Eat This Book (Part Three)

From The Christian Reader:

Eat this Book (Part Three)


by Brian Carpenter



We continue this week where we left off last week. Spiritual meditation on the Word of God is a primary means of spiritual growth. One of the functions meditation fulfills in the Christian life is to get us to see truth and dwell upon it until we internalize it and believe it from the depths of our being. The lies we currently believe are thus uprooted and replaced with truth. When the truths of the Scriptures are settled deeply into our souls, our “autopilot” function is changed, and our automatic responses to the events of our lives become more and more in accord with that truth. We become more Christlike in our words and actions.



But there is another function to spiritual meditation, and I think it’s even more important. Human beings are creatures of desire. Desire is an essential category of being for us. We are ruled by our desires in every aspect of our lives. They motivate us in a powerful way, and can even drive us onward when all strength is gone. We will endure great agony in pursuit of what we deeply desire. When desire ceases, we stop dead in our tracks. A pervasive loss of desire can even bring death. We say that such a person has “lost the will to live.” If they do not recover their desire to live, then they will die, sometimes by their own hand, sometimes their bodies will suddenly and inexplicably sicken and die of “natural” causes. The central problem of the Christian life occurs at just this level, the level of desire.



Part of the legacy of the Fall is that our desires are now disordered. We generally do not do evil things simply for the sake of doing evil. Most of the time we do evil things because we are trying to meet a good desire in a way that God has forbidden. The woman who covets another woman’s husband, or the thief who covets some item which doesn’t belong to him are all motivated by basic desires for which there is a legitimate, God-ordained function. The woman might want the other woman’s husband because she thinks he can make her happy and fulfilled, or because the other woman has hurt her and she wants revenge, which is some sort of rough justice. But human fulfillment and justice are good things. The thief may steal because the proceeds of the theft bring money, which he thinks brings security. But security is a good thing. The man who visits a prostitute does it because he is trying to get pleasure or relief from some bodily tension. But pleasure or relief are good things, when considered by themselves. Even an act of pure depravity, like a random, senseless, brutal murder, fulfills some desire at some level in the murderer, even if it’s only the desire to alleviate boredom or to obtain some sort of quasi-sexual thrill.



C.S. Lewis explained this admirably in the following passage of The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape, a senior demon is giving advice to Wormwood, a Junior Tempter posted on earth:



Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made all the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.



This is one of the hardest concepts to get across to modern Christians. Modern consumerist culture has taught us that we all have a God-given right to the speedy fulfillment of our desires in exactly the manner we want them fulfilled. Thus when you attempt to rebuke a modern Christian for pursuing their desires sinfully, all they can see is the good thing they want. They cannot see that they are going about getting that good thing in the wrong way, and so they are doing evil. Often the modern Christian cannot fathom a state of affairs in which his or her good desires are to go unfulfilled, just because the legitimate means of fulfilling them is not available right now. If they could fulfill their desires legitimately, they probably would do so. But since they can’t, they feel compelled to fulfill them illegitimately. Very often they actually think God doesn’t mind in the least if they do, for they also cannot fathom the idea of a God who would keep them from what they desire. Such a God would not be a good God in their minds, and since we assert that God is good, then he must want them to fulfill their desires.



Desire is the central problem to be solved both in justification and in sanctification. For a person to be justified, he or she must repentantly exercise saving faith. He or she must believe on the Lord Jesus. In order to do that, two things are necessary. First he or she must have true knowledge, and then he or she must have the desire.



It is precisely at this point that most Arminians (and some Calvinists) misunderstand what Calvinism teaches. Calvinists do believe in free will. We believe that a human being will always choose according to his or her greatest desire. That choice is a free choice (i.e. it is not compelled by an external force). But it is also a conditioned choice. It is conditioned by the internal state of the one doing the choosing. In other words, you can do whatever you want, but you are powerless to want whatever you want.



For instance, I hate brussels sprouts, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I couldn’t like them even if I wanted to for some reason (which I don’t). If you put a gun to my head and made me eat them, I would, but it would only be because in that moment my greatest desire would be to live. One time a member of my congregation put a plate of brussels sprouts down on the dinner table alongside a check for $100. If I ate the nasty little things, he’d give me the check. I ate them, but only because I wanted the $100 more than I wanted to avoid the brussels sprouts in that circumstance. I didn’t like them one bit. You can make me eat them. You can’t make me like them. You can’t make me desire them, and I can’t make me desire them either.



