Point of Contact

I. Scripture does not affirm the unbeliever’s method of evaluating God’s truth. (The Bible establishes a point of contact that exposes the sinner’s faulty epistemology.)

     A. The unbeliever operates upon the assumption that he is autonomous and not accountable to God. This core commitment to autonomous self drives the unbeliever’s studious suppression of God’s truth.

          1. We cannot allow the natural man’s assumption of himself as ultimate reference point to remain unchallenged. If we do not challenge his assumption, he will interpret Christianity in naturalistic terms.[i][1]

          2. The believer and the unbeliever can have no common area of knowledge UNLESS they agree between them on the nature of man. No such agreement exists. (Scripture affirms anantithesis rather than an agreement.)[ii][2]

     B. God has clearly revealed His truth to sinners. Unbelievers strive to distort the truth beyond recognition.[iii][3]

1. Believer and unbeliever do not have methods of interpretation in common. When we treat the natural man’s thought processes as normal, we are behaving as if he has the “ability” to correctly interpret the phenomenal world.

2. Natural men interpret the phenomenal world on the assumption of human autonomy. In order topreserve their presupposition of autonomy, unbelievers assume the non-createdness of facts and they assume a system logic that envelops both God and man.

C. Unbelieving man is in no position to judge what God can say and cannot say about Himself or what God can do and cannot do in saving and in condemning. [iv][4]

1. The apologist must constantly keep the above in mind. He must not grant sinners the authority that they can do right or handle right the Scriptures.

2. By nature, the sinner is incapable of handling the Word of God truthfully. Unbelievers demonstrate their rebellion by sitting in judgment on the Scriptures.

D. In order to retain the Biblical method of apologetics, we must fix our mind on the true state and condition of the unbeliever.

II. Scripture uncovers the strength and content of the unbeliever’s

bias against God’s truth.

A. Scripture gives a full account of the unbeliever’s hostile state of mind. [v][5]

1. When men refuse to acknowledge God’s truth, they will be led into futility and error. The sinner daily changes God’s truth into a lie.

2. The unbeliever suppresses God’s truth because he doesn’t want to deal with God whorevealed it. Sinners choose not to know as they ought, because knowing comes with ethical obligations. The God who is to be known through His revelation requires all men to be subject to Him as sovereign Creator and Lord.[vi][6]

B. The natural man blurs the infinite distinction between himself and God. The unbeliever thinks of himself as equal to God and insists upon occupying His place.

1. The natural man has abandoned the creature-Creator relationship for which he was made. Like Adam, he has “rooted” himself in the world. He hides in the world from God. By worshipping and serving the creation, he proves that he is NOT rich toward God (his treasure is elsewhere).[vii][7]

2. In his darkness and rebellion, the natural man denies his need of divine revelation to understand his world and man’s place in it. He has complete confidence in the human rational process to discover all knowledge. He only deems to be true what autonomous reason deems to be true. By claiming to know independently of God, he usurps the place of God.

3. Like Adam, he has a definition of freedom that is based upon the ultimacy of his mind. He views freedom as the “liberty” to arrange his life according to the dictates of his own counsel.[viii][8]

C. In his pride, the natural man denies that he needs regeneration to reset his mind. [ix][9]

1. The pride of the natural man naturally wants to destroy the system of supernatural revelation that exposes his sin and shame and reveals his helplessness. (It is impossible for him to be objective when he has a vested interest in silencing the testimony.)

2. In his pride, modern man says that he can identify himself, BEFORE he knows and identifies God.[x][10]

3. In his pride, he has no sentiment whatsoever to use his intellect to glorify God. All of God’s truth is “shoved” into naturalistic categories. The unbeliever denies that God has planned all the relations between what He has created. He denies that all created reality displays the divine plan. In his pride, he assumes that facts and laws are intelligible without God. He sees reality as greater than God.[xi][11]

4. The sinner has a three point premise: a.) He denies creaturehood, he believes that he is ultimate. He assumes that self (and not God) is the final reference point for explaining all things. b.) He assumes that all things are non-created and controlled by chance. c.) He believes that the power of logic he possesses is the means to determine what is possible and impossible in a universe of chance.[xii][12]

