John Piper - Stop treating Jesus like your plumber

"God So Loved the World"
John 3:9-18

The Way to Permanent Faith - Oswald Chambers

The Way to Permanent Faith - Oswald Chambers

Oswald Chambers playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=10F140787559EB2B

John 16

American Standard Version (ASV)

32 Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. 33 These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Magnificat In D Major, Bwv 243: Aria (Duet): "et Misericordia" (Alto, Tenor)

Artist: Johann Sebastian Bach, John Eliot Gardiner, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, English Baroque Soloists, Charles Brett

Faith and Repentance: The Inseparable Link in the Book of Acts

by Matt Waymeyer @ http://expositorythoughts.wordpress.com

The Bible teaches that faith and repentance are inseparably linked as two sides of the same “saving response” to the gospel. In the book of Acts—as elsewhere in the New Testament—sometimes only repentance is mentioned (2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 17:30; 26:20), and other times only faith is (4:4; 10:43; 13:48; 14:1; 16:31). But regardless of which is emphasized in a given passage, the presence of one implies the existence of the other, for a sinner cannot repent without believing, and he cannot believe without repenting.

This inseparable link is reflected in Acts 20:21 where the apostle Paul states that he testified “to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the original Greek, “repentance” (metanoia) and “faith” (pistis) are connected by the conjunction “and” (kai), and the definite article precedes only the first noun. The use of only one article to govern both nouns indicates a unity between “repentance” and “faith.” As Greek grammarian Daniel Wallace explains:

The evidence suggests that, in Luke’s usage, saving faith includes repentance. In those texts which speak simply of faith, a “theological shorthand” seems to be employed: Luke envisions repentance as the inceptive act of which the entirety may be called [faith]. Thus, for Luke, conversion is not a two-step process, but one step, faith—but the kind of faith that includes repentance.

This inseparable link is also reflected in how conversions are portrayed in the book of Acts: Peter exhorts Cornelius and the Gentiles to “believe” (Acts 10:43), and later they are described as having come to “repentance” (Acts 11:18); while Paul exhorts the men of Athens to “repent” (Acts 17:30), and in response some of them are said to have “believed” (Acts 17:34).

What, then, must a sinner do to be saved? Repent and believe. Anything less falls short of a “saving response” to the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Humble Calvinism > Part 19 > What is Faith? Pt. 1 (3.2)

From tony reinke @http://spurgeon.wordpress.com

Part 19: What is Faith? Pt. 1 (3.2)

What is faith? Maybe because it sounds elementary, this is not a question we ask much anymore. But church history reminds us of the dangers of an improperly defined (or undefined) answer to this question. Often this question has been wrongly answered by the fruit of faith – like peace, patience, joy, love, etc. — without first coming to understand the object of that faith. The nature of saving faith can never be assumed.

Jonathan Gresham Machen in his classic book, What is Faith? (1925), addressed this problem in his own day.

“Many men, as has already been observed, are telling us that we should not seek to know Him (God) at all; theology, we are told, is the death of religion. We do not know God, then – such deems to be the logical implication of this view – but simply feel Him. In its consistent form such a view is mysticism; religion is reduced to a state of the soul in which the mind and the will are in abeyance. Whatever may be thought of such a religion, I cannot see that it possesses any moral quality at all; pure feeling is non-moral, and so is religion that is not founded upon theology. What makes our love for a true friend, for example, such an ennobling thing is the recognition by our mind of the character of our friend. Human affection, so beautiful in its apparent simplicity, really depends upon a treasured host of observations of the actions of our friend. So it is also in the case of our relation to God. It is because we know certain things about Him, it is because we know that He is mighty and holy and loving, that our communion with Him obtains its peculiar quality. The devout man cannot be indifferent to doctrine, in the sense in which many modern preachers would have us be indifferent, any more than he can listen with equanimity [unmoved] to misrepresentations of an earthly friend. Our faith in God, despite all that is said, is indissolubly connected with what we think of Him” (74-75).

