We Ought To Distrust Our Moods

(This is a repost from September 2010)

In the early 1900s, J. Gresham Machen faced intense spiritual struggles – he was asking some deep questions about Christianity.  There were three people who helped him through it: Francis Patton, Bishop Blougram, and his own dear mother.  Here’s what he said of his mother – how she helped him through his spiritual struggles.

“Another thing used to be said to me by my mother in those dark hours when the lamp burned dim, when I thought that faith was gone and shipwreck had been made of my soul.  ‘Christ,’ she used to say, ‘keeps firmer hold on us than we keep on him.’”

“That means, at least, when translated into worldly terms, that we ought to distrust our moods.  Many a man has fallen into despair because, losing the heavenly vision for a moment, passing through the dull lowlands of life, he takes such experience as though it were permanent, and desserts a well-grounded conviction which was the real foundation of his life.  Faith is often diversified by doubt, but a man should not desert the conviction of his better moments because the dark moments come.”

“But my mother’s word meant something far deeper than all that.  It meant rather that salvation by faith does not mean that we are saved because we keep ourselves at every moment in an ideally perfect attitude of confidence in Christ.  No, we are saved because, having once been united to Christ by faith, we are his forever.  Calvinism is a very comforting doctrine indeed.  Without its comfort, I think I should have perished long ago in the castle of Giant Despair.”

Found on page 561 of Machen’s Selected Shorter Writings.

shane lems

What Confessions Are…and Are Not

God Transcendent is a collection of some sermons preached by J. Gresham Machen in the 1920′s and 1930′s.  It is really a gem; priced at under $10, it is a solid addition to any Reformed library.  Anyway, one message in this book that stuck out for me was the one called “The Creeds and Doctrinal Advance.”  In it he talks about what creeds/confessions are and what they are not.  Below is an edited summary of this great message.

What creeds/confessions are not: “The creeds of Christendom are not expressions of Christian experience.”  They are not positive expressions that avoid negative and controversial statements.  Historic creeds and confessions are not designed to “make room in the church for just as many people and for just as many types of thought as possible.”  They are not vague statements where words can mean almost anything that everyone can agree upon, liberal or conservative.  They were not written by people who denied the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture.   The creeds and confessions are not obscure and ambiguous statements that seek to avoid any offense.  They are not meant to show “how little of truth we can get along with and still be Christians.”  Creeds are not statements that get back to the “bare essentials.”

What creeds/confessions are: “[Creeds and confessions] are summary statements of what God has told us in his Word.  …The historic creeds were exclusive of error; they were intended to exclude error; they were intended to set forth the biblical teaching in sharp contrast with what was opposed to the biblical teaching, in order that the purity of the church might be preserved.”  …[The historic creeds and confessions] are clear, concise, and precise; they also delineate truth from error.  They are true – “true in the plain man’s sense of the word ‘truth.’”  Finally, they contain Christian doctrine which “is just a setting forth of what the Bible teaches…they are intended to show how much of truth God has revealed to us in his Word.”

This was a big issue in Machen’s day.  Many modern churches were writing faith statements and new creedal-type statements which were not summaries of deeply studied biblical truths, but instead vague statements of Christian experience that neither pointed out error nor explained deep biblical truths.  These faith statements of Machen’s day were supposed to unify churches by minimalistic doctrine, warm experience, and no negative words condemning error.  I guess not much has changed in the last 80 years; churches today are still writing faith statements like that while ridiculing historic creeds and confessions for their doctrinal depth, bold affirmation of the truth, and a strong condemnation of what is false.

So Machen said these new faith-statements were not doctrinal progression, but regression instead.  Here’s his critique.  Read it carefully.

“Groups of people that undertake to write a creed without believing in the full truthfulness of the Bible, and without taking the subject-matter of their creed from that inspired Word of God, are not at all taking an additional step on the pathway which the great Christian creeds moved; rather they are moving in an exactly opposite direction.  What they are doing has nothing whatever to do with that grand progress of Christian doctrine….  Far from continuing the advance of Christian doctrine they are starting from something entirely different, and that something different, we may add, is doomed to failure from the start.”

Those of you who subscribe to the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian church need to read this message of Machen: “The Creeds and Doctrinal Advance.”  It’ll make you a bit more confessional.  And for our readers who do not adhere to creeds/confessions, I’d challenge you to wrestle with this article to help you see what creeds/confessions are and why they are beneficial for Christ’s church.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Christian Missions: The Message

 In 1933 J. G. Machen gave a brief radio address called “The Christian View of Missions” (the manuscript is found in his Selected Shorter Writings).  In this address he mentioned the biblical truth of God’s wrath against sin.  As the Christian church continues to go forth and make disciples of all nations, this is a good note to take to heart.

