J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

Transcription

Speaker A: Well, again, let me just say it’s been a pleasure and I told our dear host and Pastor DeYoung that I didn’t inform him, as I’ve been thinking about this in the last few days, of how I would do the last talk. I thought I would do what I did, that I would sort of give an apology for why we have confessions. I would give a bit of contrast between the Roman Catholic and our understanding of the Holy Spirit and how that comes to bear, particularly in our confession.

I could have given you lots of details just about the Westminster Confession, but I hope that was helpful, what we did to give you that sweep and to give you to introduce it in that way. And I should say this just two things by way of a little bibliography. I always try to give that if you’re more interested.

If you want to read more about the Westminster assembly and its work, there’s a recent work just out last year by Bob Lethem, Robert Letham, L E T H A M Robert Letham. It’s published by pnr, so we’re all quite familiar with that. I don’t know if you have a book table or if that’s been on the book table, but it’s published by PNR last year. It’s called the Westminster Reading Its Theology in Historical Context. The Westminster Assembly Reading Its Theology in Historical Context. So it really gets into the work of the assembly and all of the historical context there and the surrounding.

You know, if you want to know, have I published something on the Westminster Assembly? I have. I’m one of the editors of Confessional Presbyterian and I published an article in there back in 2007 that deals a lot with the work of the assembly, talking about how it worked. It wasn’t the Westminster assembly wasn’t a court or as we would call it, a judicatory of the Church. It was not an extension of the Church. It was of the state. And none of that was implemented until the Church adopted it. So it’s an interesting sort of a situation.

But I did publish this fairly lengthy article and some people liked it, surprisingly so the one or two people who read it and they asked me to recast it and it’s been published just recently now in a book. It’s the second article. The first article is published by Richard Muller, a little known historian. He’s highly known. And then there’s this article which I’m actually rather pleased with this because this is a European publisher. So it’s the first time I’ve been published in Europe. It’s kind of nice. It extends the readership. Carl Truman and a lot of other fellows have articles in this book.

This article is called the Imputation of the Active Obedience of Christ at the Westminster Assembly. But it’s an important issue and they’ve republished this. The good news, as I said, is it’s European. It’ll be widely read. Here’s the bad news with the euro, I think this is currently going for about $126. So that’s. So I got one copy. They sent me one copy, and that’s it. So this will be in libraries, Theological seminary libraries. Of course, our seminary bought one, but I’m afraid a lot of people aren’t going to be buying these individual parties. But. So those are just a few things about the assembly. I figured the Lessam book is. I don’t think it’s $20, so it’s a little bit more affordable there.

Well, let’s go on here. I’ll read the Scripture and have a word of prayer and we’ll look further at. We’ll come over to America. Let’s pray. Gracious Father in heaven, we thank you for what we have looked at this morning because we have been privileged to see how you, from first to last, are the one who saves us. There was some confusion and unclarity about this in the Middle Ages, and we thank you for the clarity that the Reformation brought to it, that you have done everything needful for us in Jesus Christ from first to last for our salvation, and you bring us into that, and you bring it to us by your Holy Spirit. We thank you for Calvin’s recognition of that. We thank you for the Westminster Assembly’s clear recognition and development of that.

Father, we thank you that the same Spirit who gave the Word, that same spirit helps your church to understand the Word. You illumine that Word to us and we can confess it together in our confessions and our creeds. We thank you, Lord, for that. And we thank you for delivering us from the error of the Roman Church that pins our justification upon our sanctification. We thank you, Father, that our justification does not depend upon our sanctification. Because all of us, the best of us, as other Reformed confessions say, make but the smallest beginnings of holiness in this life.

We thank you that we have a perfect righteousness. We have that righteousness which comes not through the law or our keeping of the law, but which comes through faith in Christ. And having that, then you enable us to live a life of gratitude. You enable us to live, Lord, in keeping with your ways to die to sin, to live to righteousness. We praise you for this and we thank you for this opportunity and time together. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Let me just read a short passage again here in First Timothy, with which I think you’re quite familiar. First Timothy 12:1 12:17. Just a little bit. We’re not going to reflect directly on this right now, but it reflects on Machen’s own life. And I think Machen himself did, would and did take it as a bit of a reflection on his life.

First Timothy 1:12. I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service. Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason. That in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him. For eternal life. To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

I realized the word wise was not in the version. It’s disputed whether it should be there or not. I just voted that it should be there. It’s in the West Texas receptus and. But I think it is there. Well, John Gresham Machen. And by the way, we’re going to talk about Dr. Machen. That’s the way you say the last name Machen. He once explained this in a little program. And the Gresham, what looks like Gresham, G R E S H A M is pronounced. You don’t pronounce the H. It’s Gresham. So I don’t have some kind of a reverse lisp or something like that.

His name is John Gresham Machen. And he was called by his family, largely Gresham, called by his middle name. And he was called by others Dassi or Das, for if you remember your German lesson, Das Machen the girl. And that was kind of a little joke. So Das Machen Dossy called that by his friends with friends like these.

Now, Nachen was not only the single most important figure in the formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian church, which was 75 years ago, our general assembly. We just celebrated that. I’m sure, you’ve seen the new horizons and you’re aware of this. Part of the reason I’m speaking to you on Matron is because of that 75 years, God has been gracious. I mean, that’s really the story. That’s really the story. It’s not, look what our hands have done. It’s not, look who we are, God forbid, and God help us if that’s what we think ever. It’s, look what God has done. And so for 75 years, God has been very gracious to the OPC. We have plenty of falls, we have plenty of warts. There’s plenty to learn. But God has been gracious nonetheless, and we’re thankful for that.

But we say Machen was not only the single most important figure in the formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, but was also perhaps the greatest defender of true Christianity in the early part of the 20th century. Now we’re coming over from. From England and Scotland. Remember, the Westminster Confession was 1643-1649, largely in those years. And of course, we talked about people coming over to America. You already had people over in America at that point, right?

You had the people in Jamestown, 1607. We just celebrated the 400th of that a few years ago. That was the last time the queen was over, in case you were trying to remember. It was for that in 2007, she was over for the Jamestown celebration, first permanent English settlement. And then 1620, we talked about that. The Plymouth, the Pilgrims, as they. As we tend to refer to them as. And then the Puritans, the Massachusetts Bay settlers a decade later. And then you’re going to get all kinds of settlers.

