John Owen on the Lord's Supper (Philippians 3:10)

For some brief tastes of John Owen (1616-1683), his discourses are great, short and also solid and thoughtful. I just read one of his discourses relating to the Lord's Supper, based on Philippians 3:10, particularly about us being conformed to Christ's death. Below are some excerpts...

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death."

The cause of the death of Christ was sin... He died for sin; he died for our sin; our iniquities were upon him, and were the cause of all the punishment that befell him...

Our hope and faith is, in and through him, that we shall never die for sin. No mortal man can be made like unto Christ in suffering for sin... our conformity unto the death of Christ with respect unto sin lies in this, — that as he died for sin, so we should die unto sin, — that that sin which he died for should die in us... Here is our conformity to Christ, as he suffered in the flesh, — that we should no longer live to our lusts, nor unto the will of man, but unto the will of God. And, brethren, let me tell you, he who approacheth unto this remembrance of the death of Christ, that hath not laboured, that doth not labour, for conformity to his death in the universal mortification of all sin, runs a hazard to his soul, and puts an affront upon Jesus Christ. O let none of us come in a way of thankfulness to remember the death of Jesus Christ, and bring along with us the murderer whereby he was slain! To harbour with us, and bring along with us to the death of Christ, unmortified lusts and corruptions, such as we do not continually and sincerely endeavour to kill and mortify, is to come and upbraid Christ with his murderer, instead of obtaining any spiritual advantage.

There is no such sermon to teach, mortification of sin, as the commemoration of the death of Christ. It is the greatest outward instruction unto this duty that God hath left unto his church; and, I am persuaded, which he doth most bless to them who are sincere. Do we see Christ evidently crucified before our eyes, his body broken, his blood shed for sin? and is it not of powerful instruction to us to go on to mortify sin? He that hath not learned this, never learned any thing aright from this ordinance, nor did he ever receive any benefit from it...

And I would beg of you all, brethren, that not one of us would pass through or go over this ordinance, this representation of the death of Christ, without a fresh obligation to God to abide more constant and vigorous in the mortification of sin: we all need it.

And lastly; a spiritually beholding of Christ by faith is the means to change us into the image and likeness of Christ. Beholding the death of Christ by faith, as represented to us in this ordinance, is the means to change us into his image and likeness, and make us conformable unto his death, in the death of sin in us.

[Source: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/owen/discourses.i.xvii.html]

John Owen on the Deadly Deceptiveness of Sin

Sin is always deceptive and deadly. It may start looking harmless enough, but it will stealthily lead towards utter destruction. We need to kill sin or be killed by it! Here is a quote from the English Puritan, John Owen:

Sin will not only be striving, acting, rebelling, troubling, disquieting, but if let alone, if not continually mortified, it will bring forth great, cursed, scandalous, soul-destroying sins. The apostle tells us what the works and fruits of it are, Gal. v. 19–21, “The works of the flesh are manifest, which are, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.” You know what it did in David and sundry others. Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could; every covetous desire would be oppression, every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head. Men may come to that, that sin may not be heard speaking a scandalous word in their hearts, — that is, provoking to any great sin with scandal in its mouth; but yet every rise of lust, might it have its course, would come to the height of villany: it is like the grave, that is never satisfied. And herein lies no small share of the deceitfulness of sin, by which it prevails to the hardening of men, and so to their ruin, Heb. iii. 13, — it is modest, as it were, in its first motions and proposals, but having once got footing in the heart by them, it constantly makes good its ground, and presseth on to some farther degrees in the same kind. This new acting and pressing forward makes the soul take little notice of what an entrance to a falling off from God is already made; it thinks all is indifferent well if there be no farther progress; and so far as the soul is made insensible of any sin, — that is, as to such a sense as the gospel requireth, — so far it is hardened: but sin is still pressing forward, and that because it hath no bounds but utter relinquishment of God and opposition to him; that it proceeds towards its height by degrees, making good the ground it hath got by hardness, is not from its nature, but its deceitfulness. Now nothing can prevent this but mortification; that withers the root and strikes at the head of sin every hour, so that whatever it aims at it is crossed in. There is not the best saint in the world but, if he should give over this duty, would fall into as many cursed sins as ever any did of his kind.

[src: Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, Chapter 2, heading 3]

D Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the state of the Christian Church (Ephesians 5:2)

Quote from D Martyn Lloyd-Jones from her sermon on Ephesians 5:2 (preached sometime between 1954 and 1962):

I can tell you why the Christian Church is as she is. She has been evacuating the biblical doctrine of the cross from the death of the cross, and has been describing it as some vague manifestation of love. Then she has been weeping in sorrow and in sympathy for Him. But he said to the women of Jerusalem, "Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves"; do not be sorry for Me, he said, I have come to do this. "I am the good Shepherd. The good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." All the Scriptures, from beginning to end, emphasise the same thing, that it is in Christ's sacrificial work that we see the love of God; that God sent, and gave Him up even to the death of the cross, and laid upon Him, His only begotten Son, the sins of men. "God so loved the world that he gave" - to the shame, the agony, the suffering, the separation between His Son and Himself when He was made sin - "He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life". That is the measure of the love!
["Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17", The Banner of Truth Trust (1982), pp309-310]

Calvin on the Death of Animals Before the Fall

I have heard people say before that John Calvin didn't support the idea of no death of animals before the fall.

