Assurance

By John de Witt 2/1/1992

     What does a pastor think about assurance? By assurance here I mean the certainty that through Jesus Christ one is a child of God: forgiven, renewed, having eternal life. I cannot speak for others, but I can give my thoughts on the subject based on more than thirty years of ministry.

     As a pastor I am committed to the welfare of the congregation I serve and want the people to whom I minister to be in good spiritual health. This means, of course, that the whole matter of assurance is very important to me. If people lack assurance they will not be whole and they are bound to lack the joy and peace which are so essential to a mature Christian experience.

     I have to say at the same time, however, that I am far more concerned about some other matters than I am about assurance, or an absence of it. There have been times in the past when a want of assurance among serious, spiritually-minded men and women was pervasive and widespread. Generally speaking, that is not the case now. The truth is that if I were to begin to encounter people genuinely troubled by doubts about their salvation, I should regard it as a healthy sign.

     Problems with respect to assurance may arise for any number of reasons.

     It should be said at once that personality differences play a considerable part here. Optimistic, positive, confident people are far less prone to introspection and doubt about themselves than are those whose inclination it is to look on the dark side of things and who are by nature introspective. It is essential that we understand this, and that we do not regard everyone in the same light. One who has struggled much and has gone through very deep valleys will be much more liable to questions in this area than another who has known little or nothing of the kind. I do not suggest, of course, that the one type of personality is more spiritual than the other personality; only that people are different.

     Further, a very large number of folk within as well as outside the church have no right whatsoever to assurance. The reason for this is that they are not believers, they have not been born again, they have never experienced true conversion. They may suppose that all is well, but it is not, and we do them no favor by allowing them to continue in their delusion. Some in this category may be “awakened,” but not yet “converted.” By that I mean they have perhaps come to grasp something of the seriousness of their position outside of Jesus Christ, but they have not yet come to faith in him. To try to rush them out of conviction and into an easy assurance would be to commit a grievous error.

     Then, in my experience, people who have been grievously tempted and have fallen into sin are often troubled by a lack of assurance. They may be led by a sense of defeat and guilt to question their relationship to God; or they may even begin to doubt the very existence of God and the truth of the Gospel. It is, for many, easier to deny that God is than to acknowledge failure and to repent.

     Sometimes physical or emotional illness may be the reason for spiritual uncertainty. Again and again I have observed this to be the case. Those who are not well, whose physical or mental constitution is under attack by illness, are prone to depression and often experience uneasiness about their relationship to God. They may lose hope and even begin to believe that God has abandoned them. These folk are frequently helped by being reminded of the connection between illness and feelings. In certain cases a pastor can do great good by referring a troubled person to a skilled physician. People with healthy bodies and healthy minds have far fewer problems about assurance than those who are sick.

     In other instances people may be in difficulties with respect to assurance because of bad teaching in the church. The doctrine of predestination is not set forth in the Bible in such a way as to produce spiritual anxiety. On the contrary, it is intended to strengthen, to edify, to encourage. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). In the event that this great truth is distorted and people are thereby led to wonder whether they are elect or not, problems will certainly arise about assurance. If one cannot know that one is elect, how can one know that one is a child of God? Clearly the answer here is to gain an understanding of what the Bible actually teaches.

     It is also the case, however, that under very different circumstances, with a radically different kind of teaching, people may be led to think that nothing more is involved in becoming a Christian than to “make a decision for Christ.” All across the Christian world the whole matter of spiritual rebirth and conversion has been placed almost on the level of a mathematical formula. “When the invitation is given, go forward. If you go forward and sincerely repeat the words of a prayer of confession and faith, if you sign the commitment card, then — so we are told — you are a Christian. You may not feel like one, or act like one, or have any substantial ground for considering yourself one. Nevertheless, if you have made a decision for Christ, that is all you need do. And beyond that, you have the right to regard yourself as a fully assured child of God.

     At the present time I am much more concerned about easy believism (notion that one can be a Christian even though one displays no vital signs of spiritual life) than I am about an absence of assurance. One cannot know Jesus Christ as Savior and not know Him, at least in some emerging way, as Lord and Master of one’s life. Our objective must be to return to the teaching of Scripture, to be faithful to the Word of God in setting forth the plan of salvation without cutting corners and giving people false grounds for assurance.

     Pastors, and others who are called upon to give spiritual counsel, must be very wise and faithful, attempting to discern what the situation is in individual cases. There is always the temptation to give the same answer to a diversity of questions. Anything of that sort is quite wrong. We should resist the temptation to resort too quickly to a simple formula which ignores the differences among people and the diverse causes of spiritual anxiety. Pastors must seek to be wise physicians of the soul at all times, never content with mere formulae which treat all cases in the same manner. It is altogether wrong to treat intricate matters of the soul by prescribing easy answers.

The Politization of Truth: The New Sophism

By R.C. Sproul 3/1/1992

     In October of 1991, the American people were riveted to the drama of the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. Then, a twist of biting irony took place when Anita Hill emerged with allegations of sexual harassment. After Professor Hill testified before a watching world, Clarence Thomas reappeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

     But something had changed. A marked contrast appeared in the demeanor of Judge Thomas from what he described as his “real” confirmation hearing. Thomas was angry. Sensing that his appointment to the Court was lost and that he had nothing else of a political nature to lose, he waded into the fray with fists flying. Gone was the elusive, evasive, “politically correct” respondent. Now Thomas spoke with the candor of fury, accusing those who sat in judgment on him of a “high-tech lynching.” Thomas was obviously unconcerned about further alienating his antagonists.

     I don’t know if Thomas spoke the truth. I know, however, that he spoke differently, and the nation responded positively to his less—than—cautious replies. He broke all the rules of political sensitivity and got away with it. That part, at least, was a breath of fresh air, a political aggiornamento (a Latin term used by Pope John XXIII meaning “to open the windows”) in an atmosphere of choking blue smoke.

     Politics in America has degenerated to the nadir of the rhetoric of sophistry. It was not truth that kindled the spark that brought Socrates to the fore in Athens. It was the sophists of antiquity with their multitude of empty phrases and vacant words designed for persuasion. The “gadfly of Greece” was convinced that sophism was a clear and present danger to the very survival of civilization, and that made him willing to drink the bitter dregs of hemlock to sound his protest.

     Socrates, with his protegé Plato, and in turn, Plato’s most gifted student, Aristotle, restored truth over perception and science over political opinion, and delayed the disintegration of Western civilization.

     With the advent of Christianity, the quest for ultimate truth and the priority of ethics over vested interests conquered the new pragmatism of Roman morals.

     Now, however, it seems that once again civilization is threatened by neo-sophism. To understand this, we need a brief recapitulation of ancient sophism. Sophism emerged in ancient Greece after science and philosophy reached an impasse in the metaphysical tension between Parmenides and Heraclitus.

