Letters of Newton: Grace in the Full Corn | Behold Your God Podcast

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Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Gratiae, and I'm here again with Dr.

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John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany, and the author and host of the

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Behold Your God study series by Media Gratiae. John, it's good to be back with you. Yeah, it's good to be here.

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The last two weeks, we've looked at letters from a man named John Newton.

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Now, Newton, of course, was a hymn writer. He was the leader of evangelical men after the Great Weakening in the

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United Kingdom in many ways, and he was a pastor. And as we've said before, much of his counsel came to people through the ministry of him sitting down to write letters to them, his letter writing ministry.

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And he wrote three letters to a man about what he described as being the progressive work of grace in the several stages of a believer's experience.

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And to do that, he used the kingdom parable of our Lord from Mark 4, verses 26 to 28.

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So those three stages, grace in the blade, grace in the ear, and the grace in the full corn, and each of those is characterized,

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Newton says, by different things. So that earliest stage, grace in the blade,

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Newton says, is characterized most of all by desire. Then that second stage, grace in the ear,

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Newton says, is characterized primarily by conflict. And then now this final stage of Christian maturity, the grace in the full corn,

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Newton says, is distinguished most by contemplation. Yeah, and we'll kind of look at what

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Newton means by that. That can take a number of paths, you know. Newton begins his letter right off by dealing with a common problem, really an unbiblical remorse that older believers often find in this stage, and that is they look back at the earliest days of their

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Christian life and they regret that they do not have the same degree of what he called sensible warmth and fervency in their feelings.

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Now, Newton explains that this is not necessarily an accurate picture. Because there is warmth.

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There is love to Christ still. That hasn't left. But as other aspects grow and, you know, to the appropriate proportion, this, you know, passionate desire perhaps doesn't seem as prominent.

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One of the things he says is that the strength of the stage is that there will be a greater clarity for the mature

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Christian regarding the work of Christ. And long experience of His grace and of His faithfulness leads the mature

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Christian to a more what he calls a more stable and a more simple assurance.

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Yeah, Newton does say that he does point out that the mature Christian doesn't have any more inherent strength than the younger

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Christian. He is as dependent upon God as he ever has been. For strength to live the

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Christian life, for wisdom and for every virtue. So none of this strength or maturity is inherent to himself.

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However, the mature Christian, Newton argues, is in one way stronger.

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He's more constantly aware of his weakness and that makes him walk closer and walk more humbly with Christ.

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And by that, the believer receives constant aid from God, which does enable obedience.

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Yeah, Newton, you remember in our second episode, we talked about the fact that that kind of what

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Newton considers a middle stage of Christian growing is it is characterized by conflict where we're being allowed to see how really weak we are.

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I mean, you think about it, the early days of the Christian, you tend to think you look at the

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Christian life and you think, you know what, in a couple of years, I probably will have arrived. Like, I think every sin will be dead.

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So Newton says, you know, God little by little brings things into your life to teach you his faithfulness, but also to teach you your weakness.

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And so Newton goes on to say that through many sad lessons, the mature believer has learned that his heart cannot be trusted and nothing in creation can really be leaned upon.

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So that has driven him by experience, not just by agreeing with the concepts of scripture, but it has driven him back to the word in a dependence upon Christ alone.

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And so there's the strength. Here's how Newton sums up what we just said. This is from his letter.

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It's letter seven in his collected works. Again, if you haven't read these, you can go on our site at themeansofgrace .org,

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look for this blog post, and you can read these letters with us. Newton writes, thus, though his sensible feelings may not be so warm as when he was in the state of a young believer, his judgment is more solid, his mind more fixed, his thoughts more habitually exercised upon the things within the veil.

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His great business is to behold the glory of God in Christ. And by beholding, he is changed into the same image and he brings forth in an eminent and uniform manner the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

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His contemplations are not barren speculations, but have a real influence and they enable him to exemplify the

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Christian character to more advantage and with more consistence than can in the present state of things be expected either from the earlier stages of Christian growth.

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What Newton does next is he begins to give us a series of three particular qualities that he says characterize the more mature

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Christian. So the first is humility. No stage of the Christian life, he says, is without this quality.

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So we have no right to say, well, I'm a young Christian, so I'm proud. But he says, it is to be expected that humility will be in the life of a believer in direct proportion to the knowledge that the believer has of Jesus Christ, but also to the knowledge that the believer has of his own heart, the sinfulness of his heart.

