Latest / Reformed Thinking / All the Graces of Christianity Connected (1 Corinthians 13:7) | Jonathan Edwards

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All the Graces of Christianity Connected (1 Corinthians 13:7) | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome back to Reform Thinking. It is Saturday, February 14th,
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2026. And for those of you maybe
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glancing at your calendars with a sudden spike in heart rate,
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yes, it is Valentine's Day. If you forgot the reservation,
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well, consider this your two-minute warning.
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The one day a year where the price of a rose defies all known
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laws of supply and demand. It's quite something it.
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Is it's the day of romance, red hearts and you know, inevitably
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the love chapter. If you step into a church
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wedding or even just scroll through your social media feed
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today, you are going to hit a wall of First Corinthians 13.
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Oh, absolutely. Love is patient, love is kind.
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It's the standard text. It is the gold standard for
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anything related to love in a Christian context.
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But because we are who we are, and because we like to look at
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things through a, well, a theological lens, we are going
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to talk about Cupid today. Or even in the more sentimental
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side of this text. No, we're doing deep dive into a
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sermon by the Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards.
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The title is All the Graces of Christianity Connected.
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And this is not the sermon you hear at a typical wedding, I can
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promise you that. This is Edwards taking that
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famous, beloved chapter and using it to inspect the very
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foundation of the Christian soul.
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It just completely flips the script.
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Usually we hear First Corinthians 13 and we
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immediately think about how to be nicer to our spouses or maybe
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our neighbors. Edwards reads it, and he sees a
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structural engineering report. That's a great way to put it,
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He. Argues that you cannot pick and
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choose virtues. You can't be a faith person but
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not a love person. You know you can't decide to
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specialize in hope and just sort of ignore humility.
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That is the core thesis right there.
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Edwards argues that Christianity is a unified Organism, a living
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thing. It is an all or nothing package.
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And the reason this matters, especially for us, coming from a
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Reformed perspective, is that it addresses a massive and I think
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often unspoken anxiety. Anxiety of assurance.
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Exactly. The question of is my faith
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real? You know, am I actually one of
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the elect or am I just deceiving myself?
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We talk a lot about justification by faith alone,
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and that is absolutely true. But Edwards is helping us answer
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the follow up question, How do I know I have that saving faith?
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Right, the subjective part. The subjective part.
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He provides a diagnostic tool here that is frankly rigorous,
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but it cuts through the fog of what people today might call
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imposter syndrome. And in doing that, it exposes
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the danger of what we might call partial morality, the idea that
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I can somehow balance my spiritual books by being really
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good at theology while being, you know, terrible at kindness.
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Edward says that is mathematically impossible in the
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Kingdom of God. So it's not just a bad look,
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it's a logical impossibility. It is if the virtues are not
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connected. They are not Christian virtues.
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They are something else entirely.
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Maybe just moralism or temperament, but not grace.
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So let's get into the text. Edward starts right in the
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middle of the chapter of First Corinthians 13, verse 7.
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Charity believeth all things, hopeth all things.
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OK, now just pause there. Think about how that is usually
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preached. If I say love believes all
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things in a say, a marriage counseling session, what am I
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saying? What does that mean to?
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You. It means don't be suspicious.
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You know, If my wife is late coming home, I shouldn't assume
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she's up to no good. I should give her the benefit of
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the doubt. It means being charitable about
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someone's reputation, thinking the best of them.
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That is the standard interpretation.
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It implies a sort of default optimism about other people, a
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refusal to be cynical. A nice way to live.
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A very nice way to live. But Edwards looks at that and,
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well, he just rejects it. OK, why?
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It seems like a pretty decent way to interpret that verse.
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It does. But Edwards is a precise
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thinker. He's a close reader of the text.
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He looks just two sentences prior at verse 5, where Paul
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says charity thinketh no evil, right.
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So if believeth all things in verse 7 just means thinking the
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best of people, then Paul's repeating himself.
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He's saying the exact same thing twice in the same breath.
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And Edwards assumes the Holy Spirit is efficient with words.
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There's no fluff in Scripture. Exactly.
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Scripture doesn't stutter, so Edwards argues that something
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else must be going on. He argues that Paul is shifting
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gears here. He moves from how love treats a
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neighbor to how love relates to God himself.
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Wait, OK, so he's saying the object of the believing and
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hoping changes. Precisely, he argues that love
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or charity, the old word for it, cherishes and promotes the other
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theological graces. So when the text says believeth
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all things, it isn't talking about being gullible about my
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neighbor, it's talking about believing God.
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It's talking about the theological grace of faith.
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Correct. And hope with all things is not
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wishful thinking about a person's behavior.
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It is referring to biblical hope in God and His promises.
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And the context supports that. The context is everything here.
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Edwards points out that Paul groups these three together
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constantly. Look at the end of the chapter
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and now abide of Faith, Hope, charity.
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These 3 When they appear as a trio, Faith and hope are always
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vertical. They're always directed at God.
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You don't have saving faith in your neighbor.
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No, you have faith in Christ. You don't place your eternal
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hope in another fallen human being, You place it in God's
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covenant promises. So Edward's question is why
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would we suddenly change the definition of faith and hope for
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this one verse verse seven, only to change it back again in verse
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13? Right.
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It makes no sense. The most consistent reading is
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that if faith and hope mean trust in God at the end of the
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chapter, they probably mean trust in God in the middle of it
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too. This means Paul is saying that
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love is the very engine that drives faith and hope.
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Wow, that is a massive shift. It takes the verse out of the
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realm of, like you said, being a nice guy, and puts it squarely
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into the realm of how a saved soul actually functions.
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And from that one piece of exegesis, Edwards builds his
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entire doctrine for the sermon. And here it is.
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The graces of Christianity are all connected together and
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mutually dependent on each other.
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And to make it stick, he uses the analogy of a chain.
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It's a simple image, but it's powerful.
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Just hold it in your mind for a second.
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Imagine a heavy iron chain hanging from a beam in a barn.
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Each link is distinct, right? The top link is not the bottom
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link. They occupy different spaces.
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They might look slightly different from wear and tear,
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but they are fused together. And if I take a bolt cutter to
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one link, let's call it the humility link, I don't just lose
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humility. You lose the connection to the
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beam, the whole chain falls in a heap on the floor.
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It's over. You cannot have the faith link
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just suspended in midair without the Love link holding it, which
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is held by the patients link and so on.
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So if one is genuinely absent. The whole thing is scrap metal.
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It's not a chain of grace anymore.
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It's just a collection of disconnected virtues that can't
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bear any weight. That is heavy.
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That is really heavy because I think we all tend to
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compartmentalize. We look at our spiritual lives
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like AI. Don't know a report card.
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I got an A in theology AB in church attendance.
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But man, I got an F in patience this week, Edwards is saying.
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You can't fail one subject and still pass the grade.
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Well, we have to be careful with the word fail because we all
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sin. We all have moments of
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impatience. But yes, he is saying, you
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cannot have a complete void in one subject.
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You cannot have the total absence of patience and the
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genuine presence of saving faith.
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In his view, those are mutually exclusive states.
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OK, so let's break down the mechanics of this.
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Then how did these graces actually coexist?
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Edward says. First off, they just always go
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together where one is the others are.
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Right, that's his first point. It's just an observation of fact
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based on scripture. He's not even getting into the
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how yet, just the what. So again, to clarify, if I have
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genuine saving faith, I automatically in that moment of
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conversion also have humility and love and patience.
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Yes, that's his claim. He backs us up with Scripture.
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For example, Psalm 147 verse 11. The Lord taketh pleasure in them
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that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy.
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Look at that pairing. Fear and hope.
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Seems strange, doesn't? It Yeah, they seem like total
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opposites. Fear implies trembling, pulling
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back. Hope implies reaching out
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expecting good. But in the Christian life, they
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are fused. The fear he's talking about here
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is not slavish terror. It's a high view of God.
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It's reverence. It's awe.