This emphasis on theology in understanding faith (and the impossibility of faith without theology) shows that Machen walked in the tracks left by John Calvin. For Machen and Calvin, What is Faith? is an important question worthy of consideration. Faith must center around an object, and only true faith will prove to be saving faith and bear the ripe fruit of godliness. [Faith and theology always pointed towards godly fruit (see Machen, pp. 183-218)].

This saving faith is an amazing work of a sovereign God in the heart of a spiritually dead sinner. However, as we understand the application of the Gospel to the sinner’s soul, Calvin is concerned that we not misunderstand faith as a subjective emotion bypassing the mind, but rather a faith flowing through the mind as the truth of Christ (theology) is pondered in serious thought and then clutched tightly by the affections. So what is faith?

What faith is NOT (3.2.1-5)

Like Machen, Calvin begins a chapter on faith with a restatement of the Gospel. So before we talk about faith, the object of faith (Christ in the Gospel) needs to be placed on the table. Saving faith is never separated from the Gospel; that God has stated His Law and expects perfect obedience, promises death to all who fail, that as sinners we are utterly unable to achieve perfect obedience to the Law, we have “no trace of good hope,” because we look forward only to eternal death and being cast away from the presence of a holy God. But God. By His grace there is one perfect Mediator, the savior Jesus Christ, sent by the Father in love. He will save sinners if “with a firm faith we embrace this mercy and rest in it with steadfast hope” (542-543). So as we pull a chair up to the table to learn about faith from Calvin, he first sets out the centerpiece of the Gospel. No conversation about faith can take place but in light of this theology.

Before Calvin defines what faith IS he wants to make clear what faith is NOT.

1. Saving faith is NOT a mere conviction that the Gospel is true. The centerpiece of the Gospel sits in the middle of the table. But looking at the Gospel message is not faith. This is a grave danger in Calvin’s mind. He writes “we must scrutinize and investigate the true character of faith with greater care and zeal because many are dangerously deluded today in this respect. Indeed, most people, when they hear this term, understand nothing deeper than a common assent to the gospel history” (543). It is dangerous, Calvin says, to be content with a faith that simply believes the “gospel history” is true.

Several chapters later Calvin returns to this concept in detail,

“Of course, most people believe that there is a God, and they consider that the gospel history and the remaining parts of the Scripture are true. Such a judgment is on a par with the judgment we ordinarily make concerning those things which are either narrated as having once taken place, or which we have seen as eyewitnesses. There are, also, those who go beyond this, holding the Word of God to be an indisputable oracle; they do not utterly neglect his precepts, and are somewhat moved by his threats and promises. To such persons an ascription of faith is made, but by misapplication, because they do not impugn the Word of God with open impiety, or refuse or despise it, but rather pretend a certain show of obedience” (554).

Sinners’ hearts are deceptive and this craftiness is revealed by sinners who are content with a “common assent to the gospel history.” It is one thing for the Cross to be true, still yet another altogether to say the Cross was intended to fulfill MY Law requirements, and give ME the perfect righteousness of Christ. He died for ME! A sinner may continue under the condemnation of the Law even though he believes in the historical accuracy of the Cross. It is possible to believe in truth and only shudder under greater condemnation (Jam. 2:19).

2. Saving faith is NOT a mere faith in God. God dwells in an unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16) and we need One (Christ) to come and reveal the Father to us. That Paul called sinners to believe in Christ is proof enough that saving faith in God is to be found by saving faith in Jesus Christ (Luke 10:22; John 8:12, 14:6; Acts 20:21, 26:17-18; 1 Cor. 2:2; 2 Cor. 4:6). We know God through the One He has sent (John 17:3) because Christ “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3). Peter writes, “He (Christ) was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Pet. 1:20-21). Calvin concludes, “we must be warned that the invisible Father is to be sought solely in this image” (544). Knowing Jesus Christ, the Word of God (God’s very self-disclosure), matters to faith. Vague faith in a deity will not suffice.

3. Saving faith is NOT ignorance cloaked in religious humility. Calvin goes straight after the Roman Catholic Scholastic community here. The Scholastics promoted an “implicit faith,” that sinners could remain ignorant of the details of theology but saved because they were submitted under the authority of Rome’s teachings. Thus faith becomes more about ignorance cloaked in empty humility rather than true faith in the Gospel. Faith in the specific truth of the gospel was not necessary. Calvin responded that, “this fiction not only buries but utterly destroys true faith” (545). At length Calvin wrote,

“Faith rests not on ignorance, but on knowledge. And this is, indeed, knowledge not only of God but of the divine will. We do not obtain salvation either because we are prepared to embrace as true whatever the church has prescribed, or because we turn over to it the task of enquiring and knowing. But we do so when we know that God is our merciful Father, because of reconciliation effected through Christ (2 Cor. 5:18-19), and that Christ has been given to us as righteousness, sanctification, and life. By this knowledge, I say, not by submission of our feeling, do we obtain entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. For when the apostle says, ‘With the heart a man believes unto righteousness, with the mouth makes confession unto salvation’ (Rom. 10:10), he indicates that it is not enough for a man implicitly to believe what he does not understand or even investigate. But he requires explicit recognition of the divine goodness upon which our righteousness rests. … But on this pretext it would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility ‘faith’!” (545).

Genuine and saving faith is an explicit (though imperfect) trust in Jesus Christ. That is, the Gospel must be clear so that sinners can see their sinfulness, see the beauty of the Savior and rest in His sufficient work by faith alone. Telling ignorant sinners to simply submit implicitly to the beliefs of the church without concern for individual clarity agitated Calvin (as is should agitate us). One of the most beautiful biblical pictures of this truth is the meeting between Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26-40. The Gospel expects personal and explicit faith.

But is it not true in our day that belief in the Gospel applied to the soul is substituted for a ‘faith’ that rests content in ignorance and religious ‘humility’? Is not the “gospel” of our day peace and unity over clarity and doctrine? Likewise, we are never saved because we belong to the right church. We are not saved because we rest our ignorance under those who are educated and knowledgeable of the Gospel. We are not saved because we listen to excellent Gospel sermons. We are saved when God uses Scripture to reveal that we are wicked and sinful and our salvation can be found only in clinging to Christ as our righteousness. We must understand this. If Paul condemns those who are “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth,” how condemned are sinners ignorant of the Gospel (2 Tim. 3:7)?

Never does church membership, affiliations or religious humility overcome ignorance of the Gospel message. Saving faith is explicit.

4. Saving faith is NOT perfect faith. Calvin understands that all faith is “implicit” to some degree. Francis Turretin writes, “as sanctification is imperfect, so faith has its degrees by which it increases and grows, both as to knowledge and as to trust” (IET, 9.15.1). Saving faith is not a perfect and fully explicit faith. Many things are yet hidden from our eyes and we are surrounded by “clouds of errors” (546). The disciples are a perfect example that even the redeemed child of God needs to walk humbly in a pursuit of further wisdom. God’s children believe and will always – in this life — struggle with unbelief. God assigns to each of His children a level of faith but none have perfect faith (Rom. 12:3).

Next time Calvin explains what saving faith IS.

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This post is one in a series titled Humble Calvinism, a study through John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. For more information see the Humble Calvinism series index.

What's Out? Mind-Game Christianity

By John Frye @ http://jesustheradicalpastor.blogspot.com

So I got to wondering if God does anything in response to human mental assent...

For example,

A: "Do you believe God forgives you through the blood of Jesus Christ?"

B: "Yes, I believe that." (Meaning, "I assent to its truth)."

A: "Good. You are thereby totally forgiven by God."

Is this accurate? Is it saying more than Jesus would say?

