A Fictitious Interview Based on His WritingsB.A.-Last time we spoke about the ‘Modern Question’ and how that led to your magnum opus, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. Could you elaborate on this work?
A.F.-It was a ten year process of thought, reading, preaching, discussing, and agonizing. I certainly did not sit down one night and begin to write it. It was a long journey. And it forged many of my friends and foes.
B.A.-What were some of the theological highlights of the work that you sought to present?
A.F.-One had to be that we grasp an understanding of human depravity. The more one looks through the glass of his own sin, he sees the precious blood which flowed on Calvary.
B.A.-You really write in a personal way about this than a pure didactic approach. How did this doctrine impact your life?
A.F.-“I would sense I would drag on heavily in the work without the Lord. Sin is so deceitful. While we may obtain an apparent victory over sin, we may be insensibly enslaved to another. What an ocean of impurity have I still in me! What vain desires lodge in my sinful heart! If I am saved, what must the Son of God have endured!”
B.A.-“Your knowledge of sin interestingly comes to you in some heavy trials like the death of your first born daughter. Typically many Christians would run for comfort, but you said that during that trial you grew in a greater awareness of sin?”
A.F.-“I did experience a triumph over death. But even during that time, I had the sad experience of my own depravity, even while under the very rod of God.”
B.A.-“Many evangelicals today would say, don’t ever question your salvation. But you would have no problem investigating your hope in Jesus?”
A.F.-“I would often be in doubt as to my state of grace due to my sin and lack of humility. I would confess that if I be a Christian at all, then real Christianity was a small degree in me. What a vast distance there is between what I ought to be and what I am! The workings of real grace in my soul were so feeble, that I hardly think they can be feebler in any true Christian.”
B.A.-“Other than through the grace of God, what other avenues aided you to legitimately examine your fruit?”
A.F.-“One was through the reading of John Owen’s Mortification of Sin. The other was simply to be busy in the work of the Lord. I found in my life the greater activity increased my energy to know and love God more.”
B.A.-“And you used this doctrine and experiences in your own effort to counsel others did you not?”
A.F.-“Of course. I once counseled my daughter, ‘you are a much greater sinner than you are aware of; and an interest in the dying love of Christ is of far greater importance than you have ever yet conceived’. To the son of a friend I counseled, ‘you have thought but little of your state as a lost sinner. When you learn this, you will bewail it before God with shame and self-abhorrence; you will embrace the refuge set before you in the gospel’.”
B.A.-“How important is an understanding of the doctrine of depravity in connection with the gospel?”A.F.-“It is so important that almost all other principles are founded on it.”
B.A.-Why is it so important?”A.F.-“The reason is because once the sinner recognizes he is a sinner, then he is a position of grace, and that is the only hope for the sinner.”
B.A.-“Are you Calvinistic in your doctrine?”
A.F.-“I am a strict Calvinist. I never had any predilection for Arminianism, which appeared to me to ascribe the difference between one sinner and another, not to the grace of God, but to the good improvement made of grace given us in common with others.”
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