This is week two of our reading project. We are reading our way through John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied, a classic text that provides a thorough treatment of the doctrine of the atonement. Murray is not a man to waste a word, so this book is dense; but he is also a brilliant theologian, so it is well worth the sometimes-difficult read. It is work, but the pay-off is huge.

If you would like to join in the fun, there is still lots of time to do so. You’re only two chapters behind. Simply find a copy of the book and get reading!

Summary
This week’s chapter dealt with the nature of the atonement. I’m not sure that I fully understood the big picture of this chapter but if I did, it went like this. Murray went looking for an “inclusive rubric” under which he could place the atonement. The atonement includes specific categories used to describe Christ’s work: things like sacrifice, propitiation, reconciliation and redemption. But he sought to find a heading under which he could place even these terms. The term he settled upon is obedience. “The Scripture…uses this term, or the concept it designates, with sufficient frequency to warrant the conclusion that obedience is generic and therefore embracive enough to be viewed as the unifying or integrating principle.” This leads to a discussion of the difference between Christ’s active obedience and his passive obedience. Murray offers some valuable keys to understanding passive obedience, which I will lead you to read or review on your own. A few things stood out to me in this section, including this: “When we speak of the death of our Lord on the cross as the supreme act of his obedience we are thinking not merely of the overt act of dying upon the tree but also of the disposition, will, and determinate volition which lay back of the overt act.” When we speak of Christ’s passive obedience, we do not speak of passivity, for in all things Christ had a determined will and a determined disposition.

After this discussion of obedience as the “inclusive category in terms of which the atoning work of Christ may be viewed and which establishes at the outset the active agency of Christ in the accomplishment of redemption” he turns to the specific categories the Bible uses to set forth the nature of the atonement.

First, he looks at sacrifice. He says it is a given that Christ’s work is construed as sacrifice so the only real question here is this: what notion of sacrifice governs this pervasive use of the term as it is applied to the work of Christ? This leads to a lengthy discourse on how the New Testament writers would have understood the term based on their cultural and religious setting. “The work of Christ,” he says, “is expiatory, expiatory indeed with a transcendent virtue, efficacy.” Last week I mentioned that Murray can be difficult to read. I leave this sentence as evidence: “It is this amazing conjuncture that the union in him of priestly office and piacular offering evinces.”

Second, he looks at propitiation saying “the idea of propitiation is so woven into the fabric of the Old Testament ritual that it would be impossible to regard that ritual as the pattern of the sacrifice if propitiation did not occupy a similar place in the one great sacrifice once offered.” In other words, sacrifice and propitiation are very closely related to one another. He offers a lengthy but helpful definition of propitiation which includes the idea of “covering.” He carefully shows that sin creates a situation in which we are estranged from God but, even more importantly, in which God is estranged from us. Then he says, “Vengeance is the reaction of the holiness of God to sin, and the covering is that which provides for the removal of divine displeasure which the sin evokes.” Further, “Propitiation presupposes the wrath and displeasure of God, and the purpose of propitiation is the removal of this displeasure.”

Third, he turns to reconciliation. “Reconciliation presupposes disrupted relations between God and men. It implies enmity and alienation. This alienation is twofold, our alienation from God and God’s alienation from us. The cause of the alienation is, of course, our sin, but the alienation consists not only in our unholy enmity against God but also in God’s holy alienation from us.”

Fourth and finally, he looks to redemption. He says, “The language of redemption is the language of purchase and more specifically of ransom. And ransom is the securing of a release by the payment of a price.” He warns, though, that we cannot follow this term too far into its parallels with human transactions, lest our constructions become artificial and fanciful. He looks here to law and sin as the means to understand why an act of redemption was necessary within God’s economy. Having shared what Scripture says he concludes “redemption from sin cannot be adequately conceived or formulated except as it comprehends the victory which Christ secured once for all over him who is the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.”

So, at this point Murray has looked at both the necessity and the nature of the atonement. He continues to lay the groundwork for his eventual examination of the application of redemption. But before he can get there, there are a few more foundational matters to attend to. We will look at those over the next three weeks.

