Sermon Tone Analysis

! The Chief Design of My Life: Mortification and Universal Holiness

Reflections on the Life and Thought of John Owen

1994 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors

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By John Piper January 25, 1994

 

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!!!! Introduction

There have been six keynote speakers at the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors before this year.

Half of them have said that John Owen is the most influential Christian writer in their lives.

That is amazing for a man who has been dead for 311 years, and who wrote in a way so difficult to read that even he saw his work as immensely demanding in his own generation.

For example, his book, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, is probably his most famous and most influential book.

It was published in 1647 when Owen was 31 years old.

It is the fullest and probably the most persuasive book ever written on the "L" in TULIP: limited atonement.

The point of the book is that when Paul says, "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," (Eph.

5:25), he means that Christ really did something decisive and unique for the church when he died for her—something that is particular and sovereign, and different from what he does for people who experience his final judgment and wrath.

The book argues that the particular love Christ has for his bride is something more wonderful than the general love he has for his enemies.

It is a covenant love.

It pursues and overtakes and subdues and forgives and transforms and overcomes every resistance in the beloved.

The Death of Death is a great and powerful book—it kept me up for many evenings about twelve years ago as I was trying to decide what I really believed about the third point of Calvinism.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The point I was making is that it is amazing that Owen can have such a remarkable impact today when he has been dead 311 years and his way of writing is extremely difficult.

And even he knows his work is difficult.

In the Preface ("To the Reader") of The Death of Death Owen does what no good marketing agent would allow today.

He begins like this: "READER ... If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again,—thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell!"

(X, 149) (see note 1).

!!!! Owen's influence on prominent contemporary theologians

Nevertheless, J.I. Packer and Roger Nicole and Sinclair Ferguson did not bid Owen farewell.

They lingered.

And they learned.

And today all three of them say that no Christian writer has had a greater impact on them than John Owen.

!!!!! J.I. Packer

Packer says that Owen is the hero of his book, Quest for Godliness, a book about The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life.

That is saying a lot, because for Packer the Puritans are the redwoods in the forest of theology (see note 2).

And John Owen is "the greatest among the Puritan theologians."

In other words he is the tallest of the redwoods.

"For solidity, profundity, massiveness and majesty in exhibiting from Scripture God's ways with sinful mankind there is no one to touch him" (see note 3).

But Packer has a very personal reason for loving John Owen.

I've heard him tell the story of the crisis he came into soon after his conversion.

He was in danger in his student days of despairing under a perfectionistic teaching that did not take indwelling sin seriously.

The discovery of John Owen brought him back to reality.

"Suffice it so say," Packer recalls, "that without Owen I might well have gone off my head or got bogged down in mystical fanaticism" (see note 4).

So Packer virtually says he owes his life, and not just his theology to John Owen.

It's not surprising then that Packer would say with regard to Owen's style that, while laborious and difficult, "the reward to be reaped from studying Owen is worth all the labour involved" (see note 5).

!!!!! Roger Nicole

Roger Nicole, who taught at Gordon-Conwell Seminary for over 40 years said when he was here in 1989 that John Owen is the greatest theologian who has ever written in the English language.

He even paused and said, even greater than the great Jonathan Edwards.

That really caught my attention, because I am sure Nicole has read more of those two greats than most theologians and pastors have.

!!!!! Sinclair Ferguson

Sinclair Ferguson, who was here in 1990, wrote an entire book on Owen, John Owen on the Christian Life, and tells us about his debt that began, if you can believe it, when he was still a teenager:

My personal interest in [Owen] as a teacher and theologian began in my late teenage years when I first read some of his writing.

Like others, before and since, I found that they dealt with issues which contemporary evangelical literature rarely, if ever, touched.

Owen's penetrating exposition opened up areas of need in my own heart, but also correspondingly profound assurances of grace in Jesus Christ ... Ever since those first encounters with his Works, I have remained in his debt ... To have known the pastoral ministry of John Owen during these years (albeit in written form) has been a rich privilege; to have known Owen's God an even greater one (see note 6).

!!!!! Others

Of course the magnitude of John Owen's influence goes well beyond these three.

To Ambrose Barnes he was "the Calvin of England."

To Anthony Wood, he was "the Atlas and Patriarch of Independency" (see note 7).

Charles Bridges, in The Christian Ministry (1830) said,

Indeed upon the whole—for luminous exposition, and powerful defence of Scriptural doctrine—for determined enforcement of practical obligation —for skillful anatomy of the self-deceitfulness of the heart—and for a detailed and wise treatment of the diversified exercises of the Christian's heart, he stands probably unrivaled" (see note 8).

