We will take a momentary break from our holiday frivolity to bring you a final installment from Iain Murray’s Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism. We will return tomorrow with more pointless drivel.

The last of four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day is that doctrine not kept in perspective can become a master rather than a servant. Iain Murray writes:

The final conclusion has to be that when Calvinism ceases to be evangelistic, when it becomes more concerned with theory than with the salvation of men and women, when the acceptance of doctrines seems to become more important than acceptance of Christ, then it is a system going to seed and it will invariably lose its attractive power. As we have seen, in his early ministries Spurgeon was opposed by those who believed that the Hyper-Calvinism of such eighteenth century-Baptists as John Gill represented the purest Christianity under heaven. That interpretation of history he knew to be wrong, not simply because it fell short of Scripture, but because its effect was to reduce endeavors for the conversion of sinners. ‘During the pastorate of my venerated predecessor, Dr. Gill, this Church, instead of increasing, gradually decreased . . . But mark this, from the day when Fuller, Carey, Sutcliffe, and others, met together to send out missionaries to India the sun began to dawn on a gracious revival which is not over yet.’
   In this connection it is noteworthy that just as renewed understanding of the free offer of the gospel led to the age of overseas missions in England it did also – by different means – in Scotland. As James Walker writes, Boston and the Morrow men ‘entered fully into the missionary spirit of the Bible’ and ‘were able to see that Calvinistic doctrine is inconsistent with world-conquering aspirations and efforts.’ Robert Moffat, Scots pioneer missionary in South Africa, was one of the outstanding results of this rediscovery. A Calvinist who made the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly one of the first publications of the infant missions press at Kuruman, Moffat had no hesitation in writing as follows in 1834:
   ‘I see nothing in the world worth looking after if it has not a direct reference to the gory and extension of the Redeemer’s kingdom; and were we always able to have a lively view of the myriads of who are descending into the horrible pit, our zeal would be proportionate. Much depends on us who have received the ministry of reconciliation, assured that God our Savior willeth the salvation of all.’
   To say this is not to deny that there have been preachers of Hyper-Calvinistic views whose preaching has been used In the conversion of many. Spurgeon was thankful for such men as John Warburton and John Kernshaw, men whose Christ-centeredness often enabled them to rise above their system. But in the hands of the general run of men who regarded Hyper-Calvinism as scriptural he believed the tendency of the preaching was inevitably injurious. By distorting and exaggerating truth the system misrepresented vital doctrines and made them offensive instead of appealing to the wider Christian world. He was convinced that the truths called Calvinistic would never be more widely received among the churches if the impression was allowed to prevail that these truths inhibited earnest evangelism, as they commonly did where Hyper-Calvinism became the accepted tradition. ‘I have seen,’ he says, ‘to my inexpressible grief, the doctrines of grace made a huge stone to be rolled at the mouth of the dead sepulcher of a dead Christ.’
   Hyper-Calvinism still exists today but what is needed far more than a renewed controversy on the subject is living evidence that the doctrines of grace are harmonious with true evangelistic preaching. The ministries of such men as Whitefield, Spurgeon, and, more recently, Lloyd-Jones, proved that more than a thousand books could ever do. Such preaching can only come from a baptism of new and deeper devotion to Christ. Much more than a change of opinion is needed. Spurgeon labored all his ministry for purity of doctrine but his final word was always this:
   ‘What is doctrine after all but the throne whereon Christ sitteth, and when the throne is vacant what is the throne to us? Doctrines are the shovel and tongs for the altar, while Christ is the sacrifice smoking thereon. Doctrines are Christ’s garments; verily they smell of myrrh, and cassia, and aloes out of the ivory places, whereby they make us glad, but it is not the garments we care for as much as the person, the very person, of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 120–122.

The third of four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day is the vanity of expecting to answer every question satisfactorily to human reason. Murray writes:

This controversy directs us to our need for profound humility before God. It reminds us forcefully of questions about which we can only say, ‘behold, God is great, and we know him not’ (Job 36:26), and, ‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!’ (Rom. 11:33). We do not know why God has purposed to save some and not others, nor why, given his desire for the good of all, many are left in their sin. We cannot say why his love to all men is not the same to the elect. We do not know how God works in us ‘to will and to do’ and yet leaves us wholly responsible for our own actions, nor how invitations to all to believe on Christ are to be harmonised with electing grace. As Crawford said, various attempts have been made to solve such mysteries, ‘but, it must be owned, they have been signally unsuccessful.’ He concludes: ‘We do well to be exceedingly diffident in our judgments respecting matters so unsearchable as the secret purposes of God.’
   It is to be feared that sharp contentions between Christians on these issues have too often risen from a wrong confidence in our powers of reasoning and our assumed ability to draw logical inferences. It is arguable that in the eclipse of Calvinistic beliefs at the beginning of the eighteenth century, at a time when ‘reason’ was being made the test of all religious belief, the would-be defenders of orthodoxy who became Hyper-Calvinistic fell into the very mistake which they were seeking to correct. As J. I. Packer writes, ‘In an increasingly rationalistic age, the reaction itself was rationalistic, within the Reformed supernaturalistic frame.’ Joseph Hussey, the standard bearer of the movement, certainly gave justification of that charge. The contentious spirit in which he advocated his views was a discredit to the truth. John Newton was not the only Calvinist to complain that in Hussey’s writings, ‘I frequently found more bones than meat, and seasoned with much of an angry and self-important spirit.’
   Spurgeon, like all the children of men, had to learn humility, and he was not always entirely blameless in this regard in his early years, but it was given to him to see how a system which sought to attribute all to the grace of God had itself too much confidence in the powers of reason. His mature judgment on that point, given below, constitutes a statement of great value. Probably as a young man Spurgeon was, at times, over concerned to assert his agreement with Calvin but in his deepening humility before God, and his refusal to trust in human reason, he truly followed in the spirit of that leader and of all true teachers in the church of God. It was Calvin, shortly before his death, who, on the words, ‘have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?’ (Ezek. 18:3) said this: ‘If any one again objects – this is making God act with duplicity, the answer is ready, that God always wishes the same thing, though by different ways, and in a manner inscrutable to us. Although, therefore, God’s will is simple, yet great variety is involved in it, as far as our senses are concerned. Besides, it is not surprising that our eyes should be blinded by intense light, so that we cannot judge how God wishes all to be saved, and yet has devoted all the reprobate to eternal destruction, and wishes them to perish. While we now look through a glass darkly, we should be content with the measure of our own intelligence (1 Cor. 13:12).’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 117–119.

The second of four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day:

   This controversy brings out the danger which is created when biblical truths are constantly presented to the non-Christian in the wrong order. Spurgeon believed all the truths commonly called Calvinistic but he did not believe that all the truths commonly so designated had to be presented to sinners in order to their conversion. As noted, he wanted to see both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. The tendency of Hyper-Calvinism was to make sinners want to understand theology before they could believe in Christ, as though ‘they cannot be saved until they are theologians.’ But the non-Christian can hear ‘the soul and marrow of the gospel’, that is, Christ as the Savior, and see his responsibility to repent and believe, without understanding ‘the doctrines commonly called Calvinistic’. It is with his responsibility, says Spurgeon, that ‘the sinner has the most to do’, whereas God’s predestining grace is the subject of with which ‘the saint has most to do. Let him praise the free and sovereign grace of God, and bless his name’.
   In so thinking Spurgeon was surely siding with what the wisest preachers in the church had always taught. While Reformed Confessions may begin with statements on the doctrine of God and divine decrees, that is not where preachers and teachers need to begin in addressing men about salvation. In the apostolic teaching to the lost, recorded in the book of Acts, nothing is said of the doctrine of election, while in the Epistles ‘it is scarcely ever omitted’. In accordance with his approach, Calvin, in the later editions of his Institutes, moved his treatment of election to follow teaching on justification. He recognized that Scripture generally introduces the doctrine of election to show believers the security and certainty of their salvation and to make clear who made them to differ. But when election is constantly introduced as a preliminary to hearing the gospel it inevitably comes to be seen as though it were designed to limit or obstruct the salvation of men and women. No one put this point better than John Bradford, the English reformer, whose words were often quoted by Whitefield, ‘let a man go to the grammar school of faith and repentance, before he goes to the university of election and predestination.’
   It ought not to be the business of the evangelist to teach God’s decrees to the unconverted. It is certainly God’s decree of salvation which is fulfilled in conversion but knowledge of that decree is no part of saving faith. As Crawford says, God’s decrees are his fixed purposes and his ‘secret designs for the regulation of his own procedure; but they are not rules of laws prescribed for the guidance of others . . . The doctrine of election is not to be regarded as what an apostle calls “milk that babes have need of,” but as the “strong meat that belongs to them who are of full age.” It ought not, therefore, to be prefixed to the calls of the Gospel, or placed in the fore-front of the calls and invitations which are therein addressed without restriction to all sinners. When so placed, it is apt to perplex and disquiet humble souls . . . No man can be of the number of the elect if he utterly neglects the appointed means of salvation; and no man can be of the number of the non-elect if he truly repents and unfiegnedly believes the Gospel. The salvation of a sinner is actually brought to pass, according to the plainest declarations of the Holy Scripture, in the way of faith and repentance, and no otherwise.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 114–117.