D. The sinner is incapable of diagnosing himself. In his self-deception, he assumes non-createdness and autonomy.

1. In his self-deception, he has chosen an epistemology that is informed by his ethical hostility toward God.[xiii][13]

2. His negative reaction to God’s revelation issues from his false view of himself. The Christian apologist must know that the unbeliever is quite a different sort of person than he thinks he is. The unbeliever will not have a correct view of self apart from Christianity.[xiv][14]

3. In his self-deception, he assumes that he is a proper judge of all claims to authority. By contrast, the Scriptures proclaim that he is not autonomous, but a dependent creature and sinner before the face of God. He must subordinate his reason to the Word of God in order to have the light necessary to interpret his experience.[xv][15]

E. The unbeliever’s hostility to God’s truth provokes his Creator to wrath (Rom 1:18).

1. Any and every truth about God that comes to the unbeliever is immediately suppressed. When man’s darkened understanding has completed its “restructuring” activity, the original truth emerges as falsehood. The suppression of God’s truth is only overcome by the convicting and illuminating work of the Holy Spirit.[xvi][16]

2. It is the nature of sin to deny the God’s rightful honor. The unbeliever is strongly motivated to interpret all reality according to his atheistic presuppositions. The sinner finds Christian truth so uncomfortable that he twists it, denies it, suppresses it, changes it and domesticates it.[xvii][17]

III. No man can escape the Creator’s clear revelation in the natural order and the inward conscience.

A. Human beings can never escape facing their Creator. God reveals Himself in the universe around them and in their own constitution. God is man’s environment.[xviii][18]

1. Human sin cannot destroy man’s knowledge of God. Sin cannot eradicate man’s sense of deity. Human rebellion does not create a new reality in which man possesses genuine autonomy. (A “sense of deity” constitutes the following: By virtue of being made in God’s image, man has an innate God-given consciousness that he is a creature of God, he is responsible to God, and he is a covenant-breaker.[xix][19]

2. God’s face appears in every fact that the unbeliever seeks to suppress. Unsaved men constantly fight a losing battle to obliterate the truth of God. But the truth they seek to extinguish is inherent in their very beings.[xx][20]

B. All men possess a sense of deity. The common ground we share with unbelievers lies not in a common epistemology, but in a common bearing of God’s image. Sense of deity is not merely probable conclusions about God’s existence, it is actual metaphysical common ground – all men bear God’s image.  Thus, sense of deity becomes the proper point of contact within apologetics and evangelism.[xxi][21]

C. The natural man cannot live consistent with his atheistic presuppositions. As a consequence, he operates with knowledge “borrowed” from the Christian world view.

1. Without a “head on” collision with the false assumptions of the natural man, there is no point of contact with his sense of deity.

We must challenge the sinful structure of the natural man.[xxii][22]

2. Every man knows he is a creature accountable to God. We must have the faith to believe this, no matter how vociferous and dogmatic he may be in his resistance to God’s truth. [xxiii][23]

IV. The sinner’s real problem is not intellectual, but moral. As a

hostile enemy of God, he denies his need of divine revelation to

understand the world and man’s place in it. A truly biblical

apologetic emphasizes the antithesis that exists between the

mind of the believer and unbeliever.[xxiv][24]

A. The believer and the unbeliever do not have interpretation in common. Given the ANTITHESISthat exists between faith and unbelief, there is no truth that is religiously neutral.[xxv][25]

B. According to Romans 1, man knows “after a fashion,” but he does know ethically.  Because man is a creature who belongs to God and who is ethically responsible to God, knowing is an ethical process.

C. The antithesis is not merely one group of propositions contrary to another, it is about the whole life of a man. It is about the conflict of the ages between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the wicked one. [xxvi][26]

1. The antithesis between kingdoms centers upon the matter of the recognition of the lordship of Christ.

2. The antithesis between kingdoms concerns the reasoning of the human heart. There is a sharpantithesis between the wisdom of God and the foolishness of unbelief (1 Cor 2:6-16).

3. Believer and unbeliever live in antithetical realms of thought. 

Practically speaking, they live in different “universes” of discourse.

