Pastor David B. Curtis
Pastor David B. Curtis
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This past Thursday was the anniversary of a very important date in history. Do you know what it is? October 31, 1517 is the date which is recognized as the beginning of The Reformation. This was the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg.
A study of Martin Luther is not just a historical study but can be a powerful testimony of the effect that one person can have for the kingdom of God. One person sold out to God brought a spiritual reformation.
On our website in the "About us" section, that gives some distinctive characteristics of Berean Bible Church it says: "First of all, we are reformed in the way that we view the world and the Bible. This means that we consider ourselves to have historically descended from those churches of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. We believe in the absolute sovereignty of the Almighty God, in "Sola fide" (salvation by grace through faith alone) and in "Sola Scriptura" (the Scriptures alone). So, we think that The Reformation was very important.
How you view The Reformation will depend on your theological persuasion. Roman Catholic historians interpret The Reformation as a heresy inspired by Martin Luther. On the other hand, Protestant historians (e.g., Schaff, Grimm, and Bainton) interpret The Reformation largely as a religious movement that sought to recover the purity of the primitive Christianity that is depicted in the New Testament.
The Reformers sought to develop a theology that was in complete accord with the New Testament and believed that this could never be a reality as long as the church, instead of the Bible, was made the final authority. The Reformation proper began on October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door.
Martin Luther is one of the most influential figures in Western history. His writings were responsible for fractionalizing the Catholic Church and sparking the Protestant Reformation. His central teachings that the Bible is the central source of religious authority and that salvation is reached through faith and not deeds, shaped the core of Protestantism.
Church history is a subject that few twenty-first century Americans know much about. Martin Lloyd Jones said, "Fortunately, we are not the first people who have been engaged in this battle (Christian life) and there is nothing which can be of greater help to us, next to the Scriptures, than the History of the Church." So, let's look at the history of Luther and The Reformation and see what we can learn.
Martin Luther was born in Germany on November 10, 1483. He attended school at Mansfeld, at Magdeburg under the Brethren of the Common Life, and at Eisleben. He then went to the University at Erfurt (1501) where he came under Nominalist influence and learned Greek. He graduated with a B.A. in 1502 and with an M.A. in 1505. His father wanted him to study law and Luther pursued that direction. But His goals changed in 1505 when he became deeply frightened during a severe thunderstorm on the road near Stotternheim. Desperate to be saved from it, he made a promise to Saint Anne that he would become a monk if he were spared. About two weeks later, he entered a monastery of the Augustinian order at Erfurt. Here in 1507, he was ordained and celebrated his first mass.
In 1511, Luther was transferred to Wittenberg. During the next year he became a professor of Bible and received his Doctor of Theology degree. Luther at this time was still unconverted.
In his lectures from 1513 to 1515, he expounded the Psalms. Around 1515, he began to study the book of Romans. This led to what he called the "Tower Experience. He revealed that Romans 1:17 just jumped out of the Scriptures and brought him to God.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." Romans 1:17 ESV
Let me say a little about this verse before we go on. The word "for" is the Greek word gar. When Paul says "for," he is explaining what has just gone before. In other words, the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation because it is through the Gospel that the righteousness of God is revealed.
"The righteousness of God"—this phrase, which dominates Romans, has been taken in two different ways in the history of the Church. In Greek, the phrase can simply mean "God's righteousness." The trouble with this phrase is that Greek genitives can go one way or another. So, scholars have debated whether the phrase "the righteousness of God" is God's own righteousness or whether it is a righteousness that God gives.
The mainstream view is that this righteousness that Paul speaks of here is not God's own righteousness, but is, rather, a righteousness "from" God—the righteousness which God gives on the basis of faith. It is the righteous status believers have because of Christ-imputed righteousness.
But if you trace the phrase "the righteousness of God" back to its Jewish roots, you will find it has many different connotations. But it is never used of a righteous status which is a gift of God. We find that in Romans 3:21-31, a righteousness from God doesn't make sense. I think that Paul is speaking here of God's righteousness, His character. God is a righteous God. Certainly, the Scripture acknowledges God as righteous.
In the following statement, Martin Luther describes his encounter with this term as he studied the book of Romans:
But up till then it was not the cold blood about the heart, but a single word of Chapter 1:17, "In it the righteousness of God is revealed," that had stood in my way. For I hated that word "righteousness of God," which, according to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God [Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther's Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 90, quoted from Luther's Works, vol. 34, pp. 336-37].
I think that Luther's problem was that he didn't understand what "God's righteousness" meant. There are several scholars (e.g., Williams, Dunn, Kaylor, Davies, O'Brian, and Wright) who suggest that the term "righteousness of God" is referring to God's covenant faithfulness. In other words, His saving actions are rooted in His faithfulness to the covenant enacted with His people.
So, what we have in Romans 1:17 is that in the Gospel, God's covenant faithfulness is being revealed (present tense). The covenant faithfulness of God is presently being revealed in the preaching of the Gospel.
This verse convicted Luther that only faith in Christ could make one just before God. From that time on, Sola Fide (justification by faith alone) and Sola Scriptura (the idea that the Scriptures are the only authority for sinful man in seeking salvation) became the main points in his theological system.
Luther saw God's righteousness in Romans 1 not as the justice that we have to fear, but, rather, the positive righteousness that God gives believers in Christ. It is a righteousness they receive by personally trusting in Christ.
He began to understand that the Roman Catholic Church did not square with the Scriptures. As he heard confessions at Wittenberg, he realized that people were trusting in their works and in their indulgence letters.
Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg, through a series of circumstances, wound up in some high offices in the church even though technically he was not eligible to hold them because of his age. Also, church law forbade multiple occupation of high ecclesiastical offices by one person. But the pope agreed to overlook the legal problems if Albert would pay him a huge sum of money. Albert borrowed the money from the wealthy and powerful Fugger banking house of Augsburg. Then, to enable Albert to raise money to pay his debts and to raise money to build the new St. Peter's Church in Rome, Pope Leo X authorized an "indulgence," which Albert was permitted to have preached and sold in his dioceses.
An indulgence was an official church provision by which a penitent sinner could purchase from the pope a remission of the punishment for temporal sins (sins that would otherwise have to be atoned for in purgatory). Indulgence benefits were even extended to departed souls supposedly already in purgatory.
The Roman Catholic Church taught that Yeshua's merit covered sin only in a certain sense. There also was a penalty that had to be paid by which God punished a sinner either in this life or in purgatory. An indulgence was a means to get rid of that penalty. In Roman Catholicism, purgatory is the place of cleansing after death, usually involving punishment and suffering. According to this doctrine, Christians go to purgatory to be purified of venial sins that were unconfessed and unforgiven on earth. After the appropriate cleansing has taken place, the soul is ready to be received into heaven. Indulgences, masses, and prayers for the dead can speed up the cleansing process and reduce the time in purgatory. Let me just say here that purgatory is NOT Biblical! It is an invention of man.
Archbishop Albert commissioned John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, to be the indulgence preacher. Tetzel began selling indulgence letters throughout Germany. His crassly mercenary sermons were successful in filling church coffers. His slogan was, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul into heaven springs." Fifty percent of the money he raised was used to build St. Peters cathedral in Rome. Tetzel preached that by buying indulgences, a person could buy a relative out of purgatory and free him to go to heaven.
Now you might be wondering how people could fall for such nonsense. We must keep in mind that prior to the Reformation, the Scriptures were not translated into the people's language. The mass was done completely in Latin. There was no Bible to speak of in the hands of the people. The only contact the people had with the Scriptures came from priests who read them in Latin. Consequently, nobody understood what was being spoken and nobody except the priests could read the Bible and expound upon the Latin text. The people would simply believe whatever the priest said because they had no basis by which to evaluate what they were being taught. Consequently, they accepted whatever the priests told them.
