John Owen · 36 of 73

Chapter VII. The mediation of Christ. · Part 3

2. It appears from that peculiar promise that Christ makes of sending his Holy Spirit unto his own. He tells them, indeed, once and again, that the Father will send him, as he comes from that original and fountain love from which also himself was sent; but withal he assures us that he himself will send him: John xv. 26, “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth.” It is true that he is promised here only as a comforter, for the performance of that part of his office; but look, upon what account he is sent for any one act or work of grace, on that he is sent for all. John xvi. 7, “I will send him then,” saith Christ; and that as a fruit of his death, as the procurement of his mediation, for that alone he promiseth to bestow [Him] on his. And, in particular, he tells us that he receives the Spirit from the Father for us, upon his intercession; wherein, as hath been elsewhere demonstrated, he asks no more nor leas than what by his death is obtained: John xiv. 16, 17, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive.” He tells us, verse 13, that whatsoever we ask he will do it; but withal in these verses how he will do it, even by interceding with the Father for it as a fruit of his blood-shedding, and the promise made to him upon his undertaking to glorify his Father’s name in the great work of redemption, John xvii. 4–6. And therefore he informs us, that when the Comforter, whom he procureth for us, shall come, “he shall glorify him,” and “shall receive of his, and show it unto us,” John xvi. 14, — farther manifest his glory, in his bringing nothing with him but what is his, or of his procurement: so also instructing us dearly and plentifully to ask in his name, that is, for his sake, — which to do plainly and openly is the great privilege of the, new testament; — for so he tells his disciples, chap. xvi. 24, “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name,” who yet were believers, and bad made many addresses unto God in and through him, but darkly, as they did under the old testament, when they begged mercy “for his sake,” Dan. ix. 17; but to plead with the Father clearly upon the account of the mediation and purchase of Christ, that, I say, is the privilege of the new testament. Now, in this way he would have us ask the Holy Spirit at the hand of God, Luke xi. 9–13. Ask him; that is, as to a clearer, fuller administration of him unto us, for he is antecedently bestowed, as to the working of faith and regeneration, even unto this application: for without him we cannot once ask in the name of Christ, for none can call Jesus Lord, or do any thing in his name, but by the Spirit of God. This I say, then: He in whom we are “blessed with all spiritual blessings” hath procured the Holy Spirit for us, and through his intercession he is bestowed on us, Eph. i. 3. Now, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” from sin, peace and acceptance with God, 2 Cor. iii. 17. But it may be objected, “Although this Spirit be thus bestowed on believers, yet may they not cast him off, so that his abode with them may be but for a season, and their glory not be safeguarded in the issue, but their condemnation increased by their receiving of him, Rom. viii. 14, 15?” This being the only thing wherein this proof of believers’ abiding with God seems liable to exception, I shall give a triple testimony of the certainty of the continuance of the Holy Spirit with them on whom he is bestowed, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses this truth may be established; and they are no mean ones neither, but the three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The first you have Isa. lix. 21, “As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; My Spirit which is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever.” That which the Lord declares here to the church he calls “his covenant.” Now, whereas in a covenant there are two things, — 1. What is stipulated on the part of him that makes the covenant; 2. What of them is required with whom it is made (which in themselves are distinct, though in the covenant of grace God hath promised that he will work in us what he requires of us), — that here mentioned is clearly an evidence of somewhat of the first kind, — of that goodness that God in the covenant doth promise to bestow. Though perhaps words of the future tense may sometimes have an imperative construction, where the import of the residue of the words enforces such a sense, yet because it may be so in some place therefore it is so in this place, and that therefore these words are not a promise that the Spirit shall not depart, but an injunction to take care that it do not depart, as Mr Goodwin will have it, is a weak inference; and the close of the words will by no means be wrested to speak significantly to any such purpose, “Saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever,” which plainly make the words promissory, and an engagement of God himself to them to whom they are spoken. So that the interpretation of these words, “This is my covenant with them,” by Mr Goodwin, chap. xi. sect. 4, p. 227, — “That covenant of perpetual grace and mercy which I made with them requireth this of them, in order to the performance of it on my part, that they quench not my Spirit which I have put into them,” — doth plainly invert the intendment of God in them, and substitute what is tacitly required as our duty into the room of what is expressly promised as his grace. Observe then, —

