Growing in Christ
John Flavel
His Providence Controlled by Promises
07 months ago
In the opening pages of John Flavel’s The Mystery of Providence, he makes a comment that helps me see how the Bible affects me today.
Rom 8:28, “and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.” For it is certain, no ship at sea keeps more exactly by the compass which directs its course, than providence doth by that promise, which is its Cynosura and Pole-star.
The promises of God are woven into my life with the precision of the sovereign, loving, providential hand of my Father in Heaven. They aren’t scattered, waiting for me to gamble their power. God aims his promises, like a ship kept on course with a compass, to effectually work their power in my life. God’s aiming and guiding of his promises from Scripture into me is his providence. What else would he do for his beloved in Christ Jesus?
Not only is providence the means of God’s promises meeting me, but providence is controlled by the promises of God. The Lord is good and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. This means that my son waking up at 12am and staying awake for 3 hours is controlled in God’s providential hand by his promises to be good and gracious. That is, my dear soul, that you aren’t being flicked by the Lord, but loved. Loved so much that God’s providence demands you meet God’s promises in your most desperate moments.
A Prayer
I am humbled, O Lord, that you care for the intimate details of my life. You are good and gracious, and teach me your character and promises by your orchestration of my life. You guide my life to know your promises as true and real, and to follow the lines of your promises as they draw your face, that I may know you. O Father, teach me to see your providential care to know your promises more intimately today, that I may be prepared to meet you face to face when, by your plan, death comes to me, and that I might be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, your best and brightest promise.
Amen.
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Photo source.
New e-book: The Fountain of Life by John Flavel
28 months ago
The aim of every Christian’s heart should treasure with increasing delight the glory of Jesus Christ in their daily life. This desire ekes through every Apostle’s writings from Paul to John. One of the best ways we can do this apart from reading and meditating on Scripture is the reading of good sermons and books about the glory of Jesus Christ. To that end, John Flavel penned (and preached) one of his most infamous and famous works, The Fountain of Life. I’ve been working through it over the last couple years (a sermon here, a sermon there) and am about to finish it. There are several sermons in it that I have starred to reread again (if not the whole thing). Flavel has served my soul immensely (and become a good friend along the way, a beloved dead-pastor). In this digital age, I thought it would be helpful to convert it into e-book format, and have made my file available here, free, at no charge. Of course, you can buy the printed volume along with the rest of his works here. But in the mean time while you’re saving up, if you have the desire to have your soul fed with grand and glorious visions of Jesus Christ, here is his Fountain of Life in e-book format. (Click the picture for download. If you have any problems, please comment.)
Jesus, Hell, and the Love of God
09 months ago
Hell is a rather popular topic of controversy today. In the little that I’ve read in the discussion, most focus on human value and the victory of the love of God, with little seriousness about the sufferings of Christ. On this point in particular, my (dead) friend John Flavel has helped me deeply. C.S. Lewis commented that reading people outside of our own times and controversies helps bring the issues at stake into perspective through the wisdom of those who have gone (and thought) before us.
The sermon I’m quoting from is from The Fountain of Life. In this chapter Flavel is preaching on John 19:28
“After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, said–I thirst!“
Of the many things he has to say on this passage (which you can read online for free here), these are the sections that I found most helpful in bring the matter of Hell and the sufferings of Christ into clearer focus.
