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Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

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I’ve been reading a book from the 1600’s that was never intended to be a book because it was written as a letter from one friend to another who had lost his faith. The name of the book is, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, by Henry Scougal.

Here is the summary from Amazon:

Life of God in the Son of Man was written by seventeenth century, Scottish minister Henry Scougal. It is a long letter, written to a friend who had lost the faith. Consequently, Life of God in the Son of Man is supportive, and its tone is one of friendship and love, betraying a true passion in Scougal’s work. Being a letter, The Life of God in the Son of Man is somewhat short. It is divided into three parts. In the first part, Scougal provides an immensely instructive investigation of the true nature of religion. He addresses several poor conceptions of God and religion before turning to true religion–the “life of God in the son of man.” In the second part, he explains the benefits of true religion. He focuses on the “excellence of divine love.” The love of God, he emphasizes, is a great love, worth having! Nevertheless, in the third part, Scougal recognizes the difficulties in following God. He thus encourages the dependence upon divine assistance, and the contemplation of scripture in developing a Godly life. Although the writing is somewhat dated, Life of God in the Son of Man is a tour de force of spiritual wisdom, which has served countless spiritual wayfarers.

Version 1.0.0

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The actual version I purchased is the modern English version, which replaces words like “doth” and other antiquated English words and phrases with more up-to-date and easier to understand English vernacular of today. It can be seen/purchased at this link.[1]

I’ll be frank and maybe readers can relate. For the longest time, I have not loved God as I should. It is not a natural outflow of God’s life within me, though it certainly should be. There are numerous reasons for that in my own life, things that I am working through. Some people, when they become Christians, are immediately released from their own prisons of doubt and self-hatred. For others, it is a very slow process of resolving the problems within in order to come to realize just how much God loves us. When both arrive to that realization, their life changes dramatically. It’s not due to tongues or ecstatic experiences. It’s due to the growing realization of how and why we should love God more than anything else in life.

Scougal breaks things down quite nicely and easily. He talks about what constitutes true Christianity, contrasting it to what people often call Christianity today, but isn’t. He notes that there are essentially three things that compel our actions, our words and our thoughts: our intellect/knowledge, our works or our emotions.

Too often, says Scougal, there is a real lack of understanding of what constitutes true Christianity, even among people who believe they are Christians. Let me quote Scougal here.

Some believe that Christianity is a matter of understanding, of accurate doctrine, and of opinions. All they can say about their faith is that they believe one of the different opinions, and have joined one of the many denominations that Christianity has so sadly been divided into.

Others believe that Christianity is a matter of one’s actions, in a constant course of external duties or in the performance of certain standards. If they live in peace with their neighbors, exercise self-control in eating and drinking, give money regularly, attend church services, pray, and occasionally give to the needy, they think they have done all that is required.

There are others who put all of their Christianity in their feelings, in emotional experiences, and in their ecstasy in devotion. All they pursue is to pray passionately, to think of heaven with pleasure, and to experience warm feelings when they seek their Savior’s affections…they convince themselves that they are deeply in love with Him. They assume they are truly saved because of their experiences. They consider this feeling-based confidence to be the greatest of Christian blessings.

Scougal then goes onto explain to his dear friend what actual Christianity is all about. Ultimately, true Christianity is the “…union of the soul with God. It is a real impartation of the divine nature. It is the image of God sketched on the soul…Christ formed in us…it is a divine life in us.” In a nutshell, Scougal notes that being a Christian means God’s character stamped upon our soul. Consider that and allow the implications to dawn on you.

Look in your heart. Do you love God with all of your being? I don’t and admitting that is not something I enjoy doing. I’ve begun to realize that the reason I do not love God with all my heart, soul and mind is due to a simple problem I’ve had for years. I’ve always seen God as something He is not. Like the servant who completely misunderstood his master in Matthew 25:14-25 out of fear, I have been guilty of a misplaced fear of God, seeing Him as a taskmaster instead of Someone who loved me so much that He gave His only Son so that I might have eternal life.

This inordinate fear of God (not to be confused with a holy fear or deep reverence/respect for Him), has marked my path for too long. It has kept me focused on me, myself and I, instead of God who so deeply loves me that there is nothing I can do to come under His condemnation (Romans 8).

Scougal has a way of making things clear and applicable. He speaks of the love we have for others, especially our spouse and how, because of that, we want to do what is best for them. When they are gone for a short period of time, we miss them terribly, counting the days or hours until they return.

My issue has to do with the fact that I have not spent time focusing on who God is (absolute love), how much He loves me (immensely and eternally), and the fact that His indwelling has stamped His image on my soul. Instead – whether it was due to my parents and the way they dealt with me because of the frustrations in life they experienced growing up – I tended to see God as a larger than life parent, who would grimace at my faults and foibles, standing there with crossed arms and a frown. Yes, He loved me as long as I towed the line, but there was always a resident fear of doing something wrong.

I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating because it is so wrong that it must be dealt with in me. If God is like my parents, then how on earth could He actually love me so much that even before I became a Christian, He was willing to die for me? What is His love if not an actual pouring out of Himself through Jesus in order that the righteous requirements of the Law would be met so that my sins – all of them – would be forgiven?

Why on earth would the apostle John love Jesus so much that he felt comfortable in resting his head on Jesus’ chest during the final supper before Jesus was betrayed? That’s impossible if Jesus was a stereotypical fly off the handle overbearing Italian like my father! Why has it taken me this long to begin to come to terms with it?!

