Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

8 September, 2005   comments: (0) Changed Message   A Linchpin Doctrine, Forgotten in Today's Pulpits Martin Luther said it was key to understanding God's grace. Charles Spurgeon spoke of a prominent writer who testified that he never knew anyone who held a great theological error, who did not also hold a diminished belief in this one specific doctrine. AW Pink had this to say about it: "It is therefore a TESTING doctrine, especially of a preacher's soundness in the faith. A man's orthodoxy on this subject determines his viewpoint of many other doctrines of great importance". In other words, if you get this one wrong, you risk polluting all of the doctrinal waters that flow downstream from it. The doctrine I am referring to is the depravity of fallen man. Sure, all Christians believe that mankind is sinful to some extent, but see if your concept of depravity goes as far as the 'old truth' believed by the Puritans, Reformers, and early church fathers such as Augustine. What follows are a few excerpts from AW Pink's book "Man's Total Depravity": It is our deep conviction that the vital question most needing to be raised today is this: Is man a totally and thoroughly depraved creature by nature? Does he enter the world completely ruined and helpless, spiritually blind and dead in trespasses and sins? According as is our answer to that question, so will be our views on many others. It is on the basis of this dark background that the whole Bible proceeds. Any attempt to modify or abate, repudiate or tone down the teaching of Scripture on the matter is fatal. Putting the question in another form: Is man now in such a condition that he cannot be saved without the special and direct intervention of the triune God on his behalf? In other words, is there any hope for him apart from his personal election by the Father, his particular redemption by the Son, and the supernatural operations of the Spirit within him? Or, putting it in still another way: If man is a totally depraved being, can he possibly take the first step in the matter of his return to God? [Since the 19th century] the steady trend of a deteriorating Christendom has been to underrate the evil of sin and overrate the moral capabilities of man. . . . If the popular religion of the churches - including nine-tenths of what is termed "evangelical Christianity" - be tested at this point, it will be found that it clashes directly with man's fallen, ruined and spiritually dead condition. There is therefore a crying need today for sin to be viewed in the light of God's law and gospel, so that its exceeding sinfulness may be demonstrated, and the dark depths of human depravity exposed by the teaching of Holy Writ, that we may learn what is connoted by those fearful words "dead in trespasses and sins." The grand object of the Bible is to make God known to us, to portray man as he appears in the eyes of his Maker, and to show the relation of one to the other. It is therefore the business of His servants not only to declare the divine character and perfections, but also to delineate the original condition and apostasy of man, as well as the divine remedy for his ruin. Until we really behold the horror of the pit in which by nature we lie, we can never properly appreciate Christ's so-great salvation. In man's fallen condition we have the awful disease for which divine redemption is the only cure, and our estimation and valuation of the provisions of divine grace will necessarily be modified in proportion as we modify the need it was meant to meet. Watch Chris Carmichael's online presentations: "The History of Natural Man" and "The Fall" PC speakers turned on? The doctrine of total depravity is a very HUMBLING one. It is not that man leans to one side and needs propping up, nor that he is merely ignorant and requires instructing, nor that he is run down and calls for a tonic; but rather that he is undone, lost, spiritually dead. Consequently, he is "without strength," thoroughly incapable of bettering himself; he is exposed to the wrath of God, and unable to perform a single work which can find acceptance with Him. Almost every page of the Bible bears witness to this truth. [The] duty of God's servants is to stain the pride of all that man glories in, to strip him of his stolen plumes, to lay him low in the dust before God. However repugnant such teaching is, God's emissary must faithfully discharge his duty "whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear" (Ezekiel 3:11). This is no dismal dogma invented by the church in "the dark ages," but a truth of Holy Writ. George Whitefield said, "I 1ook upon it not merely as a doctrine of Scripture - the great Fountain of truth - but a very fundamental one, from which I hope God will suffer none of you to be enticed." It is a subject to which great prominence is given in the Bible. Every part of the Scriptures has much to say on the awful state of degradation and slavery into which the fall has brought man. The corruption, the blindness, the hostility of all Adam's descendants to everything of a spiritual nature are constantly insisted upon. Not only is man's utter ruin fully described, but also his powerlessness