Is forgiveness a mental game played with God and his grace based on the work of Jesus Christ?

With an uneasy heart I say "I don't think so."

"Forgive us our debts/sins, as we also have forgiven our debtors/those who sin against us. ...For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

We like to think that forgiveness is a neat, clean transaction just between our mental agreement and God's Word (promise). Other people are actually peripheral or unnecessary. Not so, according to Jesus. There are very real social, relational connections between us and others and God and us. Nothing is private about forgiveness.

Less you think this is going astray, let me refer you once again to Jesus as recorded in Matthew:
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
"Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
"The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.
"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
"But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." --Matthew 18:21-35

Now if there is a relational dimension to something as fundamental as the forgiveness of our sins, I wonder if all of our alleged privatized doctrines ("between just me and God") are suspect. What if all our theology is valid only through the gateway of the entire Great Commandment which ends with "...and your neighbor as yourself." What if it is true that we don't really love the God we can't see because we don't love the very real human being we do see. John the Apostle suggested something to that effect.

What if all propositional theology is valid only if relationally lived. I don't think the simplistic bifurcation (dividing into two parts) of Paul's letters (e.g., Ephesians) is correctly understood. We tend to think that the lofty doctrines of Ephesians chapters 1-3 are a thing in themselves. They present "truths" we then "have to live out" (chapters 4-6). Not quite accurate. The changed lives and ethical newness of chapters 4-6 are the God-energized validation that the truths of chapters 1-3 have taken root in human lives.

Paul can describe the wonderful, comprehensive salvation in Jesus the Messiah (chapters 1-3), but he is thrilled to go on and describe the incarnation of that salvation in wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters, Gentiles and Jews, poor and rich, female and male, cultured and Barbarian (chapters 4-6). In another place Paul actually says that believers are "the message of Christ." Words carved in stone and placed in the ark of the covenant, and written with ink on leather, papyrus, and printed on paper---words highly revered---have never thrilled God as much as "the Word made flesh." God dreamed of the day when "I will write my words on their hearts...I will put my Spirit in them..." That's incarnation.

Unless we incarnate what we say we believe, we're stone monuments, not living messages; museum pieces, not world-changers.

Your Own Personal Jesus: Is the language of "a personal relationship" biblical?

The song "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode describes the faith of many: "Your own personal Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers. Someone who cares." In this post, John Suk, a professor of homiletics at Asian Theological Seminary in Manila, The Philippines, challenges popular evangelical jargon by questioning whether having a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ" is poor theology or, worse, a capitulation to theraputic secular values? Below is an excerpt. You may read Suk’s full article at Perspectives Journal's website.

Evangelicals generally insist that “the meaning and purpose of life is to have a personal relationship with Jesus.” That’s how a Methodist pastor I was listening to a few months ago put it. Philip Yancey says it another way in his Reaching for the Invisible God (Zondervan, 2000): “getting to know God is a lot like getting to know a person. You spend time together, whether happy or sad. You laugh together. You weep together. You fight and argue, then reconcile.”

But we also confess that Jesus is not physically present on earth. So how does one have a personal relationship with someone you can’t talk to, share a glass of wine with, or even email? We need to do some fundamental reflection on the whole notion of having a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ. While, on the one hand, I respect the longing for intimacy with God that these words reflect, they also concern me because they betray a creeping sort of secularization of our language about God.

The phrase “a personal relationship with Jesus,” is not found in the Bible. Thus, there is no sustained systematic theological reflection on what the phrase means. In fact, people experience the personal presence of God – in a wide variety of idiosyncratic and highly personal ways. Publicly, however, when people say they have "a personal relationship" with Jesus, it sounds like they are saying they have a relationship characterized by face-time, by talk-time, by touching, by all the things – and especially the intimacy – we usually associate with having a personal relationship with another human being.

