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Esau
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RL DABNEY
In our Confession, Chapter III., Section iii., verses 4 and 7, we have this description of it:
3d. “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death.”
IV. “These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.”
VII. “The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will,whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”
The first and second sections of this tract prove absolutely this sad but stubborn fact, that no sinner ever truly regenerates himself. One sufficient reason is, that none ever wish to do it, but always prefer, while left to themselves by God, to remain as they are, self-willed and worldly. That is to say, no sinner ever makes himself choose God and holiness, because every principle of his soul goes infallibly to decide the opposite preference. Therefore, whenever a sinner is truly regenerated, it must be God that has done it. Take notice, after God has done it, this new-born sinner will, in his subsequent course of repentance and conversion, freely put forth many choices for God and holiness; but it is impossible that this sinner can have put forth the first choice to reverse his own natural principles of choice. Can a child beget its own father? It must have been God that changed the sinner. Then, when he did it he meant to do it. When was this intention to do it born into the divine mind? That same day? The day that sinner was born? The day Adam was made? No! These answers are all foolish. Because God is omniscient and unchangeable he must have known from eternity his own intention to do it. This suggests, second, that no man can date any of God’s purposes in time without virtually denying his perfections of omniscience,wisdom, omnipotence, and immutability. Being omniscient, it is impossible he should ever find out afterwards anything he did not know from the first. Being all-wise, it is impossible he should take up a purpose for which his knowledge does not see a reason. Being all-powerful, it is impossible he should ever fail in trying to effect one of his purposes. Hence, whatever God does in nature or grace, he intended to do that thing from eternity. Being unchangeable, it is impossible that he should change his mind to a different purpose after he had once made it up aright under the guidance of infinite knowledge, wisdom, and holiness. All the inferior wisdom of good men but illustrates this. Here is a wise and righteous general conducting a defensive war to save his country. At mid-summer an observer says to him, “General, have you not changed your plan of campaign since you began it?” He replies, “I have.” Says the observer, “Then you must be a fickle person?” He replies, “No, I have changed it not because I was fickle, but for these two reasons: because I have been unable and have failed in some of the necessary points of my first plan; and second, I have found out things I did not know when I began.” We say that is perfect common sense, and clears the general from all charge of fickleness. But suppose he were, in fact, almighty and omniscient? Then he could not use those excuses, and if he changed his plan after the beginning he would be fickle. Reader, dare you charge God with fickleness? This is a sublime conception of God’s nature and actions, as far above the wisest man’s as the heavens above the earth. But it is the one taught us everywhere in Scripture. Let us beware how in our pride of self-will we blaspheme God by denying it. Third. Arminians themselves virtually admit the force of these views and scriptures; for their doctrinal books expressly admit God’s particular personal election of every sinner that reaches heaven. A great many ignorant persons suppose that the Arminian theology denies all particular election. This is a stupid mistake. Nobody can deny it without attacking the Scripture, God’s perfections, and common sense. The whole difference between Presbyterians and intelligent Arminians is this: We believe that God’s election of individuals is unconditioned and sovereign. They believe that while eternal and particular, it is on account of God’s eternal, omniscient foresight of the given sinner’s future faith and repentance, and perseverance in holy living. But we Presbyterians must dissent for these reasons: It is inconsistent with the eternity, omnipotence, and sovereignty of the great first cause to represent his eternal purposes thus, as grounded in, or conditioned on, anything which one of his dependent creatures would hereafter contingently do or leave undone.
Will or will not that creature ever exist in the future to do or to leave undone any particular thing? That itself must depend on God’s sovereign creative power. We must not make an independent God depend upon his own dependent creature. But does not Scripture often represent a salvation or ruin of sinners as conditioned on their own faith or unbelief? Yes. But do not confound two different things. The result ordained by God may depend for its rise upon the suitable means. But the acts of God’s mind in ordaining it does not depend on these means, because God’s very purpose is this, to bring about the means without fail and the result by the means.
Next, whether God’s election of a given sinner, say, Saul of Tarsus, be conditioned or not upon the foresight of his faith, if it is an eternal and omniscient: foresight it must be a certain one. Common sense says: no cause, no effect; an uncertain cause can only give an uncertain effect. Says the Arminian: God certainly foresaw that Saul of Tarsus would believe and repent, and, therefore, elected him. But I say, that if God certainly foresaw Saul’s faith, it must have been certain to take place, for the Omniscient cannot make mistakes. Then, if this sinner’s faith was certain to take place, there must have been some certain cause insuring that it would take place. Now, no certain cause could be in the “free-will” of this sinner, Saul, even as aided by “common sufficient grace.” For Arminians say, that this makes and leaves the sinner’s will contingent. Then, whatever made God think that this sinner, Saul, would ever be certain to believe and repent? Nothing but God’s own sovereign eternal will to renew him unto faith and repentance.
This leads to the crowning argument. This Saul was by nature “dead in trespasses and in sins” (Ephesians 2:1), and, therefore, would never have in him any faith or repentance to be foreseen, except as the result of God’s purpose to put them in him. But the effect cannot be the cause of its own cause. The cart cannot pull the horse; why, it is the horse that pulls the cart. This is expressly confirmed by Scripture. Christ says (John 15:16): “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you,that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain .” Romans 9:11-13: “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated;” and verse 16: “So then, it is not of him that: willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.” What is not? The connection shows that it is the election of the man that willeth and runneth, of which the apostle here speaks. Paul here goes so dead against the notion of conditional election, that learned Arminians see that they must find some evasion, or squarely take the ground of infidels. This is their evasion: that by the names Esau and Jacob the individual patriarchs are not meant, but the two nations, Edom and Israel, and that the predestination was only unto the privation or enjoyment of the means of grace. But this is utterly futile: First, Because certainly the individual patriarchs went along with the two posterities whom they represented. Second, Because Paul’s discussion in this ninth chapter all relates to individuals and not to races, and to salvation or perdition, and not to mere church privileges. Third, Because the perdition of the Edomite race from all gospel means must have resulted in the perdition of the individuals. For, says Paul: “How could they believe on him of whom they have not heard?”
This is the right place to notice the frequent mistake when we say that God’s election is sovereign and not conditioned on his foresight of the elected man’s piety. Many pretend to think that we teach God has no reason at all for his choice; that we make it an instance of sovereign divine caprice! We teach no such thing. It would be impiety. Our God is too wise and righteous to have any caprices. He has a reasonable motive for every one of his purposes; and his omniscience shows him it is always the best reason. But he is not bound to publish it to us. God knew he had a reason for preferring the sinner, Jacob, to the sinner Esau. But this reason could not have been any foreseeing merit of Jacob’s piety by two arguments: the choice was made before the children were born. There never was any piety in Jacob to foresee, except what was to follow after as an effect of Jacob’s election. Esau appears to have been an open, hard-mouthed, profane person. Jacob, by nature, a mean, sneaking hypocrite and supplanter. Probably God judged their personal merits as I do, that personally Jacob was a more detestable sinner than Esau. Therefore, on grounds of foreseen personal deserts, God could never have elected either of them. But his omniscience saw a separate, independent reason why it was wisest to make the worse man the object of his infinite mercy, while leaving the other to his own profane choice. Does the Arminian now say that I must tell him what that reason was? I answer, I do not know, God has not told me. But I know He had a good reason, because he is God. Will any man dare to say that because omniscience could not find its reason in the foreseen merits of Jacob, therefore it could find none at all in the whole infinite sweep of its Providence and wisdom? This would be arrogance run mad and near to blasphemy.
One more argument for election remains: Many human beings have their salvation or ruin practically decided by providential events in their lives. The argument is, that since these events are sovereignly determined by God’s providence, the election, or preterition of their souls is thereby virtually decided, Take two instances: Here is a willful, impenitent man who is down with fever and is already delirious. Will he die or get well? God’s providence will decide that. “In his hands our breath is, and his are all our ways.” (Daniel 5:23.) If he dies this time he is too delirious to believe and repent; if he recovers, he may attend revival meetings and return to God. The other instance is, that of dying infants. This is peculiarly deadly to the Arminian theory, because they say so positively that all humans who die in infancy are saved. (And they slander us Presbyterians by charging that we are not positive enough on that point, and that we believe in the “damnation of infants.”) Well, here is a human infant three months old. Will it die of croup, or will it live to be a man? God’s providence will decide that. If it dies, the Arminian is certain its soul is gone to heaven, and therefore was elected of God to go there. If it is to grow to be a man, the Arminian says he may exercise his freewill to be a Korah, Dalthan, Abiram, or Judas. But the election of the baby who dies cannot be grounded in God’s foresight of its faith and repentance, because there was none to foresee before it entered glory; the little soul having redeemed by sovereign grace without these means.
But there is that sentence in our Confession, Chapter X., Section iii.: “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when and where and how he pleaseth.” Our charitable accusers will have it that the antithesis which we imply to the words “elect infants dying in infancy” is, that there are non-elect infants dying in infancy are so damned. This we always deny. But they seem to know what we think better than we know ourselves. The implied antithesis we hold is this: There are elect infants not dying in infancy, and such must experience effectual calling through rational means, and freely believe and repent according to Chapter X. There were once two Jewish babies, John and Judas; John an elect infant, Judas a non-elect one. Had John the Baptist died of croup he would have been redeemed without personal faith and repentance; but he was predestinated to live to man’s estate, so he had to be saved through effectual calling. Judas, being a non-elect infant, was also predestinated to live to manhood and receive his own fate freely by his own contumacy. Presbyterians do not believe that the Bible or their Confession teaches that there are non-elect infants dying in infancy and so damned. Had they thought this of their Confession, they would have changed this section long ago.