     Parmenides postulated a land of metaphysical monism by declaring the ultimacy of being with his famous maxim, “Whatever is, is.” He rejected the physical world of changing entities as being ephemeral and illusory.

     Heraclitus responded by asserting the ultimacy of change, arguing that whatever is, is changing. The only thing permanent is change itself. Everything is always and everywhere in a state of flux.

     This metaphysical debate left the public with a collective Excedrin headache. The man in the street reasoned, “If these two titans of theoretical thought cannot agree, how can we ever resolve such ultimate issues?” Ultimate truth was then deemed unknowable and equally unnecessary. What was left was the pragmatic concerns of daily living.

     The cry of the sophist was, “Give us some news we can use.” Ultimate truth is not possible; what matters is the here and now in my political situation. Sophism gave rise to “how to” schools that majored in the art of political expediency. The new science of rhetoric became popular. This “science” was not concerned about discerning truth through argument and debate. Rather, rhetoric stressed the importance of political persuasion. Whatever is persuasive is true. Science was reduced to popularity opinion polls. Does this sound familiar? Sophism became equated with superficiality where truth and ethics were relativized and politicized.

     Western civilization experienced a renaissance of culture with the emergence of modern forms of democracy. The supreme model for the new experiment was the republic of the United States. It was formed not as a pure democracy but as a republic. The difference between a pure democracy and a republic is crucial, though this difference is being more and more obscured with each passing day. The republic is defined as “rule by law,” whereas a pure democracy is defined in terms of majority rule. The chief safeguard of a republic is embodied in a constitution that guarantees certain rights to every person in the society, individual rights that may not be usurped via a tyranny of the majority.

     When the American experiment began the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville warned of two eventualities that could destroy the plan. Both involved the threat of the politicization of economics. He said that when people discover that the vote is worth money, the republic is in trouble (bribes and financial support can corrupt statesmen and turn them into prostituted politicians); and when people discover that they can vote for themselves largess from the government, it’s over.

     What de Tocqueville apparently did not anticipate was the politicization of education. Once economics is politicized, the public education system follows. We are accustomed to distinguishing in our culture between public schools and private schools. Perhaps a more accurate designation for “public schools” is “government schools,” or more precisely, “politicized schools.”

     The relativization of higher education philosophy was documented by Allen Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind. Now, the politization of American higher education is documented in the recent work of Dinesh D’Souza entitled Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. D’Souza traces the pattern of the new sophism as it has moved through institutions such as Stanford, Harvard, Duke, and other universities that had achieved the highest level of credibility in education. Now, hiring policies, entrance policies, and curricula are being reshaped by a left-wing activistic political agenda.

     The book jacket asserts: “Student activists march under the banners of pluralism and diversity. They have demanded an admissions policy based not on academic merit but on ethnic representation; a curriculum and faculty assembled not by intellectual standards but by race and gender categories; and sensitivity training which borders on the totalitarian in its invasive insistence on a new social and political orthodoxy.”

     The structural innovations D’Souza documents are as scary as they are silly. The politics of intimidation are used to enforce a radically leftist political agenda on liberal arts education. D’Souza did well on exposing the illiberal character of this movement. We need a new Socrates who would prefer hemlock to such a distortion of the academic enterprise.

Robert Charles Sproul, 2/13/1939 – 12/14/2017 was an American theologian, author, and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries, an international Christian education and discipleship organization located near Orlando, Fla. He was also copastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., chancellor of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Dr. Sproul has contributed dozens of articles to national evangelical publications, has spoken at conferences, churches, and schools around the world, and has written more than one hundred books. He also served as general editor of the Reformation Study Bible.

The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Translated by Henry Beveridge

     11. But more poison lurks in the second branch, when he says that we are righteous together with God. I think I have already sufficiently proved, that although the dogma were not so pestiferous, yet because it is frigid and jejune, and falls by its own vanity, it must justly be disrelished by all sound and pious readers. But it is impossible to tolerate the impiety which, under the pretence of a twofold righteousness, undermines our assurance of salvation, and hurrying us into the clouds, tries to prevent us from embracing the gift of expiation in faith, and invoking God with quiet minds. Osiander derides us for teaching, that to be justified is a forensic term, because it behaves us to be in reality just: there is nothing also to which he is more opposed than the idea of our being justified by a free imputation. Say, then, if God does not justify us by acquitting and pardoning, what does Paul mean when he says "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them"? "He made him to be sin for us who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him," (2 Cor. 5:19, 21). Here I learn, first, that those who are reconciled to God are regarded as righteous: then the method is stated, God justifies by pardoning; and hence, in another place, justification is opposed to accusation (Rom. 8:33); this antithesis clearly demonstrating that the mode of expression is derived from forensic use. And, indeed, no man, moderately verdant in the Hebrew tongue (provided he is also of sedate brain), is ignorant that this phrase thus took its rise, and thereafter derived its tendency and force. Now, then, when Paul says that David "describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven," (Rom. 4:6, 7; Ps. 32:1), let Osiander say whether this is a complete or only a partial definition. He certainly does not adduce the Psalmist as a witness that pardon of sins is a part of righteousness, or concurs with something else in justifying, but he includes the whole of righteousness in gratuitous forgiveness, declaring those to be blessed "whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered," and "to whom the Lord will not impute sin." He estimates and judges of his happiness from this that in this way he is righteous not in reality, but by imputation.