Next Week
For next Thursday please read chapter three, “The Perfection of the Atonement.”

Your Turn
The purpose of this program is to read classics together. So if there are things that stood out to you in this chapter, if there are questions you had, this is the time and place to have your say. Feel free to post a comment below.

A little while ago I read Warren Wiersbe’s book 50 People Every Christian Should Know. Just the other day I was tidying up my bookcases and noticed a toothpick sticking out of the book. I opened it to the page marked by the toothpick and found a quote I guess I must have been hoping to come back to. Turns out it’s a good one. It comes from a chapter devoted to Alexander Whyte. Here it is:

*****

The sales manager of a successful Christian publishing house tells me that pastors are not buying books. “Most of the books sold in Christian bookstores are sold to and read by women,” he said. If our pastors are not using their valuable time for study, what are they using it for? Perhaps Whyte had the answer: “We shroud our indolence under the pretext of a difficulty. The truth is, it is lack of real love for our work.”

Alexander Whyte loved books, and he read them to his dying day. The Puritans in general and Thomas Goodwin in particular were his main diet. But he also thrived on the mystics and the princes of the Scottish church, such as Samuel Rutherford. Whyte constantly ordered books for himself and his friends in the ministry. However, he cautioned young pastors against becoming book-buyers instead of book-readers. “Don’t hunger for books,” he wrote a minister friend. “Get a few of the very best, such as you already have, and read them and your own heart continually.” Whyte often contrasted two kinds of reading—“reading on a sofa and reading with a pencil in hand.” He urged students to keep notebooks and to make entries in an interleaved Bible for future reference. “No day without its line” was his motto. He wrote to Hubert Simpson: “for more than forty years, I think I can say, never a week, scarcely a day, has passed, that I have not entered some note or notes into my Bible: and, then, I never read a book without taking notes for preservation one way or another.”

Today we begin another iteration of Reading Classics Together—a project which affords us the structure and accountability to read through some of the classics of the Christian faith. This time around we are reading John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied. The structure of the program is simple. We read one chapter per week and then come here to discuss it. Each week I will create a post like this one to introduce the topic and I will give just a brief summary and perhaps a few reflections. And then we can discuss what we’ve read.

If you’d like to join in, all you need to do is find a copy of the book and begin to read along.

Summary

Redemption Accomplished and Applied is a book about the atonement. Most people, when they think of the book, think of the second section which discusses the ordo salutis—the order of salvation. But before Murray can get to the application of the atonement, he must first discuss its accomplishment. He does this in five chapters, the first of which is called “The Necessity of the Atonement.”

This week’s reading was dedicated to answering a simple question: was the atonement necessary? Murray actually asks several clarifying questions: “Why did God become man? Why, having become man, did he die? Why, having died, did he die the accursed death of the cross?” All of these, when put together, speak of necessity. Why was it necessary for Christ to die and was this the only way in which God could accomplish the redemption of his people?

Traditionally Christians have answered in one of two ways. Some have held to hypothetical necessity, a view which says that God could have forgiven sin and saved his people without atonement or satisfaction, but that this was the way he chose to do it. Others have held to consequent absolute necessity, a more traditionally Protestant understanding, which says that if atonement was to take place, it must happen in this way. Murray explains, “The word ‘consequent’ in this designation points to the fact that God’s will or decree to save any is of free and sovereign grace. To save lost men was not of absolute necessity but of the sovereign good pleasure of God. The terms ‘absolute necessity,’ however, indicate that God, having elected some to everlasting life out of his mere good pleasure, was under the necessity of accomplishing this purpose through the sacrifice of his own Son, a necessity arising from the perfections of his own nature.” So while it was not inherently necessary for God to save anyone, if he was to do so, because of his very nature, it had to happen this way.

