John Owen in his commentary on Ps. 130 mentions that "Gracious souls (believers), after much communion with God, may be brought into inextricable depths and entanglements on the account of sin." We in our sins experience darkness of soul.
Owen lists seven incidences when our soul will experience depression and darkness.
1. "Loss of the wonted sense of the love of God, which the soul did formerly enjoy." Owen explains that the strong sense of the love of God is a "transient acting of the heart by the Holy Ghost with ravishing, unspeakable joys, in apprehension of God's love, and our relation unto him in Christ."(p.18) Owen points out that this kind of unspeakable joy isn't for everyday experience; it isn't a meal that the believers should grow on, but are "dainties and high cordials he reserveth only for the seasons and persons wherein and to whom he knows them to be needful and useful." (p. 19)
2. Perplexed thoughtfulness about their great and wretched unkindness towards God. Ps. 77:3 "I remembered God, and was troubled." Our heart is troubled because we remembered how kind God was to us and yet how unthankful our lives have been.
3. A revised sense of justly deserved wrath. "When men have passed through a sense of wrath, and have obatained deliverance and rest through the blood of Christ…to be trading afresh with hell, curse, law, and wrath…this often befalls gracious souls on the account of sin." (p. 20) Ps. 138:7 "Thy wrath lieth hard upon me.'
4. Oppressing apprehensions of temporal judgment. "Let them not be ashamed for my sake." Cries David.
5. There maybe added hereunto prevailing fears for a season of being utterly rejected by God, of being found a reprobate on the last day. I personally experience this many times, that in the back of my mind I would fear that no matter how good I have lived I am just a reprobate and will be in for a big surprise on the final judgment day. Jonah feared the same way: "Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; I am lost for ever, God will own me no more." (Jonah 2:4)
6. God secretly sends his arrows into the soul, the wound and gall it, adding pain, trouble, and disquietness to its disconsolation. Ps. 38:2 "Thine arrow stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore." Owen adds: "these arrows are God's rebukes (Ps. 39:11)… God speaks in his word, and by his Spirit in the conscience, things sharp and bitter to the soul, fastening them so as it cannot shake them out. These Job so mournfully complains of. (Job 6:4)" (p.22)
7. Unspiritedness and disability unto duty. Owen explains: "the soul cannot pray with life and power, cannot hear with joy and profit, cannot do good and communicate with cheerfulness and freedom, cannot meditate with delight and heavenly-mindedness, cannot act for God with zeal and liberty, cannot think of suffering with boldness and resolution, but is sick, weak, feeble, and bowed down." What a graphic description! These are indeed our feelings oftentimes.
Owen concludes: Now, I say, a gracious soul, after much communion with God, may, on the account of sin, by a sense of the guilt of it, be brought into a state and condition wherein some, more, or all of these…maybe its portion. p.23
I appreciate that Owen points out that even believers will experience these spiritual darkness, and the fact that we may experience it doesn't mean that we are not the true elects or "gracious souls."
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