Travels prevented a post on Machen Day (July 28), which also solved the dilemma of whether to post on the Lord’s Day (July 28). But in honor of Machen’s birth, a selection from What is Faith? (1925):
The gospel does not abrogate God’s law, but it makes men love it with all their hearts.
How is it with us? The law of God stands over us; we have offended against it in thought, word and deed; its. majestic “letter” pronounces a sentence of death against our sin. Shall we obtain a specious security by ignoring God’s law, and by taking refuge in an easier law of our own devising? Or shall the Lord Jesus, as He is offered to us in the gospel, wipe out the sentence of condemnation that was against us, and shall the Holy Spirit write God’s law in our heart, and make us doers of the law and not hearers only? So and only so will the great text be applied to us: “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”
The alternative that underlies this verse, then, and that becomes explicit in Galatians also, is not an alternative between an external or ceremonial religion and what men would now call (by a misuse of the New Testament word) a “spiritual” religion, important though that alternative no doubt is; but it is an alternative between a religion of merit and a religion of grace. The Epistle to the Galatians is directed just as much against the modern notion of “salvation by character” or salvation by “making Christ Master” in the life or salvation by a mere attempt to put into practice “the
principles of Jesus,” as it is directed against the Jewish ceremonialists of long ago: for what the Apostle is concerned to deny is any intrusion of human merit into-the work by which salvation is obtained. That work, according to the Epistle to the Galatians and according to the whole New Testament, is the work of God and of God alone.At this point appears the full poignancy of the great Epistle with which we have been dealing. Paul is not merely arguing that a man is justified by faith so much no doubt his opponents, the Judaizers, admitted but he is arguing that a man is justified by faith alone. What the Judaizers said was not that a man is justified by works; but that he is justified by faith and works exactly the thing that is being taught by the Roman Catholic Church today. No doubt they admitted that it was necessary for a man to have faith in. Christ in order, to be saved: but they held that it was also necessary for him to keep the law the best he could; salvation, according to them, was not by faith alone and not by works alone but by faith and works together. A man’s obedience to the law of God, they held, was not, indeed, sufficient for salvation; but it was necessary; and it became sufficient when it was supplemented by Christ.
Against this compromising solution of the problem, the Apostle insists upon a sharp alternative: a man may be saved by works (if he keeps the law perfectly), or he may be saved by faith; but he cannot possibly be f’saved by faith and works together. Christ, according to Paul, will do everything or nothing; if righteousness is in slightest measure obtained by our obedience to the law, then Christ died in vain; if we trust in slightest measure in our own good works, then we have turned away from grace and Christ profiteth us nothing. (192-93)
Old Life 
But you don’t understand, sir. There is always a need for compromises (options, alternatives) and this was true in the Galatian congregations. If some among us want to do an external thing like circumcision in order to get themselves more internally pious, why are they are not free to do so?
Paul had his own distinctive vision or “slant” on things, but so do some of the rest of us, and if we want to stay together, and keep the pension funds and institutions intact, then others should be free to circumcise externally if they want, just so they don’t make us do it. Whatever floats your boat, Certainly we can have different points of view, unless we are sectarians who can’t think that clearly anyway.
And as for this for this religion of merit vs religion of grace, it’s not us but you that talk about Christ’s “merits” and now the federal vision has taught us not to talk about merits of Christ.
Galatians 2:21 for IF righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
Galatians 3:18 For IF the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise
Galatians 3:21 For IF a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.
When you TR guys talk about Christ satisfying the law, you turn Him into a legalist, and what we need instead is covenantal maturity, both external and internal. Why shouldn’t some of us be free to circumcise if that helps them feel more pious and act accordingly. It might not be what my distinctive vision for capturing cities would do, but let’s simply reject any overtures which would deny the federal visionists to do what their conscience tells them to do.
Because in the end we all mostly agree about who Christ is and what Christ did, but now we need to pay attention to the curses of the new covenant, because covenantal vengeance is worse for us than it is for pagans or heathens or baptists..