If Nicole and Bridges are right—that John Owen is unrivaled in the English speaking world—then Jonathan Edwards was not too far behind, and Edwards pays his respect to Owen not only by quoting him substantially in the Religious Affections, but also by recording in his "Catalogue" of readings the recommendation of Hallyburton to his students at St. Andrews University that the writings of John Owen are to be valued above all human writings for a true view of the mystery of the gospel (see note 9).

One of the reasons I linger over these tributes so long is that I want you to feel drawn not just to Owen, but to the value of having some great heroes in the ministry.

There are not many around today.

And God wills that we have heroes.

Hebrews 13:7—"Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith."

It seems to me that the Christian leaders today that come closest to being heroes are the ones who had great heroes.

I hope you have one or two, living or dead.

Maybe Owen will become one.

!!!!

An Overview of Owen's Life

Most people—even pastors and theologians—don't know much about John Owen.

One of the reasons is that his writings are not popular today (see note 10).

But another reason is that not much is known about him —at least not much about his personal life.

Peter Toon, in his 1971 biography says, "Not one of Owen's diaries has been preserved; and ... the extant letters in which he lays bare his soul are very few, and recorded, personal reactions of others to him are brief and scarce (see note 11) ... We have to rely on a few letters and a few remarks of others to seek to understand him as a man.

And these are insufficient to probe the depths of his character.

So Owen must remain hidden as it were behind a veil ... his secret thoughts remain his own" (see note 12).

I think this may be a little misleading because when you read the more practical works of Owen the man shines through in a way that I think reveals the deep places of his heart.

But still the details of his personal life are frustratingly few.

You will see this—and share my frustration— in what follows.

Owen was born in England in 1616, the same year that William Shakespeare died and four years before the Pilgrims set sail for New England.

This is virtually in the middle of the great Puritan century (roughly 1560 to 1660).

Puritanism was at heart a spiritual movement, passionately concerned with God and godliness.

It began in England with William Tyndale the Bible translator, Luther's contemporary, a generation before the word "Puritan" was coined, and it continued till the latter years of the seventeenth century, some decades after "Puritan" had fallen out of use ... Puritanism was essentially a movement for church reform, pastoral renewal and evangelism, and spiritual revival ... The Puritan goal was to complete what England's Reformation began: to finish reshaping Anglican worship, to introduce effective church discipline into Anglican parishes, to establish righteousness in the political, domestic, and socioeconomic fields, and to convert all Englishmen to a vigorous evangelical faith (see note 13).

Owen was born in the middle of this movement and became its greatest pastor-theologian as the movement ended almost simultaneously with his death in 1683 (see note 14).

His father was a pastor in Stadham, five miles north of Oxford.

He had three brothers and a sister.

In all his writings he does not mention his mother or his siblings.

There is one brief reference to this father which says, "I was bred up from my infancy under the care of my father, who was a Nonconformist all his days, and a painful laborer in the vineyard of the Lord" (see note 15).

At the age of 10 he was sent to the grammar school run by Edward Sylvester in Oxford where he prepared for the university.

He entered Queens College, Oxford at 12, took his Bachelor of Arts at 16 and his M.A. three years later at 19.

We can get a flavor of what the boy was like from the observation by Peter Toon that Owen's zeal for knowledge was so great at this time that "he often allowed himself only four hours of sleep each night.

His health was affected, and in later life, when he was often on a sick-bed, he regretted these hours of rest that he had missed as a youth" (see note 16).

Owen began his work for the B.D. but could not stand the high church Arminianism and formalism of Oxford any longer and dropped out to become a personal tutor and chaplain to some wealth families near London.

In 1642 the Civil war began between Parliament and King Charles (between the high-church religion of William Laud and the Puritan religion of the Presbyterians and Independents in the House of Commons).

Owen was sympathetic with Parliament against the king and Laud, and so he was pushed out of his chaplaincy and moved to London where five major events of his life happened in the next four years that stamped the rest of his life.

!!!!! Five Events that Stamped the Rest of his Life

A. Conversion

The first is his conversion—or his assurance of salvation and deepening of his personal communion with God.

It is remarkable that it happened in a way almost identical to Charles Spurgeon's conversion two centuries later.

On January 6, 1850 Spurgeon was driven by a snow storm into a Primitive Methodist Chapel where a layman stood in for the pastor and took the text from Isaiah 45:22, "Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth."

Spurgeon looked and was saved (see note 17).

Owen was a convinced Calvinist with large doctrinal knowledge, but he lacked the sense of the reality of his own salvation.

That sense of personal reality in all that he wrote was going to make all the difference in the world for Owen in the years to come.

So what happened one Sunday in 1642 is very important.

When Owen was 26 years old he went with his cousin to hear the famous Presbyterian, Edmund Calamy at St. Mary's Church Aldermanbury.