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Was John Owen a Christian Hedonist?

by Brian G. Hedges /

John Owen, aka the “Prince of Puritans,” was born in 1616, the same year Shakespeare died. Owen has a reputation among Reformed folk for being hard on sin and even harder to read. The nineteenth century Scottish professor John Duncan is famous for assigning one of Owen’s books to his students with the warning, “Prepare for the Knife!” And theologian A.W.Pink said that one was more likely to find vinegar than honey in Owen’s writings.

But, while Owen is most famous for his trilogy on mortification, temptation, and indwelling sin, readers who dig deep actually discover a lot of honey in his writings. His books and sermons are well-seasoned with words such as “pleasant,” “satisfaction,” “sweetness,” and “delight.” For example, in his devotional meditation on communion with the Triune God, Owen says that God the Father’s love “ought to be looked on as the fountain from whence all other sweetnesses flow.”[1] And in The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded, an extended meditation on Romans 8:6, Owen says that life and peace “comprise a holy frame of heart and mind, wherein the souls of believers do find rest, quietness, refreshment, and satisfaction in God, in the midst of temptations, afflictions, offences, and sufferings.”[2]

These references, and dozens more, reveal Owen to be as deeply acquainted with the spiritual joys of fellowship with Christ as he was with the spiritual rigor required in killing sin. In fact, Owen did not merely acknowledge the presence and benefit of spiritual joy and delight; he also integrated such joy into his whole understanding of Christian experience. There are good reasons, then, to recognize John Owen (like Jonathan Edwards a century later) as a Puritan proponent of Christian Hedonism.

Here are three insights we can learn from Owen’s treatment of these themes.

One of the principal evidences of saving faith is the believer’s embrace of the gospel for both the glorification of God and the satisfaction of the soul.

In one of his most overlooked books, a slim volume called The Gospel Grounds and Evidences of the Faith of God’s Elect (now retitled as Gospel Evidences of Saving Faith), Owen discusses four important evidences of true faith. Owen doesn’t start where one might think: for example, with a vigorous call to mortify sin. He eventually gets there, but, for Owen, the first evidence of saving faith is “Choosing, Embracing, and Approving God’s Way of Saving Sinners through the Work of Christ Alone.”[3]

True believers are those who not recognize themselves as sinners, but have embraced the good news of God’s mercy through Christ alone. Owen says that believers must embrace the gospel as that which most glorifies God, most satisfies our souls, and most honors God’s law.[4]

Why Write a Book About Pot?

by Tom Breeden /

Editor’s Note:

Historically, Christians across the theological spectrum have had a settled position on marijuana use: almost universally forbidden. Yet this position has been primarily a matter of Christian tradition, rather than theology. In practical terms that’s been sufficient, because until recently every law in the land (at least, as written on the books) has upheld the overwhelming Christian consensus on this issue.

But Western nations, of course, are in the process of reconsidering and recategorizing marijuana use, and in many places (more places all the time) the cultural climate is shifting in favor of smoking pot recreationally or using it medicinally. As a result, some Christians are honestly beginning to wonder whether either or both of those uses are really so bad.

Clearly, these trends are only going to increase. It’s high time the evangelical church had a short, clear, simple book that offers a sound biblical response to the question, “Can I smoke pot?” We have made an effort to provide such a book, which we plan to release in early October. Today we are announcing the book, and thought you’d like to hear from one of the authors, Tom Breeden. He and co-author Mark Ward will follow up with additional blog posts about Can I Smoke Pot? in coming weeks.

Teenagers ask the best questions. I was serving as a pastoral intern during my second year in seminary, working primarily with middle school, high school, and college students. I received all kinds of questions from them. Some of these questions were what you’d expect: “Why is it wrong to have sex before marriage?” Some of them were humorous: “Is it a sin for me to troll people on the internet?” But one question came up more frequently than I expected: “Is it a sin to smoke marijuana?”

