Jesus' words, we must feel grateful that the woman raised this important issue. With these words our Lord makes the following points: Samaritan worship is ignorant worship (d. Acts 17:23); Jewish worship is informed worship because the Jews have been the channel of God's revelation; true worship is about to be set free from the limitations of a particular place; and worship in this new time will be more nearly conformed to what God is like than ever before.
Each of these points is worthy of further study, but there is one more point here we will concentrate on: Samaritans will shortly be among the true worshipers. "A time is coming," says Jesus, "when you [plural, meaning you Samaritans] will worship the Father .... " From a first century Jewish perspective, this idea was revolutionary.
In an important sense this is the point toward which the conversation has been moving from the outset. Let's examine this issue more closely.
Why did Jesus force this woman into some grasp of His own character and person? "Well," says someone, "I suppose He wanted this woman to be saved, and there is no salvation without knowledge of Christ." Quite so. But what does it mean to be saved? According to the New Testament it cannot mean less than to become a worshiper of God.
Here it is necessary to distinguish between formal acts of worship and the attitude of the worshiping heart. When the woman raised the question she probably had the former in view. On nearby Mt. Gerizim the Samaritans acted out their understanding of formal worship. Jesus recognizes a certain legitimacy in this idea of formal worship, though He denies that the Samaritans' worship conformed to God's requirement in any way. Nevertheless that is not His main point.
I never tire of citing the words of the Puritan, Thomas Watson: "We glorify God when we are God-admirers." Here we are in a different world, the world of attitudes and affections. Here we are reminded that worship is not the aggregate of formal acts. In this context, worship is a response to greatness. Here there is the marriage of attention and spontaneity. The heart fixed on God. rises out of itself in adoration and praise.
There is nothing wrong with formal acts of worship. They may be likened to the protocol one might learn to meet the Queen of England, such things as how to bow or curtsy, for example. But surely such a meeting would produce something else, the awe inspired by a significant presence. (Oddly enough, that very awe might interfere with a proper carrying out of the protocol!) And it is that awe that Jesus commends to us.
It is that awe that Jesus commended to the Samaritan woman; He did so by displaying His own greatness. "But wait," someone may say. "Isn't there some confusion here? How is the display of Jesus' greatness likely to lead this woman to worship the Father?" That is a fair question; let's see the answer.
If the gospel is a statement about the glory of Christ and it is, according to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:4-there is something more we need to know about that glory. The glory of Christ is the glory of God. Listen to Paul in verses 4-6:
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the Image of God .... For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God In the face of Christ.At first glance we may think we have misread Paul. What is his subject, the glory of Christ? Or the glory of God? But a closer look shows us Paul's meaning. Jesus Christ has come into the world to display His own glory. Unbelievers do not see that glory, of course. Their eyes are blinded by "the god of this age," Satan. Believers, on the other hand, can say with John, "We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
It is not just any glory that Jesus Christ displays; it is the glory of One who came from the Father, the glory of One who is filled with the attributes of God, such things as grace and truth. In other words, those who see Christ see what the Father is like. This explains Jesus' words to Philip:
Don't you know Me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, "Show us the Father"? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in Me? The words I say to you are not just My own. Rather, it is the Father, living in Me, who is doing His work (John 14:9-10).In leading the Samaritan woman to Himself, Jesus was simultaneously leading her to the Father. When she saw even a glimpse of Christ's glory, she saw something of the glory of the Father, because Jesus Christ is the image of God. This explains something else as well.
In John 4:23 Jesus speaks of "the kind of worshipers the Father seeks." That raises the question: just how does the Father seek worshipers? Let me say two things about that.
First, let's clear away a possible misunderstanding about this "seeking." Jesus does not mean to suggest that such worshipers already exist in the world, and His Father is looking around to see if He can locate them. Given the fact of endemic sin, there are no men, women or children who naturally worship God. Paul's word stands: "There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God" (Rom. 3:11). God's seeking, whatever it is, must be far different from this.
Second, Jesus' own activity is the answer to the question, "How does God seek worshipers?" Throughout the conversation with the Samaritan woman God was seeking her in His Son, the Lord Jesus. "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10). His seeking is the seeking of the Father.
What does that mean to us today, we who live long after the Savior's bodily presence on earth? In what way does God seek sinners now? Oddly enough, the bodily absence of Christ does not change the way the Father seeks sinners today, nor does it change the reason for which He seeks them. Let me explain what I mean.
In opening the book of Acts the author, Luke, tells us that his Gospel recorded "all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven" (Acts 1:1-2). The word "began" is suggestive. Luke probably means to tell us that the book of Acts is a continuation of the ministry of Jesus. It is but a small step further to realize that that ministry continues until this very day. [2] The Father still seeks men and women through His Son wherever the gospel that centers in His Son is preached.
And He still seeks sinners for the same reason, to make them worshipers, or "God-admirers," to use Thomas Watson's phrase.
We may see this focus on worship in the model prayer given to the church in Matthew 6:9ff. What is the first thing we ask? We ask the Father to "hallow" His name. What does that mean? It means that we want to see God's person set apart from the ordinary things of life and to be put in the high place it deserves. It is another way of saying, "Glorify Yourself, Father," or "Cause men and angels to worship You!" The model prayer starts with this request; this is first; all else comes afterward.
This is evident also throughout the Epistles that reflect on the activity going on in the first-century church. While words literally meaning "worship" are uncommon, the idea is everywhere as the Christian's natural reaction to the grace of God. God's electing grace allows "no one to boast before Him" (1 Cor. 1:29). Is that the end of all boasting, then? By no means - "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord" (1 Cor. 1:31). What else is this but worship?
That command, intended no doubt to characterize all of the Christian's life, is but the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg whose massive dimensions come into sight when we review the frequent use of the word glory in the letters of the New Testament. For example: "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever! Amen" (Rom. 11:36). Paul's point could not be clearer: God's constant activity is a perpetual call to glorify Him. Think on His act(s) of creation, and worship Him! Reflect on His endless maintenance of what He has made, and praise Him! Consider the end for which He made all things, and magnify Him! "To Him be the glory forever!"
And one thing more.
Paul not only thinks grace produces praise in the individual, he thinks of himself as gathering a grand choir, a new race of musicians whose talents are dedicated to worship. All this (he writes of his taxing ministry) is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God (2 Cor. 4:15).
What is Paul saying? He pursues his ministry - a ministry of grace - for the good of his hearers and readers. With what effect? Increasing numbers of people are touched by grace, and they return thanks to God. The thanksgiving grows as each is added to the choir until the voices spill over in exuberant worship. This is no accident - not at all. It is the goal Paul has in mind. It is not only his goal, it is God's goal.
Long before Paul, Jesus aimed to add the Samaritan woman to that choir of praise. It is, in fact, the reason "He had to go through Samaria" (John 4:4). It has been said, "A seeking sinner and a seeking Savior cannot fail to meet." But the news is better than that; The sinners God seeks through Jesus are not seeking Him at all. But He succeeds in bringing them to Himself. And when He does so He adds them to His choir of praise and worship forever.
End Notes
- It is generally agreed that the Samaritans, who limited themselves to the Pentateuch and ignored the rest of the Old Testament, looked upon the Messiah as the greatest of prophets, the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:18. They did not have the high expectation of the Messiah's person and work that the Jews had. The effect, then, of Jesus' telling the Samaritan woman that He was the Messiah was to challenge her to advance in her thinking from a prophet to the greatest of all prophets, a category which was true though inadequate. The following verses seem to show that she did, in fact, make that advance. She may, however, have gone much further.
- While Acts reaches the end Luke planned for it when Paul preaches the gospel in Rome, there is nothing at all to suggest that Christian activity after that point in time would be any different from what it is in Acts itself. With the coming of Jesus the end times began, and they go on now and shall continue to do so until He returns. If Jesus Himself is the chief actor in the book of Acts, He remains so to this present hour.
Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, OH. He is author of several books including: Christian: Take Heart, A Vision for Missions, Come to Me, and Faith: The Gift of God. He is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal.
Saturday, 25 November 2017
The Holiness of God and Assurance That I Am a Christian
By Rev. Tom Wells
It is no easy matter to define the holiness of God. For anything like a complete discussion of the content of God's holiness you will want to look at the other articles in this issue of Reformation & Revival Journal. In this article we will narrowly confine ourselves to a single observation about God's holiness: God's holiness demands a corresponding holiness and righteousness in us. God Himself has plainly commanded: "I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy" (Lev. 11:44). This, of course, was spoken to His ancient people, Israel, but when we turn to the New Testament we hear it repeated to the church of Jesus Christ:
But I find all this quite intolerable. It is not that it causes me intellectual problems as though it were somehow irrational for God to call on me to be holy. The command itself makes sense, but I have a problem of another kind. I am unholy, and try as I may I cannot convince myself that I shall ever measure up to this simple standard - the holiness of God. Certainly I fall far short just now.
How then can I be a Christian? I have examined myself to see whether I am in the faith (as 1 Corinthians 13:5 exhorts me) and I find that I can give no certain answer. I have sought to take seriously Peter's command to make my calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10), but doubt, based on uncertainty about the worthiness of my walk, dogs my footsteps and nudges me toward despair. I repeat, this time with still further apprehension: "How then can I be a Christian?"
In the last two paragraphs I have cast the experience of many Christians in the first person to bring it vividly before our minds. For such men and women the holiness of God that is to be reproduced in their lives stands like a roadblock on the way to a settled assurance. They can see no way around it. Perhaps you find yourself in this predicament; perhaps you have a friend afflicted in this way. Is there help? I think there is.
We must discard at once the answer of cheap grace, as in the following quotation from Heinrich Heppe: "Things are admirably arranged. God likes forgiving sins, and I like committing them." In this scenario there is no concern at all for personal holiness. No, we must seek an answer to the question of personal assurance that comes to grips with the absolute necessity of conforming to the law of God. Yet, oddly enough, unless you have robust assurance already, it is well in most cases to temporarily set to one side the demand for personal holiness. Let me show you why this is so by discussing the book that, above all others, speaks to us about the tests of Christian reality - the Epistle of First John.
First John, like all the books of the New Testament, arises out of a distinct historical situation. The writer, John, found himself faced with the apostasy of some for whom he once had entertained great hope. But these "brethren" proved false. They forsook John, Christ's special messenger, and in that way they forsook Christ Himself. As John wrote: "He who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error" (4:6). John could speak in this authoritative way, not because he was proud, but because he had been specially sent by Christ Himself to give the church inspired revelation.
But when these men forsook John they did not give up the claim to being Christians. As John writes his letter he speaks to others who apparently were remaining true to the Lord Jesus, Here, then, is the salient point: John constantly has the other men in his mind, the unfaithful men who yet claimed to know Jesus Christ. Much of what we read in his epistle is shaped by this fact. And this is especially the case when John sets down the thing that characterizes the letter as a whole: the tests that determine the truth or falsity of a man's profession of faith.
How does this affect what John writes? This means that generally speaking John's tests are for those who profess robust faith in Jesus Christ. Since I think this point has often been overlooked, it bears repeating. John is setting forth tests of Christianity primarily for men or women who are confident that they belong to Christ. If we miss this presupposition on John's part I believe that we will also miss much of the point of what he has written. He is not thinking, in the first instance; of a poor trembling soul seeking to know whether or not he is saved. Rather he has in his mind's eye the man or woman who says, "I know Christ, and nothing you can say will make me doubt it." His tests may be useful to others as we will yet see, but they were originally set forth to examine the claims of those who did not doubt that they were true Christians. That does not mean that John was still assessing the state of those who had forsaken him and his Lord. He had already taken their measure. No, he was writing for the church of his day and for us, but he was doing it from the standpoint of one who saw the necessity for testing even the most confident faith. In this way two things could be accomplished. Some would be confirmed in their assurance that they belonged to Christ; others could begin to call their own confidence into question, either to have it confirmed later or to see themselves exposed as false disciples.
