The Center of the Christian Religion

Twentieth century Presbyterian J. Gresham Machen writes the following on the center of Christianity, and is a great launching-pad for Thanksgiving weekend:

"Christ, according to Paul, will do everything or nothing; if righteousness is in slightest measure obtained by our obedience to the law, then Christ died in vain; if we trust in slightest measure in our own good works, then we have turned away from grace and Christ profiteth us nothing.

"To the world, that may seem to be a hard saying; but it is not a hard saying to the man who has ever been at the foot of the Cross; it is not a hard saying to the man who has first known the bondage of the law, the weary effort at establishment of his own righteousnes in the presence of God, and then has come to understand, as in a wonderous flash of light, that Christ has done all, and that the weary bondage was vain....--that man knows in his heart of hearts that the Apostle is right, that to trust Christ only for part is not to trust Him at all, that our own righteousness is insufficient even to bridge the smallest gap which might be left open between us and God, that there is no hope unless we can safely say to the Lord Jesus, without shadow of reservation, without shadow of self-trust: 'Thou must save, and Thou alone.'

That is the centre of the Christian religion--the absolutely underserved and sovereign grace of God, saving sinful men by the gift of Christ upon the cross. Condemnation comes by merit; salvation comes only by grace: condemnation is earned by man; salvation is given by God....

The reception of that gift is faith: faith means not doing something but receiving something; it means not the earning of a reward but the acceptance of a gift....Faith, in other words, is not active but passive; and to say that we are saved by faith is to say that we do not save ourselves but are saved only by the one in whom our faith is reposed; the faith of man presupposes the sovereign grace of God....

Thus the beginning of the Christian life is not an achievement but an experience; the soul of the man who is saved is not, at the moment of salvation, active, but passive; salvation is the work of God and God alone."

What is Faith?, 193-197. (Emphasis mine).

I am not only thankful for the gracious gift of of Jesus' death and resurrection on my behalf, but the gracious gift of faith that God has given me. Thanks be to God for the Good News of Jesus.

Should Christian's Punish Their Kids? Lloyd-Jones Answers

Martyn Lloyd-Jones gives the following answer via my excerpts from his sermon "Discipline and the Modern Mind":

"[In the modern outlook there is] a general opposition to the whole idea of justice, and of righteousness, of wrath and punishment. These terms are all abominated and are hated. In general the modern man dislikes them radically....What makes the position so serious is that this attitude is generally presented in terms of Christianity, and especially in terms of New Testament teaching, and this, in particular, as contrasted with the Old Testament teaching....They claim that these modern ideas concerning discipline are based upon the New Testament, and that they have the true New Testament conception of God. They are therefore not interested, they say, in justice and righteousness, wrath and punishment. Nothing matters but love and understanding....

Summing it up we can say that the basic idea underlying this view is that human nature is essentially good....What is needed therefore is to draw out, to encourage, and to develop the child's personality. So there must be no repelling, no control; there must be no punishing, and no administering of correction because that tends to be repressive....

We are told that you must not punish; you must appeal to children, show them the wrong, set them a good example, and then reward them positively. We must grant, of course, that there is a measure of truth in all this, but the danger is that men usually go from one extreme to the other, and by today the whole notion of punishment has largely vanished....

All this, I repeat, is based upon the notion that human nature is essentially good; so you have only to appeal to it. You will never need to resort to punishment. And if you do punish at all, it must never be corporal, and it must never be punitive; if there is any sort of punishment, we are told, it must be reformatory....

This, we are told, is the approach of Christ toward these matters....

I do not hesitate to assert that the biblical and Christian attitude towards these two extremes is that they are both wrong; that the Victorian position is wrong, and that the modern position is wrong, even more so....

Any position which says 'law only' or which says 'grace only' is of necessity wrong, because in the Bible you have 'law' and 'grace'....It is a tragic fallacy to think that when you have grace there is no element of law at all, but that it is a kind of license. That is a contradiction of the biblical teaching....We are not 'without law' as Christians, says Paul, 'but we are under law to Christ' (1 Corinthians 9:21)....

...the modern teaching--and this is one of the serious things concerning it--displays a complete misunderstanding of the biblical doctrine of God. This is the desperately serious thing....the notion that God is One who can wink at sin and pretend that He has not seen it, and cover it over and forgive every offender, and never feel any wrath, and never punish is, I say, not only to deny the Old Testament, but to deny the New Testament also. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who spoke about the place 'where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched'....[God] is a holy God, a just God, a righteous God, who has made it plain that He will punish sin and transgression, and who has done so in many times. He punished His own children of Israel for their transgressions; He sent them into captivity...The Apostle Paul teaches explicitly in the Epistle to the Romans (1:8-32), that God punishes sin, and does so sometimes by abandoning the world to its own evil and iniquity....

The modern notions that man is fundamentally and essentially good, and that, if only the good is drawn out, everything will be right, and that you have only to make an appeal, and never punish...are the consequence of a rejection of the biblical doctrine of sin. The simple answer to them is that man's nature is evil, that as the result of the Fall he is altogether evil....

...there is also a complete misunderstanding of the doctrine of the atonement and of redemption....The biblical doctrine of the atonement tells us that, on the Cross of Calvary, the just and holy and righteous God was punishing sin in the person of His own Son, that He might 'be just, and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus' (Romans 3:25 & 26)....The justice and the righteousness of God demanded this, the wrath of God upon sin insisted upon this. But this is where we see truly the love of God, that it is so great that the wrath is poured out even on His own Son in all His innocence, in order that you and I might be rescued and delivered....

There is no purpose in making appeals in terms of sweet reasonableness to men who are evil and governed by lust and passion.

The biblical teaching is that such people are to be punished, and are to feel their punishment. If they will not listen to the law, then the sanctions of the law are to be applied. God, when He gave His Law, accompanied it by the sanctions which were to be applied following transgression. When the Law was broken the sanctions were carried out....The biblical teaching is that because man is a fallen creature, because he is a sinner and a rebel, because he is a creature of lust and passion, and governed by them, he must be forcibly restrained, he must be kept in order. The principle applies alike to children and to adults who are guilty of misdemeanor and crime and a departure from the law of the land and from the Law of God....The biblical teaching, founded upon the character and being of God, and recognizing that man is in a state of sin, requires that law must be enforced, in order that men may be brought to see and to know God; next that they might be brought into grace; so that finally they may be brought to own and obey the higher law under which they delight in pleasing God and honouring and keeping His holy commandments."

Life in the Spirit in Marriage, Home & Work, 262-275