Iain Murray lists four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day. The first concerns the divisiveness of the Hyper-Calvinists, which Spurgeon deplored. Murray writes:

   Genuine evangelical Christianity is never of an exclusive spirit. Any view of the truth which undermines catholicity has gone astray from Scripture. This was the point which played a considerable part in Spurgeon’s inability to join with the Strict Baptists. He could speak of them as ‘about the best people in the world,’ but the practice of many of their churches in restricting the Lord’s table to Baptists grieved him. Christians may be divided over their beliefs concerning the outward sign; they are not divided in the spiritual reality of symbolized: ‘I always say to Strict Baptist brethren who think it is a dreadful thing for baptized believers to commune with the unbaptized: “But you cannot help it; if you are the people of God you must commune with all saints, baptized or not. You may deny them outward and visible sign, but you cannot keep them from the inward and spiritual grace.” If a man be a child of God, I do not care what I may think about him – if he be a child of God I do commune with him and I must.’
   But he saw this professed separation of Strict Communion Baptists from the rest of the visible church was frequently made the more serious by the tenets of Hyper-Calvinism. Its teachers, from Huntington onwards, has commonly made faith in election a part of saving faith and thus either denied the Christianity of all professed Christians who did not so believe, or at least, treated such profession with much suspicion. In so doing they had spread the idea that Calvinism is necessarily exclusive, that there is something inherent in its tenets which lead men to separate from others. Spurgeon deplored the way that the abuse of the doctrine of election had thus been used to foster division:
   ‘We give our hand to every man that loves the Lord Jesus Christ, be he what he may or who he may. The doctrine of election, like the great act of election itself, is intended to divide, not between Israel and Israel, but between Israel and the Egyptians, – not between saint and saint, but between saints and the children of the world. A man may be evidently of God’s chosen family, and yet though elected, may not believe in the doctrine of election. I hold there are many savingly called, who do not believe in effectual calling, and that there are a great many who persevere to the end, who do not believe the doctrine of final perseverance. We do hope that the hearts of many are a great deal better than their heads. We do not set their fallacies down to any willful opposition to the truth as it is in Jesus, but simply to an error in their judgments, which we pray God to correct. We hope that if they think us mistaken too, they will reciprocate the same Christian courtesy; and when we meet around the cross, we hope that we shall ever feel that we are one in Christ Jesus.

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 110–112.

Spurgeon, contra Hyper-Calvinism, believed in the universal love of God for all men. He also believed, contra Arminianism, in the particular electing love of God for his chosen bride.

From what [Spurgeon taught] on the universal love of God, Hyper-Calvinists deduced that Spurgeon did not believe in a special electing love which secures the salvation of all those for whom Christ died. Sometimes Christians of Arminian persuasion, with a superficial knowledge of Spurgeon, have reached the same conclusion on Spurgeon’s position. But this is the same mistake as can be made in reading the Bible itself. All references to divine love in Scripture are not to be interpreted as universal (Arminianism), neither are they all to be made particular (Hyper-Calvinism). There is a differentiation observable in Scripture. In speaking to Christians Spurgeon would often make the difference clear: ‘Beloved, the benevolent love of Jesus is more extended than the lines of his electing love . . . That [i.e. the love revealed in Matthew 23:37] is not the love which beams resplendently upon his chosen, but it is true love for all that.’ God’s special love ‘is not love for all men . . . There is an electing, discriminating, distinguishing love, which is settled upon a chosen people . . . and it is this love which is the true resting place for the saint.’
   Arminianism, by making universal benevolence the only love revealed in Scripture, denies the sovereignty of grace and leads men to suppose that God had to make salvation equally available to all. Hyper-Calvinism, on the other hand, denies, in the words of John Murray, ‘that there is a love of God that goes forth to lost men and is manifested in the manifold blessings which all men without distinction enjoy, a love in which non-elect persons are embraced, and a love that comes to its highest expression in the entreaties, overtures and demands of gospel proclamation.’
   While holding firmly to these important theological distinctions, Spurgeon did not believe that they were ones which had necessarily to be introduced in presenting the gospel to the unconverted and he warned against the kind of preaching which appears more concerned to safeguard orthodoxy than to save the lost. ‘Many good people think they ought to guard the gospel . . . When we protect it with provisos, and guard it with exceptions, and qualify it with observations, it is like David in Saul’s armour.’
   He refused to explain how men could be held accountable for not trusting in a Saviour in whom they were never chosen, on the grounds that Scripture itself offers no explanation. It was enough for him that there is a salvation to be preached with love to all and that he call all to come to Christ and to say, ‘If he died for all those who trust him, I will trust him; if he has offered so great a sacrifice upon the tree for guilty men, I will rely upon that sacrifice and make it the basis of my hope.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 97–99.

The third reason given by Murray for Spurgeon’s rejection of Hyper-Calvinism was the denial of human responsibility.

Spurgeon regarded an emphasis on man’s free-agency as absolutely essential to true evangelism. Because Scripture teaches that conversion is the work of God, Hyper-Calvinism fears to appeal for human action lest it interferes with God. But Scripture also presents conversion as the work of man and recognizes no inconsistency in calling upon men to be reconciled to God. Because it does not recognize this, Hyper-Calvinism fails to tell the unconverted that it is heir fault alone if they remain unsaved under the gospel and that their damnation will be their own work. Not only is faith in Christ a duty, but as Spurgeon often showed from Scripture, a refusal to believe on Christ will be found at last o be a greater offence than the iniquities of Sodom and Gomorrah. ‘Is it not the very summit of arrogance and the height of pride for a son of Adam to say, even in his heart, “God, I doubt thy grace; God, I doubt Thy love; God, I doubt Thy power”? I feel that, could we roll all sins into one mass, — could we take murder, blasphemy, lust, adultery, fornication, and everything that is vile, and unite them all into one vast globe of black corruption, — they would not even then equal the sin of unbelief.’’
     In his autobiography Spurgeon reports how in his early days, before he came to London, he found himself with some ministers and others of Hyper-Calvinistic views ‘who were disputing whether it was a sin in men that they did not believe the gospel.’ The shock he felt on that occasion was to remain with him all his days: ‘Whilst they were discussing, I said, “Gentlemen, am I in the presence of Christians? Are you believers in the Bible or are you not?” They said, “We are Christians, of course.” “Then,” said I, “does not the Scripture say, ‘of sin, because they believe not on Me?’ And is it not the damning sin of men, that they do not believe on Christ?”’
     Spurgeon used this incident in the second sermon of the first volume of the New Park Street Pulpit, entitled ‘The Sin of Unbelief, and, as we have seen, much of the contention of Hyper-Calvinism against his preaching concerned this point. ‘I hold,’ he says, ‘as firmly as any man living, that repentance and conversion are the work of the Holy Spirit, but I would sooner lose this hand, and both, than I would give up preaching that it is the duty of men to repent and believe and that it is the duty of Christian ministers to say to them, “Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.”’
     Spurgeon frequently spoke against Hyper-Calvinism in his sermons. He did so at some length in an ‘Exposition of the Doctrines of Grace’ at the time of the opening of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861 when he forcefully repudiated any idea of fatalism and insisted, ‘If he be lost, damnation is all of man; but, if he be saved, still salvation is all of God.’ God did not make men to be damned but, as Spurgeon showed from the Westminster Assembly’s Larger Catechism, wrath is only inflicted on men on account of sin: ‘This is no more than what the Methodist and all other Evangelical bodies acknowledge — that where men perish it is in consequence of their sin.’
     In his Preface to the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit for 1863 he made what was possibly the last of his open appeals to those whom he describes as ‘led captive by ultra-calvinistic theories’, calling upon them to ‘preach the whole gospel, instead of a part’: ‘Divine sovereignty is a great and indisputable fact, but human responsibility is quite as indisputable . . . Faith is God’s gift, but it is also the act of renewed manhood. Damnation is the result of justice, not of arbitrary predestination. O that the time were come when seeming opposites would be received, because faith knows that they are portions of one harmonious whole. Would that an enlarged view of the dispensations of God to man would permit men to be faithful to the human race, and at the same time true to the Sovereign Lord of all.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 84–87.

