The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum The new gospel

I was curious if members here would agree or not with a little paper I wrote to submit to the elder board of a church I would like to attend, if their view accorded with my own on main points of Christain teaching. Here's what I submitted to an elder of the church, asking him to share it with his fellow elders, not knowing his response yet:

THE NEW AND THE OLD

The new way believes converts can always be made quickly by following certain steps
- Read propositions and accompanying Bible verses
- Agree to propositions and verses
- Repeat prepared words in the form of a prayer
- Believe you are a Christian
- Do not ever after doubt you are a Christian
- Join a church

In the old way converts were not so easy to make, nor to detect

- There used to be a “law work” which preceded conversion – The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Gal. 3.24); By the law is the knowledge of sin (Romans 3.20)

“Do we make void the law through faith? God forbid:Yea, we establish the law.” (Romans 3.31). Let us inquire which are the most usual ways of making void the law through faith? Now the way for a Preacher to make it all void at a stroke, is, not to preach it at all. This is just the same thing as to blot it out of the oracles of God. There may have been here and there an exempt case. One in a thousand may have been awakened by the gospel: But this is no general rule: The ordinary method of God is, to convict sinners by the law, and that only. The gospel is not the means which God hath ordained, or which our Lord himself used, for this end. – John Wesley

He who would have a fruitful ministry must have clear shining after the rain, by which I mean, first, law, and then, gospel. We must preach plainly against sin. In our ministry there must be rain, we must have the clouds and darkness, and divine justice bearing heavily upon the sinner’s conscience. Then comes in Christ crucified, full atonement, simple faith, and clear shining of comfort to the believing sinner. But there must be the rain first. He who preaches all sweetness and all love, and has nothing to do with warning men of the consequences of sin, may be thought to be very loving; but, in truth, he is altogether unfaithful to the souls of men. – Charles Spurgeon

- Regeneration was necessary and a great miracle – You must be born again (John 3.7)

IF any doctrines within the whole compass of Christianity may be properly termed fundamental, they are doubtless these two — the doctrine of justification, and that of the new birth: The former relating to that great work which God does for us, in forgiving our sins; the latter, to the great work which God does in us, in renewing our fallen nature. How great importance then must it be of, to every child of man, thoroughly to understand these fundamental doctrines! From a full conviction of this many excellent men have wrote very largely concerning justification, explaining every point relating thereto, and opening the Scriptures which treat upon it. Many likewise have wrote on the new birth: And some of them largely enough; but yet not so clearly as might have been desired, nor so deeply and accurately; having either given a dark, obtrude account of it, or a slight and superficial one. – John Wesley

Nicodemas was a man who was trying to go on before he had started. He illustrates the danger of assuming the vital thing, instead of making quite sure and certain that we have it. This is really the danger of assuming we are Christians when we are not Christians. It’s the danger of trying to grow before you’ve been born. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s the thing that so many are trying to do. They’re trying to develop, they’re trying to grow and to increase, but they haven’t any life. – D.M. Lloyd-Jones

- Prayer and assurance were no substitutes for repentance and faith in Christ

In our converts we must see true prayer, which is the vital breath of godliness. If there is no prayer you may be quite sure the soul is dead. Yet, we are not to urge men to pray as though it were the great gospel duty, and the one prescribed way of salvation; for our chief message is, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is easy to put prayer into its wrong place, and make it out to be a kind of work by which men are to live; but this you will, I trust, most carefully avoid. - C.H. Spurgeon

Never tell a man he is converted, let the Holy Ghost do that - D.L. Moody

It is absolutely right and essential that we should realize that repentance always comes at the very beginning of the gospel. It is important that we should realize this because there is a popular teaching at the present time which tells people not to worry about repentance. You come to Jesus. You make your decision. You come forward. You sign the card or whatever it is. Repentance? That will come later. But I am here to remind you that it does not come later. It is the first step. And I have a most uncomfortable feeling that it is because this is forgotten, that the Christian church is as she is. We are not to get people interested in religion anyhow, somehow. We must follow the apostolic pattern and here repentance is something that comes at the very beginning. It is amazing to me that anybody should be in any trouble over this. Repentance must come first because our state and condition by nature makes it an absolute necessity. - D.M. Lloyd-Jones