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It's the feeling you get when you see God as he truly is,
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immense, holy, sovereign. And it is precisely that vision
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of a big God that makes his mercy a reliable thing to hope
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in. OK, so you can't hope in a God
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you don't respect, and you can't rightly fear God in this sense
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without fleeing to Him for hope. They feed each other.
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There are two sides of the same perception of God.
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Or think of first John 4.20. I mean that is the hammer drop.
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It really is. If a man say I love God and
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hateth his brother, he is a liar.
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And the language is so absolute, it doesn't say he's confused or
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he is working on it or he has a blind spot.
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No, it says he is a liar. The claim itself is fraudulent.
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You cannot have the vertical grace, that love for God,
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without the horizontal grace, the love for people.
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The presence of 1 proves the presence of the other, and the
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absence of 1 proves the absence of the other.
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OK, so the roommates, they always show up together.
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But Edwards goes deeper than that.
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He talks about a circular relationship.
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He says they actually generate each other.
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Yes, this is the causality loop. This is the really dynamic part.
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We usually think linearly. A causes BI believe in God,
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therefore I love God. But in the life of the soul it's
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more complex. A causes B&B, turns around and
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reinforces A. So take faith and love.
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I usually think of it in that linear way.
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I have faith in Jesus and because of that faith I learned
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to love Him. And that is true.
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That direction is absolutely correct.
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Faith reveals God's character from Scripture.
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You see that he is good, that he is merciful, that he is strong
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and wise. And you can't help but love a
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being like that. Faith lights the fire of love.
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But Edward says flip it around. Love also promotes faith, yes?
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How does that work? How does love build faith?
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Well, just think about it. In human relationships, are you
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more likely to trust a total stranger on the street or
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someone you deeply love, like your wife or your child?
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Someone I love. Obviously my affection for them
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creates a a bias toward trust. I want to believe them.
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Exactly. Love predisposes the heart to
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believe. If you love God, you're inclined
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to trust His promises. You want them to be true.
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A cold, detached heart is skeptical by nature, but a
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loving heart is a trusting heart.
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So you see the loop. Faith ignites love by showing
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God's loveliness, and then love adds fuel to the fire of faith
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by making the heart tender and trusting.
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It's like a perpetual motion machine of the Spirit.
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It is, and he applies the same logic to hope as well.
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And this is where he brings in the spirit of adoption from
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Romans. It's a beautiful picture.
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The child analogy. Yes, Romans 8.15 we have
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received the spirit of adoption whereby we pray ABBA.
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Father Edwards argues that it is the grace of love that creates
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this childlike dynamic. If you truly love God, you stop
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seeing him primarily as a judge or a king, and you start seeing
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him as a father. OK, now what is the natural
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psychological state of a small child with a good, loving,
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competent father? Security.
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Total security. An expectation of good things.
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My dad will fix it. My dad will feed me.
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My dad will protect me. That expectation is hope.
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The child doesn't lie awake at night worrying about the
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mortgage or the electric bill. They have hope because they have
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a loving relationship with the provider.
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So Love casts out what Edwards calls slavish fear, the terror
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of a criminal before a judge, and replaces it with filial
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boldness. Filial meaning son like or
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daughter. Like, right, it's the boldness
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of a son asking for bread that is biblical hope.
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So if you are out there and you're struggling with anxiety,
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if your hope link feels weak and rusty, Edwards would ask, how is
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your view of the Father? Do you love him as a father?
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Because if you fix the relationship, if you stir up
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your love for God as Father, the anxiety often resolves itself.
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It all connects back to the tribulation sequence in Romans
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5, doesn't it? Tribulation worketh patience and
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patience. Experience and experience.
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Hope. It's a perfect chain reaction.
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And notice how that sequence ends.
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And hope maketh not ashamed because the love of God is shed
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abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.
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You go through the grinder of suffering.
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You learn to be patient. That gives you a track record
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experience of God's faithfulness.
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That track record gives you hope.
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And that hope is ultimately grounded in and sustained by
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love. It is all one system.
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I want to focus on humility for a moment because as I was
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reading the sermon, humility seems to be the secret sauce.
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It's it's everywhere. It's like the oil and the
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machine. That's a great way to think of
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it. Humility is the underlying
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posture of every single genuine grace, Edwards argues.
