The sky was the kind of blue if blue could burn, blue on fire, lit by the sun blazing high above the hills in winter on a morning when there are no clouds. A sky like that makes it easier for a soldier to die. It’s the last thing he sees, and there is comfort in knowing some things will live forever. (The Well-Spoken Thesaurus, 16)

Have you ever seen a sky like this? A sky ablaze and serene, reaching down to dying men with the warmth of a mother’s arms or the caress of a wife’s hand? This sky, burning blue, eases the soldier’s passing. He is dying — he knows the wound. Among thoughts of loves lost, future days unlived, last words never spoken, he gazes up, and there, a painting more beautiful than he ever remembers. What a Sistine Chapel to canvas this theater of war — unsmeared, unshot. Beauty amidst death. Loveliness amidst terror. A flower sprouts in a bloody field. As his eyes begin to stare beyond this world, he almost smiles.

A sky like that makes it easier for a soldier to die.

This world has many such skies, skies (figuratively speaking) that make it easier for us to face death. They seem to say, in their own way, Everything is going to be alright. But earth’s burning skies do not always (or even often) tell the truth. As much as they may quiet the conscience at the end of a life we thought well-lived, we may still, in fact, be unprepared to die. Then, such skies deceive like a decorated hallway on our way to a place we never meant to go. Men, women, and children have slipped into death with a degree of consolation, only to awake in confusion. They died under the comfort of a burning blue sky that gave way to a living nightmare.

If our soldier could have heard the speech of the sky that day, he would have heard a fiery sermon about the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). A sermon rebuking his thankless and dishonoring life toward his Creator (Romans 1:20–21). A sermon pleading with him to turn from sin to a faithful God who remembers his own with mercy (Jeremiah 31:34–37). The sky burned blue-faced, yes, with earnest appeals: “Confess your sins; look to the perfect sacrifice — Jesus Christ — who died under a skyless night that sinners might wake to eternal Day. Trust in him completely, before you lose your soul forever!”

Earth’s Best Skies

Reader, do you know what sky would ease your death, if death came sooner rather than later? Is it trustworthy? Let us turn our gaze to some of the most vivid skies earth contains, skies that, apart from Christ, will cheat us in the end — the true, the good, the beautiful. These firmaments put man in touch with something beyond himself. Yet we can die beneath these heavenlies without being welcomed into heaven.

The True

Many men have died under the serene skies of a thoughtful life. They have wondered and thus wandered beyond the maze of carnal stupidity. They will not die as a cow eating grass. They are men, not beasts. They agree that the unexamined life is not worth living. They believe in true and false; they believe in logic and mathematics and science and philosophy, and even that a higher power must reign above.

Such men ask hard questions and cannot be satisfied with shallow answers. They read and listen and converse and challenge and will follow where the evidence leads. They think and test their thoughts. What they believe, they know, and what they know can correspond very well with God’s reality. They answer some questions correctly. They do not bow to Jesus as the Truth — they too have exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and for this they shall perish — but they stand more approximate to truth than their unthinking, unserious, uninterested, and easily distractable peers. To trap them, Satan must at least use the good cheese.

When they come to die, they recognize that they die in a nest perched on a higher branch. They have read better books, dined on better thoughts, lived more efficiently, productively, rationally, humanely. Worldly wisdom, perhaps, but better than worldly idiocy. They die under a sky of thought, yet never fearing the happy prayer of Jesus:

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. (Luke 10:21)

The Good

Another brilliant sky is the virtuous one. The great Village of Morality boasts the most captivating atmospheres for sons of Adam to die beneath. Creeds and religions of all sorts coexist under these colors and pat themselves on the back till death.

These feed the conscience memories of goodness, offer their doubts the wine of good works — You weren’t perfect, but you did your best. They despised the pellets and dirty water left in the hamster wheel; they never ran after those lusts. They have learned some version of decency, civility, discipline, which, at points, overlapped with the right, agreed with conscience, acted in accordance with God’s law.

Such a man believes that without morality, he is no better than the dog he pets or the worm he puts on the hook. He may not get it all right, but he cannot live without attempting goodness. Reading C.S. Lewis, he cries amen:

The man without a moral code, like the animal, is free from moral problems. The man who has not learned to count is free from mathematical problems. A man asleep is free from all problems. Within the framework of general human ethics problems will, of course, arise and will sometimes be resolved wrongly. This possibility of error is simply the symptom that we are awake, not asleep, that we are men, not beasts or gods. (Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, 313)

Such may conserve traditional ideals of right and wrong, may warmly embrace sanity and live in friendship with natural law, may still know the meaning of duty and honor, and thus sicken at the decadence of a culture bartering Christian constraints for pagan perversions.

“Faith in the Son — dwelling in him and under his blood — is the only safe sky for mankind.”

But still, they themselves do not follow Christ. Yes, obviously boys are boys and girls are girls. Yes, of course murdering children is an abomination ladled from the bottom of the pit of hell. Yes, our government should end its war on the natural family. But no, I personally don’t worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of my life.

This is a pretty sky, prettier than the drab and polluted grey of the demonic ideologies of the time, but an unsafe sky to die beneath nonetheless.

The Beautiful

Overlapping with the first two, the beautiful is “an intrinsic quality of things which, when perceived, pleases the mind by displaying a certain kind of fittingness” (Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord, 9). As paint in the right place and proportion gives us a lovely painting, and as music in the fitting keys and proper sequence soothes the ear, so a life well-proportioned, bright with varying colors, gives off a sort of beauty, even if unredeemed.

Such lives unveil a father worth imitating, a friendship we want, a great romance we envy. They pursue high ideals; they live, in some sense, for others. This initially pleasing (but Christless) life fills the world’s novels, television series, plays, and movies. It is the beauty of the human experience: The replaying of moments — special and common — that make this life worth living. The beautiful contours of the human story that we relate to, know, and can glimpse as inexplicably precious. Our story — filled with tragedy and triumph, family and failure, music and misery — is still authored in pleasing font, still valuable.

And if we can look back at the four seasons of life and see love, or at the faces surrounding our deathbed and see it returned in their tears, this can soothe the sting of death as it overwhelms us. The burning blue sky is the wife’s hand or the memory of a beloved mother you hope to see again.

This compelling aesthetic is the hope of many. She is a smiling sky, a beautiful expectation. Yet while it imitates the second great commandment (loving your neighbor as yourself), it doesn’t pretend to attempt the first (loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength). The loveliness toward man is spoiled by the heart’s unloveliness toward God. The “love” is seen as idolatry in the end, a pleasing mural painted on a rotting house. More unjust is this love than a man who adores his dog and neglects his wife, or the woman who feeds her cat and starves her grandmother. Lightning will soon erupt from this clear sky.

Parting Clouds

Christ, dear reader, Jesus Christ. All loves inevitably fall and die and decay while we still serve the world, the flesh, and the devil. No matter what sky makes it easier for us to die, faith in the Son — dwelling in him and under his blood — is the only safe sky for mankind. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36).

All truth is found in him — “I am . . . the truth” (John 14:6). All goodness is his, and he is “the righteous one” (Isaiah 53:11). All shafts of beauty beam from his crown to earth — “He is the radiance of the glory of God,” “the king in his beauty” (Hebrews 1:3; Isaiah 33:17). Apart from him, this world’s best truths, highest goodness, and most suggestive splendors spoil, fester, and stink. The corpse, though embalmed, decays, smells, and returns to dust.

But what a sky, burning blue and gold and silver, is Christ to the soul. Gaze up, as Stephen in his death, and prize not the horizon for its colors, but heaven for its Christ. “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). Look to him — as Truth, Goodness, and Beauty himself — and die looking to him. He is the only sky that makes it not only easier to die, but far better.

