In the most recent newsletters we have been looking at conviction of sin. This is a matter that is perhaps of some dispute, but in past days it was no dispute. If one thought of conversion as God’s work (whether quick or slow) and that the Holy Spirit takes the soul from its deadness in sin, it appears self-evident that it would start with a period of conviction to bring the soul to a realization of its sin and its need of a Savior. But, as in the modern day, when faith is thought of as an intellectual agreement or assent to some degree to a set of facts, then conviction is not thought of as necessary. Once again let me quote from Chapter 7 of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith.
“It pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace, wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved; and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life, his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.”
Q. 31. What is effective calling? A. Effective calling is the work of God’s Spirit, Who convinces us that we are sinful and miserable, Who enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and Who renews our wills. This is how He persuades and makes us able to receive Jesus Christ, Who is freely offered to us in the gospel. (Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English)
Solomon Stoddard, the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, wrote A Guide to Christ. The purpose was to teach ministers how to guide seeking souls to Christ. We need to hear some of his very solemn warnings in our day.
“The work of regeneration being of absolute necessity unto salvation, it greatly concerns ministers especially, in all ways possible, to promote the same; and in particular that they guide souls aright who are under a work of preparation. There are some who deny any necessity of the preparatory work of the Spirit of God in order to a closing with Christ. This is a very dark cloud, both as it is an evidence that men do not have the experience of that work in their own souls, and as it is a sign that such men are utterly unskillful in guiding others who are under this work. If this opinion should prevail in the land, it would give a deadly wound to religion. It would expose men to think of themselves as converted when they are not.
If men understand that there is a work of humiliation before faith, then, if they get some common affections (love, sorrow, delight, yes, and a common faith too), they will say that these are not of the right kind; for men must see the plague of their own hearts, their helplessness, and that they are like the clay in the hand of the potter before they come to Christ, and so will be afraid and be searching themselves. But if they do not know of any necessity of preparation, they will take the first appearance of holiness for holiness; and, if they find religious affections in themselves, they will grow confident that God has wrought a good work in them. It would, likewise, expose them to bolster up others in false confidence.
A man who knows there must be a work of preparation will be careful how he encourages others that they are in Christ. He will inquire how God has made way for their receiving of Christ; but another who is a stranger to it will be ready to take all for gold that glitters and, if he sees men religiously disposed, will be speaking peace to them. He will be like the false prophets saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. So men will be hardened. It is a dismal thing to give men sleepy notions and make them sleep the sleep of death.
The truth of this opinion is much to be suspected from what has been left on record to the contrary by Arthur Hildersham, William Perkins, John Dodd, Richard Sibbes, Daniel Dyke, John Ball, John Preston, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Norton, and others of the like stamp, whose judgment in matters of this nature outweighs the judgment of thousands of others, though otherwise learned men. But, besides this, there is a great deal of light in the Word of God in this matter.”
What this quote from Stoddard does, in light of the Westminster and the 1689 Baptist Confessions, is give us how the older writers viewed this issue. Stoddard could have listed many more, but he only gave us a representative few. This is in no way a form of works for salvation, but is simply saying how the Holy Spirit persuades and makes souls able to receive Christ as the Confessions say. Again, if salvation is thought to be simply coming to an intellectual agreement or an act of the will to Christ, then this conviction will be seen as works. But here we have a united testimony of those used of God telling us that souls must go through a work of conviction and humiliation before they come to faith. It would seem that if we could understand the drastic difference of methods and of the Gospel itself that Charles Finney brought in during the 1800’s it would chill us to think that our modern methods may be more like his than the Gospel that God used during the great revivals of the past.
Finney did not believe in a thorough conviction of sin in which the soul was broken from its pride and self, but instead he pressured the soul to come to a decision. This method would be included in Stoddard’s dark cloud. He saw this as so serious that he said that “if this opinion should prevail in the land, it would give a deadly wound to religion. It would expose men to think of themselves as converted when they are not.” We live in a day where the churches are filled with the unconverted who think they are converted and so that opinion has prevailed. Could there be a link between those two things and so Stoddard was right? Could it be that because Finney’s method prevailed in our land a deadly wound has been given to religion? Is it not evident when we simply ask people if they believe facts (the devil does) rather than seeing if Christ is in them? Christianity is not just a matter of getting people to pray prayers and assent to a few facts; it is about the life of God living in the souls of human beings.
