the expression of our rebellious wills; they are only bruises where the devil has been kicking us around. Of course sinners can feel no guilt, seeing they are merely the victims of another’s wickedness.
Under that kind of teaching there can be no self-condemnation, but there can be, and is, plenty of self-pity over the raw deal we innocent sinners got at the hand of the devil. Now, no Bible student will underestimate the sinister work of Satan, but to make him responsible for our sins is to practice deadly deception upon ourselves. And the hardest deception to cure is that which is self-imposed.
Another doctrine which hinders God’s work, and one which is heard almost everywhere, is that sinners are not lost because they have sinned, but because they have not accepted Jesus. “Men are not lost because they murder; they are not sent to hell because they lie and steal and blaspheme; they are sent to hell because they reject a Saviour.” This short-sighted preachment is thundered at us constantly, and is seldom challenged by the hearers. A parallel argument would be hooted down as silly, but apparently no one notices it: “That man with a cancer is dying, but it is not the cancer that is killing him; it is his failure to accept a cure.” Is it not plain that the only reason the man would need a cure is that he is already marked for death by the cancer? The only reason I need a Saviour, in His capacity as Saviour, is that I am already marked for hell by the sins I have committed. Refusing to believe in Christ is a symptom of deeper evil in the life, of sins unconfessed and wicked ways unforsaken. The guilt lies in acts of sin; the proof of that guilt is seen in the rejection of the Saviour.
If anyone should feel like brushing this aside as mere verbal sparring, let him first pause: the doctrine that the only damning sin is the rejection of Jesus is definitely a contributing cause of our present weakness and lack of moral grip. It is nothing but a neat theological sophism which has become identified with orthodoxy in the mind of the modern Christian and is for that reason very difficult to correct. It is, for all its harmless seeming, a most injurious belief, for it destroys our sense of responsibility for our moral conduct. It robs all sin of its frightfulness and makes evil to consist in a mere technicality. And where sin is not cured power cannot flow.
Another doctrinal hindrance is the teaching that men are so weak by nature that they are unable to keep the law of God. Our moral helplessness is hammered into us in sermon and song until we wilt under it and give up in despair. And on top of this we are told that we must accept Jesus in order that we may be saved from the wrath of the broken law! No matter what the intellect may say, the human heart can never accept the idea that we are to be held responsible for breaking a law that we cannot keep. Would a father lay upon the back of his three year-old son a sack of grain weighing five-hundred pounds and then beat the child because he could not carry it? Either men can or they cannot please God. If they cannot, they are not morally responsible, and have nothing to fear. If they can, and will not, then they are guilty, and as guilty sinners they will be sent to hell at last. The latter is undoubtedly the fact. If the Bible is allowed to speak for itself it will teach loudly the doctrine of man’s personal responsibility for sins committed. Men sin because they want to sin. God’s quarrel with men is that they will not do even that part of the will of God which they understand and could do if they would.
From Paul’s testimony in the seventh chapter of Romans some teachers have drawn the doctrine of moral inability. But however Paul’s inner struggle may be interpreted, it is contrary to the whole known truth to believe that he had been a consistent law-breaker and violator of the Ten Commandments. He specifically testified that he had lived in all good conscience before God, which to a Jew could only mean that he had observed the legal requirements of the law. Paul’s cry in Romans is not after power to fulfill the simple morality of the Ten Commandments, but after inward holiness which the law could not impart.
It is time we get straightened out in our thinking about the law. The weakness of the law was three-fold: (1) It could not cancel past sins—that is, it could not justify; (2) it could not make dead men live—that is, it could not regenerate; (3)it could not make bad hearts good—that is, it could not sanctify. To teach that the insufficiency of the law lay in man’s moral inability to meet its simple demands on human behaviour is to err most radically. If the law could not be kept, God is in the position of laying upon mankind an impossible moral burden and then punishing them for failure to do the impossible. I will believe anything I find in the Bible, but I do not feel under obligation to believe a teaching which is obviously a mistaken inference and one, furthermore, which both contradicts the Scriptures and outrages human reason.
The Bible everywhere takes for granted Israel’s ability to obey the law. Condemnation fell because Israel, having that ability, refused to obey. They sinned not out of amiable weakness, but out of deliberate rebellion against the will of God. That is the inner nature of sin always, willful refusal to obey God. But still men go on trying to get conviction upon sinners by telling them they sinned because they could not help it.
The vogue of excusing sin, of seeking theological justification for it instead of treating it as an affront to God, is having its terrible effect among us. Deep searching of heart and a resolute turning from evil will go far to bring back power to the Church of Christ. Tender, tear-stained preaching on this subject must be heard again before revival can come.
The contradictions observed in the teachings which we have examined here are another cause of weakness. Christians do not, as a rule, enjoy great power until they begin to think straight. Whether or not the Methodists were right on every point they held is an open question; but their leaders had thought things out so clearly that they were not leading the people around in circles. As far as they could see there were no contradictions in their philosophy of faith, and this was a source of real strength to them. The same was true in the Finney revivals. God used Finney to get people thinking straight about religion. He may not have been correct in all his conclusions, but he did remove the doctrinal stalemates and start the people moving toward God. He placed before his hearers a moral either/or, so they could always know just where they stood. The inner confusion caused by hidden contradictions was absent from his preaching. We could use another Finney today.
VI
Through the Out-Poured Spirit
A disinterested observer, reading without the handicap of doctrinal prejudice, would surely gather from the Scriptures that God desires to advance His work among men by frequent outpourings of the Spirit upon His people as they need them and are prepared to receive them.
We make this statement with the full knowledge that it will be hotly challenged by some teachers. “It is not scriptural,” they say, “to pray for or expect an outpouring of the Spirit today. The Spirit was poured out once for all at Pentecost and has not left the Church since that time. To pray for the Holy Spirit now is to ignore the historical fact of Pentecost.” That is the argument used to discourage expectation, and it has been successful in damping down the fervor of many a congregation and silencing their prayers. There is a specious logic about this objection, even an air of superior orthodoxy; but for all that, it is contrary to the Word of God and out of harmony with the operations of God in Church history.
The Bible does not sponsor this chilling doctrine of once-for-all blessing. Rather, it encourages us to expect “showers of blessing” and “floods upon the dry ground.” It was impossible for the outpouring which came at Pentecost to affect persons who were not present or congregations not yet in existence. It is obvious that the spiritual benefits of Pentecost must be prolonged beyond the lifetimes of the persons who were the first to receive them. The Spirit must fill not only that first company of “about an hundred and twenty,” but others as well or the blessings of that experience would cease with the death of the last member of the original band.
All this seems reasonable