Century after century went by in this way. The Roman Catholic Church had developed a system which was never really evaluated by the people because they didn't have the Bible in their own language. The people had unquestioningly accepted the priestly interpretations and, consequently, they conformed to the system of Rome. What the Reformation did more than anything else was to give the Bible to the people. It put the Word of God in the people's hands. When they began to read the Scriptures, many began to see the false teachings and the misrepresentation of the Gospel that had been given to them for centuries. It was the truth of the Gospel that helped to shatter the Dark Ages, and Protestant Christianity, as we know it today, was born out of that. Today we have the Bible in our own languages and are, therefore, able to evaluate the validity of any religious system by the Bible's divine standard.
When Luther discovered what was going on with Tetzel and the indulgences, he drafted his famous 95 Theses. On October 31, 1517, Luther posted his theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. In them, he condemned the abuses of the indulgence system and challenged all comers to debate on the matter.
Number 27 of the 95 Theses declares: "Those who assert that a soul straightway flies out of purgatory as a coin tinkles in the collection box, are preaching an invention of man."
Number 32 states: "Those who think themselves sure of salvation through letters of pardon, will be damned forever with their teachers."
Within 14 days, Martin Luther's theses had spread all over Germany. Just 100 years earlier Huss had been burned at the stake for saying things not far distant from Luther's charges.
When translated and widely circulated, these theses brought an explosion of anti-church feeling that wrecked the indulgence system. Because of this practical application by the people, Luther's theology could no longer go unnoticed. He soon came under ecclesiastical pressures that ranged from attempts to intimidate him to the promising of favors for his compliance to the Church's authority.
Early in 1521, a bill of excommunication was prepared that, if carried out, would have deprived Luther of civil rights and protection. Before its execution, Charles V agreed to give Luther the chance to recant at the diet to be held at Worms. Here Luther made his resounding confession before the emperor, princes, and other rulers: "I ask for the Scriptures and Eck offers me the fathers. I ask for the Sun, and he shows me his lanterns. I ask, 'Where is your Scriptural proof?' And he adduces Ambrose and Cyril. With all due respect to the Fathers, I prefer the authority of the Scripture."
Charles V said to Luther, "One friar who goes counter to all Christianity for 1,000 years must be wrong." Luther replied, "My conscience is captive to the Word of God . . Here I stand, I can do no other." Luther went against the corrupt Christianity of the day, but he stuck to the Scriptures. Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura were the cry of The Reformation.
Luther said that only Erasmus knew what the real issue in The Reformation was, and it was the issue of the bondage of the will.
Erasmus was Europe's most famous philosopher, and he and Luther debated on the question of whether or not the human creature has the freedom to accept or to refuse divine grace. The issue was: Do we have "free will"? This debate was not new. In the fifth century, Augustine and Pelagius debated the same issue, and Pelagius' views were condemned at the Church Council of Ephesus in 431.
Erasmus published a Diatribe on Free Will (1524). To this, Luther made a sharp and almost scornful reply in his Bondage of the Will (1525). This work is a powerful statement of the Augustinian position that in matters of right conduct and salvation, the will has no power to act apart from the divine initiative.
Luther taught that man, because of the Fall, was so bound by sin that he could not of himself do anything to avail himself to get out of the situation, but that God must do it. This is what is called the Doctrine of "Total Depravity." Luther believed that man has the power of choice, but that the will of man was not free.
Luther and Erasmus disagreed. Erasmus taught that the will of man was always able to choose good or evil. Luther accused Erasmus of Epicurianism (the idea that the universe is basically chance). It teaches that God hasn't foreordained everything. Luther said that Erasmus taught an indeterminate God, a God that hasn't determined everything. That was semi-pelagianism. Luther said that this was not only heresy but blasphemy, in fact, it was atheism. Because if God is not totally in control of everything, He is not God. He said that Erasmus' god didn't exist, and that he was teaching a form of atheism.
