The Aquila Report

WCF 27: Of the Sacraments

Sacraments are not magical. They aren’t a quick and easy replacement for sincere faith, and spiritual devotion. But by the power of God they sincerely promise “benefit to worthy receivers.” Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are central to God’s program for our spiritual growth. Let’s use them to think about Jesus and his benefits, to believe that by faith we have a saving relation to him, to walk differently.

Has the church has missed God’s plan for spiritual growth? Conventional wisdom promotes pragmatic self-help schemes, elaborate church programs, and charismatic leaders. But what if God actually authorized a simpler way?
Early Christians committed to expository preaching, fellowship, and prayers (Acts 2:42). They also believed that God had given them powerful rituals to help them walk with God. Baptism symbolizes everything believers have gained in Christ (Rom. 6:4). The Lord’s Supper, sometimes called “the breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42), helps God’s hungry and thirsty children feed on Christ.[i] The early church teaches us to be cautious about modern models for spiritual growth (1 Cor. 2:1–5) and to emphasize the role of the sacraments as God’s gift for pilgrims along the way.
What are Sacraments?
Sacraments are divinely instituted signs and seals of the covenant of grace.
Signs and Seals
God voluntarily condescends to make a gracious covenant with his people. A covenant is a binding agreement between two parties. In the covenant of grace God “freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ.” In turn he requires of covenant people “faith in him.” This is the most life-giving relationship you can ever enter. In the covenant of grace God promises “to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe” (WCF 7.3).
In fact, God’s covenant promises are so wonderful that we are prone to doubt them. We worry that we may not be among the number of those God has called out of the world. We are slow to keep our side of the covenant. We might forget altogether about covenant privileges and responsibilities. So our gracious God gives sacraments to point to (signs) and authenticate (seals) the covenant of grace. In Abraham’s life the sign of circumcision validated God’s promise that he was righteous before God because of his faith (Rom. 4:11). So today baptism and the Lord’s Supper signify and seal God’s covenant.
Divinely Instituted
God alone can authorize holy signs and seals of his covenant. Many things may feel spiritual but lack actual power for helping our walk with the Lord. As tangible indicators of the covenant of grace God has given us two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are substantially the same as circumcision and the Passover in the Old Testament; they signify and exhibit the same spiritual things.
And like the Old Testament sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper cannot be “dispensed by any, but by a minister of the Word lawfully ordained.”
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For the Glory of God

Written by R.C. Sproul |
Friday, September 6, 2024
The great danger is that we make ourselves the center of concern, and we steal the glory of God. In all that we do, the driving passion of the Christian must always be Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory. And the only way for this passion to be realized is to honor God as God, to understand Him as He has revealed Himself in His Word and not according to the mere opinions of fallen creatures.

At the church I co-pastor, Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, we are deliberate about making sure that both our church members and visitors understand the doctrinal basis of our fellowship. As a small way of helping to further that end, we note in our church bulletin every Sunday morning that “we affirm the solas of the Protestant Reformation.”
By way of reminder, the five solas are five points that summarize the biblical theology recovered and proclaimed during the Protestant Reformation. As we note in our bulletin, these five solas are:

Sola Scriptura: The Bible is the sole written divine revelation and alone can bind the conscience of the believer absolutely.
Sola Fide: Justification is by faith alone. The merit of Christ, imputed to us by faith, is the sole ground of our acceptance by God, by which our sins are remitted, and imputed to Christ.
Solus Christus: Christ is the only mediator through whose work we are redeemed.
Sola Gratia: Our salvation rests solely on the work of God’s grace for us.
Soli Deo Gloria: To God alone belongs the glory.

