William Wilberforce: 1797 book condensed

Chapter III Section IV

Wrong Ideas About Being Right With God

“ … in contradiction to the plainest dictates of Scripture and to the ritual of our established church; the sanctifying operations of the Holy Spirit – the first fruits of our reconciliation to God, the purchase of our Redeemer's death, and his best gift to his disciples – are too generally undervalued and slighted.

… our thoughts of the Blessed Saviour are confused and faint, our affections towards him are languid and lukewarm, little proportioned to what they who at such price have been rescued from ruin and endowed with a title to glory might justly be expected to feel towards the Author of their deliverance.”

Why is this so? It is because many people who think they are Christians have superficial, confused and downright dangerous ideas about being right with God.

“With little more than indistinct and nominal reference to Him who 'bore our sins in his own body on the tree', they really rest their eternal hopes on on a vague general persuasion of the unqualified mercy of the Supreme Being; or that still more erroneously they rely in the main on their own negative or positive merits.”

They look at themselves and say: “I'm a good average person, I haven't done the really big sins – or if I did occasionally slip at least I didn't make a habit of it! So allowing for human weakness and all that I think a nice kind of God should let me into his heaven!”

Wrong! The God of the Bible is not some corrupt easy going deity. He is a God who hates evil with a passion, but who in love has provided a means of forgiveness at infinite cost to himself. If you think God will just weigh your life in a balance and are counting on your good deeds just tipping the scale you are dead wrong.

Some go further. There is an infinite graduation between those who reject Christ outright and those who love him and rejoice in his salvation. There are also those who call themselves Christians and seem to have some woolly dependence on Jesus. They have the idea that this gives them a sort of “get out of jail free” card. They think that by claiming Jesus their sins will not be judged too harshly and their good deeds will be rewarded.

The crunch is that all these are at heart relying on their own merits: not on the grace of God and the death of Jesus.

In effect they think that now the bar has been lowered so that they can jump over it and win eternal life for themselves. Wrong!

People who think these things are in the grip of the most insidious of sins: pride. Real Christians have to throw away their vanity and banish their proud hearts until they don't even think of trying to justify themselves before God.

Real Christians know they are desperate sinners, totally unable to save themselves and unable to change and do anything good without God's help. They throw themselves totally and unreservedly on God's mercy. They see Christ's atoning death as their only and most glorious hope. They are so overwhelmed by the magnitude of God's loving-kindness to them that they give him their hearts and their lives forever.

The result of the error of these “Christians” is what you would expect: No gratitude.

In fact they have the cheek to think of it like a two-way contract. They live sort-of-good lives ... God has to let them into heaven.

My point is that when people think their efforts get them into heaven they de-value what Jesus did for them and the magnitude of God's love so that they do not love him in return.

Don't get me wrong: I know eople have abused the doctrine of salvation by grace! They have vainly trusted in Jesus for salvation when their lives have plainly showed they do not love and obey him! I am not advocating that error, just pointing out the opposite error. The tree is known by its fruit. Where there is no fruit of holiness : there is no faith. These people are deceiving themselves that they are Christ's. We know the awful fate Jesus warned of, where at the judgement he will say to such people: “Away from me you evil doers, I never knew you”

The “work which God requires” is firstly to believe on His Son; but this in turn means we are to surrender ourselves to him to be washed in his blood, to be sanctified by his Spirit, to learn in his school and to obey all his commands.

Having denounced this opposite error, let me turn back to the error I fear most at present: People who reduce Christianity to just a set of moral teachings. That is not Biblical Christianity!

What the Bible urges us to is this: Flee for refuge to God's appointed hope; “No one can lay any other foundation;” Only Jesus saves. Let us fall down humbly before the throne of God imploring pity and pardon in the name of his beloved Son. Let us beseech him to give us a true spirit of repentance and a heart truly loving the Lord Jesus. Until we have all joy and peace in believing and daily strive to be imitators of Christ as dearly loved children. And let us study the scriptures to know more and more of who Jesus is, what he did so that we grow in love and admiration for him and then we will want to know and live the sort of life that will please him.