If there be any here who say, “As to the matter of faith, I need no caution, I scarcely need admonition, I believe, oh! you cannot tell how firmly.” No, my dear friend, and perhaps you cannot tell how weakly you believe. At any rate, do not mistake your belief in your own faith for faith in Christ; for belief in your own faith may be only self-conceit; but faith in Christ gives glory to God, and brings salvation to the believer. – C.H. Spurgeon

- Assurance of salvation used to be a troubling thing – give diligence to make your calling and election sure (1 Peter 1.10); Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves (2 Corinthians 13.5)

The saying, “Lord, Lord,” may imply, thirdly, many of what are usually styled good works. A man may attend the supper of the Lord, may hear abundance of excellent sermons, and omit no opportunity of partaking all the other ordinances of God. I may do good to my neighbor, deal my bread to the hungry, and cover the naked with a garment. I may be so zealous of good works as even to “give all my goods to feed the poor.” Yea, and I may do all this with a desire to please God, and a real belief that I do please him thereby; (which is undeniably the case of those our Lord introduces, saving unto him, “Lord, Lord;”) and still I may have no part in the glory which shall be revealed. If any man marvels at this, let him acknowledge he is a stranger to the whole religion of Jesus Christ; and, in particular, to that perfect portraiture thereof which he has set before us in this discourse. For how far short is all this of that righteousness and true holiness which he has described therein! How widely distant from that inward kingdom of heaven which is now opened in the believing soul, — which is first sown in the heart as a grain of mustard-seed, but afterwards putteth forth great branches, on which grow all the fruits of righteousness, every good temper, and word, and work. – John Wesley, on the sermon on the mount.

Alas, there is such a thing as a false peace; there are people who think they are at peace with God who are not. What then are the characteristics of a false peace? We have to consider this because it is in the New Testament. Take the people described in the sixth chapter of Hebrews; they had had certain experiences but finally they are lost, they were never regenerate at all. We have to test ourselves and prove ourselves and examine ourselves, say the Scriptures, whether we are in the faith or not (2 Corinthians 13.5). False peace generally results from thinking that faith simply means believing, and giving an intellectual assent to certain propositions and truths. You can subscribe to the truth, and give an intellectual assent to it, and yet not really be saved by it. There are men who have ‘a form of godliness but deny the power thereof’. The person with a false peace is generally found to be resting on his or her faith rather than on Christ and His work. They really look at their own believing rather than at Christ and what He has done. They say, ‘I now believe, therefore I must be all right’. They persuade themselves. They are not looking to Christ; they are looking to their own faith, and they turn faith into a kind of work on which they rest. Another characteristic of false peace is somewhat surprising and unexpected. The man who has a false peace is never troubled by doubts. But that is where the devil makes a mistake. The counterfeit is always too wonderful, the counterfeit always goes much further than the true experience. When the devil gives a man a false peace counterfeiting the true peace, he creates a condition in which the man is never troubled at all. He is in a psychological state. He does not truly face the truth, so there is nothing to make him unhappy. I say that this kind of person is always much too ‘healthy’. The people who have this false, counterfeit peace are much too glib, much too light-hearted. Compare them with the New Testament picture of the Christian. The New Testament Christian is ‘grave’, ‘sober’, and he approaches God with ‘reverence and godly fear’. Can you imagine the apostle Paul with glib clichés falling from his lips? His speech is ‘knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men’, and ‘I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling’. Another characteristic of the man with a false peace is that when this man falls again into sin he takes it much too lightly. This man says almost as soon as he has fallen, ‘It is all right, the blood of Christ covers me’. And up he gets and on he goes as if nothing had happened. You cannot do that if you have any true conception of what sin means, and what the holiness of God really is. This man with a false peace heals himself much too quickly, much too easily, much too lightly. It is because he takes sin as a whole too lightly. He is not like the person I have been describing whose faith is shaken by Satan when he falls into sin. - D.M. Lloyd-Jones

