The Obedience of Gratitude, Not of Self-Righteousness

[KenH]

"Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there?" Jeremiah 8:22

There is balm in Gilead, and there is a physician there. This is, and must ever be, our only hope. If there were no balm in Gilead, what could we do but lie down in despair and die? For our sins are so great, our backslidings so repeated, our minds so dark, our hearts so hard, our affections so cold, our souls so wavering and wandering, that if there were no balm in Gilead, no precious blood, no sweet promises, no sovereign grace, and if there were no physician there, no risen Jesus, no great High Priest over the house of God, what well-grounded hope could we entertain? Not a ray. Our own obedience and consistency? These are a bed too short and a covering too narrow.

But when there is some application of the balm in Gilead, it softens, melts, humbles, and at the same time thoroughly heals. No, this balm strengthens every nerve and sinew, heals blindness, remedies deafness, cures paralysis, makes the lame man leap as a deer and the tongue of the dumb to sing, and thus produces gospel sight, gospel hearing, gospel strength, and a gospel walk.

When the spirit is melted, and the heart touched by a sense of God's goodness, mercy, and love to such base, undeserving wretches, it produces gospel obedience, aye, a humble obedience; not that proud obedience which those manifest who are trusting to their own goodness and seeking to scale the battlements of heaven by the ladder of self-righteousness, but an obedience of gratitude, love, and submission--willingly, cheerfully rendered, and therefore acceptable to God, because flowing from his own Spirit and grace. It is the application of this divine balm which purifies the heart, makes sin hateful, and Jesus precious, and not only dissolves the soul in sweet gratitude, but fills it with earnest desires to live to God's honor and glory.

This is the mysterious way the Lord takes to get honor to himself. As he opens up the depth of the fall, makes the burden of sin felt, and shows the sinner how his iniquities have abounded, he brings the proud heart down, and lays the head low in the dust; and as he makes him sigh and cry, grieve and groan, he applies his sovereign balm to the soul, brings the blood of sprinkling into the conscience, sheds abroad his mercy and love, and thus constrains the feet to walk in cheerful and willing obedience.

This is obeying the precept from right motives, right views, right influences, under right feelings, and to right ends. This is the true Christian obedience, obedience "in the spirit and not in the letter," an obedience which glorifies God, and is attended by every fruit and grace of the Spirit.

- J.C. Philpot, Through Baca's Vale, March 14

 

[Tenchi]

"Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there?" Jeremiah 8:22

There is balm in Gilead, and there is a physician there. This is, and must ever be, our only hope. If there were no balm in Gilead, what could we do but lie down in despair and die? For our sins are so great, our backslidings so repeated, our minds so dark, our hearts so hard, our affections so cold, our souls so wavering and wandering, that if there were no balm in Gilead, no precious blood, no sweet promises, no sovereign grace, and if there were no physician there, no risen Jesus, no great High Priest over the house of God, what well-grounded hope could we entertain? Not a ray. Our own obedience and consistency? These are a bed too short and a covering too narrow.

I'm sure you mean well in posting these quotations, but how does all this correspond to the many passages in the New Testament that not only enjoin Christians to holy living but establish such living as the norm for them? What it seems Philpot is doing here is ennobling spiritual failure, making room for sin on the basis of Christ's greatness and our incorrigible foulness. What does Scripture say, though?

2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

Colossians 3:1-14
1 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
6 For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,
7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.
8 But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
9 Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
10 and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—
11 a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.
12 So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience;
13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
14 Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

Romans 6:1-2
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

2 Peter 1:2-4
2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord;
3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.
4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

It's hard to see how Philpot's statements above align with these verses/passages from Scripture. Perhaps, though, he has only the unsaved person in mind in the quotation above.

But when there is some application of the balm in Gilead, it softens, melts, humbles, and at the same time thoroughly heals. No, this balm strengthens every nerve and sinew, heals blindness, remedies deafness, cures paralysis, makes the lame man leap as a deer and the tongue of the dumb to sing, and thus produces gospel sight, gospel hearing, gospel strength, and a gospel walk.

When the spirit is melted, and the heart touched by a sense of God's goodness, mercy, and love to such base, undeserving wretches, it produces gospel obedience, aye, a humble obedience; not that proud obedience which those manifest who are trusting to their own goodness and seeking to scale the battlements of heaven by the ladder of self-righteousness, but an obedience of gratitude, love, and submission--willingly, cheerfully rendered, and therefore acceptable to God, because flowing from his own Spirit and grace. It is the application of this divine balm which purifies the heart, makes sin hateful, and Jesus precious, and not only dissolves the soul in sweet gratitude, but fills it with earnest desires to live to God's honor and glory.

But how rare it is for those whose lives are truly transformed by God, who are enjoying deep, rich fellowship with Him every day, becoming ever-more like Christ, to be able to say so without the objections of those who are not. Immediately upon such an admission, the believer who is living well in the truths and promises of God, who is daily walking in the Spirit, is denied, and criticized, and doubted when he says that he is. He must be a self-righteous, prideful liar. Why? Simply because those who aren't enjoying the same as he does with God say so. Never mind that the believer who is enjoying life-changing fellowship with God is living in correspondence to the repeated declarations and promises of God's word. It must be the believer with the poorest experience of God, who is constantly plagued by sin, who gets to say what the "norm" for Christian living is, condemning as arrogant any Christian whose life doesn't conform to that "norm." Under this dynamic, is it any wonder that the Church (in North America, anyway) has generally grown spiritually tepid, impotent and increasingly uninteresting/irrelevant to the lost?

What does it look like for a Christian to say that he is enjoying God deeply and joyfully every day, his life increasingly absent of sin, but to do so humbly? If the Christian who doesn't have such an experience of God has anything say about it, the believer who is living well with God ought to just shut up about the fact that they are; to do otherwise is to be necessarily prideful and self-righteous. Or, if the Christian admits to a wonderful, powerful experience of God, he ought also to admit to constant struggle and failure with sin, too. Because no Christian can actually live in what the Bible describes as the normal Christian life (as far as the believer with a lukewarm experience of God is concerned).

This is the mysterious way the Lord takes to get honor to himself. As he opens up the depth of the fall, makes the burden of sin felt, and shows the sinner how his iniquities have abounded, he brings the proud heart down, and lays the head low in the dust; and as he makes him sigh and cry, grieve and groan, he applies his sovereign balm to the soul, brings the blood of sprinkling into the conscience, sheds abroad his mercy and love, and thus constrains the feet to walk in cheerful and willing obedience.

Most importantly, however, God teaches His child to "walk in/by the Spirit" (Ga. 5:16, 25; Ro. 8:13-14), by faith standing upon their identity in Christ (2 Cor. 5:7; 2 Pet. 1:3-4), living in joyful, loving submission to the will and way of their heavenly Father (Ro. 6:11, 13-18; Ro. 12:1). Filled with the life of the Spirit as a result, such a believer is able to "work out their own salvation", the fruit of the Spirit manifesting in ever-fuller degree in their life.

Philippians 2:12-13
12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

2 Corinthians 3:18
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.