As a result, using the language of personal relationship is bound to lead to all sorts of confusion. As a pastor I met more than a few people who experienced doubt, or perhaps anger, because they didn’t experience Jesus the way their Christian friends claimed to.

The language of personal relationship with God has become popular due to the pervasive influence of the language of secularity. So Marsha Witten cogently argues in her book, All is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism (Princeton, 1993), a close textual analysis of fifty-eight sermons on the parable of the prodigal son as found in Luke 15:11-32. Twenty-seven of the sermons were preached in mainline Presbyterian churches, and the rest to conservative Southern Baptists. In both traditions, Witten discovers, preachers respond to secularity by accommodating their language to it. Biblical language that emphasizes God’s transcendence is replaced by language that emphasizes God’s immanence. Jesus is not in heaven, at the right hand of God; he lives in our hearts. God is primarily seen as a “daddy,” as sufferer on our behalf, and as extravagant lover. In these sermons the traditional language for God is accommodated to the human desire for connection and intimacy.

Furthermore, these sermons lack much sense that Christianity has anything to say beyond one’s personal relationship to God. In both conservative and liberal denominations, the language of conversion has been replaced by the language of personal relationship. The language of personal relationship fits with secularity; the traditional language of conversion, of trading faiths through a dying to self, does not.

One cannot fail by recall David Wells’ warning:

They labor under the illusion that the God they make in the image of the self becomes more real as he more nearly comes to resemble the self, to accommodate its needs and desires. The truth is quite the opposite. It is ridiculous to assert that God could become more real by abandoning his own character in an effort to identify more completely with ours. And yet the illusion has proved compelling to a whole generation. (God in the Wasteland, Eerdmans, 1994, 100-101.)

Is this possible? Do many Christians have a personal relationship not so much with Jesus, but with something in their heads, with something that they’re comfortable with, a social construction driven by their need to go easy on themselves?

I’ve tried to pastor parents who just gave birth to a child with Down’s syndrome. After a car accident, once, I buried a man’s wife and only child. I’ve seen hundred of rotting bodies in a little church in Nterama, in Rwanda – victims of genocide. I have a foster daughter who gets calls from her real parents in Zimbabwe saying that their whole neighborhood has just been bulldozed by Mugabe’s henchmen. Everyday I go to work, here in Manila, I see malnourished street children begging for coins.

In such a world I think that rather than focusing on “personal relationship,” we need to recover the Psalmist’s language of lament because it fairly represents how we ought to feel about Jesus’ absence until he comes again to make all things new.

Second, we need to revisit Scripture’s assertion that we are “in Christ.” Being in Christ – even if it isn’t a personal relationship – is a wonderful and cosmic reality, the new history begun in Christ. A further consequence of being in Christ, Lewis Smedes argues, is that it makes us “part of a program as broad as the universe,” as opposed to a narrow, pragmatic, and personal program of that type described by Witten.

Rather than saying, “I have a personal relationship with Jesus,” why don’t we say instead, “I have faith in Jesus,” or “I believe in Jesus.” Where the language of personal relationship has a very questionable pedigree, amidst a therapeutic culture, to cut God down to a manageable size, the language of faith is deeply rooted in Scripture. The apostle John put it this way: “This is [God’s] command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us” (1 John 3:23).

Posted by UrL on March 24, 2006

God is transcendent, but He is also imminent. There a scores of references throughout Scripture that show how His character can be experienced and interacted with by the believer. Psalm 63:1-5 and the "fellowship with the Spirit" in Philippians 2:1 and Romans 8:15-17 jump out immediately. (I know there are many more, but I haven't had the time to do more adequate study).

Your call to the church to shed its secular trappings is commendable. But, let's not forget that the fellowship we will have with God in heaven begins here on Earth.

Posted by: Kevin at March 24, 2006

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Revelation 3:20

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Professor Suk never denied the abiding presence of Christ with His people. He asserted the very same things Peter asserted in 1 Peter 1:8-9: we don't actually physically see or hear from Christ.

