Today we will look at two more quotes from Jonathan Edwards:
“If persons have a great sense of the natural perfections of God, and are greatly affected with them, or have any other sight or sense of God, than that which consists in, or implies a sense of the beauty of his moral perfections, it is no certain sign of grace: as particularly men’s having a great sense of the awful greatness, and terrible majesty of God; for this is only God’s natural perfection, and what men may see, and yet be entirely blind to the beauty of his moral perfections” (RA 263)
Here we have an indictment of a massive percentage of the practices of the modern professing Church. We have people running around telling others that God’s greatness and glory is seen in that He wants all to be wealthy and lavishes riches upon them. So people will repent of something and seek after religion because wealth has a certain luster and glory to it. God is glorious to the degree that He is thought to give people money. In other circles God is thought to be glorious because He delivers people from hell. Hell is set out to be awful and terrible, and so it is. But if hell is only terrible because of human comforts, then hell has not been set out for what it is. If the Gospel is there only to deliver human beings from those things which take away from human comforts then the Gospel is essentially centered upon human beings and God is human centered as well. If that is all that people hear, then they will never repent of their self-centeredness and see the glory of the God-centeredness of God. In other words, they are entirely blind to the true beauty of God and of how that beauty shines in all of His perfections and of how that glory shines in the Gospel of the glory of God. The Gospel is all about the true glory of God and how that shines in Christ. If we only set the glory of the Gospel out in human centered ways, we are being used of the devil to hide the Gospel of the glory of Christ from people (II Corinthians 4:3-6). So when people have a sense of the greatness and majesty of God, but they do not see His glory other than what is possible from a man-centered view, that is no sign of grace at all. If we are moved by a sight or sense of the greatness of God as set forth in the universe, again that is no certain sign of grace. We must be taught in our soul by the Holy Spirit and have the love of God for Himself poured out in our soul by the Holy Spirit to see His true glory and majesty in all things.
“Wicked men and devils will see, and have a great sense of everything that appertains to the glory of God, but only the beauty of his moral perfection. They will see his infinite greatness and majesty, his infinite power, and will be fully convinced of his omniscience, and his eternity and immutability; and they will see and know everything appertaining to his moral attributes themselves, but only the beauty and amiableness of them: they will see and know that he is perfectly just and righteous and true; and that he is a holy God…and they will see the wonderful manifestations of his infinite goodness and free grace to the saints; and there is nothing will be hid from their eyes but only the beauty of these moral attributes, and that beauty of other attributes, which arises from it. And so natural men in this world are capable of having a very affecting sense of everything else that appertains to God, but this only” (RA 264).
This paragraph from Edwards is simply shocking when applied to the modern professing Church. Wicked men and devils see much of the greatness and glory of God but simply do not see the beauty of His moral perfections. They see His infinity and are awed. They see something of the beauty of that and they also see how He is just and righteous. They may see what they think is His holiness and be melted by what they think is free grace. They see all of these attributes as beautiful in the sense that they see them as working for their eternal good, but they do not see the true beauty of His character. Men in academia may know more facts about God than a thousand other men, but they can still miss the true beauty of God. We have preachers who preach something of the wonders of Jesus Christ and set Him forth as beautiful and lovely for all that He has done for human beings, but all they are doing is preaching Christ as centered upon human beings and are not preaching the Gospel of the true glory of God. A man can preaching nothing but truth about Christ in one sense and dwell long and loud upon the cross and resurrection of Christ and preach nothing that will move a soul from being dead in its self-centeredness to being alive to the true glory and beauty of God.
Much has been written and preached on the assurance of salvation. In those books and sermons people are taught to look to Christ and all that He has done for them, but only in a self-centered way. Are they taught to look for true assurance in a way where God is truly holy and where His true love flows? Are they taught to look to the true beauty and majesty of God or are they taught to look to those things in a way that the devils can see and understand? Is there anything taught from the majority of the modern pulpit that the devil and an unbeliever cannot understand and at least the unbeliever have a sense of some greatness of God based on the unbeliever’s self-interest alone? Is this true within Reformed circles as well? It most certainly is. Within Reformed circles we have the intellectual truths of the Reformed faith taught and people agree that it is biblical. Some if not most see something beautiful about it, but do they see the true beauty of it? Do they see the true glory of God as God-centered in it? It matters not how much intellectual truth a person has of God if a person does not see the true beauty of the glory of God in it. After all, that person is seeing nothing more than a wicked person and the devil himself can see. Edwards is teaching us something very important here. We need to listen.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment