Leaving the Truth

It is upon the request of some interested friends that I will gladly write a few lines about the above-mentioned expression. The proverb says: “One who understands well needs only half a word.” However, it is not that way with all people. Because of this, some friends have requested a further explanation.

Some people have in the way of God’s providence been brought under the truth; on the other hand, others have been born under it. By nature a person cannot appreciate anything. When we think of the thousands and millions of people who never hear the truth or are growing up under a false religion, then a person really should bow in the dust before God because of the privilege that has been his lot.

With the “truth” I naturally mean the pure truth where God is exalted to the highest and the sinner is most deeply abased. That truth where the state of a three-fold death of man is brought for-ward, and the indispensable administering of the Holy Ghost is acknowledged, and Christ is preached as the Obtainer and also as the Applier of salvation. That truth where one is not afraid to proclaim predestination, election and rejection according to the declaration and revelation of God given in his eternal testimony.

Much is brought on the religious market that is labeled and proposed as truth, but what in the root of the matter is not truth. The pure truth is that truth where the one-sided work of God is placed in the foreground and where man in everything he does is cut off in his sins and self-righteousness. The pure truth is where man in his own righteousness is excluded and where Christ is preached as the only all-sufficient and complete Savior of sinners. The pure religion, death and life, blessing and curse, law and Gospel, according to the infallible and undeceivable declaration of God’s testimony. Man nothing and God everything. The pure truth wherein sin is condemned, where self-righteousness and also the Antinomian’s neck is cut off. However, a broad gospel is preached for a hell-worthy and lost sinner in himself. For souls that have cut off everything through wilful and voluntary sin and guilt, but where God’s Spirit also has closed all the doors of the world, there is a door opened in heaven. Christ came into this world to seek and save those who are lost.

When we come under the gospel net we can be caught. Through the foolishness of preaching, God saves those who are lost. That word is a power of God to salvation for those who believe. It is as fire and a hammer that crushes rock, and it also is in the hand of the Spirit as a sharp two-edged sword that goes through to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow. What an invaluable privilege it is to live under the Word! God is eternally free, but He binds us to the means that he has or-dained to that end. As long as man lives, it is as Van Der Groe once wrote in one of his sermons, “Calling, seeking, and finding time.” God can suddenly and un-expectedly shoot an arrow in our heart so that we are slain on the battlefield of free grace.

It is our dutiful calling to make use of every opportunity, but the poor creature has no desire for it by nature because man lies dead in sins and trespasses and has become an enemy of God.

Now a person may well consider it a great privilege that he may yet remain under the truth. Of course, if a person dies unconverted under it, then it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment. The Lord Jesus Himself said: “He who has known the way and has not walked therein shall be beaten with many stripes.”

It isn’t that we have to passively await it, far from it! God can still convert a sinner even in the evening of his life, and at the eleventh hour. There isn’t anything too wonderful for the Lord. The first plucked fruit that a certain minister who lived in England many years ago had was a man between sixty and seventy years old, and that minister wrote that this had so wonderfully en-couraged him.

A broad gospel is preached for a hell-worthy and lost sinner in himself.

But now what a dreadful matter it is to leave the truth and to say farewell to it. Certainly we should never look haughtily upon our fellow-creatures, but what a dreadful thought it is when a person withdraws himself. Paul writes: “My soul shall have no pleasure in him.” We should look down upon them with deep and heartfelt sympathy.

Yes, then must a person say: “Lord, why not I?” The Jews at the time of Christ’s walking upon the earth said: “This saying is hard! Yes, even the disciples, those beloved disciples of the Lord Jesus, asked when the rich young man went away sorrowing: “Who then can be saved?” The words of the Lord Jesus Himself were: “And blessed is he who will not be offended in Me.”

It is a greater wonder when a person remains with the truth than when he runs away from it, because, indeed, the gospel is not according to man. It is an offence unto the Jew and foolishness unto the Greek. Now you don’t have to seek that Jew in Palestine, or go on a journey to Greece to find that Greek in the woods. Oh no, just seek them in your own heart. Ask that uncovered people of God and they will teil you that through enlightened and discovering grace that the longer they are on the way the more they come to the knowledge what an enemy they are of God, and that they carry flesh that is nothing else than enmity against God.

Oh, it doesn’t happen every day that they may bow under the pure truth! They become ever more afraid of themselves. Then they sometimes say: “Lord, if Thou Thyself didn’t hold me by it, then I would surely run away.”

The pure truth does not let us keep anything and always lays man bare as a deserter, a forsaker, and a forgetter of God. Still, on the other hand, they receive a love for such a truth. Oh, there are moments for that enlivened people and for those who are made upright by God that they embrace it with their whole heart, and then it is with Hezekiah also the language of their heart: “Oh Lord, by these things men live and in all these things is the life of my spirit.

No, then they do not want to hear anything else, and they shun all preaching wherein is brought forth man’s merits. They cannot, as once an old minister under us expressed, give God anything but they grant Him everything. The lower man is abased and the higher God is exalted, the more agreeable it is for their heart. His Name must receive all the glory.

They cannot give God anything, but they grant Him everything.

Rev. W.C. Lamain (1904–1984) pastored the Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Leiden (1929–1932), Rotterdam-South (1932–1943), Rijssen-Wal (1943–1947), and Grand Rapids, Michigan (1947–1984). This article is reprinted from The Banner of Truth (1967).

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