Friday, 2 October 2015
Thursday, 1 October 2015
Coram Deo (September 2015)
Coram Deo: As creatures, our view of others is limited. We can only evaluate outward appearances. Thus, when someone seems to fall away, all we can surmise is that the faith we thought we saw was likely an illusion. Yet even here we must not assume that a fall from grace is final. There is always the chance for repentance and restoration up until the point of death. Thus, we should pray for people who seem to have fallen away, asking God to grant them repentant hearts.
At times, Jesus allows His bride’s imperfections to be revealed publicly in a way that is best described as scandal. How should we respond in the midst of church scandal? —Elliott Grudem in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Do you have other “irons” in your life who can help in sharpening you? We are blessed indeed if we have at least one friend upon whom we can count for loving, constructive criticism. If we do not have any such people in our lives, we should be looking for them. We should also be asking the Lord to help develop us into people who can offer such criticism to others and to enable us to persist in love toward our friends and others.
A good study Bible can encourage people in our congregations to discover new authors and ideas that can help them to have a deeper understanding of the gospel and its implications. A study Bible can also be the first step toward cherishing sound theology. —Victor Cruz in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: The Lord detests pride because it indicates that we do not have an accurate understanding of just who we are in relation to Him and to the rest of creation. When we exalt ourselves at the expense of another, we sin greatly against our neighbor. Placing confidence wholly in ourselves and what we can do is the precise opposite of the humility and fear of the humility and fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7).
Coram Deo: Jesus tells us that all sin begins within (Matt. 15:10–20). The heart that devises wicked plans and the eagerness to run swiftly to evil reflect inward corruption that the Lord hates just as much—if not more—than sinister actions. Sin is not merely an outward phenomenon; rather, it is something deeply rooted in us. Thus, we should be praying that the Lord would cleanse us of this inward corruption, and we should ask Him for the strength to fight it.
Coram Deo: God’s omniscience is a scary attribute for those who do not also know His grace. All too often, our sin goes unnoticed by others, but the Lord is always aware of it. Thankfully, however, if we are covered with the blood of Christ, we know that there is forgiveness even for the transgressions we commit in secret. We need only to confess and forsake our sins. Let us not try to hide sins from God, and let us never fail to repent when it is necessary to do so.
There is distaste in our day, even in the church, for doctrine. People say, “I can live the Christian life without being concerned about doctrine.” Well, if you are not concerned about doctrine, then the best thing you can do with your Bible is throw it away, because that is what the Bible is—it is sixty-six divinely revealed books of doctrine. —R.C. Sproul in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: We cannot isolate ourselves fully from others. Our decisions invariably affect other people, and their decisions affect us. The church as a whole may go through trials and tribulations, and when this happens, even the most faithful servants of God will suffer. In the midst of such pain, the faithful will continue to hold fast to the promises of the Lord, believing that He will bring restoration. In so doing, they will be assured of their salvation and will grow in their love for Christ.
Coram Deo: Scripture frequently compares God to a rock, and with good reason. Rocks are strong and stable, and so is our Lord. But that is where the similarity ends. For even rocks are subject to the changes wrought by erosion and other natural phenomena. But our Maker cannot change or be changed. He is the only security in which we can trust without reservation. He alone is fully dependable. Truly, we are blessed to know that God never changes.
Without a good working knowledge of theology, we will never understand how the gospel works, nor what the causes of spiritual sicknesses are, nor what gospel remedies to apply. —Sinclair Ferguson in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Jesus, who is God Himself, tells us that He is the “truth” (John 14:6), so it is clear why our Creator hates the lying tongue. To tell untruths is to manifest opposition to the One who is truth Himself and to show no regard for the sanctity of His character. Being pure and holy, God is ever true in His speech, and when we lie, we show utter disdain for His truthful character. Moreover, lying also brings great harm to others. A false witness can destroy the reputation and livelihood of another person made in God’s image, and our Lord takes very seriously threats to His image bearers.
Coram Deo: Wise people put up safeguards in their thoughts and actions to help keep them from being ensnared by a root of bitterness. Lest our minds lead us astray, it is wise to think on what is true, good, and beautiful so that our thoughts are not filled with curses and other unclean things (Phil. 4:8). At the same time, we should endeavor not to listen to or repeat uncertainties that we hear about others or otherwise gossip about our neighbors.
The fundamental issue is this: is the basis by which I am justified a righteousness that is my own? Or is it a righteousness that is, as Luther said, “an alien righteousness,” a righteousness that is extra nos, apart from us — the righteousness of another, namely, the righteousness of Christ? —R.C. Sproul in Tabletalk Magazine
Each week we are provided with an opportunity to gather together as a fellowship, a family, with Jesus as our Elder Brother. Our Father calls us together for worship—to sing, to pray, to read Scripture and hear it expounded, and to baptize and share a meal together—signs and seals of all the blessings and privileges of the gospel and of the covenant of grace that lies behind it. Sundays are fitness enhancing, ensuring the health of our souls. It is a time of spiritual nourishment, to be used wisely and with discipline—profiting from the Lord’s Day does require effort and resolve on our part, including preparation and expectation. Here, as elsewhere in the Christian life, the saying is true that “you do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). —Derek W.H. Thomas in this month's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Humanly speaking, there seems to be no hope for the self-deluded fool. Given the omnipotent grace of Christ, however, the gospel can break through and reach the hearts of even those who are the most hardened in their folly. God often chooses to redeem those who are the most self-deluded, so we should not believe that He cannot save the fools we know. Instead, we should pray for them. Also, let us pray for ourselves that we would not repeat our folly.
Coram Deo: Scripture repeatedly encourages us to take a long-term perspective. Divine wisdom will on many occasions bring success in this world; however, there is no guarantee that following the Lord will make life easy on this side of glory. Sometimes we will suffer greatly for doing what God says. When this happens, we are to remember what the Lord actually promises, namely, that serving Him brings eternal blessing (Matt. 19:29).
When the gospel is at stake, everything is at stake. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: We must be reminded that the good news of Christ’s work is as necessary for us as we live the Christian life as it was when we were converted. Constant reflection on our Savior’s cross is the fuel that sustains our Spirit-animated gratitude, which is necessary if we will remember our need for God to sanctify us. As we resolve to serve the Lord, may we ever remember what Christ has done that we may be empowered by thankfulness to stand firm against sin.
At times, Jesus allows His bride’s imperfections to be revealed publicly in a way that is best described as scandal. How should we respond in the midst of church scandal? —Elliott Grudem in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Do you have other “irons” in your life who can help in sharpening you? We are blessed indeed if we have at least one friend upon whom we can count for loving, constructive criticism. If we do not have any such people in our lives, we should be looking for them. We should also be asking the Lord to help develop us into people who can offer such criticism to others and to enable us to persist in love toward our friends and others.
A good study Bible can encourage people in our congregations to discover new authors and ideas that can help them to have a deeper understanding of the gospel and its implications. A study Bible can also be the first step toward cherishing sound theology. —Victor Cruz in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: The Lord detests pride because it indicates that we do not have an accurate understanding of just who we are in relation to Him and to the rest of creation. When we exalt ourselves at the expense of another, we sin greatly against our neighbor. Placing confidence wholly in ourselves and what we can do is the precise opposite of the humility and fear of the humility and fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7).
Coram Deo: Jesus tells us that all sin begins within (Matt. 15:10–20). The heart that devises wicked plans and the eagerness to run swiftly to evil reflect inward corruption that the Lord hates just as much—if not more—than sinister actions. Sin is not merely an outward phenomenon; rather, it is something deeply rooted in us. Thus, we should be praying that the Lord would cleanse us of this inward corruption, and we should ask Him for the strength to fight it.
Coram Deo: God’s omniscience is a scary attribute for those who do not also know His grace. All too often, our sin goes unnoticed by others, but the Lord is always aware of it. Thankfully, however, if we are covered with the blood of Christ, we know that there is forgiveness even for the transgressions we commit in secret. We need only to confess and forsake our sins. Let us not try to hide sins from God, and let us never fail to repent when it is necessary to do so.
There is distaste in our day, even in the church, for doctrine. People say, “I can live the Christian life without being concerned about doctrine.” Well, if you are not concerned about doctrine, then the best thing you can do with your Bible is throw it away, because that is what the Bible is—it is sixty-six divinely revealed books of doctrine. —R.C. Sproul in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: We cannot isolate ourselves fully from others. Our decisions invariably affect other people, and their decisions affect us. The church as a whole may go through trials and tribulations, and when this happens, even the most faithful servants of God will suffer. In the midst of such pain, the faithful will continue to hold fast to the promises of the Lord, believing that He will bring restoration. In so doing, they will be assured of their salvation and will grow in their love for Christ.
Coram Deo: Scripture frequently compares God to a rock, and with good reason. Rocks are strong and stable, and so is our Lord. But that is where the similarity ends. For even rocks are subject to the changes wrought by erosion and other natural phenomena. But our Maker cannot change or be changed. He is the only security in which we can trust without reservation. He alone is fully dependable. Truly, we are blessed to know that God never changes.
Without a good working knowledge of theology, we will never understand how the gospel works, nor what the causes of spiritual sicknesses are, nor what gospel remedies to apply. —Sinclair Ferguson in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Jesus, who is God Himself, tells us that He is the “truth” (John 14:6), so it is clear why our Creator hates the lying tongue. To tell untruths is to manifest opposition to the One who is truth Himself and to show no regard for the sanctity of His character. Being pure and holy, God is ever true in His speech, and when we lie, we show utter disdain for His truthful character. Moreover, lying also brings great harm to others. A false witness can destroy the reputation and livelihood of another person made in God’s image, and our Lord takes very seriously threats to His image bearers.
Coram Deo: Wise people put up safeguards in their thoughts and actions to help keep them from being ensnared by a root of bitterness. Lest our minds lead us astray, it is wise to think on what is true, good, and beautiful so that our thoughts are not filled with curses and other unclean things (Phil. 4:8). At the same time, we should endeavor not to listen to or repeat uncertainties that we hear about others or otherwise gossip about our neighbors.
The fundamental issue is this: is the basis by which I am justified a righteousness that is my own? Or is it a righteousness that is, as Luther said, “an alien righteousness,” a righteousness that is extra nos, apart from us — the righteousness of another, namely, the righteousness of Christ? —R.C. Sproul in Tabletalk Magazine
Each week we are provided with an opportunity to gather together as a fellowship, a family, with Jesus as our Elder Brother. Our Father calls us together for worship—to sing, to pray, to read Scripture and hear it expounded, and to baptize and share a meal together—signs and seals of all the blessings and privileges of the gospel and of the covenant of grace that lies behind it. Sundays are fitness enhancing, ensuring the health of our souls. It is a time of spiritual nourishment, to be used wisely and with discipline—profiting from the Lord’s Day does require effort and resolve on our part, including preparation and expectation. Here, as elsewhere in the Christian life, the saying is true that “you do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). —Derek W.H. Thomas in this month's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Humanly speaking, there seems to be no hope for the self-deluded fool. Given the omnipotent grace of Christ, however, the gospel can break through and reach the hearts of even those who are the most hardened in their folly. God often chooses to redeem those who are the most self-deluded, so we should not believe that He cannot save the fools we know. Instead, we should pray for them. Also, let us pray for ourselves that we would not repeat our folly.
Coram Deo: Scripture repeatedly encourages us to take a long-term perspective. Divine wisdom will on many occasions bring success in this world; however, there is no guarantee that following the Lord will make life easy on this side of glory. Sometimes we will suffer greatly for doing what God says. When this happens, we are to remember what the Lord actually promises, namely, that serving Him brings eternal blessing (Matt. 19:29).
When the gospel is at stake, everything is at stake. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: We must be reminded that the good news of Christ’s work is as necessary for us as we live the Christian life as it was when we were converted. Constant reflection on our Savior’s cross is the fuel that sustains our Spirit-animated gratitude, which is necessary if we will remember our need for God to sanctify us. As we resolve to serve the Lord, may we ever remember what Christ has done that we may be empowered by thankfulness to stand firm against sin.
How Can a Just God Forgive a Sinful Man?
by John W. Robbins
On what basis does God accept a man? This is the most fundamental of all questions concerning salvation. Several answers have been given:
This question demands a clear answer. And in order to give such an answer, we must be clear in our own minds about this important matter. This was the great issue of the Reformation. Some feel that times have changed and therefore old questions are irrelevant. But we believe the question is as relevant today as it was in the days of Paul or Luther. It is the most fundamental question that plagues the human heart. It is at the root of all problems in society.
The correct answer is Number 1: The only basis upon which any person is accepted by God is a life of obedience to the Law.
The Answer of Legalism
Most people choose Number 2 rather than Number 1 because they do not want to appear to be legalists. Most people choose faith in the Gospel of Christ because they think it is against legalism. But answer Number 2 is actually the legalistic answer.
What is the basis, foundation, or ground on which a man is acceptable to God? None of the Reformers and no Bible scholar worthy of the Reformation tradition has ever said that faith is the basis or ground of acceptance with God. Of all attributes that God implants in the human heart, faith stands right at the top. It is the gift of God and the root of all virtues. It is the principal work of the Holy Spirit. But irrespective of the princely nature of faith, it never is the basis, foundation, or ground of salvation. One of the perils of the modern religious scene is the idea that it is because of my faith, because I am born again, or because I trust in Jesus that God accepts me.
To say that faith is the basis of acceptance with God is legalistic, because it offers to God something that is within me as the basis of acceptance with God. (That God gives faith makes no difference to the principle. Faith is still a quality within me.) If you take the time to look at the decrees of the Council of Trent on justification, you will see that Number 2 is the classic Roman Catholic answer. The Reformers and the Bible stood against that position. In this century of theological decline, however, the Biblical and Reformation doctrine was eclipsed by the Arminian and Roman doctrines, which hold that faith is the basis of our acceptance with God–that faith is a work that we do, a quality that we have, that makes us acceptable to a holy God.
The Answer of Faith
Now let us look at Romans 2: 12, 13:
The trouble with so much evangelism today is that the Gospel is presented as a smart way of skirting the Law. It has come to mean a smart trick whereby we can jump over the claims of the Law straight into the presence of God. We think that the Gospel means that God is less demanding than he used to be.
God demands a life of perfect obedience to his Law. No lame, imperfect, halfway, partial obedience will satisfy his holiness: "the doers of the Law shall be justified." James says that if we offend in only one point, we are lawbreakers. This fundamental basis of Biblical Christianity has been overlooked in the twentieth century. There is little true preaching of the Law or the Gospel today. We have neglected to preach the holiness and majesty of God. God is presented as an easygoing benevolence who frantically runs around Heaven seeking how he may please insatiably worldly people. No wonder we’re in such a religious quagmire. We need the Law. We need to know the holy requirement of God. We need to know the standard of God. We need to preach the standard of God in such a way that people will cry out, "How then can I be saved?"
When Paul contrasts the way of faith and the way of works in Romans and Galatians, he is not contrasting faith and works as such, but faith and our weak, puny, defective works. We must not get the idea that faith is against the Law. In Romans 3:31 Paul argues that the way of faith is not against the Law. Faith establishes the Law. Faith is not the negation of the Law of God. Faith honors the Law. Faith acknowledges that it is only on the basis of answer Number 1–a life of complete obedience to the Law–that God will ever accept a man.
Man’s Predicament
In the early chapters of Romans Paul shows the perilous predicament of man: Neither Gentile nor Jew is able to meet the holy standard of God that is demanded in the Law of God. It is to rectify this situation that Paul talks-as he does in Romans 3:21-26-about Jesus Christ and the righteousness of God. But we often jump into Romans 3:21-26 without giving due attention to the force of the preceding argument. Let us remember that in Romans 1:13 to 3:20 Paul seeks to hammer home with unsurpassed clarity and inspired force the message that the whole human race is in a terrible predicament because man has not been able to give God what is God’s due–and that is nothing less than perfect conformity to God’s Law. The Christian Gospel honors the Law of God. Faith honors the Law of God. Since faith always depends on and takes its value from its object, faith will always answer: "The only basis by which a man is accepted by God is a life of complete obedience to the Law."
The Righteousness of God
"But now the righteousness of God. . . ." God intervenes into our terrible predicament. It was this "righteousness of God" around which and out of which the Reformation exploded. What is meant by the "righteousness of God"? The righteousness of God is that which is measured by the character of God himself. It is that which is commensurate with the holiness of God. It has God as its measure. It is his holy, spotless, divine character. This righteousness of God is the demand of God. His justice demands it of every man, woman, and child. This is what he has always demanded, and this is what he will always demand of us, because he could never demand anything less than his own perfect being.
This is the matter over which Martin Luther wrestled. He almost despaired when he saw this aspect of "the righteousness of God." He struggled with all his power and ascetic principles to give to God what God required. Yet his conscience gave him no rest. "Have I done enough? Have I done it well enough? How can I be sure?" It is because we today are not wrestling with these same convictions that the Gospel is virtually unknown. The Gospel only makes sense against the backdrop of God’s radical and uncompromising demand for complete and total righteousness. When men and women understand that a life of perfect conformity to the Law is the only basis of acceptance with God, and when they are distressed as to how they can meet that demand, then, and only then, will the Gospel make any sense.
What is so wrong with much of our religiosity today is that we are not asking theological questions. We rather want to know, "How can God please me? How can he raise my self-esteem? How can God make me happy and successful?" But the fundamental question of the Bible and the fundamental question that gave birth to the Reformation was, "How can I please God?" Only when this question is an urgent necessity will the righteousness of God make any sense. The righteousness of God is that which God himself provides. When Luther discovered this, the Reformation was born. That is the good news. That is the Gospel. The righteousness of Jesus Christ is both the demand of God and God’s provision for his people. If you want to see what God demands of you and me, look at the perfect life of Jesus Christ. He was truly man as man was meant to be. Jesus is the righteousness of God in that he is the provision of God. When he was born into this world, it was a birth such as had not been since Adam fell. He came to Earth to live a life that no one had lived since Adam fell. If you look at the whole stream of human history from the Fall to the end of the world, you will see only thirty-three years that God accepts.
Jesus came to give the perfect sacrifice, the substitutionary ransom for the failure of men and women to live righteously before God. He rose from the tomb and ascended to the right hand of God, so that right now he is in God’s presence as a perfect Man on behalf of all those who trust him. Jesus came and lived a life of perfect obedience to the Law of God. His life matched the holiness of God at every point. What the holiness of God demanded, Jesus provided. Have you ever read Concerning the Incarnation of the Word of God, by Athanasius, or Cur Deus Homo? (Why Did God Become Man?) by Anselm? We ought to read these classics instead of the pious pap that dominates the shelves of our religious bookstores. These men grappled with the question of the Incarnation. God the Son had to become and did become man in order to provide for us what God the Father’s holy self-consistency demanded.
The Action of Faith
Jesus provided the righteousness that God requires, but we are still obligated to agree with God in order to be justified. Christ’s obedience to the law will not help you unless you agree to the transaction. How does that come about? It comes about through (not because of) faith. Faith is assent to the solution that God has provided in Christ Jesus.
When we come before God in repentance, we say, "Lord, I have not kept your holy law. I have not done what your holiness requires. You have done it for me in Jesus Christ. Mine are Jesus’ birth, his sinless life, his death, resurrection and ascension." That is the language of faith. Faith accepts the utter sinfulness of self and the utter righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. The righteousness of God, therefore, is my righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. Sometimes charismatics ask, "Brother, have you made the exciting discovery of the Spirit-filled life?" The tragedy is that, when thus confronted, many Christians feel spiritually nude and embarrassed. The only answer of a man or woman of faith is, "Yes, what a life! I was born perfectly, I have lived commensurately with the holiness of God himself in my Substitute, Jesus Christ." When we boast about that Spirit-filled life of Christ (which is ours by faith alone), it makes every other so-called Spirit-filled life look insignificant and sinful by comparison. We have not outbragged the charismatics, who boast of their own lives, by boasting about the life of Christ.
The righteousness of God, which is mine, through faith, is in Jesus Christ. It not a quality in my heart. This is the emphasis of Romans 3:21-26–"in Christ Jesus." This righteousness is found alone in Jesus at God’s right hand. Paul tells the Colossians:
Conclusion
A life of obedience to the law–that which God demands–has been performed by the doing and the dying of Jesus Christ–his sinless life and his obedient death. I am able to present it to God by faith. This is not presenting the righteousness that I have within, but it is presenting the righteousness that is in Jesus Christ. It is, as Luther said, the alien righteousness of Christ. It is reserved in Heaven as a great treasure for people who live among thieves. Heaven is a safe place for it to be. Thus, God accepts us only on the basis of a perfect righteousness. He saves us justly. This means that our salvation is grounded on the justice of God. That is good news. We sometimes wonder if the mercy of God will run out. The pastor might tell us that God is merciful. Yet we may say, "But he doesn’t know my heart. Is God that merciful?" But have you thought it possible that God would cease to be just? No! That is why we think his mercy may run out–because we know how just he is.
Here is the glorious message of Romans 3:25, 26, which is not taught today: The Gospel is a declaration of God’s justice and his mercy. God has saved us in a way that affirms that he is just. He has not skirted the Law. He has not been inconsistent. He has not repealed the Law. Before God could reject a man who trusts in Jesus Christ, he would first have to become unjust. "To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). So our security is grounded firmly in God’s justice.
God has never changed his mind. He has always required perfect obedience to his law. And when he looked out at an utterly desperate world, he came himself–God the Son in a donkey’s feedbox; God the Son allowing the Palestinian dust to sift through his toes as he fulfilled his own Law on our behalf. Faith acknowledges the Law because Jesus acknowledged the Law. Faith always chooses the perfect, law-conforming life of Jesus as the only basis for acceptance with God.
On what basis does God accept a man? This is the most fundamental of all questions concerning salvation. Several answers have been given:
- A life of complete obedience to the Law
- Faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ
- Some other way
This question demands a clear answer. And in order to give such an answer, we must be clear in our own minds about this important matter. This was the great issue of the Reformation. Some feel that times have changed and therefore old questions are irrelevant. But we believe the question is as relevant today as it was in the days of Paul or Luther. It is the most fundamental question that plagues the human heart. It is at the root of all problems in society.
The correct answer is Number 1: The only basis upon which any person is accepted by God is a life of obedience to the Law.
The Answer of Legalism
Most people choose Number 2 rather than Number 1 because they do not want to appear to be legalists. Most people choose faith in the Gospel of Christ because they think it is against legalism. But answer Number 2 is actually the legalistic answer.
What is the basis, foundation, or ground on which a man is acceptable to God? None of the Reformers and no Bible scholar worthy of the Reformation tradition has ever said that faith is the basis or ground of acceptance with God. Of all attributes that God implants in the human heart, faith stands right at the top. It is the gift of God and the root of all virtues. It is the principal work of the Holy Spirit. But irrespective of the princely nature of faith, it never is the basis, foundation, or ground of salvation. One of the perils of the modern religious scene is the idea that it is because of my faith, because I am born again, or because I trust in Jesus that God accepts me.
To say that faith is the basis of acceptance with God is legalistic, because it offers to God something that is within me as the basis of acceptance with God. (That God gives faith makes no difference to the principle. Faith is still a quality within me.) If you take the time to look at the decrees of the Council of Trent on justification, you will see that Number 2 is the classic Roman Catholic answer. The Reformers and the Bible stood against that position. In this century of theological decline, however, the Biblical and Reformation doctrine was eclipsed by the Arminian and Roman doctrines, which hold that faith is the basis of our acceptance with God–that faith is a work that we do, a quality that we have, that makes us acceptable to a holy God.
The Answer of Faith
Now let us look at Romans 2: 12, 13:
For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.The Bible is unequivocal. None but the doers of the Law is accepted by God. That is an eternal principle. God will not turn from it. He has never changed his mind. A life of perfect obedience–that is to say, a life of righteousness–is the only possible basis of acceptance with the holy and righteous God.
The trouble with so much evangelism today is that the Gospel is presented as a smart way of skirting the Law. It has come to mean a smart trick whereby we can jump over the claims of the Law straight into the presence of God. We think that the Gospel means that God is less demanding than he used to be.
God demands a life of perfect obedience to his Law. No lame, imperfect, halfway, partial obedience will satisfy his holiness: "the doers of the Law shall be justified." James says that if we offend in only one point, we are lawbreakers. This fundamental basis of Biblical Christianity has been overlooked in the twentieth century. There is little true preaching of the Law or the Gospel today. We have neglected to preach the holiness and majesty of God. God is presented as an easygoing benevolence who frantically runs around Heaven seeking how he may please insatiably worldly people. No wonder we’re in such a religious quagmire. We need the Law. We need to know the holy requirement of God. We need to know the standard of God. We need to preach the standard of God in such a way that people will cry out, "How then can I be saved?"
When Paul contrasts the way of faith and the way of works in Romans and Galatians, he is not contrasting faith and works as such, but faith and our weak, puny, defective works. We must not get the idea that faith is against the Law. In Romans 3:31 Paul argues that the way of faith is not against the Law. Faith establishes the Law. Faith is not the negation of the Law of God. Faith honors the Law. Faith acknowledges that it is only on the basis of answer Number 1–a life of complete obedience to the Law–that God will ever accept a man.
Man’s Predicament
In the early chapters of Romans Paul shows the perilous predicament of man: Neither Gentile nor Jew is able to meet the holy standard of God that is demanded in the Law of God. It is to rectify this situation that Paul talks-as he does in Romans 3:21-26-about Jesus Christ and the righteousness of God. But we often jump into Romans 3:21-26 without giving due attention to the force of the preceding argument. Let us remember that in Romans 1:13 to 3:20 Paul seeks to hammer home with unsurpassed clarity and inspired force the message that the whole human race is in a terrible predicament because man has not been able to give God what is God’s due–and that is nothing less than perfect conformity to God’s Law. The Christian Gospel honors the Law of God. Faith honors the Law of God. Since faith always depends on and takes its value from its object, faith will always answer: "The only basis by which a man is accepted by God is a life of complete obedience to the Law."
The Righteousness of God
"But now the righteousness of God. . . ." God intervenes into our terrible predicament. It was this "righteousness of God" around which and out of which the Reformation exploded. What is meant by the "righteousness of God"? The righteousness of God is that which is measured by the character of God himself. It is that which is commensurate with the holiness of God. It has God as its measure. It is his holy, spotless, divine character. This righteousness of God is the demand of God. His justice demands it of every man, woman, and child. This is what he has always demanded, and this is what he will always demand of us, because he could never demand anything less than his own perfect being.
This is the matter over which Martin Luther wrestled. He almost despaired when he saw this aspect of "the righteousness of God." He struggled with all his power and ascetic principles to give to God what God required. Yet his conscience gave him no rest. "Have I done enough? Have I done it well enough? How can I be sure?" It is because we today are not wrestling with these same convictions that the Gospel is virtually unknown. The Gospel only makes sense against the backdrop of God’s radical and uncompromising demand for complete and total righteousness. When men and women understand that a life of perfect conformity to the Law is the only basis of acceptance with God, and when they are distressed as to how they can meet that demand, then, and only then, will the Gospel make any sense.
What is so wrong with much of our religiosity today is that we are not asking theological questions. We rather want to know, "How can God please me? How can he raise my self-esteem? How can God make me happy and successful?" But the fundamental question of the Bible and the fundamental question that gave birth to the Reformation was, "How can I please God?" Only when this question is an urgent necessity will the righteousness of God make any sense. The righteousness of God is that which God himself provides. When Luther discovered this, the Reformation was born. That is the good news. That is the Gospel. The righteousness of Jesus Christ is both the demand of God and God’s provision for his people. If you want to see what God demands of you and me, look at the perfect life of Jesus Christ. He was truly man as man was meant to be. Jesus is the righteousness of God in that he is the provision of God. When he was born into this world, it was a birth such as had not been since Adam fell. He came to Earth to live a life that no one had lived since Adam fell. If you look at the whole stream of human history from the Fall to the end of the world, you will see only thirty-three years that God accepts.
