Men are talking of justification by _faith alone_; but the main trouble
is, that they have no faith. They have no confidence in the gospel,
the power of God. They have no confidence in preaching the cross
of Christ, the power and wisdom of God. They have no confidence in
preaching Christ to save the world. They never preach Christ with any
animation—any spirit or power. They have deserted God’s ordained power
to save men, and are dealing out their insipid theories of spiritual
influence, their views and philosophies, which have nothing in them to
save, if they were all true. Preaching theories of the Word or of the
Spirit, of the mode of the Divine existence, or of anything else, has
no power to convert or save any one. All the preaching of Calvinism
or Arminianism, of Trinitarianism or Unitarianism, of Necessity or
Freedom, or all the other theories ever preached, whether true or
false, never saved one soul of our poor fallen race. But the preaching
of the gospel, preaching Christ, the cross of Christ, is the ordained
work for the Christian ministry. This is unequivocally the power God
has authorized them to exercise in saving sinners. We know it will save
sinners, from the following three reasons:
1. The Holy Spirit declares it to be “the power of God, to every one
that believes.”
2. The apostles and first ministers of Christ preached it to the
salvation of thousands in a single day, and millions in a few years.
3. We are preaching the gospel almost every day of our life, and find
it bringing sinners to Christ. We have all faith in the gospel, the
ancient gospel, preached in its purity and simplicity, as the only
means of saving man. It will save men. It is the power of God to save
men. We realize this more and more every year. The blessing of the
Lord is attending every man who has faith in Christ, in his word, and
preaches the gospel honestly.
But we know that those brethren who oppose us in this, are wrong, for
the following reasons:
1. The Lord never said that their theories upon any subject, were the
power of God unto salvation to anybody, either Jew or Greek.