There are two considerations which require the preaching of these truths…. The second reason is this; faith’s object is things not seen. That there may be room for faith, therefore, all that is believed must be hidden. Yet it is not hidden more deeply than under a contrary appearance of sight, sense, and experience. Thus, when God quickens, He does so by killing; when He justifies, He does so by pronouncing guilty; when He carries up to heaven, He does so by bringing down to hell…Thus God conceals His eternal mercy and loving kindness beneath eternal wrath, His righteousness beneath unrighteousness. Now the highest degree of faith is to believe that He is merciful, though He saves so few and damns so many; to believe that He is just, though of His own will He makes us perforce proper subjects for damnation. (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will)
“For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). In this verse the words of the Spirit tell us that the wisdom of the world cannot be a means of coming to know God because in the wisdom of God made it so that the world through it wisdom did not come to know God. But God is pleased to save through the foolishness (to the world’s wisdom) of the message preached saves those who believe. In other words, true faith comes in a way that is not in accordance with the wisdom of the world. This is a vital point if the nature of true faith is to be seen and understood. True faith is not in accordance with the wisdom of the world.
The wisdom of men is either tied to their rational approach or it is tied to their senses. This is not to say that the rational approach and the senses cannot go together, but it is just put this way to make a point. However, to receive grace, which operates in the spiritual realm, a soul must be humbled beyond the fleshly nature in both the rational and the physical senses in order to receive it. Another way to put it is to say that a soul must be humbled from its fleshly nature to receive grace which comes in a spiritual way. This seems to be rather obvious and is certainly self-evident. Men must be humbled into the dust and give up all hope in themselves and in their physical senses in order to receive what can only come by grace. We are told to trust in the Lord with all of our heart and not to lean on our own understanding (Prov 3:5). This would include the worldly wisdom and the way it understands.
All grace that comes to the soul comes through Christ and the soul that is united to Christ. Faith also comes by grace and Scripture sets it out as the work of the Spirit. So we have the Spirit working faith in the soul and the grace that is received only comes through faith. But this is not by the physical senses, but by the faith that operates in the spiritual realm. Jesus told the woman that if she believed she would see the glory of God. This was in John 11 where Lazarus was raised from the dead. So faith beholds the glory of God and sees what the physical senses do not. All the people there that day saw and heard Jesus says words and then Lazarus come out of the grave. But not all saw the glory of God shining forth. Nicodemus and many others saw the miracles that Jesus did, but Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born from above to see or enter the kingdom of God. So the miracles made it obvious who Jesus was and many believed. But that did not mean that they were converted and saw His glory.
2 Corinthians 4:18 sets this out very a great deal of clarity for us: “while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” The things that are seen, that is, the things that the physical eyes can see, are the things which are temporal. But the things which are not seen by the physical eye and yet are the things we look at with the spiritual eye are eternal things. In order for a soul to use faith, then, it must be driven beyond what the physical eye can see and behold spiritual things. It appears that much of Christianity today is simply a fleshly and blind trust in God to do something that the soul wants in the physical realm. But Luther saw ever so clearly that the soul must be driven beyond its physical senses and beyond its fleshly and physical nature in order to have true faith. We miss that today and in missing that we are missing something vital to Christianity.
So in the modern way of evangelizing, we want to be nice to people and tell them things that they can understand as they are and give them something to do that is in their own power. So many who profess to be Reformed say that there are deeper truths but do not want to trouble people with those. However, it seems to be the case that people need to be troubled in order to be driven beyond their fleshly powers and abilities in order that they may have faith in the first place. Until men are driven beyond their own fleshly abilities, there is no room for faith at all.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment