A Sentence of Death

[py3ak]

In ET Perspective No.4, Overcoming the World (a collection of biographical essays by Faith Cook) I came across a profound thought from Bunyan.

Speaking of incarceration in Bedford County jail, Bunyan says:

I was made to see that if ever I would suffer rightly, I must first pass a sentence of death upon everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyment and all, as dead to me and myself as dead to them.

Apart from making me wonder whether I've ever even thought about preparing myself for suffering, it called to mind Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 7:

But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.

In order to properly face the sufferings that will come upon us, we must sit lightly to all creature comfort, trusting to have them made up in God. So that while we can enjoy God's goodness in the face of means like health and family, yet we have the confidence that God's goodness is not dependent on those means. In the absence of such a sentence of death passed by us, I think we run the risk of idolizing the creatures that are dearest to us, and therefore of flinching if faithfulness to God involves giving them up. Surely it was only through some such mortification that Ezekiel could lose the desire of his eyes and yet calmly do as the Lord commanded (Ezekiel 24:16-18).

So how can we pass such a sentence of death? How do we do that without crossing the line into a sort of stoicism or apathy? What considerations can strengthen our confidence that nothing worth having can be lost, that is not abundantly made up for in God?

And lest we be inclined to make excuses for our dearest indulgence, remember that Thomas Goodwin lost his library in the great fire of London.

 

[Mushroom]

Job 1:20-22 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, (21) And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. (22) In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

As I perceive it, we are free to rejoice in those pleasant things the Lord bestows upon us, and to mourn those things He takes away, but not as those who have no hope. No chastening 'seemeth pleasant' for the moment, 'but grievous', but we have the promise that it will produce good things for us. Wouldn't stoicism or apathy be an attempt to avoid the intended effect of such chastening? Then it would defeat the purpose of being 'exercised thereby', would it not? My picture of this, Ruben, is that it is lawful that we enjoy God's good gifts, and lawful that we mourn their loss or witholding, yet trust that the denial of those good things will work far better things in and for us according to His promise. The actual practice of that is the difficult part. We must need that hurt, but it sure ain't fun...

And lest we be inclined to make excuses for our dearest indulgence, remember that Thomas Goodwin lost his library in the great fire of London.

That gave me a good laugh, brother. Thank you.

 

[Peairtach]

And lest we be inclined to make excuses for our dearest indulgence, remember that Thomas Goodwin lost his library in the great fire of London.

And had he prepared his heart for this?

I think the Lord understands our legitimate but not idolatrous attachments to various persons and things.

As we are sanctified our increasing delight in the Lord will lead to a non-stoical loosening hold on other persons and things.

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. (Ps 63:3)

 

[py3ak]

Brad, I do agree: rejoicing and mourning are both seen in Job. Perhaps the difficult thing is rejoicing without becoming so attached that the loss of it is incapacitating. I think of Sarah Edwards' note when Jonathan Edwards expired:

O my very Dear Child, What shall I say. A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud. O that we may all kiss the rod and lay our hands on our mouths. The Lord has done it. He has made me adore his goodness that we had him so long. But my God lives and he has my heart. O what a legacy my husband and your father has left us. We are all given to God and there I am and love to be.

Obviously she feels great grief; but it is not grief that in any degree shakes her away from God, whether through mere surprise or something less innocent, like bitterness or vexation. It seems like quite a difficult task to allow appropriate room to proper human emotions, like grief, without allowing any resentment of God to creep in. Perhaps she had learned something of this from her husband:

God is the highest good of the reasonable creature, and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. — To go to heaven fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows. But the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean. — Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey towards heaven, as it becomes us to make the seeking of our highest end and proper good, the whole work of our lives, to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for, or set our hearts on anything else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness?

Richard, I'm no expert on Thomas Goodwin (Stephen Charnock also lost his books in that fire); but perhaps we may conclude that a habit of loving and trusting God will in general prepare us to respond appropriately to any particular calamity. And I think Goodwin's works give ample evidence of a heart that was given to the practice of loving and trusting God.

