Justified by faith — J. Gresham Machen

“The beginning of the Christian life is not an act of man but a wonderful act of the Spirit of God.

But it is accompanied by a conscious act of man; it is accompanied by the act of faith. Faith is not a meritorious work; the New Testament never says that a man is saved on account of his faith, but always that he is saved through his faith. Faith is the means which the Holy Spirit uses to apply to the individual soul the benefits of Christ’s death.

And faith is a very simple thing; it simply means the receiving of a gift; it simply means that abandoning the vain effort of earning our way into God’s presence we accept the gift of salvation which Christ offers so full and free. Such is the doctrine – let us not be afraid of the word – such is the doctrine of justification by faith.

That has been a liberating doctrine; to it is due most of the freedom that we possess today, and if it is abandoned freedom will soon depart. If we are interested in what God thinks of us, we shall not be deterred by what men think; the very desire for justification before God makes us independent of the judgments of men. And if the very desire for justification is liberating, how much more the attainment of it! The man who has been justified by God, the man who has accepted as a free gift this condition of rightness with God, is not a man who hopes that possibly, with due effort, if he does not fail, he may win through to become a child of God. But he is a man who has already become a child of God. If our being children of God depended in the slightest measure upon ourselves, we could never be sure that we had attained the highest estate. But it does not depend upon ourselves; it depends only upon God. It is not a reward that we have earned but a gift that we received.

A hard battle indeed lies before us. This faith of ours, if we be true Christians, is a faith that works; and it is a faith that fights – against sin. But we begin the battle not with God as our reward, but with God as our ally. There is the high liberty of the Christian man. Let us not throw our liberty away; let us not descend into the bondage of dependence upon ourselves, let us not descend into the hard bondage of agnostic Modernism. But having received the gospel – this great Magna Charta of Christian liberty – let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.”

— J. Gresham Machen, God transcendent, sermon Justified by faith

"God's Works of Providence" - J. Gresham Machen

“The Bible plainly teaches that God works His will just as surely through the free actions of personal beings including man as He does through the courses of the heavenly bodies or the silent ripening of the grain…God, according to the Bible, is master of the heart of man just as much as He is master of the impersonal forces of nature, and from man’s heart man’s actions come.
Even the wicked actions of men serve God’s purposes and it is by His works of providence that He permits those wicked actions to be done.
Just pass in review, my friends, the history of Bible times. Nation after nation rises on the scene – Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Rome. Wicked nations are these – cruel, hard and proud. Yet how does the Bible represent them? How does the Bible represent even the cruel devastations that they carried on amid the people of God? As defeating God’s eternal purpose, as contravening His governance of the world? No, my friends, the Bible represents those wicked nations as unwitting instruments in God’s almighty hand.
Take also the wicked acts not of nations but of individual men. Were they accomplished without the providence of God; did they defeat His governance of the world? The Bible tells us, No. ‘You thought’ – said Joseph to his wicked brothers – “you thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Gen. 50:20). Even the supreme crime of all the ages, the crucifixion of Jesus our Lord, was not brought about apart from the providence of God. ‘For truly’ says the Book of Acts, ‘ in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place’ (Acts 4:27,28).
No, my friends, there are no exceptions here. Everything that is done in the whole course of the world – by forces of nature or by the free actions of men good and bad – everything has God as its great Cause.
But though God brings all these things to pass, He brings them to pass in widely different ways. He does not bring to pass the free actions of personal beings in the same way as the way in which He brings to pass the ripening of the grain. He brings to pass the actions of personal beings in a way that preserves their freedom and their responsibility to the full.
Shall that be accounted a thing inconceivable? We persuade our fellow men, yet their freedom is preserved when they do what we persuade them to do. Shall not then God be able to do with certainty what we with our little power do with uncertainty? Does not God who made the soul of man know how to move it in accordance with its own nature so that its freedom shall not be destroyed?
Shall He not be able even to use the evil actions of men for His own holy purposes? The Bible tells us plainly that He does so use those evil actions. Even they do not lie beyond His governance as the great First Cause. Yet the Bible tells us with equal plainness that He is not the author of sin that sin is ever hateful in His eyes. Why He allowed sin to enter is the mystery of mysteries, but that He did so we are plainly told, and that He did so for some high and holy end.”

- J. Gresham Machen, The Christian View of Man

"...the Bible regards it as surprising that any are saved...” J. Gresham Machen

“The Bible clearly teaches that when some men are saved and others are lost, neither of these two things come as a surprise to God, but both come to pass because they both stand in God’s eternal plan.
The Bible lays the chief stress upon the former of these two things; it lays more stress upon the fact that the saved are predestined to their salvation than it does upon the fact that the lost are predestined to their eternal retribution.
Why does it do that? Does it do it because it seeks to obscure in any way the predestination of the lost? Certainly not. On the contrary, it teaches that latter doctrine in certain passages in the clearest possible way. Why then does it lay the chief stress upon the predestination of the saved to salvation?
I think I can tell you at least one reason why it does so. It does so because it regards the salvation of the saved and not the eternal loss of the unsaved as the really surprising thing. We are prone to look at the matter in exactly the opposite way. The thing that we regard as surprising is that any members of the human race, any of those excellent creatures known as men, who are supposed to be doing the best they can and be guilty, at the most, of merely trifling and thoroughly forgivable faults, should ever fall under the divine displeasure. But the thing that the Bible regards as surprising is that any of those fallen creatures known as men, all of whom without exception deserve God's wrath and curse, should be received into eternal life. We regard it as surprising that any are lost: the Bible regards it as surprising that any are saved. Naturally, it is the surprising or unexpected thing upon which the stress is laid. It is for that reason, or at least partly for that reason, that the Biblical doctrine of the predestination is concerned chiefly with the predestination of the saved to their salvation rather than with the predestination of the unsaved to their eternal loss. The latter side of the matter is less extensively expounded simply because it is everywhere presupposed. It forms the dark background upon which the wonder of God’s purpose for those whom He has chosen for salvation is thrown into glorious relief.”

- J. Gresham Machen, A Christian View of Man