The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1902, Page 30

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

“I Believe in God.”

1. If Charles, in ordinary conversation, says,
“T believe I saw John,’’ he means to say, ‘‘I
am not certain, but I think it was John that I
saw.’’ The opposite of believing in everyday
life is Knowing, being certain. But this is not
the case with the word believing in its biblical
sense. For example, when a Christian says,
“T believe that Jesus is God’s Son,’’ his mean-
ing is not, ‘‘I think that Jesus is the Son of
God,’’ but, ‘‘I know, I am certain that Jesus
is the true Son of God.’’ In its biblical sense
believing is a positive, a certain knowing.

The source of this knowledge is in every
case the Bible, and not our reason. Not our
reason, nor any other man’s reason, but the
Holy Scriptures must be the rule of our faith.
Thus, ‘I believe in God,’’ means, ‘‘I know
what the Scriptures say of God.’’ Not to know
what the Bible says of God makes it impossible
for me to believe in God; for, as St. Paul says,
‘‘How shall they believe in Him of whom they
have not heard??? Rom. 10,14. And, as has
just been said, the source from which we hear
of God, and on which we base our faith in Him,
must always be the immovable foundation of
the Holy Scriptures, since ‘‘faith cometh by
hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,’”’
Rom. 10, 17.

In this connection, however, let us not for-
get that this knowledge of God is not an or-
dinary, everyday knowledge, a mere know]l-
edge of the head. There are hundreds of
people who have a so-called historical knowl-
edge of what the Bible says of God and yet
lack true faith in God. ‘This knowledge of
God, which is faith in God, is/a living, life-
giving thing. Let me illustrate by means of
anexample. Paul says, 2 Tim. 1, 12, ‘‘I know
whom I have believed,” and this his knowledge
of his God and Saviour, far from being a mere
knowing of certain facts concerning God, per-
suaded Paul that God would be able to keep
that which he had committed unto Him against
the last day — it filled him with the blessed
assurance that God would never leave him nor
forsake him, and would give him the crown of
life. He that has this living knowledge of God
will, like St. Paul, appropriate unto himself

5 all divine promises and assurances, and thus
: ‘will be, by faith, in possession of life eternal,
; though yet in the world; for to know God is
: to have God—is to have Christ—is to have
life eternal. This Christ declares, John 17, 3,
“This is life eternal, that they might know
Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom ‘Thou hast sent.”’
_ 2. My friend John tells me something and,
when he is through, asks me, ‘Do you believe
_ what I have told you?”’ I answer, ‘Yes, I
believe every word.”? In this case believing
means, to accept as true, to give assent to what
“lias been said: Faith in God, likewise, re-
to accept what the Scriptures say
C To believe in God is to accept all
a8 true which the Bible tells us of God

—to give full assent and consent to each and |"

every word.

But as the word knowledge is far more com-
prehensive in its biblical sense than in its every-
day usage, so also does accepting as true mean
much more in the Bible than it does in ordi-
nary conversation. This I have tried to ex-
press by saying above that believing in God
is ‘‘to give full assent and consent’’ to all
that the Bible says of God. The assent of
my understanding to God’s Word as the truth
must be accompanied by a hearty consent of
the will and the affections; the Word of God
must have my fullest approval, so that I, re-
nouncing all other refuge, base my whole hope
and comfort on it alone. Were the mere out-
ward assent to what the Bible says of God a
saving faith in God, then even the devils in
hell would have it, since they know and be-
lieve that what the Bible says of God is truth,
James 2,19. The faith of the devils, how-
ever, causes them to fear and tremble. Living
faith is more than a mere matter of the head,
it is, above all, a matter of the heart. Jesus
says, John 3, 36, ‘‘He that believeth not the
Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God
abideth on him.’’ Now, we know, a mere out-
ward acceptance of Jesus’ words never can re-
move the wrath of God from a man and give
him eternal life, since in such a case the devils
would inherit eternal life. This ‘‘believing”’
which Christ here speaks of is the acceptance,
as true, of every word that He spoke and a re-
liance upon His every promise without waver-
ing or doubting. In Abraham we have a beauti-
ful example of such a faith. Abraham believed
God’s promises and proved it by his obedience.
When he received the divine command to leave
his home and go into a strange country, he
willingly obeyed, being fully persuaded that,
what God had promised, He was able also to
perform, Rom. 4,21. Oh, that God, who has
given us also great and precious promises,
would grant us so without doubting to believe
His Word, that our faith be never reproved in