They have no point of contact epistemologically. The epistemological

gulf is humanly unbridgeable. Only by God’s Spirit can the sinner

attain to a true knowledge of God.[xxvii][27]

D. The Christian apologist must QUALIFY the antithesis that exists between believer and unbeliever.

1. It is true that the non-Christian’s ethical hostility adversely affects

his epistemology and his interpreting of the world and God. But it is

also true that in the real world, unbelievers believe and behave in

ways with which the Christian agrees. Fallen man knows truth and

does “morally good” things in spite of the fact that in principle he is

set against God (Unbelievers may promote charities, work for law

and order, espouse moral behavior, and assist the poor.)[xxviii][28]

2. A second way that we can qualify the antithesis is by emphasizing

that the antithesis to God is not metaphysical, but ethical. Unbelief

does not change the metaphysical reality that all men will never be

anything but image-bearers of God. The antithesis is ethical in

nature. Sinners know that they have broken God’s law, they

know they suppress the truth and they know they should obey God.[xxix][29]

E. Apologists need to be epistemologically self-conscious – they need to

exhibit with greater clarity, the antithesis between the believer and the

unbeliever’s espoused systems of thought.

1. When presenting his apologetic argument, the Christian should

begin by emphasizing the absolute ethical antithesis in which the

natural man stands to God.

2. The apologist must not “tone down” the confrontation between truth

and error. By emphasizing the antithesis, the apologist guards against

arguing with a fool on the “turf” of his world view.[xxx][30]

V. We must find the point of contact in the natural man. Non-

presuppositional apologetics permits the legitimacy of the natural

man’s view of self to stand.[xxxi][31]

 A. Our point of contact is man’s rebellion against God’s claims upon

 him.

1. We press the claims of God upon men without apology.

 2. Ask the natural man how his system differs from the Word of God. 

 Listen to his objections. Present him the opposite of what he claims to

believe. 

 3. The pagan does not have a legitimate reason why the Christian

world view is not true. The Christian apologist challenges the sinner to

take his faith out of himself and put it in God.[xxxii][32]

4. Unbelievers frequently try to reduce the point of contact to a debate

between personal opinions. Respond by asking, “Where are your

answers coming from? Mine are rooted in the Word of God.” Show the

unbeliever what God says about his world view. Remember, the

sinner’s intellectual assumptions are on trial, not the revelation of

Christ.[xxxiii][33]

B. The apologist is to appeal to the sense of deity that is in the very

depth of the sinner’s consciousness. The natural man is always

confronting the same God who now asks him to yield obedience to

Him.[xxxiv][34]

1. We go beneath his consciousness to the sense of deity he seeks to

suppress. The natural man is constantly haunted by Romans 2. The accusations of God’s law written on his heart fill the workings of his conscience.[xxxv][35]

2. Because men are ignorant of God due to sin, the point of contact cannot be in human reason or aspirations.[xxxvi][36]

C. The natural man suppresses the very world view he needs to make

sense of the world and himself. Man is a creature of God, designed to

think God’s thoughts after Him.[xxxvii][37]

Endnotes:

[i][1] Greg L. Bahnsen, VanTil’s Apologetic, Readings & Analysis (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1998), 439.

[ii][2] Cornelius VanTil, The Defense of the Faith (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1955), 67.

[iii][3] Thom Notaro, VanTil & the Use of Evidence (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1980), 41.

[iv][4] Robert L. Reymond, The Justification of Knowledge (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1976), 29.

[v][5] Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready (Atlanta: American Vision, 1996), 80.

[vi][6] Thom Notaro, Van Til & Evidences, 33.

[vii][7] C. K. Barrett, From First Adam to Last (New York: Scriber’s and Sons), 13, 17.

[viii][8] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 84.

[ix][9] Ibid., p. 75.

[x][10] Ibid., p. 157.

[xi][11] Ibid., pp. 173, 196.

[xii][12] Ibid., p. 231.

[xiii][13] Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, p. 410.

[xiv][14] Ibid., p. 422.

[xv][15] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, p. 108.

[xvi][16] Robert L. Reymond, The Justification of Knowledge, p. 26.

[xvii][17] John M. Frame, “Van Til on Antithesis” Westminster Theological Journal, 57:1(Spring 1995): 92.

[xviii][18] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, p. 417.

[xix][19] Ibid., p. 419.

[xx][20] David L. Turner, “Cornelius Van Til and Romans 1:18-21” Grace Theological Journal 2:1 (Spring 1981): 52.

[xxi][21] Ibid., p. 55-57.

[xxii][22] Thom Notaro, Van Til and Evidences, p. 40.

[xxiii][23] James F. Stitzinger, “Apologetics and Evangelism TH 701” (The Master’s Seminary, Sun Valley, CA, 1999), p. 97.

[xxiv][24] Ibid., p. 97.

[xxv][25] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, p. 424.

[xxvi][26] John M. Frame, “Van Til on Antithesis” WTJ, P. 101.

[xxvii][27] Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “Some Epistemological Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:6-16” The Westminster Theological Journal 57:1 (Spring 1995): 106-110. 

[xxviii][28] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, p. 416.

[xxix][29] Ibid., p. 417.

[xxx][30] James F. Stitzinger, Apologetics, p. 118, 126.

[xxxi][31] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, p. 440.

[xxxii][32] James F. Stitzinger, Apologetics, pp. 122, 126, 127.

[xxxiii][33] Bahnsen, Always Ready, p. 83.

[xxxiv][34] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, p. 448.

[xxxv][35] James F. Stitzinger, Apologetics, p. 97.

[xxxvi][36] William Edgar, “Two Christian Warriors: Cornelius Van Til and Francis A. Schaeffer Compared” The Westminster Theological Journal 57:1 (Spring 1995): 65.

[xxxvii][37] Bahnsen, Always Ready, p. 63.

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Moral Government of God

Not long ago I received by e-mail a one-page article written by Ray Comfort, “Avoiding the Wall of Antagonism.” In this short piece, he suggests that the intellect of the unbeliever is like a brick wall that will not let in biblical arguments. Comfort then asserts that the only faculty in man that is not an avowed enemy of God is the conscience. The author then makes an appeal to the reader to “learn to speak directly to the conscience.” He then suggests that when the conscience is targeted, the arguments that commonly arise in apologetic discussions will become non-issues (i.e. origins, doctrines, denominations, the fate of the heathen, etc.). “The conscience is God’s ally” says Comfort. “It doesn’t speak against the Law of God; it speaks for it.” In order to win our case, we must bring forth the “star witness” – God’s Law. Out of a personal desire to find a more perfect union between apologetics and evangelism, my study in the use of the Law in evangelism has taken me to an excellent work on the Puritans –The Grace of Law, by Ernest Kevan. In Kevan’s work, he documents the way the Puritans used the Law in evangelism. In applying this material to our presuppositional apologetic, my thought was, “To what degree is the conscience of man afflicted when the inconsistencies in his world view are exposed? Does our internal critique of erroneous worldviews fall short of speaking directly to the conscience? How can we turn the transcendental argument into an occasion for humbling the conscience?” It is my desire to write an apologetic methodology that takes a very calculated aim at the conscience of man. I want to answer Comfort’s charge that apologetics falls short of afflicting the moral conscience. The following article is a proposal for the aforementioned methodology. Of late, in my evangelism, I have been adding conscience material to my apologetic and have seen an excellent response. Can a man understand the Gospel if he has no understanding of the divine economy of Law? The Puritans would say, “No!” The Law now has both a precept role and an evangelical role. Its evangelical role is to make sin exceedingly sinful. We are to therefore preach the law “killingly” to the end that the sinner loses all hope of contributing to his own salvation. It’s fascinating that early Puritans such as Robert Bolton (1606-1654) recognized the danger of “short-cutting” the Gospel by offering free grace, before the conscience was afflicted by the Law (Robert Bolton, Afflicted Consciences, p. 175). The Puritans believed that the Law was God’s holiness in transcript. They regarded the moral law as a codified copy of the divine nature; an unchanging expression of the holy majesty of God’s Person. Since God’s moral government is founded upon His Law, the ineffable principle of moral cause and effect reveals God’s righteous character. C. H. Dodd regarded God’s moral Law to be built into the very fabric of the universe and creation (C. H. Dodd, Gospel and Law, pp. 70, 71, 79). Under the new covenant, the evangelical role of the Law is summarized in Galatians 2 and 3. In those chapters we find that the moral law is a “bulldozer” that scrapes human merit off the face of the earth. In fulfilling that role, it functions as a prosecutor, an executioner, a jailor, a tutor, and a curse-er. (In fulfilling this role, the Law prepares the sinner for the Gospel.) What is the use of the Law in apologetics and evangelism? Ernest Kevan documents the way in which the Puritans used the Law in evangelism (Ernest Kevan, The Grace of Law, pp. 91, 92). Kevan quotes William Perkins who identified four aspects related to God’s moral majesty which must be grasped before the Gospel can be understood: a.) the existence of God’s Law, b.) man’s sin against God’s Law, c.) the guilt of sin incurred by breaking God’s Law d.) the eternal wrath of God poured out in judgment against sin (William Perkins, Two Treatises, in Works, p. 541). The Puritans believed that the Holy Spirit utilized the preaching of the Law to produce a state of conviction designated as “legal faith” or “the spirit of bondage.” Once in that state of conviction, the awakened sinner recognizes the guilt of his sin, he recognizes the moral government of God, and he comes to understand the hopelessness of working his way out of condemnation (Kevan, p. 92). A suggested procedure for using the Law in apologetics. 1.) Establish the very concept of moral law. Note how our culture separates the Person of God from moral law. How can we in our preaching bring the two back together again? When ethics are “orphaned” from the Person of God, they are easily debauched. Vices can be legislated as “virtues” (John O. Anderson, Cry of the Innocents, p. 135). (Note the recent legislation on the recognition of homosexual domestic partnerships.) 2.) Establish that moral law is a direct reflection of God’s unchanging moral character. It is impossible to love God without submitting to and valuing His commands as the expression of His righteousness (Deut 30:19, 20). The formula repeated in Leviticus is, “I am the Lord, therefore . . . “ Only the man who “imitates God” will enter the kingdom of heaven (Eph 5:1-6). God’s standard never evolves because the Lawgiver never changes. His moral law for man reflects the immutable character of His righteousness and holiness. It is a standard that is eternally binding upon all civilizations (Douglas W. Phillips, Esq., “Do Laws and Standards Evolve?” Impact #303, Institute for Creation Research, 1998).  3.) Establish the existence of God’s moral government. Moral cause and effect are administrated by God (note Deut 10, 11, 13, 27, 28). To possess salvation is to be possessed by God. By obedience to God’s commands we manifest that we are God’s possession and that we are willingly subject to His moral government. Paul preached the Gospel against the backdrop of the coming judgment of God’s moral government (see Acts 17:30, 31; 24:15, 16). A proposed line of questioning in apologetics that can be used to promote the recognition of God’s moral government. 1.) Do you believe that we can know right from wrong? 2.) Do you believe that the concept of right from wrong is merely the result of social convention, cultural mores, and/or Darwinian evolution? 3.) Do you believe that right from wrong is a matter of personal opinion? OR, is right from wrong an external, constant standard which flows from the holy character of the one, true and righteous God? 4.) Do you believe that God has revealed His standard of right and wrong in the Ten Commandments found in the Holy Bible? (Do you also believe that God’s standard in the Ten Commandments is absolute, universal, and unchanging?) 5.) Do you believe that God is the sovereign, moral Governor of all creation, ruling over his moral creatures by means of his righteous laws found in the Ten Commandments? 6.) Do you believe that God’s righteous character, expressed in His moral government, requires that He thoroughly punish all evil? Do you believe that God will someday judge every man and woman by this righteous standard which flows from His own character? 7.) Do you believe that your conscience is an undeniable testimony of the righteous standard found in the Ten Commandments? Do you believe that the same holy God created both your conscience and the Ten Commandments which are an expression of His moral perfections? 8.) Do you believe that God requires you to keep the Ten Commandments? Do you believe that God has a record of your transgressions of His laws? 9.) Do you know what God’s Word, the Bible, teaches concerning personal guilt before God due to the breaking of His laws? My I show you from God’s Word the Bible what God declares concerning the lost and sinful condition of the human race? (Remember, some of the most flagrant inconsistencies within pagan philosophies and worldviews are in the area of morals and their origin and enforcement.) The Apostle Paul states that the human condition is made known by means of God’s Law. “Creation in the image of God demands moral conformity to that image. Romans 1:18-32 is God’s indictment upon man as a creature in sin. Both being created by God and being sinful are universal realities since the fall of Adam. . . Paul is describing God’s attitude toward His creatures that find themselves in sin and outside of Christ. The very fact of their creation makes all men ethically responsible to God. Creation by God’s hand demands moral conformity to God’s law. Man is responsible to God for his conduct and is held to a standard of conduct and indicted and judged for not upholding that standard, even if he has never read or heard of the Bible. According to Paul, man has an innate knowledge of God’s attributes (Rom 1:20), an innate knowledge of God’s person (Rom 1:21), an innate knowledge of God’s law (Rom 1:32; 2:14-15), and an innate knowledge of God’s judgment (Rom 1:32)” (Richard C. Barcellos, The Ten Commandments, p. 19). “[Thus] man by creation is responsible to God to uphold an assumed code of ethics that comes from God and is known by all men. [The sins listed in Romans one are direct violations of the Decalogue.] This at least suggests that the Ten Commandments can be easily consulted when pointing out the sins of men without special revelation. It should be obvious now that what the Gentiles possess is the Ten Commandments, though not necessarily in the identical form as they appear in the Decalogue. . . In other words, what the Jews get by special revelation, the Gentiles get by general revelation” (Barcellos, p. 20, 23). In our apologetic “reasoning” with the unbeliever, we must remember that the conscience of man must be reached BEFORE the sinner is ready to abandon his cherished intellectual fallacies. Arguments against biblical theism come from the unbeliever’s intellect. “The ungodly mind is like a brick wall. It has been built to keep God out. It is at enmity against Him. It refuses to bow to the Law of God – ‘because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be’ (Rom 8:7)” (Ray Comfort, Avoiding the Wall of Antagonism). The human mind spins off arguments and attacks against God. The carnal mind is the place of battles against God – it is a place of great hostility against the knowledge of God (Col 1:21). “The wall of antagonism is hard and immovable, so make it a habit of going around it. Learn to speak directly to the conscience. This is good news. It means that we can be effective in our Christian witness without having to learn how to pronounce, ‘Australopithicus afarensis’ or define the [contents of] the fossil record, or know the [precise] age of the earth. When you address the conscience, these things become non-issues. [The conscience] is the part of human nature that isn’t an enemy of God. The conscience is God’s ally. It doesn’t speak against the Law of God; it speaks for it. It is the work of the Law written on their heart. It bears witness (Rom 2:15). It testifies for God. It is the trustworthy witness who points out the guilty party in the courtroom. . . If we want to win our case we must bring out our star witness and put it on the stand to give it a voice. We want to stop the mouth of the criminal [a criminal in God’s sight], and that’s what the lawful use of the Law does (Rom 3:19). It condemns the guilty and drives him to give up his defense, so that he will be forced to look solely to the Judge for mercy” (Ray Comfort). If our witness is to be both biblical and effective, we must know why the Gospel offends the unbeliever. The religious reasoning that is natural to man always thinks in terms of personal merit. The natural man thinks of salvation in terms of a “commodity” that is bestowed in exchange for religious exertion. Only the born again Christian understands (by the Spirit’s illumination) that salvation is by union with Christ. The natural man seeks to add something religious to his life; he doesn’t think in terms of abandoning himself to the lordship of Christ. As a consequence, the Gospel offends because it lays bare one’s life before God. It confronts personal idolatry in all of its forms. It calls and commands us to say the same thing about our ruined condition as God does. It demands that we discard our faulty “scales” of reasoning in exchange for the absolute authority of God’s Word. The Gospel offends because it demands we make the greatest “U-turn” conceivable, acknowledging that our chosen path has been one of destruction and one of rebellion against God. The Gospel offends because at its center is the cross. The cross states that man is horribly wrong and God alone is right. The cross of Christ is a monument to the fact that the human race deserves to die, and that nothing less than the death of the only begotten Son of God can avail to remedy our ruin (Gardner Spring, The Attraction of the Cross, pp. 205-207). The Gospel offends because man is not in charge of its eternal benefits. The sinner’s only hope is the sovereign mercy and pity of God in Christ. If one is to be saved, it hangs completely upon un-obligated divine compassion. The Gospel offends because the sinner is rescued solely by Christ’s might, love, and infinite grace. Every saved man is therefore utterly beholden to the Son of God. Yes the Gospel offends because men hate being obligated forever to the lordship and Mediatorial Kingship of Christ. They resist the values of God’s Kingdom in which the lives of the citizens of the Kingdom are no longer their own but are possessed and constrained by Christ’s love (2 Cor 5:14). The Gospel offends because it declares the sinner’s abject moral and spiritual bankruptcy; a bankruptcy in which the sinner has no resources in himself with which to “trade” with heaven. He has no spiritual life, but is like a decayed corpse – whose only hope is spiritual resurrection by Almighty God. The Gospel offends because sinners are suspicious of the cross; for the cross speaks of pain, suffering, self-denial, and death. The cross calls for a complete reordering of one’s life; a repentance that goes to the depth of one’s being and leaves no existing loyalties untouched. The cross offends because it speaks of an extremely demanding and comprehensive worldview. It is a worldview that divorces the believer from the love of the world and binds him completely to Christ for his identity, purpose, happiness, and destiny. The modern “gospel” fails to bring the human condition to light; therefore it comes short of producing true conviction of sin. Without exposing the human condition in a convincing way that afflicts the conscience, people have little idea what they are to be saved from. Modern presentations of the Gospel tend to emphasize the benefits of salvation rather than the character of God and the sinner’s condition (Jim Elliff, The New Gospel: Appealing but not Revealing, p. 3). When the Gospel is preached minus the offense of the cross, sinners will attempt to do business with God on their terms, not God’s terms. It is by preaching the offense of the cross that sinners are brought to true repentance. The Gospel is not a different “happiness formula” that we hope to promote over the world’s formula. The Gospel is about knowing the God of Scripture and living for His glory. A Gospel without sin, hell, justice, conviction, and repentance bears no resemblance to the Gospel our Lord preached (Elliff, p. 4, 5). When Christ preached the Gospel, He removed all middle ground; He eliminated all gray areas. He emphatically stated that there is no territory between truth and lies, between heaven and hell. Christ’s words concerning the Gospel made a very clear division between men. If a person is not following Christ with all his heart, and seeking to build His Kingdom, and involved in gathering souls, then according to Christ, that person is scattering, and is “against Me” (Luke 11:23). Christ and the Apostles preached the Law of God, original sin, the need of repentance, and the need for a new nature. When the Gospel is preached biblically, the soil of the heart will be “plowed up” in order to receive the good seed. Preaching the Law of God and preaching repentance toward God is necessarily joined to the Holy Spirit’s preparation of the sinner. Only the man prepared by God’s Spirit goes to war against his own sin and his own sin nature. The sinner prepared by the Holy Spirit takes God’s side against himself. As Luther said, “Penance remains while self hate remains.” In other words, no one comes to Christ without being overwhelmed with self-contempt over personal sin. In order to be brought to true repentance, a man must be taken beyond merely the fear of punishment; he must be taken all the way to hatred of sin and love of Christ. Repentance begins with sobering thoughts of eternity then proceeds to conscience crushing contemplation of personal sin (John MacArthur, Exposition of Luke 3:1-18). The sinner will come willingly if the Spirit of God has prepared him by crushing his conscience over sin and by bringing him to the end of self. Unbelievers stop short of saving faith and repentance when they place their trust in their efforts of personal reformation. Therefore it is the Spirit’s convicting role to bring the sinner to utter bankruptcy of soul and despairing of all self-help. Only then has the sinner been made ready to seek the solution outside of himself in the eternal Son of God. Fear of judgment is a preparatory part of repentance. The Holy Spirit brings down the sinner’s pride by means of conviction of sin. The unbeliever is radically humbled so as to behold his wretchedness for the very first time. This is essential preparation for the desperateness that accompanies brokenness and penitence (John MacArthur, Exposition of Luke 12:22-34). True turning from sin has a desperate-ness about it. The prepared sinner longs for forgiveness and deliverance from sin. The cost of discipleship lived out under the absolute lordship of Christ appeals ONLY to the person who is desperate to be delivered from sin. The prepared person is willing to pay any cost and part with anything in order to have Christ and deliverance (MacArthur). The Scriptures warn against temporary discipleship. The false believer follows for awhile then falls away. He was never prepared to the point of being so destitute that he pleads with God to be delivered from sin and judgment. The prepared man, by God’s sovereign grace, trusts in God and abandons any imagined right to earthly attachments. He puts his life in the hand of the Lord; he finds in Christ the ability to deny himself and submit to the Heavenly Father’s care and love. He regards his true treasure to be heavenly treasure (MacArthur). The man who is genuinely converted never outgrows his amazement at divine forgiveness. His mind and affections are now a servant and instrument of God’s Word and grace. He continues to glorify God by viewing God’s grace from the vantage point of his own ill desert (Eph 2:1-16). This is why we preach the Law, for it is the beginning of understanding our ill desert and it is the beginning of preparing the sinner to appeal to the throne of grace for mercy.