John Owen on Communing with God in the Ordinances of Corporate Worship
John Owen (1616-1683) earned the title “Prince of Puritans” because of his influence as pastor, prolific author, theologian, academic administrator, biblical exegete, military chaplain, statesman, etc. However, his role as a pastor stands out. He demonstrates a pastoral heart and a desire to lead people into an authentic experiential relationship with God.
This authentic relationship, according to Owen, is initiated by God’s revelation, received through Christ, which then necessitates an affectionate response from believers by the Spirit. This covenantal revelation, redemptive reception, and appropriate response in worship is what Owen understood to actively enjoy communion with the triune God. This communicative relationship between God and His church is to be expressed through the ordinances of corporate worship.
There are at least three implications for the church today in the way Owen articulates how the church has communion with the triune God in and through the ordinances of corporate worship.
What is Communion with God?
Owen defines experiential communion with God as follows: “Our communion, then, with God consisteth in his communication of himself unto us, with our returnal unto him of that which he requireth and accepteth, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him” (John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed., William Goold, 16 vols. (Carlisle, Pa: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 2:8-9).
This communion with God consists of each person of the Godhead testifying about Himself in a special way without ever compromising the unified and inseparable activity of the Trinity. For example, the Father initiates the work of redemption from love, the Son accomplishes the work of redemption through His grace, and the Spirit applies the work of redemption by bringing comfort.
While the Father, Son, and Spirit distinctly testify about themselves, all three persons are at work in each person’s distinct revelation. The Father testifies about His love through the Son and by the Spirit. The Son testifies about His grace from the Father and by the Spirit. The Spirit testifies about His comfort from the Father and through the Son.
This communication from the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit is received as one has union with Christ. In fact, communion with God centers on the person of Christ. Through Christ, the church receives the affectionate love of the Father. As Owen further explains, “The communion begun… between Christ and the soul, is in the next place carried on by suitable consequential affections, – affections suiting such a relation. Christ, having given himself to the soul, loves the soul; and the soul having given itself unto Christ, loveth him also” (Owen, Works, 2:117-18).
The only appropriate response the church can have as they receive the love from God is to then love God—to reciprocate their affections to Him in worship.
Reciprocating affections to God must be done through God. Owen understood this “returnal unto him” to be done according to, what Owen called, the “heavenly directory,” a concept he derived from Ephesians 2:18 (Owen, Works, 2:269). The heavenly directory is to worship by the Spirit, through the Son, and to the Father. It is one directional. It is how the church worships God through God.
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None of this is to defend the cruelties associated with slavery. It is simply to say that Brown’s response was the wrong one, and that we should neither approve it nor celebrate him. Brown was celebrated for his militancy, and he seems to have regarded such militancy as the proper fruit of the Christian faith.

In 1860 a newspaper called The Christian Watchman and Reflector published a series of letters from Charles Spurgeon, in one of which he denied rumors that the American publishers of his works excised material that might be offensive to slaveholders. Highly perturbed at the suggestion, Spurgeon said, amongst other things, that “any slaveholder who should show himself in our neighborhood would get a mark which he would carry to his grave, if it did not carry him there.” He finished the letter in view by saying that “John Brown is immortal in the memories of the good in England, and in my heart he lives.” Here we have a minister of the gospel with a high reputation and wide influence expressing his opinion with such fervor as to descend into talk of his neighbors possibly murdering foreign citizens and praising an insurrectionist.
This is of interest because the statement in view is cited as proof that many evangelicals condemned slavery at the same time that many southern Protestants were defending it. It is certainly proof of that sober truth, though there are plenty of other sources that make the same point that lack the regrettable character of Mr. Spurgeon’s statement here. To be sure, he did not say that he would approve such lawless violence, much less that he would participate; and it is conceivable that Victorian era Englishmen were not quite as prone to waylaying foreigners as Mr. Spurgeon suggests. It could be that he was so caught up in a fit of high dudgeon that he wrote more boldly than was warranted, and that the talk of lawless violence was idle banter.
Whatever the case, it was not in accord with the duty of his office to speak in such a manner, and it is a point of curiosity that contemporary critics of 1800s southern evangelical attitudes about slavery so readily latch upon examples such as this. Such critics are quick to point at the perceived hypocrisy of claiming Christ while at the same time defending a civil institution that oppressed its participants and was often attended by great physical cruelty. And so in finding grounds to condemn the violence and hypocrisy of slaveholding they . . . . latch upon examples of evangelicals mentioning violence approvingly.
This is a strange method, surely, and it goes far to undermine the critics’ own moral authority. Why, pray tell, do we consider slavery wrong? Is it not because it does violence to the dignity of its unwilling participants, holding them in bondage and subjecting them, in many cases, to harsh punishments for flight or disobedience? Is it not because of the chain and the lash, the separation of families and the prohibition of literacy, and because of all the other things that denied equal protection and rights under the law and reduced slaves to being a permanent under caste? Is it not because the whole institution denied them their rights as human beings whose nature is no different from that of people of other classes and ethnicities? Why then would it be any less evil to do similar things to other people, including slaveholders or people who are citizens or public officials of places where slavery was legal? Mistreatment is wrong regardless of who does it or why, and our Lord forbids vengeance (Lev. 19:18; Deut. 32:35; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30) and prohibits former victims of oppression oppressing others in turn (Ex. 22:21; comp. Deut. 23:7).
It is here that John Brown enters the question. Many people in his day regarded him as a hero with few equals, and after his death he was hailed as a martyr and prophet, Henry David Thoreau saying that he had become “an angel of light” and a popular camp tune saying that he was “John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see.” That enthusiasm has not dimmed, it seems, for Christianity Today has published an article urging the glad acceptance of Brown as an evangelical hero.
John Brown was hanged for treason and murder for leading the seizure of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) as part of a scheme to forcibly abolish slavery in the southern states. Brown’s plan was to use his action to incite slaves in the surrounding areas to flee their masters and join his forces, after which they would march southward, collecting men and materiel as they went. Ostensibly his forces would fight only in self-defense if accosted.
That last bit makes for a large claim to swallow when we remember that Brown had already attained national notoriety for organizing private militants in the Bleeding Kansas crisis earlier in the 1850s. Brown had presided over the Pottawatomie Massacre, in which five men had been hacked to death in what can only be considered cold-blooded murder. The other facts are also against interpreting his plan and actions as a scheme of fomenting an armed-but-purely-defensive insurrection, such as that two of the five men his band killed at Harpers Ferry were unarmed. One was the mayor, the other a free black man who was the first victim and who was shot in the back. If these killings were against Brown’s intentions, as has been suggested, they nonetheless suggest that he had poor control over his force that he had trained for his occupation of the arsenal; and it is hard to imagine that he would have had any better control over the multitudes of strangers whom he expected to rally to his standard.
It is likely that arming large numbers of escaped slaves, whatever Brown’s ostensible intention, would have led to aggression and even the wanton taking of vengeance on their part. Virginia’s earlier slave revolt 28 years before (Nat Turner’s) had been attended by the killing of civilians, including women and children. It is simply not human nature for spontaneous mobs to act only in self-defense and to eschew all criminal and vengeful tendencies. And notwithstanding that Brown attempted to give legitimacy to his efforts by establishing a ‘provisional government’ replete with offices and constitution, what Brown actually attempted, whether he realized it or not, was to foment an enormous mob, probably the largest in the history of the country. Had he succeeded he would have been culpable for any excesses that such a mob committed, but as it was he gained very little support.
There is another fault with such an argument, which is that it is generally a principle of law that one cannot provoke resistance by threats or assault and then use force to repel the violence that ensues: the initial provocation makes one the aggressor, so that every subsequent action is a furtherance of the aggression and cannot be justified as defensive. Brown was the aggressor in the Harpers Ferry affair, for he started it by seizing the arsenal, and then continued it by taking hostages and preventing the lawful authorities from repossessing it or rescuing them. When it was then claimed that his subsequent fighting with state and federal forces was in self-defense (as his defense attempted at his trial), the claim is null – and more than a little brazen and absurd.
One cannot break into someone’s house and take him captive, and then say that he acted in self-defense by firing at the police when they surrounded the house. All notion of self-defense goes out the window when one first commences his criminal venture. And yet that is essentially what Brown did, except that he acted not merely against a single private individual and domicile, but against an entire commonwealth and its populace.
I have no desire to impugn the faith or integrity of those who have lionized Brown through the decades. Indeed, anyone who would allow that Spurgeon remark above to dissuade him from reading Spurgeon appreciatively would be doing himself an enormous disservice, for flights of indignation notwithstanding, Spurgeon was greatly used by God and is well worth reading. Remarks like that above are drowned out by the enormous quantities of edifying material he produced: it is as a flake of chaff in an ocean of grace.
