AP

WORTHY AND UNWORTHY

Right in the middle of the Friday night Bible study that I lead every week a Christian brother cried out angrily: “Heresy! That’s heresy!”. That had a dampening effect on proceedings. Every Bible teacher is prone to the occasional error, but heresy – deliberate or accidental – is something that every godly Bible teacher does his utmost to avoid. I do not want to be a false teacher.

What was it that sounded so heretical? I had quoted a beautiful passage from a sermon by George Whitefield: “However lightly you may esteem your souls, I know our Lord has set an unspeakable value on them. He thought them worthy of his most precious blood.—I beseech you therefore, O sinners, be ye reconciled to God”.

On the surface, though it is a poetic and beautiful quote, it does sound perhaps a little doubtful. After all, does not J C Ryle say: “No proof of the fulness of sin, after all, is so overwhelming and unanswerable as the cross and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the whole doctrine of His substitution and atonement. Terribly black must that guilt be for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could make satisfaction”. 

The contemporary missionary evangelist Paul Washer said something similar: “People say the cross is a sign of how much man is worth. That’s not true. The cross is a sign of how depraved we really are, that it took the death of God’s own Son.”.

To add to the conversation, Keith and Kirstyn Getty wrote in their hymn My worth is not in what I own: “Two wonders here that I confess,/ My worth and my unworthiness,/ My value fixed – my ransom paid./ At the cross”.

Who is right? Is Whitefield right to say that Christ found us worthy of His most precious blood? Or are Ryle and Washer right to say that we are depraved and unworthy?

Both are correct. And the Gettys get it right to sing “My worth and my unworthiness”. It was a beautiful thing for Whitefield to say to the unbelieving masses of England that Christ found them worthy of His most precious blood. He did. And many unworthy sinners were ushered into the Kingdom. That men’s souls are of great worth is a core reason why Jesus came and died upon the cross. The value of a man’s soul is also one motive behind missionary activity within the evangelical churches.

At Adoniram Judson’s commissioning service in 1812, Leonard Woods reminded Judson that “The souls of all these [the lost in Asia] are as precious as your own. The wisdom of God, — the blood of the dying Savior has so declared.” Later, Woods reminded the missionaries that Christ’s blood was plenteous to save the unworthy.

“The plenteousness of the provision which Christ has made for their salvation. Were there anything scanty in this provision, — any deficiency in divine grace, — any thing circumscribed in the evangelic offer; our zeal for propagating the gospel would be suppressed.”

Woods goes on to say: “But my brethren, the word of eternal truth has taught us that Jesus tasted death for every  man; that he is the propitiation for ours sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world; that a rich feast is prepared, and all things ready; that whosoever will may come and take of the water of life freely. This great atonement is as sufficient for Asiatic and Africans, as for us. This abundant provision is made for them as well as for us. The door of Christ’s kingdom is equally open to them and to us. Unnumbered millions of our race have entered in; and yet there is room. The mercy of God … is a pattern for our imitation, and a rule to govern our exertions and prayers, he wills that all men should be saved.”

There are times when Christians think to themselves that some sinners are unworthy of being saved. When the great Scottish Presbyterian John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides in the mid to late 19^th century, saw the lifestyle of the cannibals, he wondered: “Did Jesus really want to save such savages?” The beauty and kindness of Jesus is Yes! he found even great sinners worthy of His most precious blood!

We deserve damnation. As R. C. Sproul said numerous times, sinners ought to be killed by God. We have no right to live in God’s creation. Isaiah 66:24 and Matthew 25:46 loom before us, but for the moment, while we live on this side of eternity, Jesus pleads for unworthy sinners to come and live.

– Troy Appleton