Osiander objects that it would be insulting to God, and contrary to his nature, to justify those who still remain wicked. But it ought to be remembered, as I already observed, that the gift of justification is not separated from regeneration, though the two things are distinct. But as it is too well known by experience, that the remains of sin always exist in the righteous, it is necessary that justification should be something very different from reformation to newness of life. This latter God begins in his elect, and carries on during the whole course of life, gradually and sometimes slowly, so that if placed at his judgment-seat they would always deserve sentence of death. He justifies not partially, but freely, so that they can appear in the heavens as if clothed with the purity of Christ. No portion of righteousness could pacify the conscience. It must be decided that we are pleasing to God, as being without exception righteous in his sight. Hence it follows that the doctrine of justification is perverted and completely overthrown whenever doubt is instilled into the mind, confidence in salvation is shaken, and free and intrepid prayer is retarded; yea, whenever rest and tranquillity with spiritual joy are not established. Hence Paul argues against objectors, that "if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise," (Gal. 3:18). that in this way faith would be made vain; for if respect be had to works it fails, the holiest of men in that case finding nothing in which they can confide. This distinction between justification and regeneration (Osiander confounding the two, calls them a twofold righteousness) is admirably expressed by Paul. Speaking of his real righteousness, or the integrity bestowed upon him (which Osiander terms his essential righteousness), he mournfully exclaims, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:24); but retaking himself to the righteousness which is founded solely on the mercy of God, he breaks forth thus magnificently into the language of triumph: "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth." "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Rom. 8:33, 35). He clearly declares that the only righteousness for him is that which alone suffices for complete salvation in the presence of God, so that that miserable bondage, the consciousness of which made him a little before lament his lot, derogates not from his confidence, and is no obstacle in his way. This diversity is well known, and indeed is familiar to all the saints who groan under the burden of sin, and yet with victorious assurance rise above all fears. Osiander's objection as to its being inconsistent with the nature of God, falls back upon himself; for though he clothes the saints with a twofold righteousness as with a coat of skins, he is, however, forced to admit, that without forgiveness no man is pleasing to God. If this be so, let him at least admit, that with reference to what is called the proportion of imputation, those are regarded as righteous who are not so in reality. But how far shall the sinner extend this gratuitous acceptance, which is substituted in the room of righteousness? Will it amount to the whole pound, or will it be only an ounce? He will remain in doubt, vibrating to this side and to that, because he will be unable to assume to himself as much righteousness as will be necessary to give confidence. It is well that he who would prescribe a law to God is not the judge in this cause. But this saying will ever stand true, "That thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judges," (Ps. 51:4). What arrogance to condemn the Supreme Judge when he acquits freely, and try to prevent the response from taking affect: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." And yet the intercession of Moses, which God calmed by this answer, was not for pardon to some individual, but to all alike, by wiping away the guilt to which all were liable. And we, indeed, say, that the lost are justified before God by the burial of their sins; for (as he hates sin) he can only love those whom he justifies. But herein is the wondrous method of justification, that, clothed with the righteousness of Christ, they dread not the judgment of which they are worthy, and while they justly condemn themselves, are yet deemed righteous out of themselves.

12. I must admonish the reader carefully to attend to the mystery which he boasts he is unwilling to conceal from them. For after contending with great prolixity that we do not obtain favor with God through the mere imputation of the righteousness of Christ, because (to use his own words) it were impossible for God to hold those as righteous who are not so, he at length concludes that Christ was given to us for righteousness, in respect not of his human, but of his divine nature; and though this can only be found in the person of the Mediator, it is, however, the righteousness not of man, but of God. He does not now twist his rope of two righteousnesses, but plainly deprives the human nature of Christ of the office of justifying. It is worth while to understand what the nature of his argument is. It is said in the same passage that Christ is made unto us wisdom (1 Cor. 1:30); but this is true only of the eternal Word, and, therefore, it is not the man Christ that is made righteousness. I answer, that the only begotten Son of God was indeed his eternal wisdom, but that this title is applied to him by Paul in a different way--viz. because "in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and righteousness," (Col. 2:3). That, therefore, which he had with the Father he manifested to us; and thus Paul's expression refers not to the essence of the Son of God, but to our use, and is fitly applied to the human nature of Christ; for although the light shone in darkness before he was clothed with flesh, yet he was a hidden light until he appeared in human nature as the Sun of Righteousness, and hence he calls himself the light of the world. It is also foolishly objected by Osiander, that justifying far transcends the power both of men and angels, since it depends not on the dignity of any creature, but on the ordination of God. Were angels to attempt to give satisfaction to God, they could have no success, because they are not appointed for this purpose, it being the peculiar office of Christ, who "has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us," (Gal. 3:13). Those who deny that Christ is our righteousness, in respect of his divine nature, are wickedly charged by Osiander with leaving only a part of Christ, and (what is worse) with making two Gods; because, while admitting that God dwells in us, they still insist that we are not justified by the righteousness of God. For though we call Christ the author of life, inasmuch as he endured death that he might destroy him who had the power of death (Heb. 2:14), we do not thereby rob him of this honor, in his whole character as God manifested in the flesh. We only make a distinction as to the manner in which the righteousness of God comes to us, and is enjoyed by us,--a matter as to which Osiander shamefully erred. We deny not that that which was openly exhibited to us in Christ flowed from the secret grace and power of God; nor do we dispute that the righteousness which Christ confers upon us is the righteousness of God, and proceeds from him. What we constantly maintain is, that our righteousness and life are in the death and resurrection of Christ. I say nothing of that absurd accumulation of passages with which without selection or common understanding, he has loaded his readers, in endeavoring to show, that whenever mention is made of righteousness, this essential righteousness of his should be understood; as when David implores help from the righteousness of God. This David does more than a hundred times, and as often Osiander hesitates not to pervert his meaning. Not a whit more solid is his objection, that the name of righteousness is rightly and properly applied to that by which we are moved to act aright, but that it is God only that worketh in us both to will and to do (Phil. 2:13). For we deny not that God by his Spirit forms us anew to holiness and righteousness of life; but we must first see whether he does this of himself, immediately, or by the hand of his Son, with whom he has deposited all the fulness of the Holy Spirit, that out of his own abundance he may supply the wants of his members. When, although righteousness comes to us from the secret fountain of the Godhead, it does not follow that Christ, who sanctified himself in the flesh on our account, is our righteousness in respect of his divine nature (John 17:19). Not less frivolous is his observation, that the righteousness with which Christ himself was righteous was divine; for had not the will of the Father impelled him, he could not have fulfilled the office assigned him. For although it has been elsewhere said that all the merits of Christ flow from the mere good pleasure of God, this gives no countenance to the phantom by which Osiander fascinates both his own eyes and those of the simple. For who will allow him to infer, that because God is the source and commencement of our righteousness, we are essentially righteous, and the essence of the divine righteousness dwells in us? In redeeming us, says Isaiah, "he (God) put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head," (Isaiah 59:17), was this to deprive Christ of the armour which he had given him, and prevent him from being a perfect Redeemer? All that the Prophet meant was, that God borrowed nothing from an external quarter, that in redeeming us he received no external aid. The same thing is briefly expressed by Paul in different terms, when he says that God set him forth "to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins." This is not the least repugnant to his doctrine: in another place, that "by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous," (Rom. 5:19). In short, every one who, by the entanglement of a twofold righteousness, prevents miserable souls from resting entirely on the mere mercy of God, mocks Christ by putting on him a crown of plaited thorns.

13. But since a great part of mankind imagine a righteousness compounded of faith and works let us here show that there is so wide a difference between justification by faith and by works, that the establishment of the one necessarily overthrows the other. The Apostle says, "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith," (Phil. 3:8, 9). You here see a comparison of contraries, and an intimation that every one who would obtain the righteousness of Christ must renounce his own. Hence he elsewhere declares the cause of the rejection of the Jews to have been, that "they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God," (Rom. 10:3). If we destroy the righteousness of God by establishing our own righteousness, then, in order to obtain his righteousness, our own must be entirely abandoned. This also he shows, when he declares that boasting is not excluded by the Law, but by faith (Rom. 3:27). Hence it follows, that so long as the minutes portion of our own righteousness remains, we have still some ground for boasting. Now if faith utterly excludes boasting, the righteousness of works cannot in any way be associated with the righteousness of faith. This meaning is so clearly expressed in the fourth chapter to the Romans as to leave no room for cavil or evasion. "If Abraham were justified by works he has whereof to glory;" and then it is added, "but not before God," (Rom. 4:2). The conclusion, therefore, is, that he was not justified by works. He then employs another argument from contraries--viz. when reward is paid to works, it is done of debt, not of grace; but the righteousness of faith is of grace: therefore it is not of the merit of works. Away, then, with the dream of those who invent a righteousness compounded of faith and works (see Calvin. ad Concilium Tridentinum).