When an intelligent being makes a selection of some out of a number of objects, he therein unavoidably makes a preterition (a passing by) of the others; we cannot deny this without imputing ignorance or inattention to the agent; but omniscience can neither be ignorant nor inattentive. Hence, God’s preordination must: extend to the saved and the lost.
But here we must understand the difference between God’s effective decree and his permissive decree, the latter is just as definite and certain as the former; but the distinction is this: The objects of God’s effective decree are effects which he himself works, without employing or including the free-agency of any other rational responsible person, such as his creations, miracles, regenerations of souls, resurrections of bodies, and all those results which his providence brings to pass, through the blind, compulsory powers of second causes, brutish or material. The nature of his purpose here is by his own power to determine these results to come to pass.
But the nature of his permissive decree is this: He resolves to allow or permit some creature free-agent freely and certainly to do the thing decreed without impulsion from God’s power. To this class of actions belong all the indifferent, and especially all the sinful, deeds of natural men, and all those final results where such persons throw away their own salvation by their own disobedience. In all these results God does not himself do the thing, nor help to do it, but intentionally lets it be done. Does one ask how then a permissive decree can have entire certainty? The answer is, because God knows that men’s natural disposition certainly prompts them to evil; for instance, I know it is the nature of lambs to eat grass. If I intentionally leave open the gate between the fold and the pasture I know that the grass will be eaten, and I intend to allow it just as clearly as if I had myself driven them upon the pasture.
Now, it is vain for those to object that God’s will cannot have anything to do with sinful results, even in this permissive sense, without making God an author of the sin, unless these cavilers mean to take the square infidel ground. For the Bible is full of assertions that God does thus foreordain sin without being an author of sin. He foreordained Pharaoh’s tyranny and rebellion, and then punished him for it. In Isaiah 10 he foreordains Nebuchadnezzar’s sack of Jerusalem, and then punishes him for it. In Acts 2:23 the wicked Judas betrays his Lord by the determinate purpose and foreknowledge of God. In Romans 9:18, “he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth,” so in many other places. But our Confession, Chapter X., Section vii., makes this express difference between God’s decree of election and of preterition. The former is purely gracious, not grounded in any foresight of any piety in them because they have none to foresee, except as they are elected and called, and in consequence thereof. But the non-elect are passed by and foreordained to destruction “for their sins, and for the glory of God’s justice.”
We thus see that usual fiery denunciations of this preterition are nothing but absurd follies and falsehoods. These vain-talkers rant as though it was God’s foreordination which makes these men go to perdition. In this there is not one word of truth. They alone make themselves go, and God’s purpose concerning the wretched result never goes a particle further than this, that in his justice he resolves to let them have their own preferred way. These men talk as though God’s decree of preterition was represented by us as a barrier preventing poor striving sinners from getting to heaven, no matter how they repent and pray and obey, only because they are not the secret pets of an unjust divine caprice.
The utter folly and wickedness of this cavil are made plain by this, that the Bible everywhere teaches none but the elect and effectually called ever work or try in earnest to get to heaven; that the lost never really wish nor try to be saints; that their whole souls are opposed to it, and they prefer freely to remain ungodly, and this is the sole cause of their ruin. If they would truly repent, believe, and obey, they would find no decree debarring them from grace and heaven, God can say this just as the shepherd might say of the wolves: if they will choose to eat my grass peaceably with my lambs they shall find no fence of mine keeping them from my grass. But the shepherd knows that it is always the nature of wolves to choose to devour the lambs instead of the grass, which former their own natures, and not the fence, assuredly prompts them to do, until almighty power new-creates them into lambs. The reason why godless men cavil so fiercely against this part of the doctrine, and so fully misrepresent it, is just this —that they hate to acknowledge to themselves that free yet stubborn godlessness of soul which leads them voluntarily to work their own ruin, and so they try to throw the blame on God or his doctrine instead of taking it on themselves.
In fine, unbelieving men are ever striving to paint the doctrine of election as the harsh, the exclusive, the terrible doctrine, erecting a hindrance between sinners and salvation. But properly viewed it is exactly the opposite. It is not the harsh doctrine, but the sweet one, not the exclusive doctrine, not the hindrance of our salvation, but the blessed inlet to all the salvation found in this universe. It is sin, man’s voluntary sin, which excludes him from salvation; and in this sin God has no responsibility. It is God’s grace alone which persuades men both to come in and remain within the region of salvation; and all this grace is the fruit of election. I repeat, then, it is our voluntary sin which is the source of all that is terrible in the fate of ruined men and angels. It is God’s election of grace which is the sweet and blessed source of all that is remedial, hopeful, and happy in earth and heaven. God can say to every angel and redeemed man in the universe: “I have chosen thee in everlasting love; therefore in loving kindness have I drawn thee.” And every angel, and saint on this earth and in glory responds, in accordance with our hymn:
Why was I made to hear his voice
And enter while there’s room,
While others make a wretched choice
And rather starve than come?
‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew me in;
Else I had still refused to taste
And perish in my sin.
And now dare any sinner insolently press the question, why the same electing love and power in God did not also include and save all lost sinners? This is the sufficient and the awful answer: “Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?” (Romans 9:20.) Hast thou any claim of right against God, O man, to force thee against thy preference and stubborn choice to embrace a redemption unto holiness which thou dost hate and willfully reject in all the secret powers of thy soul? And if thou destroyest thyself, while holy creatures may lament thy ruin, all will say that thou art the last being in this universe to complain of injustice, since this would be only complaining against the God whom thou dost daily insult, that he did not make thee do the things and live the life which thou didst thyself willfully and utterly refuse!
Others urge this captious objection: that this doctrine of election places a fatal obstacle between the anxious sinner and saving faith. They ask, How can I exercise a sincere, appropriating faith, unless I have ascertained that I am elected? For the reprobate soul is not entitled to believe that Christ died for him, and as his salvation is impossible, the truest faith could not save him even if he felt it. But how can man as certain God’s secret purpose of election toward him?
This cavil expressly falsifies God’s teachings concerning salvation by faith. As concerning his election the sinner is neither commanded nor invited to embrace as the object of his faith the proposition “I am elected.” There is no such command in the Bible. The proposition he is invited and commanded to embrace is this: “Whosoever believes shall be saved.” (Romans 5:11.) God has told this caviler expressly, “Secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to you and your children, that ye may do all the words of this law.”(Deuteronomy 29:29) Let us not cavil, but obey. God’s promises also assure us “that whosoever cometh unto God through Christ, he will in no wise cast off” (John 6:37). So that it is impossible that any sinner really wishing to be saved can be kept from salvation by uncertainty about his own election. When we add that God’s decree in no wise infringes man’s free agency, our answer is complete. Confession, Chapter III., Section 1., by this decree, “No violence is offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”
But it is stubbornly objected that those who are subject to a sovereign, immutable decree cannot be free agents; that the two propositions are contradictory, and the assertion of both an insult to reason. We explained that there are various means by which we see free agents prompted to action, which are not compulsory, and yet certain of effect, and that our God is a God of infinite wisdom and resources. God tells them that in governing his rational creatures according to his eternal purpose, he uses only such means as are consistent with their freedom. Still, the arrogant objectors are positive that it cannot be done, even by an infinite God! that if there is predestination, there cannot be free-agency. Surely the man who makes this denial should be himself infinite!
But, perhaps, the best answer to this folly is this: Mr. Arminian, you, a puny mortal, are actually doing, and that often, the very thing you say an almighty God cannot do! Predestining the acts of free-agents, certainly and efficiently, without their freedom. For instance : Mr. Arminian invites me to dine with him at one o’clock P.M. I reply, yes, provided dinner is punctual and certain, because I have to take a railroad train at two P.M. He promises positively that dinner shall be ready at one P.M. How so, will he cook it himself? Oh, no! But he employs a steady cook, named Gretchen, and he has already instructed her that one P.M. must be the dinner hour.
That is predestination he tells me, certain and efficacious.
I now take up Mr. Arminian’s argument, and apply it to Gretchen thus: He says predestination and free-agency are contradictory. He predestinated you, Gretchen, to prepare dinner for one o’clock, therefore you were not a free agent in getting dinner. Moreover, as there can be no moral desert where there is no freedom, you have not deserved your promised wages for cooking, and Mr. Arminian thinks he is not at all bound to pay you.
Gretchen’s common sense replies thus: I know I am a free agent; I am no slave, no machine, but a free woman, and an honest woman, who got dinner at one o’clock because I chose to keep my word; and if Mr. Arminian robs me of my wages on this nasty pretext, I will know he is a rogue.
Gretchen’s logic is perfectly good.
My argument is, that men are perpetually predestinating and efficiently procuring free acts of free agents. How much more may an infinite God do likewise. But this reasoning need not, and does not, imply that God’s ways of doing it are the same as ours.
His resources of wisdom and power are manifold, infinite. Thus this popular cavil is shown to be as silly and superficial as it is common. It is men’s sinful pride of will which makes them repeat such shallow stuff:
Having exploded objections, I now close this argument for election with the strongest of all the testimonies, the Scriptures. The Bible is full of it; all of God’s prophecies imply predestination, because, unless he had foreordained the predicted events, he could not be certain they would come to pass. The Bible doctrine of God’s providence proves predestination, because the Bible says providence extends to everything, and is certain and omnipotent, and it only executes what predestination plans. Here are a few express texts among a hundred: Psalms 33:11: “The counsel of the Lord standeth forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.” Isaiah 45:10: God declareth “the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” God’s election of Israel was unconditional. See Ezekiel 16:6: “And when I passed by thee and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.” Acts 13:48: “When the Gentiles heard this… as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Romans 8:29, 30: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate… Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Ephesians 1:4-7: “He hath chosen us in him (Christ) before the foundation of the world,” etc. 1 Thessalonians 1:4: “Knowing, brethren, beloved, your election of God.” Revelation 21:27 “….They that are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
Silly people try to say that election is the doctrine of that harsh apostle Paul. But the loving Savior teaches it more expressly if possible than Paul does. See, again, John 15:16: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” etc. John 6:37: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me,” etc.; see also verses 39, 44; Matthew 24:22; Luke 18:7; John 10:14, 28; Mark 13:22; Matt. 20:16.