His sight. F. J. L.
(To be concluded.)

Christian Young Men Needed.

Ex-Governor Northen, of Georgia, held, not
long since, an address before a large audience
of the Y. M. C. A. at New Orleans. The sub-
ject of his address was, ‘‘Our Country’s Need
of Christian Young Men.’’ After reviewing
with much care the various conditions found

in our country and the many classes of people

who inhabit it, he, in speaking to this audi-

ence of professed Christians, concluded his

remarks in the following manner;

“The greatest problem, therefore, is not
found in trusts, nor in the presence of the
classes named, nor the conditions that attend
them, but it is found in the business and so-
cial conditions at work to deny the inspiration
of the Bible and to weaken and destroy the

authority and distinctiveness ofthe church.

“IT charge you now with all the force and

earnestness I can command, whatever else you
do for the prosperity of the nation, defend the
inspiration, the purity, and the power of the
Bible.
everlasting truth for the upbuilding of the in-
dividual and for the peace and prosperity of
the republic.

Keep it as the embodiment of God’s

““Away with the theological demagogy of the

higher critic, who, pandering to the wicked-
ness of an ungodly constituency, is trying to
find a God without a wrath, salvation without
a cross, and a religion without a hell.
God is God, and there is none other God hbe-
side.
It embodies His absolute sovereignty, the de-
pravity of the human heart, the enlightening
and energizing influences of God the Holy
Ghost, the redemption of the world, of man-
kind, through repentance and faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ, through the atoning blood shed
on the cross.

Our

Preserve His Word. His Word is truth.

“Having done this much, preserve the church

as a distinct institution founded alone upon the
life-giving, inspired Word of God.

‘*When the leading spirit of one ‘of the most

iniquitous trusts known to the nation stalks
into the pulpit and seizes by the throat. so to
speak, a minister of the Gospel and hurls him
from his God-appointed place, without protest

from the people, we have a menace not only to
our liberties, but to the power and sacred in-
fluences of the church and the nation far more
alarming than all the evils to which I have
alluded.

“Stand by the pulpit as it denounces. the
devil in all his forms and you will stand by
the state in the character of citizenship it will
build.

“Tt is the consenting judgment of all his-
tory that the decline and ruin of decades of
nations have been due, not to foreign assaults
or hostile armies; the presence or immigra-
tion of depraved races; the devastating erup-
tions of barbarism; nor even to misgovern-
ment or oppressive political power, but to those
agencies of corruption which are doing their
deadly work in the homes of our rich and
most influential people, where the world, the
flesh, and the devil have taken possession of
the highest social conditions and set to work
to demand a church, a religion, to conform to
all their wicked living and godless invasion of
virtue and propriety, to say nothing of Chris-
tian character.’’

Tis true, ‘Sin’? —and unbelief is sin —“‘is
a reproach of any nation.”’ J. K.

——_»—~- 0-< o ee

TuEnrronre do thou learn Christ, the cruci-
fied Christ, till, having lost all trust in thyself,
thou canst extol Him, and say: ‘‘Thou, my
Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, while I am
Thy sin. Thou hast taken upon Thee what 1s
mine, and hast given me what is Thine. Thou
hast taken to Thyself that which Thou wast
not, and Thou hast*given to me that which
I was not.?? —Luther. p sig