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So Newton says at this stage of maturity, he can look back on a lifetime of examples of two things, of Christ's love and faithful dealings.

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And at the same time of an equal number of examples of his own shortcomings, his failings, his rebellion, or what he says, how he has in a thousand instances rendered to the

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Lord evil for good. So the mature believer comes to the place where Paul was, where he says,

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I am less than the least of all saints and of sinners.

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I'm the chief. Newton concludes that little statement by saying this, he says, the apprehension of infinite majesty combined with infinite love makes the believer shrink into the dust, you know, to become nothing before God.

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Yeah, Newton points out that two things flow from humility. The first is submission to God's will.

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How can we really claim any kind of humility and still direct our own actions, direct our own thinking?

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He says the views he has of his own vileness, unworthiness, and ignorance, and of the divine sovereignty, wisdom, and love teach him to be content in every state and to bear his appointed lot of suffering with resignation.

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According to the language of David in a time of affliction, I was dumb and opened not my mouth because thou didst it.

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So we need to note there that Newton isn't primarily talking about doing God's will, as important as that is that we do

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God's will, but more he's speaking to a willingness to endure whatever

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God brings, even when it's difficult. Yeah, that's a wonderful mark of humility. And I think that that's something we can all stop and just test ourselves.

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When the Lord allows very difficult things at home, at work, are we quick to rise up as if we've been wounded by Him, you know, as if He's not paid what

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He owes us? You know, we don't like to say it out loud, but we might as well, you know, that we think

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He kind of cheated us today. And Newton says one of the marks of humility is that cheerful enduring of His will.

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And one of the marks of pride then, of course, would be the rise up against it. Another expression of humility, he says, is a tenderness in the way that we deal with other

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Christians. Now, be careful here, he says, we are still required when we look at the activity of another believer, we are still required to judge their conduct by the rule of God's Word.

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So as we're growing old, we're not allowed to become kind of soft grandparents, you know, that just say, well, look,

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I know I'm a sinner, so I'm not going to say anything to anybody. And I'm just going to kind of let everybody do what they want to do.

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That's not really love. That's not really Christian maturity. But he gives some statements about how the humble believer deals with other believers in tenderness.

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He says this, but His, the mature Christians, own heart and the knowledge

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He has acquired of the snares of the world and the subtlety of Satan teach

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Him to make all due allowances and to qualify Him for admonishing and restoring in the spirit of meekness those who have been overtaken in a fault.

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And here, Newton says, this is really where the young believer tends to fall short, being so full of a zeal for the

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Lord and desire to know Him better and to serve Him and to honor Him. And yet, somewhat ignorant of the depth and number of their own struggles, they are very impatient when they see other believers stumbling along.

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The second great quality in this stage of spiritual development in a soul, Newton points out, is a spirituality.

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And that can mean so many things in our day. But Newton defines it very helpfully as a spiritual taste, a spiritual appetite, understandings that cause him to see things as they truly are and cause them to value everything in light of Christ.

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So, the things of this world lose their attraction and the things that are connected to Christ, knowing

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Him and loving Him and serving Him, those things are valued more and more. Yeah, Newton wrote a hymn.

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We have it in our church hymn book, and we'll be talking about it in the extended session that opens with the words,

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I ask the Lord that I might grow. That's the prayer of every believer. But what follows in the hymn is classic

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Newton, just very honest, biblical, wise expression of how

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God deals with this. And he goes to the hymn and he describes verse by verse how unexpectedly the way

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God answered that was to strip everything away from Newton that he either hoped in for spiritual growth other than Christ, you know, every earthly thing, or he stripped every earthly thing that Newton hoped in for contentment and joy.

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And in doing this, you know, it leads the believer to attach their hearts to Christ alone.

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Now, Newton says that with regard to the heart being attached to other things, the older believer is not free from that temptation and not free from the attachment to worldly things.

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There are many good things that God gives us. We appreciate them. The struggle comes, you know, when we appreciate them so much, we begin to look to them in themselves as a source of our happiness rather than thankful for them and, you know, looking through them to the

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God that gave them to us. So they kind of become, they go from gifts, you know, to really nice idols.

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But Newton says the older believer, though not free from these attachments completely, he is more aware of the attachment, whereas a young believer may not even notice it.

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He is also more aware of the danger inherent in attaching our hearts to the worldly things or to the earthly gifts that God gives us.

