January 25, 2015 · 5:27 pm

Week 4 of 50 in the Institutes: Idolatry Is the Epitome of Weakness

If asked to describe, as briefly as possible, the marks of a strong Christian, what comes to mind?  Would it be faith?  Love?  Assurance of salvation?

We do well to consider the prayer what Paul prayed for the Ephesians, as found in Eph. 4:14-19, when defining spiritual strength, because that text paints a picture of spiritual strength that catches the casual reader off guard, and at the same time it reveals how diametrically opposed spiritual strength is to every form of idolatry.  So keep reading and I will show how it ties in with the origin of idolatry which Calvin exposes in 1.11.8 of the Institutes.

Let’s consider briefly the context of Ephesians 4:14f.  Paul wrote this epistle to the church at Ephesus during his first Roman imprisonment, so it would seem natural for the believers there, the recipients of his letter, to be concerned, not only about Paul, but about themselves.  After all, if the apostle Paul himself wound up in prison for believing and preaching the gospel, what is to prevent any disciple of his from experiencing a similar fate?  Paul seems to have anticipated this concern, since he added in 4:13 “So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.” (ESV) Thereafter Paul shares his prayer for them:

14 Because of this I bow my knees to the Father, 15 by whom every family is named, in heaven and on earth, 16 that he would grant you, according to the wealth of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, 17 so that Christ would settle down in your hearts through faith, having been rooted and grounded in love, 18 in order that you may be strong enough to grasp with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and so to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, in order that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  (my translation)

I have translated the first part of verse 17 “so that Christ would settle down in your hearts” which more accurately reflects the meaning of the verb in its context here, and is key to understanding the picture of spiritual strength which I think Paul has in mind here.  Paul is not praying that the Ephesians would come to faith in Christ in 3:17.  The larger context prohibits such an interpretation.  We see this in the opening of the letter which began with praise to God for the salvation they have experienced (1:3-14).  He also described the Ephesians as those who were formerly dead in trespasses and sins (2:1-3), but who now have been made alive, raised with Christ, and seated with Him in the heavenly places (2:4-6), all because of God’s almighty work of salvation in their lives.  So it is unthinkable that he is praying for their conversion in 3:17.

Rather, Paul is praying that the Ephesians will come to know Christ in such a way that, despite whatever circumstances in which they may find themselves, they will be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ with the result that nothing can ever call into question His love for them.  This is the essence of what it means to be spiritually strong, and is so far removed from what I’m going to call the weak, immature, daffodil believer.  Like a child plucking petals from a daffodil, when bad things happen, the daffodil believer concludes God doesn’t love him.  When good things happen, he concludes God loves him.  So he goes through life never settled in the love of God, like so:  “He loves me . . . He loves me not . . . He loves me . . . He loves me not . . . Oh, I don’t know whether He loves me or He loves me not!”  So how is it possible to move beyond this doubtful state?  How does a person become assured of God’s love?  The answer isn’t found in circumstances.  Rather, we must look to one place only: the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  There is the place we know the love of God: But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom. 5:8, ESV)

But the next two words in the passage are very important: so that Christ would settle down in your hearts through faith. The way a person comes to know the love of Christ is by faith.  This is what it means to be spiritually strong.  But it takes a work of the Spirit in our heart, as Paul puts it, to be strong enough to grasp with all the saints what is truly inexhaustible and unknowable: the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.

And now we come to consider the origin of idolatry which Calvin identified in 1.11.8, and I hope we can perceive it as the epitome of spiritual weakness, because it must operate by sight instead of the currency of true spiritual strength, which is faith:

“That idolatry has its origin in the idea which men have, that God is not present with them unless his presence is carnally exhibited, appears from the example of the Israelites: ‘Up,’ said they, ‘make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wet not what is become of him’ (Exod. 22:1). They knew, indeed, that there was a God whose mighty power they had experienced in so many miracles, but they had no confidence of his being near to them, if they did not with their eyes behold a corporeal symbol of his presence, as an attestation to his actual government. They desired, therefore, to be assured by the image which went before them, that they were journeying under Divine guidance. And daily experience shows, that the flesh is always restless until it has obtained some figment like itself, with which it may vainly solace itself as a representation of God. In consequence of this blind passion men have, almost in all ages since the world began, set up signs on which they imagined that God was visibly depicted to their eyes.  (1.11.8)

