Remember Your Leaders: Jonathan Edwards

“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.

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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.

Remember Your Leaders: John Calvin

“No man ever had a profounder sense of God than he; no man ever more unreservedly surrendered himself to the Divine direction.” --BB Warfield

Calvin is the father of Reformed Theology. It’s a wonder this Presbyterian didn’t begin our series with Calvin. Central to reformed theology for Calvin was the supremacy of God’s glory and the Scriptures for understanding first who God is, and therefore the purpose of His creation. Few have exhibited as much devotion to the proper handling of the Scriptures as that of John Calvin. He was a man who found himself at all times enamored with the glory of God as displayed in His Scriptures. At every point of the canon Calvin found that it pointed to the unsurpassing glory of God as it’s utmost end. For those of us who know Calvin we can’t forget to remember his contribution to our faith. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Calvin, his passion for God will ignite a flame in your heart to set aside all purposes in your life that lead elsewhere than God and encourage Godward focus in all that you are.

I have been influenced more by Calvin than any other theologian and his influence has not simply been a matter of knowledge, he has drawn me to worship and glorify God in my daily life. My hope is he will do the same for you, he will take your heart and set it on fire for God’s glory.

A Biographical Sketch

Jean Cauvin was born July 10th, 1509, in Noyon, France. He was a brilliant boy and was sent at 14 to study theology at University of Paris by order of his father. However five years later he began a degree in law in Bourges and Orleans because his father had a disagreement with the church. Shortly following this change of course Calvin’s father passed away and he returned to Paris to study the Classics which had become a dear love to him. At the age of 23 (1532) he published his first book, a commentary on Seneca, a classic secular text. To say he was driven would be an understatement.

Sometime between 1532 and the end of 1533 Calvin became a Christian. His friend Nicholas Cop gave a rather Protestant fueled address at the University of Paris and was chastised by parliament for being Lutheran-like in his speech. This led to an attack on other Lutheran minded people, of which Calvin was one. He was forced to flee France. He intended to go to Strasbourg, Germany and retire to a life of writing and teaching; God had other plans. Troop movements prevented Calvin from traveling directly to Strasbourg; he was forced to detour through Geneva, Switzerland. In Geneva William Farel, the fiery leader of the Reformation movement there, chastised Calvin for hoping to attend a life of writing and leisure:

[Farel] proceeded to utter an imprecation that God would curse my retirement…if I should withdraw and refuse to give assistance, when the necessity was so urgent. By this imprecation I was so stricken with terror, that I desisted from the journey which I had undertaken.” (Piper, Legacy of Sovereign Joy, 129) 

Calvin, by God’s sovereign plan, with the help of troop movements blocking Calvin’s path, became minister of St. Pierre’s in Geneva.

However Calvin did not attend to all the desires of city council and they booted him out of town in 1538. He finally made it to Strasbourg where he spent three years teaching New Tesament and writing. He met his wife Idelette de Bure here and married her in August of 1540. During Calvin’s leave, the city council realized their mistake and begged Calvin back. He returned on September 13, 1541 and his first Sunday back preached on the next verse of the series on Acts that he left off with when he was kicked out of Geneva. He remained there as a minister until his death in 1564.

Because Calvin is so well known, we will look at three things we can learn and imitate of him in our faith, two of which are commonly known, and one which is more obscure.

Soli Deo Gloria
Calvin’s faith led him to focus primarily on the supremacy of God’s glory. If we imitate nothing else in Calvin’s faith than this, we are on solid ground. This truly is the foundation of Reformed Theology. John Piper speaks about Calvin in this manner, “The fundamental issue for John Calvin, from the beginning to the end of his life, was the issue of the centrality and supremacy and majesty of the glory of God” (Piper 119). Indeed one can scarcely read anything written by Calvin and not see that God’s glory was his chief end in what he said, how he ministered, and how he lived his private life. Calvin claims that it is his highest goal by his own writing:

“The thing [O God] at which I chiefly aimed, and for which I most diligently labored, was, that the glory of thy goodness and justice…might shine forth conspicuous, that the virtue and blessings of thy Christ…might be fully displayed” (Dillenberger, John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, 110). 

We learn from Calvin what our proper aim is: the glory of God! In the 1600’s the Westminster Assembly ratified this as true according to question and answer one, “What is our chief purpose in life?...To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Calvin’s faith leads the way for us who live in the 21st century. In remembering him as a leader of the faith we are drawn to imitate his sheer delight and devotion to glorifying God in all that he did. May we seek in our days to glorify the Creator and not the creature (Rom. 1:24-25) in our studies in school, in our relationships at work, in our mutual worship together as a family, and above all as witnesses and ambassadors on Jesus’ behalf to the world.

Scripture As Spectacles
Second to Calvin’s devotion to God’s glory is his devotion to the Scripture’s. Calvin famously describes the Scriptures “spectacles” whereby they help us “[gather] up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds…[and] clearly shows us the true God” (Institutes I.VI.I). Therefore as a child of God he was vehemently focused on the importance of the living word of God. He shined as a preacher, as an expositor of God’s Word to his congregation day in and day out. His life was “a ministry of unrelenting exposition of the Word of God. [His] constancy had a focus, the exposition of the Word of God” (Piper, Legacy of Sovereign Joy, 137). Few examples of the faith had as high a view of Scripture as Calvin. He magnifies it’s importance in this manner:

“Now, in order that true religion may shine upon us, we ought to hold that it must take its beginning from heavenly doctrine and that no one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture. Hence, there also emerges the beginning of true understanding when we reverently embrace what it pleases God there to witness of himself.” (Institutes I.VI.II) 

We learn then very clearly from our great father in the faith that Scripture is of utmost importance to our lives. For scripture acts as the equilibrium of the Christian; it directs our steps, one foot in front of the other, without falling over, towards a true knowledge of God and therefore of ourselves. To learn and imitate Calvin’s faith leads us to be pupils of the Scriptures.

A Godward Happiness
The glory of God and the primacy of Scripture are commonly known about Calvin, but this third point is more obscure to his theological children. Calvin was a man who was exceedingly happy in God alone. We often think in the church that happiness is a secondary issue that is set aside for God’s glory. But Calvin understood that giving glory to God was precisely what we were created to do, and to do that meant that we were to truly be happy, what God longs for us. And so our service of God rests in our happiness towards Him. Calvin puts it like this:

“For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.” (Institutes I.II.I) 

We learn from Calvin that we are to be happy people. We learn from Calvin’s faith that our happiness is only truly happiness when it rests in God and how he has designed us to be happy, in the presence of his glory. As imitators of his faith then we ought to endeavor to find God as our supreme treasure and delight, the person who brings a smile to our faces and one in which we long to live for because he alone is our happiness. Pray that we might learn from the faith of John Calvin, that God would draw us nearer to Himself through the great leader he has given to us as an example of faith.

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There is much written on John Calvin. For an introduction I would recommend Steven Lawson's The Expository Genius of John Calvin, Burk Parson's John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology, or Piper's chapter on Calvin in The Legacy of Sovereign Joy. For something a bit more meatier I would look at THL Parker's classic biography, John Calvin, or I would go straight to Calvin's Institutes, they are a wonderfully accessible read.

**Next Week: Remembering Your Leader Jonathan Edwards

JT Holderman is Assistant Pastor of Bellevue Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Gap, PA.