Things in Common

What do believers and unbelievers alike have in common? As to the facts, they have every (fact) thing in common. But as to interpretation of the facts, they have nothing in common. As to the facts, which stand objectively before them in the creation, believers and unbelievers alike compute according to the same rules of arithmetic; 2. think, speak, read and write by means of the same alphabet and language; 3. listen to the same music (Beethoven); 4. read the same books (the Bible, Bunyan, Dickens); 5. look on the same world round about; 6. see every­where the same manifestation of God (Rom. 1:20); 7. hear the same preaching of the whole counsel of God (Rom. 10:12, 18; I Cor. 1:18-25); 8. eat and drink the same foods and liquids; 9. marry and give in marriage; 10. work in the field and at the mill (Matt. 24:40f). But as to interpretation, believers and unbelievers interpret each and everything in anti­thesis to one another. Their thinking is in opposition to one another. The one knows numbers are creaturely, finite, quantita­tive signs; the other thinks them ancient human discoveries dug from the mines of the infinite universe. The one knows language to be a divine innate gift conferred at man’s creation; the other suppose it a product of the long process of evolution. The one hears the sounds of nature as notes of praise the creature sings to its Creator; the other hears them and classifies them according to system deemed dictated by nature itself. The one reads the Bible as the only and unique revelation of God; the other conceives of the Bible as being on the same level with any other book. The one looking on the world sees it as a book inscribed with characters divine; the other sees it as something that was “always there.” The one seeing the creation, worships the Creator; the other seeing the order of nature serves the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25). The one does the ordinary things of life: eating and drinking, raising a family, working at an occupation, in the fear of God and conscious of the coming general judgment; the other does these things not necessarily in immorality, but as oblivious to the wrath to come (Mt. 24:32-44). Marriage is viewed by the one as a divine institution, but by the other as a development in society out of custom or tradition. Both view the same elm tree, but the one cannot possibly see it except as environed by God and His creation, while the other looks at it as an independent entity “because it is (some­how) there.” Both feel and acknowledge the same fact of cold, but the one faces the fact as a creature of God (Ps. 147:17), while the other regards it as a proof that “anything can happen.”

We see that God has drawn a line between truth and error, separating them on opposite sides. The believer stands on the one side, the unbeliever on the other. The one stands in the light; the other gropes in darkness. True, the latter in his darkness does catch from across the line feeble flickerings of occasional sparks of natural light (knowledge), which enable him, for example, to know the difference between right and wrong. Believers to a degree share that moral judgment with the unbeliever. But he with his natural knowledge of things forges a path of would-be independence upward and out­ward from his miry bog of error and darkness. Here believer and unbeliever part. The latter regards his rebellious line of independence as extending upward infinitely. Thus, he denies the reality of total depravity, while he himself, a living demonstration of man’s depravity, cannot escape bending and forcing down his so called independence in unrighteousness. So that his line upward from his position in falsehood, like an expiring rocket, takes a sudden and irreversible zoom and curve downward. Rom. 1:18. Therefore, he cannot even shake his fist in God’s face (Rev. 16:10-11) except in utter dependence on God (Acts 17:28a)!

So then, the natural Man’s know­ledge, embracing, it may be, a far greater volume of facts than held by the spiritual man, is true as far as it goes, only he butts his head against the stone wall of his own dependency, which he stubbornly denies, at the same time denying the source of his knowledge, from God. (Ps. 94:10; Job 34:11; Isa. 28:26). “Further, this light, such as it is, man . . . holds” down (suppresses it) in unrighteousness, that is, holds it away in thought from its context in reality, away from God and His creation. In these assumptions of his own indepen­dence, his denials of the source of truth, his abstracting knowledge off into un­righteousness (sin), he pollutes what little truth filters through his own frame of reference. But even polluted truth is spotted with vestiges and glints of natural light. But that is not a mark or proof of common grace. It is rather a proof that the common darkness of sin cannot entirely extinguish natural light. God does not leave men who are in the darkness with no evidence of His existence and truth. (Ps. 139; Rom. 1:18, 19, 25). Even the liar has to face the truth, see it, understand it and admit it. In order to be a liar, he cannot do otherwise. Truth is inescapable, even to those who in thought annihilate it. Loving the darkness, hating the light, and for that reason, refusing to come to the light (Jn. 3:19, 20), they, doing all this, show that they know that the light is objectively real and indestructible. Actually, they can do no more against the light than to withdraw from it and wish it were extinct.