And while Calvin was directing his comments against the use of images found in the worship of the Roman Catholic Church, we must not fail to recognize the idolatry that is alive and well throughout secular society today in the 21st century.  Man’s heart is a perpetual idol factory, as Calvin also noted in 1.11.8, and the output is so immense that I cannot chronicle it here.  But any image used in the worship of what the Puritans called the carnal trinity, known as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is an idol, whereby significance, status, prestige, security, sensuality, power or acquisition is pursued.  In this generation they are manifest as any number of fortune 500 company trademarks or those of their products, team logos (be it NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, etc.), or the obscene images spewed out by peddlers of the multibillion dollar porn industry.  Yes, idolatry thrives in our midst today such that we fool ourselves if we attempt to relegate it to the past or to less developed cultures.

So we must pray fervently and frequently, as Paul did: Your face, full of grace and truth, Lord, do I seek.

Links to Reformation 21 blogs through the Institutes (all by Phil Ryken for this week):

Jan. 26:  1.9.3 – 1.11.1

Jan. 27:  1.11.2 – 1.11.6

Jan. 28:  1.11.7 – 1.11.12 

Jan. 29:  1.11.13 – 1.12.2 

Jan. 30:  1.12.3 – 1.13.3 

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January 18, 2015 · 4:42 pm

Week 3 of 50 in the Institutes: Your face, LORD, do I seek (in this labyrinth)

In John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life, Herman J. Selderhuis notes how Calvin took the term labyrinth from the humanistic tradition where it was used in a pejorative way against scholasticism, and re-cast it to refer to a type of thinking that kept a person from a true knowledge of God and self.  In the reading assignment for January 20th, we discover Calvin referring to God’s countenance as an inextricable labyrinth such that a person cannot keep to the path without the thread of God’s word (1.6.3, emphasis added, Beveridge translation):

It being thus manifest that God, foreseeing the inefficiency of his image imprinted on the fair form of the universe, has given the assistance of his Word to all whom he has ever been pleased to instruct effectually, we, too, must pursue this straight path, if we aspire in earnest to a genuine contemplation of God – we must go, I say, to the Word, where the character of God, drawn from his works is described accurately and to the life; these works being estimated, not by our depraved judgement, but by the standard of eternal truth. If, as I lately said, we turn aside from it, how great soever the speed with which we move, we shall never reach the goal, because we are off the course. We should consider that the brightness of the Divine countenance, which even an apostle declares to be inaccessible (1Ti. 6:16), is a kind of labyrinth – a labyrinth to us inextricable, if the Word do not serve us as a thread to guide our path; and that it is better to limp in the way, than run with the greatest swiftness out of it. Hence the Psalmist, after repeatedly declaring (Psa. 93:1-5, Psa. 96:1-13, Psa. 97:1-12, Psa. 99:1-9, &c.) that superstition should be banished from the world in order that pure religion may flourish, introduces God as reigning; meaning by the term, not the power which he possesses and which he exerts in the government of universal nature, but the doctrine by which he maintains his due supremacy: because error never can be eradicated from the heart of man until the true knowledge of God has been implanted in it.

One of the main reasons I love to read the Puritans and Reformers is because of the light they shine on the Scriptures and the human heart (knowledge of God and of self), and thus become a means of beholding His face in a mirror more clearly, albeit dimly, in comparison to what is to come (1 Cor. 13:12; Psa. 27:8).  And so on we go, by the grace of God!

Links to Reformation 21 blogs through the Institutes for upcoming daily readings:

Jan. 19:  1.5.12 — 1.6.1

Jan. 20:  1.6.2. – 1.7.2

Jan. 21:  1.7.3 – 1.8.1

Jan. 22:  1.8.2 – 1.8.9

Jan. 23:  1.8.10 – 1.9.2

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January 17, 2015 · 4:50 pm

Just Being a “Five Pointer” Doesn’t Mean You Are a Calvinist

A recent blog by Mark Jones cited an article by Dr. Richard A. Muller, How Many Points? which I heartily recommend.

Dr. Muller rightly notes that many today who tout themselves as “Calvinists” actually espouse very little of Calvin’s theology, and, as he put it, would have gotten themselves tossed out of Geneva if they arrived there at any time during the late sixteenth or the seventeenth century.  Too many, I suspect, are unwittingly like the pastor Dr. Muller encountered: simply American evangelicals, without much awareness of, or interest in, the Reformed confessional standards.

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January 11, 2015 · 4:14 pm

Week 2 of 50 in the Institutes: Usurpers Anonymous

The concept in the film The Bourne Identity comes to mind when considering parts of the first three chapters of the Institutes.  Like Jason Bourne, all humanity has a natural instinct or awareness of an identity that goes beyond what immediately meets the eye (in this material world), but it is suppressed in many ways, often seeping out in various forms of idolatry (1.3.1):

That there exists in the human minds and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead, the memory of which he constantly renews and occasionally enlarges, that all to a man being aware that there is a God, and that he is their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service. Certainly, if there is any quarter where it may be supposed that God is unknown, the most likely for such an instance to exist is among the dullest tribes farthest removed from civilisation. But, as a heathen tells us, there is no nation so barbarous, no race so brutish, as not to be imbued with the conviction that there is a God. Even those who, in other respects, seem to differ least from the lower animals, constantly retain some sense of religion; so thoroughly has this common conviction possessed the mind, so firmly is it stamped on the breasts of all men. Since, then, there never has been, from the very first, any quarter of the globe, any city, any household even, without religion, this amounts to a tacit confession, that a sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact. For we know how reluctant man is to lower himself, in order to set other creatures above him. Therefore, when he chooses to worship wood and stone rather than be thought to have no God, it is evident how very strong this impression of a Deity must be; since it is more difficult to obliterate it from the mind of man, than to break down the feelings of his nature – these certainly being broken down, when, in opposition to his natural haughtiness, he spontaneously humbles himself before the meanest object as an act of reverence to God.

Whenever God isn’t acknowledged, man acts as a usurper of his glory, because, as Calvin points out in 1.2.1, all human skill, intellect, and power (indeed, life itself) are gifts from God:

My meaning is: we must be persuaded not only that as he once formed the world, so he sustains it by his boundless power, governs it by his wisdom, preserves it by his goodness, in particular, rules the human race with justice and judgement, bears with them in mercy, shields them by his protection; but also that not a particle of light, or wisdom, or justice, or power, or rectitude, or genuine truth, will anywhere be found, which does not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause; in this way we must learn to expect and ask all things from him, and thankfully ascribe to him whatever we receive.

And so, working backwards, we can appreciate the wisdom in the opening of the Institutes where Calvin declares the absolute necessity of two kinds of knowledge: knowledge of self and knowledge of God.  Any individual or society which lacks a knowledge of God will remain oblivious to its true identity, and perpetual usurpers of God’s glory, claiming for self what belongs to God alone.  In the end, the very definition of what it means to be human is lost.

Links to Reformation 21 blogs through the Institutes for the upcoming week’s reading assignments:

Jan. 12 – 1.1.1 thru 1.2.1

Jan. 13 – 1.2.2. – 1.3.3

Jan. 14 – 1.4.1 – 1.5.1

Jan. 15 – 1.5.2 – 1.5.5

Jan. 16 – 1.5.6- 1.5.11

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January 4, 2015 · 3:12 pm

Week 1 of 50 in the Institutes: Much Maligned, Was He!

Since I will be referencing the Reformation 21 blogs from 2009 throughout this fifty week excursion through the Institutes, I feel no compulsion to give an overview or a lot of background, or even to make any profound observations, as if I had any to share, since the scholars and gentlemen over at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals have already done that for every daily assignment (follow the links at the bottom of this entry).  For the first time since the formation of our group, I feel as if I’m along for the ride, and free to share as much, or as little, as comes to mind.

I take great delight in the little tidbits encountered whenever dealing directly with primary sources, and right at the outset we encounter a morsel which I never discovered from any secondary source.  In Calvin’s opening remarks to his readers, first affixed to the Institutes in 1559, we find the following comment (from Beveridge’s translation, bold added):

And truly it would fare ill with me if, not contented with the approbation of God alone, I were unable to despise the foolish and perverse censures of ignorant as well as the malicious and unjust censures of ungodly men. For although, by the blessing of God, my most ardent desire has been to advance his kingdoms and promote the public good,—although I feel perfectly conscious, and take God and his angels to witness, that ever since I began to discharge the office of teacher in the Church, my only object has been to do good to the Church, by maintaining the pure doctrine of godliness, yet I believe there never was a man more assailed, stung, and torn by calumny [as well by the declared enemies of the truth of God, as by many worthless persons who have crept into his Church—as well by monks who have brought forth their frocks from their cloisters to spread infection wherever they come, as by other miscreants not better than they.]

To whatever degree Calvin found himself to be much maligned in his own day, it has certainly been multiplied more than a hundredfold over the past five hundred years!  It seems many times people make up things to say against Calvin, without any basis whatsoever.  Many years ago I had the sad experience of hearing a pastor say, from the pulpit, that Calvin didn’t believe in the eternal punishment of unbelievers in hell.  (Obviously he never read the Institutes, 3.25.12, for example).

I appreciate the snippets Jeremy Walker included in An Outline of the Life of John Calvin which show some of the derision Calvin faced in his own day.  Far from having the universal acclaim and esteem of his contemporaries, Calvin found his name used derisively for many of the mutts running through the streets of Geneva, and worse:

The opposition was private and public, political and personal: children referred to him as ‘Cain’ rather than ‘Calvin’; a good number of Geneva’s dogs answered to his name; he was publicly abused whenever he went out, and called the second-ranked devil in hell.

Walker’s citation of Calvin’s reflections in April 1564, a month before his death, is especially telling with regard to the opposition he faced throughout his ministry:

When I first came to this church, I found almost nothing in it. There was preaching and that was all. They would look out for idols it is true, and they burned them. But there was no reformation. Everything was in disorder . . . I have lived here amid continual bickering. I have been from derision saluted of an evening before my door with forty or fifty shots of an arquebuse [musket]. . . . They set the dogs at my heels, crying, Here! here! and these snapped at my gown and legs. . . . though I am nothing, yet know I well that I have prevented three thousand tumults that would have broken out in Geneva. But take courage and fortify yourselves, for God will make use of this church and will maintain it, and assures you that he will protect it.

Along with the Institutes this year, I plan on reading John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life by Selderhuis to gain additional insights on Calvin’s life and times.  I look forward to getting to know Calvin the man, as well as his theology, better in 2015.

Links to Reformation 21 blogs through the Institutes:

Jan 5:  To the Reader

Jan 6:  Prefatory 1-2

Jan 7:  Prefatory 3-4

Jan 8:  Prefatory 5-6

Jan 9:  Prefatory 7-8

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December 28, 2014 · 4:13 pm

Countdown to Calvin: One Week to Go!

Our Dead Theologians Society small group is now just a week away from a fifty week excursion through Calvin’s Institutes, beginning January 5th.

The collective decision to take up this next selection is an event of no small significance for our reading group:

  • It is the 20th selection since the group was formed on March 30, 2009.
  • It is only the second non-Puritan work (the first was our previous read, Octavius Winslow’s Personal Declension & Revival of Religion in the Soul), and hence the earliest selection.
  • The charter members of the group have read a total of 4461 pages, an average of 2.2 pages per day, excluding breaks. Reading the Institutes in 2015 will require that pace to double to 4.4 pages per day for 344 days (94% of the year).
  • The highest number of books finished in a year so far is four, both in 2013 and 2014, and the Institutes will tie that number, if we consider it as four books in one.
  • The highest number of pages assigned for completion in a year was 893 in 2011. Reading the Institutes in 2015 in the McNeill-Battles 2 volume edition will exceed that record by 69%, with 1512 pages to cover.

Following the reading schedule developed by Dr. James C. Goodloe IV, we will spend roughly a third (35%) of our time in books 1 and 2, a third (31%) in book 3, and a third (34%) in book 4 as follows:

Book Start Date End Date # Days % Time Start Page End Page # Pages % Pages
1 1/5 2/26 52 15.1% 3 237 235 15.5%
2 2/27 5/6 68 19.8% 241 534 294 19.4%
3 5/7 8/25 110 32.0% 537 1008 472 31.2%
4 8/26 12/18 114 33.1% 1011 1521 511 33.8%
344 100.0% 1512 100.0%
Daily Avg: 4.4

Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren included the Institutes in their recommended reading list as one of those books that is typically over people’s heads (How to Read a Book, Appendix A: A Recommended Reading List). The Institutes of the Christian Religion is considered to be among the top 1% of books in the Western tradition that will significantly reward the reader for the efforts made to read them. And lest anyone become puffed up with the notion of this undertaking, please realize that some people make it a habit to read the Institutes every year, in addition to their annual reading through the Bible.

So rest now, but prepare to TAKE UP AND READ on January 5th!

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December 21, 2014 · 3:53 pm

Countdown to Calvin: Two Weeks to Go!

Our Dead Theologians Society is now just two weeks away from a fifty week excursion through Calvin’s Institutes, beginning January 5th.  Reading through the Institutes in 2015 will require an average of 5-7 pages per day of the McNeill-Battles (MB) translation, five days each week.  I’ve tried the schedule on for size, and already cruised through the first week.

Anyone with the two volume MB translation will want to take the opportunity to read the 43 page introduction (pp. xxix-lxxi) to gain further background than the materials recommended in the previous blog, since the first reading assignment for January 5th begins with Calvin’s preface to the reader (p. 3 of MB).

I discovered one delightful tidbit in the MB introduction on p. xxxvi, where it was noted that Calvin thought in Latin from his boyhood as a matter of habit.  The age at which Calvin took up this habit wasn’t specified, but the fact that he did so indicates how precocious he was in his studies.  This little tidbit also is essential in appreciating the role of the Latin and French editions of the Institutes.  Calvin wrote the Institutes in Latin, and the last four Latin editions (1539, 1543, 1550, 1559) were translated into French for wider dissemination, within a year or two after the Latin edition was published. Hence the Latin editions are definitive.

So unless you are a Latin scholar, the issue becomes which English translation to use.  The 1559, final edition of the Institutes has been translated into English four times: Thomas Norton (1561); John Allen (1813); Henry Beveridge (1845); and Ford Lewis Battles (1960).  J. I. Packer gives the following assessment of all four:

No English translation fully matches Calvin’s Latin; that of the Elizabethan, Thomas Norton, perhaps gets closest; Beveridge gives us Calvin’s feistiness but not always his precision; Battles gives us the precision but not always the punchiness, and fleetness of foot; Allen is smooth and clear, but low-key.  

Years ago I bought the McNeill-Battles translation (two volume set) from the Westminster Theological Seminary bookstore, because that is the edition used in the seminary’s coursework.  I figured if it was good enough for Westminster, it is good enough for me. And I must say, when I have pulled down Beveridge’s translation for sharing sections with others, I have usually been a little disappointed in his translation by comparison.  But I don’t mean to disparage Beveridge’s translation or scholarship.  Perhaps it is what you get used to.  I like how one person responded to the Beveridge vs Battles debate on PuritanBoard back in 2009, which a fellow DTS member shared with me:

Wow! Talk about inside baseball! Comparing Beveridge and Battles vis a vis who was the better Calvin scholar is a little like asking whether Micky Mantle or Roger Maris was a better Yankee.

I will probably acquire a copy of Beveridge’s translation within the next few months for further study anyway, and most of the passages I share from the Institutes will be his rendering, since it is available online.

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December 15, 2014 · 9:07 pm

Countdown to Calvin: Three Weeks to Go!

Our Dead Theologians Society will embark on it most ambitious expedition yet when we take up Calvin’s Institutes in 2015, beginning January 5th. Using the reading schedule prepared by Dr. James C. Goodloe IV, available online here, the pace will require reading an average of 5-7 pages per day of the Battles/McNeill edition of the Institutes, five days a week for 50 weeks (no sweat, just 10-15 minutes per day, 5 days a week).

Any cost-conscious enthusiast eager to join this expedition may obtain Beveridge’s translation (1845) for around $20 from the WTS Bookstore. If you want the more recent, two-volume Battles translation edited by John T. McNeill (1960), it will cost you a little more. If you don’t want to spend anything, Beveridge’s translation is accessible online for free.

As background on the life of Calvin, Jeremy Walker’s An Outline of the Life of John Calvin is handy. And J. I. Packer wrote an excellent preface, as always, to A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis. Ligon Duncan gave 10 good reasons to read through the Institutes in 2009 (the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth), so we are only six years behind, but the days of the week fall out exactly the same.  So Dr. Goodloe’s reading schedule will serve us well in 2015!

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December 10, 2014 · 6:51 pm

Midweek Rambling: An Age of Acedia

W. Bradford Littlejohn is doing a series of articles titled, “The Seven Deadly Sins in a Digital Age,” and recently completed the fourth installment, on sloth, or acedia (Latin).  I heartily recommend the article on the Reformation21 website, along with others in that series.

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December 7, 2014 · 5:20 pm

Week 9 of 9 in Winslow: The Lord, the Keeper of His People

Sadly we come to our last assignment in Octavius Winslow’s book, Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul, in chapter 9, “The Lord, the Keeper of His People”.

Puritan writers tell us that one test of sound theology is whether it leads to the worship and praise and glory of God. Our author certainly passes that test here, increasingly so towards the end of the book. I’m saddened, as usual, at this point when we have to part company, so to speak, with this dear elder brother and put his book back on the shelf (temporarily at least, it’s a keeper). In his parting admonition Winslow wisely points us to the great Shepherd of the sheep by closing with Jude 24-25, reminding us of the one who is able to keep us from stumbling, and who never forsakes us.  So we have great consolation.

I love the progression Winslow used in making his case as to why the believer needs the Lord as his keeper. He listed some solemn and affecting examples which prove the utter inability of every creature to keep itself: the fallen angels, the first Adam, and some illustrious saints in Scripture. Last but not least he cited the sad experience of every believer:

“But why speak of others? Let the reader, if he is a professing child of God, pause and survey the past of his own life. What marks of perfect weakness may he discover; what evidences of his own fickleness, folly, immature judgment, may he trace; what outbreakings of deep iniquity; what disclosures of hidden corruption; what startling symptoms of the most awful departure and apostasy from God, does the review present! And this, too, let it be remembered, is the history of a believer in Jesus, a renewed child of God, a partaker of the Divine nature, an expectant of eternal glory! Holy and blessed are they who, as they read and lay aside this book, shall relinquish all their fond conceit of self-power, and of self-keeping, and shall pray, and cease not to pray, ‘Lord, hold thou me up, and I shall be safe!’ ‘Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.’

Winslow went on to catalog some of the ways the Lord brings believers to know “their perfect weakness and insufficiency to keep themselves,” and the last one he referred to as “the great school”, citing Romans 7:18-20, 24:

“But the great school in which we learn this painful, yet needed and wholesome lesson, is in the body of sin which we daily bear about with us. It was here Paul learned his lesson, as the seventh chapter of his letter to the church at Rome shows, and for which epistle the saints of God will ever have reason to praise and adore the blessed and Eternal Spirit: ‘I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: . . . ‘”

Winslow interpreted Romans 7:14-25 as describing the experience of every believer, as did all of the Puritans. Sadly today, many modern commentators are not so unanimous. Some think Paul was describing a man in transition, coming to faith in Christ. I can go along with a view of a man in transition, if we are thinking in terms of sanctification as a whole, but all the while we are still talking about the experience of a believer. I say that because as long as a believer remains on earth in this body, he has indwelling sin while at the same time he has Christ dwelling within. As such, he has a renewed nature, albeit an imperfectly renewed nature. Hence he has a struggle and constant battle all the way home.

As a result of this imperfectly renewed nature, the believer experiences cognitive dissonance the rest of his life. He finds himself believing and doubting, wise and foolish, spiritually discerning and spiritually myopic, over and over again (Paul’s experience in Romans 7:14f). On the one hand there is a tendency towards license, because of salvation by grace, and on the other hand there is a pull towards legalism, as he hankers for his former master, the law (follow this link to see the larger context of the excerpt below from William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour):

“Indeed, all those complaints of our wants and weaknesses, so far as they withdraw our hearts from relying cheerfully on Christ, they are but the language of pride hankering after the covenant of works. O it is hard to forget our mother-tongue, which is so natural to us; labour therefore to be sensible of it, [of] how grievous it is to the Spirit of Christ. What would a husband say, if his wife, instead of expressing her love to him, and delight in him, should day and night do nothing but weep and cry to think of her former husband that is dead? The law, as a covenant, and Christ, are com­pared to two husbands: ‘Ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead,’ Rom. 7:4. Now thy sorrow for the defect of thy own righteousness, when it hinders thy rejoicing in Christ, is but a whining after thy other husband, and this Christ cannot take but unkindly—that thou art not well pleased to lie in the bosom of Christ, and have thy happiness from him as with your old husband the law.”

And so let us take to heart the lesson Winslow left us, summed up in the poem by Augustus Toplady which he cited in part, A Debtor to Mercy Alone, informing us that we are only less happy but not less secure than glorified saints in heaven:

Of covenant mercy I sing; nor fear, with Your righteousness on, my person and offering to bring. The terrors of law and of God with me can have nothing to do; my Savior’s obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view.

 The work which His goodness began, the arm of His strength will complete; His promise is yea and amen, and never was forfeited yet. Things future, nor things that are now nor all things below or above, can make him his purpose forgo, or sever my soul from his love.

 My name from the palms of His hands Eternity will not erase; impressed on His heart it remains, in marks of indelible grace. Yes, I to the end shall endure, as sure as the earnest is given; more happy, but not more secure, the glorified spirits in heaven.

Glory be to Him!

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