February 23, 2005

• GOD NO
  LIAR

   

  The Christian’s assurance
  of faith is founded in the alone, immediate, direct evidence of God’s
  testimony.

  This testimony is commended and manifested as God’s own infallible truth, communicated
  by the Holy Spirit to the Christian’s own understanding and conscience.

  Thus, the Christian has
  the witness and undeniable evidence in himself, personally and not in another.

   

  This evidence, is not
  drawn from consequences, nor heads of reasoning, from other things, within
  himself or around him, but immediately and directly derived, communicated, received
  from God Himself, the sole Lord and instructor of the conscience, who is truth
  and speaks truth, and teaches the knowledge and understanding by His Word.

   

  This evidence, in one
  word, like that of all other matters of fact founded in the pure testimony of
  divine revelation, save by which revelation there can be no knowledge
  whatsoever in man, concerning them.

   

  Such is the evidence
  which we have of Creation, for it is “By faith we understand the ages to
  have been framed by the Word of God, so that the things seen should not come
  into being out of things that appear.” (Hebrews 11:1). Such is the evidence
  of Adam’s fall, and of our connection with him, or the giving of the Sinai Law,
  the same Law for sum and substance, both moral and ceremonial, which was published
  and kept on record from Adam to Moses, and the impossibility of one being
  justified by the deeds thereof – and of the certainty of our just and legal
  condemnation thereby. Such also is the evidence of there being a heaven, a
  hell, a Resurrection of the just and the unjust, and of an eternal judgment.

  Now,
  are these truths any less certain than the glad tidings of the Holy
  Scriptures? Is it any less true that all that believe the gospel are
  JUSTIFIED from all things, from which you could not be justified by the
  Law of Moses? (Acts 13:38)?
  

  Has not the Father said, “By
  His knowledge the righteous the righteous One, My Servant, shall justify for
  many, and He shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11)? Has not the Holy
  Spirit said, “the righteousness of God through faith of Jesus Christ toward
  all and upon all and upon all those believing.” (Romans 3:22) and that “Christ
  is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone that believes” (Romans
  10:4)? And “if you confess [the] Lord Jesus with your mouth, and believe
  in your heart that God raised Him from [the] dead, you will be saved.” (Romans
  10:9)?

   

  Now, is it not evident
  from hence, as indeed from the whole sacred record that God has joined together
  these two, viz. justification, which is God’s own act, and the belief of the
  truth in a man’s heart concerning Jesus Christ, which belief is also God’s own
  act, gift and work in man?

   

  And what God has joined
  together is it for man to asunder? See Isaiah 53, Romans 3, 4, 10, Acts 13,
  Galatians 2, 3.

   

  So those who believe the
  Scripture testimony concerning Jesus Christ are justified and saved and those who
  believe not are unregenerate.

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