We live in times of polarization and fragmentation. In many places, the ties that have historically bound societies together are coming apart.

Our own society has been brewing a strong and growing distrust of everything under the sun. We don’t trust many of our elected leaders and government officials. We don’t have high confidence in our medical and health authorities. We have doubts about the agendas and intentions of large corporations. Our suspicions about media and news outlets have reached new heights. We have been let down by our educational systems at nearly every level. And the church has not been immune to our cynicism. We have even approached the bride of Christ with wariness and uncertainty.

All this fear is exacerbated, of course, by the Internet and the 24/7 news cycle. Social media, in particular, amplifies our distrust and rewards our outrage. As a result, many of us are less happy, less trusting, and more angry than ever. Division and angst have become like oxygen. Over time, it can feel like any remnant of hope might be slowly eroding, like a sandcastle at high tide.

Painful Polarity in the Pews

As I said, the church has not been immune to the polarization. Congregations have had to navigate higher levels of conflict, controversy, and contentiousness. The pain of divisions in our pews is disheartening. Here we are, the blood-bought people of God, united by Christ, but divided over so much else. This state of affairs has some of us wishing we were still arguing over whether to sing contemporary worship songs or what color carpet to lay in the sanctuary.

As a pastor of a church, a church I love to pastor, I would personally be glad to never have to talk about COVID, vaccines, social distancing, and the efficacy of masks ever again. While it was a privilege to shepherd our people through a pandemic compounded by political and social turmoil, it was also punishing at times. I’ve now added “global-health crisis,” “mass protests and riots,” and “the threat of nuclear war” to my list of “things I never learned in seminary.”

It’s good to be reminded that polarization in the church is not new. In fact, it’s a problem as old as the church. Already in Acts 6, the Greek-speaking Jews complained that their widows were being neglected (Acts 6:1). Paul admonishes another church for its divisions, quarreling, jealousy, and strife (1 Corinthians 1:10–11; 3:4). They found superiority in their allegiances to either Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, forgetting that Christ is all in all.

Again and again, through Scripture and church history, when sinful people consistently gather, they consistently sin against one another and eventually turn on one another.

Paradox of Christ

The writer of Hebrews tells us to cast off our sin that clings so closely, and instead look to Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1–2). By looking to Jesus — and his paradoxical qualities — we find help to navigate our polarized age.

“Jesus doesn’t fit into any of our neat and tidy categories or tribes.”

Jesus doesn’t fit into any of our neat and tidy categories or tribes. He is pro-justice, pro-mercy, and pro-life. Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart, and he also will return to make war against his enemies. He is the meekest man that ever walked on earth, yet he will strike down the rebellious nations and tread the winepress of God’s wrath (Revelation 19:11–15). He will save to the uttermost with unparalleled grace and mercy, and he will rule with a rod of iron.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) draws out Jesus’s unique and paradoxical qualities in a famous sermon: “The Excellency of Christ.” Jesus is both lion and lamb. He possesses lionlike qualities: ferocious, powerful, regal, and appropriately terrifying. He is full of power, glory, and dominion. A lamb is quite the opposite: gentle, vulnerable, an animal of prey. How can Jesus be both? How is he both judge of all creation and a friend of sinners? How is he both priest and atoning sacrifice? How is he both strong and gentle, worthy and lowly, infinitely holy yet merciful toward his enemies?

This is the wonderful paradox of Jesus. He holds together seemingly opposite excellencies in one God-man.

His Excellencies Undo Us

Typically, we gravitate to the ways Jesus is more like us; we align with those excellencies more natural to our personality and wiring. Who he is, however, admonishes us all to not be one-sided or one-dimensional. Jesus’s example and teaching cuts both ways, admonishing us and encouraging each of us to be more Christlike than we are.

