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 When
old-time preachers spoke of "God's part, and Man's
part" in man's salvation, they certainly were not saying
man could earn or merit redemption on the basis of perfect
works. I have heard the sermon scores of times and hundreds of
our readers can verify my observations. "The God's
part" portion of those lessons stressed the grace of God,
the blood of Christ and the mercy of God extended in forgiveness
— to "whosoever will..." Man's part may have sounded
like legalism to "evangelicals"; and for that matter,
the preacher may have unintentionally invited such criticism by
his zeal and terminology, but one must ignore the first half of
the sermon to draw such a conclusion.
The
preachers of those sermons had listeners who were drilled in
"faith only" concepts — who equated justification by
faith (Rom. 5:1) with "the moment you feel God move in your
heart." The "trust" essential to salvation had to
be explained in detail. Knowing that their hearers thought of
faith as an "experience," those sermons had to point
out that the faith which saves is an obedient faith, and
"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."
In
the frequent wrangles over "in order to" versus
"because of" remission of sins, and other like
particulars, it is possible that neither "side" gave
much thought to the underlying principle at stake. But
"faith only" and "experience of grace" had
ancestry. The shallow ripples sprang from deep-seated theories:
that man was so depraved as to be incapable of responding to
God; that God had elected certain individuals to be saved
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and
would "call them" in due time by a miraculous outpouring of grace (or
spirit, or faith); and that one so "saved" could not
be lost. And back of that, in the very foundation of that
theology, was the idea that the sovereignty of God was
incompatible with a truly" "free-will" man.
This
theology seems to glorify God in the ultimate sense. ALL is in
His hands, man can have no part! Extreme proponents of
the theory Adam sinned as a result of a decree of God — and
for this difficulty they can only plead, "His ways cannot
be comprehended." Despite all of their praise of God's
sovereign power, they really denied that God could and did make
man a free agent, and will vindicate His ultimacy in His
judgment of man.
On
the basis that man can have no part (is NOT free to act
in response to God's will, whether from the creation, or from
Adam's sin) all commands of God, all invitations of man, all
conditions of salvation, must be explained away. They
must mean something other than their obvious import. These folk
say there is no condition which man can meet in order to
his salvation. If he must do anything at all, it is
"justification by works of law" — and some of
"our" preachers are as 'hung up' on this flaw as any
Baptist debater I have ever heard. As they dig deeper and deeper
into this type of theology they adopt the terminology:
"finished work," "imputation of Christ's
life," etc. And bit-by-bit, evangelical concepts of
"faith" invade their thinking, and find expression in
their writings. (continued next page)
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