The rest of the chapter is dedicated to providing five Scriptural proofs that this is the case. Murray shows 1) that there are passages which create a very strong presumption in favor of this inference; 2) that there are passages which definitely suggest that the only alternative to this way of atonement was perdition; 3) that there are passages which teach that the efficacy of Christ’s work is contingent upon the unique constitution of Christ’s person; 4) that the salvation of grace which we experience is a salvation that goes beyond forgiveness of sin but also to justification; 5) that the cross of Christ is the supreme demonstration of God’s love because of its supreme cost.

Having looked to these reasons Murray concludes, “we are constrained to conclude that the kind of necessity which the Scriptural considerations support is that which may be described as absolute or indispensable. … If we keep in view the gravity of sin and the exigencies arising from the holiness of God which must be met in salvation from it, then the doctrine of indispensable necessity makes Calvary intelligible to us and enhances the incomprehensible marvel of both Calvary itself and the sovereign purpose of love which Calvary fulfilled. The more we emphasize the inflexible demands of justice and holiness the more marvelous become the love of God and its provisions.”

Overall I enjoyed this chapter, though I was surprised at how difficult it was to read. I have read much older authors who were easier to understand than Murray! And though I did enjoy it, I find that I am primarily anticipating reading the second section of this book where we learn about Redemption Applied. Still, this chapter was very good and offered a useful defense of the Bible’s teaching that if we were to be saved, this was the only way.

Next Week

For next Thursday please read chapter two, “The Nature of the Atonement.”

Your Turn

The purpose of this program is to read classics together. So if there are things that stood out to you in this chapter, if there are questions you had, this is the time and place to have your say. Feel free to post a comment below.

A couple of weeks ago I announced that the next book we would read together as part of the Reading Classics Together program would be Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray. We will begin reading that book on November 12, exactly one week from today. Actually, we will begin discussing the book on that date, so it would be best to start reading it before then. This is a final invitation to participate in the program and, for those who have already indicated interest, a final reminder that you’ll want to finish reading the first chapter in the next week.

This Reading Classics Together program exists to give us all a good excuse to read some of the classics of the faith. And this new book is, indeed, a classic, In Redemption Accomplished and Applied Murray explores the biblical passages dealing with the necessity, nature, perfection, and extent of the atonement, and goes on to identify the distinct steps in the Bible’s presentation of how the redemption accomplished by Christ is applied progressively to the life of the redeemed. It is, then, an overview of the biblical account of salvation as understood by Reformed Christians. Monergism Books says it is “One of the best, most concise, theologically sound and helpful expositions of the atonement ever produced. John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied should be required reading for every Christian. At just under 200 pages, Murray offers page after page of devotional and scholarly study that is nearly unparalleled in its clarity, usefulness and theological depth. Read this book, re-read this book and keep it close at hand.”

There is still time for you to order a copy of the book and read the first chapter before next Thursday.

If you are interested, you can purchase the book at:

Amazon | Westminster Books | Monergism Books

Check in one week from today and we will begin to discuss it together. I can’t wait!

When was the last time you read a book about reading? Maybe you have read Adler’s How to Read a Book or another like it. When was the last time you read a book about reading Scripture? Maybe you have read a book about how to do better personal devotions and have found there some ideas about reading Scripture in a more effective way. But when was the last time you read a book about the public reading of Scripture in the worship service? It’s a pretty safe bet that you never have read such a book; only a very few exist. I was excited, then, to see Max McLean’s Unleashing the Word: Rediscovering the Public Reading of Scripture. “I want to help you learn to present the Bible in such a way that your audience can engage the Word with their heart, mind, and soul as they hear it being read aloud,” he says in his introduction. “The goal is ultimately transformation—their lives will be touched and changed, just as the original hearers were.”

If you were one of the four million people to read the bestselling book Freakonomics, you will pretty well know what to expect from the long-awaited sequel SuperFreakonomics. It has five chapters, each of which stands on its own and each of which ties varied economic data into some kind of a cohesive whole. It is just as interesting as its predecessor and sticks very closely to the formula that made the first book such an unlikely hit.

The first chapter is titled “How Is a Street Prostitute Like a Department-Store Santa?” and this chapter is a lengthy look at the economics of prostitution. The authors draw out all kinds of interesting conclusions about prostitution and especially about how prostitution has changed over the years. For example, they show that the wages for prostitutes have fallen drastically over the past hundred years. The reason is pure economics and goes back to the law of competition. “Who poses the greatest competition to a prostitute? Simple: any woman who is willing to have sex with a man for free. It is no secret that sexual mores have evolved substantially in recent decades. The phrase ‘casual sex’ didn’t exist a century ago (to say nothing of ‘friends with benefits’). Sex outside of marriage was much harder to come by and carried significantly higher penalties than it does today.” In other words, in decades past women held closely to their virginity and were unlikely to give it away to anyone but their husbands. Today a man has, in the words of the authors, “a much greater supply of unpaid sex.” According to the laws of supply and demand, prices must then fall. In our generation only 5% of men lose their virginity to a prostitute; in days past it ran as high as 20%. Today more than 70% of men have sex before marriage; in days past it was just 33%. Premarital sex has proven a free substitute for prostitution. Once the domain of the professional (at one time one in every fifty American women in their twenties was a prostitute!) premarital sex is now the realm of any woman. This has driven down wages through a strange but sad kind of free market force. I guess this gives us something to think about the next time we hear about the falling levels of prostitution. Though we rejoice when prostitutes find another line of work, it does not necessarily mean that we have cured one of society’s ills. It may point to changing market forces based in turn on declining morality.

There was something else in this chapter that gave me a lot to think about. In their research the authors found that certain sexual acts have always commanded a premium; some are more costly than others. That is no surprise. Acts that are taboo in society are going to cost more than acts that are considered “normal.” What is interesting, though, is to see that this is a moving standard. As society has become increasingly sexualized, acts that were once taboo are now considered bland or boring. What once commanded a premium is now considered barely worth thinking about. This got me thinking about sin and about the very nature of sin. Have you ever had one of those moments where you found that sin was suddenly taking charge of you? If you think about it I’m sure you can come up with a moment when you realized that it was no longer you who was in charge, but sin. Sin had taken over; sin was taking the lead and you were just following along. It is a terrifying place to be! Sin always wants more, always demands more. It is progressive, beginning with something small but always demanding more and greater. Give it an inch and it will take a mile. The economics of prostitution shows the progressive nature of sin. Just in a brief look at rates and wages we can see how society has changed as women have become more willing to give their bodies away and as the vulgar and invasive and degrading has become mainstream.

This book illustrates why I love reading and why I always seek to read widely. I rarely regret reading Christian books and have benefited from such books immeasurably. But I would be impoverishing myself, I think, if I were to read only Christian books. Here in a book that is not in any way “Christian” I found all sorts of interesting facts, interesting ideas, that I can grapple with. They are issues that I can think about within my Christian worldview and use them to uncover great truths about people and about the God who created them.

It has been a few weeks now since we finished reading The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, the most recent entry in Reading Classics Together.

The impetus for this project was the simple realization that, though many Christians want to read through the classics of the faith, few of us have the motivation to actually make it happen. This program allows us to read them together, providing both a level of accountability and the added of interest of comparing notes. Those who have participated in each of the programs will now have read Holiness by J.C. Ryle, Overcoming Sin and Temptation by John Owen, The Seven Sayings of the Savior on the Cross by A.W. Pink, The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, Real Christianity by William Wilberforce and The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs. That is quite a solid collection of classics! I have benefited immensely from reading these books and know that others have, too. The format is simple: every week we read a chapter or a section of a classic of the Christian faith and then on Thursday we check in at my blog to discuss it. It’s that easy: one chapter per week.