John tests the Christian faith of his readers in three main ways:
For the purposes of this article we will be concerned primarily with the second and third tests, godliness and love. In these two tests we confront the holiness of God where it impinges on our own thoughts, words and deeds. In my experience; those who struggle to know whether or not they are genuine believers do not often feel threatened by the first test in the way they feel menaced by the following two. The question, "Am I a godly person?" is a daunting question to answer if we are truly honest with ourselves. "Am I a loving person?" is also intimidating when I consider that the standard of love is the willing death of my Savior. These two tests, flowing as they do out of the holy character of God, have often risen up to mock the profession of the man or woman who asks them.
How then should those who are struggling to know whether they are saved apply these tests to themselves? The answer is: in general, they should not apply them at all! (I will treat an exception to this general rule later.) The tests, speaking generally, are for those who are confident that they belong to Christ. They are for men and women who say that they have fellowship with Christ (1:6) and who affirm "I have come to know Him" (2:4) and who claim to abide in Him (2:6). They are for those who profess to walk in the light (2:9) and who may think of themselves as far enough along to teach others (4:1- 3). These people, the ones with robust faith, are the ones to apply these tests to themselves.
Is there no help, then, for those with doubts and fears about their own salvation? Yes, much! Their help is found in taking their eyes off of themselves and directing them to Jesus Christ. In answer to the question, "What must I do to be saved?" Paul said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved" (Acts 16:31). He said this because he knew this truth: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
The problem of assurance is the problem of salvation. It is the agonizing question, "Do I belong to Christ or not?" The answer is the same in both cases: confident faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The tests are for those who say, "I am a Christian!" Those who had departed from John (and from Christ) were loud in their professions of faith. "Very well then," John said, "let's see. Let's test their faith. Let's test the faith of all of us who are sure that we belong to Christ. Here are the tests." And he followed with the tests of orthodoxy, godliness and love.
But poor trembling sinners need to turn their eyes solely to Jesus. The Puritan Thomas Willcox put it this way: If you have looked at words, duties and qualifications more than at the merits of Christ, it will cost you dearly. No wonder you go about complaining. Graces may be evidences; the merits of Christ alone (without the evidences) must be the foundation of your hope to stand on. Christ only can be the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).
When we come to God, we must bring nothing but Christ with us. Any ingredients, or any previous qualifications of our own, will poison and corrupt faith. He who builds upon duties, graces, etc., knows not the merits of Christ. Despairing sinner! Look at Christ now; look to Him and be saved, all the ends of the earth (Isa. 45:22). There is none else. He is the Savior, and there is no other besides Him (v. 21). Look anywhere else and you are undone. God will look at nothing but Christ and you must look at nothing else. This is the way to clear the fog of doubt and come into the sunshine of God's peace. In this way the holiness of God is not a threat to the soul.
What then of John's tests? Have they no use? Of course they have! For when the sinner or doubting saint has rested his or her case fully upon Christ, then comes the time to apply these tests. As a psychological state, or what I would call a state of mind, assurance, whether it comes from ourselves, or from God, or from Satan, is alike. John's tests come in precisely here; they are tests of our assurance. When the sinner no longer doubts about his interest in Christ, then is the time to test his assurance to see if it is soundly based.
We may put this in form of a chart with two columns and title it The Question of Assurance.
The Question of Assurance
Everything, as you can see, depends on which column describes your situation. Are you without assurance? Column two applies to you. Do you have robust faith? Column one is where you must go.
"But," someone objects, "I can imagine myself bouncing back and forth between these two columns, first resting on Christ, and then having my faith dislodged repeatedly. What should I do?"
That case, of course, is easy to imagine, but is it likely to happen? I think not. Several things make it unlikely; To begin with, experience suggests that those who lack assurance and are serious about finding it in their godliness and love have not often drawn back and started over, as it were, by simply looking to Christ. If we are convinced that John's tests are the place to find our assurance we are likely to apply ourselves more persistently to their use as assurance fails. This is a losing strategy, increasing our discomfort. At this point we must return to first things. Faith in Christ is where healing lies.
Beyond that, an increase in concentration upon Christ is the best preparation, both for the production of godliness and its discovery in the life. Paul assures the Ephesians that the knowledge of the love of Christ is the grand basis of sanctification. He prays that they will learn the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ "that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3: 19). God is filled with the most wonderful qualities. Some of them, those called communicable attributes by theologians, He gives in measure to His people. How will we be filled with these? Paul's answer is clear: we will receive them by concentrating on the love of Christ. And the more of these things that actually exist in us, the more easy they will be to discover.
Here are some other questions that may arise:
First, how soon should one move from column two to column one? This is not a matter of time; it might be five minutes, it might be never. You must not take up the texts under column one until you can say that you have firm faith that you belong to Jesus Christ.
Second, suppose you have robust faith in Christ, but the texts under column one make you "uneasy." What should you do? The answer depends on what you mean by "uneasy." If you mean that you see shortcomings that you need to work on, go ahead and work on them. A Christian should be constantly striving against sin and self-satisfaction. But if by "uneasy" you mean that you have begun to doubt whether you are a Christian, you must forget the tests and take up the texts in column two.
Finally, are there any exceptions to the advice in this article to keep clear of the texts in column one unless you already have confident faith? There is one exception. Some people with little or no assurance are helped toward assurance by the tests in column one. If you are one of those people, by all means use them. But if that is not your case, you will only injure yourself by using column one. First, you must have firm faith in Christ.
Let me make one closing point. It is this: no amount of conformity to the will of God can ever bring you up to the full measure of God's holiness in this life. The Bible makes this very clear and, unfortunately, our daily experience confirms it. That raises a question: If I must always fall short of the standard set forth in the "tests," of what use are they after all?
The answer to that question seems clear. The "tests" enable a man or woman to see the fact of God's working in his or her life, not the extent of God's work. All Christians are called "saints" in the New Testament. That means two things: First, it means they have been separated from the mass of mankind to belong to God. Second, it means that God, in that act of separation, has begun to make them like Christ in godliness and love. The important phrase in that last sentence is "has begun." No Christian has arrived at perfection. No two Christians are exactly the same distance along the road to pure holiness. The "tests" do not enable us to measure our progress with precision. But our assurance is not to rest on our superiority, real or imagined, over fellow believers. It is enough for us if we can see God at work. We need no more than that.
Author
Rev. Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, Ohio. He is the author of several books including: God's King, A Price for a People, and Come Home Forever. He is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal, and a conference speaker.
It is no easy matter to define the holiness of God. For anything like a complete discussion of the content of God's holiness you will want to look at the other articles in this issue of Reformation & Revival Journal. In this article we will narrowly confine ourselves to a single observation about God's holiness: God's holiness demands a corresponding holiness and righteousness in us. God Himself has plainly commanded: "I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy" (Lev. 11:44). This, of course, was spoken to His ancient people, Israel, but when we turn to the New Testament we hear it repeated to the church of Jesus Christ:
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, "You shall be Holy, for I am Holy" (1 Peter 1:1416).In other words, we are to be like God. We are to be like God in our moral character. Nor is this pious advice to be taken or left aside as the moment dictates. This is basic to the entire Christian life. If we are not holy we will never "see the Lord" (Heb. 12:14). In the baldest of terms, "It is holiness or hell."
But I find all this quite intolerable. It is not that it causes me intellectual problems as though it were somehow irrational for God to call on me to be holy. The command itself makes sense, but I have a problem of another kind. I am unholy, and try as I may I cannot convince myself that I shall ever measure up to this simple standard - the holiness of God. Certainly I fall far short just now.
How then can I be a Christian? I have examined myself to see whether I am in the faith (as 1 Corinthians 13:5 exhorts me) and I find that I can give no certain answer. I have sought to take seriously Peter's command to make my calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10), but doubt, based on uncertainty about the worthiness of my walk, dogs my footsteps and nudges me toward despair. I repeat, this time with still further apprehension: "How then can I be a Christian?"
In the last two paragraphs I have cast the experience of many Christians in the first person to bring it vividly before our minds. For such men and women the holiness of God that is to be reproduced in their lives stands like a roadblock on the way to a settled assurance. They can see no way around it. Perhaps you find yourself in this predicament; perhaps you have a friend afflicted in this way. Is there help? I think there is.
We must discard at once the answer of cheap grace, as in the following quotation from Heinrich Heppe: "Things are admirably arranged. God likes forgiving sins, and I like committing them." In this scenario there is no concern at all for personal holiness. No, we must seek an answer to the question of personal assurance that comes to grips with the absolute necessity of conforming to the law of God. Yet, oddly enough, unless you have robust assurance already, it is well in most cases to temporarily set to one side the demand for personal holiness. Let me show you why this is so by discussing the book that, above all others, speaks to us about the tests of Christian reality - the Epistle of First John.
First John, like all the books of the New Testament, arises out of a distinct historical situation. The writer, John, found himself faced with the apostasy of some for whom he once had entertained great hope. But these "brethren" proved false. They forsook John, Christ's special messenger, and in that way they forsook Christ Himself. As John wrote: "He who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error" (4:6). John could speak in this authoritative way, not because he was proud, but because he had been specially sent by Christ Himself to give the church inspired revelation.
But when these men forsook John they did not give up the claim to being Christians. As John writes his letter he speaks to others who apparently were remaining true to the Lord Jesus, Here, then, is the salient point: John constantly has the other men in his mind, the unfaithful men who yet claimed to know Jesus Christ. Much of what we read in his epistle is shaped by this fact. And this is especially the case when John sets down the thing that characterizes the letter as a whole: the tests that determine the truth or falsity of a man's profession of faith.
How does this affect what John writes? This means that generally speaking John's tests are for those who profess robust faith in Jesus Christ. Since I think this point has often been overlooked, it bears repeating. John is setting forth tests of Christianity primarily for men or women who are confident that they belong to Christ. If we miss this presupposition on John's part I believe that we will also miss much of the point of what he has written. He is not thinking, in the first instance; of a poor trembling soul seeking to know whether or not he is saved. Rather he has in his mind's eye the man or woman who says, "I know Christ, and nothing you can say will make me doubt it." His tests may be useful to others as we will yet see, but they were originally set forth to examine the claims of those who did not doubt that they were true Christians. That does not mean that John was still assessing the state of those who had forsaken him and his Lord. He had already taken their measure. No, he was writing for the church of his day and for us, but he was doing it from the standpoint of one who saw the necessity for testing even the most confident faith. In this way two things could be accomplished. Some would be confirmed in their assurance that they belonged to Christ; others could begin to call their own confidence into question, either to have it confirmed later or to see themselves exposed as false disciples.
John tests the Christian faith of his readers in three main ways:
- He shows them that they must hold orthodox views of Christ if they are to consider themselves Christians. For example, there was a doctrine in the air in those days that separated the human Jesus from the divine Christ. To this John responded, "Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ?" (2:22). To be a liar in John's view excluded one from being a Christian.
- He makes plain that those who live ungodly lives cannot be Christians. "Little children," he writes, "let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the Devil" (3:7- 8).
- He lays down love of the brethren as an acid test of Christian faith. "We know we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death" (3: 14). This is, of course, not a mere profession of love that we must have. It is the self-sacrificial spirit found in our Lord Jesus. "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world's goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?" (3:16-17). Clearly the man whose "love"is not evident in readiness for sacrificial giving deceives himself about being a Christian.
For the purposes of this article we will be concerned primarily with the second and third tests, godliness and love. In these two tests we confront the holiness of God where it impinges on our own thoughts, words and deeds. In my experience; those who struggle to know whether or not they are genuine believers do not often feel threatened by the first test in the way they feel menaced by the following two. The question, "Am I a godly person?" is a daunting question to answer if we are truly honest with ourselves. "Am I a loving person?" is also intimidating when I consider that the standard of love is the willing death of my Savior. These two tests, flowing as they do out of the holy character of God, have often risen up to mock the profession of the man or woman who asks them.
