Warfield on the Joyfully Exultant Tone of Miserable Sinner Christianity
March 10th, 2010 by Todd JohnsonThis is a follow up to Wednesday’s night study in the Sermon on the Mount. It is meant to emphasize the reality that though we know the truth about our own sinfulness, and realize something of our poverty of spirit before a Holy and perfect God, the result OUGHT to be GREAT JOY rather than depression and discouragement! I hope the following quote from B.B. Warfield is a blessing to some that struggle with this balance of knowing your personal sinfulness and God’s perfect love for you!!!
Benjamin Warfield:
“We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all.
This is not true of us only “when we believe.”
It is just as true after we have believed.
It will continue to be true as long as we live.
Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be.
It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest.
There is never anything that we are or have or do that can take His place, or that can take a place along with Him.
We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always of pure grace.
Though blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, we are still in ourselves just “miserable sinners”: “miserable sinners” saved by grace to be sure, but “miserable sinners” still, deserving in ourselves nothing but everlasting wrath. That is the attitude which the Reformers took, and that is the attitude which the Protestant world has learned from the Reformers to take, toward the relation of believers to Christ.
There is emphasized in this attitude the believer’s continued sinfulness in fact and in act; and his continued sense of his sinfulness. And this carries with it recognition of the necessity of unbroken penitence throughout life. The Christian is conceived fundamentally in other words as a penitent sinner.
But that is not all that is to be said: it is not even the main thing that must be said.
It is therefore gravely inadequate to describe the spirit of “miserable sinner Christianity” as “the spirit of continuous but not unhopeful penitence.” It is not merely that it is too negative a description, and that we must at least say, “the spirit of continuous though hopeful penitence.” It is wholly uncomprehending description, and misplaces the emphasis altogether.
The spirit of this Christianity is a spirit of penitence indeed, but also of overmastering exultation.
The attitude of the “miserable sinner” is not only not one of despair; it is not even one of depression; and not even one of hesitation or doubt; hope is too weak a word to apply to it.
It is an attitude of exultant joy.
Only this joy has its ground not in ourselves but in our Savior.
We are sinners and we know ourselves to be sinners, lost and helpless in ourselves.
But we are saved sinners; and it is our salvation which gives the tone to our life, a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill-desert; for it is he to whom much is forgiven who loves much, and who, loving, rejoices much.”
The great Lion of Princeton, B.B. Warfield (1851–1921), from his essay, “’Miserable-Sinner Christianity’ in the Hands of the Rationalists,” in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 7, pp. 113-114.
The people who are still depressed or down troden over their sin rather then being filled with joy over their salvation are ones still in the process of dying to self. We all have a long way to go and our sin is always going to depress us to a point. How “quickly” we raise our eyes to Jesus is the measure of how far we have come in our sanctification.
“Overmastering exultation” and “exultant joy”
Paul was a great example regarding overmastering exultation/exultant joy. After his conversion from enemy to hero, sinner to saint he mentions joy (in Christ) constantly…
Romans 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with ALL JOY AND PEACE IN BELIEVING, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
What does “overmastering” mean?
Overcoming; conquering.
“…a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill-desert; for it is he to whom much is forgiven who loves much, and who, loving, rejoices much.”
And how do we come to understand the extent of our “ill-desert”? Not by looking inward but by seeing and understanding our Lord more fully. The Christian life is a daily exploration of God through His Word and the person of Jesus Christ.
As Paul prayed:
Ephesians 1:16-19 (ESV)
I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might
Ephesians 3:14-19 (ESV)
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
“T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.”
Thank you for the definition!
Has been a week for feeling less than. My oldest turns 40 on the 6th of June my youngest graduates high school. My oldest says I am too different from her to be her mother and denies our youngest an adopted niece from birth as her “real sister”. So, her family is her father. After 40 years of raising children and 20 years of helping my father to die and now a wife to an ill husband. I am at a loss, I am tired and God has, has what…I remember being a little girl and believing God would supply my needs, a husband, children grandchildren and a white picket fence. There are no white picket fences. We are never good enough or strong enough or wise enough and answers to prayer is quiet, why because we pray wrongly, because we sin we do. Because joy and love and happiness is not the truth and the life that everyone gets in the end is not what we thought it to be. And little girl dreams are only a fantasy. Husbands will be too sick to love, our children wont always love us back and parents need us to help them die. And by then there is nothing left no strength, no widom and prayers are quiet.