I’d love to have you participate in this next effort. Keep reading to find out how you can do that…

The next classic we will read together is Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray. In this book Murray explores the biblical passages dealing with the necessity, nature, perfection, and extent of the atonement, and goes on to identify the distinct steps in the Bible’s presentation of how the redemption accomplished by Christ is applied progressively to the life of the redeemed. It is, then, an overview of the biblical account of salvation as understood by Reformed Christians. Monergism Books says it is “One of the best, most concise, theologically sound and helpful expositions of the atonement ever produced. John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied should be required reading for every Christian. At just under 200 pages, Murray offers page after page of devotional and scholarly study that is nearly unparalleled in its clarity, usefulness and theological depth. Read this book, re-read this book and keep it close at hand.”

At a time when so many people are discovering or re-discovering Reformed theology, this book offers us an opportunity to turn to Scripture to see if all that we are being taught, all that we believe, truly accords with Scripture. And even if you have no love for this New Calvinism, you may like to read along to at least ensure that you have a correct understanding of its theology.

We will begin reading the book on November 12. So if you would like to read along, read chapter 1 by November 12 and then check in here on that day.

You can purchase the book at:

Amazon | Westminster Books | Monergism Books

It is not unusual for the “next classic” to sell out really quickly at the various stores, so if you’d like to read along, go ahead and order it ASAP.

Do let me know if you are planning on participating. Obviously I will not hold you to anything; it is just nice to get a sense of how many people will be joining in the fun.

We made it! And honestly, it was barely even a challenge. There have been some classics that I’ve had to struggle to finish. Sometimes, by the end, it is hard work just to turn the next page. But that was not that case, at least for me, with The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. I found it a joy to read from beginning to end and it is one I know I will return to in the future (though I may need a copy that is no quite so thoroughly highlighted). Today I am simply going to provide a very brief overview of the chapter and then offer a few of my favorite quotes.

In this final chapter, Burroughs concludes his thoughts on how to attain contentment. Here are the twelve directions he gives:

1. All the rules and helps in the world will do us little good unless we get a good temper within our hearts.

2. If you would get a contented life, do not grasp too much of the world, do not take in more of the business of the world than God calls you to.

3. Be sure of your call to every business you go about.

4. I must walk by rule in the work that I am called to.

5. Exercise much faith.

6. Labor to be spiritually minded.

7. Do not promise yourselves too much beforehand; do not reckon on too great things.

8. Labor to get your hearts mortified to the world, dead to the world.

9. Let not men and women pore too much upon their afflictions: that is, busy their thoughts too much to look down into their afflictions.

10. Make a good interpretation of God’s ways towards you.

11. Do not so much regard the fancies of other men, as what indeed you feel yourselves.

12. Be not inordinately taken up with the comforts of this world when you have them. When you have them, do not take too much satisfaction in them.

Let me share just a few favorite quotes that I had to highlight on my way through:

“You can never make a ship go steady, by propping it outside; you know there must be ballast within the ship, to make it go steady. And so, there is nothing outside us that can keep our hearts in a steady, constant way, but what is within us: grace is within the soul, and it will do this.”

“Nothing in the world will quiet the heart so much as this: when I meet with any cross, I know I am where God would have me, in my place and calling; I am about the work that God has set me.”

“Exercise faith, not only in the promise that all shall work together for good to them that fear God, but likewise exercise faith in God himself; as well as in his Word, in the attributes of God.”

“Let afflictions and troubles find you with a mortified heart to the world, and they will not break your bones; those whose bones are broken by crosses and afflictions are those who are alive to the world, but are not dead to the world. But no afflictions or troubles will break the bones of one who has a mortified heart and is dead to the world; that is, they will not be very grievous or painful to such a one as is mortified to the world.”

“You find many people, all of whose thoughts are taken up about what their crosses and afflictions are, they are altogether thinking and speaking of them. It is just with them as with a child who has a sore: his finger is always on the sore; so men’s and women’s thoughts are always on their afflictions.”

The Next Classic

Stay tuned and in a couple of weeks I’ll announce the next classic we’ll be reading together. Feel free to offer suggestions in the comments here.

But for now, I’d love to hear your concluding thoughts on The Rare Jewel…

We’ve got just two readings left in this classic of the Christian faith, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. Thanks for hanging in with me through what has proven to be quite a lengthy read (twelve weeks down, one to go). A few people have asked what I intend to read when this book is complete. Truth be told, I do not yet know. Give me a couple more weeks and I will make an announcement. First things first though; let’s finish up this one.

In the final two chapters of The Rare Jewel, Burroughs first offers several considerations for contenting the heart in any afflicted condition and then offers several directions as to what should be done to prepare hearts for affliction. This week we look to the first of these, considerations for contenting a heart in the midst of affliction.

Summary

Burroughs offers ten things that he wants Christians to consider when facing some kind of an affliction that threatens to leave them feeling discontent before God. I will list each of these and offer the occasional comment.

1. We should consider, in all our wants and inclinations to discontent, the greatness of the mercies that we have, and the meanness of the things that we lack. What we have been given by God in salvation is so much greater than anything we may lack that there ought to be no comparison, no matter how great those things may appear in the moment. “I am discontented for want of what a dog may have, what a devil may have, what a reprobate may have; shall I be discontented for not having that, when God has given me what makes angels glorious?”

2. The consideration that God is beforehand with us with his mercies should content us. “We should bless God for what we have had, and not think that we are worse because we have had thus and thus. Previous graces should not be allowed to cause present or future discontent. Enjoy the graces God has given you today and hold to them loosely, knowing that he may see fit to remove them for his purposes.

3. The consideration of the abundance of mercies that God bestows and we enjoy. “Afflictions considered in themselves, we think very great, but let them be considered with the sea of God’s mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison.” If you toss a pail full of water on the kitchen floor, it will look like a terrible mess; but if you pour that pail into the ocean, there is no sign of it. God’s mercies to us are as the ocean and our afflictions are as that bucket of water.

4. Consider the way of God towards all creatures. Everything in nature shows that there are times of plenty and times of want, times of much and times of little. Why should we expect that this will not be true of us?

5. The creatures suffer for us; why should not we be willing to suffer, to be serviceable to God? This may be Burroughs’ strangest line of reasoning. It seems to go like this: animals are delicious and, therefore, of great service to us. We are much closer to animals than we are to God. Therefore, we should not complain when God seems to treat us as we treat animals (which is to say, to accomplish our purposes ahead of theirs). “Every time the creature is upon your plates you may think, What! does God not make the creature suffer for my use, not only for my nourishment but for my delight? what am I, then, in respect of the infinite God?” While I understand his line of reasoning, I am not sure that I would have listed it in my top ten!

6. Consider that we have but a little time in this world. Just as a sailor who sees clear sky beyond an approaching storm will not much fear the storm, so we know that this storm of life will last but a little while and after it will be joys inexpressible.

7. Consider the condition that others have been in, who have been our betters. Many of our brothers and sisters who were much godlier than we are, and much more used of God, have had to suffer great things. But even more so, as our ultimate example, we look to Christ. “Above all, set Christ before us, who professes that the birds of the air had nests, and the foxes had holes, yet the Son of man had no place to hide his head, such a low condition was he in.”

8. Before your conversion, before God wrought upon your souls, you were contented with the world without grace, though you had no interest in God nor Christ; why cannot you now be contented with grace and spiritual things without the world? “If you yourselves were content with the world without grace, there is reason you should be content with grace without the world.” Now that is a sentence worth pondering.

9. When God has given you such contentments you have not given him the glory. And here is another sentence well worth pondering: “When God has let you have your heart’s desire, what have you done with your heart’s desire?” And if you have refused to give God praise for the great contentments he has given you, why now will you complain when they are taken away?

10. Consider all the experience that you have had of God’s doing good to you in the want of many comforts. The person who assesses past experiences of suffering will know that God makes affliction somehow beneficial. So many of our afflictions are actually great mercies. “Therefore, think thus to yourself: Lord, why may not this affliction work as great a good upon me as afflictions have done before?”

