Joy Akin to Fear

I wrote yesterday that this week’s chapter in Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen had it’s glorious parts. Here’s the proof:

Religion cannot be made joyful by simply looking on the bright side of God. For a one-sided God is not a real God, and it is the real God alone who can satisfy the longing of our soul. God is love, but is He only love? God is love, but is love God? Seek joy alone, then, seek joy at any cost and you will not find it. How then may it be attained?

The search for joy in religion seems to have ended in disaster. God is found to be enveloped in impenetrable mystery, and in awful righteousness; man is confined in the prison of the world, trying to make the best of his condition, beautifying the prison with tinsel, yet secretly dissatisfied with his bondage, dissatisfied with a merely relative goodness which is no goodness at all, …. unable to forget his heavenly destiny and his heavenly duty, longing for communion with the Holy One. There seems to be no hope; God is separate from sinners; there is no room for joy, but only a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.

Yet such a God has at least one advantage over the comforting God of modern preaching — He is alive, He is sovereign, He is not bound by His creation or by His creatures, He can perform wonders. Could he even save us if He would? He has saved us — in that message the gospel consists. It could not have been foretold; still less could the manner of it have been foretold. That Birth. that Life, that Death — why was it done just thus and then and there? It all seems so very local, so very particular, so very unphilosophical, so very unlike what might have been expected. Are not our own methods of salvation, men say, better than that?…. Yet what if it were true? …. God’s own Son delivered up for us all, freedom from the world, sought by philosophers of all the ages, offered now freely to every simple soul, things hidden from the wise and prudent revealed unto babes, the long striving over, the impossible accomplished, sin conquered by mysterious grace, communion at length with the Holy God, our Father which art in heaven!

Surely this and this alone is joy. But it is a joy that is akin to fear. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Were we not safer with a God of our own devising — love and only love, a Father and nothing else, one before whom we could stand in our own merit without fear? He who will may be satisfied with such a God. But we, God help us — sinful as we are, we would see Jehovah. Despairing, hoping, trembling, half-doubting and half believing, trusting all to Jesus, we venture into the presence of the very God. And in his presence we live.

Thankful Thursday

It was another busy summer day and I’m tired. I’m thankful for my comfy bed, for windows that open to let in the breeze, and for window screens to keep out the mosquitoes. 

I’m thankful that there wasn’t really a crack in the dam last night. Yes, someone texted me during the power outage and told me that’s what happened. I didn’t believe it and I’m thankful that it wasn’t true. I’m thankful that God gives us people to design and build dams and to run things there. I’m thankful for our electricity, despite our way-too-frequent outages.

I’m thankful that God kept my family safe through another week. 

I’m thankful that God governs his creation graciously. I’m also thankful that God can save. 

Throughout this year I’m planning to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving each Thursday along with Kim at the Upward Call and others.

Christianity and Liberalism: Chapter 6

Well! I intended to put up a new post last night, and then work on this post, too, but the power went out and stayed out for a couple of hours. By the time it came back on I was ready to put on my jammies and wind down for the night. Then I’d just got things in order this afternoon and settled down on the back deck to blog when the power went out again. Here’s hoping I can get this post on Chapter 6 of Christianity and Liberalism up now, because it’s been hanging over my head for too long. (You remember that I am reading it because I am participating in this round Tim Challies’ Reading Classics Together, right?)

In this chapter, Machen spells out the contrast between the Christian view of salvation and that of modern liberalism. As with all the other doctrines covered so far in this book, the view of modern liberalism and true Christianity on the doctrine of salvation are completely different. I’ve listed some of the contrasting beliefs on the various teachings related to salvation below—not, mind you, in the exact order you’d find them in the book, but in an order that makes sense to me.

• The purpose of Christ’s death: Christianity teaches that the death of Christ was designed to have an effect upon God, but modern liberalism teaches that it was designed to have an effect only on man.
• The nature of the atonement: Christianity teaches that Christ’s death is substitutionary for sinner; modern liberalism sees it as merely an example for humankind or a demonstration for us. What’s more, the modern liberal argues that it is an absurd idea for one person to suffer in place of another, while Christianity argues that Jesus could do what he did because he “was no mere man but the eternal Son of God.” 

  It is perfectly true that the Christ of modern naturalistic reconstruction never could have suffered for the sins of others; but it is very different in the case of the Lord of Glory.

• The exclusivity of the gospel: The Christian gospel “binds salvation to the name of Jesus”; modern liberalism prefers a message  of “right living whatever creed men may chance to have.”
• The nature of God: Christianity claims that God needs to be reconciled to us; modern liberalism claims that is is only we who need to be reconciled to God.
• The necessity of the atonement: Christianity teaches that God’s wrath must be appeased; modern liberalism teaches that God can just “let by-gones be by-gones.”
• The necessity of the new birth: Christianity teaches that we can be saved only by a supernatural work of God; modern liberalism teaches that “the world’s evil may be overcome by the world’s good.”
• The nature of faith: The faith of Christianity is dogmatic; the faith of modern liberalism is undogmatic.
• The object of faith: In Christianity, the object of faith is Christ and his work; in modern liberalism the object of faith is our obedience to God’s law.
• The nature of our hope: The ultimate Christian hope is in the life to come; the hope of modern liberalism is making things better in this world now.
• The purpose of evangelism: The purpose of Christian evangelism is leading individuals to faith in Christ—the “saving of souls”; in modern liberalism it’s “spreading the blessings of Christian civilization (whatever that may be)….”

What a long, dense chapter this is! But it’s also glorious, especially in Machen’s description of the salvation that comes through Christ. Can you see from the list above why Machen begins the chapter by writing that “Liberalism finds salvation (so far as it is willing to speak at all of ‘salvation’) in man; Christianity finds it in an act of God”?

I’ve decided to post my favourite quote from this chapter tomorrow rather tack it on the end of an already lengthy post. And it’s time for me to go make supper now, anyway.