Introduction
Are you struggling with whether your sorrow for sin is deep enough to truly come to Christ? This question weighs heavily on many hearts, especially when certain teachings suggest that salvation requires intense emotional brokenness or tears. In this episode, Pastor Cam Porter, Dr. Samuel Renihan, and Pastor Jim Butler address this crucial concern with biblical clarity and pastoral warmth. They explore what Scripture actually teaches about the role of sorrow in salvation, helping us understand that while humility and acknowledgment of sin are necessary, the power of salvation lies not in the measure of our feelings but in the object of our faith—Jesus Christ himself.
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Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS: Sorrow for sin, salvation, humility, repentance, faith, object of faith, subject of faith, misery, rebellion, gospel, conversion experience, Puritan literature, religious affections, revivalism, church history.
SPEAKERS: Pastor Cam Porter, Pastor Jim Butler, Dr. Samuel Renihan
The Question
Pastor Cam Porter (00:07)
Is my sorrow for sin deep enough to come to Christ? Some churches teach that a person must experience great sorrow or tears when they’re saved, often citing passages like Isaiah 61:1-3, Psalm 51:17, Psalm 34:18, and Matthew 5:4. But what if someone doesn’t feel that kind of emotional brokenness—can they still truly come to Christ?
John Norton’s Wisdom on Conversion
Dr. Samuel Renihan (00:37)
There’s a very good quotation that I want to share from John Norton, who’s one of my favorite theologians. He was in the colonies in the 17th century. He was a teacher in a Congregationalist church in Boston, and he said this. John Norton said, “What measure—so we’re talking how much—what measure of preparatory work is necessary to conversion? Answer: As the greatest measure has no necessary connection with salvation, so the least measure puts the soul into a preparatory capacity to the receiving of Christ. There is not the like degree of humiliation in all those that are converted. For some feel a greater measure of trouble, others a lesser—but all that are truly converted are truly humbled.”
So there must be a humility of heart, there must be an acknowledgement of one’s sin. But the measure has no necessary connection to salvation. Salvation is not conditioned upon a degree of faith, but faith—and so it is not the power of the subject of faith that saves. It’s the power of the object of faith that saves. So mustard seed faith, so long as Jesus is its object, receives the same grace and salvation that the faith of a martyr obtains because the object is the same, even if the subject is disproportionate.
So is there some measure of sorrow necessary for salvation? No. As the greatest degree has no necessary connection, so the least degree has no necessary connection. Must the person acknowledge themselves to be a sinner, which is by nature, by definition, to humble yourself by an acknowledgement? Yes, there must be a humility of heart, or a contrition, a repentance of a kind. But if we get to degree and measure, you will never be able to escape that maze if you insist on some particular experience or way that it looks and so on. It’s a trap.
The Danger of Quantifying Misery
Pastor Jim Butler (02:45)
Very good. Yeah, for sure that I’m a sinner, yeah, but the misery that is commensurate with that—I don’t see how we could have that misery if we really understood our sin, if we really understood the nature of our rebellion against God. You know, the Psalmist asks, “If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” If I was conscious of my rebel heart for but a moment, I think it was Luther—we’d explode.
So, you know, to put or quantify a certain amount of misery or awareness concerning sin—no. Again, that I’m a sinner, yes. That Christ is the Savior, yes. That’s, you know, “Foul, I to the fountain fly! Wash me, Savior, or I die.” And when you look at the New Testament, Matthew’s counting as loot at the tax office, Jesus says, “Come, follow me.” You know, there’s no whiff of, “Well, Lord, I got to really sit here for a bit and kind of investigate how sinful I am. And do I see the degree of that?” You know, the Philippian jailer: “What must I do to be saved?” Well, you should really figure out how bad you are, to see how good Jesus is. No! “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.”
