By Neil Earle
“Will God forgive me?”
“Am I going to hell for what I have done?”
“Have I committed the unpardonable sin?”
It’s not very often a pastor gets to hear these questions put to him quite so directly but it does happen. Indeed it does. Especially is this true in cases of people victimized by abuse so strong that they end up carrying a confusing emotional load. Tragically, they often think God is mad at them and since they can’t forgive their perpetrator as quickly as hasty counselors advise them, they genuinely do feel they’re on the road to perdition.
What a trap!
But, of course, there is a way out. The actual process of how and why we are able to be forgiven has been commented upon by many spiritual teachers across the centuries. Let’s meet one of them today. His name is John Owen (1616-1683), an English Congregationalist and a Puritan mainstay who rose to become Chaplin to the English parliament in the 1650s. He ended his ministerial career banned from high office by the restored Anglican Church but his writings are read to this day. Owen saw all 13 of his children die. So here is a man who had every reason to wonder “Is God mad at me?”
Owen wrote more than 300 pages on just one Psalm – Psalm 130, and what a great text it is. “Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord.” Now our depths could be anything from depression to sickness, from financial burdens to divorce. All Christians will someday find themselves entangled in the depths, as David wrote elsewhere, sinking in the deep marshy mire (Psalm 69:2). In Jonah’s case those depths became quite literal. Psalm 130 moves on to have the Psalmist utter this deeply fearful cry: “If you kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?”
Ever feel that way?
Of course you have if you are honest. And you may end up there again before this Christian walk is over. But the Psalmist had a relationship with God. He knew that God was, to be somewhat common about it, “in the forgiveness business.” He went on to answer his own question in Psalm 130:4, “But…there is forgiveness with you therefore you are feared.”
Forgiveness. How does it work? Let’s let Owen take over. Here he is commenting on Jeremiah 32:40, “I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me.” Now “fear of God” in Old Testament parlance was not a personal dread or quivering dismay in the face of God. It was more often a deep-seated respect and awe for God’s ability to intervene forcefully, dramatically, and sometimes miraculously. Owen writes: “This provision [not departing from God] is absolute…it shall not by any sin be disannulled. All that is in us is to be used as a means for the accomplishment of this purpose [see Romans 8:28].
What a wonderful insight. “All that is in us is to be used as a means for keeping us close to God,” says Owen. One of our beloved hymns has a line:
“Let thy Goodness, like a fetter/Bind my wandering heart to Thee.” Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. But verse 10 in the King James Version says God rewards us according to the fruit of our doings,” i.e. based on what our sins and wrong attitudes produce in us. The question here is, Do our sins, once we are apprised of them and admit them, do they short circuit our relationship with God? No, says Owen. God will use even those setbacks in the construction of that New Man inside us. As one expositor wrote, “We Christians are being built down and torn up at the same time.” To which I can say, It certainly seems like that at times.
Well, Owen is really on to something important. His point of God bringing something good from the bad is well illustrated by the Apostle Peter’s experience in Luke 22:54-62. You’ll remember the story. Big bold brash Simon Peter had bragged to Jesus that he was the most loyal of all the disciples. Jesus told him that Satan could sift him like wheat. Peter didn’t believe the warning. But that awful night when Jesus was being interrogated in the high priest’s courtyard, Peter three times denied he even knew Jesus. Mark 14:71 says Peter even cursed and swore to emphasize his distance from Jesus. Then Jesus looked at him with that knowing, searching look and Peter went out, it says, and wept bitterly (Luke 22:62).
The old proud cocky arrogant Simon began to die from that moment. The new Peter was in the process of being rebuilt and refurbished deep inside through the painful process of real repentance. Peter began to experience what Paul’s Corinthian church went through when they realized they had been awfully “out of line.” Paul praised those repentant parishioners for seven acts of zeal. He praised them for their earnestness, their eagerness to clear themselves, their anger at their past behavior, their fear, their longing to make things right, their concern for having maybe offended Paul and being way out of line, their readiness to see right relationship restored (2 Corinthians 7:11).
Thus, even sin, in God’s good grace and time, can lead to righteousness. For God makes everything beautiful in its time.
John Owen knew this: “And herein lies the latitude of the New Covenant; This is the arena of free, voluntary obedience under the administration of Gospel Grace. There are extremes it is not concerned with. To be wholly perfect, to be free from every sin, all failings, all infirmities is not provided under this covenant. It is a covenant of Mercy and Pardon which supposes a continuance of Sin.
“To fail utterly and finally from God is provided against.”
Do you grasp what Owen is saying?
Here is this legendary minister saying Christians will sin. Freedom from sin is not possible even under the Covenant of Grace. 1 John 1:8 says the same thing. “If we say we have NO sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity.” Wow! The first time I read that verse with understanding I was so encouraged. I immediately thought, what if the Bible had said, “If we say we HAVE sinned, there is no truth in us.” How awful would that be! But God says just the obvious. How comforting! How hopeful! How wonderful! This is Gospel Grace with a capital “G.”
Do I hear an “Amen?”
Owen continues: “Between these two extremes of absolute perfection and total apostasy lies the large field of the believer’s obedience, and walking with God. Many a sweet heavenly passage there is, and many a dangerous depth in this field.
“Some walk near to one side, some to the other; yea the same person may sometimes press hard after perfection, sometimes wander to the very border of destruction. Now between these two lie many a soul-plunging sin, and into which, for want of giving all diligence, believers often fall…”
“For want of giving all diligence” is Owen’s way of saying, We don’t try hard enough sometimes. Our salvation is assured in heaven, yes, but we fall down here on earth many many times. Those setbacks can be so discouraging that they may tempt us to question God’s grace and his power in us. But the Puritans had an answer for this predicament we fall into: We aren’t using the tools God has given us. We aren’t using what some call “the Means of Grace.” James Packer, the great Christian author and theologian, was a fan of John Owen. He explained the Means of Grace as those Christian disciplines the church has always and wisely set forth. Packer wrote, with James 4:7 in view: “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Turn to him and trust him as best you can, and pray for grace to turn and trust more thoroughly, use the means of grace expectantly [the Communion, wise counsel, church fellowship]…watch, pray, read and hear God’s word, worship and commune with God’s people, and so continue till you know beyond doubt that you are indeed a changed being, a penitent believer, and the new heart which you desired has been put into you (John Owen’s Death of Death, page 15).
Puritans knew that real Christianity was a way of life not a once a week social outing. Owen’s explanation of the difference between living in sin and a Christian’s oft stumbling into sin is almost the capstone of this section. He begins by quoting Paul’s “sin list” in 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10 and then proceeds to draw the minutest but most inspiring conclusion from even this passage. It’s so important to know this, and so wonderful. Here it is:
“’Be not deceived,’ said the apostle, ’neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor covetous, nor drunkards shall inherit the Kingdom of God.’ Certain it is that believers may fall into some of the sins here mentioned…[but] the apostle says, not those who have committed any of these sins, but such sinners, shall not inherit the Kingdom of God, that is, those who LIVE IN THESE or any like them emphasis added)…
“Depths of sin entanglements will excite a gracious soul to intense and earnest supplications unto God. ‘Lord, hear. Lord, forgive’ (Daniel 9:19).“
This beautifully captures and explains a word we don’t hear too much today: “penitence.” The sincerely penitent believer need not worry. His sin can be forgiven if he “takes it to the Lord in prayer.” The heavy lifting has been done on God’s side of the equation, that is, the forgiveness side.
Owen concludes realistically and powerfully: “Indwelling sin, though weakened, retains all it properties. [That’s right – we’ll never achieve perfection in this life, remember – far far from it.] ”[But] in the cross, says Owen, “to see eternal love springing forth triumphantly from his blood, flourishing into pardon, grace, mercy and forgiveness – this the heart of a sinner can be enlarged to only by the Spirit of God.”
This is such a wonderful passage. And so amazingly up to date. All true Christians see their sin. That much is true and must be acknowledged and our confessing in fact helps define us as Christians (that’s 1 John 1:8-9 again). But Christians also see something else. On the screen of their inmost imagination where God’s Spirit dwells they have projected…the cross. The cross of Christ. For repentant believers the reminder of the cross has the power to neutralize sin. This is true because the cross signifies even with its most grisly implications the lengths to which God and Christ were willing to go to secure our forgiveness. The cross of Christ sort of “squares the circle” in a way between Law and Grace, Sin and Righteousness, Guilt and Forgiveness.
So…what a great God we serve. Thank God for Christian teachers such as John Owen who not only knew how all this worked, but was able to explain it in terms we can understand. Let’s be thankful for those Means of Grace. Let’s use them more often.