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You literally cannot have a Christian virtue without it.
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Take any grace. Strip humility away and it
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ceases to be a grace. So faith requires humility.
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It's an absolute necessity. I mean, what is faith?
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At its core, it is looking outside of yourself for
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salvation. It is the act of saying I cannot
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save myself. My own righteousness is filthy
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rags. I am utterly dependent.
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That is a profound act of humiliation.
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Self-sufficiency is the enemy of faith.
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It's the polar opposite. You cannot truly trust God until
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you truly distrust yourself. OK, what about love?
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How does love require humility? Well, the text itself says love
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vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.
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Proud love isn't love. It's patronage, it's
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condescension, it's looking down on someone.
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True love esteems others better than oneself.
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And what about repentance? Well, you certainly can't repent
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while holding on to your pride, that's for sure.
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Impossible. To repent is to say I was wrong.
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I am vile, I deserve wrath. That is the very essence of
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humility. So.
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If you meet someone who claims to have great faith or great
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theological insight, but they're arrogant, they're puffed up.
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Then their faith is a counterfeit.
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It might be intellectual ascent, it might be a deep knowledge of
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the facts of the gospel, but it is not the living grace of
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faith, because that grace is always clothed in humility.
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This leads to his Third Point on the mechanics, which is a little
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more abstract. He says the graces are implied
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in one another. Right.
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This is where he goes beyond They're connected to They
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overlap in their very nature. It's like baking a cake.
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Before you bake, you have flour, sugar, eggs.
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They are distinct, but once it's baked you can't separate them
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anymore. You can't just pull the sugar
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out of a finished cake. You can't.
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They're blended into a new substance, he says.
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The Graces are like that. And he uses this striking phrase
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that love is the soul of faith. That's the phrase he uses, yeah.
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He gets it from Galatians 5.6 Faith which worketh by love and
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also from James chapter 2. Think about the demons.
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This is a classic reformed point.
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Right. The demons also believe and
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tremble. So what do they have?
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They have data. They know God is 1.
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They know Jesus is the Son of God.
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They confessed to him in the Gospels.
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In a purely intellectual sense, their faith is orthodox.
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It's accurate. But they hate it.
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They absolutely hate it. Exactly.
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They have the conviction without the affection.
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They have the skeleton of faith without the heart, without the
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soul, Edwards says. True saving faith has love
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inside of it. It doesn't just believe God
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exists, it delights that He exists.
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It doesn't just accept the facts about Christ, it embraces the
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person of Christ. Love is the active operative
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agent inside of faith. This brings us to a really
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crucial theological point for our listeners, especially on the
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topic of repentance and faith. I think a lot of people, myself
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included, grew up thinking of these as two sequential steps.
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Step one, clean up your ACT Stop sinning.
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That's repentance. Step 2.
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Once you've done that, you can trust Jesus.
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That's faith. That is a very common
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misunderstanding and it leads to a lot of legalism and despair
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because you can never clean up your ACT enough, right?
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Edwards argues powerfully that repentance and faith are the
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same single motion of the soul, just viewed from two different
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perspectives. How can they be the same thing?
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1 is about my sin, the other is about Christ.
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They seem to be focused on two different objects.
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Picture of physical motion. Let's say you're standing in a
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field and you are facing due north and you turn 180° to face
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due South. How many distinct turning
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motions did you make? One, just one turn.
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Just. One turn.
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But I can describe that one turn in two different ways, can't I?
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I can say he turned away from the north, or I can say he
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turned toward the South. OK, I see where this is going.
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Conversion is the 180° turn of the soul.
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It is turning from sin to God in Christ.
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When we look at the starting point, the thing you are turning
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away from, which is sin, we call that motion repentance.
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When we look at the destination, the person you are turning
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toward, which is God, we call that same motion faith.
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But you cannot do 1 without the other.
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You can't turn toward the South without simultaneously turning
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your back on the north. You can't.
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They are mechanically inseparable.
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That one motion includes both. Aspects.