Each sola is important, but the first four really exist to preserve the last one, namely, the glory of God. By sola Scriptura, we declare the glory of God’s authority by noting that only His inspired Word can command us absolutely. Sola fide, solus Christus, and sola gratia all exalt God’s glory in salvation. God and God alone—through His Son, Jesus Christ—saves His people from sin and death.
We need the glory of God to be reinforced because it is the hardest truth of all for people to accept. The refusal to glorify God in an appropriate and proper way is basic to our corrupt state. As Paul says in his penetrating description of human fallenness in Romans 1: “They did not honor him as God” (Rom. 1:21).
So often when we talk about God, we describe Him in such a way that He isn’t recognizable as the God of the Bible.
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Don’t Utilize Extensive Vocabulary when You can Use Simple Words

A little consideration of the hearers will go a long way to making sermons more understandable. Are many of your hearers from a different culture to you? Then keep your vocabulary as simple as possible and try to avoid idioms. Are there likely to be those with little to no Bible knowledge? Then don’t use obscure illustrations from the Bible with no explanation. Is there a difficult word in the Bible text itself? Take time to explain it in simple words.

Too many sermons are more complicated than they need to be. Like any specialty, the Christian world has its own special vocabulary. Words like holy, justification and glorification do turn up in the Bible, yet they rarely if ever turn up in everyday conversation. On top of this, there are all kinds of theological terms used to describe Biblical concepts that are rich and meaningful if you know what they mean, like Trinity and ordo salutis and transcendence. Yet the majority of people in our churches listening to sermons don’t know or use these words. Anyone whose task it is to explain the word of God to others needs to think carefully about the words they use lest they are misunderstood.
Think about Jesus in his teaching. He used the common language and common illustrations that everyone would understand. Sure, they might not have understood what he meant, but the words were clear. Likewise, when Paul spoke to the Athenians who were educated but not experienced in the Jewish Scriptures, he spoke plainly. He explained God’s sovereignty and aseity without using those words. It is more than possible to explain difficult concepts in simple words.
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Fearing God Our Judge

It is a joyful fear that drives us to please him, and not the paralysing fear of punishment. It is a fear that fuels our courage to persuade others at the risk offending them when we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. When we rightly fear God as our loving Judge, we will have no fear of condemnation. Rather we will long for his commendation: “well done good and faithful servant” (Matt 25:21, 23).

Believers should fear God our Creator in joyful awe, as I explored in my first article. But does fearing God as Judge feature in Christian experience? The answer is no and yes. We no longer fear the condemnation of God. But we feel a joyful godly fear because of our knowledge of God’s authoritative judgment; our confidence in his declaration of our acceptance in Christ; and our eagerness to receive his commendation for our lives of faith, obedience and mission.
Perfect Love Drives out Fear of Judgment
Fearing God as our Judge, seems at odds with the gospel. Surely it is the person who has no hope in Christ who should fear the judgment of God. This brings to mind the fear that drove Martin Luther away from God:
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.
By contrast, believers need no longer fear condemnation. When Luther grasped from Romans 1:17 the gospel truth of the gracious gift of God’s righteousness, he writes:
I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. … And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word “righteousness of God.” Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.
John writes in his first letter:
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)
Perfect love refers to the love of God in sending Jesus to turn aside God’s condemning wrath. It is this love that drives out any fear of punishment. It is this love that assures us of our salvation. God’s grace in Christ is the refuge from God’s wrath outside Christ.
There is a trembling of punishment outside of Christ. But there is a different kind of trembling for those in Christ. As I argued in my first article, both fears involve ‘trembling’. But gospel fear will drive you toward Christ; unbelieving fear will drive you away from Christ.
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Certainty, Mystery and Faith

Indeed, if we had all the answers, if we had all the solutions, we would be God. Or at the very least, we would have no need for faith, no need for trust, and so on. Thus having questions and concerns can be a good thing. It keeps us dependent on God. It makes us want to know him more. It helps build trust in our lives. It can improve our prayer life. The benefits are many.

