Pride: Another Cause of Apostasy
By John Fast
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)
If there is one thing that virtually all forms of modern Christianity have in common it is they all, in one way or another, pander to and flatter the pride of man. Some more so than others, some more subtly than others, but the difference is only a matter of degree, not practice. Some do so by pandering to a person’s fleshly pride, some to intellectual pride, and some to spiritual pride. There is no end to the persuasive arguments, false reasonings, hair-splitting distinctions, and empty deceptions which have been invented by ‘scholars’ and ‘theologians’, the sole purpose of which are to persuade us we can be Christians even if we reject those truths and doctrines of Scripture, either in word or practice, that conflict with our fleshly, intellectual, and spiritual pride. It is a Christianity that is based on a particular view of the nature of man; a view in which man, while having some flaws, still possesses within himself the ability to perform some act, or cooperate with God in some way, so as to facilitate his own salvation, and in which God is powerless to save anyone without this initial act or cooperation on the part of man. It is a Christianity in which God exists for us and our own ends and is at our disposal, and utterly forgets that God must be conceived as using man for His own ends and is at His sovereign disposal. It is a Christianity in which God is impotent to act without our consent, invitation, or permission. He is simply the instrument we use to obtain the results we cannot attain for ourselves. No doubt He is an absolutely indispensable instrument; an instrument without which the desired results could not be obtained; we must use Him if we want the desired results. But He can do nothing of Himself; it is only as we use Him and give Him permission that He can work on or in or for us. The work which God does, and on which everything in salvation depends, itself depends absolutely on us. Thus, everything ultimately is in our hands.
Such a Christianity is indeed flattering to human pride. It is a Christianity in which a person can be “saved” even if they live in sin, are utterly ignorant of the gospel taught by Jesus and the New Testament, and in which unbelief excludes no one from heaven. It is a Christianity that, under the pretext of a false charity and humility, condemns the clear, dogmatic, and uncompromising proclamation of divine truths and doctrines as “unloving”, “narrow-minded”, “intolerant”, “hate-speech”, and even “dangerous”. The humbling, pride destroying doctrine respecting the corruption and depravity of human nature is deemed to be too harsh, too pessimistic, too demeaning, and psychologically harmful. It is a Christianity that cares little about what we believe, and in which what we believe plays little or no role in being Christian, just as long as we are sincere in our belief, feel good about ourselves, and are basically a good person. The person of Jesus is reduced to a sort of indefinable Savior who is more humanitarian and social reformer than the divine Son of God. Faith is reduced to merely acknowledging the existence of God, affirming a few truths about the person of Jesus, trusting in some response on our part to a “gospel invitation”, and resting on some emotional experience and the wisdom of men, not on the power of God. The authority of all of Scripture is rejected and denied, if not in word then certainly in practice. The sinfulness of sin is minimized, denied, and even turned into a virtue and something of which to be proud and celebrate, or it is attributed to some external cause, some inanimate object, or to some physical addiction or psychological snafu, rather than to our own depraved, evil, and sinful natures. Sin is given respectable names, redefined as a disease or disorder of which we are a victim and from which we need to be cured or delivered. All this is done to avoid making us face the humbling and pride destroying fact that we are guilty, willful, rebellious sinners and haters of God by nature, utterly incapable of doing anything to save ourselves from the wrath of an infinitely holy, just, righteous, and offended God.
Men and women, so we are told by this system of religion that still calls itself Christian, have both the will and ability to cooperate with God and contribute some goodness of their own to affect their own salvation. In this system God is love and nothing but love, and therefore men and women have nothing to fear from Him. God feels no displeasure towards us and has no intention whatsoever of punishing our sin. He never has had. His whole attitude toward us is love. He feels no anger towards us, and never has. When it comes to sin, God is willing to let bygones be bygones, with no questions asked. God’s forgiveness of sin is a purely arbitrary act, performed for no other reason and with no other justification than that He is love. This is, of course, a profoundly immoral doctrine, system of religion, and view of God. It represents God as treating us as if we were not by nature proud, rebellious, and evil sinners, and as if sin were not sin, as if it were not evil, thereby representing God as if He were not holy. This new system of religion continues to use the words justification, forgiveness, salvation, adoption, regeneration; but in the hands of this system they all denote human, not divine acts; they all become subjects for metaphysical hypothesizing and philosophical speculation and theological refinement. The gospel of salvation by human cooperation is certainly more appealing to human pride, but it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In this system of religion that still calls itself Christian, the decisive instrument for both justification and sanctification is the human will, not the power of God. Such a system is indeed flattering to human pride, and is bound to be popular, but it is not the Christianity taught by Jesus, the apostles, and the New Testament; rather it is a Pelagianized system of religion that out Pelagianizes even Pelagius himself. It is a different form of Pelagianism than Pelagius’ in that it substitutes our ‘faith’ for Pelagius’ works. This gives it a certain specious appearance of being Evangelical, and it is this specious appearance that makes it so appealing to human pride. However, this does not make it any less pure Pelagianism. The antithesis to Pelagius’ works is not faith, but grace, and grace is not something that can be obtained by the fulfillment of conditions. It is a shoddier Pelagianism than Pelagius’ to substitute our faith for our works as a condition for securing God’s free gift of grace and eternal life. God’s free gift of eternal life is not merely an “offer” or “invitation” that is conditional upon our accepting or rejecting as we may chance to choose. Rather, He “gives”, makes it ours, just as He gave life to Lazarus and sight to the man born blind. It was not in the power of Lazarus to accept or reject the gift of life which Jesus gave him, nor is it in the power of dead souls to accept or reject life when God “gives” it to them, any more than it is in the power of a new born babe to accept or reject being born.
From this Pelagian doctrine of the human will and its conception of the nature of man, modern Christianity has been compelled to construct a corresponding doctrine of salvation that minimizes, redefines, and denies the true nature of man, the true nature and sinfulness of sin, the true nature of regeneration, and which preserves human pride by making the will of man the ultimate cause and determining factor of his salvation. In the Biblical view of salvation, it is God who determines who is and is not saved, in this other system that still calls itself Christian, it is man. In the Biblical view, it is God who is sovereign in salvation, in the other it is man. In the Biblical view, it is man who is acted upon by the power and grace of God, in the other, it is God who is responding to human actions. In the Biblical view, man has no part in salvation, and if he did, his very nature as a helpless sinner would make it impossible for him to do it. In the other we are told that God can save no one unless they do their part, which is to “accept” and “believe”. The gravitation of this synergistic system is obviously downward, so we should not be surprised to see that it has apostatized into express Pelagianism which now forms the practical faith of the bulk of modern Christianity.
