Stanek Sunday quote: “Though I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan”
Because our weekend question focuses on post-abortive mothers, I thought this quote from the book, The God Who is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story, by D. A. Carson, would be helpful…
We still await the final transformation that lies ahead of us. But we look back and see that we are not what we were.
The point was well made by John Newton… the old slave trader who had become a preacher of the gospel. Looking back on his life, he estimated that he had transported 20,000 slaves across the Atlantic. He said that in his nightmares he could still hear them scream. At some point he… became a Christian, and his life changed. Eventually he became a pastor. In his senior years, he declared,
I am not what I ought to be – ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be – I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be – soon, soon shall I put off mortaility, and with mortality all sin and imperfection.
Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”
Newton authored the beloved Christian hymn, Amazing Grace.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Amen. No longer a slave to sin and Satan, bought with the Precious Blood of Christ. Thank you, Jesus, for freedom.
Amazing!!! Grace!!! Thank you for sharing this! Love! The final quote, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” I am adopting this!
Well said,Thank You Jesus for freedom through your blood.I should be more involved i also should be more following towards you,i am still working on that.God Bless everybody who follows Jesus or is trying to.God Bless those in need and God Bless those who are nice to others even tho it isn’t returned as easily such as myself.
Amen!!
Thank you so much for this!!
I am not who I once was. I am not defined by my abortion. It is something I have done, it is not who I am.
I am what He says I am!!! Thank you, Jesus!
I’m right there with Carla. My abortions don’t define who I am and I do what I can to help women that find themselves in positions of thinking abortion is their only choice and I try to help them see it’s not. I am no longer a slave to the guilt I once felt and Satan can no longer bring me down. Thanks for sharing this Jill!
Forgive me, but as a convert to Catholicism, it is amazing just how Catholic this perspective of Newton’s is! We Catholics would call this the ongoing process of sanctification (i.e., being made more holy by the grace of God). Becoming more like Jesus, by His grace, is a day-to-day, gradual thing that involves our daily walk with Christ. Amen to this!
This understanding of our relationship with Christ implicitly rejects the idea that we are totally depraved dung incapable of being genuinely transformed in the depths of our soul (as per Luther). Rather, it marvels at the reality that although we will always be sinners and always imperfect, never fully what we should be, yet, if we freely embrace and cooperate with grace in our daily life, we can indeed be gradually ever more purified and healed and transformed–sanctified. The exact idea expressed here by Newton is the very same thing that the Catholic Church acknowledges in the life of particular individuals to an extraordinary degree when she declares someone to be a Saint.
C.S. Lewis also thought very much along these lines regarding the genuine possibility of the sanctification of the human soul by our free cooperation with divine grace.
Praise be to God for His healing, transforming, elevating grace!
[S]oon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection.
I can’t resist commenting here as well that Newton seems to be thinking implicitly (no doubt without realizing it) very much in harmony with the Catholic doctrine of purgatory (a “place” of purification of the human soul from any remaining attachment to sin and imperfection). Catholics call, “purgatory,” that very place where upon death, we put off all (remaining) sin.
Newton here intuitively realizes, as did the philosopher Saints of the first few centuries of Christianity, that no human soul can be in the presence of God while it is still attached to any sin even in the slightest degree; while it still suffers the imperfection of unhealed wounds and selfish tendencies caused by sin, it cannot survive being in the presence of God. Only completely pure souls, with no sin or attachment to sin whatsoever, can be in heaven with God.
Acknowledging just exactly as Newton does that we are not going to reach this state of total purity–the perfection of being totally free from all attachment to sin–in this life (though we can make constant progress in this life along this path by God’s grace), the Catholic faith understands that purgatory is real because it is necessary that souls be purified completely–finishing the process begun on earth–before they can enter into heaven. This teaching manifests that the following three awesome truths are each fully and totally true–true not only individually, but all at once, together in perfect simultaneity: 1) God is completely pure and perfect in every way (i.e., He is supremely and totally holy), such that no being with any trace of sin could survive being in His immediate and direct presence; 2) He loves every human person whom He created out of love and for love (and thus desires that every person accept the free gift of salvation offered to all); and 3) most (if not all) human beings, upon our death, will not yet have attained by cooperation with grace a spiritual state of complete detachment from sin, though hopefully much progress will have been made in this regard.
Purgatory is simply the supernatural result of these three truths being real–and real together, with no exceptions for any human person. It is a teaching that upholds at once God’s perfect holiness, love for His children, and the reality of our freedom to remain selfish–thus, to cooperate with grace in this life only partially and imperfectly.
This is what, I think, is implied in Newton’s realizing that when the time came for him to die, he would also at that point just after the threshold of death put off “all sin and imperfection.”
Indeed! As D. A. Carson wrote, “We still await the final transformation that lies ahead of us.” (quoted by Jill above).
Here is a recent quote from Pope Benedict that applies to all this:
There is nothing magic in Christianity. There are no shortcuts, but everything passes through the patient and humble logic of the grain of wheat that is broken to give life, the logic of faith that moves mountains with the gentle power of God. This is why God wants to continue to renew humanity, history and the cosmos through this chain of transformations, of which the Eucharist is the sacrament.
Pope Benedict XVI, homily, Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 6/23/11