14. The Sophists, who delight in sporting with Scripture and in empty cavils, think they have a subtle evasion when they expound works to mean, such as unregenerated men do literally, and by the effect of free will, without the grace of Christ, and deny that these have any reference to spiritual works. [416] Thus according to them, man is justified by faith as well as by works, provided these are not his own works, but gifts of Christ and fruits of regeneration; Paul's only object in so expressing himself being to convince the Jews, that in trusting to their own strength they foolishly arrogated righteousness to themselves, whereas it is bestowed upon us by the Spirit of Christ alone, and not by studied efforts of our own nature. But they observe not that in the antithesis between Legal and Gospel righteousness, which Paul elsewhere introduces, all kinds of works, with whatever name adorned, are excluded (Gal. 3:11, 12). For he says that the righteousness of the Law consists in obtaining salvation by doing what the Law requires, but that the righteousness of faith consists in believing that Christ died and rose again (Rom. 10:5-9). Moreover, we shall afterwards see, at the proper place, that the blessings of sanctification and justification, which we derive from Christ, are different. Hence it follows, that not even spiritual works are taken into account when the power of justifying is ascribed to faith. And, indeed, the passage above quoted, in which Paul declares that Abraham had no ground of glorying before God, because he was not justified by works, ought not to be confined to a literal and external form of virtue, or to the effort of free will. The meaning is, that though the life of the Patriarch had been spiritual and almost angelic, yet he could not by the merit of works have procured justification before God.

15. The Schoolmen treat the matter somewhat more grossly by mingling their preparations with it; and yet the others instill into the simple and unwary a no less pernicious dogma, when, under cover of the Spirit and grace, they hide the divine mercy, which alone can give peace to the trembling soul. We, indeed, hold with Paul, that those who fulfill the Law are justified by God, but because we are all far from observing the Law, we infer that the works which should be most effectual to justification are of no avail to us, because we are destitute of them. In regard to vulgar Papists or Schoolmen, they are here doubly wrong, both in calling faith assurance of conscience while waiting to receive from God the reward of merits, and in interpreting divine grace to mean not the imputation of gratuitous righteousness, but the assistance of the Spirit in the study of holiness. They quote from an Apostle: "He that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him," (Heb. 11:6). But they observe not what the method of seeking is. Then in regard to the term grace, it is plain from their writings that they labour under a delusion. For Lombard holds that justification is given to us by Christ in two ways. "First," says he (Lombard, Sent. Lib. 3, Dist. 16, c. 11), "the death of Christ justifies us when by means of it the love by which we are made righteous is excited in our hearts; and, secondly, when by means of it sin is extinguished, sin by which the devil held us captive, but by which he cannot now procure our condemnation." You see here that the chief office of divine grace in our justification he considers to be its directing us to good works by the agency of the Holy Spirit. He intended, no doubt, to follow the opinion of Augustine, but he follows it at a distance, and even wanders far from a true imitation of him both obscuring what was clearly stated by Augustine, and making what in him was less pure more corrupt. The Schools have always gone from worse to worse, until at length, in their downward path, they have degenerated into a kind of Pelagianism. Even the sentiment of Augustine, or at least his mode of expressing it, cannot be entirely approved of. For although he is admirable in stripping man of all merit of righteousness, and transferring the whole praise of it to God, yet he classes the grace by which we are regenerated to newness of life under the head of sanctification.

16. Scripture, when it treats of justification by faith, leads us in a very different direction. Turning away our view from our own works, it bids us look only to the mercy of God and the perfection of Christ. The order of justification which it sets before us is this: first, God of his mere gratuitous goodness is pleased to embrace the sinner, in whom he sees nothing that can move him to mercy but wretchedness, because he sees him altogether naked and destitute of good works. He, therefore, seeks the cause of kindness in himself, that thus he may affect the sinner by a sense of his goodness, and induce him, in distrust of his own works, to cast himself entirely upon his mercy for salvation. This is the meaning of faith by which the sinner comes into the possession of salvation, when, according to the doctrine of the Gospel, he perceives that he is reconciled by God; when, by the intercession of Christ, he obtains the pardon of his sins, and is justified; and, though renewed by the Spirit of God, considers that, instead of leaning on his own works, he must look solely to the righteousness which is treasured up for him in Christ. When these things are weighed separately, they will clearly explain our view, though they may be arranged in a better order than that in which they are here presented. But it is of little consequence, provided they are so connected with each other as to give us a full exposition and solid confirmation of the whole subject.

17. Here it is proper to remember the relation which we previously established between faith and the Gospel; faith being said to justify because it receives and embraces the righteousness offered in the Gospel. By the very fact of its being said to be offered by the Gospel, all consideration of works is excluded. This Paul repeatedly declares, and in two passages, in particular, most clearly demonstrates. In the Epistle to the Romans, comparing the Law and the Gospel, he says, "Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which does those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise,--If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved," (Rom. 10:5, 6:9). Do you see how he makes the distinction between the Law and the Gospel to be, that the former gives justification to works, whereas the latter bestows it freely without any help from works? This is a notable passage, and may free us from many difficulties if we understand that the justification which is given us by the Gospel is free from any terms of Law. It is for this reason he more than once places the promise in diametrical opposition to the Law. "If the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise," (Gal. 3:18). Expressions of similar import occur in the same chapter. Undoubtedly the Law also has its promises; and, therefore, between them and the Gospel promises there must be some distinction and difference, unless we are to hold that the comparison is inept. And in what can the difference consist unless in this that the promises of the Gospel are gratuitous, and founded on the mere mercy of God, whereas the promises of the Law depend on the condition of works? But let no pester here allege that only the righteousness which men would obtrude upon God of their own strength and free will is repudiated; since Paul declares, without exceptions that the Law gained nothing by its commands, being such as none, not only of mankind in general, but none even of the most perfect, are able to fulfill. Love assuredly is the chief commandment in the Law, and since the Spirit of God trains us to love, it cannot but be a cause of righteousness in us, though that righteousness even in the saints is defective, and therefore of no value as a ground of merit.