 

[a mere housewife]

I have been thinking lately of that beautiful phrase, "Come thou fount of every blessing," in conjunction with a phrase in an essay by David Steinmetz: "Those people who are justified by faith have, as Luther says, all their goods in words and promises." William Spurstowe says, " There is no good that can present itself as an object to our desires or thoughts, of which the promises are not a ground for faith to believe and hope to expect the enjoyment of." Surely we can hold loosely to the things of this life because we know this is not all: that any good we have here is just like a shadow briefly thrown over a screen -- whatever good they have in them is from God, to whom we are going, 'at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore'. We know that all the good we enjoy or could enjoy is created and held in being by the word of God; and that His unfailing Word, which promises us every good thing, will remake all again out of nothing, if necessary (as Abraham believed of Isaac). And so we don't clutch at the emanations and the manifestations of His goodness and faithfulness, but we cling to the sure Word which creates, and the goodness Himself. We can suffer loss because we know there is something beyond all this, worth all loss. That is the comfort in the face of so much that is terrible in the world -- that there is a good worth even the greatest suffering. "If a man should give all the substance of his house for love, he should be utterly contemned.' No earthly love can justify all the loss of even one life (earthly love itself is subject to loss and death). But God's love can.

Blessed whoso loveth Thee, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee. For he alone loses none dear to him, to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost. (Augustine)

Book IV of the Confessions summarized in verse:

So one should speak, who in in his heart hopes to choose good:

These bright, corruptible emblems pass away
Like suns: they rise and increase to the heat of day,
Only to speed the faster to their fall.
These pleasures all succeed each other like a word

Succeeds a word, till the whole universe is spoken:
Till the whole utterance of which they are a part is heard.
Set not, my heart, my heart’s desire on these bright, blest

Created tokens: though they are good and better, they are not Best:
They rush upon a sensual shore, and then return.
But fix an inward glance over their ocean: yearn

After an eternal Word, fly faster than decaying flesh
To an unsetting motion –
And cry, when caught and beating birdlike, in an earthly mesh:
‘I am a more enduring substance!

I have tired of vanity:
I seek a more remaining rest.’

~

Then thy decay shall bloom, renewed,

Thy mortal parts be bound around thy soul:
Nor shall they lay thee whither themselves descend,
Or scatter thee in dust where they are strewed:

Or lose thee in the ocean where themselves are tossed.
But shall abide with Him who changes not: and apprehend
All partial things in the possession of the whole:

How all we sought is there to seek again
In finding Him with whom nothing is lost.

 

[jwithnell]

I've been studying these topics in 1 Peter, which is an amazing book when you think that God's people would have received it just as the Roman were ratcheting up their persecution of the Christians.

Peter sets the reader's eye (aliens) to what lies beyond this earth in 1 Peter 1:4 "... to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you." Then he turns his attention to suffering, 1:6: "In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials." This is real joy, not just stoic endurance, in the face of hardship. Also 1 Peter 2:21 "For you have been called for this purpose [what purpose? vs 20, patiently enduring hardship when doing what is right] since Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth."

Paul sheds some light on this process (i.e. how to endure) in 2 Corinthians 12:9: "And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weakness, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, and with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong."

 

[py3ak]

Thanks, Jean! Very relevant passages. I can't help thinking also of Hebrews 11:13-16.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

The patriarchs were able to endure a perpetually unstable condition because they were persuaded of the promises and embraced them; and they were willing to be strangers and pilgrims because they sought for a better country. When I set my affections on things below, I make myself vulnerable - I set in my hope on something that can and will disappoint; but when my affections are set on things above, then I have chosen a portion which will not be taken from me.

 

[Mushroom]

Amen and amen! When I glimpse more clearly that better country, I find myself more content with being a stranger and pilgrim in this world. The fading trinkets and baubles of it cannot compare.

