Fundamentals—Their Importance.
FUNDAMENTALS are important. They are the foundations of things. Ignoring them, one is left without a foundation, his edifice constructed of fancy, his foundation imagination. In no place are fundamentals more important than theology; in no place are they more ignored with sadder results. God's universal government and unchangeable law are fundamental facts; but they have been ignored, and sin and anarchy and rebellion are the result. Men seek to smash the mirror rather than to clean their face. God's Gospel, founded in His love, wisdom, and power, necessitated by man's sin, separation from God, and utter helplessness, is fundamental. Denying it, and we have the rejection of the vicarious atonement, the resurrection, the second advent, and in their place all the vagaries of Higher Criticism, New Thought, and Christian Science. An article in a recent missionary journal suggests these thoughts. It is based on an entirely erroneous understanding of an expression in Isa. 43:24: "Thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins." And the idea is carried that every man, good and evil, is a temple of God; and God is subject to the man. When the man is righteous, God rules; when the man sins, God is servant, and man the master. In the first place, these words of the prophet are not addressed to all people, nor to the unbeliever, nor to the sinner, but to God's professed people who bore His name, and by sinning reproached Him because of their professed relation to Him, and not because He dwelt in each one personally. The American Standard Revised Version gives a much better rendering: "Thou hast burdened Me with thy sins, thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities." Nowhere does God say that He dwells in the heart of the sinner. Nowhere does He say that the sinner is a temple of God. On the contrary, He tells His people that before conversion they were "sons of disobedience," "children of wrath, even as the rest," "separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world," "alienated from the life of God." Eph. 2:2, 3, 12; 4:18. That is the truth. That is what every sinner feels and knows under normal conviction. He feels that he is slave and Satan and sin masters. He longs for power to free him from the bondage. It is the refinement of cruelty to tell him, "You have that power within yourself; God is there; only let Him rule, instead of making Him your slave of sin." Such a message has no Christ in it, however sweetly it may talk of Him. It is a libel upon the Gospel. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God, and this is that spirit of antichrist. . . . Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." 1 John 4:2-4. If He comes into the flesh, He was not there before. How does Christ come into the flesh? —"Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God." 1 John 5:1. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Gal. 2:20. God's message to the poor, hopeless sinner is not that of a God who is made and kept a slave by the sinner's will, but of a Saviour who took upon Himself all the weaknesses of humanity and conquered for every soul. And when submission and acceptance—faith—opens the door so that He may come into the flesh, He comes not to serve with our sins, a servant to our lusts, but a conqueror of sin and lust. Preach to the sinner this glad message.