“Resolved: To live with all my
might while I do live.”
-Jonathan Edwards
A Biographical
Sketch
Jonathan Edwards was
born October 5, 1703, in Windsor, Connecticut. He had ten sisters and not one
brother. He could probably knit with and crochet with the best. He was of superior
intellect and at twelve years of age his father sent him to Yale where Edwards
flourished. He was a thinker, appearing to have always had his pen in hand
taking notes as he read. At the age of 16 he graduated from Yale as
valedictorian and gave the graduation address in Latin, for fun. He was
brilliant.
At 19 years of age
Edwards took his first call as a pastor to Scotch Presbyterian Church in New
York. He returned to Yale a year later to finish Masters work and fell in love
with Sarah Pierrepont. She was according to Edward’s own hand, “…of a wonderful
sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind…and seems to be always
full of joy and pleasure” (Edwards, Memoirs,
xxxix). Over the next 23 years they had eight daughters and three sons.
In 1726 God called
Edwards to assist his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, in ministering to the
esteemed Church of Northampton, Massachusetts. Stoddard passed three years
later and Edwards took over as sole minister. His primary task as a pastor was
ardent study of the Scriptures. He said: “Be assiduous in reading the Holy
Scriptures. This is the fountain whence all knowledge in divinity must be
derived. Therefore let not this treasure lie by you neglected” (Edwards, Christian Knowledge, 162). To Edwards
the greatest impact and good he could do as a pastor was to study well the Word
of God and communicate it’s truth in all that he did, be that preaching,
conversation, or in his prolific writing.
In 1757, after 23
years as pastor of Northampton, and time spent writing and thinking in
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Edwards was called by Princeton College to assume
the role of President. It was a crowning achievement to be extended this
invitation. He took it, although he was initially against the opportunity due to
his poor health and grand writing dreams. However on March 22, 1758, after only
assuming the position of President a month earlier, Edwards passed away after
complications that arose from a smallpox inoculation.
Edwards is an example
to us as a man who was fixed upon God as his ultimate end in all of life. Due
to his writings that have been well preserved, we have a good corpus from which
to “remember” his faith and imitate it in our lives. Here are three great
things that Edwards strived for in the exercise of his faith:
We Were Created to
Glorify God
Uppermost in all of
Edwards life was the great Reformed pillar of Soli Deo Gloria. Edwards’ faith spurned him to exist to magnify and
extol God’s glory in all that he put his hand to. While he was a sinner and
couldn’t accomplish this perfectly, it was nonetheless chief in his mind for
what was his end in life. For as Edward’s says:
“Thus
we see that the great and last end of God’s works which is so variously
expressed in Scripture, is indeed but one;
and this one end is most properly and
comprehensively called, ‘the glory of God.’” (Edwards, Ethical Writings, 530)
And so Edwards, by the
faith God had given him, sought to elevate and display the glory of God in his
life. One thing we can take from Edwards on this point is his understanding of
our sinful nature. The more depraved we are, the more we have to glory in our
God:
“God
hath made man’s emptiness and misery, his low, lost and ruined state into which
he is sunk by the fall, an occasion of the greater advancement of his own
glory…as there is now a much more universal and apparent dependence of man on
God.” (Kimnach, The Sermons of Jonathan
Edwards, 79)
We Were Created To
Delight in God
To many the Christian
faith looks like a joyless prison. It is a religion of prohibition: you can’t
get drunk, you can’t sleep around, you can’t lie on your taxes. Many in the
world see Christianity as a set of rules that restricts the individual and takes
all fun out of life. However Edwards says quite the opposite. He roots the
fundamental core of Christianity in relation to happiness and joy. Christianity
does not kill delight, it instead magnifies it and puts it in it’s proper
place. Edwards says this:
“God
is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in.
When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only
see it.” (Piper, God’s Passion for His
Glory, 79)
Edwards contends that
when we live into our created purpose in Christ, namely to glorify God, we do
so only successfully when we do so out of delight. Because the Christian, if he
truly grasps faith, realizes that he has found the most joyful pursuit in all
of life, giving glory to his creator. And he is the most joyful pursuit because
“He is [our] highest good…the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God
is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls.” (Kimnach, The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, 74) And
so from Edwards we can learn that we are to delight in our God, in His goodness
towards us, and in so doing bring glory to God.
We Were Created to
Pursue God
Edwards was a man of
great resolve. A man who put his mind to a task and did not waver. He was
intensely driven in all that he did. He was this way because he understood the
seriousness of what he was called to do, to redirect hearts and minds to God’s
glory. As such, Edwards found himself in a relentless pursuit of God. This is
well attested to in his many Resolutions
(Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol.
1, xx).
With 1 Corinthians
10:31 as his guide, whatever you do, do
it all for the glory of God, Edwards produced a list of 70 resolutions to
guide his life and pursuit of God’s glory to be manifested. These are no mere New Years Resolution like we might
think. May these few be an encouragement to you to imitate his faith, a faith
that calls us to be enamored in our pursuit of knowing and displaying God’s
glory in our lives.
1.
Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to the glory of God, and
my own good, profit, and pleasure, in the whole of my duration…
4.
Resolved, never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or
more, but what tends to the glory of God…
6.
Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.
7.
Resolved, never to do any thing, which I should be afraid to do if it were the
last hour of my life.
Edwards was a man of
resolve. May we resolve to be so fixed on God in our lives so as to display His
glory in all that we do.
* * *
There is much written on Jonathan Edwards. For an introduction I would recommend Owen Strachan's Essential Edwards Collection (book one in particular), and John Piper's elucidation of Edward's main theological orientation in God's Passion for His Glory. For a deeper look at Edwards life George Marsden's biography is top notch. As for Edwards own work, I would direct you first to some of his best sermons and then to the Religious Affections or Concerning The End for Which God Created the World. Yale also has most of Edwards work free to read on their webpage which is simply an invaluable gift from the school.
**Next Week: Remembering Your Leader Charles Spurgeon
JT Holderman is Assistant Pastor of Bellevue Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Gap, PA.
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