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John Owen

John Owen’s life was incredibly difficult. Born in 1616 and dying in 1683, Owen lived through the deaths of his first wife and all of his children, several of whom died in very early childhood. He supported his last surviving daughter when her marriage broke down. He contributed to a political revolution, watched it fail, saw the monarchy restored and wreak a terrible revenge on republicans, and lived in and around London during the persecution that followed. For twenty years he would have seen the decapitated heads of his friends on display around the city. He died fearing that the dissenting churches had largely abandoned the doctrine of the Trinity and justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone; and, with Charles II about to be replaced by his openly Catholic brother James, believing that the English Reformation was almost over. Owen was one of the most published writers in the seventeenth century. He published around 8 million words. These writings included books on theology and spirituality, politics and economics, and ranged in length from the largest commentary ever published on the epistle to the Hebrews to a short Latin poem that has never been reprinted. For not all of Owen’s works have been kept in print. The most widely circulating nineteenth-century edition, most of which is published by the Banner of Truth, did not include Owen’s sermon manuscripts that are kept in various English libraries, nor the book for children that Owen published in 1652. Owen was one of England’s earliest children’s authors. The catechisms that Owen published (1645) outlined what he expected children in his congregation to know. These catechisms were published before the Westminster Assembly published its better-known examples. But Owen’s catechisms are in many ways simpler. The Primer (1652), which Owen prepared after the death of several of his children during the years of poor harvests and disease at the end of the 1640s, showed what Owen expected of an ideal Christian home. Its routine would be built around Bible reading and prayer, he believed, and his little book included sample prayers that children could learn to pray in mornings, evenings, and at meals. Owen argued that those who led church services should take account of the needs of children. Services that were too long, he believed, did no one any good. Adult believers should not need written prayers, he believed, and these should be banned from public worship. But children were different and needed all the help they could get. Owen enjoyed many warm friendships. His social network included many of the most famous writers in seventeenth-century England. Among his friends and rivals were John Milton, Andrew Marvell, John Bunyan, and Lucy Hutchinson. Owen fell out with Milton and became the subject of one of his sonnets. Owen helped Marvell publish one of his most controversial political pamphlets. He encouraged his publisher, Nathanial Ponder, to publish Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. And he appears to have supported Lucy Hutchinson during her move into London, when she attended and took notes upon his preaching and translated large parts of his Theologoumena Pantodapa (1661)—a translation of which has been published with the title Biblical Theology. Owen’s letters reveal his kindness and care as a pastor, especially to mothers grieving their children’s death. Owen was deeply political. He preached to Members of Parliament on the day after the execution of Charles I, and pinned his hopes for the reformation of church and society on their efforts to transform England into a protestant republic. During the 1650s, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, Owen served on important committees that sought to establish a religious foundation for the new regime. But he grew dismayed by the ways in which the Cromwell family, and the administration they led, seemed to turn away from godly values. In 1658, he worked with leading army officers to create a crisis that, he likely hoped, would call the regime back to its earlier ideals. It failed, and instead created the crisis that was resolved by the restoration of the monarchy, the return of Charles II, and the persecution of dissenters that followed. During the Restoration, Owen kept his head down, and, as persecution slackened in the later 1660s, published pamphlets that argued that dissenters were the economic lifeblood of the English nation. But he was chastened by his attempts at political intervention and came increasingly to realize that his focus should be on things eternal. Owen often changed his mind. As his developing attitudes to political intervention suggest, Owen committed himself to some beliefs and behaviors that he came to regret. In his early years, he changed his churchmanship from Presbyterianism to Congregationalism. He innovated as a Congregationalist, installing as a co-elder and preacher a man who would not be ordained for several years. He argued for the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, though it is not clear that he ever persuaded any of his congregations to practice it. He thought carefully about the end times and came to believe that, in the latter days, a large number of Jewish people would be converted to Christianity and would return to live in the Promised Land. He dismissed a great deal of discussion about the millennium, but became convinced that the binding of Satan had yet to be