2. That as no promise of God given to believers is either apt of itself to ingenerate, or by them to be received under, such an absurd notion of being made good whatsoever their deportment be, it being the nature of all the promises of God to frame and mould them to whom they are given into all holiness and purity, 2 Cor. vii. 1, — and this in especial is a promise of the principal author and cause of all holiness, to be continued to them, and is impossible to be apprehended under any such foolish supposal, — so also that this promise is absolute, and not conditional, can neither be colourably gainsaid nor the contrary probably affirmed. So that the strength of Mr Goodwin’s two next exceptions, — 1. “That this cannot be a promise of perseverance unto true believers, whatsoever their deportment shall be;” and, 2. “That it must be conditional, which cannot,” as he saith, “be reasonably gainsaid,” — the first of them not looking towards our persuasion in this thing, and the latter being not in the least put upon the proof, is but very weakness; for what condition of this promise, I pray, can be imagined? God promises his Spirit of holiness, that sanctifieth us and worketh all holiness in us; and therewith the holy word of the gospel, which is also sanctifying, John xvii. 17; and that they shall abide with us for ever. It is the continuance of the presence of God with us for our holiness that is here promised. On what condition shall this be supposed to depend? Is it in case we continue holy? Who seeth not the vanity of interserting any condition? “I will be with you by my Spirit and word for ever, to keep you holy, provided you continue holy!”

3. It is a hard task, to seek to squeeze a condition out of those gracious words in the beginning of the verse, “As for me,” which Junius renders de me autem, — words wherein God graciously reveals himself as the sole author of this great blessing promised, it being a work of his own, which he accomplisheth upon the account of his free grace; and therefore God signally placed that expression in the entrance of the promise, that we may know whom to look unto for the fulfilling thereof. And it is yet a farther corruption to say, “That ‘As for me,’ is as much as, ‘For my part, I will deal bountifully with them, provided they do so and so, what I require from them,’ ” which is Mr Goodwin’s interpretation of the words; for of this supposition there is not one word in the text as incumbent on them to whom this promise is made in contradistinction to what God here promiseth; yea, he promiseth them, at least in the root and principle, whatsoever is required of them. Let it be that “As for me,” is, “As for my part, I will do what here is promised,” and there is an end of this debate.

4. The persons to whom this promise is made are called “thee” and “thy seed,” — that is, all those and only those with whom God is a God in covenant. God here minds them of the first making of this covenant with Abraham and his seed, Gen. xvii. 7. Now, who are this seed of Abraham? Not all his carnal posterity, not the whole nation of the Jews; which is the last subterfuge invented by our author to evade the force of our argument from this place. Our Saviour not only denies, but also proves by many arguments, that the Pharisees and their followers, who doubtless were of the nation of the Jews and the carnal seed of Abraham, were not the children of Abraham in this sense, nor his seed, but rather the devil’s, John viii. 39–44. And the apostle disputes and argues the same case, Rom. iv. 9–12, and proves undeniably that it is believers only, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, whether Jews or Gentiles, that are this seed of Abraham and heirs of the promise. So, plainly, Gal. iii. 7, “Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham;” and then he concludes again, as the issue of his debate, verse 9, “So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.” And this is the sum of what Mr Goodwin objects unto this testimony, in our case, to the perpetual abiding of the Spirit with the saints.

The force, then, of this promise, and the influence it hath into the establishment of the truth we have in hand, will not be evaded and turned aside by affirming “that it is made to the whole people of Israel:” for besides that the Spirit of the Lord could not be said to be in the ungodly, rejected part of them, nor his word in their mouth, there is not the least, in text or context, to intimate such an extent of this promise as to the object of it: and it is very weakly attempted to be proved from Paul’s accommodation and interpretation of the verse foregoing, “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion,” etc., in Rom. xi. 26; for it is most evident and indisputable, to any one who shall but once cast an eye upon that place, that the apostle accommodates and applies these words to none but only those who shall be saved, being turned away from ungodliness to Christ; which are only the seed before described. And those he calls “All Israel,” either in the spiritual sense of the word, as taken for the chosen Israel of God, or else indefinitely for that nation, upon the account of those plentiful fruits which the gospel shall find amongst them, when they shall “fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days,” Hos. iii. 5.

5. This, then, is a promise equally made unto all believers: it is to all that are in covenant; neither is there any thing that is of peculiar importance to any sort of believers, of any time, or age, or dispensation, therein comprised. It equally respecteth all to whom the Lord extends his covenant of grace. Certainly the giving of the Spirit of grace is not inwrapped in any promise that may be “of private interpretation,” the concernment of all the saints of God lying therein. It cannot but be judged a needless labour to give particular instances in a thing so generally known in the word. Though the expressions differ, the matter of this promise is the same with that given to Abraham, Gen. xvii. 7, the Holy Spirit being the great blessing of the covenant, and bestowed on all and every one, and only on them, whom God hath graciously taken into covenant from the foundation of the world.

