Faith for Faith

No man can work his way to God, for, “No one does good, not even one,” and no one can will his way to God, for, “No one understands, no one seeks for God.” It is for this reason that the apostle writes later in the Epistle to the Romans, “So then, [salvation] depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy” (v. 9:16), and why he quotes the prophet Isaiah later in that same chapter concerning Israel, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah” (v. 9:29).

The Good News is that God has not left us to ourselves. For Paul declares in Romans 5 that that same Offspring that preserved the life and the holiness of ancient Israel has come into the world as the Second Adam–the second head of the human race–and where the first Adam failed, the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, succeeded. Where the first Adam brought judgment into the world, the Second Adam–Jesus Christ brought justification into the world. Where the first Adam brought the reign of death, the Second Adam–Jesus Christ brought the reign of righteousness unto eternal life. Where the first Adam was disobedient, the Second Adam–Jesus Christ was obedient. Where the first Adam brought the condemnation of the law, the Second Adam–Jesus Christ brought the abundance of grace.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | No Comments »

“Baptism is the most important event in the life of a child of God.” If one were to declare thus in a typical American Baptist church, that person would almost immediately be labeled a heretic or at least be charged with misunderstanding the Word of God. “Baptism is merely an outward picture of an inward reality,” they would answer. “Baptism does not save a soul.” To which I would respond, “A symbol of what?” To which they would reply, “Of dying with Christ and being raised with him.” “Which is what?” I would ask. To which I would expect an “I do not know,” or a “Being born again,” or an “Accepting of Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.”

The sad irony for most of us who call ourselves Baptists is that we bear baptism in our denominational title, yet we by and large have no clue what baptism is. In this way, we are much like the Circumcision party of whom the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5 in that we, like them, bear the symbol of God’s covenant in our title, and, we, like them, understand the symbol of the covenant with great precision, and yet we do not understand the reality behind the symbol. We, like the Circumcision party, are zealously meticulous about practicing the symbol correctly, giving lectures and preaching sermons on why baptism by immersion is the only acceptable mode of baptism, all the while neglecting to teach upon the reality of baptism. We will harp upon the mode of the symbol to such detail so as to say that a baptizer cannot hold the nose of the one being baptized because dead people do not hold their noses, yet we neglect to teach that baptism is matter of the heart performed by the Spirit of God not by the letter of the law.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | No Comments »

Having come to the end of Paul’s epistle to the church at Rome, the apostle clarifies that which can be surmised throughout his letter, namely his very purpose in writing the letter. Everything that the apostle has written in the letter tends to a particular end, and he emphasizes that end by calling forth the same language that he used to begin the letter and thereby neatly bookends his purpose.

The great purpose of the apostle in writing his letter is this: “To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among all the nations” (Rm. 1:5). We know this is the great purpose of the apostle for he ends his letter writing:

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith–to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen (vv. 16:25-27).

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | No Comments »

I had a great conversation the other day with one my wonderful brothers in Christ concerning our failings as believers and how we are to respond to those failings. And though such failings among God’s people are inevitable because of the nature of our present state in this age, we oftentimes do not know how to respond rightly to those failings. And it is not a simple issue. For when we fall into sin and temptation as children of God, our whole soul is cast into upheaval. For our mind understands our fall and logically seeks to rectify it, our heart feels it and is torn by it, our will comprehends it and strives against it, and our spirit is broken by it and feels as though it is severed from the very Spirit of God.

And because of this turmoil that captivates our souls when we fall into sin and by it turn from our God, we long to jump up quickly and turn back onto the path of obedience. However, despite our desire, the path back to obedience is not always as quick and easy as we would like it to be. And I have found this to be the case in my life, where I have walked the path of obedience and then, seemingly out of nowhere, fell into temptation and then found that the obedience that I desired to have was even more difficult than it was prior to my fall.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 5 Comments »

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Rm. 8:1-4).

In some ways, the Roman Road basis of evangelism has been both a blessing and curse to American Christianity. For on the one hand, the Romans Road has taken verses that are fundamental to the Faith and has made them well known to many, and yet, on the other hand, it has taken those same verses and ripped them from their contexts and has in the process watered down the Gospel.

For while it is indeed true that, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” (v. 6:23), the verse taken from its context removes the very foundation of eternal life, namely regeneration and sanctification. For v. 6:23 is the apex of the apostle’s chain of salvific events that begins with identification with Christ in his crucifixion by baptism (v. 6:2), the freedom afforded by Christ’s death from the body of sin (v. 6:6; cf. v. 7:23) and thus from slavery to sin (v. 6:6; cf. v. 7:14, 25), and ends with the Christian’s being brought into slavery to obedience, to righteousness, and to sanctification, and sanctification’s end–eternal life (v. 6:16, 18, 19, 22). For the gift of God indeed is eternal life in Christ Jesus, however eternal life never comes apart from obedience, righteousness, and sanctification.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | No Comments »

