The believer who trembles at the
Word of the Lord can learn much from the examination and critique of Keswick
theology. First, since charity rejoiceth
in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6), such a believer can greatly delight in the
blessed truths retained by the Keswick Convention from the older
orthodoxy. Does Keswick seek to exalt
Christ? Hallelujah! Does not the heart of the upright child of
God cry, “Oh that the Lord Jesus would be exalted the more—in my own life, in
my congregation, in my city, in my country, and in the world!” Does not such a one long for the day when
every knee shall bow before the Son of God, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father?
Jesus Christ cannot be too highly exalted, and the feebleness the
Christian recognizes in his own exaltation and glorying in Christ is
exceedingly grievous to him. Does he not
look with expectant joy for the time when the earth will be filled with the
knowledge of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea, and his own
heart will be free from indwelling sin forever?
“Come, come Lord Jesus!” is the upright’s cry.
Word of the Lord can learn much from the examination and critique of Keswick
theology. First, since charity rejoiceth
in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6), such a believer can greatly delight in the
blessed truths retained by the Keswick Convention from the older
orthodoxy. Does Keswick seek to exalt
Christ? Hallelujah! Does not the heart of the upright child of
God cry, “Oh that the Lord Jesus would be exalted the more—in my own life, in
my congregation, in my city, in my country, and in the world!” Does not such a one long for the day when
every knee shall bow before the Son of God, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father?
Jesus Christ cannot be too highly exalted, and the feebleness the
Christian recognizes in his own exaltation and glorying in Christ is
exceedingly grievous to him. Does he not
look with expectant joy for the time when the earth will be filled with the
knowledge of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea, and his own
heart will be free from indwelling sin forever?
“Come, come Lord Jesus!” is the upright’s cry.
Furthermore,
the blessed fact that Jesus Christ is full of truth and grace—that He is an
overflowing treasury of grace who fills His dear redeemed and upright ones with
the communicable Divine attributes by His Spirit, based on His purchase of them
at infinite cost, is an unspeakable consolation. The Lord’s purchased people marvel at their
Father’s infinite power, exerted on their behalf to sanctify them. They rightly renounce all self-confidence,
self-dependence, and self-righteousness, to wait in an active faith upon their
God in Christ, and upon Him only. He
alone must receive all the glory for their sanctification, for it is only His
power that can affect that supernatural transformation from glory to glory into
the image of their Head, Christ Jesus.
To whatever extent the Keswick theology has led believers to such
spiritual motions, to that extent they can thank God for the truth within its
Higher Life system. If Keswick preaching
has led them from backsliding to being right with God—if it has led them to the
immediate renunciation of sin—if it has led them to renounce all
self-dependence—if it has led them to greater communion with the Holy Spirit—if
it has brought them to greater fervency in prayer—if it has led them to
proclaim the sweet name of Jesus Christ with greater passion, so that the world
is more filled with the savor of His name than it would have been otherwise—can
any not rejoice at these things and praise the Lord?
the blessed fact that Jesus Christ is full of truth and grace—that He is an
overflowing treasury of grace who fills His dear redeemed and upright ones with
the communicable Divine attributes by His Spirit, based on His purchase of them
at infinite cost, is an unspeakable consolation. The Lord’s purchased people marvel at their
Father’s infinite power, exerted on their behalf to sanctify them. They rightly renounce all self-confidence,
self-dependence, and self-righteousness, to wait in an active faith upon their
God in Christ, and upon Him only. He
alone must receive all the glory for their sanctification, for it is only His
power that can affect that supernatural transformation from glory to glory into
the image of their Head, Christ Jesus.
To whatever extent the Keswick theology has led believers to such
spiritual motions, to that extent they can thank God for the truth within its
Higher Life system. If Keswick preaching
has led them from backsliding to being right with God—if it has led them to the
immediate renunciation of sin—if it has led them to renounce all
self-dependence—if it has led them to greater communion with the Holy Spirit—if
it has brought them to greater fervency in prayer—if it has led them to
proclaim the sweet name of Jesus Christ with greater passion, so that the world
is more filled with the savor of His name than it would have been otherwise—can
any not rejoice at these things and praise the Lord?