Luther believed that after the Fall, man's will was a selfish, sinful will. Man could choose — he was uncoerced, but man fallen had no desire for anything except the evil, and as long as he is inclined only to evil, he chooses only evil. Jonathan Edwards, in his essay, "The Freedom of the Will," (1754) wrote that all men everywhere always act according to their strongest inclination at any given time. The Bible teaches that after the Fall, man's strongest inclination at any given moment is always to sin. Fallen man loves darkness (sin) and he hates light, so whenever he is confronted with a choice between darkness and light, he chooses darkness. He chooses what is attractive to him.
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. John 3:19-20 ESV
A person always chooses according to his strongest inclination; he is in bondage to choose what he loves. Now, you might ask, "Where is the bondage in choosing what we love and want?" The bondage comes in the result of the sin he loves, the consequences of sin he doesn't like. He wants to live forever; he wants joy, love, peace; but he hates righteousness.
Look with me at Zechariah 1, which is a call to Israel to return to the LORD.
In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, saying, "The LORD was very angry with your fathers. Therefore say to them, Thus declares the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.' But they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the LORD. Zechariah 1:1-4 ESV
Commenting on these verses, Luther said, "It is not in your power to turn to God. If you think that it is in your power to turn to God, you have missed the whole point of The Reformation and don't understand total depravity. It is not in your power to turn to God. You are a sinner, you're dead, you're eaten up with corruption. Every choice of yours is evil and not good. So how can we turn to Him who is light, righteousness, holy, and good?"
Luther taught that you have a duty to return to God, but you do not have the ability. RESPONSIBILITY DOES NOT IMPLY ABILITY!
While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light." When Yeshua had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. John 12:36 ESV
Yeshua said "believe in the light." Most believers today would say that because Christ commands us to believe, we must be able to believe. That is not correct! Look at the following verses.
Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: "Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, John 12:37-39 ESV
They did not believe because they could not believe. Notice what Yeshua said earlier in John's Gospel.
but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. John 10:26-29 ESV
Why did they not believe? They didn't believe because they did not belong to Yeshua. They had not been given to Him by the Father. Therefore, they could not believe. Scripture states dogmatically some things that a lost man cannot do.
1) Man cannot see or perceive the kingdom of God — until he first be born again.
Yeshua answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." John 3:3 ESV
2) Man cannot understand spiritual things — until he is first given spiritual life.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14 ESV
3) The natural man is man without the Spirit. Man cannot come to God — until he first be effectually called by the Holy Spirit.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. John 6:44 ESV
Some have tried to interpret the word "draw" here as "call or invite." But this is not what the word "draw" means. The Greek word translated "draw" is helkuo, which means "to drag, to draw by irresistible superiority." It is used eight times in the New Testament. Let me show you another one of them.
Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant's name was Malchus.) John 18:10 ESV
The word "drew" is helkuo. Does "call or invite" make any sense here? Did Peter invite or call his sword to come out? No! He grabbed it, and pulled it out.
Please take the time to look up all eight uses of helkuo in the New Testament. They all have the idea of dragging and not of inviting or calling.
So, in John 6:44, Yeshua is saying that no one can come to Him "...unless the Father who sent Me draws him!" This is what Calvinists call "Irresistible Grace or Sovereign Grace." It is not that God drags those who don't want to come. It is that God makes them willing by His grace. In regeneration, God gives us spiritual life, which includes a desire for Him. If God gives us a desire for Christ, we will act according to that desire, and we will choose Christ.
A sinner absolutely cannot (notice it is not "will" not) come to Christ until God first does something in that sinner's nature. That "something" is what the Bible calls "regeneration," or the new birth, and it is the exclusive work of God, the Holy Spirit. Man has no part whatever in regeneration. In John 11, Yeshua commands Lazarus to come forth out of the grave.
When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." John 11:43 ESV
Did Lazarus have the ability in himself to obey that command? No, he was dead! He had no ability at all. Unsaved man, natural man, has a duty to believe the Gospel, but he does not have the ability.