I didn’t have a great answer. I knew what I thought, but I couldn’t easily explain it from Scripture. The students didn’t need my opinion; they needed God’s Word. That semester I was taking an ethics class and we were given wide latitude for our term papers. Anything connected to Christian ethics was fair game. So I decided to answer these students’ questions and knock out my term paper at the same time.

Four Reasons We Are Chosen in Christ

Four Reasons We Are Chosen in Christ: On What Basis Are We Saved? - Part 2 by Jeremy Walker/

Read all the posts published to date in this 16-part series on the essential truths of the Christian faith.

ON WHAT BASIS ARE WE SAVED? – PART 2

Chosen

In the previous post in this series, we established from Scripture that salvation involves a choice. We asked the questions “Who chooses?,” “Who are chosen?,” “In whom were they chosen?,” and “When were they chosen?” Now we move on to discuss four biblical reasons for this choosing, exploring two strands of inquiry: “On what basis are we chosen?,” and “To what end are we chosen?”

On What Basis Are We Chosen?

1) Not chosen out of merit. Negatively, and as we have already begun to see in Acts 13:48 (NKJV), we were not chosen because of any worthiness in us, either predicted or actual. The Lord has never dealt with people in this way. For example, in Deuteronomy 7:7 (NKJV), Moses assures Israel that “the Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples.” Israel at that time might have been tempted to look on the multitudes of the tribes and say, “Ah, this is why God chose us. Look at how many of us there are! Truly we are just the kind of people whom God might have chosen for his glory!” We still face precisely the same kind of temptations—we imagine that our numbers, graces, abilities, faith, wealth, charisma, influence, or whatever else it might be, actually lies behind God’s gift to us. In that scenario, salvation becomes a reward for what we already were or had become.

Scripturally, the truth is precisely the reverse.

God Works through Our Will to Do His Will

by Jerry Bridges /

Read all the posts published to date in this 9-part series on God’s providence from Cruciform’s good friend, the late Jerry Bridges. This was a teaching Jerry was presenting in the months leading up to his fatal heart attack in March, 2016.

In the previous posts in this series, we addressed the miracle and mystery of God’s providence, His sovereignty, and the role of providence in our everyday lives. This time we’ll take a quick look at the question of God’s providence and man’s free will.

GOD’S PROVIDENCE, PART SIX OF NINE

Providence and Free Will

God is sovereign even though he has allowed—to a limited extent—humans to also have their own will. In order to understand how this works we need to remember that God does what we cannot do. We can request, persuade, coerce, or manipulate people’s wills, but all of our efforts are external. God, on the other hand, works within our will so that we choose to do what He has determined we will do.

Here is a prime example of this from Scripture:

The Second Anchor Point of Faith

The Second Anchor Point of Faith: On What Basis Are We Saved? Part 1

by Jeremy Walker/

Read all the posts published to date in this 16-part series on the essential truths of the Christian faith.

ON WHAT BASIS ARE WE SAVED? – PART 1

Chosen

If we drew only one conclusion from the preceding posts in his series, I trust it would be something along these lines: for men and women like us, by nature being dead in our trespasses and sins, the only possible solution or remedy lies outside mankind. It must, of necessity, lie with God alone.

We can put it another way, in the form of a question. If everyone by nature deserves death and hell, how is it that some obtain life and heaven? If someone has those blessings, where did they come from and how did that person come by them? The beginning of the answer to that question is addressed in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, as well as in a number of other places.

7 Rational Responses to a Fallen World

7 Rational Responses to a Fallen World: Who Needs to Be Saved? - Part 3 by Jeremy Walker/

Read all the posts published to date in this 16-part series.

In the previous two posts we examined two kinds of evidence affirming the innate fallen nature of man: the testimony of Scripture and the testimony of the world. So, what do we take from all this?