You’re going to get Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam, New York, New Jersey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get a little Dutch in there, Krissi. English. You’re going to take it over from the Dutch. I don’t know who got the good deal out of that, but. No, but at any rate, you’re going to have America being settled all during this time, and you’re going to have your first. It’s interesting that we don’t date the beginning of the Presbyterian Church until 1706. And so a few years ago, we had a thing in our assembly and some of us were involved with it, but giving historical addresses celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Presbyterian Church. You had Presbyterian churches going back 30 and 40 years before that. So people say, I don’t get it. You had, you know, here was a church in Maryland in the 1680s. Why isn’t that the beginning of The Presbyterian Church. Anybody know the answer? When is the Presbyterian Church dated from. So you didn’t expect me to ask that.

You had. Okay, we’ll take it as rhetorical. It was 1706, when you had the first presbytery. You don’t have the Presbyterian Church by just having churches here and there. You don’t have the Presbyterian Church until you have a presbytery. So you get the Presbytery of Philadelphia, 1706, four churches in that area that can make up a presbytery.

So you have the Presbytery of Philadelphia, 1706, 17, 16, 17. You have the first Senate of Philadelphia. Four presbyteries are together and they form a Senate. 1729, you have the Adopting Act. That’s when the Westminster Confession was officially adopted here in the Presbyterian Church in this country. And then you have, in 1789, the first general Assembly.

Basically, at the same time the Constitutional Convention was meeting, you had down the street the Presbyterian. I know you may have been told that, you know, that form of government that we have in the national government of a federal and a state and a local, that that comes from, like, the Iroquois Nation or it comes from the Presbyterians. I mean, it’s been said to come from all other sorts of things. Anybody but those Presbyterians, Please. We don’t want that. But. So it’s not politically correct, but it comes from the Presbyterians. These various levels of governance in the U.S. government. That kind of a model. It’s not just that, but it’s certainly. That’s a part of it.

Well, this is the church. This is the Presbyterian Church. And we come down to the 19th century. And you have this old school, new school split in the 19th century. And there’s liberalism coming into the churches. It’s coming from Germany and England. Higher criticism. Basically, liberalism comes from the enlightenment of the 18th century. And then that which follows. And it’s real simple in this sense, what the Enlightenment is saying. What the Enlightenment is about is privileging reason over revelation. In other words, we get what we get really from our own minds, from reason, and not from the revelation of God. We say that we reason within revelation. We stand under the revelation of God. The revelation of God determines the truth, not our own mind. Our minds are not the measure of truth. So that’s the big controversy, though, in the Enlightenment, saying no man’s mind is the measure of all truth.

And that starts coming into the churches, not in a big way in America. It’s there with some New England churches that go Unitarian, but the Presbyterian Church in the main, it doesn’t really come in so much until the 19th century. It comes in with a flood and you get Darwinism and you got all these things going on that starts coming in and making more and more of the church liberal. This is the church into which Dr. Machen was born. He was born in 1881 after the US Civil War. And a lot of the church is very compromised when he’s born. So we say this, the Machen that so many of us in the OPC have come to know and love, fewer and fewer personally.

There are people who did know Machen, John Galbraith, who spoke at our General Assembly. If you haven’t had the opportunity, go on opc.org and you can see his speech. It was largely reproduced in the New Horizon, but there’s nothing like it, children. There’s nothing like it. To see this. This man who is 98 years old. 98. That’s older than me. Okay, 98. And he comes up to the podium like this and you think, oh, my goodness, you can see that he’s not what he used to be, that he’s more frail. And you think, I don’t know how this is going to work. And he does this. He does this, and he straightens his back. And all of those of you who know him, he’s an impressive figure. He always has been. He’s tall and has a great voice and he does like this. And he starts speaking and it’s like. I mean, we almost start crying because it’s the old John Galbraith. He’s there and he gives this magnificent speech. And by the way, it’s what you read in your horizon. And he had memorized it. He didn’t have a note that front of him. So he’s defending the faith. I mean, just telling us to preach and to be faithful. This is quite a rousing address and it was very moving.

But that’s somebody who did know Dr. Machen. But we say fewer and fewer of those people are around the Machen that we’ve come to know and love, as the stalwart defender of the faith against liberalism. This is what you need to know. That Machen didn’t appear on the scene as a champion for the faith, fully formed as Athena sprung from the head of Zeus. No, he developed. He developed. And we want to talk about that. We want to talk about how the matron of the 20s and the 30s, who was the great defender of God’s word and its certainty, something which is again under attack, that never goes Away, you know, it began in the garden. The devil said, yea, hath God said? Is that what God said? Yes, and it’s been around ever since.

And Nathan was a defender of it. And we have to be defenders of it. And not just defenders of it, but believers in it. You know, you can defend this and just let it sit on the shelf. Can’t do that. Oughtn’t to do that. But I’m going to talk about that tomorrow morning in the sermon. But Machen didn’t come to such certainty and assurance without a struggle. Machen attained the unshakable convictions for which we know him about the veracity of the Bible, the truth of it, the necessity of it, the sufficiency of Scripture. Only after traversing the dark waters of biblical criticism, historicism and Modernism, Machen looked modernism in the face. This notion that the Bible is not the word of God, but really is a word about God. Is the Bible the word of God from God to us? Or is it a lot of wise men who put together their thoughts about God? You see, Machen looked that in the face.

He sensed its attraction to sinful flesh. Oh, yes, that appeals to our flesh. Why does that appeal to our flesh? Because we don’t want, in one sense, God speaking to us and telling us what to do. We want to do our own thing, or so we think. I mean, we really don’t because it just doesn’t work. Ultimately, it leads to hell. It gets you nowhere. But we continue to chase that fool’s errand of doing our own thing, which is really horrible, but we do it anyway. Matron dealt with that, and by the grace of God, he rejected it. And he wholeheartedly embraced the infallibility, that is to say that God’s word cannot err. It isn’t just that it doesn’t err. I mean, I can make an inerrant statement. The Cardinals won the World Series. Now, that doesn’t make me happy, I’ll tell you that. But it’s an inerrant statement. Statement. Now, maybe you’re a Cardinal fan and you’re happy. Congratulations, you know, congratulations. That wasn’t my team, but okay, that is an inerrant statement. But I’m not infallible. I’m capable of error. My son looks shocked. No, I. No, he doesn’t really. He said, amen. If you heard that.