But I do think that such people, be they past or present, are sorely mistaken on this point. There is nothing in the New Testament that justifies fomenting armed rebellion. Romans 13 says, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” and “whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” Granting the institution of southern slavery was evil, it does not follow that it should have been countered by violent force. “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all” (Rom. 12:17). Evil must be opposed righteously; and fomenting rebellion that was likely to lead to widespread bloodshed cannot be deemed righteous. It is in direct contradiction of the commands to “live peaceably with all” and “overcome evil with good” (12:18, 21).
And in the outcome of Brown’s misadventure at Harpers Ferry we see the wisdom of our Lord’s instructions on this point. Brown’s insurrection failed utterly. He gained only a handful of supporters among the local slave population; succeeded in getting himself, many of his men, and several citizens killed; and further aggravated the already tense relations between North and South, ultimately playing an important role in provoking secession and the subsequent war that killed more than 620,000 men.
Over against all this we must remember that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and that he did not come to establish it by means of force (Jn. 18:36). When someone mentioned an example of Pilate’s cruelty toward the Jews (including sacrilegious murder), Christ declined to cry aloud for temporal justice and instead urged his hearers to take heed for their souls and repent while they had time (Lk. 13:1-3). His way is not the way of social revolution, but of patient long-suffering (Matt. 5:39) and of repaying evil with good (Lk. 6:28; Rom. 12:14, 20; 1 Pet. 3:9). Those who, like Brown, attempt to find in Christ’s message a justification for armed revolution contradict the essence of that message, and many of its particulars (2 Tim. 2:24; Tit. 3:1-2; Heb. 12:14; Jas. 3:17).
None of this is to defend the cruelties associated with slavery. It is simply to say that Brown’s response was the wrong one, and that we should neither approve it nor celebrate him. Brown was celebrated for his militancy, and he seems to have regarded such militancy as the proper fruit of the Christian faith. In his speech at his conviction he appealed to Scripture as justifying his actions:
Court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction.
When someone celebrates Brown he is therefore celebrating a man who contradicted the teaching of Scripture under the guise of fulfilling it. Against this, consider these words and ponder whether John Brown’s behavior accords with them: “Whoever says he abides in him [Christ] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 Jn. 2:6). Christ walked in the way of works of mercy and witness, and his death redeemed the souls of many. Brown walked in the way of the sword and came to the end which Christ predicted of those who do so (Matt. 26:52), and his death brought not peace but division and strife and a war that consumed multitudes. It is no part of our faith to honor such a man, and the scriptural data abundantly point the other way.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 
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Paul came proclaiming “the testimony of God.” He did not come preaching personal preferences, pop culture, political ideology, scientific theories, or sociological studies. He did not come proclaiming the testimony of man but the testimony of God. I love how Paul refers to the Word of God, that is the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, as God’s “testimony.”

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:1-5).
In his book, The Soul Winner, Charles Spurgeon tells the story of a young pastor who, after preaching one Sunday, asked an older minster in his congregation for some feedback. The old minister was hesitant at first, but the young pastor pressed him until he said, “If I must tell you, I did not like it at all; there was no Christ in your sermon.” “No,” replied the young man, “because I did not see that Christ was in the text.” “But do you not know,” asked the old preacher, “that from every little town and village and tiny hamlet in England there is a road leading to London? Whenever I get hold of a text, I say to myself, ‘There is a road from here to Jesus Christ, and I mean to keep on His track till I get to Him.’” To which the young man said, “but suppose you are preaching from a text that says nothing about Christ?” The old man said, “Then I will go over hedge and ditch [to] get at Him.”
The Apostle Paul held and was held by the same Christ-exalting conviction. When summarizing his 18-month ministry to the Corinthians he said simply, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). It was a reminder the Corinthians desperately needed because after Paul left them, they forgot the gospel and fell into gross sins and divisions. So, Paul wrote this letter hoping to reignite their affections for Christ and reinforce their confidence in simple gospel preaching as the primary means by which God saves and sanctifies sinners.
What is good preaching? What is a faithful ministry? Upon what and upon whom must we build our faith? We can find answers to these questions and more in the opening lines of 1 Corinthians 2 and we see that a faithful minister must preach Christ crucified in reliance upon the Holy Spirit.
I have dedicated an entire shelf of my library to books on homiletics, the art of preaching. But none of those books, nor all of them combined, can rival the simplicity and glory of Paul’s compact, how-to preaching manual before us, the first chapter of which could be entitled, What to Preach? Paul writes, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom” (1 Corinthians 2:1).
Paul came proclaiming “the testimony of God.” He did not come preaching personal preferences, pop culture, political ideology, scientific theories, or sociological studies. He did not come proclaiming the testimony of man but the testimony of God. I love how Paul refers to the Word of God, that is the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, as God’s “testimony.” This is the only time he employs this phrase.
In a courtroom, witnesses sit on the stand and give their testimony. They answer questions and tell of what they’ve seen and what they know as the jury searches for truth. How infinitely valuable then, is the book in which is written the testimony of him who knows and sees all? How trustworthy is the account of him who is not like a man that he should lie or the son of man that he should change his mind? How timeless is the word of him who dwells outside of time in eternity, without beginning or end? So, like Paul faithful preachers must proclaim the testimony of God gripped by a holy fear of straying from its ancient paths. Our sermons must be riveted to the Bible and uncompromisingly exegetical.
When we used microscopes in high school biology we were told to start on the lowest magnification and then click over to higher magnifications to zoom in on the plant cells or fish scales we were examining. Paul does the same thing here. Having identified “the testimony of God” as the body of truth he preached, he zooms in on the very heart of the Scriptures, who is the Lord Jesus Christ: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Paul’s saying that to properly proclaim the testimony of God is to know “nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Why? Because the testimony of God swirls like a heavenly hurricane around Jesus. That’s why Phillip told Nathaniel, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). That’s why on the Mt. of Transfiguration the disciples saw Jesus standing with Moses and Elijah, the representatives of the law and the prophets. That’s why as the resurrected Christ walked along the road to Emmaus with his disciples, Luke writes, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). That’s why Paul said all of the promises of God find their “yes” and “amen” in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).
But what, precisely about Jesus did Paul preach? Not just Jesus the divine teacher, or Jesus the wonder worker, or Jesus the moral example but, Jesus “Christ.” That is, Jesus the anointed one, long awaited Messiah, the Prophet like Moses whom God would raise up from among his brothers and who would speak the very words of God, the Priest after the order of Melchizedek that would intercede on behalf of his people and atone for their sins, and the King, great David’s greater Son, who would rule and defend his blood-bought people and whose kingdom would be everlasting, universal, and indomitable.
But there’s something more. Paul decided to know nothing but “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Paul preached every sermon in the shadow of the empty cross. Why? Because it was on the cross that Jesus, the Seed of the Woman, the virgin born Son of God and Son of Man, the Offspring of Abraham, the Lion of Judah, Son of David, the Holy one of Israel, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Prince of Peace, became the Lamb of God who bore the sins of his people. And on that Friday long ago, atop a hill called Golgotha, which means the skull, suspended between a cruel mob and blackened sun, Jesus hung naked and nailed to a tree where he endured in his body and soul the of God’s burning hatred for the sins of his people until the magazines of Heaven’s holy wrath were empty and the fires of hell which burned for his people, were extinguished in his blood.
Paul decided to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified because that gospel of canceled sin by a loving God is the greatest news and only hope this world has ever heard; because while the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing it is the power of God to those who are being saved (1 Corinthians 1:18); because Jesus Christ is all together lovely, the fairest of ten thousand, the bright and morning star, the lily of the valley, the rose of Sharon, the balm of Gilead, the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, in whom the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell, bread of life, light of the world, the only door to God, the Good Shepherd, the resurrections and the life, the way, the truth and the life; because Paul’s highest hope and most ardent prayer was for his people to kiss the Son in love and embrace him in faith.
Well, if the first chapter of Paul’s preaching manual could be entitled, “What to Preach”, the second and final chapter could be called, “How to Preach.”  When I served as a youth ministry intern at another PCA church, we took an annual mission trip to Mexico. And we gave our students a detailed packing list that included sunscreen, bug spray, bottled water, Bible, double the pairs of underwear you think you’ll need. But if I remember correctly, the first item on the list was not something to bring, but something to leave behind. “Don’t pack your negative attitude.” Paul begins the same way; listing what he did not bring with him to Corinth: “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom” (1 Corinthians 2:1).
Paul left his lofty speech and wisdom at home. He didn’t preach to impress. His style and his content were clear and plain that all might understand and believe the gospel he preached. He didn’t tickle the ears of his hearers with polished eloquence and Shakespearean sermons. There was a decided austerity to his style. He wrapped his sermons in sackcloth. He wanted his people to see Christ in his preaching so he refused to blind them by the glare of lacquered words. The old Puritan, Matthew Henry, said, Paul “preached the truths of Christ in their native dress, with plainness of speech.” Nor did he vaunt his learning to blow his hearers away. He didn’t come to make fans of Paul but disciples of Jesus Christ.
We who preach must decide the same. The temptation to make a name for ourselves is great. Sermon Audio download reports, book publishing, conference circuits, growing church attendance and budgets, even the well-intentioned praises of parishioners can become trip wires in which a proud man may become ensnared. So, we preachers must not overestimate our own sanctification and underestimate the power of indwelling pride. The 19th century Scottish theologian, James Denney, once said, “You cannot at the same time give the impression that you are a great preacher and that Jesus Christ is a great Savior.”
So, if Paul didn’t come with lofty speech or wisdom, what did he bring? Paul explained, “And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling…” (1 Corinthians 2:3). These three things are connected. One flows into the other like pools of cascading water. Paul came in spiritual weakness in humble recognition that the task to which he’d been called was bigger than him. Paul must have felt like Ezekiel looking out over that valley carpeted with dry bones, of which the Lord asked, “Son of man can these bones live?” Paul knew that no matter how well he preached to the Corinthians, no matter how robust his reasoning, no matter how sacrificially he served them or how genuinely he loved them he could not change a single person. He knew that only the Spirit of God, who is the Lord and Giver of life, can open eyes blinded by sin. Only the Spirit can enlighten minds darkened by depravity. Only the Spirit can thaw hearts frozen in hate for God and fill them with love for Christ. Only the Spirit can burst the bonds of Satan and liberate captive wills to choose Jesus. Only the Spirit can fill the craters of doubt and unbelief with saving faith by which we receive and rest in Christ alone for our salvation.
Some people fear snakes, or spiders, or darkness. In view of his own weakness, Paul was afraid of something too: not creepy crawlies or cruel people or even death itself; Paul was filled with a holy fear and zealous longing for the souls of his people. Paul knew that the wages of sin is death in hell forever and man’s only hope was to trust the Christ of whom Paul preached. But Paul knew that the forces of darkness committed to keeping the Corinthians from coming to Christ even if it meant convincing them to hang their faith on Paul instead of the power of the Holy Spirit. In fact, Paul’s decision to preach unadorned sermons was born of his awareness of his own weaknesses and the inability of eloquence and human sophistication to save a soul. So, he said in 1 Corinthians 2:4-6: “and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
The preacher who believes that he is truly powerless and that the greatest sermon he could ever preach is insufficient to move the needle of one heart one degree towards God unless the Holy Spirit owns it will be a praying preacher. The church that yearns for the kind of preaching that saves sinners, the kind of preaching that transforms society, the kind of preaching that sparks revival in our land and rattle the gates of hell, will beg God for it in prayer.
Many years ago, I visited the historic Independent Presbyterian Church in downtown Savannah. I was blown away by the beauty of the architecture: the copper crowned steeple, Savannah shutters, hardwood box pews, vaulted ceiling, marble baptismal font, and especially the massive pulpit. As I gazed up at the pulpit, my friend who was also an intern at the church at that time, turned to me and asked, “Do you want to get in it?” “Do I!” I replied. So, he opened a secret door at the base of the pulpit which led to a secret staircase. And as I ascended those stairs something caught my eye at the top: a small brass plaque. I noticed that the finish of the wood surrounding the plaque had been rubbed away by the ministers who would touch the plaque as they went to preach each Lords Day. And as I got closer I was able to read the plaque. It said, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”
May we privileged preachers decide with Paul to live and preach with our hands on that plaque. May every sermon, every text, every Sunday beam with Christ and him crucified, Christ and him buried, Christ and him resurrected, Christ and his ascended, Christ and him seated ruling and reigning, and Christ returning in glory to judge the living and the dead. And may the church demand it of us, like those unnamed Greeks who said to Phillip long ago, “Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:21). And in seeing him, may we be made more like him and bear much fruit to the glory of God.
Jim McCarthy is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Pastor of Trinity PCA in Statesboro, Ga.
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