As a young pastor, Thomas Boston noticed the Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher sitting on a shelf during a pastoral visit. He borrowed it, read it, “and discovered it spoke to his heart and mind, and to a wide variety of pastoral issues in his ministry.” Seventeen years later, at the assembly that overturned the Auchterarder Creed (“It is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ.)”, Boston recommended the Marrow to John Drummond, saying it had helped him work through many of the same issues debated by the assembly. This comment led to a reprinting of the book and the expansion of the debate over the Auchterarder Creed and the Marrow throughout the Church of Scotland. Boston and others who had been transformed by the book had been preaching its doctrines and commending it to others. Ultimately, the Church of Scotland banned the book. Boston and those who protested this action became known as the Marrow Men.
In the second installment of video series “The Whole Christ,” Sinclair Ferguson asked a series of questions that came out of the controversy over the Auchterarder Creed and the Marrow of Modern Divinity, including the following. How do you offer Christ if you believe that Christ died exclusively for the elect? What does it mean to offer Christ to sinners; and how can you be really sure that you are a Christian believer? How do you live the Christian life and be obedient to God without becoming a legalist or wrongly responding to the law of God and becoming an antinomian? But for Thomas Boston and the Marrow Men, the main question was, exactly what is the gospel and how then should you proclaim it?
Ferguson said when he asks Christians the question, “What is the gospel?”, they often answer in terms of the experiences they have had. They describe how they were converted. They give a personal testimony; they describe how they found peace with God—how they felt guilty and then felt that their sins were forgiven. While that’s the experience or consequence of the gospel, it is not the gospel. “The gospel at the end of the day is Jesus Christ Himself and all that Jesus Christ has done.”
When Paul spoke to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5, he didn’t say to them, “Listen to my experience on the Damascus Road because that is the gospel.” Rather, he proclaimed that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. He didn’t count our sins against us, “but he counted them against Jesus Christ.” Jesus Christ was offered as a Savior; and it is on that basis that we come to Christ and put our trust in Him. “But how can you say this to everybody if you believe that Christ died just for the elect?”
The critics of Thomas Boston and the Marrow Men were saying, if you offered Christ to people freely without saying to them, “First of all you’ve got to repent,” then you’ve offered Jesus Christ to some people that you don’t know He really died for. And the Westminster Confession teaches, on the basis of Scripture, that Jesus died only for His sheep; only for the elect. So, if He didn’t die for every single human being, how can you offer the gospel to every single human being? These critics therefore believed you could offer the gospel only to those you had a sense were really and truly elect. They had a kind of circular logic that supported this belief: The way you could tell if someone was elect was when you saw signs of repentance in their lives, because repentance is the fruit of God’s election. So how could you preach Christ and offer Christ to all?
The answer to that question is because God has promised that anyone who comes to Jesus Christ will be saved. “Since it is Jesus Christ Himself who saves us, Jesus Christ is sufficient to save anyone who comes to Him in faith and trust.” The promise of God is, whoever believes will be saved (Acts 16:31; Romans 10:9). So, the business of the preacher is not to try and work out who in the congregation was elect and who wasn’t—an impossible task. “The business of the preacher was to offer Jesus Christ to everyone, and allow, as it were, the Holy Spirit to do His work through the preaching of the gospel to bring the Lord’s people to Himself . . . The business of the preacher is to point to Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”
We must remember the gospel is not the same thing as the blessings that result from the gospel. It is Jesus Christ in Whom all the blessings of the gospel are found. There is nothing between you and Jesus Christ that bars you from Him unless you qualify. As Isaiah 55:1 says, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” As Jesus Christ Himself says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37). The proclamation of the gospel is not just offering Christ to the elect. “The proclamation of the gospel offers a crucified Christ to the world.”
The problem with seeing repentance as a prerequisite for saving grace is this: How would you know when you had adequately repented? When would you know if you had done enough? This is a belief that in many ways is still present in the church today—God gives you grace in order to transform you; and then eventually as you are transformed, “once all the conditions have been met, God will justify you on the basis of what His grace has done in you, because that grace has made you justifiable.”
This way of thinking is endemic in the natural man, then and now. People still felt there had to be something they needed to do in order to be fully justified. The net result was many were left asking themselves, “Have I repented enough yet? Have I been sufficiently sorry for my sin to receive grace?” They were confusing the way in which the Spirit often works in our lives with the warrant of the preacher to offer the gospel.
The chief thing is now come to faith in Jesus Christ . . . There’s nothing in between. There’s no qualification. There’s no mark that needs to be reached. Sinners all stand before Jesus Christ, hopeless and helpless, and we offer Jesus Christ to each of them and to every one of them, in order that they may come and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, because their salvation is not found in the extent to which they have felt sorry for their sin. My sorrow for my sin contributes nothing to my salvation. All of my salvation is to be found exclusively in Jesus Christ.
In “Grace in the Gospel,” the second installment of his video series on The Whole Christ, Sinclair Ferguson has given answers to the questions of what is the gospel and how we should proclaim it. He has wrestled with the conundrum of how you can offer Christ to all, if you believe that Christ died exclusively for the elect. He showed how seeing repentance as a prerequisite for saving grace leads ultimately to another question for these believers: how can I know that I have repented enough to be sure I am a Christian? He also left another question unanswered: “How can we live the Christian life and be obedient to God without becoming legalists or wrongly responding to the law of God and becoming antinomians”? But he will address these questions as this video series on The Whole Christ continues.
This article has been based on “Grace in the Gospel,” the second video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. Here is a link to Ligonier Connect. The video series is itself based upon his book of the same name. You can review summaries of the Marrow Controversy here and here. If the topic interests you, look for more of my ruminations under the link, The Whole Christ.
