Give Sin a Name

It is unlikely that we will be delivered from the blemishes on our character until we confess our sin by name. Today, Sinclair Ferguson provides three essential principles for pursuing repentance and spiritual transformation.

All this week, we’ve been thinking together about a letter written by the famous English hymn writer John Newton. In his collected works, it’s actually got a title: “On Some Blemishes in Christian Character.” If I remember rightly, Newton talks about seven different characters, and we’ve thought only about a few of them. But if you’ve been listening, perhaps you’ve recognized yourself, or at least parts of yourself, in one or other of these characters. And I want us now, as we come towards the end of the week, to ask a question: If I recognize a blemish in my Christian character, something that seems to obscure the grace and graciousness of Jesus Christ, is there a remedy? Is there a pathway I can follow to spiritual transformation?

Now, you know that being a Christian isn’t a matter of following a checklist, but the Scriptures are full of very helpful and very wise directives for us to follow, and I want to suggest a few principles. The first is this: whatever you come to realize is distorting the image of the Lord Jesus in you, be sure to give it a name.

I think it’s part of the wisdom of John Newton that when he described these people, he specified their name. And in fact, that’s what Scripture does. Scripture encourages us to confess our faults, but Scripture actually encourages us also not to be vague about them—to confess our faults in general—but to specify them, to give them names.

It’s always intrigued me that in Ephesians 5, the Apostle Paul says there are things that shouldn’t be named among believers (Eph. 5:3), and yet in Colossians 3:5, he actually names those very things. What explains the paradox? It’s this: if we don’t have a clear sight of the target that we want to destroy in our lives, then we will miss it. Unless we confess to the Lord, “Lord, the blemish on my Christian character and walk is called (whatever it is),” it’s unlikely that we really will be delivered from it. So, we need to learn to name the distortion.

Here’s a second principle I think that’s helpful. Write down the name of the opposite grace of your blemish. Write down on a piece of paper the nature of your blemish. Name it, and then write down opposite the grace, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is the opposite of your blemish. And I do mean write it down. And when you have done that, commit yourself before God to seeking it.

And this is a principle that we need to keep coming back to. You see, we are not transformed merely by avoiding the works of the flesh. We need simultaneously to seek the fruit of the Spirit. Just trying to get rid of the blemish may actually make it worse, no more likely to transform me than scratching an itch that I feel is likely to make it go away. And as you read through Paul’s letters, you’ll notice that he does this constantly. We are to put off, but we are also to put on.

And here’s a third principle. We need to realize that the resources for lasting transformation are to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. So having named my sinful blemish by naming the opposite grace, I should now turn to perhaps particularly the Gospels and read about the Lord Jesus Christ, and see how that opposite grace is manifested in His life and pray the simple prayer, “Lord God, make me more like my Lord Jesus Christ.” And if we make that prayer without any strings attached, and if we don’t try and second-guess how the Lord is going to do it, He surely will do it.

John Newton himself wrote an entire hymn on the way God does this. It’s called “Prayer Answered by Crosses.” And if you don’t know it, I suggest you do a Google search for it this weekend. I think you’ll find it a great help, because you can never second-guess the ways in which the heavenly Father means to transform you into the likeness of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, but He surely wants to do it.