As I have said so often now, getting the biblical balance right is crucial. And this applies in so many areas. Here I want to speak about the need for biblical balance in terms of the believer embracing both certainty as well as mystery. That is, there are many things that we can be quite sure about, but there are also many things that leave us wondering, that leave us with questions, that leave us with mystery.
Let me explain. We have an entire book (really, 66 books) which contains all that we need to know about God, why we are here, what our problem is, and how things can be sorted out. So who we are, why we exist, how to get right with God, is all spelled out clearly in Scripture.
But so many other things that we might wonder about are not always clearly disclosed to us. As Francis Schaeffer used to say, we have true truth, but not exhaustive truth. God has given us all the vital information that we need to have, but he has not told us everything.
So in many areas – especially in terms of our own personal lives – we are left with countless questions. We do not fully know why we did not get that job we so very much wanted, or why the person we liked so much never became our spouse, or why a loved one died early, or why a friend got cancer, or why our church let us down so greatly.
A million questions can arise, and we do not always get the answers we are looking for – at least in this life. Presumably in the next life we will either get more clarity on some of these matters, or the questions will then disappear and seem not so very important any longer.
Especially when it comes to suffering and hardships and trials and adversity, we can have so very many questions, and most of them seem never to be answered – or at least answered to our liking. So all we can do is keep walking with God, even with so many unresolved questions.
Indeed, if we had all the answers, if we had all the solutions, we would be God. Or at the very least, we would have no need for faith, no need for trust, and so on. Thus having questions and concerns can be a good thing. It keeps us dependent on God. It makes us want to know him more. It helps build trust in our lives. It can improve our prayer life. The benefits are many.
Let me tease this out a bit further, and with my own story as a part of it. Some time ago on the social media a person had a post about how they had a huge improvement in their cancer situation. It seems they really are now doing quite well. The person said something like this: ‘It is a real miracle. It is such an answer to all your prayers.’
To which any Christian would rightly shout ‘Amen!’. God is a miracle-working God, and God certainly does answer prayer. So this was terrific news indeed, and I believe I pressed the ‘like’ button on that post. Always great to hear such reports. But….
Of course at the very same time that I was reading this I had some other thoughts going through my head as well. The truth is, other people – indeed, millions of other people – including myself, had a somewhat different outcome to a similar situation. As some of you know, my wife had a quite rare and quite aggressive form of breast cancer.
I and so many others of course were praying for her. Were there many hundreds of Christians all up praying for her? Perhaps even thousands? Friends, family, church members, even those who had never met her were praying, and many of them were praying fervently.
Yet after a very tough 18-month battle, she lost out to that cancer. The cancer won. Of course, God always wins, and she is now in the arms of her loving Saviour and suffering no more. That is great news too.
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What Is Distinct about the Theology of Galatians?

Written by Thomas R. Schreiner |
Friday, September 6, 2024
The most important question in life is how we are justified before God. In other words, what does it take for a person to be declared in the right before God at the final judgment? The answer is that righteousness before God doesn’t come by the works of the law. We are not right before God by our works since, as the one who is infinitely holy, God demands perfect obedience. Our works will only lead to judgment since we are all sinners, since we all fall short in many ways. 

The Gospel in Galatians
One way to think about Galatians is to sketch it in three movements. These three movements roughly map onto chapters so that chapters 1–2 are the first movement, chapters 3–4 the second, and chapters 5–6 the third. The three movements can be described as the 1) the truth of the gospel (chs. 1–2); 2) the content of the gospel (chs. 3–4); and 3) the result of the gospel (chs. 5–6).
The truth of the gospel takes center stage in chapters 1–2. Jewish teachers accused Paul of proclaiming a false gospel since the latter argued that one didn’t need to keep the law or be circumcised to be saved. Paul strikes back by emphasizing that the gospel of free grace that he preached was revealed to him by Jesus himself on the road to Damascus. Anyone who departs from the good news declared by Paul, whether it was an angel, an apostle, or even Peter himself, would be condemned (Gal. 1:8–9). We learn from this that the gospel found in Galatians is the very truth of God, and we depart from it to our eternal peril. No compromise can be accepted or tolerated when it comes to the gospel, and all teachings and teachers must be evaluated and measured by the gospel revealed to us by Jesus Christ himself.
In the second movement, chapters 3–4 of Galatians, the content of the gospel is unfolded. The most important question in life is how we are justified before God. In other words, what does it take for a person to be declared in the right before God at the final judgment? The answer is that righteousness before God doesn’t come by the works of the law. We are not right before God by our works since, as the one who is infinitely holy, God demands perfect obedience.
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You Become What You Do, and Who You Do It With

Written by T. M. Suffield |
Friday, September 6, 2024
Christians need to go to church. We grow to be more like Jesus as we repeat the actions of a Sunday: hear the word read and preached, say the creed, pray, sing, take the Supper, speak in tongues, hear and receive prophetic words. We grow to be more like Jesus as we eat with other Christians in their homes and they in ours; as we serve with them to help the poor in our church community and in the wider place that we live; as we speak the gospel to each other whenever we encounter each other.