—Five Points of Calvinism, The
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I would love to pretend to be sinless, and think that since coming to back to obedience in Christ after a decae of apostacy that all my wars with the flesh have been won. I would love to pretend that all I really need to do is keep waiting for Jesus to come back in a sort of heavenly limbo; like a train station for previously sanctified ticket holders.
But it’s just not that way. The turnstyle to the station lets in the great, hairy, dirty sinners just as readily as … well, only the sinners, really. This has been by way of spammy introduction to say that I still battle daily lust. So this article from Piper is here precisely because I need a quick way of finding it to reference it instead of fumbling about his site. It’s not here to help “others”, or a “friend of a friend.” No, the battle is real. It’s a battle against lust, not a sewing circle against lust. It’s my battle against lust, not ‘a guy I know.’
Strategies for Fighting Lust
By John Piper November 5, 2001
I have in mind men and women. For men it’s obvious. The need for warfare against the bombardment of visual temptation to fixate on sexual images is urgent. For women it is less obvious, but just as great if we broaden the scope of temptation to food or figure or relational fantasies. When I say “lust” I mean the realm of thought, imagination, and desire that leads to sexual misconduct. So here is one set of strategies in the war against wrong desires. I put it in the form of an acronym, A N T H E M.
A – AVOID as much as is possible and reasonable the sights and situations that arouse unfitting desire. I say “possible and reasonable” because some exposure to temptation is inevitable. And I say “unfitting desire” because not all desires for sex, food, and family are bad. We know when they are unfitting and unhelpful and on their way to becoming enslaving. We know our weaknesses and what triggers them. “Avoiding” is a Biblical strategy. “Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness” (2 Timothy 2:22). “Make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14).
N – Say NO to every lustful thought within five seconds. And say it with the authority of Jesus Christ. “In the name of Jesus, NO!” You don’t have much more than five seconds. Give it more unopposed time than that, and it will lodge itself with such force as to be almost immovable. Say it out loud if you dare. Be tough and warlike. As John Owen said, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” Strike fast and strike hard. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” ( James 4:7).
T – TURN the mind forcefully toward Christ as a superior satisfaction. Saying “no” will not suffice. You must move from defense to offense. Fight fire with fire. Attack the promises of sin with the promises of Christ. The Bible calls lusts “deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22). They lie. They promise more than they can deliver. The Bible calls them “passions of your former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14). Only fools yield. “All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter” (Proverbs 7:22). Deceit is defeated by truth. Ignorance is defeated by knowledge. It must be glorious truth and beautiful knowledge. This is why I wrote Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ. We must stock our minds with the superior promises and pleasures of Jesus. Then we must turn to them immediately after saying, “NO!”
H – HOLD the promise and the pleasure of Christ firmly in your mind until it pushes the other images out. “Fix your eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 3:1). Here is where many fail. They give in too soon. They say, “I tried to push it out, and it didn’t work.” I ask, “How long did you try?” How hard did you exert your mind? The mind is a muscle. You can flex it with vehemence. Take the kingdom violently (Matthew 11:12). Be brutal. Hold the promise of Christ before your eyes. Hold it. Hold it! Don’t let it go! Keep holding it! How long? As long as it takes. Fight! For Christ’s sake, fight till you win! If an electric garage door were about to crush your child you would hold it up with all our might and holler for help, and hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it.
E – ENJOY a superior satisfaction. Cultivate the capacities for pleasure in Christ. One reason lust reigns in so many is that Christ has so little appeal. We default to deceit because we have little delight in Christ. Don’t say, “That’s just not me.” What steps have you taken to waken affection for Jesus? Have you fought for joy? Don’t be fatalistic. You were created to treasure Christ with all your heart – more than you treasure sex or sugar. If you have little taste for Jesus, competing pleasures will triumph. Plead with God for the satisfaction you don’t have: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14). Then look, look, look at the most magnificent Person in the universe until you see him the way he is.
M – MOVE into a useful activity away from idleness and other vulnerable behaviors. Lust grows fast in the garden of leisure. Find a good work to do, and do it with all your might. “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11). “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Abound in work. Get up and do something. Sweep a room. Hammer a nail. Write a letter. Fix a faucet. And do it for Jesus’ sake. You were made to manage and create. Christ died to make you “zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14). Displace deceitful lusts with a passion for good deeds.
Fighting at your side,
Pastor John
© Desiring God
By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: www.desiringGod.org. Email: mail@desiringGod.org. Toll Free: 1.888.346.4700.
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Graciously, my disturbed reader shared with me that the real drive for Matthew in all the genealogical stuff is to prove that the Messiah was indeed descended from David. To me, it seems silly. I mean, those that believed that the Messiah was the Messiah would naturally be happy with a genealogy that went “The Messiah came from David. So, Mary was betrothed to Joseph…” whilst those less likely to accept that the carpenter’s son was also God’s Son would notice that certain liberties were taken with the lists and accuse Matthew of tampering with evidence… Anyway, it was good to know that it was for more than just the sake of it.
After the birth of Jesus and his surviving the assassination attempt by Herod, Jesus sort of goes into limbo for three decades. At the end of chapter two, we read that the family has settled down in Nazareth, presumably living a fairly typical life. We know from elsewhere that at around 12 years of age, Jesus made a trip to Jerusalem. There, he impressed some Rabbi’s and “got lost” on the way home, although, it was actually his parents that got lost as the lad never actually left the city! But for Matthew’s purpose, nothing happened until just prior to Christ’s public ministry kicking off with the arrival on the scene of John the Baptist.
This John fellow is enigmatic. In the line of the Old Testament prophets, he did some pretty bizarre things. His clothing seems to be less than conventional, even if it was (based on my somewhat limited exposure to camels), aromatic. His message was pretty simple. “Repent.” It strikes me that this is pretty much the first public proclamation by Jesus a few chapters later. John is baptizing in the Jordan, calling for repentance due to the proximity of the Kingdom of God.
I can imagine this drew two main responses. Those that thought that too many locusts had upset the balance of his brain, with all that standing about in the water and desert sun pushing him over the brink into sheer madness. After all, it had been 400 years since the return from exile and there was no sign of the Kingdom to come. In fact, all these proconsuls, kings, Herods and whatnot tended to indicate that, if anything, the kingdom was actually further away, didn’t they? Just another barking fundy in the desert with no idea of the social mores that let us all get along.
But, obviously, there were also those that thought, “At last!” Finally, their hopes would be realized and they could throw off the shackles of oppression. Perhaps this John was the one who would raise the Jews to nationhood once more, and establish a return to a National Kingdom under one who was the same as, and, yet at the same time, better than David. After all, wasn’t he a lot like Hezekiah? Didn’t those guys call for reformation? Didn’t Ezra and Nehemiah preach the need for a return to righteousness to preclude the restoration of the people? Perhaps John was like that! Maybe we should pack some pickled figs and a rock hyrax or something, and go down there and see what he is up to!
And go they did. In all the movies there are long lines of people waiting to be baptized by John, with attendant hangers-on and on-lookers sitting and standing on various dunes and cliffs around the river. It seems to have had something of an air of a first century church picnic. And to some degree this is borne out by the text. We are told that not just locals, but folks from other places in the district and some even further afield were coming to see him.
His message does not seem to have been tailored to cater to the masses. We know that folks came and heard his call to a repentant state of heart before God, and were baptized, but I wonder how many found themselves like the Rich, Young Ruler Christ was to encounter a little later on. I wonder how many were disturbed by his ‘rantings’, how many dismissed him as a lunatic. I wonder how many came with friends and relatives and watched with astonishment as they rose to descend to the river and receive the baptism.
Certainly he was drawing a crowd. So much so that the local clergy got together a delegation and went out to see what all this fuss was about. Right here before even they have had a chance to be demonstrated as the ‘bad guys’, the Pharisees and Sadducees get it in the neck. Before they have even done anything wrong, they are set aside for wrath.
This troubled me until I realized that I was approaching Scripture as a novel and wanting to see my antagonists and protagonists built up so that in some sense what John was saying was justified and their sentence to destruction was deserved. I wanted to rewrite Scripture as if it were to say “When John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, just after they had beaten up a widow and stolen her cloak, not to mention burned down the house of a guy who was very holy but didn’t tithe his cummin and oh yeah there was a baby inside that died, he said “You offspring of vipers!”” That I could deal with. That would not assault my 20th century western morality that tells me ‘You’re saved because you deserve to be and do all the right things.’
But John is a prophet! He knows their hearts. And the Pharisees and Sadducees are not innocent of having done ‘nothing wrong.’ Their robes and hats and whatnot stood in stark contrast to the camel hair and leather thong of John, yes? Now I understand why he dressed weird and ate … what he ate. Because it set him fundamentally and irrevocably apart from the established religious leaders of the day who sought far more than righteousness from their flock, but wealth. And power. And to constrain and bind them with a multiplicity of laws and regulations, all of them supra-scriptural. They did not walk onto the pages of Scripture straight out of the author’s head as pure, new and undefiled. They were arriving on the scene straight from history. They were real. They existed. We might say “Now as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was preaching, some S.S. Nazis walked in and he said “You brood of vipers.”” We know that these were not innocent folks with a clean slate who Bonhoeffer just happened to be picking on.