Indeed,
those precious elements of truth emphasized at Keswick are what make the
Convention’s system appealing to the Christian heart. Reader, do not by any means turn away from
these blessed truths because your renewed mind cannot bear any longer the
corruptions and errors mixed with them at Keswick. Some critique Keswick because of a fervent
zeal for the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, rejoicing in the truths affirmed
by Keswick but deploring its errors.
Others critique Keswick because they have no zeal for the truth and use
the corruptions of the Keswick theology as an excuse to live a life of carnal
self-pleasing. Do you reject the errors
of the Keswick theology? You do well—but
the devil knows that Keswick errors are false also, and such knowledge does not
make Satan a whit more holy. Are you, in
your opposition to Keswick errors, yet carnal, worldly, selfish,
self-dependent, faithless, non-evangelistic, false-worshipping, careless, cold,
and unspiritual? Then you are a vile
hypocrite, and you need to get right with God.
Now. Do not use the mote in your Keswick brother’s
eye as an excuse to smack people on the head with the two-by-four protruding
from your own. Do not think you please
the Lord if you yourself downplay God’s white-hot holiness, diminish the
immense loathsomeness of sin—of all sin, even the least—shrink from making
pointed and specific application of Scripture to your life and the lives of
those you are responsible to guide, dabble with Pelagian or humanistic ideas,
live by sight instead of by faith, and are openly and rebelliously ecumenical
or are merely softly separatistic, happy to coexist with the Amalekites instead
of putting them all under the ban and hewing Agag in pieces. Indeed, consider the warning of the Lord
Jesus to the doctrinally sound church at Ephesus:
those precious elements of truth emphasized at Keswick are what make the
Convention’s system appealing to the Christian heart. Reader, do not by any means turn away from
these blessed truths because your renewed mind cannot bear any longer the
corruptions and errors mixed with them at Keswick. Some critique Keswick because of a fervent
zeal for the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, rejoicing in the truths affirmed
by Keswick but deploring its errors.
Others critique Keswick because they have no zeal for the truth and use
the corruptions of the Keswick theology as an excuse to live a life of carnal
self-pleasing. Do you reject the errors
of the Keswick theology? You do well—but
the devil knows that Keswick errors are false also, and such knowledge does not
make Satan a whit more holy. Are you, in
your opposition to Keswick errors, yet carnal, worldly, selfish,
self-dependent, faithless, non-evangelistic, false-worshipping, careless, cold,
and unspiritual? Then you are a vile
hypocrite, and you need to get right with God.
Now. Do not use the mote in your Keswick brother’s
eye as an excuse to smack people on the head with the two-by-four protruding
from your own. Do not think you please
the Lord if you yourself downplay God’s white-hot holiness, diminish the
immense loathsomeness of sin—of all sin, even the least—shrink from making
pointed and specific application of Scripture to your life and the lives of
those you are responsible to guide, dabble with Pelagian or humanistic ideas,
live by sight instead of by faith, and are openly and rebelliously ecumenical
or are merely softly separatistic, happy to coexist with the Amalekites instead
of putting them all under the ban and hewing Agag in pieces. Indeed, consider the warning of the Lord
Jesus to the doctrinally sound church at Ephesus:
I know thy
works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which
are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not,
and hast found them liars: and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s
sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast
left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and
repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will
remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. (Revelation 2:2-5)
works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which
are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not,
and hast found them liars: and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s
sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast
left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and
repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will
remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. (Revelation 2:2-5)
You do well to labor and work for
God, and you do well to expose false apostles, such as those who originated the
Keswick theology—but have you left your first love? Woe to you!
Without love for Christ, all your works profit you nothing (1
Corinthians 13:1-3). Or are you even
worse, so that you do not even labor with patience, expose false apostles, and
serve the Lord without fainting? Will
you then presume to take the Lord’s statutes into your mouth, criticize
Keswick, and speak about spiritual things, when you are a weak and worldly
compromiser and a desperately backslidden and wicked sinner? It is not enough to reject
pseudo-spirituality—you must have a genuine and living Christian piety. Do not think that the Lord will be pleased
with you if you reject, or fail to live, the truths affirmed at the Keswick
Convention because of the errors also propagated there. Embrace and passionately love the truth, all
of it, for the sake of He who is Truth Himself, and despise and passionately
hate error, all of it, for the sake of Him who is Truth Himself.
God, and you do well to expose false apostles, such as those who originated the
Keswick theology—but have you left your first love? Woe to you!
Without love for Christ, all your works profit you nothing (1
Corinthians 13:1-3). Or are you even
worse, so that you do not even labor with patience, expose false apostles, and
serve the Lord without fainting? Will
you then presume to take the Lord’s statutes into your mouth, criticize
Keswick, and speak about spiritual things, when you are a weak and worldly
compromiser and a desperately backslidden and wicked sinner? It is not enough to reject
pseudo-spirituality—you must have a genuine and living Christian piety. Do not think that the Lord will be pleased
with you if you reject, or fail to live, the truths affirmed at the Keswick
Convention because of the errors also propagated there. Embrace and passionately love the truth, all
of it, for the sake of He who is Truth Himself, and despise and passionately
hate error, all of it, for the sake of Him who is Truth Himself.
Recognize
that the ineffably precious gospel of Christ is a priceless jewel filled with
beauties that the angels desire to look into (1 Peter 1:12). Consequently, all aspects of the gospel, in
all its revealed fullness as the mind of Christ revealed to us in the
Scripture, must be treasured and defended at all costs. You cannot be too precise with the
gospel. Consequently, every one of the
many errors and corruptions of the redeeming and sanctifying gospel propagated
at Keswick must be absolutely and uncompromisingly rejected. Reject Keswick’s Pelagianism. Reject Keswick’s divorce of justification and
sanctification. Reject Keswick’s
confusion on saving repentance, saving faith, and true conversion. Reject Keswick’s practice of giving Christian
assurance to the unregenerate and making them into two-fold children of
hell. Reject Keswick’s ecumenical
embrace of wolves who devour God’s flock.
Reject Keswick’s weakness on the efficacy of sanctifying grace, its
shallow and often incomprehensible or contradictory theology, its corruption of
the revealed truths about the work of the glorious Holy Ghost, its
perfectionism, its eudemonism, its Quietism, its neglect of the role of the
Word in sanctification, its Spirit-grieving and Bible-twisting experiential
hermeneutic, and its denial of the mortifying and vivifying work of God the
Spirit in progressively eradicating indwelling sin. Purge all the unbiblical influence of Keswick
from your mind, and cast out any affection for Keswick theology from your
heart. Keswick’s false teachings are
vile trash. Let them stink in the
garbage bin and no longer corrupt the savor of Christ in the temple of the
living God, whether the individual temple of the believer or the corporate
temple of the congregation of Christ. We
are not talking about the ideas of men, but the truths of God, the rejection of
which constitutes sin for which the Lord Jesus had to shed His blood. Reject the Keswick theology for the Biblical
and historic Baptist doctrine of sanctification.
that the ineffably precious gospel of Christ is a priceless jewel filled with
beauties that the angels desire to look into (1 Peter 1:12). Consequently, all aspects of the gospel, in
all its revealed fullness as the mind of Christ revealed to us in the
Scripture, must be treasured and defended at all costs. You cannot be too precise with the
gospel. Consequently, every one of the
many errors and corruptions of the redeeming and sanctifying gospel propagated
at Keswick must be absolutely and uncompromisingly rejected. Reject Keswick’s Pelagianism. Reject Keswick’s divorce of justification and
sanctification. Reject Keswick’s
confusion on saving repentance, saving faith, and true conversion. Reject Keswick’s practice of giving Christian
assurance to the unregenerate and making them into two-fold children of
hell. Reject Keswick’s ecumenical
embrace of wolves who devour God’s flock.