Burroughs wraps up with one more reflection that is much in the same vein. “I make no question but you find it so, that your worst voyages have proved your best. When you have met with the greatest crosses in a voyage, God has been pleased to turn them to a greater good to you in some other way.”

Next Week

Next week we’ll read the thirteenth (and final) chapter of this book.

Your Turn

The purpose of this program is to read these classics together. So if there is something you’d like to share about what you read, please feel free to do so. You can leave a comment or a link to your blog and we’ll make this a collaborative effort.

Today we come to our eleventh reading in Jeremiah Burroughs’ classic work The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. Around this time in “reading classics together” I tend to begin wondering how many people are still with me. But no matter, those of us who remain will press on!

Summary

After several chapters looking at the evils of a murmuring heart, Burroughs concludes his “negative” chapters by turning to “The Excuses of a Discontented Heart.” Here he imagines and then answers some of the excuses people will use to explain away their discontentment. To use his words, he “seeks to take away what every discontented heart has to say for himself.” I am guessing he wrote this book in an age before editors because I suspect an editor would have pared the list down a little from the thirteen he came up with. Nevertheless, here they are, my interpretation of the excuses we are likely to use to explain away our discontented hearts:

I. It is not discontentment but a sense of my condition. I am not discontent but rather just aware of the difficulty of the situation I’m in.

II. I am not troubled by my afflictions as much as I am troubled and discontented with my sin. Surely you can at least grant that I can be discontented with my sin!

III. I am not troubled by my afflictions as much as I am troubled by the fact that God has withdrawn his presence from me. How can I be quiet when the Lord withdraws himself from me?

IV. I can be content when I see that God is chastening me, but how can I be content when it is mere men who are being so unjust and unreasonable with me?

V. The affliction that has come upon me is one I had not expected. If I had been expecting it, I would have been better prepared and would be more content under it. I had armed myself against some afflictions, but not this one!

VI. If you only knew what I was going through, the greatness of this affliction, you would understand how I must be discontent through it.

VII. This affliction is far greater than what others have gone through. You just cannot cairly compare my afflictions (and therefore my reaction to it) to what others have faced.

VIII. I could remain content under any other affliction, but this particular one is just too much.

IX. This affliction keeps me from greater service to God and that troubles me, leading me to seem discontent. But it is my inability to serve that troubles me most.

X. I can bear the affliction but it is the uncertainly of it, the unsettledness of it, that leads me to be discontent.

XI. If I had never been in such a great condition in the past I could bear this. If God had always allowed me to be in a low condition, I could be content now. But since he blessed me so much in the past, it has made this affliction all the greater.

XII. I worked long and hard for a particular comfort and now God has taken it from me. It would be easier to deal with the affliction if only I hadn’t gone through such great pains to achieve it.

XIII. Though I know that my affliction is hard and though I feel some discontentment within, I thank God that I do not allow my discontentment to appear outwardly; I keep it all bottled up in my heart.

Let me provide just a few favorite quotes as they appear through the chapter:

“There is no sense of any affliction that will hinder the sense of God’s mercies.”

“You reason, I am disquiet because God is gone, when the truth is, God is gone because you are disquiet. Reason the other way, Oh, my disquiet has driven God away from me, and therefore if I would have the presence of God to come again to me, let my heart be quiet under the hand of God.”

“It is in this case of afflictions as in mercies: many times mercy comes unexpected… Set one against the other. I have many mercies that I never looked for, as well as afflictions that I never looked for; why should not the one rejoice me as much as the other disturbs me?”

And while there was not a single quote to pull out, I appreciated what Burroughs had to say about the suitableness of afflictions, that God may give us an affliction that is particularly difficult for us, one that is most contrary to us, because that is exactly what we need for purging out some kind of sin. Even afflictions are an expression of grace.

Next Week

Next week we’ll read chapter twelve. And after that we’ll have just one chapter remaining. Time flies.

Your Turn

The purpose of this program is to read these classics together. So if there is something you’d like to share about what you read, please feel free to do so. You can leave a comment or a link to your blog and we’ll make this a collaborative effort.