This post used excerpts of chapter 2 of Spiritual Depression to show what he believed to be two problems that keep professed Christians from experiencing the joy of the Lord.
Spiritual Depression
Chapter 1, a brief summary in my words:
Unbelief is a cause of spiritual depression and we must learn to preach to ourselves instead of listening to ourselves. [Martyn Lloyd-Jones took more than 20 pages to emphasize that idea. You would certainly have to read is words to get a workable understanding of it.]
He used the following verse from Psalm 42:
Psa 42:5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. [Therein, the psalmist exhorts himself to prayer and reliance upon God.]
One way of talking to ourselves is singing; singing hymns that contain biblical doctrine. I heard from another source and haven’t arrived at where Lloyd-Jones talks about that in his book.
Chapter 2, EXCERPTS [paragraph divisions are mine; bracketed statements are also mine, in an attempt to keep this post as short as possible via summary statements of his text]:
THE TRUE FOUNDATION
I want to consider this statement with you in the light of the fundamental text which we began to consider last time. There can be no doubt but that the condition known as spiritual depression is a very common complaint, indeed the more one thinks about it and the more one speaks about it, the more one discovers how common it is.
We are considering this condition because, as I have suggested, there are at least two great reasons for our doing so. The first is that it is very sad that anybody should remain in such a condition. But the second reason is still more serious and important, that is that such people are very poor representatives of the Christian faith.
As we face the modern world with all its trouble and turmoil and with all its difficulties and sadness, nothing is more important than that we who call ourselves Christian, and who claim the Name of Christ, should be representing our faith in such a way before others, as to give them the impression that here is the solution, and here the answer.
In a world where everything has gone so sadly astray, we should be standing out as men and women apart, people characterized by a fundamental joy and certainty in spite of conditions, in spite of adversity.
Now that, I think you will agree, is the picture which is given of God’s people everywhere in the Scriptures, whether it is the Old Testament or the New. Those men of God stood out in that way, and, whatever their circumstances and conditions, they seemed to possess a secret which enabled them to live triumphantly and to be more than conquerors. It therefore behooves us to examine this state of spiritual depression very closely….
I want to take up this method which is advocated by the Psalmist. The vital principle is that we must face ourselves and examine ourselves, and if we are among those that never seem to know the joy of salvation and the joy of the Lord, we must discover the cause. The causes are many, and it seems to me that the essence of wisdom in this matter is to deal with these causes one by one and to take them in detail. Nothing must be taken for granted….
There are so many people who never seem to arrive at the true Christian position because they are not clear in their minds about certain primary matters, certain fundamental things that should be dealt with at the beginning….
The particular trouble with which we are dealing tends, I find, to be common among those who have been brought up in a religious manner rather than in those who have not been brought up in a religious manner….
They are in the realm of the Church, and very interested in Christian things; and yet when you compare them with the New Testament description of the new man in Christ you see at once that there is a great difference. Indeed they themselves see that, and this is often the main cause of their depression and their unhappiness….
[He provided some examples of things such Christians unsuccessfully do to become more like Bible characters, great persons of the faith….]
I would not say that they are not Christians but I am suggesting that they are what I would call miserable Christians, simply because they have not understood the way of salvation, and for that reason all their beliefs and efforts have been more or less useless.
They often concentrate on the question of sanctification, but it does not help them because they have not understood justification. Having assumed that they were on the right road, they assume that all they have to do is to continue along it….
It is an interesting theological point as to whether such people are Christians or not. For myself I would say they are. The classic example is of course John Wesley. I would hesitate to say that John Wesley was not a Christian until 1738; but I am certain of this, that John Wesley had not understood the way of salvation as justification by faith only, until 1738.
He had in a sense subscribed to the full teaching of the Bible, but he had not understood it, nor fully apprehended it. I have no doubt that if you had questioned him he would have given the correct answers even about the death of our Lord; and yet in experience he was not clear about justification by faith….
[At the end of this post, see that it took Wesley 23 years to complete the ‘struggle of faith;’ the process identified by Jonathan Edwards as he assessed the conversion experiences of the Great Awakening, because so many fell away from the faith and he wanted to identify the causes of that.]
[ML-J explains in detail Wesley’s problem and his former Christian life which consisted mostly of works to become righteous.]