Posted by: chuck at March 27, 2006

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the aposlte Paul said it this way: Glatians 2:20 I live by faith in the Son of God." Paul also said in Philippians 310 He wants to Know Christ and the "fellowship of his sufferings."

Posted by: Earl Banks at March 28, 2006

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Jesus said in John 15:15..."but I have called you friends..." Does not friendship suggest a personal relationship?
The Beloved Apostle John writes in 1 John 3:1-3:
"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God! therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of god, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."
Does not sonship also suggest personal relationship?
And further, does not the hope of becoming like Jesus when we finally DO see Him suggest more and deeper intimacy promised to us as a part of that personal relationship?

Posted by: Kay at March 28, 2006

Man’s Religion vs. God’s Religion

By Darrin R. Brooker

This week’s excerpt from the writings of Horatius Bonar is from his book entitled Man: His Religion and His World (1851). It is a little longer than most posts I will make because, if you’re anything like me, after four paragraphs your interest can quickly wane. But I implore you to get through it; it is an excellent piece from start to finish even though I have edited it somewhat. In it, Bonar delineates the differences between true Christianity, or “God’s religion,” and the man-made variants that try to displace the work of Christ alone with a combination of grace and works. Please take note that Bonar addresses many of what we would call the “modern fads” that infect Christianity; hardly any of them escape unscathed. From the seeker-sensitive movement, to the powerless Arminianism that pervades much of “evangelicalism,” and all points in between, Bonar shows that there is only one ground of acceptance in the sight of God, and that ground is not found in, or mingled with, anything in man.

Today is the 5th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, and people the world over are still in dire need of finding “God’s religion.” People in general may be more spiritual, or have a greater desire towards religious things, but if the desires they have do not lead them to believing solely in Jesus Christ and His work on their behalf, then they are useless; and those desires will perish along with them on that day of Jesus’ most certain return. It will be on that day, all of man’s religions will be shown for what they are: inventions of those who despised the Lord Jesus.

Man’s religion makes man its centre. It is constructed so as to revolve around himself. It makes him live for himself, think of himself, magnify himself. It teaches him to lessen the distance between himself and God, for the purpose of enabling him to remove that distance by his own endeavours…Man’s religion is like the old astronomy, with the vast earth in the centre, and the puny sun revolving round it!

Man’s religion trifles with sin. Having lessened the greatness of Jehovah’s character, and obscured His glory, it is not wonderful that he treats sin lightly. If God be not the infinitely holy and exalted One, then, opposition to Him, and contempt of His law are not very serious evils. The evil of sin, as a wrong done to man’s self or to his fellows will be allowed; but its evil, as a wrong done to God, is never thought of. While man’s religion trifles with sin, God’s religion bases itself on the utterly odious and intolerable nature of sin. THE SOUL THAT SINNETH IT SHALL DIE, lies at the very foundation of God’s religion, and of all His dealings with the creature, specially of His transactions with the sinner. Grace is not grace, which does not rest on this. Grace is not grace which mutilates or modifies, or tampers with this law of laws.

Man’s religion contains no recognition of pure and unmingled grace. It does not deny grace, nay, it has a place for it among its forms; but it will not allow grace the entire credit of saving man. It mixes together grace and merit, as if afraid to trust the former alone, nay, repudiating it, except in so far as it is restricted and modified by the latter. It dilutes grace, and lowers righteousness, and mitigates the law, and thus obtains a foundation for itself. Grace alone is the foundation of God’s religion…It must be complete, unmingled, certain, and unconditional, else it cannot suit our case, nor provide a religion for the sinner.

Man’s religion deals in uncertainties—God’s religion in none. The former really requires uncertainties to make it sufficiently effective and influential. It operates by keeping man in a state of uncertainty in all things pertaining to his own connexion with God. It suspends these uncertainties over man as the most powerful and trusty stimulants by which it can work upon him. From God’s religion all such uncertainties are swept away. He deals with man by calling up every feeling of love, and gratitude, and honour, and devotedness. He comes at once with certainties in His hand—the certainties of pardon, and life, and an endless kingdom. He presents to man a gospel, which at once, when believed, puts him in possession of all these certainties.