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And so he has become in his maturity more watchful and therefore more delivered, more consistently free of an idolatrous attachment to something else.

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Newton says this in his letter, the older believer sees nothing worth a serious thought but communion with God and progress in holiness.

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So with that thought in mind, Newton affirms that the chief desire of the mature

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Christian, though we're grateful for many gifts, is God himself, God's presence, uninterrupted communion with God.

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Newton wrote a hymn where he says, how tedious and tasteless the hours. And this is another hymn that we'll talk about in the extended session where he describes the fact that as a new believer, he understands a prison would feel like a palace if God would dwell with us there.

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But a palace would be like a prison to a man without God. So he says the result of all of this is a peaceful reliance upon the

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Lord. And the Christian comes to the place where he has nothing that he is afraid to commit to the hands of the

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Lord. He is habitually, happily resigning everything into the hands of God to be at his disposal.

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He is not afraid of bad news. I think that's a pretty hard statement to make.

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But he is trusting that God will make good every loss, sweeten every bitter thing, and in fact, do exactly what

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Paul says. He will cause all things to work together for our good. A third quality that Newton points out is characteristic of this mature believer is a union of heart to the glory of God and to the will of God.

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And this is another distinguishing mark, Newton says, of the mature Christian. And he lays out his explanation of why in the letter briefly.

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The glory of God and the good of his people are inseparably connected. But of these great ends, the first is unspeakably the highest and the most important and into which everything else will finally be resolved.

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Now, in proportion as we advance nearer to him, our judgment, aim and end will be comfortable to his and his glory will have the highest place in our hearts.

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Newton contrasts this type of maturity with the younger believer, with all the desire and the fire in the heart.

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And Newton says that the early stage of the Christian life tends to be characterized by primarily the believer being focused a lot on himself.

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So think about the believer's needs. He's always talking about his needs, the believer's joys in Christ, what

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God is doing in his life. He's always talking about that. And so you go to church and the baby believer's there. And it's just, you know, it just there's a constant stream of very encouraging stuff.

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But it tends to be stuff that's about what's happening here. Wow, man, you know, I you know,

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God has shown me new things about myself. And and wow, you know, yesterday's quiet time was so wonderful.

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Wasn't today's sermon helpful? But the more mature believer tends to be more focused on the glory of God itself.

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Regardless of the path, regardless of our own ups and downs at the moment, and his love for God, Newton affirms, is more self -forgetful at this stage.

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Now, Newton says he's not saying that the Christian loves God just for who

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God is and doesn't pay attention to what God has done. Actually, that there's no stage in the Christian life where that's the truth.

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What John says in First John is true. We love him because he first loved us. And as we are continuing to grow in our awareness of what that means, when we say he first loved me to that same degree, we are growing in our love for him.

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Yet, Newton says, as the Christian matures and, you know, as we contemplate the perfections of God, we are loving

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God for all that he's done for us. But we are also delighting in God just for who he is.

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You know, he is mine. And, you know, and what does that mean?

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And then we begin to look at the great panorama, you know, the high definition of the descriptions of God's perfections in Scripture.

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And they begin, it's like they begin to march out one after the next in front of our eyes as we grow as Christians.

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And it's not just that I'm forgiven or just that mercy is new every morning or just that he's my father or whatever else you want to say.

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It's that he is. And that becomes the great treasure of the Christian life. And we tend to become a bit self -forgetful as we view him.

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Yeah, we are not promised that we will get the answer key to how exactly these things that come into our lives, sometimes very difficult things, are for our good.

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And we're not promised the answer key or to be able to peer into and God's infinite purposes, how they will tend to his glory.

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So even a self -centered focus of things being for my good and for the glory of God that has to have answers is not ultimately going to help us.

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And it's not ultimately going to be for the glory of God. So I really do love that he points out that of these great ends, the good of his people and his own glory, that his own glory is unspeakably the highest and most important.

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And that is what everything else will finally be resolved to and in.

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And if that's our great desire and that's our great glory, even more than, you know, I need some explanations.

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I need some answers. I need to understand even. Those are all I can identify and I can empathize with that.

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But if we can say, I know that God will be glorified and that is my great hope and that's my greatest joy more and more and more, then we'll be well served.

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Newton has described three stages of Christian maturity here, and he gives a warning that we can't really be competent judges of another believer's progress because there are so many hidden factors, so many things that we just can't see.