What we do see, however, is that John had a firm grasp on the fact that when God delivered His people, it was intimately connected with judgment. Repent, yes! The kingdom of God was at hand, you betcha! Fire and winnowing forks, Judgment certainly! What John had not grasped, could not have grasped without direct revelation from God, was that Christ was to suffer that judgment, not mete it out.
So John the Baptist contained a strong ‘Already/Not Yet’ element. Yes, Judgment is a part of the coming of the Kingdom. Yes, Jehovah will consume the wicked like a devouring fire; a fire from which there is no escape and this will inaugurate the establishment of the Kingdom. But in the final, ultimate sense, that is the language of Revelation and not the language of the Gospel. In the Gospel, sin is dealt a death blow but it is by personalizing it in Christ and not by obliterating it from the masses leaving only the righteous. This approach had been tried before, after all. You may recall the flood incident when all who were not righteous were destroyed and only Noah and his family found favor in the eyes of God. Yet, immediately after landfall – here we go again with the sin. Something more effective, more dramatic was needed than a quick swap of elements from water to fire and a repetition of a previously failed ‘experiment.’
John was not, ultimately, a popular guy. I am familiar with enough of his story to know he dies in the end. But I want to be more like John. I want to wear the equivalent of camel’s hair and leather belts to set myself apart from the plastic-haired, crispy-baked tele-evangelists that mock my faith by using it as a vehicle to reach whatever personal goals they have. I don’t want snuffle at the same trough of excess as they do, despite what my waistline says. I want to want to (no, not a mistake. My desire does not yet match the reality…) be so hideous to the god of this world, that he conspires to arrange my beheading. I’m not there yet, but it’s a goal. I want to be sure that under duress and pain, torture, whatever, that my faith is so resolute that I can know that, yeah, life is good, but to be with Christ is better.
I have some work to do.
Posted in Blogging the New Testament, Matthew | 1 Comment »
Jesus: The Early Years.
Matthew 1-2
I don’t understand the obsessive nature of Jewish writers such as Matthew with genealogies. The Bible, however, is replete with them and another one occurs here at the opening of the New Testament. I’m sure there is also some symbolic significance to the observation Matthew makes that the numbers of generations are 14 from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Babylonian Exile, and 14 from that time to the birth of Christ. A strong part of me wants to do what I always do in situations such as these, and that is to dive for a commentary and unpack all the mysterious truths that greater minds than my miserable matter may have discerned; but my goal here is to interact with the text and not to conduct an online Bible study, so other than noting that for perhaps the first time I read slowly and comprehensively through the list of names, nothing much here leaps out to me.
Of course, the spidey senses in the back of my head want to note the women included in the list. We have Tamar, who got knocked up by her father-in-law by pretending to be a prostitute because Judah, her husband’s father, hadn’t married her off to her dead husband’s brother; Rahab, a whore who betrayed her people to help Israelite warriors escape death; Ruth, who was perhaps the best of all of them and yet was still a foreigner, a Moabitess, no less, outside of Israel; Bathsheba, who doesn’t even rate a personal mention but gets introduced as ‘the wife of Uriah. These women (and in many cases, the men around them) are nothing if not proof that despite our fallible and ‘best’ efforts to derail the messianic line, God rules and over-rules.
Right down to Mary who risks stigma of her own. Betrothed to Joseph, there had been no hanky-panky behind the olive press and yet, she is pregnant! Despite how we choose to interpret the Isaiah prophecy (young maiden vs virgin, etc.), it is the plain and obvious reading of the text that no sexual congress had taken place between Joseph and Mary. In fact, it’s not even that she played about a bit, as he must have no doubt concluded given his desire to ‘divorce her’, even if he did plan to do it quietly and with an eye to her public reputation.
But we see she had been overcome by the Holy Spirit who impregnated her. This interests me as, since Jesus was not of the seed of Adam, he was not corrupted with the stain of Adam; namely, original sin. This placed him uniquely outside the curse of Adam and able to fully satisfy the law through obedience. Here was one guy who did not start ‘behind the eight-ball.’ And yet, born of Mary biologically, he was also fully man; able to identify with our condition; able to suffer as we did; know hunger, want, desire for a woman.
We give Mary lots of credit, and rightfully so, for her obedience to the Lord. But imagine yourself as Joseph. Your beloved’s belly starts to swell and you KNOW it’s not yours. You’re torn. You love this girl. She’s your heart. You can imagine him after a long day at the shop, filled with food after shaking out the sawdust, filled with anxiety about how to divorce this woman and send her away. How to preserve his family from shame and yet not forsake the love he obviously bears for her. You just know he nodded off with these things on his mind. “As he pondered these things”, it says, “an angel of the Lord appeard to him in a dream.”
You have to know that these angels are the cute little cherubs we see peeking out of Christmas Cards and chintzy Victoriana. This guys was the shizznit! One dream was all it took for Joseph to totally get it straight and fall into line with God’s plan. No arguing. No Moses wheedling for a sign. No Dickensian ‘There’s more of gravy than of grave’ about having seen a ‘ghost.’ Nope. One dream, wake up “Oh cool, I’m the father of the Messiah. I wonder if old man Graunbaum wants his chair tomorrow?” Joseph had some chops.
We Three Kings of Orient Are
One On A Tractor, Two In A Car
So runs my recollection of the carol, which I now notice is completely without merit. I guess it just works better as a lyric than “We three magi of orient are.” And there’s no mention of camels anywhere, so if we are making stuff up, the John Deere and Ford Prefect (which I always imagine them in, green by the way. My dad knows why…) are just as valid as camels. And they came to Jesus’ … … house! His House! Not the stable. Not the manger. Not the no crib for a bed where he lay down his sweet head. His house. Ripped off! I found this profoundly disturbing. No wonder Herod wanted all the baby boys under two murdered. Jesus was not laying there with his umbilical cord hanging off, smeared in blood and birth pains. Mary was not sweaty but jubilant and Joseph didn’t give these guys cigars. The family had gotten through the birth, through the census and traveled home again.
No camels, no kings, no baby Jesus in a hayrick. If right off the bat my visions of the New Testament were far more about marketing glitz, a sort of popular culture version of the Bible, what else did I know? Nothing of which I am willing to stake my life on. I knew, of course, as a piece of trivia to appear learned at parties, that the birth was not in December, let alone on the 25th. I know all about sun gods and Roman Catholics and usurping pagan days and shepherds watching their flocks not freezing to death during winter. Even so, I can’t quite divorce the manger scene from snow, winter, and all the trappings we see on the TV during the holiday season.
And not surprisingly, we see Joseph dragging the young family all over the Middle East on the strengths of dreams. I used to want to see an angel. Now, not so much. I don’t think I’m man enough to handle it.
Posted in Blogging the New Testament, Christmas, Gospel, Matthew | Leave a Comment »
I recently read a piece in Slate magazine by following a link from Challies. It was by David Plotz, and his desire to blog through the Old Testament in a year. I was captivated by this idea and decided to blatantly steal his idea and blog through the New Testament. Always I start better than I finish, but I hope to, and pray to, follow the New Testament through, blogging about my reading as I go.
Plotz nailed me, and convicted me, when he outlined his reasons and methods for reading the Scriptures on which his faith was based:
So, what can I possibly do? My goal is pretty simple. I want to find out what happens when an ignorant person actually reads the book on which his religion is based. I think I’m in the same position as many other lazy but faithful people (Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus). I love Judaism; I love (most of) the lessons it has taught me about how to live in the world; and yet I realized I am fundamentally ignorant about its foundation, its essential document. So, what will happen if I approach my Bible empty, unmediated by teachers or rabbis or parents? What will delight and horrify me? How will the Bible relate to the religion I practice, and the lessons I thought I learned in synagogue and Hebrew School?
They sound pretty logical and straightforward to me. Read, react, write. I’m ignorant of large swathes of the writings on which my faith is based. Faith which, by the way, I really pray I would be willing to die for. That’s pretty stupid. So, in the spirit of all grand adventure into unfamiliar territory, I don my Bloggy pith hat, fill my ink bottles, ready my specimen jars and jump aboard the train!
Let’s go!
Posted in Blogging the New Testament | Leave a Comment »
From an article in Modern Reformation (Link at bottom)
In February 2007, Michael Horton had the opportunity to interview Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church (Seattle, Washington) and author of The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out (Zondervan, 2004).
This interview was originally broadcast on March 11, 2007 on The White Horse Inn radio program. To hear the entire interview online, go to www.whitehoresinn.org, click “Previous Programs,” then click “Broadcast Archives”at the top of the page.
Can you give us some background on your congregation? It’s mostly a younger crowd, isn’t it?
Well, it started that way. I’m in Seattle, one of the least-churched cities in America. There are more dogs than evangelicals in our town. I started here as a non-Christian, I became a Christian when I was 19, got married at 21, started a Bible study at age 25 that today is over 6,000 people. I think we’re the fifteenth fastest growing church in America right now. So, it started off really young, but the age has spread. It’s about half single, half married, about forty percent conversion growth as far as we can tell. So, it’s been pretty busy.
Wow, and you’re doing this with a good dose of Reformation theology, specifically Calvinism?
It’s going well so far. We’re enjoying it. I’m a Bible teacher, I have a high view of Scripture, we do Communion every week. So far God’s using it to reach a lot of mainly younger people who are a little weary of pluralism and postmodernism and looking for some truth and some Bible and ultimately really intrigued by Jesus. So, I’m really glad for what he’s done.
Now, wait a second. Teaching and Communion every week? We’ve been told that this generation isn’t interested in teaching and they grew up in churches of their Boomer parents where teaching was pretty light and stage productions other than Communion were key. What’s different about this generation or at least these people in your church?
