This isn’t a story about an unbelieving pastor who counsels his flock to follow his lead on turning their back to Christ. This is a story about a very wise pastor who counseled a depressed believer to abandon Christ, and to do so for her good.

The young lady in question has been a professing believer for quite sometime. She has been attending church for a while. Went through all the typical “steps” to becoming a  Christian. She prayed. She repented. She was baptized. She was sincere. All that stuff. But lately she has been absolutely tortured by this feeling that she isn’t saved.

She would love to feel comfort. She’d love to feel like she was actually part of the people of God, but she just isn’t sure anymore. There isn’t a heap of unrepentant sin in her life. Really her biggest issue is doubt. Sometimes she wonders if the whole story about Christ and God are real. And when those temptations to doubt come, she immediately loses any assurance she once had. She slams herself, “How could a real Christian have the doubts and questions that I have”.

She’s so torn up about it that she finally decides to go to her pastor. He had been preaching on assurance and what it’s like to be a smoking flax. Part of what the preacher is saying feels like her experience. She wants comfort so bad but she isn’t even confident she fits the description of a smoking flax. So what should she do?

Here is what her pastor said:

Do not wrong the work of his Spirit in your heart. Satan, as he slanders Christ to us, so he slanders us to ourselves. If you are not so much as a smoking flax, then why do you not renounce your interest in Christ, and disclaim the covenant of grace? This you dare not do. Why do you not give yourself up wholly to other pleasures? This your spirit will not allow you to do. Where do these restless groanings and complaints come from? (Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, p65)

That bit of counsel is from the Puritan Richard Sibbes. The story of the woman coming to him is fictional, but only kind of fictional. Sibbes’ book is filled with the type of advice that only a pastor can give when he’s been through the furnace with his sheep. It’s not theoretical advice or something he got out of a textbook. It’s the type of wisdom you get from getting wool on your suit coat.

Essentially what Sibbes is saying to anyone in a position similar to our fictitious woman is that if she has such doubts perhaps she should just abandon Christ altogether. Walk away. Give up the whole thing. If you aren’t a Christian you should have absolutely no problem doing this. But Sibbes knew that such a one in this state has been born from above and will not so easily walk away from Christ. And that gives assurance.

Sibbes goes on to say,

“Lay your present state alongside the office of Christ to such, and do not despise the consolation of the Almighty nor refuse your own mercy. Cast yourself into the arms of Christ, and if you perish, perish there. If you do not, you are sure to perish. If mercy is to be found anywhere, it is there.” (65)

The key here to what Sibbes is saying is found in his simple question, “Where do these restless groanings and complaints come from?” His answer would be that they come from the presence of the Holy Spirit. Apart from the work of the Spirit we don’t have this battle. We don’t retch at the thought of abandoning Christ. When we think of hell we not only think of flames and screams we think of not having Jesus—and it’s too much for us to bear.

If this describes you, take heart. Sibbes counseled this fictitious person to abandon Christ because he knew that “she” wouldn’t. And he has confidence in the strong Christ to awaken affections, to provide the necessary assurance, to cause us to keep the faith. Sibbes knew that “the sights of a bruised heart carry in them a report, both of our affection to Christ, and of his care to us” (66).

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