7 Questions About Your Christian Life | The Whole Counsel

The Law as External Knowledge Versus Convicting Knowledge

Hopkins points out to us that there are several ways that we can know the law, and not all of them are equally valuable. One of those ways is a speculative kind of knowledge, so we can have some understanding of it.

We know it's there. We might even agree with it in very general terms, but it's all external to us, and it doesn't really bother us. It doesn't keep us up at night. It's just this vague notion that it's there.

But there's another knowledge, still really the knowledge of an unbeliever, but a fuller knowledge in which perhaps your eyes have been opened to some degree, and you know there is a lawgiver, and there's a law, and it says this, and it thunders against me, and so it bothers you.

Maybe it does keep you up at night, but it is a law that you hate because you don't love God, and it is still external to you. You don't see it as beautiful. You don't see holiness as beautiful. It's just this thing that condemns me.

But it is the work of Christ to open our eyes and to change our hearts to see the law as something that's beautiful, though we've broken it, and then to look to Him as the one who has fulfilled it, kept it for us, and makes us righteous with God.

Conviction That Drives the Soul to Christ

Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's really such a simple test, isn't it? What do you really, deep down, what do you think about the law? When the law is exposing you at that moment, as painful as it is, is it still a thing that is perfectly lovely, balanced, desirable to you?

Is it a path? Do you feel like you're a person who, like, I'm spiritually lame, but the path is a perfect path, and I wish, by the grace of God, that I could walk that. And I think that as God is bringing us through that period of conviction, and He's opening our eyes, that we do see the holiness of God, particularly reflected in the law, as something that is terrifying, but at the same moment, something within us longs that, if only I could be clean before that God and walk with Him.

Yeah. And that desperation then drives us to Christ.

Self-Examination in Hopkins's Seven Questions

Yeah. He gives a series of really penetrating, self-examining questions. So let me just run through those really quickly. This is under his fourth remark, and so for the 17th, 18th century guys, that means his fourth application.

He says this, We've been talking about that, so let's go to the third question. Like Paul says, Fourth question. Now that's a great point. One evidence of true repentance is a man quits justifying himself, and he finds himself justifying God.

I remember before I was a Christian, someone recommended I would read Spurgeon, and I did this just because I was precocious. You know, I thought, well, I'll read Spurgeon, so all the older people in the church would be really impressed, like, wow, John's 11 years old, and he's reading Spurgeon.

So I kind of slogged through Spurgeon. It was way above me. But I found in the middle of that sermon, it was like Spurgeon was over there pointing to me and preaching to me, and in the middle of the sermon, part of me got up and joined Spurgeon and pointed fingers at me and said, He's right, you know, and you stop arguing and justifying yourself before the Lord, and you join the Lord in condemning you.

You know, God's right, you're wrong, and so you justify God in his actions. God is right in the way he's treated me, and instead of yourself. Number five, he says, Do you long for, seek, and strive after conformity to this law?

So now he's talking to the believer. You've been emptied of yourself. You've looked to Christ. Now, are you longing to be conformed, to walk in harmony with the law? Number six, do you place all your religious attainments in conformity and obedience to the law?

So he says, Do the exercises of your religion consist in love to God and your neighbor, and in those things which are implied in this and result from it? So, in other words, you say you're loving God, but is that being guided by what he said he delights in?

And number seven, do you grow in a sense of your own sinfulness? Because he says, even though we are justified, the Christian does grow painfully. What one old writer called the pain of love. That as we love God and we see more and more the truth about ourselves as we mature as believers, that sight grieves us, but it does drive us more and more to the cross and to realize the magnitude of what Christ has provided for us.