 

[jwithnell]

Oh, that Hebrews passage is so perfect for this topic! Maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, but its seems that the specter of gnosticism and vague decisionalism promises makes it easy for the reformed to emphasize what can be done in the here in the physical realm, and to de-emphasize the promises of what's to come. The latter is the only sure thing. When I think of what some believers have had to endure -- either directly because of their faith or out of the extreme difficulties that can come from living in a fallen world -- it is clear they would not have survived if their eyes were set on what is here below.

 

[J. Dean]

Amen and amen! When I glimpse more clearly that better country, I find myself more content with being a stranger and pilgrim in this world. The fading trinkets and baubles of it cannot compare.

We tend to go to one of two extremes on this: we either become materialistic and justify it, or we condemn all material things and slip into a "protestant monasticism" which condemns what God does not condemn.

To be sure, this is a difficult balance to maintain. On the one hand, we ought not (and I'm just as guilty of this as anybody) cling too tightly to the possessions and people in this life. These things are gifts from God, but God is under no obligation to give them to us, and we certainly deserve their removal if they become idols. We must never hold fast so tightly to things of earth that they cause us to stumble in our Christian walk.

On the other hand, it's just as wrong to condemn what God does not condemn. Solomon tells us that it is good for a man to "eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of his labor" in Ecclesiastes. Some jump to the extreme that all things material are bad for us to own and enjoy on a personal level, but you see no such blanket condemnation anywhere in the Scriptures. So long as these things are given their rightful place, there is no sin in enjoyment.

I like how C.S. Lewis said this regarding pleasure. Speaking as the devil Screwtape, he put it this way: "I know we have won many a soul through pleasure; all the same, it is (God's) invention, not ours." Enjoyment of the things of this world (not "things of this world" as defined by I John 2:16, but legitamate physical, material things) is not a sin. Still, the temptation comes to idolize these things and permit them to interfere with our Christian walk, and as Ruben put it so succinctly, we have to be willing to put a "Death sentence" on things should God require it of us.

 

[Pilgrim Standard]

This makes me think of

Phl 1:29 For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;

and

Act 5:41 And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

and

2Th 1:5 Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer:

Even in our loss, or suffering, we can even suffer in such a way as to suffer for Christ and His kingdom.

 

[jwithnell]

J., unless I'm misreading the original post, the problem here isn't whether or not to enjoy the many good things that God has given us. The problem comes down to whether or not we embrace God as all-sufficient and whether or not we might place family, health, or recreation before God.

 

[py3ak]

Oh, that Hebrews passage is so perfect for this topic! Maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, but its seems that the specter of gnosticism and vague decisionalism promises makes it easy for the reformed to emphasize what can be done in the here in the physical realm, and to de-emphasize the promises of what's to come. The latter is the only sure thing. When I think of what some believers have had to endure -- either directly because of their faith or out of the extreme difficulties that can come from living in a fallen world -- it is clear they would not have survived if their eyes were set on what is here below.

Indeed! These ideas call us to have an ample enough mind and heart to love what God has made and see his goodness in it, while remembering that this expression is fleeting, and that the shadow should not be confused for the object that casts the shadow. And the proof of whether we have been doing that or not often lies in adversity. If we can suffer joyfully the spoiling of our goods, it seems likely that they had not in any sense become our gods.

Joshua, I have made up my mind to loftily ignore you from an eminence.

 

[J. Dean]

J., unless I'm misreading the original post, the problem here isn't whether or not to enjoy the many good things that God has given us. The problem comes down to whether or not we embrace God as all-sufficient and whether or not we might place family, health, or recreation before God.

Right. What I was saying was that (in conjunction with this) people can become overzealous in "dying to self" and will jump to an opposite extreme and essentially denounce all things material. We do well to avoid putting other things before God, but in the process we need to remember not to denounce things as intrinsically evil.

 

[jwithnell]

Joshua mentions in another post how, as we move away from God (backsliding) a censorious spirit can set in. I wonder if this might be more the root of denouncing all things material?