18. The second passage is, "That no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that does them shall live in them," (Gal. 3:11, 12; Hab. 2:4). How could the argument hold unless it be true that works are not to be taken into account, but are to be altogether separated? The Law, he says, is different from faith. Why? Because to obtain justification by it, works are required; and hence it follows, that to obtain justification by the Gospel they are not required. From this statement, it appears that those who are justified by faith are justified independent of, nay, in the absence of, the merit of works, because faith receives that righteousness which the Gospel bestows. But the Gospel differs from the Law in this, that it does not confine justification to works, but places it entirely in the mercy of God. In like manner, Paul contends, in the Epistle to the Romans, that Abraham had no ground of glorying, because faith was imputed to him for righteousness (Rom. 4:2); and he adds in confirmation, that the proper place for justification by faith is where there are no works to which reward is due. "To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt." What is given to faith is gratuitous, this being the force of the meaning of the words which he there employs. Shortly after he adds, "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace," (Rom. 4:16); and hence infers that the inheritance is gratuitous because it is procured by faith. How so but just because faith, without the aid of works, leans entirely on the mercy of God? And in the same sense, doubtless, he elsewhere teaches, that the righteousness of God without the Law was manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets (Rom. 3:21); for excluding the Law, he declares that it is not aided by worlds, that we do not obtain it by working, but are destitute when we draw near to receive it.

     Christian Classics Ethereal Library / Public Domain

     Institutes of the Christian Religion

Dear Bob

By R.C. Sproul 4/1/1992

     Your letter struck a raw nerve with me. I felt a sense of déjà vu. My mind snapped back to my own seminary days and subsequent early years of ministry.

     The first memory it sparked was of occasions as a young man when I expressed my frustrations to older men who responded to me by saying, “You’re too young and idealistic to understand these things. Wait until you get more experience.”

     That type of answer only fueled my frustration. I wanted cogent answers and sound arguments, not patronage from my elders.

     My seminary experience was much like yours. I had professors who openly attacked the doctrine of Christ’s substitutionary atonement, the deity of Christ, and ridiculed anyone who believed the Bible was God’s word. I experienced shock, hurt, and anger. When I expressed these concerns to older people in the church, they added to my dismay by insisting that I must be mistaken and that I was being a troublemaker.

     Day after day in seminary classes I was exposed to a rigorous skepticism toward everything I held sacred. Fortunately (I should say providentially), I had one professor who brilliantly defended the biblical faith and who supported me in my trials. I really don’t know what I would have done without Dr. Gerstner.

     There were two simple passages from the Bible to which I clung tenaciously. The first was from Psalm 37:1: “Do not fret because of evil men.” That hit home with me because I was doing a lot of fretting and it wasn’t helping my spiritual life.

     The second passage was from Jeremiah. When the prophet complained to God bitterly and threatened to quit because false prophets were undermining his ministry, God rebuked him and said, “Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has My word speak it faithfully” (Jeremiah 23:28).

     The application of those words to my life was simple. I realized that God was not going to hold me accountable for what other ministers said or did. Rather, He was going to hold my feet to the fire for what I say and do. I had my marching orders, and so do you.

     When I hear your anguish, I have two conflicting responses in my heart. On the one hand I want to rush to your side and offer you whatever encouragement I can. I want to weep with you as you weep. On the other hand, as a battle-scarred veteran, I want to kick you in the pants and give you a “Pattonesque” bop on the chin. I want to say, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” The ministry is no place for cowards. You know as well as I do that this all goes with the territory. When was it ever any different? We are called to serve a Master who was despised and rejected of men. We join a company of those whom the world hated and slew.

     I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, its easy to put up with the hostility of the world. We expect it. It’s getting shot in the back from within the church that is hard to take. Even then we tend to rise to the occasion when the issues are big and important. It’s the pettiness that wears us down.

     Again, mature faith requires that we be willing and able to absorb petty slights and insults. How does it go for you on Sunday mornings? You stand at the door to greet your flock and fifty people tell you that they appreciated your sermon. Then one person expresses a criticism. What do you remember for the rest of the day? Right … me too. You tell yourself that you’re supposed to be able to handle criticism, but it still wounds. Chances are, if the person knew how much they wounded you they would be horrified. Most of the petty hurts we endure are unintentional. Understanding that can go a long way to salving the wound.

     But there is a bigger issue to be dealt with from your letter. It involves our understanding of the church itself. You need to understand that the church is the most corrupt institution on earth. It’s more corrupt than the government. It’s more corrupt than the cosa nostra.

     Surely I exaggerate? By no means. I am rating corruption according to a standard of giftedness. God says that to whom much is given, much is required. No institution has been invested with more divine grace than the church. Here is where both grace and the means of grace are particularly concentrated. Again, no institution on earth has such a holy vocation. If the church is the most corrupt institution in the world, it is because it is the most important institution in the world. All things being equal it is nowhere near the actual corruption of government or of the mafia. But judged by its gifts and its sacred vocation, relatively speaking its corruption grows in proportion.

     Because the church is so important, it is the central target of hell. The devil doesn’t have to work up a sweat to induce the mafia to evil. Junior-grade demons can plunge a government into decadence. But the church— the bride of Jesus, the family of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit—that institution invites the unbridled assault of hell at every point. This isn’t a simple problem of wrestling with flesh and blood. It is a struggle with principalities and powers.

     We know that there have been periods in history when the church was more or less pure. But it has always been what St. Augustine described as a corpus per mixtum, a mixed body. Our Lord described the church as an institution that included both tares and wheat. Sometimes the tares gain the upper hand and lead the church into apostasy. Some churches have degenerated to such a low degree that they cease being churches at all. But no church in any age has been utterly pure. It was the clergy who gnashed their teeth in hatred of Jesus and plotted His death. It was the church that condemned Luther, banished Calvin from France, and dismissed Edwards from Northampton. It was during the century of the Great Awakening in our land that Gilbert Tennant wrote The Danger of an Unconverted Clergy. The sheep have always suffered at the hands of wolves cleverly disguised as sheep themselves. But will not God vindicate His elect who cry unto Him day and night?

     You gotta love the church. You can’t love Christ and despise His body. You can’t reject His bride. He has promised to present His bride to the Father without spot or wrinkle. Right now we may be discouraged. Her wedding gown has been torn to shreds as if by a wolf. But the groom will surely take care of all that. He will remove every spot, mend every tear, and smooth every wrinkle. Remember, it is we who are the spots and the wrinkles. If we despise them we despise ourselves.

     Now it is time to gird up yourself like a man. Stir up the gift that is within you and look to the Author and finisher of your faith to rekindle a fire in your bones. It’s worth it.

     Love as always, R.C.

Robert Charles Sproul, 2/13/1939 – 12/14/2017 was an American theologian, author, and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries, an international Christian education and discipleship organization located near Orlando, Fla. He was also copastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., chancellor of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Dr. Sproul has contributed dozens of articles to national evangelical publications, has spoken at conferences, churches, and schools around the world, and has written more than one hundred books. He also served as general editor of the Reformation Study Bible.

