Defending the Faith - The Problem of Human Nature

From Voice, Jan/Feb 2015. Used by permission. (Read Part 1.)

Believers best defend the faith by turning the Bible loose through careful, accurate and patient teaching. Ultimately this becomes an issue of biblical anthropology: how do you view man? Is he able to fully comprehend and judge facts as if The Fall (Genesis 3) had no affect upon him?

Biblical view of man

Here’s what I mean. God created everything in the universe and His imprint is seen everywhere in creation because everything came from His hand. But Romans 1:18-23 teaches that man’s problem is not a lack of evidence.

Man’s problem instead is the cognitive, moral deficiency to correctly interpret what he sees. Romans 1:18-23 says that man suppresses the truth displayed in creation/natural revelation and he rejects its message of God’s “eternal power and divine nature” (Romans 1:20) so that all men “are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Unbelieving humans reject what creation reveals to them.

And just as humans in their unregenerate condition suppress God’s natural revelation in creation, we do the same to God’s special/written revelation. We twist it and reject it. So you don’t take the unregenerate man in his cognitive, moral deficiency and tell him to make judgments on the Bible. You don’t offer an unbeliever the authority to judge the veracity of Scripture, because this implies that he inherently knows what God can or cannot reveal. The Scriptures are not on trial by the sinner—the sinner is on trial by the Bible.

When you turn the Bible loose, you do so knowing that the unbeliever will at first resist it and twist it and reject it. But you still patiently and carefully explain what the Bible teaches, hoping God will open their eyes to the truth. When observing God’s natural revelation in creation or when reading His written, special revelation in Scripture, there is no neutral fact; a person either accepts the truth or rejects it. The sinner’s only hope is if the Holy Spirit illumines his eyes and removes his blindness so he can see the light, the truth of God’s revelation.

Balance between defending and trusting

When defending the faith, we must seek a proper balance between defending and trusting. We need to defend the faith vigorously while at the same time trusting God to open the unbeliever’s eyes to the truth we are explaining from God’s Word. We must defend the truth while trusting God to work through His Word and His Spirit to save the unbeliever we are talking to. But this is a difficult balance to achieve.

Over fifty years ago J. I. Packer wrote a landmark book entitled Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. He was seeking this balance I’m referring to. Note these extended quotations from Packer’s book and see the wisdom of balancing the defense of truth with trusting God, all the while presenting to unbelievers the truth of God’s Word.

While we must always remember that it is our responsibility to proclaim salvation, we must never forget that it is God who saves… Our evangelistic work is the instrument that He uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not in the instrument; it is in the hand of the One who uses the instrument. We must not at any stage forget that. For if we forget that it is God’s prerogative to give results when the gospel is preached, we shall start to think that it is our responsibility to secure them. And if we forget that… we shall start to think that the making of converts depends, in the last analysis, not on God, but on us, and that the decisive factor is the way in which we evangelize. And this line of thought, consistently followed through, will lead us far astray.

Let us work this out. If we regarded it as our job, not simply to present Christ, but actually to produce converts—to evangelize, not only faithfully, but also successfully—our approach to evangelism would become pragmatic and calculating. We should conclude that our basic equipment, both for personal dealing and for public preaching, must be twofold. We must have not merely a clear grasp of the meaning and application of the gospel, but also an irresistible technique for inducing a response. We should, therefore, make it our business to try and develop such a technique … . We should not regard evangelism as an activity involving a battle of wills between ourselves and those to whom we go, a battle in which victory depends on our firing off a heavy enough barrage of calculated effects. (27-28)

Those who have begun to understand the sovereignty of God … seek to efface themselves in all their work for God. They thus bear a practical witness to their belief that God is great, and reigns, by trying to make themselves small, and to act in a way which is itself an acknowledgment that the fruitfulness of their Christian service depends wholly on God. (32)

Packer is saying that it is right to engage unbelievers and seek to demonstrate from Scripture where they are incorrect. It is right to desire their conversion. It is right to seek to present the Gospel in as clear and intellectually forceful way as possible. But it is wrong when we do so with prideful, aggressive anger. It is wrong “when we take on ourselves more than God has given us to do” (29). You must not take the weight of decision making of unbelievers upon your shoulders by seeking to induce or even coerce them. But you must do everything in your power to persuade them, to induce their comprehension of God’s claims in the Bible. You must defend the faith.

Conclusion

Theological and cultural threats are spinning out of control all around us today. We are called to defend the faith, to give reasons and cite evidence from the Bible with the aim of persuading others to agree with what God has written. We are to contend, assert, maintain, insist, hold, allege and reason from the Scriptures.

Some may shrink back from this, but defending the faith is not only a Scriptural command, it is a rapidly growing reality that our churches must face today. And all the while we defend the faith, we must trust God the Spirit to open the eyes of unbelievers to the truths of His written revelation.

Defending the faith is an essential part of the ministry of pastors and churches!