You May Be Wounded

Every Christian with a phone is now a pamphleteer. The eighteenth century had to typeset its quarrels, wait for the printer, pay for paper. We publish against our opponents before breakfast. I have done it myself. I have typed the paragraph, read it over twice to check the tone, told myself it was for the truth's sake, and posted it anyway.

And the appeal is real. Contending for the faith is not a temptation to be resisted; it is a command. “Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). When you take up an argument for the truth, you feel yourself doing something Scripture tells you to do. That feeling is not wrong. The man who defends sound doctrine against error is doing honorable work, and the church has always needed him.

Scripture takes for granted that this work will happen. What Scripture keeps pressing is a different question: what kind of man is doing it, and what is happening to him while he does.

The temper Scripture requires

The church has always begun this conversation with the epistle of James:

Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. (James 3:13–18)

Notice what James assumes. A man can hold the truth and lie against it at the same time, because the lie lives in the manner, not the content. Bitter jealousy in the heart falsifies an orthodox sentence on the page.

The Proverbs say the same thing in smaller coins. “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly” (Prov 15:1–2). “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit” (Prov 15:4). “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear” (Prov 25:11–12). “With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone” (Prov 25:15). That last one deserves a moment. The soft tongue is the instrument that breaks bone. Gentleness in Scripture is a form of power, the kind that actually gets through.

And once more, a single verse every man online should have taped above his screen: “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Prov 18:13).

The apostles carry the proverb into the young churches. Paul, to the Colossians: “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Col 4:5–6). To Timothy: “The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:24–25). And Peter, writing to churches under real persecution: “Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15–16).

That is the temper. The fullest working-out of it that I know is a letter.

Newton's letter

In the 1770s, John Newton heard that a friend was about to publish against an opponent. Newton knew something about the subject. He had captained slave ships before God converted him, and by then he had pastored the little lace-making town of Olney for years, writing hymns with William Cowper, including one you have sung. When the pamphlet was headed to press, he wrote to his friend first. The letter is usually titled “On Controversy,” and it opens like this:

As you are likely to be engaged in controversy, and your love of truth is joined with natural warmth of temper, my friendship makes me solicitous on your behalf. You are of the strongest side; for truth is great, and must prevail… I am not therefore anxious for the outcome of the battle; but I would have you more than a conqueror, and to triumph, not only over your adversary, but also over yourself. If you cannot be vanquished, you may be wounded.

If you cannot be vanquished, you may be wounded. Newton grants his friend the win before the fight starts. His whole concern is what the winning will cost. His advice comes under three heads: the opponent, the public, and the writer himself.

The opponent. Newton's first counsel is prayer, and he is specific about the timing:

I wish that before you set pen to paper against him, and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord's teaching and blessing. This practice will have a direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him; and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write.

If the opponent is a believer, Newton says, remember where you will both end up:

In a little while you will meet in heaven; he will then be dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now. Anticipate that period in your thoughts, and though you may find it necessary to oppose his errors, view him personally as a kindred soul, with whom you are to be happy in Christ forever.

And if the opponent is unconverted:

He is a more proper object of your compassion than of your anger… If God, in his sovereign pleasure, had so appointed, you might have been as he is now; and he, instead of you, might have been set for the defense of the gospel. You were both equally blind by nature.

Then Newton turns the knife on his own theological party, and mine:

Of all people who engage in controversy, we, who are called Calvinists, are most expressly bound by our own principles to the exercise of gentleness and compassion. If, indeed, those who differ from us have a power of changing themselves… then we might with less inconsistency be offended at their obstinacy. But if we believe the very contrary to this, our part is not to argue, but in meekness to gently teach those who oppose the truth.

He is right. A doctrine of sovereign grace preached in a spirit of contempt refutes itself in the preaching. The angry Calvinist is a man whose mouth denies what his confession affirms.

The public. Newton's second head concerns everyone listening who is not a party to the quarrel. The bystanders cannot judge the doctrine, he says, “but they can form a tolerable judgment of a writer's spirit.” They know what a Christian is supposed to sound like. Then this:

If our zeal is embittered by expressions of anger, invective, or scorn, we may think we are doing service to the cause of truth, when in reality we shall only bring it into discredit… If we can satisfy them that we act upon these motives, our point is half gained.

Read that in 2026 and it lands harder than it did in 1775. Our controversies now have an audience of millions, and the audience is doing exactly what Newton said it would do: skipping the arguments and reading the spirit.

The self. The third head is the one the whole letter was written for.

There is a principle of self, which disposes us to despise those who differ from us; and we are often under its influence, when we think we are only showing a fitting zeal in the cause of God… Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines, as well as upon works. A man may have the heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with orthodox notions.

Sit with that sentence. Precision of doctrine offers no protection against the disease Jesus reserved his sharpest words for. The Pharisee's problem was never his theology exam scores. And then the sentence I would put on the wall of every seminary:

We find but very few writers of controversy who have not been manifestly hurt by it. Either they grow in a sense of their own importance; or imbibe an angry, contentious spirit; or they insensibly withdraw their attention from those spiritual truths which are the food and immediate support of the life of faith. If the service is honorable, it is also dangerous. What will it profit a man if he gains his cause and silences his adversary, if at the same time he loses that humble, tender frame of spirit in which the Lord delights?

Newton had watched it happen. Good men entered a controversy sound and came out of it sour, and the sourness outlived the controversy. He warns his friend that even a fight begun for God's cause can quietly become your own: “Though you set out in defense of the cause of God, if you are not continually looking to the Lord to keep you, it may become your own cause.” And if you are mistreated in the exchange, he says, you have been handed an opportunity to look like your Master, “who when reviled did not revile in return” (cf. 1 Pet 2:23).

The lack of gentleness, Newton writes, is “like the dead fly in the jar of ointment,” an image he borrows from Ecclesiastes 10:1. One fly. A whole jar spoiled. The argument can be sound from the first page to the last, and the spirit ruins the fragrance of the whole.

Where Newton lands

He does not close with a warning. He closes with a blessing:

Go forth, therefore, in the name and strength of the Lord Almighty, speaking the truth in love; and may he give you a witness in many hearts that you are taught of God, and favored with the unction of his Holy Spirit.

So the letter ends where the gospel ends. Newton never tells his friend to withdraw from the field. The controversy should happen; truth is worth defending, and the friend is the right man to defend it. What Newton wants is a conqueror who comes home unwounded, a writer who prayed for his opponent before he answered him, who remembered that grace alone distinguishes him from the man he is correcting, and who watched his own heart more closely than his adversary's arguments. That is James 3 in practice. The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable. And the man who wrote the letter knew the ground he stood on when he wrote it, because he was the same man who had captained the slave ships. Newton contended gently for the rest of his life for one reason. He never got over being forgiven.