Read The Psalms In "1" Year

Psalm 35

1 Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me;
fight against those who fight against me!
2 Take hold of shield and buckler
and rise for my help!
3 Draw the spear and javelin
against my pursuers!
Say to my soul,
“I am your salvation!”

4 Let them be put to shame and dishonor
who seek after my life!
Let them be turned back and disappointed
who devise evil against me!
5 Let them be like chaff before the wind,
with the angel of the LORD driving them away!
6 Let their way be dark and slippery,
with the angel of the LORD pursuing them!

1 Samuel 4

By Don Carson 8/14/2018

     When people know little about the God who has actually disclosed himself, it is terribly easy for them to sink into some perverted view of this God, until the image held of him has very little to do with the reality.

     One can understand the Philistines’ ignorance (1 Sam. 4). In their polytheistic world, full of idols providing concrete representations of their gods, the arrival of the ark of the covenant in the Israelite camp is understood to be the arrival of the Israelite god (1 Sam. 4:6-7). But this god, even if he proved so powerful that he could at one point take on the Egyptians, is merely one more god, finite, limited, local. So the Philistines, having to choose between buckling under and courageous defiance, opt for the latter, and win. Implicit in their win are an assumption and a result: the assumption is that God is no longer laying on the hearts of the Canaanites the mortal dread of the Israelites that had accompanied the early Israelite victories (and this spells judgment for the Israelites); the result is that the Philistines will now have an even more diminished view of God. Knowing the God of the Bible, we can be certain that this is a situation that will not last long; God will take action to defend his own glory.

     The Israelites’ ignorance of God is wholly without excuse, but is of a piece with the horrible declension toward the end of the period of the judges. They are getting trounced by the Philistines. Their theological reasoning is so bad that they think they can reverse the fortunes of war by bringing the ark of the covenant into the military camp like an oversized good-luck charm. The writer hints at the sheer preposterousness of the notion; they bring “the ark of the covenant of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim” (1 Sam. 4:4). Sadly, Eli’s sons, the priests Hophni and Phinehas, are complicit in these arrangements. Is God’s favor so easily manipulated? Does he care as much about the location of a box as he does about the conduct and (in)fidelity of his image-bearers and covenant community? What kind of pared-down and domesticated image of God did the leaders of Israel hold at this juncture that they should utter such nonsense?

     Yesterday I received in the mail a letter from one of America’s premier television preachers, inviting me to send money and offering me in return a Christmas tree ornament of an “angel” with a trumpet, to remind me that God had commanded the angel looking after me to blow a trumpet to celebrate me. What kind of pared-down and domesticated image of God do such leaders hold that they should utter such nonsense?

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Don Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and co-founder (with Tim Keller) of The Gospel Coalition. He has authored numerous books, and recently edited The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2016).

1 Samuel 5-6

By Don Carson 8/15/2018

     God is never amused at being treated with contempt, nor by having his explicit instructions ignored or defied. For then he would not be God.

     God is well able to defend himself. In 1 Samuel 5-6, the unfolding account can be as restrained as it is precisely because it is as obvious to the reader as it was to the Philistines that God himself is behind the tragic illnesses and deaths they were suffering. The surprises began with the capsizing of their fish god, Dagon. It soon spread to a plague of rats, an epidemic of tumors, multiplying deaths — and not only in the city of Ashdod, to which the ark of the covenant was first taken, but in other cities to which it was transported — Gath and Ekron. Panic ensued.

     But at the end of the day, all the phenomena the Philistines were experiencing could have been natural. That’s not what they thought, of course; but still, it was difficult to be sure. So the Philistine priests concoct a test so much against nature that should the test succeed, the people will be convinced that what they are suffering comes from the hand of “Israel’s god” (1 Sam. 6:5, 7-9). The cows are separated from their calves and draw along the cart to Beth Shemesh, on the Israelite side: God himself plays along with their superstitions and their fears.

     While the Israelites rejoice at the return of the ark of the covenant, “God struck down some of the men of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they had looked into the ark of the LORD” (1 Sam. 6:19). There is no reason to think this happened instantaneously. If one had peeked into it and been struck down immediately, others would have been pretty quickly discouraged from doing so. There is no hint that a blinding and consuming light swept out of the opened box and melted the flesh off people, like some sort of ancient Harrison Ford film. Rather, seventy men from Beth Shemesh looked into the ark (which of course was strictly forbidden under pain of death), and doubtless saw what was there: the tablets of stone (apparently the pot of old manna and Aaron’s rod that budded had disappeared, perhaps removed by the Philistines). Then the deaths started, all premature, by whatever means — and the only commonality was that they were occurring among men who had looked into the ark. “Who can stand in the presence of the LORD, this holy God?” the people ask (1 Sam. 6:22) — not intending to learn the ways of holiness, but to get rid of the ark — precisely the same pattern as in the pagan cities.

     God will not be treated with contempt, nor forever permit his covenant people to ignore his words.

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Don Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and co-founder (with Tim Keller) of The Gospel Coalition. He has authored numerous books, and recently edited The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2016).

1 Samuel 8

By Don Carson 8/16/2018

     Why people ask for something is at least as important as what they ask for.

     This is true in many domains of life. I know an executive in a midsize corporation who successfully talked his bosses into setting up a new committee. The reason he gave was that it was needed to oversee some new development. What he did not tell his bosses was his real reason: he could in time use this committee to sidestep another established committee that was questioning some of his projects and holding them up. He saw the new committee as a managerial trick to avoid being controlled, and thus to shin up the ladder a little faster. What might have been construed as a shrewd device for peacefully circumventing an unnecessary roadblock in the company’s structure (had he explained what he was doing to the bosses) was in fact presented in quite different terms, because he could not honestly tell them what he was doing—he knew they thought the established committee was doing a good job. Hence the deceit.

     We need not look so far. How many of our own requests—in the home, in church, at work, in our prayers—mask motives that are decidedly self-serving?   I am always asking myself this; tough question and hard for me to know when I am being really honest or fooling myself.

     That was the problem with Israel’s request for a king (1 Sam. 8). The problem was not the request itself. After all, God would eventually give them the Davidic dynasty. Moses had anticipated the time when there would be a king (Deut. 17). The problem was the motive. They looked at their recent ups and downs with the local Canaanites and perceived few of their own faults, their own infidelities. They did not want to rely on the word of God mediated through prophets and judges and truly learn to obey that word. They figured that there would be political stability if only they could have a king. They wanted to be like the other nations (!), with a king to lead them in their military skirmishes (1 Sam. 8:19–20).

     God not only understands their requests, but he perceives and evaluates their motives. In this instance he knows that the people are not simply loosening their ties to a prophet like Samuel, they are turning away from God himself (1 Sam. 8:7–8). The result is horrific: they get what they want, along with a desperate range of new evils they had not foreseen.