For example, tender believers may be quick to revel in the compassion of Christ: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). They may resonate deeply with Jesus’s weeping outside Lazarus’s tomb (John 11:35). Meanwhile, zealous-for-truth believers might admire his woes to the Pharisees. They may resonate more with Jesus’s rebuke of Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23).

Those of us who are naturally inclined toward compassion and sympathy need to learn from his courageous conviction. We need to beware of minimizing the whole counsel of God to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or drawing harsh criticism. We will want to unashamedly portray the truth of Christ accurately — all of it — even as we comfort and care for hurting people. And we might be slow to condemn those contending for truth in the public square who don’t do it exactly the way we would. The gospel will necessarily offend some, and standing for truth in a world set against the truth will require courage and boldness, and may even appear quarrelsome in some eyes.

The same is true for those who speak the truth more freely. Some of us are quite gifted at saying the hard thing, but need to grow in doing so with love. If we can speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, we are noisy gongs and clanging cymbals (1 Corinthians 13:1). We will pray for greater compassion and sympathy, being quick to listen and weep with those who weep. Proverbs reminds us, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). Do our words, and the hearts behind those words, consistently reflect the priorities of Christ? We want to become the kind of paradox that we treasure and follow in Jesus.

As you study him, watch where you lean and where you lean away, and then deliberately lean into the diverse excellencies of Christ. Find courage in his example. Where you are prone to wander, work to realign yourself more and more to our North Star.

Truly Great Excellencies

Excellencies is an old-fashioned word meant to ascribe extreme value to someone or something. Royalty would be addressed as “your Excellency.” For Jesus, however, it’s not just a title, but a true and accurate description of all that he is. He excels in his love and grace, in his compassion and justice, in his rule and reign.

“Jesus has no blind spots, weaknesses, or deficiencies. He is all glorious in his diverse excellencies.”

Short of glory, we’re all in process. We’re finite. We’re sinners being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). Our instincts are being honed by God’s word and the power of his Spirit. And as he conforms us to himself, our glorious Savior — the Lion and the Lamb — lacks nothing. In every circumstance, our paradoxical Savior speaks the perfect word. He never lacks compassion, and he never shrinks back from a rebuke. He has no blind spots, weaknesses, or deficiencies. He is all glorious in his diverse excellencies.

Therefore, strive to think, feel, speak, and do more as Christ would in this polarized world, and delight yourself in daily receiving his all-surpassing glory and goodness.

ABSTRACT: As a young pastor, Jonathan Edwards yearned for revival — and in time, God was pleased to bring revival, first in 1734, and then into the 1740s as the Great Awakening spread through the Western world. Edwards watched hundreds of formerly apathetic neighbors become earnest seekers of God; he saw evening revelries become gatherings for singing and prayer. Along the way, however, he also observed many spurious signs of spiritual life. His ministry yields insight into both the spiritual means of revival and the genuine marks of revival, and it also gives hope that God might be pleased to bring similar revival today.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Douglas Sweeney, professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School, to draw lessons on revival from the ministry of Jonathan Edwards.

The young Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) longed for nothing more than revival. He viewed special works of the Spirit as special tokens of God’s blessing, and he hoped beyond hope that he would receive some himself. He had moved to Northampton while in his early twenties to assist his aging grandfather, Rev. Solomon Stoddard, at the only church in town. Stoddard had led the congregation in occasional seasons of grace, but soon after he passed away, leaving Edwards by himself as the town’s only pastor, the church’s spiritual life began to go downhill. The young people, especially, started sowing wild oats, partying especially after corporate worship services. They seemed deaf to their Lord. Edwards wondered what would become of his ministry.

