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by
Tony Reinke
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March 15 - March 27, 2016
Through Newton’s words and Tony’s words—one voice—God does eye surgery on the heart, so that we see Christ more fully. And more fully means seeing him as more precious. And more precious means more powerful to heal us and change us.
This is how Newton saw the Christian life: “Every step along the path of life is a battle for the Christian to keep two eyes on Christ”—the eyes of the heart.
And that is the essence of Christian living. “To know him, is the shortest description of true grace; to know him better, is the surest mark of growth in grace; to know him perfectly, is eternal life.
“The greatest happiness we are capable of,” Newton says, is our communion with Christ. 6 “Hungering and thirsting for Christ is the central daily Christian discipline”—to see him clearly and to depend “on him for hourly supplies of wisdom, strength, and comfort.
Once asked if he was a Calvinist, Newton plunked a lump of sugar into his tea, stirred the hot liquid, and said, “I am more of a Calvinist than anything else; but I use my Calvinism in my writing and preaching as I use this sugar. I do not give it alone, and whole; but mixed, and diluted.”20 Diluted—not weakened—in a holistic and permeating way. “I think these doctrines should be in a sermon like sugar in a dish of tea, which sweetens every drop, but is no where to be found in a lump”;21 they should be “tasted everywhere, though prominent nowhere.
John Newton’s vision for the Christian life centers on the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Awakened to Christ by the new birth, and united to Christ by faith, the Christian passes through various stages of maturity in this life as he/she beholds and delights in Christ’s glory in Scripture. All along the pilgrimage of the Christian life—through the darkest personal trials, and despite indwelling sin and various character flaws—Christ’s glory is beheld and treasured, resulting in tastes of eternal joy, in growing security, and in progressive victory over the self, the world, and the devil—a
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The glory of the ascended Jesus Christ is the North Pole magnet which fixes the compass of the Christian life (Heb. 12:1
Newton was immune from no sin. He delighted to lead others into temptation, later calling himself “a ringleader in blasphemy and wickedness.
If there is one point of self-understanding Newton lived with, it is that his salvation could never have originated within himself. Grace broke his life just as powerfully as an unexpected ocean storm broke his security.
For Newton, the Christian life could only be explained by God’s sustaining grace. Grace saved his wretched soul. Grace sought him out. Grace removed his spiritual blindness and opened his spiritual eyes. Grace taught him to fear God. Grace relieved his fears. Grace led him to hope. The life and ministry of Newton can all fit under the banner of grace—God’s abundant, all-sufficient, infinite, sovereign, unceasing, and amazing grace.
One of the most beautiful paradoxes in God’s wisdom is sovereign grace. The same grace that is unmerited is also unstoppable. Grace is a battering ram. Grace is forced entry.
Grace alone is powerful enough to break the sinner’s bondage to wickedness. “His grace can overcome the most obstinate habits.”15 Grace breaks in to free and unshackle souls. Grace takes away the guilt of sin, the love of sin, and the dominion of sin, even hard sins like drunkenness.
“The mercy of God is infinite, and the power of his grace is invincible” (see Rom. 11:29).
And the same invincible grace that brings salvation is the same grace that is “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12).
Understanding God’s sovereign grace at the front end of the Christian life is critical for understanding the rest of the Christian life, because we are certain to face personal sin and insufficiency all throughout the Christian journey.
Newton explains, “That I am still preserved in the way, in defiance of all that has arisen from within and from without to turn me aside, must be wholly ascribed to the same sovereignty,” that is, the same sovereignty that saved him.
Grace finishes what the divine Architect planned. As the builder, grace never walks off the job or leaves the project unfinished. The Christian life is always progressing behind scaffolding and debris that clouds our vision and makes it difficult for us to gauge the work of grace in our lives and the lives of other Christians. Yet we are confident that grace executes the Architect’s blueprint.
The Christian life is not comfortable. God makes us no promises to remove difficult circumstances, or alleviate our pains, or protect us from suffering, but he does promise sufficient grace for all our wants and needs.
My grace would soon exhausted be, But his is boundless as the sea; Then let me boast with holy Paul, That I am nothing, Christ is all.21
Grace welcomes us to look into our emptiness and personal weakness because our strength and security is outside of us, in God’s all-sufficient grace. Our owning of personal weakness is one of the results of the active presence of grace. And our weakness is how we broadcast the grace of God to others.
We must resist the temptation to morph grace into spiritual currency or some abstracted spiritual power that mysteriously ebbs and flows.
If you have Christ, you have all of Christ, and to have all of Christ is to have free access to Christ’s all-sufficient grace.
Calvin, “All graces are bestowed on us through Christ.
Grace is shorthand for the full and free access we have to all the merits and power and promises to be found in the person of our Savior (John 1:16–17; Eph. 2:7; 1 Cor. 1:4; 2 Cor. 8:9; 2
Grace is a stream from Christ, the fountain of all grace, he writes.
Christ “is the Fountain, the Sun, the Treasury of all grace.
When Newton speaks of grace, he is speaking of Christ in union with the believer.
A life in union with Christ is “the life of grace.”34
In our abiding union with Christ we find the context of the Christian life. Grace not only connects us to Christ; grace is the daily motivation for us to press closer toward Christ, to “be daily hungering and thirsting after him, and daily receiving from his fullness, even grace for grace; that you may rejoice in his all-sufficiency, may taste his love in every dispensation.”35 We seek more grace by seeking to experience more Christ
Grace finds the sinner in a hopeless, helpless state, sitting in darkness, and in the shadow of death. Grace pardons the guilt, cleanses the pollution, and subdues the power of sin. Grace sustains the bruised reed, binds up the broken heart, and cherishes the smoking flax into a flame.
Grace is not currency dispensed from an impersonal, computerized ATM. Grace is deeply personal, it is glue, securing the branch of our Christian life into the trunk of Christ’s all-sufficiency.
“My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior.
“Our sins are many, but his mercies are more: our sins are great, but his righteousness is greater.
“We cannot be so evil as he is good.
sin is a monstrous, condemning force—but Christ is greater. Grace abounds because the Savior superabounds
our sin is dark and ugly and damning and destructive, but Christ superabounds our sin with unassailable light and beauty and redemption and restoration.
“to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). The Christian’s life is Christ.
Christ is the motto of the Christian life because Christ is the substance of the Christian life.
To know him, is the shortest description of true grace; to know him better, is the surest mark of growth in grace; to know him perfectly, is eternal life” (John 17:3).
“I advise you by all means to keep close to the atonement
The doctrine of the cross is the sun in the system of truth. It is seen by its own light, and throws light upon every other subject. This will soften hearts that withstand threatenings. This opens a door of hope to the vilest—to despairing sinners. The strictness and sanction of the law must be preached, to show sinners their danger; but the gospel is the only remedy, and suggests those motives, which are alone able to break off the sinner from the love of his sins, and to enable him to overcome the world.37
Yet only eternity will afford us time to discover and enjoy and worship Christ in the full dimensions of his all-sufficiency—“the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph.
Christ is like the sun in his endless supplies.
Jesus has unsearchable, inexhaustible riches of grace to bestow. The innumerable assembly before the Throne have been all supplied from his fullness; and yet there is enough and to spare for us also, and for all that shall come after us. May he give us an eager appetite, a hunger and thirst that will not be put off with any thing short of the bread of life; and then we may confidently open our mouths wide, for he has promised to fill them.55
His grace cannot be exhausted (Matt. 14:13
His “unsearchable riches” are sufficient for millions of distressed sinners at the same time.56 Christ is a sun, he is an endless feast, and he is an endless ocean in breadth, length, height, and depth of unsearchable love (Eph. 3:18
“This love of Christ to sinners is inexpressible, unsearchable, and passing knowledge; it is an ocean w...
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The treasury of life and salvation in Christ is inexhaustible, like a boundless, shoreless, bottomless ocean; like the sun, which having cheered the successive generations of mankind with his beams, still shines with undiminished luster, is still the fountain of light, and has alway...
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Christ, and him crucified, is the sun in the solar system of all kn...
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To know Christ perfectly—to be with Christ—is the zenith of eternal life, the consummation of our union to him. To behold his presence is the highest pleasure, joy’s apex. To behold his glory is to be made holy, and to be made holy is to be made perfectly happy (John 17:24).
