Guiltless Good News--The Deformed Theology of Seeker Sensitivity

by Don Matzat

We are living in a society permeated with the concept of self-esteem. The gurus of humanistic psychology have convinced us that feeling good about ourselves is one of our basic felt needs. A positive self-image has become the sine qua non of human growth and success.

Many evangelical churches, including many who find their roots in the Reformation, have attempted to Christianize such thought. They have adopted the concept of seeker sensitivity in the desire to grow their churches. The gurus of the Church Growth movement have convinced many pastors and church leaders that we must be sensitive to the felt needs of the culture. Thus seeker sensitivity has become the sine qua non of church growth and success.

When you join a culture permeated with the desire for self-esteem and a church seduced by the concept of seeker sensitivity, you create a diabolical mix. Such a combination demands that the Christian message be adjusted. The felt need for self-esteem is not compatible with the biblical concept of human sin and depravity. The concept of human sin, or what has been called the church's "worm theology", is actually detrimental to the sensitive human psyche. Dr. Robert Schuller, a self-esteem advocate and pioneer in developing the concept of seeker sensitivity, put it this way:

I don't think that anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality, and hence counterproductive to the evangelistic enterprise, than the unchristian uncouth strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition.

Since the central Christian message offers the death of Jesus Christ on the cross as the divine solution to the human sin dilemma, the elimination of the clear proclamation of human sin and depravity demands a major adjustment in the preaching of Christ. The basic, central message of the Gospel must be redefined. To claim that our sins caused the death of Jesus can be potentially debilitating to the impressionable human psyche pursuing a sense of self-worth. The pitiable inner child may become hopelessly bruised and beaten by such an insensitive message. This is how Dr. Ray Anders, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, put it:

If our sin is viewed as causing the death of Jesus on the cross, then we ourselves become victims of a 'psychological battering' produced by the cross. When I am led to feel that the pain and torment of Jesus' death on the cross is due to my sin, I inflict upon myself spiritual and psychological torment.

For those seduced by the concept of seeker sensitivity, Jesus can no longer be the suffering servant bearing the sins of fallen humanity to a bloody cross. Such a message is irrelevant. One highly successful seeker sensitive center in Chicago has chosen not to display a cross in their sanctuary. To this group's way of thinking, Jesus is not primarily our Savior who died to forgive our sins; rather, he is our friend who helps us make it through the day. He is our example for living. He meets our felt needs. He wants us to become better people and in order to do that, gives us principles whereby we can improve our family relationships, put our finances in order, and live more productive and successful lives. "Oh, how we love Jesus!"

To illustrate how far this way of thinking deviates from the understanding that characterized the sixteenth-century Reformation, compare the statements of Schuller and Anderson with statements of the two great Reformers: Martin Luther and John Calvin.

In defining the purpose of mediating upon the passion of our Lord Jesus, Luther wrote:

The main benefit of Christ's passion is that man sees into his own true self and that he be terrified and crushed by this. Unless we seek that knowledge, we do not derive much benefit from Christ's passion.... He who is so hardhearted and callous as not to be terrified by Christ's passion and led to a knowledge of self has reason to fear.

If John Calvin were alive today, this is the assessment he would make of those who eliminate the message of human depravity under the guise of appealing to the culture:

I am not unaware how much more plausible the view is, which invites us rather to ponder on our good qualities than to contemplate what must overwhelm us with shame, our miserable destitution and ignominy. There is nothing more acceptable to the human mind that flattery.... Whoever, therefore, gives heed to those teachers who merely employ us in contemplating our good qualities... will be plunged into the most pernicious ignorance.

Sin Has Never Been Popular

It is a gross fallacy to suggest that this culture, in its quest for self-esteem, is unique. The Christian Church has always been confronted with unbelievers who want to feel good about themselves and who work very hard at avoiding any personal guilt or blame. This is certainly not new to this culture. Being victimized and playing the "blame game" is as old as Adam getting out from under his guilt by blaming the woman, and, of course, Eve blaming the snake. Being born "in Adam," such a defense mechanism is natural to fallen humanity. Swiss therapist Paul Tournier writes: "In a healthy person...this defense mechanism has the precision and universality of a law of nature.... We defend ourselves against criticism with the same energy we employ in defending ourselves against hunger, cold, or wild beasts, for it is a mortal threat."

For this reason, the thinking of those who are willing to jettison the truth of human sin and depravity in favor of seeker sensitivity is inane. They act as if they have discovered some new technique for reaching people. It is obvious that people do not want to be confronted with their sin and failure. If you can create a "religious" environment in which they can be made to feel good about themselves, you will gain a crowd. To stand in awe of the crowds who frequent casinos or buy lottery tickets. Having more money is also a felt need.

Appealing to the felt needs of a fallen culture is not appealing to their real needs. French philosopher Blaise Pascal explained:

As soon as we venture out along the pathway of self-knowledge, what we discover is that man is desperately trying to avoid self-knowledge. The need to escape oneself explains why many people are miserable when they are not preoccupied with work, or amusement, or vices. They are afraid to be alone lest they get a glimpse of their own emptiness.... For if we could face ourselves, with all our faults, we would then be so shaken out of complacency, triviality, indifference, and pretense that a deep longing for strength and truth would be aroused within us. Not until man is aware of his deepest need is he ready to discern and grasp what can meet his deepest need.

This diabolical combination of self-esteem and seeker sensitivity produces a "religion" that is no longer Christianity. Since proclaiming the message of sin and grace, or Law and Gospel, is the very essence of the faith, eliminating or subordinating that proclamation causes a departure from historic Christianity. But more than that, the forgiveness and eternal salvation of the people who are seduced by the appealing seeker sensitive message are put in jeopardy. The success of a Christian congregation is not determined by how many dill the pews on a Sunday morning but rather how many will eventually gather around the table to celebrate eternally the marriage feast of the Lamb who was slain for the forgiveness of sins.

The Right Combination of Guilt and Grace

To stand in awe of the numbers who flock to seeker sensitive congregations is similar to standing in awe of the crowds who frequent casinos or buy lottery tickets. Having more money is also a felt need.

It is the Holy Spirit's central purpose to bring every person to a knowledge of sin through the proclamation of the divine Law so that the message of God's grace in Christ Jesus (the Gospel) can be applied to those suffering the pangs of guilt. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 3:19: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God." Again he writes in Romans 5:20: "The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more." The proclamation of the Good News of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus is, so to speak, "set up" by the knowledge of our own sinful condition. Martin Luther wrote:

A doctor must first diagnose the sickness for his patient; other wise he will give him poison instead of medicine. First he must say: this is your sickness; secondly; this medicine serves to fight it.... If you want to engage profitably in study of Holy Scripture and do not want to run head-on into a Scripture closed and sealed, then learn, above all things, to understand sin aright.

The message of the divine Law is intended to set before us the demand of Almighty God for moral perfection. God demands perfect holiness. The preaching of the Law, which is intended to show us the depth of our sin, presents us with an impossible plight. What God demands, we cannot accomplish. The Good News of the Gospel tells us that what God demands he has provided in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. The proper preaching of sin and grace of Law and Gospel should turn us away from ourselves so that we embrace the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ as the divine solution to the human dilemma. This is the central truth of justification by grace through faith because of Christ alone. Werner Elert defines Luther's understanding of the knowledge of sin as being a necessary precondition for justification.

The righteousness imparted through justification presupposes, of course, the 'self- accusation" of the sinner. Accordingly, Luther counts it among the effects of Christ's suffering "that man comes to a knowledge of himself and is terrified of himself, and is crushed. To have Christ as Savior is to need him"....The necessity for self-accusation, without which there is no justification, holds true of the whole natural and moral "inwardness".... Faith however clings constantly only to the other Person—the Person who I am not—to Christ."

Good Intention/Faulty Diagnosis

I do not question the intentions of those who have adopted the seeker sensitive agenda. I believe that these church growth advocates honestly desire to reach people and to positively affect lives. They desire to make the Christian message relevant. They want to see the Church of Jesus Christ become a dynamic force for moral change in the midst of a perverted generation. Yet, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

There is no doubt that the quality of life that exists in many Christian congregations is not what it ought to be. The problem is not that we have been too bold in our proclamation of sin and grace, Law and Gospel, but rather that we have not been bold enough. If those in the pew do not see the extent of their sin and the perversion of their human nature, they will not seek the life- changing grace of God. Even though the Bible says to "pursue" spiritual growth and sanctification, to be engaged in "fighting" the fight of faith, and , like newborn babes, "crave" the pure milk of the Word of God, those admonitions will fall on deaf ears if the reality of our condition is not faced.

In the Book of Revelation, our Lord Jesus addresses and warns the various churches of that day. One of those churches, the Church at Laodicea, was guilty of spiritual apathy. Jesus describes their "lack of need" as being lukewarmness. In addressing this church, Jesus minces no words. "You say 'I am rich...and do not need a thing', but you do not realize that your wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked" (Rev. 3:18)

The dynamic of the Christian life is fueled by the combination of a deep sense of sin together with a deep appreciation for divine grace. If you read of the experiences of Christians who progressed in their relationship with the Lord Jesus beyond the norm you see their deep sense of sin and failure coupled with a deep appreciation for what God accomplished in Christ Jesus. Men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer were not afraid to speak of their sinful natures and even boast of their weaknesses, because they recognized the reality of divine grace. They knew their sin, but they also knew the Gospel. The profound level of spiritual depth and biblical insight of such men causes the theology of seeker sensitivity to look feeble indeed.

Martin Luther's discovery of the great doctrine of justification by grace was not an isolated incident. A great deal led up to the day when his eyes were opened and he was able to clearly understand that God had forgiven him and actually declared him to be righteous through Jesus Christ. His very keen sense of sin and failure was the driving force behind his discovery. In fact, he stated that when he was at the point of despair over his sin, he was then actually the closest to grace.

John Calvin, for example, was referred to by his friends as "the accusative case" because of his intense spiritual introspection. He was aware of his guilt.

This necessary combination of sin and grace is not difficult to understand. A person who is not willing to face his sickness will not desire the services of a physician. If something isn't broken, you don't fix it. If you do not see your sin, you will have no desire for God's grace. And, if you don't know the brokenness of your human condition, you obviously do not require the provision that God offers. Dr. Paul Tournier wrote,

This can be seen in history; for believers who are the most desperate about themselves are the ones who express most forcefully their confidence in Grace.... Those who are the most pessimistic about man are the most optimistic about God; those who are the most severe with themselves are the ones who have the most serene confidence in divine forgiveness.... By degrees the awareness of our guilt and of God's love increase side by side.

Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard pointed out that a man who is remote from his own guilt and failure is also remote from God, because he is remote from himself.

The Bible is very clear in revealing the divine estimate of human nature. Being born out of the root of Adam, we are the children of wrath (Eph.2:3), totally unable by nature to grasp the things of the Spirit of God (I Cor. 2:14). The Bible tells us that we were shaped in iniquity and born in sin (Ps. 51:5) and that the imaginations of our hearts are evil (Gen. 8:21). Within our human flesh, there dwells absolutely no good thing. Even though we may desire to do good and to be good, we are unable to accomplish our lofty ideals because our nature is wrong (Rom. 7:18-19) we are in bondage to the law of sin and death. (Rom. 7:21)

Put simply, from God's perspective, our lives are a mess! Our real need is for self-accusation, not self-esteem. We need grace, not acceptance and understanding. We need a crucified Savior, not a support group.

(From Modern Reformation Magazine)

Do Not Be Led Astray

06.28.10
J.A. Matteson

“You are looking at things as they are outwardly….” 2 Corinthians 10:5

Since the days of Eden fallen humanity remains captivated by the beautiful, the delightful, the seductive, this to the expense of truth resulting in the detriment of the soul. Things beautiful and delightful are gifts from the Lord and are to be appreciated, for on the sixth day of creation the Lord looked at all that He had created and it was “very good” (Gen. 1:31).

Human life is physical and spiritual so that the redemption of sinners is not merely of the spirit, to the exclusion of the body, but the restoration of both spirit and body, to be fully realized at the resurrection of the dead on the Day of the Lord. An innate tendency of the fallen nature, even among the redeemed, is to esteem form before substance, and this is often done at the subconscious level. Satan, capitalizes on this inner tendency and “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14) with the sinister intent of misleading the saints and keeping in spiritual bondage the unregenerate. That is not to suggest that the Lord’s messenger is always lacking in physical beauty and eloquent speech; but, the measure of the man must always be in accordance to substance by rightly dividing the Word. Let the pilgrim learn a valuable lesson from the cloud of witnesses in Berea, testing the message proclaimed by aspiring preachers against the Word of Truth.

Scripture is not explicit as to the specific physical traits of the Apostle Paul, but implicitly the student of the Word can piece together a plausible portrait of God’s bond-servant to the Gentiles, for he quotes a common view of himself held by his detractors in Corinth, “For they say, ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible’” (v.10). Note the confession by Paul’s opponents that the content of his message in his writings is weighty (βαρεῖαι) or of great importance. Also, the Apostle’s style was deemed strong (ἰσχυραί) or mighty and loud as a thunder clap in its effect when read. And yet God’s messenger was physically unimpressive (ἀσθενὴς) or weak and delicate with his manor of speech being contemptible (ἐξουθενημένος) or despised and looked down on.

Beloved, recall the wisdom given at this juncture by the Apostle in his first letter to the Corinthian church, “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are” (1 Cor. 1:26-28). Pursue inner truth in God’s messenger before outward adornment and develop the skill and wisdom to discern the difference. Do not be led astray by lips that flatter and by a gospel that promises much but requires little.

Consider too the many powerful vessels of honor used by the Lord for the advancement of His Kingdom through the proclamation of His Word. Was Moses a man of verbal eloquence who could wow the Israelites with dazzling oratory skill? Was it king David whose stature rose above his contemporaries or was he the ruddy one overlooked by the wise? How many of God’s bond-servant’s have been afflicted by physical impairments is difficult to measure; however, even a shallow review of Scripture and Church history reveals they have been and to this day remain many. While the tendency to place form before substance has always plagued the Church the danger of so doing in the present age of mass communication is at an all time high.

Today, many of the beautiful faces broadcast on Christian television networks, hosting international leadership seminars, plastered on book covers, and paraded on the internet are spiritual frauds, these false teachers fleece the flock of God for position, power, and wealth while the authentic messengers of God are too often despised. It should not be surprising that perceptions have not changed since the days of Corinth. That the Lord would send a damning influence of delusion upon those seeking a counterfeit message of hope is in accordance to their own sinfulness by turning their ears away from the truth of God’s Word in exchange for a lie, desiring to be titillated by smooth speech that flatters rather than weighty and strong speech that convicts of sin.

The Lord Jesus Christ warned that the path is wide and the way is easy for those bound for destruction, while the way is difficult and narrow which leads to life and few are those who find it (Matt. 7:13). Beloved, as you expose yourself to spiritual teaching be wise and discerning in your hearing, viewing, and reading, testing all things against the gloriously inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient Word of God.

Copyright (c) 2010 Immutable Word Ministries ("...the word of our God stands forever." Isa. 40:8).

What is Calvanism?

Originally printed in The Presbyterian, Mar.2, 1904, pp. 6-7; Reprinted in SELECTED SHORTER WRITINGS of BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, Vol.1, pp.389-392


By B.B. Warfield

It is very odd how difficult it seems for some persons to understand just what Calvinism is. And yet the matter itself presents no difficulty whatever. It is capable of being put into a single sentence; and that, one level to every religious man's comprehension. For Calvinism is just religion in its purity. We have only, therefore, to conceive of religion in its purity, and that is Calvinism.

In what attitude of mind and heart does religion come most fully to its rights? Is it not in the attitude of prayer? When we kneel before God, not with the body merely, but with the mind and heart, we have assumed the attitude which above all others deserves the name of religious. And this religious attitude by way of eminence is obviously just the attitude of utter dependence and humble trust. He who comes to God in prayer, comes not in a spirit of self-assertion, but in a spirit of trustful dependence. No one ever addressed God in prayer thus: "O God, thou knowest that I am the architect of my own fortunes and the determiner of my own destiny. Thou mayest indeed do something to help me in the securing of my purposes after I have determined upon them. But my heart is my own, and thou canst not intrude into it; my will is my own, and thou canst not bend it. When I wish thy aid, I will call on thee for it. Meanwhile, thou must await my pleasure." Men may reason somewhat like this; but that is not the way they pray. There did, indeed, once two men go up into the temple to pray. And one stood and prayed thus to himself (can it be that this "to himself" has a deeper significance than appears on the surface?), "God, I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men." While the other smote his breast, and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Even the former acknowledged a certain dependence on God; for he thanked God for his virtues. But we are not left in doubt in which one the religious mood was most purely exhibited. There is One who has told us that with clearness and emphasis.

All men assume the religious attitude, then, when they pray. But many men box up, as it were, this attitude in their prayer, and shutting it off from their lives with the Amen, rise from their knees to assume a totally different attitude, if not of heart, then at least of mind. They pray as if they were dependent on God's mercy alone; they reason--perhaps they even live--as if God, in some of his activities at least, were dependent on them. The Calvinist is the man who is determined to preserve the attitude he takes in prayer in all his thinking, in all his feeling, in all his doing. That is to say, he is the man who is determined that religion in its purity shall come to its full rights in his thinking, and feeling, and living. This is the ground of his special mode of thought, by reason of which he is called a Calvinist; and as well of his special mode of acting in the world, by reason of which he has become the greatest regenerating force in the world. Other men are Calvinists on their knees; the Calvinist is the man who is determined that his intellect, and heart, and will shall remain on their knees continually, and only from this attitude think, and feel, and act. Calvinism is, therefore, that type of thought in which there comes to its rights the truly religious attitude of utter dependence on God and humble trust in his mercy alone for salvation.

There are at bottom but two types of religious thought in the world--if we may improperly use the term "religious" for both of them. There is the religion of faith; there is the "religion" of works. Calvinism is the pure embodiment of the former of these; what is known in Church History as Pelagianism is the pure embodiment of the latter of them. All other forms of "religious" teaching which have been known in Christendom are but unstable attempts at compromise between the two. At the opening of the fifth century, the two fundamental types came into direct conflict in remarkably pure form as embodied in the two persons of Augustine and Pelagius. Both were expending themselves in seeking to better the lives of men. But Pelagius in his exhortations threw men back on themselves; they were able, he declared, to do all that God demanded of them--otherwise God would not have demanded it. Augustine on the contrary pointed them in their weakness to God; "He himself," he said, in his pregnant speech, "He himself is our power." The one is the "religion" of proud self-dependence; the other is the religion of dependence on God. The one is the "religion" of works; the other is the religion of faith. The one is not "religion" at all--it is mere moralism; the other is all that is in the world that deserves to be called religion. Just in proportion as this attitude of faith is present in our thought, feeling, life, are we religious. When it becomes regnant in our thought, feeling, life, then are we truly religious. Calvinism is that type of thinking in which it has become regnant.

"There is a state of mind," says Professor William James in his lectures on "The Varieties of Religious Experience," "known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God." He is describing what he looks upon as the truly religious mood as over against what he calls "mere moralism." "The moralist," he tells us, "must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense"; and things go well with him only when he can do so. The religious man, on the contrary, finds his consolation in his very powerlessness; his trust is not in himself, but in his God; and "the hour of his moral death turns into his spiritual birthday." The psychological analyst has caught the exact distinction between moralism and religion. It is the distinction between trust in ourselves and trust in God. And when trust in ourselves is driven entirely out, and trust in God comes in, in its purity, we have Calvinism. Under the name of religion at its height, what Professor James has really described is therefore just Calvinism.

We may take Professor James' testimony, therefore, as testimony that religion at its height is just Calvinism. There are many forms of religious teaching in the world which are not Calvinism. Because, teaching even in religion often (ordinarily even) offers us only "broken lights." There is no true religion in the world, however, which is not Calvinistic--Calvinistic in its essence, Calvinistic in its implications. When these implications are soundly drawn out and stated, and the essence thus comes to its rights, we obtain just Calvinism. In proportion as we are religious, in that proportion, then, are we Calvinistic; and when religion comes fully to its rights in our thinking, and feeling, and doing, then shall we be truly Calvinistic. This is why those who have caught a glimpse of these things, love with passion what men call "Calvinism," sometimes with an air of contempt; and why they cling to it with enthusiasm. It is not merely the hope of true religion in the world: it is true religion in the world--as far as true religion is in the world at all.

The Pelagian Captivity of the Church

The following article is reproduced from Modern Reformation, Vol 10, Number 3 (May/June 2001), pp. 22-29.

by R.C. Sproul

Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era and talked about the new Babylonian captivity of the Church. He was speaking of Rome as the modern Babylon that held the Gospel hostage with its rejection of the biblical understanding of justification. You can understand how fierce the controversy was, how polemical this title would be in that period by saying that the Church had not simply erred or strayed, but had fallen — that it’s actually now Babylonian; it is now in pagan captivity.

I’ve often wondered if Luther were alive today and came to our culture and looked, not at the liberal church community, but at evangelical churches, what would he have to say? Of course I can’t answer that question with any kind of definitive authority, but my guess is this: If Martin Luther lived today and picked up his pen to write, the book he would write in our time would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Evangelical Church. Luther saw the doctrine of justification as fueled by a deeper theological problem. He writes about this extensively in The Bondage of the Will. When we look at the Reformation and we see the solas of the Reformation — sola Scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria, sola gratia — Luther was convinced that the real issue of the Reformation was the issue of grace; and that underlying the doctrine of solo fide, justification by faith alone, was the prior commitment to sola gratia, the concept of justification by grace alone.

In the Fleming Revell edition of The Bondage of the Will, the translators, J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, included a somewhat provocative historical and theological introduction to the book itself. This is from the end of that introduction:

These things need to be pondered by Protestants today. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognised by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own. Has not Protestantism today become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimise and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters?1

Historically, it’s a simple matter of fact that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and all the leading Protestant theologians of the first epoch of the Reformation stood on precisely the same ground here. On other points they had their differences. In asserting the helplessness of man in sin and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them these doctrines were the very lifeblood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther’s works says this:

Whoever puts this book down without having realized that Evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain. The doctrine of free justification by faith alone, which became the storm center of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformers’ theology, but this is not accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed by Augustine and others, that the sinner’s entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only, and that the doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace. The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a more profound level still in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration.2

That is to say, that the faith that receives Christ for justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God. The principle of sola fide is not rightly understood until it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia. What is the source of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received, or is it a condition of justification which is left to man to fulfill? Do you hear the difference? Let me put it in simple terms. I heard an evangelist recently say, “If God takes a thousand steps to reach out to you for your redemption, still in the final analysis, you must take the decisive step to be saved.” Consider the statement that has been made by America’s most beloved and leading evangelical of the twentieth century, Billy Graham, who says with great passion, “God does ninety-nine percent of it but you still must do that last one percent.”

What Is Pelagianism?

Now, let’s return briefly to my title, “The Pelagian Captivity of the Church.” What are we talking about? Pelagius was a monk who lived in Britain in the fifth century. He was a contemporary of the greatest theologian of the first millennium of Church history if not of all time, Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. We have heard of St. Augustine, of his great works in theology, of his City of God, of his Confessions, and so on, which remain Christian classics.

Augustine, in addition to being a titanic theologian and a prodigious intellect, was also a man of deep spirituality and prayer. In one of his famous prayers, Augustine made a seemingly harmless and innocuous statement in the prayer to God in which he says: “O God, command what you wouldst, and grant what thou dost command.” Now, would that give you apoplexy — to hear a prayer like that? Well it certainly set Pelagius, this British monk, into orbit. When he heard that, he protested vociferously, even appealing to Rome to have this ghastly prayer censured from the pen of Augustine. Here’s why. He said, “Are you saying, Augustine, that God has the inherent right to command anything that he so desires from his creatures? Nobody is going to dispute that. God inherently, as the creator of heaven and earth, has the right to impose obligations on his creatures and say, ‘Thou shalt do this, and thou shalt not do that.’ ‘Command whatever thou would’ — it’s a perfectly legitimate prayer.”

It’s the second part of the prayer that Pelagius abhorred when Augustine said, “and grant what thou dost command.” He said, “What are you talking about? If God is just, if God is righteous and God is holy, and God commands of the creature to do something, certainly that creature must have the power within himself, the moral ability within himself, to perform it or God would never require it in the first place.” Now that makes sense, doesn’t it? What Pelagius was saying is that moral responsibility always and everywhere implies moral capability or, simply, moral ability. So why would we have to pray, “God grant me, give me the gift of being able to do what you command me to do”? Pelagius saw in this statement a shadow being cast over the integrity of God himself, who would hold people responsible for doing something they cannot do.

So in the ensuing debate, Augustine made it clear that in creation, God commanded nothing from Adam or Eve that they were incapable of performing. But once transgression entered and mankind became fallen, God’s law was not repealed nor did God adjust his holy requirements downward to accommodate the weakened, fallen condition of his creation. God did punish his creation by visiting upon them the judgment of original sin, so that everyone after Adam and Eve who was born into this world was born already dead in sin. Original sin is not the first sin. It’s the result of the first sin; it refers to our inherent corruption, by which we are born in sin, and in sin did our mothers conceive us. We are not born in a neutral state of innocence, but we are born in a sinful, fallen condition. Virtually every church in the historic World Council of Churches at some point in their history and in their creedal development articulates some doctrine of original sin. So clear is that to the biblical revelation that it would take a repudiation of the biblical view of mankind to deny original sin altogether.

This is precisely what was at issue in the battle between Augustine and Pelagius in the fifth century. Pelagius said there is no such thing as original sin. Adam’s sin affected Adam and only Adam. There is no transmission or transfer of guilt or fallenness or corruption to the progeny of Adam and Eve. Everyone is born in the same state of innocence in which Adam was created. And, he said, for a person to live a life of obedience to God, a life of moral perfection, is possible without any help from Jesus or without any help from the grace of God. Pelagius said that grace — and here’s the key distinction — facilitates righteousness. What does “facilitate” mean?

It helps, it makes it more facile, it makes it easier, but you don’t have to have it. You can be perfect without it. Pelagius further stated that it is not only theoretically possible for some folks to live a perfect life without any assistance from divine grace, but there are in fact people who do it. Augustine said, “No, no, no, no . . . we are infected by sin by nature, to the very depths and core of our being — so much so that no human being has the moral power to incline himself to cooperate with the grace of God. The human will, as a result of original sin, still has the power to choose, but it is in bondage to its evil desires and inclinations. The condition of fallen humanity is one that Augustine would describe as the inability to not sin. In simple English, what Augustine was saying is that in the Fall, man loses his moral ability to do the things of God and he is held captive by his own evil inclinations.

In the fifth century the Church condemned Pelagius as a heretic. Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Orange, and it was condemned again at the Council of Florence, the Council of Carthage, and also, ironically, at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century in the first three anathemas of the Canons of the Sixth Session. So, consistently throughout Church history, the Church has roundly and soundly condemned Pelagianism — because Pelagianism denies the fallenness of our nature; it denies the doctrine of original sin.

Now what is called semi-Pelagianism, as the prefix “semi” suggests, was a somewhat middle ground between full-orbed Augustinianism and full-orbed Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism said this: yes, there was a fall; yes, there is such a thing as original sin; yes, the constituent nature of humanity has been changed by this state of corruption and all parts of our humanity have been significantly weakened by the fall, so much so that without the assistance of divine grace nobody can possibly be redeemed, so that grace is not only helpful but it’s absolutely necessary for salvation. While we are so fallen that we can’t be saved without grace, we are not so fallen that we don’t have the ability to accept or reject the grace when it’s offered to us. The will is weakened but is not enslaved. There remains in the core of our being an island of righteousness that remains untouched by the fall. It’s out of that little island of righteousness, that little parcel of goodness that is still intact in the soul or in the will that is the determinative difference between heaven and hell. It’s that little island that must be exercised when God does his thousand steps of reaching out to us, but in the final analysis it’s that one step that we take that determines whether we go to heaven or hell — whether we exercise that little righteousness that is in the core of our being or whether we don’t. That little island Augustine wouldn’t even recognize as an atoll in the South Pacific. He said it’s a mythical island, that the will is enslaved, and that man is dead in his sin and trespasses.

Ironically, the Church condemned semi-Pelagianism as vehemently as it had condemned original Pelagianism. Yet by the time you get to the sixteenth century and you read the Catholic understanding of what happens in salvation the Church basically repudiated what Augustine taught and Aquinas taught as well. The Church concluded that there still remains this freedom that is intact in the human will and that man must cooperate with — and assent to — the prevenient grace that is offered to them by God. If we exercise that will, if we exercise a cooperation with whatever powers we have left, we will be saved. And so in the sixteenth century the Church reembraced semi-Pelagianism.

At the time of the Reformation, all the reformers agreed on one point: the moral inability of fallen human beings to incline themselves to the things of God; that all people, in order to be saved, are totally dependent, not ninety-nine percent, but one hundred percent dependent upon the monergistic work of regeneration in order to come to faith, and that faith itself is a gift of God. It’s not that we are offered salvation and that we will be born again if we choose to believe. But we can’t even believe until God in his grace and in his mercy first changes the disposition of our souls through his sovereign work of regeneration. In other words, what the reformers all agreed with was, unless a man is born again, he can’t even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it. Like Jesus says in the sixth chapter of John, “No man can come to me unless it is given to him of the Father” — that the necessary condition for anybody’s faith and anybody’s salvation is regeneration.