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That is incredibly helpful because it prevents us from
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trying to repent in a vacuum. I think people do that.
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They try to just stop sinning by sheer willpower, focusing
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entirely on the sin without ever looking to Christ for power and
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for love. And that's just behavior
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modification. It's miserable.
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It's like trying to face north and walk backward to get to the
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South. It doesn't.
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Work and the flip side is also dangerous, what some people call
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cheap grace, trying to have faith in Jesus, turning to Him
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without ever turning your back on your sin.
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Which, by this analogy, is impossible.
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If you haven't turned from sin, you haven't truly turned to
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Jesus. You are still facing north.
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You might be, you know, glancing over your shoulder at Jesus,
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talking about Him, but your life, your heart, is still
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oriented towards self and sin. OK, so we've established that
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the Graces are a unified system. They're a chain.
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They generate each other, they're implied in each other.
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But why? Why did God design it this way?
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Edwards gives us, I think, 6 theological reasons.
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This is the why behind the what. Right.
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He's not content to just say this is how it is.
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He wants to understand the mind of God in it.
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And the first reason is the source.
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All graces come from the same Holy Spirit.
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The Sun analogy. Yes.
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Think of the sun shining into a dark room through a window.
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One beam of light hits the floor.
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Another beam hits a table. A third hits a chair.
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They are striking different objects.
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They might look a little different, but they are all the
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same light. They all have the same
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properties, they all travel at the same speed.
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They're all from the same *. They are so Grace isn't like a
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bag of marbles where God hands you a red one for love and a
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blue one for faith. Grace is the Holy Spirit Himself
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communicating His own nature to us.
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And the Spirit is a unified person.
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He's a unified being. He doesn't come in pieces.
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He doesn't say I'm going to give you the spirit of patience
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today, but I'm leaving the spirit of holiness back at the
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office. When he indwells A believer, he
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brings his whole undivided character.
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So all the fruit of the Spirit comes from the same Spirit.
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Reason #2 is the same work. This is about regeneration being
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born again. And this is where that
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biological analogy comes in, and it's so vital for the
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application part. Later, Edwards says, when a baby
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is conceived and formed in the womb, it gets all its parts at
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once. A baby isn't an assembly line
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project where you get a heart one week and lungs the next.
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Right. Can you imagine a heart born on
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Tuesday? Lungs arrive 3 weeks later and
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then maybe a year after that you get a brain.
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That would be a monster, not a human.
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A human being is a systemic hole from the beginning.
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So when we are born again, we are born with the entire new
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man. All the pieces are there.
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Yes, in that moment of regeneration you receive a new
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heart, new eyes to see God, new ears to hear His word.
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You get the seed of every single Christian virtue.
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You are not converted to faith today and then converted to
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humility and then years. The spiritual DNA of the new
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creation contains everything from the start.
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OK, reason #3 the same root. The root of all grace is what he
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calls the knowledge of God's excellence.
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This is classic Edwards. For him, everything starts with
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the true spiritual vision. You see who God is.
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And that one vision triggers multiple simultaneous reactions.
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Exactly. Imagine you are standing on the
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edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time.
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You see the vastness, the beauty, the power.
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That one sight does multiple things to you at once.
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It makes you feel small. That's humility.
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Makes you feel awe. That's fear or reverence.
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It makes you marvel at the creator.
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That's a form of love or adoration.
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One object, multiple reflexes. That's it.
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So if you see God as infinitely holy and beautiful, you will
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trust Him. That's faith.
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You will adore Him, that's love, and you will bow down before
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Him. That's humility.
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All in the same moment from the same root. #4 the same rule.
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The law of God. He points to James 2.10, which
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says if you offend in one point of the law, you're guilty of
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breaking all of it. Why?
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Because the law isn't just a random checklist, it's a unified
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reflection of God's single unified character.
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So it's an affront to the law giver, not just the specific
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rule. Precisely.
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You cannot say I respect the law givers authority while despising
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one of his laws. If you rebel against thou shall
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not commit adultery, you are rebelling against the same
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authority that said thou shalt have no other gods before me.
