Westminster Wednesday: Refreshment for the Weary

The Lord's Day assembly is the day, the place and time, when the Christian hears from the Lord, "You are in My favor, My child. My Son, your Lord and Savior, has satisfied My covenant requirements. Be comforted, and live in the benefits that He has purchased for you through His fulfillment of the mission that I had placed upon Him. Walk in My ways for therein is life, and life truly."

Sadly, one would be hard-pressed to find such an announcement coming from the pulpits of most churches today.

J. Gresham Machen observed:

Whatever the solution there may be, one thing is clear. There must be somewhere groups of redeemed men and women who can gather together humbly in the name of Christ, to give thanks to Him for his unspeakable gift and to worship the Father through Him. Such groups alone can satisfy the needs of the soul. At the present time, there is one longing of the human heart which is often forgotten — it is the deep, pathetic longing of the Christian for fellowship with his brethren. One hears much, it is true, about Christian union and harmony and co-operation. But the union that is meant is often a union with the world against the Lord, or at best a forced union of machinery and tyrannical committees. How different is the true unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace! Sometimes, it is true, the longing for Christian fellowship is satisfied. There are congregations, even in the present age of conflict, that are really gathered around the table of the crucified Lord; there are pastors that are pastors indeed. But such congregations, in many cities, are difficult to find. Weary with the conflicts of the world, one goes into the Church to seek refreshment for the soul. And what does one find? Alas, too often, one finds only the turmoil of the world. The preacher comes forward, not out of a secret place of meditation and power, not with the authority of God's Word permeating his message, not with human wisdom pushed far into the background by the glory of the Cross, but with human opinions about the social problems of the hour or easy solutions of the vast problem of sin. Such is the sermon. And then perhaps the service is closed by one of those hymns breathing out the angry passions of 1861, which are to be found in the back part of the hymnals. Thus the warfare of the world has entered even into the house of God. And sad indeed is the heart of the man who has come seeking peace.

Is there no refuge from strife? Is there no place of refreshing where a man can prepare for the battle of life? Is there no place where two or three can gather in Jesus' name, to forget for the moment all those things that divide nation from nation and race from race, to forget human pride, to forget the passions of war, to forget the puzzling problems of industrial strife, and to unite in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the Cross? If there be such a place, then that is the house of God and that the gate of heaven. And from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive the weary world. (Christianity and Liberalism [1923], 180-81)

Mere Christianity: The Appeal to a Heterodox Past

It is often lamented that modern (or postmodern) evangelicalism does not look to the past for the foundations of its faith and practice. While this is certainly true in a strict sense, there is no escaping the universal truth expressed in Ecclesiates 1:9 and the fact that evangelicals today owe a lot to the legacies of those who've pandered a notion of mere Christianity in the past.

Claiming to get at the kernel and leaving behind the husk, these seemingly "radical" innovators are actually no more than current expressions of a rebellious individualism that has marked heretics of a bygone era. Tradition is stiff, "new measures" are where the Spirit's at, doctrine divides, and a host of other meaningless catch phrases comprise their rhetoric.

In fact, "Christian liberalism" is mere Christianity and this is what J. Gresham Machen fought against, not liberalism per se.

To C.S. Lewis fans this little snippet from Dr. Carl Trueman has much to say:

Westminster Wednesday: Where Have the Great Men Gone?

Scientific advancement and the industrial revolution have produced a new criterion for judging man as successful. A man is made when he has contributed significantly to industry, and a man who has thus contributed is rewarded handsomely in financial terms. Hence, the impetus for higher education has really not been the desire to know more about God, His creation, and the cultivation of the latter for the glory of the former, but the amassment of wealth. This phenomenon has produced dullards on a wholesale level.

J. Gresham Machen rightly observes:

"Scientific investigation, as has already been observed, has certainly accomplished much; it has in many respects produced a new world. But there is another aspect of the picture which should not be ignored. The modern world represents in some respects an enormous improvement over the world in which our ancestors lived; but in other respects it exhibits a lamentable decline. The improvement appears in the physical conditions of life, but in the spiritual realm there is a corresponding loss. The loss is clearest, perhaps, in the realm of art. Despite the mighty revolution which has been produced in the external conditions of life, no great poet is now living to celebrate the change; humanity has suddenly become dumb. Gone, too, are the great painters and the great musicians and the great sculptors. The art that still subsists is largely imitative, and where it is not imitative it is usually bizarre. Even the appreciation of the glories of the past is gradually being lost, under the influence of a utilitarian education that concerns itself only with the production of physical well-being." (Christianity and Liberalism, Introduction)

The solution? A Christianity that is integrally connected with the past.

Next to the Bible, What Is the Second Most Important Book?

According to Carl Trueman, it is J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, a book that tackled an issue that will stay an issue up until the eschaton finally breaks in.

What is Christianity?

That is a big question to ask, with every other religious sect claiming the label, and with enterprising entities claiming a lucrative niche market with products tagged as "Christian" this and "Christian" that.

J. Gresham Machen exhorts us to approach the question in a catholic frame of mind:

More Machen: Lip-Service Liberals

"The modern liberal preacher reverences Jesus; he has the name of Jesus forever on his lips; he speaks of Jesus as the supreme revelation of God; he enters, or tries to enter, into the religious life of Jesus. But he does not stand in a religious relation to Jesus. Jesus for him is an example for faith, not the object of faith."

— J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism

Doctrine and The Worst Sin of All

"For Machen, however, the Bible contains truth, and as such is ineradicably doctrinal. Indeed, one overarching concern in Christianity and Liberalism is simply the vital importance of Christian doctrine to the church: doctrine, he makes clear, is the very heart of Christian testimony. Claiming to honor the Bible without synthesizing the Bible’s teaching into doctrine, into systematic theology, is not really honoring the Bible at all, for the Bible teaches truth, truth which is coherent and can be articulated; and regarding with indifference those things which the Bible clearly sees as important is, in some sense, the worst sin of all."

— Carl Trueman, The Second Most Important Book You Will Ever Read, Themelios 33.2 (2008).