“I know that people tell us it is an unworthy thing to appeal to the motive of fear.  In missionary endeavor particularly, they tell us, that motive is out of date.  But it is strange that those who tell us that should appeal to Jesus as their authority in religion.  For if there ever was a religious teacher who appealed to the motive of fear, it was Jesus.  ‘Be not afraid of them that kill the body,’ he said, ‘and after that have no more that they can do.  But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into Hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.’  These words are no mere excrescence in the teaching of Jesus.  No, they are at the very heart of it; they give to the ethical teaching of Jesus its stupendous earnestness.  And they are also the very heart of the missionary message of the earliest Christian church.”

 ”One thing is perfectly clear – no missionary work that consists merely in presenting to the people in foreign lands a thing that has proved to be mildly valuable in the experience of the missionary himself, which he thinks may perhaps prove helpful in foreign lands in building up a better life upon this earth, can possibly be regarded as real Christian missions.  At the very heart of the real Christian missionary message is the conviction that every individual hearer to whom the missionary goes is in deadly peril, and that unless the message [of the gospel] is heeded he is without hope in this world and in the dreadful world that is to come.”

“…On the basis of those two great presuppositions – the awful holiness of God and a mankind lost under the guilt and power of sin – the first Christian missionaries preached Jesus Christ.”

For the full transcript, see pages 237-242 of Machen’s Selected Shorter Writings.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Predestination

   J. Gresham Machen (d. 1937) has an oustanding explanation of predestination in his little book The Christian View of Man.  I realize this biblical doctrine is a tough one.  If you’ve wrestled with it or know someone who struggles with this doctrine, I recommend reading chapters 3-6 of The Christian View of Man.  I’ll give a few excerpts below.  First, he says the main question at hand is

“…whether a man is predestinated by God to salvation because he believes in Christ or is enabled to believe in Christ because he is predestinated.”

After discussing a few different views of predestination, he notes this:

“[The Bible] is utterly opposed to the view that God does not know what man will decide, and it is equally opposed to the view that what God foreknows he does not foreordain.  Over against such views, it tells us in the clearest possible way, not only in general that God has foreordained all things according to the counsel of his will but also in particular that he has foreordained the salvation of some men and the loss of others.”

“We do not, indeed know what the reason for God’s choice is. … But because we do not know what the reason is for God’s choice of some and his passing by of others, that does not mean there is no reason.  As a matter of fact, there is without doubt an altogether good and sufficient reason.  We can be perfectly sure of that.  God never acts in arbitrary fashion; he acts always in accordance with infinite wisdom; all his acts are directed to infinitely high and worthy ends.  We must just trust him for that.  We do not know why God has acted thus and not otherwise, but we know the  One who knows and we rest in his infinite justice and goodness and wisdom.”

“Little hope have we, my friends, if our salvation depends upon ourselves; but the salvation of which the Bible speaks is rooted in the eternal counsel of God. [Here Machen quotes Rom 8.28 & 30]  There, my friends, is the true ground of all our comforts – not in our love, not in our faith, not in anything that is in us, but in that mysterious and eternal counsel of God from which comes all faith, all love, all that we have and are and can be in this world and in the world to come.”

Again, this is an outstanding treatment of predestination.  Machen (as always) writes clearly, biblically, and pastorally.  He deals with objections well, and ends this section with a brief discussion of the beauty of God’s gracious act of choosing and saving wicked rebels.  If you haven’t read this book, The Christian View of Man, I’d say get it!  It is written for the average layperson, so most thoughtful Christians will be able to benefit from it.  While I’m at it, I also recommend What is Faith by Machen, which is one of the best presentations of faith alone and justification that I’ve read – its right up there with some of Luther’s sermons.  [I also need to note that each of these books is less than $10 - probably under $5 if you get them used!]

shane lems

Dear Preacher, Love With Intensity

The other day I was reading a prayer by Augustine in which he asked the Lord to strengthen his love for other Christians.  Machen takes this theme and applies it to the preacher.  These are outstanding words, and all Christian leaders should take them to heart.

“I know some preachers who are very good men, and very devoted to Christ, who seem somehow to let their Christianity make them cold and dead to all the movings of friendship.  They do not outwardly lead the lives of hermits; on the contrary their greatest joy is to be serving Christ by preaching his word.  Yet somehow there is an impenetrable barrier between them and other men.  You always have the feeling that whenever they speak to you it is out of a stern sense of duty, in order that they may do you some good.”

“They have no spontaneous affection for individual men – all men are to them alike, for all alike simply form a field for preaching.  The consequence is their sermons sound as though they were coming out of a phonograph [that is, impersonal - SL].  In order to prevent your words from being sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, two kinds of love are necessary – love to God and love to your hearers.  It will not do to let your hearers say, Yes, the preacher loves Christ devotedly, but he cares not one cent for me.”

Taken from pages 424-425 of Machen’s Selected Shorter Writings.

shane lems