Christian Snowflakes

This is not a time for snowflakes. Check out Christian Snowflakery by Stephen McAlpine

I've just about finished Tony Reinke’s book on John Newton’s pastoral letters, Newton On The Christian Life: To Live is Christ and here’s what I have concluded: compared with his theological robustness in the face of trials, we’re in danger of being a culture of Christian snowflakes.

You get what I mean by “snowflake?”

The word has been hijacked these past few months by all sorts of political flavours. There are almost as many usages of “snowflake” across the political spectrum as there are different shapes of snowflakes. Well maybe not that many.

In political terms “snowflakes” are those who can’t stand the heat of any opposition to their cherished views. And all sides of the fence use it. “Snowflakes” melt when the blowtorch is applied.

Christian snowflakery cuts across the spectrum. And it does so because we live in a culture that worships, what RR Reno calls the “hearth gods” of comfort and security.

We’re marinaded in an expectation that somehow we are owed these things as rewards for either our hard work and striving, or for our good fortune at having been born in the West in the 20th and 21st centuries.

And it’s a perspective that is in danger of squeezing out any theological conviction that “trials” are a normative part of the Christian life, as a quick skim of the Christian bestsellers list may reveal.

It’s that aspect of Newton’s life that has particularly struck me. He was convinced that trials were not simply occasional bad luck events, but were part and parcel of what it meant to belong to Christ, to be like Christ and to be brought home by Christ.

Now Newton was no stoic. How could the man who wrote Amazing Grace be unmoved in the face of his own trials, or the many trials recorded in his decades worth of pastoral correspondences to other Christians?

I was almost unnerved reading many of the passages in the book. There is no maudlin or gleeful tone to the reality of trials, but a conviction in Newton that God brings these trials to us because we need them.

Remember Two Things

“My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior.”

— John Newton, quoted by Jonathan Aitken in John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace  (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), 347

HT: Of First Importance

Grace More Amazing

“Though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say that I am not what I once was, a slave to sin and Satan. And I can heartily join with the apostle and acknowledge that by the grace of God I am what I am.”

                   — John Newton (Author of "Amazing Grace")

HT: Grace for Today, Of First Importance

Not What I Once Was

You may know John Newton as the author of  the hymn "Amazing Grace."  But how about this?

I am not what I ought to be.
Ah! how imperfect and deficient.
Not what I might be,
considering my privileges and opportunities.
Not what I wish to be.
God, who knows my heart, knows I wish to be like him.
I am not what I hope to be;
ere long to drop this clay tabernacle, to be like him and see him as He is.
Not what I once was,
a child of sin, and slave of the devil.
Thought not all these,

not what I ought to be,
not what I might be,
not what I wish or hope to be, and
not what once was,

I think I can truly say with the apostle,

“By the grace of God I am what I am.”

—John Newton (1725-1807), cited in Letters of John Newton, p. 400.

I can sing that one too!

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

Justice Smiles

Let us wonder, grace and justice
Join and point to mercy's store;
When through grace in Christ our trust is
Justice smiles and asks no more.

--John Newton, 'Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder'

Hat Tip: Dane Ortlund

I Am Not....But...

This is a perfect description of my life (and probably yours):

I am not what I ought to be.
Ah! how imperfect and deficient.
Not what I might be,
considering my privileges and opportunities.
Not what I wish to be.
God, who knows my heart, knows I wish to be like him.
I am not what I hope to be;
ere long to drop this clay tabernacle, to be like him and see him as He is.
Not what I once was,
a child of sin, and slave of the devil.
Thought not all these,

not what I ought to be,
not what I might be,
not what I wish or hope to be, and
not what once was,

I think I can truly say with the apostle,

“By the grace of God I am what I am.”

—Cited in Letters of John Newton, p. 400.

Hat Tip:  One of My Favorite Descriptions of the Christian Life – Justin Taylor

Too Low An Opinion

In follow up to the previous post earlier today, this is a quote from a letter written by John Newton (author of the hymn Amazing Grace) to a very depressed correspondent:

You say you feel overwhelmed with guilt and a sense of unworthiness.

Well, you cannot be too aware of the inward and inbred evils you complain of, but you may be (indeed you are) improperly controlled and affected by them.

You say it is hard to understand how a holy God could accept such an awful person as yourself.

You, then, not only express a low opinion of yourself (which is right!) but also too low an opinion of the person, work, and promises of the Redeemer, which is wrong. . . You complain about sin, but when we examine your complaints, they are so full of self-righteousness, unbelief, pride, and impatience that they are little better than the worst evils you complain of!

                        —Works of John Newton, vol. 6, p. 185.

Hat tip:  How an Inferiority Complex Can Be a Form of Pride – Justin Taylor:

Gratitude for Grace

From the author of the hymn Amazing Grace, quoted at Gospel Reminders:

“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”

- John Newton"