Jesus came to give the perfect sacrifice, the substitutionary ransom for the failure of men and women to live righteously before God. He rose from the tomb and ascended to the right hand of God, so that right now he is in God’s presence as a perfect Man on behalf of all those who trust him. Jesus came and lived a life of perfect obedience to the Law of God. His life matched the holiness of God at every point. What the holiness of God demanded, Jesus provided. Have you ever read Concerning the Incarnation of the Word of God, by Athanasius, or Cur Deus Homo? (Why Did God Become Man?) by Anselm? We ought to read these classics instead of the pious pap that dominates the shelves of our religious bookstores. These men grappled with the question of the Incarnation. God the Son had to become and did become man in order to provide for us what God the Father’s holy self-consistency demanded.
The Action of Faith
Jesus provided the righteousness that God requires, but we are still obligated to agree with God in order to be justified. Christ’s obedience to the law will not help you unless you agree to the transaction. How does that come about? It comes about through (not because of) faith. Faith is assent to the solution that God has provided in Christ Jesus.
When we come before God in repentance, we say, "Lord, I have not kept your holy law. I have not done what your holiness requires. You have done it for me in Jesus Christ. Mine are Jesus’ birth, his sinless life, his death, resurrection and ascension." That is the language of faith. Faith accepts the utter sinfulness of self and the utter righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. The righteousness of God, therefore, is my righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. Sometimes charismatics ask, "Brother, have you made the exciting discovery of the Spirit-filled life?" The tragedy is that, when thus confronted, many Christians feel spiritually nude and embarrassed. The only answer of a man or woman of faith is, "Yes, what a life! I was born perfectly, I have lived commensurately with the holiness of God himself in my Substitute, Jesus Christ." When we boast about that Spirit-filled life of Christ (which is ours by faith alone), it makes every other so-called Spirit-filled life look insignificant and sinful by comparison. We have not outbragged the charismatics, who boast of their own lives, by boasting about the life of Christ.
The righteousness of God, which is mine, through faith, is in Jesus Christ. It not a quality in my heart. This is the emphasis of Romans 3:21-26–"in Christ Jesus." This righteousness is found alone in Jesus at God’s right hand. Paul tells the Colossians:
If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the Earth. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory (Colossians 3:1-4).So don’t set your affection on the wrong life. Your life of sanctification, which of necessity follows justification, is a shadow of the Christian’s true life at God’s right hand. Our life is hid with Christ in God.
Conclusion
A life of obedience to the law–that which God demands–has been performed by the doing and the dying of Jesus Christ–his sinless life and his obedient death. I am able to present it to God by faith. This is not presenting the righteousness that I have within, but it is presenting the righteousness that is in Jesus Christ. It is, as Luther said, the alien righteousness of Christ. It is reserved in Heaven as a great treasure for people who live among thieves. Heaven is a safe place for it to be. Thus, God accepts us only on the basis of a perfect righteousness. He saves us justly. This means that our salvation is grounded on the justice of God. That is good news. We sometimes wonder if the mercy of God will run out. The pastor might tell us that God is merciful. Yet we may say, "But he doesn’t know my heart. Is God that merciful?" But have you thought it possible that God would cease to be just? No! That is why we think his mercy may run out–because we know how just he is.
Here is the glorious message of Romans 3:25, 26, which is not taught today: The Gospel is a declaration of God’s justice and his mercy. God has saved us in a way that affirms that he is just. He has not skirted the Law. He has not been inconsistent. He has not repealed the Law. Before God could reject a man who trusts in Jesus Christ, he would first have to become unjust. "To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). So our security is grounded firmly in God’s justice.
God has never changed his mind. He has always required perfect obedience to his law. And when he looked out at an utterly desperate world, he came himself–God the Son in a donkey’s feedbox; God the Son allowing the Palestinian dust to sift through his toes as he fulfilled his own Law on our behalf. Faith acknowledges the Law because Jesus acknowledged the Law. Faith always chooses the perfect, law-conforming life of Jesus as the only basis for acceptance with God.
Ethics and Justification by Faith Alone
by John W. Robbins
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slandering, without selfcontrol, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power. From such people turn away (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
Once it was generally accepted that right and wrong must be judged by some objective, absolute standard. More than one hundred years ago society began to believe in evolution instead of divine creation. The next step was perfectly logical and inevitable. If God is not our creator, perhaps he is not our judge. Existentialism, situation ethics, and relativism are based on the premise that each person is the only judge of his beliefs and actions, and therefore he is not responsible to any absolute, external, objective standard for his conduct.
Christians need to be especially aware that this same spirit of disrespect for law flourishes in the visible church. In Paul’s list of last-day sins, quoted above, the burden is not to show how bad the world will be at the end time. The apostle describes the conditions that will exist in the visible church in the last days (i.e., among those "having a form of godliness").
While the secular liberals talk of "the responsible self" and "social consciousness" in place of law, theological liberals talk of "Christian love" and "the guidance of the Holy Spirit" as taking the place of law. It is the same tune, second verse. Neoevangelicals have carried on such a one-sided attack against "legalism" that law has become a dirty word. Under the influence of liberalism and neoevangelicalism, legalism has evolved a new meaning. It used to mean the wrong use of law (as a means of salvation), now it is often taken to mean conscientious obedience to rules of any kind. As society is being deluged by corruption, lawlessness, crime, and rottenness that defies description, it needs no encouragement from the visible church to show disrespect for the moral law of God.
Justification by Faith Alone and Respect for Law
We agree with J. Gresham Machen, who wrote, "One way to encourage respect for law, we think, would be to make law more respectable" (What Is Faith? 168). How do we make law more respectable?
There are some, there have always been some—see Romans 9— who are ready to blame justification by faith alone for lack of ethical action in the church. They feel that this great Christian doctrine needs to be played down, while more emphasis needs to be given to sanctification and practical Christian living. This is a happy eventuality for Rome, which has always contended that Luther’s doctrine loosens the reins of moral restraint. The great Reformation principle of justification by faith alone is in no way responsible for fostering disrespect for law. This is an age that knows almost nothing about the doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is impossible to be strong on justification by faith and weak on ethics. Justification is a term of law. No two Bible concepts stand more closely related than justification and law. To honor and uphold justification is to honor and uphold the law (Romans 3:31). Returning to Machen’s proposition, how may we make law more respectable? By putting the truth of justification back into the center of the Christian message where it belongs. Wherever and whenever this truth is exalted and taught, the Spirit of God breathes new life into the church and equips its members for "every good work."
The Fear of God, Justification, and Ethics
The great Biblical truth of justification by faith alone does not make sense unless it is seen against the background of the fear of God. The Bible says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10), the foundation of piety (Job 1:8), the core of obedience (Ecclesiastes 12:13; Genesis 22:11, 12), the basis of ethical integrity (Genesis 20:11; Proverbs 8:13; 16:6), and the foundation of sanctification (2 Corinthians 7:1). The Holy Spirit is called "the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Isaiah 11:2). To fear God means to respond to him with reverential awe, humble respect, and profound adoration. This attitude toward God comes by a vivid understanding of the majesty of him who is constantly aflame with holiness, truth, and goodness, and of the wrath of him whose justice is fiery indignation against sin.
Whenever men are taught the fear of the Lord by a confrontation with God’s righteousness and his claims upon their lives, they are led to cry out, "How can I be just with God?" They do not take it for granted that God forgives, but they are so impressed with the righteousness of God that their own conscience demands, "How can God justly forgive me?" They feel like Spurgeon, who cried out, "I felt I could not be forgiven unless I could be forgiven justly." This is the great problem that Paul solves for us in his message to the Romans—how God demonstrates his justice in the remission of sins (Romans 3:25-26).
When we look at the current religious scene, there is little evidence that people are asking such theocentric (God-centered) questions. Instead, they are asking anthropocentric (man-centered) questions: How can God make me happy? How can Christ make my life run smoothly and joyously? How can I solve my problems and find fulfillment in life? Never has so much religious activity been so disinterested in the question of justification with God. Why? Because there is so little fear of God. People can wave their arms or jump up and down "in the Spirit." But if the religious interest is not marked by a great fear of God, it is not the work of the Holy Spirit, for he is "the Spirit . . . of the fear of the Lord." Again, why is there such an appalling disinterest in justification by faith? Because people are taking it for granted that God is gracious and forgiving. In fact, they feel that they are on such good terms with him that they talk to him as if he were (to use Luther’s complaint against the Enthusiasts) "a shoemaker’s apprentice." How can justification be a concern when there is no marked fear of God?
Consider how these man-centered questions are patently foolish in the light of man’s predicament. Here is a wretched sinner, bound hand and foot and consigned to Hell for his great crimes against his maker. Standing on the threshold of eternal damnation, he presumes to ask, "How can God make me happy?" Such a question shows he has no understanding of his awful predicament. If the Spirit gives him any true enlightenment of his situation, he will cry out, "How can I be right with God?" We are not suggesting that God is indifferent to the earthly happiness of his children. But we do not find happiness in trying to use God as if he were our lackey. Nowhere do we find such genuine, exultant joy as in Romans 5 and 8. This holy, sacred joy comes to the man who, because of Christ, has found justification at the hand of a just and merciful God.
Such a man is ready to follow Christ anywhere, to make any sacrifice, to perform any duty, to obey any commandment, and to count it all a "reasonable service" from an "unprofitable servant." He does not take his forgiveness for granted or begin to walk before God with irreverent familiarity. Imagine saying to the man who wrote Romans, "Paul, I accept your doctrine of justification by faith alone. But can you tell me how my life can be vitalized with Christian joy?" With one stroke of the Word, the apostle would say, "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin." "We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation" (Romans 4:7; 5:11). Understanding justification without joy in the Holy Spirit is unthinkable.
The message of justification by grace alone, because of Christ alone, through faith alone is the sweetest and most joyful melody that can ever come to the human heart. Then why are people rushing off to find "the Spirit" in a "second blessing," tongues, or some guru or celebrity? It is because the fear of God is the one great ingredient most lacking in the current religious scene, and therefore the truth of justification is unappreciated as the gift of the Spirit.
The New Testament teaches the fear of God as much as does the Old Testament. Luke describes the church as "walking in the fear of the Lord" (Acts 9:31). The writer to the Hebrew Christians exhorts the believers not to "draw back" and find that it "is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:38, 31). And Paul exhorts the Gentile Christians: "Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he may not spare you either" (Romans 11:20, 21).
God is not a popular figure with whom sinners may fraternize on their own level. He is so high, so holy, that he can have no direct fellowship with any man save Jesus Christ. Christ alone will he accept, and Christ’s righteousness alone makes him propitious toward us. Well may the most holy saint flee from his throne with dread and terror except that he may keep looking to his Substitute at God’s right hand and keep believing the good news that he is justified in God’s sight solely because Jesus stands there instead of him and for him. This is the only atmosphere in which the Christian continues to live and breathe. Such a Christian will never look on sin as if it were as harmless as a Sunday afternoon frolic.
In short, two things belong together—the fear of God and Christian ethics—just as Solomon declares, "Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). And the last book of the Bible declares, "Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made Heaven and Earth . . ." (Revelation 14:7).
The Satisfaction, Justification, and Ethics
Paul did not write the book of Romans just to tell us that God is willing to forgive. The Old Testament had already made that abundantly clear. Nor did he write Romans just to tell us that we should live by trusting in God’s mercy. The Old Testament was clear enough on that too. The central issue that the epistle deals with is this: How can the God of law and justice forgive sin? How can the moral governor of the universe justify people who deserve to be condemned? It is important to see that the theme of Romans, therefore, is not merely the justification of sinners, but the justification of God in his justification of sinners.
God’s justice in passing over sins was prefigured in types and shadows of the old dispensation. The prophets who "prophesied of the grace that should come" "inquired and searched diligently" into God’s answer to the problem of sin (1 Peter 1:10, 11). God had revealed himself as gracious and forgiving. He passed over the sins of Israel times without number. He passed over the sins of David without inflicting upon him what justice required. He even forgave the sins of Manasseh, who filled Jerusalem with the blood of God’s saints. How is all this consistent with justice? Does the supreme Judge treat his law as a mere regulation to be modified, relaxed, or set aside at pleasure? Should not the Judge uphold the law irrespective of any person? We might even say that God’s passing by the sins of men might look like moments of weak leniency on the part of the great Judge, and therefore his act of pardon might appear as a scandal against the divine government.
Then God himself answers in the holy wrath that fell on the person of Christ. Never had Earth or Heaven beheld such a display of awful, holy justice as when God spared not his only Son. So Paul points to the cross of Christ and declares:
So why should not they also spend their lives getting around the law? The Biblical doctrine of the satisfaction of God’s law undergirds all Christian ethics. It shows us that God was not only providing for the justification of sinners, but for the justification of his moral order in the universe. It shows us that the divine law and government must be maintained and vindicated. Calvary was the highest honor that God himself could pay to his law. Prophecy had declared of Christ, "He will magnify the law and make it honorable" (Isaiah 42:21). Never was the law of God more highly honored than when Christ stood before the bar of justice to make satisfaction for the damage done. Luther declared, "Now although out of pure grace God does not impute our sins to us, he nonetheless did not want to do this until complete and ample satisfaction of his law and his righteousness had been made." Carl Henry wrote in Personal Christian Ethics: "The Cross is the center of the moral universe, unveiling God’s absolute refusal to suspend his law of holiness."
Faith, Justification, and Ethics
We must now consider the nature and action of faith in the sinner’s justification. Faith is the root of every good work, the tree that blossoms and bears a harvest of ethical action. God does care for good works and the honor of his law. His holy nature demands a righteousness that conforms to his commandments without variableness or shadow of turning. Paul declares, "the doers of the law shall be justified" (Romans 2:13). Perfect obedience to his law is the only condition upon which God will give any man eternal life (Matthew 19:17). As Luther said, "The law must be fulfilled so that not a jot or tittle shall be lost, otherwise man will be condemned without hope."
