Duty-Faith. 3
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"For ministers in this present day to address unconverted persons, or indiscriminately all in a mixed congregation, calling upon them to savingly repent, believe, and receive Christ, or perform any other acts dependent upon the new creative power of the Holy Spirit—is, on the one hand, to imply creature power, and on the other to deny the doctrine of special redemption."
The above "article of faith" is from an English denomination which still has considerable membership and influence. With almost all their other Articles of Faith we are in hearty accord, as with their marked separation from the world, and the simplicity of their worship. Nor have we one particle of sympathy with the delusive errors of creature ability or general redemption, rather do we unhesitatingly brand them both as lies of the Devil.
In his unregenerate state, fallen and depraved man is so completely the slave of sin and the captive of Satan, that he is altogether unable to deliver himself or take one step toward that deliverance; yes, his heart is so corrupt and his mind so at enmity against God, that he has no desire to be brought out of darkness into His marvelous light. Not until the Holy Spirit performs a miracle of grace upon the soul, does its possessor have any spiritual appetite or aspirations; and that miracle He performs only in those for whom Christ died—for God's elect.
Now if we resort to human reasoning it will logically follow that it is quite useless to exhort the unregenerate to turn unto God or come unto Christ; yes, to exhort those who are utterly incompetent to respond, will appear to be most inconsistent and the height of absurdity. But, my reader, the things of God cannot be encompassed by human reason, and the moment we attempt to measure them by the line of our "logic," we open the door for Satan to deceive by his subtleties. He will tell us that if the Lord our God is one Lord—then He cannot be a plurality of Persons; and that if we hold to three Divine Persons—we are most "inconsistent" in affirming the unity of God. Satan will tell us that if God is Love then He will never banish any of His creatures to everlasting woe; and that if we hold to eternal punishment of the wicked we are altogether "inconsistent" in believing in the Divine benevolence.
What, then are we to do? This—repudiate all reasoning upon spiritual things as utterly worthless, and believe with the simplicity of a child whatever God's Word teaches! The Apostles held firmly the revealed truth of a glorious and victorious Messiah, and they could not "harmonize" with that fact ahumiliated Messiah that would be crucified—the two things appeared to be altogether "inconsistent" and contradictory. But to them Christ said, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken" (Luke 24:25). That, my reader, should be a lasting warning to us of the utter inadequacy of human logic and philosophizing upon Divine things!
We must turn from the vain reasonings of the Unitarian, and while holding fast to the Unity of the Divine nature, we must also believe there are three co-equal Persons in the Godhead. We must turn from the vain reasonings of the Universalist, and while holding fast to the love of God, we must also believe in the eternal punishment of His enemies. And why? Because Holy Scripture teaches both!
In like manner, we must turn from the vain reasonings (as in the above Articles of Faith) of the hyper-Calvinist, and while holding fast to the total depravity and the spiritual inability of the natural man—we must also believe in his moral responsibility and accountability to God. It is the bounden duty of God's servants to tell the unregenerate that the reason why they cannot repent evangelically—is because their hearts are so wedded to their lusts; that the reason why they cannot come to Christ—is because their sins have fettered and chained them; that the reason why they hate the Light—is because they love the darkness. But so far from this excusing them—it only adds to their guilt! That so far from rendering them objects of pity—it exposes them as doubly deserving of damnation!
It is the preacher's business to show wherein spiritual inability consists—not in the lack of soul faculties—but in the absence of any love for Him who is infinitely lovely. Far be it from us to extenuate the wicked unbelief of the unregenerate!
The compilers of the above Article of Faith were very largely influenced by a piece written by William Huntington in 1791, "Excommunication—and the Duty of all men to believe weighed in the balance." We have space to quote only one paragraph, "When Peter said, 'Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out' (Acts 3:19), He who is exalted to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins, sent His Spirit and Grace with the Word to work repentance and conversion in His own elect. And though they spoke the Word, promiscuously to all, yet He only spoke it to His own. It was sent with the power of the Spirit. It never was sent with the Spirit of Faith to any but His own—'When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the Word of the Lord—and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed' (Acts 13:48). This is the life-giving commandment of the everlasting God, in the mouth of Zion's King. But what effect has it, or what power attends it, from the mouth of Mr. Ryland or the mouth of Mr. Fuller, when they make it the rule of a dead man's duty? Just as much as the adjuration of the sons of Sceva the Jew, when they abused the name of the Lord Jesus in commanding the spirit, who left the man and mastered them; and so these labor for the unconverted until they get into the gall of bitterness themselves . . . . You might just as well go to the gates of the grave and tell the sleeping dust it is their duty to come forth as Lazarus did. Mr. Ryland may just as well do the one as the other."
What a confused jumble is that! Confounding the Word of Power (Heb. 1:3) on the lips of Christ, with the Word of Reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18, 19) in the mouths of His servants.
What the Lord does, is none of our business. The commission He has given His servants is to preach the Gospel to every creature, and they certainly have not fully obeyed, until they bid their hearers "Repent—and believe the Gospel" (Mark 1:15).
Whom God quickens, is His own affair; ours is to faithfully warn the unsaved, to show wherein their sins consists (enmity against God), to bid them to throw down the weapons of their warfare against Him, to call upon them to repent (Acts 17:30), to proclaim the One who receives all who come to Him in faith. In allowing that Peter "spoke the Word promiscuously to all" Mr. Huntington pulled down what he labored so hard to build up.
To affirm that the ministry of the Apostles (recorded in the Acts) furnishes no precedent for God's servants today, is as foolish, as "inconsistent," and unwarrantable, as it would be to say that Acts 6 supplies no present rule for deacons to be governed by! The physical condition of those in the cemetery is vastly different from the moral state of the unregenerate still upon the earth. The former cannot sin, cannot reject Christ; the latter canand do. The former cannot read their Bibles or call upon God for mercy; the latter should! It is because the natural man possesses the same faculties of soul as does the regenerate that he is an accountable creature, responsible to use them for God instead of against Him.
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