For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
Last week I wrote about William Wilberforce’s remarkable book A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, contrasted with Real Christianity. I promised an extract.
Where better than the very heart of the book, in which Wilberforce contrasts the nominal Christianity of his day with the real thing.
He gives a summary of a version of Christianity common in his day: “Be sorry indeed for your sins, and discontinue the practice of them, but do not make yourselves so uneasy. Christ died for the sins of the whole world. Do your utmost; discharge with fidelity the duties of your station, not neglecting your religious offices; and fear not but that in the end all will go well; and that having thus performed the conditions required on your part, you will at last obtain forgiveness of our merciful Creator through the merits of Jesus Christ, and be aided where your strength shall be insufficient, by the assistance of his Holy Spirit.”
On this, Wilberforce comments: but the holy Scriptures, and with them the Church of England, call upon those who are in the circumstances above stated, to lay afresh the whole foundation of their religion. (His emphasis)
What, then, does real Christianity look like? But the nature of the holiness to which the desires of the true Christian are directed, is no other than the restoration of the image of God: and as to the manner of acquiring it, disclaiming with indignation every idea of attaining it by his own strength, all his hopes of possessing it rest altogether on the divine assurances of the operation of the Holy Spirit, and those who accordingly embrace the gospel of Christ. He knows therefore that this holiness is not to PRECEDE his reconciliation to God and be its CAUSE; but to FOLLOW it and be its EFFECT. That in short it is by FAITH IN CHRIST only that he is to be justified in the sight of God; to be delivered from the condition of a child of wrath, and a slave of Satan; to be adopted into the family of God; to become an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ, entitled to all the privileges which belong to this high relation; here, to the Spirit of Grace and a partial renewal after the image of his Creator; hereafter, to the more perfect possession of the divine like this, and an inheritance of eternal glory. (His capitalisation)
The misunderstanding of real Christianity Wilberforce encounters remains current, and its antidote the same – the real gospel, as we’re looking at on Sundays in Romans.
(I have taken these quotes from the critical edition published by Hendrickson. A friend who reads this blog has found a really readable modern re-write, which he commends.)
Praise God for this great campaigner whose life was shaped by this gospel!