Evangelicals and Faith

Modern Evangelicalism almost uniformly and universally teaches that in order for a person to be born again, he must first exercise faith. You have to choose to be born again. Isn’t that what you hear? In a George Barna poll, more than seventy percent of “professing evangelical Christians” in America expressed the belief that man is basically good. And more than eighty percent articulated the view that God helps those who help themselves. These positions — or let me say it negatively — neither of these positions is semi-Pelagian. They’re both Pelagian. To say that we’re basically good is the Pelagian view. I would be willing to assume that in at least thirty percent of the people who are reading this issue, and probably more, if we really examine their thinking in depth, we would find hearts that are beating Pelagianism. We’re overwhelmed with it. We’re surrounded by it. We’re immersed in it. We hear it every day. We hear it every day in the secular culture. And not only do we hear it every day in the secular culture, we hear it every day on Christian television and on Christian radio.

In the nineteenth century, there was a preacher who became very popular in America, who wrote a book on theology, coming out of his own training in law, in which he made no bones about his Pelagianism. He rejected not only Augustinianism, but he also rejected semi-Pelagianism and stood clearly on the subject of unvarnished Pelagianism, saying in no uncertain terms, without any ambiguity, that there was no Fall and that there is no such thing as original sin. This man went on to attack viciously the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and in addition to that, to repudiate as clearly and as loudly as he could the doctrine of justification by faith alone by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. This man’s basic thesis was, we don’t need the imputation of the righteousness of Christ because we have the capacity in and of ourselves to become righteous. His name: Charles Finney, one of America’s most revered evangelists. Now, if Luther was correct in saying that sola fide is the article upon which the Church stands or falls, if what the reformers were saying is that justification by faith alone is an essential truth of Christianity, who also argued that the substitutionary atonement is an essential truth of Christianity; if they’re correct in their assessment that those doctrines are essential truths of Christianity, the only conclusion we can come to is that Charles Finney was not a Christian. I read his writings and I say, “I don’t see how any Christian person could write this.” And yet, he is in the Hall of Fame of Evangelical Christianity in America. He is the patron saint of twentieth-century Evangelicalism. And he is not semi-Pelagian; he is unvarnished in his Pelagianism.

The Island of Righteousness

One thing is clear: that you can be purely Pelagian and be completely welcome in the evangelical movement today. It’s not simply that the camel sticks his nose into the tent; he doesn’t just come in the tent — he kicks the owner of the tent out. Modern Evangelicalism today looks with suspicion at Reformed theology, which has become sort of the third-class citizen of Evangelicalism. Now you say, “Wait a minute, R. C. Let’s not tar everybody with the extreme brush of Pelagianism, because, after all, Billy Graham and the rest of these people are saying there was a Fall; you’ve got to have grace; there is such a thing as original sin; and semi-Pelagians do not agree with Pelagius’ facile and sanguine view of unfallen human nature.” And that’s true. No question about it. But it’s that little island of righteousness where man still has the ability, in and of himself, to turn, to change, to incline, to dispose, to embrace the offer of grace that reveals why historically semi-Pelagianism is not called semi-Augustinianism, but semi-Pelagianism.

I heard an evangelist use two analogies to describe what happens in our redemption. He said sin has such a strong hold on us, a stranglehold, that it’s like a person who can’t swim, who falls overboard in a raging sea, and he’s going under for the third time and only the tops of his fingers are still above the water; and unless someone intervenes to rescue him, he has no hope of survival, his death is certain. And unless God throws him a life preserver, he can’t possibly be rescued. And not only must God throw him a life preserver in the general vicinity of where he is, but that life preserver has to hit him right where his fingers are still extended out of the water, and hit him so that he can grasp hold of it. It has to be perfectly pitched. But still that man will drown unless he takes his fingers and curls them around the life preserver and God will rescue him. But unless that tiny little human action is done, he will surely perish.

The other analogy is this: A man is desperately ill, sick unto death, lying in his hospital bed with a disease that is fatal. There is no way he can be cured unless somebody from outside comes up with a cure, a medicine that will take care of this fatal disease. And God has the cure and walks into the room with the medicine. But the man is so weak he can’t even help himself to the medicine; God has to pour it on the spoon. The man is so sick he’s almost comatose. He can’t even open his mouth, and God has to lean over and open up his mouth for him. God has to bring the spoon to the man’s lips, but the man still has to swallow it.

Now, if we’re going to use analogies, let’s be accurate. The man isn’t going under for the third time; he is stone cold dead at the bottom of the ocean. That’s where you once were when you were dead in sin and trespasses and walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. And while you were dead hath God quickened you together with Christ. God dove to the bottom of the sea and took that drowned corpse and breathed into it the breath of his life and raised you from the dead. And it’s not that you were dying in a hospital bed of a certain illness, but rather, when you were born you were born D.O.A. That’s what the Bible says: that we are morally stillborn.

Do we have a will? Yes, of course we have a will. Calvin said, if you mean by a free will a faculty of choosing by which you have the power within yourself to choose what you desire, then we all have free will. If you mean by free will the ability for fallen human beings to incline themselves and exercise that will to choose the things of God without the prior monergistic work of regeneration then, said Calvin, free will is far too grandiose a term to apply to a human being.

The semi-Pelagian doctrine of free will prevalent in the evangelical world today is a pagan view that denies the captivity of the human heart to sin. It underestimates the stranglehold that sin has upon us.

None of us wants to see things as bad as they really are. The biblical doctrine of human corruption is grim. We don’t hear the Apostle Paul say, “You know, it’s sad that we have such a thing as sin in the world; nobody’s perfect. But be of good cheer. We’re basically good.” Do you see that even a cursory reading of Scripture denies this?

Now back to Luther. What is the source and status of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received? Or is it a condition of justification which is left to us to fulfill? Is your faith a work? Is it the one work that God leaves for you to do? I had a discussion with some folks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently. I was speaking on sola gratia, and one fellow was upset.

He said, “Are you trying to tell me that in the final analysis it’s God who either does or doesn’t sovereignly regenerate a heart?”

And I said, “Yes;” and he was very upset about that. I said, “Let me ask you this: are you a Christian?”

He said, “Yes.”

I said, “Do you have friends who aren’t Christians?”

He said, “Well, of course.”

I said, “Why are you a Christian and your friends aren’t? Is it because you’re more righteous than they are?” He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to say, “Of course it’s because I’m more righteous. I did the right thing and my friend didn’t.” He knew where I was going with that question.

And he said, “Oh, no, no, no.”

I said, “Tell me why. Is it because you are smarter than your friend?”

And he said, “No.”

But he would not agree that the final, decisive issue was the grace of God. He wouldn’t come to that. And after we discussed this for fifteen minutes, he said, “OK! I’ll say it. I’m a Christian because I did the right thing, I made the right response, and my friend didn’t.”

What was this person trusting in for his salvation? Not in his works in general, but in the one work that he performed. And he was a Protestant, an evangelical. But his view of salvation was no different from the Roman view.

God’s Sovereignty in Salvation

This is the issue: Is it a part of God’s gift of salvation, or is it in our own contribution to salvation? Is our salvation wholly of God or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves? Those who say the latter, that it ultimately depends on something we do for ourselves, thereby deny humanity’s utter helplessness in sin and affirm that a form of semi-Pelagianism is true after all. It is no wonder then that later Reformed theology condemned Arminianism as being, in principle, both a return to Rome because, in effect, it turned faith into a meritorious work, and a betrayal of the Reformation because it denied the sovereignty of God in saving sinners, which was the deepest religious and theological principle of the reformers’ thought. Arminianism was indeed, in Reformed eyes, a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favor of New Testament Judaism. For to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle than to rely on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other. In the light of what Luther says to Erasmus there is no doubt that he would have endorsed this judgment.

And yet this view is the overwhelming majority report today in professing evangelical circles. And as long as semi-Pelagianism, which is simply a thinly veiled version of real Pelagianism at its core — as long as it prevails in the Church, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I know, however, what will not happen: there will not be a new Reformation. Until we humble ourselves and understand that no man is an island and that no man has an island of righteousness, that we are utterly dependent upon the unmixed grace of God for our salvation, we will not begin to rest upon grace and rejoice in the greatness of God’s sovereignty, and we will not be rid of the pagan influence of humanism that exalts and puts man at the center of religion. Until that happens there will not be a new Reformation, because at the heart of Reformation teaching is the central place of the worship and gratitude given to God and God alone. Soli Deo gloria, to God alone be the glory.

Until the End

06.19.10
J.A. Matteson

“…by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:2

The message of the Gospel is effectual upon the hearts of the elect, vessels of honor foreknown to the Father from the beginning, drawing them to faith in Christ and conforming them to His image. Justification and sanctification are two sides of the same spiritual coin and cannot be separated, both are indicative of the supernatural transformative power of grace upon the heart; both are necessary and inseparably wedded together.

One cannot realize a state of sanctification without first benefiting from justification; likewise, one cannot be justified and not be in Christ (positional sanctification), and those in Christ cannot be utterly void of spiritual fruit to the glory of God, “even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:5f). As moisture cannot be separated from water, nor heat from fire, nor darkness from night, nor light from day, neither can sanctification be separated from justification. Those whom the Lord has made to be free shall be free indeed.

Recipients of divine justification enjoy first positional sanctification in Christ and the subsequent practical sanctification of being conformed to His image, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). One distinguishing mark of the justified/sanctified in Christ is a remarkable steadfastness in faith, and it is this unique characteristic of perseverance in the face of hardship and persecution by which they are known, “For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end” (Heb. 3:6). In chapter 11 the writer to the Hebrews cites numerous examples of Old Testament saints who, in the midst of continual adversity, never surrendered their faith, “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:13).

Therefore, being mindful of the deceitfulness of sin the Apostle Paul states to his readers in Corinth, “if you hold fast the word which I preached to you”, for it is possible to be self-deceived into believing one is in a state of grace when in due season their bogus “faith” will give way to the bitter fruit of unbelief; perseverance is a cornerstone mark of genuine faith wrought by the Spirit of God as a result of regeneration and conversion, and if a man has not been circumcised in the heart by the Spirit of God his “faith” is counterfeit, guaranteeing his future apostasy when the winds of adversity howl, or when the temptations of the world beckon to overcome him, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us” (1 Jn. 2:19).