For centuries, many Christians have used Romans 7 as an anesthetic to numb the pain of their perpetual sinning. In this unusual passage, we find the speaker (who many presume to be the apostle at the time of his writing), saying,

For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing (Rm. 7:15-19)

Me, being the contrary person that I am, obstinately disagree with the popular and Reformed interpretation of this passage that says that this is the apostle speaking at the time of his writing, and this passage exists as a comfort to Christians who are in sin. I do so simply because of the context and because of the way the speaker introduces himself at the beginning of this section, namely as one who is of the flesh and a slave of sin (v. 7:14). For anyone who has even thought about reading Romans 6 and Romans 8 knows that the apostle goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Christ’s death and the salvation that it brought has freed every Christian from his slavery to sin (cf. vv. 6:6, 7) and that all who live according to the flesh cannot please God and will die (cf. v. 8:8, 13).

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Miscellanies | 12 Comments »

I have spoken much in several posts on the act of giving up all that one owns for the sake of Christ, but I have spoken little of the driving force behind such a step. Yes, I have spoken of obedience to Christ, and that is indeed a chief motivation, but there is a greater underlying and supernatural motivation that drives one to obedience and then to sacrifice. Jonathan Edwards labeled this underlying force by the title of one of his great essays, viz. “A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, etc.” If there is to be any true religion, any obedience to Christ, and any desire to love him with our entirety, it must begin with a prevenient work of the Spirit of God.

The prevenient work of the Spirit of God is described in several ways in the Bible. It is called at one point new birth, at another the writing of the law upon our hearts, at another the removing of the scales upon our eyes, etc. There are numerous others, and they all demonstrate that our coming to God is fully initiated by God. Christ said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44).

The necessity of this prevenient work of the Spirit lies not in any lack of our Object of worship and obedience, but it lies in our natural condition in Adam. Scripture declares that all men apart from God’s grace are dead in their sins, blind to the glory and beauty of God, and deaf to the call and demands of the Gospel. Romans 3 declares that no one is righteous, not a single one; all have turned aside and no one seeks God. Elsewhere Scripture declares that even that which we as men consider to be righteousness is in the eyes of God rags of filthiness. There is nothing in us that compels us to call upon the Lord, and there is nothing that we do that commends us to God.

Therefore, even a spark of divine fire to seek after God (as Henry Higgins so eloquently put it) is a spark created by God in the soul.

When God in his Infinite and Providential Wisdom causes this spark of regeneration to happen in the life of the soul, it is nothing short of spectacular–it is life from the dead, it is new birth, it is being given a new heart, it is exchanging sight for blindness and hearing for deafness–it is by all accounts the most spectacular transformation in the universe. The angels in heaven know this and rejoice in unison when a lost soul is brought into God’s fold, even more than they rejoiced when Christ restored physical sight to the blind, or mobility to the crippled, etc.

This supernatural transformation wrought in the soul by the Spirit of God is by most accounts not what is being preached in American pulpits today. Most teach of a conversion that involves praying a prayer, walking an aisle, accepting a Savior, but they do not teach its supernatural and transforming elements. This method of preaching might create many converts and might increase the number of names on church rolls, but it does not save souls. Any acceptance (what a horrid word to use for being saved by the God of the universe!) of Jesus Christ as Savior without seeing him as glorious and beautiful and without full surrender to him and his commandments is not salvation neither in this life nor in the one to come. God does not save prostitutes and heathens so that they remain prostitutes and heathens, but so that they will be transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ to the glory of the Father.

This prevenient work of the Spirit continues in the sustaining work of the Spirit, for “He that began a good work in you will carry out till the day of Christ Jesus.” This good work that the Spirit continues in us, which is commonly called sanctification, is nothing more than the desire for and the accomplishment of obedience to God’s commands. On God’s side, it is his Spirit working and willing his good pleasure in us; on our side, it is our seeing Christ as our glorious and beautiful King and regarding all the world’s pleasures as rubbish when compared to him.

This is why Christ commands that we forsake all for him, for only those who see him as he really is will do it. When the rich young man turned away from Christ grieved, the disciples marveled not at the rich man’s leaving but at Christ’s command to him. “Who then can be saved?” they asked. They recognized that no man, regardless of his wealth, can deny themselves for the sake of Christ. But Christ responds, “With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” God can do it. God has done it. He has done in all those whom he has called to himself, and it is to those that he commands, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor,” “Take up your cross and follow me,” and “Lose your life so that you might gain it.” These commands on not burdensome to God’s children, not because they are not humanly difficult, but because God is so much better to them than the world’s treasures.

This view of the work of God in the soul demands several questions be asked of those who claim to follow Christ: Do you see Christ as more precious than the treasures of the world? Do you say that you treasure Christ but neglect Christ’s commands and hold onto your possessions? If you do not see Christ as better than the world’s treasures or if you do not keep Christ’s commands and sell your possessions, you have nothing on which to base your assurance. The work of God in the soul is a work of God unto obedience, and God does not fail in anything that he does.

Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | No Comments »