A Fourfold Salvation. 2

I. Salvation from the PLEASURE of Sin.

It is here that God begins in His actual application of salvation unto His elect. God saves us from the pleasure or love of sin, before He delivers from the penalty or punishment of sin. Necessarily so, for it would be neither an act of holiness nor of righteousness, were He to grant a full pardon to one who was still a rebel against Him, loving that which He hates.

God is a God of order throughout, and nothing ever more evidences the perfection of His works, than the orderliness of them. And how does God save His people from the pleasure of sin? The answer is—by imparting to them a nature which hates evil and loves holiness. This takes place when they are born again, so that actual salvation begins with regeneration. Of course it does—where else could it commence? Fallen man can neither perceive his desperate need of salvation, nor come to Christ for it, until he has been renewed by the Holy Spirit.

"He has made everything beautiful in His time" (Eccl. 3:11), and much of the beauty of God's spiritual handiwork is lost upon us, unless we duly observe our "time." Has not the Spirit Himself emphasized this in the express enumeration He has given us in, "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he alsocalled; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified." (Romans 8:29, 30)? Verse 29 announces the Divine foreordination; verse 30 states the manner of its actualization. It seems strange, that with this Divinely-defined method before them, so many preachers begin with our justification, instead of with that effectual call (from death unto life—our regeneration) which precedes it. Surely it is most obvious that regeneration must first take place—in order to lay a foundation for our justification. Justification is by faith (Acts 13:39; Romans 5:1; Gal. 3:8), and the sinner must be Divinely quickened before he is capable of believing savingly.

Ah, does not the last statement made throw light upon and explain what we have said is so "strange"? Preachers today are so thoroughly imbued with free-willism that they have departed almost wholly from that sound evangelism which marked our forefathers.

The radical difference between Arminianism and Calvinism is that the system of the former revolves around the creature, whereas the system of the latter has the Creator for the center of its orbit. The Arminian allots to man the first place, the Calvinist gives God that position of honor. Thus the Arminian begins his discussion of salvation with justification, for the sinner must believe before he can be forgiven; further back he will not go, for he is unwilling that man should be made nothing of. But the instructed Calvinist begins with election, descends to regeneration, and then shows that being born again (by the sovereign act of God, in which the creature has no part) the sinner is made capable of savingly believing the Gospel.

Saved from the pleasure or love of sin. What multitudes of people strongly resent being told that they delighted in evil! They would indignantly ask if we suppose them to be moral perverts? No indeed—a person may be thoroughly chaste and yet delight in evil. It may be that some of our own readers repudiate the charge that they have ever taken pleasure in sin, and would claim, on the contrary, that from earliest recollections they have detested wickedness in all its forms. Nor would we dare to call into question their sincerity; instead, we point out that it only affords another exemplification of the solemn fact, that "the heart is deceitful above all things" (Jer. 17:9). But this is a matter that is not open to argument—the plain teaching of God's Word deciding the point once and for all, and beyond its verdict there is no appeal.

What, then, say the Scriptures? So far from God's Word denying that there is any delight to be found therein, it expressly speaks of "the pleasures of sin," yet it immediately warns us that those pleasures are but "for a season" (Heb. 11:25), for the aftermath is painful and not pleasant; yes, Studies in the Scriptures July, 1938 22 unless God intervenes in His sovereign grace, they entail eternal torment. So, too, the Word refers to those who are "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God" (2 Tim. 3:4).

It is indeed striking to observe how often this discordant note is struck in Scripture. It mentions those who "love vanity" (Psalm 4:2), "him that loves violence" (Psalm 11:5) "you love evil more than good" (Psalm 52:3), "scorners delight in their scorning" (Proverbs 1:22), "those who delight in the abominations" (Isaiah 66:3), "their abominations were according as they loved" (Hosea 9:10), "who hate the good and love the evil" (Micah 3:2), "if any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15). To love sin is far worse than to commit it, for a man may be suddenly tripped up and commit it through frailty.

The fact is, my reader, that we are not only born into this world with an evil nature—but with hearts that are thoroughly in love with sin. Sin is a native element. We are wedded to our lusts, and of ourselves no man is able to alter the bent of our corrupt nature any more than the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots. But what is impossible with man is possible to God, and when He takes us in hand this is where He begins—by saving us from the pleasure or love of sin. This is the great miracle of grace, for the Almighty stoops down and picks up a loathsome leper from the dunghill, and makes him a new creature in Christ, so that the things he once loved he now hates, and the things he once hated he now loves. God commences by saving us from ourselves. He does not save us from the penalty of sin—until He has delivered us from the love of it.

And how is this miracle of grace accomplished, or rather, exactly what does it consist of? Negatively, not by eradicating the evil nature, nor even by refining it. Positively, by communicating a new nature, a holy nature which loathes that which is evil and delights in all that is truly good. To be more specific.

First, God saves His people from the pleasure or love of sin—by putting His holy awe in their hearts, for "the fear of the Lord is to hate evil" (Proverbs 8:13), and again, "by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil" (Proverbs 16:6).

Second, God saves His people from the pleasure of sin—by communicating to them a new and vital principle, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 5:5), and where the love of God rules the heart, the love of sin is dethroned.

Third, God saves His people from the love of sin—by the Holy Spirit's drawing their affections unto things above, thereby taking them off the things which formerly enthralled them.

If on the one hand the unbeliever hotly denies that he is in love with sin, many a believer is often hard put to it to persuade himself that he has been saved from the love thereof. With an understanding that has been in part enlightened by the Holy Spirit, he is the better able to discern things in their true colors. With a heart that has been made honest by grace, he refuses to call sweet bitter. With a conscience that has been sensitized by the new birth, he the more quickly feels the workings of sin and the hankering of his affections for that which is forbidden. Moreover, the flesh remains in him, unchanged, and as the raven constantly craves carrion, so this corrupt principle in which our mothers conceived us—lusts after and delights in that which is the opposite of holiness. These things are they which occasion and give rise to the disturbing questions that clamor for answers within the genuine believer.

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