Presbyterian & Reformed

Sibbes really is a divine cordial! Chapter three left me in the distinct impression that the typical understanding I had of new believers having a ‘large portion of grace’ and so being free of travails, was largely inverted.

New Christians are spared so much trouble because they have little grace and not overmuch. We don’t have a "grace tank" or a "graceometer" whereby we have more or less trouble in direct proportion to the measure of grace in the tank. I confess that perhaps my Romish beginnings led me into a foolish kind of thinking whereby if we acquired much grace (merit) then God would look favorably upon us and not castigate us overmuch with thorns. If we allow this tank to drain, God spurs us with whips of travail to drive us back to filling the tank.

Sibbes exposes my futility in thinking. "Nay," says he. "Rather, new Christians are so little troubled by problems because their grace is so small and mixed with so great a corruption." They are spared because of their weakness. Yes, this is ‘grace’ and they may thereby be said to have a greater measure of it.

But Sibbes uses his ‘grace’ more like sanctification. He speaks of it mixed with corruption so as to be odious - like a smokey fire that stings the eyes and assaults the nose - yet welcome for its heat and light nonetheless. Likewise, he cautions against disparaging such humble apportions of grace - urging a vision of the believer as clothed in the righteousness of Christ instead of garbing himself in his homespun rags. But, unlike moderns who would urge that we would never again look on the filthy muck-crusted cotton we wore once, Sibbes makes a point to remind us that these rags should be considered, not overmuch, but on occasion, "to enforce further striving to perfection, and to keep us in a low opinion of ourselves."

This is good. Yet, Sibbes recognizes too the propensity of some to be overwhelmed with the weight of their own shortcomings:

From this mixture [of grace and nature] arises the fact that the people of God … looking sometimes at the work of grace, sometimes upon the remainder of corruption, and when they look upon that, then they think they have no grace.

We should be encouraged to greater Godliness by this smoking corruption on the meager torch of grace within is, and not discouraged so as to put out the coals we have in ourselves - or by our overbearing - extinguish the embers of another. This theme he picks up in chapter 4.

I love the illustration Sibbes uses on page 21:

Man for a little smoke will quench the light. Christ, we see, ever cherishes even the least beginnings.

What a delight for me. What a word to my own heart. For zeal, even for Christ, do I crush the smoking flax of another? In my own passions, do I "alienate new beginners with the austerities of religion"? May God grant me wisdom to see where I do this. May he humble my heart if in my desire to show myself learned, I pridefully and wickedly "assail young beginners with minor matters." I know in my heart, I do. Sibbes speaks to me in plain speech and urges me, in imitation of Christ to show them the more excellent way and train them in fundamental points.

Show them a more excellent way. Not harangue them a more excellent way, Not even lecture them lovingly with full exegesis and hermeneutical sensitivity to their sitz em leben.

Show them. Point them. Live out before them. Guide them. Aide them. Walk with them. Is there a place for teaching? Yes. Even hard teaching of complex thoughts? Yes. But demonstrating the foolishness of an infralapsarian bias to a statement made in ‘good faith’ is folly. Sibbes says it so beautifully:

It is not amiss to conceal their defects, to excuse some failings, to commend their performances, to encourage their progress, to remove all difficulties out of their way, to help them in every way to bear the yoke of religion with greater ease, to bring them to love God and his service, lest they acquire a distaste for it before they know it. For the most part,. we see that Christ plants in young beginners a love which we call their ‘first love’ (Rev. 2:4), to carry them through their profession with more delight, and does not expose them to crosses before they have gathered strength; as we bring on young plants and fence them from the weather until they be rooted.  … The weakest are most ready to think themselves despised. (emphasis mine)

Right there, you have $65 dollars worth of insight. If I never open another page and the Puritans be nothing so much as a means to stop a wobbly table (mh genoito!) - the money was spent well.