So my difficulty is narrowed down to this: I am not in love enough with the very God who loves me with an endless love. If I was, 1 Corinthians 13 would be more clearly and easily lived out within and through me toward others. We forget that humanity is made in God’s image. That applies to those who are so sinful and so evil we don’t even want to be anywhere near them. Our hearts don’t necessarily bleed for them. In fact, often, we want retribution against them. Is that what God wants? Yes, there will come a time when His patience will end and He will pour out His wrath, but isn’t today the day of salvation?

Scougal takes pains to explain what real Christianity is all about so that there is no mistake. Ultimately, it is absolute freedom via unforced behavior to do with the will of God. We come to love Him so much, that we think nothing of the problems and issues we might face if it means going through those things because it is His will for us.

How many times have you or I done something because we know we should, not because we are compelled to do so? How many times has our compassion or pity compelled us to reach out to those in need without even considering ourselves? How many times have we simply done what is true and right because we desperately want to do what is true and right and cannot hold ourselves back from that?

All too often, we are involved in “religious exercises” as opposed to a life that naturally flows from God’s love being shed abroad in our hearts (Romans 5:5). If God truly lives within us then shouldn’t our hearts be more fully aligned with God’s purposes? Yet, all too often, I have found myself having to force myself to do something simply because intellectually I know it is the right thing to do, but I don’t want to do it.

In John 7:37-38, we note the following:

37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

Certainly, Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit who would come to indwell every believer. Look at your life. Do rivers of living water flow from your heart? Mine has at times, but it is not consistent. The more it flows, the more we are willing and able to perform God’s will because of our growing love for Him. If we rarely or never have rivers of living water flowing out of our hearts toward God and others, there is something terribly wrong with us.

If God truly lives within me and has stamped His image upon my soul, there should be a change in the way I think and in what I do and say. This is not to say that I will no longer sin. Unfortunately, I cannot escape it in this life because of the sin nature within me. However, just as I greatly love my wife and want her to succeed and to do for her the things that not only make her happy but prove my love to her, shouldn’t this also be the attitude within me toward God to a far greater degree?

This has to be true and again, it goes back to 1 Corinthians 13, where the apostle Paul fully describes in detail what it means to live a life of love. In Galatians 5, he takes the time to tell us what walking by the power of the Spirit means and notice he does not allude to tongues or other ecstatic experiences there. He talks about how a person empowered by the Holy Spirit becomes more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled (v. 22). He then sums it up by stating clearly, “Against such things there is no law” (v. 23).

Is that me? Is that you? If we are not asking that question, there may be something wrong. Can we ever become loving enough? Gentle enough? Patient enough? Kind enough? Self-controlled enough, etc.? I’m thinking no.

Paul is saying that if a person loves as Jesus loves (and isn’t that the goal of each and every Christian to become a “little Jesus”?), that love should flow from our hearts carrying us along like a river flowing from its source. As that water moves along in the stream bed, it may meet certain obstacles but generally those obstacles do not hamper the movement of the water as it wends and winds its way around and through.

Space does not permit me to discuss all of what Scougal expresses and I’ll remind readers that his book was originally written as a letter to a dear friend in the late 1600’s. However, someone got hold of it and decided it needed to be a book and so it became one. Interestingly enough, the book found its way to the likes of Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, who were extremely important in the Great Awakening. After receiving a copy of the book from Wesley, Whitefield is said to have claimed, “I never knew what real Christianity was until God sent me this excellent book.” I can very easily relate to that!

Along those lines, I believe today’s Christian is also so far removed from the reality that those men of old learned. They sought God, not on religious terms or intellectual pursuits, but because they wanted to actually know God. I personally believe I have been missing something far greater than what I have imagined. Again, I’m not talking about ecstatic experiences, which can be and often are, so misleading and deceptive. I’m talking about a growing love for God, whom we should love more than anything in this world.

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24 NKJV; emphasis added)

If God literally lives within us, then why aren’t we living a life of power that enables and compels us to be imitators of Jesus in the way He lived, by loving God and loving others? Doing the Father’s will was what He loved and He considered it food (John 4:34). What does that mean except that He was so filled with the desire to fulfill every aspect of the Father’s will, even when it meant sorrow, pain, discomfort and ultimately, death?

I firmly believe we are in the last days. I recently read that the earth’s rotational speed is changing leaving us with totally unpredictable days ahead. I don’t fully understand what that means, but it may well be that this old earth is getting tired and under God’s timing, winding down in preparation for what is ahead.

But because it is the last days with the Tribulation ahead of us, shouldn’t we Christians be so focused on loving our Lord that nothing can deter us from fulfilling His will? If I am so overwhelmed in loving God and what He has accomplished for me, would I be able to cave into doubt, frustration and fear?

When I first met my wife, I didn’t have to say to myself, “Hey, don’t you wish you could love that woman?” No, it happened naturally as I focused on her. That love fortunately, was reciprocated and has grown over the nearly forty years we’ve been married.

Why is it I don’t love God like that? Why is it I have not learned like the apostle John to love our Lord the way He loves me? Why is not God’s love more meaningfully shed abroad in my heart?

Paul seems to imply that as believers, God’s love will become reflected in and through us toward God first and others second. Doesn’t it mean that His love will become the foundational compelling force within us and to fulfill His will? If we truly love our spouses, aren’t we compelled to do for them to prove our love of them because we want to? Don’t we actually want to do that? How much more should this be our pursuit and demeanor where God is concerned?

I’m not talking about a namby-pamby gushy feeling within that can actually derail us from the reality of His will. I’m talking about a love for Him so strong that though we are tempted, tired, fatigued, overwrought, pressed down and all the rest, we still choose to do His will because we love Him that much.

If this resonates within you, take the time to read Scougal’s book. He is clear and enlightening. He pushes us to realize that the more we love God, the easier it becomes to fulfill His will. We then, like Jesus, can say with certainty that His will is our food.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1533579997

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective