John Owen (1616–1683) has a reputation for being hard on sin — and even harder to read. Nineteenth-century Scottish professor John Duncan is famous for assigning Owen to his students with the warning, “Prepare for the knife!” And theologian A.W. Pink said he found more salt than honey in Owen’s writings.
While Owen is most famous for his trilogy on sin and temptation, readers who dig deep actually discover much sweetness. After all, he is known as “Prince of the Puritans,” and his writings are well-seasoned with words like pleasant, satisfaction, sweetness, and delight. Owen had a special eye for spiritual joy, and he integrated it into his whole understanding of Christian experience. We have good reason, then, to recognize Owen as a Puritan proponent of what John Piper has called “Christian Hedonism.”
Here are three insights, among others, we can glean from Owen’s treatment of Christian joy.
- Faith glorifies God and satisfies the soul.
- Joy in God embraces godly sorrow and transcends other delights.
- Communion with God is the key to joy.
- Mind: “in contemplation and thoughts of [Christ] night and day” (8:377). This involves the spiritual acts of meditation and contemplation on Christ as revealed in the gospel.
- Will: “in great diligence and carefulness about that obedience which Christ doth require, in all the instances of it” (8:378).
- Affections: “through love and delight in all these things” (8:378).
Brian Hedges( Contributor )
Brian Hedges is the lead pastor for Fulkerson Park Baptist Church in Niles, Michigan, and the author of Christ Formed in You: The Power of the Gospel for Personal Change (Shepherd Press, 2010) and Licensed to Kill: A Field Manual for Mortifying Sin (Cruciform Press, 2011).