​Machen and Evangelistic Identity

By Dr. Eric Watkins
 
It is s a well-known story that just before J. Gresham Machen passed away in January of 1937, he sent a telegraph to his friend John Murray with these cherished words, “I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ; no hope without it.”
 
Machen was on a speaking tour at the time, seek- ing to strengthen churches in North Dakota that had recently left the mainline Presbyterian church (PCUSA) over the influx of liberal theology. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) was a newly formed denomination, having just begun the year before. Machen was a leader – a catalyst within the new fledgling church. He had studied and taught at Princeton and had suffered greatly at the hands of liberal opponents, to the point of being defrocked for his unwillingness to support theologically liberal missionaries that denied core Christian truths.
 
Similar to many denominations that formed in the 20th century, the OPC’s beginnings were mod- est and, in some ways, painful. Most congregations lost their property when they left to join the OPC and had to meet in obscure locations. Ministers lost their pensions and had to make do with whatever God provided. Friendships were frayed and hearts were broken – all for the sake of the gospel. The church is far more than a social club, of course.
 
It is “a pillar and buttress of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). As many reformed fathers have affirmed, the church stands or falls with its commitment to the gospel. Machen understood this, and in his well-known and eerily prescient book, Christianity and Liberalism, Machen pleaded with the church and her missionar- ies to either make the tree good and the fruit good, or to make the tree bad and the fruit bad. God had 20 Christian Renewal June 20, 2020 promised in his Word to spit out a lukewarm church. Machen and many others, ministering as they were in the shadow of a world war, felt that the hour had never been so urgent and desperate; the church must fulfill her calling to communicate a clear, uncompromised gospel. People needed gospel hope.
 
The church, according to Machen, was the primary agent of evangelism that God had placed in the world to proclaim gospel hope. The Great Commission was given to the church to carry out unto the end of theage. Machen also believed that God would preserve the Church through  Machen also believed that God would preserve the Church through trial and tribulation; but he also believed that the Church would suffer attacks from without and also be tempted by compromise from within. Liberalism had been like a poison, slowly yet destructively absorbed into the teaching and practices of the mainline church. Machen saw this as the perennial challenge before the Church – to stand firm while still reaching out. In a sermon on Matthew 5:13, Machen said, “The real attack is not by fire and swords, threat of bonds of death, but friendly words; attack from within.1” It was not the full-on frontal assault against the Church that wor- ried Machen, “but the deadlier poison of merging the Church gradually and peacefully with the life of the world.”
 
Machen knew the sting of friendly fire, as well as the brutality of full, frontal assault. He had served as a volunteer with the YMCA during World War I in France, working in close proximity to the front lines and seeing the violence and devastation of war. This forever shaped him. The romantic idealism of liberal thought (that man was basically good) was painfully far from the truth. The gospel was man’s only hope and an uncompromised gospel at that. Machen believed that in spite of the darkness and depravity that he had witnessed first-hand, “the gospel still finds an answer in the human heart.”3 The grace of God was stronger than the hardness of man’s heart. Machen evangelized soldiers during the war, holding out gospel hope. He did not believe the popular sentiment of the day that “All good soldiers go to heaven.” Rather, men and women must place their faith wholly and completely in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Without it, there truly is no hope. But with it…what lively hope there is!
 

Much of what is said above formed the backbone of the new OPC’s early sense of identity. Machen said that, “If the church has failed, it is at least perfectly clear why she has failed. She has failed because men have been unwilling to receive and the church has been unwilling to preach the gospel of Christ crucified.”4 He believed that the church did not exist to preserve and protect the truth but to proclaim and promote it. The church was not called to simply open the doors and quietly wait for people to walk in and get saved; rather, the church was compelled by the grace of God to go out with the gospel to proclaim a passionate message of grace. While preaching before the OPC’s Second General Assembly in 1936, Machen said, “With what lively hope does our gaze turn now to the future! At last true evangelism can go forward without the shackles of compromising associations. The fields are white for the harvest. The evangelists are ready to be sent. Who will give the funds needed to send them out with their message of peace?”
 
It is hard to miss the optimistic tone in Machen’s words. The church possessed a “lively hope” because of the gospel. The active obedience of Christ, his sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection were things to boast about. They were inspiring and worth proclaiming. They fueled confidence and compelled men and women to either help send or be sent to spread the gospel far and wide. This gospel is what continues to inspire our sense of evangelistic identity – and urgency. There is a familiar cliché that “desperate times call for desper- ate measures.” In a time where nations were warring against nations and death ravaged continents, Machen knew the world desperately needed the gospel. The church needed to be inspired; her fire for the gospel needed to be reignited. Liberalism had stagnated the church’s zeal for the Great Commis- sion then, much the same way that complacency and indifference can stifle it now. The mainline church had drifted into a position of cultural comfort and had thus lost its evangelistic identity. It had grown worldly. It enjoyed the idols of comfort and ease too much to continue faithfully as the salt of the earth and the light of the world purely and without compromise.
 
Many things continue to threaten the church’s sense of identity today. There are the frontal attacks that come from the world, just as there are subtle attacks that can develop from within. Liberalism, syncretism and postmodernism will continue to beat upon the church like relentless waves of the sea. The desire for peace and safety (calm waters) will constantly tempt the church toward indifference, complacency and atrophy. That is why we need to be reminded of our identity in the gospel. In Christ we have a lively hope. The world cannot take it away from us and not even death can undo it. Our purpose in this world as a church is shaped by the gospel and the commission Jesus gave to his Church to make his name and goodness known to the ends of the earth and the end of the age.
 
Machen was right. The active obedience of Christ; no hope without it. But because of it…what lively hope we have.