It Is Not a Hard Saying

Christ, according to Paul, will do everything or nothing; if righteousness is in slightest measure obtained by our obedience to the law, then Christ died in vain; if we trust in slightest measure in our own good works, then we have turned away from grace and Christ profiteth us nothing.

To the world, that may seem to be a hard saying; but it is not a hard saying to the man who has ever been at the foot of the cross; it is not a hard saying to the man who has first known the bondage of the law, the weary effort at establishment of his own righteousness in the presence of God, and then has come to understand, as in a wondrous flash of light, that Christ has done all, and that the weary bondage was vain. What a great theologian is the Christian heart--the Christian heart that has been touched by redeeming grace!

. . . That is the centre of the Christian religion--the absolutely undeserved and sovereign grace of God, saving sinful men by the gift of Christ upon the cross. . . . Everywhere the basis of the NT is the same--the mysterious, incalculable, wondrous, grace of God.

--J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith? (1925), 193-95