Transforming Grace

I’m a preacher and teacher of the bible. Yet, even with the bible open in front of me, I’ve been guilty until recently of the following accusation made by Charles Spurgeon. This excerpt comes from Michael Horton’s article The Law and the Gospel at the White Horse Inn:

As he watched the Baptist Church in England give way to moralism in the so-called “Down-grade Controversy,” Charles Spurgeon declared, “There is no point on which men make greater mistakes than on the relation which exists between the law and the gospel. Some men put the law instead of the gospel; others put gospel instead of the law. A certain class maintains that the law and the gospel are mixed…These men understand not the truth and are false teachers.”

In our day, these categories are once again confused in even the most conservative churches…much of evangelical preaching today softens the Law and confuses the Gospel with exhortations…obedience must not be confused with the Gospel. Our best obedience is corrupted, so how could that be good news? The Gospel is that Christ was crucified for our sins and was raised for our justification. The Gospel produces new life, new experiences, and a new obedience, but too often we confuse the fruit or effects with the Gospel itself.

I have, for a few years, mixed law and gospel in my own mind (this is neonomianism or Galatianism) and so I have been a false teacher as well as a joyless Christian. Grace is not grace where it is mixed with works. In future posts I aim to show how the two are distinct.

This is the second part of Thomas Watson’s section on mourning for sin from his exposition of “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt 5:4). The first part is here. This extract is heavily edited. I’ve mostly just left the header of each section except where I found his explanation was particularly useful.

What is the right gospel-mourning? That mourning which will entitle a man to blessedness has these qualifications:

A. It is spontaneous and free. It must come as water out of a spring, not as fire out of a flint.

B. Gospel-mourning is spiritual; that is, when we mourn for sin more than suffering. Thus the penitent prodigal, ‘I have sinned against heaven, and before thee’ (Luke 15: 18,21). He does not say, ‘I am almost starved among the husks’, but ‘I have offended my father’. In particular, our mourning for sin, if it be spiritual, must be under this threefold notion:

1. We must mourn for sin as it is an act of hostility and enmity. Sin not only makes us unlike God, but contrary to God: ‘They have walked contrary unto me’ (Leviticus 26: 40).

2. We must mourn for sin as it is a piece of the highest ingratitude. It is a kicking against the breasts of mercy. God sends his Son to redeem us, his Spirit to comfort us. We sin against the blood of Christ, the grace of the Spirit and shall we not mourn?

3. We must mourn for sin as it is a privation; it keeps good things from us; it hinders our communion with God.

1. Gospel-mourning sends the soul to God.
2. Gospel-mourning is for sin in particular. The deceitful man is occupied with generalities. It is with a true penitent as it is with a wounded man. He comes to the surgeon and shows him all his wounds. Here I was cut with the sword; here I was shot with a bullet. So a true penitent bewails all his particular sins.
3. Gospel tears must drop from the eye of faith.
4. Gospel-mourning is joined with self-loathing. The sinner admires himself. The penitent loathes himself. ‘Ye shall loath yourselves in your own sight for all your evils’ (Ezekiel 20: 43). A true penitent is troubled not only for the shameful consequence of sin, but for the loathsome nature of sin.
5. Gospel-mourning must be purifying. Our tears must make us more holy. We must so weep for sin, as to weep out sin. Our tears must drown our sins.
6. Gospel-mourning must be joined with hatred of sin. ‘What indignation!’ (2 Corinthians 7:11). We must not only abstain from sin, but abhor sin. The dove hates the least feather of the hawk. A true mourner hates the least motion to sin. A true mourner is a sin-hater.
7. Gospel-mourning in some cases is joined with restitution.
8. Gospel-mourning must be a speedy mourning. The true mourner makes haste to meet an angry God, as Jacob did his brother; and the present he sends before is the sacrifice of tears.
9. Gospel-mourning for sin is constant. There are some who at a sermon will shed a few tears, but this land-flood is soon dried up. The hypocrite’s sorrow is like a vein opened and presently stopped.

I have a tendency to find a level of sin that I am content to live with. I know that I am sinner and that this will always be the case. So, I excuse myself from sin above this self-determined level, believing that I am incapable of greater godliness. I settle into a routine where as long as I am not upsetting people and am able to function without injuring myself, I’ll live with that level of sin. But notion B and marks 4-6 blow my attitude toward comfortable sinning right out of the water.

I need to come clean. “Transforming Grace” is not an original title. This might be the only blog of that name but I borrowed the title from Jerry Bridges book Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love. I was given the book by friends in Malaysia around ten years ago and have only read it recently. I wish I’d read it then! It would have, perhaps, saved me a number of years struggling with unrecognised neonomianism (where acceptance by God is based on a mixture of grace and works).

In his opening chapter The Performance Treadmill Bridges explains what happens to Christians who are practical neonomians:

All true Christians readily agree that justification is by grace through faith in Christ. And if we stop to think about it, we agree that glorification is also solely by God’s grace. Jesus purchased for us not only forgiveness of sins (justification) but also eternal life (glorification). But sanctification-the entire Christian experience between justification and glorification- is another story. At best, Christian life is viewed as a mixture of personal performance and God’s grace. It is not that we have consciously sorted it all out in our minds and have concluded that our relationship with God, for example, is based on 50 percent performance and 50 percent grace. Rather it is a subconscious assumption arising from our own innate legalism-reinforced and fueled by the Christian culture we live in…The principal thesis of this book, however, and the truth I hope to demonstrate is that…the entire Christian life from start to completion is lived on the basis of God’s grace to us through Christ.

That introductory paragraph will also determine much of the content of this blog. I aim to post quotations which do two things:

1. Transform and increase my grasp and knowledge of God’s grace in Christ

2. Transform me as a result

This is the quotation from Thomas Watson’s exposition of the beatitudes which gave me the desire to start a blog. I have resisted blogging until now believing it to be a waste of time, another modern intrusion on that scarce resource. What has changed my mind? I have decided that if I can, by the use of a blog, regularly remind myself of what I have read which points to all the tricks of my sinful heart, such as my inability to grasp the extent of the grace of God in Christ or my lack of true heartfelt mourning for sin then a blog must be a good thing. I will return to this post again and again…

What is not the right gospel-mourning for sin? There is a fivefold mourning which is false and spurious.

A despairing kind of mourning. Such was Judas’ mourning. He saw his sin, he was sorry, he made confession, he justifies Christ, he makes restitution (Matthew 27). Judas, who is in hell, did more than many nowadays. He confessed his sin. He did not plead necessity or good intentions, but he makes an open acknowledgement of his sin. ‘I have sinned’. Judas made restitution. His conscience told him he came wickedly by the money. It was ‘the price of blood’, and he ‘brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests’ (Matthew 27: 3). But how many are there who invade the rights and possessions of others, but not a word of restitution! Judas was more honest than they are. Well, wherein was Judas’ sorrow blameworthy? It was a mourning joined with despair. He thought his wound broader than the plaster. He drowned himself in tears. His was not repentance unto life (Acts 11: 18), but rather unto death.

An hypocritical mourning. The heart is very deceitful. It can betray as well by a tear as by a kiss. Saul looks like a mourner, and as he was sometimes ‘among the prophets’ (1 Samuel 10: 12) So he seemed to be among the penitents. ‘And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord’ (1 Samuel 15: 24). Saul played the hypocrite in his mourning, for he did not take shame to him self, but he did rather take honour to himself: ‘honour me before the elders of my people’ (verse 30). He pared and minced his sin that it might appear lesser, he laid his sin upon the people, ‘because I feared the people’ (verse 24). They would have me fly upon the spoil, and I dare do no other. A true mourner labours to draw out sin in its bloody colours, and accent it with all its killing aggravations, that he may be deeply humbled before the Lord. ‘Our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens’ (Ezra 9: 6). The true penitent labours to make the worst of his sin. Saul labours to make the best of sin; like a patient that makes the best of his disease, lest the physician should prescribe him too sharp physic. How easy is it for a man to put a cheat upon his own soul, and by hypocrisy to sweep himself into hell!

A forced mourning. When tears are pumped out by God’s judgements, these are like the tears of a man that has the stone, or that lies upon the rack. Such was Cain’s mourning. ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear’ (Genesis 4: 13). His punishment troubled him more than his sin; to mourn only for fear of hell is like a thief that weeps for the penalty rather than the offence. The tears of the wicked are forced by the fire of affliction.

An extrinsic mourning; when sorrow lies only on the outside. ‘They disfigure their faces’ (Matthew 6: 16). The eye is tender, but the heart is hard. Such was Ahab’s mourning. ‘He rent his clothes and put sackcloth on his flesh, and went softly’ (1 Kings 21: 27). His clothes were rent, but his heart was not rent. He had sackcloth but no sorrow. He hung down his head like a bulrush, but his heart was like an adamant. There are many who may be compared to weeping marbles, they are both watery and flinty.

A vain fruitless mourning. Some will shed a few tears, but are as bad as ever. They will cozen and be unclean. Such a kind of mourning there is in hell. The damned weep but they blaspheme.