The Glory of God in Salvation

Alex posted these thoughts on Facebook this morning.

I had a conversation with a pastor friend not that long ago about the need for the glory of God to be at the forefront of the Gospel message instead of the benefits to man being the main focus. Many churches have taken to the assumption that the only way to get people to accept Christ as their savior is to present the Gospel in a way that is very little about God but very much about the man and the man's happiness, both in this life and the afterlife.

After some time to think about it I cannot see (even if I am wrong about Calvinism) God ever saying to me in heaven "Alex, I wish you were less strict about Biblical doctrine. I wish you were more pragmatic and just compromised a bit more to help get more people to walk down the aisle. Sure the Bible is clear that salvation is primarily about the glorification of the name of God (Rom 9, Rom 11:36, 1 Cor 10:31) but that isn't so important for new converts to know."

We over time have compromised too much in the name of being practical. Our going too far is not limited to the actions of the extreme cases that we all hear about such as a church offering beer at their Father's Day service or a church raffling off a trip to Hawaii just for attending their outreach service. We have compromised far too much on the message preached to those men and women that God has given us the gift of being able to minister to.

While many may see this development as a new problem within the church it is not. People have been going down this slippery slope for a very long time. We see evidence of this when C.H. Spurgeon wrote in FEEDING SHEEP OR AMUSING GOATS. "Had Christ introduced more of the pleasant elements into His mission, He would have been more popular when they went back, because of the searching nature of His teaching. I do not hear Him say, 'Run after these people, Peter, and tell them we will have a different style of service tomorrow, something short and attractive with little preaching. We will have a pleasant evening for the people. Tell them they will be sure to enjoy it. Be quick, Peter, we must get the people somehow!' Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them... The need is Biblical doctrine, so understood and felt, that it sets men on fire."

We have pragmatically made our churches a place where we can meet "seekers" and can be met on their terms rather than where our sheep are being fed. while there are many problems with that form of preaching there is just one that I will focus on. There are no seekers! No one seeks God. Romans 3:11 "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God". Romans 3:18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Romans 8:7-8 "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; INDEED IT CANNOT. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Eph 2:1,5 "You were dead through your trespasses and sins".

So if this is true and no man seeks after God how do we then have converts? It is a TOTAL work of God. Our salvation is not a synergistic work where Jesus died for our ability to save ourselves by asking Him into our hearts but rather it is a monergistic work were it is God who died, God who elects, God who draws, and God who SAVES. God and God alone is the author of our salvation from start to finish. Ephesians 2 is clear that salvation is GRACE THROUGH FAITH. Our faith is not our own doing but it is the gift of grace. If our faith was our own we can boast in it but is not a result of works so that no one may boast. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. When did He prepare us before hand? We can see the answer to that if we back up a bit to Ephesians 1:4 -5 "Even as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for the adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will."

Jesus says in John 6:37 "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out". God does a work in our lives before we ever accept Him as our savior. We do not need to pare off the rough edges of the doctrine of salvation in the name of trying to win more people to Christ. We can preach every ounce of truth that Scripture gives us, from salvation being salvation from the wrath of God (Rom 5:9) to salvation being all about God's glory, because it is God who opens the eyes of the sinner and it is God who will draw the convert in.

A.W. Pink told his congregation "Today it is true almost everywhere that we are far more concerned about the results of the gospel than we are about the purity of it! We are more concerned in the blessings of man than we are about the glory of Christ! Is not that true? Is it not true that the first great question asked everywhere today is, What are the 'results'? What is the fruitage? How many people have been saved in your church the last year? I am not saying that the question has no importance, but I do say that, if that is the first question that is asked, it only shows what a low level we are living on! the first question we ought to ask is, How scripturally is the gospel being preached in your church? Is the preacher magnifying Christ? Is the preacher emphasizing the absolute sufficiency of his finished work? Does the preacher make it plain that God does not ask the sinner to do anything? that Christ has done it all for him? Ah, my friends, when the preachers today are tested by that, there are mighty few of them that will survive the test. How many there are today who tell the poor sinner that he has got to give his heart to God! Well, you say, isn't that right? Isn't that true? Must not the sinner give his heart to the Lord if he is going to be saved? Oh, the tragedy that such a question has to be asked! We talk about progress and advancing; why, we need indoctrinating in the ABC of Christianity, and the ABC of Christianity is the gospel! No, my friends, no sinner was ever saved by our giving, we are saved by God's giving... A whole lot of our so-called Christian work today reminds me of little children when they first witness father and mother doing something in the garden. The ground is prepared and then the seed is sown, and every day the child goes into the garden and he looks around to see if the seed is beginning to sprout, and if it doesn't show any signs and he want to make sure that the seed is beginning to sprout, he just scratches around amongst the soil. He wants to see something. My friends, that is what a lot of us are doing in connection with so-called Christian work today! O we have so little confidence in the power and in the sufficiency of the Divine 'seed' to bring about the harvest that God has ordained it shall do!"

Our pragmatism is a distrust in the power of God. We evangelize for God's glory but what good is that if we do it in a dishonoring way. If our chief end as man is to glorify God we must do so in both evangelism and doctrine not just one or the other. I will end with these words from Martin Lloyd Jones "Any teaching... that starts with us and our needs, rather that the glory of God, is unscriptural, and seriously unscriptural. That subjective approach.., is what has led many astray for so many years."