“Flesh”, at least as we define it in this church, is not about having bad theology or disagreeing with Machen about the merits of Christ. Why shouldn’t we have as one alternative to add circumcision, as long as we don’t force it on all other congregations?
10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” (Deuteronomy 27:26)
11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall LIVE by faith.” (Habbakuk 2:4)
12 But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall LIVE by them.” (Leviticus 18:5)
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— (Deuteronomy 21:23)
Galatians 5:2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ,you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.
Philippians 3: 2 Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. 3 For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—4 though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews…but I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as DUNG, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.
Machen is too much like the apostle Paul. He could not compromise, because he was not capable of “framing” together perspectives in paradox. This is why he ended up saying mean “fleshly” things which got in the way of “evangelical reunion” And I don’t just mean saying bad words like “dung”.
Philippians 3: 9 A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough. 10 0 I have confidence in the Lord that you will take NO OTHER VIEW….12 I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!
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Peter Lillback, president of Machen’s Westminster Seminary— “Calvin affirms that there is a works righteousness that is imputed to the believer’s works. This works righteousness in no way detracts from justification by faith alone, since it is a subordinate righteousness. Calvin even speaks of works as inferior causes of one’s salvation. Because of the mutual and inseparable character of the benefits of the covenant, there must be both types of righteousness in the believer. But, the righteousness of works is subordinate to the righteousness of justification and is thus not contrary to it.”
Binding of God, p. 189.
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“Christ, according to Paul, will do everything or nothing; if righteousness is in slightest measure obtained by our obedience to the law, then Christ died in vain; if we trust in slightest measure in our own good works, then we have turned away from grace and Christ profiteth us nothing.”
Very nice.
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Amen.
It’s ALL…or NOTHING.
A tough sell today (and always)…but we must stand firm and proclaim it against all who would add even the “slightest measure”.
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“Legal preaching” does not mean preaching the law and the seriousness of sin and the wrath of God.
Legal preaching” is preaching that does not insist on Machen’s antithesis between Christ’s merits and our merits.
There are many who tell us that the gospel has to tell everybody that God loves them SO THAT then God will then be free to condemn those who don’t “accept” and love God back. But this notion of the “gospel” turns it into the law. We are already condemned and don’t need the gospel for that
Jesus Christ preached the gospel in John 5: 24. “As many as hear my word and believe him who sent me already have the life of the age to come—THEY DO NOT COME INTO JUDGMENT
Machen’s warning against going back into “ceremonies AND WORKS” is not at all hypothetical. Let me give you an example from my personal experience, This was in a rather large “Reformed Baptist” congregation, quite some time ago. The clergyman attempted to put us all in the “sweat-box” for about 50 minutes one night before the Lord’s Supper. I suppose his idea was to prepare us for the gospel by smiting the sheep with the law. (What else could a shepherd do with his stick?)
Don’t you know, he asked us, that most of the threats of hell are not to those outside the church? Most of the language about hell is directed to God’s people, not only to motivate them, but to make them examine themselves if they are really are trusting Christ.
He told us to examine what we were doing, and to think about our motives for what we were doing. He did not preach the gospel. He was a serious man, at least at that time. But the only way we really learn to fear God, and to love God’s law, is to see that only Christ could and did satisfy God’s law for God’s elect.
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MM – this example reminds me of a “reformed” baptist church I visited for a few Sundays in the early years of the last decade when I was looking for a different congregation. One Sunday the “assistant” pastor preached while the head pastor was away (actually, as I found out later, he was more like a pastor-apprentice having come from an entirely secular occupation and was studying to become an ordained pastor solely under the teaching of that church’s head pastor – i.e., no seminary training).
He preached on the Beatitudes as though they were Law … if you’re not poor in spirit maybe you should examine yourself, etc. I had always viewed Christ’s words in that section of the Sermon on the Mount as passive – in other word, you’re blessed IF you are poor in spirit, it’s not because it’s something you achieve, but it’s if you have been given that particular gift.