Man’s religion keeps God at a distance—God’s brings him nigh. Homage to God, but not communion with Him, is the object of the former; nearness of fellowship and companionship, coupled with lowliest reverence is the aim of the latter.

Man’s religion is a thing separate from all his other doings, or employments, or feelings, nay, I may say, separate from himself. It throws up a wall between the religious part of life and the common part of it. It says, so much of life should be filled up with religion; but the rest of it religion must not touch nor approach. God’s religion is made to pervade every lawful thing, so that nothing in its estimation is common or unclean. It is not a sacred lamp kept for the closet, or the crypt, or the cell. To separate religion from the common things and scenes of life has always been man’s object, because he thus prevents himself being incommoded by it; he gets it cast into a corner; he can make it serve as a whet to give keener zest to his worldly joys.

Man’s religion leaves the question of relationship to God unsettled and untouched. Adoption, sonship, heirship, are not words that have place in it, save in the vaguest sense. In God’s religion, the personal and paternal relationship is everything. “I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty,” is God’s declaration of the nature of His religion. The commencement of it is the fastening of this great filial bond. Till this is done, God owns nothing as true religion which man may engage in, however labourious or costly it may be.

Man’s religion begins by enjoining worship—God’s by preparing the worshipper. And here the difference is as wide as it is striking. Man thinks that the worship makes the worshipper, and that therefore we must set diligently about worship, in order to get ourselves accepted. The main idea that man has in connexion with worship (such as prayer, and praise, and service) is, that it is the means of securing acceptance, and effecting reconciliation with God. He brings his gifts as the bribes or payments of the criminal, not as the thank-offerings of the forgiven. He worships in order to pacify God, and persuade Him to extend His favour towards him. In God’s religion, this order is reversed. The worshipper is accepted first, and then his worship. The person is first taken into favour, and then all his services are acknowledged as well-pleasing. God’s design is to provide an accepted man in order to secure accepted worship; and His whole Word proceeds upon this great truth. This is the Divine order of things; and the reversal of this order not merely injures worship—it wholly invalidates it. God’s order is absolutely essential to that which He recognises as religion. He will receive no offering save from the hand of an accepted worshipper.

Man’s religion always leaves a sinner somewhere short of God and peace with Him. It may produce earnestness and seriousness and zeal, but it does not bring a sinner close to God. Man’s religion says much, and does much; but it knows nothing of the Apostle’s conclusion, “Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith.” Only God’s religion can speak of that. And how fully it does this! It leads us not up to the gate merely, nor simply places us on the threshold; but it calls us into the inner chamber, and brings us nigh to the living God. It sweeps away all distance, all suspicion, all estrangement. It places us in the very shrine of the sanctuary; and that not merely as strangers admitted to behold the glory, but as children brought into the paternal dwelling, and settled there, as in their natural and undisputed home.

Man’s religion does not deal honestly, either with God or with himself. He is obliged to give a much better representation of himself than the case warrants. He is obliged to profess to be what he thinks he ought to be, and what he supposes God wishes him to be. He practises deceit upon his own conscience; and he tries to practise the same deceit upon God. The whole of man’s religion may be said to be founded upon this dishonest dealing. In his transactions with God, there is a want of straightforwardness and simplicity. He is disingenuous and crooked. He is always endeavouring to make out as good a case as he can for himself before God. God’s religion lays no such snare for the conscience. It sets out with declaring the utter evil and ungodliness of man. Thus, all temptation to deceitfulness is completely swept away. There is no room for it.