Christian Formation II
If we’re formed by what we think, what we feel, and what we do—as I’ve argued we are—how does being formed by what we do work? I think there are two components to this: community and habit.
We become what we do. James K. A. Smith’s famous ‘pedagogy of desire’ argues that rather than doing what we love, instead we love what we do. If you want to train yourself to love something, then do it. Part of the Christian life is repetition. If you want to become a person who prays, then you need to start by praying. Obviously, there must be more to it than this—and there is, all three angles of formation are present all the time—but you won’t become a person of prayer unless you actually carve out time to pray in, and then pray at those times.
Of course, the early steps are faltering; of course it’s hard; and of course you can’t do it without the Spirit’s help. Charismatics sometimes make it sound like all you need to do is wait on the Spirit to change you. While a good thing we also need to ask him to change us (please teach me to pray is a powerful prayer) and then start doing it in our lives. This is partly because of the way the Lord has made us as creatures, but it’s also because the Christian life is one of actions: as I’ve argued before hope is an action, as are love, faith, and perseverance (1 Thessalonians 1).
Sometimes we can be down on the idea of daily devotions. You won’t find a direct reference to them in the Bible, which is understandable because they largely assume that you can both read and have the Bible in your native tongue. Devotions also have an individualised sense of how to pray; assuming it’s something we do on our own. The early Christians would have gathered to pray in the mornings. The common practice of morning and evening prayer arose from this. We could probably discuss the benefits of different types of daily prayer, but practice does make perfect in the Biblical sense: it makes us mature. Whatever it is you’re doing, it’s good to do it habitually.
Note the second feature rising up in that discussion, you often see Christians praying together. If you want to love to pray, then pray with people who love to pray. Do it a lot. Habitual actions are easier, and easier to sustain, when done with others. That’s because that’s the kind of creatures we are; firstly, for the love of marriage and the immediate family, and then secondly for the love of the kingdom, for friendship.
If you keep doing something you will grow to love it. If people in your church don’t like the Lord’s Supper and seem confused by it, just start doing it weekly. You’ll find a love for it will grow.
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Speaking the Truth About Toxic Leadership

I don’t write this in anger or seeking my “pound of flesh” as I was accused of at a presbytery council meeting when seeking to expose this behavior at the presbytery level. We must all pursue the path of forgiveness just as we have been forgiven. So, I must pursue it as well. Yet we cannot let such behavior and character lead the way. What is my hope in writing all this down? I hope more will speak the truth in whatever difficult circumstances they face. I hope more will seek righteousness over institutional success. I hope we will stop platforming toxic leadership.

