The professing Church must begin to think of salvation in terms of conversion and not just salvation from hell as the Bible does. Hell is a fearful truth, but it is not conversion. Sinners are saved from hell, but also converted for the glory of God now. The professing Church must repent of practical deism and live before the living God. Deists think that God created the world, wound it up like a clock with natural laws, stood back, and then disinterestedly watched. God did not, they said, take part in daily affairs. That is what the professing Church has done spiritually. Practical deists have taken the Bible as His Word and yet think that God is standing back and watching what human beings will do with it. They think that all that is needed is to teach people for the purpose of intellectual belief. Their theology may say differently, but practically speaking they deny that God is active in conversion.
Practical deists evangelize by quoting Scripture and telling men that they need to make a decision and pray. It is to tell them that the Bible gives the facts and we must make an act of the will to believe them to be saved from hell. This idea has permeated churches and seminaries. We believe that if we can simply get the information to those listening that we have done our duty. A.W. Tozer called this idea “evangelical rationalism.” He noted that people thought that if they learned the text then they thought they had the truth. This “practical deism” has inundated the evangelical realm. We think that if a professor tells us what academia says about the Bible then we know the truth. Many say that the crying need of the Church is expositional preaching. That may be true in one sense, but if the sermon only teaches people words of the Bible by a lexicon and some history, that preacher is nothing more than what an unbeliever can do without the Spirit of God. We must have the living God moving in our souls.
The Holy Spirit alone can give understanding in the depths of the soul. All the expositional preaching and all the academics in the world cannot give spiritual understanding. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is no wonder if people are not truly converted if they don’t understand that they have to be born of the Spirit and that spiritual understanding has to come from His enlightening work. Practical deism or evangelical rationalism has become what people think is orthodoxy in the conservative churches in our day and has brought a malaise on the one hand and hyper-activity on the other. Evangelism in talked about and practiced after that idea. But evangelism apart from the Holy Spirit is nothing more than a mixture of evangelical rationalism and humanism. That is practical deism which is to say that God has told us what to do and so we go out to talk people into believing.
Thomas Goodwin wrote over 500 pages on the The Work of the Holy Spirit in Our Salvation. James Buchanan, who wrote the classic work on justification, also wrote The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit and spent over 200 pages on “The Spirit’s Work in the Conversion of Sinners.” The Holy Spirit is not just an objective power, but He is fully God and apart from His converting work salvation is impossible. For some reason this is absent in a lot of preaching and evangelizing in America. A Chinese Christian returned from America, and when asked what was most amazing, he replied that it was how much the American Church got done without God. It is possible to evangelize in a way and have people “saved” by a practical deism rather than truly converted by the Holy Spirit. We must know that a person can say “yes” to our bible verses and arguments and yet not be converted by the Spirit of the living God. They are simply hardened to the truth of God by a humanistic angle on the biblical teaching.
Evangelical rationalism is not just for the very rational, but it is a practice of “Christianity” with words without power. It is using the Word of God to reach the rational or volitional man. It is to approach man as if he needs nothing but intellectual truths from the Word of God to make a choice rather than be converted by the Spirit. It can be as orthodox as orthodoxy can be, but without the Spirit of the living God it is also as dead as dead can be. This is not charismatic teaching at all, but is a declaration that the good news of Jesus Christ demands us to tell of the work of the Spirit. Tozer said “that evangelical rationalism will kill the truth just as quickly as liberalism will.” Liberals deny the truth of God while evangelical rationalism kills the life of the truth by leaving out the Spirit.
The Pharisees thought of Jesus as unschooled while leaders looked upon the apostles as ignorant. What they did not realize was that despite their great learning they had no real understanding of the Bible. The understanding of Scripture is spiritual and only spiritual men can understand the Spirit of the living God. Jesus spoke in parables and few understood Him. Matthew 13:13-16 give us the words of Jesus in this matter:
“Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 “In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE; 15 FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.’ 16 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.”
Jesus not only spoke in parables to make people understand, but also to blind and bring judgment. But some saw and some heard. What made the difference? The practical deist will say that some just committed themselves and others didn’t. Perhaps those who are Calvinists will say that God enlightened some but not others. But we must understand that it is the specific work of the Spirit to illuminate minds so that people can see. Without Him people will not understand and be judged. Whether we are preaching in an expositional manner or not, what is needed is for the Holy Spirit to give understanding. Well, someone might say, we must give them the truth and the Spirit will do as He will. That is true in one sense, but misses it in another. If sinners are not told that they are utterly dependant on the Spirit to understand Scripture, they will look to themselves and their own power for understanding. People must learn to look to the Spirit for illumination rather than just assume He is working.
Last week we looked at I Corinthians 2:4-5. That told us that Paul preached so that it would not be his wisdom that men rested in, but his preaching demonstrated the Spirit and power so that their faith would be in the power of God. We cannot preach the Word of God and a biblical view of conversion apart from preaching the Spirit. We cannot preach in power apart from preaching God working through the Spirit. It is not enough to tell people about truths, but we must demonstrate how Holy Spirit does these things. Below is more of I Corinthians 2.
“But just as it is written, “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM. 10 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, 13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. 14 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.”
As we can see from the text, God must reveal the truth. He reveals these things by the Holy Spirit, and we might add that the Holy Spirit breathed forth the words of Scripture (II Tim 3:16). No one can really understand the thoughts and things of God apart from the Spirit of God. The Lord teaches His people things that do not come from human wisdom. Simply put, as verse 14 says, the natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God. It does not matter if the person is a seminary professor or pastor, if that person is unconverted that person does not understand the things of the Spirit of God. A pastor cannot be cool enough and our music cannot be professional or lively enough to teach what the Spirit alone can teach. We cannot be smart enough to teach what the Spirit alone can teach. In other words, we are developing personalities and methodologies in order to get people to say prayers because the Spirit is being withdrawn in our day. If we cannot even understand things apart from the Spirit, then surely we must know that the Spirit of God alone can truly convert people and bring spiritual life to their souls.
When a famine hit Israel, only God could help. America also has no help in its spiritual famine but the Holy Spirit. Some might say that this is not Christ-centered, but apart from the Spirit we don’t understand the true Christ. To preach Christ truly we must speak of the Spirit who alone can give true understanding and apply Christ to our souls. The Gospel is of the triune God and to speak of the Spirit’s work is to speak of what Christ accomplished. Jesus died that we might have the Spirit (Gal 3:13-14) and when He was resurrected He sent the Spirit by whom alone we can speak of Christ with power (Acts 2:33; 1:8). True Christianity is about Christ, but that includes what He does by the Spirit. It is impossible to preach Christ apart from preaching the glory of God through Christ, but it is equally impossible to preach the glory of God in Christ apart from preaching what the Holy Spirit does and how He does it. To truly preach the Gospel of Christ, then, is to preach the glory of God as He works in the souls of sinners by the Holy Spirit. Practical deists, then, do not truly preach Christ or the glory of God.
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