How then should those who are struggling to know whether they are saved apply these tests to themselves? The answer is: in general, they should not apply them at all! (I will treat an exception to this general rule later.) The tests, speaking generally, are for those who are confident that they belong to Christ. They are for men and women who say that they have fellowship with Christ (1:6) and who affirm "I have come to know Him" (2:4) and who claim to abide in Him (2:6). They are for those who profess to walk in the light (2:9) and who may think of themselves as far enough along to teach others (4:1- 3). These people, the ones with robust faith, are the ones to apply these tests to themselves.
Is there no help, then, for those with doubts and fears about their own salvation? Yes, much! Their help is found in taking their eyes off of themselves and directing them to Jesus Christ. In answer to the question, "What must I do to be saved?" Paul said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved" (Acts 16:31). He said this because he knew this truth: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
The problem of assurance is the problem of salvation. It is the agonizing question, "Do I belong to Christ or not?" The answer is the same in both cases: confident faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The tests are for those who say, "I am a Christian!" Those who had departed from John (and from Christ) were loud in their professions of faith. "Very well then," John said, "let's see. Let's test their faith. Let's test the faith of all of us who are sure that we belong to Christ. Here are the tests." And he followed with the tests of orthodoxy, godliness and love.
But poor trembling sinners need to turn their eyes solely to Jesus. The Puritan Thomas Willcox put it this way: If you have looked at words, duties and qualifications more than at the merits of Christ, it will cost you dearly. No wonder you go about complaining. Graces may be evidences; the merits of Christ alone (without the evidences) must be the foundation of your hope to stand on. Christ only can be the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).
When we come to God, we must bring nothing but Christ with us. Any ingredients, or any previous qualifications of our own, will poison and corrupt faith. He who builds upon duties, graces, etc., knows not the merits of Christ. Despairing sinner! Look at Christ now; look to Him and be saved, all the ends of the earth (Isa. 45:22). There is none else. He is the Savior, and there is no other besides Him (v. 21). Look anywhere else and you are undone. God will look at nothing but Christ and you must look at nothing else. This is the way to clear the fog of doubt and come into the sunshine of God's peace. In this way the holiness of God is not a threat to the soul.
What then of John's tests? Have they no use? Of course they have! For when the sinner or doubting saint has rested his or her case fully upon Christ, then comes the time to apply these tests. As a psychological state, or what I would call a state of mind, assurance, whether it comes from ourselves, or from God, or from Satan, is alike. John's tests come in precisely here; they are tests of our assurance. When the sinner no longer doubts about his interest in Christ, then is the time to test his assurance to see if it is soundly based.
We may put this in form of a chart with two columns and title it The Question of Assurance.
The Question of Assurance
Column One
|
Column Two
|
I Have Robust Assurance That I Belong to Jesus Christ.
|
I Have Doubts Concerning Whether I Belong to Jesus Christ.
|
Expected Action:
You Must Test the Reality of Your Faith by the Following Texts: 1
John 2:4-6 [the test of godliness]; 1
John 2:9-11 [the test of love for Christian brothers].
|
Expected Action:
You Must Act upon the Following Texts: Acts 16:31; John 3:16; Romans 4: 5.
|
Everything, as you can see, depends on which column describes your situation. Are you without assurance? Column two applies to you. Do you have robust faith? Column one is where you must go.
"But," someone objects, "I can imagine myself bouncing back and forth between these two columns, first resting on Christ, and then having my faith dislodged repeatedly. What should I do?"
That case, of course, is easy to imagine, but is it likely to happen? I think not. Several things make it unlikely; To begin with, experience suggests that those who lack assurance and are serious about finding it in their godliness and love have not often drawn back and started over, as it were, by simply looking to Christ. If we are convinced that John's tests are the place to find our assurance we are likely to apply ourselves more persistently to their use as assurance fails. This is a losing strategy, increasing our discomfort. At this point we must return to first things. Faith in Christ is where healing lies.
Beyond that, an increase in concentration upon Christ is the best preparation, both for the production of godliness and its discovery in the life. Paul assures the Ephesians that the knowledge of the love of Christ is the grand basis of sanctification. He prays that they will learn the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ "that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3: 19). God is filled with the most wonderful qualities. Some of them, those called communicable attributes by theologians, He gives in measure to His people. How will we be filled with these? Paul's answer is clear: we will receive them by concentrating on the love of Christ. And the more of these things that actually exist in us, the more easy they will be to discover.
Here are some other questions that may arise:
First, how soon should one move from column two to column one? This is not a matter of time; it might be five minutes, it might be never. You must not take up the texts under column one until you can say that you have firm faith that you belong to Jesus Christ.
Second, suppose you have robust faith in Christ, but the texts under column one make you "uneasy." What should you do? The answer depends on what you mean by "uneasy." If you mean that you see shortcomings that you need to work on, go ahead and work on them. A Christian should be constantly striving against sin and self-satisfaction. But if by "uneasy" you mean that you have begun to doubt whether you are a Christian, you must forget the tests and take up the texts in column two.
Finally, are there any exceptions to the advice in this article to keep clear of the texts in column one unless you already have confident faith? There is one exception. Some people with little or no assurance are helped toward assurance by the tests in column one. If you are one of those people, by all means use them. But if that is not your case, you will only injure yourself by using column one. First, you must have firm faith in Christ.
Let me make one closing point. It is this: no amount of conformity to the will of God can ever bring you up to the full measure of God's holiness in this life. The Bible makes this very clear and, unfortunately, our daily experience confirms it. That raises a question: If I must always fall short of the standard set forth in the "tests," of what use are they after all?
The answer to that question seems clear. The "tests" enable a man or woman to see the fact of God's working in his or her life, not the extent of God's work. All Christians are called "saints" in the New Testament. That means two things: First, it means they have been separated from the mass of mankind to belong to God. Second, it means that God, in that act of separation, has begun to make them like Christ in godliness and love. The important phrase in that last sentence is "has begun." No Christian has arrived at perfection. No two Christians are exactly the same distance along the road to pure holiness. The "tests" do not enable us to measure our progress with precision. But our assurance is not to rest on our superiority, real or imagined, over fellow believers. It is enough for us if we can see God at work. We need no more than that.
Author
Rev. Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, Ohio. He is the author of several books including: God's King, A Price for a People, and Come Home Forever. He is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal, and a conference speaker.
Thursday, 23 November 2017
For Whom Did Christ Die?
By Rev. Tom Wells
Let's take a further look at this last reaction. A frequent complaint against Reformed or Calvinistic people goes something like this: "Your view of the Atonement is not the result of Scripture but of logic. In fact, you are rationalists!" Those are harsh words indeed, but necessary, if true.
When I hear that I am a rationalist I am reminded of something Carl F. H. Henry said in another connection: "Let those who want to defend irrationalism do it with whatever weapons they can find!"
Abandon logic altogether and you must abandon all reasoned discourse. There is no discussion that does not appeal to reason from beginning to end. We have no choice. If we want to graduate from "Mama" and "Dada" we have to think in a rational way.
But to be fair, the objections really amount to this: I have a logical grid that I impress upon Scripture and it affects how I read it. Or, the lens through which I look at Scripture distorts it. I do not come objectively to the Word of God. Is that really true? If it is true, is it serious?
To begin with, I must plead guilty to not being objective. It's widely recognized in our country that objectivity, however desirable it mayor may not be, is not the state of any of us. We all bring a great deal of baggage to every question we seek to answer. My objector and I have this in common. What we must both do is to admit this and to keep it firmly in mind as we carry on our discussion, seeking to minimize its negative impact on us.
But there is more to be said.
Let's think together about how we learn what Scripture teaches. When we come to a text that we've never carefully considered before, how shall we approach it? Sooner or later we will have to look at it in the light of all that we already know from Scripture. Of course this is virtually instinctive with us; we seldom think about what we are doing, we just do it.
To illustrate how this works, imagine that you are in a culture where Christ is not widely known and you are a relatively new Christian who has read only the four Gospels. Suppose someone tells you, "There's a verse of Scripture in Paul's letters that says quite literally that Jesus had seven arms." How will you react?
You will find this difficult to believe for several reasons. The reason that interests us here is this: You have read the Gospels and have seen the reactions of men and women to the Lord Jesus. Some reacted well and others reacted-violently, but none of the adverse reactions seemed to arise from His physical appearance. It is a non issue in the Gospels. That is unthinkable if Jesus really had seven arms.
You will immediately see what happened: The baggage that you brought to this supposed verse was good baggage-the knowledge of Scripture that you already had. Your previous knowledge was imposed on the newly alleged verse. That was the lens through which you looked at it. In doing that you acted correctly. There was a danger in doing it; perhaps you misunderstood the adverse reactions of Jesus' critics. Maybe they did arise to some degree from Jesus' appearance. Maybe you needed Paul's verse to tell you that. In this hypothetical case, however, you were dead right since there is no such verse.
This demonstrates how we come to all Scripture. We bring our previous knowledge with us. What often happens is that the new Scripture is read in the light of the old, shading our understanding of the new verse, but also to a small degree correcting all that we have already held. But again, we may be hardly conscious of the process. Only if a large number of verses changes our perspective appreciably will we be aware that something important is happening.
Most of us who became Christians when we were young came to Scripture with the assumption that Christ died for every person whoever lived. That is what modern evangelicalism had tended to say to us. In fact, that was the grid that we impressed on Scripture; that was the lens through which we saw it. It seemed to us inevitable that any verse that touched the Atonement contained that idea either explicitly or implicitly. It was beyond question. Somewhere along the way, however, some of us changed our minds. And we thought we did it under the impact of Scripture.
Let me share with you two points that Scripture makes repeatedly that seem to demand that Christ died only for those who are actually saved. This doctrine, by the way, is often called, limited Atonement, but I prefer to call it particular Redemption, emphasizing the idea that Christ died for particular men and women. It may surprise you to know that the first mission organization involved in the modern missionary movement was called The Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathens. William Carey and those associated with him in that great effort believed that Christ died for particular people.
First, the Bible teaches that Christ died to pay the penalty of sin. This is the heart of the Reformed view. You may ask: "Don't all Christians believe that?" No, they do not. As an example, let me quote J. K. Grider of Nazarene Theological Seminary. In an article on Arminianism in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grider writes:
Let's also look at 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He [God] made Him [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
Here Paul says that Christ became sin for us. In keeping with the meaning of a Hebrew synonym some scholars would translate this as a sin offering on our behalf, but most reject this understanding because the word sin occurs twice in rapid succession. In the one case when the text speaks of Christ as One "who knew no sin," sin offering cannot be the meaning. In some sense, then, Christ became sin.
As far as the grammar is concerned, Paul may mean one of two things. He may be telling us that Jesus became sinful and as a consequence we become godly. That would be grammatically possible, but in the light of all else in the New Testament, we know that Paul would never mean that.
No doubt the contrast is not intended to describe moral states, but legal ones: Jesus bore our punishment and we receive His reward. In fact, this is the understanding of most evangelical commentators except those who adopt the meaning sin offering. Here again sin and punishment go hand in hand. Christ bore our punishment and we receive His right-standing with God. This verse does not tell us about two new moral conditions that He and we experience, but it describes our standing before the law of God. He was condemned so that we could be justified or declared right with God.
There is a second teaching of Scripture, closely related, that also demands that Christ died only for those who are finally saved. The Scripture teaches that Christ was the substitute for those for whom He died, dying in their room or place or stead. If one person dies in the stead of another, then that second person cannot die.
Let me illustrate: Suppose Bill Jones appears to be drowning and Joe Smith jumps into the lake to save him. Here are some possible results:
First, the idea of bearing a penalty for another implies substitution when the price paid is a person. If Christ bore my penalty and as a consequence I go free, then Christ has substituted Himself for me. You can see that easily in the two passages we looked at above. In the first case, Galatians 3:10 and 13, the curse should have fallen on us, but it fell on Christ. That's substitution. In the second passage, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Christ took my guilt and I received His righteousness. That, too, is substitution.
Substitution is also taught by Jesus as He speaks in John 10:11-15:
This passage teaches particular redemption in another way as well. The Good Shepherd dies for His own sheep. That is clear in two ways: First, the parable is about sheep drawn from a larger group in one or more sheepfolds (vv. 1-4, 16). Second, the one who dies is "the owner of the sheep" (v. 12). This argument is not conclusive by itself, but in connection with substitution it bears out the particular nature of Christ's death.
