Blogging Theologically

Theology for real life

Charles Spurgeon

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To be Christian is not to be excluded from sorrow

I don’t know many Christians who genuinely feel like the Christian life should be marked by an unceasing, unfailing, unrelenting happiness. The kind of victorious Christian life that you see peddled on TV. But I do know many who aren’t sure if they’re doing it right. That is, they might know in once sense that Christianity isn’t supposed to mean a life free from difficulty and pain, but practically, they’re not too sure what that really means. They’re worried that God is punishing them for something, but they have no idea what.

I’m entirely not sure what it is that we do that perpetuates this idea. But I do know that it’s not true. Charles Spurgeon understood this, and actually talked about the Christian life as something more than some sort of smile and sunshine faux-joy. He wrote,

The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God’s Word, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;” and it is a great truth, that religion is calculated to give a man happiness below as well as bliss above; but experience tells us that if the course of the just be “As the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,” yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods clouds cover the believer’s sun, and he walks in darkness and sees no light. There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the “green pastures” by the side of the “still waters,” but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, “Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen.” Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness. The best of God’s saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of his children must bear the cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God’s full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope.1

To be a Christian is not to be excluded from sorrow. To follow Jesus is not to walk a path free from difficulty. But to be a Christian is to be able to walk through the shadows and sorrow with hope, knowing that he will come and bring our sorrows to an end. But until that day, we walk the path where joy mixes with sorrow.

  1. Morning and Evening, April 29 Morning reading. ↵

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Jesus’ love for his Church never changes

I know more than a few people who, well, maybe it’s not fair to say they’ve fallen out of love with the local church, but they’ve certainly become disenchanted by it, at least in practice. They value Christian community and fellowship, but “church” holds a ton of baggage.

I get that. It’s easy to become disillusioned, especially when you consider all the junk many have experienced (thankfully, my few negative church experiences have been fairly minor). I sympathize, and try to empathize, with those either have or are tempted to say, “we’re done.” But what I’m always thankful for are the people who, despite their frustrations and painful experiences, refuse to give up on the church. They love her, despite her flaws.

In some small way, they’re displaying the kind of love Jesus has for his bride, the church—a love that will never leave nor forsake her. I love the way Spurgeon described it in one of his sermons:

Before the first star was kindled, before the first living creature began to sing the praise of its Creator, he loved his Church with an everlasting love. He spied her in the glass of predestination, pictured her by his divine foreknowledge, and loved her with all his heart; and it was for this cause that he left his Father, and became one with her, that he might redeem her. It was for this cause that he went with her through all this vale of tears, discharged her debts, and bore her sins in his own body on the tree. For her sake he slept in the tomb, and with the same love that brought him down he has gone up again, and with the same heart beating true to the same blessed betrothment he has gone into the glory, waiting for the marriage day when he shall come again, to receive his perfected spouse, who shall have made herself ready by his grace. Never for a moment, whether as God over all, blessed forever, or as God and man in one divine person, or as dead and buried, or as risen and ascended, never has he changed in the love he bears to his chosen.1

It’s that last line that gets me every time. “Never for a moment… has he changed in the love he bears to his chosen.” Jesus won’t stop loving the church. He knows all that she does—all we do—and loves us still. He is preparing his bride for eternity. His love will cleanse her. And someday, the church will truly be as beautiful outwardly as Jesus sees her now.

  1.  Charles H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XL ↵

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No higher praise could be offered

Familiarity is a double-edged sword. Familiarity can bring with it a sense of comfort, of happiness and contentment. Think of a favorite shirt or pair of slippers, maybe even a good book. Familiarity, in this sense, can be a very good thing. But it can also have a downside in that the exciting can seem mundane.

It’s easy to feel that way at Christmastime. We know the stories. We know the Christmas productions and all the events. And it’s easy to just want it to be done and over with so we can get back to our regular lives.

I feel like that sometimes. And when I do, it’s because I need to change my perspective. I often find it when I consider the fact that the angels sang of Christ’s birth. Spurgeon said this well:

They stretched their willing wings, and gladly sped from their bright seats above, to tell the shepherds on the plain by night, the marvelous story of an Incarnate God. And mark how well they told the story, and surely you will love them! Not with the stammering tongue of him that tells a tale in which he hath no interest; nor even with the feigned interest of a man that would move the passions of others, when he feels no emotion himself; but with joy and gladness, such as angels only can know. They sang the story out, for they could not stay to tell it in heavy prose. They sang, “Glory to God on high, and on earth peace, good will towards men.”1

The angels didn’t just speak of Jesus’ birth. They sang. There was no higher praise they could offer, no song so sweet as the one announcing that the Messiah had come. And that’s the thing I want to latch onto. It’s not just the good news being announced, but the way they announced it. The news was (and is) too good to just be spoken.

Photo: Lightstock.

  1. From his sermon, “The First Christmas Carol.” ↵