If our mercies must be pure mercies, and our glory in heaven pure and unmixed glory, then the wrath which lie suffered must be pure and unmixed wrath. (I: 423)
None of the damned had ever so large a capacity to take in a full sense of the wrath of God as Christ had. The larger any one’s capacity is to understand and weigh his troubles fully, the more grievous and heavy is his burden. If a man cast vessels of greater and lesser quantity into the sea, though all will be full, yet the greater the vessel is, the more water it contains. Now Christ had a capacity beyond all mere creatures to take in the wrath of his Father; and what deep and large apprehensions he had of it may be judged by his bloody sweat in the garden, which was the effect of his mere apprehensions of the wrath of God. Christ was a large vessel indeed; as he is capable of more glory, so of more sense and misery than any other person in the world. (I: 423-424)
The sufferings of Christ for sin give us the true account, and fullest representation of its evil. “The law (says one) is a bright glass, wherein we may see the evil of sin; but there is the red glass of the sufferings of Christ, and in that we may see more of the evil of sin, than if God should let us down to hell, and there we should see all the tortures and torments of the damned. If we should see them how they lie sweltering under God’s wrath there, it were not so much as the beholding of sin through the red glass of the sufferings of Christ.”
If we should see and hear all this, it is not so much as what we may see in this text, where the Son of God, under his sufferings for it, cries out, I thirst. For, as I showed you before, Christ’s sufferings, in divers respects, were beyond theirs. O then, let not your vain heart slight sin, as if it were but a small thing! If ever God show you the face of sin in this glass, you will say, there is not such another horrid representation to be made to a man in all the world. Fools make a mock at sin, but wise men tremble at it. (I: 425-426)
A penal thirst, is God’s just denying of all refreshments or relief to sinners in their extremities, and that as a due punishment for their sin. This believers shall never feel, because when Christ thirsted upon the cross, he made full satisfaction to God in their room. These sufferings of Christ, as they were ordained for them, so the benefits of them are truly imputed to them. And for the natural thirst, that shall be satisfied: for in heaven we shall live without these necessities and dependencies upon the creature; we shall be equal with the angels in the way and manner of living and subsisting…Luke 20:6. And for the gracious thirsting of their souls for God, it shall be fully satisfied. So it is promised, Mat. 5:6. “Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled:” They shall then depend no more upon the stream, but drink from the overflowing fountain itself, Psalm. 36:8 “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of your house, and you shall make them drink of the river of your pleasures: for with you is the fountain of life, and in Your light shall we see light:” There they shall drink and praise, and praise and drink for evermore; all their thirsty desires shall be filled with complete satisfaction. O how desirable a state is heaven upon this account! and how should we be restless until we come there; as the thirsty traveler is until he meet that cool, refreshing spring he wants and seeks for. This present state is a state of thirsting, that to come of refreshment and satisfaction. Some drops indeed come from the fountain by faith, hut they quench not the believer’s thirst; rather like water sprinkled on the fire, they make it burn the more: but there the thirsty soul has enough.
O bless God, that Jesus Christ thirsted under the heat of his wrath once, that you might not be scorched with it forever. If he had not cried, I thirst, you must have cried out of thirst eternally, and never be satisfied. (I: 428-429)
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Image from Tony Reinke’s Flickr feed.
He thinks on us, when we forget him
01 year ago
Our home has been a little crazy lately (for reasons enumerated at my wife’s blog), so I’ve been sparse in reading and posting. So when these sort of times come up, I go to the bare basics. In times like these I need something that going to easily instruct and encourage me to love Jesus, so I turn to my good friend John Flavel. I’ve been working through the last quarter of Volume 1 of Flavel’s works, which is a collection of sermons he preached on the glory of Jesus Christ, his person and work. (Side note: Isn’t it telling about the center of the Puritan’s theology that both Owen and Flavel had an entire volume – the first in their works – devoted to the glory of Jesus Christ?) I’ve been working on a few sermons here or there from this volume over the last few years, and have always found it deeply edifying.
As I was reviewing some of what I’d underlined earlier in the volume, I came across this gem:
I’ve shared this with a couple friends and each responded that it was convicting. I agree, it is convicting, but the encouragement I drew from it was two fold:
- The King of the Universe bothers to lovingly fix this thoughts on me. I can think of a lot things more preferable to think upon than this weak heap of a man… But then again, God’s wisdom isn’t my thinking. I think this is what they call grace.