Last week, I began looking at four reasons why Spurgeon rejected Hyper-Calvinism. The first was the universal invitation of the gospel, denied by the Hyper-Calvinists. The second is

that it turned individuals away from their only sure warrant for trusting in Christ, namely, the objective commands and invitations of the gospel. Hyper-Calvinism denies such a universal warrant, applicable to all, and claims, instead, that Scripture only addresses invitations to specific people — to the penitent, the ‘heavy laden’, to the convicted, to the ‘sensible’ sinner and so on. Under such preaching, gospel hearers must first find some warrant within themselves for thinking that Christ’s invitations are addressed to them personally. Subjective experience is thus made a kind of necessary preliminary and qualification before anyone can trust in scriptural promises. Against this, Spurgeon held that the scriptural warrant for the unconverted to trust in Christ rests on nothing in themselves; the warrant lies in the invitation of Christ. His entire presentation of the gospel turned on the truth that no sinner has any more warrant than any other for trusting in Christ. The warrant lies in Scripture alone. Before a man has any willingness to be saved, it is ‘his duty to believe in Christ, for it is not man’s willingness that gives him a right to believe. Men are to believe in obedience to God’s command. God commandeth all men everywhere to repent, and this is his great command, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved”.’ Christ’s ambassadors are authorised to call ‘on all people of every clime and kindred, to believe the gospel with a promise of personal salvation to each and every one that believes.’ The message is not, ‘Wait for feelings’, it is, ‘Believe and live’. ‘I find Jesus Christ says nothing to sinners about waiting, but very much about coming.’
   To this the Hyper-Calvinists replied that if all are called to trust in Christ then such trust must involve them in believing a falsehood because Christ has not died for all. In their view, to preach a universal warrant is to deny that redemption is definite and particular. This was a further ground for charging Spurgeon with inconsistency, for he believed in particular redemption and yet summoned all to believe in Christ. But Spurgeon, along with Scripture, did not make, ‘Believe that Christ died for you’, part of faith to which the unbeliever is summoned. The call to the sinner is to commit himself to Christ, not because he has been saved but rather because he is lost and must come to Jesus in order to be saved.
. . .
   To deny a universal warrant, and to require subjective experiences before Christ is trusted, is bound to lead to confusion and legality. Such teaching makes men look at themselves instead of the Saviour. It leads people to suppose that possessing a broken heart and feeling the burden of sin are some kind of qualification for believing. But this is to require a discernment on the part of would-be converts for which Scripture does not ask. The truth is that individuals under conviction are unable to understand themselves and it is common for those who are most burdened to fear that they have no true sense of sin at all. The Holy Spirit is indeed given to convict of sin but Scripture says nothing about him assuring the convicted of their convictions prior to faith. On this Spurgeon says in the same sermon on ‘The Warrant of Faith’:
   ‘I believe the tendency of that preaching which puts the warrant for faith anywhere but in the gospel command, is to vex the true penitent, and to console the hypocrite; the tendency of it is to make the poor soul which really repents, feel that he must not believe in Christ, because he sees so much of his own hardness of heart. The more spiritual a man is, the more unspiritual he see himself to be . . . Often the most penitent men are those who think themselves the most impenitent.’
   ‘If we begin to preach to sinners that they must have a certain sense of sin and a certain measure of conviction, such teaching would turn the sinner away from God in Christ to himself. The man begins at once to say, “Have I a broken heart? Do I feel the burden of sin?” This is only another form of looking at self. Man must not look to himself to find reasons for God’s grace.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 71–74, 77–78.

Iain Murray presents four reasons for Spurgeon’s vehement opposition to Hyper-Calvinism. The first is the universal invitation of the gospel, which the Hyper-Calvinists denied and assiduously avoided.

Spurgeon believed that historic evangelicalism differed from Hyper-Calvinism over the persons to whom the promises of the gospel are to be preached. Hyper-Calvinism views gospel preaching solely as a means for the ingathering of God’s elect. It argues that such words as, ‘Trust in Christ and you will be saved’, should only be addressed to elect sinners for it is their salvation alone which the preacher should have in view. For a preacher to convey to his hearers the impression that they are all called to receive Christ, and to believe in him for salvation, is to deny, in the opinion of Hyper-Calvinists, the sovereignty of divine grace. It is to represent salvation as available to those whom God has excluded by the decree of election. Gospel preaching for Hyper-Calvinists means a declaration of the facts of the gospel but nothing should be said by way of encouraging individuals to believe that the promises of Christ are made to them particularly until there is evidence that the Spirit of God has begun a saving work in their hearts, convicting them and making them ‘sensible’ of their need.
   Spurgeon rejected the placing of such a restriction upon the invitation of the gospel. The gospel is ‘good news’ which God would have proclaimed throughout the world and to ‘every creature’. Its message is not simply a statement of facts. It also contains clear, unrestricted general promises, such as, ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned’ (John 3:18); ‘Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (Rom. 10:13); ‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely’ (Rev. 22:17). So the preacher has not done his work when he has spoken of Christ and proclaimed the historic facts of salvation. From there he must go on to urge the reception of Christ upon all men. In the name of God he must assure all of the certainty of their welcome and forgiveness on their repentance and faith. Thus Paul said to all his hearers at Antioch in Pisidia: ‘Be it known unto you, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses’ (Acts 13:38–9). The apostle evidently knew of no limitations. Christ was to be preached, ‘warning every man’ — any one, every one — ‘and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus’ (Col. 1:28). Words could scarcely be more embracing and individual.
   Hyper-Calvinists argued that gospel promises and invitations cannot be made universal because saving grace is special and particular. Spurgeon replied by asserting that the language of Scripture can be given no other meaning. In a sermon entitled ‘Apostolic Exhortation’, on Peter’s words to all his hearers, ‘Repent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out’ (Acts 3:19), he says:
   ‘Peter preached the Christ of the gospel — preached it personally and directly at the crowd who were gathered around him . . . Grown up among us is a school of men who say that they rightly preach the gospel to sinners when they merely deliver statements of what the gospel is, and the result of dying unsaved, but they grow furious and talk of unsoundness if any venture to say to the sinner, “Believe”, or “Repent”. To this school Peter did not belong — into their secret he had never come, and with their assembly, were he alive now, he would not be joined.’
   In another sermon he refers to brethren who ‘do not think it to be their duty to go into the highways and hedges’ and bid all, as many as they find, to come to the supper. Oh, no! They are too orthodox to obey the Master’s will; they desire to understand first who are appointed to come to the supper, and then they will invite them; that is to say, they will do what there is no necessity to do [i.e., present the gospel to those who are already saved]. In contrast with this, the apostles ‘delivered the gospel, the same gospel to the dead as to the living, the same gospel to the non-elect as to the elect. The point of distinction not in the gospel, but in its being applied by the Holy Ghost, or left to be rejected of man.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 69–71.

At the end of his notes on John 6:3, Charles Spurgeon wrote the following comment:

Read, write, print, shout, – “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” Great Saviour, I thank Thee for this text; help Thou me so to preach from it that many may come to Thee, and find eternal life!

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 50.

Throughout most of Spurgeon’s ministry, both he and his wife suffered greatly with ill health. But rather than remonstrate bitterly with God, he recognized trials as a necessary part of his sanctification, and as a part of fitting him for ministry. As Iain Murray writes, Spurgeon believed that without without difficulties,

he would have been ruined. Fallen men, though Christians, cannot long be surrounded by popularity and success without the special help of God. ‘Our God takes care always to have the security that, if He works a great work by us, we shall not appropriate the glory of it to ourselves. He brings us down lower and lower in our own esteem . . . Some trumpets are so stuffed with self that God cannot blow through them.’ ‘You may rest quite certain that, if God honors any man in public, he takes him aside privately, and flogs him well, otherwise he would get elevated and proud, and God will not have that.’ ‘Many a man has been elevated until his brain has grown dizzy, and he has fallen to his destruction. He who is to be made to stand securely in a high place has need to be put through sharp affliction. More men are destroyed by prosperity and success than by affliction and apparent failure.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 17–18.

It is with great pleasure, as usual, that I pick up another Iain Murray volume from Banner of Truth. This one, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism, is different from the others I’ve read in a couple of ways. First, it’s a paperback. (I pause here to direct a frown in the Banner’s direction. It was never published in hardcover, so I couldn’t even track down a used copy, as I often do, and I can't set it next to my cloth-bound Murray volumes on the shelf.) Second, it turns our critical eye one hundred and eighty degrees from its usual orientation, away from the Arminians, and toward the hyper-Calvinists.

Murray begins with a little biographical information, and comments on the remarkable scope of Spurgeon’s influence. Spurgeon’s preaching ministry in London spanned thirty-seven years, from 1854–1891. During that time, “If we take into account [Murray writes] both his spoken and written words, it is estimated that each weak his ‘congregation’ amounted to about a million people.” Beginning in 1855, his sermons were published weekly, and also compiled in annually, the 63rd and final volume published twenty-five years posthumously. And that was just his preaching. In addition, he published “about 50 other works and edited 28 volumes of The Sword and Trowel.” His publishers, Passmore and Alabaster, were kept busy — and in business — with publishing Spurgeon’s works alone. Murray writes:

   The obvious question is, how could any man retain such influence over so many people through such a long period? How can we account for the enduring interest? How could a man speak so often, and write so much, without losing his freshness and his appeal? It is true Spurgeon possessed unusual gifts, and that he worked very hard, but we cannot get anywhere near the real answer if we think merely in terms of what he was or did. The explanation lies in the Book that was in his hands, the Book that was his constant companion, and which he lived to preach and study. All the blessing he attributed to that source. His own thoughts, his own opinions, would have achieved nothing:
   ‘“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul”; nothing else but the living Word of God will convince, convert, renew and sanctify. He has promised that this shall not return unto him void; but He has made no such promise to the wisdom of men, or the excellency of human speech. The Spirit of God works with the Word of God . . . All his paths drop fatness; but man’s paths are barrenness.’
   In possessing the Bible Spurgeon believed that the church has an inexhaustible source of light and heat. What he said once of John Bunyan could be equally said of himself, ‘Prick him anywhere and his bloodline is bibline’. The content of his sermons and his books is plain, you might say, ordinary, Scripture. The energy of his prayerful adherence to Scripture is the true explanation of his work:
   ‘The Bible is a wonderful book . . . You can use it for a lamp at night. You can use it for a screen by day. It is a universal book; it is the Book of books, and has furnished material for mountains of books; it is made of what I call bibline, or the essence of books . . . This one book is enough to last a man throughout the whole of his life, however diligently he may study it.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 12–13.

The Christian life is not wrapped up in doing, but in being. It follows, then, that we ought not to judge ourselves primarily by our actions, but by our motives. John Piper writes:

A Personal Test for What Is Ultimate in Our Hearts
We should test ourselves with some questions. It is right to pursue likeness to Christ. But the question is, why? What is the root of our motivation? Consider some attributes of Christ that we might pursue, and ask these questions:

• Do I want to be strong like Christ, so I will be admired as strong, or so that I can defeat every adversary that will entice me to settle for any pleasure less than admiring the strongest person in the universe, Christ?
• Do I want to be wise like Christ, so that I will be admired wise and intelligent or so I can discern and admire the one who is most truly wise?
• Do I want to be holy like Christ, so that I will be admired as holy, or so that I can be free from all unholy inhibitions that keep me from seeing and savoring the holiness of Christ?
• Do I want to be loving like Christ, so that I will be admired as a loving person, or so that I will enjoy extending to others, even in sufferings, the all satisfying love of Christ?

The question is not whether we will have all this glorious likeness to Christ. We will. The question is: to what end? Everything in Romans 8:29–30—all of God’s work, his choosing us, predestining us, calling us, justifying us, bringing us to final glory—is designed by God not ultimately to make much of us, but to free us and fit us to enjoy seeing and making much of Christ forever.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 159–160.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” We would be wise to meditate on those words frequently, as this sickness of our hearts tends to infect our very best thoughts. This is well illustrated as John Piper asks if gratitude to God and even gratitude for the cross can be idolatrous.

. . . gratitude that is pleasing to God is not first a delight in the benefits God gives (though that will be part of it). True gratitude must be rooted in something else that comes first—namely, a delight in the beauty and excellency of God’s character. If this is not the foundation of our gratitude, then it is not above what the “natural man,” apart from the Spirit and the new nature in Christ, experiences. In that case “gratitude” to God is no more pleasing to God than all the other emotions that unbelievers have without delighting in him.
   You would not be honored if I thanked you often for your gifts to me but had no deep and spontaneous regard for you as a person. You would feel insulted, no matter how much I thanked you for your gifts. If your character and personality do not attract me or give me joy in being around you, then you will just feel used, like a tool or a machine to produce the things I really love.
   So it is with God. If we are not captured by his personality and character, displayed in his saving work, then all our declarations of thanksgiving are like the gratitude of a wife to a husband for the money she gets from him to use in her affair with another man.

. . .
It is amazing that this same idolatry is sometimes even true when people thank God for sending Christ to die for them. Perhaps you have heard people say how thankful we should be for the death of Christ because it shows how much value God puts upon us. In other words, they are thankful for the cross as a echo of our worth. What is the foundation of this gratitude?
   Jonathan Edwards calls it the gratitude of hypocrites. Why? Because “they first rejoice, and are elevated with the fact that they are made much of by God; and then on that ground, [God] seems in a sort, lovely to them. . . . They are pleased in the highest degree, in hearing how much God and Christ make of them. So that their joy is really a joy in themselves, and not in God” [Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, ed. John Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), 250, 251]. It is a shocking thing to learn that one of today’s most common descriptions of the cross—namely, how much of our value it celebrates—may well be a description of natural self-love with no spiritual value.
   Oh, that we would all heed the wisdom of Jonathan Edwards here. He is simply spelling out what it means to do all things—including giving thanks—to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). He is showing us what the gospel is for. It is for the glory of God. And God is not glorified if the foundation of our gratitude for the gospel is the worth of its gifts and not the value of the Giver. If gratitude for the gospel is not rooted in the glory of God beneath the gift of God, it is disguised idolatry. May God grant us a heart to see in the gospel the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ. May he grant us to delight in him for who he is, so that all our gratitude for his gifts will be the echo of our joy in the excellency of the Giver!

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 137–138.

I was reminded, as I read this, of gifts I receive from my children. Those gifts often have little or no value at all. I often have no use for them, except to clutter up my desk until such a time as I can discreetly tuck them away (I do usually save them). I have a box full of cards and crayon drawings that I will never part with, because those gifts are precious to me. Their value to me is certainly not in their quality or usefulness. I value them simply because their givers, little sinners with bad handwriting and spelling, who need me and owe me their gratitude, are precious to me. How much more ought this to be true of the gifts I receive from the Lord of the universe, who has no need of me and owes me nothing! Shouldn’t he be infinitely more precious to me?

In and through Christ believers are promised “all things” (Romans 8:32). What is “all things”? Surely not everything we want. By the worldly, materialistic measure of “all things,” we are promised much less than “all.” But at the same time, by that standard, we are promised much more than we imagine.

. . . The gospel has unleashed the omnipotent mercy of God so that thousands of other gifts flow to us from the gospel heart of God. I am thinking of a text like Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” This means that the heart of the gospel—God’s not sparing his own Son—is the guarantee that “all things” will be given to us.
   All things? What does that mean? It means the same thing that Romans 8:28 means: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” God takes “all things” and makes them serve our ultimate good. It doesn’t mean we get everything our imperfect hearts want. It means we get what’s good for us.

. . .
Compare this with Philippians 4:19: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Every need! Does that mean we never have hard times? Evidently not. Seven verses earlier Paul said, “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (vv. 12-13). This is amazing. God meets “every need” (v. 19). Therefore, I have learned how to face “hunger” and “need” (v. 12). I can do “all things” through him who strengthens me—including be hungry and be in need! I conclude from this that for Christians everything we need—in order to do God’s will and magnify him—will be supplied.
   According to Romans 8:32 this was secured by the gospel. It is stated even more strikingly in Romans 8:35–37. Here the love of Christ guarantees that we will be more than conquerors in every circumstance, including the circumstance of being killed. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Astonishing! We are more than conquerors as we are being killed all day long! So nothing can separate us from Christ’s love, not because Christ’s love protects us from harm, but because it protects us from the ultimate harm of unbelief and separation from the love of God. The gospel gift of God’s love is better than life.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 124–125.

What did the death of Christ accomplish? Depending on the context of the question, there are a number of correct answers. Ultimately, however, there was one single purpose.

Whether one thinks of the work of Christ as accomplishing reconciliation or propitiation or penal satisfaction or redemption or justification or forgiveness of sins or liberation, the aim of them all is summed up in the ultimate gift of God himself. First Peter 3:18 is the clearest statement: “Christ also suffered once for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” Ephesians 2: 13–18 is the next most explicit statement of this truth. “In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blod of Christ . . . . That he might . . . Reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross. . . . . For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” The ultimate aim of the blood of Christ is that we be “brought near” to God and “have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 120–121.

As we enjoy our gifts from God, how do we guard against valuing the gifts above the giver? John Piper examines “The Line Between God-Cherishing Gratitude and Gift-Cherishing Idolatry.”

How do all the gifts that flow to us from the gospel relate to God as the ultimate and all important gift of the gospel? The challenge . . . is to walk a fine line between belittling the gifts of God and making the gifts of God into god. It’s the line between God-cherishing gratitude and gift-cherishing idolatry. The truth I will try to unfold is that all the gifts of God are given for the sake of revealing more of God’s glory, so that the proper use of them is to rest our affections not on them but through them on God alone.
   What I mean by resting our affections is that the desires of our hearts find their end point—their goal, their resting place—only in God, even though, as it were, they ride up to God on a thousand gifts. Augustine said, “thou hast made us for thyself and our heart is restless until it repose in thee.” This restlessness is a good thing when we find ourselves delighting in one of God’s gifts. Gifts of God should be enjoyed, whether it be the gift of salvation (1 Pet. 1:4–5) or food (1 Tim. 4:3; 6–7). But if our affections rest there, we become idolaters. So the aim of this chapter and the next is to show from scripture how blood-bought gifts—one could say, gifts of the gospel—point away from themselves to the one great gift of the gospel, God himself.