It is the Scriptural doctrine of the total corruption and depravity of the nature of man, a doctrine which includes a variety of profound, humbling, and practical truths, such as man’s alienation of heart from God, his inbred hostility to the nature and truths of God, his total impotency and aversion to everything spiritually good, his inability to truly know and understand spiritual truth, his extreme propensity to what is evil, immoral, sensual, carnal, external, and flattering to human pride, his inordinate love of the things of this world, the total ruin of his moral nature – in a word, his guilty, hopeless, helpless, and lost condition – which distinguishes Christianity from any other system of religion. To strip Christianity of this humbling doctrine of the nature of man and replace it with a Pelagianized, psychologized, and evolutionary view of man, as has most of modern Christianity, is to preach a different gospel, which is, of course, precisely what is taught, preached, and believed by most of modern Christianity.
For well over a hundred years, professing Christianity has been busily engaged in trying to bring people into the kingdom of God without requiring them to relinquish their pride. Instead of seeking to humble the pride of men and women, to undeceive them of their own imaginary goodness and righteousness, to strip them of their vain self-deceptions, to demolish their futile attempts at self-salvation, to reveal their true evil nature to themselves, and to convict them of being guilty, willful, helpless sinners before a holy, just, and offended God, modern Christianity panders to and flatters human pride, instills, encourages, and affirms a sense of self-importance and self-sufficiency, and hides, ignores, and denies the sinfulness of sin. It is a system that has simply reproduced, in one form or another, the ancient Pelagianism, namely, a salvation that ultimately is dependent upon human ability. It is a form of godliness and system of religion that is compatible with a person’s own pride, wisdom, reason, lusts, desires, experiences, and opinions, then insists on retaining the historical name ‘Christian’ for this new system of religion, although it repudiates all the truths and doctrines of Christianity, and in fact, is quite able to get along without even the person of Jesus Christ. This is why most of what professes to be Christian today has lost all sense of what it is to be Christian, and is in fact hostile to the true gospel of Jesus Christ, because there is nothing that so offends and wounds the pride of man, as Martyn-Lloyd Jones once observed,
“The cross is an offence to the pride of the natural man, because it says that not only are we all sinners, not only are we all equally sinners, but it tells us we are all equally helpless. We can do nothing at all. It tells us that all our righteousness is but filthy rags. All we regard as best is dung and refuse, and absolutely useless. And it tells us, who believe in ourselves and our capacity, that we can do nothing. That we are utterly and completely helpless and entirely hopeless. And here it offends us and hurts us, it damns all our efforts, it is an offense to the mind and to the heart. And it is equally an offense to the will of man. It tells him: I do not care what your will is, I do not care how powerful your will. I do not care what your resolutions are. Do all you will, you will never save yourself. It crushes us to the ground. It demolishes everything that we have ever believed in. It leaves us helpless and hopeless, lost, damned, hell-deserving sinners, and that is what it says about every one of us.”[1]
Another Cause of Apostasy
The innate pride and futility of the sin darkened mind of men and women is another means by which they are predisposed and inclined to an apostacy from the truths and doctrines of Christianity. The unregenerate person pridefully refuses to submit to any authority other than their own mind. They assiduously labor to conform the truths and doctrines of Scripture to their own wills, opinions, imaginations, human wisdom, preconceived systems of theology, experiences, lusts, desires, the culture, and their own understandings, rather than have their mind conformed by and to Scripture, and to humbly submit their mind and life, like a little child, to its truths and doctrines. Those truths which they cannot wrest and distort, they simply ignore or reject as not relevant for today, thereby arrogantly setting themselves up as a judge over Scripture. They refuse to acknowledge that there are truths and doctrines of Scripture that are as much above the intellect of the most learned theologian as they are of a child, being above all human understanding, and which must be humbly received and submitted to by faith, which is itself a gift of God and not of ourselves (Eph 2:8).
The mind of man thinks it can understand anything; it thinks it can solve all of man’s problems, without any special divine aid, enabling, or assistance. It imagines the wisdom of man has rendered much, if not all, of the Bible obsolete and relegated it to the level of a fairy tale. We are told the modern mind cannot reasonably be expected to believe all of the Bible to be literally true, and to do so would make us appear utterly foolish, ignorant, unscientific, and anti-intellectual in the eyes of the world. Since “the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God” (1 Cor 3:19), consequently the wisdom of God is foolishness to the natural man (1 Cor 2:14). In fact, the wisdom of God makes the wisdom of man look utterly foolish. It is destructive to man’s intellectual, fleshly, and spiritual pride. It exposes the utter and abject failure of human wisdom, goodness, social reform, education, humanitarianism, psychology, philosophy, ideologies – in other words, all human effort – to make mankind and the world better, to solve its problems, and of truly knowing God. The consequences of both are clear; all who humbly submit their mind and life to the authority of divine truth and wisdom must necessarily be regarded and despised as fools in the eyes of the world. In order to avoid this inevitable pride-destroying consequence, modern Christianity has invented for itself a Christianity in which we are now smarter than the Holy Spirit. Truths and doctrines written by men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Tm 3:16; 2 Pt 1:20, 21), and who lived thousands of years ago cannot possibly be as authoritative, much less more authoritative, than twenty-first-century science, psychology, and theology. Thinking ourselves too wise to believe all of the Bible, we have become fools (Rm 1:22), whether we realize it or not, or, in the words of J. Gresham Machen, “humanity has suddenly become dumb”.[2] Nothing else can account for the unparalleled and unprecedented stupidity that today not only tolerates, but rabidly defends, promotes, and bullies others into affirming ideologies and behaviors that are obviously wicked, offensive, and destructive to human reason, human dignity, human society, and even common sense.
Pagan Christianity
For this reason, modern Christianity has much more in common with paganism than it has with the Christianity taught by the New Testament. It is in fact the “religionizing” of paganism and dressing it up in Christian clothes. By calling modern Christianity “pagan”, we do not use the word in a derogatory sense, nor do we equate the word with ‘atheist’, or ‘uncivilized’, or with gross immorality, wickedness, and ignorance, although these things do characterize much of professing Christianity today. There are many ‘good’ and moral pagans. Ancient Greece and Rome were pagan, but they were highly civilized and attained heights of culture and knowledge which we have yet to attain. Rather, we use the word to describe a state of mind, and a particular view of man. Paganism is, as J. Gresham Machen once described, “optimistic with regard to unaided human nature”.[3] It is, like the old heresy of Pelagianism and all of its modern counterparts, founded on a high and optimistic view of man and unbounded human pride, not on the consciousness of sin and the grace of God. Paganism is a way of life that is completely inconsistent with a humble trust in God as sovereign Lord and Master, and a humble submission and obedience to the authority of all of His Word as the Word of God. The tendency of the pagan mind is “to think more highly of himself than he ought to think” (Rm 12:3), and to be “inflated without cause by his fleshly mind” (Col 2:18). His key assumption is that man is by nature basically good, despite the clear teaching of Scripture and all obvious evidence to the contrary. The pagan blames all the evils that plague him and society on some causes outside of himself, because, being basically good, they cannot possibly originate from within himself, and which can only be solved by embracing the pagan’s ideas of how to achieve its notions of human perfectibility and utopia.