Let us, therefore, hold fast to our confession until the end, demonstrating first to ourselves, and to world, that we are legitimate children of God in the likeness of the faith of Abraham “who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer” (Gal. 3:7) who, as the Apostle noted, was saved by faith and not in the keeping of the the Mosaic Law, and who remained in a state of faith until the end.

Copyright (c) 2010 Immutable Word Ministries (“…the word of our God stands forever.” Isa. 40:8).

Preaching Christ Alone

By Michael S. Horton

"You search the Scriptures in vain, thinking that you have eternal life in them, not realizing that it is they which testify concerning me." With these words, our Lord confronted what has always been the temptation in our reading of Holy Scripture: to read it without Christ as the supreme focus of revelation.

Many people who come to embrace the specific tenets of the Protestant Reformation (grace alone, scripture alone, Christ alone, to God alone be glory, faith alone, etc.) are liberated by the good news of God's free grace in Christ. Pastors who used to preach a human-centered message suddenly become impassionate defenders of God's glory and particular doctrines which often characterized the messages and shaped the teaching ministry of the congregation are exchanged for more biblical truths. This is all very exciting, of course, and we should be grateful to God for awakening us (this writer included) to the doctrines of grace. Nevertheless, there are deeper issues involved.

Not infrequently, we run into a church that is very excited about having just discovered the Reformation faith, but the preaching remains what it always was: witty, perhaps anecdotal (plenty of stories and illustrations that often serve the purpose of entertainment rather than illumination of a point), and moralistic (Bible characters surveyed for their usefulness in teaching moral lessons for our daily life). This is because we have not yet integrated our systematic theology with our hermeneutics (i.e., way of interpreting Scripture). We say, "Christ alone!" in our doctrine of salvation, but in actual practice our devotional life is saturated with sappy and trivial "principles" and the preaching is often directed toward motivating us through practical tips.

What we intend to do in this issue is present an urgent call to recover the lost art of Reformational preaching. This isn't just a matter of concern for preachers themselves, for the ministry of the Word is something that is committed to every believer, since we are all witnesses to God's unfolding revelation in Christ. It is not only important for those who speak for God in the pulpit in public assemblies, but for the layperson who reads his or her Bible and wonders, "How can I make sense of it all?" Below, I want to point out why we think there has been a decline of evangelical preaching in this important area.

Moralism

I have already referred to this threat and it will be the target of a good deal of criticism throughout this issue. Whenever the story of David and Goliath is used to motivate you to think about the "Goliaths" in your life and the "Seven Stones of Victory" used to defeat them, you have been the victim of moralistic preaching. The same is true whenever the primary intention of the sermon is to give you a Bible hero to emulate or a villain to teach a lesson, like "crime doesn't pay," or, "sin doesn't really make you happy." Reading or hearing the Bible in this way turns the Scriptures into a sort of Aesop's Fables or Grimm's Fairy Tales, where the story exists for the purpose of teaching a lesson to the wise and the story ends with, "and they lived happily ever after." In his Screwtape Letters, Lewis has Screwtape writing Wormwood in the attempt to persuade Wormwood to undermine the faith by turning Jesus into a great hero and moralist.

He has to be a 'great man' in the modern sense of the word--one standing at the terminus of some centrifugal and unbalanced line of thought--a crank vending a panacea. We thus distract men's minds from Who He is, and what He did. We first make Him solely a teacher, and then conceal the very substantial agreement between His teaching and those of other great moral teachers.

This is the greatest problem, from my own experience, with the preaching we hear today. There is such a demand to be practical--that is, to have clever principles for daily living. But the danger, of course, is that what one hears on Sunday morning is not the Word of God. To be sure, the Scriptures were read (maybe) and there was a sermon (perhaps), but the message had more in common with a talk at the Lion's Club, a pop-psychology seminar, prophecy conference or political convention than with proclamation of heavenly truth "from above."

Because we are already seated with Christ in the heavens (Eph.2:4) and are already participating in the new creation that dawned with Christ's resurrection, we are to be heavenly-minded. This, of course, does not mean that we are irrelevant mystics who have no use for this world; rather, it means that we are oriented in our outlook toward God rather than humanity (including ourselves), the eternal rather than this present age, holiness rather than happiness, glorifying God rather than demanding that God meet our "felt needs." Only with this kind of orientation can we be of use to this world as "salt" and "light," bearing a distinctive testimony to the transcendent in a world that is so bound to the present moment.

Finally, moralism commits a basic hermeneutical error, from the Reformation point of view. Both Lutherans and the Reformed have insisted, in the words of the Second Helvetic Confession, "The Gospel is, indeed, opposed to the law. For the law works wrath and announces a curse, whereas the Gospel preaches grace and blessing." Calvin and his successor, Beza, followed the common Lutheran understanding that while both the law and the Gospel were clearly taught in Scripture (in both Old and New Testaments), that the confusion of the two categories lay at the heart of all wayward preaching and teaching in the church. It is not that the Old Testament believers were under the law and we are under grace or the Gospel, but rather that believers in both Testaments are obligated to the moral law, to perfectly obey its precepts and conform to its purity not only in outward deed, but in the frame and fashion of heart and soul. And yet, in both Testaments, believers are offered the Gospel of Christ's righteousness placed over the naked, law-breaking sinner so that God can accept the wicked--yes, even the wicked for the sake of Christ.

Both Lutherans and the Reformed have also affirmed that the law still has a place after conversion in the life of the believer, as the only commands for works that are now done in faith. Nevertheless, preaching must observe clearly the distinction between these two things. As John Murray writes, "The law can never give the believer any spiritual power to obey its commands." And yet, so much of the moralistic preaching we get these days presupposes the error that somehow principles, steps for victory, rules, guidelines that the preacher has cleverly devised (i.e., the traditions of men?) promise spiritual success to those who will simply put them into daily practice. Those who are new in the faith regard this kind of preaching as useful and practical; those who have been around it for a while eventually burn out and grow cynical about the Christian life because they cannot "gain victory" even though they have tried everything in the book.

It must be said that not even the commands of God himself can give us life or the power to grow as Christians. The statutes are right and good, but I am not, Paul said in Romans 7. Even the believer cannot gain any strength from the law. The law can only tell him what is right; the Gospel alone can make him right by giving him what he cannot gain by law-keeping. If the law itself is rendered powerless by human sinfulness, how on earth could we possibly believe that humanly devised schemes and principles for victory and spiritual power could achieve success? We look to the law for the standard, realizing that even as Christians we fall far short of reaching it. Just then, the Gospel steps in and tells us that someone has attained that standard, that victory, for us, in our place, and now the law can be preached again without tormenting our conscience. It cannot provoke us to fear or anxiety, since its demands are fulfilled by someone else's obedience.

Therefore, it is our duty to preach "the whole counsel of God," which includes everything in the category of law (the divine commandments and threats of punishment; the call to repentance and conversion, sanctification and service to God and our neighbor) and in the category of Gospel (God's promise of rest, from Genesis to Revelation; its fulfillment in Christ's death, burial and resurrection, ascension, intercession, second coming; the gift of faith, through which the believer is justified and entered into a vital union with Christ; the gift of persevering faith, which enables us to pursue godliness in spite of suffering). But any type of preaching that fails to underscore the role of the law in condemning the sinner and the role of the Gospel in justifying the sinner or confuses these two is a serious violation of the distinction which Paul himself makes in Galatians 3:15-25.

Much of the evangelical preaching with which I am familiar neither inspires a terror of God's righteousness nor praise for the depths of God's grace in his gift of righteousness. Rather, it is often a confusion of these two, so that the bad news isn't quite that bad and the good news isn't all that good. We actually can do something to get closer to God; we aren't so far from God that we cannot make use of the examples of the biblical characters and attain righteousness by following the "Seven Steps to the Spirit-Filled Life." But in the biblical view, the biblical characters are not examples of their victory, but of God's! The life of David is not a testimony to David's faithfulness, surely, but to God's and for us to read any part of that story as though we could attain the Gospel (righteousness) by the law (obedience) is the age-old error of Cain, the Pharisees, the Galatian Judaizers, the Pelagians, Semi-Pelagians, Arminians, and Higher Life proponents.

There are varieties of moralism. Some moralists are sentimental in their preaching. In other words, the goal is to be helpful and a loving nurturer who aims each Sunday at affirming his congregation with the wise sayings of a Jesus who sounds a lot like a talk-show therapist. Other moralists are harsh in their preaching. Their Gospel is, "Do this and you shall live." In other words, unless you can measure a growth in holiness by any number of indicators or barometers, you should not conclude that you are entitled to the promises. The Gospel, for these preachers, is law and the law is Gospel. One can attain God's forgiveness and acceptance only through constant self-assessment. Doubt rather than assurance marks mature Christian reflection, these preachers insist, in sharp distinction to the tenderness of the Savior who excluded only those who thought they had jumped through all the right hoops. The sinners were welcome at Christ's table, the "righteous" were clearly not.

Therefore, even the Christian needs to be constantly reminded that his sanctification is so slow and imperfect in this life that not one single spiritual blessing can be pried from God's hand by obedience; it is all there in the Father's open, outstretched hand. This, of course, is the death-knell to moralism of every stripe. The bad news is very bad indeed; the good news is greater than any earthly moral wisdom. That's why Paul said, paraphrased, "You Greek Christians in Corinth want moral wisdom? OK, I'll give you wisdom: Christ is made our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Aha! God in his foolishness is wiser than all the world's self-help gurus!" (1 Cor. 1:18-31).

Moralism might answer the "felt needs" of those who demand practical and inspirational pep talks on Sunday morning, but it cannot really be considered preaching.

Verse-By-Verse Exposition

Having been raised in churches which painstakingly exegeted a particular passage verse-by-verse, I have profited from the insights this method sometimes offers. Nevertheless, it too falls short of an adequate way of preaching, reading, or interpreting the sacred text.