Machen rejected the modernistic claim that man is the proper judge of the world. That’s again, what modernism says. Man is the judge of God’s word. And he embraced the truth that God in his word is our judge. He could confess this with joy because he had discovered that not only is God our judge and not we his, but also that God has restored us sinners to himself in Christ, so that those who trust in Christ alone discover God to be no longer their judge, but their Father. That’s the language of Calvin. Calvin says, when we come to God in Christ, we understand and see that he who was our judge is no longer that, but our Father. It was for these truths and this joy that J. Gresham Machen gave his life.

Considering the privileged birth of J. Gresson Machen and his patrician family in post Civil War Baltimore, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that Machen would prove willing to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Machen, enjoying silver spoon and mouth as he did, may well have rejected any association with the despised fundamentalists of the early 20th century, preferring instead the cultured despisers of Christianity to the old paths of the tried and true faith.

Machen’s dad, Arthur Webster Machen, was 45 when he married his mom, Mary Jones Graham, who was 24. And his father was a successful and well known trial lawyer in Baltimore. And so, as I say, he was brought up in wealth and privilege. His father always would have some Greek or Latin work in his pockets, usually to translate, and Machen did that himself. He would always wear in his blue suit. And by the way, he once had a group of students over to his house, to his townhouses. This was when they were meeting in the city, this is in the early 30s. And he heard some conversation among them. I got this from a professor who got it from a professor back at that time. These are the unpublished things. He heard some conversation among the students and they were. He said, what are you talking about? And, well, Dr. Machen, they were kind of embarrassed. You know, it’s one of these things, you’re sort of caught. And they say you always wear the same suit. You always wear this dark blue suit. Maybe, you know, blue suit, but it doesn’t seem to wear out. He said, come on, boys. He took them into his bedroom, opened the door. In his closet, he had 30 of the same suits, one for each day of the month. So they didn’t wear out because he wore them once, you know, this was for the first of the month, second of the month, third of the month. So, yeah, that’s a little. It gives you a little thing into his mind.

He loved climbing Mountains. Maybe you’ve seen the pamphlet Mountains and why We Love Them. He loved hiking, loved nature, loved singing, loved Princeton football, the Tigers, many things. And so he was a man of great joy and liveliness. But he himself, in these blue suits, would carry around always in each of the pockets. In one pocket, he would have his Greek New Testament. So wherever he was, he could just take it out and read it. He was often on trains, waiting for trains, going places. So he could do that. And then he would cycle through the whole Loeb Library. Harvard has published all of the main Greek and Latin authors, all of the classical Greek and Latin authors. It’s hundreds of volumes. It’s several hundred volumes. It’s called the Loeb Library. And they’re in small volumes and they’re Greek or Latin on one page and English translation on the other page. And he would have always one of those in his pocket, and he would just cycle through, you know, the whole thing. So he could always be reading a classical author or else the New Testament in Greek. I suppose he did read the Old Testament some, too, but I mean, he was a great scholar. That was his area of greatest training in terms of both Classics and New Testament. So it’s, you know, he could. You could think, this guy’s going to have a pretty smooth life. He’s in the Presbyterian Church, which back in those days was. I mean, you’re talking about the mainline church. It was very much. You know, there were places that would say the Republican Party meetings in Philadelphia were like the Presbyterian. You know, it was all these Presbyterians, or it would be the church would be the Republicans at prayer at the Presbyterian Church.

Well, Machen partook of an education that could well have moved him in the direction of unbelief were it not for the grace of God and on the human side, the instruction of his parents, and particularly the prayers of his mother. His mother was without question the greatest influence on his life. He never marries, and he always keeps up a significant correspondence with his mother. So you get a lot of insight from that correspondence with his mother.

As DG Hart wrote. Born the second of three sons to a prominent Baltimore lawyer, Nachen was reared in an old school Presbyterian home of genteel taste. Remaining in Baltimore for his undergraduate education, Machen majored in classics at Johns Hopkins. It’s Johns Hopkins, it’s not John Hopkins, Johns Hopkins University, and was graduated in 1901. He stayed at Hopkins for another year to undertake graduate study with the renowned American classicist, particularly Latin scholar Basil L. Gilderslave. That Always strikes me, I mean, that sounds like a name out of central casting, you know, for I am a classical scholar, Basilil Gildesley. I mean, boy, does that name fit.

But even though he enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary the next year, the only remaining bastion of orthodoxy in the pcusa. Now, by this time, Princeton was the only after the turn of the century, we’re talking 190102 now was the only theological seminary that had not capitulated among the Presbyterians to higher criticism. So you might think that this would secure his doctrinal soundness, but he’s still going to struggle. He also earned at the same time a master’s degree in philosophy from the university. So he actually went there in 1901 02, and he got a philosophy degree, a master’s in philosophy in 1904, and he got his divinity degree the next year, in 1905. So he was no slouch. He was studying very hard, getting a philosophy degree, getting a divinity degree in 1905.

Thankfully, Nation did there at the seminary and in the university, come under the strong influence of Francis L. Patton, who was the president of the college and in the seminary, and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, the brilliant professor of didactic and polemical theology, both of whom encouraged him in the direction of orthodoxy. So Patton and Warfield encouraged him in that way.

Machen’s mentor in New Testament, William Park Armstrong, in New Testament, as we said, becomes his main discipline, also encouraged him in the truth. Machen, however, remained uncertain and unsure of himself. After taking these degrees, he was not sure whether he enjoyed a ministerial call. And at Armstrong’s urging in particular, he left in 1905 to study in Germany at Marburg and gotten it really. It had been the practice of people on the continent of Europe to travel around. And it was Charles Hodge, who was the third professor at Princeton, who from 1826 to 1828, went to the continent of Europe and traveled around ever since. Hodge had done that Princeton Estonians would tend to go over to Europe and travel and study at some of the universities. It’s interesting because Hodge ran into a lot of unbelief, but it didn’t really affect him. He was already very solid and he just refuted everybody and, you know, engaged them and so forth.

But Nachen, you see, goes over there and he’s not. He’s learned all this stuff, but he’s not solid in it in terms of you can do lots of studies, but still your own convictions not be solid. And his convictions are. Are not solid. Because partly he’s in a Presbyterian church that itself is kind of compromised and somewhat liberal, which is different than the Presbyterian Church of the day of Charles Hodge. So he goes over to study in 1905 to study in Germany at Marburg and Gottingen. His most influential teacher there was probably Wilhelmina Herman. Herman who was also a teacher to some other people. One of them was a fellow named Karl Barth. He was his teacher. Another fellow that this Hermann taught was a fellow named Rudolf Bultmann. Now I’ve just named probably what will become in the 20th century the greatest theological and the greatest New Testament biblical figures of the century. I didn’t say the most faithful, the most well known, the most renowned would be Barth and Bultmann. Barth, Bultmann and Machen all studied under the same guy. Very interesting. Hermann was himself a pupil of one of the most renowned liberal German theologians of the 19th century, Albrecht Ritschl. Brischl was the theologian of his day in Germany. But he was a liberal and his pupil Hermann was liberal. And this is what Machen came into.