To the pagan, the truths, doctrines, commands, and principles of Scripture are seen as a barrier to this goal of human progress and perfectibility, and a form of oppression designed to keep men and women from achieving their full potential and ultimate goal of self-fulfillment, self-importance, self-expression, and self-gratification. It is the Pagan, the Humanist, the Liberal, the Progressive, not the true Christian, who is shocked when their pagan ideologies result in the current disintegration of society. The pagan himself is the primary victim of his view of man, and who suffers the most. What he sees and hears will not fit into his picture; he has no explanation for why his thinking and ideologies produce such destructive and barbarous consequences. The true Christian, on the other hand, is not shocked by what he sees happening around him. He knows it is the inevitable result of rejecting God and His Word, and of subordinating the authority of Scripture to the authority of the mind of man. He, unlike the pagan, knows and believes, “God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap” (Gal 6:7). He knows this is what it looks like when God gives a people and nation over to the inevitable consequences of their own pride-filled and sin darkened minds, and of their own ungodly ideologies, lusts, and desires, and when He gives “them over to the stubbornness of their heart, to walk in their own devices” (Ps 81:12). The Christian is accustomed to being out of step and at odds with the world in which he has to live. The world is definitely worse now than it was before, but it remains unchanged in its essential nature and essence. The mind set on the flesh always has been and always will be hostile to God and His Word (Rm 8:7).
When people lament the passing of a way of life, when they say that our society is crumbling, or has crumbled, they imply that what they have lost is of greater value than what now is, and what is disappearing is better than what has come. There may be much disagreement as to the causes and reasons for this degeneration of society, but most will agree that what we have lost is better and more valuable than what has replaced it. The pagan seeks to combat this societal decay by tweaking, updating, and reinventing the pagan ideologies that have caused it, thinking it is their implementation, or the opposition to them by those less enlightened than themselves, not their pagan ideologies, that are flawed and at fault. They seem to think that freedom consists in being enslaved to their sin, wisdom is achieved only by becoming fools (Rm 1:22), and progress is attained by regressing into paganism, exchanging the truth of God for a lie (Rm 1:25), murdering their offspring at will, mutilating their own bodies, degrading themselves below the level of an animal, and debasing reason below common sense. When a person, church, or nation forsakes and rejects God and His Word, and when they subordinate the authority of Scripture to the authority of their own mind, they will never fail to degenerate into paganism, “Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their own evil heart, and went backward and not forward” (Jer 7:24); “You who have forsaken Me,” declares the LORD, “You keep going backward” (Jer 15:6). This describes not only our nation and culture in general, but modern Christianity in particular. Wherever we look, whether it is education, government, business, the family, the culture, the arts, the church, morality, civility, even common sense, all we see is decay, corruption, and deterioration.
Others believe the solution to this degeneration of society is to return to Christian ‘values’ and a cultural Christianity. They think being moral is synonymous with being Christian, or that Christianity is in its essence humanitarian and altruistic. This way of thinking, however, is no different in its essence than that of the pagan’s. Both are simply human attempts at political, economic, cultural, and social reform. The values and ends of both are essentially man-centered, not God-centered. Both are firmly rooted in unbounded human pride. For both, it is the things of this world that are supremely important; the values of both are this-worldly and temporal, not other-worldly and eternal. For both, man, not God, not Jesus Christ, is the ultimate reality of life. Neither can be supported from Scripture; rather they are repeatedly condemned by Scripture. Both are rooted and grounded in the same pagan optimism of human nature. In all the present confusion and rejection of biblical truth, the rejection and repudiation of biblical standards of good and evil, this alone has survived, namely, the emphasis on material well-being and social reform, based on an optimistic view of man and unaided human potential, as the sole criterion for progress. It was the eighteenth-century pastor Thomas Adam (1701-1784), who in his private dairy observed,
“There is something odd happens in the mixing of Paganism with Christianity. The appearance of Christianity remains, the substance evaporates; the appearance of Paganism vanishes, the substance remains.”[4]
In other words, mixing Paganism with Christianity is to mix poison with wholesome food; it is to introduce leaven into the dough, and it only takes a little leaven to corrupt the entire lump of dough. Poison, or unhealthy additives, do not necessarily change the appearance of wholesome food; rather it corrupts and changes its nature, so that instead of being beneficial and life-sustaining, it becomes unhealthy, detrimental, and deadly. When a pagan view of man, or pagan view of God, or pagan ideologies are mixed with Christianity, Christianity then degenerates into a mere form of godliness that denies its life transforming power to bring the mind, heart, and life into conformity with the Word and will of God. Such is modern Christianity; it is a Christianity in which the name and appearance of Christianity remains, but the substance has long ago evaporated. Or, to state it another way, the salt has long ago lost its saltiness.
The teaching of Jesus Christ, however, is the exact opposite of this optimistic pagan view of man. According to Jesus, the trouble with men and women, and the source of all our problems, is not external, but internal; it is “from within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man” (Mk 7:21-23). Unregenerate men and women “walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;” (Eph 4:17, 18); they are by nature “hostile in mind” (Col 1:21) to the truths and doctrines of Scripture. Contrary to the pagan view of man held and promoted by modern Christianity, unregenerate people are not “hurting”; rather they are hostile to God and His Word. They are not victims of sin, but willful and guilty perpetrators of sin. They are by nature avowed enemies of God. This has been the fatal fallacy, particularly of the last hundred and fifty years, of those who think that the world can be made a better place by the social, political, and humanitarian actions and enactments of men and women, that is, by their own self-effort. According to Jesus and the gospel which He taught, man’s trouble is much more serious; it is much too deep, too profound for any of these man-made and man-centered solutions. The gospel of Jesus Christ provides no support for, but utterly refutes and repudiates this optimistic and pagan view of man. Men and women are not broken and in need of fixing; they do not need a little improvement here and there; they do not need to be delivered from a sense of insignificance, unimportance, and personal despair, as modern Christianity seems to think – despair and discontentedness is the growth of pride, not humility – rather, they need to be radically changed; they need a new nature, which is, of course, just another way of saying what Jesus declared, “You must be born again” (Jn 3:7).