First, an explanation of how this is done. I remember the pastor going through even rather brief books like Jude over a period of several months and there we would be, pen and paper in hand as though we were in a classroom, following his outline--either printed in the bulletin or on an overhead projector. Words would be taken apart like an auto mechanic taking apart an engine, conducting an extensive study on the root of that word in the Greek language. This is inadvisable, first, because word studies often focus on etymology (i.e., what is the root of the work in the original language?) rather than on the use of the word in ancient literature, for very often the use of a particular word in ancient literature had nothing at all to do with the root meaning of the word itself. It is dangerous to think of biblical words as magical or different somehow from the same words in the secular works of their day.

This approach is also dangerous because it "misses the forest for the trees." In other words, revelation is one long, unfolding drama of redemption and to get wrapped up in a technical analysis of bits and pieces fails to do justice to the larger context of the text. What God intended as one continuous story that is proclaimed each week to remind the faithful of God's promise and our calling is often turned into an arduous and irrelevant search for words. The same tendency is present in Bible study methods or study Bibles that outline, take apart, and put back together the pieces of the Bible in such a way as to get in the way of the Scripture's inherent power and authority.

Another fault of this verse-by-verse method is that it often fails to appreciate the variety of genre in the biblical text and imposes a woodenly literalistic grid on passages that are meant to be preached, read, or interpreted in a different way. The Bible is not a textbook of geometry that can be reductionistically dissected for simple conclusions, but a book in which God himself speaks to us, disclosing his nature, his purpose, and his unfolding plan of redemption through history.

A final danger of this method is that it tends to remove the congregation from the text of Scripture. Even though the hearers may be very involved taking notes, it only serves to reinforce in their experience that they could not simply sit down and read their English Bibles for themselves and discover the deeper meaning of the text apart from those who have the method down and know the original languages.

Carelessness

Unfortunately, too much of the preaching we come across these days does not even have the merit of attempting a faithful exposition of the Scriptures, as these preceding methods do.

When John Calvin was asked to respond to Cardinal Sadoleto as to why Geneva was irretrievably Protestant, the Reformer included this indictment of the state of preaching before the Reformation:

Nay, what one sermon was there from which old wives might not carry off more whimsies than they could devise at their own fireside in a month? For as sermons were usually then divided, the first half was devoted to those misty questions of the schools which might astonish the rude populace, while the second contained sweet stories and amusing speculations by which the hearers might be kept awake. Only a few expressions were thrown in from the Word of God, that by their majesty they might procure credit for these frivolities.

Calvin then contrasts this former way of preaching with the Reformation approach to Scripture:

First, we bid a man to begin by examining himself, and this not in a superficial and perfunctory manner, but to cite his conscience before the tribunal of God, and when sufficiently convinced of his iniquity, to reflect on the strictness of the sentence pronounced on all sinners. Thus confounded and amazed at his misery, he is prostrated and humbled before God; and, casting away all self-confidence, groans as if given up to final perdition. Then we show that the only haven of safety is in the mercy of God, as manifested in Christ, in whom every part of our salvation is complete. As all mankind are, in the sight of God, lost sinners, we hold that Christ is their only righteousness, since, by His obedience, He has wiped off our transgressions; by His sacrifice, appeased the divine anger.

The Genevan Reformer goes on to ask the Cardinal what problem he has with that. It is probably, says Calvin, that the Reformation way of preaching is not "practical" enough; that it doesn't give people clear directions for daily living and motivate them to a higher life. Nevertheless, the Reformers all believed that the preacher is required to preach the text, not to decide on a topic and look for a text that can be pressed into its service. And the text, said they, was aimed not at offering heroes to emulate (even Jesus), but at proclamation of God's redemptive act in the person and work of the God-Man.

Who couldn't find in Calvin's description of medieval preaching something of the contemporary situation? In many of the church growth contexts, once more the sermon is not given the central place liturgically and the sermon itself often reveals that the speaker is more widely read in marketing surveys, trend analyses, biographies of the rich and famous, "One Hundred & One Sermon Illustrations," and Leadership journal than in the Greek New Testament, hermeneutical aids, and the riches of centuries of theological scholarship. One can often tell when a pastor has just read a powerful book of pop-psychology, Christian personality theories, end-times speculations, moral or political calls to action, or entrepreneurial successes. He has been blown away by some of the insights and has scouted about for a text that can, if read very quickly, lend some divine credibility to something he did not actually get from that text, but from the Christian or secular best-seller's list. "I'm a pastor, not a theologian," they say, in contrast to the classical evangelical notion, inherited from the Reformation, that a pastor was a scholar as well as a preacher.

Good communicators can get away with the lack of content by their witty, anecdotal style, but they are still unfaithful as ministers of the Word, even if they help people and keep folks coming back for more.

The "Christ And..." Syndrome

In C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, the devil's strategy is not to remove Christ altogether from the scene, but to propagate a "Christ And..." religion:

What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of "Christianity And." You know--Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychic Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians, let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing (Letter XXV).

Today, we see this in terms of Christ and America; Christ and Self-Esteem; Christ and Prosperity; Christ and the Republican or Democratic Party; Christ and End-Time Predictions; Christ and Healing; Christ and Marketing and Church Growth; Christ and Traditional Values, and on we could go, until Christ himself becomes little more than an appendage to a religion that can, after all, get on quite well without him. That is not, of course, to say that the evangelical enterprise could do this without some difficulty. After all, every movement needs a mascot. We say we are Christ-centered, but what was the sermon about last Sunday?

In fact, it is not even enough to preach the centrality of Christ. It is particularly Christ as he is our sacrifice for sin and guarantor of new life because of his resurrection that the Bible makes central in its revelation. After a tragic car accident, Fr. James Feehan, a seasoned Roman Catholic priest in New Zealand, realized afresh the significance of Paul's command to preach Christ and him crucified:

If the pulpit is not committed to this utter centrality of the Cross, then our preaching, however, brilliant, is doomed to sterility and failure. We preach the Christ of the Mount; we preach the Christ of the healing ministry; we preach the Christ of the sublime example; we preach the Christ of the Social Gospel; we preach the Christ of the Resurrection but rarely, if ever, do we preach the Christ of the Cross. We have evaded the very heart of the Christian message. In our preaching we tend to decry the human predicament, the turmoil of our lives, the evil in the world, and we wonder if there is a way out. The Way Out is staring us in the face. It is the Way of Christ, the Way of the Cross (Preaching Christ Crucified: Our Guilty Silence [Dublin: The Mercier Press, 1991], p.19).

In other words, to guard the centrality of Christ in our preaching, it is necessary to guard the centrality of Christ's ministry as prophet, priest and king. Otherwise, we will even use "Christ" as a means of preaching something other than Christ. We will insist that we are preaching Christ even though we are really only using his name in vain as a buttress for some fashionable tangent we happen to be on this week.

What then is the proper method for reading, preaching, and interpreting God's Word? Many resist the idea that there is a proper method at all, dismissing it as naive. The content is normative and unchanging, they say, but the method is relative and depends on what works best for each pastor. It is often treated as a matter of style, like whether one wears robes or has the choir in the front or the back of the church. But not only does the Bible give us the content of what we are to believe; it gives us a method for properly determining that message.

Reclaiming the Doctrine of Justification

By Rod Rosenbladt

Any evangelical--indeed, any Christian--would probably say that the key issue of human life is that of a saving relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Those who are familiar with the scriptures and know what is described with regard to the nature of the fall of the human race in Genesis three and have come to grips with the texts that plumb the true depths of that fall and the ramifications for every human being born after Adam and Eve, would probably not hesitate to say that man became at that point totally depraved.

Total depravity, of course, does not mean that man has become as bad as he can possibly be, but that every part of us is infected with a deep infection and that we cannot solve our own problem with regard to that infection. This realism moves the evangelical to affirm, therefore, that the eternal Logos assumed to himself a particular human nature and had as his work to be our prophet, priest, and king and to solve our basic problem in our stead or in our place. The word that most evangelicals would use for that is a biblical word...salvation.

And so, in one way, our subject is a very very simple one: How am I to be saved? And in a way, the answer to the question is as simple: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved! Or, to use a couple of texts which Luther and Calvin cited in their debates with great frequency, "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law..." (Rom. 3:28) and, "But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness" (Rom. 4:5).

Now the basic motifs are as follows: (1) The reformers really believed that the popular (and, by the mid-sixteenth century, official) Roman Catholic position was a self-salvation. By "Roman Catholic" I don't mean what's going on necessarily at St. John's by the gas station today. Rather, it is to the medieval position which I refer, the Roman Catholic theology that was represented in the Council of Trent.

(2) When God gives orders and tells us what will happen if we fail to obey those orders perfectly, it is in the category of what the reformers, following the biblical text, called "law." When God promises freely, providing for us because of Christ's righteousness the status he demands of us, this is in the category of "gospel." It is good news from start to finish. The Bible includes both, and the reformers were agreed that the scriptures clearly taught (contrary to many forms of dispensationalism) that the Law (whether Old or New Testament commands) was not set aside for the believer. Nevertheless, they insisted that nothing in this category of "Law" could be a means of justification or acceptance before a holy God.

The Law comes, not to reform the sinner, nor to show him or her the "narrow way" to life, but to crush the sinner's hopes of escaping God's wrath through self-effort or even cooperation. All of our righteousness must come from someone else--someone who fulfilled the Law's demands. Once we have been stripped of our "filthy rags" of righteousness (Is.64:6), our "fig leaves" through which we try in vain to hide our guilt and shame, only then can we be clothed with Christ's righteousness. First comes the Law to proclaim judgment and death, then the Gospel to proclaim justification and life. One of the clearest presentations of this motif is found in Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.

