I am currently reading Iain Murray's
The Old Evangelicalism, and am finding it thrilling, enthralling, and encouraging. As my normal custom, here is an excerpt, without comment.
In light of the history of (the doctrine of Justification by Christ's Righteousness) there is good reason for us to ask whether the weakness of our evangelistic preaching is not related to our contemporary deficiency in its presentation. It is true that the consequences of faithful preaching are with God and not with us, but are we sure that we are faithful in making salvation by Christ's righteousness as clear and prominent as it ought to be? Here is the only message truly relevant to the reality of the condition of fallen men and women. Every offer of hope to individuals which is based upon moral education, self-improvement, or religious devotion, is an empty hope. It needs divine power to change human nature and it is this teaching alone which is "the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes"
Rom. 1:16.
To the most degraded, to those upon whom even an immoral society looks with shock, the gospel speaks not of the possibility of gradual improvement but of an immediate reconciliation for the very worst, through receiving the righteousness of Christ. The dynamic of evangelism lies with this truth. It was the preaching of Christ's righteousness which brought salvation into the moral cesspool of the first century and it has ever been the same. We have therefore good reason to ask whether the small results of preaching in the present day are not connected with our weak hold of this message.
Of one thing we can be sure: every new flood-tide of spiritual blessing has been brought in by the fervent proclamation of the righteousness which Christ has secured for believing sinners by his death. Today men and women live as they have always done in the fear of death, possessed with the suspicion that the deeds of this life may follow them and be found displeasing to God. They fear that there is more that they ought to have done or to have been. The thought which came to the dying king, Louis XIV of France, is by no means uncommon. Amidst shortening periods of consciousness he looked back on his pleasure-seeking life, and asked his priest, Père Tellier, to give him absolution for all his sins. "Do you suffer much?" Tellier asked. "No." replied the king, "that's what troubles me. I should like to suffer more for the expiation of my sins." Such is the religion of the natural man, looking to himself to the last.
What a difference we see in the final hours of J. Gresham Machen who died of pneumonia in a North Dakota hospital on January 1, 1937. The previous night he had spoken to a friend of a vision he had enjoyed of being in heaven, "Sam, it was glorious; it was glorious." And on the very morning of his death he sent a telegram to another friend, John Murray, repeating the grounds of his assurance, "I am so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it." This is the way of salvation. It leaves every believer saying with Paul, "God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ"; "Not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith"
(Gal 6:14; Phil 3:9). [1][1] The Old Evangelicalism - Old Truths For A New Awakening, Iain H. Murray, Banner of Truth Trust, 2005, p.95-96.
