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)
Unless a person is driven beyond his or her fleshly abilities there is no room for faith. This sounds a bit much, but this is at least part of what Luther is saying. Men and women trust in themselves to believe and trust in themselves to convince others to believe. But in doing so they are not getting beyond the fleshly ability of a person and so there is no true faith at all. For there to be true and spiritual faith in the soul a person must get beyond his own abilities and strength to come up with faith on his own. This is why it is so important to teach people their own inability in the spiritual realm. If people are not driven beyond their own abilities, then they will be Pharisees or libertines or something other than a true Christian. Once again, let me quote from Solomon Stoddard:
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 sight 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 (A Guide to Christ).
Here we see what happens when people do not understand the work of the Spirit of God in bringing men to a point where they do not rely on anything of themselves and their own power. The nature of the self, pride, and the flesh are so strong that it will do anything but stop trusting and relying on self. The self and pride will become orthodox and very religious. Self and pride and the flesh will become quite Reformed, but it will not stop trusting in itself. So when people deny the necessity of the preparatory work of the Spirit of God in order to come to Christ what they are doing is shutting off the way of true repentance and faith. Apart from that preparatory work of the Spirit in working in men and bringing them to an end to all hope in self a person will never repent and never truly believe.
What this does, then, is to make men think of themselves as converted when in fact they are not. Instead of being turned from self the modern religion turns men to self or at least leaves men in the power and bondage of self. Yet this serves the devil quite well. He is a self-made devil in the sense that he does what he wants to do and is in the full power of self. The devil loves to use religion to blind the souls of men to the truth. It is no wonder that he would use the fleshly nature to blind men to the way of life which is beyond the fleshly nature. When men think of faith as simply believing a few facts, that is in accordance with the fleshly nature and not spiritual truth.
Thus it is so clear that Stoddard was right in the words he penned in the 1700’s which agree with what Luther penned in the 1500’s. Yet in the modern day Satan has been at work very hard and has restored a lot of the religion of the Pharisees in various forms. The Pharisees were those who looked to themselves to believe and the works they could perform. Oh they believed in predestination, but they were still so focused on themselves and their own works. One cannot deny works for salvation until one denies the ability of human souls to do the works. One cannot deny the ability of human souls to do works until one teaches that human souls must come to an utter end of their rational abilities and five senses to produce faith or anything else. The soul must come to an utter end of itself and be helpless before God before faith will be or can be worked in it by grace alone.
It is the helpless soul that alone can look to God alone. It is the soul under the wrath of God that alone can look to the grace of God alone. It is the soul that has lost all hope in its own ability that can look to the ability of God alone to save it. It is the soul that is hanging over the pit of hell knowing justice cries out for it and it deserves to go there than can look to grace alone for heaven. The soul must be driven beyond its senses and strength to have true faith.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment