God Loves… Himself

Revelation 2:5 ‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place– unless you repent.

The Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ can only come by grace and grace alone. The Gospel of grace alone is really the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone. Since Luther it has been common to say that souls are justified by faith alone, but that was his way of protecting the doctrine of justification by sovereign grace alone which protected the doctrine of Christ alone. All spiritual blessings are in Christ (Eph 1:3) and that means that there are no spiritual blessings in any other place or location, which is also to say that all grace is in Christ and all grace must come by Christ.

We can also see the beauty of the Gospel by seeing the glory of God in the face of Christ, which once again shows us that the Gospel is all about God shining forth Himself in and through Christ. This also shows us that the Gospel is for only those who have Christ and that must come by grace and grace alone. There is nothing that can be added to the work of Christ and if nothing can be added to the work of Christ in the Gospel, then the Gospel can only come to sinners by grace alone. There is nothing that would cause God to save sinners other than His love for Himself and His own glory, so there is nothing that would move God to send His Son to die for those who hated Him other than His own glory. This, once again, moves the spotlight to the grace of God which is the theatre of glory and is where all of His attributes gather together (so to speak) that His grace would shine forth in them all and the great luster of God would be on brilliant display in and through grace. How puny and ludicrous it is for man to think that he can add one thing to the Gospel which Christ has worked in perfection and with perfect sufficiency. How ludicrous it appears for man to think that he can work enough to add one iota to the work of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The beauty and glory of God in the Gospel of Christ alone and grace alone can barely even be stated with human words much less exaggerated. However, if the glory of this Gospel is so great, far greater than the whole universe, how great must that judgment be that would darken and harden the hearts of men that they would not see the Gospel. How awful must that judgment be for those who set out a system which is opposed to the Gospel of grace when Paul wrote so strongly against them. Yet even more, how awful it will be for those who think that they preach a message of grace and yet it is diluted with works that they have brought in. But it must be said that even those things are judgments of God to a people which hate Him and refuse to listen to the Gospel of grace.

It certainly appears that the pulpits in our nation are full of those who don’t really believe the Gospel of Christ alone and of grace alone. Many teach a gospel of works and that is quite clear, but there are also many who are orthodox in their creeds who have brought in works and added them to the Gospel of grace alone. But again, to repeat former posts, one little condition brought into the Gospel of grace alone that man can keep in his own strength makes the Gospel less than Christ alone and grace alone. But why do men do this? It is because they are in darkness, are blinded, and are hardened. Why are men blinded and hardened? It is because God hardens them and blinds them. It is His judgment upon them. But why will He give people ministers who are blinded and hardened? It is because the people are also under judgment and God gives them ministers who blind them under the guise of truth. This is a very hard message, but just because it is hard does not mean that it is not true. Listen to the words of Jesus and then the words about Jesus. He preached the truth, but even it was meant to harden some. Judgment comes when God removes the Light, but also to some who hear the truth. We are utterly dependent on Him.

John 12:36 “While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.” These things Jesus spoke, and He went away and hid Himself from them. 37 But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him. 38 This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: “LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT? AND TO WHOM HAS THE ARM OF THE LORD BEEN REVEALED?” 39 For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, 40 “HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM.”

Revelation 2:5 ‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place– unless you repent.

To repeat a few things from the previous post, we must understand that the judgment of God comes in spiritual things and that means that His hiding the Gospel of grace alone is a judgment. The Gospel is not just removed by a complete and total taking of it away, but it is also removed by its being distorted which happens by adding or subtracting. Adding to grace or subtracting from grace, regardless of the language used to do so, is still adding to or subtracting from grace.

The glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ and of His perfect and sufficient grace must have no addition and not an iota of subtraction to it. The Gospel is grace from beginning to end, or even from eternity past through eternity future. The work of God in the soul prior to regeneration is also by grace, though this is not stressed in our day. But in the days of Luther and the Puritans that followed, this was stressed. For God to give a person a humble heart, He must break that heart from its pride. For God to unite a soul to Christ, He must break a person from its unity with self and the love of self and pride. God stands against and is opposed to the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. But if humility is something that the flesh and pride of man can work into itself, then that is something man can do that will earn or bring the grace of God and as such it is not His giving grace for grace.

As long as a soul is not delivered from pride and self, it has not been delivered from the slavery of sin. The soul must either deliver itself from pride and self or it must be delivered by grace from pride and self. God will only dwell with the humble and the contrite, so He will only dwell with those who deliver themselves from pride or He will only dwell with those He delivers from pride. This again shows the utter necessity of the work of the Spirit of the living God in the hearts of those that He will bring to true and saving union with Christ which includes true faith. There is no true faith apart from union with Christ and as such there is no such thing as a proud man being in union with Christ. The Lord Jesus does not dwell with the proud, but instead He delivers them from their pride and then comes to dwell in them.

What is surely obvious, then, is that the soul that is still in the grip of pride and self is not a soul that has been saved by Christ. For Christ to save a soul by grace alone, that is, to call a soul by grace alone to a salvation by grace alone, it must be King Jesus by His grace who delivers the soul from pride and self. But in the modern version of “Church” this is not being stressed or taught. For the soul that is in the bondage of self and pride, it is good news that Christ will deliver it from self and pride and will only do that by grace alone. What soul in the bondage of pride can do anything but sin in its pride? What soul that can do nothing but sin in pride will be able to do something so God will show grace to it? Instead of that, it is King Jesus who comes as a Warrior and defeats pride in the soul of those He saves by grace and grace alone.

The Lord Jesus calls sinners to Himself when He says (in Matthew 11):

At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. 26 “Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. 27 “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. 28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.

We see here that God hides things from the wise and intelligent, but reveals them to infants. We see that no one can knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son, but also anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Then the text issues the call to the weary and heavy-laden. Those who feel the bondage of their sin and are weary of it Christ calls to Himself and they are the ones that Christ reveals the Father to. But this is by grace and grace alone from beginning to end. Christ reveals the Father by grace but this includes the conviction and weariness of sin. But the proud (wise in their own eyes) He does not reveal these things to and does not even call them. This work of Christ by grace alone must not be neglected. When it is neglected, as it is in the modern day, it is Christ hiding these things from the wise and as such it is a judgment.

Revelation 2:5 ‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place– unless you repent.

Across the land (and apparently, the world) the Gospel has been obscured if not removed. This is a severe judgment from the Lord. This has happened in different ways and for different reasons, humanly speaking, but it is a severe judgment of the Lord to remove the Gospel from people regardless of how He does it. For example, in the Old Testament God would send severe famines upon the land to judge people. But the prophet Amos also spoke of a famine of hearing the words of the Lord (8:11). Spiritual judgments are harder to see and can happen to a people who are in great financial prosperity. However, spiritual judgments have eternal ramifications and in a very real sense are far greater than temporal judgments.

We see in the book of Galatians how God views a man that preaches a gospel that is different than the biblical one. Twice, in just a few verses, Paul says that man is to be anathema, which is to be eternally damned (Gal 1:8-9). Paul says that the people were being disturbed by some and it was by those who wanted to “distort the gospel of Christ.” This is to say that they were not trying to replace everything, but they were either trying to add or subtract. But in doing so they were distorting. Paul was amazed that the people were “so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel” (Gal 1:6). But again, this different Gospel is one that has been distorted. This is one way of how God withdraws the Gospel from a people and that is by allowing it to be distorted or by hardening hearts and blinding people so that they do distort it. This is a great judgment.

The Gospel is distorted by either adding or subtracting from the Gospel. We should note that in Galatians 1:6 (quoted in the previous paragraph) that people are said to desert Him. A different Gospel is not just a minor issue though the issues involved may seem minor to a vast majority of people today, but it is to desert Christ. These people are said to have been called by the grace of Christ. As we go on in the book of Galatians it can be seen what was happening. People wanted to say Christ plus circumcision or Christ plus one little thing. Paul would have nothing of that. It was Christ alone and grace alone. Whenever anyone adds or subtracts from the Gospel of grace alone, it is no longer all of Christ and all of grace and so it is distorted and vastly different.

While it is fairly clear that many are adding to the Gospel today by requiring things of men to do and making those things conditions for God showing grace to people, it is also true that people are subtracting from the Gospel as well. God changes hearts by grace alone and delivers people from the power and grip of pride, self, and sin before He gives them grace, but again He does that by grace. Sure enough people must repent and believe, but those are things that they must be given by grace alone rather than those things that they can do in their own power. Sure enough people must be convicted of sin or they will not see their need of a Savior, but this conviction is not something they can work up in their own power and work. True conviction of sin comes by the work of the Holy Spirit. The heart must be broken from pride, but that cannot be done by the power of self either. All of those things must be done by the work of grace rather than the work of self. When men are working these things as if they can do them, they are given over to the work of self and pride and that is a different gospel.

One of the most obvious ways that we see the hand of judgment on us in our day is when “ministers” tell people that they must believe and don’t tell them what that means or what is involved in that. This is nothing but the pride of “ministers” giving false instructions to people who want to hear that. The heart of true faith in Christ cannot come from a proud heart, but instead this can only come from a humble heart. Sinful and proud hearts cannot break self from pride as that is the work of God Himself. It is not just a matter of believing some information, but a heart of true faith is a heart that has been broken from unity with self and pride and has been united to Christ. True faith comes from a soul that is united to Christ by grace alone and so receives all by grace alone. The heart that has not been broken from pride and self will continue on in its pride and self even if it is theologically orthodox. The Gospel of grace alone can only be received by a humbled heart and that can only happen by grace doing the work. A proud heart is a blind heart and that is a judgment from God. So God blinds men to His work of grace in the soul and as such the Gospel of grace alone is taken from men as judgment. As long as men think that their wills are free while they are in their pride and that they can “accept” Christ in that way, they are blind to the Gospel.

Revelation 2:5 ‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place– unless you repent.

Without going into any sort of detail or rigorous exegesis regarding this passage, it has been understood that at the least this verse speaks of the removing of the Gospel from a church. This is a severe judgment on a person, a church, a city, and a nation. It is perhaps the greatest judgment that can happen to a person or a group of people however large. The Gospel of grace alone is the only Gospel there is and that alone is the power of God to save. When the Gospel has been withdrawn, that person or that group of people that it has been withdrawn from has no way of escaping eternal damnation and no way to know God.

This passage can also be seen in a different light as well. When the light of the Gospel has been removed from a church, what was a church is no longer a church. Without the Gospel of grace alone or the Gospel of the Jesus the Messiah, there is no church. When a religious institution claims to be a church and yet does not preach the Gospel of grace alone, the acts of that institution contradict the claim to be a church. Without the Gospel of Jesus Christ how can there be a church of Jesus Christ? That would be a church without Christ and a church without the Gospel. It simply cannot be.

What is crystal clear is that without the Gospel of grace alone there is no church. What becomes apparent, then, is that in the United States there are few churches in contrast to the many institutions with the word “church” on the door. When the Gospel of grace alone is compromised, the wrath of God is on display. Across this nation there are many churches in name and ministers in name who stand every morning to proclaim something but the real proclamation is that God has removed the Gospel and the standing of a church from that place. It does not matter (in this sense) whether one holds to the Westminster Confession or not of the 1689 London Baptist Confession or not, but what really matters is whether the Gospel is preached or not. One can have an intellectual understanding of these great Confessions and not preach the Gospel of grace alone. One can preach and teach many things regarding these Confessions and still not preach the Gospel of grace alone. Regardless of the Confession that a “church” has, it is not a church unless it preaches the Gospel of grace alone.

