Spiritual Depression

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. PSALM 42:5

In the mid-1950s Lloyd-Jones preached a series of sermons at Westminster Chapel on a subject few preachers of his day would have touched. They were published in 1965 as Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure, and the book has become, by a wide margin, his most popular. It is not hard to see why. It deals with a condition that many Christians know from the inside and few talk about: the believer who is miserable, joyless, defeated, cast down — and who suspects, in addition to everything else, that he ought not to be.

An unhappy Christian is a poor advertisement

He began with a conviction that sounds almost harsh, but was meant as the opposite. The Christian ought to be a happy person. The New Testament is full of joy, and so was the early church. A miserable Christian is a poor advertisement for the faith, and he is also, in a real sense, dishonouring his Lord. That is not a reason for pretending to be happy. It is a reason for taking the condition seriously and seeking a cure.

Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. PHILIPPIANS 4:4

He was clear that spiritual depression is not the same as ordinary sadness, grief or suffering. The Christian weeps with those who weep, feels the pain of loss, is burdened by the sin of the world. Joy in the New Testament sense is compatible with all of that. What he had in mind was a settled condition of dejection and defeat, in which the believer has lost the sense of his privileges and lives far below them.

The doctor takes the history

It is in this book that his medical training is most visible. He did not offer a single remedy for all cases. He took the history. What kind of person are you? What has happened to you? What do you believe? The causes of spiritual depression, he held, are many, and the treatment depends on the diagnosis.

Some causes lie in temperament. Some Christians are by nature introspective, prone to self-examination to the point of morbidity; others are volatile, up one day and down the next. Grace does not abolish temperament. The same Holy Spirit works through Peter and John, and they remain recognisably themselves. A Christian must understand his own temperament, so that he is not surprised by its weaknesses.

Some causes are physical. Here the physician in him was emphatic. Tiredness, illness, overwork, the aftermath of great strain — these can bring a man low in spirit, and it is folly to treat as a spiritual problem what is really a matter of the body. He pointed to Elijah under the juniper tree, exhausted after Carmel, and to the gentleness with which God first gave him food and sleep before He dealt with him.

And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. 1 KINGS 19:5

Some causes are spiritual, and these occupied most of his attention. He treated in turn the Christian who has never clearly grasped justification by faith and is still, in his heart, trying to earn his standing; the Christian who is tormented by his past sins and cannot believe they are really forgiven; the Christian paralysed by fear of the future; the Christian who has made his feelings the measure of his spiritual state; and the Christian who has grown weary in well-doing. He also dealt with trials, with the Lord’s chastening, and with the direct assault of the devil, who is always eager to rob the believer of his joy.

Looking back

One of the most common causes, he found, is the inability to let go of the past. Some Christians are haunted by the sins they committed before conversion; others by the wasted years; others by the thought of what might have been. He called them to Paul’s example, which is all the more striking given what Paul had once been.

Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 3:13–14

To go on grieving over sins that God has forgiven, he argued in effect, is not humility but unbelief. It treats the blood of Christ as insufficient. God has cast those sins behind His back; the believer must not keep picking them up.

Feelings

Another cause he treated at length is the tyranny of feelings. Many Christians judge their standing with God by how they feel on a given day. When they feel warm, they are sure of God’s love; when they feel cold, they doubt it. Lloyd-Jones pointed out that feelings are the most changeable thing about us, affected by weather, health and circumstance. To build the Christian life on them is to build on sand. The believer must learn to stand on the facts of what God has said and done, and let feelings follow in their own time.

For we walk by faith, not by sight. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:7

This does not mean feelings do not matter. He believed joy is a proper part of the Christian life and should be sought. But it is the fruit, not the root.

Where care is needed

This book has helped a great many people, and it can be misused. A reader suffering from severe clinical depression may hear in it a suggestion that his illness is a spiritual failure, and be crushed. That was emphatically not Lloyd-Jones’s view; he insisted on the physical factors and would have sent such a person to a doctor. His book addresses the Christian whose depression is chiefly spiritual in origin. It is not a substitute for medical care, and anyone reading it in a dark place should read it alongside proper help, and not alone.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. PSALM 34:18

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask honestly whether you are living far below your privileges as a Christian. What has robbed you of your joy?

2. Take your own spiritual history as a doctor would. Consider temperament, body, circumstances and belief. Where does the trouble lie?

3. If you are exhausted, attend to your body first: rest, eat, sleep. Then pray.

4. Name one past sin that you keep revisiting even though you have confessed it. Read Philippians 3:13–14 and Micah 7:19, and leave it there.

5. If your low spirits have lasted long or are severe, speak to a doctor as well as to a pastor. There is no shame in either.

A PRAYER

Lord, my soul has been cast down, and I have not always known why. Search me, and show me the cause.

Where the trouble is in my body, give me rest and wisdom to seek help. Where it is in my mind, correct my thinking by Your truth.

Deliver me from the tyranny of my feelings and from the grip of my past. Let me stand on what You have said and done.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, that I may praise You again for the help of Your countenance. Amen.