Faith in Christ is faith from Christ.

It is common to read both Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:28 too narrowly as if the text was only addressing “works of the law.” On this reading, one could not be justified by works done in obedience to the law, but could conceivably be justified by faith works, and that is wholly acceptable. Throw in a James two and a Romans two to boot, slip in a statement about faith without works being dead, and you have successfully undermined the Protestant Reformation. Justification by faith alone will be an oddity with which we can dispense for a more robust theology of salvation.

That would be a dreaded mistake, however. The problem with “works of the law” is not that they are of the law but that they are works period. When one compares the passage in Ephesians 2:8-9, it is clear that works are considered non-salvific because salvation is a gift. Even the faith, by which we sinners believe in conversion, comes from God, not of ourselves. This is essential to understanding salvation to be, as Charles Spurgeon so elegantly put it, “All of Grace.” Hence, when Paul reminds Titus about how we are saved, it is the doctrine of Justification by grace that has preeminence. Not even a mention of faith is had!

But there is a more subtle danger that lurks within the theological constructs of contemporary evangelicalism. It is the specter of a different type but its heresy is the age-old works salvation model set on a different footing. This time God does not reward the works of the law, works in general, or even works of faith, but God does reward faith. Faith is the new work! People are bombarded with the notion that faith saves. But then, it is explained as a type of deal where God gives his part, Grace, and we give our part, faith. So in this co-operation salvation is achieved, as many believe, in this synergistic effort.

What is implicitly denied in this scheme, however, is the efficaciousness of the Cross. It is no longer Jesus the savior as it is Jesus the helper. The work of Christ is now deemed to be necessary, but not sufficient. Add some twists in the methodology department, and then preaching itself falls by the wayside. We are oblivious to the fact that the church has jettisoned the cross and its proclamation for the program and its entertainment. We have sold our birthright of Salvation by Grace for the pot of lentil soup sprinkled with humanism. Of course, we don’t call it by that name. We hide behind the labels of Christian sounding verbiage: The church of the Nazarene, The Southern Baptist convention, The Methodist church, etc. etc. And so it is understood that as the experts of Christianity we should know, all too well, what the faith actually is. But remember, the Titanic was built by the experts. So, also PhDs in theology have known to be in error. I am one of them! Luther once exclaimed that he was a Doctor in Theology but did not know what remission of sin was. Thankfully, God finally taught him!

Sometimes it takes a layman to see the tree in the woods. Our doctrine of salvation is no longer under attack from without, it is being decimated from within. Let us keep on guard for the ravenous wolves that graduate from our seminaries. Let us beware of the leaders that make the people err. Let us strive once again for the faith of God’s elect. And while we are doing this, let us not forsake the truth that all our striving would be losing if not the right man were on our side. And because He is on our side He grants us the faith to believe Him.

The Reformation: An Expert's Assessment and a Layman’s Hope.

This time of the year I am always retrieving insights from the reformation. Today is the anniversary of the so-called beginning of that movement when Luther banged a notice on a church door that served as a bulletin board for the community. That message quickly spread and the 95 theological theses became the catalyst for the burning question of where ultimate authority could be found. For Luther, the evident and emerging answer was found in the NT itself, whereas for all his opponents that was safeguarded by the person of the Pope himself. So when in 1517 the start was ushered in by the clanging of a hammer, it was Jesus in reality banging at the door of the church which had replaced Him with ritual, ceremony, pomp and most of all superstition.

Of the many alternate, sometimes overlapping and quite ingenious explanations of the whys and wherefores of the reformation, one still must pay heed to the theological core as a succinct and comprehensive answer. Among the better scholars of the Reformation Era is Hans Hillerbrand. His insight should be highlighted.

“To be sure, Luther and his fellow-reformers now and then talked about the correction of ecclesiastical abuses and their efforts may have been so understood by the people. But the real thrust of the reformers was in a different direction – a reinterpretation of the gospel. The reformers propounded a different understanding of the New Testament, and while this understanding had connections with the theological tradition of the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, it can justifiably be called new. When the Protestants talked about “reform,” therefore, they thought not so much about the practical life of the church as about a new theological understanding.” [Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed. The Protestant Reformation in Documentary History of Western Civilization, ed. Eugene C. Black & Leonard W. Levy, (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. xxii].

A new theology, indeed! What the church realized in the sixteenth century, that the church needs reform, is still true today. Christendom is a conglomeration of ritual, ceremony, idolatry and superstition once more. Only a new theology will save the church from the worldly compromise, but that new theology is going to look very much like that of Luther and Calvin.

