Realism about sin and human nature

I started things off in my first post with an explanation for the title of the blog, and I listed six gifts that the Puritans have left us. My hope is that in working through this list, it will encourage us to rediscover their writings.

The third gift the Puritans left us is their realism about sin and human nature. In The Reformed Pastor, Richard Baxter gives this piece of advice to pastors that I find both sobering and wonderful: "Take heed to yourselves, for you have a depraved nature, and sinful inclinations, as well as others. If innocent Adam had need of heed, and lost himself and us for want of it, how much more need have such as we!" It sobers me because of the problem it describes and the labor that is involved in keeping watch over ourselves. But we should find it wonderful because we only find real freedom and abundant life when we take seriously the reality of our corrupted condition. If we are indeed depraved as Baxter says, and yet we comfort ourselves with books that offer us our best life now or life without limits, then won't we only delude ourselves into thinking that we are happy and thus distract ourselves from finding satisfaction in Christ? Any self-help approach to living that does not begin with the reality of our wretched condition is not really dealing with reality. And all too often, such approaches reduce biblical religion to using God to get what we want.

Perhaps the seriousness with which the Puritans approached sin and sanctification is part of where their "bad rap" comes from. But it is in their seriousness that the Puritans can be so helpful to us. Their view of God is too big to allow us to use Him. And their view of human nature is too realistic to allow us to delude ourselves.

The Puritan work that has most engaged my thinking in regard to sin is John Owen's Mortification of Sin (now more accessible than ever thanks to the volume edited by Kapic and Taylor). Owen patiently works through the biblical text, systematically laying out the need, the nature, and the means of mortification (the putting to death of sin in the life of the Christian). "Be killing sin or it will be killing you," he writes, and presses on us the reality that mortification is a never-ending labor that embraces every area of human life, but that can only be done through the Holy Spirit. Today we tend to want shortcuts and instant gratification. Owen reminds us that when it comes to sin there are no shortcuts. He cares about us too much, and cares about the glory of God in Christ too much, to allow us to deceive ourselves.

Human beings are corrupt in every part of our being. The Puritans will not let us forget that fact. But they do so not to destroy us, but to point us to the source of liberty, Jesus Christ.