The design and work of the gospel is to show us we are by nature evil, ungodly sinners under the wrath of a holy and offended God. The gospel is for, “destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God,” and for, “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:4, 5), because the mind of man is by nature hostile and disobedient to Christ. It was the afore mentioned humble eighteenth century pastor Thomas Adam who once wrote,
“The design of the Christian religion, is to change men’s views, lives, and tempers. But how? By the superior excellence of its precepts? By the weight of its exhortations, or the promise of its rewards? – No; but by convincing men of their wretched guilt, blindness, and impotence; by inculcating the necessity of remission, supernatural light and assistance, and actually promising and conveying these blessings. And if it does not prove its divinity by its efficacy, let it be condemned as an imposture. This was one of its most operative convincing proofs at the beginning, and certainly is its greatest abiding proof.”[5]
It is self-evident that most of what bears the name ‘Christian’ today is an imposture of true Christianity. It does nothing to change the pagan view which natural men have of themselves; rather, it panders to, promotes, encourages, and flatters it. Iain Murray unequivocally demonstrated in his book Evangelicalism Divided, “that for over a hundred years a sustained attempt has been made to popularize a definition of Christian which possesses no biblical authority”.[6] This is modern Christianity; it is an imposture of true Christianity which has no authority other than what emanates from the mind of man. The mind of man naturally has high thoughts in itself and of itself. The dominant principle by which it acts is the belief that it is sufficient in and of itself to diagnose and solve all of man’s problems, and to repair and improve its own life and that of society, without any special divine aid, assistance, or illumination. Men and women by nature not only say, “With our tongue we will prevail; our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” (Ps 12:4), that is, they imagine they have a sovereignty over their lives and all their outward actions, but they also think nothing is, or can, or ought to be required of us, nor should we be responsible to believe any truth or perform any duty, except what we have the power and ability in ourselves to understand, comply with, and perform. It is the old Pelagian doctrine that ability limits responsibility.
All the disagreements and various conflicting ideologies concerning the true nature of man and the source of all his problems can be reduced to these two views of man; that on the one hand, the minds and wills of men and women are believed to be basically good, and to be fully capable and self-sufficient of doing all that is necessary to improve their life in this world and obtain a blessed life after death; and on the other hand, that man is by nature evil (Jn 7:11), an object of God’s wrath (Eph 2:3), darkened in their understanding (Eph 4:18), and have no sufficiency in ourselves, but all our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor 3:5; 9:8). The first is a Pelagian and pagan view of man, the latter is the biblical and Christian view of man. One believes people are born naturally good, the other believes all people are born naturally bad. One believes all people are by nature basically good, the other believes all people are by nature rebels and sinners who are hostile to God and His Word. The first finds it surprising, if not downright offensive, that all people are deserving of being objects of God’s wrath and eternal punishment in a literal hell, the latter finds it surprising, given the nature of man, that anyone inherits eternal life. One believes each person is the captain of their own soul, and a pretty capable captain at that, the other believes all mankind is hopelessly lost in sin and darkness without any will, desire, or ability to deliver and save himself. It should be obvious to anyone who knows and believes their Bible which is the pagan view of man and which is the biblical and Christian view. Sadly, the bulk of modern Christianity now embraces, affirms, and teaches this pagan view of man. It attributes its own pagan confidence in man to Jesus, that He saw and appealed to the good that is in the hearts of all mankind. I am not surprised that the pagan mind has an optimistic view of man, but I am surprised that professing Christians should believe that Jesus had. In order to think so, they must first reject all the teaching of the Bible concerning the nature of man, which is to reject the true gospel and the nature and necessity of regeneration. How terrible is the rebuke of Jesus again and again and again for those who think they are an exception to the universal sinfulness of all mankind, but I have already dealt with this extensively in part eight of this study in the nature and causes of apostasy, so I need not repeat it here.
Two Evils
This principle of self-sufficiency, which was the immediate result of that pride which Adam and Eve asserted in seeking to think and live independently of God, has never yet been rooted out of the minds of the generality of professing Christians. In all things, the mind of man would be its own standard, guide, authority, and rule, “following their own thoughts” (Is 65:2), not the clear Word of God. Jesus Himself has told us, “for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God” (Lk 16:15). In other words, the highest human standards fall far short of God’s standards. They are detestable in the sight of God because they are our own, not God’s standards. By what standard is it deemed ‘good’ that women take upon themselves the office of pastors and teachers? By what standard, or rather, by what stretch of the imagination, are LGBTQ+ ideologies and those who teach, defend, and affirm them, considered consistent with biblical Christianity? The answer is obvious. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Is 55:8, 9); “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Pv 14:12). A Pelagianized gospel of human effort and cooperation, and a paganized Christianity may seem right to a pride-filled, carnal, unregenerate mind, but its end is the way of death. The way in which this pagan self-sufficiency that is inherent in the mind of man manifests itself is seen most vividly in these two evils:
First, the mind of man exalts its own imaginations, which it highly esteems, loves, dotes on, and adheres to. This is the origin of all heresy and error, and feeds the growth and progress of all error. It is because men and women exalt and highly esteem their own imaginations that they choose for themselves teachers according to their own desires, and turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths (2 Tm 4:3, 4), that is, to things which are the product of their own or someone else’s imagination. It is why they exalt and highly esteem their own pseudo-intellectual theorizing, philosophical speculations, pagan ideologies, and their own human reasonings over the clear truths of Scripture. In fact, many seem to think that Christianity may thrive better in an atmosphere of fantasy than reality, that their own imaginations are more authoritative than the clear Word of God, and that the Jesus of our own or someone else’s imaginations has a higher value than the Jesus of fact revealed in the Bible. Most of what passes today for Christianity, like the teaching of the false prophets, is simply “a vision of their own imagination, not from the mouth of the LORD” (Jer 23:16). “God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices” (Eccl 7:29); seeking out and exalting our own inventions and imaginations in all things moral, religious, and spiritual, is the universal principle and most pernicious consequence of mankind’s fall from that state of uprightness in which God originally created us. The truth is, the Jesus, gospel, and Christianity which most professing Christians say they believe in are nothing more than the products of their own or someone else’s pagan imaginations, not the Jesus, gospel, and Christianity revealed and taught by the Bible, which is why they highly esteem them.
Secondly, the mind of man makes itself the sole and absolute judge and authority of the truths and doctrines revealed to it in and by the inspired Word of God; whether they are true or false, historically accurate or inaccurate, “scientific” or unscientific, rational or irrational, reasonable or unreasonable, fair or unfair, just or unjust, good or evil, to be received or rejected, all apart from any desire or expectation of any supernatural guidance, illumination, or assistance. Whatever it cannot reconcile with its own prejudices, lusts, desires, experiences, opinions, reason, wisdom, preconceptions, or imaginations, it is ready to scorn, despise, and reject. Its very nature, being hostile in mind, is to say, “The way of the Lord is not right” (Ezk 33:17), whenever God’s Word is inconsistent with their pride and own human reasonings.
So it always has been, and always will be, that where the mind of man remains unregenerate, where this pride and principle of self-sufficiency rule and dominate, where men and women exalt their own imaginations and make themselves the judge of Scripture, where one is not mortified by the grace and power of God nor the other eradicated by spiritual light, then there, men and women can never receive the truths and doctrines of the gospel in a saving manner, and are ready and predisposed to renounce them after they have made a profession of them for a season. They do not renounce the name or profession of being Christian; rather they turn Christianity into a new system of religion with new beliefs and doctrines previously unknown to the Christianity taught by Jesus, the apostles, and the New Testament. It is a Christianity that is in its substance pagan, man-centered, and humanitarian, not Christ-centered and redemptive. It is a Christianity that changes with the times, adopts and conforms itself to the standards of the world, is highly esteemed among men, commends itself to our own ideas of what is reasonable, rational, just, fair, and true, and accords with our own ideas of morality and justice and what it is to be ‘spiritual’ and Christian. True Christianity is replaced by a ‘rational’, pagan, and mystical system of our own imaginations that bears no relation to Christ and the Christianity of the New Testament, and all the truths and doctrines of Scripture that contradict and expose this new system of religion for what it truly is are scorned, mocked, ridiculed, vilified, despised, and rejected.
Not only is the gospel, that is, the doctrines and truths which it contains and declares, but also all of Scripture is declared to be the very Word of God, not the word or thought of man, having God’s authority, image, and superscription engraved upon it. “All Scripture is inspired by God…” (2 Tm 3:16). Many attempts have been made by various ‘scholars’ and ‘theologians’ to overthrow the historical meaning of the Greek word Theopneustos, and translated by the word “inspired”. But, as B.B. Warfield once definitively demonstrated concerning this word,
“From all points of approach alike we appear to be conducted to the conclusion that it is primarily expressive of the origination of Scripture, not of its nature and much less of its effects. What is … “God-breathed,” the product of divine spiration, the creation of that Spirit who is in all spheres of the Divine activity the exclusive of the Godhead …. It does not express a breathing into the Scriptures by God …. What it affirms is that the Scriptures owe their origin to an activity of God the Holy Ghost and are in the highest and truest sense His creation. It is on this foundation of Divine origin that all the high attributes of Scripture are built.”[7]
The reason Paul gives for his thanks to God concerning the Thessalonians was because when they “received from us the word of God’s message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe” (1 Thes 2:13). All of God’s Word is stamped with such impressions of divine wisdom, goodness, grace, holiness, and power as to clearly manifest itself to be “what it really is, the word of God”, not the word of man. In numerous passages of Scripture, the Scriptures are spoken of as if they were God (Gal 3:8 and Rm 9:17), and in other passages God is spoken of as if He were the Scriptures (Mt 19:4, 5; Hb 3:7; Ac 4:24, 25; 8:34, 35). The gospel is “the glorious gospel of the blessed God,” (1 Tm 1:11). Therefore, God requires that His Word be received and believed with a holy reverence, and with a due sense that all of Scripture is His voice speaking to us from heaven, “But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word” (Is 66:2). The author of Hebrews warns us, “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven” (Hb 12:25). It is self-evident that not only has this nation, but virtually every ‘Christian’ denomination, most churches, parachurch organizations, ‘Christian’ schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, and virtually all that professes to be Christian, have turned away from God and His Word and turned aside to myths, that is, to human ideas, ideologies, theories, opinions, imaginations, solutions, wisdom, and understandings. Whatever they have turned to, it is of human not divine origin; it is the product of the mind and imagination of man, not the inerrant revelation of God.
Without this holy fear and reverence for God’s Word as the Word of God, it will never be received as the Word of God, nor will it be truly understood or steadfastly believed. The reason the Jews did not believe the words of Jesus was because they did not believe Moses and the Prophets, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (Jn 5:46, 47). Reverence for God and His Word has virtually vanished today, even among most of what professes to be Christian. To tell someone today, even most professing Christians, “The Bible says…”, carries no weight at all. Among the many millions of people who profess to be Christians, comparatively few give the Bible any serious attention, unless it is to distort and adulterate it and conform it to their corrupt desires and the reasonings of their own carnal minds. Like Israel, “they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations,” (Is 66:3). Modern Christianity has become irreverent towards all things holy because of its prideful and willful unbelief, ignorance, corruption, and rejection of God, His gospel, and His Word. No one can believe truths of which they are willfully ignorant. Jesus Himself declared that “unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3). Unless we deny ourselves and all our pride, our sin, the world, and all our own imaginations, unless we become humble, teachable, and submit our mind and life to all of Scripture, we can never come to a true, right, and saving understanding of God, Jesus Christ, and His Word. When instead of having inward shame and godly sorrow for sin, men and women justify their sin, give sin respectable names, deny it is sin, double-down in their sin, and are even proud of their sin, then there is no true saving faith. Jesus condemned the learned scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees that because of their pride, irreverence, worldliness, and hypocrisy they could not perceive or understand the truths and doctrines which He taught. God requires that we believe all of Scripture, not that we fully understand all of Scripture, as the great Puritan Stephen Charnock once wrote,
“God in His kindness to man has made revelations of Himself, but His goodness is manifested in obliging us to believe Him, not fully understand Him. He has made them, by sufficient testimonies, as clear to our faith, as they are incomprehensible to our reason; …. But since the clearness of men’s understanding is sullied by the fall, and has lost its wings to fly up to a knowledge of such sublime things as that of the Trinity, and other mysteries of the Christian religion, God has manifested His goodness in not obliging us to understand them but to believe them; and has given us reason enough to believe it to be His revelation, though He has not extended our understanding to a capacity to know them, and render a reason of every mystery. …. God did not require that everyone within the verge of the [gospel] should be able to discourse of it to the reasons of men; He required not that every man should be a philosopher, or an orator, but a believer …. Repent and believe, is that which is required by Christ and the apostles for the enjoyment of the kingdom of heaven.” [8]
God promises that He will teach the humble, “He teaches the humble His way” (Ps 25:9); “The secret of the LORD is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant” (Ps 25:14). Unless men and women humble themselves, and become like little children, as Jesus Himself declared (Mt 18:3 ,4), God will not teach them. Therefore, there is no greater obstruction to the truths and doctrines of Scripture as the pride of men’s minds, which is utterly inconsistent with them. This is why men and women come to Scripture with carnal and arrogant confidence in the ability of their own minds, to the truths and doctrines of the gospel, without the least fear, awe, or reverence for God whose Word it is. They imagine themselves to be competent judges of the mind of the Holy Spirit in all of Scripture. They think they can come to the Scriptures in the same way and with the same frame of mind as they come to a book of philosophy, or any other subject they wish to read and learn. When we consider how people for the most part learn the truths of Scripture, we should not be surprised to see how easily they unlearn and forsake them. The truths of Scripture are foolishness to an unhumbled and unregenerate mind (1 Cor 2:14), and if they are ever at one time received, they will be forsaken upon the first occasion to do so. Their minds will easily be “led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor 11:3). The stony ground hearer received the Word with joy, but parted with it at the first hint of affliction or opposition (Mk 4:16, 17).
Infinite vs. Finite
There is no truth or doctrine in Scripture that is against human reason, but there is much that is above human reason, and which, therefore, must be received, believed, trusted in, obeyed, and persevered in by faith, not by sight. The true Christian understands and expects that the truths and doctrines revealed in Scripture, and which are the product of the infinite wisdom of God, will often contain truths which surpass the finite reason of man, and that submission to these truths and doctrines is, in fact, a test of their faith, obedience, and humility. If, however, we follow the reasoning of our own limited and finite minds, lean on our own understanding, trust in our own heart, integrate human wisdom and ideologies with Scripture, mix Paganism with Christianity, entertain extra-biblical revelations and imaginations, substitute denominational dogma and traditions for divine truth, entangle ourselves in subtle arguments, philosophical speculations, and pseudo-intellectual theorizing, forsaking a humble, childlike dependence on the clear teaching of God in His Word, we expose our minds to being led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, and turning away from the truth and turning aside to myths, thereby coming under the curse of God, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD” (Jer 17:5).
This is what corrupted all the beliefs and worship of the Jews. In their pride and arrogance, they nullified the commandment of God for the sake of their own man-made traditions and hair-splitting distinctions, and taught as doctrines the precepts of men (Mt 15:9). This is what corrupted all the efforts of the medieval “schoolmen” or “scholastics”; men like Anselm (1033-1109), Peter Abelard (1079-1142), and Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274). These were monks and professional ‘scholars’ who, like the Athenians and Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, spent “their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new” (Ac 17:21). This is what gave birth to and fueled the spread of Pelagianism, Arminianism, and all false doctrines of like tendencies which make salvation dependent on some act or action on the part of man. This is what corrupted all the efforts of Higher Criticism and the teachings which came out of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment from men like Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), and the teachings and doctrines of the nineteenth century Rationalists such as Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889). These were men for whom the Bible, its truths and doctrines, were things not to be humbly received and believed by faith, but were the subject for their own philosophical speculations, theological theorizing, and human reasonings, and who came to the study of divine truth with minds stuffed full of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, pagan philosophical presuppositions, sophisms, esoteric expressions invented by the serpentine minds of men, which they mixed, integrated, and assimilated with the truths and doctrines of Scripture, thereby woefully corrupting, debasing, and perverting it. It never entered their minds in all their philosophizing about the Scriptures to come with a holy, humble attitude of heart, waiting and praying for their minds to be illumined and enlightened to the mysteries of the gospel. Instead, they were puffed up with a conceit of their own intellectual powers, the superiority of their religious presuppositions, philosophical maxims, and convinced of their own ability to come to a true knowledge of God by their own powers of reason, apart from any divine illumination. They came to the truths and doctrines of Christianity, and forming them to their own imaginations, they wholly corrupted them, and led the minds of people away from the simplicity and purity of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. In other words, these men pridefully ignored and dismissed the Apostle Paul’s warning to the Colossians, as if it did not apply to someone as intelligent, learned, and scholastic as they, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Col 2:8).
These proud and self-conceited men did not leave one truth or doctrine of the Bible that could be understood by anyone who was not more proficient in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle than they were in the teachings of Christ. To teach and believe the plain, simple, humbling truths of Scripture in a way that even a child could understand, and in the way commanded by Scripture to affect the minds and consciences of men and women, without all their pride-preserving philosophical notions, sophisms, theorizing, and subtle, hair-splitting distinctions by which they had confused, corrupted, and perverted them, was regarded by them to be a heretic or an ignoramus. These men, and all like them, by their pride, self-confidence, pretended intellectualism, and integration of human wisdom and ideologies, totally corrupted true Christianity, and poisoned the fountain from which others sought the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. Even what was left of truth was so debased, corrupted, and divested of its heavenly glory, as to render it useless and ineffective for its divine ends. What B.B. Warfield said of the nineteenth-century Rationalist Albrecht Ritschl, can be said of all people in every age who elevate human wisdom and reason over the authority and plain and simple truths of Scripture,
“He takes from Scripture and Reformers alike what suits his purpose, without the least regard to its logical connection, and then fits it without mercy into his scheme …. Neglecting their real teachings he gathered out from their writings such chance remarks as could be made to fit in with his own view of things, and built up from them a new Reformation doctrine which he presented as the only true one. Thus he gave the world a new Naturalism, decked out in phrases borrowed from the Scriptures and Reformers, but as like their system of thought as black is to white, and called it the true doctrine of the Bible and Reformers. This strange procedure has, under his influence, been systematized and men now tell us gravely that the essence of any movement consists of that in it which we can look upon as lasting truth – which, being interpreted, means that in it which we find conformable to our own predilections.”[9]
Error can never produce the effects of truth under any circumstances, no matter how cleverly those errors are systematized and justified in the sight of men. All these pseudo-intellectual distortions, reinterpretations, and redefinitions of biblical truths, doctrines, and terminology, which are nothing more than the products of the puffed-up minds of men, in no way alters the poverty of their conception of Christianity. They all alike expose to us in sharpest relief the extreme destitution and impotency of the religions which men have invented for themselves. People who only believe as much of Scripture as they can reconcile with their own presuppositions, and “find conformable to our own predilections”, their own imaginations, their own carnal reasonings, or their own finite understanding, and that they can, as B.B. Warfield stated, “be made to fit in with his own view of things,” simply are not Christians. A superficial and natural understanding of divine truths may last for a time, but it will soon betray its own insufficiency and barrenness. It will waver or turn aside to myths at the first wind of false doctrine, and will always fail to fulfill the highest ends of true Christianity, which is the glory of God. If the revelation of God is not truly known, or known and rejected, it cannot produce its proper effects. We are never in more danger of parting with the teachings of God than when we lean on our own understandings when we come to the truths and doctrines of Scripture, so as to forsake that humble, lowly, childlike, frame of heart and mind we must have if we are to be taught, learn, understand, believe, and obey the Scriptures as we ought. This is one way by which men and women, by the innate pride of their minds, are both prevented from receiving and believing, as well as predisposed to surrendering and abandoning all the truths and doctrines of Christianity.