So, although the natural man marvels at the wonders of astronomy and the wheeling galaxies of space, he concludes that they are all the result of a ponderous evolutionary process continuing for bil­lions of years. He himself accomplishes some wonders — he makes cobalt bombs and lands on the moon. He accomplishes these things by barging into God’s workshop, as though he were the owner, and appropriates God’s own tools. He acquires knowledge and truth by inconsis­tently reaching over the fence from his yard of darkness, falsehood and supposed independence into his Maker’s yard to “borrow” His books (mathematics, physics) and tools (logic, nature, scrip­ture). But he understands them from the point of view of the Lie and employs them in the service of the Lie!

Man in the Renewed State

Mankind fell in Adam from original righteousness into sin, misery and death. That sin took the character of rebellion against the marriage covenant (cp. the philosophy of the ERA, NOW, the women’s liberation movement) and of suicidal, anarchistic rebellion of mankind against itself. It all began when Eve, and Adam, assumed the Lord and His command to be in the minority, viewing authority to lay in a 3 to 1 majority against Him. How could they so blindly do this? They sided with the devil who had insinuated himself into their lives as an expert on authority, on life and death, right and wrong. Instead of keeping their finite minds in complete dependence on God’s infinite knowledge, they got de­ceived into making a choice between God and the devil. They were, indeed, free to do this (a freedom fallen man no longer has), but so doing they became slaves to sin, the flesh and the devil. However, God did not leave all mankind to perish in that state of sin and misery, but, in His sovereign good pleasure, chose some from all eternity to everlasting life in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeem­er. Through Him the elect are recovered from the fall. “He hath chosen us in Him … in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins . . . you hath He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 1:4, 7; 2:1). Eve, before the fall, had listened solely to the Word of God. At the fall, she exchanged the word of God for human wisdom (her own) as the standard of truth. But after the fall, the elect are converted to the Lord under the preaching of the gospel of God, to again receive His Word, as it is in truth, not the word of men, but the Word of God, which works effectually in all believers who become followers of the churches of God (II Thes. 2:9, 13, 14). Whereas, with man’s fall, he made himself the arbiter between God and the devil, and between right and wrong, now, in his renewal, he is restored to the place where again God and His Word are the standard for all judgments in faith and life. This renewal of our nature is the first work of God in our heart, which we call regeneration, in which the “regenerating Spirit pervades the inmost recesses of the man, opens the closed, softens the hardened heart . . . infuses new qualities into the will, which, though heretofore dead, He makes alive; from being evil . . . renders it good… This is the regeneration … in scripture . . . denominated a new creation (II Cor. 5:17), a resurrection from the dead (Jn. 5:24, 25), a making alive (Eph. 2:1), which God works in us without our aid … it is … a supernatural work . . . not inferior in efficacy to creation or the resurrection from the dead … so that all in whose heart God works in this marvelous manner are certainly, infallibly and effectually regenerated and (so) do actually believe” (Canons of Dort, III-IV, 11, 12). This wonderful, delightful, ineffable change must (Jn. 3:7) come over us in order for us to be defenders of the faith and witnesses for Christ. The dead praise not the Lord, nor fight for His truth, nor gain others to Christ (Heidelberg Catechism, Q. & A. 86).

But the miracle of regeneration is not limited to man individually and person­ally, as important as that is (Jn. 3:3, 5!), for it extends to the renewal of the elect race (I Pet. 2:9, Gk.) and to The Regeneration (Mt. 19:28) and restitution of all things (Acts 3:21), when the whole creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption (Rom. 8:19, 21-23) to issue in the new heaven and earth (II Pet. 3:10-13).