to save himself from the same. It is a SADLY NEGLECTED subject. Notwithstanding the clear and uniform teaching of Scripture, man's ruined condition and alienation from God are but feebly apprehended and seldom heard in the modern pulpit. In consequence of the guilty silence of the modern pulpit, a generation of churchgoers has arisen which is deplorably ignorant of the basic truths of the Bible, so that perhaps not more than one in a thousand has even a mental knowledge of the chains of hardness and unbelief which bind the natural heart, or of the dungeon of darkness in which they lie. Thousands of preachers, instead of faithfully telling their hearers of their woeful state by nature, are wasting their time by relating [other modern messages]. It is a doctrine of great PRACTICAL value as well as spiritual importance. The foundation of all true piety lies in a correct view of ourselves and our vileness, and a scriptural belief in God and His grace. There can be no genuine abhorrence or repentance, no real appreciation of the saving mercy of God, no faith in Christ, without it. It is a SALUTARY doctrine - one which God often uses to bring men to their senses. While we imagine that our wills have power to do what is pleasing to God, we never abandon dependence on self. Not that a mere intellectual knowledge of man's fall and ruin is sufficient to deliver from pride. Only the Spirit's powerful operations can effect that. Yet He is pleased to use the faithful preaching of the Word to that end. Nothing but a real sense of our lost condition lays us in the dust before God. Depravity, the kind of biblical depravity depicted above, should make us appreciate the Grace that is necessary for anyone to be saved. AW Pink explains how the Holy Spirit works to overcome this depravity in those who are saved: That miracle of grace is performed by the Holy Spirit in those who are "by nature the children of wrath, even as others" (Ephesians 2:3). But how little this is realized today. Insistence on this fact has all but disappeared from the modern pulpit, even in those who pride themselves on being orthodox. The work of the Spirit in the saving of sinners has no place in the creed of many a churchgoer; and where it is nominally acknowledged it possesses no real weight and exerts no practical influence. In the 16th century Martin Luther wrote: "If any man doth ascribe of salvation, even the very least, to the free-will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright" book excerpts The current teaching [today] is that He has made it "possible" for men to be saved, but that they themselves must decide whether or not they will be saved; thus the greatest of all God's works is left contingent on the fickle will of men as to whether it is a success or a failure. . . . The popular view [today] is that the sinner has to cooperate with the Spirit, that he must yield himself to His "striving," or he will not and cannot be saved. But such a pernicious and God-insulting concept repudiates two important facts: To affirm that the natural man is capable of cooperating with the Spirit is to deny that he is "dead in trespasses and sins," for a dead man is powerless to do any good. To say that the specific operations of the Spirit in a man's heart and conscience are capable of being so resisted as to thwart His endeavors is to deny His omnipotence. The solemn and unpalatable fact is that were the Spirit of God to suspend His operations, not a single person on earth would savingly benefit from the redemptive work of Christ. The natural man is such an enemy to God and so obstinate in his rebellion that he dislikes a holy Christ, and remains opposed to His way of salvation until his heart is divinely renewed [born from above]. Nothing but the miracle-working power of the Spirit can change them. Charles Spurgeon stated: Man is utterly and entirely averse to everything that is good and right. "The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8, 7). Turn you all Scripture through, and you will find continually the will of man described as being contrary to the things of God. What said Christ in that text so often quoted by the Arminian to disprove the very doctrine which it clearly states? What did Christ say to those who imagined that men would come without Divine influence? He said, first, "No man can come unto Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him"; but He said something more strong - "Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life." Herein lies the deadly mischief: not only that he is powerless to do good, but that he is powerful enough to do that which is wrong, and that his will is desperately set against everything that is right. Men will not come; you cannot force them to by all your invitations. Until the Spirit draw them, come they neither will, nor can. For more on this topic, read Spurgeon's sermon entitled "Human Inability": http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0182.htm Or listen to Spurgeon's sermon online (audio): http://sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?sermonID=WMUU0000000979 Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.44   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism