A.W. Pink on the topic of sin.
“How does God save His people from the pleasure of sin? The answer is, “By imparting to them a nature which hates evil and loves holiness.” This takes place when they are born again, so that actual salvation begins with regeneration. Of course it does; where else could it commence? Fallen man can neither perceive his desperate need of salvation, nor come to Christ for it, till he has been renewed by the Holy Spirit.”
“The nature of Christ’s salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Saviour from Hell rather than a Saviour from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of Fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.“
“The god which the vast majority of professing Christians love is looked upon very much like an indulgent old man, who himself has no relish for folly, but leniently winks at the indiscretions of youth…For one sin God banished our first parents from Eden; for one sin all the posterity of Canaan fell under a curse which remains over them to this day; for one sin Moses was excluded form the promised land; Elisha’s servant smitten with leprosy; Ananias and Sapphira were cut off from the land of the living.“
“Just as the sinner’s despair of any hope from himself is the first prerequisite of a sound conversion, so the loss of all confidence in himself is the first essential in the believer’s growth in grace.“
“The Christian who has stopped repenting has stopped growing.”
Arthur W. Pink – Born in Nottingham, England in 1886, Arthur Walkington Pink was converted to Christ while a spiritualist medium. He briefly attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, in 1910, before taking up his first pastorate at Silverton, Colorado. Little-known to the outside world, he was a pastor in other churches in the U.S. and Australia before returning to his homeland in 1934. Settling in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, there he died almost unnoticed in 1952. By that date, however, the magazine he had started in 1922 – Studies in the Scriptures – was feeding several of the men who were leading a return to doctrinal Christianity, including Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Douglas Johnson (founder of Inter-Varsity). After his death, his writings eventually became more widely read across the world.
Pink was a prolific writer. He published a short-form magazine, “Studies in the Scriptures,” many books, and he penned over 20,000 personal letters by hand. Of the worth of his writings, we turn to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who recommended Pink’s writings to a young student for the ministry: “Don’t waste your time reading Barth and Brunner. You will get nothing from them to aid you with preaching. Read Pink.”
Interestingly, the Lewis Revival, a.k.a. the Hebrides Revival, broke out in the village of Barvas on the Isle of Lewis during the time that A.W. Pink lived there. That revival started in 1949 and spread among the Hebrides, ending in 1952. That is also the year that Pink died on Lewis Island.
Banner image via author, unnamed lake, Wallowa Mountains, Oregon. Image of A.W. Pink in the public domain. Image of Stornoway from Pinterest.co.uk.
One Pursuit 
“Just as the sinner’s despair of any hope from himself is the first prerequisite of a sound conversion, so the loss of all confidence in himself is the first essential in the believer’s growth in grace.”
Regarding the latter part of this statement by Pink, of late, I have been experiencing an extraordinary emphasis on the excellence and extravagance of grace, for which I am greatly glad and grateful to our good and grand God of all grace and glory.
To be heart-held in our ardently affectionate Abba Amight’ys invincible, unfathomable grace is no less than safe salvation and sure sanctification.
Imperatively motivated to motivate one another to true love and resulting works of benevolence, intrinsically and inseparably involved and initiating same, is God’s inimitable grace of generosity.
Grace God Is so that ultimately, universally, endlessly, He gets all the glory He infinitely deserves for giving us all the grace we do not even, at the very least, ever deserve. Each time we inevitably stumble or slip, grace grabs or woos, wows and wins us, setting us right, sooner or later, yet again.
Like Christian, the man we all can closely relate to in Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, we do not always decide divinely, yet by God’s all-glorious grace, that is, His unearned mercy and His unmerited favor, His divine enablement and His holy empowerment, ennobled we progress on our pilgrimage, not by preening our person, but by responding repentantly for restoration to relationship with the Righteous One.
As our all-gracious God is faithful and righteous in forgiving our sins when we confess them to Him, we ought to agree with Him by forgiving ourselves our sins. By God’s grace, having forgiven ourselves, healing happens homeward to the holy, happy highlands of heaven. Without healing, help from us, by the grace of God, to others is immeasurably hindered or not initiated.
My prayer is that with evermore acute awareness, we appreciate the acceptance of the ages-abiding wisdom, the providence from everlasting past, the provision to everlasting future, the tenacious tenderness of the ever-in-the-present merciful loving-kindness that is the unfailing grace of the One Beautiful Triune God Who Is Love Almighty, the Holy One, and the Justice, our Uncreated Creator, Sovereign Lord of History, including yours and mine.
LikeLike