To Peace by Way of Agony

One of the attributes I most appreciate in many of the characters in the Bible is that mixture of weakness and strength discernible in their personalities, the dark and luminous areas that struggle incessantly within them

, and that remind me of the vicissitudes and twists and turns of my own spiritual experience.

Over the years, I too have struggled with the contradictory and persistent impulses of my personality. On many occasions, like Paul, I have asked the Lord many times to deliver me from some secret thorn, and time and again I have had to content myself with his firm but fatherly counsel: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

It must be made clear that these sinful tendencies have arisen in the context of a profound desire to please the Lord and a consuming passion to serve him and be useful to him. I have had to accept the psychological and spiritual reality that within us, within what we are in this fallen condition we inhabit, good and evil, the carnal and the spiritual, profound love for God and the dark demands of the flesh can coexist. For those of us who recognize this harsh reality of the Christian experience, the honest words of the apostle Paul, which we have already mentioned in another context, resound with crystal clarity (Romans 7:21–25):

21 So then, when I desire to do good, I find this law: that evil is present with me.

22 For according to the inward man, I delight in the law of God;

23 but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin that is in my members.

24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

25 I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Paul acknowledges the inner struggle that divides him. He understands that something like two natures are at work within him in constant conflict, what he calls “the law of my mind” and “the law of sin.” These two inclinations keep him in continual tension, alternating between a profound sense of frustration over the continual tendency to sin (“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”) and a sense of gratitude at the fact that in Jesus Christ there is hope of freedom and justification (“I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”).

Through these very sincere words, the great apostle acknowledges the true condition of all of us who love the Lord deeply but are also forced to recognize that, as long as we remain in the flesh, we will have to struggle against the sinister tendencies of our biological nature.

Interestingly, that expression of profound frustration on the part of the great apostle gives way in the next chapter of Romans to one of the most wonderful expressions of Christian confidence and assurance in the entire Bible. There Paul confidently declares (Romans 8:1, 2):

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

As we have noted before (‘Knowing Our Deformities’), this realistic and honest recognition of the complexity of the human soul in no way impoverishes our understanding of the experience of sanctification or of God’s power to perfect and polish us over time. It simply makes the believer’s spiritual journey deeper and more complex. It adds more texture and mystery—and perhaps more beauty—to our spiritual pilgrimage here on earth. In my own life, just as I have had to struggle with those persistent giants for a long time, I have also seen them fall one after another through prayer, fasting, the continual surrender of my will to the Lord, continual confession, and the exercise of self-control strengthened by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

The victories gained during that pilgrimage have been costly and long in coming. They have cost me tears, sleepless nights, and shame. But those long journeys through the desert have also left within me a deposit of humility, patience, and mercy toward others that has proved extremely useful in my career as a pastor and counselor of souls. They have compelled me to discover and draw upon the resources that the Word provides for the long and exhausting pilgrimages of the Spirit. They have given me access to the heart and mysteries of God that I otherwise would not have known. They have made me much more realistic and tolerant regarding the failings and inconsistencies of others.

I am certain that those wrestlings with the angel in the middle of the night have allowed me to know God and know myself in a way that would not have been possible if the process of sanctification had been linear and simple. God has been glorified in all my struggles. At every moment he has shown himself faithful and consistent in his mysterious ways. The result of that winding and agonizing journey has justified the trials and tribulations along the way! I can fully identify with the words of the writer of Hebrews, who, as we see, understood very well the struggles, agonies, and victories of the farmer, the athlete, and the soldier (Hebrews 12:11):

11 It is true that no discipline seems at present to be a cause for joy, but rather for sorrow; yet afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.