John Newton

A letter to a friend on the question of whether the sins of
believers shall be publicly declared at the great Day.

My dear sir, my heart congratulates you. Your pilgrimage is nearly finished. You stand upon the river’s brink with the city full in view, waiting and wishing for the appointed hour. You need not be anxious concerning your passage, for every circumstance attending it is already adjusted by Infinite Wisdom and Love. The King Himself will be ready to receive you. While you continue here, I am glad to hear from you and glad to contribute in any way or degree to your satisfaction or even to show my willingness, if I can do no more. I can propose little more than the latter by offering my thoughts on the subject you propose from 2 Corinthians 5:10, and the apparent difficulty of understanding that passage in full harmony with the many texts that seem expressly to assert that the sins of believers are so forgiven as to be remembered no more.

There is doubtless (as you observe) a perfect consistency in every part of the Word of God. The difficulties we meet with are wholly owing to the narrowness of our faculties and the ignorance that in some degree is inseparable from our present state of imperfection. And we may, in general, rest satisfied with the thought that there is a bright moment approaching when the veil shall be wholly taken away. It is the part of faith to rest upon the plain declarations of Scripture without indulging a blamable curiosity of knowing more than is clearly revealed. Yet, while we humbly depend upon divine teaching, it is right to aim at as enlarged a sense of what is revealed as we can attain. Every acquisition of this kind is more valuable than gold, especially respecting those points that have an immediate tendency to comfort and support us under the view of an approaching dissolution. The question you have proposed is undoubtedly of this nature.

May the Lord direct my thoughts and pen that I may not “darken counsel by words without knowledge” (Job 38:2)! I have been looking over the passage you refer to in Dr. Ridgeley,1 and think I might be well excused from saying anything further on the subject, as he hath briefly and fully stated all the arguments that have occurred to me on either side of the question. He closes with a proper caution not to be peremptory in determining, lest by attempting to be wise above what is written, I should betray my own folly. Yet as you desire to have my thoughts, I must say something. I wish I may not give you reason to think that this caution has been lost upon me.

I think all the great truths in which we are concerned are clearly and expressly laid down, not only in one, but also in many places of Scripture. But it sometimes happens that here and there we meet with a text, which, in the first and obvious sound of the words, seems to speak differently from what is asserted more largely elsewhere. These texts, singly taken, afford some men their only ground for the hypothesis they maintain. But their true interpretation is to be sought according to the analogy of faith. They are capable of a sense agreeable to the others, though the others are not intelligible in the sense they would fix upon these. In like manner I would say, whatever may be the precise meaning of 2 Corinthians 5:10, we are sure it cannot be designed to weaken what we are taught in almost every page of the free, absolute, and unalterable nature of a believer’s justification. The benefit of this doctrine, as to the forgiveness of sin, is signified by the phrases of “blotting out,” “not remembering,” “casting behind the back,” and “into the depths of the sea.” The sins of a believer are so effectually removed that even when or if they are sought for, they cannot be found. For Jesus has borne them away. Believers are complete in Him and clothed in His righteousness. They shall stand before God without spot or wrinkle. Who shall lay anything to their charge? Practical Christianity A letter to a friend on the question of whether the sins of believers shall be publicly declared at the great Day. Judgment and the Sins of Believers John Newton (1725–1807) “ ” I think those are the sweetest moments in this life, when we have the clearest sense of our own sins, provided the sense of our acceptance in the Beloved is proportionately clear, and we feel the consolations of His love, notwithstanding all our transgressions.

But it is probable that those stray expressions, chiefly, if not entirely, respect the guilt, imputation, and deserved consequences of sin. None can suppose that the Lord will or can forget the sins of His people, or that they can be ever hid from His all-comprehending view. Neither can I think they themselves will forget them. Their song is founded upon a recollection of their sins and their circumstances in this life (Rev. 5:9). Their love, and consequently their happiness, seems inseparably connected with the consciousness of what they were and what they had done (Luke 7:47). And I think those are the sweetest moments in this life, when we have the clearest sense of our own sins, provided the sense of our acceptance in the Beloved is proportionately clear, and we feel the consolations of His love, notwithstanding all our transgressions. When we arrive in glory, unbelief and fear will cease forever: our nearness to God and communion with Him will be unspeakably beyond what we can now conceive. Therefore, the remembrance of our sins will be no abatement of our bliss, but rather the contrary. When Pharaoh and his host were alive and pursuing them, the Israelites were terrified: but afterwards, when they saw their enemies dead upon the shore, their joy and triumph were not abated, but heightened by the consideration of their number.

