"These Inward Trials" (Chapter 21)

Knowing God by J. I. Packer

“These Inward Trials” (Chapter 21)

A well-meaning, but inaccurate application of the gospel, can cause disastrous results in the lives of new converts and immature Christians.

A gospel that promises too much—freedom from sin and temptation, resolution of relationship conflicts, overcoming fear and depression, etc.—is, at best, an imbalanced presentation of the Christian life, and, at worst, a gross distortion of the gospel that leads to false conversions and apostacy.

Misapplied Doctrines

The gospel does bring power over temptation and sin.

The gospel does produce the fruit of joy and peace through the Holy Spirit.

The gospel does bring us the abiding relationship with God our Father.

The gospel can help us restore broken marriages, families, and relationships.

But, to promise all of these things without the accompanying reality that the Christian life is also a struggle against temptation, the world, the flesh, and the devil and a daily taking up of our cross to follow Jesus on the road of suffering is to misrepresent biblical teaching.

A convert to Christianity who is drawn in with these false hopes is quickly disillusioned when the actual Christian life is harder to trod than anticipated. This person often falls away, revealing a false conversion.

Matthew 13:3–6 NIV

3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

Matthew 13:20–21 NIV

20 The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

God often is very gentle with very young Christians. Their Christian life may begin with great emotional joy, striking providences, answers to prayer, and fruitfulness in their witness.

But as they grow stronger, and are able to bear more, he exercises them in a tougher school, including testing, opposition, discouragements, and weakness.

Through these more difficult experiences, he builds our character, strengthens our faith, and prepares us to help others.

He glorifies himself in our lives causing us to depend upon him, making his strength perfect in our weakness.

“There is nothing unnatural, therefore, in an increase of temptations, conflicts and pressures as the Christian goes on with God—indeed, something would be wrong if it did not happen.” - J. I. Packer

Wrong Remedy

Those who “oversell” the gospel, painting only a rosy picture of the Christian life, also apply the wrong remedy when things do not happen as expected, only making the problem worse.

Struggles, temptations, loss of joy, discouragement, etc. are diagnosed as failures caused by a lack of “consecration” and “faith.”

So, the struggling new Christian, is counseled to find, confess, and forsake his defection; to reconsecrate himself to Christ and maintain his consecration daily.

Having done this, he is promised once again, a return to the mountain-top, victorious Christian life.

In all error, there is always a mixture of truth. And the truth is that deliberate sin will cause a believer’s joy, rest of heart, and peace to ebb.

But struggle, fighting against sin, wrestling with the flesh, and encountering times of discouragement, are a normal part of the Christian life, and not in themselves a mark of waywardness or rebellion.

The presence of troubles, struggle, increased temptation, etc. is not necessarily an indication of failure on the believer’s part to maintain consecration to Christ. It more than likely is God’s exercising his child to become more mature and complete in Christ.

So, added to the imbalance of promising an over-inflated and rosy picture of the Christian life is the false remedy of bondage to self-introspection and guilt over “lack of consecration” when the Christian life is an uphill climb.

“It sentences devoted Christians to a treadmill life of hunting each day for nonexistent failures in consecration, in the belief that if only they could find some such failures to confess and forsake they could recover an experience of spiritual infancy which God means them now to leave behind. Thus it not only produces spiritual regression and unreality; it sets them at cross-purposes with their God, who has taken from them the carefree glow of spiritual babyhood, with its huge chuckles and contented passivity, precisely in order that he may lead them into an experience that is more adult and mature.”

Losing Sight of Grace

What is wrong with this teaching?

Fails to grasp NT teaching on sanctification and Christian warfare.

Does not understand the meaning of growth in grace.

Does not understand the operation of indwelling sin.

Confuses the Christian life on earth with the Christian life as it will be in heaven.

Misconceives the psychology of Christian obedience (Spirit-prompted activity, not Spirit-prompted passivity).

It loses sight of the method and purpose of grace.

What is grace?

God’s love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love.

There is both a will of grace and a work of grace. The will of grace is God’s eternal plan to save. The work of grace is God’s “good work in you” (Phil 1:6).

Grace includes, then, not only God’s purpose, but also his work of actually making us into children of God.

What is the purpose of grace?

Primarily, to restore our relationship with God.

God forgives our sins in order that we may live in fellowship with him.

God renews our nature in order to lead us into the exercise of love, trust, delight, hope, and obedience toward God.

The work of grace aims at an even deeper knowledge of God and an ever closer fellowship with him.

Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to himself.

How does God fulfill this purpose of grace?

Not by shielding us from assault by the world, the flesh, and the evil.

Not by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstances.

Not by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology.

He exposes “us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another: it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast.” - J. I. Packer

“God wants us to feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing, so that we may learn thankfully to lean on him. Therefore he takes steps to drive us out of self-confidence to trust in himself...” - J. I. Packer

The God Who Restores

It is God’s pattern and purpose to use our sins and mistakes to mature us in Christ. “He employs the educative discipline of failures and mistakes very frequently.”

The Bible is filled with examples of his people sinning and God chastening them for it.

“But the point to stress is that the human mistake, and the immediate divine displeasure, were in no case the end of the story.” - J. I. Packer

“God can bring good out of the extremes of our own folly; God can restore the years that the locust has eaten.” - J. I. Packer

“Unreality in religion is an accursed thing… Unreality toward God is the wasting disease of much modern Christianity. We need God to make us realists about both ourselves and him.” - J. I. Packer

John Newton:

I asked the Lord, that I might grow

   In faith, and love, and every grace;

Might more of His salvation know,

   And seek more earnestly His face.

I hoped that in some favoured hour

   At once He’d answer my request,

And by His love’s constraining power

   Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel

   The hidden evils of my heart;

And let the angry powers of hell

   Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed

   Intent to aggravate my woe;

Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,

   Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

“Lord, why is this?” I trembling cried,

   “Wilt thou pursue Thy worm to death?”

“’Tis in this way,” the Lord replied,

   “I answer prayer for grace and faith.

“These inward trials I employ

   From self and pride to set thee free;

And break thy schemes of earthly joy,

   That thou may’st seek thy all in me.”