We have known many who, by hearing continually the most precious doctrine that belief in Christ Jesus is saving, have forgotten other truths, and have concluded that they were saved when they were not, have fancied they believed when as yet they were total strangers to the experience which always attends true faith. They have imagined faith to be the same thing as a presumptuous confidence of safety in Christ, not grounded upon the divine word when rightly understood, nor proved by any facts in their own souls. Whenever self-examination has been proposed to them they have avoided it as an assault upon their assurance, and when they have been urged to try themselves by gospel tests, they have defended their false peace by the notion that to raise a question about their certain salvation would be unbelief. Thus, I fear, the conceit of supposed faith in Christ has placed them in an almost hopeless position, since the warnings and admonitions of the gospel have been set aside by their fatal persuasion that it is needless to attend to them, and only necessary to cling tenaciously to the belief that all has been done long ago for us by Christ Jesus. - C.H. Spurgeon

It requires a great deal of diligence and labour to make sure our calling and election; there must be a very close examination of ourselves, a very narrow search and strict inquiry, whether we are thoroughly converted, our minds enlightened, our wills renewed, and our whole souls changed as to the bent and inclination thereof; and to come to a fixed certainty in this requires the utmost diligence, and cannot be attained and kept without divine assistance, as we may learn from Ps. 139.23 and Rms. 8.16. - Mathew Henry

'Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought;
Do I love the Lord, or no?
Am I his, or am I not?
- John Newton (1725-1807)

Editor’s note: the preceding quotations by the older preachers were typical of standard evangelical Christian teaching 150 years ago and before, and slowly faded away since then. It seems to the editor that the new way and the old cannot both be correct as they are opposed to each other, and therefore one class of teachers are, or were, doing a disservice, to say the least, to religious minded people.

hbdan,

I can appreciate you wanting to know from those given to serve this local assembly concerning their views on regeneration, etc. Does this church subscribe to any of the historic Reformation confessions, e.g., Westminster Confession, Baptist London Confession, Savoy Declaration, etc.??? There is an inestimable value given to confessional churches both to the 'clergy' and the 'laity'.

J.I. Packer wrote a little piece which addresses the subject you chose to address which you can find HERE

Pilgrim,
The church is conservative Baptist, whatever that means, and I don't know if they subscribe to any of the confessions. I'm quite sure they are orthodox theologically, but I am more interested in what they are practically - what do they teach specifically about the things in my little piece. I've found that Armenian Wesley and Calvinist Spurgeon agreed about these fundamental things, which, to me at least, are as important as believing what the creeds teach.

It was a good piece by Packer and showed the difference pretty well between now and then. Do you know if he ever addressed in detail what the old preachers called a law work, which I referred to? I've found this thread running thoughout the old preachers like Owen, who said for instance, "By this dispensation of the gospel do they endeavor to ingenerate in the hearts and souls of men “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” To prepare them also hereunto they cease not, by the preaching of the law, to make known to men “the terror of the Lord,” to convince them of the nature of sin, of their own lost and ruined condition by reason of it, through its guilt, as both original in their natures and actual in their lives; that they may be stirred up to “flee from the wrath to come,” and to “lay hold on eternal life.” And thus, as God is pleased to succeed them, do they endeavor to lay the great foundation, Jesus Christ, in the hearts of their hearers, and to bring them to an interest in him by believing."

It seems we don't have much conviction of sin like they used to in the old days, having read the testimonies of conversion back then. I wonder if it might be because preachers are afraid to offend their hearers away by seeming to be too hard on them. I remember hearing a reformed pastor preching on the Spirit convincing men of sin, as he came to it on his way through the book of John. He seemed to be asking his hearers if they had ever known conviction or not, but at the end half apologized for it, saying something to the effect that what was he supposed to do with the text as it was in the word. I thought he sort of blunted the sword at the end by his handling of it. But at least he made the attempt