Augustine’s Confessions

I recently finished reading Augustine’s Confessions.  The book is in the form of a prayer; Augustine pours out his heart to God as he looks back and tells the story of his life:

• “You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you” (p. 21 from the Penguin 1961 edition).
• “But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him [i.e., God] but in myself and his other crea­tures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error” (pp. 40-41).
• On his view of the Scriptures before coming to faith in Christ:  “I had too much conceit to accept their simplicity and not enough insight to penetrate their depths” (p. 66).
• Even though Augustine wallowed in sin as a young adult, his mother, Monica, prayed for him:  She “never ceased to pray at all hours and to offer you the tears she shed for me” (p. 69).
• “It is wrong to impose upon your readiness to forgive, taking it as a license to commit sin” (p. 73; so too Romans 6:1).
• “The soul is weak and helpless unless it clings to the firm rock of truth” (p. 85).
• Looking back over his pre-Christian life, Augustine saw many signs of God’s leading:  “O Lord, you laid your most gentle, most merciful finger on my heart and set my thoughts in order…” (pp. 116-17).
• “I can see now that the passages in Scripture which I used to think absurd are not absurd at all” (p. 126).
• Wickedness is “perversion of the will when it turns aside from you, O God…” (p. 150).  Yet this is what Augustine did—he tells of years that he repeatedly indulged his sinful heart:  “I plunged again into the things of this world” (p. 151).
• Even though the Gospel was taking root in his heart, he said, “Still I could not make up my mind to venture along the narrow path” (p. 157).
• “So these two wills within me, one old, one new, one the servant of the flesh, the other of the spirit, were in conflict, and between them they tore my soul apart” (p. 164).  “My inner self was a house divided against itself” (p. 170).
• Amidst tears of anguish, Augustine turned to Romans 13:13-14:  “Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (ESV).  “I had no wish to read more and no need to do so.  For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled” (p. 178).  Augustine had been born again to faith in Jesus Christ.
• After his conversion, “We went in and told my mother, who was overjoyed” (p. 178).  The love and faith of his praying mother, despite the years of Augustine’s spiritual wanderings and flagrant sins, was used by God in profound ways for the eternal good of her son.  Shortly after Augustine came to faith, his mother died.  She was 56, and he was 33 (p. 200).
• Augustine reflects on the relationship between our obedience to God and his enabling grace:  “There can be no hope for me except in your great mercy.  Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will” (p. 233; see also pp. 236, 245—and compare Philippians 2:12-13).
• As he matured in his faith, Augustine detected tempta­tions lingering in his heart, such as pride, “despicable vain­glory”—i.e., “the desire to be feared or loved” by others (p. 244).  “Day after day without ceasing these temptations put us to the test, O Lord” (p. 245).  All in all, Augustine’s is the story of a slow sanctification amidst ongoing spiritual battle (pp. 248-49).
• As he reflects, Augustine falls back in the arms of God:  “You both prompt me to knock and also open your door to my knocking” (p. 288—see also Matthew 7:7).  It is a testimony of a restless soul who found his peace in Christ.