The good news of the Gospel is that Christ has lived this life of perfect obedience. He has fulfilled the conditions upon which God will justify his people. Jesus lived this life in our name and on our behalf. This is why the apostle says that we are justified by Christ (Galatians 3:17), by his obedience (Romans 5:18, 19). So it is perfectly true to say that the meritorious cause of our justification is a life of good works—not ours, of course, but Christ’s. While the death of Jesus (his passive obedience) is the basis upon which God forgives sin, the life of Jesus (his active obedience) is the basis upon which God can impute to us a life of perfect obedience. We need to hear more about the redemptive nature of Christ’s life, for this is what fulfills the law and entitles us to eternal life.
God does not justify us because of our faith—as if faith had any redemptive value. Neither does God now accept faith instead of perfect obedience to his law. (This is the error of neo-nomianism, which says that Christ died to change the conditions, to make it possible for God to impose an easier standard.) Faith is not the meritorious cause of justification but merely the instrumental cause. By faith a sinner assents–agrees–to God’s offer of salvation. Justice acknowledges that this life, which the sinner now accepts as his, satisfies the demands of the law, and God pronounces him justified.
The Reformers clearly saw that the moral law of God has three uses:
a. First use—to restrain sin in society;
b. Second use—to point out sin and to lead the sinner to Christ;
c. Third use—to be a rule of life for Christians.
In the last one hundred years it has become quite popular to reject all three uses of the law. This is antinomianism. It undermines the whole structure of Christian ethics, destroys all legal content of justification by faith, and betrays the cause of the Reformation.
When we say that the Christian is not under the obligation to the law, we had better be clear that we mean obligation to satisfy its claims for perfect righteousness and not obligation to obey it as a rule of life. But many fail to make that distinction. Does the justified believer have any dealing with the law? The satisfaction should be to us a constant reminder of the unrelieved heinousness of breaking God’s law. The freedom of justification by faith alone is freedom to obey, the privilege to obey a law so royal, so holy (Romans 7:6, 12, 25; James 2:10). Far from not being under obligation to keep the law, love puts us under double obligation to keep it.
There are at least four kinds of teaching that open the door to antinomianism:
a. Making Grace Antagonistic to Law. The Reformers made a sharp distinction between the law and the Gospel, but they were careful to write into all the great confessions that the moral law of God always remains valid as a rule of life for believers. But in the last one hundred years there has developed a kind of teaching that sets the moral law in opposition to grace and discards the concept of the law’s third use.
b. Enthusiasm. By "enthusiasm" we do not mean religious fanaticism which causes people to jump up and down in spiritual ecstasy. "Enthusiasm" is a teaching that claims direct guidance from the Holy Spirit apart from the written, outside-of-me Word of God. Instead of sound teaching on the proper use of the law, there are many today who feel that the Holy Spirit dwells in them and tells them what to do quite apart from any teaching of the law. Luther had to meet this error from those whom he called "Enthusiasts." The Reformer saw that their basic error was to make a dangerous separation of Word and Spirit. Luther and Calvin had to maintain that the Holy Spirit works in the Word and never apart from the Word. The only way to hear the Holy Spirit speak to us is to listen to the Word, and the only way to obey the Spirit is to obey that objective Word of God. We must have none of this notion that we can get a private word from the Lord. The charismatics who claim visions, private revelations, and direct information from God are only carrying what has been a popular notion to its logical end. Under the guise of honoring the Holy Spirit, the Enthusiast’s inner voices replace the absolute norm of God’s moral law.
c. Quietism. Quietism is the teaching that the Christian life is lived by being a passive channel for the operation of the Holy Spirit. The victorious life is said to be lived when the believer stops trying and lets God do it all. ("Let go and let God.") The error of quietism is that it tends to make the Holy Spirit’s work in the heart substitutionary. This is the result of an inadequate focus on the grand facts of Christ’s substitutionary work. The work Christ did in life and death was substitutionary—it was in our place and instead of us. Justification comes by the passive acceptance of what was done on the cross apart from any effort of ours. But the same thing cannot be said about the inward, sanctifying work of the Spirit. The Spirit does not replace human effort. He does not substitute for human obedience. The Christian life is not a matter of refraining from effort while the Spirit does it all. The Christian life is a struggle, a race, a fight; and the Spirit stirs the believer up and equips him for holy warfare. Faith is not an opiate but a stimulant. It does not compose us for sleep but for action.
Justification is possessed only by faith. He who has no faith has no justification. Saving faith is faith in Christ and his work, not in some personal experience of being born again. There is a popular doctrine which says that a man can be eternally saved whether he believes or not. But belief is not optional. He who does not obey does not believe, and he who does not believe will not be saved. The churches are full of spiritually dead souls who are asleep in their sins; yet they content themselves that they are saved because of some past experience. They have faith in their experience; they have no faith in the Gospel.
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slandering, without selfcontrol, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power. From such people turn away (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
Once it was generally accepted that right and wrong must be judged by some objective, absolute standard. More than one hundred years ago society began to believe in evolution instead of divine creation. The next step was perfectly logical and inevitable. If God is not our creator, perhaps he is not our judge. Existentialism, situation ethics, and relativism are based on the premise that each person is the only judge of his beliefs and actions, and therefore he is not responsible to any absolute, external, objective standard for his conduct.
Christians need to be especially aware that this same spirit of disrespect for law flourishes in the visible church. In Paul’s list of last-day sins, quoted above, the burden is not to show how bad the world will be at the end time. The apostle describes the conditions that will exist in the visible church in the last days (i.e., among those "having a form of godliness").
While the secular liberals talk of "the responsible self" and "social consciousness" in place of law, theological liberals talk of "Christian love" and "the guidance of the Holy Spirit" as taking the place of law. It is the same tune, second verse. Neoevangelicals have carried on such a one-sided attack against "legalism" that law has become a dirty word. Under the influence of liberalism and neoevangelicalism, legalism has evolved a new meaning. It used to mean the wrong use of law (as a means of salvation), now it is often taken to mean conscientious obedience to rules of any kind. As society is being deluged by corruption, lawlessness, crime, and rottenness that defies description, it needs no encouragement from the visible church to show disrespect for the moral law of God.
Justification by Faith Alone and Respect for Law
We agree with J. Gresham Machen, who wrote, "One way to encourage respect for law, we think, would be to make law more respectable" (What Is Faith? 168). How do we make law more respectable?
There are some, there have always been some—see Romans 9— who are ready to blame justification by faith alone for lack of ethical action in the church. They feel that this great Christian doctrine needs to be played down, while more emphasis needs to be given to sanctification and practical Christian living. This is a happy eventuality for Rome, which has always contended that Luther’s doctrine loosens the reins of moral restraint. The great Reformation principle of justification by faith alone is in no way responsible for fostering disrespect for law. This is an age that knows almost nothing about the doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is impossible to be strong on justification by faith and weak on ethics. Justification is a term of law. No two Bible concepts stand more closely related than justification and law. To honor and uphold justification is to honor and uphold the law (Romans 3:31). Returning to Machen’s proposition, how may we make law more respectable? By putting the truth of justification back into the center of the Christian message where it belongs. Wherever and whenever this truth is exalted and taught, the Spirit of God breathes new life into the church and equips its members for "every good work."
The Fear of God, Justification, and Ethics
The great Biblical truth of justification by faith alone does not make sense unless it is seen against the background of the fear of God. The Bible says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10), the foundation of piety (Job 1:8), the core of obedience (Ecclesiastes 12:13; Genesis 22:11, 12), the basis of ethical integrity (Genesis 20:11; Proverbs 8:13; 16:6), and the foundation of sanctification (2 Corinthians 7:1). The Holy Spirit is called "the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Isaiah 11:2). To fear God means to respond to him with reverential awe, humble respect, and profound adoration. This attitude toward God comes by a vivid understanding of the majesty of him who is constantly aflame with holiness, truth, and goodness, and of the wrath of him whose justice is fiery indignation against sin.
Whenever men are taught the fear of the Lord by a confrontation with God’s righteousness and his claims upon their lives, they are led to cry out, "How can I be just with God?" They do not take it for granted that God forgives, but they are so impressed with the righteousness of God that their own conscience demands, "How can God justly forgive me?" They feel like Spurgeon, who cried out, "I felt I could not be forgiven unless I could be forgiven justly." This is the great problem that Paul solves for us in his message to the Romans—how God demonstrates his justice in the remission of sins (Romans 3:25-26).
When we look at the current religious scene, there is little evidence that people are asking such theocentric (God-centered) questions. Instead, they are asking anthropocentric (man-centered) questions: How can God make me happy? How can Christ make my life run smoothly and joyously? How can I solve my problems and find fulfillment in life? Never has so much religious activity been so disinterested in the question of justification with God. Why? Because there is so little fear of God. People can wave their arms or jump up and down "in the Spirit." But if the religious interest is not marked by a great fear of God, it is not the work of the Holy Spirit, for he is "the Spirit . . . of the fear of the Lord." Again, why is there such an appalling disinterest in justification by faith? Because people are taking it for granted that God is gracious and forgiving. In fact, they feel that they are on such good terms with him that they talk to him as if he were (to use Luther’s complaint against the Enthusiasts) "a shoemaker’s apprentice." How can justification be a concern when there is no marked fear of God?
Consider how these man-centered questions are patently foolish in the light of man’s predicament. Here is a wretched sinner, bound hand and foot and consigned to Hell for his great crimes against his maker. Standing on the threshold of eternal damnation, he presumes to ask, "How can God make me happy?" Such a question shows he has no understanding of his awful predicament. If the Spirit gives him any true enlightenment of his situation, he will cry out, "How can I be right with God?" We are not suggesting that God is indifferent to the earthly happiness of his children. But we do not find happiness in trying to use God as if he were our lackey. Nowhere do we find such genuine, exultant joy as in Romans 5 and 8. This holy, sacred joy comes to the man who, because of Christ, has found justification at the hand of a just and merciful God.
Such a man is ready to follow Christ anywhere, to make any sacrifice, to perform any duty, to obey any commandment, and to count it all a "reasonable service" from an "unprofitable servant." He does not take his forgiveness for granted or begin to walk before God with irreverent familiarity. Imagine saying to the man who wrote Romans, "Paul, I accept your doctrine of justification by faith alone. But can you tell me how my life can be vitalized with Christian joy?" With one stroke of the Word, the apostle would say, "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin." "We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation" (Romans 4:7; 5:11). Understanding justification without joy in the Holy Spirit is unthinkable.
The message of justification by grace alone, because of Christ alone, through faith alone is the sweetest and most joyful melody that can ever come to the human heart. Then why are people rushing off to find "the Spirit" in a "second blessing," tongues, or some guru or celebrity? It is because the fear of God is the one great ingredient most lacking in the current religious scene, and therefore the truth of justification is unappreciated as the gift of the Spirit.
The New Testament teaches the fear of God as much as does the Old Testament. Luke describes the church as "walking in the fear of the Lord" (Acts 9:31). The writer to the Hebrew Christians exhorts the believers not to "draw back" and find that it "is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:38, 31). And Paul exhorts the Gentile Christians: "Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he may not spare you either" (Romans 11:20, 21).
God is not a popular figure with whom sinners may fraternize on their own level. He is so high, so holy, that he can have no direct fellowship with any man save Jesus Christ. Christ alone will he accept, and Christ’s righteousness alone makes him propitious toward us. Well may the most holy saint flee from his throne with dread and terror except that he may keep looking to his Substitute at God’s right hand and keep believing the good news that he is justified in God’s sight solely because Jesus stands there instead of him and for him. This is the only atmosphere in which the Christian continues to live and breathe. Such a Christian will never look on sin as if it were as harmless as a Sunday afternoon frolic.
In short, two things belong together—the fear of God and Christian ethics—just as Solomon declares, "Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). And the last book of the Bible declares, "Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made Heaven and Earth . . ." (Revelation 14:7).
The Satisfaction, Justification, and Ethics
Paul did not write the book of Romans just to tell us that God is willing to forgive. The Old Testament had already made that abundantly clear. Nor did he write Romans just to tell us that we should live by trusting in God’s mercy. The Old Testament was clear enough on that too. The central issue that the epistle deals with is this: How can the God of law and justice forgive sin? How can the moral governor of the universe justify people who deserve to be condemned? It is important to see that the theme of Romans, therefore, is not merely the justification of sinners, but the justification of God in his justification of sinners.
God’s justice in passing over sins was prefigured in types and shadows of the old dispensation. The prophets who "prophesied of the grace that should come" "inquired and searched diligently" into God’s answer to the problem of sin (1 Peter 1:10, 11). God had revealed himself as gracious and forgiving. He passed over the sins of Israel times without number. He passed over the sins of David without inflicting upon him what justice required. He even forgave the sins of Manasseh, who filled Jerusalem with the blood of God’s saints. How is all this consistent with justice? Does the supreme Judge treat his law as a mere regulation to be modified, relaxed, or set aside at pleasure? Should not the Judge uphold the law irrespective of any person? We might even say that God’s passing by the sins of men might look like moments of weak leniency on the part of the great Judge, and therefore his act of pardon might appear as a scandal against the divine government.
Then God himself answers in the holy wrath that fell on the person of Christ. Never had Earth or Heaven beheld such a display of awful, holy justice as when God spared not his only Son. So Paul points to the cross of Christ and declares:
God meant by this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:25-26).There are some who feel that forgiveness of sins proceeds from an easy-going benevolence. Consequently, they are also easy-going about sin, saying in their hearts, "There is plenty of forgiveness with the Lord." Others propose that Christ died merely to show us that God will excuse our sins and good-naturedly pass them by. Such sentimental thoughts of Calvary allow them to sin with an easy conscience. Then there are some who see the atonement as a skillful maneuver on the part of God to "get around his law."
So why should not they also spend their lives getting around the law? The Biblical doctrine of the satisfaction of God’s law undergirds all Christian ethics. It shows us that God was not only providing for the justification of sinners, but for the justification of his moral order in the universe. It shows us that the divine law and government must be maintained and vindicated. Calvary was the highest honor that God himself could pay to his law. Prophecy had declared of Christ, "He will magnify the law and make it honorable" (Isaiah 42:21). Never was the law of God more highly honored than when Christ stood before the bar of justice to make satisfaction for the damage done. Luther declared, "Now although out of pure grace God does not impute our sins to us, he nonetheless did not want to do this until complete and ample satisfaction of his law and his righteousness had been made." Carl Henry wrote in Personal Christian Ethics: "The Cross is the center of the moral universe, unveiling God’s absolute refusal to suspend his law of holiness."
Faith, Justification, and Ethics
We must now consider the nature and action of faith in the sinner’s justification. Faith is the root of every good work, the tree that blossoms and bears a harvest of ethical action. God does care for good works and the honor of his law. His holy nature demands a righteousness that conforms to his commandments without variableness or shadow of turning. Paul declares, "the doers of the law shall be justified" (Romans 2:13). Perfect obedience to his law is the only condition upon which God will give any man eternal life (Matthew 19:17). As Luther said, "The law must be fulfilled so that not a jot or tittle shall be lost, otherwise man will be condemned without hope."
The good news of the Gospel is that Christ has lived this life of perfect obedience. He has fulfilled the conditions upon which God will justify his people. Jesus lived this life in our name and on our behalf. This is why the apostle says that we are justified by Christ (Galatians 3:17), by his obedience (Romans 5:18, 19). So it is perfectly true to say that the meritorious cause of our justification is a life of good works—not ours, of course, but Christ’s. While the death of Jesus (his passive obedience) is the basis upon which God forgives sin, the life of Jesus (his active obedience) is the basis upon which God can impute to us a life of perfect obedience. We need to hear more about the redemptive nature of Christ’s life, for this is what fulfills the law and entitles us to eternal life.
God does not justify us because of our faith—as if faith had any redemptive value. Neither does God now accept faith instead of perfect obedience to his law. (This is the error of neo-nomianism, which says that Christ died to change the conditions, to make it possible for God to impose an easier standard.) Faith is not the meritorious cause of justification but merely the instrumental cause. By faith a sinner assents–agrees–to God’s offer of salvation. Justice acknowledges that this life, which the sinner now accepts as his, satisfies the demands of the law, and God pronounces him justified.
The Reformers clearly saw that the moral law of God has three uses:
a. First use—to restrain sin in society;
b. Second use—to point out sin and to lead the sinner to Christ;
c. Third use—to be a rule of life for Christians.
In the last one hundred years it has become quite popular to reject all three uses of the law. This is antinomianism. It undermines the whole structure of Christian ethics, destroys all legal content of justification by faith, and betrays the cause of the Reformation.
When we say that the Christian is not under the obligation to the law, we had better be clear that we mean obligation to satisfy its claims for perfect righteousness and not obligation to obey it as a rule of life. But many fail to make that distinction. Does the justified believer have any dealing with the law? The satisfaction should be to us a constant reminder of the unrelieved heinousness of breaking God’s law. The freedom of justification by faith alone is freedom to obey, the privilege to obey a law so royal, so holy (Romans 7:6, 12, 25; James 2:10). Far from not being under obligation to keep the law, love puts us under double obligation to keep it.
There are at least four kinds of teaching that open the door to antinomianism:
a. Making Grace Antagonistic to Law. The Reformers made a sharp distinction between the law and the Gospel, but they were careful to write into all the great confessions that the moral law of God always remains valid as a rule of life for believers. But in the last one hundred years there has developed a kind of teaching that sets the moral law in opposition to grace and discards the concept of the law’s third use.
b. Enthusiasm. By "enthusiasm" we do not mean religious fanaticism which causes people to jump up and down in spiritual ecstasy. "Enthusiasm" is a teaching that claims direct guidance from the Holy Spirit apart from the written, outside-of-me Word of God. Instead of sound teaching on the proper use of the law, there are many today who feel that the Holy Spirit dwells in them and tells them what to do quite apart from any teaching of the law. Luther had to meet this error from those whom he called "Enthusiasts." The Reformer saw that their basic error was to make a dangerous separation of Word and Spirit. Luther and Calvin had to maintain that the Holy Spirit works in the Word and never apart from the Word. The only way to hear the Holy Spirit speak to us is to listen to the Word, and the only way to obey the Spirit is to obey that objective Word of God. We must have none of this notion that we can get a private word from the Lord. The charismatics who claim visions, private revelations, and direct information from God are only carrying what has been a popular notion to its logical end. Under the guise of honoring the Holy Spirit, the Enthusiast’s inner voices replace the absolute norm of God’s moral law.
c. Quietism. Quietism is the teaching that the Christian life is lived by being a passive channel for the operation of the Holy Spirit. The victorious life is said to be lived when the believer stops trying and lets God do it all. ("Let go and let God.") The error of quietism is that it tends to make the Holy Spirit’s work in the heart substitutionary. This is the result of an inadequate focus on the grand facts of Christ’s substitutionary work. The work Christ did in life and death was substitutionary—it was in our place and instead of us. Justification comes by the passive acceptance of what was done on the cross apart from any effort of ours. But the same thing cannot be said about the inward, sanctifying work of the Spirit. The Spirit does not replace human effort. He does not substitute for human obedience. The Christian life is not a matter of refraining from effort while the Spirit does it all. The Christian life is a struggle, a race, a fight; and the Spirit stirs the believer up and equips him for holy warfare. Faith is not an opiate but a stimulant. It does not compose us for sleep but for action.
Justification is possessed only by faith. He who has no faith has no justification. Saving faith is faith in Christ and his work, not in some personal experience of being born again. There is a popular doctrine which says that a man can be eternally saved whether he believes or not. But belief is not optional. He who does not obey does not believe, and he who does not believe will not be saved. The churches are full of spiritually dead souls who are asleep in their sins; yet they content themselves that they are saved because of some past experience. They have faith in their experience; they have no faith in the Gospel.
Through Faith Alone
by John W. Robbins
A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law (Romans 3:28).
"By faith alone" was the motto of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. It was radical then. It is just as radical now. It does not mean quietism, that is, "Let Christ live the victorious life in you." Nor does it mean the slothful indolence of spiritual do-nothingism. The Reformation was revolutionary. "Faith alone" was not the slogan of a delicate, cloistered piety. It was the battle-cry of a movement that turned the world upside down.
What does "faith alone" mean? "Faith alone" is the confession that all which is necessary for our acceptance with God has been done by God himself in Jesus Christ. It is an acknowledgment that Christ himself, in our name and our behalf, met all our obligations before the bar of eternal justice. This redemptive act was so complete and perfect that we cannot and need not add anything to it. "Faith alone" means that we cannot in the least contribute to our salvation, but that we must submit to what God has already done – fully and completely.
"Faith alone" does not mean that faith in itself will make us pleasing and acceptable to God. Only one is righteous. Only one is pleasing. "Faith alone" is a confession that God’s saving work has been done completely outside of our own experience. There are some who will admit that God alone saves, but they imagine that this saving work is done inside of them. But faith is always directed to the outside-of me action of God in Jesus Christ. As John Bunyan wrote, "It is the righteousness which resides with a person in Heaven which justifies me, a sinner, on Earth." The book of Revelation shows that the ongoing cause of Christ depends on the action of Christ in the control room of the universe. He alone can move history on toward its great consummation. He alone must come to bring salvation to those who eagerly wait for him (Hebrews 9:28). "Faith alone" is therefore a confession that salvation has been won by mighty, conquering acts in which we had no share.
"Faith alone" is a confession that our righteousness is not in us, but in Jesus Christ at God’s right hand. It means that we continually confess that we are sinners and have no righteousness to justify us save that which is outside of us in the person of our mediator. It means that life is not fulfilled here and now in this historical process. We know that all that we do is unworthy. Our best deeds, when tried before the undimmed splendor of God’s law, are no better than filthy rags. Notice that Isaiah says that all our "righteousnesses" – not our "unrighteousnesses" – are filthy rags.
We are never righteous before God by virtue of being born again, or by being filled with the Spirit, or by lives of new obedience, or by acts of "surrender" or "trust." The truth of "faith alone" is a great No! against the aspirations of humanism, Romanism, Pentecostalism, neo-evangelicalism, Arminianism, Wesleyanism, and all other -isms which promise fulfillment through internal and earthly experience. "Faith alone" says, "Our completeness is realized only in him" (Colossians 2:10). "Faith alone" means that we admit our destitution. We confess before justice that we have nothing to pay.
"Faith alone" means that we come to God relying on his love and mercy and forgiveness. "Faith alone" is a humbling of man in the dust, a dependence upon God to do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. Nothing empties a man like "faith alone." That is the reason why we are filled with the Spirit by faith (Galatians 3:14). Let us never speak of faith plus self-crucifixion, but of faith as self-crucifixion. "Faith alone" is the fountainhead of all true obedience. The first commandment says, "You shall have no other gods before me." In his Catechism, Martin Luther says:
A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law (Romans 3:28).
"By faith alone" was the motto of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. It was radical then. It is just as radical now. It does not mean quietism, that is, "Let Christ live the victorious life in you." Nor does it mean the slothful indolence of spiritual do-nothingism. The Reformation was revolutionary. "Faith alone" was not the slogan of a delicate, cloistered piety. It was the battle-cry of a movement that turned the world upside down.
What does "faith alone" mean? "Faith alone" is the confession that all which is necessary for our acceptance with God has been done by God himself in Jesus Christ. It is an acknowledgment that Christ himself, in our name and our behalf, met all our obligations before the bar of eternal justice. This redemptive act was so complete and perfect that we cannot and need not add anything to it. "Faith alone" means that we cannot in the least contribute to our salvation, but that we must submit to what God has already done – fully and completely.
"Faith alone" does not mean that faith in itself will make us pleasing and acceptable to God. Only one is righteous. Only one is pleasing. "Faith alone" is a confession that God’s saving work has been done completely outside of our own experience. There are some who will admit that God alone saves, but they imagine that this saving work is done inside of them. But faith is always directed to the outside-of me action of God in Jesus Christ. As John Bunyan wrote, "It is the righteousness which resides with a person in Heaven which justifies me, a sinner, on Earth." The book of Revelation shows that the ongoing cause of Christ depends on the action of Christ in the control room of the universe. He alone can move history on toward its great consummation. He alone must come to bring salvation to those who eagerly wait for him (Hebrews 9:28). "Faith alone" is therefore a confession that salvation has been won by mighty, conquering acts in which we had no share.
"Faith alone" is a confession that our righteousness is not in us, but in Jesus Christ at God’s right hand. It means that we continually confess that we are sinners and have no righteousness to justify us save that which is outside of us in the person of our mediator. It means that life is not fulfilled here and now in this historical process. We know that all that we do is unworthy. Our best deeds, when tried before the undimmed splendor of God’s law, are no better than filthy rags. Notice that Isaiah says that all our "righteousnesses" – not our "unrighteousnesses" – are filthy rags.
We are never righteous before God by virtue of being born again, or by being filled with the Spirit, or by lives of new obedience, or by acts of "surrender" or "trust." The truth of "faith alone" is a great No! against the aspirations of humanism, Romanism, Pentecostalism, neo-evangelicalism, Arminianism, Wesleyanism, and all other -isms which promise fulfillment through internal and earthly experience. "Faith alone" says, "Our completeness is realized only in him" (Colossians 2:10). "Faith alone" means that we admit our destitution. We confess before justice that we have nothing to pay.
"Faith alone" means that we come to God relying on his love and mercy and forgiveness. "Faith alone" is a humbling of man in the dust, a dependence upon God to do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. Nothing empties a man like "faith alone." That is the reason why we are filled with the Spirit by faith (Galatians 3:14). Let us never speak of faith plus self-crucifixion, but of faith as self-crucifixion. "Faith alone" is the fountainhead of all true obedience. The first commandment says, "You shall have no other gods before me." In his Catechism, Martin Luther says:
God is that to which we look for all good and where we resort for help in every time of need; to have a God is simply to trust and believe in one with our whole heart.... If your faith and confidence are right, then likewise your God is the true God. On the other hand, if your confidence is false, if it is wrong, then you have not the true God.... I say, whatever your heart... confides in, that is really your God.... If the heart is rightly disposed toward God and this commandment is kept, obedience to the remainder will follow of itself."Faith alone" frees a man for a life of good works. On the other hand, when a man fails to understand the Gospel and the law, he labors in vain and spends his strength for nothing. His effort is directed to do what God alone can do. Deep down, every soul is conscious of the need to be right with God. But justification is a great work that only God can do. When a man blindly spends his strength and effort to do God’s work, he cannot be about his own work. When he works his fingers to the bone trying to save himself, he cannot love his neighbor, for he has no time for him. "The soul released from anxiety about itself is free to exercise concern about others. The heart is at leisure from itself to set forward the salvation of those around" (W. H. Griffith-Thomas, The Principles of Theology: An Introduction to the Thirty-nine Articles [London: Church Book Room Press, 1956], 194). This is a far cry from that false religion which removes all urgency for ethical action. "Faith alone" puts a man to work for God as nothing else can. It is not an opiate to put a Christian to sleep, but a stimulant to stir him to action. "Faith alone" is mighty. What makes it mighty is its mighty object. Like John the Baptist, it points away from itself to the Lamb of God, who alone takes away the sin of the world.
Antichrist
by John W. Robbins
The actual word Antichrist is used by only one Bible writer—John in his first and second Epistles. However, it is generally recognized that the apostle Paul refers to the same figure in 2 Thessalonians 2, where he warns the church about the man of sin, or mystery of lawlessness.
Few figures have stirred the imagination and anxious forebodings as much as the mystery figure of Antichrist. As different generations of Christians have scanned the horizon for signs of the end of the world, they thought they discovered the Antichrist in such men as Nero, Constantine, Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Kissinger, and Stalin.
Views of the Reformers In the sixteenth century the European church was awakened and shaken by the Reformation. Although there were several branches of the Reformation, and there were points of disagreement, there was complete unanimity on three things:
Whatever we may think today about the Reformers’ views on Antichrist, we have to acknowledge that they were so widely held by Protestants for 300 years that they became known as the Protestant view of prophetic interpretation.
