Owen on Sin and Temptation, Part 3

I've seen The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in my recent reading in Overcoming Sin and Temptation by John Owen, edited by Kapic and Taylor. (Consider Ennio Morricone's famous movie score as the soundtrack for this blog, because I'm sure it's stuck in your head now!)

The Good is the numerous profound passages I've encountered along the way, including the parts where Owen discusses the need to know our enemy on page 76 (so simple, but so true and often neglected!) and the necessity of being a believer in Christ in order to truly mortify sin (pages 79-86), which also should be obvious but is basically ignored by a lot of self-help and self-improvement teaching and programs today. But the most moving and useful contributions Owen makes, in my opinion, are when he provides prayers for us that flow from the depth of his reflection and meditation upon the Scriptures and his own sin. Here's a great example:

"What have I done? What love, what mercy, what blood, what grace have I despised and trampled on! Is this the return I make to the Father for his love, to the Son for his blood, to the Holy Ghost for his grace? Do I thus requite the Lord? Have I defiled the heart that Christ died to wash?, that the blessed Spirit has chosen to dwell in? And can I keep myself out of the dust? What can I say to the dear Lord Jesus? How shall I hold up my head with any boldness before him? Do I account communion with him of so little value, that for this vile lust's sake I have scarce left him any room in my heart?" (page 105)

This next one starts on the same dark note, which is important to hit, but it thankfully does go on to the "succor" of the gospel, as men like Owen used to call it:

"I am a poor, weak creature; unstable as water, I cannot excel. This corruption is too hard for me, and is at the very door of ruining my soul; and what to do I know not. My soul has become as parched ground, and an habitation of dragons. I have made promises and broken them; vows and engagements have been as a thing of naught. Many persuasions have I had that I had got the victory and should be delivered, but I am deceived; so that I plainly see, that without some eminent succor and assistance, I am lost, and shall be prevailed on to an utter relinquishment of God. But yet, though this be my state and condition, let the hands that hang down be lifted up, and the feeble knees be strengthened. Behold, the Lord Christ, that has all fullness of grace in his heart (John 1:16), all fullness of power in his hand (Matt. 28:18), he is able to slay all these his enemies. There is sufficient provision in him for my relief and assistance. He can take my drooping, dying soul and make me more than a conqueror (Rom. 8:37)."

Owen then quotes Isaiah 40:27-31, which is the famous "wings like eagles" passage, which I have read many times before. But in this context I saw it in a new way, with the emphasis on "they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." The point Isaiah is making is not primarily that we should wait or persevere in faith, though we certainly should do that. But in context he is emphasizing is that we must wait on the Lord because no other source of hope or help will do the trick.

The Bad in my recent reading of Owen are a few passages that I didn't like as much, either because they were sub-par or perhaps I failed to understand them correctly (which is certainly possible!). But I have to point out some negative things about Owen's writing, so I can be a good example of exercising discernment like the Bereans and not just nod dully to everything he says simply because he's a great theologian. On pages 112-118 he goes on and on about a particular issue that does not seem to warrant such an extensive discussion (how much more we can know of God than the OT saints did)...it seems that he was in the middle of some controversy with someone at the time, but it is not as applicable to most of us. Also, on pages 126-127 he seems to be advocating a rather mystical approach to knowing when we are forgiven...kinda like "you know that you know when you know." I found this confusing and not very helpful. And finally, the distinction he makes between temptation and "entering temptation" on pages 159 and following also seems unnecessary and confusing to me. Aren't the two wordings just different ways of saying the same thing? The Puritans had a tendency to over-parse the text, precisely because their meditations on it were so thorough and deep. So as with all of us, their strength can be their weakness sometimes. But like I said, I may not be smart enough to fully understand Owen's thinking in these passages...I'm very willing to admit that possibility. Maybe someone who reads this can enlighten me...

The Ugly in my readings in Owen has been my own sinfulness reflected in the mirror of his words...words like these: "There are traitors in our hearts, ready to take part, to close and side with every temptation, and to give up all to them...Do not flatter yourselves that you should hold out; there are secret lusts that lie lurking in your hearts, which perhaps now stir not, which, as soon as any temptation befalls you, will rise, tumultuate, cry, disquiet, seduce, and never give over until they are either killed or satisfied" (page 171). It's hard to look in a mirror for any length of time and not like what you see...you want to avert your gaze and not have to focus on the ugliness there. But though it is far from pleasant, I have realized it is a necessary means to humility and the recognition of my need for God's grace. To switch the metaphor to a biblical one, I have to realize how sick I am before I will go to the Great Physician for help, and the more sick I know I am, the more help I will seek from Him and the more I will rely on Him for that help.