- Though I do not think and rest my thoughts upon God as I ought through the day – being diverted by every little thing, whim, preference, tweet, hint of an e-mail, etc. God designed my soul to think upon him without burden as a bird isn’t burdened by its wings. As naturally as a bird spreads it wings to get its desire, so my soul was designed to think upon God to get its happiness in God through every moment of the day.
Should we be convicted of our little we think upon God, let us take hope that He who who never diverts His thoughts from us the very one”who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).
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Picture taken from Tony Reinke‘s flick feed.
Jesus Christ and Him Crucified
03 years ago
I did a mini-paper outline for a men’s meeting this past week on the person of Christ and the atonement (hence the tittle). For the outline I pulled some quotes from my past reading. I’ve put them bellow headed by their subject they were set under for the outline. My reflections on them to follow tomorrow.
The Person of Christ
“Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.” ~ John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion 2:13:4
The Hypostatic Union of Christ’s Natures
“A man that holds in his hand a sword sheathed, when he pleaseth, draws forth the sword; but still holds that in one hand, and the sheath in the other, and then sheaths it again, still holding it in his hand: so when Christ died, his soul and body retained their union with the divine nature, though not (during that space) one with another.” ~ John Flavel, Works 1:78
“The human nature did what was necessary in its kind; it gave the matter of the sacrifice: the divine nature stampt the dignity and value upon it, which made it adequate compensation: so that it was the acts of God-man…”it was God that redeemed the church with his own blood” (Acts 22:28). If God redeem with his own blood, he redeems as God-man, without any dispute.” John Flavel, Works 1:179
The Cause of Christ’s Atonement
“God is love. But the supreme object of that love is himself. And because he loves himself supremely he cannot suffer what belongs to the integrity of his character and glory to be compromised or curtailed. That is the reason for the propitiation. God appeases his own holy wrath in the cross of Christ in order that the purpose of his love to lost men may be accomplished in accordance with and to the vindication of all the perfections that constitute his glory” John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 32.
The Necessity of Christ’s Atonement
“If we keep in view the gravity of sin and the exigencies arising from the holiness of god which must be met in salvation from it, then the doctrine of the indispensable necessity [of the cross] makes Calvary intelligible to us and enhances the incomprehensible marvel of both Calvary itself and the sovereign purpose of love which Calvary fulfilled. The more we emphasize the inflexible demands of justice and holiness the more marvelous become the love of god and its provisions.” John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 18.
The Nature of Christ’s Atonement
“Christ’s obedience was vicarious in the bearing of the full judgment of God upon sin, and it was vicarious in the full dischargement of the demands of righteousness. His obedience becomes the ground of the remission of sin and of actual justification” John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 22.
Grace Tried is Glory in its Infancy
03 years ago
As we have not far to carry it, and Christ carries the heaviest part; yes, all the burden for us; yes, us and our burden too; so, in the last place, it is reviving to think what an innumerable multitude of blessings and mercies are the fruit and offspring of a sanctified cross. Since that tree was so richly watered with the blood of Christ; what store of choice, and rich fruits does it bear to believers?
Our sufferings (says one) are washed in the blood of Christ, as well as our souls. “For Christ’s merits bought a blessing to the crosses of the sons of God. Our troubles owe us a free passage through him. Devils, and men, and crosses, are our debtors; and death, and all storms are our debtors, to blow our poor tossed bark over the water freight free: and to set the travelers in their own known ground. Therefore we shall die, and yet live. – I know no man has a velvet cross, but the cross is made of what God will have it; but verily, howbeit, it be no warrentable market to buy a cross, yet I dare not say, O that I had liberty to sell Christ’s cross, lest therewith also I should sell joy, comfort, sense of love, patience, and the kind visits of a bridegroom. I have but small experience of sufferings for Christ, but let my Judge and witness in heaven, lay my soul in the balance of justice; if I find not a young heaven, and a little paradise of glorious comforts, and soul-delighting love-kisses of Christ in suffering for him and his truth. – My prison is my palace, my sorrow is with child of joy; my losses are rich losses, my pain easy pain, my heavy days are holy days and happy days. I may tell a new tale of Christ to my friends. O what owe I to the file, and to the hammer, and to the furnace of my Lord Jesus! who has now let me see how good the wheat of Christ is, that goes through his mill, and his oven, to be made bread for his own table. Grace tried is better than grace, and more than grace. It is glory in its infancy.”
“Who knows the truth of grace without a trial. – O how little gets Christ of us, but what he wins (to speak so) with much toil and pains? And how soon would faith freeze without a cross? Bear your cross therefore with joy.”
John Flavel, Works 1:331
There is not much to add here, I believe Flavel speaks for himself on this quote. I have been so struck by the line: “Grace tried is better than grace and more than grace. It is glory in its infancy.” What a profoundly helpful insight and perspective as Christians suffer. We see this perspective of grace in trial being filled with and propelling glory in Jesus’ words recorded by John: “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you…” (John 15:20) and regarding this, he prays to his Father, “All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them…I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world…Sanctify themin the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctifiedin truth” (John 17:10,14,17,18). Oh, how Christ is glorified by grace enriched in our lives under trial, where his strength and glory are magnified in our weakness, which gives us a stronger taste for heaven!
Christ Bears the Heaviest End of Our Cross
03 years ago
As we shall carry the cross of Christ but a little way, so Christ himself bears the heaviest end of it. And as one happily expresses, he says of their crosses, half mine. He divideth sufferings with them, and takes the largest share to himself. “O how sweet a sight (says one sweetly) is it to see a cross between Christ and us. To hear our Redeemer say, at every sigh, at every blow, and eatery loss of a believer, half mine. For they are called the sufferings of Christ, and the reproach of Christ, Col. 2:24. Heb. 11:26. As when two are partners or owners of a ship, half of the gain, and half of the loss, belongs to either of the two. So Christ in our sufferings, is half gainer, and half loser, with us: yes, the heaviest end of the black tree lies on your Lord. It falls first upon him, and but rebounds from him upon you:” “The reproaches of them that reproached you, are fallen upon me,” Psalm. 69:9. Nay, so speak as the thing is, Christ does not only bear half, or the better part, but the whole of our cross and burden. Yes, he bears all, and more than all; for he bears us and our burden too, or else we would quickly sink, and faint under it.
John Flavel, Works 1:330-331.
When in suffering, we are not alone in Christ. Those outside of him bear their whole cross, but those who belong to Christ bear only half, and their half they hold up is by his own strength. It does not feel this way many times in our trials, but the spiritual and supernatural reality of the Christian life does not necessarily feel more than natural to them. Christian suffering does not mean that the suffering is not real. Rather, it means the Christian sees it as all the more real, and with a sobered mind by the victory of Christ on the cross they take the suffering as evidence for their need for Christ and his returning. Thus, Christ bears half our cross, and yet he bears the whole thing.
(As a note here, I’ve updated the post for yesterday’s Flavel quote Sorrow And The Saints Are Not Married.)
Sorrow and The Saints Are Not Married
03 years ago
It should be enough to me (says a holy one) that Christ will have joy and sorrow halfers of the life of the saints. And that each of them should have a share of our days, as the night and day are kindly partners of time, and take it up between them. But if sorrow be the greediest halfer of our days here, I know joy’s day shall dawn, and do more than recompense all our sad hours.
Let my Lord Jesus, (since he will do so) weave my bit-and-span length of time with white and black; well and woe. – Let the rose be neighbor with the thorn. – “When we are over the water, Christ shall cry, down crosses, and up heaven for evermore; down hell, and down death, and down sin, and down sorrow; and up glory, up life, up joy for evermore. It is true, Christ and his cross are not separable in this life; howbeit Christ and his cross part at heaven’s door: for there is no house room for crosses in heaven. One tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble cannot find lodging there.” – Sorrow and the saints are not married together! or suppose it was so, heaven shall make a divorce. Life is but short, and therefore crosses cannot be long. Our sufferings are but for a while, 1 Pet. 5:10. They are but the sufferings of the present time, Rom. 8:18.”
John Flavel, Works 1:330
I found this section from Flavel very helpful in reflecting on different aspects of Jesus’ command: “take up your cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Flavel begins by making the simple observation about the Christian life: half of it is suffering, half of it is joy. If you were side-lined by what “halfers” meant as I would, that’s what he intended (and not “heifers” – which is how I initially read it in my head; it made for an odd reading). This I believe is part of what Paul means when he says that the Christian is “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10). But Flavel makes the observation that sorrow will pass, and glory and joy will fill our view and hearts for all eternity.
This is where he steps into saying that while the saint may seem to be married to perpetual suffering and sorrow they will divorce that sorrow when stepping into glory. One can’t help but think of Jesus Christ “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2), suffering, sorrow, and an “unfruitful ministry” was his life. (Do we ever stop to pause and reflect on how we have the tendency to point to massively fruitful ministers as the ideal for ministry and forget that Jesus himself saw maybe a couple hundred true followers in his life? Thankfully I’ve heard Piper, Chandler, etc. address this from the stage God’s given them. There’s no delusions in their minds on this issue, but what about us who watch and see them?)
Oh that I would meditate more on how short life is, and how small these sufferings are compared to the glory they are presently working in me and preparing me for in the final coming of Jesus Christ.
God’s Holy Providence
03 years ago
The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and kind in all his works.
~ Psalm 145:17
John Flavel comments on this verse that, just as you cannot separate heat from a sunbeam, so you cannot separate holiness from God’s works. Quite a powerful thought to mediate upon. This means that even the car wreck, the kidney stone, the death of a spouse/child, the difficult conversation, are all superseded by the kind hand of God, and are the perfect actions that God designs for us in his kindness and holiness. It adds a different dimension to providence in my mind to see “holiness” as a part of providence. It’s not just that our Father is ordaining what happens, but in his holiness he designs our days in all their apparent chaos. It is, I think, only in the Gospel that we know this for sure, and in fact find it clearly taught. This is what Paul meant when he followed “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” later on with “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” in Romans 8. In God’s holiness he works all things for his glory, and our good. I tend to think, functionally at least, that God is ambivalent in his providence, and only rarely think of his Fatherly kindness and holiness in his actions. How often my heart goes to viewing God as though he’s coldly ordaining my life. But his holiness designs my days, designs my life. His holiness upholds his glory; and he acts in his holiness upon my life to bring me to delight in him for that same glory he desires. What a big, expansive, quaking view of God.
Prayer for Jesus Christ – Flavel
04 years ago
This is a prayer I read in a chapter of Flavel last night. My meager introduction to it is that it’s smack in the middle of a great chapter on Christ’s priesthood, how he particularly cares for his people, and draws them into knowing him. I love this prayer, and it speaks for itself:
Oh (cried one) what would I give to have a bed made to my wearied soul in Christ’s bosom? – I cannot tell you what sweet pain and delightful torments are in his love; I often challenge time for holding us asunder; I profess to you, I have no rest till I be over head and ears in love’s ocean. If Christ’s love (that fountain of delights) were laid open to me as I would wish, O how overcome would this my soul be! I half call his absence cruel; and the mask and veil on his face a cruel covering, that hideth such a fair, fair face from a sick soul. I dare not challenge himself, but his absence is a mountain of iron upon my heavy heart. O when shall we meet! How long is the dawning of the marriage-day! O sweet Lord Jesus, take wide steps! O my lord, come over mountains at one stride! O my beloved, flee like a roe, or a young hart upon the mountains of separation! O if he would fold the heavens together like an old cloak, and shovel time and days out of the way, and make ready in haste the Lamb’s wife for her husband! Since he looked upon me, my heart is not mine own. ~ John Flavel, Works 1:196.
