We Should Have Listened

We should have listened to the warnings in the Word of God: "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (2 Tim. 4:1-5).


We should have listened to the godly men of Christ that took that warning seriously and preached the Word and fought against the abandonment of the Gospel. The men that gave the creeds, confessions and catechisms. The under-shepherds that produced wholesome doctrine in the proclamation and defense of it. The men that warned of the impending departure from the truth. We should have listened:

The entire elements of this momentous question, therefore, are put in their due place, only when a true conception of SIN and of its infinite evil is adequately apprehended. The atonement is not a mere governmental display before creation, as if the principal end of punishment in the government of God were a mere spectacle to deter from sin. So long as men theorize as to God acting before a created public, only to impress and awe their minds, or seek an object apart from God Himself, they are yielding to a course of thought which only tends to subvert or deny His punitive justice. Such a principle may be called into play in human rule, but has no application in the divine government, where the only public worthy of regard is God Himself, and the harmony of His attributes. To hold with certain eminent writers, such as Michaelis, Seiler, and others, that the infliction of punishment, though not absolutely necessary, is yet fitted to serve an important end in deterring other rational beings from sin, is at once destitute of biblical authority, and puts the question on a false foundation. On this supposition, punishment is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end. On the contrary, as Scripture always puts it, God’s moral perfections demand satisfaction; justice links the sin and punishment together; and the recompense is uniformly proportioned to what is deserved. We find the statement adduced again and again, both in the Old Testament and in the New: “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30). The meaning of that significant statement is, that punitive justice belongs essentially to God as a perfection of the divine nature; that it belongs to no other but to Himself, except in so far as He has been pleased to delegate it in certain special cases to the magistrate acting as His representative; and that in consequence of this divine perfection, wherever moral evil is committed, natural evil, or punishment corresponding to it, must ensue.

a. But here we are met by the latitudinarian tendencies of the age, which take exception to the necessity of the atonement, on the ground that we are to view God only as occupying the paternal relation to mankind. Not a few repudiate from this supposed vantage-ground, which seems to have a foothold in Scripture, all the representations otherwise given of God as a lawgiver and a judge. They will have it, that we are to conceive of God only as a source of goodness, or as a fountain of influences, but not as the sovereign Lord or moral Governor; that His dominion is only that of a Father; that the divine laws wholly differ from human laws sanctioned by threats and punishments; and that, when God does punish in any case, it is as a father, and not as a judge. By such representations, which are partly the speculations of a false philosophy, partly the afterthoughts of men writing in the interest of a tendency, the modern assailants of the necessity of the atonement would change laws into counsels, and punishments into corrections. They would sunder the link between sin and punishment, on which, as will appear in the sequel, all religion and all morals depend; for nothing could appear more detrimental to human welfare than the circulation of the doctrine that men are irresponsible to a judge.

The only thing that entitles this speculation to any weight is, that it professes to have a biblical sanction. Far be it from our thoughts to ignore the Fatherhood of God and the tender relation formed by grace between Him and His children; but when men come into this relationship, which henceforth exempts them from everything properly penal, that is the privilege of saints, not of natural men. It is a gift of grace, not a right of nature nor a universal boon; for all are by nature the children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). It cannot be affirmed that it belongs indiscriminately to all men, unless we obliterate the distinction between converted and unconverted men. But God’s Fatherhood does not exclude His relation as a lawgiver and a judge. We rather affirm,—without entering into a new question foreign to our undertaking,—that the former rests upon the latter.*

Oh, we should have listened! We should have learned! we have the Holy Writ. We have the Creeds. We have the Confessions. We have the Catechisms. We have the godly literature. We should have listened and learned!

"Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers" (1 Ti 4:16).
Praise the Living God for his faithfulness!

"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it"  (Mt 16:18). Soli Deo Gloria!

For His Glory,
Fernando

*Smeaton, G. (2009). The doctrine of the atonement, As taught by Christ Himself (Second Edition) (30–32). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.