Christianity Today did a story in September that was interesting. It was about the resurgence of Reformed theology among younger evangelicals…it was the cover story. What we are seeing is, the two hot theologies right now among the younger evangelicals are sort of a “new Reformed theology,” which is basically just the older form rediscovered, and what is known as Emergent, or emerging theology, which is becoming the new left. So, we are seeing a return to Bible exposition…In our network, we’ve seen a hundred new churches planted in the U.S. just in the last few years, all led by basically expository Bible teachers who serve Communion every week and have a Reformed theology that includes male leadership in the church and are conservative evangelicals and it’s going very well. There’s a major upswing in that direction.
Now, you were involved on the ground floor of the emerging movement, sometimes called the Emergent Movement. How did that originate and what is your relationship to it now?
In the mid to late 90’s, my friends-whom I love very much-in this organization called Leadership Network brought together a bunch of young pastors just to share ideas and network and see what the next generation of ministry might look like. That led to what was called the Young Leaders Network. I became involved in the early days of that. We did some speaking and traveling together, we talked about the future of where Christianity might be going in America.
And this is with Brian McLaren and others?
Brian McLaren was added about a year or two later to that team, and then it separated from Leadership Network and became, ultimately, the Emergent Village. And it was in that transition that I tried to part company on some theological issues. I still consider a lot of the leaders in that movement to be personal friends and people that I do love, but theologically I had to part ways, as it were, over some doctrinal issues.
What would you point out as the most critical areas of disagreement between the emphases of Reformation theology and Emergent theology?
The biggest issue is always the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, which for me are watershed issues that then lay the groundwork for the resolution of the other issues. Behind that comes penal substitution issues-Jesus’ death on the cross in our place for our sins, such things as eternal torment in hell, things such as original sin-we are sinners both by nature and choice, things such as the exclusivity of Jesus-no salvation apart from the person and work of Jesus, and also gender roles, which includes male leadership in the church, male/female roles in the home, as well as sexual issues, like homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbianism-is there intentional creative design by God that’s designated for gender? And those are kind of the big issues on the table. They’re not new issues, but they’ve got a new interest.
As we look at this generation, is there sort of a realization among pastors in your network that we have over-stereotyped generations and turned churches into niche demographics?
I think that one of the sad things that has happened is that there is an assumption that there is a sameness, or commonality, among generations, and at least in what we’re seeing in a world that is more pluralistic, that is more diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-perspectival, you’re really dealing with a lot of different tribes of people. They may be the same age, but they may have a completely different view of God, of the world, of truth, of life and death and sexuality, and so I think it’s reductionistic to put millions of people in a bucket and say because they were born between certain years they’re all the same. The result of that is you’re told how to market to them, how to program for them as if one size does fit all and a franchise mentality would work for a whole generation, which isn’t true.
So the real difference between, say, a Willow Creek and the Emergent Village is the difference between the mall and Starbucks.
In the seeker movement the ideology was to hold to evangelical theology but to take some of the rough edges off; some of the doctrines you do believe, like hell, you sort of tuck those away so that they’re not out in plain sight. It’s interesting among some young evangelicals who are more “emerging,” for them the theological issues are really important and they are pressing the theological issues but they’re coming to more liberal conclusions and they end up having much smaller congregations. You’re looking at house churches, new monastic communities, alternative communities that are smaller and grass-roots in orientation, more theology-driven but more liberal in their orientation.
Remarkable. How much of this, Mark, is because they did grow up in churches that really downplayed the rough edges and didn’t really engage in in-depth instruction from the Scriptures and had kind of “worship lite”? How much of this longing for some substance and yet, sometimes without a rudder, is due to that upbringing in the mega-church?
Well, I don’t think it’s just mega-church, or size of church. There are men like Spurgeon who had large churches. But I think it’s more of an orientation of church where the people that you’re seeking to attract are consumers and you’re a producer of religious goods and services, so you pull your constituency and target your market. I think that led to a theological reduction, to a drive of pragmatism and best practices that walked away from a core theological conviction driving what it means to be the church. And I think a younger generation of evangelicals is wanting to get back to that theological core. One of my concerns is, they tend to be leaning into church history, they tend to be leaning into experience, and they tend not to have as high a view of Scripture as I would have hoped for. And I don’t say that broad brush for everyone, but the area of concern I see is a low view of Scripture and the result is, when you’re looking for firm foundations upon which to build and you don’t end up at Scripture, you’re going to find yourself in very serious trouble.
How much of this, too, is “channel surfing”? The younger generation, 40 years old and younger, are so used to surfing the Net and surfing the channels. How much of this is, “Yeah, there’s a depth of interest in theology, but a kind of eclectic ‘make-it-up-as-you-go-along’?”
The word that’s used a lot is “mosaic,” you know, pieces from many traditions and perspectives and ideologies that come together to formulate a whole-That’s the language that is used. On the flip side, I think for those who weren’t raised in the church and aren’t the products of more soft-centered evangelicalism-those who are just not Christian-what we are seeing is that they have a strong interest in Bible and theology. Like I said, in our city, I can’t believe it, Michael. We are going through the Book of Ruth and we grew by a thousand people this month-in one of the least churched cities in America. We’re growing by non-Christians coming for Bible teaching. We’re seeing that same thing throughout the country. I could point to most of the major cities across the country and show you young, Reformed-minded Bible teachers whose churches are growing very fast but it’s primarily Bible, doctrinal, theological instruction. They have unbelievers who are coming for theological instruction to learn about the God of the Bible, which I find whole-heartedly encouraging. I’m thrilled by that.
So unlike the church growth emphases of the previous generation, where you kind of move people out of the churches they already belong to into larger churches, you’re actually seeing (and a lot of your friends who are doing this faithful biblical exposition) non-Christians become Christians and the growth coming from actual evangelism?
Absolutely. But the evangelism is Jesus-centered Bible teaching where the text is open and Jesus is the hero of every page of Scripture, which is just classic, Reformed, biblical theology. So, yeah, that is in fact what we are seeing. The people have been marketed, they have been pitched, they have been sold, they have had their felt needs assuaged. What they haven’t had is anyone get up and open the Bible, tell them who God is, what he has done and call them to repentance in a very clear, forthright way that respects their intelligence.
What does that look like in concrete terms on the ground?
That means that Christians need to be loving their neighbors as Jesus did, you know whether it’s like Jesus with the woman at the well who was a social outcast and very sinful; there is a deep love for that person and a willingness to sit down and dialogue with them, not just preach at them… or whether it’s a man like Zaccheus; it’s actually having meals with such people and entering into a relationship with them so that the gospel can be explained and demonstrated and defended. I think the hard thing is that most people are for evangelism, but it is time-consuming. It does take energy and some people are very difficult and their understanding grows slowly and it’s a commitment to walking with people in relationship, in community, in conversation, practicing hospitality, loving your neighbor…and I think we see that in the incarnation of Jesus, that God himself would spend time with some of the people that he spent time with, and people like me who he’s still willing to spend time with is remarkable.
So your preaching, your Word-based ministry, it’s not one thing over here and then you also have this outreach program over there, but your outreach is a ministry of the Word to your neighborhood.
We call it “air war” and “ground war.” The preaching of Scripture is air war. It deals with multitudes and wide audiences, but then our people really do the ground war. They love their neighbor, they share the gospel with their friends, they open their home to family, friends, and coworkers…they’re really doing the work of the ground war, and generally speaking, that’s where most evangelism happens – on the ground war. The air war can help articulate the gospel, but then people are going to have questions, misunderstandings, misapplications, and somebody who loves God is going to need to help walk with them through those particulars.
A lot of us grew up in churches, Mark, where we were told, “You are a member of this church now, which means that you have to find your gift-teach such and such a grade in Sunday school, be a greeter, show up for various church events… are you going to join the clean-up ministry or the tract ministry…”-and you end up spending all of your time in church-related activities so that you couldn’t actually spend time out in the world in your secular calling, investing in relationships with friends. You kind of scurry out there to make a buck, then scurry back into the church to be with your people. Do you think that that is a fundamental flaw in the way a lot of traditional churches approach the outside world?
Look at the way they look at their programming. Sometimes a church only considers formal ministry in the church, as opposed to informal ministry in their home. So, you know, we like to tell our people that informal ministry counts. If you’re having your lost neighbors over for dinner to love them, that counts. And so, I think it’s an understanding that church is not just a thing that people come to; it’s also living the lifestyle created by the gospel, knowing that wherever we’re at we’re witnesses, we are missionaries, we do bring the gospel with us, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are given opportunities. We should not overlook those in the name of formalized ministry but to see those informal opportunities as God’s providential hand giving us wonderful opportunities out in the marketplace… We don’t have any evangelism training, we don’t have an evangelism department, we don’t have altar calls, we don’t do any advertising, we don’t do any marketing. I tend to preach right through books of the Bible, occasionally I’ll do a series. I did a twelve-week series on the cross, on penal substitutionary atonement, so the times I do something topical is usually theologically clarifying for people. And what we find is that in previous generations it was a fight between “Is Sunday to disciple the believers or to reach the lost?” My articulation is, Sunday is for the worship and the adoration and the exaltation of Jesus, and if everything is about Jesus, then it works for Christians and non-Christians. Everyone needs Jesus, and the gospel is for Christians, too. It’s not just something you believe and then move on with the rest of your life. The gospel of conviction of sin and repentance and trusting in the finished work of Christ is something that every Christian practices every moment of every day, and I think it’s a truncated view of the gospel if it’s a few laws, or a sales pitch we give to someone, they pray the prayer, and then we’ve concluded our evangelistic endeavor. I think it’s a very reductionistic view of the gospel.
The title of your book, Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out, is interesting. Why the title “Radical Reformission”? What’s “reformission”?