After five years of anxiety, hard work, and prayer, signs of spring began to appear. Early in 1734, a revival started to stir the nearby village of Pascommuck, roughly three miles from town. Then in April of that year, Northampton’s youth were faced with the unexpected deaths of two of their friends — the first “a young man in the bloom of his youth,” who was “violently seized with a pleurisy and . . . died in about two days”; the other “a young married woman, who had been considerably exercised in mind about the salvation of her soul before she was ill, and was in great distress in the beginning of her illness; but seemed to have satisfying evidences of God’s saving mercy to her before her death; so that she died very full of comfort, in a most earnest and moving manner warning and counseling others.” As Edwards noted of her passing, “This seemed much to contribute to the solemnizing of the spirits of many young persons: and there began evidently to appear more of a religious concern on people’s minds.”1

“The young Jonathan Edwards longed for nothing more than revival.”

Leaning into this concern, Edwards spoke to the youth that fall, recommending that they turn their Thursday evening revelry into a time of “social religion,” meeting in homes throughout the town for Christian fellowship and prayer. No sooner had they done so than the town was forced again to deal with a strange, surprising death — this time of a senior citizen. “Many were much moved and affected” by this tragedy.2 The adults in town followed the lead of their own children, meeting on Sunday nights for fellowship, prayer, and hymn-singing. Soon these spiritual practices led to transformation. Revival roared through town, spreading up and down the Connecticut River Valley.

God’s Surprising Work

Edwards, of course, was biased, but his testimony regarding this revival’s holy fruit suggests a massive outpouring of the Spirit in Northampton. “This work of God . . . soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that in the spring and summer following [1735] . . . the town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor so full of joy; and yet so full of distress, as it was then.”3

In addition to the changes wrought in individual souls, this revival changed the nature of corporate worship in Northampton. “Our public assemblies were then beautiful,” as Edwards later recalled. “The congregation was alive in God’s service, everyone earnestly intent on the public worship . . . ; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the Word was preached; some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbors.”4

It amazes one to consider that Edwards was barely 31 years old when he led this great revival. His wife Sarah was 24. Even contemporaries stood in awe of what was taking place. Edwards scribbled a breathless report to a senior colleague living in Boston, who in turn spread the word along his own social network. Soon the news reverberated all the way to England. A detailed account was in demand across the sea, and Edwards stepped up to supply it in the form of his first book, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and the Neighbouring Towns and Villages (1737). Within three years, this book was printed both in Edinburgh and Boston, and translated and republished in both German and Dutch editions. It inspired other ministers to work toward revival. It compelled George Whitefield to resume his work in the colonies, encouraged John Wesley to practice outdoor preaching in England, and exerted a powerful force on the spread of the Great Awakening, which would crest during the early 1740s.

Edwards gave the credit to the work of his sovereign God. But he knew that God is wont to work through prayer and gospel preaching. In 1747, Edwards published a lengthy treatise on the need to pray for revival. He preached for many years about the importance of praying persistently. Late in 1734, he also began, prayerfully, to preach a gospel series on the sinner’s justification and conversion by faith alone — a series used by God to effect the work of redemption in Northampton.

He commenced this series in November of that year, attributing his church’s own revival to its contents. It began with a talk on “Justification by Faith Alone,” based on Romans 4:5: “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” He took from the text this doctrine: “We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue or goodness of our own.” And he expounded this doctrine with passion, making it clear that justification comes as a gift of God’s free grace, not for anything we do, but because of what God effects when he unites us to his Son, by the power of the Spirit, making us part of his holy church, the mystical bride of Jesus Christ. Our faith is that by which we cling to Christ in spiritual union. God brings it to life in us; we merely exercise it “actively.” And as we cling to Christ and trust in his merit for salvation, God sees that we are one with him and reckons his merit as our own. “What is real in the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal,” Edwards postulated famously.5

Marks of the Spirit

Like the Puritans before him, Edwards placed a high premium on the Christian’s union with Christ as the basis of salvation. We are saved, he taught, not merely by assenting to the gospel; even “the devils . . . believe, and tremble” (James 2:19). We are saved, as well, because the Holy Spirit inhabits our bodies, reorients our souls by uniting them to Christ, makes us sharers in the Lord’s righteousness, and bears fruit in our lives.