What Luther called the Babylonian Captivity in his day, we are witnessing in our own times similar phenomena, with the Evangelical Captivity with its evangelistic megastars like Bill Hybels or Rick warren, the Megachurch Captivity with Joel Osteen, the Televangelist Captivity with Benny Hinn and Creflo Dollar, and on and on it goes. The average Evangelical church that has remained true to the Bible is blinded by other glaring inconsistencies. Whether Baptist, Methodist or Presbyterian, much compromise has infiltrated the church via humanistic tendencies masquerading as plausible theological affirmations. Whether it is Arminianism or Semi-pelagianism, the result is the same: God is not the Ruler of History in many churches across the spectrum. Soli Deo Gloria is no longer true; even sociologists are insightful enough to explain church growth! It is not God getting the glory. Rather techniques and ingenuity are the true heroes. One local church in my community was even offering ten dollar gift-cards for all adult first time visitors. And better still for the person that initiated the most visitors a fifty dollar bonus. Tetzel is being undone in our own backyard. This time it is: “when the soul emerges through the church door, a dead president hits your wallet for sure.”

The time is ripe, just like 1517. We are in a time when the church needs someone to smash a post against the door. Who will it be? Maybe you are the man! Will you do your homework as Luther did and study afresh the New Testament? Will you risk infamy or even worse, persecution or death for the cause of Christ? Will you submit all your cherished traditions to the scrutiny of God’s inerrant Word? Are you willing to change into that person and believer that God desires in order to show the world once again that a man and a mallet can change the world? If so, look up! We may be on the verge of a reformation of the reformation!

Theodore Zachariades

First and Foremost

It is the intellect that is primary in Christianity. From the renewing of our mind to the putting on the mind of Christ, and from the leaning not on our own understanding to loving the Lord with out whole inner man, what is central in the Bible's message to mankind is truth, and truth has to do with intellectual content.

The federal headship of Christ and the doctrine of substitutionary atonement are truths. They are saving truths that will make a difference at the bar of God's judgment. We will not be held accountable primarily for our feelings or even our actions, but our beliefs. Faith is the foundation of a life lived. Faith in God's revelation or faith in some other authority will differentiate men. The greatest privelege we have as humans made in the image of God is to think God's thoughts after Him. That is why what is first and foremost in Biblical Christianity is propositional revelation.

If a renewal of a vibrant Christianity is to occur then it must begin with serious engagement with the words of truth and reason that constitute the Word of God inscripturated. Theologians that understood this to be of fundamental importance such as Gordon H. Clark and Carl F. H. Henry must be re-discovered by a rising generation of Evangelicals that are drowning in sentimental and therapeutic notions of the faith. Christianity has been masquerading as a pop-psychology for too long. Seminary students are graduating with M.Divs and D.Mins without ever having read Jonathan Edwards, St. Athanasius, Augustine or Anselm. Men such as Clark and Henry are virtually unknown.

Our prospective educated clergy know all the techniques for growing a church but have no clue what the grand themes of Scripture are all about. Many seminarians can take courses in leadership strategies or creative ministries that could well have been taught by marketing executives of a company selling toilet paper.

Would to God that all the seminaries that are forsaking or have already forsaken the Word of the Living God as their primary text-book burn to the ground and never rise again. Would to God that all the so-called ministries, whether churches, para-church organizations, missions agencies, and denominations that have forsaken the primacy of the inspired and inerrant, infallible and irreplaceable Word of the Living God be struck down by the clear hand of God.

As a man thinks so is he!

TZ

God of Truth

O God of truth, whose living Word
Upholds whate'er hath breath,
Look down on thy creation, Lord,
Enslaved by sin and death,

Set up thy standard, Lord, that we
Who claim a heav'nly birth,
May march with thee to smite the lies
That vex thy groaning earth.

Ah! would we join that blest array,
And follow in the might
Of him, the Faithful and the True,
In raiment clean and white!

Then, God of truth for whom we long,
Thou who wilt hear our pray'r,
Do thine own battle in our hearts,
And slay the falsehood there.

Thomas Hughes, 1859.

Paradox and Contradiction

While some revel in paradox; Others strongly repudiate it. Paradox may be utilized as a figure of speech to make a point creating bafflement and irony. However, real contradictory notions cannot be utilized in theology, or in deed, claimed as Biblical revelation without damaging the character of God. It is true Jesus made the startling statements as "The first shall be last, and the last first," but these were 'plays on words' intended to teach a spiritual truth. Of course, Jesus would not affirm that people could be first and last in the exact same sense for that would be nonsense. So teaching that affirms that God is one person and at the same is three persons is necessarily erroneous. Teaching that affirms that grace is salvific and is sufficiently for all people and at the same time for the elect efficiently are making non-sensical claims. Those who claim that God loves the reprobate salvifically, as they must based on their interpretation of John 3:16, and yet also maintain that the only ultimate recipients of this redeeming love are the elect are speaking and writing falsehoods. God's love and His grace are not paradoxical! From eternity He has set His affections on the elect alone. His love never fails. His grace never falters. What God sets out to do salvifically, He accomplishes it absolutely. There will be no unloved people in Heaven, and there will be none loved in Hell. To claim otherwise is not a paradox but a blatant contradiction, not to mention the eternal frustration that God must necessarily endure because some of His beloved could not be reached by His mercies. Perish the thought.