The problem in conversion is that sinful man cannot truly see God (2 Cor 4:4, etc) and does not want God. (See 1 Cor 2:6-14, Rom 8:7-8.) When God brings an elect person to salvation, the Holy Spirit operates at the level of knowledge and desire. As an act of sovereign grace He opens the sinner’s eyes to see Christ in all his beauty and mercy, and to see his own sin in all its ugliness and death, and he implants a desire for Christ. The human being then freely chooses according to his or her greatest desire. They do truly choose Christ. [1] At that moment, grace is infused in the soul [2] and a new nature is implanted.



The regenerate person now has two natures dwelling inside of him. Each nature has its own desires. The old, fallen nature, called the flesh, still wants what is contrary to God’s will. The new, regenerate nature, called the spirit, truly desires God and the things of God. These two natures battle within the Christian and are the cause of the “continual, irreconcilable war” (WCF 13.2). The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.



The Christian has a responsibility to use the resources given to him by the Spirit of God to wage war against the flesh and mortify it, and to strengthen the spirit. We are to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” recognizing that “it is God who works in us giving us the ability both to will and to act” (Phil 2:12-13).



When we are under the sway of a besetting sin of one type or another, our problem resides either at the level of true knowledge (as we covered last week) or at the level of desire, or both. The desire of the flesh for wickedness is stronger than the desire of the spirit for obedience and goodness. If you are to truly defeat this sin, you must kindle good desire and strengthen your spirit with it.



So how do you cause yourself to desire what you do not currently desire? This is actually a relatively straightforward process whose mechanism is well known in our day. We in the West, and particularly in America, have mastered the kindling and manipulation of desire more thoroughly than any other people who have ever existed. Fantastic amounts of study have gone into this enterprise. Our whole economy depends on it. You have had your desires kindled and manipulated almost from birth. Every time you turn on your television, go to a movie, or read a magazine, your desires are being manipulated in the form of advertisements. You are shown an image, or a brief scene, which is laden with all sorts of subtle psychological meanings which you may not even be aware of on a conscious level. Your deepest drives are activated and stimulated. Desire is kindled. You associate that product with the satisfaction of that desire. You buy the product.





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The same mechanism is put into play in the process of sanctification. The higher does not stand without the lower. God does not overrule nature. He adds grace to nature to begin to re-grant it the abilities it lost in the Fall. If you would truly overcome sin, a strong desire for the good, the true, and the lovely must be kindled.



Spirit-empowered meditation on the Word of God will, in the words of Wilhelmus a Brakel, cause us to be “led further into divine mysteries, to be kindled with love, to be comforted, and to be stirred up in lively exercises.” We “delight” in these matters and are “astonished” about them and “quickened by them.” We meditate to find “clear light, sensibility, enjoyment and sweetness.” These are “the very purpose for which one engages in meditation.”



In meditation we set before our mind’s eye the loveliness of Christ, the beauty of holiness, the joys of heaven, the comforts that are ours in sorrow, the love which has been shed abroad in our hearts, and the breathtaking privileges which are ours as children of God. An earnest examination of these spiritual realities will fan a weak spark of desire into a flame. That is precisely why Paul teaches us, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”



Next week we will go a little further on this subject, giving some practical advice on how to go about spiritual meditation.







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[1] Westminster Larger Catechism Q104 numbers “choosing” as among our duties under the First Commandment.

[2] WLC Q. 77. Wherein do justification and sanctification differ? 
A. Although sanctification be inseparably joined with justification, yet they differ, in that God in justification imputeth the righteousness of Christ; in sanctification his Spirit infuseth grace, and enableth to the exercise thereof; in the former, sin is pardoned; in the other, it is subdued: the one doth equally free all believers from the revenging wrath of God, and that perfectly in this life, that they never fall into condemnation; the other is neither equal in all, nor in this life perfect in any, but growing up to perfection.





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Brian Carpenter is the pastor of Foothills Community Church (PCA) in Sturgis, South Dakota. He and his wife Laura have two lovely daughters, Evelyn and Jordan, ages 2 and 3. His interests include automotive and motorcycle repair and rebuilding, welding and metal fabrication, economics and monetary theory, philosophy, classical education, church history, and really expensive Scotch whisky. Brian blogs at TheHappyTR and AFiresideChat. His sermons are available online at SermonAudio.com.