"So Then" by Alexander Whyte

Introduction:

This sermon is taken from a series of sermons Alexander Whyte preached on the Puritan Thomas Goodwin. Though Whyte read many Puritans, Goodwin was probably his favorite. Not only was Goodwin his favorite Puritan but the topic addressed in this sermon, indwelling sin, was one he continually expounded. His sense of sin was crushing and he was known throughout the land as a prophet of sin. No hidden crevice of the black depths of the human heart escaped the Scripture spotlight be beamed on it. This particular sermon, which is on Romans 7, was written so that the redeemed might know the plague of their own hearts. Whyte told his congregation more than once, "You’ll never get out of the seventh of Romans while I'm your minister." (G. F. Barbour, The Life of Alexander Whyte D. D., p. 305)

Why this continual exposure of the ugliness of sin? Why this delving into the dark recesses of the heart? Perhaps these words of John Bunyan from The Holy War will explain. In speaking to Mansoul (a redeemed sinner) Emmanuel (Christ) speaks these words about sin: "Nothing can hurt thee but sin; nothing can grieve Me but sin; nothing can make thee base before thy foes but sin; take heed of sin." (Bunyan, The Holy War, p. 335) So then, should we not also take heed of sin?

[Note: This sermon is preached from the standpoint that Paul is speaking about his sanctification in Romans 7. In our sanctification we have three enemies; the world, the flesh, and the devil. In the following the enemy of the flesh (indwelling sin) will be dealt with. Look for the distinctions made between the mind, the affections, and the will in the battle which rages in the Christian.]

Sermon: So Then by Alexander Whyte The Spiritual Life the Teaching of Thomas Goodwin as Received and Reissued, pp. 109-120

To begin with, -- what exactly does this little word "so" mean in the text? This little word "so" as it comes to us from Paul's pen at the close of the most experimental and the most pungent passage the Apostle ever wrote -- what does it really mean? Let us ask that question at the previous context, and at our own hearts, till we get a satisfactory answer to it. For this so innocent-looking little word will be sure to elude us and deceive us unless we arrest it and put it under pressure so as to compel it to yield up to us the whole of Paul's mind in penning it. But when we do put this so elusive little word under sufficient pressure, and when we bestow sufficient scrutiny upon it, we come to see that, small as it is, this little word sums up into itself the deepest experiences of the deepest-souled man, the most spiritually-minded man, and the most heavenly-minded man that ever lived. Yes; this one little word "so" here sums up, and puts into the smallest of syllables, the whole of the foregoing chapter, which is the deepest the most heart-searching and the most heartbroken chapter that ever was written since writing was .

For one thing, this little word "so" contains within itself all this. Putting his whole life before his conversion into his own so vivid and so powerful words, Paul tells us that he was at one time "alive without the law." He was what he calls alive as long as the holy law of God remained wholly outside of his inward life. But when the law of God, in all its intense spirituality, really penetrated into Paul's mind, and heart, and conscience, and imagination, then he died - died, he means, to all his previous self-righteousness, self-satisfaction, self-complacency, self-importance, and to all peace with God and with himself. To all that Paul was henceforth as good as a dead man. When the holy law of God really entered Paul's conscience and demanded of him that on pain of death and hell he must not covet what any other man possesses, nor envy any other man, nor hate any other man, nor have any ill-will at any other man, nor think, nor speak, nor do against any other man what he would not like to have thought or spoken or done against himself - that so holy, so spiritual, and so heart-searching law of God he found to be absolutely death and hell to him. You all understand that, I am sure. At any rate, as many of you as have come through that same heart-searching and heart-breaking experience; and especially as many of you as are passing more and more through that same heart-searching and heart-breaking experience every day you live.

Then, again, "sold under sin," - that is another terrible experience and terrible expression of the Apostle. Sold under that cruelest and hatefulest of all slave-driving masters. And then this wonderful saint and wonderful writer proceeds to open us to all his like-minded readers his own innermost experience as a slave sold under sin. Like a sold slave Paul pants to be free. But he soon finds that perfect freedom from the tyranny of his indwelling sin is absolutely impossible to him. A slave's will is free. No master, the most tyrannical, can chain up a slave's will; while all the time his hands and his feet are bound fast in fetters of iron. But no fetters were ever riveted on any slave's hands and feet that he so hated, and so cursed, and so kicked against as Paul hated, and cursed, and kicked against those fetters of indwelling sin under the cruel dominion of which he so continually agonized. Yes, great thanks be to God, Paul's will is free. As our Pauline Catechism - the most Pauline of all the catechisms - has it, in our effectual calling our minds are savingly enlightened, and our wills are savingly renewed. Now, Paul's will was savingly renewed in his effectual calling - savingly renewed as, I suppose, no other man's mind and will have ever been so savingly renewed. But not yet his heart; not yet his whole heart; not yet his whole spirit and disposition and inclination and affection. Paul's whole will was now wholly set upon always thinking and feeling and wishing what was good, both toward God and toward all men. But with all that there were still the remains of his original sin lurking deep down in his imperfectly sanctified heart And thus it was that his better mind and better will were so often forerun and forestalled; overrun and overrun by the uprush of the inward sinfulness that still dwelt deep down within him. In the most heart-breaking chapter that ever was written in this world the greatest writer in this world displays to us the supreme tragedy of this world - that is to say, his sanctified mind and will everlastingly warring within him against his still unrenewed heart - everlastingly warring within him till he is the wretchedest man on the face of the earth; just because in his mind and in his will he is the holiest of men.

And again, mark this, and mark all that follows from this: Again and again and again Paul tells us that he "finds" all that to be the constant case within himself. Paul's indwelling sin and its accursed slavery was not a doctrine that he had been taught in any school, Jewish or Christian. For lessons in the doctrine of original and indwelling sin Paul had not sat at any man's feet: prophet, nor psalmist, nor apostle. Whether they all taught that doctrine or not he does not stop to say. But what he does say, and with all his might, is this: that indwelling sin is not a doctrine at all to him. No; to him it is a sure experience. It is not even a divine doctrine to him, so much as a spiritual and a personal experience: a daily, a bitter, a hateful, a loathsome, a cruel, and a lifelong spiritual experience. "And then, among other things," says John Owen, that most Pauline of men, "this inward experience of Paul is the great guarantee and the sure preservative of evangelical truth in Paul's mind, and heart, and doctrine; just as it is in every man's mind, and heart, and doctrine who has Paul's spiritual experience." No man need attempt to argue Paul - no, nor any of Paul's successors - out of this so experimental and so personal truth, because they all "find" it in themselves. Incontestably so, according to the depth and the sincerity and the spirituality of their minds and their hearts. 'I know it,' says the Apostle. 'I know it, beyond all possible dispute or shadow of doubt. For I find it within my own soul, continually and incessantly, and that to my cost, to my shame, and to my deepest pain; to a shame and to a pain that are simply indescribable and inconsolable.' "Some," says John Owen, summing up his great masterpiece on this deep matter - "some pretend to great natural virtue, and some to great gospel perfection, but I am resolved to believe the Apostle and my own experience." And so am I.

"So, then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." That is to say, since all that is "so" with me, Paul, and since all that has been so with me ever since my conversion - and is not less so, but is every new day more so - "then" let me penitently and contritely, and humbly, and resignedly make up my mind and lay my account with all my divinely ordained condition in this life. Let me take up this awful inward cross of mine; let me endure to the end this cruelest of all thorns of mine, and follow after the holy law of God, if with ever-bleeding feet, till the end comes. And let me believe and be sure that His grace is sufficient for me, and that His strength will be perfect in all my weakness. Let me live ever near the fountain opened for such awful uncleanness as mine, and keep my heart ever open to His holy and indwelling Spirit till the day dawns when He shall unloose all my remaining bonds, and give me my full and everlasting discharge from this terrible battle. All that, and much more than all that, is summed up in these two all-containing words of Paul: "So, then." "So, then, with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the remainders of the flesh the law of sin."

Now, my brethren, my Pauline-minded brethren, be you few or many this morning, carrying all that with us, let us come home to ourselves. And as Paul has here written his most inward, most secret, and most spiritual experience for our learning - for our best learning - let us honestly and courageously imitate him and read out our own spiritual experience to ourselves and to one another. And, accordingly, if you will accompany me, I will now read out to you some of your own most inward and most painful, but at the same time, most spiritual and most soul-sanctifying experiences - yours and mine. And, since Paul is so nobly plain-spoken about himself, let me err on the same side, with you and with myself.

Well, then, there are certain men planted by God's special appointment all around you and me. Paul does not name his God-planted and God-appointed men and neither will I name yours nor mine. But they are there. And I am sure that we often name them to ourselves and to God, as Paul often did. Men whom we do not love and who do not love us; men whom we have hurt and who have hurt us; men who stand in our way and oppose and hinder and obstruct us; men who possess name and fame and place and honor and reward that we would fain possess, and so on and so on, in this whole world of such unceasing trail and temptation. And as often as we read or hear the names of those men, as often as we pass their doors and windows, as often as we meet them, or any of theirs on the street, like Paul's evil heart, our evil heart rises up in enmity and in malice against them. But the next moment our will, our renewed and sanctified will, denounces our evil heart and refuses to join with our evil heart in its evil ways. Now, at that enslaved moment ours is a case of what the old experimental divines were wont to call motus prime non cadunt sub libertatem. 'Mat is to say, the first motions of sin in our evil heart do not come under the jurisdiction of our will. But to make up for that, as far as may be, our renewed will rises up immediately and repudiates our evil heart, and immediately proceeds against it, and in this way. 'Me very next moment after that sudden uprush of indwelling sin from our heart our better will turns to God on the spot - on the very street sometimes - and cries to Him for instantaneous pardon and for a clean heart Aye, and more than all that, far more than all that, and far more well-pleasing to God than all that - we protest to Him as He is our Witness and our Judge that, if He will only put it in our power to do that enemy of ours a service - him, or any of his - we swear to God that we will immediately and rejoicingly do it. Now, that was Paul's case exactly at the moment when he was penning his seventh chapter to the Romans. And so much is our case the same as his was, that if he had omitted to pen that chapter to the saints at Rome, by the same Spirit and out of the same experience we would have penned it for ourselves. For we know, quite as well as Paul knew, that the law is spiritual, but that we, in many things, are still inwardly sinful, and are as much sold under sin as ever he was.

I have kept you too long already, I fear, on this not very easy and not very pleasant and not very acceptable argument. But if you will bear with me I have still a few words I would like to say. For one thing, you will be glad to be told that this deep spiritual experience of the Apostle is not confined to Calvinists and Puritans such as I have named. Take our old Bible-class friend, Santa Teresa, for one. I open her classical autobiography and I read this: "God leads His people in the way He chooses out as the best for them and for His special purposes with them individually. Whom the Lord specially loveth He layeth on them His special cross. And the heaviest of all His special crosses is a life of sanctification and service without sensible consolation. It is indeed a very great misery to live on in this evil world where our deadly enemies are ever at our door, and where we can neither eat nor sleep nor work nor rest in peace, but are compelled to have our armor on night and day. There is no rest nor happiness here, nor will be till we are home with the everlastingly Blessed. As I write," she says, "I am seized with terror lest I should never escape this sinful life. I know one who often wishes for death in order that she may be freed from the torment of her sinful heart. Her fear is not so much of hell as that she should so grieve God's Holy Spirit that He will be wearied out with her and so forsake her and leave her in here sins." The Catholic saint does not in so many words mention the seventh of the Romans, but I can see that every verse of it is deep down in her mind and in her heart, as it was in the mind and heart of an old Puritan saint lately gone to his rest, whose extended pilgrimage was over ninety years, and who often said that he must have been often swallowed up of despair had it not been for the seventh chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

Now, my more thoughtful brethren, arising out of all that, it has been a great problem with all the greatest saints and with all the deepest divines in all ages - this great problem: Why is it that the Holy Spirit so leaves the seventh of the Romans, more or less, in the souls of all the truly regenerate? Why is it that He takes them all through this terrible experience, more or less? Now, what would you say toward the solution of that great problem? For you must be studying that great problem, many of you, more than any other problem on the face of the earth. Well, what do you say to it? Are you getting any light upon God's mind and will with you in this so mysterious matter? Can you at all justify and vindicate Him when He is judged and blamed in this so perplexing and so painful matter? Are you learning anything about the deepest of all God's ways with His saints as these years of such spiritual suffering go on with you? There is an old proverb to this effect, that experience teaches, even fools. Well, is your experience teaching you anything worth calling teaching? There is more than a proverb in this of Paul in his eighth chapter that all things work together for good. And the Apostle does not exclude from that law even your indwelling sin. Well, look down into your own sinful heart and see. And I will say this concerning some of you, with some personal experience of what I say: Is not your indwelling sin teaching you lessons about itself, lessons that you could never have learned but from itself? Is not your indwelling, tyrannizing, enslaving sin teaching you lessons concerning its power and its persistence and its depth and its malignity and its absolutely unspeakable wickedness - lessons and experiences that break your heart every day you live? And anything and everything that breaks your heart every day is good - indeed, is your best good - in this present life. And that because the sacrifices of God, the every morning and the every night sacrifices of God, are a broken heart. And, then, is not this so also - that with your daily broken hearts you are putting on every day a new humility and a new patience with God and with all men and with yourselves? As, also, an ever new prayerfulness, and an ever new faith in Christ and an ever new love for the word of God and for spiritual reading and spiritual preaching? And, above all, far, far above all - Jesus Christ Himself is beginning to get His right place with you and within you. A place He would never have got but for your indwelling sin.

This is Goodwin's winding up: -

"When the Apostle, long after his first conversion, was in the midst of that great and famous battle chronicled in the seventh of Romans, presently upon that woeful outcry, 0 wretched man that I am! he falls admiring the grace of justification through Christ. Now, he says, there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ. Mark that word now: that now, after such bloody wounds and gashes, there should be no condemnation, this exceedingly exalts the grace of justification. For if ever, thought he, I was in danger of condemnation it was upon the rising and the rebelling of those my corruptions. But I find, says he, that God still pardons me, and accepts me as much as ever upon my returning to Him. Now this is a Gospel indeed."

And this is the winding up of Walter Marshall, Goodwin's greatest disciple: "Let us observe and consider diligently in our whole conversation that though we are partakers of a holy state by faith in Christ, yet our natural state doth remain, in a measure, with all its corrupt principles and properties. Therefore, we must be content to leave the natural man in us vile and wicked, as we found it, until it is utterly abolished by death..... And all this serveth to work self-loathing, and self-abasement and to make us look upon nature as desperately wicked, and not to be reformed but by putting on Christ. It remains wicked, and only wicked, even after we have put on Christ, though we must not allow its wickedness, but rather groan to be delivered from the body of this death, thanking God that there is a deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord."

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