NOT WILLING THAT ANY SHOULD PERISH

by WILLIAM GADSBY

Preached in Manchester, England, on Feb. 9th 1840

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"The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count

slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward; not willing that any

should perish, but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)

To add to, or diminish from, the Word of God is a crime, though much employed in the frivolities of the world; and the office of a minister is a very responsible one. He is God's steward, and he must one day give up his stewardship; and if he seeks to please men, he is not a true servant of God; nay, it is insulting God. Some say God is not willing that any creature should perish, but every one should come to repentance; but in our text we are told it is this "us-ward" for whom he is long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. "Then," say you, "if it is only to this us-ward, why preach the gospel?" Because God has ordained the preaching of the gospel for the gathering in of his people. If it were to all men, would he not send his Word into all men? When God designs to save his people, he sends his gospel into them; as he did into the Philippian jailor. He sent ministers unto him in the prison. Zaccheus, who must climb a tree; and God brought him down and abode with him. And where were some of you

when God met with you? You had no inclination to hear his Word, but he brought you forth out of nature's darkness into his marvelous light. And what is the sense of the text? God's long-suffering with, and

promise to, his people, the us-ward, not willing that any of his people should perish, but that all should come to repentance. In the last days

scoffers shall come, and shall say, "Where is the promise of Christ's coming, without sin in the world? One generation passeth away, and another, and there is no appearance of his coming; how is it?" It is his

long-suffering to us-ward; therefore, beloved, account his long-suffering salvation. When he shall fold up the skies as in a scroll, and wind up the business, all his people shall be brought in; and I would ask if God is not willing that any man should perish, is he not able to give him repentance? For repentance is the gift of God; and is he incapacitated to

do what he wished? Or will his designs be frustrated by such frail creatures as you and I." He says, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens together, and ye would not." (Matt. 23:37) Here we find that Christ refers to the Scribes, and Pharisees, and heads of the people, the

Sanhedrin. He worked many miracles before them, but they did not believe on him; he would have gathered thy children, "but ye would not;" not "they would not." And again: "When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, he shall die," "but if the wicked turneth from his wickedness, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall live." (Ezek. 18:26,27). This is according to the Jewish

nation; not the preaching of the gospel, but the law. For what saith the law? Do and live; leave undone and die. Therefore there is no salvation

by the law, "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God." (Rom. 3:19) That it might be by grace, not of works,

lest any man should boast. (Eph. 2:8,9) Salvation is entirely of free, unmerited, discriminating grace. But this it could not be if it depended on any thing the creature does.

What is intended by the promise, "The Lord is not slack?" etc. And why this apparent delay and long-suffering? God declared in the beginning concerning the temple, that it should be destroyed, and that one stone

should not be left upon another. But the Jews laughed it to scorn; they could not believe it; but it came to pass at last. His long-suffering bore with their manners until its accomplishment, and the execution thereof was awful in the extreme. Never was known such an appalling devastation. There was a great famine; and so great was their distress

that men butchered each other for food to support their dying frames, and women tore their own children from their bosoms for the same purpose. Never was known in the history of time such a day of misery. And what made the scene more appalling, the destruction happened on a festival day, wherein all that were met together in the temple perished;

but all the children of God escaped, out of the way; not one of them perished. What an awful sight to them; that the departed spirits should in a

moment's warning quit this world and enter hell, and then in agonizing torments behold the just God whom they had despised and mocked. May

God enable you to confide in his promise, and trust him for his grace, that when the time comes for its accomplishment you may be found ready. We have the promise of Christ's second coming. The apostle Paul had a blessed view of this, as recorded in Heb. 9:27,28: "And as it is appointed unto men once to die; but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin; and Heb.7:26: "he will be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." At his first coming, his visage was marred, and there was neither form nor comeliness in him, that we should desire him; but he bore the sins of many; (Isa. 53:2,12) he hath appeared once to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Heb. 9:26) God hath laid upon him the iniquity of

his us-ward. If God had not done it, we never should; for our sins are so numerous we should have forgotten many; and there are many that we

should not have thought were sins; they are so amiable and pleasant to our nature that we should not look upon them as sins; and from our first breath in infancy, to our last, though it be to old age, there is not a

moment of our existence that we live without sin, except when we are bathing in the blood of the Lamb. "Thy garden is the place, Where pride cannot intrude; For should it dare to enter there 'Twould soon be drown'd in blood."

Yes, Gethsemane is the place where our sins were put away; our sins of omission and sins of commission were all gathered together and put upon Christ. He bore them, and hath nailed them to his cross. He finished the work which his Father gave him to do; (John 17:4) "he

ascended to his God and our God;" "to his Father and our Father, (John 20:17) and ever liveth to make intercession for us." (Heb. 7:25) He is not

slack concerning his promise, but will come at the appointed time. Before him shall be gathered all nations, and every man shall be judged according to the deeds done in the body. His apparent delays do not

prove that he is slack concerning his promise, but rather his longsuffering; for if it were not for his long-suffering, would you not all be damned? For unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish; (Luke 13:3)

and, therefore, is it not of his long-suffering that he brings us to repent, and cleanseth us from dead works, by washing us in the washing of

regeneration, that we may have pardon through his blood? Did not God promise Abraham that he should possess the land of Canaan, and that in his seed should all the nations be blessed? (Gen. 12:3) And was not the promise apparently delayed? But it was his long-suffering. And though

Abraham and Sarah his wife became old, yet did not God perform his

promise at the appointed time? And though Abraham took a bondwoman

to his bosom, yet it did not in any wise further the execution of

God's promise, but rather was the very means of causing discord in the

family. And so with us; for anything that we may do will not hasten the

promise of God. "And Abraham, by faith, sojourned in the land of

promise, not knowing whither he went." "But the Lord was not slack concerning his promise; but is longsuffering to us-ward." Did he not promise that Joseph should be above his brethren? And though he experienced many changes on his way for

this purpose to bring him, yet all things work together for its

accomplishment. The Lord was not slack concerning his promise; but his long suffering bore with their matters. He bore with the manners of the children of Israel forty years; but at

length brought them to the land of promise. All things shall work

together for good to them that love God and are the called according to his eternal purpose. Honors crown his brow! "He is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness," but will perform his promises in his own time and in his own way.

May the Lord bless you and me with patience to wait his time; for his mercy's sake. Amen.

Heights of anti-intellectualism

When I speak to people about the need to understand the gospel intellectually I get some responses that amount to a wonderment and fear that I have somehow lost the plot. I used to be big on an emotional type of faith which was indeed no faith at all, so I am aware of the direction many pastors and regular Christians take in insisting that heaven can be missed by eighteen inches, the space between your head and your heart. What these poor souls are advocating, however, a faith that is heartfelt as an emotional reality rather than some perceived sterile rationality, is completely unfounded. Worse still, it is un-Biblical. The heart is the center of the inner man. The inner man is the thinking man. The focus of the New Testament is on renewing our minds. And this is about thinking. The Hebrew word leb, which is the term "heart" is about our spiritual inner man and that is why Proverbs reminds us, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." You see that Scripturally, to believe with the heart is a rational exercise, and an intellectual endeavor that requires information. What is needed is information; saving information no doubt, but it is information nonetheless. Christianity is about truth. Truth is the most important matter in our lives. We can live by the truth and for the truth or we can reject the truth and ignore the truth. What we cannot do is deny the truth. It is impossible to deny the concept that there is such a thing as truth. The emotion-laden versions of Christianity are unwittingly rejecting truth for pragmatism as the focus is on feelings. By doing this the church has abdicated her role as a thinking community that speaks the truth in love. Today we are speaking anything but the truth, and we have re-interpreted love as a sentimental notion instaed of it being linked to the Person of Christ, and hence His will for the elect. The flowery notion that God loves everybody really amounts to the false idea that God loves nobody. Why, if His love is not linked with truth and if His love never fails, then there will be many unsaved loved ones to whom God will need to explain how He failed them in their greatest need: to be saved! But if his love is linked with His truth then an expression of that love is the eternal election of His sheep to be represented and redeemed by the Appointed Anointed: Jesus Christ the Son of God, who has died to save them, then there is no problem as they will inevitably be saved by that everlasting love and grace. These truths all need to be believed, and that my friends is a matter of the intellect. Let us forsake the pious sounding anti-intellectualism of the age. It got a great revival in the early 20th century, when the Danish existentialist philosopher Kierkegaard was (re)-discovered. We need not hold to passionless prejudices of a past period, but we must embrace the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to be helped by God.

tz.