Newton on the Christian Life: To Live Is Christ

by Tony Reinke

We must feel our malady before we rightly prize our Physician, and appeal to him as our all-sufficient solution.14

There are times when God willingly withholds his presence from us in order that we can feel the weight of our indwelling sin for ourselves.18 To feel sin for what it is, an offense against a holy God, is a bone-chilling sensation explained by no human cause, but only the “good work” of the Spirit.

As C. S. Lewis wrote, “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

Turning away from God and turning to creatures for our joy is one perpetual reminder that sin continues to indwell our hearts.

The most striking sense of depravity, where we feel it strongest, is in the dehydrated affections that are starved for God.

Indwelling sin is never more evident than when we are content to forego communion with Christ (the fountain of special grace) in favor of enjoying the comforts of this world (the drops of common grace).

“Though sin wars,” he wrote, it shall not reign; and though it breaks our peace, it cannot separate from his love. Nor is it inconsistent with his holiness and perfection, to manifest his favor to such poor defiled creatures, or to admit them to communion with himself; for they are not considered as in themselves, but as one with Jesus, to whom they have fled for refuge, and by whom they live a life of faith.28

A Christian may self-identify as the chief of sinners, but indwelling sin is not the chief identity of the Christian. The Christian finds his identity in union to the Chief Shepherd.

Apart from Christ, indwelling sin only angers God; for those in Christ, indwelling sin draws out his compassion. Apart from Christ, the sinful soul will be completely judged; in Christ, the sinful flesh will be completely destroyed. For now, we are his children, suppor...

indwelling sin remains to make us wonder how such a weak sinner’s faith has been sustained

Indwelling sin should cause us to marvel when we awake each morning with a remaining spark of hope and faith in Jesus. A sinner living with sustained faith and assurance of eternity in the presence of God is the sure mark of grace.

indwelling sin magnifies the extent of redemption. By experiencing the battle between the Holy Spirit and the flesh in our hearts, we taste the incredible accomplishment of what Christ defeated at the cross. Indwelling sin affords us the firsthand experience of sin’s potency, thereby magnifying the work of Christ’s power in its defeat. Only a powerful Savior could defeat evil this stubborn and strong.

indwelling sin humbles us in our awareness of its presence

The Christian is safe on the journey home, but not arrogantly safe—properly humbled, we can say.

whoever is truly humbled will not be easily angry, will not be positive and rash, will be compassionate and tender to the infirmities of his fellow-sinners, knowing, that, if there be a difference, it is grace that has made it, and that he has the seeds of every evil in his own heart; and, under all trials and afflictions, he will look to the hand of the Lord, and lay his mouth in the dust, acknowledging that he suffers much less than his iniquities have deserved. These are some of the advantages and good fruits which the Lord enables us to obtain from that bitter root, indwelling sin.

Indwelling sin makes us humble friends.

the degrees of awareness in relation to indwelling sin explain the varying degrees of Christian maturity.

“The tip-top Christians do not say, ‘behold I am perfect,’ but, ‘behold I am vile.’”34 In the mature Christian more aware of his sin (in private) there will be found an authenticity to his humility (in public) that cannot be faked by those who are less aware of indwelling evil. A deep sense of indwelling sin is essential to humble living.

indwelling sin magnifies Christ’s...

Hereby Christ is made more precious to us when our insurmountable evils encompass us about like bees—when we see them more in number than the hairs of our head; then, and then only, we are properly apprized both of the exceeding value and the absolute necessity of that better righteousness than our own, whereon our hope is founded.

indwelling sin humbles all our attempts at charity

indwelling sin sets our hopes off this world. God would never allow sin to remain inside his children if he did not purpose to ultimately defeat its presence.

Which is to say, our indwelling sin causes us to cherish the forthcoming day when it will be removed forever.

“We serve a gracious Master, who knows how to over-rule even our mistakes to his glory and our own advantage.

By magnifying the initiating grace of God in the Christian life, and by rooting every hope of the Christian life in Jesus Christ, Newton helped his friends look honestly and realistically at their remaining evil and besetting sins without feeding their personal condemnation.

To feel the weight of sin is a sure mark of God acting upon the soul, because apart from the Holy Spirit we are numb to the gangrene sin in our lifeless hearts. As reborn creatures, we are given new eyes to truly perceive the dreadful darkness of sin that remains.

indwelling sin will not be eradicated from the Christian’s life until the resurrection. For now, we remain at war with the sinful nature, like the apostle Paul (Rom. 7:7–25; Gal. 5:17). If we measure progress by the absence of indwelling sin, we will be endlessly frustrated and depressed.

The holiness of a sinner does not consist in a deliverance from it, but in being sensible of it, striving against it, and being humbled under it, and taking occasion from thence to admire our Savior, and rejoice in him as our complete righteousness and sanctification.

there is a line we must never cross, and the line is crossed when indwelling sin clouds the Savior from our eyes.

We should take sin seriously and readily admit of the monster we find roaming the yet half-conquered land of our hearts. But sin should never consume our focus at the expense of our confidence in the power and sufficiency of Christ. There is little danger in thinking lowly of ourselves. The ever-present danger faced by the Christian is thinking too lowly of Christ. Christ is our identity, not indwelling

To not feel the sting of sin is a form of sickness, a deadness, a leprosy of the soul.54 But to feel the sting of sin is a mark of health, a sign of life, and a necessary experience if we are to appreciate the sin-conquering work of Christ.

“In ourselves we are all darkness, confusion, and misery; but in him there is a sufficiency of wisdom, grace, and peace suited to all our wants. May we ever behold his glory in the glass of the Gospel, ‘till we are changed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit.

The job of the sin-sick Christian is to repent and turn from sin and press into Christ for continued healing.

In him we find our Infallible Physician (a favorite name Newton applied to Christ), for our sin-sick souls (a common title he applied to himself). There is but one Physician Can cure a sin-sick soul!57 And so we come. Physician of my sin-sick soul, To thee I bring my case; My raging malady control, And heal me by thy grace.58

In his cross and resurrection, Christ has taken our sin-sick hearts under his care, and he will not finish until the cure is complete (Phil.

Christ’s all-sufficient care gives the Christian perfect freedom and honesty to face his or her sins, to confess them genuinely, and to rejoice in hope.

The more sick I am, the more need I have to apply to such a great, compassionate, infallible physician. I cannot heal myself, and why should I wish I could, when he has undertaken my case. Depend upon it, our hearts are all alike. To know that they are deceitful and desperately wicked, and to look to Jesus for mercy, help, and salvation, are, I think, the greatest attainments we can rise to in this imperfect state.63

“The sum of my complaints amounts but to this—that I am a sick sinner, diseased in every part; but then, if he who is the Infallible Physician has undertaken my case, I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”64

“I could go on complaining,” Newton wrote a friend, “but I check myself. I am vile indeed, but Jesus is full of grace and truth. He leads and guides, he feeds and guards, he restores and heals. He is an all-sufficient Savior.”66 Under the care of such an all-sufficient Christ, the chief of sinners does not despair, but presses on toward holiness.

Christ is our victor, Christ is our life, and Christ is also our example—this is the Christian life in 3-D, three dimensions held together by the person, life, and work of Christ.

In the Christ of the Gospels, the Christ to whom the Christian is united, we find every provision for every situation in the Christian’s life: “a balm for every grief, an amends for every loss, a motive for every duty, a restraint from every evil, a pattern for every thing which he is called to do or suffer, and a principle sufficient to constitute the actions of every day, even in common life, acts of religion.

Christ is always the Christian’s victory, life, and example.

Since the Savior I have known My rules are all reduc’d to one, To keep my Lord, by faith, in view; This strength supplies, and motives too.4

Christ is our pattern because he’s the perfect image of God in human form

in Christ we find our ideal selves and catch a glimpse of our future perfected selves.

Christ is our pattern because he’s our forerunner (Heb. 4:14; 6:20; 8:1; 9:24).

Paradoxically, the only way to look like Christ is to walk behind Christ, and to walk behind Christ is to suffer with Christ

Christ’s glory is the operating power in our Christian holiness. “It is thus by looking to Jesus, that the believer is enlightened and strengthened, and grows in grace and sanctification.”11 “To behold the glory and the love of Jesus is the only effectual way to participate of his image.”12 In other words, gospel holiness is possible only to those who behold the glory of Christ in disciplined and expectant Bible reading.

Newton is clear: we become by beholding. “By beholding we are gradually formed into the resemblance of him whom we see, admire, and love.”13

it’s the beauty in Christ that fuels true obedience in us