Overcoming Sin and Temptation (Chapter 10)

Hi Pete W: About your friend Tom. I was under awakening about 4 years before I had assurance. During this time, about 1983 to 1986, I would come across a Puritan quote that would shake me to my very foundation and near despair. I came across this quote that might apply to Tom’s case. It is in the book, An Alarm to the Unconverted by Joseph Alleine.

All of Christ is accepted by the sincere convert. He loves not only the wages but the work of Christ, not only the benefits but the burden of Christ. He is willing not only to tread out the corn, but to draw under the yoke. He takes up the commands of Christ, yea, the cross of Christ. The unsound convert takes Christ by halves. He is all for the salvation of Christ, but he is not for sanctification. He is for the privileges, but does not appropriate the person of Christ. He divides the offices and benefits of Christ. This is an error in the foundation. Whoever loves life, let him beware here. It is an undoing mistake, of which you have often been warned, and yet none is more common.
The true convert, however, is willing to receive a whole Christ, without limitations. “He is willing to have Christ upon any terms; he is willing to have the dominion of Christ as well as deliverance by Christ,”

Hello Jason: You asked, “doesn’t he also give apprehensions of grace and mercy as ways of guarding our hearts and mind in Christ Jesus?” One thing that you may want to keep in mind. Owen is talking about the Mortification of Sin and his emphasis is on what happens if you live a careless life and give bent to the desires of your heart. It is in that context that Owen says that God “will shoot His arrows at you.” This may help. If a person who is in a serious state of spiritual declension had a more manifest experience of the Spirit of Adoption, Romans 8:16, he would be more apt to conclude that God is pleased with his present state and condition. This would be to harden him in his impenitence. If your child is about to pick up a razor blade and stick it into his mouth, the best thing to do is to scare him from his present course, not to remind him how much you love him and that he is greatly prized by you.

Now this illustration is not at all perfect, because sometimes God does shower His kindness on His children though they are in a bad way spiritually. God was pleased, for whatever reason, to overlook much that was wrong in the conduct of Jacob.

Further, God may shoot His arrows at you even though your conduct is very exceptional. So He did Job. This was to try his faith. William Gurnall speaks of praying to a God who is not only a withdrawing God, but a killing God. When His wrath seems to be aimed at you while you are praying. He says, this will try the Christian’s mettle to purpose.”

Hello Jerry: When Owen talks about God “scaring you with sad apprehensions of His hatred” he obviously is talking about what the Christian PERCEIVES not what is strictly true. God is loving His child all the while He is spanking him soundly. What is interesting to keep in mind is that these kind of experiences, I mean like what Heman details in Psalm 88 about a believer perceiving that God is pouring His wrath out on him, or the case of William Cowper, Timothy Rogers (1658-1728) who wrote, “Trouble of Mind and the Disease of Melancholy” are speaking of what they knew as a more common experience in their day. It is very rare to hear about such cases in our day. But that is the rub. Is it better for our sanctification to have a little excessive fear or to be let alone in our carnal security. I could argue that neither is good because fear itself fights against that “perfect love” which is the proper fruit of the Spirit. My only question is which is safer? At least the fearful saint is aware of his condition, the carnally secure are not.

Hello Jason: When a person is in a state that you are in, it may require more than just a few paragraphs to assist you through the labyrinth of the fears that are gnawing at you. I know, I went through them for 3 1/2 years. I have written more than once on the idea that is sometimes entertained that a person believes that he has committed the unpardonable sin, or is a cast away.. I went through that alone for 8 months in 1983. The 5 warning passages in Hebrews, including Heb. 6:4-6, Hebrews 10:26, would be atomic bombs to my peace. I am glad I was single in those days, for I would not want to have a family to witness it. So I studied everything that I could find on the subject. One of the most helpful was Strong’s Systematic Theology Pages 650, 651 on what is the Sin of Final Obduracy. I remember in those days I couldn’t read certain authors like A.W. Pink because his writings seemed so narrow and I was sure there was no hope I was among the elect.

If your fears are as intense as you say they are, please write to me if you need someone to assist you to understand what is going on. I can be reached at jubwubbins@yahoo.com. This may sound surprising that I would say this, but maybe the type of introspection that Owen is calling you to may be a bit much for you at this time. I have been studying experimental theology over 25 years and know that there are certain books that may actually drive you to despair instead of assist you. For example, the book “A Treatise on the Religious Affections” by Jonathan Edwards, or “A Parable of the 10 Virgins” by Thomas Shepard.

The one book that has helped me understand Christian experience more than any other is “Thoughts on Religious Experience” by Archibald Alexander. This book was written in the early 1800’s but I have never seen a book that matches it in the subjects to which it treats.
The book, however, that assisted me out of fear that I was cast off from God was “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,” by John Bunyan.

My fears at times were so intense that when I would read things in the Bible about God’s sovereignty, my heart would rise up at enmity against Him for I feared I was a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction. This is no joke, I was struggling so much with doubts that I would tremble at the warning on an aerosol can! It would remind me of Galatians 6:8. Many a Bible verse would shatter me. 1 Tim 5:24 Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after. - Which I would misapply and suppose that the day of grace is past.

Anyway, thanks for being so open with us.

Thomas - Grand Rapids, MI

Since I have heard no more from Jason, I wanted to comment about what it is like to be in the depths spoken of in Psalm 88. The person in this valley reads comments from other struggling Christians, “we all sin and fall and little live up to the light we have.” But a person in the depths described in Psalm 88 is not helped by that. For he supposes that his case is singular. He supposes that others may sin, but feels he is still a servant of sin. He knows others may experience God’s frown, but he feels he is still an object of God’s wrath.

Some may say that there is the fall of Peter recorded, but he says to himself, there is also the recorded fall of Judas and supposes this more resembles his case. He is like the “man in the iron cage” in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. He wonders if he has not provoked the Spirit to cast him off, for he does not understand the warnings, and his melancholy temper is too troubled to apply them anyway.

He makes some attempt to pray to God, but his prayers are dashed in the bud because he appears to be praying to a consuming fire, not a heavenly Father.

Once again, as Owen is more able to describe the case than I, here are his words from his commentary on Psalm 130.
The {moral} law will put in its claim to all. It will condemn the sin, and try what it can do against the sinner. There is no shaking of it off; it must be fairly answered, or it will prevail. The law issues out an arrest for the debt; and it is to no purpose to bid the sergeant be gone, or to entreat him to spare. If payment be not procured, and an acquaintance produced, the soul must to prison.” I am going unto God,” saith the soul; “he is great and terrible, a marker of sin, and what shall I say unto him?” This makes him tremble, and cry out, “O Lord, who shall stand?

Secondly, Serious thoughts of God’s marking sin according to the tenor of the law is a thing full of dread and terror to the soul of a sinner. But this is not all; he is not swallowed up in this amazement, crying out only, “Who can stand?”

He who first sinned,{Adam} and had first occasion to have serious thoughts about God’s marking of sin, He knew that God was coming on the inquest of sin, and he was not able to bear the thoughts of meeting him. Could he have gone into the bowels of the earth from whence he was taken, and have been there hid from God, he would not have failed to have attempted it. Things are now altered with him. In that God whom he loved before as a good, holy, powerful, righteous Creator, Preserver, Benefactor, and Rewarder, he saw nothing now but wrath, indignation, vengeance, and terror. This makes him tremble out those dreadful words, “I heard thy voice and was afraid, and hid myself.”