The Miserable Christian

By Doug Mains

[intro]I became a Christian in the spring of 2007 and I have been miserable since. [/intro]

As I type this, I can feel the uncomfortable shifts in your seating; the scowls and head-tilts of confusion. I can imagine your eyes darting to the top of your screen in a nervous hope that you didn’t happen upon an atheist website. 

Take a breath. You didn’t. 

But you did read it right. For eight years I have been a Christian—a miserable Christian—immobilized by anxiety and stricken with guilt and insecurity before God and man. And, yes, I understand the apparent contradiction. Isn’t a Christian meant to bear an unshakable and lasting hope? 

“What a wretched man I am!”

Well, if a Christian is meant to bear an unshakable and lasting hope, then it seems I am not a satisfactory believer; I don’t always feel very hopeful. I relate too deeply with Paul’s lament: 

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Romans 7:18-19

In the past near-decade of being a believer, I have run myself ragged in attempts to secure my salvation. I have been a Christian but not a very free one, relentlessly beating myself up over mistakes, doubting my security in God because of my constant slips, and then shrinking into dark isolation and despair. I’ve lived in obsessive introspection and constant guilt because I came to Christ in 2007 and, simply put, I left him there. I relied on Jesus for the ticket to heaven but on myself to get me there. 

Certainly, I am not the lone ranger who has gotten off my knees with the self-determination to “live a better life” or “prove my salvation.” Many Christians are just as miserable, and frankly, we are confusing those around us with our lives of misery. We are proclaiming to the world a weak Gospel message that says Jesus is only good for a ticket to Heaven.

In his outstanding collection of sermons in the book Spiritual Depression, Martin Lloyd Jones writes that  “Nothing is more important…than that we should be delivered from a condition which gives other people, looking at us, the impression that to be a Christian means to be unhappy, to be sad, to be morbid, and that the Christian is one who ‘scorns delights and lives laborious days.’”

To be clear, grief is real. Reaching deep into the heart of sorrow, one of the most profound verses in the Bible is also the shortest: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Sadness, depression, anxiety are real. But within and beyond these streams of pain, there are undercurrents of hope, deliverance, and freedom from the miseries of sin and death.

“Who will deliver me?”

So, how then do we mend the wounded heart of a miserable Christian? Because of Jesus, Christians no longer need obsess over their grip on the Father’s arm by their good deeds nor should they dwell on the daily dirt that collects upon their souls. We are free to alter our focus from fighting the old to building the new and thus we are able to change for his glory and our good. The old is done away with in Christ!

Miserable Christian, you can focus, not on your baby-carrot fingers, but on the mighty hand of God. It is his grip holding your defiant arm and carrying you across the streets of damnation that saves you. Your feeble works have nothing to do with it. You did not save yourself by coming to Christ nor did you secure your salvation by turning your life around or quitting that habitual sin or even by doing incredibly stellar things. You are saved by grace alone and in this understanding is the secret to freedom.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…

Ephesians 2:8

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ!”

Misery’s power is kicked to the curb when we acknowledge the love and acceptance that is already ours in Christ Jesus; when we see the salvation that has been proclaimed on our behalf and the favor that is laid upon us despite our works, good or bad. Our hearts rejoice in worshipful gratitude when we accept with head and hands the gracious gift of God, and only then do we experience a full life of freedom. 

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

Psalm 103:10-12

2 Timothy 1:9 says that “before the ages began” you were saved, called, and given Christ; chosen by God, held onto by his glorious grip. When you let go the chains of misery and obsessive introspection, you are able to love God and people more purely and unrestrained as you lift your eyes off of yourself and onto others. When you give up the title of being miserable Christian by acknowledging that Christ is building you anew, you can battle your sin and pursue righteous-living in freedom rather than for freedom. The one word makes all the difference. 

To battle for freedom is to anxiously dig your pudgy fingers into God as if your strength alone could save you. To battle for freedom is to live as if grace is something to be earned, not accepted. It is to count your sins and even seek them out frantically. It is to live a life of striving and misery and there is only guilt, weariness, and anxiety in that. 

To battle in freedom is to trust by his Word that you are ever secure in the Father’s arms through Jesus Christ and you have been secure since “before the ages began.” It means to leave the old behind to build the new in a confident hope. It is to silence the taunting dos and don’ts in your head with Christ’s proclamation that it is done. It allows you to say in the face of sin, “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me!” (Micah 7:8). This gospel of liberation is what Martin Luther gave his life to proclaim to the duty-bound church: “Is it not wonderful news to believe that salvation lies outside of ourselves?”

How then do we mend the wounded heart of a miserable Christian? Believe Jesus’ words at his time of death: “It is finished” (John 19:30). And do not leave Christ at his cross for he did not remain there nor leave him on the day of your salvation; leave only your misery. Depend upon him always for your salvation (by his cross) and your sanctification (by his resurrection). Dwell upon and savor this passage:

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1 

Miserable Christian, hold on, build the new, battle, and stand firm in freedom; never for it. Desert the childish notions that tell you that your baby-carrot fingers are your hope for salvation. Look beyond them and see the powerful hand of God, your Father, that will not let go and do not submit again to the yoke of misery. And if you relate so deeply with Paul’s introspective cry in Romans 7 exclaiming, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?,” then also rejoice with him in singing, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25).

Image Credit: Daniel Zedda