Patton, Armstrong and Machen’s family all wanted him to return from his study in Germany to teach at Princeton. They’re all going come back and teach at Princeton. And Machen is really having a bit of a crisis. Like he’s a man of integrity and he’s not going to do it. He’s not going to be a minister and he’s not going to teach at Princeton if he can’t, if he doesn’t firmly believe these things and embrace the these things and is convinced that this is what God wants him to do. So he did in 1906 return not without some misgivings. He agreed to teach. But he resolutely refused to seek at that point ordination. Which meant that he remained an instructor from 1906 until 1914. For eight or nine years he was simply an instructor because he wouldn’t be ordained. And he had to come to clarity about being ordained. And he did. And he was ordained in 1914. Then he entered the professorial ranks at that point, Hermann and others. But Hermann particularly shook. Now we’re back to Germany, shook Machen’s complacent faith and forced him to confront his own remaining unbelief.

Machen, after first hearing Hermon, now this is after the first hearing of this guy, he writes this to his. I should say that the first term I heard Hermann may almost be described as an epoch in my life. Such an overwhelming personality. I think I almost never encountered overpowering in the sincerity of religious devotion. Hermann may be illogical and one sided, but I tell you, he is alive. That’s a very important statement. Now see, we tend to think that liberals are these just horrible deformed figures that wouldn’t be attractive to no one. Now people don’t believe in liberalism because of that. And they have big signs saying I’m a liberal. Warning, warning, you know. No, I mean, that’s not the way it works. This man was very attractive. And notice this, he was, he was to Machen. He seemed to have a very sincere devotion to Christ. So his doctrine of Christ was not the biblical doctrine of Christ or manner of God. But Machen is impressed by, as he says, the sincerity of a religious devotion. This is probably speaking to some deficiency in his own church back home and what he saw in people in terms of religious devotion and sincerity. This is appealing to him. This is significant.

Then he writes to his father, that was to his mother. Now he writes to his father and you can. The folks back home are going, what’s happening? You know, they’re concerned. He says, I can’t criticize him. Speaking about Herman again, as my chief feeling with reference to him is already one of deepest reverence. Since I’ve been listening to him, my other studies have for a time lost interest to me. For Hermann refuses to look at religion from a distance as a thing to be studied merely he speaks right to the heart. And I’ve been thrown into all confusion by what he says. So much deeper is his devotion to Christ than anything I’ve known to myself during the past few years. I don’t know at all what to say as yet. For Herman’s views are so revolutionary. Very interesting. What precisely was it that Hermann so effectively represented? What were his illogical, revolutionary views that. That Machen found such a challenge to orthodoxy?

It was the still developing position that gripped particularly Germany in the 1830s, England in the 1860s and America in the 1880s. Historicism. Historicism, which when applied to the Bible meant that the Bible was not God’s word to man, but man’s time and space conditioned words about God. What I described earlier. In other words, this is just historically situated and this all applies to these people in their own circumstances. And it’s all naturalistic. There’s nothing supernatural here. There’s just a lot of wisdom, a lot of interesting good things, good stories. Take them for what they’re worth. That’s historicism. You’re just saying this is just historically conditioned. It doesn’t have in it any saying. Anything. Truths that are universal, that are invariant, that are unchanging, that are eternal. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There’s no such thing as that. That’s metaphysics. We don’t believe in all of that stuff. This is since Immanuel Kant. This is what everybody’s saying. And I know you were hoping I wouldn’t mention Immanuel Kant, but sorry. There you go. I won’t say too much about him.

Historicism came to reign after the Enlightenment and yielded what we know as liberalism and modernism and neo orthodoxy and postmodernism, which is simply modernism gone to seed. Historicism is the notion that everything is a product of its time and place, so that there are no universal and invariant truths. The orthodox would agree that the expression of truth in the Bible has a proper historical myths. It’s all historically located. We must take that into account. God spoke to particular persons in particular times and places, to be sure, but by such historically situated speaking, he also communicated verbally inspired, infallible truth to us all.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to be preaching on the reformation of Josiah, King Josiah. Tomorrow evening I’m going to be preaching about the prayer of Daniel, Daniel’s great prayer of confession. And these all have their historical context and we’re going to talk about that. And you have to understand that. But they also have something to say to us all. You see, historicism is denying. That last part doesn’t have anything to say to us, just some interesting stories. I mean, if you want to base something of your life on it, go ahead. But that’s not what we would say. We would say God speaking to us. Us. He’s speaking to us. He’s telling us the truth. He’s telling us how we should live. This is what Machen is wrestling with. This is what he’s wrestling with. This proclamation that God is holy, that we’re sinners, and that the only way of salvation is in and through his Son, who has done for us. That’s all historical, but it’s for you and me who has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. Keeping the law for us and paying the penalty for our law breaking.

Well, Machen came to realize more and more those gospel truths of which we just spoke. He dedicated his life to the vigorous propagation and defense of them. But before that, he had to struggle with the historicism that Hermann and others were promoting. Charles Denison, then historian of the OPC at the OPC Semi Centennial in 1986, offered these insights into Machen’s Struggle. I’m sort of summarizing a lot of what Charlie said.

The Presbyterianism of Machen’s youth. So now we’re going back to the 1880s and 90s. The Presbyterianism of his youth, while possessing a broad cultural vision and enjoying wide societal position and influence, was less distinctly Calvinist than broadly Presbyterian, revering the idea of the church possessing more the aura of respectability than of profound holiness. So there was this, you know, it’s respectable, it’s upper middle class, it’s very good. Its, you know, influence out of all proportion to its size. You know, Grover Cleveland was president around the time of. He was Presbyterian buried there in Princeton. All kinds of presidents have been Presbyterian again, more than was reflected among the general population by this point.

