Archibald Alexander was a professor for many years in the mid nineteenth century at Princeton Theological Seminary (USA). In his work, Thoughts on Religious Experience, he asked ‘why’ we grow so slowly as Christians. Ray Ortlund records Alexander’s response to his own question in this way:
“First, he rounded up the usual suspects: “The influences of worldly relatives and companions, embarking too deeply in business, devoting too much time to amusements, immoderate attachment to a worldly object,” and so forth. But then he drilled down further and asked why such things even get a hold on us, “why Christians commonly are of so diminutive a stature and of such feeble strength in their religion.” He proposed the following reasons:
- “There is a defect in our belief in the freeness of divine grace.” Even when the gospel is acknowledged in theory, he wrote, Christians define their okayness according to their moods and performances rather than looking away from themselves to Christ alone. Then, in our inevitable failure, we become discouraged, and worldliness regains strength in us, with nothing to counteract it. “The covenant of grace must be more clearly and repeatedly expounded in all its rich plentitude of mercy, and in all its absolute freeness.”
Two things stand out for me in Alexander’s response. One is the relevancy of his words almost two hundred years later. How often do you and I determine our ‘okayness’ by our feelings or our actions, as if God’s favor towards us depends on our ‘work’ rather than His work? So many of the things Alexander describes can still ‘catch us in their web’ and keep us from turning our eyes regularly to Christ.
The other is the importance of ‘speaking the gospel’ to ourselves daily by ‘expounding the (the covenant) of grace in all its rich plenitude of mercy’. To put it in other words, when we ‘preach the gospel’ to ourselves daily, it is not by a simple repetition of the facts of the Gospel. Rather, when we ‘speak that gospel’ to one another, we are to search together to know more and more the height, width, depth and breadth of His love for us (Ephesians 3:18)
How might you describe the depth of the richness of His mercy today? Why not share that in a note or a whatsapp message with a fellow worker in the Gospel?
Filed under: Gospel, Grace, Sharing the Gospel story |
Thoughts Along The Journey 
So true. The life of faith begins with faith, and continues daily with faith. But we slip too easily into self-sufficiency and self interest. Jesus call us to deny ourselves and take up the cross daily.
It is amazing, we forget that anger and frustration at others; talking offence at or holding bitterness against others; gossip, slander, badmouthing, fist-shaking and so man daily practices evidence this.
You said it well: the life of faith begins with faith, and continues daily with faith! Our need is always for ‘faith’ to believe again in Jesus and His promises.
Thanks David. Thanks John. I am forwarding this post to a friend with whom I’ve shared this frustration. John, I agree, we do slip too easily into self-sufficiency. I like the illustration that is used in the Sonship Discipleship Model–as believers we believe in justification as a work of God but we treat sanctification as a work of our own righteousness–we have our toolbox to make us righteous-our education, our Bible knowledge, etc. We often put faith aside and trust in our tools.
That is the one thing which struck me when I started to think of the Gospel more deeply: that we look at entering the Christian life by faith, but then we choose to live the Chrisian life by our own energy and strength. Faith brings about the desire and will to obey God and grow more in sanctification.
Dear David,
I just read your thoughts, “Drilling Down.” I agree with what you wrote, but I think one of the basic problems of not growing as believers can be summarized by the words in James 1:22-25. We have a lot of “hearers of the Word” but not a lot of “doers” of the Word. In one word, obedience. Obedience to Christ, to the biblical message, is missing in most Christian’s lives, at least where I live and minister.
In Jesus’ love, Gary
Obedience is something we cannot do without God’s work in our lives on a daily basis. The hymnwriter called us to ‘trust and obey’, not to ‘obey and trust’ (: I always found that interesting and true. The lack of obedience, in many respects, comes from a lack of a daily growing trust in Christ.