Category: Puritans

John Owen on Genuine Faith

John Owen on Genuine Faithby Brian G. Hedges /

Last week we learned a bit about the life of John Owen, whose 400th birthday we’ve been celebrating in the now-dwindling year of 2016. We also learned about the existence of a little-known gem of a book he wrote that was originally titled Gospel Grounds and Evidences of the Faith of God’s Elect. In the conclusion of this two-part series, we examine four reasons why the book remains valuable to the church today.

A Unique Faith

First, in the book Owen highlighted the difference between gospel, or evangelical, Christianity and all other systems of religion. This difference is not always obvious, especially in books addressed to the practical lives of Christians. Many books (and sermons) abound with moral directions and practical exhortations, yet fail to distinguish gospel Christianity from mere religion.

It is now in vogue to use “gospel” as an adjective. Books on “gospel” holiness or being “gospel centered” or “gospel driven” fill our shelves. Some of us may imagine this is a recent development. Yet it is not uncommon to find “gospel” used as an adjective in Owen’s works. Indeed, he did so in this book at least nine times, as he wrote six times of “gospel holiness,” twice of “gospel repentance,” and once each of “gospel graces” and “gospel ordinances.” Owen predated the gospel-centered movement by three-and-a-half centuries!

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John Owen’s Lesser-Known Gem of Puritan Theology

John Owen’s Lesser-Known Gem of Puritan Theologyby Brian G. Hedges /

John Owen was born in 1616, the same year that William Shakespeare died. While Shakespeare is justly famous as the greatest playwright in the history of the English language, Owen is arguably our greatest theologian. The son of a minister himself, Owen lived through both the highest and lowest points of the Puritan era. He served as Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain in the 1650s. He opposed the move to make Cromwell king in 1657. And after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he faced persecution for being a nonconformist, which significantly curtailed his influence and changed the course of the rest of his life and ministry.

Though he was raised in a Puritan household, Owen did not come to a settled assurance concerning his own salvation until 1642. He attended a church service at St. Mary Aldermanbury, London, and expected to hear the famous Edmund Calamy preach. But a substitute, whose name Owen never discovered, filled the pulpit instead and preached from the text “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” (Matt. 8:26 KJV) God used this sermon to bring Owen to assurance of his salvation.[1]

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John Owen’s Surprising Counsel to Struggling, Doubting Believers

John Owen's surprising word to doubting believersby Brian G. Hedges /

In his masterful exposition of Psalm 130, the seventeenth-century Puritan John Owen gave the church one of the most comprehensive theological and pastoral treatments of forgiveness of sin and assurance ever written. This is one of my favorite of Owen’s books and one that I return to over and again.

Near the end of his exposition, Owen includes a wonderfully encouraging chapter for saints struggling with sin. Having already presented an extensive exposition of the nature of gospel forgiveness, Owen is now turning to objections. And among the objections he addresses are those “arising from the consideration of [the soul’s] present state and condition as to actual holiness, duties, and sins” (Owen, Works 6:600). Owen further explains:

Souls complain, when in darkness and under temptations, that they cannot find that holiness, nor those fruits of it in themselves, which they suppose an interest in pardoning mercy will produce. Their hearts they find are weak, and their duties worthless. If they were weighed in the balance, they would all be found too light. In the best of them there is such a mixture of self, hypocrisy, unbelief, vain-glory, that they are even ashamed and confounded with the remembrance of them” (Works, 6:600).

I suppose any earnest and honest Christian has experienced this: doubts regarding the reality of God’s forgiveness, struggles with assurance, that are rooted in the consciousness of one’s struggles with sin and weakness in holiness.

How do you suppose Owen responds?

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