When the Gospel Becomes a Law
And I think this kind of teaching puts people, firstly, on a track that is not Christ. Look at this guy. Look at the misery he went through. Look at the degree to which he suffered. But then secondly, it keeps you looking at yourself. It’s the worst possible place to be. I mean, I don’t ever want to look at myself, but to be looking at myself to see if I’m aware enough of my sin before I look to the Savior—it’s a wretched way to approach the preaching of the gospel, to throw a man upon himself, or to throw a man upon examples in the history of the church.
I, you know, maybe have shared this with you, Cam. When the kids were little, we were reading Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. I love Bunyan, but I couldn’t read that book. Not couldn’t physically—I didn’t forget how to read—but I didn’t want my children to think this is the conversion experience. They have to be afraid to go outside because the rocks are going to fall on them. That’s just not—you know, the Bunyan experience, great, but I didn’t want it to be my children’s experience, and I don’t want them to think that it had to be their experience.
If you’re a sinner, look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Look and live. You know, just as Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man also be lifted up. I don’t remember in the Numbers passage where Moses says, “Okay, you all need to make sure you’re really sore where you were bit by those fiery serpents before you look to that brazen serpent.” No, you look and you live.
Dr. Samuel Renihan (05:28)
Yeah. It turns, unfortunately, it turns the gospel into a law. And you end up needing to satisfy men instead of satisfying God—I mean, he wouldn’t even put it that way, as satisfying. But you have to satisfy men where someone is gatekeeping—to use a modern term, gatekeeping the church. “Well, when I’m satisfied that you are sufficiently sorrowful,” so you just have to make some pastor or group of people in the church happy—not happy, but satisfied about your condition, which, where’s the goal? You know, where’s the line? What’s the measure? What’s the standard? Instead of all of those excellent words that Pastor Butler just gave of “Look and live.”
Growing Awareness of Sin After Conversion
Pastor Jim Butler (06:23)
I would say, in addition to that, I don’t think—as we get more aware of our sin, I think as believers, the Spirit’s at work in us both to will and to do according to God’s good pleasure. Before conversion, I didn’t ever, you know, examine my miserable state, but as a believer, you know, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” I see it in me now.
You know, some of those passages that are cited and brought in the service of the new convert, or the guide to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ—I don’t think when the psalmist says, you know, “Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord,” he’s a believer. He’s a Christian. He’s agonizing over that remaining corruption. I believe that’s what Paul’s speaking to in Romans 7, Galatians 5—that’s more conscious in the thought of somebody who’s walked with the Savior versus the brand new person you’re preaching the gospel to, to say, “Well, you got to really make sure that you’re sinful, then come to the Savior.”
Understanding Historical Context
Dr. Samuel Renihan (07:28)
One last thing that I would add is that the literature that people read that often leads them to think in this way and act in this way in the church—they fail, perhaps, to understand the context that produced that literature. So if you read Puritan literature that is emphasizing the necessity or the importance of clear conversion and evidences of conversion, you have to remember that that was a time when everyone went to church. You all went to the parish church. So as far as everyone was concerned, they were all baptized Christians.
So how did the dissenters, those who broke off from the Church of England—Presbyterians or Congregationalists, or Particular Baptists and other groups—for them, it was very important that people showed genuine evidence of conversion in a baptized nation. Or in the Americas, with Jonathan Edwards’ Treatise on Religious Affections, you have this Great Awakening and revivalism, where you have all kinds of enthusiastic, big groups, tons of people suddenly coming, all kinds of outward—who knows what—and he’s trying to say, “Okay, how can we faithfully judge sincere religious affections in a context of revivalism?” which I don’t even think his book is helpful to read, necessarily.
But if you use that literature, you’re taking moments in history where there was a certain necessity for that kind of examination that’s not paradigmatic for the church and is not helpful at other seasons of life for the church. And sometimes people just think, “Oh, well, the way they did it then is the way we should always do it.” But they had needs to be discerning about things that we don’t necessarily have to face in the same way or to the same degree.
Pastor Cam Porter (09:16)
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you.
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