It’s a reforming of our understanding of missions. In previous generations, the idea has been that missionaries are people that we send overseas to bizaare foreign cultures and they are the highly trained professionals that go share the gospel. Well, what we’re looking at is God has brought the nations, the United States of America, our cities and our areas are very tribal with different races, nations, groups, tribes, subcultures of people and that mission is something that happens across the street as well as across the world. And I think that’s what Jesus was getting at when he said “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth.” It’s fine to send a missionary to China, but the number of evangelicals in China is statistically the same as the city of Seattle. So if we’re going to send missionaries to China, I’m all for it, but we also need to send missionaries to Seattle, Philadelphia, New York City, to these major culture-making urban centers that create pop culture. That’s where the television stations are, the record labels are, that’s where the media is centered, politics are centered, money is centered, and if we don’t have a faithful gospel witness there, then we’re essentially just handing over the making of culture for the next generation to people who have no idea of the gospel. And, to me, the understanding of mission is not just going across the world; sometimes we’re going across the street and that counts as well.
Mark, thank you so much for the time you’ve given us and for the insights you’ve passed on to us. We all have a lot to learn and areas to improve as we think about reaching out without losing “the reached.”
“Christless Christianity” May/June Vol. 16 No. 3 2007 Pages 39-42
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RL Dabney
Effectual Calling
What is the nature and agency of the moral revolution usually called effectual calling or regeneration?
This change must be more than an outer reformation of conduct; it is an inward revolution of first principles which regulate conduct. It must go deeper than a change of purpose as to sin and godliness; it must be a reversal of the original dispositions which hitherto prompted the soul to choose sin and reject godliness. Nothing less grounds a true conversion. As the gluttonous child maybe persuaded by the selfish fear of pain and death to forego the dainties he loves, and to swallow the nauseous drugs which his palate loathes so the ungodly man may be induced by his self-righteousness and selfish fear of hell to forbear the sins he still loves, and submit to the religious duties which his secret soul still detests. But, as the one practice is no real cure of the vice of gluttony in the child, so the other is no real conversion to godliness in the sinner. The child must not only forsake, but really dislike his unhealthy dainties; not only submit to swallow, but really love, the medicines naturally nauseous to him. Selfish fear can do the former; nothing but a physiological change of constitution can do the latter. The natural man must not only submit from selfish fear to the godliness which he detested, he must love it for its own sake, and hate the sins naturally sweet to him. No change can be permanent which does not go thus deep; nothing less is true conversion. God’s call to the sinner is: “My son, give me thine heart.” (Proverbs 23:26.) God requireth truth in the inward parts and in the hidden parts: “Thou shalt make me to know wisdom.” (Psalms 51:6.) “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart.” (Deuteronomy 10:16.) But hear especially Christ: “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt.” (Matthew 12:33) We call the inward revolution of principles regeneration; the change of life which immediately begins from the new principles conversion. Regeneration is a summary act, conversion a continuous process. Conversion begins in, and proceeds constantly out of, regeneration, as does the continuous growth of a plant out of the first sprouting or quickening of its dry seed. In conversion the renewed soul is an active agent: “God’s people are willing in the day of his power.” The converted man chooses and acts the new life of faith and obedience heartily and freely, as prompted by the Holy Ghost. In this sense, “He works out his own salvation” (Philippians 2:12.). But manifestly in regeneration, in the initial revolution of disposition, the soul does not act, but is a thing acted on. In this first point there can be no cooperation of the man’s will with the divine power. The agency is wholly Gods, and not man’s, even in part. The vital change must be affected by immediate direct divine power. God’s touch here may be mysterious; but it must be real, for it is proved by the seen results. The work must be sovereign and supernatural. Sovereign in this sense, that there is no will concerned in its effectuation except God’s, because the sinner’s will goes against it as invariably, as freely, until it is renewed; supernatural, because there is nothing at all in sinful human nature to begin it, man’s whole natural disposition being to prefer and remain in a godless state. As soon as this doctrine is stated, it really proves itself. In our second section we showed beyond dispute that man’s natural disposition and will are enmity against God. Does enmity ever turn itself into love? Can nature act above nature? Can the stream raise itself to a higher level than its own source? Nothing can be plainer than this, that since the native disposition and will of man are wholly and decisively against godliness, there is no source within the man out of which the new godly will can come; into the converted man it has come; then it must have come from without, solely from the divine will.
But men cheat themselves with the notion that what they call free-will may choose to respond to valid outward inducements placed before it, so that gospel truth and rational free-will cooperating with it may originate the great change instead of sovereign, efficacious divine grace. Now, any plain mind, if it will think, can see that this is delusive. Is any kind of an object actual inducement to any sort of agent? No, indeed. Is fresh grass an inducement to a tiger? Is bloody flesh an inducement to a lamb to eat? Is a nauseous drug an inducement to a child’s palate; or ripe sweet fruit? Useless loss an inducement to the merchant; or useful gain? Are contempt and reproach inducements to aspiring youth; or honor and fame ? Manifestly some kinds of objects only are inducements to given sorts of agents; and the opposite objects are repellents. Such is the answer of common sense. Now, what has decided which class of objects shall attract, and which shall repel? Obviously it is the agents’ own original, subjective dispositions which have determined this. It is the lamb’s nature which has determined that the fresh grass, and not the bloody flesh, shall be the attraction to it. It is human nature in the soul which has determined that useful gain, and not useless loss, shall be inducement to the merchant. Now, then, to influence a man by inducement you must select an object which his own natural disposition has made attractive to him; by pressing the opposite objects on him you only repel him; and the presentation of the objects can never reverse the man’s natural disposition, because this has determined in advance which objects will be attractions and which repellents. Effects cannot reverse the very causes on which they themselves depend. The complexion of the child cannot Re-determine the complexion of the father. Now, facts and Scripture teach us (see 2d. Section) that man’s original disposition is as freely, as entirely, against God’s will and godliness and in favor of self-will and sin. Therefore, godliness can never be of itself inducement, but only repulsion, to the unregenerate soul. Men cheat themselves; they think they are induced by the selfish advantages of an imaginary heaven, an imaginary selfish escape from hell. But this is not regeneration; it is but the sorrows of the world that worketh death, and the hope of the hypocrite that perisheth.
The different effects of the same preached gospel at the same time and place prove that regeneration is from sovereign grace: “Some believed the things which mere spoken, and some believed not.” (Acts 28:24). This is because, “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” (Acts 13:48). Often those remain unchanged whose social virtues, good habits, and amiability should seem to offer least obstruction to the gospel; while some old, profane, sensual, and hardened sinners become truly converted, whose wickedness and long confirmed habits of sinning must have presented the greatest obstruction to gospel truth. Like causes should produce like effects. Had outward gospel inducements been the real causes, these results of preaching would be impossible. The facts show that the gospel inducements were only instruments, and that in the real conversion the agency was almighty grace.
The erroneous theory of conversion is again powerfully refuted by those cases, often seen, in which gospel truth has remained powerless over certain men for ten, twenty, or fifty years, and at last has seemed to prevail for their genuine conversion. The gospel, urged by the tender lips of a mother, proved too weak to overcome the self-will of the boy’s heart. Fifty years afterwards that same gospel seemed to convert a hardened old man! There are two well-known laws of the human soul which show this to be impossible. One is, that facts and inducements often, but fruitlessly, presented to the soul, become weak and trite from vain repetition. The other is, that men’s active appetences grow stronger continually by their own indulgence. Here, then, is the case: The gospel when presented to the sensitive boy must have had much more force than it could have to the old man after it had grown stale to him by fifty years of vain repetition. The old man’s love of sin must have grown greatly stronger than the boy’s by fifty years of constant indulgence. Now how comes it, that a given moral influence which was too weak to overcome the boy’s sinfulness has overcome the old man’s carnality when the influences had become so much weaker and the resistance to it so much stronger. This is impossible. It was the finger of God, and not the mere moral influence, which wrought the mighty change. Let us suppose that fifty years ago the reader had seen me visit his rural sanctuary, when the grand oaks which now shade it were but lithe saplings. He saw me make an effort to tear one of them with my hands from its seat; but it proved too strong for me. Fifty years after, he and I meet at the same sacred spot, and he sees me repeat my attempt upon the same tree, now grown to be a monarch of the grove. He will incline to laugh me to scorn: “He attempted that same tree fifty years ago, when he was in his youthful prime and it was but a sapling, but he could not move it. Does the old fool think to rend it from its seat now’ when age has so diminished his muscle, and the sapling has grown to a mighty tree?” But let us suppose that the reader saw that giant of the grove come up in my aged hands. He would no longer laugh. He would stand awe-struck. He would conclude that this must be the hand of God, not of man. How vain is it to seek to break the force of this demonstration by saying that at last the moral influence of the gospel had received sufficient accession from attendant circumstances, from clearness and eloquence of presentation, to enable it to do its work? What later eloquence of the pulpit can rival that of the Christian mother presenting the cross in the tender accents of love. Again, the story of the cross, the attractions of heaven, ought to be immense, even when stated in the simplest words of childhood. How trivial and paltry are any additions which mere human rhetoric can make to what ought to be the infinite force of the naked truth.
But the surest proof is that of Scripture. This everywhere asserts that the sinner’s regeneration is by sovereign, almighty grace. One class of texts presents those which describe the sinner’s prior condition as one of “blindness,” Ephesians 4:18; “of stony heartedness,” Ezekiel 36:26; “of impotency,” Romans 10:6; “of enmity,” Romans 8:7; “of inability”, John 11:44, and Romans 8:18; “of deadness,” Ephesians 2:1-5. Let no one exclaim that these are “figures of speech.” Surely the Holy Spirit, when resorting to figures for the very purpose of giving a more forcible expression to truth, does not resort to a deceitful rhetoric! Surely he selects his figures because of the correct parallel between them and his truth! Now, then, the blind man cannot take part in the very operation which is to open his eyes. The hard stone cannot be a source of softness. The helpless paralytic cannot begin his own restoration. Enmity against God cannot choose love for him, The dead corpse of Lazarus could have no agency in recalling the vital spirit into itself. After Christ’s almighty power restored it, the living man could respond to the Savior’s command and rise and come forth.
