Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

Written by: April J. Buchanan

If God’s grace were in any measure weak or impotent, then I would exhaust it before the evening. His grace cannot be exhausted. His mercy does not end. His wisdom has no beginning and no end. For He is God. He is God eternal, God immortal, God self-sufficient, God all-powerful.

If I consider Him in all His ways through my own weakness, even in those communicable attributes of God which we reflect in part as His creatures, and seek to understand Him by beginning with my frailty, what utter despair shall seize me before I take my next breath. For a god like me is a god unworthy of worship and merely a little better than myself. My mind cannot conceive of a god worthy of worship. He must reveal Himself as He is.

Yet when He does, it is in me to reject Him or shape Him into what my wicked heart would like Him to be. For in His holiness, His righteousness, His sovereignty, His wisdom, and His power, He terrifies my soul. I cannot stand before Him as one who is completely known, with all I have sought to cover, put out of my mind, or justify in myself exposed fully and perfectly before Him.

Such a God is too terrifying to the finite man born in Adam. It is far more comforting to bring Him low, to make His attributes serve my desires, and to elevate His mercy, grace, and love to a place where His justice, righteousness, and holiness are not satisfied but set aside.

The mind of man is hostile toward such a holy God. We cannot bear it. We cannot tolerate it. We cannot let God be God.

And yet He has set His love upon a people from before the foundation of the world. The Father sent His Son, who entered into the world He created and put on flesh, adding humanity to His deity. He lived the righteous life we could not live, died the death we deserve, rose again on the third day, and now, seated at the right hand of the Father, makes intercession for His own.

At the cross, the full, undiluted wrath of God was poured out upon Jesus. If we can look at the cross and not see the love of God as well as the wrath of God, then we do not see it rightly.

The mind is hostile to the truth and hostile toward God. Yet in His mercy, God calls out His own, and this call is effectual. Through the external call of the Gospel, the Spirit works inwardly, regenerating those who are dead in sin, making them alive in Christ, and they respond in repentance and faith. A new heart He gives them.

And yet we are justified. This is a declaration. It cannot be changed. This must not be confused with sanctification. We are declared righteous by the perfect righteousness of Christ. And yet we are being sanctified. How? By the Word of God.

We must remain in the Word so that our minds may be transformed by the truth. For we are no longer enemies of God, though our minds still battle the remnants of sin and deceit. God has changed our hearts, and He continues to transform our minds through His Word. We learn who He is through right teaching, right study, and therefore the right application of His Word.

To listen to music, teaching, or read books by those who are not doctrinally sound has an effect upon us whether we wish to believe it or not. We cannot worship God rightly if what we consume is shaping our thoughts toward a perversion of the truth, toward a bent that sounds Christian and spiritual but is false and full of serious error.

How important is it that we hear the truth and commit our lives to sound doctrine? There is nothing more important. If we are to know God for who He truly is, and if our hearts are to rejoice and delight in Him, then our minds must be informed and transformed by truth, by sound doctrine.

Do we love God? How are we commanded to love Him? With all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Yet often the mind is abandoned to men’s imaginations while the heart is gratified through the pursuit of feelings and impressions. Men’s faculties become consumed with seeking a god of their own imagining while convincing themselves that they love the God of Scripture.

Many are convinced that if one has received a second baptism of the Spirit, of which Scripture does not teach, then he may now trust what he feels in his heart or what comes to his mind as special revelation exclusive to those who possess a greater anointing. They are deceived.

There are no second-class Christians. If one is born again, he is baptized by the Spirit, indwelt by the Spirit, sealed by the Spirit, and enjoys the ongoing work of the Spirit within him, whereby he is also being filled by the Spirit.

If we believe there is a special class of Christians who have access to special knowledge through a unique anointing received by a second baptism foreign to Scripture, then we have gone beyond Scripture and have begun to treat what we feel in our hearts and what comes to our minds as possessing authority alongside Scripture. Here many err.

The Spirit is not giving new revelation. Rather, the Spirit works in the hearts of all who are truly regenerate by illuminating the meaning of the text He inspired. The Spirit of God does not work apart from the Word but by means of it.

To separate the Spirit from the Word is to invite deception. The same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures now works through the Scriptures, opening blind eyes to understand, receive, and delight in the truth. He does not lead His people beyond the Word He has given but continually leads them deeper into it.

Many show themselves hostile toward God as He has revealed Himself in His glory and in His governance of the church. Men have their own ideas of who God is, what He is like, and what they believe the church ought to be. They know not God, nor do they worship Him as He is worthy.

Many worship. Many gather together in the name of God. Yet they know Him not, nor do they worship Him rightly, for their minds are not transformed by the Word so as to see Him as He has revealed Himself and to worship Him according to His appointed order. Rather, they worship Him as they imagine Him to be, feel Him to be, and think Him to be.

They worship a god fashioned by their own foolish hearts and know not the terror Scripture reveals concerning false worship and idolatry. Such worship soothes the conscience for a time. Yet when they meet the God of Scripture and stand laid bare before Him, they shall find Him holy.

May they then learn of that grace which leads to repentance for all they have done falsely in His name. May they be led to the truth, that they might truly hunger and thirst for righteousness, which is found only in Christ and in His Word.