Considering the Monster in You

I’m nearly finished with reading The Letters of John Newton.  It is a great, humbling and encouraging read that is focused on the gospel.  The reason I bought the book was for a letter that ended up not being in the book.  It is a letter he wrote to a young pastor.  It is suitable for many of us.

Your understanding of the gospel is intellectually sound, but there is much legalism in your experience of Christ, and that perplexes you.  You are very capable of giving advice to others, but I wish you could apply more effectively what you preach.

Did he meet me?  Part of what is scary here is that we can intellectually “get it” but still have a heart bound by legalism.  We still try to relate to Christ with a legal spirit.  We seem quite capable, but don’t seem to live in light of what know intellectually.

You can’t be too aware of your inward and inbred evils, which you complain of, but you may, yest in fact you are, too controlled by them.  You find it hard to believe it compatible with divine purity that God would embrace or employ such a monster as yourself.  You can’t complain too much about your sin.  Go ahead and complain about your sin.  Take a look at it.  Look it full in the face.  You are a monster.  You have all these inward evils.  That’s not your problem.  Keep looking at them.  You are probably worse than you think.  But, that’s not your problem.  Your problem is, you say you express not only a too low an opinion of the person, work, and promises of the redeemer which is certainly wrong.  If you think God cannot work with you, then that means you think your sins bear more weight than the work of the Redeemer.

Newton lowers the boom on us.  We are monsters.  The sin goes far deeper in our heart and character than we are ready to admit and than we realize.  He does not want us to turn away from our sin, but stare it full in the face.  Own it.

But our problem is not that we are sinners.  It is that we minimize the work of Christ!  He sounds like Jack Miller (which means Jack probably spent lots of time with letters like this).

It seems, too, that though the total depravity of human nature is fundamental to your doctrinal creed, you do not actually accept what you say.  Or else, why are you so continually disappointed and surprised that in and of yourself you find nothing but evil?  A man with two broken legs will hardly wonder that he is not able to run or stand.  If you know you are a sinner, why are you constantly surprised by it?  And though you say you have nothing good of your own, you act as though you believe you do, forgetting that they Gospel is provision for the helpless and the worthless.  You have not, you cannot, have anything in the sight of God but what you derive from the righteousness and atonement of Jesus.  Sometimes Satan wants to teach you humility, but though I wish to be humble, I desire not to learn in his school.  His premises are true.  We are vile and wretched creatures, but then he draws abominable conclusions from them, Satan does, and would teach you that therefore you ought to question the power of the willingness or the faithfulness of Christ.  Indeed, you complaints about your sin, when we come to examine them closely, have as much self-will, self-righteousness, unbelief, pride, and impatience mingled with them that they are little better than the worst evils you can complain of.

I once wrote a piece about being a “practical Arminian”- affirming God’s sovereignty but living like he isn’t in control of all things.  Newton does something similar.  This young pastor is not living in line with his doctrinal creed.  He thinks, for some reason, that he’s exempt from depravity and is surprised by his sin.  We can do the same thing.  We function out of pride as if unrighteous anger, sexual lust, hatred, greed and bitterness are not found in our hearts.

Then we commit a sin, and are undone as though such a thing come out of nowhere.  Satan tells us the truth about our sinfulness, but deceives us about the sufficiency of Christ.  He wants us in despair and humiliation.  Jesus, through the cross, wants us both humble and confident.  Our sin required His death in our place to be right with God.  His love meant He was pleased to endure it that He might have fellowship with us.  Leave behind you theological-correctness, better-than-thou-ness, and all the other manifestations of your utterly sinful pride.  Rest wholly on Christ and His blood and righteousness not only to be saved, but for ministry.