achieved. Owen changed his mind because he kept on studying the Bible. Owen was biblical, through and through, and depended just as much on the Holy Spirit. He certainly believed in a learned ministry–after all, he had taught theology at Oxford and done his best to promote godliness within the student body. But he also trusted the Holy Spirit to guide ordinary Christians in small group Bible studies that did not need to be policed by a formally trained expert. Aside from his own Bible study, which advanced on the serious scholarship represented by the three thousand titles that were included in the catalog of his library published soon after his death, Owen encouraged church members to meet together to study Scripture in private. Owen trusted the Bible and the work of the Spirit after writing about both. Owen was not a philosophically-driven, rationalist theologian. His writing abounds in biblical citations. It is molded and contoured by biblical revelation. But he warned that Christians could approach their study of the Bible with absolutely no spiritual advantage to themselves. Christians who approached the study of the Bible without absolute dependence upon the Spirit who inspired and preserved it would gain no more benefit than Jewish readers did from their Scriptures, he argued. Christians should never choose between entire dependence upon the Bible and the Spirit. Owen believed that the goal of the Christian life was knowing God. Before Owen, no one had ever shown clearly how Christians relate to each person of the Trinity. Owen described the goal of the gospel as revealing the love of the Father, who sent the Son as a redeemer of his people, who would be indwelt, provided with gifts, and united together by the Spirit. Owen’s Communion with God is among his most celebrated achievements—and no wonder. It is the exhalation of his devotion to Father, Son, and Spirit, and the discovery of the limitless love of God. Owen is much easier to read than many people imagine. There is a mystique to Owen—a widespread feeling that his books are too difficult and best left to expert theologians. But Owen’s greatest books were written as sermons for an audience of teenagers. Publishers have begun to modernize Owen’s language in new editions of his works. Now more than ever, it’s time to pick up Owen and find his encouragement for the Christian life.

Secret Allies in the Human Heart - The Advantage We Have in Evangelism

One warm, dusty midday, Jesus sat alone near Jacob’s well outside the Samaritan town of Sychar. His disciples had gone into town to buy food, but he had planned a different meal for himself (John 4:34). Soon a solitary woman arrived at the well with a large clay jar and began to draw water. Jesus asked her for a drink. So began one of the most famous evangelistic conversations in history. And this conversation is remarkably relevant to us twenty-first-century Christians. Because in it, Jesus demonstrates that hidden in the human heart are secret evangelistic allies, as Scottish preacher James Stewart once observed (Heralds of God, 53). These secret allies are deep-seated intuitions and longings that can help a person recognize the truth of the gospel. And like Jesus, if we listen carefully and prayerfully, both to the person and the Holy Spirit, we can engage these allies in the pursuit of that person’s ultimate joy. Obstacles to Evangelism In numerous ways, this woman would have appeared to most of us as an unlikely candidate for conversion. “Hidden in the human heart are secret evangelistic allies.” First, she was a Samaritan, which meant she was viewed and hated by most Jews as a member of a heretical, idolatrous religion. We would have assumed she reciprocated the hatred. She was a woman, which meant (according to ancient Near Eastern social norms) that she would have been reticent to enter into such a conversation alone with a strange man. And given the odd, hot time of day she chose to fetch water, we might have intuited some social estrangement from her own townspeople. In other words, there were layers of complex awkwardness about the whole situation — the kind of awkwardness most of us want to avoid, the kind we tend to assume will make fruitfulness unlikely. But Jesus, alert to the Holy Spirit and lovingly eager for this woman to experience grace and forgiveness and liberation and joy, stepped into the awkwardness. And notice how he navigated this conversation, engaging several secret allies along the way. Secret Allies in an Unlikely Convert It began with a mundane-sounding yet provocative request: “Give me a drink” (John 4:7). This simple question caught the woman off guard. Not only was a man addressing an unaccompanied woman, but a Jew was addressing a Samaritan. In doing so, however, Jesus acknowledged her as an image-bearer of God, according her the dignity due such a creation. Her deep, intuitive knowledge of the rightness of this became one secret ally in helping prepare her to receive the grace and mercy he offers. Then, given the immediate context of their conversation, Jesus used the metaphor of thirst to raise the issue of the woman’s deep, inconsolable longing for lasting hope, joy, meaning, and love — a longing she shared with all fallen humanity (John 4:10–15). He wasn’t put off by her skepticism and derogatory comments. He was after her joy, not defending himself. What he did was engage her soul-thirst as a secret gospel ally for her highest good. Then he gently stepped into another very awkward place: the