With respect to our sins being made known to others, I acknowledge with you that I could not now bear to have any of my fellow creatures made acquainted with what passes in my heart for a single day. But I apprehend it is a part and a proof of my present depravity that I feel myself disposed to pay so great a regard to the judgment of men, while I am so little affected with what I am in the sight of the pure and holy God. But I believe that hereafter, when self shall be entirely rooted out and my will perfectly united to the Divine will, I should feel no reluctance—supposing it for the manifestation of His glorious grace—that men, angels, and devils should know the very worst of me.

Whether it will be so or no, I dare not determine. Perhaps the difficulty chiefly lies in the necessity of our being taught at present heavenly things by earthly. In the descriptions we have of the Great Day, allusion is made to what is most solemn in human transactions. The ideas of the Judgment Seat, the great trumpet, the books being opened, and the pleadings (Matt. 25:37– 44) seem to be borrowed from the customs that obtain amongst men to help our weak conceptions, rather than justly and fully to describe what will be the real process. Now, when we attempt to look into the unseen world, we carry our ideas of time, place, and sensible objects along with us. We cannot divest ourselves of them or provide ourselves with better. Yet perhaps they have as little relation to the objects we aim at, as the ideas that a man born blind acquires from what he hears and feels have to the true nature of light and color.

In a word, my dear Sir, if I have not given you satisfaction—I am sure I have not satisfied myself—accept my apology in the words of a much wiser and an inspired man: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it” (Ps. 139:6). Ere long, we shall know: in the meanwhile, our cause is in sure hands. We have a Shepherd who will guide us below, an Advocate who will receive and present us before the Throne above. I trust we meet daily before the throne of grace; hereafter we shall meet in glory.

______________________________________________________
1. Thomas Ridgeley (c. 1667–1734) writes: “But there is a difficult question proposed by some, namely, Whether the sins of God’s people shall be published in the Great Day; though it is certain they shall not be alleged against them to their condemnation? This is one of the secret things that belong to God, which He has not so fully or clearly revealed to us in His Word; so that we can say little more about it than what is matter of conjecture. Some have thought that the sins of the godly, though forgiven shall be made manifest, so that the glory of that grace that has pardoned them may appear more illustrious, and their obligation to God farther enhanced. They also think that the justice of the proceedings of that Day requires it; since it is presumed and known by the whole world that they were prone to sin as well as others—that, before conversion, they were as great sinners as any—and that after it their sins had a peculiar aggravation. Why, then, they ask, should not their sins be made public, as a glory due to the justice and holiness of God, as being infinitely opposite to all sin? This they farther suppose to be necessary: that the impartiality of divine justice may appear. Moreover, if God, by recording the sins of His saints in Scripture, has perpetuated the knowledge of them, and if it is to their honor that the sins there mentioned were repented of as well as forgiven, why may it not be supposed that the sins of believers shall be made known in the Great Day? Besides, that they shall be made known seems agreeable to those Scriptures that state that every word and every action shall be brought into judgment, whether it be good or whether it be bad. “On the other hand, it is supposed by others, that though the making known of sin which is subdued and forgiven, tends to the advancement of divine grace; yet it is sufficient to answer this end—as far as God designs it shall be answered—that the sins that have been subdued and forgiven should be known to those who committed them, who, in consequence of having received pardon, have matter of praise to God. Again, the expressions of Scripture whereby forgiveness of sin is set forth are such as seem to argue that those sins that were forgiven shall not be made manifest. Thus they are said to be ‘blotted out,’ ‘covered,’ ‘subdued,’ ‘cast into the depths of the sea,’ and ‘remembered no more,’ etc. Besides, Christ’s being a Judge does not divest Him of the character of an Advocate, whose part is rather to conceal the crimes of those whose cause He pleads than to divulge them. We may add, that the Law, which requires duty and forbids the contrary sins, is not the rule by which they who are in Christ are to be proceeded against, for if it were, they could not stand in Judgment; but they are dealt with according to the tenor of the Gospel, which forgives and covers all sins. Furthermore, it is argued that the public declaring of all their sins before the whole world, notwithstanding their interest in forgiving grace, would fill them with such shame as is hardly consistent with a state of perfect blessedness. Lastly, the principal argument insisted on is that our Savior, in Matthew 25, in which He gives a particular account of the proceedings of that day, makes no mention of the sins, but only commends the graces of His saints. Such arguments as these are alleged to prove that it is probable the sins of the saints shall not be exposed to public view in the Great Day. But after all that has been said, it is safest for us not to be too peremptory in determining this matter, lest, by pretending to be wise beyond what is clearly revealed in Scripture, we betray our own folly and too bold presumption or assert that which is not right of this glorious Judge. Thus concerning the method in which Christ shall proceed in judging the world.” (Commentary on the Larger Catechism)
______________________________________________________
Rev. John Newton (1725–1807) was an Angelican minister and well-known hymn-writer and author of letters. This article is taken from “Letter 3” in The Works of John Newton, Vol. 1, reprinted by The Banner of Truth Trust.

Published by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, used with permission.