I mean, at the time of the American Revolution, Presbyterianism was fairly flourishing. And it, together with Calvinistic Congregationalism, actually made up a majority of those who were religious or churched people. Most people were Calvinistic of some stripe at the time of the American Revolution in terms of their affiliation. But that had waned a lot. That had waned. Why? Because of the rise of the Methodists and then the Baptists. They had eclipsed the Presbyterians, the Methodists and the Baptists. And with the opening up of the frontier and all of the movement of America west, you had the Methodists and the Baptists going out there in great numbers. The Presbyterians couldn’t keep up because the Presbyterians required a trained ministry, a trained clergy, and the Methodists and the Baptists didn’t. And they could get out there and they could start churches and they could minister the gospel.

So that was one of the reasons why when the country opened up its credit, the Presbyterians were. They should have done more than just be bitter about it. But they tended to be bitter about it. They said things like, the Methodist will ordain any fool on a horse and the Baptist will ordain the horse. I mean, that’s a Presbyterian talking. And it’s a little bitterness there because they’re just not getting people out to the frontier. And to be frank with you as well, part of it had to do with class structure. I mean, part of the men who would be drawn to the Presbyterian ministry when you have to go through all the education and so forth, they want to be in settled churches. They don’t want to go plant churches in frontier towns with, as they would put it, lots of ignorant people. This is something we as Presbyterians have to be very careful about. We have to repent of because we’re very Comfortable ministering to the middle class, the educated classes. What about going to classes that aren’t educated and helping them become educated? But of course, also on the other side of that, it wasn’t easy to serve frontier churches. They often didn’t want to hear it. Frankly, a lot of the reason people went to frontiers was to get away from religion, certainly out east. So this is a pretty complex thing here. So. But Machen’s Presbyterianism of that day was lacking, I think, and he felt it. He felt it.

In short, the Baltimore Presbyterianism of the Machen household, as Terry Crissup also discovered in his very important work on Machen. This is quoting now. Chrysop likely provided its middle son with the proper cultural associations, a genuine reverence for the Bible, along with a solid knowledge of its contents, and a foundation of doctrinal correctness which perhaps at the same time unwittingly groomed him for the kind of upheaval which he experienced in Germany and for which Hermann was the catalyst.

The state of the PC USA the mainline Northern Presbyterian Church was itself, as we said, not in particularly good shape at the time of Machen’s birth in 1881, as Denison suggests, and as a liberal like Leffert’s Lesher of Princeton in his work the Broadening Church celebrates. They celebrated, oh, great. It’s, you know, done with that old sort of fundamentalism, they might call it. Princeton Seminary was engaged in a full court press in the defense of the faith, that’s true. But many of the other seminaries, as I’ve indicated at the time of machen’s birth in 1881, were beginning to embrace, or had already already embraced, biblical higher criticism.

To be sure, several heresy trials revolving around such critical claims had resulted in some ecclesiastical convictions, and people had been convicted of these things, like Swing in Chicago in 1874, McCune at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati in 1877, Briggs, Charles Briggs at Union Seminary in 1893, or Henry Preserved Smith at Lane Seminary in 1894. But ever since the reunion of the Old and the new school in 1869, a reunion which by the way, was opposed by Charles Hodge, ever since that reunion, the church had become more and more infected with doctrinal error.

What happened was there was a split from 1837 to 1869 between what’s called the Old School and the New School, and the Old School and the New School came back together in 1869, you might say, oh, well, why did the Old School and the New School come back together in the north in 1869, because that means the New School had worked out all of its doctrinal problems. The New school denied the substitutionary penal atonement, had a governmental view of the atonement. The New school denied the imputation of Adam sin. There were a number of doctrinal problems here. And so, you know, had they solved all of those doctrinal problems? Well, Charles Hodge recognize that they hadn’t solved the. The doctrinal problems. They just ignored them.

Why did they come back together? Because we have all fought this civil war together and our sons and daughters have died. And what really separated us, some said in the New School side, was slavery. And now that’s gone and we can come together. And Hodge said, yeah, I want to come together, but on the right basis. And Hyde said, why don’t we come together with the old school Southern church? And everybody was like, you know, they don’t want to hear that at that point. No way. Forget that. We don’t want to come together with those people. And so the New School and the Old School in the north came together and there were these problems.

So we say it was not a vigorous, healthy, vibrant church in which nation was reared, but one more interested with maintaining the favor of this world, it seemed, than uncompromisingly standing for the truths of the gospel. And such compromise in that church manifested itself in a host of ways, not only with those heresy trials, but in 1903 the Westminster Confession was revised in an Arminian direction. In 1906, the Arminian Cumberland Presbyterians joined together and they joined and they all formed the mainline Presbyterian Church and a lot of other churches, Methodist and Episcopalian and so forth, formed the, not the Federal Communications Commission, but the Federal Council of churches in 1908.

It’s hardly surprising, we might say then that Machen, brought up as he was in this kind of attenuated, weak Presbyterianism, had his faith shaken when he encountered liberalism. Machen emerged from the encounter with Hermon and the like with a rock solid confidence in the certainty of God’s word. Going on to write masterworks on the Origin of Paul’s Religion, 1921 and the Virgin Birth, 1930. Those are two of his real masterworks.

His work on the Origin of Paul’s religion is very relevant to the Federal vision controversy. That’s a work in which he says he’s talking about the question which was asserted in his day, that Paul had basically made up Christianity out of Greek and Roman sources. And he says, no, no, no, no. What Jesus taught and what Paul taught is the same thing. But one of the great quotes from that book that could apply to FB was that either Paul and Jesus were wrong about the Jews of their day, or the Jews of their day, Paul and Jesus were wrong about the Old Testament because Federal Vision and New Perspective on Paul says that, particularly New perspective on Paul, that teaching says that the Jews of Jesus in Paul’s day understood grace and had a religion of grace. Well, they didn’t appear to have a religion. I’m not saying the Old Testament doesn’t teach a religion of grace, but it wasn’t understood by those of the day. And Jesus makes that very clear in the way he interacts. And Paul and Machen is saying, well, either Jesus and Paul were wrong, which of course he’s meaning for you to say, no, God forbid, may it never be, or they were wrong about the Old Testament. And the answer is they were wrong about the Old Testament. They didn’t rightly understand it. But.

So he publishes these marvelous works as well as staunchly defending the five fundamentals that were set forth at the general assemblies of 1910, 16, and 23. What were called the five fundamentals in the teens and the twenties. The inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth of Christ, the vicarious substitutionary atonement of Christ to satisfy divine justice, the physical resurrection of Christ and the miracles of our Lord. All of these were proclaimed to be essential doctrines of the word of God. And they were under attack. They were under attack by the modernists. None of this came about without a monumental struggle that lasted far after Machen’s return from Germany until perhaps 1912. I’ll talk a little bit more about that. But after 1912, with Machen, we tend to see a clear resolution of what had begun in Germany. The conviction. Please listen to this. The conviction that liberalism, attractive and appealing as it may be, was something altogether different from Christianity.

Now, I should say here. So there’s no. There’s no confusion. There could easily be confusion. I don’t mean by liberalism, anything that has to do with politics. That’s not what we’re talking about here. So, you know, if you’re getting all excited and you think that this is the Rush Limbaugh show or whatever, forget about that. What we’re talking about, okay? We’re not talking as nothing to do with politics. It has to do with liberalism, in this case, means a denial of what the Bible teaches. A humanistic religion. Not a divine, supernatural, revealed religion, but a religion that man has made up. That’s what you know. And it’s about doing good works and being kind and that sort of a thing. That’s what Menachem is talking about. And he says that liberalism, attractive and appealing as it may be one, was something altogether different from Christianity.

After hearing one particularly powerful liberal lecture in Gottingen, Machen wrote his brother, now he’s writing his brother Arthur. You’ve heard from mom and dad writing mom and dad, now he’s writing Arthur, that while Bussay’s teaching was tantalizing, you see, now he’s turning a corner. Whether it such liberalism is the Christian faith that has been found to overcome the world is very doubtful. So he’s hearing all this teaching. He’s hearing Hermia and now he’s hearing, well, it’s probably good. He was hearing a German and it all sounded pretty convicting. Now he’s hearing a Frenchman. He’s not so sure. No, sorry about that. It’s not quite as certain, you know.

Here in seed form is the great argument that Machen will put forth in his 1923 masterwork, Christianity and Liberalism. You want to read a book that is a classic and that sounds like it was written yesterday in terms of what it’s addressing, read Christianity and Liberalism. That’s not his greatest work of scholarship. As such, I would say the Origin of Paul’s Religion and the Virgin Birth are greater works of scholarship and what they’re arguing for. But Christianity Liberalism is the best book he wrote just in terms of getting it out there. And the thing you have to realize is this was published by Harper and Rowe, okay? This wasn’t published by P and R. It didn’t exist or some other publisher like that. It was published by Harper and Rowe, which is a mainstream publisher. Very significant.

Machen’s trial was on the front page of the New York Times when he was tried. It was described, things were talked about. And actually the New York Times opined that his trial was unfair and unjust. There were a lot of liberals that actually said, well, we don’t like Menchen or agree with Machin, but he’s not getting a fair trial. The liberal saying, the guy wasn’t getting a fair trial. You know, the people prosecuting him, they were just quiet. We got to go. We gotta go.

Well, his masterwork, Christianity and Liberalism, he says this Christianity and liberalism are distinct and competing claims, both of which cannot be true. Liberalism is not just an approach to or a variant of true Christianity. It is rather something else altogether. It’s not Christianity. Notice the title. Christianity and Liberalism. They’re different things. Christianity is a supernatural faith. That calls us to trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the only redeemer of mankind. Liberalism is a naturalistic program that teaches us that we too ought to aspire to the religious insights and developments of Jesus, who grasp God in his love like none other.

Adolf von Harnack, another pupil of ritual like Hermann, summarized liberalism as teaching the kingdom of God which is present, the present inner spiritual experience of God’s rule and power, the fatherhood of God and the infinite worth of the human soul, both applied to all humans without any distinction. In other words, liberalism reduced Christianity to ethics, and that’s what all liberalism does today. All false versions of Christianity reduce it to ethics. Christianity at its heart is not in any sense at its heart about what you do for God, but what God has done for you in Christ. And our response is that it’s a response because God has made us alive in Christ. But the basis.

And Richard Sibbes one point said this. He said, never do we come before God on the basis of our sanctification to be accepted by him. We always and ever come before God on the basis of our justification to be accepted by him. You don’t come, you know, Pastor DeYoung doesn’t say, well, I’ve been a pastor all these years. You know, you enter prayer, you don’t say, I’ve been a pastor all these years and look what I’ve done and look what I’ve achieved. No, you say, the greatest Christian, whoever that is, whoever that could be conceived to be, always can only say nothing. In my hands I bring simply to thy cross. I cling naked, Come to thee for dress helpless, look to thee for grace Foul I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Savior, or I die. See, we think, oh, well, that’s a sinner coming to Christ. That’s anybody ever coming to Christ at any point. That’s the way to come to Christ. Always. Every time. Machen’s getting that, that’s what Machen’s talking about.

Machen looked. Christ was seen in liberalism as the highest ethical ideal and salvation lay in imitating Christ. See, that’s liberalism, always puts first and foremost and central. Imitating Jesus, you say, Pastor, I’m confused. I thought we were supposed to imitate Jesus. That’s not how we’re saved. We trust in Jesus who has done for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. And then we walk after his ways. But we do that as a response, as I say, of gratitude, not so that we might be saved, but because we are saved. And if you don’t see the difference in that. Come talk to me afterwards. Because that’s the difference between heaven and hell. That’s the difference between life and death. That’s the difference between Christianity and liberalism. Not just me, pastor elder. There are other elders here. I see pastors. Pastor Ameriti. This room is full of people. Really. I mean, you say, well, I thought this was a lecture. Well, it is, but you need to be clear on these things. I want everybody everywhere to be clear in the gospel. If I’m not clear in the gospel in a lecture, just shoot me. I mean, I’m done for, you know, what good am I? That’s what it’s all about. The gospel is what it’s all about. That’s what Nachen was about.

Nachen looked this humanism that has a great appeal to sinful human flesh. He looked it in the face. It’s the temptation in the garden. It’s the same. It goes all the way back. He looked it full in the face and he came to reject it entirely, recognizing man’s plight and the sole remedy for such not in one who is merely our great example, but in one who by his life and death did what we could no longer do and undid the consequences and effects of Adam’s sin and our sin.