We find the fact of substitution in Romans 3:24-26:
We know this because we are in the legal (forensic) realm here, according to Paul. Propitiation showed God's justice. But how does God show His justice in dealing with sin? By punishing it. By punishing Christ, God showed Himself to be just and also opened a way to justify sinners (26). If what Christ did at the cross enables God to save men justly, then we are in the realm of law and penalty. Here again, penalty and substitution meet. And if Christ has substituted Himself for me; then justice demands that I go free. Substitution is meaningful only where one dies and the other lives because of his death.
Let's look at one last verse that teaches substitution, Matthew 20:28. "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." This brief verse indicates substitution in two ways.
First, the little phrase, "for many," contains the Greek preposition, anti, that means "in the place of" or "in the stead of." The standard New Testament Greek lexicon says it is used "in order to indicate that one person or thing is, or is to be, replaced by another." [1] So Jesus here predicts that He will substitute Himself "for many."
Second, the idea of a ransom, when the ransom price is another human being, is clearly another case of substitution. If a slave is being held for ransom and another slave is handed over to effect his freedom, there is substitution. If a criminal had been sentenced to death and another man becomes his ransom, bringing about his freedom, that too is a case of substitution. In Matthew 20:28 and the parallel passage, Mark 10:45, Jesus sets Himself forward as the substitute for sinners. And if He substitutes Himself for sinners, they go free. He could, then, have died only for those actually saved.
What is the effect of thinking carefully on these two ideas of penalty and substitution in the New Testament in connection with the death of Christ? They lead us to see that Christ purchased His people, His particular people, out of the larger mass of mankind. Does the New Testament teach that truth anywhere? Yes, it does. As far as the fact of a purchase having taken place, we may look at such texts as Acts 20:28 and 1 Corinthians 6:20, and indeed, all the places Christ is said to have redeemed us, for a redemption and a purchase are the same thing.
And was that purchase from the larger mass of mankind? Listen to the singers in Revelation 5:9: "And they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.''' The purchase was a purchase out of the various people groups of earth; it was not a purchase of all of them. Let me come finally to the chief objections to what I have written about the particularity of Christ's death. We do not know our own position until we know what can be said against it.
First in order, I think, is the feeling that something precious has been denied to those who reject Jesus Christ if Christ did not die for them. But when one asks, "What advantage does the death of Christ give to those who are lost?" there seems to be no biblical answer. Many Christians [2] can only reply that the death of Christ becomes for the Christ-rejecter a ground of condemnation. That, of course, is no advantage at all.
One group of Christians, the Arminians, have a better answer if it were taught in Scripture. They say that the death of Christ has restored to all men the ability, lost in the fall, to turn to Christ in faith. But the Scripture does not teach this. If it did, it would make the natural man a mere hypothesis. Let me explain what I mean.
In such texts as Romans 8:7 and 1 Corinthians 2:14 we are taught the inability of the natural man. In Romans Paul tells us that the carnal mind, which is the only mind the natural man has, "is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so." Paul here is not speaking about some hypothetical man who no longer exists. He is speaking of natural men as they existed in his day. He says of them that they do not subject themselves to God's law. He says further that they do not because they cannot. Their hostility at God is so great that they cannot respond to the command, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 16:31). They cannot respond positively when God now commands "all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30).
We find the same thing in 1 Corinthians 2: 14: "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised."
Is Paul thinking here of some hypothetical man who now has had ability to understand spiritual things restored to him? No, it is plain that he is speaking of natural men as they existed when he wrote. What does he say of such men? First, they do not accept the things of the Spirit of God. Second, such things are foolishness to them. Third, they cannot understand them.
Someone may respond by saying, "Of course a natural man can't understand the deep things of God, but he can understand the Gospel and be saved." But a glance at the context will show that that misses Paul's point. It is the Gospel itself that is foolishness to the natural man. "For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness" (1: 18). "God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe" (1:21). "But we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness" (1:23).
The conclusion is clear: Christ's death has not restored to all men the ability to believe. A death for all men, if that were what the Scripture taught, would be no advantage to the lost; it would be a liability, adding to their guilt.
A second objection to particular redemption turns on the universal words used in connection with the death of Christ, words like all and world. I have dealt with these words at great length in my book, A Price for a People, the Meaning of Christ's Death. Let me confine myself to a few remarks here.
To begin with, universal terms in every language with which I am familiar are almost always used with very wide imitations. We do not often notice this, simply because we have taken it for granted since we were children. In fact, you may be surprised at this, but you will easily see that it is so. I'll take my examples from Scripture. Here are verses that illustrate it from John 3: "Behold, (Jesus) is baptizing, and all are coming to Him" (3:26). "(Jesus) bears witness; and no man receives His witness" (3:32). "He who has received His witness has set his seal to this, that God is true" (3:33).
Note the apparent contradiction in this account of Jesus' ministry. In verse 26, all receive His witness and come to Him. In verse 32, no man does so. But verse 33 assumes that some do in fact receive His witness. What's going on here?
Even if you have read this account many times you have probably never noticed this. The reason is simple: you are fully used to reading universal terms in a limited way, and you do it without giving it a second thought. You understand that verse 26 means only that a large number were coming to Christ, not literally all. In verse 32 you again grasp the idea: compared to the number of people who should have responded to Christ, no man means relatively few. And verse 33 confirms your understanding: some did, in fact, receive the witness of Christ. It never occurred to you to read all and no man as if they were true, universal assertions. You assumed the limitations on them and read on, without noticing what you were doing. You do that all the time (meaning often!).
Another example comes from Acts 2:17 where the AV reads, "I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh." Think about that: all flesh. The NASB has translated this all mankind, thus eliminating almost every kind of flesh there is, with one exception. That is quite a sweeping change, yet it is correct. The flesh of turkeys and giraffes is not in view; God pours His Spirit on men.
But even with the NASB's correction, eliminating most flesh, the alert reader eliminates still more. Is it true that God pours out His Spirit on all men (and women) without exception? No. So all flesh turns out to mean some men and women. In addition it implies a large number from many tribes and nations.
One last example comes from 1 Timothy 6:10 where the AV reads, "For the love of money is the root of all evil." Is this true? Can we trace every evil in the world up to love for money? To ask these questions is to answer them. The NASB translators made this read all sorts of evil. Is that better? Not literally, but it is if we impose our knowledge of idiomatic English on it; The English phrase, all sorts of evil, means quite a few evils. Again, the universal term is greatly reduced in our minds without any reflection on what we are doing.
And we treat the word world the same way. Hendriksen in his commentary on John 1:9 distinguishes six groups or entities called the world. His list is not exhaustive. But let's look at the texts where some difficulty is felt.
If we have been raised to think world in John 3:16 means every person who ever lived, we will take it that way. But there are other possibilities. World here may signify both Jews and Gentiles. In the context Jesus has talked to Nicodemus, a man who probably held firmly to the common view that God loved the Jews but not the Gentiles. John attacks this idea elsewhere in his gospel.
Or perhaps John 3: 16 means that God loves mankind on the mass, a mass that He created. If a man says, "I love Englishmen," no one understands him to mean each and every Englishman, but Englishmen generally. Alternately, B. B. Warfield held that the word world is used qualitatively here, not quantitatively. That would mean that God loved that which was at enmity with Himself - another common use of world - however many actual people He might include.
First John 2:2 reads, "He Himself is the Propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." Again there are several possibilities. John, being a Jew, might mean "not only for the sins of those of us who are Jewish, but for Gentiles as well." It seems to me more likely, however, that he means to assert that there is no other Propitiation. Anyone who will be saved - however many or few - will be saved by that Propitiation and no other. Still others think he may mean, "He is the Propitiation for the sins of those of us who believe, and for the sins of all who will ever believe."
In the case of controversial passages, how we understand universal terms depends very much on how those who taught us understood them. Had you been taught that "God so loved the world" means that God loved both Jews and Gentiles, that is how you would understand it.
What does that prove? Prove may be too strong a word, but it strongly suggests that we must get our doctrine of the Atonement from the words that describe it in Scripture and not from the universal terms that describe those who benefit from it. [3]
Words like Redemption, Reconciliation and Propitiation, when applied to the death of Christ, show that His death was for His people and not for every person who ever lived. Does that seem threatening? It need not. What we all must remember is that everyone who puts His trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior will be saved. No one will ever believe, only to find that there is no Atonement for him or her.
The death of Christ is as broad as the category of believer. Beyond that it would do no good anyway. If Christ died for those who will never believe, His death would not help them in any fashion. It would only add to their condemnation. But Christ died for all who would ever believe. They, and no others, receive the benefit of the death He died for them.
Endnotes
There is not a word in the Bible that is extra crucem, which can be understood without reference to the cross. - Martin Luther
Christianity is a religion about a cross. - Leon Morris
To try and find a common ground between the message of the cross and fallen man's reason is to try the impossible, and if persisted in must result in an impaired reason, a meaningless cross and a powerless Christianity. - A. W. Tozer
The glory of the cross of Christ is bound up with the effectiveness of its accomplishment. - John Murray
The cross of Christ runs through the whole of Scripture. - Martin Luther
Every doctrine that is not embedded in the cross of Jesus will lead astray. - Oswald ChambersAsk the average Christian the question in the title of this article and you're likely to get one of two reactions. Some will give you a quizzical look, as much as to say, "All right, what's the catch? Everyone knows the answer to that question." Others will say simply, "Christ died for everyone who ever lived." A small number of people will smell heresy and point an accusing finger. "Aha!" they will cry, "You're a Calvinist!" Without another word they may convey a further disheartening message: you ought to blush with shame and slink back into whatever hole it was that you crawled out of.
Let's take a further look at this last reaction. A frequent complaint against Reformed or Calvinistic people goes something like this: "Your view of the Atonement is not the result of Scripture but of logic. In fact, you are rationalists!" Those are harsh words indeed, but necessary, if true.
When I hear that I am a rationalist I am reminded of something Carl F. H. Henry said in another connection: "Let those who want to defend irrationalism do it with whatever weapons they can find!"
Abandon logic altogether and you must abandon all reasoned discourse. There is no discussion that does not appeal to reason from beginning to end. We have no choice. If we want to graduate from "Mama" and "Dada" we have to think in a rational way.
But to be fair, the objections really amount to this: I have a logical grid that I impress upon Scripture and it affects how I read it. Or, the lens through which I look at Scripture distorts it. I do not come objectively to the Word of God. Is that really true? If it is true, is it serious?
To begin with, I must plead guilty to not being objective. It's widely recognized in our country that objectivity, however desirable it mayor may not be, is not the state of any of us. We all bring a great deal of baggage to every question we seek to answer. My objector and I have this in common. What we must both do is to admit this and to keep it firmly in mind as we carry on our discussion, seeking to minimize its negative impact on us.
But there is more to be said.
Let's think together about how we learn what Scripture teaches. When we come to a text that we've never carefully considered before, how shall we approach it? Sooner or later we will have to look at it in the light of all that we already know from Scripture. Of course this is virtually instinctive with us; we seldom think about what we are doing, we just do it.
To illustrate how this works, imagine that you are in a culture where Christ is not widely known and you are a relatively new Christian who has read only the four Gospels. Suppose someone tells you, "There's a verse of Scripture in Paul's letters that says quite literally that Jesus had seven arms." How will you react?
You will find this difficult to believe for several reasons. The reason that interests us here is this: You have read the Gospels and have seen the reactions of men and women to the Lord Jesus. Some reacted well and others reacted-violently, but none of the adverse reactions seemed to arise from His physical appearance. It is a non issue in the Gospels. That is unthinkable if Jesus really had seven arms.
You will immediately see what happened: The baggage that you brought to this supposed verse was good baggage-the knowledge of Scripture that you already had. Your previous knowledge was imposed on the newly alleged verse. That was the lens through which you looked at it. In doing that you acted correctly. There was a danger in doing it; perhaps you misunderstood the adverse reactions of Jesus' critics. Maybe they did arise to some degree from Jesus' appearance. Maybe you needed Paul's verse to tell you that. In this hypothetical case, however, you were dead right since there is no such verse.