It is not just important that a church have a Confession or a good doctrinal statement, but it must in fact be serious about the Gospel. The Gospel is not just some little message to get people saved and they can grow from there, but it is the central message of Scripture of how God manifests His glory in and through Christ in this world. There can be no Gospel apart from Christ, but apart from the true Gospel there is no true message of Christ in the world. Going one more step, apart from the true message of Christ there will be far less truth about God in the world. God has revealed true things about Himself in nature, but He has revealed far more about Himself in Christ. One can say, even though He has revealed Himself in nature, that apart from Christ the true revelation of God has been hidden or concealed.

The Gospel of grace alone is utterly vital to the revelation of who God truly is and of the nature of a true church. Apart from preaching the true Gospel of grace alone, a “minister” is not a minister of God and a “church” is not a church of Christ. Legalism, then, is not just a way of distorting a few things about the Gospel, but it is a way of distorting the truth of God and of how He saves sinners to the glory of His grace alone. Legalism, though said to be a problem with Roman Catholicism and other groups, is far more pervasive than that. It is anything brought into the Gospel of grace alone that makes it less than grace alone. It is anything brought into the Gospel of grace alone that a human being can do or choose in his or her own strength.

If the above paragraph is true, then those groups which teach that repentance and/or faith is necessary for a human will to do before it receives grace, then those groups are teaching a false gospel. Anything that a human has the power or ability to do that is of a free-will (hence, free of grace) that moves God to save that soul, that is a false gospel and makes groups that teach it a something other than a church. It would make God’s grace contingent on human ability rather than human ability contingent upon the grace of God. That is a false gospel.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”

It would appear that the modern day “message” of the Gospel is full of legalism from beginning to end. Grace reigns in all aspects of the Gospel and of sanctification, but many things have been brought in. It is true that a soul must repent, but is that repentance a work of the flesh or of the Spirit? Is that repentance before or after conversion? It is also true that a soul must believe/ have faith, but is that a work of the human will and flesh or a work of the Spirit? It is also true that we must consider whether a soul can believe with an unregenerate heart or if the soul must be born again that it may have a true spiritual faith. These are points where men who have conservative and orthodox creeds can be ashamed of the Gospel of grace alone in practice.

If we are to preach a Gospel that is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, then we must preach a Gospel that is the power of God in all aspects of the Gospel and not a Gospel that joins the power of the will of man to the will of God. The Gospel is the good news of the glory of God and not the good news of the glory of God and of the will of man. When we bring in some form of cooperation between the will of God and the will of man in terms of salvation, we have introduced some work of the human flesh into the Gospel and it is no longer the Gospel of grace alone. When we bring in something that the human soul must do in order for God to show grace to that soul, that is a form of legalism or a form of conditionalism that the human soul has the ability to meet apart from grace working that in the soul.

There are no conditions that a soul has the ability to meet in order for God to show grace to the soul. Once a condition is given that the unregenerate soul (or regenerate as far as that goes) can meet in order to obtain grace, this makes grace no longer to be grace. For grace to be grace there can be no conditions that the soul meets in its own strength and power to obtain grace. Instead, God gives grace based upon His love for Himself and His own glory and He is sufficient to save based on Himself. God saves in a way that puts the stress on His grace and not on human ability or choice. God saves in a way that allows for the brilliance of His glory to shine forth in the beauty and majesty of grace. When conditions are set forth that man can meet in his own power and will, that intrudes upon grace and as such it makes for something less than a pure grace which is no grace at all.

Perhaps some people don’t see the need for such a stress on grace, but that is inexcusable in terms of the Gospel of grace alone. However, we can also look at this in terms of Christ alone. All grace comes to sinners because of Christ and not because of themselves. All grace comes to sinners because of the works of Christ and not because of any works of man. The soul must not look to itself in any way for any reason or condition that it can meet in order to move Christ to give it grace, but instead it must look to Christ to give all blessings because He gives them of His sovereign grace. If grace is not sovereign, it is not grace at all. The Reformers taught that grace was sovereign because God alone can decide to give grace as He pleases and does not give it to men to dispense it as they please or to the degree they can work it up.