The figures which describe the almighty change prove the same truth. It is described (Psalms 119:18) as an opening of the blind eyes to the law; as a new creation; (Psalms 51:10; Ephesians 2:5) as a pew birth; (John 3:3) as a quickening or resurrection (making alive); Ephesians 1:18, and 2:10). The man blind of cataract does not join the surgeon in couching his own eye; nor does the sunbeam begin and perform the surgical operation; that must take place in order for the light to enter and produce vision.
The timber is shaped by the carpenter; it does not shape itself, and does not become an implement until he gives it the desired shape. The infant does not procreate itself, but must be born of its parents in order to become a living agent. The corpse does not restore life to itself; after life is restored if becomes a living agent. Express scriptures teach the same doctrine. In Jeremiah 31:18, Ephraim is heard praying thus: “Turn thou to me and I shall be turned.” In John 1:12, we are taught that believers are born “not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.” In John 11:44, Christ assures us that “No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” And in chapter 15:16, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit.” In Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which Christ hath fore ordained that we should walk in them.”
It is objected that this doctrine of almighty grace would destroy man’s free-agency. This is not true. All men whom God does not regenerate retain their natural freedom unimpaired by anything which he does to them.
It is true that these use their freedom, as in variably, as voluntarily, by choosing their self-will and unregenerate state. But in doing this they choose in perfect accordance with their own preference, and this the only kind of free-agency known to men of common sense. The unregenerate choose just what they prefer, and therefore choose freely; but so long as not renewed by almighty grace, they always prefer to remain unregenerate, because it is fallen man’s nature. The truly regenerate do not lose their free-agency by effectual calling, but regain a truer and higher freedom; for the almighty power which renews them does not force them into a new line of conduct contrary to their own preferences, but reverses the original disposition itself which regulates preference. Under this renewed disposition they now act just as freely as when they were voluntary sinners, but far more reasonably and happily. For they act the new and right preference, which almighty grace has put in place of the old one.
It is objected, again, that unless the agent has exercised his free-will in the very first choice or adoption of the new moral state, there could be no moral quality and no credit for the series of actions proceeding there from, because they would not be voluntary. This is expressly false. True, the new-born sinner can claim no merit for that sovereign change of will in which his conversion began, because it was not his own choosing, or doing, but God’s; yet the cavil is untrue; the moral quality and merit of a series of actions does not depend on the question, whether the agent put himself into the moral state whence they how, by a previous volition of his own starting from a moral indifference.
The only question is, whether his actions are sincere, and the free expressions of a right disposition, for:
1. Then Adam could have no morality; for we are expressly told that God “created him upright.” (Ecclesiastes 7:29)
2. Jesus could have had no meritorious morality, because being conceived of the Holy Ghost he was born that holy thing. (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:35)
3. God himself could have no meritorious holiness, because he was and is eternally and unchangeably holy. He never chose himself into a state of holiness, being eternally and necessarily holy. Here, then, this miserable objection runs into actual blasphemy. On this point John Wesley is as expressly with us as Jonathan Edwards. See Wesley, On Original Sin.
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I love this stuff! Words are great fun, and, even though I don’t use them as I should, I enjoy reading about some of the foibles of English language. It was pleasant today, then, when Tim Challies shared this link on his blog.
It’s a post that talks about words that are their own opposites. One that came to mind whilst reading was Scan: to look over quickly (I scanned your report), to look over in minute detail (I scanned your report – into the computer!)
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RL Dabney
Original Sin
What Presbyterians really mean by terms such as “Original Sin,” “Total Depravity,” and “Inability of the Will” is defined by our Confession of Faith, Chapter IX, Section iii: “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.”
By original sin we mean the evil quality which characterizes man’s natural disposition and will. We call this sin of nature original, because each fallen man is born with it, and because it is the source or origin in each man of his actual transgressions.
By calling it total, we do not mean that men are from their youth as bad as they can be. Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, “deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13). Nor do we mean that they have no social virtues towards their fellowmen in which they are sincere. We do not assert with extremists that because they are natural men, therefore all their friendship, honesty, truth, sympathy, patriotism, domestic love, are pretenses or hypocrisies. What our Confession says is, “That they have wholly lost ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.” The worst retain some, and the better much, ability of will for sundry moral goods accompanying social life. Christ teaches this (Mark 10:21) when, beholding the social virtues of the rich young man who came kneeling unto him, “He loved him,” Christ could never love mere hypocrisies. What we teach is, that by the fall man’s moral nature has undergone an utter change to sin, irreparable by himself. In this sense it is complete, decisive, or total. The state is as truly sinful as their actual transgressions, because it is as truly free and spontaneous. This original sin shows itself in all natural men in a fixed and utter opposition of heart to some forms of duty, and especially and always to spiritual duties, owing to God, and in a fixed and absolutely decisive purpose of heart to continue in some sins (even while practicing some social duties), and especially to continue in their sins of unbelief, impenitence, self-will, and practical godlessness. In this the most moral are as inflexibly determined by nature as the most immoral. The better part may sincerely respect sundry rights and duties regarding their fellowmen, but in the resolve that self-will shall be their rule, whenever they please, as against God’s sovereign holy will, these are as inexorable as the most wicked. I suppose that a refined and gently reared young lady presents the least sinful specimen of unregenerate human nature. Examine such a one. Before she would be guilty of theft, profane swearing, drunkenness, or impurity, she would die. In her opposition to these sins she is truly sincere. But there are some forms of self-will, especially in sins of omission as against God, in which she is just as determined as the most brutal drunkard is in his sensuality. She has, we will suppose, a Christian mother. She is determined to pursue certain fashionable conformities and dissipations. She has a light novel under her pillow which she intends to read on the Sabbath. Though she may still sometimes repeat like a parrot her nursery prayers, her’s is spiritually a prayerless life. Especially is her heart fully set in her not to forsake at this time her life of self-will and worldliness for Christ’s service and her salvation. Tenderly and solemnly her Christian mother may ask her, “My daughter, do you not know that in these things you are wrong toward your heavenly Father” She is silent. She knows she is wrong. “My daughter, will you not therefore now relent, and choose for your Savior’s sake, this very day, the life of faith and repentance, and especially begin tonight the life of regular, real, secret prayer. Will you?” Probably her answer is in a tone of cold and bitter pain. “Mother, don’t press me, I would rather not promise.” No; she will not! Her refusal may be civil in form, because she is well-bred; but her heart is as inflexibly set in her as the hardened steel not at this time to turn truly from her self-will to her God. In that particular her stubbornness is just the same as that of the most hardened sinners. Such is the best type of unregenerate humanity.
Now, the soul’s duties towards God are the highest, dearest, and most urgent of all duties; so that willful disobedience herein is the most express, most guilty, and most hardening of all the sins that the soul commits. God’s perfections and will are the most supreme and perfect standard of moral right and truth. Therefore, he who sets himself obstinately against God’s right is putting himself in the most fatal and deadly opposition to moral goodness. God’s grace is the one fountain of holiness for rational creatures; hence, he who separates himself from this God by this hostile self-will, shuts himself in to ultimate spiritual death. This rooted, godless, self-will is the eating cancer of the soul. That soul may remain for a time like the body of a young person tainted with undeveloped cancer, apparently attractive and pretty. But the cancer is spreading the secret seeds of corruption through all the veins; it will break out at last in putrid ulcers, the blooming body will become a ghastly corpse. There is no human remedy. To drop the figure; when the sinful soul passes beyond the social restraints and natural affections of this life, and beyond hope, into the world of the lost, this fatal root, sin of willful godlessness will soon develop into all forms of malignity and wickedness; the soul will become finally and utterly dead to God and to good. This is what we mean by total depravity.
Once more, Presbyterians do not believe they lose their free-agency because of original sin. See our Confession, Chapter IX., Section 1: “God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined, to good or evil.” We fully admit that where an agent is not free he is not morally responsible. A just God will never punish him for actions in which he is merely an instrument, impelled by the compulsion of external force or fate. But what is free agency? There is no need to call in any abstruse metaphysics to the sufficient answer. Let every man’s consciousness and common sense tell him: I know that I am free whenever what I choose to do is the results of my own preference.
I choose and act so as to please myself, then I am free. That is to say, our responsible volitions are the expression and the result of our own rational preference. When I am free and responsible it is because I choose and do the thing which I do, not compelled by some other agents, but in accordance with my own inward preference. We all know self-evidently that this is so. But is rational preference in us a mere haphazard state? Do our reasonable souls contain no original principles regulative of their preferences and choices? Were this so, then would man’s soul be indeed a miserable weathercock, wheeled about by every outward wind; not fit to be either free, rational or responsible. We all know that we have such first principles regulative of our preferences; and these are own natural dispositions. They are inward, not external. They are spontaneous, not compelled, and so as free as our choices. They are our own, not somebody else’s. They are ourselves. They are essential attributes in any being possessed of personality. Every rational person must have some kind of natural disposition. We can conceive of one person as naturally disposed this way, and of another that way. It is impossible for us to think a rational free agent not disposed any way at all. Try it. We have capital illustrations of what native disposition is in the corporeal propensities of animals. It is the nature of a colt to like grass and hay. It is the nature of a bouncing schoolboy to like hot sausage. You may tole the colt with a bunch of nice hay, but not the boy; it is the hot sausage will fetch him when he is hungry; offer the hot sausage to the colt and he will reject it and shudder at it. Now both the colt and the boy are free in choosing what they like; free be cause their choices follow their own natural likings, i.e., their own animal dispositions.
But rational man has mental dispositions which are better than illustrations, actual cases of native principles regulating natural choices. Thus, when happiness or misery may be chosen simply for their own sakes, every man’s natural disposition is towards happiness and against misery. Again, man naturally loves property; all are naturally disposed to gain and to keep their own rather than to lose it for nothing. Once more, every man is naturally disposed to enjoy the approbation and praise of his fellow-men; and their contempt and abuse are naturally painful to him. In all these cases men choose according as they prefer, and they prefer according to their natural dispositions, happiness rather than misery, gain rather than loss, applause rather than abuse. They are free in these choices as they are sure to choose in the given way. And they are as certain to choose agreeably to these original dispositions as rivers are to run downwards; equally certain and equally free, because the dispositions which certainly regulate their preferences are their own, not some one else’s, and are spontaneous in them, not compelled.
Let us apply one of these cases. I make this appeal to a company of aspiring young ladies and gentlemen: “Come and engage with me of your free choice in this given course of labor; it will be long and arduous; but I can assure you of a certain result. I promise you that, by this laborious effort, you shall make yourselves the most despised and abused set of young people in the State.” Will this succeed in inducing them? Can it succeed? No; it will not, and we justly say, it cannot. But are not these young persons free when they answer me, as they certainly will, “No, Teacher, we will not, and we cannot commit the folly of working hard solely to earn contempt, because contempt is in itself contrary and painful to our nature.” This is precisely parallel to what Presbyterians mean by inability of will to all spiritual good. It is just as real and certain as inability of faculty. These young people have the fingers therewith to perform the proposed labor, let us say of writing, by which I invite them to toil for the earning of contempt. They have eyes and fingers wherewith to do penmanship, but they cannot freely choose my offer, because it contradicts that principle of their nature, love of applause, which infallibly regulates free human preference and choice. Here is an exact case of “inability of will.” If, now, man’s fall has brought into his nature a similar native principle or disposition against godliness for its own sake, and in favor of self-will as against God, then a parallel case of inability of will presents itself. The former case explains the latter. The natural man’s choice in preferring his self-will to God’s authority is equally free, and equally certain. But this total lack of ability of will toward God does not suspend man’s responsibility, because it is the result of his own free disposition, not from any compulsion from without. If a master would require his servant to do a bodily act for which he naturally had not the bodily faculty, as, for instance, the pulling up of a healthy oak tree with his hands, it would be unjust to punish the servant’s failure. But this is wholly another case than the sinner’s. For, if his natural disposition towards God were what it ought to be, he would not find himself deprived of the natural faculties by which God is known, loved, and served. The sinner’s case is not one of extinction of faculties, but of their thorough willful perversion. It is just like the case of Joseph’s wicked brethren, of whom Moses says (Genesis 37:4): “That they hated their brother Joseph, so that they could not speak peaceably unto him.” They had tongues in their heads? Yes. They could speak in words whatever they chose, but hatred, the wicked voluntary principle, ensured that they would not, and could not, speak kindly to their innocent brother.
Now, then, all the argument turns upon the question of fact: is it so that since Adam’s fall the natural disposition of all men is in this state of fixed, decisive enmity against God’s will, and fixed, inexorable preference for their own self-will, as against God? Is it true that man is in this lamentable state, that while still capable of being rightly disposed toward sundry virtues and duties, terminating on his fellow creatures, his heart is inexorably indisposed and willfully opposed to those duties which he owes to his heavenly Father directly? That is the question! Its best and shortest proof would be the direct appeal to every man’s conscience. I know that it was just so with me for seventeen years, until God’s almighty hand took away the heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh. Every converted man confesses the same of himself. Every unconverted man well knows that it is now true of himself, if he would allow his judgment and conscience to look honestly within. Unbeliever, you may at times desire even earnestly the impunity, the safety from hell, and the other selfish advantages of the Christian life; but did you ever prefer and desire that life for its own sake? Did you ever see the moment when you really wished God to subjugate all your self-will to his holy will? No ! That is the very thing which the secret disposition of your soul utterly resents and rejects. The retention of that self-will is the very thing which you so obstinately prefer, that as long as you dare you mean to retain it and cherish it, even at the known risk of an unprepared death and a horrible perdition. But I will add other proofs of this awful fact, and especially the express testimony of the Holy Spirit.
There is the universal fact that all men sin more or less, and do it willfully. In the lives of most unrenewed men, sin reigns prevalently. The large majority are dishonest, unjust, selfish, cruel, as far as they dare to be, even to their fellow creatures, not to say utterly godless to their heavenly Father. The cases like that of the well-bred young lady, described above, are relatively few, fatally defective as they are. This dreadful reign of sin in this world continues in spite of great obstacles, such as God’s judgments and threatenings, and laborious efforts to curb it in the way of governments, restrictive laws and penalties, schools, family discipline, and churches. This sinning of human beings begins more or less as soon as the child’s faculties are so developed as to qualify him for sinning intentionally. “The wicked go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” Now, a uniform result must proceed from a regular prior cause–there must be original sin in man’s nature.
Even the great rationalistic philosopher, Emmanual Kant, believed and taught this doctrine. His argument is, that when men act in the aggregate and in national masses, they show out their real native dispositions, because in these concur rent actions they are not restrained by public opinion and by human laws restricting individual actions, and they do not feel immediate personal responsibility for what they do. The actions of men in the aggregate, therefore, shows what man’s heart really is. Now, then, what are the morals of the nations towards each other and towards God? Simply those of foxes, wolves, tigers, and atheists. What national senate really and humbly tries to please and obey God in its treatment of neighbor nations? What nation trusts its safety simply to the justice of its neighbors? Look at the great standing armies and fleets! Though the nation may include many God-fearing and righteous persons, when is that nation ever seen to forego a profitable aggression upon the weak, simply because it is unjust before God? These questions are unanswerable.
In the third place, all natural men, the decent and genteel just as much as the vile, show this absolute opposition of heart to God’s will, and preference for self-will in some sinful acts and by rejecting the gospel. This they do invariably, knowingly, willfully, and with utter obstinacy, until they are made willing in the day of God’s power. They know with Perfect clearness that the gospel requirements of faith, trust, repentance, endeavors after sincere obedience, God’s righteous law, prayer, praise, and love to him, are reasonable and right. Outward objects or inducements are constantly presented to their souls, which are of infinite moment, and ought to be absolutely omnipotent over right hearts. These objects include the unspeakable love of God in Christ in giving his Son to die for his enemies, which ought to melt the heart to gratitude in an instant; the inexpressible advantages and blessings of an immortal heaven, secured by immediate faith, and the unutterable, infinite horrors of an everlasting hell, incurred by final unbelief, and risked to an awful degree, even by temporary hesitation. And these latter considerations appeal not only to moral conscience, but to that natural selfishness which remains in full force in unbelievers. Nor could doubts concerning these gospel truths, even if sincere and reasonably grounded to some extent, explain or excuse this neglect. For faith, and obedience, and the worship and the love of God, are self-evidently right and good for men, whether these awful gospel facts be true or not. He who believes is acting on the safe side in that he loses nothing, but gains something whichever way the event may go; whereas neglect of the gospel will have incurred an infinite mischief, with no possible gain should Christianity turn out to be true.
In such cases reasonable men always act, as they are morally bound to do, upon the safe side, under the guidance of even a slight probability. Why do not doubting men act thus on the safe side, even if it were a doubtful case (which it is not)? Because their dispositions are absolutely fixed and determined against godliness. Now, what result do we see from the constant application of these immense persuasives to the hearts of natural men? They invariably put them off; sometimes at the cost of temporary uneasiness or agitation, but they infallibly put them off, preferring, as long as they dare, to gratify self-will at the known risk of plain duty and infinite blessedness. Usually they make this ghastly suicidal and wicked choice with complete coolness, quickness, and ease! They attempt to cover from their own consciences the folly and wickedness of their decision by the fact they can do it so coolly and unfeelingly. My common sense tells me that this very circumstance is the most awful and ghastly proof of the reality and power of original sin in them. If this had not blinded them, they would be horrified at the very coolness with which they can outrage themselves and their Savior. I see two men willfully murder each his enemy. One has given the fatal stab in great agitation, after agonizing hesitations, followed by pungent remorse. He is not yet an adept in murder. I see the other man drive his knife into the breast of his helpless victim promptly, coolly, calmly, jesting while he does it, and then cheerfully eat his food with his bloody knife. This is no longer a man, but a fiend.
But the great proof is the Scripture. The whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, asserts this original sin and decisive ungodliness of will of all fallen men. Genesis 6:3: “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh (carnally minded).” Again, Genesis 6:5: “God saw that every imagination of the man’s heart was only evil continually.” After the terrors of the flood, God’s verdict on the survivors was still the same. Genesis 8:21: “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
Job, probably the earliest sacred writer, asks, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.” (Job 14:4.) David says: “Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”(Psalms 51:5.) Prophet asks (Jeremiah 13:23), “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.” Jeremiah says, chapter 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” What does desperately mean? In the New Testament Christ says John 3:4 and 5), “That which is born of the flesh is flesh;” and “Except ye be born again ye cannot see the kingdom of God.” The Pharisees’ hearts (decent moral men) are like unto whited sepulchers, which appear beautifully outwardly, but within are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Does Christ exaggerate, and slander decent people?
Peter tells us (Acts 8:23) that the spurious believer is “in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.” Paul (Romans 8:7): “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be,” (inability of will). (Ephesians 2): “All men are by nature children of wrath…. and dead in trespasses and sins.” Are not these enough?
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