The same thing is advanced on page 199: “His [man’s] second duty is to cry to God for His enabling power — to ask God in mercy to overcome his enmity and ‘draw’ him to Christ; to bestow upon him the gift of repentance and faith. If he will do so, sincerely from the heart, then most surely God will respond to his appeal.” Can any man apart from the Holy Spirit’s work in him draw nigh to God in this manner? For in coming to God thus, the man must have faith: “He that cometh to God must believe that He is.” Is not this asking man to take the first step to salvation on his own strength, when he is “without strength”? How can a man in nature “sincerely from the heart” approach God, for his heart is incurably bad (Jer. 17:99The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)).
Other remarks on the preaching of the gospel are indeed strange: “God suffers the gospel to fall on the ears of the non-elect. . . . The preaching of the gospel to the non-elect is made an admirable test of their characters.” What strange language! Is God using His precious gospel concerning His Son just to test characters? Man was proved bad long before, according to Romans 3. His trial was over then, for it ended in the cross.
When Mr. Pink says (p. 234), “God has to put His laws in our minds, and write them in our hearts (see Heb. 8:1010For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: (Hebrews 8:10)),” he is applying to us what strictly belongs to the houses of Israel and Judah in the millennium—see Jeremiah 31:31-3431Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: 33But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31‑34). Christ in our hearts and occupation with Him in glory are the safeguards of our conduct, not the law given to Israel of old being in our hearts. To say this is to lower the whole standard of Christian living.
Mr. Pink is guilty of using the language of Scripture very carelessly. This is seen in many places, but on page 72 he says, “It surely does not need arguing that the Father had an express purpose in giving Him to die, or that God the Son had a definite design before Him in laying down His life.” Did God the Son die? Could God die? To be specific, He was rejected and suffered as the Son of Man, a title first mentioned in Psalm 8, and that in connection with His rejection and His coming reign. The Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, and the Son of Man had to be lifted up, but carelessness in use of words is dangerous and can lead to serious error, as is witnessed in Mr. Pink’s statement.
On page 75, Mr. Pink makes a remark about substitution, which says, “The persons for whom He acts, whose sins He bears, whose legal obligations He discharges.” This is sad, for to make Christ merely discharge our legal obligations is to remove grace and God’s forgiveness. If He merely discharged our legal obligations, then nothing needs to be forgiven, but Scripture teaches God’s forgiveness, and in such a way that God remains just while justifying the ungodly (Rom. 3:2626To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:26)).
We must now bring our review of Mr. Pink’s book, which sets forth the Calvinistic line of teaching, to a close. Much more might be said, but we leave with our readers the challenges we have made and commend them to the Word of God: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:21).
In closing, however, we wish to again affirm that we stand squarely on the fact of man’s total ruin and helplessness, and maintain that besides the work of Christ on the cross for the glory of God and for the putting away of the sins of all who believe, the work of the Spirit of God in the soul producing new birth is an absolute essential in the saving of souls. We close with the words of the poet Cowper:
Of all the gifts Thy love bestows,
Thou Giver of all good!
Not heaven itself a richer knows
Than the Redeemer’s blood.
Faith, too, that trusts the blood through grace,
From that same love we gain;
Else, sweetly, as it suits our case,
The gift had been in vain.
We praise Thee, and would praise Thee more;
To Thee our all we owe;
The precious Saviour, and the power
That makes Him precious too.