“This teaching about the Spirit’s role in salvation might have been the defining feature of Edwards’s ministry.”

This teaching about the Spirit’s role in salvation might have been the defining feature of Edwards’s ministry. He lived in a setting where everyone had to go to church and almost everyone affirmed the basic truths of the Christian faith. He worked as a tax-supported servant of his colony’s state church, an institution that he knew was full of merely cultural Protestantism. He loved his people dearly and believed that he would have to give an account someday for his ministry. So he labored tirelessly to help his hearers understand that there is a wide, eternal difference between authentic faith in Christ and perfunctory religion, or nominal Christianity. That difference, furthermore, has to do with the Holy Spirit and his work of regeneration, of quickening the soul, giving it spiritual life in Christ.

After struggling with his predecessors’ doctrines of conversion, Edwards came to see that God does not convert us all in exactly the same way, that the substance of conversion matters much more than the form. He also saw that true conversion was primarily supernatural. It is not something sinners effect by taking the right steps. They can (and should) certainly prepare for conversion, availing themselves of God’s means of grace and praying for mercy. But they cannot make it happen by their practice of religion. God effects conversion. And the main thing he does when he converts penitent sinners is give them a new heart, reorienting their “affections.” He fills them with his Spirit. He engenders in the soul a deep longing to walk with him, to know him better, and to honor him in everything. So when Edwards counseled sinners, he asked about their hearts. He wanted to find out what they loved, how they wished to spend their time, what they aspired to in life. Moreover, his burden during the rest of his revivalistic ministry was to help others discern the Spirit’s presence in their lives — to “try the spirits” (1 John 4:1), distinguishing God’s Spirit from counterfeits.

Edwards’s strategy was to point people away from what we might call externals of religion, red herrings of the faith, qualities he labeled “negative signs” — they neither confirm nor disprove the Spirit’s presence and activity — and toward what he referred to as the “positive signs” of grace, qualities the Bible says result from true revival and conversion. The negative signs included strong emotions, loss of control (either physically or spiritually), and irregular worship practices. Such qualities had often attended God’s regenerating work, but they could also be the products of religious “hypocrites” (a term Edwards used quite frequently), or even of the devil.

Edwards’s positive signs, by contrast, included esteem for Jesus, opposition to the devil, greater regard to the Scriptures, and a spirit of love to God and man, qualities that guarantee that God is active in one’s life. They cannot be fabricated. They are supernatural gifts. And the “chief” of all these gifts, the sign most clearly taught in Scripture as an indicator of grace, was the sign of “Christian practice,” or biblical holiness. This was no red herring. It was the sum of true religion and, in Edwards’s estimation, it had characterized Northampton for a period of several months — like never before in local history — from December of 1734 through summer of 1735.

Whitefield Visits Northampton

Unfortunately, however, this revival of the Spirit and its signs of grace would fade — nearly as fast as they had appeared — during the dog days of summer. Despite (or rather because of) these positive signs of saving grace, the devil was haunting the town by spring, trying to thwart the work of God by spreading melancholy, doubt, and even suicidal urges. The revival came to a halt that summer.

The good news is that Edwards continued grow in grace through the late 1730s and taught his people to do the same, preaching some of the best sermons in the history of the church. This faithfulness contributed to even larger revivals, which culminated regionally in the early 1740s and were tied to the preaching of Edwards’s friend George Whitefield, thought by some to be the greatest preacher in history.

Only 26 years old at the height of this work of God, Whitefield spoke to larger crowds than anyone else in colonial history — at times to tens of thousands — long before the invention of microphones and amplifiers. A poor man from England with distinctly crossed eyes, he was blessed by God with a booming voice, a flair for the dramatic, and a remarkable gift of extemporaneous speech. He preached a basic gospel message from all over the biblical canon. He told stories with charisma. The most compelling stories he told as he progressed from place to place had to do with the spread of revival through the Anglo-American world. He personified the Awakening and its international scope.

