John Owen's Communion With God- Part 5

John Owen’s Communion With God- Part 5

(Sunday mornings before our worship service, our church is studying our way through Owen's book. This series consists of the notes handed out for the class).

To read John Owen is to enter a rare world. Whenever I return to one of his works I find myself asking “Why do I spend time reading lesser literature?”
—Sinclair B. Ferguson


Owen concludes chapter 3 by answering a potential objection to his claim that God’s love is like Himself: “equal, constant, not capable of augmentation or diminuation.”

But you will say,’This comes nigh to that blasphemy, that God loves His people in their sinning as well as in their strictest obedience; and, if so, who will care to serve Him more, or to walk with Him unto well-pleasing”
He answers:

The love of God in itself is the eternal purpose and act of His will. This is no more changeable than God Himself: if it were, no flesh could be saved; but it changeth not, and we are not condemned. What then? Loves He His people in their sinning? Yes; His people- not their sinning. Alters He not the purpose of His will, but the dispensations of His grace. He rebukes them, He chastens them, He hides his face from them, He smites them, He fills them with a sense of His indignation; but woe, woe would it be to us, should He change in His love, or take away His kindness from us! Those very things which seem to be demonstrations of the change of His affections toward His, do as clearly proceed from love as those which seem to be the most genuine issues thereof. “But will not this encourage to sin?” he never tasted of the love of God that can seriously make this objection.
Chapter 4- pg. 31

Because the typical Christian has seen God as being a God of anger that they fear rather than a God of love, Owen now seeks to give some directions to help us to experience this communion with God.

1) Eye the Father as love; look not on Him as an always lowering Father, but as one most kind and tender. We should see the Father as having kind thoughts towards us. We cannot commune with Him otherwise. Our first thought of the Father should be “as one full of eternal, free love” towards us. If we would do this we could not bear an hour’s absence from Him; whereas now, perhaps we cannot watch with Him one hour.

To do this we must consider:

a. Whose love it is. It is the love of Him who does not need to share His love with others. He lacks nothing that He needs to share His love with us in order to receive anything in return and yet His love is so great that He seeks out our good by showing us a love of kindness and bounty.

b. What kind of love it is. It is:

i. Eternal- it was fixed upon us before the foundation of the world (Rom. 9:11,12; Acts 15:18; 2 Tim. 1:9, 2:19; Prov. 8:31; Jer. 31:3). Before we were, or had done the least good, then were His thoughts upon us,- then was His delight in us;- then did the Son rejoice in the thoughts of fulfilling His Father’s delight in Him (Prov. 8:30). It was from eternity that He designed our happiness and the very thought of that ought to make us leap for joy as John the Baptist did in Elizabeth’s womb.

ii. Free. The Father loves us because He wills to love us. There has been nothing in us and there is nothing in us for which we should be loved. If we deserved God’s love, it would not be as valuable to us- we are typically not grateful for things that are owed to us. Love which is antecedent to our being must, by definition, be free. Rom. 9:11; Eph. 1:3, 4; Titus 3:5; James 1:8.

iii. Unchangeable. Though we change every day, the Father’s love for us does not change. If there was anything that we could do to cause Him to stop loving us, He would have stopped loving us long ago. It is His love’s unchangeableness which enables Him to show us infinite patience and forbearance, without which we would die. 2 Peter 3:9

iv. Distinguishing. He has not loved the whole world in this way- “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.” Why should He put His love on us and pass by millions that we are no different from in our natures? I name but the heads of things. Let them enlarge whose hearts are touched.


2) Eye it as to receive it. Unless this be added, all is in vain as to any communion with God. We do not hold communion with Him in anything, until it be received by faith. This, then, is that which I would provoke the saints of God unto, even to believe this love of God for themselves and their own part,- believe that such is the heart of the Father towards them,- accept of His witness herein. His love is not ours in the sweetness of it until it be so received. Continually, then, act thoughts of faith on God, as love to thee, -as embracing thee with the eternal love before described. When the Lord is, by His word, presented as such unto thee, let thy mind know it, and assent that it is so; and they will embrace it, in its being so; and all thy affections be filled with it. Set thy whole heart to it; let it be bound with the cords of this love. If the King be bound in the galleries with thy love, shouldst thou not be bound in heaven with His?

3) Let it have its proper fruit and efficacy upon thy heart, in return of love to Him again. We should walk in the light of God’s love for us, holding communion with Him all day long, not dealing with Him unkindly or unthankfully.


It is important to understand that our holding communion with Him in this way is “exceeding acceptable” to Him.

Flesh and blood is apt to have very hard thought of him, - to think that He is always angry….How unwilling is a child to come into the presence of an angry father! Consider, then, this in the first place,- receiving of the Father as He holds out love to the soul, gives him the honour He aims at, and is exceeding acceptable unto Him….Men are afraid to have good thoughts of God. They think it boldness to eye God as good, gracious, tender, kind , loving…Is this not soul-deceit from Satan? Was it not his design from the beginning to inject such thoughts of God? Assure thyself, then, there is nothing more acceptable unto the Father, then for us to keep up our hearts unto Him as the eternal fountain of all that rich grace which flows out to sinners in the blood of Jesus (pgs. 34-35).

To understand this will endear your heart to God and will cause you to delight in Him.

If the love of the father will not make a child delight in him, what will? Put, then, this to the venture: exercise your thoughts upon this very thing, the eternal, free, and fruitful love of the Father, and see if your hearts are not wrought upon to delight in Him. I dare boldly say, believers will find it as thriving a course as ever they pitched on in their lives. Sit down a little at the fountain, and you will quickly have a farther discovery of the sweetness of the streams. You who have run from Him, will not be able, after a while, to keep a distance for a moment.

Owen then says that some might say that they cannot get their hearts to return love to God and, if only they could, then they would be enabled to believe that He actually did delight in them.

Owen answers:

This is the most preposterous course that possibly thy thoughts can pitch upon, a most ready way to rob God of His glory. “Herein is love,” saith the Holy Ghost, “not that we loved God, but that He loved us” first, 1 John 4:10,11. Now, thou wouldst invert this order, and say, “Herein is love, not that God loved me, but that I love Him first.” This is to take the glory of God from him: that whereas He loves us without a cause that is in ourselves, and we have all cause in the world to love Him, thou wouldst have the contrary, - namely, that something should be in thee for which God should love thee, even thy love to Him; and that thou shouldst love God, before thou knowest any thing lovely in Him, -namely , whether He love thee or no. This is a course of flesh’s finding out, that will never bring glory to God, nor peace to thy own soul. Lay down, then, thy reasonings; take up the love of the Father upon a pure act of believing, and that will open thy soul to let it out unto the Lord in the communion of love. P. 37