This demonstrates how we come to all Scripture. We bring our previous knowledge with us. What often happens is that the new Scripture is read in the light of the old, shading our understanding of the new verse, but also to a small degree correcting all that we have already held. But again, we may be hardly conscious of the process. Only if a large number of verses changes our perspective appreciably will we be aware that something important is happening.
Most of us who became Christians when we were young came to Scripture with the assumption that Christ died for every person whoever lived. That is what modern evangelicalism had tended to say to us. In fact, that was the grid that we impressed on Scripture; that was the lens through which we saw it. It seemed to us inevitable that any verse that touched the Atonement contained that idea either explicitly or implicitly. It was beyond question. Somewhere along the way, however, some of us changed our minds. And we thought we did it under the impact of Scripture.
Let me share with you two points that Scripture makes repeatedly that seem to demand that Christ died only for those who are actually saved. This doctrine, by the way, is often called, limited Atonement, but I prefer to call it particular Redemption, emphasizing the idea that Christ died for particular men and women. It may surprise you to know that the first mission organization involved in the modern missionary movement was called The Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathens. William Carey and those associated with him in that great effort believed that Christ died for particular people.
First, the Bible teaches that Christ died to pay the penalty of sin. This is the heart of the Reformed view. You may ask: "Don't all Christians believe that?" No, they do not. As an example, let me quote J. K. Grider of Nazarene Theological Seminary. In an article on Arminianism in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grider writes:
... many Arminians whose theology is not very precise say that Christ paid the penalty for our sins .... Arminians teach that what Christ did He did for every person; therefore what He did could not have been to pay the penalty, since no one would then ever go into eternal perdition.Why did Grider say this? Because he understood the truth that was centuries earlier propounded by John Owen and others:
- If Christ paid the penalty for every sin of every man then no man can ever suffer everlasting punishment for his own sins. Their penalty has been completely borne.
- If Christ paid the penalty for some sins of every man, then every man will have to suffer everlasting punishment for his own unpaid-for sins.
- If Christ paid the penalty for all the sins of some men only, then only some men will be saved. (the salvation of some men only is, of course, the fact, as most of us agree.)
- the presence of broken law, and
- punishment. In simplest terms penalty is punishment.
For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them." ... Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us - for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree."Here Paul says first that the curse of the law of God rests on those who break the Law. The curse here is the penalty for sin. Paul's second point is that Christ bore that curse for us. Therefore Christ bore the penalty of our sin (whomever us and our may represent). In commenting on verse 13 Bishop Lightfoot says: "The victim is regarded as bearing the sins of those for whom atonement is made. The curse is transferred from them to it." Sin and punishment (or penalty), go hand in hand here. But it is not we who suffer the penalty, it is Christ on our behalf.
Let's also look at 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He [God] made Him [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
Here Paul says that Christ became sin for us. In keeping with the meaning of a Hebrew synonym some scholars would translate this as a sin offering on our behalf, but most reject this understanding because the word sin occurs twice in rapid succession. In the one case when the text speaks of Christ as One "who knew no sin," sin offering cannot be the meaning. In some sense, then, Christ became sin.
As far as the grammar is concerned, Paul may mean one of two things. He may be telling us that Jesus became sinful and as a consequence we become godly. That would be grammatically possible, but in the light of all else in the New Testament, we know that Paul would never mean that.
No doubt the contrast is not intended to describe moral states, but legal ones: Jesus bore our punishment and we receive His reward. In fact, this is the understanding of most evangelical commentators except those who adopt the meaning sin offering. Here again sin and punishment go hand in hand. Christ bore our punishment and we receive His right-standing with God. This verse does not tell us about two new moral conditions that He and we experience, but it describes our standing before the law of God. He was condemned so that we could be justified or declared right with God.
There is a second teaching of Scripture, closely related, that also demands that Christ died only for those who are finally saved. The Scripture teaches that Christ was the substitute for those for whom He died, dying in their room or place or stead. If one person dies in the stead of another, then that second person cannot die.
Let me illustrate: Suppose Bill Jones appears to be drowning and Joe Smith jumps into the lake to save him. Here are some possible results:
- Both manage to save themselves.
- Both drown.
- Joe saves himself and Bill.
- Joe saves Bill but drowns in the process.
First, the idea of bearing a penalty for another implies substitution when the price paid is a person. If Christ bore my penalty and as a consequence I go free, then Christ has substituted Himself for me. You can see that easily in the two passages we looked at above. In the first case, Galatians 3:10 and 13, the curse should have fallen on us, but it fell on Christ. That's substitution. In the second passage, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Christ took my guilt and I received His righteousness. That, too, is substitution.
Substitution is also taught by Jesus as He speaks in John 10:11-15:
I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hireling, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, beholds the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees, and the wolf snatches them, and scatters them. He flees because he is a hireling, and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know My own, and My own know Me, even as My Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.This is a part of a longer extended figure that the Lord Jesus gave us on Himself as the Good Shepherd. Substitution is clearly in view in this discourse. When the hired hand (hireling is too strong) sees that he will have to suffer and perhaps die to spare the sheep suffering and death, he flees. He will not substitute his own life for the life of the sheep. But the Good Shepherd will (and in the application does).
This passage teaches particular redemption in another way as well. The Good Shepherd dies for His own sheep. That is clear in two ways: First, the parable is about sheep drawn from a larger group in one or more sheepfolds (vv. 1-4, 16). Second, the one who dies is "the owner of the sheep" (v. 12). This argument is not conclusive by itself, but in connection with substitution it bears out the particular nature of Christ's death.
We find the fact of substitution in Romans 3:24-26:
[Believers are] justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.Here Paul shows how Christ took the wrath of God in the place of men. Look first at the word Propitiation. A Propitiation is an appeasement, something that turns away the wrath of another. So Christ's death turned away God's wrath. But how did it do that? By having the wrath which belonged to us fall on Him.
We know this because we are in the legal (forensic) realm here, according to Paul. Propitiation showed God's justice. But how does God show His justice in dealing with sin? By punishing it. By punishing Christ, God showed Himself to be just and also opened a way to justify sinners (26). If what Christ did at the cross enables God to save men justly, then we are in the realm of law and penalty. Here again, penalty and substitution meet. And if Christ has substituted Himself for me; then justice demands that I go free. Substitution is meaningful only where one dies and the other lives because of his death.
Let's look at one last verse that teaches substitution, Matthew 20:28. "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." This brief verse indicates substitution in two ways.
First, the little phrase, "for many," contains the Greek preposition, anti, that means "in the place of" or "in the stead of." The standard New Testament Greek lexicon says it is used "in order to indicate that one person or thing is, or is to be, replaced by another." [1] So Jesus here predicts that He will substitute Himself "for many."
Second, the idea of a ransom, when the ransom price is another human being, is clearly another case of substitution. If a slave is being held for ransom and another slave is handed over to effect his freedom, there is substitution. If a criminal had been sentenced to death and another man becomes his ransom, bringing about his freedom, that too is a case of substitution. In Matthew 20:28 and the parallel passage, Mark 10:45, Jesus sets Himself forward as the substitute for sinners. And if He substitutes Himself for sinners, they go free. He could, then, have died only for those actually saved.
What is the effect of thinking carefully on these two ideas of penalty and substitution in the New Testament in connection with the death of Christ? They lead us to see that Christ purchased His people, His particular people, out of the larger mass of mankind. Does the New Testament teach that truth anywhere? Yes, it does. As far as the fact of a purchase having taken place, we may look at such texts as Acts 20:28 and 1 Corinthians 6:20, and indeed, all the places Christ is said to have redeemed us, for a redemption and a purchase are the same thing.
And was that purchase from the larger mass of mankind? Listen to the singers in Revelation 5:9: "And they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.''' The purchase was a purchase out of the various people groups of earth; it was not a purchase of all of them. Let me come finally to the chief objections to what I have written about the particularity of Christ's death. We do not know our own position until we know what can be said against it.
First in order, I think, is the feeling that something precious has been denied to those who reject Jesus Christ if Christ did not die for them. But when one asks, "What advantage does the death of Christ give to those who are lost?" there seems to be no biblical answer. Many Christians [2] can only reply that the death of Christ becomes for the Christ-rejecter a ground of condemnation. That, of course, is no advantage at all.
One group of Christians, the Arminians, have a better answer if it were taught in Scripture. They say that the death of Christ has restored to all men the ability, lost in the fall, to turn to Christ in faith. But the Scripture does not teach this. If it did, it would make the natural man a mere hypothesis. Let me explain what I mean.
In such texts as Romans 8:7 and 1 Corinthians 2:14 we are taught the inability of the natural man. In Romans Paul tells us that the carnal mind, which is the only mind the natural man has, "is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so." Paul here is not speaking about some hypothetical man who no longer exists. He is speaking of natural men as they existed in his day. He says of them that they do not subject themselves to God's law. He says further that they do not because they cannot. Their hostility at God is so great that they cannot respond to the command, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 16:31). They cannot respond positively when God now commands "all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30).
We find the same thing in 1 Corinthians 2: 14: "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised."
Is Paul thinking here of some hypothetical man who now has had ability to understand spiritual things restored to him? No, it is plain that he is speaking of natural men as they existed when he wrote. What does he say of such men? First, they do not accept the things of the Spirit of God. Second, such things are foolishness to them. Third, they cannot understand them.
Someone may respond by saying, "Of course a natural man can't understand the deep things of God, but he can understand the Gospel and be saved." But a glance at the context will show that that misses Paul's point. It is the Gospel itself that is foolishness to the natural man. "For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness" (1: 18). "God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe" (1:21). "But we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness" (1:23).
The conclusion is clear: Christ's death has not restored to all men the ability to believe. A death for all men, if that were what the Scripture taught, would be no advantage to the lost; it would be a liability, adding to their guilt.
A second objection to particular redemption turns on the universal words used in connection with the death of Christ, words like all and world. I have dealt with these words at great length in my book, A Price for a People, the Meaning of Christ's Death. Let me confine myself to a few remarks here.
To begin with, universal terms in every language with which I am familiar are almost always used with very wide imitations. We do not often notice this, simply because we have taken it for granted since we were children. In fact, you may be surprised at this, but you will easily see that it is so. I'll take my examples from Scripture. Here are verses that illustrate it from John 3: "Behold, (Jesus) is baptizing, and all are coming to Him" (3:26). "(Jesus) bears witness; and no man receives His witness" (3:32). "He who has received His witness has set his seal to this, that God is true" (3:33).
Note the apparent contradiction in this account of Jesus' ministry. In verse 26, all receive His witness and come to Him. In verse 32, no man does so. But verse 33 assumes that some do in fact receive His witness. What's going on here?
Even if you have read this account many times you have probably never noticed this. The reason is simple: you are fully used to reading universal terms in a limited way, and you do it without giving it a second thought. You understand that verse 26 means only that a large number were coming to Christ, not literally all. In verse 32 you again grasp the idea: compared to the number of people who should have responded to Christ, no man means relatively few. And verse 33 confirms your understanding: some did, in fact, receive the witness of Christ. It never occurred to you to read all and no man as if they were true, universal assertions. You assumed the limitations on them and read on, without noticing what you were doing. You do that all the time (meaning often!).
Another example comes from Acts 2:17 where the AV reads, "I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh." Think about that: all flesh. The NASB has translated this all mankind, thus eliminating almost every kind of flesh there is, with one exception. That is quite a sweeping change, yet it is correct. The flesh of turkeys and giraffes is not in view; God pours His Spirit on men.
But even with the NASB's correction, eliminating most flesh, the alert reader eliminates still more. Is it true that God pours out His Spirit on all men (and women) without exception? No. So all flesh turns out to mean some men and women. In addition it implies a large number from many tribes and nations.
One last example comes from 1 Timothy 6:10 where the AV reads, "For the love of money is the root of all evil." Is this true? Can we trace every evil in the world up to love for money? To ask these questions is to answer them. The NASB translators made this read all sorts of evil. Is that better? Not literally, but it is if we impose our knowledge of idiomatic English on it; The English phrase, all sorts of evil, means quite a few evils. Again, the universal term is greatly reduced in our minds without any reflection on what we are doing.
And we treat the word world the same way. Hendriksen in his commentary on John 1:9 distinguishes six groups or entities called the world. His list is not exhaustive. But let's look at the texts where some difficulty is felt.
If we have been raised to think world in John 3:16 means every person who ever lived, we will take it that way. But there are other possibilities. World here may signify both Jews and Gentiles. In the context Jesus has talked to Nicodemus, a man who probably held firmly to the common view that God loved the Jews but not the Gentiles. John attacks this idea elsewhere in his gospel.
Or perhaps John 3: 16 means that God loves mankind on the mass, a mass that He created. If a man says, "I love Englishmen," no one understands him to mean each and every Englishman, but Englishmen generally. Alternately, B. B. Warfield held that the word world is used qualitatively here, not quantitatively. That would mean that God loved that which was at enmity with Himself - another common use of world - however many actual people He might include.
First John 2:2 reads, "He Himself is the Propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." Again there are several possibilities. John, being a Jew, might mean "not only for the sins of those of us who are Jewish, but for Gentiles as well." It seems to me more likely, however, that he means to assert that there is no other Propitiation. Anyone who will be saved - however many or few - will be saved by that Propitiation and no other. Still others think he may mean, "He is the Propitiation for the sins of those of us who believe, and for the sins of all who will ever believe."
In the case of controversial passages, how we understand universal terms depends very much on how those who taught us understood them. Had you been taught that "God so loved the world" means that God loved both Jews and Gentiles, that is how you would understand it.
What does that prove? Prove may be too strong a word, but it strongly suggests that we must get our doctrine of the Atonement from the words that describe it in Scripture and not from the universal terms that describe those who benefit from it. [3]
Words like Redemption, Reconciliation and Propitiation, when applied to the death of Christ, show that His death was for His people and not for every person who ever lived. Does that seem threatening? It need not. What we all must remember is that everyone who puts His trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior will be saved. No one will ever believe, only to find that there is no Atonement for him or her.
The death of Christ is as broad as the category of believer. Beyond that it would do no good anyway. If Christ died for those who will never believe, His death would not help them in any fashion. It would only add to their condemnation. But Christ died for all who would ever believe. They, and no others, receive the benefit of the death He died for them.
Endnotes
- I refer to A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, adapted by W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich from the fifth edition of Walter Bauer's Greek-German lexicon. In what appears to be an effort to reduce the meaning of anti to in behalf of, they have the strange statement, "Gen. 44:33 shows how the mng. [meaning] in place of can develop into in behalf of. .. " This, of course, would not require substitution. But anyone who reads Genesis 44:33 will see there as plain a case of substitution as can possibly be imagined. It records the offer of Judah to become a slave in the place of his brother, Benjamin. In the words of the NASB, "Please let your servant remain instead of the lad a slave to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brothers." In other words, he offered to substitute himself for the boy.
- The Christians who can say no more than this are those who are called "Four-Point Calvinists" and those called "Semi-Pelagians." It is beyond the scope of this study to go into these terms in any detail. Briefly, Four-Point Calvinists believe most of the Calvinistic system including unconditional Election and effectual (irresistible) grace, but they deny the particularity of Christ's death. Semi-Pelagians believe that, after the fall, man retained the ability to turn to God. Calvinists deny this.
- Some members of the early church found in the word world a reference to the new humanity that God is forming in Christ. The Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 150-80 A D.) speaks of our Lord as the one who suffered for the whole world of those being saved. Christ has a world of His own, in this understanding, that He is bringing to Himself. Origen, who died about 254 AD., after citing the words, "God was in Christ reconciling the world" (2 Cor. 5:19), says, "Of the world of the church this is written." He also cites John 1 :29 as illustrating the same truth. The sin of the world is for him the sin of the church. For more illustrations of this use from the early church, consult my A Price for a People, pp. 12-26.
Author
Rev. Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, Ohio. He preaches widely as a conference minister and is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal. He is author of a number of titles including A Price for a People, a very useful study of the doctrine of definite atonement as outlined in the above article.
Rev. Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, Ohio. He preaches widely as a conference minister and is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal. He is author of a number of titles including A Price for a People, a very useful study of the doctrine of definite atonement as outlined in the above article.
Tuesday, 21 November 2017
Misunderstandings of Grace
By Rev. Tom Wells
We desperately need the content of the word grace, of course. The word stands for an idea that we cannot live without. I have no quarrel with that. But the word "grace" creates a problem for us. The problem is this: the use to which Christians put the word "grace" is not the use the word has in daily English. Our everyday English use of "grace" suggests a human virtue or quality of attractiveness. That leads to constant misunderstanding. For most believers, I think, grace is a rather hazy idea. That will be true even for those who have learned the little acrostic: God's Riches At Christ's Expense. The acrostic tells us what grace gives us, but not what grace is.
Now someone may say, quite rightly, that we have lots of theological words of which this is true. They are used in everyday English in a somewhat different way than they are used in the Bible and in our theological systems. Why then single out the word "grace"?
The answer is this: in many of those cases there is no plain synonym that one might use for the biblical or theological idea. We don't have that problem with "grace." A clear and easy synonym for "grace" is "favor." Simply put, God's grace is God's favor. When Paul, for example, describes himself as called by God's grace in Galatians 1: 15, he means that it was by God's favor that he was called. It was a favor from God that Paul became both a Christian and an apostle.
Let's bring this closer home. If you have been saved by God's grace, then you have been saved by His favor. Salvation is yours because He favored you. The gift of salvation is one of His favors to you. This is what the Bible means when it speaks of salvation by grace. It means that you and I and all other believers are saved because God favored us over others. We have often heard that God has no favorites, but that is not true. He has millions of favorites, and the phrase "God has no favorites" would never have arisen if our English translators had given us the word "favor" where they have substituted the word "grace." It is important to add, however, that God does not practice "favoritism," a word that carries the idea of injustice with it in English usage. God is just. God gives every man and woman what that person deserves, or God treats him better than he deserves.
This article, however, is not intended to be a comment on the quality of our English translations of the Bible. I'm sure that whatever faults they may have, I could not have done as well. My point is quite different. It is this: there are many misunderstandings of the idea contained in the word "grace," and some of them can be traced to our unfamiliarity with the way the word is used in Scripture.
A Theological Misunderstanding
Let's start with a theological misunderstanding. This misconception is a bit difficult to explain, but widespread. It treats grace as a kind of substance that God pours into us. This may inspire the prayer, "Lord, give me Your grace." That prayer should mean, "Lord, give me Your favor," or perhaps, "Lord, show me Your favor." In actual practice, however, the person praying the prayer may think of himself as lacking some spiritual substance within that makes him ineffectual in his Christian life. If he just had more of this stuff called "grace," he could do a much better job.
What is missing in this understanding? The missing element is the fact that grace or favor is not primarily something that is passed over to us from God. Grace is an attitude in God Himself, an attitude of favor that reassures and strengthens the Christian. To paraphrase Romans 8:31: "If God favors us, who can be against us?"
Some theologians have traced this misconception of grace to the influence of the Latin word gratia which began by meaning "favor" but which, over time, came to convey the idea of a spiritual power that makes for right living. We can illustrate this change in the way the Roman Catholic Church has understood the Virgin Mary. The King James Version refers to her as "full of grace" (Luke 1 :28). At first this meant "highly favored" (NIV). But in the course of centuries Mary came to be looked on as a repository or storehouse of spiritual power. She had "graces" that she could distribute to others. What at first was a description of God's attitude toward Mary became a description of Mary's qualities as a mediator between God and man. Of course Protestants never adopted this view of Mary, but many have come to look upon grace, not as an attitude of God but as a spiritual substance or power which He gives.
Practical Misunderstandings
In this article, however, I am interested in what we might call practical misunderstandings of grace. I hope to discuss two:
Through the years there have been men and women who have claimed to know God's saving favor and who have thought that salvation had nothing to do with good works. In the second century a religion arose that is called Gnosticism, one branch of which claimed to be Christian. Some Gnostics treated morality very lightly. They reasoned that God will destroy this mortal body we live in, and what we had done with it would prove to be a matter of indifference to Him.
Ideas of this kind were already afloat when John wrote his first Epistle. He may have had this attitude in mind when he wrote, "If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth" (1:6). People who held this view would profess to be "without sin" (1 :8). Against such people John wrote, "The man who says, 'I know Him,' but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (2:4).
Many today seem to think that grace is unconnected with good works. A man once said from my pulpit, "My religion has nothing to do with good works." At the time I took him to mean that his justification did not depend on good works. If that is what he meant he certainly was right, as I hope to show shortly. Later, however, I saw reason to think that he meant exactly what he said, though I hope I misjudged him.
The doctrine of the security of the believer is sometimes preached in a way that leaves a godly life as an option for the Christian. It is looked upon as a desirable option, to be sure, but an option nevertheless. No doubt many pastors who hold this idea do so to protect the freeness of justification. Many of them also are zealous to see their people become more holy, and they preach with that in mind.
But the effect of such preaching is often to harden people in their sins. Pulpits where this misunderstanding exists never ring with the words, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith" (2 Cor. 13:5). They do not often sound the note of Peter, "Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure" (2 Peter 1:10). If a godly life does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with God's salvation by grace, these texts are robbed of their force. After giving a long list of virtues that the Christian must eagerly pursue, Peter says, "Make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (1: 10b-11). The man who believes he has received the grace of God and yet does not pursue godliness deceives himself. He is not a characteristically carnal Christian; he is lost. His profession of faith is mere presumption.
Some preachers do not grasp this fact. I know this well, since I was once one of them. They are ready to reassure such a fellow that he need not have "a rich welcome" into God's kingdom; he may have a poor welcome, a welcome in which he will lose his rewards but gain his soul. To bolster this view they may cite Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 3:14- 15. Paul wrote there, "If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." Clearly these verses picture some men losing rewards; and making it to heaven.
Oddly enough, however, these verses do not apply to the man who professes to have received the grace of God and yet lives an ungodly life. In a marvelous bit of irony, they apply to the preacher or teacher who reassures such a man that he is a Christian!
The passage in First Corinthians is not about any and every work. It is about one thing: the quality of our teaching. Paul wrote these words of those who sought to build up the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, he said, is the foundation of the church (3:11). Those who preach and teach are adding others to this foundation. As teachers they must be careful that they are adding true converts to the church. If they are careless in this matter, their work (their converts) will be destroyed, though they themselves will be saved. [1]
Once more: those who think that the grace of God is unconnected with good works are deceived. Further than that, they may be presuming on the grace or favor of God. If their lives are characterized by ungodliness, they are lost. They have misunderstood the grace of God.
Let's come finally to the other misunderstanding of the grace of God, the misconception that leads men to fear or despair of God's grace. Men misunderstand God's favor or grace when they think of it as dependent upon good works.
"Now wait a minute," someone may object. "Haven't you just told us that grace depends on good works? Are you reversing fields?"
No, I am not reversing fields. Grace does not depend on good works in anyway. What I have insisted on is this: Good works always accompany saving grace. But that does not tell us which depends on which. Grace does not depend on good works, but good works depend on grace.
Let's put it another way: Salvation is not by works, but works are by salvation. Or again, grace does not wait for works, but works come from grace. I repeat: Men misunderstand God's favor or grace when they think of it as dependent upon good works. Good works arise from grace, not the other way around.
The view that God's favor toward us depends on our works (or lack of works) takes various forms. Here are a few: [2]
1) Christians misunderstand God's grace when they "live with a vague sense of God's disapproval." The operative words here are "a vague sense." If we know we have sinned a specific sin we must confess, and, God being our helper, determine to forsake it. But a vague sense of God's disapproval probably arises from not understanding grace.
