One thought has recently surfaced in discussions on the pastoral staff: we have lost the mystical. No one meditates. We keep our daily fifteen-minute devotion and walk out the door without God.
Not only do we not meditate; we do not read good books. Our mind is drugged by TV drama but not pushed and challenged by godly authors. No wonder the epidemic of Alzheimer's. Here's a sure cure.
In the 1650s an English Puritan preacher named John Owen wrote a tome entitled Communion with the Triune God. It has recently been edited and reprinted (at 448 pages) by Crossway Books. His thesis: believers need to know their God in order to be faithful worshippers. How do we know God, Owen asks? In his three persons (Father-Son-Spirit). The way you understand the One is through the Three. There is no "God behind the Gods."
In preparing these sermons for publication, Owen ended up penning more about the person of the Holy Spirit than any other Western theologian before him. He walks the line between two camps emerging in the seventeenth century: the rationalists and the emotionalists. The first group diminished the activity of the Spirit. The second prioritized spiritual experiences without checking that they came from the Holy Spirit. Churches today are not very different. Either they ignore the Spirit, or they are spiritual but not biblical.
Owen was clear on a key doctrine: standing and state (or what he calls union and communion). Our standing is a unilateral action by God, which establishes our relationship with him in heavenly places, and does not ebb and flow. Who we are "in Christ" does not change with out changes. This is our union and is the standing of all true believers.
Relationship requires response, so our state is our earthly experience of communion, and it can fluctuate. It is who we are in the world. Communion is our continuous prayer, corporate worship, and biblical meditation. Since you missed that, you better go back and read those three things again, because forsaking them does not make God love us less, but having them makes our state come closer to match our standing. Giving into temptation and neglecting devotion (forsaking our consecration) puts us in a state that threatens our communion, but not our union.
Four things flow from recognizing this distinction.
1. We are saved by God's grace, which is freely detached from either who we are, who God foresees we could become, or what we have done. State is not based on standing. Union is not based on our sense of communion.
2. The children of God have a real relationship with God, which means there are things they do in communion to either help or hinder it
3. Our unchangeable union with Christ is what encourages us to turn and return from sin, claim our forgiveness, and restore our fellowship with God
4. Obedience flows from our standing in grace; it affects our communion but is never the ground for our union
How do we relate to the Spirit, Owen asks? By distinguishing between sanctification and consolation. Sanctification is the Spirit’s work that sets us apart as belonging to Christ. It enables our standing, our union with Christ. Consolation is the Spirit’s word that enables our communion and enhances our state in our circumstances.
Want a reviving revelation? You do not have to be passive in the Spirit’s work of consolation. Do three things.
A. Seek the Spirit’s comfort by focusing your mind and meditation on scripture’s promises. This will give you correct mentality.
B. Call out in prayer for the Spirit to bring you correct emotions through his consolation, and strengthening with might in the inner man. This will give you correct motives and feelings.
C. Pay attention to the Spirit’s “monitions” or movement in your life. This will allow your will to follow correct thinking and feeling.
Typical of most all Puritan authors, this is a detailed work, not for the faint of heart. It will repay your attention. If your attention span is not that long, then get Spurgeon (1) and read him, because he sucked-out all the marrow from Owen before he preached. And remember, he who is the Comforter always abides, even when he is not doing his work of comforting.
(1) For example, Spurgeon's Sermons on Jesus And the Holy Spirit, Charles Spurgeon. Hendrickson, 2006. And, The Unknown God: 25 Sermons on the Subject of the Holy Spirit, Charles Spurgeon. Fox River Press, 2003.