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And so here's another quote. For these reasons, we can never be competent judges of each other because we cannot be competently acquainted with the whole complex case.

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But our great and merciful high priest knows the whole. He considers our frame, remembers that we are but dust, makes gracious allowances, pities, bears, accepts, and approves with unerring judgment.

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Yeah, I think a pretty important thing in our culture where, you know, where I read a number of years ago, shockingly, that what used to be the most popular

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Bible verse in America, John 3, 16, pretty much everybody knew that, you know, or those that would know a

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Bible verse, that was the one they knew, that it had been replaced. They had done a, you know, a gallop pull and it had become judge not.

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And that's a pretty severe indictment against us, that of all that God has said to us, the one that we yanked out of the context was, don't you judge me, you know.

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So when Newton says, well, we can't judge each other, he's not, you know, he's not in 2019

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America saying, hey, who am I to judge, you know? He gives us a very specific statement.

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We can never be competent judges. That is, we can never, in a perfect way, without any fear of mistake, look at another believer and say,

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I pretty much figured out your life. And, you know, I know which stage you're in.

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Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and to kind of have a real hard line approach as if there's no room for us maybe being mistaken because of the complexity of the

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Christian life. You know, I mean, as a parent, we have children, both of us. You know, you look at your children, and they're at different ages, so you deal with them differently.

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And they're also, even if they're toward the same age, they're different personalities.

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And how you respond to them as a parent is different. And it's very easy for someone sitting out to look at you and go, I know what you should have done with that kid.

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You blew it. And you think, well, I can understand how you feel that way. But actually, if you understood all these issues that we've known for the last, you know, that we've been involved in since the kid was born, you would understand why we've done this.

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Some complexity to the situation. So in dealing with other believers, don't take

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John Newton's three stages and kind of, you know, label somebody stage one, two, or three, and feel like now that I've read

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Newton, I figured everybody out. You know, it's kind of like the guy that takes the psychology course, you know, Introduction to Psychology in college, and then he starts to dissect everybody.

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So we want to be careful with that. Yeah. Unlike the Enneagram or the horoscope, at least these are biblical categories, but they are taken from a parable, a kingdom parable that the

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Lord gave. And they're not meant to inform every area of our theology. And I think

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Newton's very wise to warn us against coming in and trying to lay these things on top of every person that we know as a grid.

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But I do hope that if you find yourself described here, listener, that you'll be encouraged.

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We're not all that unique. The Lord deals with us in our very special circumstances, and none of us are dealt with in the exact same way.

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But there are some similarities, aren't there? One of the things that we love about attending conferences is when people drop by our booth, and they tell us about how one of our studies or our films has helped or influenced them, their church, their family, their small groups.

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Eventually, we started asking if they would let us record their stories so that we could share them with you.

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This is Chris, and we talked to him at the G3 conference about rethinking God biblically.

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...as a pastor looking for good resources and really became challenged by it. And he was able to lead our church through in California and to see how

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God used that in such unique ways to drive us back to a biblical definition of who is

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God, who is man, what is the gospel. And when we twist that around, we end up with a false gospel and really an empty hope.

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And to see how the workbook really challenged the people to dive into scripture in a way that maybe they don't normally.

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And so to see the byproduct of really what the scripture produced was such a blessing as a pastor, as a shepherd.

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I think the biggest thing that the congregation walked away with was understanding that we don't get the gospel right if we don't begin with God.

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And when they talk to other people, they hear, well, I think God is. Well, it's not about what we think.

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It's about what scripture says and who God is. For more information about Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, visit themeansofgrace .org.

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Well, Newton ends his letter with this beautiful description of the worth of a true

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Christian. So, John, why don't you read that to us to close us out? He writes, The sun, the

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S -U -N, the sun in his daily course beholds nothing so excellent and honorable upon the earth as a mature

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Christian. Though perhaps he may be confined to a cottage and is little known or noticed by men, but he is the object and residence of divine love, the charge of angels and ripening for everlasting glory, happy Christian.

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His toils, sufferings, and exercises will soon be at an end. Soon his desires will be accomplished and he who has loved him and redeemed him with his own blood will receive him to himself with a well -done, good and faithful servant enter thou into the joy of thy

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Lord. Well, praise God. Thank you for joining us. And we look forward to being back with you again next week.

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Thanks for listening to the Behold Your God podcast. All the scripture passages and resources we mentioned in the podcast are available in this week's show notes at mediagratia .org

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