WHO NEEDS TO BE SAVED? – PART 3

Taking Stock

What shall we make of all we have seen in the previous two posts? Given that Scripture and experience speak with one voice regarding our innate spiritual fallenness, what inferences and conclusions must we draw?

1: Realism. First of all, there should be realism about those who are, at this point in time, unconverted—those who are not true Christians. Such men and women, boys and girls, must be born again: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:5–7 NKJV). This is not the language of obligation (it is not a command) but of an absolute spiritual necessity. No one moves to God, or even desires to move toward God, without God moving first to draw that one to himself. We may and should mourn over the hardness of men’s hearts, but it should not surprise us. In fact, we are told to expect it. When believers take the gospel into the world, they take it to those who are utterly dead in themselves. We must be realistic about that and about what it means for the hostile reception that the unregenerate heart will give to both the message and messengers of the cross. We must be realistic, no less, about our own children, if we are Christians. We cannot excuse or ameliorate their sin. All their privileges growing up under the gospel, all the healthful influences brought to bear upon them, do not in themselves render our children less sinful.

2: Honesty. Furthermore, there must be honesty concerning our own condition. It may be that even now the Holy Spirit is using this blog post to give some reader, perhaps for the first time, a clearer understanding of the evil of your nature, the criminality of your record, the rebellion of your heart. Have you grasped that, as you are or were, there is no good thing in you or from you? That might be a dawning realization for a Christian who has never considered these things before. It might even be a revelation of your present utter lostness and your deadness to your own dead state. If that is so, do you see that you need a Savior? Do you now understand that from the womb you have gone astray? We must face the facts.

Providence in the Everyday

Providence in the Everyday: God's Providence, Part 5 of 10, by Jerry Bridges by Jerry Bridges /

Read all the posts published to date in this 9-part series on God’s Providence from Cruciform’s good friend, the late Jerry Bridges. This was a teaching Jerry was presenting in the months leading up to his fatal heart attack in March, 2016.

GOD’S PROVIDENCE, PART FIVE OF NINE

In the previous post we saw that God in His sovereignty caused Genghis Kahn and the generation that followed him to conquer one fourth of the world’s population, forming the largest nation-state in human history…and then God destroyed it by using fleas. Today we’re looking briefly at ways God’s providence affects us directly in our personal lives.

1. Health and physical disabilities

Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? (Exodus 4:11)

Have you or your loved ones faced health or disability challenges? Clearly, God is in control of every part of our bodies and how they function.

2. Financial and social standing

The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. (1 Samuel 2:7)

Many people live to some degree in constant fear or worry over their material prosperity, their position in society, or both. But we see here that God alone ultimately determines our level of wealth or poverty.

3. Weather

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:45)

I also withheld the rain from you when there was yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither. (Amos 4:7)

The plain and most important meaning of these passages speaks specifically to weather conditions. That said, there is value and biblical legitimacy in understanding weather as a metaphor for other aspects of life that can seem random but are in fact subject to God’s will. That is, we all experience the blessings of good weather and the trials of bad weather, literal or otherwise. Yet our God is in sovereign control over all of it, in every place, all the time.

4 Daily Proofs of the Fall

Who Needs to Be Saved? Part 2 by Jeremy Walker/

Read all the posts published to date in this 16-part series.

We continue to review our condition as fallen creatures. Last time, we examined the testimony of God’s Word as it pertains to our innate spiritual condition. Now we will examine the evidence of the world around us.

WHO NEEDS TO BE SAVED? – PART 2

Evidence: The Testimony of Daily Life

While the testimony of the Word of God should be sufficient for the Christian, we may also expect experience to bear out what we read there. In truth, if we survey the world with the same honesty with which we face the Bible, we do find this to be the case.

1: Children. We can see evidence of man’s innate spiritual poverty, for example, in the behavior of children. As any candid parent will tell you, no one needs to teach a toddler selfishness or greed or anger. No one must school a child in deceit or pride. But there cannot be many parents who set out to develop sin in their children. Nevertheless, in the face of the best human efforts, the blithest little baby allowed to develop in the most neutral or positive environment will soon enough produce the fruit of a fallen nature.

2: The world. Or consider, more generally, the state of the world. As I write there are wars being fought out in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and countless other places around the world. By the time you read these words, those wars may well have been won and lost by respective sides, with all the resultant misery. Other conflicts will be simmering or boiling over in other parts of the planet, and you will be able to list them for yourselves. But you need not look so far afield. Walk the streets of your village, town, or city with your eyes and ears open. Do you see some rural idyll or scenes of metropolitan bliss? Or do you not find, more or less evidently, the marks of man’s iniquity scorched into countless lives? Do the sins and sorrows of this world contradict or illustrate the truth of God’s Word?

6 Scriptural Proofs of the Fall

6 Scriptural Proofs of the Fall: Who Needs to be Saved? - Part 1 by Jeremy Walker/

Read all the posts published to date in this 16-part series on the essential truths of the Christian faith.

WHO NEEDS TO BE SAVED? PART 1

Fallen

What then? Are we better than they? Not at all.
For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.
As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;
there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable;
there is none who does good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:9–12, NKJV)

We must begin with our condition as fallen creatures, what the Scottish pastor and theologian Thomas Boston called “the state of nature.”ⁱ This is a vital first step because if we make a false diagnosis of our condition then we will seek out flawed remedies and accept false answers. To do so in this instance would be fatal.

In order to make a proper assessment of this matter, we shall trace out two strands of evidence. The primary and fundamental strand is the testimony of God’s Word. The secondary and supplementary strand, covered in the subsequent post in this series, is the evidence of the world around us. Having surveyed the evidence we shall, two posts from now, draw out some particular inferences and conclusions.

Evidence: The Testimony of Scripture

The testimony of Scripture must be, for Christians, the defining truth. This is where we begin seeking a final answer to every question addressed therein. What does the Word of God say about the human heart? What does the Bible reveal about our natural state or fallen condition? It describes it in various terms.

1: Deadness. Scripture describes our natural condition as one of deadness. Paul concludes part of his reasoning with the Roman Christians by telling them that, “therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12, NKJV). Paul traces our condition to its fountain in the sin of Adam. All mankind, descending from Adam by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression. All our sinning is traced back to the sinful nature we inherited from our first father. Ours is an hereditary condition, and a dreadful one. Everyone, Christian or otherwise, is by nature “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1, NKJV). Death—spiritual death—is revealed by our pattern of existence marked by trespasses and sins. It is a state of spiritual inertness, or utter spiritual lifelessness.

The Sovereignty of God’s Providence

The Sovereignty of God's Providence by Jerry Bridges /

GOD’S PROVIDENCE, PART FOUR OF NINE

So far in this series we have defined God’s providence, distinguished it from miracles, and offered reasons why it can seem so mysterious. Now we will take a look at sovereignty as it pertains to our personal and collective plans.

The sovereignty of God means that He is in absolute control of every event and circumstance in His creation. As the Psalmist put it, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3). Whether person, family, tribe, or nation, God alone ultimately determines whether we will accomplish what we have planned. For a brief but powerful description of this, see James 4:13-16.

Centuries ago, Augustine said, “Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen; he either permits it to happen, or He brings it about himself.” This means that nothing in your life is so small or trivial as to escape the attention of His sovereign control; and nothing is so great as to be beyond His power to control it.

In Matthew 10:29-31, Jesus taught that there is no detail in His creation that is beyond God’s control. Even the little sparrow cannot fall to the ground apart from His will. Jesus spoke these words in the context of expecting persecution. Thus, even when a believer suffers the injustice of religious persecution, God is still in sovereign control of his or her life.

Was John Owen a Christian Hedonist?

One of the principal evidences of saving faith is the believer’s embrace of the gospel for both the glorification of God and the satisfaction of the soul.

Read More