If there are no conditions that a soul can meet because of its depravity and because of God’s self-sufficiency, then grace comes to sinners with the basis specifically and clearly not on something they can do. But if the Gospel is what God does despite the inability and sinfulness of sinners, then the Gospel is all of grace and nothing but grace. The Gospel is all about the power of God and the complete lack of ability in man. The Gospel is all about the grace of God and the complete lack of works that a man can do. The Gospel is all about the grace of God and has nothing to do with the choice of man who would never choose God apart from the power of God working grace in a soul. There is nothing in the Gospel that reveals anything about the righteousness of man because there is nothing righteousness in man, for the Scripture (Rom 3:10) tells us that “there is none righteous, not even one.” Oh how men are so deceived and so blinded by the devil and their own hearts to put conditions on the Gospel rather than to point souls to Christ alone for grace alone.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”

It is hard to see how this text is really believed by the ministry of the day. It seems as if everything is more important than the Gospel. Social issues, expositional preaching (so-called), and moral issues are rampant, but the Gospel is seemingly forgotten. On the other hand, there are those who have the so-called “simple gospel” which is nothing more than another gospel. They simply want to say a few things about Jesus and then invite people to say a prayer or walk an aisle and so on. The glorious Gospel of grace alone is rarely heard. Where can one hear teaching on Christ crucified and the wonders of the cross to daily life? Where can one hear about the imputed or reckoned righteousness of Christ and how that is for the ungodly? Where can one find the hearts of believers and unbelievers alike being opened to them and then Christ preached in a way that they can see how they must have Him?

Is the Gospel really the power of salvation for all who believe? If we really believed that, we would preach the Gospel of grace alone and the Gospel of the glory of God alone to all. Sinners need to hear the Gospel whether or not they are believers or not. Believers who wrestle with sensitive consciences and sinful hearts would welcome the proclamation of a crucified Savior. Unbelievers who have had their hearts opened to them and see how desperately they need Christ would want to hear of this Christ who saves sinners and of a Gospel that is the power of God for salvation.

Where is this great doctrine of justification that was so important in the understanding of Luther to the degree that he was willing to stand against Rome and the secular authorities over it? Why is this great doctrine of justification not being taught and proclaimed in the churches today? The Gospel of grace alone was discovered anew and the Reformation was born. Why is it such a small thing in the churches today? Has the Gospel changed? Has the doctrine of justification by grace alone changed? Has this doctrine been set to the side as unimportant now?

Could it be the case that the failure of preachers to declare justification by grace alone is the failure of preachers to understand depravity and of the nature of God? It is so bewildering to watch the churches simply fall away into irrelevance in reality thought they are a nuisance to the world with all of their moralizing in politics, though they may see that as being persecuted for the name of Christ. But the churches must proclaim the Gospel in order to be a church as this is one of the marks of a church. Apart from the Gospel being proclaimed there is no church. It does not matter how much a church stands for moral issues and political issues if it does not proclaim the glorious Gospel of grace alone. A group of people thinking it is a church does not make it one and they cannot make it a church apart from the gospel.

In the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, not from moral to moral and from political issue to political issue. In the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, not the righteousness of man in all sorts of other things. It is in the Gospel that God Himself is seen and it is the glory of His grace that is seen, but in all the things that “churches” are busy with today the glory of God is not seen. They may use the words and say that what they are doing glorifies Him, but they are deceiving themselves.

While it may seem radical to the modern world, apart from the Gospel of grace alone no group of people can be considered to be a true church. It does not matter what one group believes about the covenants or not, the covenants do not make a church a church. It does not matter what one group believes about the Westminster Confession or the 1689 London Baptist Confession if they don’t preach the Gospel. People of those stripes may call themselves what they wish and they may be as conservative as they wish and follow all the rituals as they please, but apart from the Gospel of grace alone people such as those do not make up churches. We must seek the Lord of grace to grant repentance to those who are so wicked as not to preach the Gospel of grace alone. Until that happens, the churches will not be churches and the world will be even more worldly.