You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless,
Christ died for the ungodly. Romans 5:6
IT IS VITAL TO ANY UNDERSTANDING
of ourselves and our fellowmen that we believe what is written in the
Scriptures about human society, that it is fallen, alienated from God and in
rebellion against His laws.
In these days of togetherness when all men would brothers be for
a' that, even the true Christian is hard put to it to believe what God has
spoken about men and their relation to each other and to God; for what He has
spoken is never complimentary to men.
There is plenty of good news in the Bible, but there is never
any flattery or back scratching. Seen one way, the Bible is a book of doom. It
condemns all men as sinners and declares that the soul that sins shall die.
Always it pronounces sentence against society before it offers mercy; and if we
will not own the validity of the sentence we cannot admit the need for mercy.
The coming of Jesus Christ to the world has been so
sentimentalized that it means now something utterly alien to the Biblical
teaching concerning it. Soft human pity has been substituted for God's mercy in
the minds of millions, a pity that has long ago degenerated into self-pity. The
blame for man's condition has been shifted to God, and Christ's dying for the
world has been twisted into an act of penance on God's part. In the drama of
redemption man is viewed as Miss Cinderella who has long been oppressed and
mistreated, but now through the heroic deeds of earth's noblest Son is about to
don her radiant apparel and step forth a queen.
This is humanism romantically tinted with Christianity, a
humanism that takes sides with rebels and excuses those who by word, thought
and deed would glorify fallen men and if possible overthrow the glorious high
Throne in the heavens.
According to this philosophy men are never really to blame for
anything, the exception being the man who insists that men are indeed to blame
for something. In this dim world of pious sentiment all religions are equal and
any man who insists that salvation is by Jesus Christ alone is a bigot and a
boor…
All great Christian leaders have been dogmatic. To such men two
plus two made four. Anyone who insisted upon denying it or suspending judgment
upon it was summarily dismissed as frivolous. They were only interested in a meeting
of minds if the minds agreed to meet on holy ground. We could use some gentle
dogmatists these days.
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