Tuesdays with Edwards!
In May of 1734 Edwards took on the oft given objection of young people, that “religion…[is]…a very dull, melancholy thing, and think, if they embrace it, that they must have done in a great measure with their pleasures” (page 89). Translation: Christianity = a joyless, boring, lame life. Edwards could not disagree more.
In this section, Edwards argues that if finding love and friendship is one of the things you are looking for, the ultimate place to find it is in living a life of love with Christ.
You can find the sermon, Youth and the Pleasures of Piety, on the Jonathan Edwards Center website at www.edwards.yale.edu and in Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, ed. M. X. Lesser, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 19 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). Today’s post can be found on pages 83-84 in that volume.
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By walking in the ways of religion and virtue, young people will obtain the sweetest delights of love and friendship. A life of true religion and virtue is a life of divine love, a life of love to God, which love affords greater pleasures far than that of earthly love: a life of love is the sweetest life in the world, but no love affords such pleasures as love to God. Divine love is an affection that is of a more sublime and excellent nature than love to an earthly object: it is a purer flame, and the pleasure that it affords is a purer stream.
They that live a life of true religion and virtue, they live a life of love to the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a most dear friendship between him and them. Their souls are espoused to Christ, their hearts are knit to him, and their love has an infinitely more beautiful and lovely object than that of earthly lovers. And their love is not despised, but accepted of Christ; they may freely have access to Christ at all times to express their love. Canticles 8:1, “O that thou wert my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.” As those that walk in the ways of religion and virtue do love this glorious person, so they are loved by him. This divine love is always mutual: there is love on both sides.
The love of Christ to them don’t fall short of theirs to him, but indeed greatly exceeds it, vastly exceeds the love of any earthly lover. And Christ has given greater manifestations of love to those that love [him] than ever any earthly friend did to the object of his love; for he has died for them, and so has rescued them from eternal destruction, and has purchased for them eternal glory.
Those young people therefore that live a life of love to Christ, they spend their youth the most pleasantly of any persons in the world. 1 Peter 1:7–8, “That your faith might be found to praise and glory at the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 