Today I offer you some isolated quotes from four different authors and present them to you with this question: "What do you think?"
When you read each one what is your initial response? Do you agree or disagree? And if so, why? Are they clear or hard to understand? I know most everyone is pretty busy, but if you did have a spare moment I would enjoy hearing your thoughts! And if you do happen to respond, please note which comment you are responding to -- comment #1 by Richard Lovelace, comment #2 by William Carey, comment #3 by John Owen, or comment #4 B.B. Warfield. Enjoy.
“Only
a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly
appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so
light an apprehension of God’s holiness and of the extent and guilt of their
sin, that consciously they see little need for justification (little need for
forgiveness and pardon through the substitutionary work of Jesus), although
below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and
insecure… Many have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine [of
justification by faith] but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their
sanctification for justification, in the Augustinian manner, drawing their
assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of
conversion, their recent religious performance, or the relative infrequency of
their conscious, willful disobedience. Few know enough to start each day
with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking
outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the
only ground for acceptance, and relaxing in that quality of trust which will
produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude.”
Richard Lovelace, “Dynamics of Spiritual Life.”
On
his 70th birthday, pioneer missionary William Carey, who translated the whole
Bible (or large parts of it) into 23 Indian dialects and Persian; who wrote a Mahratta-English
dictionary, a Bengali-English dictionary, a Bhotanta-English dictionary, and a
Sanscrit-English
dictionary; and who worked tirelessly as a missionary in India for 41 years
(between 1792 and 1833) wrote to one of his sons these words: “I am this day 70
years old, a monument of divine mercy and goodness, though on a review of my
life I find very much for which I ought to be humbled in the dust. My direct
and positive sins are innumerable. My negligence in the Lord's work has been
great. I have not promoted His cause nor sought His glory and honor as I
ought. Notwithstanding all of this, I am spared till now and am still
retained in His work, and I trust I am received into the divine favor through
Him (Christ).”
William Carey
“Believers
obey Christ as the one by whom all their obedience is accepted by God.
Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect and unable to abide in
God’s presence. Therefore, they look to Christ as the one who bears the
iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out
all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God... The
actual aid and internal operation of the Spirit of God is necessary to produce
every holy act of our minds, wills and emotions in every duty whatsoever.
Notwithstanding the power or ability that believers have received by the
principle of new life implanted in salvation, they still stand in need of the
divine enablement of the Holy Spirit in every single act or duty toward God.”
John
Owen
"It
is the conviction that there is nothing in us, or done by us, at any stage of
our earthly development which is the cause of our acceptance with God. We must
always be accepted for Christ’s sake or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This
is not true of us only when we initially believe, it is just as true after we
have believed and it will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of
Christ does not cease with our believing, nor does the nature of our relation
to Him or to God through Him ever alter regardless of our attainments in
Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior. It is always on His
"blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest. There is never anything
that we are or have or do that can take His place or that takes a place along
with Him. We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always
of pure grace… There is emphasized in this attitude the believer's
continued sinfulness in fact and in act and his continued sense of his
sinfulness. And this carries with it recognition of the necessity of unbroken
penitence throughout life. The Christian is conceived fundamentally, in other
words, as a penitent sinner.
We
are sinners, and we know ourselves to be sinners, lost and helpless in
ourselves. But we are saved sinners, and it is our salvation which gives the
tone to our life—a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we
have of how much we deserve just the opposite. For it is he to whom much
is forgiven who loves much and, who loving, rejoices much. “It is a great
paradox but glorious truth of Christianity,” says Thomas Adams, “that a good
conscience may coexist with a consciousness of evil. Though we can have no
satisfaction in ourselves, we may have perfect satisfaction in Christ.”
B.
B. Warfield
As
I am sure you already know, I am in agreement with all the statements above and
believe they accurately reflect the biblical teaching. But if you do not, or
feel you would change them in any way, or feel they are out of sync with the
message of the Bible I'd love to hear how you disagree or would alter them!
In
His Grace, Pastor Jeff
