While reading Rutherford's excellent but extremely taxing book, The Covenant of Life Opened, I came across a rebuttal which Rutherford apparently meant to use against the Antinomians of his time, which is still relevant, in fact more relevant, for us today:
21. It were good to pray much, and to be dead to prayer; One of the main causes why we cry and pray much and are not heard, Psalm 22:2; Psalm 69:-3, is, because that which is proper to God the hearer of prayer, to wit, confidence and hope, we give to prayer which is not God. We pray to our own prayers and to our own wrestling [in earnest prayer] often, rather than to God: and we believer [sic believe] praying does the business and works the charm, as if prayer were Omnipotency itself.
22. Nor are we dead to faith and hope, but we believe in faith an [sic] in believing, and we hope in our own hoping in God. But [sic] was crucified for you? How many fetch peace, pardon and righteousness, not from Christ, but from their act of believing? Hence a case, whether some may not fervently pray and believe strongly, and yet be disappointed in the particular they pray for and believe they shall have? Certain it may be, especially when we are dead to Omnipotency and alive to praying and believing, and lay more weight on faith in God than on God, and on praying to God then [sic] on God himself. What Antinomians say unjustly we give to works, to wit, or peace with God, they and many unduly give to faith, not to Christ.
— Samuel Rutherford, C. Matthew McMahon (Ed.), The Covenant of Life Opened (New Lenox, IL, USA: Puritan Publications, 2005, Original 1654), p. 397
Sounds like an exact description of the "faith" (Word-faith) and "grace" (Joseph Prince and NCC) movement today, doesn't it? Truly, there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl. 1:9).
See also:
On the efficaciousness of Prayer— Does prayer operates Ex Opere Operato?
3 comments:
Phil:
Prince does ask believers to focus on Christ; that's true. But he also tells people to have faith in God's "promises" even when such "promises" are not made to them (ie certain healing). When you believe that you must have faith for something because God calls upon you to have faith and will grant that thing to you if you have enough faith, then you are having "faith" in "faith"; believing that your amount of faith will determine God's response.
Faith is a gift (Ephl. 2:8-9; 1 Cor. 12:9), so trying to muster up faith would necessarily creates faith in faith.
Phil:
Next time please write coherently.
Either you do not know what Prince actually teaches, or you are purposely being misleading.
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