True Wisdom
Again, we need to emphasize that there is nothing proposed to us in the gospel that is contrary to human reason. How could there be, seeing that reason is the true comprehension of things in their true nature and as they really are, and when all of Scripture is the revelation of the infinite reason or wisdom of God who has revealed all things in their true natures, including the true nature of man. Nevertheless, there are many things revealed in Scripture which are above the comprehension of finite human reason, and this is something that reason itself cannot help but admit, knowing that our reason is that of a finite creature which is limited. This limitation is not the result of sin and the Fall, but simply the limitation which finite has of comprehending what is infinite. So how can a finite wisdom, reason, and understanding perfectly comprehend all the revelations of infinite wisdom? “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know? Its measure is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea” (Job 11:7-9); “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it” (Ps 139:6); “Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again?” (Rm 11:33-35). Many divine truths and doctrines far exceed the ability of our finite minds to perfectly comprehend and understand them. Finite human reason can only humbly believe, trust, and obey the revelations which God gives of them. To believe, trust, and obey all of Scripture, even those truths and doctrines that are above the capacity of our finite reason to perfectly comprehend and understand, far from being unreasonable, is the most reasonable thing we could possibly do, as the great Puritan Stephen Charnock once declared,
“It is very reasonable that things so great and glorious, so beneficial to men, and revealed to them by so sound an authority, and an unerring truth, should be believed.”[10]
There is no end to the lies, false religions, erroneous doctrines, irrational ideologies, and obvious falsehoods which people willingly believe and act upon. Many believe in evolution despite the fact they have no authority but their own or someone else’s imagination on which to base their belief. People believe the media and follow social media influencers despite their having no authority other than themselves. People routinely choose to irrationally and unreasonably believe all kinds of things, even things which are blatantly false and contrary even to common sense, for no other reason than they want to believe them because they find them compatible with their own lusts, desires, opinions, and prejudices, and for which they have no authority other than their own mind, but very few ever believe all the truths and doctrines taught by Jesus and the New Testament for the simple reason they do not want to believe them. This is because there are in the gospel, truths and doctrines that are not only unsuited, but contrary to human reason, not only as it is finite, but as it is corrupted by sin. Human reason is now not only finite, but wholly corrupted and depraved by sin.
The unregenerate mind is “darkened in its understanding” (Eph 4:18), that is, in its ability to think and reason, therefore, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” (Is 53:6). The mind corrupted by sin is actively hostile to the truths and doctrines of the gospel (Col 1:21), and expresses this hostility by actively opposing and denying them, or by corrupting, twisting, and forcing them into conformity to its own ideas of what it is to be Christian. To deny this is to deny the fundamental truth which makes the gospel and the new birth necessary, that is, that Jesus Christ came into the world not just to forgive sins, or make forgiveness of sins possible if we fulfill the right conditions, but to actually redeem a people for His own possession, to give them a new nature, “which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph 4:24).
The Scriptures not only teach us what the truth is, but also the effects it produces upon an enlightened regenerate mind and believing heart. In this unregenerate state, the mind is unable of itself to truly discern and understand spiritual truths, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14). Therefore, the unregenerate mind is apt to create for itself numerous vain imaginations, philosophies, ideologies, theories, and false systems of religion, and to be filled with innumerable prejudices and preconceptions, contrary to what the gospel teaches and requires. Whatever it invents and imagines, the mind regards, approves, and believes it to be the reasonable and proper actions and effects of its own wisdom and reason, just as much as any other of which it is capable. The fact that the evil, sensual, selfish, and cruel character of Mohammed appears good in the eyes of a Muslim does not change the fact that he was evil. An entirely different standard of “good” other than that revealed in the Bible must be invented if evil is to be called good. This new standard of good is then justified in the sight of men. In the same way, an entirely different standard of Christian other than that taught by the New Testament must be invented by the mind of man, then justified in the sight of men, if modern Christianity is to retain the name of Christian. Whatever flatters the canal mind and innate pride of man will be easily justified in the sight of men and highly esteemed by them. With respect to both of these, namely, the weakness of human reason as it is finite and limited, and the depravity of human reason as it is corrupted and darkened by sin, it is the design, work, and power of the gospel to renew and transform the mind, to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, faith, and His gospel, to give us “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16), and to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rm 12:2).
With respect to the weakness of human reason as to its being finite and limited, the Bible requires men and women to believe and act on things that are above human reason, merely on the authority of divine revelation. The Bible demands immediate and implicit faith from all who hear and read it. This demand is not confined to the educated, or to those who have the ability to wade through all the evidences of its truthfulness and philosophical apologetic arguments in its defense. The Bible and its truths do not need to be defended, they simply need to be proclaimed and believed. This demand for faith is not dependent upon our being able to fully understand all that is revealed in Scripture or being able to harmonize the truths of Scripture with our own finite human reason. This demand of faith is inseparable from the Word itself. Since this demand of faith goes wherever the Word of God goes, it must rest upon the divine authority of the Word itself, not on some evidence or authority outside of itself. There is no way of justifying the universal, immediate, and authoritative demand which the Bible makes on our faith, except by admitting that it contains within itself the proof of its divine origin. If the Bible is the very word and work of God, it must contain the impress of His divine nature; “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man,” (1Cor 2:9), but God must reveal them through the Spirit (1Cor 2:10), “that we might know the things freely given to us by God” (1 Cor 2:12). Therefore, when men and women reject the divine authority of all of Scripture either in word or practice, their unbelief is to be attributed to their own moral and spiritual state, not to any deficiency in the evidence of the truth. Those who do not believe the gospel would not believe even if they had witnessed all the miracles of Jesus. “And even if our gospel is veiled,” says the apostle Paul, “it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:3, 4).
Whenever the wise, the scribes, the debaters of this world have refused to accept and submit their minds and lives to the authority of Scripture, under the pretext of being led by some supposed superior human reason, they never fail to fall into the most irrational thinking and behavior, in judging the wisdom of God to be foolishness (1 Cor 2:14). Whatever the natural man cannot understand by means of their own human reason, whatever contradicts their own human reason, and whatever divine revelations they judge to be incompatible with their own standards, rules, beliefs, dogmas, pride, ideologies, experiences, and desires, they regard as foolishness. The unregenerate mind, in its pride and arrogance, makes itself infinite and the wisdom of God finite. Therefore, to affirm that we are not required to believe any more of Scripture than we can understand, or that we can harmonize with our own finite and limited human wisdom, and that we can reject whatever is really above human reason on the pretext that it is contrary to human reason, or because it conflicts with our own standards, is to effectively renounce the gospel, all divine revelation, and biblical Christianity.
