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God's Plan For Man
The religious world in general has elevated feelings to the place of high prominence in religion. Their concept of salvation begins and ends with man’s emotion–how he feels. And while it would be foolish indeed to say that emotion has no relation to religion, it should be noted that emotion is mostly a result, not the cause of religion. Religion produces emotion; emotion does not produce religion. It is a fact that “in the present condition of Christendom, men are more governed by prejudice and animal impulse, than the clear conclusions of a well regulated mind.” (The Christian, 1837, Vol.1, No. 1).
The person who has given careful attention to the Bible realizes that God appeals to man’s mind. The plan of salvation, or the scheme of redemption, is not like joining a club, or being initiated into some fraternal order, but is the appeal of the Divine by His creatures– through communication.
The plan of salvation is a process, a set of mental actions or changes which occur in a pre-arranged order. If you bake a cake and the recipe calls for flour, milk, sugar and eggs, you don’t mess up the order by cooking the eggs before you put them in, do you? Even so, salvation starts at the right place and ends up with the right result. It is a logical, sequential mental action.
Hearing is the means for understanding. Jesus said, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15). In other words, put to work your inherent powers to understand. Just because some doctrine has a “religious ring” does not mean it is from God. We must give attention to faithfulness of reproduction, “for it the trumpet given an uncertain should, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (I Corinthians 14:8).
Just as hearing is the means by which we come to understand, understanding is the means by which we believe. Belief is not a “church word.” It is a mental process we use all the time and with which we form constant connections with the world of unseen things. Belief is the ability to put facts together and consider the testimony given in support of them to produce, a settled conclusion or conviction. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). That is not just a definition of faith, but a statement of fact about what it does. “To whom shall we go, Lord? Thou has the word so eternal life” (John 6:68) not only praises Jesus, it states the necessity of God’s word for salvation. And when Paul says, “so then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17), he states emphatically that where the word of God has not been heard, there can be no faith. You can see from these passages–and a host of others which could be cited that faith does not come from “some wee, small voice,” but from a knowledge of what must be known to obtain it.
But the belief of new information produces a result. When a person believes in Christ, he has a feeling of guilt about his sin, or what the Bible calls “godly sorrow” (II Corinthians 7:10), or being “pricked in the heart” (Acts 2:37). This sorrow for sin brings about repentance, or a change of a man’s will with regard to sin. It is unthinkable that repentance could possibly precede faith, for how can there be godly sorrow to produce it if the potential convert has not yet heard about Jesus? Notice that in Acts 2:37, the narrative says, “now when they heard this, the were pricked in their hearts.”
Stricken of conscience, deliberate in heart, the man now understands that he is condemned, and is apt to ask the same question as was asked on Pentecost–“Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). Baptism is the command given by God. “Repent and be baptized,” says Peter. Peter later says “the like figure whereunto baptism doth now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God” (I Peter 3:21), or as the New American Standard Version translates it, “but an appeal to God for a good conscience.” Acts 3:19 says essentially the same thing “repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” See the process? Baptism occupies the same place in the order of I Peter 3:21 that “return” (“turn again”, ESV) occupies in Acts 3:19, and the “seasons of refreshing” in Acts 3:19 equals “the appeal to God for a clean conscience” in I Peter 3:21. There cannot be any clear conscience, or seasons of refreshing, until a man is baptized for the remission of his sins. Compare the emotional outburst of the Ethiopian after he was baptized. He “went on his way rejoicing.” When was it–when he heard? When he believed? When he confessed? No, when he was baptized (Acts 3:39), or after he had appealed to God for a clean conscience through baptism.
The religious world’s desultory suggestions regarding salvation serve only to confuse an already confused populace. No wonder people regard religion suspiciously, especially if they have not “had the feeling,”or a “better-felt-than-told” experience.
The fact is, salvation is produced in the only way it can be–by an appeal by God to man’s ability to understand and obey. The gospel–the good news–is “the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). Sure, it speaks of Jesus. It speaks of God’s grace, His mercy, His atonement, but without an appeal to the mind of man to believe in Him and obey His commands, there can be no practical application of God’s grace, no way to illustrate God’s mercy, no practical process for salvation. Both the ground of salvation and the conditions of salvation are products of the word of God. And one would be useless without the other.
And now you know why we say, “Let’s just get back to the Bible!”