Here are his comments on Genesis 1:28...

"Some infer, from this passage that men were content with herbs and fruits until the deluge, and that it was even unlawful for them to eat flesh. And this seems the more probable, because God confines, in some way, the food of mankind within certain limits. Then after the deluge, he expressly grants them the use of flesh. These reasons, however are not sufficiently strong: for it may be adduced on the opposite side, that the first men offered sacrifices from their flocks. This, moreover, is the law of sacrificing rightly, not to offer unto God anything except what he has granted to our use. Lastly men were clothed in skins; therefore it was lawful for them to kill animals. For these reasons, I think it will be better for us to assert nothing concerning this matter. Let it suffice for us, that herbs and the fruits of trees were given them as their common food; yet it is not to be doubted that this was abundantly sufficient for their highest gratification. For they judge prudently who maintain that the earth was so marred by the deluge, that we retain scarcely a moderate portion of the original benediction. Even immediately after the fall of man, it had already begun to bring forth degenerate and noxious fruits, but at the deluge, the change became still greater. Yet, however this may be, God certainly did not intend that man should be slenderly and sparingly sustained; but rather, by these words, he promises a liberal abundance, which should leave nothing wanting to a sweet and pleasant life. For Moses relates how beneficent the Lord had been to them, in bestowing on them all things which they could desire, that their ingratitude might have the less excuse."

So it seems here that his main argument is about whether it was lawful to kill animals for food before the flood (not before the fall). His main argument seems to be that the lawfulness of killing animals for sacrifices would imply that it cannot ever be inherently wrong or sin to kill animals (before or after the flood or fall). And therefore Genesis 1:28 does not *necessarily* say that animals could not be eaten for food before the fall.

However, his comments on Isaiah 11 seem pretty clear of his view (at least at the time of writing) of animals killing other animals before the fall:

Calvin's comments on Isaiah11:6..

"But the Prophet’s discourse looks beyond this; for it amounts to a promise that there will be a blessed restoration of the world. He describes the order which was at the beginning, before man’s apostasy produced the unhappy and melancholy change under which we groan. Whence comes the cruelty of brutes, which prompts the stronger to seize and rend and devour with dreadful violence the weaker animals? There would certainly have been no discord among the creatures of God, if they had remained in their first and original condition. When they exercise cruelty towards each other, and the weak need to be protected against the strong, it is an evidence of the disorder (ἀταξίας) which has sprung from the sinfulness of man... For this reason, he says, that straw will be the food of the lion as well as of the ox; for if the stain of sin had not polluted the world, no animal would have been addicted to prey on blood, but the fruits of the earth would have sufficed for all, according to the method which God had appointed. (Genesis 1:30.)"

Similarly his comments on Isaiah 65:25..

"“The lion” shall eat harmlessly, and shall no longer seek his prey. The serpent, satisfied with his dust, shall wrap himself in it, and shall no longer hurt by his envenomed bite. In a word, all that is disordered or confused shall be restored to its proper order. Yet beyond all controversy the Prophet speaks allegorically of bloody and violent men, whose cruel and savage nature shall be subdued, when they submit to the yoke of Christ. But first we must carefully consider that confusion which befell all the creatures in consequence of the fall of man; for if this were not taken into view, it would be impossible for us to have sufficiently just and correct views of this blessing of restoration. "

Gen 3:22-24 No Life without Death?

I have often heard people interpret Genesis 3:22 like this: God in his mercy prevented man from eating from the tree of life otherwise he would have lived forever in a state of sin. But I am uncomfortable with this for a number of reasons:

• It seems a too sophisticated intrepretation; there is a lot of logic involved in the statement above and beyond what is in the text.
• It attributes a 'magical' property to the tree itself, that by physically eating it eternal life is conferred, ex opere operato.
• It views 'live forever' only as meaning an unending physical life, a continuation of whatever current physical state is being experienced (kind of like the wind changing when you pull a face ;-)

Instead, I would prefer understanding Gen 3:22-24 as simply about cutting off man from life (and perfected life) as a consequence of sin. The wages of sin is death ('you shall surely die'), and not life, therefore man has no right to the tree of LIFE, and must be cut off from it. So 3:22 is not a mercy, but a judgement. The only way to life is God's way, and man lost the opportunity for life when he sinned. So man was sent out of the garden and cut off from the tree of life. (One wonders if the labour of 3:23 required of man indicates he is 'stuck' in the sixth day, and unable to enter the rest of God, in the perfected seventh day..?)
More tentively, I wonder if Gen 3:24 signifies that there will be no access to the tree of life, without first passing through suffering and death (the flaming sword wielded by the cherubim). This would seem a wonderful picture of what will happen in Christ, that he first dies before obtaining eternal life. But correctly reading typology and symbolism is always difficult!!!
I like Calvin's comments on this:

It is indeed certain, that man would not have been able, had he even devoured the whole tree, to enjoy life against the will of God; but God, out of respect to his own institution, connects life with the external sign, till the promise should be taken away from it; for there never was any intrinsic efficacy in the tree; but God made it life-giving, so far as he had sealed his grace to man in the use of it, as, in truths he represents nothing to us with false signs, but always speaks to us, as they say, with effect. In short, God resolved to wrest out of the hands of man that which was the occasion or ground of confidence, lest he should form for himself a vain hope of the perpetuity of the life which he had lost.