     That is the fatal flaw in Machiavellian schemes, of course. They may win short-term advantages. But God is on his throne. Not only will the truth eventually come out, whether in this life or the next, but we may pay a horrible price, within our families and in our culture, in unforeseen correlatives, administered by a God who loves integrity of motive.

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Don Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and co-founder (with Tim Keller) of The Gospel Coalition. He has authored numerous books, and recently edited The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2016).

By Gleason Archer Jr.

The Three Main Festivals of the Hebrew Year ( Lev. 23 )

A. The Passover (pesaḥ) and Unleavened bread (maṣṣōt) (vv.  4–5 )
     1. Passover: on evening of fourteenth of Abib (the first month)
          a) Purpose: to commemorate Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage.
          b) Ritual: lamb slain, its blood to be sprinkled with hyssop on the lintel of the front door, and then roasted and consumed by the offerer with his family ( Deut. 16:5–6 specified that after God chose a holy city, as capital the public Passover should be celebrated there).
          c) Typical significance: Christ’s crucifixion ( 1 Cor. 5:7 )
     2. Feast of Unleavened Bread: fifteenth to twenty-second of Abib (v.  6 )
          a) Purpose: to commemorate the hardships of the hurried flight from Egypt, Absence of leaven symbolized sincere consecration to God
          b) Ritual: offering of the first fruits of wave-sheaf on the second day (i.e., the sixteenth of Abib); this consisted of barley, the earliest crop in the year (typifying the resurrection of Christ); also a prescribed burnt offering presented with the sheaf, a holy convocation (v.  7 ) on the fifteenth and twenty-second, both of which count as Sabbaths and require additional burnt offerings (two bullocks, one ram, seven lambs) and a sin offering (one goat); unleavened bread only to be eaten during this entire week.
B. Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks (sheḇû˓ôt): sixth of Sivan (third month), or forty-nine days after the offering of the firstfruits on the second day of Unleavened Bread
     1. Purpose: to dedicate to God the firstfruits of the wheat harvest.
     2. Ritual: a holy convocation (counting as a Sabbath); wave offering of two loaves of leavened wheat flour; burnt offering (seven lambs, one bullock, two rams); sin offering (he-goat); and peace offering (two male lambs); an additional burnt offering and sin offering at the convocation itself ( Num. 28:27 ).
     3. Typical significance: the descent of the Spirit on the New Testament church ( Acts 2 ). C. Feast of Tabernacles or Booths (sukkôṯ): fifteenth to twenty-second of Tishri (seventh month)
     1. Purpose: to commemorate the wilderness wandering and to rejoice in the completion of all the harvests (grain, fruit tree, vintage).
     2. Ritual: convocations on fifteenth and twenty-second (both counting as Sabbaths); burnt offering (from thirteen to seven bullocks, day by day; two rams, fourteen lambs) and sin offering (one goat) ( Num. 29 ); celebrants to live in booths, celebrating the week with fruits: the ethrog or citron in one hand, and the lulab or cluster of branches in the other (consisting of palms and willows).
     3. Typical significance: apparently to foreshadow peace and prosperity of the coming millennial kingdom (cf.  Zech. 14:16 ).
     The basic principle underlying all the blood sacrifices (zebāḥɩ̂m) was atonement (kippûr) by the substitution of an innocent life for the guilty. In token of this substitution, the offerer laid his hand upon the victim’s head, thus identifying himself with it as his representative. To signify his acceptance of the just penalty of death, the offerer himself slew his victim and then turned it over to the priest for the completion of the ceremony. The priest usually sprinkled or smeared a portion of the blood upon the altar.

A Survey of Old Testament Introduction

The Coming Prince

By Sir Robert Anderson 1841-1918

Chapter 6 The Prophetic Year

[10] The division of the 69 weeks into 7 +62 is accounted for by the fact that the first 49 years, during which the restoration of Jerusalem was completed, ended with a great crisis in Jewish history, the close of the prophetic testimony. Forty-nine years from B. C. 445 brings us to the date of Malachi's prophecy.

[11] "The multitude." — TREGELLES, Daniel, p. 97.

The Continual Burnt Offering

By H.A. Ironside - 1941

March 28

Psalm 19:1  The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Psalm 19:7  The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the LORD is sure,
making wise the simple;   ESV

“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
25  but the word of the Lord remains forever.”   ESV

Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green!
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen:
Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
Flowers with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine.
--- Wade Robinson

By James Orr 1907

I. NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE MORAL DIFFICULTIES

There would be no difficulty, possibly, in connection with the progressiveness of revelation, if the progress in question were simply one of development in moral knowledge — of growth from a more or less childlike consciousness of moral truths to a stage of greater maturity. The matter becomes more complicated when we observe that it is also in part the growth of a higher out of a lower morality, and that the lower stages involve much which to the enlightened conscience at the higher stage is positively evil. It is here that ethical difficulties emerge. When we go back to the earlier stages of Old Testament revelation — or even to the Old Testament as a whole — we find, co-existing with the knowledge and worship of the true God, with a high sense of the general obligations of righteousness, and with what we must recognise as great nobility of religious character, many things which perplex and stagger us. We find defects in the idea of duty, as measured by a later standard, the non-recognition of principles of conduct which to us are self-evident, institutions and usages which the enlightened Christian conscience would not tolerate, things regarded as permissible or right which we as emphatically pronounce wrong.  ( In 2021 the only thing wrong is what the Bible calls right. ) For instance, there is in the Old Testament slavery and polygamy, there is blood - revenge, there is a low standard — not in the law, indeed, but in individuals — of sexual morality, there is the cursing of enemies, there is mercilessness in warfare, in the case of the Canaanites there is the extermination of whole populations. It is possible, no doubt, to set all this in an exaggerated and distorted light, and this, as we shall see, is sometimes done. The “moral difficulties” are no new discovery. They were worked for all they were worth a century and a half ago in the Deistical controversy, and many sensible and temperate replies then appeared to the attacks on the Old Testament based on them. Little can be said now which was not said, with far keener edge, by a Chubb, a Morgan, or a Bolingbroke. But when every allowance for exaggeration or animus is made, we cannot but recognise that a very real problem remains.  ( and today pharmaceutical companies are not accountable for killing people in the thousands. 03-22-2021 )

The difficulty even here, it is next to be observed, is not so much that such lower stages of morality should exist, and should need to be overcome — that is only to be expected — as that the defects in idea and practice cleave to the organs of revelation themselves, — that these share in, and give expression to, the same views as their contemporaries, — that they do this sometimes when speaking in the name of God, — nay, that God Himself is represented by them as implicated in, and as sanctioning, these lower forms of morality. Thus Abraham receives from God a command to sacrifice his son Isaac; Deborah, a prophetess, pronounces Jael blessed for her treacherous murder of Sisera; the Mosaic legislation provides for slavery, polygamy, and divorce; the command to exterminate the Canaanites is represented as coming directly from God, and the Israelites are even reproved for not executing it with sufficient thoroughness; David, or whoever was the writer, invokes curses on his enemies, and prays for their destruction. It is, in these and other cases, the apparent implication of God in the lower morality, or seeming immorality, which causes the difficulty. The morality of man may and must progress; the morality prescribed by God should, we naturally think, be one and the same throughout. How, on the assumption of the reality of the revelation, can we vindicate the divine action?