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It's one piece of fabric. Reason #5 is simple the same
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end. The same goal, every single
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grace is a vector pointing to the same coordinate, the glory
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of God. Faith trusts God for His glory.
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Love delights in His glory. Humility renounces its own glory
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to give Him the glory. They are all moving the soul in
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the exact same direction. And finally, Reason 6 brings us
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full circle, right back to our text, the relation to charity or
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love. Yes, he says, love is the sum of
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them all. All other graces are just
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different modes of love exercising itself in different
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situations. Patience is love waiting.
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Kindness is love acting. Faith is love trusting hope is
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love expecting. It's all just love in motion.
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So we've built this massive theological structure.
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The Graces are a chain. They're a single Organism born
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all at once. But now we have to land the
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plane. Because I'm listening to this
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and I'll be honest, I'm starting to sweat a little.
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Why is that? I can guess, but tell me.
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Because I don't feel like a unified Organism.
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I feel like a mess. I look at my life and I see
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faith on good days, but then I see a whole lot of impatience.
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I see a glaring lack of love sometimes.
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If Edwards is really saying all or nothing, am I in the nothing
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category? I think a lot of people feel
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that way. And this is the pastoral turn in
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the sermon. Edwards anticipates this
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objection completely. He goes right back to 2nd
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Corinthians 5.1 semen. Therefore, if any man be in
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Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away.
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Behold, all things are become new.
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But if all things are new, why do I still struggle so much with
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the old things? Because of the infant analogy.
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Remember what we said about the baby being born with all its
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parts? A baby has all the parts of a
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man Hands, feet, eyes, a brain. But are they strong?
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No, a baby is completely helpless.
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The hands can't lift anything, the legs can't walk, the eyes
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can barely focus. But the parts are there.
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The structure is complete, just undeveloped.
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Edwards argues that a new Christian has every grace
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present, but they may be in infant form.
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That is a critical distinction, a game changing distinction.
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It is the difference between a small, weak limb and a missing
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limb. A baby's arm is weak, but it is
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alive and it's connected to the body.
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A missing arm is a tragedy, Edwards says.
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Our growth in holiness, sanctification is the growing of
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these limbs, not the adding of new ones we didn't have before.
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So I don't need to go out and somehow find patience as if it's
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not in me. I possess the spirit of patience
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because I have the spirit. I just need to exercise it.
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It's atrophied. Exactly, it needs to be fed by
23:35
the word and used in daily life. And this also brings up the
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concept of mortification, the putting to death of sin.
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If the light has entered the room, the darkness is under
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attack. It might not be noonday bright
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in there yet. It might be a flickering candle,
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but the darkness is no longer absolute.
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There is a war, a real conflict. Yes, and that conflict is the
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proof of life. Faith attacks unbelief.
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Humility attacks pride, Love attacks selfishness.
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So the diagnostic isn't am I perfect?
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The diagnostic is, Is there a fight on every front?
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If there's a sin, you are coddling, a sin you're at peace
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with, an area of your life you've cordoned off from
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Christ's rule. That is a very bad sign.
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But if you are fighting, even if you feel like you are losing
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battles left and right, the fact that you are fighting proves the
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grace is there. OK, so let's give the listener
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some practical tools. Here Edward suggests trying
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Grace by Grace, a method of self examination.
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Yes, he gets very practical. Let's run a few scenarios.
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OK scenario AI think I have faith.
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I intellectually ascend to the creeds.
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I believe the Bible is true. How do I test if it's real
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saving faith and not just, you know, demonic faith?
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You look for its siblings first. Check for repentance.
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When you came to Christ, did you come with a broken heart?
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Were you sensible of your own need, your own spiritual
24:52
poverty? Or did you come with a
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Pharisaical spirit thinking you were pretty good already and
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Jesus was just a nice addition? If there was no no sense of
24:59
brokenness, no turning from sin, the faith is fake.
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Right. Then check for love.
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Is your faith just cold hard theology?
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Is your main spiritual gift being right in an argument on
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the Internet or does it have warmth?
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Does it work by love? He says if your faith is just
25:15
cold light, it is not the light of the sun of Righteousness.
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It is moonlight, it's reflected, it's cold, and it's ultimately
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did. Wow, OK, Scenario B testing
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hope. I feel pretty confident that I'm
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going to heaven. I have hope.
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Edwards makes a sharp distinction between false hope
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and true hope. False hope is what we would call
25:33
presumption. It lifts a person up with high
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conceit of themselves and makes them arrogant.
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It allows them to live easily and casually in sin because,
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hey, it's all covered. I'm elect, it doesn't matter.
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The fire insurance mentality. I've got my ticket punched.
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True hope, Edwards says, lies in the dust before God.
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It is accompanied by lowly, humble joy.
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It doesn't make you casual about sin.
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It makes you profoundly grateful for being delivered from it.
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And it purifies you. He'd point to 1st John 3.3.
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Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as
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he is pure. So if my hope isn't making me
26:06
want to be more holy, it isn't Christian hope, it's something
26:10
else. Precisely.
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It's a delusion that allows you to be comfortable in your sin.
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OK, Scenario C This one I found fascinating.
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Testing weanedness from the world.
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Your detachment. We talked about being in the
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world, but not of it. This is a tricky one because we
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often think being weaned from the world just means you don't
26:30
care about material things anymore, But Edwards warns about
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a false weanedness. What does that?
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Look like it is a detachment caused by sorrow or depression
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or fear. Maybe you lost your job and now
26:43
you say money is the root of all evil.
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Maybe you went through a terrible breakup and now you say
26:47
all relationships are worthless. Maybe you're just naturally
26:50
melancholic and you find the world disappointing.
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You hate the world because the world hurt you.
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You're like a bitter ex-boyfriend.
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You haven't really moved on, you're just sulking because you
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didn't get what you wanted. That's a perfect analogy.
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You leave the world, but you still crave it.
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You're constantly looking back at Sodom.
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True weenedness, he says, is caused by seeing something
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better. This sounds like that famous
27:11
line from Thomas Chalmers about the expulsive power of a new
27:15
affection. It's the exact same principle.
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Imagine a toddler who has found a dirty, sharp piece of metal on
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the ground, a rusty penny or a Shard of glass.
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If you try to RIP it out of their hand, what happens?
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They. Scream, they snipe their fist
27:29
tighter, becomes the most valuable thing in the world to
27:31
them. But what if you hold out a
27:33
beautiful sparkling diamond or a piece of their favorite candy?
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They dropped The Dirty Shard without a second thought.
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They drop it not because you forced them, not because the
27:44
Shard cut them and became painful, but because the diamond
27:47
is superior. The value of the new object
27:50
expels the old one from their heart.
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You dropped the penny because you found the treasure in the
27:55
field. That is true Christian
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detachment from the world. You aren't driven away from the
28:00
world by its pain. You are drawn away from the
28:02
world by the superior beauty and satisfaction of Christ.
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So if your spirituality is just a long list of complaints about
28:08
how bad modern culture is, that isn't grace.
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That is just grumpiness. True grace is being so
28:15
captivated by heaven that Earth begins to lose its gravitational
28:18
pull. Man that changes how we should
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pray. Instead of praying God make me
28:22
hate this sin, maybe we should be praying.
28:25
God, show me more of your beauty so that I don't even want this
28:27
sin anymore. Pipe the negative with the
28:29
positive. That is the heart of reformed
28:31
piety. We are coming into the final
28:33
stretch here and we have to talk about the cake not turned.
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This is such a vivid image that Edwards pulls from the prophet
28:41
Hosea, Chapter 7, verse 8. Ephraim is a cake not turned.
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It's a great everyday kitchen metaphor.
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Think of making a pancake or a piece of flatbread on a hot
28:50
griddle. If you don't flip it, what
28:52
happens? The bottom gets burnt to a
28:54
crisp, it's black, charred hard, and the top is still raw dough,
28:59
gooey and uncooked. Is that pancake edible?
29:02
No, it's garbage. You have to throw it out.
29:04
It is good for nothing. Edwards applies this to the
29:07
partial Christian, the person who is burnt on one side.
29:10
Maybe they're over religious, super zealous for doctrine,
29:13
intense about theology, fervent in their private worship.
29:16
They are hot toward God. But on the other side, the side
29:20
that faces other people. They are raw and doughy.
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They're unkind to their spouse. They are unethical in their
29:26
business dealings. They are ungenerous to the poor.
29:29
They are harsh, critical and proud.
29:31
Or you could have the reverse. The person who is a great social
29:34
justice warrior, always feeding the hungry, very humanitarian,
29:39
but totally raw and cold toward God.
29:42
No prayer life, no reverence, no acknowledgement of His Holiness.
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Edwards calls this a monstrous image.
29:48
He says it's like looking at a portrait of a person that has
29:51
one beautiful eye but the other eye is missing, leaving a
29:54
ghastly hole. It is deeply disturbing.
29:56
He says. You cannot have high religious
29:58
affections toward God while being nasty, unjust, or
30:01
ungenerous to men. If a man say I love God and
30:04
hateth his brother, he's a liar. We just keep coming back that,
30:07
don't we? It's the linchpin.
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The verdict on the cake not turned is that it is thrown out.
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God doesn't want half baked Christians.
30:15
He calls us to be proportioned Christians.
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Proportioned. I like that word.
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It applies symmetry balance. We want our faith to match our
30:23
love. We want our zeal to match our
30:25
humility. The goal, he says, is the
30:28
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
30:31
Christ was the perfect man. He was not lopsided.
30:34
He had perfect burning zeal for God's house, but also perfect
30:38
meekness with children, perfect justice against hypocrisy,
30:42
perfect mercy for the broken. That is our template.
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This has been a workout. I mean, we started with a verse
30:47
that is usually about wedding sentimentality and we've ended
30:50
up with the blueprint for a structurally sound soul.
30:53
It is the difference between interior decorating and a
30:55
foundation inspection. And Edwards?
30:58
Well, he is an inspector. To summarize it all, the
31:00
Christian life isn't a buffet. You don't get to pick your
31:02
favorite virtues and leave the ones you don't like.
31:04
It's a living Organism. Every part relies on every other
31:07
part. If you have the Spirit of God,
31:09
you have the whole package, even if many parts are still in
31:12
infant form. And that reality gives us both a
31:15
serious warning and a deep comfort.
31:17
The warning is against the hypocrisy of the cake not
31:20
turned. But the comfort is that if we
31:22
can see even a little genuine fruit, a little true humility, a
31:25
little sincere love for a brother, a little real
31:27
repentance, we can trust that the root is there.
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I want to leave our listener with a final thought to chew on
31:35
a provocative idea that sort of flows from all of this.
31:38
If all these graces are truly connected, if it really is a
31:41
chain, then working on your weakest link isn't just self
31:45
improvement, it might actually be the fastest way to strengthen
31:49
your strongest link. That's a really sharp point.
31:51
Say more about that. Well, if you feel like your
31:52
faith is stagnant, you know, you feel dry.
31:55
God feels distant. Maybe the answer isn't to just
31:58
read another heavy theology book.
32:00
Maybe the answer is to go practice love.
32:02
Go out of your way to serve someone in your church.
32:04
Go forgive someone who wronged you.
32:06
Because, as Edwards showed, love fuels faith.
32:09
And conversely, if you are ignoring 1 area of obedience,
32:12
let's say you're holding a grudge, refusing to forgive.
32:15
You aren't just hurting your forgiveness score.
32:18
You are actively dismantling your faith and your hope.
32:21
You are starving the other graces of the nourishment they
32:24
need. Everything touches everything
32:25
else. It really does.
32:26
It's one life, one soul, 1 spirit.
32:29
So to the learner joining us today, take a look at the chain.
32:33
Don't be discouraged if the links are small.
32:36
Remember the infant, but make sure they're all connected.
32:38
And maybe, just maybe, go flip the pancake.
32:41
Don't be a cake not turned. This has been a deep dive into
32:45
all the graces of Christianity connected by Jonathan Edwards.
32:48
Thanks for joining us on Reform Thinking.
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See you next time.