Anyway, I didn’t last long at that church before moving on. I was too naive at the time to even know what American evangelicals were – I thought evangelical was part of the name that Lutherans included in the name of their congregations. Later I ran across this reference from Richard Muller on Kim Riddlebarger’s blog site and it started me in an entirely new direction:
“…. I once met a minister who introduced himself to me as a “five-point Calvinist.” I later learned that, in addition to being a self-confessed five-point Calvinist, he was also an anti-paedobaptist who assumed that the church was a voluntary association of adult believers, that the sacraments were not means of grace but were merely “ordinances” of the church, that there was more than one covenant offering salvation in the time between the Fall and the eschaton, and that the church could expect a thousand-year reign on earth after Christ’s Second Coming but before the ultimate end of the world. He recognized no creeds or confessions of the church as binding in any way. I also found out that he regularly preached the “five points” in such a way as to indicate the difficulty of finding assurance of salvation: He often taught his congregation that they had to examine their repentance continually in order to determine whether they had exerted themselves enough in renouncing the world and in “accepting” Christ. This view of Christian life was totally in accord with his conception of the church as a visible, voluntary association of “born again” adults who had “a personal relationship with Jesus.”
In retrospect, I recognize that I should not have been terribly surprised at the doctrinal context or at the practical application of the famous five points by this minister — although at the time I was astonished. After all, here was a person, proud to be a five-point Calvinist, whose doctrines would have been repudiated by Calvin. In fact, his doctrines would have gotten him tossed out of Geneva had he arrived there with his brand of “Calvinism” at any time during the late sixteenth or the seventeenth century. Perhaps more to the point, his beliefs stood outside of the theological limits presented by the great confessions of the Reformed churches—whether the Second Helvetic Confession of the Swiss Reformed church or the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism of the Dutch Reformed churches or the Westminster standards of the Presbyterian churches. He was, in short, an American evangelical …”
I suppose that I’ll catch a lot of flack for these remarks and for that reference, but it led me to look at a lot of things in the Scriptures differently than I had previously and for that I’m eternally thankful.
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McMark, Lillback is a lil’ off.
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George – “…. I once met a minister who introduced himself to me as a “five-point Calvinist.” I later learned that, in addition to being a self-confessed five-point Calvinist, he was also an anti-paedobaptist who assumed that the church was a voluntary association of adult believers, that the sacraments were not means of grace but were merely “ordinances” of the church, that there was more than one covenant offering salvation in the time between the Fall and the eschaton, and that the church could expect a thousand-year reign on earth after Christ’s Second Coming but before the ultimate end of the world. He recognized no creeds or confessions of the church as binding in any way. I also found out that he regularly preached the “five points” in such a way as to indicate the difficulty of finding assurance of salvation: He often taught his congregation that they had to examine their repentance continually in order to determine whether they had exerted themselves enough in renouncing the world and in “accepting” Christ. This view of Christian life was totally in accord with his conception of the church as a visible, voluntary association of “born again” adults who had “a personal relationship with Jesus.”
Erik – Was he named Richard Smith?
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The Beatitudes are law.
Sure, they describe an authentic human being…Jesus. But they expose us…and condemn us. Jesus laid it on thick in The Sermon on the Mount. No one was left standing after that sermon….but him.
And that is how it (the law) should be preached today. Not like so many marching orders to make us better and authentic Christians. Good luck. Our innocence is long gone. But the law ought kill us off to any notion of righteousness by what we do.
And then notice when the SoM is over and Jesus comes upon a leper who says, “Heal me if you will.”
Jesus says, “I will.”
There it is. The law/gospel paradigm.
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NOT all “5 point baptists” are Reformed Baptists. And NOT all “Reformed Baptists” are legalists. Of course I am not “Reformed” and not that much of a water person even (I Cor 1). I am more of an anti-paedo-water person who wants to point out that there is neither water nor Holy Spirit in Romans 6.