. . .
Consider first God’s manifold gifts that come to us in the accomplishment of our salvation. How shall we rejoice in them? Predestination is one of the first gifts of the gospel, even though it preceded the death of Christ in eternity. The spotless lamb, Jesus Christ, who was slain for our sins, was foreknown before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:20). Because of his, God gave us grace before the ages began (2 Tim. 1:9). Therefore, Paul says, “God predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:5) This predestination was God’s purpose to adopt us and make us holy and blameless before him in love.
   How then shall we rejoice in this amazing blood-bought gift of predestination? Paul gives the answer in Ephesians 1:6. “He predestined us . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace” (NASB). God’s aim in our predestination is that we admire and make much of the glory of his grace. In other words, the aim of predestining us is that grace would be put on display as glorious, and that we would see it and savor it and sing its praises. The glory of grace is the glory of God acting graciously. Therefore, the aim of predestination is that we savor God in his gracious saving action of predestination. The goal of predestination, and of the gospel acts that purchased it, is that we would be glad in praising the grace of God.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 117–118.

If it is true, as John Piper says, that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him,” how does godly sorrow fit into the Christian life?

In a sermon from 1723, titled “The Pleasantness of Religion,” Edwards addressed the question: How does the centrality of savoring the glory of God in the gospel relate to the pain of gospel-awakened contrition? Here is the key insight:

There is repentance of sin: though it be a deep sorrow for sin that God requires as necessary to salvation, yet the very nature of it necessarily implies delight. Repentance of sin is a sorrow arising from the sight of God’s excellency and mercy, but the apprehension of excellency or mercy must necessarily and unavoidably beget pleasure in the mind of the beholder. ’Tis impossible that anyone should see anything that appears to him excellent and not behold it with pleasure, and it’s impossible to be affected with the mercy and love of God, and his willingness to be merciful to us and love us, and not be affected with pleasure at the thoughts of [it];but this is the very affection that begets true repentance. How much soever of a paradox it may seem, it is true that repentance is a sweet sorrow, so that the more of this sorrow, the more pleasure. [The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader (Yale University Press, 1999), 18–19.]

   This is astonishing and true. What he is saying is that to bring people to the sorrow of repentance and contrition, you must bring them first to see the glory of God as their treasure and their delight. This is what happens in the gospel. The gospel is the revelation of “the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). True sorrow over sin is shown by the gospel to be what it really is—the result of failing to savor “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). The sorrow of true contrition is sorrow for not having God as our all-satisfying treasure. But to be sorrowful over not savoring God, we must see God as our treasure, our sweetness. To grieve over not delighting in God, he must have become a delight to us.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 107–108.

Many people look for the Holy Spirit to work in spectacular, miraculous ways. But the Holy Spirit does not exist to amaze us with his power. In fact, he has no interest in doing so. His one purpose is to display the glory of Christ in the gospel. John Piper writes:

[The Holy Spirit] will not do his sanctifying work by the use of his direct divine power. He will only do it by making the glory of Christ the immediate cause of it. This is the only way he works in evangelism, and this is the only way he works in sanctification.
   In evangelism the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of sinners to see the glory of Christ who is faithfully preached in the gospel. If Christ is not preached and his glory is not exalted, the Holy Spirit does not open our eyes, for there is no glorious Christ for us to see. The Holy Spirit, we might say, flies in perfect formation be hind the jet of the Christ-exalting gospel. he does his miraculous heart-opening work to make Christ seen and savored as he is preached in the gospel. The Spirit was sent to glorify the Son of God (John 16:14), and He would not save anyone apart from drawing their attention to the glory of the Son in the gospel.
   So it is with sanctification. We are transformed into Christ’s image—that’s what sanctification is—by steadfast seeing and savoring of the glory of Christ. This too is from the Lord who is the Spirit. This is the work of the Spirit: to shine the light of truth on the glory of Christ so that we see it for what it really is, namely, infinitely precious. The work of the Holy Spirit in changing us is not to work directly on our bad habits but to make us admire Jesus Christ so much that sinful habits feel foreign and distasteful. My aim here is not to spell this out in detail, but to point it out so that the gospel does its work decisively by revealing the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Therefore, if we neglect the glory of God in Christ as the greatest gift of the gospel, we cripple the sanctifying work of the church.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 91–92.

Raised as an evangelical Lutheran, the doctrine of Justification has been pretty well drilled into me as the supreme doctrine of the church, with only sola Scriptura as its equal. I’m grateful for that heritage, and the foundation that was laid early in life. These doctrines are the very bedrock of my faith, and without them, I would have nothing to believe in.

In the last several months, however, another doctrine has absolutely captivated my heart. I cannot think of it without being utterly overwhelmed. Whenever I encounter it, I am stopped in my tracks and must simply sit and contemplate it at length. It is the doctrine of Adoption. I have more to say about that, but first this, from J. I. Packer:

   Sonship to God . . . Is not a natural but an adoptive sonship, and so the New Testament explicitly pictures it. . . . The Apostles proclaim that God has so loved those whom he redeemed on the cross that he has adopted them as heirs, to see and share the glory into which his only begotten son has already come. “God sent his Son . . . To redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full [adoptive] rights of sons” (Gal 4:4–5): we, that is, who were “foreordained unto adoption as sons by Jesus Christ unto himself” (Eph 1:5 RV). “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is what we are! . . .” (1 Jn 3:1–2).
   Some years ago, I wrote:

You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator. In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ tught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctly Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God. (Evangelical Magazine 7, pp. 19–20)

This still seems to me wholly true, and very important. Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 201–202 [bold added]

I have a sort of mental picture of God’s adoption process. It is perhaps rather lame; I’m sure I can’t capture such profound truth in a parable of my own design.

There is a fabulously wealthy man who wants to adopt a son. It’s not that he needs to. He already has a son — and not just any son, but a son who is perfect in every way. This man is entirely happy with his natural son, and has no need of another. He loves his son, and his son loves him.

The son he wants to adopt is not just anyone, either. He knows this boy. He has seen him on several occasions. He knows this child. This child is not the typical child that most parents seek to adopt. He is no adorable, cooing baby. He is a homeless child, a loner, living in alleys and abandoned buildings. But he isn’t just any homeless child, either. He has a disease. His disease has deformed his body and twisted his mind. He is filthy, and he stinks. He is vicious and violent, entirely antisocial. He survives by scavenging and stealing. No one would want him.

The man tracks this boy down, finding him in an alley scrounging through a dumpster. He approaches the boy with a smile and an outstretched hand. The boy runs. The man follows him, tracking him to a condemned building. Cornered, the boy begins hurling debris at the man, shouting threats and obscenities.

All the while, the man looks upon him and loves him. He wants him. He wants nothing more than to take him home and lavish his wealth and affection on him. And so he does. He subdues the boy and takes him to his home. He feeds him, clothes him, and treats his illness. He loves him.

And he gives him his name and writes him into his will. This child who was nobody, with no hope, diseased and ugly, hateful and hated, is now a privileged son, heir to a fortune; and he is loved. He has been adopted.

He is me.

I love this doctrine of adoption.

Continuing from last week’s entry from Piper’s God Is the Gospel (and very much in tune with yesterday’s post on Thomas Chalmers), in which we saw that the Word of God is confirmed by none other than his own Spirit, we will now see how that happens, and how it does not. Piper writes:

The Unmistakable Majesty of God Manifest in the Word
But how does this persuasion happen? Is it by the Spirit telling us a new fact—namely, the whisper, “This book is true”? Do we hear a voice? That is not the way it happens. The glory of God in the gospel does not need another witness of that sort. How then does the internal testimony of the Spirit work in conjunction with the glory of God in the gospel? What does the Spirit do?
   The answer is not that the Spirit gives us added revelation to what is in Scripture, but that he awakens us, as from the dead, to see and taste the divine reality of the glory of Christ in the gospel. (Recall the seeing of 2 Corinthians 4:4, 6.) This sight authenticates the gospel as God’s own Word. Calvin says, “Our Heavenly Father, revealing his majesty [in the gospel], lifts reverence for Scripture above the realm of controversy” [Institutes, 1:92 (I.vi.13).]. This is the key for Calvin: the witness of the gospel is the immediate, unassailable, life-giving revelation to the mind of the majesty of od manifest in the Word itself—not in new revelation about it.
   We are almost at the bottom of this experience of the internal testimony of the Spirit. Here are the words that will take us deeper.

Therefore illumined by [the Spirit’s] power, we believe neither by our own [note this!] nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of god himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. [John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Westminster Press, 1960), 1:80 (I.vii.5).]

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 79.

