Newton on the Christian Life: To Live Is Christ

by Tony Reinke

we need only to see the centrality of Christ’s all-sufficiency for every step of the Christian journey.

All the scenarios we face in this life are navigated by a Scripture map which always seeks to point the Christian soul to the all-sufficient Christ, alive and reigning in heaven.

So for now, the full and dazzling work of Christ precedes every step of our Christian lives and directs all our aims and pursuits.

The Christian life is hidden within Christ’s life (Col. 3:3–4). Or, to repeat the apostle Paul, “To live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21).

Christ is the sum and substance of this all-encompassing thing we ca...

All Christian maturity is advancement toward greater Christlikeness.

“I trust the great desire of my soul is that Christ may be all in all to me, that my whole dependence, love, and aim, may center in him alone.

None but Jesus,’ is my motto.

Look unto the Lord Jesus Christ; look unto him as he hung naked, wounded, bleeding, dead, and forsaken upon the cross. Look unto him again as he now reigns in glory, possessed of all power in heaven and in earth, with thousands of thousands of saints and angels worshipping before him, and ten thousand times ten thousand ministering unto him; and then compare your sins with his blood, your wants with his fullness, your unbelief with his faithfulness, your weakness with his strength, your inconstancy with his everlasting love.

By fixing our eyes on Christ, our lives are filled with holy affection and delight, and we go forth in joyful obedience to him. In our daily lives, in our families, in our callings, in our ministries, and in our vocations, Christ is “our theme in the pulpit and in the parlor.”67 He is the core of the Christian life and ministry.

Christ both empowers and aims everything about the Christian life.

Newton operates within a clear, two-pronged, universal axiom: (1) Every human is hardwired to thirst for abiding joy, and (2) these soul cravings can be satisfied only by the God who encoded those desires in us.1

Regeneration delivers a sinner from the love of sin and reaffixes his desires “supremely upon Jesus Christ.”5 Conversion realigns the affections to joy in God and recalibrates our lives to taste the glory of Christ.

Union with Christ teaches us that we are weak in ourselves, but strong in the Lord and in the power of his might (Eph. 6:10).6 Union with Christ connects us to God, binding us to our supreme pleasures.

If the Christian life is Christ, then looking to him is the great duty of the Christian life. Looking to Jesus marks the beginning of the Christian life; looking to Jesus is the end goal of the Christian life; and looking to Jesus is the daily privilege of the Christian life, which is Newton’s way of saying that we never outgrow the gospel.

Faith is the effect of a principle of new life implanted in the soul, that was before dead in trespasses and sins; and it qualifies not only for obeying the Savior’s precepts, but chiefly and primarily for receiving and rejoicing in his fullness, admiring his love, his work, his person, his glory, his advocacy. It makes Christ precious, enthrones him in the heart, presents him as the most delightful object to our meditations; as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and strength; our root, head, life, shepherd, and husband.10

This life of faith—looking to Christ and treasuring him—is the one great duty that simplifies the Christian life.

Looking to Christ is the preeminent Christian discipline,

Sin is a defeated poison, but not a wholly removed poison until the resurrection. And so whenever the bronze serpent is raised before our eyes, we find healing. First we find salvation, and then we find sanctification in the ongoing duty of looking outside of ourselves and upward to Christ—the same Christ.16

beholding the glory of Christ rouses joy, empowers obedience, and transforms the Christian into the image of Christ.

“It is by looking to Jesus that the believer is enlightened and strengthened and grows in grace and sanctification.

let us leave our troubles to themselves for a while, and let us walk to Golgotha, and there take a view of his

Come, sinners, view the Lamb of God, Wounded and dead, and bath’d in blood! Behold his side, and venture near, The well of endless life is here.26

To behold the glory of Christ is ammunition against unbelief and power for sanctification. A life focused on Christ is a life of faith, and it’s a life opposite to a life focused on self, self-sufficiency, and self-wisdom.

Whatever life throws our way, we must keep Christ in

“If I may speak my own experience, I find that to keep my eye simply upon Christ, as my peace, and my life, is by far the hardest part of my calling.

the daily fight for joy is the fight to maintain faith in the all-sufficiency of Christ.

For two reasons, it is impossible to live simultaneously in known sin and in the joy of the Lord. First, sin is the soul’s pursuit of a false pleasure that stands in as a hollow replacement for the joy of Christ. Second, our sin chases out divine joy, because holiness is the counterpart of happiness. Christlikeness is one way we experience the joy of communion with Christ.

The Christian’s hope is based not on our unsettling feelings of joy in Christ, but on Christ himself

“Sin cannot be hated for itself, till we have seen the malignity of it in Christ’s sufferings.

The joy of the Christian is a costly joy, a blood-bought joy, and therefore a sobered joy, a “pleasing grief and mournful joy.

In Newton’s mind, to behold the cross and to see Christ’s death for you—and because of you—brings a transfer of indomitable joy. You have died to the delights of this world, and you are now alive to new heavenly joys in Christ. And when you find yourself lured toward the fleeting joys of this world, Newton points back to the victory of the Savior where joys are recalibrated, daily if necessary. Every sight of Christ we take is an attack on every delight in sin left in our hearts.

As Newton liked to say, Christ is the soul’s all-sufficient sun beheld by faith in the gospel.50 And he is the sun of the soul, all-sufficient to give us fullness of spiritual joy now, for “if the whole creation around us were destroyed, and you or I were the only creatures in the universe—the Lord, the sun of the soul, could make us completely happy, and fill our capacities for happiness to the utmost, immediately from himself.

True religion is sufficient to provide joy.

“That religion which does not engage the whole heart for the Lord can be little better than a name. The comforts of the gospel neither require nor admit such poor assistance as worldly amusements offer.

our attention is easily distracted from the concrete reality of all Christ is and has accomplished on our behalf, and we turn to the entertaining fictional dramas of life that bear no effect on our soul’s eternal

Trials remedy fictional escapism. Trials are the onrush of stinging realism crashing the idealized party we call “life.” When these serious trials interrupt our lives, we “run simply and immediately to our all-sufficient Friend, feel our dependence, and cry in good earnest for help.” But when all is well, when life seems peaceful and prosperous, and when the difficulties in life are small, then “we are too apt secretly to lean to our own wisdom and strength, as if in such slight matters we could make shift without him.”56 We lose out on communion with Christ when we gorge on entertainment.

We cannot keep our eyes focused on Jesus while our greed lusts for worldly security.

Affections for Christ and desires for worldly comfort are mutually expulsive. A love for the world drives out affection for Christ. Admiration for Christ pushes out affections for worldly idols.

When we feel the weight of remaining sin, looking to Christ is the only remedy, not looking in a mirror of self-righteousness, nor studying our snakebites.

Unbelief starts a downward cycle. The more anxiety we feel, the less we see Christ, and the less we see Christ, the more we feel our anxiety.

If Christ is the sun, anxiety is certainly one dark cloud overshadowing the soul.

This battle against pride makes communion with Christ the ongoing daily discipline of forming our personal identity by the worth of Christ. This is the daily reconversion. And this daily reconversion is Newton’s way of signaling our desperate need for the transforming power of a living sight of Christ, by faith, in the gospel, every

New birth brings spiritual life, and from that life we thirst for God, delight in Jesus, renounce ourselves, and renounce the world so far as it contradicts the gospel.83 It is the work of Christ—his all-in-all-ness for us—that works for our daily joy in Christ.

Beholding Christ is the key to the Christian life.

nothing undercuts the Christian life like Christ-amnesia—thinking we can live safely for a moment without Christ, without his atoning blood, and without renewed communion with him.88 Keeping Christ in view at all times is, by far, the hardest—and the most essential—part of our calling as Christians.

By definition, sin is the dis-ordering of what was once beautiful and harmonious.

here to ask, what is the authentic Christian life? There is nothing more frightening than a professing Christian who is eventually exposed as a fraud (Matt. 7:21–23; James 1:22

Few tragedies are more lamentable than the almost-Christian.

“If I may speak my own experience, I find that to keep my eye simply upon Christ, as my peace, and my life, is by far the hardest part of my calling.