Views of the Counter Reformation and Modern Futurism
Naturally, the established church was not going to appreciate the damning appellation of Antichrist. Being challenged to present a plausible alternative interpretation of Bible prophecy, Jesuit scholarship rallied to the Roman cause and presented what became known as the futurist system of interpretation. In this, Antichrist was said to be still future and therefore could not be the papal church. Three hundred years later, these same futurist views took root on English Protestant soil; and today they are so widespread among Protestants that they are almost a test of orthodoxy in some circles.
The Biblical Perspective
Whether we subscribe to the Reformers’ view that Rome is Antichrist or to the popular evangelical views of today which declare that Antichrist is yet to come, we are still in danger of missing the vital Biblical message about Antichrist. If we content ourselves with the thought that the Reformers were correct in their identification, we are in danger of blinding ourselves to the Biblical warnings with a sort of Pharisaical complacency or Protestant self-righteousness. If we gaze off into the future, especially looking to events among the Jews in the Middle East, we will also fail to be aroused by the Biblical warnings about Antichrist. For what the Bible has to say about Antichrist is not given as mere information, and certainly not information to gratify or titillate idle curiosity about the future. What the Bible says about Antichrist is to warn and energize the Christian congregation.
The Bible presents four outstanding features of Antichrist:
1. The Religious Character of Antichrist
The Greek prefix anti means in the place of, or in the stead of. It may also contain the idea of substitution. For instance, when Paul says that Christ gave himself a ransom for all (1 Timothy 2:6), he does not use the ordinary word meaning ransom (Greek – lutron), but he uses the prefix anti (Greek – antilutron). Girdlestone, as well as other linguists, points out that the word literally means substitutionary ransom.
Antichrist therefore refers to some figure who puts himself in the place of Jesus Christ. He is a substitute Christ. To use the Latin rather than the Greek, he claims to be the vicar of Christ. Standing in the room of Jesus Christ, he tries to carry on the work of Christ. Yet his gospel is really another gospel. G.C. Berkouwer wrote:
John’s Antichrist was not merely a future entity. He was also a present reality.
Antichrist will have a future and final manifestation. But the trouble with a thoroughgoing futurism is that it is blind to the present reality of Antichrist. If we do not discern the work and forms of Antichrist from New Testament times, especially the great papal Antichrist, how can we discern the work and form that he will assume in his final eschatological manifestation? The Biblical warnings do not merely tell us that the hour is coming, but they declare that the hour is coming, and now is.
When the early church lost the clear Biblical truth of justification by faith alone, it also lost its clear eschatological vision. The last day became an event in the far distant future, and the church’s mentality was decidedly futuristic. With the rediscovery of justification by faith alone in the sixteenth century, eschatological hope revived, and the church again saw itself living in the end time. G. C. Berkouwer wrote:
It is not good enough to see the guise of Antichrist in AD 65 when John confronted the gnostic heresy, or in 1517 when Luther nailed his protest on the door of the religious establishment. Antichrist is a present reality. We must see how he is working in 1999.
3. The Internal Danger of Antichrist
To look for Antichrist as a foe external to the institutional church is to miss a vital part of the Biblical warning. Antichrist is not merely an enemy at the gate; he has infiltrated the city. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing among the flock. He looks like a lamb, but speaks as a dragon. He is, as his name suggests, a masquerader of Christ, and his message is a substitute gospel. The warnings of John and Paul make it very clear that he proceeds from the church itself.
4. The Human Form of Antichrist
Finally, it is a mistake to look for Antichrist in the form of the bizarre, the fantastic, the superhuman or the grotesque. The Bible stresses his very human configuration. He is called the man of sin (2 Thessalonians 2:3). He has a human number (Revelation 13:18). He has eyes like the eyes of man (Daniel 7:8). Certainly he has donned the religious cloak, but we must remember that, as Luther so clearly perceived, the chief human sin is religious.
What is clear in the New Testament references to the Antichrist is that this is not a supernatural or superhuman concept, but takes place and manifests itself on a human level. Behind the Antichristian powers the shadow of the demonic may fall, but with the concept of the Antichrist we find ourselves not on some remote evil terrain, but on the well-known terrain of our daily human existence. Indeed, the human level of the Antichrist is one of the most compelling messages of the New Testament. It is a human force – a human “Anti” – that elevates itself and disintegrates through the victory of the Lamb (The Return of Christ, 278).
Conclusions
Let us conclude by saying that the real force of the Biblical picture means that Antichrist is religious and not irreligious; already present and not just future; internal to the institutional church, not external, and familiarly human and not grotesquely superhuman. This means that we cannot afford to gaze back to the remote past or forward into the distant future. What are the gospel substitutes today? What have churches put in the place of the glorious work of God in Jesus Christ?
Antichrist at Work Today
Before we identify the work of Antichrist today, we must be reminded of one more thing. Since Antichrist’s chief work is a diabolical substitution for Christ and his Gospel, we can identify Antichrist only as we keep looking at the Gospel. The only truly successful way to detect a counterfeit dollar bill is to be thoroughly acquainted with a genuine one.
The Gospel
The Gospel is the good news about the person and work of Jesus Christ, the second Adam. In the whole stream of human history there are only two men who have universal significance – Adam and Jesus Christ. Adam was not merely the biological father of the race; he was the legal representative of the whole human race. He acted for all. His sin involved all: “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners...” (Romans 5:19). Consequently, the whole stream of human history has been corrupted by human sinfulness, and all stand under the judgment of the law. None of that history can satisfy the demand of holiness, for even the lives of the best saints fall far short of the glory of God.
Into this sinful stream of human history, God sent forth his Son to be our “everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6), our second Adam, our new representative. His name was Immanuel – God with us.” In Jesus Christ we see God with us in poverty and humiliation, God with us in trial and sorrow, and finally, God with us in suffering and death. More than that, Jesus was “God...for us” (Romans 8:31). What he did in all his glorious acts of goodness was done for his people. It was done in our name and on our behalf, for he was our representative who acted for us before the bar of eternal justice. By his sinless life he fulfilled the precepts of the law for us, and by his death he satisfied the penalty of the law for us. On our behalf he strove with sin and annihilated its power. In his human nature he engaged the devil in hand-to-hand combat and destroyed his power. He tasted death and abolished it, “...having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:14, 15).
All that Christ did is imputed to his people through faith. His victory is ours. So the apostle says, “By the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Romans 5:18).
There are three things we must say about this good news of Jesus Christ:
1. The Gospel is about an historical event. It is about Jesus Christ coming into the world and not about Jesus Christ coming into our hearts. It is historically objective. Christianity is the only truly historical religion. It alone proclaims a salvation based on a concrete outside-of-me event. Of course, the Gospel has subjective benefits. It has effects and fruits in the hearts of all who believe it. But in the Gospel itself there is not one subjective element. It happened completely outside of you and me.
The Gospel brings to view a new holy history – the thirty-three years which Jesus Christ lived on Earth. In the death of Jesus Christ, God rejected and punished our sinful history; and having buried it with Jesus Christ, he brought forth that new history. Now he proclaims to us that he accepts us as righteous solely on the basis that he has accepted his Son and our representative, Jesus Christ. The Gospel is the good news that the saving deeds have taken place, the redemptive transaction has been sealed by Christ’s blood and attested to by his resurrection from the dead. God’s liberating act has been carried out, and believers are cleansed, accepted, and restored in the person of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is historical.
2. The Gospel is about a unique history. There is no other event, and can be no other event, like the Christ event. His holy history is unique. In the whole stream of human history, Christ alone is without sin. We must never compromise the unique sinlessness of Jesus Christ. Only one is absolutely righteous in reality and fact. The saints can be absolutely righteous only by the merciful reckoning of Christ’s righteousness by faith alone. No one but Christ, the slain Lamb, is able to open the book and look therein (Revelation 5:1-5).
3. The Gospel is about an unrepeatable history. This is the great emphasis given by the writer of Hebrews. The offering of Christ was once and for all:
This unique, unrepeatable event, this holy history of Jesus Christ, is the focal point of Biblical proclamation. These mighty deeds of the incarnate Son, this awesome, effective act of atonement, is the one great pre-occupation of the apostolic message. Gospel preaching is the constant exposition of this historical Gospel and the unfolding of its significance for men and women everywhere. All who believe are justified, not on the grounds of their faith, but on the grounds of the saving acts of God already done once and for all in Jesus Christ.
The Substitute Gospel
It is the work of Antichrist to substitute another gospel for the Gospel. He causes men to focus on other events and experiences rather than on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This masterly substitution does not necessarily consist in the enemy’s putting something bad in the place of something good. Frequently he works by putting something good, in its right place, in a higher place.
For instance, personal righteousness is a good thing. Believers should live righteously, soberly, and godly in this world (Titus 2:12). The Holy Spirit is given to enable them to do this, for it is only by his indwelling that they can live righteously (1 John 3:7). But in the theology of the Roman Church (and Neoevangelicalism), this personal righteousness of the believer is put in the place of the vicarious righteousness of Jesus Christ. The Reformers cried out against this as the doctrine of Antichrist, not because they were against personal righteousness (as they were charged by Rome), but because they were against putting anything in the place of Christ’s righteousness. In his masterly volume on The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, James Buchanan points out that the heart of Rome’s error was to put the new birth of the believer in the place of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, for this means putting something subjective in the place of Christ’s objective and historical saving acts.
What is so plausible about the work of Antichrist is that he uses that which is otherwise good as his clever substitute gospel. Under the guise of honoring the Third Person of the Trinity, Antichrist brings in another gospel, for he substitutes the gracious work of the Spirit in us for the vicarious work of Christ for us as the ground of our justification unto life eternal.
The work of the Holy Spirit in us is a great and glorious work (2 Corinthians 3:18). But it is not to be put in the place of the Gospel. We must not confuse the work of the Second and Third Persons of the blessed Trinity. Christ’s work was substitutionary. It was done for us – without our participation. We had no part in that righteousness. Furthermore, that work, being complete, is the only ground of our acceptance with God.
The same thing cannot be said about the work of the Holy Spirit. His is not a substitutionary work. Being a work within us, we do have a vital part in the life of new obedience which he inspires us to live. Furthermore, his work is not yet complete, and for some it has not even started. It can never be a ground of our acceptance with God.
In fact, the work of the Spirit is dependent upon and subordinated to the work of Jesus Christ. By his obedience and death Christ fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of his people, and he gave the gift of the Spirit to them. What Christ has done, therefore, is the Gospel. And what is more, it is the “full Gospel.”
Contemporary Protestant Churches
We earnestly believe that, were Luther alive today, he would level the same basic criticism at the Protestant churches as he did at the Roman Church nearly 500 years ago. The doctrine of justification through the vicarious righteousness of Jesus Christ alone has disappeared in most “Protestant” churches. The fact is that Protestantism today stands much closer to the Roman Catholic tradition than to the Reformers.
In the first place, the question of justification before a holy God is not the burning question of contemporary religion. We take it for granted that God is gracious and that he forgives sins and accepts us. The healthy, Biblical fear of God is conspicuous by its absence. What we want to know is not, “How can I please God?” but, “How can God please me, make my life radiantly happy, heal my diseases, and make me fulfilled and content?” We are not asking theocentric questions any more, but anthropocentric questions. Man and his psychological needs are the center, not God and his righteousness. Things will not improve unless the holy law and Gospel of God are proclaimed.
In the second place, even where the Gospel is acknowledged, it has ceased to hold first place. We have seen that the Gospel is historical. It has no subjective element. Yet it bears subjective fruit. When proclaimed and believed, it changes lives – producing love, joy, peace, goodness, temperance and humility in the hearts of men and women. The experience it brings to believers is real and vital. But we must ever remember that the Biblical order and perspective is the historical over the personal:
Historical
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Personal
This means that the for us aspect of grace must always stand prior to and above the in us aspect. Jesus warned the disciples of this when they returned from a successful missionary excursion. They were rejoicing in the fact that they had had a glorious experience working in Christ’s name – preaching, casting out demons, healing, etc. But Jesus said, “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven” (Luke 10:20).
But the history of the church has demonstrated that the cursed tendency of human nature is to reverse the order until the personal is elevated above the historical. (Or to say it another way, the in you is elevated above the for you.) When the historical element of Christianity is eclipsed, the univocal truth of the Christian message is lost, and Christianity is reduced to everything else in the world that offers you a glorious experience. And when religious experience itself is preached as the Gospel, it is the gospel of Antichrist himself. For when the personal is placed above the historical, the divine order is reversed.
It is an interesting (and alarming) fact that the elevation of the personal above the historical has taken place in both the liberal and conservative wings of the current religious scene. In the liberal wing, man and his experience are elevated to an unbiblical prominence via such teachings as “encounter theology” (Emil Brunner), “demythologizing” (Rudolph Bultmann), and the denial of propositional revelation (Karl Barth and others). All this means is that man and his experience (insight, hunch, intuition) are substituted for God, his Word and his Gospel. Instead of man being the creature to be transformed by the renewing of his mind, man assumes the role of transforming God and his Word.
When we look into the conservative wing of the churches – into conservative Romanism, Pentecostalism, or Neo-evangelicalism – we see that the same thing has taken place. Here the dominating motif is the centrality of religious experience. In traditional Romanism this is seen in the doctrine of gratia infusa – the concept of justification by infused grace (the sacraments and the changed life). In Pentecostalism it is seen in the preoccupation with the Holy Spirit and the inner experience of Spirit possession. In Neo-evangelicalism it is seen in salvation by the inward experience of new birth, a new psychology, the gospel of “the changed life,” the witness to the Spiritfilled life of the believer, or the glories and wonders of full surrender and self-crucifixion. There is in all this a believer-centeredness that is contrary to the Bible. It is the same old error of placing the personal over the historical, the subjective over the objective, experience over truth. That the men who do this are religious men does not alter the crime, for after all, man’s chief sin is religious sin.