But Banner of Truth paedobaptists have as many problems making a distinction between faith and assurance as baptist puritans do.. Mr Muller has no doubt met a confessionalist baptist or two sometime in his life. But that diversity would be inconvenient for the point he is making. No doubt he would be very uncomfortable with the folks on old life who don’t mind thinking that “denominations” and “church memberships” are “voluntary associations” in our society. These old life folks prefer that arrangement to the Constantinian tradition of the Magisterial Reformed.
Muller: he regularly preached the “five points” in such a way as to indicate the difficulty of finding assurance of salvation:
mark: it would be interesting to see some specific examples here. People like Al Martin and Paul Washer don’t talk that much about the atonement or justification, so it’s most “are you really regenerate” all the time, not the five points—depravity and show your new birth, but no monergism allowed in the Christian life.
In any case, the problem is not the five points of antithesis ( in the reaction at Dordt) but a view of assurance which locates safety in a perseverance in works (in not sinning, as a habit, not sinning normally etc). Unlike Hebrews warning people away from going back to law, these guys warn people they need more law. The solution is not to stop talking about the five points,. One problem is telling people that they are in the covenant until they fail to produce.
Certainly both some baptists and some paedos are guilty “nomism” (Baxterism) . But thankfully not all, as this wonderful quotation from Machen shows. Machen was no Lillback or Bahnsen.
Bahnsen: So, those who are in the church but not elect are nevertheless within the covenant of GRACE. But they are under the CURSE of grace. The covenant of grace CURSES some of God’s people. Grace has distinguished them from the world, and yet in the end they don’t live up to what grace teaches, and so they are CURSED..
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One way to make sure people know that you don’t believe in “voluntary associations” is to have arranged marriages for all your covenant children. It’s a good way to show that you don’t believe in “free-will”. And surely the elders would know better than “individuals” who should marry and into which family.
Another way to show that you oppose “voluntary associations” is to never allow your members to move to another congregation just because they happen to want to. God brought them to you, and they have no right to leave you on their own say-so. What are the keys for if not to inform those that God puts out that they will now being going to hell?
Bahnsen: “Excommunication from this church is the point at which somebody in Christ is finally divorced from Christ.”
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Galatians 4:3
In the same way we also were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
Galatians 4:9
But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?
And Machen is correct—to go back to the world’s abcs is not just the external ceremonies, but also the very basic idea of “justify your life (at least in part) by what you do”…Spiritual capitalism.
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Dear George,
“He preached on the Beatitudes as though they were Law … if you’re not poor in spirit maybe you should examine yourself, etc. I had always viewed Christ’s words in that section of the Sermon on the Mount as passive – in other word, you’re blessed IF you are poor in spirit, it’s not because it’s something you achieve, but it’s if you have been given that particular gift.”
Amen, Brother George!
Indeed, The vast, vast majority of preachers – at least that I know of (especially in the context of Malaysia as well including those who are have discovered the Reformed faith and those who call themselves ‘Lutheran’) preach the Beatitudes as something one must do, achieve rather than receive as pure gift. This means that the apostolic distinction between coram Deo and coram hominibus – in the sight of God and in the sight of humanity – is mired in total confusion. This means that Law and Gospel are not properly distinguished. And this means that the sequence of where we receive Christ as Saviour first and then only as Example or Model becomes confused. The Beatitudes only become something that we do in the sight of humanity, and is therefore not meant for a spiritual pursuit or measurement of one’s sanctification. Because as The Old Adam adds, the Beatitudes is (the theological use of the) Law in the sight of God which can only crush and kills us and therefore leads to Christ alone. And your reminder that we are PASSIVE (in the sight of God) in receiving the gift of the Beatitudes is a important reminder in preserving the good news in the Gospel – ensuring that the Gospel is Gospel and not Law.
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Mark says:
“And Machen is correct—to go back to the world’s abcs is not just the external ceremonies, but also the very basic idea of “justify your life (at least in part) by what you do”…Spiritual capitalism.”
Interesting insight(!)
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Hello, again, Jason, my Lutheran friend. Get out your copy of The law Is not of Faith and look at Baugh’s essay on the Galatians 5 “fallen from grace” section. p 267
How can Gentiles come under obligation to the circumcision aspect of the Abrahamic covenant, AGAIN be coming “under a yoke of slavery”( 5:1)?
