Feb 16
11
HOLY ZEAL
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
“Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”—John 2:17
“Zeal is a principle; enthusiasm is a feeling. The one is the spark of a sanguine temperament and overheated imagination. The other a sacred flame kindled at God’s altar and burning in God’s shrine.”—(Vaughan) Such was the holy heavenly zeal of our Great Exemplar. His were no transient outbursts of ardor which time cooled and difficulties impeded. His life was one indignant protest against sin, one ceaseless current of undying love for souls which all the malignity of foes and unkindness of friends could not for one moment divert from its course. Even when He rises from the dead, and we imagine His work at an end, His zeal only meditates fresh deeds of love. “Still His heart and His care,” says Goodwin, “is upon doing more. Having now dispatched that great work on earth, He sends His disciples word that He is hastening to heaven as fast as He can, to do another” (John 20:17).
Reader! do you know anything of this zeal, which “many waters could not quench?” See that, like your Lord’s, it be steady, sober, consistent, undeviating. How many are, like the children of Ephraim, “carrying bows”—all zealous when zeal demands no sacrifice, but “turning their backs to the day of battle!” Others running well for a time, but gradually “hindered,” through the benumbing influences of worldliness, selfishness, and sin. Two disciples, apparently equally devoted and zealous, send through Paul, in one of his epistles, a joint Christian salutation—”Luke and Demas greet you.” A few years afterwards, thus he writes from his Roman dungeon—”Only Luke is with me,” “Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world!”
While zeal is commendable, remember the Apostle’s qualification, “It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing.” There is in these days much base coin current, called “zeal,” which bears not the image and superscription of Jesus. There is zeal for church-membership and party; zeal for creeds and dogmas; zeal for figments and nonessentials. “From such turn aside.” Your Lord stamped with his example and approval no such counterfeits. His zeal was ever brought to bear on two objects, and two objects alone—the glory of God and the good of man. Be it so with you. Enter, first of all (as He did the earthly temple), the sanctuary of your own heart, with “the scourge of small cords.” Drive out every unhallowed intruder there. Do not allow yourself to be deceived. Others may call such jealous searchings of spirit it “sanctimoniousness” and “enthusiasm.” But remember, to be almost saved, is to be altogether lost!—to be zealous about every thing but “the one thing needful,” is an insult to God and your everlasting interests!
Have a zeal for others. Dying myriads are around you. As a member of the Christian priesthood, it becomes you to rush in with your censer and incense between the living and the dead, “that the plague may be stayed!”
Be it yours to say, “Blessed Jesus! I am Yours!—Yours only!—Yours wholly!—Yours forever! I am willing to follow You, and (if need be) to suffer for You. I am ready at Your bidding to leave the homestead in the valley, and to face the cutting blasts of the mountain. Take me—use me for Your glory. Lord! what will You have me to do?”
“Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind.” John MacDuff.
THE WAY THEY CALL HERESY
But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets. (Acts 24:14)
There is only one message that agrees and fully satisfies all that is written in the Law and the prophets. That message and that message alone, reveals Almighty God to be just and the justifier of sinners. It is through the message of the Gospel of Christ and Him crucified that TRUTH HIMSELF is consistently set forth, and sinners have any hope. The way of truth which carnal religion claims to love is actually evil spoken of (2 Peter 2:2). This way is by the world called heresy (a self-willed opinion substituted for submission to the power of truth), but to believers it is the basis of their worship. This message, that men call heresy, is based completely on the written word of God and His word alone is the only rule of true faith (2 Tim. 3:16-17):
1.This message declares Almighty God (Father, Son, and Spirit) to be absolutely sovereign in creation, providence, and salvation (Psalm 115:3; 135:6).
2. This message declares all men born in Adam to be spiritually dead and blind sinners, totally void of anything that is good, unwilling and unable to bow or come to Christ that they might have life (Psalm 14:2-3).
3. This message declares that by eternal, unconditional election, God chose a certain people in Christ (Eph. 1:3) before the foundation of the world unto salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth, and that these elect shall be and must be saved (John 6:37)
4. This message declares the Lord Jesus Christ to be God’s substitute for all those chosen unto salvation. Christ laid down His life for the sheep (John 10:11). All the guilt of all the elect for all eternity was imputed (changed to the account) to Christ Who was made to be sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21), though He Himself knew no sin. As the guilt of all the elect was imputed to the account of Christ Jesus, His righteousness was imputed to the account of all those for whom He died. The Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29), actually redeemed all that the Father chose — their sin is forever put away.
5. This message declares God’s grace to His own in salvation to be irresistible, and that those chosen in eternity and redeemed at Calvary, will be brought and made willing (Psalm 110:3) to cast themselves on the person of Christ, believing on Him for salvation (Acts 16:31).
6. This message declares every redeemed sinner to be kept by the power of God unto eternal salvation (John 10:27-28), and these redeemed sinners, bought by the precious blood of Christ, are in the hand of God Almighty, never to be forsaken (Heb. 13:5).
This message that agrees with all the Law and the prophets, honors Almighty God in calling men to repentance. It keeps them, feeds them, exhorts them, and establishes them all by His grace. This message, the way that carnal religion calls heresy … “so worship I the God of my fathers.” Marvin Stalnaker.
Making the Blood of Christ an unholy thing
“Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?” (Hebrews 10:29)
That man who treads under his feet the Son of God, counts the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and despises the Spirit of grace commits the greatest evil in the world and deserves the terrible vengeance of God’s unmitigated wrath. Does he not? Yet, in this day of relentless compromise, preachers, theologians and religious leaders are making a mad rush to trample the precious blood of Christ under their feet, making the blood of the covenant “an unholy thing.”
A Common Thing
The word translated “an unholy thing” in Hebrews 10:29 means “something common, shared by all.” As everyone knows, that which is common is worthless. To declare that there is some sense in which our all-glorious Christ died in common for all, for those who are saved and for those who perish under the wrath of God, is to declare that he died in vain, that his precious blood is not precious at all, but worthless! It is to trample his blood under foot, make it “an unholy thing,” and do “despite unto the Spirit of grace” by denying the gospel He has revealed, asserting that it takes something more than the redemption accomplished at Calvary to put away sin, asserting that man’s faith must supplement Christ’s atonement for the atonement to be effectual.
That is precisely what is now being preached by many who once professed to believe the teaching of Holy Scripture, that the Son of God died for and redeemed his elect, whom he redeemed, not along with all men, but “ from among men” (Revelation 14:4). Regarding the wholesale rush to revive Amyraldianism (Fullerism — the teaching that Christ died for goats as well as sheep, the reprobate as well as the elect) by men who wish to be adored as “reformed” in doctrine, I have moved beyond mere concern to anger. I hope the anger is not a mere carnal passion. I find it impossible to treat that which I am convinced is a deliberate compromise of the gospel with anything less than anger.
The Motive
I am convinced that this rush of “reformed” men to deny the effectual, accomplished redemption of God’s elect by the sin-atoning sacrifice of His dear Son is not the result of “clearer light,” but of a desire to take away the offense of the cross and make the gospel of God palatable to men who hate God.
It appears obvious to me that desiring acceptability and success, but unwilling to openly deny the gospel, men who once professed to believe and openly avowed the gospel of Christ are now trying to find a way to deny it, while appearing to defend it. Either that, or they are scared to death that their peers might begin to be suspicious of them, suspicious that they are more concerned for the glory of Christ, the truth of God and the souls of men than they are for the recognition and approval of their peers. In either case, they have “trodden under foot the Son of God, and have counted the blood of the covenant…an unholy thing, and have done despite unto the Spirit of grace!”
Though we are constantly accused of being antinomians and hyper-calvinists, no one (to my knowledge) preaches the gospel more freely to sinners than we do, ever urging sinners who cannot do so to trust Christ, knowing that if they do God the Holy Spirit has given them life and faith in Christ. As I see it, all the arguments and debates, warnings and admonitions in defense of what men call “common grace,” the “free offer,” “bona-fide offer,” and “sincere offer of Christ to sinners” are nothing but disguises for telling sinners that salvation is really up to them, that God’s purpose is really nothing but a helpless desire, that Christ’s death really accomplished nothing, and that the Holy Spirit’s operations of grace are really nothing but a gentle tug upon the hearts of men.
Compromise Never Works
He who vainly imagines that by compromising the gospel he will make it more appealing to men, is ignorant of both man and the gospel. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Yet, men tell us that by compromising it, by denying the power of godliness, it will be made more powerful, more effectual, and more successful in getting sinners saved. Nonsense! The compromise of the gospel may attract men to the religion and the preacher making the compromise. It certainly deludes eternity bound sinners with the vain comfort of religion without the knowledge of Christ; but it does nothing for the salvation of any.
Resist, as you would the plague, any doctrine that teaches, suggests, or implies that Christ died in vain, that He desired to accomplish something He failed to accomplish in His death, or that man must do something to make Christ’s sacrifice personally effectual for the salvation of his soul. And resist every preacher and religion that promotes such blasphemy. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ shall never be discovered a miscarriage! — “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied!”
“Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed church of God
Be saved to sin no more!”
Don Fortner.