Since The Reformation, people have departed from the sovereignty of grace. There are those who profess to be Christians who, in reality, are not. But there are also those who are genuine Christians who have departed from The Reformation on the issue of grace. All of the Reformers (e.g., Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, Cranmer—the German reformer, the Swiss reformer, the French reformer, the Scottish reformer, and the English reformer) believed not only in Grace, but in Sovereign grace. The majority of believers today try to have the grace without the Sovereignty of the grace. Evangelical Christianity is trying to hold on to grace provided, while rejecting grace applied. Grace proves irresistible just because it destroys the disposition to resist.
Why does God command us to do what we cannot do? It is to show us the depth of our depravity. The foundation of reformed theology is the Doctrine of Total Depravity. Many people think they have trouble with the Doctrines of Election and Predestination but their real problem is that they do not understand how totally depraved man inherently is. God commands us to return to Him and promises that if we do, He will return to us. But we won't do it; we can't do it. We are in bondage to what we love, which is darkness and evil. And we reject what we hate, which is light and goodness and God. We should be able to turn to God, but we are not because of Adam's choice to disobey God in The Garden. In Adam, we all chose to turn away from God.
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—Romans 5:12 ESV
This act has left all of us spiritually dead. Let me just say a word to those Preterists who think that election was something that ended in A.D. 70. Why did God have to draw dead men to Himself in the past but now no longer needs to do so? What has changed? Is man no longer spiritually dead? And if he is not, what is his condition? Are men no longer born in sin and separated from God? If they are not, then they don't need a Savior. Where in Scripture does it state or imply that man apart from Christ is no longer dead in sin after A.D. 70?
The very fact that God commands us to do that which we are utterly unable to do shows how totally depraved we are. And if salvation is going to come at all, it's going to be applied Sovereignly. This overthrows self-confidence and convinces sinners that their salvation is altogether out of their hands and shuts them up to a self-despairing dependency on the glorious grace of a Sovereign Savior.
The nature of the human will:
The human will is the facilitator of choice and the immediate cause of all action. We think about something, and then we do it. In every act of the will, there is a preference—a desiring of one thing over another. To will is to choose, and to choose is to decide between two or more alternatives. But there is something which influences the choice because the will is not in itself causative. Something causes us to choose and that something, therefore, must be the causative agent.
What is it that determines the will? If the will is not causative, then what is it that causes you to make a choice? Let's say that your boss comes to you and says, "You're going to California." You don't have a choice if you want to keep your job. But he says, "Would you like to drive or fly?" He is giving you a choice. What determines which option you choose? What determines your choice is the strongest power that is brought to bear upon it. With one approach I may reason based on the logic that if I drive, it will take me five days, but if I fly, it will only take me about five hours. As a result, I choose to fly. With another approach, I may use emotional reasoning that dissuades me from flying. I consider that there are a lot of plane crashes, I'm not ready to die, so I'll drive. What we think causes us to will. Whichever of these presents the strongest motivational power and exerts the greatest influence upon us is that which impels the will to act.
In other words, the action of the will is determined by the mind or heart. The will is not free, but is in bondage to the heart. The Word of God teaches that the heart is the dominating center of our being.
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23 ESV
The Complete Jewish Bible puts it this way:
Above everything else, guard your heart; for it is the source of life's consequences. Proverbs 4:23 CJB
Our choices are determined by our desires. When we have conflicting desires, whichever desire is greater at the time of decision is the desire we will choose.
Example: What causes a person to overeat? His mind and his thinking will determine his choice. If his desire at the moment is self-gratification, he will eat whatever he wants. But if his desire to maintain a healthy weight is stronger, he will not overeat. The bottom line is that the condition of our hearts will determine our choices. If we don't think being overweight is bad for us, then we will continue to over indulge. Jonathan Edwards defined the will as "the mind choosing."
Let's carry this idea of the will to the non-regenerate. Does the lost person have a free will to choose God or reject Him? By and far the majority of the church today believes that the lost person has a free will. The church, during the days of The Reformation, held that man had no free will. In the eighteenth century, Campbell, a Scottish preacher, was excommunicated from the church for teaching that man had a free will. The church today is man-centered, so they want man to be able to determine his own destiny. Does the lost man have a free will? No! He cannot choose God because he loves sin and hates God; he has no desire for Him. He cannot choose what he does not desire. He does not desire God because his heart is dead in sin. Until God changes his heart through a supernatural sovereign act, he cannot choose God.
Luther. Like Calvin, was committed to total depravity—man's inability to choose God. As we go backward in time, we see that Augustine taught the same thing in the fifth century. Augustine said, "Man's will is entirely corrupted by the fall so that he must be considered totally depraved and unable to exercise his will in regard to the matter of salvation." The reformers taught it in the 16th century, Augustine taught it in the 5th century, and the apostles taught it in the 1st century.
as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one." Romans 3:10-12 ESV
"There is none who does good." People will admit they're sinners, but not many will admit that sin is this serious. Is there really none who do good? We see unbelievers doing good every day by obeying laws, providing for their families, and giving to the needy. Is Paul using hyperbole here? Is he exaggerating to make his point? No! This is God's judgment on fallen man. What is the standard for good, the standard by which we shall all be judged? God's law. God doesn't grade on a curve. He demands perfection. We do not do what God commands—not ever.
no one understands; no one seeks for God. Romans 3:11 ESV
Do you believe that? Have you ever heard people claim that they are not a Christian but that they are searching. I've got news for them— God is not hiding. In the Garden of Eden, who hid? God? No! Adam and Eve hid from God. He was looking for them.
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." Luke 19:10 ESV
Yeshua is the one seeking and saving. People don't seek God. They might seek after the benefits that God can give them, but they don't seek God Himself. There is nothing good in the flesh; it can do nothing good. We cannot believe the Gospel until God gives us life. The teaching of The Reformation is this: "Regeneration precedes faith." We must have life before we can believe. The Scriptures clearly show that faith is the evidence and not the cause of regeneration.
Everyone who believes that Yeshua is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 1 John 5:1 ESV
The Greek text reads: "Everyone who believes that Yeshua is the Christ has been [perfect tense] born of God." Wuest translates it: "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, out from God has been born and as a result is His child." Law said, "The Divine begetting is the antecedent [go before] not the consequent of the believing." Yeshua stated this concept in John 5.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. John 5:24 ESV
The one who believes does so because he has been given eternal life.
Spiritual death brings an insensitivity to the things of God. It is a spiritual slavery, the prisoners of which are helpless. This is the Doctrine of Total Depravity. It does not mean, as many have misunderstood, that man is as bad as he can possibly be. It means that man is as bad off as he can possibly be. The bottom line is this: Our hope does not lie in our own will. It is our will that has got us lost! We are all sure for condemnation unless God would somehow incline our wills in the opposite direction. We must have a Savior who is mighty enough to rescue us from ourselves. Clearly, God must do something. We've made our choice; our will has spoken. We are hopelessly lost unless God chooses otherwise. This is the doctrine of Total Depravity.
The famous Baptist preacher, C. H. Spurgeon wrote:
I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the Gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the Gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Yahweh; nor do I think we can preach the Gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ brought out upon the cross.
It is also my conviction that Calvinism is biblical and is the true Gospel. The church today is being flooded with a new Gospel, a humanistic Gospel.
The Gospel is always and essentially a proclamation of Divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment. It is a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature and grace. Its center of reference is God. But in the new Gospel, the center of reference is man—he chooses, he decides, and he initiates salvation. The chief aim of the Gospel was to teach men to worship God, but the concern of the new Gospel seems limited to making men feel better. The Gospel is — God Saves Sinners! If we understand "total depravity," then we will understand that our salvation is a gift from God. Then God, and not man, receives all the glory in salvation.
to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Yeshua the Christ! Amen. Romans 16:27 ESV
Unlike Luther's time, people today have Bibles in their own languages. Our problem is that we don't read and study them. We have to encourage people to read their Bibles in light of audience relevance. The New Testament was written two thousand years ago to people of that time. If we can get them to do this, they will see the truth of a first-century coming and fulfillment of all the promises.