The Roots of Endurance

I have recently finished reading a series of books by John Piper called The Swans Are not Silent. You may have read the several excerpts I have posted as I read. In my mind, nothing short of Scripture serves to inspire and encourage like the biographies of great saints of the past. This series has been especially good that way.

These books are a great entry-point into the history and theology of the Christian church. Rich in theology and fascinating in history, yet written on a level that should be easily understood by anyone of high school age and up, they will whet your appetite for more—more history, more theology, more of God’s working through the ages.

Titles in the series are:
• The Legacy of Sovereign Joy: God's Triumphant Grace in the Lives of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin
• The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd
• The Roots of Endurance: Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce
• Contending for Our All: Defending Truth and Treasuring Christ in the Lives of Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen

The thumb-nail sketches of great theologians of the church from Augustine and Athanasius to J. Gresham Machen show us that the struggles we face are not greater than those that Christians have faced since the beginning of the church; that the heresies that are prevalent today are the same attacks on the truth that Satan has been using for centuries; that the truth that has sustained God’s people is the same truth that sustains us today; and that the one true God upon whose grace we rest is as faithful today as he has always been—“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”

More John Piper on William Wilberforce:

The Decisive Direction of Sin: Vertical

Take the example of how people define sin. When considering the nature of sin, Wilberforce said, the vast bulk of Christians in England estimated the guilt of an action “not by the proportion in which, according to scripture, [actions] are offensive to God. but by that in which they are injurious to society.” Now, on the face of it that sounds noble, loving, and practical. Sin hurts people, so don't sin.
   Wouldn't that definition of sin be good for society? But Wilberforce says, “Their slight notions of the guilt and evil of sin [reveal] an utter [lack] of all suitable reverence for the Divine Majesty. This principle [reverence for the Divine Majesty] is justly termed in Scripture, ‘The beginning of wisdom’ [Psalm 111:10].” And without this wisdom, there will be no deep and lasting good done for man, spiritually or politically. Therefore, the supremacy of God’s glory in all things is what he calls “the grand governing maxim” in all of life. The good of society may never be put ahead of this. That would dishonor God and, paradoxically, defeat the good of society. For the good of society, the good of society must not be the primary good.

—John Piper, The Roots of Endurance, 121–122

John Piper on William Wilberforce:

   But he was practical with a difference. He believed with all his heart that new affections for God were the key to morals and lasting political reformation. And these new affections and this reformation did not come from mere ethical systems. They came from what he called the “peculiar doctrines” of Christianity. For Wilberforce, practical deeds were born in “peculiar doctrines.” By that term he simply meant the central distinguishing doctrines of human depravity, divine judgment, the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross, justification by faith alone, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and the practical necessity of fruit in all life devoted to good deeds.

The Fatal Habit of Nominal Christians

He wrote his book [A Practical View of Christianity] to show that the “bulk” of Christians in England were merely nominal because they had abandoned these doctrines in favor of a system of ethics and had thus lost the power of ethical life and the political welfare. He wrote:

The fatal habit of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight, and as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment.

   He pled [sic] with nominal Christians of England not to turn “their eyes from the grand peculiarities of Christianity, [but] to keep these ever in view, as the pregnant principles whence all the rest must derive their origin, and receive their best support.”
   Knowing that Wilberforce was a politician all his adult life, who never lost an election from the time he was twenty-one years old, we might be tempted to think that his motives were purely pragmatic—as if he should say, “If Christianity works to produce the political welfare, then use it.” But that is not the spirit of his mind or his life. In fact, he believed that such pragmatism would ruin the very thing it sought, the reformation of culture.

—John Piper, The Roots of Endurance, 119–121

Another quote from John Piper:

   When [John Newton] wrote his Narrative in the early 1760s he said, “I know not that I have ever since met so daring a blasphemer.” The hymn we know as “Amazing Grace” was written to accompany a New Year’s sermon based on 1 Chronicles 17:16, “Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and said, ‘Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?’”

Amazing grace!—how sweet the sound—
That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

   The effect of this amazement is tenderness toward others. “[The ‘wretch’ who has been saved by grace] believes and feels his own weakness and unworthiness, and lives upon the grace and pardoning love of his Lord. This gives him an habitual tenderness and gentleness of spirit. Humble under a sense of much forgiveness to himself, he finds it easy to forgive others.”
   He puts it in a picture:

A company of travelers fall in to a pit: one of them gets a passenger to draw him out. Now he should not be angry with the rest for falling in; nor because they are not yet out, as he is. He did not pull himself out: instead, therefore, of reproaching them, he should show them pity. . . . A man, truly illuminated, will no more despise others, than Bartimaeus, after his own eyes were opened, would take a stick, and beat every blind man he met.

   Glad-hearted, grateful lowliness and brokenness as a saved “wretch” was probably the most prominent root of Newton’s habitual tenderness with people.

—John Piper, The Roots of Endurance, 72-73.

Jonathan Moorhead recently asked (although I have searched in vain to find it on his blog, I’m sure it was he*) what epitaph we would like on our grave. I think I’ve found mine.

John Newton died on December 21, 1807, at the age of eighty- two. A month previously he wrote:

It is a great thing to die; and, when flesh and a heart fail, to have God for the strength of our hearts, and our portion forever. I know whom I have believed, and he is able to keep that which I have committed against that great day. Hence forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the lord, the righteous judge, shall give me that day.

—Quoted in The Roots of Endurance by John Piper, 52.

In his Preface to The Roots of Endurance, John Piper wrote:

   As I write this Preface I have just preached to my people several messages in which I pleaded with them to be “coronary Christians,” not “adrenal Christians.” Not that adrenaline is bad, I said; it gets me through lots of Sundays. But it lets you down on Mondays. The heart is another kind of friend. It just keeps on serving—very quietly, through good days and bad days, happy and sad, high and low, appreciated and unappreciated. It never says , “I don’t like your attitude, Piper , I’m taking the day off.” It just keeps humbly lub-dubbing along. It endures the way adrenaline doesn’t.
   Coronary Christians are like the heart in the causes they serve. Adrenal Christians are like adrenaline—as spurt of energy and then fatigue. What we need in the cause of social justice (for example, against racism and abortion), and the cause of world missions (to plant churches among the unreached peoples of the world), and the cause of personal holiness and evangelism (to lead people to Christ and love them no matter what) is not spurts of energy, but people who endure for the long haul. Marathoners, not sprinters.

—John Piper, The Roots of Endurance, 11-12