Three Movie Recommendations

We took a family vacation/retreat this week, and we watched three movies that were great examples of good entertainment with thought-provoking spiritual themes...

Remains of the Day has been one of my favorite movies for years, but I hadn't watched it for a long time, and loved re-experiencing it. Most of the kids fell asleep during it, so it's not for those easily bored by "no action," but it is for those who like great acting, beautiful locations, and a powerful lesson about "casting your bread upon the waters," as Ecclesiastes 11 says. Stevens the butler is a profound metaphor for the opportunities we all have missed in our lives because of fear, selfishness, pride, and even unbiblical traditions.

Jeremiah is a made-for-TV Bible epic that I had seen good reviews for on Amazon, and picked up for $9.99 at my local Genuardis. It was great! I identified with Jeremiah in some ways in his ministry, but also was made grateful that I don't have to suffer quite as much as he did! It has almost as bleak of an ending as Remains of the Day, but hope breaks through in the form of the gospel (missing from the secular movie, of course), when Jeremiah prophesies that God would make a new covenant with His people...in Jesus Christ!!

The Blind Side is one of the few bright spots in Hollywood's recent history...most really good movies are outside of Hollywood in some way, but this one not only was made by a major studio but garnered Oscar nods as well... and it's true! And it's about Christians!! And it's about Christians who actually live like Christians (at least in their ministry of mercy, which is a big part of being a Christian...see Matthew 25:31-46)!!! The movie is a great illustration of what I've said for years...if every Christian family would help just one needy individual or family, the world would be changed in a significant way.

Owen on Sin and Temptation, Part 2

Overcoming Sin and Temptation contains three books by the 17th century puritan theologian John Owen, and the first is “On the Mortification of Sin in Believers.” Owen introduces the topic by talking about how important it is, and then he expounds on “the nature of mortification.” (Mortification is mentioned in Romans 8:13 and means to kill sin in our lives…before it kills us, as Owen likes to say). In this section on the nature of mortification, I found several passages very interesting and helpful.

First, Owen discusses a passage on “false repentance” I have never noticed before, even though I have taught for many years on the topic. It is found in Psalm 78:32-27: "In spite of all this they still sinned, and did not believe in His wonderful works. So He brought their days to an end in futility, and their years in sudden terror. When He killed them, then they sought Him, and returned and searched diligently for God; and they remembered that God was their rock, and the Most High God their Redeemer. But they deceived Him with their mouth, and lied to Him with their tongue. For their heart was not steadfast toward Him, nor were they faithful in His covenant."

Owen points out how the repentance of these people, like that of Esau’s mentioned in Hebrews 12:16-17, was energetic and emotional, but failed to bring about the forgiveness of God because it was motivated more by the consequences suffered than the suffering of the Savior. This reminded me how dependent we are upon God’s grace in our lives, not only for the forgiveness that only He can grant, but also for the true Spirit-caused repentance that only He can create in us. Truly we must rely on Him to create in us a clean heart (Psalm 51)!

On the next few pages Owen gives us some deep insights into the doctrine of total depravity, first explaining why even unbelievers may not seem to be “always doing evil” as Genesis 6:5 says, but they really are in the sight of God: “The reason why a natural man is not always perpetually in the pursuit of some one lust, night and day, is because he has so many to serve, every one crying to be satisfied; thence he is carried on with great variety, but still in general he lies toward the satisfaction of self” (page 73).

Then he explains how even those with more “respectable sins” are still totally depraved and in need of grace and forgiveness: “Some men may go in their own thoughts and in the eyes of the world for mortified men, who yet have in them no less predominancy of lust than those who cry out with astonishment upon the account of its perplexing tumultuatings, yea, than those who have by the power of it been hurried into scandalous sins; only their lusts are in and about things which raise not such a tumult in the soul, about which they are exercised with a calmer frame of spirit, the very fabric of nature being not so nearly concerned in them as in some other” (page 75). In other words, just because someone is not visibly “torn apart” by their sin doesn’t mean they have less; the more subtle and unnoticeable sins can be worse because they adhere harder to the soul while leaving the impression of less need for change. I’ve noticed this in my own life, that I’ve often been worse off when I’m having “victory” over the “big sins” of action while the hidden ones of the heart are still festering there, perhaps unknown to anyone else. May God grant me the grace to mortify the sins of the heart as well as those of the body!

Some light summer reading...Not!

I just began my summer reading project, and it's a challenge...400 pages called Overcoming Sin and Temptation, by the Puritan theologian John Owen. A few friends are joining me, and we'll be meeting on Saturday morning August 21 to discuss the experience and pray about what we've learned. If anyone else would like to join us, please let me know... (you can skip the introduction like I did and go straight to Owen's own words--that will cut out almost 40 pages right off!).

I'm only a little way in and I think I've come upon the theme statement of the work, which I think is also the most famous quote from it. It goes like this: "Be killing sin or it will be killing you." In explanation Owen adds, "Your being dead with Christ virtually, your being quickened with Him, will not excuse you from this work." And later he says, "Not to be daily mortifying sin is to sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who has furnished us with a principle of doing it." This is all commentary on Romans 8:13, which says, "If you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live."

In those quotes you can see the balance that Owen strikes between the free grace of God in justification and dependence on the Spirit's work on the one hand, and personal self-denial and discipline on the other. He seems to have a very wise and complete picture of the process of sanctification, which is refreshing when compared to the extremes we modern believers can sometimes fall into, in which we over-emphasize grace at the expense of the law, or vice versa.

I am looking forward to soaking in this wonderful biblical wisdom during the next two months!

Ethical Eschatology

Studying and understanding what the Bible says about the future (eschatology) is very important, and is necessary to live a successful Christian life. Studying and understanding what the Bible says about the future (eschatology) is not that important, and can even be a fruitless waste of time for a Christian. Can those statements both be true? I think so, depending on how you look at it.

Every passage in the Bible containing future prophecy is given for an ethical or "pastoral" purpose. None of them are intended as a mere "crystal ball" to satisfy our curiosity about what will happen, give us intellectual goosebumps, or to fill in our end-times charts. When the timing or sequence of events is even mentioned, which is rare, it is never the main point of the passage and is merely implied (or must be inferred). We get our theological systems regarding the order of future events (pre-, post-, etc.) mostly by bringing separate passages together or plugging them into a pre-existing overall scheme. A classic example of this would be the dispensationalist interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17 that sees the "rapture" there as a removal of the New Testament church because God must return to the nation of Israel to complete the 70 weeks mentioned in Daniel 9:24.

But 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17 is also a perfect example of ethical eschatology (a term I've stolen from my favorite seminary professor, Dr. George Zemek). The larger passage of which it is a part begins, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope" (v. 13). And after talking about the rapture Paul adds, "Therefore comfort one another with these words" (v. 18). He has no concern whatsoever in this passage about whether this event is before, during, or after "the tribulation," or even if there will be such a time of trial in the future. He merely wants us to know that we will see our loved ones again, and take encouragement from that blessed truth.

(By the way, it seems to me that if we want to infer the timing of this "rapture," it would be better to look at the closer context of 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10--same author, same audience--where Paul refers to the "gathering together," which is presumably this same event, and uses temporal participles to say it will happen at the same time that God judges the wicked.)

So I would say that the aspects of future prophecy which have a direct application to the way we live our lives are very important, and also happen to be the ones that are emphasized in Scripture. But the details of timing and sequence are far less important, because most of the views we might have on those issues are not going to interfere with the ethical and pastoral purposes of future prophecy. I say "most," however, because I do think there are a few extremes that we need to avoid in our eschatology, precisely because they would hinder us from fulfilling the practical purposes of biblical prophecy.

One extreme we should avoid is to assume that Jesus will not be coming back for a long time. This was one of the mistakes the bad steward made in Luke 12:45 ("My master will be a long time in coming") and it is a mistake made by many postmillennialists, who say that there must be a golden age prior to the return of Christ. I believe that there may be such a golden age, but I don't believe there must be one before the Second Coming. The biggest problem with this view, besides reading more into certain texts than is actually in them, is that we are told over and over again in the Scriptures to be ready at all times (e.g. Luke 12:35-40, then verse 45 as mentioned) and the apostle Paul clearly believed that Christ might return in his lifetime (e.g. 2 Cor. 5:2-4, and his language in 1 Thess. 4 mentioned above). The belief that Christ could return at any time bears much pastoral and ethical fruit in our lives, but what exactly he will do when he returns and whether he may do other things after that is not so important or impactful.

We should also avoid the other extreme of thinking that Jesus will necessarily return soon; he may tarry hundreds or thousands of years, and we need to know that so we will plan for the future and pass down God's covenant promises to the generations who succeed us. I realize that many Christians are constantly seeing the "signs of the times" in current events, but people have been doing that ever since the first century (see the introduction to Gary DeMar's book Last Days Madness) and they have all been wrong up till now. Why should we think we are different, or have greater insight into prophecy than they did? I personally do not see any clear indication in Scripture that Christ will return in our generation, and I think that is consistent with the spirit of his teaching that "no one knows the hour of my return." Or the day, or the year, or the decade, or the century...that's the idea, I think.

This is a good time to comment on what I could call the "intentional obscurity" of much biblical prophecy. The Old Testament saints had all kinds of prophecies concerning the first coming of the Messiah, but few if any actually understood what was going to happen in any detail. I think it will be the same for us in anticipation the second coming...we'll understand it all a lot better after it happens. In the meantime it is foolish and counter-productive to gospel ministry to make our eschatological views so important that we are suspicious and separatistic toward one another, or spend too much of our precious time arguing about them.

So my "ethical eschatology," for what it's worth, is that we should always be ready because Jesus could come back in our lifetime, and we should always be planning and preparing for the future because he may wait a long time before He returns. And things could turn around for the good in our culture and in the world at large...that has happened before in the ebbs and flows of history, and it could happen again. I don't believe everything must get worse and worse until Jesus returns--that's another extreme that can rob us of the hope and energy we need for gospel ministry.

Beyond those basic, life-changing truths, I'm a classic pan-millennialist...I believe it will all pan out in the end! We'll understand prophecy completely when it happens. Until then, let's discuss it graciously and with toleration for different viewpoints, and not let it become too important, or come between us, or get in the way of our Great Commission calling.

Examine Everything Carefully

The title of this entry comes directly from 1 Thessalonians 5:21, one of the great scriptural calls to discernment, and a theme verse for a conference I had the privilege of speaking at last week. The bi-annual St. Louis Conference on Biblical Discernment was sponsored by a ministry called Personal Freedom Outreach, led by Kurt Goedelman, and featured some wonderful speakers like Paul Maier, Gary Gilley, Robert Lightner, and Ron Rhodes.

My seminar topics were "Decision Making Questions: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," "The Case Against Judging," and "The Es of Entertainment." My favorite talks by other speakers were "Jesus: What More Do We Know?" by Paul Maier, about the extra-biblical evidence for the gospel accounts, and "The Question of Homosexuality" by Ron Rhodes. You can get copies of any of these by visiting www.pfo.org. I also spoke at the host church on Sunday morning on the topic of "Relating to Church Leadership" (a.k.a. "How to Make Your Pastor Happy"), and you could listen to that online at www.gracebaptistchurch.info.

On Sunday after church Kurt and his wife Angela graciously took my son Calvin and I to visit the St. Louis Arch, which occurred to me is a giant illustration of the need for biblical discernment. I was amazed at the skill that was needed in the planning and construction of this amazing monument, one of the "seven wonders of the modern world." If a construction in the physical world requires such careful thought and exactness, how much more do we need to be careful and exact in building the church of God and handling his eternal Word!

The Mystery of Mystery Novels

The mystery of mystery novels is how to find a good one! I love Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe stories from the 1940s (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, etc.), but I can only re-read them every couple years when I've forgotten the plots, and so in between I've been searching far and wide for other good ones (mostly in libraries and used book stores). As in most categories of art and entertainment, I've only found about one in a hundred that I like. I usually stop reading them shortly after I start, because they just don't draw me in enough, they're not my kind of thing, or they have too much offensive material. But once in a while I find a "keeper," so I thought I could save you some time searching yourself by telling you about a few that I liked...

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Childs is his most recent Jack Reacher novel (there's about ten or so). I've read several others in the series, and they have pulled me in, but I was not pleased with the total product, partially because of uneven quality but also because Jack Reacher is so often amoral and immoral. Gone Tomorrow is consistently good and mostly unoffensive, except for the one brief but totally unnecessary episode of fornication toward the end. Fortunately it is not described graphically...but why do authors have to throw sex into every story?! Do they think that a relationship can't be good or complete without it? Anyway, the story is very interesting, the hero has some good qualities, and the cover is soooo cool-looking! (Yes, the way a book looks is important to me, and yes, I know I'm weird that way.)

The Good Guy by Dean Koontz was a good read. I've tried several other books by Koontz and have only finished one (The Husband, which was underwhelming, especially at the end). But I thought The Good Guy kicked some derriere...probably largely because of my Christian sensibilities... the main character is actually a good guy, for goodness sake, and that was refreshing in this age of the anti-hero. I have to admit the end was a bit anticlimactic, but at least it was satisfying, and the ride to there was great. Check this one out.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane kept me turning page after page to find out what in the world was going on...it was certainly successful by that standard. But it also raised some interesting issues about mental health, psychiatry, and even psychopharmocology that I enjoy mulling over. I tried a couple of his older private eye novels (A Drink Before the War, Prayers for Rain) but can't recommend them because the protagonists are so depraved and the ultimate "lessons" are so nihilistic or hedonistic. But though Shutter Island definitely shared some of the nihilism, it is more well directed at the depravity of man and his hopeless attempts to cure "mental" problems without God.