When it comes to things that are infinite and spiritual, the gospel presents truths, doctrines, and principles that are exceedingly above our finite and limited human comprehension. The natural tendency of our minds when it comes to things pertaining to God is to think in terms of our own righteousness, that is, of doing something, or contributing something of our own which will earn or merit the favor of God toward us, or that will predispose God to act favorably toward us. The question of the rich, young ruler is the universal question of all mankind, “what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?” (Mt 19:16). In other words, our natural tendency is to obtain a righteousness by the works of the Law, or by some other standard which men and women invent for themselves. This universal tendency toward salvation by human effort is self-evident by the fact that this is true of all the religions which man has ever invented for himself, even those that still insist on retaining the name of Christian. Within modern Christianity this meritorious act is most often our “faith”. The reason, we are told, why God saves some and not others is because He saves those whom He foresaw would, of their own free will, choose to believe in Him, thereby assigning the determining act in salvation, not to the grace of God granting salvation, but to the consent of the will, which gives the grace of God its efficacy. Without this consent God is powerless to save anyone. Here is a self-salvation by human works as truly, though not as grossly, as in Paganism, Phariseeism, and Pelagianism itself. The standard by which a person’s eternal destiny is determined is some humanly derived standard of what it is to be a good person, thereby blinding themselves to their own sin by comparing themselves with other “good” people, and so like the Jews who, “not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (Rm 10:3).
The gospel of Jesus Christ, however, teaches and demands things that are contrary and diametrically opposed to the natural tendency of our limited and finite minds, and which the carnal mind, that is, the mind as it is corrupted by sin, is rabidly hostile toward (Rm 8:7). Therefore, like the Sadducees who denied the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, not because the Bible does not teach it, but because their finite and carnal minds could not comprehend it (Mt 22:23), any teaching that is contrary to or inconsistent with their limited and finite mind and fallen human reason, they ridicule and despise it as irrational and unreasonable. Like the Sadducees, they will misrepresent the doctrines they do not like, or that are inconsistent with their pride and carnal mind, in a way intended to make these doctrines appear absurd, then attack those misrepresentations (Mt 22:25-28). The same procedure is mimicked today by most of modern Christianity, which makes the authority of human reason, tradition, opinion, experience, and the culture the rule and standard by which everything declared in the Bible is to be examined, thereby revealing that like the Sadducees they do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God (Mt 22:29). In opposition to this, the design of the gospel, in all its truths, doctrines, commands, and mysteries, is to bring every thought captive to the obedience of faith. Thus, the teaching of the apostle Paul which no natural and carnal mind will or can comply with, “If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become foolish that he may become wise” (1 Cor 3:18). Unless we renounce all our carnal wisdom, in all its principles, presuppositions, effects, and actions, we will never become wise with the wisdom that is from God, and anyone who does not know what it is to become a fool for the sake of Christ and His Word, whoever they may be, was never yet wise toward God.
Therefore, when people make an outward profession of the gospel, and they begin to discover that its doctrines, principles, and mysteries are unsuited to the natural pride of their minds, their own carnal reasonings, and inconsistent with the absolute authority they would in all things ascribe to their own reason, they then begin, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, to contrive and seek out “many devises” (Eccl 7:29), and to invent other opinions more suited to the innate pride of their minds and carnal reasonings. This is precisely what modern Christianity in all its various forms has become, namely, a system of religion that is more suited to the innate pride and carnal reasonings of natural men and women. All heresies, whether modern or ancient, have sprung from this root. When people judge that reason and not faith is to have the ultimate supremacy in the things revealed in Scripture, then it is unavoidable they will judge that it is their own finite and carnal human reason that is the reason intended. When we are told to “rethink” historical Christian doctrines and to dialogue with people of various theological perspectives, it is clear we are being told to make our own carnal minds and not faith the ultimate judge of the things revealed in Scripture. All these deviations from the truths, doctrines, commands, and principles of the gospel that now characterize modern Christianity, and that go by various names, are all products from this corrupt fountain of human reason. Modern Christianity has become nothing more than a system of human reasonings craftily suited to the carnal minds and innate pride of natural men. The carnal mind no sooner hears them than they know they express views and ideas that correspond to their own corrupt desires and the carnal reasonings of their own minds. In this way carnal men and women have labored to bring every divine revelation into submission to their own perverse reasonings and imaginations, one of the most recent efforts being the newly published Upside-Down Kingdom Bible.
It is self-evident, therefore, that this kind of apostasy which now typifies most of modern Christianity has no other source but the innate pride of the minds of men and women which refuses to submit to biblical truths, commands, and doctrines on the sole authority of their being the divine Word of God, especially when those revelations are above human reason as it is limited and finite, or inconsistent with it as it is corrupted and depraved. Under these conditions the truths and doctrines of the gospel can never be maintained, but will always be subjected to being weighed in the uneven and tottering scales of the finite and carnal minds of men and women who profess to be Christian. What is suited to their own reason and purposes they will receive, and what is not, even if it is clearly affirmed a hundred times in the Scriptures, they will distort, adulterate, redefine, and reject as if they were the words, opinions, and imaginations of men like themselves. But, as the Holy Spirit has said, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God” (1 Cor 1:27-29). It is the humble, the teachable, those who have been made willing by the power of God to submit their minds and understandings to the obedience of faith in all of Scripture as the very Word of God; it is with these alone that the true gospel will abide and continue. I pray that all who read this know by experience this humble subjection of mind, life, and conscience to the authority of God in His Word, for it and it alone is the only security against the pride that is so rampant in the days in which we live and that has spawned a whole brood of errors and heresies that have diffused themselves among all sorts of professing Christians.
In the next study I will examine two other causes of apostasy, which are the careless false security and groundless confidences which betray so many today into an apostasy from the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and the love of this present world which has been the ruin of innumerable multitudes of professing Christians.
[1] Martyn-Lloyd Jones, The Cross (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1986), 52-53.
[2] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1923), 10.
[3] Ibid, 65.
[4] Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion (Ames, IA: International Outreach, 2000), 149.
[5]Ibid, 101-102.
[6] Iain H. Murray, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 299.
[7] B.B. Warfield, The Works of B.B. Warfield, Vol 1, ‘Revelation and Inspiration’ (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2003), 280.
[8] Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, Vol 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 280, 281.
[9] B.B. Warfield, The Works of B.B. Warfield, Vol 7 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 52.
[10] Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, Vol 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 281.