Reject Keswick’s weakness on the efficacy of sanctifying grace, its
shallow and often incomprehensible or contradictory theology, its corruption of
the revealed truths about the work of the glorious Holy Ghost, its
perfectionism, its eudemonism, its Quietism, its neglect of the role of the
Word in sanctification, its Spirit-grieving and Bible-twisting experiential
hermeneutic, and its denial of the mortifying and vivifying work of God the
Spirit in progressively eradicating indwelling sin. Purge all the unbiblical influence of Keswick
from your mind, and cast out any affection for Keswick theology from your
heart. Keswick’s false teachings are
vile trash. Let them stink in the
garbage bin and no longer corrupt the savor of Christ in the temple of the
living God, whether the individual temple of the believer or the corporate
temple of the congregation of Christ. We
are not talking about the ideas of men, but the truths of God, the rejection of
which constitutes sin for which the Lord Jesus had to shed His blood. Reject the Keswick theology for the Biblical
and historic Baptist doctrine of sanctification.
The
sufficiency of Scripture, and the abundance of Christian literature presenting
truth on sanctification that is free from Keswick influence and error, makes it
entirely unnecessary for believers to read or recommend Keswick authors. Keswick ideas should be purged from the heads
of Christian preachers. Keswick theology
should be purged from the seminaries, Bible colleges, Bible institutes, and all
other teaching institutions of the churches—and all such teaching institutions
ought themselves to be ministries of particular churches (1 Timothy 3:15). Keswick books should be purged from Christian
bookstores, as the massive and easy-to-read devotional literature of Keswick
has been wildly successful in propagating Keswick spirituality. Hymns propagating Keswick theology should be
recognized and dealt with appropriately.
Keswick advocates of the past and present should be warned about, not
set up as models of Biblical piety. Your
soul, and the souls of those whom you influence spiritually, can be filled with
a deep longing for revival, a zeal for evangelism and missions, a confidence in
the power of the Holy Ghost, and, most of all, a love for Jesus Christ and His
Father, with a resultant passion for holiness, without filling your head and
the heads of others with Keswick theology. Pray and preach against the Keswick
theology, that it may be abolished from the earth and be found only in the
eternal dwelling place of the gospel-rejecters who hatched it.
sufficiency of Scripture, and the abundance of Christian literature presenting
truth on sanctification that is free from Keswick influence and error, makes it
entirely unnecessary for believers to read or recommend Keswick authors. Keswick ideas should be purged from the heads
of Christian preachers. Keswick theology
should be purged from the seminaries, Bible colleges, Bible institutes, and all
other teaching institutions of the churches—and all such teaching institutions
ought themselves to be ministries of particular churches (1 Timothy 3:15). Keswick books should be purged from Christian
bookstores, as the massive and easy-to-read devotional literature of Keswick
has been wildly successful in propagating Keswick spirituality. Hymns propagating Keswick theology should be
recognized and dealt with appropriately.
Keswick advocates of the past and present should be warned about, not
set up as models of Biblical piety. Your
soul, and the souls of those whom you influence spiritually, can be filled with
a deep longing for revival, a zeal for evangelism and missions, a confidence in
the power of the Holy Ghost, and, most of all, a love for Jesus Christ and His
Father, with a resultant passion for holiness, without filling your head and
the heads of others with Keswick theology. Pray and preach against the Keswick
theology, that it may be abolished from the earth and be found only in the
eternal dwelling place of the gospel-rejecters who hatched it.
See here for this entire study.
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