“… it was one of the most amazing experiences that I have had in church planting, and I think the one I’m most proud of….”[1]EPC Church Planting Coordinator, Tom Ricks, speaking at this year’s General Assembly (2024) about a multi-ethnic and urban church plant he helped coordinator.
I was watching the stream of the 2024 EPC General Assembly[2] to see how the denomination might handle a controversial matter before the body. Quite accidentally, I caught the panel discussion on Church Health and heard Tom Ricks say the words above. When Tom said he was “most proud” of this project, I felt an obligation to speak out about the toxic management of this project behind the scenes. Further, while I have spoken and written about my concerns over platforming leaders who have organizational success but who are a corrosive force to the long term health of those same institutions, I decided it was time to move beyond talking about it abstractly. It was time to be specific and explicit.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about my own journey through spiritual abuse and how I have recovered (mostly) from that experience. At the time, I did not include names (like Tom Ricks and Greentree Church) because that piece of writing wasn’t about finding justice but healing for me and to help others find it as well. I knew many would be able to identify the individuals and institutions in the piece, but I nonetheless chose not to be explicit. Again, I refrained from naming names because it wasn’t about putting right things that were wrong, but helping people hurt in church settings find a way back to love the Bride of Christ. For that moment, that seemed like the extent of my responsibility as it related to Greentree and Tom Ricks.
After watching the panel on Church Health, I realized that perhaps I owed the people of God more. I owed them transparency. I owed them the truth. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in a 1913 Harper’s article “[S]unlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” My hope is *not* that “people get what’s coming to them.” That would be folly indeed as we all deserve judgment. My hope is that by being explicit, people and institutions would do the hard work to become more healthy. My hope is that other institutions will stop platforming this kind of toxicity.
I worked with Tom at Greentree Community Church, first as Assistant Pastor for Care, then as Associate Pastor of Adult Ministries and at times I was unofficially given executive pastor responsibilities. It was in this expanded role that Tom spearheaded the effort to start an urban church plant in North St. Louis County. While it was not in my stated responsibilities, I was drawn into the organization of this project. I had a front seat in watching Tom Ricks promise things to a church planter he had no authority to promise, manipulate and intimidate his staff and session to support this project, and throw others “under the bus” to protect himself. Perhaps there is a bit of snark in this question but it is still an honest one: I wonder which of these behaviors made him so proud of this church planting project?[3]
When I first began working at Greentree, I felt I had found a good and stable place to work. The church was in process of building its first facility and we were on the cusp of some explosive growth. It was fun. Even still, I began to bump into Tom’s problem with truth telling from the start. I just didn’t recognize it as such. I dismissed it as miscommunication or misinterpretation or use of imprecise language. It wasn’t until the urban church plant planning started that I began to question things in earnest.
Tom had organized a group of local pastors that he dubbed the “St. Louis Urban Church Planting Network.” Greentree considered this a separate entity and as such did not fall under the governance of the session. Tom recruited a church planter (hereafter referred to as CP), an apprenticeship was established, and the “Network” hired the CP on a part-time basis (or so I thought).  Tom asked Greentree to support the effort at $15,000 a year and the session agreed. Other churches agreed to support the church plant, some by paying the seminary tuition of the CP as he attended Covenant Seminary.
Church Planting Internship
It all seemed very tidy, until September of 2018. That’s when a pastor of one of the “Network” churches mentioned to me that the CP would be an intern at Greentree. I tried to clarify that he would *not* be an employee of Greentree but of the “Network.” The pastor gently pushed back and claimed Tom had told the “Network” that the CP would be employed at Greentree. I asked if he had a written record of this and he did in the form of an email. At this point in my working relationship with Tom, I had experienced enough of his “loose relationship with the truth”[4] to ask for documentation of important communication. The pastor sent me a copy. My very next supervisory meeting with Tom, I asked if the CP would be employed at Greentree.
“No, he will work for the network.”
I countered: “______ said you told him CP would work for Greentree.”
“He is mistaken.”
“I have an email from you saying as much. Would you like me to show you?”
“Uh… no… no… yes, CP is an employee of Greentree.”
It turns out, the “Network” was not a legal entity. It was simply a group of pastors agreeing to have their churches give money to Greentree to support a new church plant. It had no more institutional standing than a book club. I strongly encouraged Tom to inform session about CP being an employee of our church and he said he would. He failed to do so and in fact never voluntarily informed session that Greentree was functioning as the financial agent for the CP’s internship.
My sense of obligation to Tom was still quite strong at this point. I wanted to see him succeed. But there was a growing tension within me. I wanted to believe Tom was sincere in his relationship with me but my gut was telling me I was being played. A wooden interpretation of 1 Cor. 13: 7 (“[Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres….”) led me to endure and hope my gut was wrong.
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[1] Church Health Panel Discussion | Wednesday, June 19, 2024, around the 10:50 mark, https://youtu.be/Q3_uBS7n374?si=GknBpTKP8noQTRJ3
[2] You can find the recordings of the 2024 EPC General Assembly here: https://epc.org/ga/ga2023recordings/
[3] I want to make this absolutely clear; I have always been supportive of this urban church plant and its church planter. In fact, I was often seeking to fix problems created by Tom Ricks overreaching or flat out lying to involved parties so the project would succeed.
[4] This is how one lay minister at Greentree described Tom very early in my tenure there. At the time, I dismissed as friendly ribbing about how Tom could be imprecise in his language.

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The Big Difficult: Louisiana & The Ten Commandments

The ten commandments were not given as a means to self-righteous achievement, reward and pride that often seems to be the goal of public displays.  Rather, they were given as a consequence of the humbling gift of deliverance from slavery to sin in order to teach God’s people how to live in freedom.  The Ten Commandments were given as a manual for freedom for those who were set free by the grace of God.

Here we go again with the Ten Commandments.  Recent Louisiana state law requires that these commandments be posted in all state supported educational institutions.  Perhaps a few comments will help in forming a constructive response to this situation.
First, and most important: the foundational element of the ten commandments is almost always missing from public discourse and display.  This most important element is the preface: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery”.  The ten commandments were not given as a means to self-righteous achievement, reward and pride that often seems to be the goal of public displays.  Rather, they were given as a consequence of the humbling gift of deliverance from slavery to sin in order to teach God’s people how to live in freedom.  The Ten Commandments were given as a manual for freedom for those who were set free by the grace of God.
Many have tried to keep the ten commandments in their own strength and for their own glory, and every one of them has failed miserably.  “Don’t try this at home!” should be attached to every display.  You will either resort to pretentious hypocrisy or give up in despair.  Read about Martin Luther’s prodigious efforts to keep the commandments, his utter failure, his hellish despair and his rescue in Christ.  Note that the Beatitudes of Christ extend these blessings with an even deeper freedom.
Jesus Christ is the only one who could and did keep these commandments perfectly.  As such, He alone can rescue us from slavery to our sin and for freedom in His righteousness.  In His death, He paid off the penalty of the violations of the commandments for all who trust Him.  His resurrection proves that He also paid up the dues of obedience to the commandments for all who give themselves wholeheartedly to Him.  He is the true Passover Lamb who was perfect and without blemish and who was sacrificed so that the people of God would be freed from slavery to sin in Egypt and freed for obedience to righteousness in the Promised Land as outlined in the ten commandments.  He gives believers His Holy Spirit to empower us through His means of grace (word & sacrament with praise & prayer, all in the fellowship of the visible church) to enjoy this freedom in obedience.
Second, our national founders assumed the ten commandments as the standard for self-government by every citizen.  John Adams knew that our republic could not endure without adherence to the faith and life outlined in these commandments.  Thomas Jefferson knew that our nation would be judged according to this standard.  These convictions are evident in the prominence of Moses and the ten commandments in our national architecture and symbols such as in the Supreme Court building.  If we reject all this, we need to break out the jackhammers and chisels to remove these things, not simply prevent more displays.
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John Owen’s Theology of Public Worship

Owen cared about worshiping the triune God properly. His theology of public worship is established on the triune God and beholding him by faith now. It’s practiced in a church’s worship service by actively communing with Christ—by looking at him—through the prescribed ordinances of worship found in God’s Word. Expressing spiritual affections by faith in God is the way to abide in Christ, to have communion with him. 

The 17th-century “Prince of Puritans,” John Owen (1616–83), committed his life to the work of ministry as a pastor, theologian, vice chancellor, chaplain, and statesman. He desired to worship the triune God freely—without any external regulations not explicitly found in Scripture.
What was Owen’s theology of public worship, and how should it be practiced in a worship service?
Behold the Glory of God for Worship
Owen regularly taught that worship, private or public, is beholding God’s glory. This glory motivates and creates worship, and for Owen, this all centers on the person of Christ.
“Some men speak much of the imitation of Christ, and following his example,” Owen explains. “But no man shall ever become ‘like unto him’ by bare imitation of his actions, without that view or intuition of his glory which alone is accompanied with a transforming power to change them into the same image.”
Through this “view or intuition of [Christ’s] glory,” Christians begin to be conformed to the Son’s image (Rom. 8:29). This is why the nature of worship is connected not to the external works one does but to the heart’s affections. The inevitable result is worshipful action—a life of holiness. Owen wants people to truly see Christ’s beauty as the theological foundation and motivation for worship.
Worship on the Lord’s Day
For Owen, the Lord’s Day is a continuation of the fourth commandment in the Old Testament—to keep the Sabbath.
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