It seems almost impossible that such a man, who had been brought up in an unusually godly home and who had spent all his life and all his time in Christian work, should be wrong about a first and so fundamental a point and should have been wrong at the very beginning. But so it was.
I am suggesting that this is the case with large numbers of people still. They have assumed that they are right about the first things, but they never have been right about their justification,…
[He provided examples. One example he doesn’t mention is that in Roman Catholicism, the belief is that justification is given at baptism by the priest and it can be lost and earned back via pennance, that is not biblical.]
…The Jews believed that the Law was made by God in order that man might save himself by keeping it….
[M L-J spent time talking about Romans 1-4, how Paul explained that all were sinners and that the purpose of the law was to REVEAL sin in one’s life; one could not become righteous via obeying the law….]
The answer is that they did not believe it because they did not see the need of it. They had the wrong view of righteousness. The righteousness of which Paul speaks means rightness with God. There is no happiness finally, there is no peace, there is no joy except we be right with God. Now that is agreed by all, that is assented to by the miserable Christian as well as the assured Christian. Yes, but the whole difference between the one and the other is that the former, the miserable Christian, is wrong in his ideas as to how this rightness with God is to be obtained.
[The Pharisees had perverted God’s way of salvation by using their own watered-down version of the law as a means of obtaining salvation; despite that the law was given by God to show that salvation was not possible by obedience to law, but only by faith – trusting completely in Christ’s work. The law was to help them by revealing their sin and driving them to God to obtain forgiveness. Anyone striving for obedience to earn salvation discovers the impossibility of doing that, if they have a correct understanding of law as described by Jesus in Matthew 5-7; they discover that the ONLY WAY is by trusting in Christ’s work.]
What then is the teaching? There are certain simple principles about which we must be quite clear before we can ever hope to enjoy this Christian salvation. The first is conviction of sin. We must be absolutely clear about our sinfulness.
Here I follow the method of the Apostle Paul and raise an imaginary objection. I imagine someone saying at once: ‘Are you going to preach to us about sin, are you going to preach about conviction of sin? You say your object is to make us happy but if you are going to preach to us about conviction of sin, surely that is going to make us still more unhappy. Are you deliberately trying to make us miserable and wretched?’ To which the simple reply is, Yes!
That is the teaching of the great Apostle in these chapters. [Romans 1-4] It may sound paradoxical—the term does not matter—but beyond any question that is the rule, and there are no exceptions.
You must be made miserable before you can know true Christian joy.
Indeed the real trouble with the miserable Christian is that he has never been truly made miserable because of conviction of sin. He has by-passed the essential preliminary to joy, he has been assuming something that he has no right to assume.
[Examples given of wrong views of sin and wrong rationales]
Their chief trouble often is their wrong idea of sin. I remember such a person putting this very dramatically to me on one occasion. She was a woman who had been brought up in a very religious home, who had always attended a place of worship and been busily and actively engaged in the life of the Church. She was then a member in a church where a number of people had been converted suddenly from the world and from various kinds of evil living—drunkenness and such like things. I well remember her saying to me: ‘You know, I almost wish that I had not been brought up in the way I have been brought up. I could wish that I had been living their kind of life in order that I might have their marvelous experience’.
What did she mean? What she was really saying was that she had never seen herself as a sinner. Why not?
[Rationales of such people stated.]
[Those who wrongly assess their sinfulness] Their thinking is in terms of actions, particular actions, and of comparisons with other people and their experiences, and so on. For this reason they have never had a real conviction of sin, and because of that they have never plainly seen their utter absolute need of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They have heard it preached that Christ has died for our sins and they say that they believe that; but they have never really known its absolute necessity for themselves.
How then can such people be convicted of sin?
That is Paul’s subject in this third chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. He has really been dealing with it throughout the second chapter also …all have sinned and come short of the glory of God’. Who are these ‘all’? He keeps on telling us, Jews as well as Gentiles….
It asserts that the Jew—the person who thought he had always lived a righteous and religious life—is as much a sinner as the most flagrant sinner amongst the Gentiles, ‘All have sinned’, Jews and Gentiles are equally condemned before God….
We confine sin to certain things only, and because we are not guilty of these we think that we are not sinners. But that is not the way to know conviction of sin. It was not in that way that John Wesley came to see himself as a sinner….
The essential point is, that the way to know yourself a sinner is not to compare yourself with other people; it is to come face to face with the Law of God.
Well, what is God’s Law? Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal? ‘I have never done that, therefore I am not a sinner.’ But, my friend, that is not the Law of God in its entirety. Would you like to know what the Law of God is?
Here it is—‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Mark 12. 30, 31).
Forget all about drunkards and their like, forget all the people you read about in the press at the present time. Here is the test for you and me: Are you loving God with all your being? If you are not, you are a sinner….
‘The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever’, and if you are not doing so you are a sinner of the deepest dye, whether you know it and feel it or not….
Do you know God? I am not asking if you believe in God, or if you believe certain things about Him.
To be a Christian is to have eternal life, and as our Lord says in John 17. 3: ‘This is life eternal to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent’.
So the test we apply to ourselves is that. Not, ‘Have I done this or that?’ My test is a positive one: ‘Do I know God? Is Jesus Christ real to me?’ I am not asking whether you know things about Him but do you know God, are you enjoying God, is God the center of your life, the soul of your being, the source of your greatest joy? …
The essence of sin, in other words, is that we do not live entirely to the glory of God.
Of course, by committing particular sins we aggravate our guilt before God, but you can be innocent of all gross sins and yet be guilty of this terrible thing, of being satisfied with your life, of having pride in your achievements and of looking down on others and feeling that you are better than others.
There is nothing worse than that because you are saying to yourself that you are somehow nearer to God than they are, and yet the whole time you are not. If that is your attitude you are like the Pharisee in the temple who thanked God that he was not like the other man—‘this publican’. The Pharisee had never seen the need of forgiveness and there is no more terrible sin than that.
I know of nothing worse than the person who says: ‘You know I have never really felt that I am a sinner’. That is the height of sin because it means that you have never realized the truth about God and the truth about yourself.
There is the first thing—conviction of sin. If you have not a conviction of sin, and if you do not realize that you are unworthy before God, and that you are utterly condemned and a complete failure before God, pay attention to nothing else until you have it, until you come to this realization, because you will never find joy, you will never get rid of your depression until you are right about that.
Conviction of sin is an essential preliminary to a true experience of salvation.
[He then enters into a discussion of the second principle to be understood, I will paste in his first thougths about it. By the way, Christ makes that point in the beatitudes, poverty of spirit is the first one out of which comes mourning for sin, meekness…. In this blog, see CATEGORIES, Beatitude Life, or True Kingdom Citizen for posts on the beatitudes.]
This brings me to the second principle. The second thing the true Christian realizes is God’s way of salvation in Christ. This is the great good news. ‘This is the thing I am preaching’, says Paul, in effect, to the Romans, ‘this righteousness that is of God, that is in Jesus Christ, His righteousness.’
What is he talking about? It can be put in the form of a question if you like. What is your view of Christ? Why did He come into the world? What has God done in Christ? Is He merely a teacher, an example, and so on? I shall not waste your time by showing the utter futility of all that. No, this is something positive, this righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.
Salvation is all in Christ, and unless you feel yourself shut up to Christ with everything else having failed, you are not a Christian, and it is not surprising that you are not happy. [Points 2 and 3 of Edwards’ ‘struggle of faith’ state the same, see below.]
Lloyd-Jones, David Martyn. Spiritual Depression (p. 32). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
End quotations
[M L-J spends about 6 pages explaining the second principle]
[This post is to whet the appetites of those Christians who might need to read this book. I am one of those. Also, if you look over the 5-stage process that Jonathan Edwards developed, just below, then you will discover that Edwards knew of the things of which M L-J is writing.]
JONATHAN EDWARDS, STRUGGLE OF FAITH:
Edwards established a 5 stage process which he termed, the struggle of faith:
1) horror of being eternally lost; 2), the sinner’s attempt to stop sinning via his will power [it cannot be done independently of God’s Spirit]; 3), realization that only God can save him from sin; 4), conviction, the sinner beginning to see that God’s judgment is just; 5), awakening to God with genuine religious affections.
The following prominent Christians spent many years between stages 1 and 5 of Edwards standard of assessment for genuine conversion:
John Calvin, 12 years; Wesley, 23 years; Whitefield, 10 years; Fox, 12 years; Edwards, 5 years; Brainerd, 9 years; Newton, 6 years; Spurgeon, 4 years….
I am left thinking, “Where am I on this scale?” The criteria of stages 3 and 4 are very familiar to me; not so with 5. I must examine myself more carefully. At what stage are you?