Galatians 4:8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years!
Baugh: “The Link between a return to paganism and submitting to the slave-yoke of the law is a fascinating one, since infant Israel was enslaved under the basic principles until the appearance of the Son in fullness….The law imposed a burden that Paul compares with slavery analogous to the bondage of paganism.”
FF Bruce–“This is an astonishing statement for a former Pharisee to make; yet Paul makes it–not as an exaggeeration in the heat of argument but as the deliberate expression of a carefully thought out position.” p202, his Eerdmans commentary
.L Donaldson, “Israel serves as a representative sample for the whole of humankind. within Israel’s experience, the nature of the universal human plight–bondage to sin and to the powers of this age– is thrown into sharp relief through the functioning of the law. The law, therefore, cannot accomplish the promise, but by creating a representative sample in which the human plight is clarified and concentrated, it sets the stage for redemption. Christ identifies not only with the human situation in general, but also with Israel in particular…. “The Curse of the Law and the Inclusion of the Gentiles”, NT Studies 1986, p 105
cited in S.M. Baugh in Galatians 5:1-6 and Personal Obligation, in The Law Is Not Of Faith
David Van Drunen: “Justification is indeed ultimately not about whether a person is
under the Mosaic law as a member of corporate Israel, but about whether a person is under the federal headship of the first Adam or the last Adam. But insofar as one of the chief divine purposes for the Mosaic law was to cause OT Israel to recapitulate Adam’s probation and fall, being under the Mosaic law was a profound illustration of the plight of humanity under the first Adam.” “Israel’s Recapitulation of Adam’s Probation”
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Jason, I am assuming that you have seen these essays on the possiblity of Lutheran gospel without Lutheran sacramentology/ecclesiology
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/06/03/seeing-calvinism-from-the-inside
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2013/06/can-there-be-lutheran-baptists-or-other-non-lutheran-lutherans/
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2013/06/04/debatable-why-are-there-calvinist-baptists-but-no-lutheran-baptists/?
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Interesting you should say that, Mark. I do have a copy of The Law is not of Faith but I must confess I haven’t actually read it properly as yet!
Thanks for the reminder! 😀
And thank you for the quotes …
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What does “For I through the law died to the law” mean? Galatians 2:19
Machen, Notes, p 159 “The law . . . led men, by its clear revelation of what God requires, to relinquish all claim to salvation by their own obedience. In that sense, surely, Paul could say that it was through the law that he died to the law. The law made the commands of God so terribly clear that Paul could see plainly that there was no hope for him if he appealed for his salvation to his own obedience to those commands.”
Machen: “This interpretation yields a truly Pauline thought. But the immediate context suggests another, and an even profounder, meaning for the words.”
Machen: “The key to the interpretation is probably to be found in the sentences, I have been crucified together with Christ, which almost immediately follows. The law, with its penalty of death upon sins (which penalty Christ bore in our stead) brought Christ to the cross; and when Christ died I died, since he died as my representative.”
Machen: “The death to the law… the law itself brought about when… Christ died that Since He died that death as our representative, we too have died that death. Thus our death to the law, suffered for us by Christ, far from being contrary to the law, was in fulfillment of the law’s own demands. “
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Machen, Notes on Galatians, p178–”You might conceivably be saved by works or you might be saved by faith, but you cannot be saved by both. It is ‘either or’ here not ‘both and’. The Scripture says it is by faith. Therefore it is NOT works.”
Gaffin, By Faith not by Sight, p77, “Surely our gratitude is important. But sanctification is first of all and ultimately not a matter of what we do, but of what God does. As Machen says, the works which James commends are different from the works which Paul condemns
Machen, p221–”If James had had the epistles of Paul before him he would no doubt have expressed himself differently.”
Norman Shepherd, “comments on the OPC justification report”—”I consider this statement of Machen to be an indictment of the Holy Spirit who inspired James.”
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