During his second trip to the colonies, Whitefield sent a letter to Edwards asking permission to visit his church. Edwards replied warmly. He knew of Whitefield’s record as a winsome gospel preacher, and he longed for help renewing the work of revival in Northampton. By the spring of 1740, Edwards’s parish started to show the signs of another work of God, especially among the youth. Then when Whitefield finally arrived — on Friday, October 17, eleven months after he had written to Edwards — these sparks were fanned into flame.

Whitefield stayed for three days. He spoke twice on the day he arrived, once in church and once at the manse; once the following afternoon (after another sermon in Hadley, nearly five miles away); and twice more “upon the sabbath.” Edwards reported to a friend that his “congregation was extraordinarily melted by every sermon; almost the whole assembly being in tears for a great part of sermon time.” Edwards “wept” as well, “during the whole time” of the Sunday morning service, according to Whitefield. God’s Spirit was at work, as nearly everyone could tell. While in town for only three days, Whitefield played a crucial role in drawing Edwards’s flock back into the Great Awakening.6

Whitefield was impetuous, at times spiritually arrogant. He had earned a reputation for judging other pastors rashly, claiming that many — maybe most — were unconverted. So as Edwards traveled with him to his next few preaching stations, he advised the young star that it could be dangerous to rely too much on spiritual impulses without help from the word of God. He also said that, while he affirmed Whitefield’s emphasis on the need for clergy themselves to be converted, he believed it inappropriate to judge precipitately which of their colleagues were regenerate — and which were not. Edwards listened to Whitefield preach to several thousand in the fields, thanked him heartily for his labors, and returned home hopeful for the future. Right away, he preached a series on the parable of the sower (Matthew 13), exhorting his people not to be starstruck by Whitefield’s obvious eloquence, but to live as the kind of soil in which the word bears fruit.

Within the next couple of months, Northampton bore abundant fruit. “There was a great alteration in the town,” Edwards testified, particularly among the local children. “By the middle of December a very considerable work of God appeared among those that were very young, and the revival of religion continued to increase; so that in the spring, an engagedness of spirit about things of religion was become very general amongst young people and children, and religious subjects almost wholly took up their conversation.” Even Edwards’s own daughters had come under the work of the Spirit. Many other children, as well, had been affected by the gospel. Edwards later described this time as “the most wonderful work among children that ever was in Northampton.” It rekindled his flame for revival and conversion in New England.7

Pastor as Watchman

During the following spring and summer, Edwards himself was called upon to serve as a traveling gospel preacher. Inspired by Whitefield’s example, he did more of this than ever during 1741. He is best known for a sermon he preached in Enfield, near the border with Connecticut. He had preached this sermon before to his own congregation. As he preached it on the road, however, amazing things happened. Edwards’s text was very brief: “Their foot shall slide in due time” (Deuteronomy 32:35). His doctrine somewhat longer and more memorable today: “There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.” He applied this doctrine at length, in words that have gone down in history:

The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given, and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. ’Tis true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing. . . . Thus are all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all that were never born again, and made new creatures. . . . You are thus in the hands of an angry God; ’tis nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction.

So goes the famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a truly frightening piece of work, but one that is also full of love and passionate literary artistry.8

Edwards preached dozens of hellfire sermons during his ministry, many of which survive. Like the Puritans before him, he did so in the manner of the “watchman” of Ezekiel, whom God held responsible to sound a trumpet clearly when his people were threatened with danger. This was serious business. Edwards believed, as he proclaimed at one of his colleagues’ ordinations, that “ministers of the gospel have the precious and immortal souls of men committed to their care and trust by the Lord Jesus Christ.” He believed that he would give an account on judgment day for his ministry. So he preached from time to time on the dangers of damnation. “If there be really a hell,” he wrote in 1741,

of such dreadful, and never-ending torments, . . . that multitudes are in great danger of, and that the bigger part of men in Christian countries do actually from generation to generation fall into, for want of a sense of the terribleness of it, and their danger of it, and so for want of taking due care to avoid it; then why is it not proper for those that have the care of souls, to take great pains to make men sensible of it? Why should not they be told as much of the truth as can be? If I am in danger of going to hell, I should be glad to know as much as possibly I can of the dreadfulness of it: if I am very prone to neglect due care to avoid it, he does me the best kindness, that does most to represent to me the truth of the case, that sets forth my misery and danger in the liveliest manner.9

Such preaching saw success at the apex of the Awakening. Thousands were converted — in America alone — during 1741. The Great Awakening was divisive, but it also crystallized the crucial importance of conversion and of living with eschatological urgency.

Ten Lessons from Edwards’s Ministry

What might we learn from Edwards and his work on revival? Let me conclude by offering ten brief lessons.

First, Edwards and his colleagues show what God has often done — and still wants to do today — by means of urgent, vivid, preaching framed by the doctrines of grace. How many preachers can you name who share Edwards’s ability to render Bible doctrine urgent and Edwards’s commitment to write sermons that leave a beautiful, intellectually compelling, and enduring impression on their hearers?

Second, Edwards and his colleagues demonstrate the great promise of preaching to people’s hearts. As Edwards wrote in Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival (1743), “I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with. . . . Our people don’t so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this.”10

Third, Great Awakening Christians showed that testimonies matter. I cannot do justice to this topic in this essay. Suffice it to say that what they often called “religious intelligence,” or news of the work of God and the spread of the gospel both at home and abroad, played a central role in spreading the revival. This news was shared orally in evangelistic services. It was also published in Christian magazines and newspapers, used by God to expand people’s horizons and make them feel part of the global cause of Christ.

Fourth, Edwards and his peers showed that prayer matters even more. Edwards preached for many years about the importance of praying persistently. He published a major treatise on the need to pray for revival, An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth. And he exhorted all who listened to participate in transatlantic concerts of prayer for revival.

Fifth, Edwards and pastors like him demonstrated the importance of preaching what the apostle Paul called the whole counsel of God — even the parts about hell and the consequences of sin. God used such preaching to draw thousands to himself. Do we have the wisdom, faith, courage, and spiritual sensitivity to preach this way today, to the honor and glory of God?

Sixth, Edwards and his peers modeled pastoral wisdom in the midst of signs and wonders and spiritual intensity. They often failed to discern rightly. But they tried their best to open their Bibles and interpret the signs of the Spirit all around them, teaching the distinguishing marks of a work of the Spirit of God.

“Edwards and his peers demonstrated that word and Spirit always go hand in hand.”

Seventh, Edwards and his peers demonstrated that word and Spirit always go hand in hand. Against those who taught the word without spiritual vitality, they called for real conversion and walking with the Spirit. Against those who made claims to immediate revelation, or to spiritual impulses not grounded in the Scriptures, they called for theological accountability.

Eighth, Edwards and his peers modeled evangelical ecumenism. They avoided spiritual rashness and judgmental attitudes toward serious Christians, at least when at their best. Some did prove divisive from time to time. But again, when at their best, they showed that Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and others can work together for the gospel — giving rise to modern evangelicalism.

Ninth, Edwards and his colleagues did not let anyone despise them for their youth, as Paul said to Timothy (1 Timothy 4:12). Edwards was in his thirties at the height of the Great Awakening. Whitefield was in his twenties. God used them remarkably in spite of themselves.

Finally, the early evangelicals demonstrated the crucial importance of “social religion”: Christian fellowship, Bible study, testimony, prayer, and spiritual singing in small-group contexts. Indeed, they put these practices on the church-historical map. Millions have come to know Jesus as a result.

May God help us all make good use of their example, facilitating revival and renewal in our time.11