woman’s sinful, painful past littered with the ruins of broken relational cisterns that had only left her more parched (Jeremiah 2:13; John 4:16–18). And he offered her the only water that could quench her thirst: the gracious, merciful love of God. Her pain proved to be the pivotal gospel ally in her heart (John 4:39), because she had an undeniable desire and need for God’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption. But there was one more massive issue to deal with: What about the deep, bitter, complex, hostile, centuries-old ethno-religious disagreements between the Jews and the Samaritans (John 4:19–22)? Notice where in the conversation Jesus chose to address this (he ignored the controversy in verse 9). Jesus discerned that this woman needed to taste God’s care and kindness toward her before she would be open to hearing that she and her ancestors had worshiped in ignorance (John 4:22). So, he did deploy the ally of the truth she already knew from Jewish Scriptures, but not until he had developed some initial trust first. Having glimpsed the Great Well and tasted the living water (John 4:23–24), this woman forgot her jar by Jacob’s well and ran back to town to share the good news she had received (John 4:28–30). And her testimony resonated with the secret allies in the hearts of many of her neighbors in Sychar. Common Secret Allies This evangelistic conversation is admittedly exceptional because Jesus is exceptional. We rarely receive such supernatural insight into someone else’s life — though such gifts sometimes are given to believers by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 14:24–25). But we can still learn from how Jesus engaged secret evangelistic allies in the hearts of his hearers. And while we may not be able to discern all he discerned as the God-man, we can still ask good questions, listen carefully, and pray for the Spirit to help us identify allies in each conversation. Certain allies are specific to particular people, like the Samaritan woman’s painful past. But there are allies that God has implanted in the hearts of every person. Here are some of them: We all instinctively recognize design in creation (Romans 1:19–20). We all are irresistibly drawn to transcendent glory (Psalm 8:1–4). We all have an intuitive knowledge of providence — that there is a purposeful intent to the created world, the events in it, and our own lives (Acts 17:22–31). We all know deep down that nihilism (ultimate meaninglessness implicit in metaphysical naturalism) is not true (Ecclesiastes 3:1–14). We all know we must have hope to keep going (Psalm 43:5; Lamentations 3:20–24; Romans 15:13). We all have an irrepressible longing for joy (Psalm 16:11; 43:4; Ecclesiastes 3:12; John 15:11; 1 Peter 1:8). We all intuitively recognize the moral law (Romans 2:14–15). We all know that we have transgressed the moral law and to some degree long to be free from guilt (Romans 3:23–26). We all at various times experience an undeniable desire for justice to prevail (Deuteronomy 16:19–20; Job 19:7–11; Proverbs 17:23; Micah 6:8; Matthew 12:18–21). We all have a sense of eternity in our hearts — we instinctively know death is not our ultimate end (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We all recognize the supreme beauty of love (Matthew 22:36–40; John 15:13; 1 Corinthians 13:13; 1 John 4:7–8). In claiming that we all know these things, I don’t mean that we all admit them, recognize them to the same degree, or explain them in the same way, but they are all part of the universal human experience. And the fact that we continually discuss and debate them is evidence of their presence. They are internal witnesses and pointers to the existence and nature of God, and in that way they become allies in our evangelism. Take Them to the Well On that warm, dusty day, on the slope of Mount Gerizim, the Lord himself became one massive, momentous fulfillment of the words of the old prophet: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7) “We all have eternity in our hearts — we instinctively know death is not our ultimate end.” He employed gospel allies already residing secretly in the heart of an unlikely convert to lead her to the living water she so desperately needed and longed for. Isn’t that essentially our story too? When it comes to evangelism, we can be too easily intimidated, especially when someone looks unlikely to respond well. It can appear to us like the ground isn’t level, like we occupy the less defendable ground because our hearer is likely to judge our gospel as foolish or weak (1 Corinthians 1:22–25). In truth, the ground is often not level, but not in the way we might fear. Often, we have the advantage because, as with Jesus that day outside Sychar, we have unseen gospel allies residing in the hearts of our hearers. And if we listen carefully and prayerfully to our hearers, the Holy Spirit can show us how to employ them. Because when it comes to the power of God in evangelism (1 Corinthians 1:18), “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). We don’t need to be experts in apologetics or trained theologians to share the good news with others, even with the most resistant and entrenched. Often, we simply need to care more about helping them find the living water they so desperately need than about protecting our reputation or demonstrating how right we are. And if we do, we will find that we have secret allies in the pursuit of that person’s highest joy. Article by Jon Bloom Staff writer, desiringGod.org