Old Haunts

“Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out” (John 12:31).

The dark night of the soul—have you tasted those bitter waters, believer? Have you wandered those dark, starless paths wherein your faith seems to hang by a lone thread? It is a dreadful thing to fall under the shadow of such a night; when the hand of the Lord seems so very heavy, and His face ever so far away. In these dreary moments, it is as though a great veil is drawn over the Son, obscuring from our souls for a time the warmth and comfort of His light.

It is during such dark nights of the soul that one’s faith seems as nothing more than a dancing candle flame in the midst of a howling infinite. Perhaps you have found refuge from the storm within—as I have often done—in the words of David. Consider, for a moment, the utter desperation of spirit with which he calls out to the Lord in Psalm 88: “I cry out day and night before you... For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol... You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves” (verses 1, 3, 7, and 7).

The words of David in Psalm 88 draw to a close with these haunting remarks: “O LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?... You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (14, 18). The man is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no relief in sight.

There is in the Christian life a particular darkness of soul that can at times almost overwhelm the believer. A spiritual depression—a dark night of the soul, a crisis of faith—that clouds our hope and gnaws at our assurance, casting our souls into the pit alongside David in those “regions dark and deep.” Having walked those dreaded halls more than once,—and been led out of them again by the faithful hand of the Lord—an observation I have made is this: the Lord’s purposes are far greater in and through such suffering than we can possibly imagine.

Indeed, His hand is not heavy without purpose. Have you ever considered, dear believer, that in allowing such fears and doubts to linger for a season, the Lord is gently, lovingly, redirecting your gaze back towards Him? Perhaps you’ve been caught navel-gazing of late—drawn away from your first love and the gospel by your own sense of achievement, comfort, or security—and the Lord in His love towards you has come to stir you awake from your slumber.

Whatever the source of these dark nights of the soul may be for any one of us, I feel confident in saying that the Lord uses such soul-agony for this predetermined end: that we should despair of ourselves anew, set aside our fleeting emotions, and cling to His promise of life eternal secured through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ alone. Do not trust your heart or the feelings that flow from it—trust in the Lord and His steadfast love, independent of whether or not you feel it. For, His faithfulness towards those in Christ is the surest thing there is; indeed, surer by far than the sun which will rise tomorrow morning.

Now, our own sin and unbelief aside, we must reckon with the reality that we have an enemy in this world: that ancient serpent from long ago, the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10). It is he who whispers lie after lie in the ears of the righteous, flinging all manner of accusations against us before the throne of God night and day continually.

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made...” (Genesis 3:1).

In days both dark and delightful, his lies can so easily come to us and make us stumble—and worse yet, cause us to doubt that gentle hand which holds us. “You have sinned again,” the forked tongue whispers, “best you give up now, your God has turned His back on you for good this time.” Whether it be the reminder of some fresh sin we have just committed, or an old haunt from our past, the father of lies and his ilk are ever quick to accuse us. In his wicked craftiness, the airing of old haunts seems to be his specialty: the painful remembrance that he calls to mind of those sins committed long ago—the sins that have scarred us, and perhaps others also. It is as though the enemy says, “You have been forgiven, you say? Perhaps—but has He forgiven you of that? Perhaps not.”

This debilitating, nigh-paralyzing feeling of unworthiness that believers can so often fall into is perfectly illustrated in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. After a humiliating arrest under suspicion of murdering his father, the eldest Karamazov son, Mitya, begins to feel naked and ashamed before his tormentors after they stripped him of his clothes, belongings, and humanity:

“He felt unbearably awkward: everyone else was dressed, and he was undressed, and—strangely—undressed, he himself seemed to feel guilty before them, and, above all, he was almost ready to agree that he had indeed suddenly become lower than all of them, and that they now had every right to despise him.”

Given The Brothers Karamazov was published in 1880, I have no qualms about spoiling this significant detail: Mitya did not kill his father. And yet, the fierce accusations of those around him make Mitya feel as though he did; as though he is in someway worthy of being despised. He is innocent, but he does not feel as though he is. Rather, he feels undressed, naked, and despised by his enemies; indeed, every bit as vile as they accuse him of being.

The enemy tempted our first parents in the garden, he sought the life of Job, and in his hubris he dared breathe lies and temptations in the presence of Him who is altogether truth. Surely we as believers cannot expect exemption from such ill-treatment if the enemy was so bold as to accuse our Lord.

In the book of Zechariah, the Lord has given us a mighty illustration of our identity in Christ—in Him, we stand pure, forgiven, accepted, and forever set free from the lies of the enemy. In Zechariah 3:1-4, we find these words:

“Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, ‘The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?’ Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Remove the filthy garments from him.’ And to him he said, ‘Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.’”

Now, I want you to notice something very important: Joshua the high priest is not clean when Satan brings an accusation against him. Joshua is, as the text says, “clothed with filthy garments” (verse 3). There is a sense in which Satan’s accusation is perfectly legitimate: “God, you say you are holy and yet here is your high priest, filthy and entirely unfit for service!” Joshua is every bit unworthy as Satan accuses him of being.

Notice, however, the response: “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” God, being God, is entirely, infinitely aware of our condition before Him and in no need of any reminders. And yet, though He is aware of every skeleton in every closet—every old haunt that the enemy may tread out before Him in accusation of us—it is nonetheless He who loves us most.

I believe it was Charles Spurgeon who once said that when he is tempted into thinking he is unworthy, he thinks little of it—for he was never worthy. At no point were any of us worthy of salvation. But God, being rich in mercy, has taken our filthy garments off of us, nailed them on the cross of His Son, and clothed us with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ:

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with [Christ], having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14).

Allow this mighty, infinitely deep truth to wash over you. The One who made you, died for you; if you are in Christ, and He in you, your vestments are pure indeed. If you have turned from your sin in repentance and found refuge in Christ through faith alone, then all your sin, every haunt and source of guilt, has been forgiven by the Lord. In Christ, your sin has been cast into that sea without bottom to forever plummet further from all living memory, blotted out from the record of Him who knows all, forgotten and forgiven entirely, removed as far from you as the east is from the west.

Plucked from the fire, we in Christ have not only been forgiven, but clothed in the very righteousness of the living God Himself, saved forever. In the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the ruler of this world has been cast out: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him” (Colossians 2:15). The accuser of the brethren, Satan, has been crushed beneath the heel of the Lord; the truth of the gospel renders the accusations of the enemy empty and impotent.

Nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord because our Lord lived the life we could not live and died the death we could not die. We do not need to fear the judgement, for Jesus has died in our place. I love these words from Dr. John Neufeld: “I will love the cross more when I come to realize how deeply dark were my sins and therefore how deeply merciful was Christ’s mercy. And my love for that which Christ has done will increase exponentially... when we paint sin so exceedingly sinful, it paints the cross so beautifully. And I can’t help but think we’ll never appreciate the cross until we appreciate how deep and dark were all of our actions here.”

Ours sins are dreadful—indeed, far more vile and nightmarish than we could possibly dare to guess—but the salvation in which we stand, secured in our Lord, is far more beautiful than our hearts can ever fathom. In fact, so infinitely rich is the gift of our salvation in Christ that we shall spend all our days in the ages to come trying to uncover its bottom: “so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).

---

Photo by m wrona, Unsplash