Many Antichrists
The apostle John says that there are many Antichrists (1 John 2:18). That is, there are many men who are offering substitutes for the Gospel. Here are some of the doctrines of Antichrist in 1999:
Putting experience in the place of the Gospel is not like stealing a few gems from the royal crown. He who does this is guilty of stealing the crown itself and placing it upon his own head. This is the deed and work of Antichrist. It is the sin of religious man. Unless we take the Biblical warnings seriously and examine our own hearts and church, we too will be found to be part of Antichrist’s conspiracy.
Billy Graham, the leading world evangelist, in his book, How To be Born Again, declared that The greatest news in the universe is that we can be born again (10). For the Neoevangelicals the new birth is the mark of true Christianity. It has become their gospel. Raising any questions about the centrality of the new birth is regarded as attacking it. But the gospel of the new birth is a false gospel.
The false gospel of the new birth teaches that what happens in the believer is the greatest news in the world. This is classical Roman Catholic theology. It confuses a good thing with the Gospel, and makes the work of the Spirit (or of the sacraments dispensed by a priest) greater than the work of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. It takes an effect of the Gospel – the new birth – and makes it into a new gospel.
The Neo-evangelical gospel of the new birth is introspective, self-preoccupied, and subjectivist. Neo-evangelical navel watching does nothing to commend Christianity to unbelievers. Worse, it robs Christ of his glory by making the righteousness of the believer more important than the righteousness of Christ, by substituting the work of the Spirit for the work of Christ.
The Reformers charged Rome, and in particular the papacy, with being the Antichrist. The Roman pontiff had shamelessly and arrogantly transferred to himself what belonged to God alone, and especially to Christ. For Calvin the tyranny of the Roman pontiff was all the more serious because it did “not wipe out…the name of Christ or of the church but rather misuses a semblance of Christ and lurks under the name of the church as under a mask” (The Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.7.25). By substituting the church (the body) for the head, and the pope for Christ, the Roman Church had become Antichrist. By substituting the interior work of the Holy Spirit for the exterior work of Christ, the Roman Church taught the doctrines of Antichrist.
Seeing the new birth as the greatest news in the world is a doctrine of Antichrist. Antichrist puts something good in the place of the best, and easily purveys lies and deception. The worst evil might not be the blatant denial of truth, but its corruption. Satan, both in the Garden with Adam and Eve and in the wilderness with Christ, quoted God’s words, but in such a way as to twist their meaning. The false gospel of the new birth, whether taught by Neo-evangelicals or by the Roman Catholic Church, perverts the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Preoccupation with the new birth as the great act of God that saves us is Roman Catholic theology, not Biblical theology.
For the Protestant Reformers, being born again was neither the Gospel nor that which justifies the believer before God. Being born again was the fruit of election and the preaching of the Gospel. It was an effect of the Gospel, not the Gospel itself. Rome either equated the new birth with the Gospel of Christ’s righteousness or regarded the new birth as that work which justifies a person before God. Many Neoevangelicals also equate the Gospel with the new birth. “You must be born again,” is their cry. So far is it from being the Gospel, the good news, that it expresses no news at all, let alone good news, but imposes a duty on unbelievers. “You must be born again,” is law, not Gospel.
When Ian Thomas asserted, “This was the miracle of the new birth, and this remains the very heart of the Gospel,” he was expressing Roman Catholic theology (The Saving Life of Christ, 1964, 11). C. H. Dodd also equated the Gospel and regeneration of the sinner in his books, The Epistle to the Romans (12, 53, 58, 84, 99) and The Meaning of Paul for Today (106). In equating the Gospel and the new birth, the Neo-evangelicals stand squarely in the tradition of Rome. Regarding the new birth as the great saving act of God places the emphasis on the internal and subjective rather than on the external and objective. Making the new birth our emphasis focuses on what God does in us rather than on what he did for us in Christ. It directs our attention from Christ to ourselves as the basis of our salvation.
Faith is the chief work of the Holy Spirit. Saving faith always has for its object, not the believing sinner, nor the work of the Spirit in the sinner, nor the sacraments, nor the church, but Jesus Christ alone. Instead of focusing on one’s experience, saving faith confesses, I believe that Christ lived and died for his people, according to the Scriptures. The object of saving faith is not what has happened to the believer or in the believer, and still less in what the believer does, but what has happened for the believer in Christ. Saving faith looks out, not in; up, not down.
Preoccupation with the new birth in Neoevangelical thinking perverts the whole Bible. Neo-evangelicalism gives the impression that God accepts a person on the ground that he is born again. But this is not true, and it is not Biblical. The sole ground of acceptance with God is the doing and dying of Jesus Christ. It is not any experience or act of obedience of the believer, including the act of believing itself, that justifies the believer. There is only one ground, one basis, for justification: the finished work of Christ. Anything that denies or perverts the Gospel is of Antichrist.
The actual word Antichrist is used by only one Bible writer—John in his first and second Epistles. However, it is generally recognized that the apostle Paul refers to the same figure in 2 Thessalonians 2, where he warns the church about the man of sin, or mystery of lawlessness.
Few figures have stirred the imagination and anxious forebodings as much as the mystery figure of Antichrist. As different generations of Christians have scanned the horizon for signs of the end of the world, they thought they discovered the Antichrist in such men as Nero, Constantine, Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Kissinger, and Stalin.
Views of the Reformers In the sixteenth century the European church was awakened and shaken by the Reformation. Although there were several branches of the Reformation, and there were points of disagreement, there was complete unanimity on three things:
- The Reformers came to a united understanding of the sovereignty of God in predestination. Luther’s Bondage of the Will and Calvin’s Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God are the classic statements on the doctrine of God’s sovereignty.
- The Reformers came to a united understanding of justification by faith alone. They unanimously upheld its primacy and centrality in the Christian theology.
- The Reformers came to a united understanding that it was the work of Antichrist to oppose and corrupt the glorious Gospel truth of justification by faith alone. To the Reformers, justification by faith alone was the great truth upon which the church stood or fell. To take this away was to take away the very life of the church. No greater harm could be done than to rob the church of justification by faith. And since the religious establishment of their day opposed the great Reformation doctrine, the Reformers unitedly declared that that revered religious establishment was Antichrist.
Whatever we may think today about the Reformers’ views on Antichrist, we have to acknowledge that they were so widely held by Protestants for 300 years that they became known as the Protestant view of prophetic interpretation.
Views of the Counter Reformation and Modern Futurism
Naturally, the established church was not going to appreciate the damning appellation of Antichrist. Being challenged to present a plausible alternative interpretation of Bible prophecy, Jesuit scholarship rallied to the Roman cause and presented what became known as the futurist system of interpretation. In this, Antichrist was said to be still future and therefore could not be the papal church. Three hundred years later, these same futurist views took root on English Protestant soil; and today they are so widespread among Protestants that they are almost a test of orthodoxy in some circles.
The Biblical Perspective
Whether we subscribe to the Reformers’ view that Rome is Antichrist or to the popular evangelical views of today which declare that Antichrist is yet to come, we are still in danger of missing the vital Biblical message about Antichrist. If we content ourselves with the thought that the Reformers were correct in their identification, we are in danger of blinding ourselves to the Biblical warnings with a sort of Pharisaical complacency or Protestant self-righteousness. If we gaze off into the future, especially looking to events among the Jews in the Middle East, we will also fail to be aroused by the Biblical warnings about Antichrist. For what the Bible has to say about Antichrist is not given as mere information, and certainly not information to gratify or titillate idle curiosity about the future. What the Bible says about Antichrist is to warn and energize the Christian congregation.
The Bible presents four outstanding features of Antichrist:
1. The Religious Character of Antichrist
The Greek prefix anti means in the place of, or in the stead of. It may also contain the idea of substitution. For instance, when Paul says that Christ gave himself a ransom for all (1 Timothy 2:6), he does not use the ordinary word meaning ransom (Greek – lutron), but he uses the prefix anti (Greek – antilutron). Girdlestone, as well as other linguists, points out that the word literally means substitutionary ransom.
Antichrist therefore refers to some figure who puts himself in the place of Jesus Christ. He is a substitute Christ. To use the Latin rather than the Greek, he claims to be the vicar of Christ. Standing in the room of Jesus Christ, he tries to carry on the work of Christ. Yet his gospel is really another gospel. G.C. Berkouwer wrote:
The religious character of the opposition preoccupied the Reformers. Theirs was not just the bitter tone of anti-papism. They were predominantly concerned and anxious about the well-being of the Church.... For the Reformers the Antichrist was all the more dangerous because he donned this religious cloak.... During the Reformation, this theme of the Antichrist’s taking his seat in the temple of God [2 Thessalonians 2:4] was taken very seriously. The temple was not in Jerusalem, but the Church, and the Antichrist strategy was primarily to drive the true God out of this temple and replace him. (The Return of Christ [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972], 268, 269)2. The Present Reality of Antichrist
John’s Antichrist was not merely a future entity. He was also a present reality.
Little children, it is the last time: and as you have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many Antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us. But they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us, but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. (1 John 2:18, 19)
For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an Antichrist. (2 John 7)
...and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof you have heard that it should come; and even now is it in the world. (1 John 4:3)The apostle Paul wrote, “the mystery of iniquity does already work...”(2 Thessalonians 2:7). So Antichrist must always be seen as a present reality – in AD 65, in 1517, or in 1999. Antichrist’s appearance belongs to the last days, and according to John, the spirit of Antichrist manifested in the false teachers was a harbinger of the end time.
Antichrist will have a future and final manifestation. But the trouble with a thoroughgoing futurism is that it is blind to the present reality of Antichrist. If we do not discern the work and forms of Antichrist from New Testament times, especially the great papal Antichrist, how can we discern the work and form that he will assume in his final eschatological manifestation? The Biblical warnings do not merely tell us that the hour is coming, but they declare that the hour is coming, and now is.
When the early church lost the clear Biblical truth of justification by faith alone, it also lost its clear eschatological vision. The last day became an event in the far distant future, and the church’s mentality was decidedly futuristic. With the rediscovery of justification by faith alone in the sixteenth century, eschatological hope revived, and the church again saw itself living in the end time. G. C. Berkouwer wrote:
Luther felt himself surrounded by great eschatological tensions, and part of this for him included the role played by the Antichrist. For Luther the Antichrist was not a remote figure of some future end-time, but a threatening and dangerous possibility each and every day.... The main point was that the danger was present, not relegated to the future.
Clearly, the actuality of the Antichrist as portrayed by John accords with the entire eschatological proclamation of the New Testament. Althaus correctly observed that the New Testament proclamation of the Antichrist is not an irrelevant prediction of some remote future, but an alarm signal. The Church must always look for the Antichrist as a reality present among it or as an immediately threatening future possibility.... The recognition of the Antichrist is a deadly serious matter; all other talk about Antichrist is idle and irresponsible play. (The Return of Christ, 263, 268)As history moves on, the church is challenged to see Antichrist in his most current form of opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Antichrist beast of the Revelation has seven heads, which symbolize the different forms he has assumed in his opposition to God’s truth from one age to another.
It is not good enough to see the guise of Antichrist in AD 65 when John confronted the gnostic heresy, or in 1517 when Luther nailed his protest on the door of the religious establishment. Antichrist is a present reality. We must see how he is working in 1999.
3. The Internal Danger of Antichrist
To look for Antichrist as a foe external to the institutional church is to miss a vital part of the Biblical warning. Antichrist is not merely an enemy at the gate; he has infiltrated the city. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing among the flock. He looks like a lamb, but speaks as a dragon. He is, as his name suggests, a masquerader of Christ, and his message is a substitute gospel. The warnings of John and Paul make it very clear that he proceeds from the church itself.
4. The Human Form of Antichrist
Finally, it is a mistake to look for Antichrist in the form of the bizarre, the fantastic, the superhuman or the grotesque. The Bible stresses his very human configuration. He is called the man of sin (2 Thessalonians 2:3). He has a human number (Revelation 13:18). He has eyes like the eyes of man (Daniel 7:8). Certainly he has donned the religious cloak, but we must remember that, as Luther so clearly perceived, the chief human sin is religious.
What is clear in the New Testament references to the Antichrist is that this is not a supernatural or superhuman concept, but takes place and manifests itself on a human level. Behind the Antichristian powers the shadow of the demonic may fall, but with the concept of the Antichrist we find ourselves not on some remote evil terrain, but on the well-known terrain of our daily human existence. Indeed, the human level of the Antichrist is one of the most compelling messages of the New Testament. It is a human force – a human “Anti” – that elevates itself and disintegrates through the victory of the Lamb (The Return of Christ, 278).
Conclusions
Let us conclude by saying that the real force of the Biblical picture means that Antichrist is religious and not irreligious; already present and not just future; internal to the institutional church, not external, and familiarly human and not grotesquely superhuman. This means that we cannot afford to gaze back to the remote past or forward into the distant future. What are the gospel substitutes today? What have churches put in the place of the glorious work of God in Jesus Christ?
Antichrist at Work Today
Before we identify the work of Antichrist today, we must be reminded of one more thing. Since Antichrist’s chief work is a diabolical substitution for Christ and his Gospel, we can identify Antichrist only as we keep looking at the Gospel. The only truly successful way to detect a counterfeit dollar bill is to be thoroughly acquainted with a genuine one.
The Gospel
The Gospel is the good news about the person and work of Jesus Christ, the second Adam. In the whole stream of human history there are only two men who have universal significance – Adam and Jesus Christ. Adam was not merely the biological father of the race; he was the legal representative of the whole human race. He acted for all. His sin involved all: “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners...” (Romans 5:19). Consequently, the whole stream of human history has been corrupted by human sinfulness, and all stand under the judgment of the law. None of that history can satisfy the demand of holiness, for even the lives of the best saints fall far short of the glory of God.
Into this sinful stream of human history, God sent forth his Son to be our “everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6), our second Adam, our new representative. His name was Immanuel – God with us.” In Jesus Christ we see God with us in poverty and humiliation, God with us in trial and sorrow, and finally, God with us in suffering and death. More than that, Jesus was “God...for us” (Romans 8:31). What he did in all his glorious acts of goodness was done for his people. It was done in our name and on our behalf, for he was our representative who acted for us before the bar of eternal justice. By his sinless life he fulfilled the precepts of the law for us, and by his death he satisfied the penalty of the law for us. On our behalf he strove with sin and annihilated its power. In his human nature he engaged the devil in hand-to-hand combat and destroyed his power. He tasted death and abolished it, “...having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:14, 15).
All that Christ did is imputed to his people through faith. His victory is ours. So the apostle says, “By the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Romans 5:18).
There are three things we must say about this good news of Jesus Christ:
1. The Gospel is about an historical event. It is about Jesus Christ coming into the world and not about Jesus Christ coming into our hearts. It is historically objective. Christianity is the only truly historical religion. It alone proclaims a salvation based on a concrete outside-of-me event. Of course, the Gospel has subjective benefits. It has effects and fruits in the hearts of all who believe it. But in the Gospel itself there is not one subjective element. It happened completely outside of you and me.
The Gospel brings to view a new holy history – the thirty-three years which Jesus Christ lived on Earth. In the death of Jesus Christ, God rejected and punished our sinful history; and having buried it with Jesus Christ, he brought forth that new history. Now he proclaims to us that he accepts us as righteous solely on the basis that he has accepted his Son and our representative, Jesus Christ. The Gospel is the good news that the saving deeds have taken place, the redemptive transaction has been sealed by Christ’s blood and attested to by his resurrection from the dead. God’s liberating act has been carried out, and believers are cleansed, accepted, and restored in the person of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is historical.
2. The Gospel is about a unique history. There is no other event, and can be no other event, like the Christ event. His holy history is unique. In the whole stream of human history, Christ alone is without sin. We must never compromise the unique sinlessness of Jesus Christ. Only one is absolutely righteous in reality and fact. The saints can be absolutely righteous only by the merciful reckoning of Christ’s righteousness by faith alone. No one but Christ, the slain Lamb, is able to open the book and look therein (Revelation 5:1-5).
3. The Gospel is about an unrepeatable history. This is the great emphasis given by the writer of Hebrews. The offering of Christ was once and for all:
By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till his enemies are made his footstool. For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:10-14)We are never called upon to initiate another redemptive event. Nothing needs to be added to what Christ has already done. Nothing can be added to it. God himself cannot add to it. We say it reverently but decidedly: This is one thing that God could not do again – the giving of and offering of his Son, Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that with him God gave us “all things” (Romans 8:32). To suggest that God could do this again is to imply that God did not really give everything the first time. But he emptied all Heaven in one gift. He poured out all the accumulated love of eternity. He kept nothing back, but gave all he had to give. The Gospel is unrepeatable history.
This unique, unrepeatable event, this holy history of Jesus Christ, is the focal point of Biblical proclamation. These mighty deeds of the incarnate Son, this awesome, effective act of atonement, is the one great pre-occupation of the apostolic message. Gospel preaching is the constant exposition of this historical Gospel and the unfolding of its significance for men and women everywhere. All who believe are justified, not on the grounds of their faith, but on the grounds of the saving acts of God already done once and for all in Jesus Christ.
The Substitute Gospel
It is the work of Antichrist to substitute another gospel for the Gospel. He causes men to focus on other events and experiences rather than on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This masterly substitution does not necessarily consist in the enemy’s putting something bad in the place of something good. Frequently he works by putting something good, in its right place, in a higher place.
For instance, personal righteousness is a good thing. Believers should live righteously, soberly, and godly in this world (Titus 2:12). The Holy Spirit is given to enable them to do this, for it is only by his indwelling that they can live righteously (1 John 3:7). But in the theology of the Roman Church (and Neoevangelicalism), this personal righteousness of the believer is put in the place of the vicarious righteousness of Jesus Christ. The Reformers cried out against this as the doctrine of Antichrist, not because they were against personal righteousness (as they were charged by Rome), but because they were against putting anything in the place of Christ’s righteousness. In his masterly volume on The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, James Buchanan points out that the heart of Rome’s error was to put the new birth of the believer in the place of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, for this means putting something subjective in the place of Christ’s objective and historical saving acts.
What is so plausible about the work of Antichrist is that he uses that which is otherwise good as his clever substitute gospel. Under the guise of honoring the Third Person of the Trinity, Antichrist brings in another gospel, for he substitutes the gracious work of the Spirit in us for the vicarious work of Christ for us as the ground of our justification unto life eternal.
The work of the Holy Spirit in us is a great and glorious work (2 Corinthians 3:18). But it is not to be put in the place of the Gospel. We must not confuse the work of the Second and Third Persons of the blessed Trinity. Christ’s work was substitutionary. It was done for us – without our participation. We had no part in that righteousness. Furthermore, that work, being complete, is the only ground of our acceptance with God.
The same thing cannot be said about the work of the Holy Spirit. His is not a substitutionary work. Being a work within us, we do have a vital part in the life of new obedience which he inspires us to live. Furthermore, his work is not yet complete, and for some it has not even started. It can never be a ground of our acceptance with God.
In fact, the work of the Spirit is dependent upon and subordinated to the work of Jesus Christ. By his obedience and death Christ fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of his people, and he gave the gift of the Spirit to them. What Christ has done, therefore, is the Gospel. And what is more, it is the “full Gospel.”
Contemporary Protestant Churches
We earnestly believe that, were Luther alive today, he would level the same basic criticism at the Protestant churches as he did at the Roman Church nearly 500 years ago. The doctrine of justification through the vicarious righteousness of Jesus Christ alone has disappeared in most “Protestant” churches. The fact is that Protestantism today stands much closer to the Roman Catholic tradition than to the Reformers.
In the first place, the question of justification before a holy God is not the burning question of contemporary religion. We take it for granted that God is gracious and that he forgives sins and accepts us. The healthy, Biblical fear of God is conspicuous by its absence. What we want to know is not, “How can I please God?” but, “How can God please me, make my life radiantly happy, heal my diseases, and make me fulfilled and content?” We are not asking theocentric questions any more, but anthropocentric questions. Man and his psychological needs are the center, not God and his righteousness. Things will not improve unless the holy law and Gospel of God are proclaimed.
In the second place, even where the Gospel is acknowledged, it has ceased to hold first place. We have seen that the Gospel is historical. It has no subjective element. Yet it bears subjective fruit. When proclaimed and believed, it changes lives – producing love, joy, peace, goodness, temperance and humility in the hearts of men and women. The experience it brings to believers is real and vital. But we must ever remember that the Biblical order and perspective is the historical over the personal:
Historical
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Personal
This means that the for us aspect of grace must always stand prior to and above the in us aspect. Jesus warned the disciples of this when they returned from a successful missionary excursion. They were rejoicing in the fact that they had had a glorious experience working in Christ’s name – preaching, casting out demons, healing, etc. But Jesus said, “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven” (Luke 10:20).
But the history of the church has demonstrated that the cursed tendency of human nature is to reverse the order until the personal is elevated above the historical. (Or to say it another way, the in you is elevated above the for you.) When the historical element of Christianity is eclipsed, the univocal truth of the Christian message is lost, and Christianity is reduced to everything else in the world that offers you a glorious experience. And when religious experience itself is preached as the Gospel, it is the gospel of Antichrist himself. For when the personal is placed above the historical, the divine order is reversed.
It is an interesting (and alarming) fact that the elevation of the personal above the historical has taken place in both the liberal and conservative wings of the current religious scene. In the liberal wing, man and his experience are elevated to an unbiblical prominence via such teachings as “encounter theology” (Emil Brunner), “demythologizing” (Rudolph Bultmann), and the denial of propositional revelation (Karl Barth and others). All this means is that man and his experience (insight, hunch, intuition) are substituted for God, his Word and his Gospel. Instead of man being the creature to be transformed by the renewing of his mind, man assumes the role of transforming God and his Word.
When we look into the conservative wing of the churches – into conservative Romanism, Pentecostalism, or Neo-evangelicalism – we see that the same thing has taken place. Here the dominating motif is the centrality of religious experience. In traditional Romanism this is seen in the doctrine of gratia infusa – the concept of justification by infused grace (the sacraments and the changed life). In Pentecostalism it is seen in the preoccupation with the Holy Spirit and the inner experience of Spirit possession. In Neo-evangelicalism it is seen in salvation by the inward experience of new birth, a new psychology, the gospel of “the changed life,” the witness to the Spiritfilled life of the believer, or the glories and wonders of full surrender and self-crucifixion. There is in all this a believer-centeredness that is contrary to the Bible. It is the same old error of placing the personal over the historical, the subjective over the objective, experience over truth. That the men who do this are religious men does not alter the crime, for after all, man’s chief sin is religious sin.
Many Antichrists
The apostle John says that there are many Antichrists (1 John 2:18). That is, there are many men who are offering substitutes for the Gospel. Here are some of the doctrines of Antichrist in 1999:
- The regeneration of the believer replaces the imputed righteousness of Christ.
- The work of the Third Person of the Trinity replaces the work of the Second Person.
- Sanctification replaces justification.
- The personal righteousness of the believer replaces the vicarious righteousness of Christ.
- Faith replaces the meritorious obedience of Christ.
- Our self-crucifixion replaces his crucifixion.
- Our new life replaces his sinless life.
- Our experience replaces his.
- Our love for God replaces his love for us.
- Our surrender replaces Christ’s.
- Our victorious life replaces his.
- Our attainment replaces his atonement.
- Our baptism in water replaces his baptism in blood.
- The church (the body) replaces Christ (the Head).
- Our obedience to the law replaces Christ’s obedience to the law.
Putting experience in the place of the Gospel is not like stealing a few gems from the royal crown. He who does this is guilty of stealing the crown itself and placing it upon his own head. This is the deed and work of Antichrist. It is the sin of religious man. Unless we take the Biblical warnings seriously and examine our own hearts and church, we too will be found to be part of Antichrist’s conspiracy.
Billy Graham, the leading world evangelist, in his book, How To be Born Again, declared that The greatest news in the universe is that we can be born again (10). For the Neoevangelicals the new birth is the mark of true Christianity. It has become their gospel. Raising any questions about the centrality of the new birth is regarded as attacking it. But the gospel of the new birth is a false gospel.
The false gospel of the new birth teaches that what happens in the believer is the greatest news in the world. This is classical Roman Catholic theology. It confuses a good thing with the Gospel, and makes the work of the Spirit (or of the sacraments dispensed by a priest) greater than the work of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. It takes an effect of the Gospel – the new birth – and makes it into a new gospel.
The Neo-evangelical gospel of the new birth is introspective, self-preoccupied, and subjectivist. Neo-evangelical navel watching does nothing to commend Christianity to unbelievers. Worse, it robs Christ of his glory by making the righteousness of the believer more important than the righteousness of Christ, by substituting the work of the Spirit for the work of Christ.
The Reformers charged Rome, and in particular the papacy, with being the Antichrist. The Roman pontiff had shamelessly and arrogantly transferred to himself what belonged to God alone, and especially to Christ. For Calvin the tyranny of the Roman pontiff was all the more serious because it did “not wipe out…the name of Christ or of the church but rather misuses a semblance of Christ and lurks under the name of the church as under a mask” (The Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.7.25). By substituting the church (the body) for the head, and the pope for Christ, the Roman Church had become Antichrist. By substituting the interior work of the Holy Spirit for the exterior work of Christ, the Roman Church taught the doctrines of Antichrist.
Seeing the new birth as the greatest news in the world is a doctrine of Antichrist. Antichrist puts something good in the place of the best, and easily purveys lies and deception. The worst evil might not be the blatant denial of truth, but its corruption. Satan, both in the Garden with Adam and Eve and in the wilderness with Christ, quoted God’s words, but in such a way as to twist their meaning. The false gospel of the new birth, whether taught by Neo-evangelicals or by the Roman Catholic Church, perverts the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Preoccupation with the new birth as the great act of God that saves us is Roman Catholic theology, not Biblical theology.
For the Protestant Reformers, being born again was neither the Gospel nor that which justifies the believer before God. Being born again was the fruit of election and the preaching of the Gospel. It was an effect of the Gospel, not the Gospel itself. Rome either equated the new birth with the Gospel of Christ’s righteousness or regarded the new birth as that work which justifies a person before God. Many Neoevangelicals also equate the Gospel with the new birth. “You must be born again,” is their cry. So far is it from being the Gospel, the good news, that it expresses no news at all, let alone good news, but imposes a duty on unbelievers. “You must be born again,” is law, not Gospel.
When Ian Thomas asserted, “This was the miracle of the new birth, and this remains the very heart of the Gospel,” he was expressing Roman Catholic theology (The Saving Life of Christ, 1964, 11). C. H. Dodd also equated the Gospel and regeneration of the sinner in his books, The Epistle to the Romans (12, 53, 58, 84, 99) and The Meaning of Paul for Today (106). In equating the Gospel and the new birth, the Neo-evangelicals stand squarely in the tradition of Rome. Regarding the new birth as the great saving act of God places the emphasis on the internal and subjective rather than on the external and objective. Making the new birth our emphasis focuses on what God does in us rather than on what he did for us in Christ. It directs our attention from Christ to ourselves as the basis of our salvation.
Faith is the chief work of the Holy Spirit. Saving faith always has for its object, not the believing sinner, nor the work of the Spirit in the sinner, nor the sacraments, nor the church, but Jesus Christ alone. Instead of focusing on one’s experience, saving faith confesses, I believe that Christ lived and died for his people, according to the Scriptures. The object of saving faith is not what has happened to the believer or in the believer, and still less in what the believer does, but what has happened for the believer in Christ. Saving faith looks out, not in; up, not down.
Preoccupation with the new birth in Neoevangelical thinking perverts the whole Bible. Neo-evangelicalism gives the impression that God accepts a person on the ground that he is born again. But this is not true, and it is not Biblical. The sole ground of acceptance with God is the doing and dying of Jesus Christ. It is not any experience or act of obedience of the believer, including the act of believing itself, that justifies the believer. There is only one ground, one basis, for justification: the finished work of Christ. Anything that denies or perverts the Gospel is of Antichrist.
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