Bill had stopped coming to church. He came to my office one day to defend his absence and teach me a thing or two. He was a Christian, a garden-variety sinner, who was in a lot of pain. He complained that my sermons were boring.
“Your sermons suck,” is what he actually said.
I admitted to Bill that my preaching has peaks and valleys and that lately I’d been working at about sea level. I proceeded to suggest that my sermons were not the problem.
Once I’d absorbed his initial blast of anger and started taking his heartache seriously, we made some headway. We talked about the importance of the means of grace in his life. It wasn’t a sin to dislike my preaching, I said, but it might be deadly for him to cut himself off from the gospel, the sacraments, worship, and the fellowship of believers. It wasn’t long before Bill was in church again, taking notes, on the good—and boring—sermons.
Lou also thinks my sermons are boring.
He expresses his feelings less colorfully, however. He falls asleep, looks away, misses worship frequently, and in general doesn’t have the slightest idea what I’m saying. He’s a nice guy, but something is missing. The fact that he doesn’t care about my preaching isn’t the sign. Lou’s problem is that he doesn’t care for the Word of God. He needs to be conquered by the grace of the gospel; he is not a Christian.
Many consider it highly presumptuous for anyone, including a pastor, to assume that he or she knows who are Christians and who are not.
Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to make that kind of assessment? (So often people think we like making these evaluations.)
As a pastor I have no choice but to develop working hypotheses about my parishioners’ spiritual situations. It would have been a serious pastoral error to suggest to Bill that he needed to receive Christ. And talking with Lou about improving his life with Christ would be like doing marriage counseling for a man and woman who had never met.
For assistance in making these tough, yet fine distinctions, no one is better than the Puritans.
FOR BILL AND LOU
In his essay, A Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace, the Puritan teacher John Owen (1616-1683) tackles these issues. It is essentially a 55-page exposition of Romans 6:14: “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (NRSV).
Owen’s burden is to discern between indwelling sin, which is the Christian’s everyday fight against sin, and the dominion of sin, in which the soul is ruled by darkness. The former is normal for Christians such as Bill and is handled by the means of grace. The latter is normal for non-Christians such as Lou and ultimately destroys them without the interposition of the work of grace.
The issue for Owen isn’t whether we sin. He assumes that we all sin. “It [sin] may tempt, seduce, and entice,” he wrote. “[I]t may fight, war, perplex, and disquiet; it may surprise into actual sin: yet if it have not dominion in us, we are in a state of grace and acceptance with God.”
The issue for Owen, then, is whether sin is fighting for dominion, or whether it has dominion.
“Sin be in us,” he wrote. “[I]t will lust, fight, and entice us. But the great question, as unto our peace and comfort, is whether it hath dominion over us or no.”
What does Owen mean by the dominion of sin? It is sin’s utter ownership of the soul. It is the power not just to harass the mind but to control it.
Again, Owen: “This dominion of sin is not a mere force against the will and endeavors of them that are under it. Where all the power and interest of sin consists in putting a force on the mind and soul by its temptations, there it hath no dominion. It may perplex them, it doth not rule over them. Where it hath dominion, it hath the force and power of law in the wills and minds of them in whom it is. Hereby it requires obedience of them, and they ‘yield themselves servants to obey it’ (Rom. 6:16).”
In discussing these issues, Owen makes valuable distinctions for the pastor—on hardness of heart, the role of the law and the gospel, the nature of hypocrisy, and the constant struggle against sin’s desire to seek dominion over the Christian soul.
FOR ME
When I ran across this essay over a decade ago, I wondered if it would be a tour of hell with too many rest stops. Much to the contrary, this masterpiece is a treatise of pastoral and personal discernment, practical tactics, and above all, encouragement.
My interest in this work goes far beyond my quest for professional competence. My own soul has fed on this work and has been comforted, challenged, and given practical advice.
Owen’s faith is muscular: “We are called into a theater, to fight and contend; into a field, to be tried in a warfare. Our enemy is sin, which strives and contends for the rule over us. This we are to resist even unto blood; that is, unto our utmost in doing and suffering.”
His prayer is athletic: “If prayer does not constantly endeavor the ruin of sin, sin will ruin prayer, and utterly alienate the soul from it.”
He is unabashedly Christocentric: ” … nothing but the death of Christ for us will be the death of sin in us.”
He is unafraid of sorrow for sin: “Sin never reigned in a humble, mourning soul.”
He’s practical: “We are not more necessarily and fervently to pray that sin may be pardoned, as to its guilt, than we are that it may be subdued as to its power. He who is negligent in the latter is never in good earnest in the former.”
In our churches are countless Bills and Lous, and we have our own wicked hearts to deal with. In both cases, we have a lot of tough calls to make. No one helps me make them like John Owen. The Puritans were ancient, expert coroners, autopsying the Old Adam in us.
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Dave Hansen is pastor of Belgrade Community Church in Belgrade, Montana. In this column, he explores how church leaders from the past can mentor us today.
WHEN YOU FACE TRIAL AND TEMPTATION
John Owen on weathering spiritual storms
As a man that goeth to sea … meets, it may be, with storms and cross winds that drive him out of his course, and sometimes directly backwards the place he set forth; but his design holds, and in the pursuit thereof he applies his skill and industry to retrieve and recover all his losses and back-drivings by cross winds and storms.
So it is with the soul under the conduct of grace. Its fixed design is to live unto God, but in its course it meets with storms and cross winds of temptations, and various artifices of sin. These disturb him, disorder him, drive him backwards sometimes, as if it would take a contrary course, and return unto the coast of sin from whence it set out.
But where grace hath the rule and conduct, it will weather all these oppositions and obstructions; it will ‘restore the soul,’ bring it again into order, recover it from the confusions and evil frames that it was drawn into. It will give a fresh predominancy unto its prevalent design of living unto God in all things.
God hath a continual regard unto mourners, those that are of a ‘broken heart and a contrite spirit.’ It is the soil where all grace will thrive and flourish.
1996 Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP Journal