Man’s religion has in it no struggles, no dangers, and but few difficulties. The path it prescribes is easy, not hard for flesh and blood. It leaves out the pangs of the new birth—the struggle with unbelief, with the flesh, with Satan. These have no place in it at all. It acknowledges no enemies, no hardships, no conflicts. It broadens the narrow way, smoothing its ruggedness, and plucking up the thorns and briers that beset it. God’s religion assumes all these things as not only certain, but necessary. It commences with a strife which seems to rend the heart in twain. The lightning of Sinai smites the sinner to the dust. The voice of the terrible law thunders against him, and shuts him up in his helplessness and guilt.

Man’s religion does not ascribe salvation wholly to God. It tries to share the credit of it with man. Admitting that man is a lost being, and therefore needing salvation, it includes salvation in its objects; it does not refuse to give to God some considerable share in planning and effecting it; but it seeks to divide the credit, so that, at least, man shall have some of it, and be in some degree, however little, his own Saviour. Salvation wholly of the Lord is too humbling to be owned. Yet this is the very centre of God’s religion. “Salvation is of the Lord.” God planned it all, and performs it all. Man gets the benefit, but God gets the honour. The first thought of it was from Him. The gift on which it rests was of Him. The propitiation was of Him. The choice is His, the giving is His, the eternal life is His. He is the great, sole Giver—we, the mere receivers. He is the beginning and the ending of it all; the planner, the provider, the accomplisher; and to Him must belong the endless praise.

Man’s religion does not trace up salvation directly to the eternal purpose of Jehovah. It passes this by; it shrinks from this; nay, sometimes it abjures this as fatalism. It substitutes man’s election of God for God’s election of man, and rejects the truth that not one soul would arise from the dead, or believe, or seek God’s favour, were it not for the Divine purpose from eternity. It says, “I can believe the truth of myself as easily as I can believe a lie; I can love God of myself as easily as I can hate Him; I can repent of myself, I can choose the good and shun the evil of myself.” It boasts of self-power to think, feel, choose, do everything that is right and holy. God’s religion takes the eternal purpose of Jehovah for its basis, as that without which there could be no gospel, no salvation, no hope for the sinner. Thus the two religions are opposed to each other. They have hardly one common principle, either in regard to God’s character or man’s. God has no right to decree who are to be saved, and man is not so far gone in sin but that he can believe of himself, and turn to God—are the two principles on which man’s religion rests. God has an entire, inalienable, and sovereign right to decree who are to be saved, and man is a totally depraved and helpless creature—are the two principles on which God’s religion bases itself. Man’s election of God is the main idea of the former; God’s election of man is the essence of the latter. God presents himself to us in the attitude of a sovereign God, doing according to His will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth. It is His eternal purpose that is the fountainhead of all that we call salvation; and not only is the scheme of deliverance in general traceable to this, but the rescue of each one who is saved is directly ascribed to the same eternal source. All is of God, and God is all. The redeemed are as truly and specially comprised in the eternal plan as is the Redeemer. They and He have been viewed as one from all eternity. The Father selected the bride just as personally as He chose the Bridegroom.

Such are the two religions in their chief points of contrast. How worthless the one—how blessed and glorious the other! We have seen the poverty of man’s religion, and how far short it falls of man’s true wants. It leaves him still empty and craving. At every point it comes short of what it professes to give, and fails in the very things which man most deeply feels his need of. Some religions may be said to bring man further than others, but all of them leave him somewhere short of God. They bring him within sight of the temple, but they lead him not in. They keep him trembling on the outside.

God, on the other hand, has provided such a religion as leads us at once into His temple, and brings us not only across the threshold, but up to Himself. He completes the reconciliation at once, and, placing us on the footing of entire acceptance, He bids us lay aside our dread, and begin at the same moment our worship and our love. Gradual approximation to God and to His fellowship is all that man’s religion can promise us; immediate entrance upon a secure and happy friendship is what God’s religion accomplishes in every soul that receives it.

-Taken from The Life and Works of Horatius Bonar CD-Rom