Heritage: The Good Fight of Faith

by   Dr. J. Gresham Machen                                                                                                                          Vol. XVII, No. 5, May 2004

[J. Gresham Machen, 1891-1937, was a professor at Princeton Seminary and a founder and professor at Westminster Seminary, both Presbyterian schools. He was a central figure in the “Modernist” controversy among Presbyterians in the 1920s. For Southern Baptists it is noteworthy that the first (1925) edition of The Baptist Faith and Message was an effort to deal with modernism within SBC life.]

... Peace with God cannot be attained by good works, neither can it be attained by confession of sin, neither can it be attained by any psychological results of an act of faith. We can never be at peace with God unless God first be at peace with us. But how can God be at peace with us? Can He be at peace with us by ignoring the guilt of sin? by descending from His throne? by throwing the universe into chaos? by making wrong to be the same as right? by making a dead letter of His holy law? "The soul that sinneth it shall die," by treating His eternal laws as though they were the changeable laws of man?

Oh, what an abyss were the universe if that were done, what a mad anarchy, what a wild demon-riot! Where could there be peace if God were thus at war with Himself; where could there be a foundation if God's laws were not sure? Oh, no, my friends, peace cannot be attained for man by the great modern method of dragging God down to man's level; peace cannot be attained by denying that right is right and wrong is wrong; peace can nowhere be attained if the awful justice of God stand not forever sure.

How then can we sinners stand before that Throne? How can there be peace for us in the presence of the justice of God? How can He be just and yet justify the ungodly? There is one answer to these questions. It is not our answer. Our wisdom could never have discovered it. It is God's Answer. It is found in the story of the Cross. We deserved eternal death because of sin; the eternal Son of God, because He loved us, and because He was sent by the Father Who loved us too, died in our stead, for our sins, upon the Cross. That message is despised today; upon it the visible church as well as the world pours out the vials of its scorn, or else does it even less honor by paying it lip-service and then passing it by. Men dismiss it as a "theory of the atonement," and fall back upon the customary commonplaces about a principle of self-sacrifice, or the culmination of a universal law, or a revelation of the love of God, or the hallowing of suffering, or the similarity between Christ's death and the death of soldiers who perished in the great war.

... Where are you going to stand in the great battle which now rages in the church? Are you going to curry favor with the world by standing aloof; are you going to be "conservative liberals" or "liberal conservatives" or "Christians who do not believe in controversy," or anything else so self-contradictory and absurd? Are you going to be Christians, but not Christians overmuch? Are you going to stand coldly aloof when God's people fight against ecclesiastical tyranny at home and abroad? Are you going to excuse yourselves by pointing out personal defects in those who contend for the Faith today? Are you going to be disloyal to Christ in external testimony until you can make all well within your own soul? Be assured, you will never accomplish your purpose if you adopt such a program as that. Witness bravely to the Truth that you already understand, and more will be given you; but make common cause with those who deny or ignore the Gospel of Christ, and the enemy will forever run riot in your life.

[Reprinted from Dr. J. Gresham Machen, “The Good Fight of Faith”, The Founders Journal, Winter 2004, pp. 25-26. Subscriptions to The Founders Journal are $15 annually. Write to: Founders Journal, P.O. Box 150931, Cape Coral, FL 33915.]