J? Gresa Mecha noted in Christianity and Liberalism that the Jesus of liberal reconstruction. Notice it’s always it’s a Jesus who’s been remade the Jesus of liberal reconstruction, not the Jesus of the Bible. Liberal reconstruction is not the supernatural redeemer set forth in the Bible as the object of faith. Jesus is the object of faith, but rather he’s to be understood and accepted as the pattern of faith. First of all, they say the Liberals, I.e. men, ought to exercise the same quality of faith in God that Jesus exercised. Machen dedicated every ounce of his energy to striking a fatal blow to such a notion. And there are those among us in these days whose teaching might tend to commend to us the faith of Jesus as much as faith in Jesus. Did you hear what I said? Who would commend to us the faith of Jesus? You know, just WWJD with Charles Sheldon in his steps. What would Jesus do? That was the social gospel. And it was saying, you look at Jesus and in any circumstance you say, what would he do? You know, I’m going to reach this to young people. What would he do with respect to marriage? Well, Jesus didn’t get married. There’s an interesting. I mean, you say. You have a lot of interesting questions there what would Jesus do? Now, the question should be, what would Jesus have me do? That’s a right question. That’s a good question. But you can only even rightly answer that question properly. If you’re trusting in Jesus alone for your salvation, that’s the first thing he would have you do, Right?

Brother Don and I were talking about, what would Jesus have you do? What is the work? To believe on Him. To believe on Him. And unless until you do that, you’re not even in the game. You’re not even in the game. If you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, you’re not a Christian. You don’t know what it means. Houston, we have a problem. You’re not in the game. You have to trust in him. And that’s what Dr. Machen, you know, that’s the thing about Christianity, liberalism. This isn’t some side thing. This is the center of the matter. It’s the heart of the matter. He’s talking about what’s really important. And that’s what a man ought to do with his life. He ought to talk about what’s important, talk about a lot of things. But if you don’t talk about what’s centrally important, nothing else matters. Doesn’t make any difference.

So I have a whole section here where I talk about FV and how they can tend to point, and I give you some quotes and so forth. You can look at the FV report. That’s Federal Vision. If you don’t know too much about it, don’t worry yourself with it. But we have addressed these things, and it’s important. It’s important to address these things.

Well, the matron that we all know and love, who opposed the moderating efforts of J. Ross Stevenson at Princeton Seminary, who opposed the plan of Union of 1920 of all Protestant churches. Did you know there was a Plan of Union, 1920, of all Protestant churches? And the head of Princeton Seminary. Now, that’s what happened when J. Ross Stevenson came to Princeton Seminary in 1914. That was the beginning of the end for Princeton. They were now going to go the way of all the other seminaries. And the head of Princeton and Charles Erdman, the great moderate, the professor of practical theology there at Princeton, they were supporting this plan of union. And what it was going to be was Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, all the liberal variants of that were going to come together, including the PCUSA into one big gelatinous mass, which is really what happened up in Canada, right? The United Church. It was the same kind of thing. But who would have thought that the head of Princeton would be out. And to say that Machen was unhappy, he was fit to be tied. He could. He had come back from the Germany. He’d been overseas in France in the war. He didn’t fight in the war. He worked with the ymca. He gave relief and aid to troops and so forth in the war. And he came back to the States and he found these kinds of things being pushed from Princeton. And he was sick. He was sick. That’s when he went to see Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. Warfield dies in 1921. So Warfield’s not long for this world. And he has the great conversation with Warfield where he says, you know, J. Ross Stevenson, the president is supporting this plan ahead of Princeton. What are we to do? And he said, do you think the church is going to split? And that’s where Warfield said, well, you can’t split rotten wood. I mean, Warfield was just completely. Warfield was very negative about. Warfield said, you know, he died saying, I see no hope for this. This is a terrible situation. Liberalism is just running rampant in our denomination. And he was heartbroken about it.

So the Plan of Union of 1920, the Auburn affirmation of 1924, the Auburn affirmation is when all these dudes get together, about 1200 guys, which is about a quarter of the ministers in the church. So about a quarter of the ministers signed this document that says the five fundamentals, the virgin birthday, the physical resurrection, the miracles of our Lord, the inspiration of scripture. Those things it said, those are mere theories. There are other theories that can also account for that. They were very slippery. They didn’t say, we deny these things. They said, these are okay. But there are other theories that may be employed to account for the facts. They drafted it. There’s evidence, but they drafted it very carefully to try to avoid charges being brought on the basis of it. Everybody always has. Why didn’t they bring charges? If you actually look the way the thing’s drafted, it’s pretty. Because I didn’t say, I deny. That’s so political and satanic and liberal. Like, I mean, stand up and say what you believe, you know.

But you say, my wife always says, when you talk about these things, you just have to know. My wife, she’s so plain and forward. She’s like, I don’t get it. What are these people who deny the bond we be ministers? And I said, well, you know, in many liberal churches, it’s not a bad salary. It’s a pretty easy life. You don’t really believe the Bible. You don’t have to work, labor hard in the scripture, really. Just get a little, you know, read the newspaper, get a little something, get up there. I mean, seriously, it’s not such a strenuous life if you’re not a faithful man. I don’t know if you know the story of. Kind of a hilarious story of Steve Brown, who’s an interesting fellow. I have my differences, Brown, but he’s PCA minister. And, and Steve was. Was. Was converted. He was a mainline minister, PC USA minister. And he used to. He was down in Florida. He’s a very able, very gifted fellow. So he’s a big PC USA church. Lots of executives in the church. And he said he was out on the links two or three times a week. He’s out there playing golf, you know, and, hey, he’s having a great time playing golf. He’s playing and he just goes into the studio. He gets a little something. He says he’s a very sharp guy. He reads a paper, reads a couple poetry books, read some other things. And you come into the pulpit and everybody’s laughing. I just think it’s a great time. And throw a little scripture in there. So people think, oh, yeah, yeah, we’re in church. I forgot a little scripture. Throw a little scripture in there.

And then he got saved. He got converted. And one of the things that hit him was, I’m going to have to work. He’s a pastor. He’s a pastor because it’s hitting him. I have to preach the Bible. I’ve got to really preach the word. Of course, he ends up getting the boot, you know, because then when he starts preaching the Bible, they don’t really want to hear that. But he said, wow. He said, it just hit me. And one of the things the executives, all these big fat cats in the church don’t like is they say, pastor, you’re not out on the lakes with us. And he’s like, well, I know what to do. What are you talking about? You know, take these. He don’t get so fired up about all this Bible stuff. We liked you the way you were. And he’s like, yeah, no, that’s the problem. Everybody’s going to hell in the church. They don’t want to hear that. And whoa. But he’s saying, I’ve got to work. I got to work. I got work to do.

And all this other stuff as evidence of liberalizing the. The Commission of 1925, the reorganization of Princeton of 1927-29, the rethinking missions of 1931. The rethinking missions report, the so called Hocking report really got Machen going because the report basically says, you know, going into a culture and preaching that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and preaching that there’s no way you can be saved but through Jesus. That’s not what we should be doing to cultures. We should go in and help them with agriculture and help them with all the things, you know, their lives, live better lives and if they’re Buddhist or Hinduist or whatever, help them to be the best. That.

And Machen is like, this is denial of the gospel. This is flat out denial of the gospel. And he was thus involved in the formation. This is why he formed with others the Independent Board for Presbyterian foreign missions in 1933. He wanted that because there were, there were plenty of faithful Presbyterian missionaries who didn’t go along with that kind of thing. But there were some who did. And Machen said, we send the money to the mission board. Yes, there are godly missionaries out there, no question about that. But there are also those who believe it’s a mixed bag. We have something where we know all the money is being rightly used. So they formed the Independent Board and Presbyterians started coming over. Some of the faithful ones started coming over from the old church. That got the General assembly all in an uproar. They didn’t like that. And the General assembly of 1934 said, you can’t do this. You cannot give to any outside agency. You can’t really, you have to support the church. You can’t support anything else. And they say it’s just not just you can’t give without outside. If you don’t support the church. That’s like not taking communion in the church. That is equivalent to not taking communion. And all of this is news to Machen. And he basically said to the General assembly, can you support this with scripture? I believe that you have authority, but your authority is ministerial and declarative. But this isn’t Rome. You can’t simply promulgate canon law. You can’t simply on your own authority say these things. There has to be a basis for this. This is supposed to be. They’re telling them to be quiet, stop talking like that. You’re disrespectful. And he’s saying, no, I’m not trying to be disrespectful. We’re Protestants, aren’t we? I thought, you know, and of course Machen is right. The church can’t just give commands. It has to be based biblically, it has to be lawful. But he gets charged with disobeying the command of the General assembly and tossed out. And a number of other guys get tossed out as well. And that’s the formation of the opc. See?

Well, where did Machen get the strength to resist his study of Scripture? Growing in faith by the power of the Spirit after he returned to teach at Princeton in 1906, convinced him more and more that the Bible was the very word of God and that the historicism of his day was wrong. He came that was really the issue, that this is the word of God and this sets the plight and that historicism is wrong. Here’s how Terry Crysop puts Machen’s resolution of the dilemma presented by biblical criticism was to adhere to an approach to the Bible that was historical without being historicist. Machen came more and more to recognize that historicists had presuppositions, I.e. pre commitments, just beliefs that they held that were anti supernatural, they were anti supernatural. They just ruled out the supernatural as part of their naturalism and that their rejection of God’s superintendence of the inspiration of his Word was of a piece with their rejection that God actively governed and sustained the world.

Did you catch that? That’s pretty key. In other words, Machen said, wait a minute. They’re saying, how could God, through all of these men, through all of the course of these 1600 years, how could God so speak through these men so as to not, you know, their personalities are expressed here, their styles of writing are expressed in the Bible. They weren’t taking mechanical dictation when they wrote the Bible, but it’s the words of man in one sense, but it’s the very word of God. It’s the very word of God, Word God intended. How could that be? Well, wait a minute. God governs the whole world. God governs everything. What’s the problem with that? How would that not be? And then he recognized, oh, these men who were denying that don’t believe God governs the world. Well, that’s total paganism. That’s total atheism. They don’t believe God governs the world. So it’s no wonder they don’t believe in the governance of Scripture. The scripture is in fire. But if you think God governs the world, well, what’s the problem? In other words, Machen rejected historicism because he came to understand and fully embrace providence.

Machen we see this especially by what he wrote in 1912 in Christianity and Culture and in 1915 he History and Faith. And these are in that shorter volume of works by Machen. And by the way, I should say this, if you want to get one thing on Machen, there’s a lot of good things out there, and I mentioned some different writers. But you really should start with the Ned Stonehouse biography of Machen. It’s magnificent. It’s not a critical biography in the sense that Stonehouse is a New Testament scholar. He’s not a historian. Machen was his friend and mentor. This is a very good biography. It’s a very good biography. It’s made more than one or two of us. I mean, this was part of my coming into the opc. I know you’re probably thinking, I wish I never read that. And one of my colleagues at seminary testifies that it was reading this as a high schooler, Professor Vanderhart, that as much as anything moved him to say, God’s calling me into the ministry. So, I mean, a marvelous book. A marvelous book. This is the 50th anniversary. I have earlier printings. It was published in 1954, and this was in 2004. The OPC published this edition of the 50th anniversary edition. To have of this J. Gresson mentioned Stone House.

Well, but you can read these articles of Christianity and Faith and History, Christianity and Culture and History and Faith in the Machen Collected Writings volume edited by Darrell Hart. But in these articles, Machen makes it clear that he had thoroughly imbibed a view that a sovereign God governed all of history and that such a God could and did give us his word without error. It is by believing the infallible word that Machen attained certainty, the certainty that allowed him to stand Luther like, against the errors of the PCUSA and Modernism more broadly in his day and to encourage us to like faithfulness in our own day.

Machen’s faithfulness, clarity and certainty were never more evident than in his justly famous last words sent to John Murray. And you may know that as he lay dying, he died January 1, 1937, out in the plains of North Dakota. He had gone out there to keep an engagement. He contracted pneumonia. He had a bad time out there. He died. But he sent a telegram to John Murray and he said, so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.

Now, this man, as he lay dying, this man who was more than any single human responsible for the formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, this man who had served Christ unceasingly and untiringly for so many years, who was a stalwart defender of the faith. As he lay dying, what he was thinking about wasn’t, wow, what a life I’ve had, what a career I’ve had. Rather he thought, no, no, it’s not about me or my doing or anything of the sort. It’s only because Jesus Christ not only died for me the that kept the law for me. I’m not the law keeper. He’s the law keeper. I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. He knew that all that he had done was in no way sufficient and didn’t even enter into the view his hope was in Christ. And what Christ had done for him, but comforted and gave a certain assurance to the dying matron was not reflection on his life, but faith in the one who had not only died for his sins, but who had perfectly kept the whole law in his place.

Here is the only basis for certainty for us all that we are accepted in the Beloved. That we cannot please God by our own efforts. In fact, we could never, even by his grace, please him more than he is already pleased with us in Christ. If he’s not pleased with us in Christ, what do you think you can do to make him pleased with you? You want to think about that? If he’s not pleased with you in Christ, what can you possibly do? No, we need to glory in Him. Here’s how you can attain certainty. Believe the testimony that God has given us in His Word to the salvation that we have in him, who is the living word. This is the legacy of John Grasson Machen. Thank you.