It is a great indication of the hubris of men that the Roman Catholic religion avers that the authority of Scripture has been given it by ecclesiastical decree. Calvin, of course, agrees with me:

Not the Church but the Spirit Confirms the Word
As John Calvin pondered the basis of our confidence in the gospel, he was dismayed that the Roman Catholic Church made the authority of the Word dependent on the authority of the church:

A most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men! [John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Westminster Press, 1960), 1:75 (I.vii.1).]

   How then shall we know for sure that the gospel is the word of God? How shall we be sure, not the just that these things happened, but that the biblical meaning given to the great events of the gospel is the true meaning—God’s meaning? Calvin continues:

The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not then find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit therefore who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrated into our hearts to persuade us that the faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded . . . because until he illumines their minds, they ever waver among many doubts! [Ibid. 79 (I.vii.4).]

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 78–79.

The claim that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God is becoming increasingly popular. We have heard this from the secular world for as long as I can remember, but now it is no longer surprising to hear it from those who profess to be Christians, as well. The following excerpt from Piper’s God Is the Gospel shows why that claim can never be true.

Knowing the Son Means Knowing the Father
Only the Son and the Father have the capacity to know each other fully, since they have a wholly unique essence—they are God. Therefore, we cannot know them truly if it is not granted to us by a special work of grace. God the Spirit, in the service of the glory of God the Son, (John 16:14), grants us the spiritual capacity to know God the Father (John 3:6–8). Because of that new capacity to know God, the Son takes his divine prerogative to make the Father known to us. Thus Jesus says, “No one knows the Son except the Father,. And no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). If the Son chooses to reveal the Father to us, then we have fellowship with both the Father and the Son through the life-giving Spirit. In this fellowship we enjoy seeing and savoring the glory of the Father and the Son.
   The Father and the Son are so inseparably one in glory and essence that knowing one implies knowing the other, and loving one implies loving the other. “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15). Confessing Christ, the Son of God, results in the Father’s coming to us and manifesting himself to us. The Father and the Son are so united that to have one is to have the other. “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23). “Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9).
   There is no possibility of knowing God or having a saving relationship with God without knowing and trusting his Son. This is made clear over and over—both negatively and positively. “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him” (John 5:23). “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (John 8:19). “Whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Matt. 10:40). The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 72–73.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; —2 Corinthians 4:3–7

The gospel is not about you. You most likely already know that. The gospel is about the glory of God in Christ. That is what God’s intent is, and it must be ours, too. Did you know that that is what the gospel is to Satan, as well? The “god of this world” hates the gospel and blinds the eyes of unbelievers to it because seeing the glory of God in Christ displayed is what liberates people from his power.

Liberator from the Blinding Work of Satan
Compare Christ’s commission to Paul in sending him out as his apostle. Christ says that he is sending Paul to the Gentiles in order “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18). In other words, in the ministry of the gospel through Paul the eyes of the spiritually blind are opened, light dawns in the heart, the power of Satan’s darkness is broken, faith is awakened, forgiveness of sins is received, and sanctification begins.
   In 2 Corinthians 4:7 Paul describes himself as a jar of clay with a powerful gospel inside: “We have this treasure [the gospel of the glory of Christ] in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” His ministry is not to exalt himself. God sees to it that Paul has little ground for boasting-even among men. Afflictions and weaknesses abound (4:8–18). But that is no hindrance to letting the glory of the gospel shine. “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (4:5).

Let There Be Light!
God uses weak, afflicted clay pots to carry “the surpassing power” of “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” What happens when these clay pots preach the gospel and offer themselves as servants? Verse 6 gives the answer: “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” This means that in the dark and troubled heart of unbelief, God does what he did in the dark and unformed creation at the beginning of our world. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. So he says to the blind and dark heart, “Let there be light,” and there is light in the heart of the sinner. In this light we see the glory of God in the face of Christ.
   Notice the Parallels between [2 Corinthians 4] verses 4 and 6.

Verse 4			Verse 6
Satan blinds to			God Creates
the light			the light
of the gospel			of the knowledge
of the glory			of the glory
of Christ	>---/	/--->	of God
who is the image of God	>---/	/--->	in the face of Christ

In verse 4 Satan blinds the mind; in verse 6 God creates light in the heart. Verse 4 describes the problem; verse 6 describes the remedy. These two verses are a description of the condition of all people before conversion, and what happens in conversion to bring about salvation. More than any part of the Bible that I know of, the connections between 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 6 shed light on the ultimate meaning of good in the term good news.

The Gospel Is the Glory of Christ
Let’s be clear that we are talking about the gospel in these verses. The fact that Paul does not mention the facts of Christ’s life and death and resurrection does not mean he has left them behind. They remain the historical core of the gospel. There is no gospel without the declaration of Christ crucified for sinners and risen from the dead (1 Cor. 15:1–4). This is assumed here. When Paul speaks of “the gospel of the glory of Christ,” he means that the events of the gospel are designed by God to reveal the glory of Christ. This is not incidental to the gospel—it’s essential. The gospel would not be good news if it did not reveal the glory of Christ for us to see and savor. It is the glory of Christ that finally satisfies our soul. We are made for Christ, and Christ died so that every obstacle would be removed that keeps us from seeing and savoring the most satisfying treasure in the universe—namely, Christ, who is the image of God.
   The supreme value of the glory of Christ revealed in the gospel is what makes Satan so furious with the gospel. Satan is not mainly interested in causing us misery. He is mainly interested in making Christ look bad. He hates Christ. And he hates the glory of Christ. He will do all he can to keep people from seeing Christ as glorious. The gospel is God’s instrument for liberating people from exulting in self to exulting in Christ. Therefore Satan hates the gospel.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 60–62.

Once we have been born again and have come to understand Christ as our highest good, when we have learned that our greatest joy is in “seeing and savoring the beauty and value of God,” we still have a problem. As long as we are in the flesh, we will have poor eyesight. “For now we see in a mirror dimly . . .” (1 Corinthians 13:12). We cannot see God clearly, and so cannot enjoy him fully.

The ability to see spiritual beauty is not unwavering. There are ups and downs in our fellowship with Christ. There are times of beclouded vision, especially if sin gets the upper had in our lives for a season. “Blessed are the poor in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). Yes, and this in not an all-or-nothing reality. There are degrees of purity and degrees of seeing. Only when we are perfected in the age to come will our seeing be totally unclouded. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).
   This is why Paul prayed the way he did for the believers of Ephesus. “[May God] give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what in the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” (Eph, 1:17–19). Notice Paul’s distinction between the eyes of the head and the eyes of the heart. There is a heart-seeing, not just a head-seeing. There is a spiritual seeing and a physical seeing. And what he longs for us to see spiritually is “the hope to Which [God] has called” us, “the riches of his glorious inheritance,” and “the immeasurable greatness of his power.” In other words, what he wants us to see is the spiritual reality and value of these things, not just raw facts that unbelievers can read and repeat. That is not the point of spiritual seeing. Spiritual seeing is seeing spiritual things for what they really are—that is, seeing them as beautiful and valuable as they really are.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 55–56.

John Piper writes that “Justification is the heart of the gospel, not its highest good.” By that he means that justification is the most important action that takes place in the gospel transaction, but as great as it is, it is only the means to an end. What, then, is the “highest good” of the gospel? Is it simply to get us to heaven, and if so, why would you want to go there? Is it because there is suffering and injustice here, and in heaven “justice and beauty will finally be everywhere”? Or perhaps it is just because the alternative is so painful. Those answers seem very reasonable, but they miss the point. Piper offers the following illustration:

Suppose I get up in the morning and as I am walking to the bathroom I trip over some of my wife’s laundry that she left lying on the hall floor. Instead of simply moving the laundry myself and assuming the best in her, I react in a way that is all out of proportion to the situation and say something very harsh to my wife as she is waking up. She gets up, puts the laundry away, and walks downstairs ahead of me. I can tell by the silence and from my own conscience that our relationship is in serious trouble.
   As I go downstairs my conscience is condemning me. Yes, the laundry should not have been there. Yes, I might have broken my neck. But those thoughts are mainly the self-defending flesh talking. The truth is that my words were way out of line. Not only was the emotional harshness way out of proportion to the fault, “Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?” (1 Cor. 6:7).
   So as I enter the kitchen there is ice in the air, and her back is blatantly toward me as she works at the kitchen counter. What needs to happen here? The answer is plain: I need to apologize and ask her forgiveness. That would be the right thing to do. But here’s the analogy: Why do I want her forgiveness? So that she will make me my favorite breakfast? So that my guilt feelings will go away and I will be able to concentrate at work today? So there will be good sex tonight? So the kids won’t see us at odds? So that she will finally admit that the laundry shouldn’t have been there?
   It may be that every one of those desires will come true. But they are all defective motives for wanting forgiveness. What’s missing is this: I want to be forgiven so that I can have the sweet fellowship of my wife back. She is the reason I want to be forgiven. I want the relationship restored. Forgiveness is simply a way of getting obstacles out of the way so that we can look at each other again with joy.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 44.

What does the world think of when it hears the word “Christian”? I’m afraid what it often thinks of is a people who do certain things and don’t do others, who practice certain rituals and traditions. To an extent, I suppose that is unavoidable; we do, or at least ought to, behave in ways that are different than theirs. I suppose it is reasonable that that would be the first thing they see that distinguishes us from the world in general. But it is a shame if they never see more than that, if they never see what motivates us and energizes us, if they are allowed to believe the goodness they perceive in us is our own goodness. What the world needs to see is not human goodness; they can manage that themselves. What the world needs to see is Christ-likeness. It needs to see lives that point to our Creator and Redeemer. The gospel we preach and live must not point to our improved lives — any religion can produce that — but to God himself.

When we celebrate the gospel of Christ and the love of God, and when we lift up the gift of salvation, let us do it in such a way the people will see through it to God himself. May those who hear the gospel from our lips know that salvation is the blood-bought gift of seeing and savoring the glory of Christ. May they believe and say, “Christ is all!” or, to use the words of the psalmist, “May those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!”
   May the church of Jesus Christ say with increasing intensity, “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup” (Ps. 16:5). “As a dear pants for the flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God, my soul thirst for God, for the living God” (Ps. 42:1). “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Phil. 1:23).
   The world needs nothing more than to see the worth of Christ in the work of words of his God-besotted people. This will come to pass when the church awakens to the truth that the saving love of God is the gift of himself, and that God himself is the gospel.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 16–17.

Today’s “gospel” is hopelessly man-centered. It is Your Best Life Now, or the horrible old cliché, repeated by Rick Warren in The Purpose of Christmas, “When the Romans nailed Jesus to a cross, they stretched his arms as wide as they could. With his arms wide open, Jesus was physically demonstrating, ‘I love you this much! I love you so much it hurts! I’d rather die than live without you!’” It is a gospel that is all about us, with Christ as a means to an end — our salvation, in the evangelical version, and in the liberal version, our personal satisfaction and fulfillment.

John Piper challenges us to examine our gospel, and see if the true gospel isn’t much more than we think.

Today—as in every generation—it is stunning to watch the shift away from God as the all-satisfying gift of God’s love. It is stunning how seldom God himself is proclaimed as the greatest gift of the gospel. But the Bible teaches that the best and final gift of God’s love is the enjoyment of God’s beauty. “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 276:4). The best and final gift of the gospel is that we gain Christ. “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8). This is the all-encompassing gift of God’s love thorough the gospel—to see and savor the glory of Christ forever.
   In place of this, we have turned the love of God and the gospel of Christ into the divine endorsement of our delight in may lesser things, especially the delight in our being made much of. The acid test of biblical God-centeredness—and faithfulness to the gospel—is this: do you feel more loved because God makes much of you, or because, at the cost of his Son, he enables you to enjoy making much of him forever? Does your happiness hang on seeing the cross of Christ as a witness to your worth, or as a way to enjoy God’s words forever? Is God’s glory in Christ the foundation of your gladness?
   From the first sin in the Garden of Eden to the final judgment of the great white throne, human beings will continue to embrace the love of God as the gift of everything but himself. Indeed there are ten thousand gifts that flow from the love of God. The gospel of Christ proclaims the news that he has purchased by his death ten thousand blessings for his bride. But none of these gifts will lead to final joy if they have not first led to God. And not one gospel blessing will be enjoyed by anyone for whom the gospel’s greatest gift was not the Lord himself.

. . .
The sad thing is that a radically man-centered view of love permeates our culture and our churches. From the time they can toddle we teach our children that feeling loved means feeling made much of. We have built whole educational philosophies around this view of love—curricula, parenting skills, motivational strategies, therapeutic models, and selling techniques. Most modern people can scarcely imagine an alternative understanding of feeling loved other than feeling made much of. If you don’t make much of me you are not loving me.
   But when you apply this definition of love to God, it weakens his worth, undermines his goodness, and steals our final satisfaction. If the enjoyment of God himself is not the final and best gift of love, then God is not the greatest treasure, his self-giving is not the highest mercy, and the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy their Maker, Christ did not suffer to bring us to God, and our souls must look beyond him for satisfaction.
   This distortion of divine love into an endorsement of self-admiration is subtle. It creeps into our most religious acts. We claim to be praising God because of his love for us. But if his love for us is at bottom his making much of us, who is really being praised? We are willing to be God-centered, it seems, as long as God is man-centered. We are willing to boast in the cross as long as the cross is a witness to our worth. Who then is our pride and joy?

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 11–12.

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
—Charles Wesley, 1738

Yesterday, I introduced R.C. Sproul’s comments on the blood of Christ with the chorus to the gospel song Power in the Blood. Typical of many of the songs of its time, it is not very deep or clear doctrinally, and requires some supplemental words to make sense of it. Today, we will see that even some truly great hymns can contain some vague language and require some clarification as Dr. Sproul answers the question, “Is it accurate to say that God Died on the Cross?”

This kind of expression is popular in hymnody and in grassroots conversation. So although I have this scruple about the hymn, and it bothers me that the expression is there, I think I understand it, and there’s a way to give an indulgence for it.
   We believe that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. We also believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross. If we say that God died on the cross, and if by that we mean that the divine nature perished, we have stepped over the edge into serious heresy. In fact, two such heresies related to this problem arose in the early centuries of the church: theopassianism and patripassianism. The first of these, theopassianism, teaches that God Himself suffered death on the cross. Patripassianism indicates that the Father suffered vicariously through the suffering of His Son. Both of these heresies were roundly rejected by the church for the very reason that they categorically deny the very character and nature of God, including His immutability. There is no change in the nature or character of God at any time.
   God not only created the universe, He sustains it by the very power of His being. As Paul said, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). If the being of God ceased for one second, the universe would disappear. It would pass out of existence, because nothing can exist apart from the sustaining power of God. If God dies, everything dies with Him. Obviously, then, God could not have perished on the cross.
   Some say, “It was the second person of the Trinity Who died.” That would be a mutation within the very being of God, because when we look at the Trinity we say that the three are one in essence, and that though there are personal distinctions among the persons of the Godhead, those distinctions are not essential in the sense that they are differences in being. Death is something that would involve a change in one’s being.
   We should shrink in horror from the idea that God actually died on the cross. The atonement was made by the human nature of Christ. Somehow people tend to think that this lessens the dignity or the value of the substitutionary act, as if we were somehow implicitly denying the deity of Christ. God forbid. It’s the God-man Who dies, but death is something that is only experienced by the human nature, because the divine nature isn’t capable of experiencing death.

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Reformation Trust, 2007), 159–161.

There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder working pow’r
In the blood of the Lamb;
There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder working pow’r
In the precious blood of the Lamb.

Or is there? The blood of Christ is often given magical, mythical power in the minds of Christians. In the classic 1959 movie Ben-Hur, the blood of Christ drips from the cross. As it begins to rain, the blood merges with the rain water, and as the rain falls on Judah Ben-Hur’s leprous mother and sister, they are healed. Healing power was attributed to the physical blood of Christ. John MacArthur has been branded a heretic by some for denying that the physical blood of Christ possesses any divine character or power. Is there “power in the blood”? If so, what does that mean, biblically? R. C. Sproul answers the question, “What is the significance of the shedding of blood in the atonement?”

   The idea that there’s some intrinsic or inherent power in the blood of Jesus is a popular concept in the Christian world. It even crops up from time to time in various hymns and praise songs. This idea reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of the blood as it relates to atonement from a biblical perspective.
   I once heard my dear friend John Guest, who is an Anglican evangelist, preach on the cross and the blood of Christ. He asked this question: “Had Jesus come to earth and scratched his finger on a nail so that a drop or two of blood was spilled, would that have been sufficient to redeem us? That would have constituted the shedding of blood. If we’re saved by the blood of Christ, wouldn’t that have been enough?” Obviously the point John was trying to make is that it’s not the blood of Christ as such that saves us.
   The significance of the blood in the sacrificial system is that it represents life. The Old Testament repeatedly makes the point that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11). Therefore, when the blood is poured out, the life is poured out. That’s significant, because under the covenant of works in the Garden of Eden, the penalty that was laid down for disobedience was death. God required that penalty for sin. That is why Jesus had to die to accomplish the atonement. When the blood is shed and the life is poured out, the penalty is paid. Nothing short of that penalty will do.

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Reformation Trust, 2007), 155–156.

After spending some time on the doctrine of limited, or particular, atonement, explaining that Christ’s death did not merely make salvation possible, but actually secured it for a particular people, R. C. Sproul answers the question, “How can you know if you‘re one of the elect?”