God tells us repeatedly in the Bible that the proud in heart are an abomination and that He opposes them. It is only the humble that receive grace. Can we, then, be honest in looking at the Gospel and think that God does not humble the pride of man so that the soul will receive Christ by grace alone? Can we honestly think that God saves the proud without saving them from their pride? The proud heart is nothing but an idol factory and does all for the great idol of self. The heart with pride cannot believe as pride and faith cannot dwell in the same heart (Hab 2:4). For a heart to truly repent it must repent of its pride and once that has happened it is a humbled soul. We know that Scripture teaches us that there are a few things that are impossible for God to do. It is impossible for God to lie and it is impossible for God to change. For God to save a proud person while they are still in their pride is for God to lie and for Him to have changed. It is impossible for God to save a proud soul apart from Him changing His nature and being opposite of what He has said. A saved soul is a soul that God dwells in and a soul that God has poured out His love in. A soul must be convicted of its sin and it must be humbled in order for those things to happen.
A few newsletters ago (Conversion 29-30) the conviction of sin from Acts 2:37 was discussed. That text describes conviction of sin as being “pierced to the heart.” The word for pierce is the same word used in John 19:34 when a soldier pierced the side of Jesus with a spear. A true conviction of sin will bring inner pain when the soul realizes that it has been convicted in God’s court and is awaiting sentencing to eternal torments. The soul is brought to see that it has sinned against God and that His judgment is just. The soul sees that there is nothing in it and nothing that it has ever done that can move God to show grace to it. Grace is that glorious attribute of God that tells us that the grace of God can only be moved from within God Himself. As the soul has been enlightened by God to sin and to the character of God and His grace, the soul sees that it has been full of pride and God will not show grace to the proud. It realizes that it must have grace or it will perish, but it knows that God views all the proud as an abomination to Him. It feels the weight of its sin and knows that if it is to have the life of God in its soul it will only come if God saves that soul to the glory of His grace. This is the conviction of sin that the giants of the past spoke of and what we must lead people to. If people do not have a true conviction of sin, then the Holy Spirit has not worked in them to persuade them and make them able to believe. This is simply His method of doing so.
A soul has not been convicted of sin as sin until it goes beyond the mere external wrong to the pride of the heart in the sin. The very heart of sin is that it is an act of enmity against God which is enormous pride. The heart must see that it is full of self-love and pride as what guides it. If the soul is not delivered from its self-love and pride then its self-love and pride will lead it to a false understanding of repentance and of the Gospel. That is exactly what so many of the followers of Christ did. They wanted to follow Christ for the benefits without bowing to Him as the supreme Lord and Messiah. It is the very nature of sinners to love those who love themselves (Luke 6:32). This is why it is so much easier to get people to pray a prayer if we tell them that God loves them. They will love those who love them. But if we tell them the truth that the wrath of God abides on those who do not believe, their natural and proud heart will rebel and hate that. The first method will produce many more supposed converts, but the second method will lead to men seeing their enmity against God and so see the true state of their sinful hearts. This is not a method of preparing souls for conversion as such, but instead it is what Spurgeon would call preparing souls by having them see just how unprepared they are. Conviction of sin is not preparing souls to be saved, but it is getting the soul to see just how unsaved it is and delivering it from the hands of pride to the grace of Christ.
Some who are misinformed and fearful call things like this hyper-Calvinism, yet it is nothing other than what the Westminster and the 1689 Baptist Confessions teach and what the giants of the past who preceded, wrote, and then came after those Confessions believed and practiced. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a simple thing, but must be taken from the whole of Scripture. Many will say that there is a free offer. Indeed, but what does that mean? It is true that the Gospel is to be proclaimed to all sinners. However, Jesus also said that He did not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners (Luke 5:32). In other words, there is a certain kind of call that is only given to those who see and feel themselves as true sinners. We must not be content to go along with the modern ways that have led us into the professing Church and the nation spiraling deeper and deeper into darkness. Do our hearts not bleed just a little at the following thoughts? How wretched are those people who will go out of this world thinking that God loves them and then find out that God is their enemy. How utterly awful it will be to the many who go out of this world saying “Lord, Lord” and then finding out that He will tell them to depart from Him because they practice iniquity. How terrible it is to think that God hears your prayers now and then you enter eternity where your cries for mercy are ignored for eternity. We need to shed our fears of men and seek the Lord for the true Gospel. The words just previous to this sentence undoubtedly refer to many ministers in our day who preach peace, peace that is no true peace to many across our land. May our hearts be broken.
God Loves... Himself 
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