I recently read the Christian classic The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scrougal (1650-1678). I’d never read it before but came across it in several John Piper books. The new Crossway version of The Life of God checks in at 180 very small pages. I was stunned at the depth of Scrougal’s argument, and yet it’s simplicity as well as biblical clarity, as though it was a 300 page book.
The Life of God was not initially written as a book but as a letter by Scrougal to a friend who had been disenfranchised with church. Apparently the letter was expanded and released as a book in 1677, anonymously, just a year before Scrougal’s death of tuberculosis. In the letter Scrougal wanted to encourage his disappointed friend that while church life is messy, yet true religion/Christianity is something deeper than what can be seen on the outside first. In short, true religion is Christ in the believer: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col.1:27). The Bible’s message is that man stands before God his creator as a sinner, incapable of bringing himself into God’s presence because sin infects every inch of man’s soul. So God must bring us to himself, which he does in Jesus. Jesus lives the sinless life and dies the sinner’s death to give us positive righteousness (justification), so that his Holy Spirit can come and live in us and conform us to Christ (progressive sanctification), until the end when we’re ready to enter God’s perfect presence to receive our grace-given reward (glorification). In all of it, Christ is living in us (Jn.17:23), dwelling in our hearts by faith (Eph.3:17), keeping us safe as he works on and in us (Jude 24). As such, says Scrougal, true religion is a union between the soul of man and God. It is not our performance before God, and neither is it merely God’s performance before us (although his heavens declare his glory and he wants us to see his love and mercy on all the he’s made). It’s the marriage of the person’s soul to God so that they long to please him, just as he longs to bless and care for us.
I summarized each of Scrougal’s three chapter divisions into my own notes as seen below. Afterward I’ll give a few concluding thoughts.
Chapter 1: THE NATURE OF TRUE RELIGION
-Main points: True religion is a union between our mature and God’s, so that from within we love God, love man, and walk in purity and humility. True religion is to be entirely focused on living this way, by these four “pillars.” Christ’s life on earth shows all of this perfectly—he loved God, loved man, and walked in purity and humility. The gospel is that he came not only to show this to us but to give it to us: He’ll make us like himself.
Chapter 2: THE EXCELLENCE AND ADVANTAGE OF RELIGION
-Main point(s): Each pillar of religion (love of God, love of man, purity, and humility) leads us to happiness: In loving God, we delight in him; in loving others, we delight in their happiness; and in purity we delight in inward rightness, and receiving what God and others do to us with thankfulness (which is humility).
Chapter 3: THE AIDS TO TRUE RELIGION
-Main point(s): Don’t despair of never getting this. Christ’s heart is all love and holiness was our original state. He wants to make the “morning star to rise in our hearts” (2 Pet.1:19), and he won’t quench us when our “wick” is burning (cf. Matt.12:20, Is.42:3). But he employs our action in the process. We must: a) Shun all sin (you’ll never get better if you won’t stop drinking poison), b) Know what sin actually is, c) Avoid sin, d) Keep watch over ourselves, and e) Employ ourselves in pure things.
-If you can’t effectively change internal conditions, give yourself to external acts (good works, acts of kindness, service, ministry, etc.) In time it’ll change you. Pray for others’ blessing. Contemplate true doctrine. Meditate on Christ. Take the sacrament (Lord’s supper)—through it Jesus works on us if we take it by faith.
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Augustine once said that all that God commands, he also gives: “Command what you will, and give what you command,” Augustine prayed. The gospel is that God not only speaks, but that he gives us the godliness we’re lacking, and he does it through Jesus. To have Christ is not only to think well of him but to need him and feed on him as God’s provision for all that we lack and need.
How relevant is Scrougal’s book today, in our day of “dechurching,” where entire generations have given up on church, and churches are so struggling? What the dechurched need to know is what Scrougal told his friend: All that God requires of us he promises to give us in Christ, if we’ll come to him. As such salvation is all of grace. Don’t be so surprised and disappointed at sinful behavior among believers—they’re a mess, and any light they have is Jesus in them. And that’s what he wants to give you, too: His light from within. “Whoever believes in me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (Jn.7:38). You can have this.
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