   If you are one of the flock of Christ, one of His lambs, then you can know with certainty that an atonement has been made for your sins. You may wonder how you can know you’re numbered among the elect. I cannot read your heart or the secrets of the Lambs Book of Life, but Jesus said: “‘My sheep hear My voice’” (John 10:27a). If you want Christ’s atonement to avail for you, and if you put your trust in that atonement and rely on it to reconcile you to almighty God, in a practical sense, you don’t need to worry about the abstract question of election. If you put your trust in Christ’s death for your redemption and you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, then you can be sure that the atonement was made for you. That, more than anything else, will settle for you the mystery of God’s election. Unless you’re elect, you won’t believe on Christ; you won’t embrace the atonement or rest on his shed blood for your salvation. If you want it, you can have it. It is offered to you if you believe and trust.
   One of the sweetest statements from the lips of Jesus in the New Testament is this: “‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’” (Matt. 25:34b). There is a plan of God designed for your salvation. It is not an afterthought or an attempt to correct a mistake. Rather, from all eternity, God determined that He would redeem for Himself a people, and that which He determined to do was, in fact, accomplished in the work of Jesus Christ, His atonement on the cross. Your salvation has been accomplished by a Savior Who is not merely a potential Savior, but an actual Savior, One Who did for you what the Father determined He should do. He is your Surety, your Mediator, your Substitute, your Redeemer. He atoned for your sins on the cross.

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Reformation Trust, 2007), 151–153.

Illustrating the necessity of a substitutionary atonement, R. C. Sproul draws three circles. The first circle represents the character of man. The second represents the character of God. The third represents Christ.

Imagine a circle representing Jesus’ character. He lived as a man on earth for decades, subject to the Law of God and subject to all of the temptations known to man. (Heb. 4:15). But we do not see any blemishes in His circle. Not one. This is why . . . John the baptist cried, “Behold! The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29b). The Passover lambs of the Old Testament were to be lambs without blemish, as physically perfect as possible. But the ultimate lamb, the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of His People, was to be perfect in every way. In calling Jesus the Lamb of God, John was affirming that Jesus was untouched by sin.
   Jesus Himself made this claim. He asked the Pharisees, “‘Which of you convicts me of sin?’” . . . How would you react if somebody said to you: “I am perfect. If you don’t agree with me, prove that I’m not.” That’s what Jesus said. He claimed to have no shadow of turning, no blemish, nom sin. He said that his meat and drink were to do the will of the Father. He was a man Whose passion in life was obedience to the Law of God.
   We have one unjust party (man) and two just parties. We have a just God, and a just Mediator, Who is altogether holy. The Mediator is the One who came to satisfy the requirements of a just God on behalf of the unjust race of man. He is the One who makes the unjust party just. He is the only One Who could do so.
. . . This justification takes place ultimately when the supreme Judge of heaven and earth says, “You are just.”
   The grounds for such a declaration are in the concept of imputation. . . . we are talking about imputation when we say that Jesus bore our sins, that He took the sins of the world on Himself. The language there is one of a quantitative act of transfer whereby the weight of guilt is taken from man and given to Christ. . . . In theological language, we say that God imputed those sins to Jesus.
   If all that happened was a single transfer of our sins to Jesus, we would not be justified. If Jesus took all the sins I’ve ever committed on His back and took the punishment for me, that would not get me into the kingdom of God. It would be good enough to keep me out of hell, but I would still not be just. I would be innocent, if you will, but still not just in the positive sense. I would have no righteousness . . .
   Thankfully, however, there is not just one transfer, there are two. Not only is the sin of man imputed to Christ, but the righteousness of Christ is transferred to us, to our account. As a result, in God’s sight the human circle is now both clean of all blemishes and adorned with glorious righteousness. Because of that, when God declares me just, He is not lying.

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Reformation Trust, 2007), 91–95.

R. C. Sproul draws three circles illustrating the separation between God and man that made a substitutionary atonement by a God-man necessary. The first circle represented the character of man. Sproul continues:

   Imagine a second circle, just like the one we had for man, to represent the character of God. How many blemishes would we see in this circle? Absolutely none. We are totally depraved, but God is absolutely holy. In fact, He is too holy to even look at iniquity. He is perfectly just.
   Here, then, is the crux of the problem: how can an unjust person stand in the presence of God? Or, to put the question another way, how can an unjust person be made just, or justified? Can he start all over again? No. Once a person commits one sin, it is impossible for him ever to be perfect, because he’s lost his perfection with his initial sin. Can he pay the penalty for his sin? No—unless he wishes to spend an eternity in hell. Can God simply overlook the sin? No. If God did that, He would sacrifice His justice.
   Therefore, if man is to be made just, God’s justice must be satisfied. Someone must be able to pay te penalty for man’s sin. It must be a member of the offending party, the human race, but it must be one who has never fallen into the inescapable imperfection of sin. Given these requirements, no man could qualify. However, God Himself could. For this reason, God the Son came into the world and took on humanity. As the author of Hebrews says, “He had to be made like His brethren . . .” (Heb. 2:17a, emphasis added).

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Reformation Trust, 2007), 90–91.

R. C. Sproul, considering the separation between God and man that made a substitutionary atonement by a God-man necessary, draws three circles. The first represents the character of man.

   Imagine a circle that represents the character of mankind. Now imagine that if someone sins, a spot—a moral blemish of sorts—appears in the circle, marring the character of man. If another sin occurs, more blemishes appear in the circle. Well, if sin continues to multiply, eventually the entire circle will be filled with spots and blemishes. . . . Human character is clearly tainted by sin . . . The sinful pollution and corruption of fallen man is complete, rendering us totally corrupt. . . .

   To take it further, when the apostle Paul elaborates on this fallen human condition, he says, “‘There is none righteous, no, not one; . . . There is none who does good; no, not one’” (Rom. 3:10b-12). That’s a radical statement. Paul is saying that man never, ever does a good deed, but that flies in the face of our experience. When we look around us, we see numerous people who are not Christians doing things that we would applaud for their virtue. . . . But how can there be these deeds of apparent goodness when the Bible says that no one does good?
   The reason for this problem is that when the Bible describes goodness or badness, it looks at it from two distinct perspectives. First, there is the measuring rod of the law, which evaluates the external performance of human beings. For example, if the law says you are not allowed to steal, and you go your whole life without stealing, we could say that you have a good record. You’ve kept the law externally.
   But in addition to the external measuring rod, there is also the consideration of the heart, the internal motivation for our behavior. We’re told that man judges by outward appearances, but God looks on the heart. From a biblical perspective, to do a good deed in the fullest sense requires not only that the deed conform outwardly to the standards of God’s law, but that it proceed from a heart that loves Him and wants to honor Him. You remember the great commandment: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’” (Matt. 22:37). Is there anyone reading this book who has loved God with all of his or her heart for the past five minutes? No. Nobody loves God with all of his heart, not to mention his soul or mind. . . .

   If we consider human performance from this perspective, we can see why the apostle would come to his apparently radical conclusion that there is no one who does good, that there’s no goodness in the full sense of the word found among mankind. Even our finest works have a taint of sin mixed in. I have never done an act of charity, of sacrifice, or of heroism that came from a heart, a soul, and a mind that loved God completely.

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Reformation Trust, 2007), 85, 87–89.

Sin, R. C. Sproul writes, “is cosmic treason.”

We rarely take the time to think through the ramifications of human sin. We fail to realize that even the slightest sins we commit, such as little white lies or other peccadilloes we are violating the law of the creator of the universe. In the smallest sin we defy God’s right to rule and reign over His creation. Instead, we seek to usurp for ourselves the authority and power that belong properly to God. Even the slightest sin does violence to His holiness, to His glory, and to his righteousness. Every sin, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is truly an act of treason against a cosmic King.
   There are two aspects of the one problem we must understand if we are to grasp the necessity of the atonement of Christ. . . . God is just. In other words, He cannot tolerate unrighteousness. He must do what is right. . . . The other aspect of the problem [is that] we have violated God’s justice and earned His displeasure. We are cosmic traitors. We must recognize this problem within ourselves if we are to grasp the necessity of the cross.

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Reformation Trust, 2007), 32–33.

In his work Cur Deus Homo? (Why the God-man?), Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) sought to answer the question of why the incarnation was necessary. R. C. Sproul writes,

   At the heart of Anselm’s answer to that question was his understanding of the character of God. Anselm saw that the chief reason a God-man was necessary was the justice of God. That may seem to be a strange answer. Thinking of the cross and of Christ’s atonement, we assume that the thing that most strenuously motivated God to send Christ into the world was His love or His mercy. As a result, we tend to overlook the characteristic of God’s nature that makes the atonement absolutely necessary—His justice.
   God is loving, but a major part of what He loves is His own perfect character, with a major aspect being the importance of maintaining justice and righteousness. Though God pardons sinners and makes great provision for expressing His mercy, He will never negotiate His justice. If we fail to understand that, the cross of Christ will be utterly meaningless to us.

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Reformation Trust, 2007), 18–19.