II. ERRONEOUS OR INADEQUATE SOLUTIONS

In facing this problem, our first duty is to beware of solutions which are not really, or only very partially, such. It is, for example, no solution simply to use this word “progressiveness,” as if that of itself removed the difficulty. It is true that revelation must be progressive; but it may be felt that what applies to the taught need not apply to the teacher — that God should not be implicated in any form of sanction of what is wrong.

Again, we do not solve the problem by denying that these lower forms of morality were, for that age and stage of development, really wrong, or did involve elements of evil. Evolution may be invoked to show that there are numerous intermediate grades between no morality and the highest morality; that society must pass through such and such stages of growth; that the moral ideal is only gradually developed, and that, till it is developed, such practices as slavery, polygamy, unchastity, mercilessness in war, etc., are not really sinful; that there can be no wrong, therefore, in recognising and sanctioning them. This, like the whole evolutionary conception of a necessary development of humanity through evil, is a dangerous line of defence; is, moreover, repugnant to the genuine Christian point of view. Jesus did not, e.g., regard the Mosaic law of divorce as per se right even for the Jews. It was given them, He said, for the hardness of their hearts, and He referred them back to the purer primitive idea of marriage. Slavery, from the Christian standpoint, is a contradiction of the true idea of man, as God made him, and meant him to exist; is, therefore, something inherently wrong, under whatever circumstances, or at whatever stage in the history of mankind, it occurs.

Shall we betake ourselves, then, to what may be called the critical solution—viz., the denying outright that God had any implication in the matter, and the ascribing of those laws and statements in the Bible which impute such participation in evil to God to the mistaken notions of the Biblical writers themselves? Either the narratives are held to be legends, or they are supposed to reflect only the ideas of the writers; in any case, the attribution of the laws and commands which create offence to Jehovah as their Author has no foundation in reality. What the leaders of Israel — a Moses, a Joshua, a Samuel — or the writers of their histories, ascribed to God of a nature which we think wrong, came really from their own imperfect thoughts and feelings, and God had nothing to do with it. Thus God is thought to be exonerated from participation in everything that offends the moral sense. Such a view may plausibly be held to be a necessary corollary from the admission of growth in religion and moral ideas. For how, it may be asked, can a writer avoid colouring his narrative in accordance with the idea of God he himself possesses, representing Jehovah as sanctioning or approving of those things which he thinks He must approve of, and as condemning those things which he — the author — reprobates? The writer’s own standard of religion and morality would seem to be the inevitable measure of the representations in his history.

This method of treatment no doubt frees God from responsibility for anything in the record which appears objectionable, — Origen of old attained the same end by “allegorizing” all such passages, — but the solution has the disadvantage that it is a cutting of the knot, not a loosing of it, for it denies the chief factor in the problem — the reality of the revelation. Neither do we, even in this way, really get rid of the difficulty. We may relieve the earlier history of laws and commands of God which offend us; but it is only to roll the burden upon the shoulders of prophets in an age when the higher morality is presumed to be developed. The strongest injunctions, e.g., to destroy the Canaanites are found in the Book of  Deuteronomy — on the theory of the critics, a prophetic work of the seventh century B.C., and the most drastic accounts of the carrying out of these injunctions are those put to the account of the Deuteronomic revision of the Book of  Joshua, the date of which is still later. It is not the early Hebrews only, therefore, who hold these imperfect views of God; but the prophets themselves, who are assumed to represent the more advanced stage of religion and morality, and to be the peculiar exponents of the higher Old Testament revelation, share in them, and put their imprimatur upon them. God’s Spirit in the prophets, if not in the history, still seems implicated in what is wrong.

Difficulties exist; but it is a pity to add to them, as is occasionally done, by unnecessarily lowering the character, and limiting the scope, of early Old Testament morality, even if it be with the aim of magnifying the divine leading in Israel in the evolving of higher conceptions. Here again comes in the tendency to exaggeration, as when it is affirmed that early Israel had no sense of personal right or responsibility, no feeling of humanity or mercy for those outside its own circle, no compunctions about falsehood and fraud, etc. It could easily be shown that, despite all marks of a lower stage, the moral standard among the Hebrews maintained its unique, and, in ancient times, unapproached, distinction. It is unfair, e.g., to say with a recent writer, that “the Hebrews were bound by moral obligation and the sanction of religion in their dealings with one another, but were entirely free of these in their dealings with foreigners,” and that “in the latter case they were governed purely by considerations of expediency.” This is not borne out by the instances quoted, and is disproved by the recognition of common principles of justice and morality by which all men are judged. Where universal principles of moral conduct are recognised, there arises of necessity the sense of mutual obligation; and such are found, not only in Israel, but in all ancient nations. It is the postulate of the whole Biblical view of history that the world is under moral government, and that individuals, communities, and nations, everywhere, are judged and punished for wickedness. What else is the moral of the narratives of the flood, of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the judgment on the Canaanites? It was for their vices that the Canaanites were destroyed. The history is full of instances which show the recognition of principles of general obligation. Is it credible, e.g., in view of his own words ( Gen. 39:9 ), that Joseph in Egypt was guided in his conduct in his master’s house, or towards his master’s wife, by no higher principle than “expediency”? It was on grounds of common right that the people of Israel protested against their harsh treatment by Pharaoh. Even Jephthah invokes Jehovah as the Judge, to judge between Israel and Ammon. It is quite true that the Old Testament had not attained to Christ’s wide sense of the word “neighbour,” and that the command to love all, even enemies, would have sounded strangely in the ears of the ancient Israelite. But short of love there is justice, and there is no reason for believing that duties falling under that head were not recognised as applicable to Gentiles as well as to Jews. Too much, we would add, ought not to be made of the imperfect conduct, or moral lapses, of individuals, or even of the prevailing practice of a time, as indicative of the religious and moral standard; else it would go hard with ourselves under a higher and purer dispensation. The conduct of Judah and Samson, e.g., cannot be held to determine the estimate of sexual relations in Israel. In letter, and even more in spirit, the Mosaic law stands for a high ideal of sexual morality. Of this we have the purest expression in the teachings of the prophets, who here, as elsewhere, do not claim to be introducing anything new.

The Problem of the Old Testament