How the Christian Life Begins

The entrance into the Christian life almost always begins with a thorn. In Texas we call it a “burr in the saddle.” As something painfully chafes against the rider’s leg, so something begins to painfully chafe against our souls. We become bothered. Exasperated. Frightened. Even terrified. Spurgeon described the Holy Spirit in this stage of the Christian experience as the “Hound of Heaven.” We begin to feel as if a spiritual bloodhound is chasing us down. There is nowhere to run. There is nowhere to hide. Eventually, we are compelled to surrender our very souls to the Lord Jesus Christ.

This article was originally published in the inaugural issue of Logic on Fire Magazine, titled Experiential Christianity. A ministry of Unashamed Truth, Logic on Fire is devoted to thoughtful, biblical, and theologically rich writing that seeks to unite sound doctrine with the lived experience of the Christian faith. Each issue is designed to strengthen the church, encourage believers, and deepen a love for Christ and His Word. Subscribe to Logic on Fire Magazine to receive future issues and enjoy faithful writing from pastors, theologians, and Christian leaders.

The experience I am describing is the spiritual experience of God the Holy Spirit beginning to “draw” us to Himself (John 6:44). During this period, we are not yet converted. We have not come yet to the sweet solace of resting in Christ. We remain in the throes of conviction over our sin. We feel the weight of the perfect character of God as if it would crush us. In truly seeing God’s law, we realize, as Isaiah did, that we are an unclean person who lives amongst an unclean people.

The Beginning of Conversion

Before a saint repents and trusts Christ in faith, most often they encounter a “dark night of the soul.” Oftentimes this spiritual experience begins with a fresh encounter with God, in which the sinner is struck afresh by God’s purity and righteous standard. All of a sudden the sinner becomes aware of the holiness of God (Is. 6:4). The holiness and purity of God, when gazed at, leaves the sinner with the awareness that they are guilty in God’s sight.

I believe that this was the experience of the Apostle Paul in Romans 7. He had come face-to-face with God, so to speak, in the martyrdom of Stephen. It had dawned on him that his life, though he had excelled in Judaism, fell far short of the standard of the Law of God. No matter how hard he desired to obey God, he found that his sinful flesh overpowered his convicted conscience. He says in Romans 7:10, “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” He would write, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Everyone, without exception, fails to keep the law. Therefore, we deserve the everlasting wrath of God. This, Paul felt acutely.

I am convinced that we cannot be converted until we go through this process. We must come to the end of our sin and our own righteous law-keeping in a state of repentance. In other words, we must come to the end of ourselves. The wick of our own pathetic spiritual efforts must be burnt out in order for the Holy Spirit to light it with spiritual life. We must die to our flimsy work of self-justification and finally surrender to Christ.

An Existential Crisis

All of this amounts to an existential crisis. I remember as a boy learning about the reality of Heaven and Hell. My father had been killed in a plane crash when I was two years old, so these realities were not hypothetical. They were very real. The idea of Hell terrified me. I was haunted by the thought of a dark chasm called the “lake of fire,” eternally separated from the love and mercy of Almighty God. I was also haunted by the reality that the Lord Jesus could return at any moment, and at that point, as I understood it as a young child, it would be too late for me to believe in Jesus Christ. My fate would be eternally sealed. The eternality of it all frightened me, as well as the suddenness of my fate. The short days of my future life paled in comparison to eternity.

I began to grasp for the blood of Christ in my soul. I was melancholy and morose, even as a five-year-old child, because of these awesome realities. Little did I know at the time that this was all the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was at work, shaking my heart with the awesome reality of the holy justice of God.

Charles Spurgeon had a similar experience—a dark night of the soul in which he searched for God. In a chapter of his autobiography entitled “Through Much Tribulation,” he wrote:

My heart was fallow, and covered with weeds; but, on a certain day, the great Husbandman came, and began to plough my soul. Ten black horses were His team, and it was a sharp ploughshare that He used, and the ploughers made deep furrows. The ten commandments were those black horses, and the justice of God, like a ploughshare, tore my spirit. I was condemned, undone, destroyed—lost, helpless, hopeless—I thought hell was before me. Then there came a cross-ploughing, for when I went to hear the gospel, it did not comfort me; it made me wish I had a part in it, but I feared that such a boon was out of the question. The choicest promises of God frowned upon me, and His threatenings thundered at me. I prayed, but found no answer of peace. It was long with me thus.

It was only after Spurgeon attended the Methodist chapel on a snowy day and heard the fill-in preacher cry out, “Look to Christ, all ye ends of the Earth,” that he was converted and finally found peace for his soul.

A Christianity Without Conviction

These awakening experiences of the sinner seem uncomfortable for those of us who are already Christians. After all, it is hard for us to think about friends and family members enduring a dark night of the soul.

For that reason, I fear we often try to push the lost person we are seeking to win for Christ past the very experience they need in order to be converted to Christ. Yes, we should be quick to offer the solace of Christ to them, but no, we do not need to soften the blow of the gravity of God’s holiness and the reality of His judgment.

Like Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), we should embrace the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. When Edwards preached his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, men and women shrieked in terror. Edwards thundered, “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of an angry God.” And so it is.

But all too often in my experience, this reality is missing in American Christianity. A nice God is championed who would never send anyone to Hell. His love is articulated without His holiness. Heaven is articulated without Hell. And grace is articulated without wrath. For these reasons, in modern evangelicalism, God’s love comes across as meaningless. His grace as meaningless. And the gospel as meaningless. What’s the good news if there is no bad news?

For this reason, we must re-embrace the experience of the conviction of the sinner. It is the Holy Spirit’s necessary work in bringing the healing balm of the gospel. What is avoided at all costs in modern evangelicalism should be embraced. After all, it is the beginning of the Christian life.