The truth is: God does not withdraw His favor because we sin. That, of course, does not mean that He approves of sin. Not at all! It Simply means that He knew all about your sin and took it into consideration before He ever extended His grace or favor to you. To live with a sense that the Lord disapproves of you is to misunderstand grace. God receives you as He receives His Son. He receives you in Christ. This is true of every believer. To be sure, believers vary. But God's acceptance of believers does not vary; His favor rests on each of them all the time.
Someone may ask, however, "If that were true, He wouldn't punish us, would He? Doesn't punishment show that we are no longer in His favor?" If we understand the word "punishment" properly, we will see the fallacy in this argument.
God has punished all the Christian's sins in Christ. There is no punishment left for us to suffer. All has been borne by Jesus. Notice this, however: here I am using "punishment" in its primary meaning, "A penalty imposed for violating law." None of this falls on the believer; all of it fell on Christ.
But God does discipline His children. Sometimes His discipline is painful. We may also call that punishment. What we must not do is think of it as God no longer favoring us. Just the opposite is the case! '''The Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son.' Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons" (Heb. 12:6-7). See the argument? God's discipline is an evidence of God's love!
2) Christians misunderstand God's grace when they "feel sheepish bringing their needs before the Lord when they have just failed Him." Here is a common problem that I suppose none of us escapes. We need to pray for something and we have just failed the Lord badly. Better postpone that prayer!
Do our failures make it less likely that the Lord will hear our prayers? Perhaps, if we are trying to hide our failure or sin from God. In that case we may need to be disciplined by having the heavens seem as brass. Even then, however, it only seems so. The Lord is as attentive to prayer after sin and failure as He is to any other prayer. He does with that prayer what He does with every prayer offered by a believer: He answers it as seems best to Him.
Grace and the Forgiveness of Sin
Why then do we have the impulse to avoid praying after sin? This gets to the heart of the issue. We feel that a certain amount of suffering and remorse must take place to restore us to God's favor or grace. It just doesn't seem right that He simply forgives our sin! It doesn't seem right to us; it does seem right to Him.
This raises a larger question too. When does God forgive our sin? Did He forgive the sin of all His people when Christ died for that sin? Does He forgive all our sin, past, present and future, when we first come to Christ? Does He forgive our sin when we commit it? Or does forgiveness wait on our confession of sin? Which is it? This is a hard question, but I want to give you my judgment.
It seems clear to me that God forgives our sins as we commit them. Of course He forgave all our past sins when we came to Christ. That much seems beyond controversy. [3] Beyond that, however, the question becomes more difficult. Let me show you why I believe as I do, and then let's look at the difficulties connected with my position.
It seems to me clear that justification, which includes the forgiveness of sins, is a present possession of believers. It is possible to think of justification as future only, something God will do for us on the judgment day. But that does not seem to me to agree with Scripture. We will, of course, be justified at the judgment, but justification is also a present possession of Christians. Yet if we had even one sin unforgiven, we would not be justified; we would be condemned before God.
The only way to have all our sins forgiven at any given moment is for God to forgive them as we commit them. This would be true if sin consisted only of outward acts that we shortly confessed. There would still be a time lapse in which we were not justified, not forgiven. The upshot would be that we would be justified part of each day and condemned part of each day.
But the problem is more serious than that. Sin extends beyond the outward acts that are obviously sinful. It is a heart condition. It dwells especially in our motives and intentions. It is sometimes hidden from us as it propels us toward a wicked act. It may be working for days or weeks before it bears its outward fruit. The result? Given this fact, we would never be justified. We would always have sin that needed to be forgiven. Only if our sin is forgiven as we commit it can we be really just in the eyes of God.
That's my understanding. Let's look at the difficulties.
Two verses in the New testament spring to mind immediately. The first is 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." This verse seems to say as plainly as possible that forgiveness awaits our confession. Isn't that'what it teaches?
Not quite.
It teaches that those whose sins are forgiven are people who confess their sins. That is what characterizes those who are forgiven. If a man is not in the habit of confessing his sins; he is a lost man; his sins are not forgiven. The verse does not, however, tell us when his sins are forgiven - whether when he commits them, or later.
This point seems to me to be immensely important. Everyone of my sins is forgiven or I am lost. But, whatever my intention, I will never confess all my sins in this life. Yet I remain justified. The Lord does not impute my sin to me. As Paul said, quoting Psalm 32, "Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him" (Rom. 4:7-8).
Does this seem to be too good to be true? It is the teaching of God's Word. It is for every believer. It applies to you.
Someone may object, however, that the Lord Jesus has told us in the Lord's Prayer to pray that our sins will be forgiven. Doesn't that imply that God doesn't forgive us until we ask Him?
No, it doesn't.
You can see the truth of this if you compare the request for forgiveness with the other requests. When we pray for God's kingdom to come, we are praying for a future event. When we ask for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, that is, perfectly, we are again looking to the future. When we ask for our daily bread, we mean for the day or days in front of us. The prayer for forgiveness, then, may be a prayer for the pardon of our future sins. And that, I think, is what it is.
But let's listen to one further objection. Someone may say, "If it's certain that God forgives our sins when we commit them, why pray about it at all? Why ask God to do what He is certain to do anyway?" The answer is this: God delights to be asked to do things He has already made up His mind to do. The Lord's Prayer bears witness to this fact throughout. Review its requests once more. What do you find? You find that the prayer is largely about things God is sure to do. His kingdom will come, for example. It is not in doubt at all.
Why ask God to do such things? What better prayer could a Christian pray? It amounts to "Your will be done!" It is like cheering our team on to victory. If eternal wisdom has decided to do something, a wise child will say, "Go for it, Lord!" And a wise child will say that about the forgiveness of his own future sins. Knowing his sins are forgiven, he will not hesitate to bring his needs before God even when he has sinned.
Let's look back for a moment. We have seen how it is possible to misunderstand the word "grace." We may think of grace in salvation as a kind of substance or energy poured into us by God. But in this context the word itself means "God's favor."
Once we have grasped the meaning of the word, we may still have one of two misconceptions. We may think of grace, or God's favor, as unconnected with godly works, allowing us to live in sin. But those whose lives are characterized by sin are not Christians. They do not truly believe in Christ.
On the other hand, we may despair of God's grace and fear Him if we think of grace as dependent on works. That too is both false and dangerous. God gives us His grace freely. He forgives believers' sins freely. All of their sins! No amount of works can make us right with God.
The truth lies between these two extremes. Believers' sins are forgiven. There is no need for servile fear when we come into God's presence, not even if we have just sinned. The man or woman, however, who refuses to confess his or her sin has another problem. Even that person's sin is forgiven, if his lack of confession is the exception and not the rule. Otherwise he has a problem greater than a single unforgiven sin. If his life is not characterized by confession, he is not a Christian at all!
Grace means favor. Every believer has God's favor already; it is not something he somehow has to find. Yet by God's favor every Christian's life is a life of good works. They may not be remarkable works, either in the sight of the world or in the esteem of the Christian himself. That's not necessary at all!
Our Lord Jesus spoke of a cup of cold water given in His name. That doesn't sound like much, but the operative phrase is "in His name." What the Christian does He seeks to do for the glory of God and of Christ. That is what makes his works good in the sight of God.
A Christian is not a perfect man, or a man on the verge of perfection. But take his average act and you will find a godly act, an act done to please his Lord. The Christian life, the life of grace or favor from God, is a life characterized by righteousness and marred by sin. If it's not that, it's not the Christian life.
Endnotes:
Rev. Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, Ohio. He is author of several books including: God is King (1992), A Price for a People (1992), and Come Home . .. Forever (1992). He is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal, and is a conference speaker.
The first step to grace is to see they have no grace; the first degree of grace is the desire of grace. - William Fenner
It is a sure mark of grace to desire more. - Robert Murray M'Cheyne
Sovereign grace can make strangers into sons. - C.H. Spurgeon
God's greatest glory is His grace. - Donald Grey Barnhouse
The word "grace" is unquestionably the most significant single word in the Bible. - Ilion T. JonesI have sometimes wished we didn't use the word "grace." Isn't that heresy? Consider for a moment what I mean.
We desperately need the content of the word grace, of course. The word stands for an idea that we cannot live without. I have no quarrel with that. But the word "grace" creates a problem for us. The problem is this: the use to which Christians put the word "grace" is not the use the word has in daily English. Our everyday English use of "grace" suggests a human virtue or quality of attractiveness. That leads to constant misunderstanding. For most believers, I think, grace is a rather hazy idea. That will be true even for those who have learned the little acrostic: God's Riches At Christ's Expense. The acrostic tells us what grace gives us, but not what grace is.
Now someone may say, quite rightly, that we have lots of theological words of which this is true. They are used in everyday English in a somewhat different way than they are used in the Bible and in our theological systems. Why then single out the word "grace"?
The answer is this: in many of those cases there is no plain synonym that one might use for the biblical or theological idea. We don't have that problem with "grace." A clear and easy synonym for "grace" is "favor." Simply put, God's grace is God's favor. When Paul, for example, describes himself as called by God's grace in Galatians 1: 15, he means that it was by God's favor that he was called. It was a favor from God that Paul became both a Christian and an apostle.
Let's bring this closer home. If you have been saved by God's grace, then you have been saved by His favor. Salvation is yours because He favored you. The gift of salvation is one of His favors to you. This is what the Bible means when it speaks of salvation by grace. It means that you and I and all other believers are saved because God favored us over others. We have often heard that God has no favorites, but that is not true. He has millions of favorites, and the phrase "God has no favorites" would never have arisen if our English translators had given us the word "favor" where they have substituted the word "grace." It is important to add, however, that God does not practice "favoritism," a word that carries the idea of injustice with it in English usage. God is just. God gives every man and woman what that person deserves, or God treats him better than he deserves.
This article, however, is not intended to be a comment on the quality of our English translations of the Bible. I'm sure that whatever faults they may have, I could not have done as well. My point is quite different. It is this: there are many misunderstandings of the idea contained in the word "grace," and some of them can be traced to our unfamiliarity with the way the word is used in Scripture.
A Theological Misunderstanding
Let's start with a theological misunderstanding. This misconception is a bit difficult to explain, but widespread. It treats grace as a kind of substance that God pours into us. This may inspire the prayer, "Lord, give me Your grace." That prayer should mean, "Lord, give me Your favor," or perhaps, "Lord, show me Your favor." In actual practice, however, the person praying the prayer may think of himself as lacking some spiritual substance within that makes him ineffectual in his Christian life. If he just had more of this stuff called "grace," he could do a much better job.
What is missing in this understanding? The missing element is the fact that grace or favor is not primarily something that is passed over to us from God. Grace is an attitude in God Himself, an attitude of favor that reassures and strengthens the Christian. To paraphrase Romans 8:31: "If God favors us, who can be against us?"
Some theologians have traced this misconception of grace to the influence of the Latin word gratia which began by meaning "favor" but which, over time, came to convey the idea of a spiritual power that makes for right living. We can illustrate this change in the way the Roman Catholic Church has understood the Virgin Mary. The King James Version refers to her as "full of grace" (Luke 1 :28). At first this meant "highly favored" (NIV). But in the course of centuries Mary came to be looked on as a repository or storehouse of spiritual power. She had "graces" that she could distribute to others. What at first was a description of God's attitude toward Mary became a description of Mary's qualities as a mediator between God and man. Of course Protestants never adopted this view of Mary, but many have come to look upon grace, not as an attitude of God but as a spiritual substance or power which He gives.
Practical Misunderstandings
In this article, however, I am interested in what we might call practical misunderstandings of grace. I hope to discuss two:
- the misunderstanding that causes men to presume on God's favor or grace, and
- the misunderstanding that causes men to fear or to despair of God's favor or grace.
Through the years there have been men and women who have claimed to know God's saving favor and who have thought that salvation had nothing to do with good works. In the second century a religion arose that is called Gnosticism, one branch of which claimed to be Christian. Some Gnostics treated morality very lightly. They reasoned that God will destroy this mortal body we live in, and what we had done with it would prove to be a matter of indifference to Him.
Ideas of this kind were already afloat when John wrote his first Epistle. He may have had this attitude in mind when he wrote, "If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth" (1:6). People who held this view would profess to be "without sin" (1 :8). Against such people John wrote, "The man who says, 'I know Him,' but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (2:4).
Many today seem to think that grace is unconnected with good works. A man once said from my pulpit, "My religion has nothing to do with good works." At the time I took him to mean that his justification did not depend on good works. If that is what he meant he certainly was right, as I hope to show shortly. Later, however, I saw reason to think that he meant exactly what he said, though I hope I misjudged him.
The doctrine of the security of the believer is sometimes preached in a way that leaves a godly life as an option for the Christian. It is looked upon as a desirable option, to be sure, but an option nevertheless. No doubt many pastors who hold this idea do so to protect the freeness of justification. Many of them also are zealous to see their people become more holy, and they preach with that in mind.
But the effect of such preaching is often to harden people in their sins. Pulpits where this misunderstanding exists never ring with the words, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith" (2 Cor. 13:5). They do not often sound the note of Peter, "Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure" (2 Peter 1:10). If a godly life does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with God's salvation by grace, these texts are robbed of their force. After giving a long list of virtues that the Christian must eagerly pursue, Peter says, "Make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (1: 10b-11). The man who believes he has received the grace of God and yet does not pursue godliness deceives himself. He is not a characteristically carnal Christian; he is lost. His profession of faith is mere presumption.
Some preachers do not grasp this fact. I know this well, since I was once one of them. They are ready to reassure such a fellow that he need not have "a rich welcome" into God's kingdom; he may have a poor welcome, a welcome in which he will lose his rewards but gain his soul. To bolster this view they may cite Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 3:14- 15. Paul wrote there, "If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." Clearly these verses picture some men losing rewards; and making it to heaven.
Oddly enough, however, these verses do not apply to the man who professes to have received the grace of God and yet lives an ungodly life. In a marvelous bit of irony, they apply to the preacher or teacher who reassures such a man that he is a Christian!
The passage in First Corinthians is not about any and every work. It is about one thing: the quality of our teaching. Paul wrote these words of those who sought to build up the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, he said, is the foundation of the church (3:11). Those who preach and teach are adding others to this foundation. As teachers they must be careful that they are adding true converts to the church. If they are careless in this matter, their work (their converts) will be destroyed, though they themselves will be saved. [1]
Once more: those who think that the grace of God is unconnected with good works are deceived. Further than that, they may be presuming on the grace or favor of God. If their lives are characterized by ungodliness, they are lost. They have misunderstood the grace of God.
Let's come finally to the other misunderstanding of the grace of God, the misconception that leads men to fear or despair of God's grace. Men misunderstand God's favor or grace when they think of it as dependent upon good works.
"Now wait a minute," someone may object. "Haven't you just told us that grace depends on good works? Are you reversing fields?"
No, I am not reversing fields. Grace does not depend on good works in anyway. What I have insisted on is this: Good works always accompany saving grace. But that does not tell us which depends on which. Grace does not depend on good works, but good works depend on grace.
Let's put it another way: Salvation is not by works, but works are by salvation. Or again, grace does not wait for works, but works come from grace. I repeat: Men misunderstand God's favor or grace when they think of it as dependent upon good works. Good works arise from grace, not the other way around.
The view that God's favor toward us depends on our works (or lack of works) takes various forms. Here are a few: [2]
1) Christians misunderstand God's grace when they "live with a vague sense of God's disapproval." The operative words here are "a vague sense." If we know we have sinned a specific sin we must confess, and, God being our helper, determine to forsake it. But a vague sense of God's disapproval probably arises from not understanding grace.
The truth is: God does not withdraw His favor because we sin. That, of course, does not mean that He approves of sin. Not at all! It Simply means that He knew all about your sin and took it into consideration before He ever extended His grace or favor to you. To live with a sense that the Lord disapproves of you is to misunderstand grace. God receives you as He receives His Son. He receives you in Christ. This is true of every believer. To be sure, believers vary. But God's acceptance of believers does not vary; His favor rests on each of them all the time.
Someone may ask, however, "If that were true, He wouldn't punish us, would He? Doesn't punishment show that we are no longer in His favor?" If we understand the word "punishment" properly, we will see the fallacy in this argument.
God has punished all the Christian's sins in Christ. There is no punishment left for us to suffer. All has been borne by Jesus. Notice this, however: here I am using "punishment" in its primary meaning, "A penalty imposed for violating law." None of this falls on the believer; all of it fell on Christ.
But God does discipline His children. Sometimes His discipline is painful. We may also call that punishment. What we must not do is think of it as God no longer favoring us. Just the opposite is the case! '''The Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son.' Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons" (Heb. 12:6-7). See the argument? God's discipline is an evidence of God's love!
2) Christians misunderstand God's grace when they "feel sheepish bringing their needs before the Lord when they have just failed Him." Here is a common problem that I suppose none of us escapes. We need to pray for something and we have just failed the Lord badly. Better postpone that prayer!
Do our failures make it less likely that the Lord will hear our prayers? Perhaps, if we are trying to hide our failure or sin from God. In that case we may need to be disciplined by having the heavens seem as brass. Even then, however, it only seems so. The Lord is as attentive to prayer after sin and failure as He is to any other prayer. He does with that prayer what He does with every prayer offered by a believer: He answers it as seems best to Him.
Grace and the Forgiveness of Sin
Why then do we have the impulse to avoid praying after sin? This gets to the heart of the issue. We feel that a certain amount of suffering and remorse must take place to restore us to God's favor or grace. It just doesn't seem right that He simply forgives our sin! It doesn't seem right to us; it does seem right to Him.
This raises a larger question too. When does God forgive our sin? Did He forgive the sin of all His people when Christ died for that sin? Does He forgive all our sin, past, present and future, when we first come to Christ? Does He forgive our sin when we commit it? Or does forgiveness wait on our confession of sin? Which is it? This is a hard question, but I want to give you my judgment.
It seems clear to me that God forgives our sins as we commit them. Of course He forgave all our past sins when we came to Christ. That much seems beyond controversy. [3] Beyond that, however, the question becomes more difficult. Let me show you why I believe as I do, and then let's look at the difficulties connected with my position.
It seems to me clear that justification, which includes the forgiveness of sins, is a present possession of believers. It is possible to think of justification as future only, something God will do for us on the judgment day. But that does not seem to me to agree with Scripture. We will, of course, be justified at the judgment, but justification is also a present possession of Christians. Yet if we had even one sin unforgiven, we would not be justified; we would be condemned before God.
The only way to have all our sins forgiven at any given moment is for God to forgive them as we commit them. This would be true if sin consisted only of outward acts that we shortly confessed. There would still be a time lapse in which we were not justified, not forgiven. The upshot would be that we would be justified part of each day and condemned part of each day.
But the problem is more serious than that. Sin extends beyond the outward acts that are obviously sinful. It is a heart condition. It dwells especially in our motives and intentions. It is sometimes hidden from us as it propels us toward a wicked act. It may be working for days or weeks before it bears its outward fruit. The result? Given this fact, we would never be justified. We would always have sin that needed to be forgiven. Only if our sin is forgiven as we commit it can we be really just in the eyes of God.
That's my understanding. Let's look at the difficulties.
Two verses in the New testament spring to mind immediately. The first is 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." This verse seems to say as plainly as possible that forgiveness awaits our confession. Isn't that'what it teaches?
Not quite.
It teaches that those whose sins are forgiven are people who confess their sins. That is what characterizes those who are forgiven. If a man is not in the habit of confessing his sins; he is a lost man; his sins are not forgiven. The verse does not, however, tell us when his sins are forgiven - whether when he commits them, or later.
This point seems to me to be immensely important. Everyone of my sins is forgiven or I am lost. But, whatever my intention, I will never confess all my sins in this life. Yet I remain justified. The Lord does not impute my sin to me. As Paul said, quoting Psalm 32, "Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him" (Rom. 4:7-8).
Does this seem to be too good to be true? It is the teaching of God's Word. It is for every believer. It applies to you.
Someone may object, however, that the Lord Jesus has told us in the Lord's Prayer to pray that our sins will be forgiven. Doesn't that imply that God doesn't forgive us until we ask Him?
No, it doesn't.
You can see the truth of this if you compare the request for forgiveness with the other requests. When we pray for God's kingdom to come, we are praying for a future event. When we ask for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, that is, perfectly, we are again looking to the future. When we ask for our daily bread, we mean for the day or days in front of us. The prayer for forgiveness, then, may be a prayer for the pardon of our future sins. And that, I think, is what it is.
But let's listen to one further objection. Someone may say, "If it's certain that God forgives our sins when we commit them, why pray about it at all? Why ask God to do what He is certain to do anyway?" The answer is this: God delights to be asked to do things He has already made up His mind to do. The Lord's Prayer bears witness to this fact throughout. Review its requests once more. What do you find? You find that the prayer is largely about things God is sure to do. His kingdom will come, for example. It is not in doubt at all.
Why ask God to do such things? What better prayer could a Christian pray? It amounts to "Your will be done!" It is like cheering our team on to victory. If eternal wisdom has decided to do something, a wise child will say, "Go for it, Lord!" And a wise child will say that about the forgiveness of his own future sins. Knowing his sins are forgiven, he will not hesitate to bring his needs before God even when he has sinned.
Let's look back for a moment. We have seen how it is possible to misunderstand the word "grace." We may think of grace in salvation as a kind of substance or energy poured into us by God. But in this context the word itself means "God's favor."
Once we have grasped the meaning of the word, we may still have one of two misconceptions. We may think of grace, or God's favor, as unconnected with godly works, allowing us to live in sin. But those whose lives are characterized by sin are not Christians. They do not truly believe in Christ.
On the other hand, we may despair of God's grace and fear Him if we think of grace as dependent on works. That too is both false and dangerous. God gives us His grace freely. He forgives believers' sins freely. All of their sins! No amount of works can make us right with God.
The truth lies between these two extremes. Believers' sins are forgiven. There is no need for servile fear when we come into God's presence, not even if we have just sinned. The man or woman, however, who refuses to confess his or her sin has another problem. Even that person's sin is forgiven, if his lack of confession is the exception and not the rule. Otherwise he has a problem greater than a single unforgiven sin. If his life is not characterized by confession, he is not a Christian at all!
Grace means favor. Every believer has God's favor already; it is not something he somehow has to find. Yet by God's favor every Christian's life is a life of good works. They may not be remarkable works, either in the sight of the world or in the esteem of the Christian himself. That's not necessary at all!
Our Lord Jesus spoke of a cup of cold water given in His name. That doesn't sound like much, but the operative phrase is "in His name." What the Christian does He seeks to do for the glory of God and of Christ. That is what makes his works good in the sight of God.
A Christian is not a perfect man, or a man on the verge of perfection. But take his average act and you will find a godly act, an act done to please his Lord. The Christian life, the life of grace or favor from God, is a life characterized by righteousness and marred by sin. If it's not that, it's not the Christian life.
Endnotes:
- This passage may be understood in a slightly different way that gives the same result. The foundation may be taken as the teaching concerning Christ, rather than as Christ Himself. In that case the preacher or teacher will be adding further truths to the foundation, or what appear to him to be truths. Then, to the extent that what he has taught is false, to that extent his work will be burned up, though he will be saved. Either understanding is possible. Both preserve the clear intent of Paul here to describe the work of teaching that he and Apollos engaged in, in raising "God's building" (3:9). What is plain in either case is that Paul is not endorsing the idea that men may lead ungodly lives and still be saved.
- I have an unidentified clipping from Sound of Grace, edited by John Reisinger, to thank for the way this and the following misunderstanding are worded.
- But nothing is beyond controversy. History shows that some few theologians have held to what is called "eternal justification," the view that God never held His elect guilty, even before He created them.
Rev. Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, Ohio. He is author of several books including: God is King (1992), A Price for a People (1992), and Come Home . .. Forever (1992). He is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal, and is a conference speaker.
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