For many in the German "Higher Life" movement, and those in the stream of Wesley generally, the motif is Law-Gospel-Law. B. B. Warfield, the great dean of "Old Princeton" Reformed theologians, was one of the clearest early critics of this trend, which has now culminated in the vast literature of "victorious living" versions of the Christian life. Warfield argued that, at the bottom of it all, the Higher Life movement was nothing more than a revival of prominent Wesleyan-Arminian features. Warfield also stated that he was fairly convinced that the Arminians had another God. That's a deep shot. Is it justified? To answer that, let us go back for a moment to the Reformation debate.

In the sixteenth century the issue of law and grace was more clearly dealt with than at almost any other time since the apostles. The lines were cut cleanly, and as the great Yale historian, Roland Bainton, has written, "This was the only issue of the century." Anybody who is studying the sixteenth century primarily through the issue of economics is going to miss the whole point of the century. It is impossible to understand the sixteenth century if you start with the categories of Marxism and revolution, or anything else.
The Gospel in the Middle Ages

Throughout what has come to be called "the Middle Ages," the western Church was discussing and debating the nature of justification. What then was the medieval doctrine of justification?

Thomas Aquinas had a doctrine of justification, but it was one doctrine among many. Somewhere tucked behind, around, and under such subjects as regeneration, predestination, sanctification, etc., there was a doctrine of justification. It also was a doctrine of justification that involved God loving the sinner in so far as he or she was not a sinner. He did not love the sinner qua sinner; how could a holy and just God love a sinner? But he loved sinners in so far as they had the potential to not be sinners.

Duns Scotus spoke of the necessity of an absolutely selfless act of contrition (sorrow) and love for God by natural means if a person was to be saved. Think about that for a moment. At least once during your life, you have to perform an utterly selfless act that has no vested interest for you whatsoever, or you will not be saved. Luther believed that this way of justification prevented God from befriending publicans and sinners, and that if it were true, God was not truly free.

Of course, there were many other views. Strict Augustinians insisted on the priority of grace, which because of predestination, rendered it absolutely certain that one would be justified--one day in the future. Even for the Augustinians--and there were not a few--justification was primarily moral transformation, not a legal declaration distinct from any prior moral conditions.

The medieval consensus which won out has come to be known by the technical name "Semipelagianism"--from the fourth century debate between Augustine, defender of grace, and Pelagius, a monk who denied original sin and, therefore, the need for supernatural grace. While the Council of Orange (529 A.D.) condemned both Pelagianism and Semipelagianism, the heresy of works-righteousness, erected on the foundation of free will, grew increasingly popular among the masses and even among the theologians.

What the reformers said of the position was that it was by necessity a theology of doubt, of fear, and finally of despair, of being saved. One had to be sanctified enough first in order to merit justifying grace, and the essence of justification was a real change within the human heart. (We must mark this well, because we shall discover parallels to this in evangelicalism when we discuss this below.) Justification, for Roman Catholic theology, is primarily a real empirical change in the human heart. Aquinas argued that justification involved a gradual change from unjust to just, thus justified. Grace amounted to an infused power to enable one to cooperate with the Spirit, to gradually move oneself from the category of "ungodly" to "righteous." And this would be noticeable in fewer and fewer sins.

As if Aquinas were anticipating the Enlightenment, he seems to have much more in common with Kant than with the New Testament, when he offers a statement likely to be heard in any number of evangelical circles in our day: "God never asks of anyone something for which he does not first give them the power to perform it." Reformation people, of course, had (and still ought to have) tremendous problems with this theory which underestimates both the seriousness of sin and the greatness of grace.

The Gospel According to the Reformers

What then is the doctrine of justification as taught by the reformers? It is, they said, primarily a forensic declaration, that is, it comes from the world of law courts. In this transaction, we the guilty party stand before the judge who is righteous and are declared as if we were not only innocent, but as though we were perfectly righteous. (Notice how the popular definition, "just-as-if-I'd-never sinned" only tells half the story: We are not only forgiven; we are also credited with Christ's complete righteousness as though we had perfectly kept the Law through the course of our lives.)

The reformers did not believe that this justification was an empirical change in the human heart; rather, it was external. One of my favorite stories that illustrates this particular matter deals with a time when Luther was under the ban of the Empire, was translating the Bible into German at the Wartburg castle, and could only have contact with his star student Melanchthon by courier. Melanchthon had a different sort of temperament than Luther. Some would call Melanchthon timid; others of a somewhat less generous bent might call him "spineless." At one point, while Luther was off in the Wartburg castle translating, Melanchthon had another one of his attacks of timidity. He wrote to Luther, "I woke this morning wondering if I trusted Christ enough." Luther received such letters from Melanchthon regularly. He had a tendency, a propensity, to navel-gaze, and to wonder about the state of his inner faith, and whether it was enough to save. Finally, in an effort to pull out all the stops and pull Melanchthon out of himself, Luther wrote back and said, "Melanchthon! Go sin bravely! Then go to the cross and bravely confess it! The whole gospel is outside of us."

This story has been told time and time again by less sympathetic observers in an effort to caricature Luther and the Reformation generally as an invitation to licentious abandon. If we are not justified by our own moral conformity to the Law, but by Christ's, surely there is nothing keeping us from self-indulgence. Of course, this was the criticism of the gospel which Paul anticipated in Romans six: "Shall we therefore sin so that grace may increase? Heaven forbid!" Nevertheless, Luther's pastoral advice was calculated to jar Melanchthon out of morbid introspection. Great sinners know liberation when they have it, but Melanchthon had been a scrupulous, pious Catholic. This, however, did not bring him assurance, but only doubts. For his assurance depended, not so much on God's promise to the ungodly as ungodly (Rom.4:5), but on his ability to see growth and improvement in his Christian walk. Luther's frustrated counsel was not an invitation to serve sin, but an attempt to shock Melanchthon into realizing that his righteousness was external to him: The whole gospel is outside of us.

In order to precisely define justification we ought to use the full formula, taking the words of William Hordern:

The Doctrine is properly called justification by grace alone through faith alone. Through the years a kind of shorthand has risen whereby we have spoken of justification by faith alone. In and of itself this is innocent enough and it avoids having to keep repeating the full formula. But the trouble with this abbreviation is that it can give a quite mistaken view of what the doctrine is really saying. When by grace alone is dropped from the phrase, the impression is that faith is the primary element in justification. But then faith begins to appear as something that we must perform. And so, ironically, the term justification by faith leads to a new doctrine of works. Faith comes to be seen as a work that we must accomplish in order save ourselves.

Ironically, even in the Lutheran church this concept is rife. We took a national survey in North America and found out that seventy-five percent of Lutherans across synodical line were functioning Roman Catholics. Seventy-five percent of them answered "yes" to questions like, "I think I will be saved because I am trying harder to obey the Ten Commandments this week than last week." A few years ago Will Herberg and other commentators noted that a predominant aspect of North American religion was that we have faith in faith. One American evangelist, in fact, wrote a booklet, "How To Have Faith In Your Faith." To believe fervently is good, regardless of what it is we believe. No doubt this attitude is partly the result of the abbreviation justification by faith alone.

I mentioned that the Roman Catholic position was that we were saved by grace, and that grace is an infused power to lead a God-pleasing life. Luther did not agree that the word "grace" in the Bible meant an infused power to live a God pleasing-life, as though it were a substance. He said rather that grace is the opposite of merit: unmerited favor. We are saved by God's graciousness to us. God has decided to be gracious to sinners; we are saved by his graciousness.

Grace is not even a principle: It is an attribute, a disposition, of the living God. He is gracious. To be saved by God's graciousness is to give up on merit, or to use Luther's phrase, to "let God be God." Luther believed that to "let God be God" was to recognize that it is he who does the saving, and part of what was requisite in that was for us to quit trying to do the saving. The Roman Catholic position was that God and the believer working together can save, while the Reformation position insisted that God can save sinners only if they stop trying to save themselves. The cause of God's graciousness to sinners is not our faith, the reformers insisted; the cause of God's graciousness to sinners is his graciousness. In other words, we do not leverage the love of God out of heaven. We do not have any archemedian point for a lever to pry it down toward us. Our openness, our yearning for him, our longing to be part of his gracious plan: none of this justifies; none of these dispositions or desires on our part can pry open the gate of heaven.

If the reformers were correct in interpreting what Paul was getting at in the epistle to the Romans, one hundred percent of our salvation is due to his graciousness, and zero percent is due to anything in us. The Reformation answer to the question, "Don't I contribute anything to my salvation?" is, "Yes...Your sin!" The value then of saving faith is only a value in virtue of the object grasped. Faith has no virtue; it connects us to the one who is virtuous.

Along these lines, a book that has been a low point in the history of publishing in the West appeared in the nineteen-fifties titled, The Magic of Believing. Again, it's Charlie Brown's line: it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you believe in something. It helps to keep your blood pressure down, and you'll be less likely to have ulcers if you believe in something, no matter what it is. This was not the Reformation position: Faith had no virtue on its own. It was, they said, an empty hand which grasps the free treasure of Christ. The old sermon illustration is worth remembering: If a person happens to be drowning and someone throws out a life-ring and pulls the person, it is bizarre for the rescued party to say, "Did you see how I grasped that ring? Why just look a these hands!"

Luther said that faith in Christ to save allowed God to be who he was. And so the Reformation affirmation is that we are saved on account of Christ through faith, and it is not that we are saved on account of faith through Christ. It is the graciousness of God that saves us by his act in Christ, not our faith itself. If we say that our faith is something which we offer to God--like some sort of transaction in which God offers salvation in exchange for our act of faith or decision, we are functioning Roman Catholics. I used to say to some of my evangelical students that they ought to find a priest and join the Roman Catholic Church, because it was the same theology and the priest could say it more clearly. What has become blurred and confused in evangelical circles is quite clearly and articulately spelled out in the dogmatic conclusions of the Roman Catholic magisterium.

Man, said Luther and Calvin, has no faith and he cannot produce any faith. We are all helpless, impotent, and bankrupt by virtue of our participation in Adam and Eve's act, and we cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. The place we find this most clearly expounded by Luther is in The Bondage of The Will.

I hear the reader asking, "Well then, is saving faith just a matter of knowing facts?" Hardly, and the reformers knew that. They distinguished between historical faith and saving faith. Historical faith had as its goal or end, human speculations. It was an intellectual acceptance of facts concerning Jesus' life, work, and death; nevertheless, it came only from the human mind, acknowledging the facts, but remained basically uninvolved with the one that caused the facts to happen. And the key phrase that Luther used was that the person who just had historical faith believed that none of this was pro me, or for me. Once a person comes to accept that this whole action summed up in the Nicene creed was for me, then said Luther we're talking about the kind of faith that saves. There we have an active embracing of the son of God and his self sacrifice. And you say, "Ah ha! There is something self produced in faith." Answer from the reformers, "Not at all. God gets the total credit when someone starts to think that sort of thing." That is the power of the Holy Spirit through the gospel that gives that inclination to us against our own.

The motif in the New Testament, and in the Reformation is that Christ's death was outside of me and for me. It is not primarily something that changes us. After one has been declared righteous by grace through faith, this grace will begin to change us (sanctification); nevertheless its changing us is certainly not what justifies us. In Roman Catholicism, and in John Wesley's work, what makes us acceptable to God is his internal work of renovation within our hearts and lives.

Thus, through the influence of Arminianism and Wesleyanism, the situation in many evangelical churches bears almost indistinguishable resemblance on these points to medieval Rome. Some of the preaching in evangelicalism--certainly some of the Sunday school material, some of the primary addresses by retreat speakers and Christian leaders-all taken together as the basic spiritual diet, tend to reinforce that old intuition that good people are the ones who are saved and that those who are not so good are the ones who are lost.

The bell-weather test as to where a person stands on this is what he or she does with Romans chapter seven, particularly passages such as, "The good that I would, I do not. And that which I abhor is that which I do...Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" In many cases, those who are not grounded in the Reformation persuasion have to say this was Paul's experience before he met the Lord, while those of us from the Reformation perspective would probably say there is no better description of the Christian life in all of the Bible than Romans seven. The reformers really believed that the Christian life was a life simul iustus et peccator-simultaneously justified and yet sinful, and that we would remain in this tension until death. They were eager to proclaim Christ as savior and lord and would never have known the dichotomy expressed by Zane Hodges and other antinomian Bible teachers, but they were absolutely opposed to a self-salvation by self surrender.

Any righteousness that we have, even in the Christian life, is gifted to us. They would not have been especially impressed with the kind of things that have come from the Keswick movement in England, from the German higher life movement, from Ian Thomas, from the American Finneyites, Andrew Murray, or some of the writings of Lewis Sperry Chafer. Here is a quote from the famous B. B. Warfield on Louis Sperry Chafer:

Mr. Chafer makes use of all the jargon of the higher life teaching. In him we too hear of two kinds of Christians whom he designates respectively carnal men, and spiritual men on the basis of a misreading of 1 Corinthians 2:9 and following. And we are told that the passage from the one to the other is at our option, whether we care to claim the higher degree by faith. With him too, thus, the enjoyment of every blessing is suspended on our claiming it. We hear of letting God, and indeed we almost hear of engaging the Spirit as we engage say a carpenter to do work for us. And we do explicitly hear of "making it possible for God to do things," a quite terrible expression. Of course we hear repeatedly of the duty and efficacy of yielding, and the act of yielding ourselves is quite in the customary manner discriminated from consecrating ourselves... (Princeton Theological Review, April 1919)

Many of the elements present in medieval theology are replicated in North American fundamentalism and evangelicalism. The family resemblances, if you want to talk across the spectrum of Christian theology, are: Luther/Calvin; Wesley/Rome.
What About Sanctification?

Did the reformers then have any doctrine of sanctification? Of course they did. We are all familiar with the biblical announcements as to what is involved sanctification: the Word, the sacraments, prayer, fellowship, sharing the gospel, serving God and neighbor, and the Reformation tradition acknowledges that there are biblical texts that speak of sanctification as complete already. This is not a perfection which is empirical or observable, but a definitive declaration that because we are "in Christ," we are set apart and holy by his sacrifice (1 Cor. 1:30; Heb. 10, etc.). Anybody who is in Christ is sanctified because his holiness is imputed to the Christian believer, just as Jesus says in John chapter seventeen, "For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified." God sees the believer as holy. That means that Wesley should not have terrified Christian brethren with texts such as, "Without holiness, no one will see the Lord." The Christian is holy--it's all imputed. And then there are texts that say, "Be holy as I am holy." What would the reformers do with that? They would say we are called to be holy. But why should we be holy if we are already perfect in Christ? Because we are saved unto good works, not unto licentiousness, according to Romans chapter six; the question has been asked before. The works are done out of thankfulness of heart by the believer who has been saved, not by one who is trying to be saved. Clearly the reformers had a doctrine of sanctification. They believed that the Law in the Bible had three uses. First, it was a civil ordinance to keep us from stealing each other's wives and speedboats. The civil use of the law applied to the whole culture. Second, the theological use of the law which was to reveal our sin and drive us to despair and terror so that we would seek a savior. Luther believed that was the primary use of the law in all of Scripture. But the reformers also believed in a third use of the Law, and that was as a didactic use, to teach the Christian God's will for holy living.

If the Christian is reading the Law and says, "This is not yet true of me: I don't love God with all my heart, and I certainly don't love my neighbor as I love myself. In fact, just today I failed to help a poor chap on the side of the road who was having car trouble. I must not yet be a Christian," here the reformers would counsel, "You hurry back to the second use of the law and flee to Christ where sanctification is truly, completely, and perfectly located." After this experience, the believer will feel a greater sense of freedom to obey, and it is the only way that one will ever feel free to obey. The difference between all "Higher Life" movements and the Reformation perspective finally turns on the question of what Baptists call the assurance of salvation, and what the reformers called fides reflexa (reflexive faith). The answer of the Higher Life movement to the struggling Christian is, "Surrender more," or, "What are you holding back from the Lord?" The Reformation answer is different.

A friend of mine was walking down the streets of Minneapolis one day and was confronted by an evangelical brother who was very anxious to know whether he was saved and asked just that. "Brother, are you saved?" Hal rolled his eyes back and said, "Yes." That didn't satisfy this brother so he said, "Well when were you saved?" Hal said, "About two thousand years ago, about a twenty minutes' walk from downtown Jerusalem." The most important thing is that the death of Christ was in fact a death even for Christian failure. Christ's death even saves Christians from major sins. There is always "room at the cross" for unbelievers, it seems, but what we ought to be telling people is that there is room there for Christians, too. This, then, is what Dr. Manske meant when earlier I referred to his comment that in many evangelical gatherings the motif is Law/Gospel/Law. The Law condemns, driving us to Christ in the Gospel, from whom we receive both instantaneous justification and progressive sanctification for the rest of our lives, according to the Reformation perspective. But in contemporary evangelicalism, the Law can come back and undermine the confidence of the Gospel. It can still make threats; it can still condemn. There is wonderful grace for the sinner out there, and the evangelical is at his best in evangelism. But the question as to whether there is enough grace for the sinful Christian is an open one in many gatherings, and I have had many students tell me, "My last state is worse than the first--I think I've got to leave the faith because I feel worse now than I did before." In many cases, I have had brothers and sisters come up to me after I had spoken and tell me, "This is about the last shot I've got. My own Christian training is killing me. I can understand how, before I was a Christian, Christ's death was for me, but I am not at all sure that his death is for me now because I have surrendered so little to him and hold so much back. My trouble really began when I committed myself to Christ as Lord and Savior." That can come from the pastoral teaching, the Sunday school curriculum, and everything one's Christian leaders declare.
Conclusion

There must be a clear and unqualified pronouncement of the assurance of salvation on the basis of the fullness of the atonement of Christ. In other words, even a Christian can be saved. This other gospel, in its various forms ("Higher Life," legalistic, the "carnal Christian" teaching, etc.) is tearing us to pieces. I must warn you that the answer to this devastating problem is not available on every street corner. It is only available in the Reformation tradition. This is not because that particular tradition has access to information other traditions do not possess. Rather, it is because the same debate which climaxed in that sixteenth century movement has erupted again and again since. In fact, since Christ's debates with the Pharisees and Paul's arguments with the legalists, this has been the debate of Christian history. At no time since the apostolic era were these issues so thoroughly discussed and debated, to the point where the lines are clear and the distinctives well-defined. To ignore the biblical wisdom, scholarship, and brilliant insights of such giants is simply to add to our ignorance the vice of pride and self-sufficiency. The Reformation position is the evangelical position.

The only way out is an exposition of the Scriptures that has to do with Law and Gospel: An exposition of the scriptures that places Christ at the center of the text for everybody, including the Christian. All of the Bible is about him. All of the Bible is even about him for the Christian!

I used to tell my students at a Christian college that they had never heard preaching with the exception of a few sound evangelistic appeals. Their weekly diet in the congregation was not a proclamation of the grace to them because of the finished and atoning death of Christ; the grace to them as Christians. That emphasis is desperately needed. And the only way to find it is to go back to when it was done, and it was done in the sixteenth century. The real hope for the church in the west lies with the evangelicals. Barring an unusual act of God, the mainline churches are not going to get the church back on its feet. Generally speaking, they simply do not have a high enough view of the inspiration of scripture to listen to it anymore.

The evangelicals do. They believe that the scriptures are true, but tend to read them as a recipe book for Christian living, rather than for the purpose of finding Christ who died for them and who is the answer for their un-Christian living. We must have that kind of renewal, and it can only come from the evangelicals. The evangelical movement in America must begin reading from the reformers instead of pretending that they are committed only to the Bible, without any system of doctrine, when it is clear what books, tapes, and sermons have shaped their faith and practice. Another thing we are going to have to re-examine in connection with Christian growth is the question of the sacraments--not sacramentalism, but the very nature of the sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper), which receives far more attention in the scriptures than in contemporary evangelical discussion and piety. We are going to have to talk about them again. The major themes of the reformers are precisely the ones which the evangelical must be encouraged to recover in this time and place.