Mr Goodwin then labours in the fire in what he farther objects, sect. 6, “That this promise exhibiteth and holds forth some new grace or favour, which God hath not vouchsafed formerly either unto the persons to whom the said promise is now made, or to any others; but for the grace or favour of final perseverance, it is nothing (at least in the opinion of our adversaries) but what is common to all true believers, and what God hath conferred upon one and other of this generation from the beginning of the world.”

Ans. The emphasis here put upon it doth not denote it to be a new promise, but a great one; not that it was never given before, but that it is now solemnly renewed, for the consolation and establishment of the church. If wherever we find a solemn promise made, and confirmed, and ratified, to the church, we must thence conclude that no saints were before made partakers of the mercy of that promise, we must also, in particular, conclude that no one ever had his sins pardoned before the giving of that solemn promise, Jer. xxxi. 34.

6. We say that the grace of perseverance is such as believers may expect, not upon the account of any thing in themselves, nor of the dignity of the state whereunto by grace they are exalted, hut merely on this bottom and foundation, that it is freely promised of God, who hath also discovered that rise and fountain of his gracious promise to lie in his eternal love towards them; so that they can lay no more claim unto it than to any other grace whatsoever. When we have the assurance given by any promise of God, to say that what is promised of him may be expected of course, is an expression that fell from Mr Goodwin when, in the heat of disputation, his thoughts were turned aside from the consideration of what it is to mix the promises of God with faith.

7. Whereas this is given in for the sense of the words, “That God will advance the dispensation of his grace and goodness towards or among his people to such an excellency and height that, if they prove not extremely unworthy, they shall have of the Spirit and word of God abundantly amongst them, and consequently abundance of peace and happiness for ever,” it is most apparent that not any thing of the mind of God in the words is reached in this gloss; for, —

(1.) That condition, “If they prove not extremely unworthy,” is extremely unworthily inserted, the promise being an engagement of God to keep and preserve them to whom it is made, by his Spirit, from being so. The Spirit is given and continued to them for that very purpose.

(2.) It is supposed to be given to all the nation of the Jews, when it is expressly made to the church and seed in covenant.

(3.) It carries the mercy promised no higher than outward dispensations, when the words expressly mention the Spirit already received.

Evident it is that the whole grace, love, kindness, and mercy, of this eminent promise, and consequently the whole covenant of grace, is enervated by this corrupting gloss. Do men think, indeed, that all the mercy of the covenant of grace consists in such tenders and offers as here are intimated? that it all lies in outward endearments, and such dealings with men as may seem to be suited to win upon them? and that, as to the real exhibition of it, it is wholly suspended upon the unstable, uncertain, frail wills of men? The Scripture seems to hold out something farther of more efficacy. The design of these exceptions is indeed to exclude all the effectual grace of God, promised in Jesus Christ, upon the account that the things which he promiseth to work in us thereby are the duties which he requireth of us.

In sum, these are the exceptions which are given in to this testimony of God concerning the abiding of the Spirit with them on whom he is bestowed and for whom he is procured, to whom he is sent by Jesus Christ. And this is the interpretation of the words, “ ‘As for me,’ for my part, or as much as in me lieth, ‘this is my covenant,’ I will deal bountifully and graciously ‘with them,’ the whole nation of the Jews. ‘My Spirit that is in thee,’ that they ought to take care that they entertain and retain, and not walk so extremely unworthily that he should depart from them.” The residue of the words, wherein the main emphasis of them doth lie, is left untouched.

The import, then, of this promise is the same with that of the promises insisted on before, with especial reference to the Holy Spirit, procured for us and given unto us by Christ. The stability and establishing grace of the covenant is here called the “covenant,” as sundry other particular mercies of it are also. Of the covenant of grace in Christ, the blessed Spirit to dwell in us and rest upon us is the main and principal promise. This, for our consolation, is renewed again and again in the Old and New Testament. As a Spirit of sanctification, he is given to men to make them believe; and as a Spirit of adoption, upon their believing. In either sense, God, even the Father, who takes us into covenant in Jesus Christ, affirms here that he shall never depart from us; which is our first testimony in the case in hand. With whom the Spirit abides, and whilst he abides with them, they cannot utterly forsake God nor be forsaken of him; for they who have the Spirit of God are the children of God, sons and heirs: but God hath promised that his Spirit shall abide with believers for ever, as hath been clearly evinced from the text under consideration, with a removal of all exceptions put in thereto.

The second witness we have of the constant abode and residence of this Spirit, bestowed on them which believe, is that of the Son, who assures his disciples of it: John xiv. 16, “I will,” saith he, “pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.” As our Saviour gives a rule of interpretation expressly of his prayers for believers, that he did in them intend not only the men of that present generation, but all that should believe to the end of the world, (John xvii. 20, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word”): so is it a rule equally infallible for the interpretation of the gracious promises which he made to his disciples, that are not peculiarly appropriated to their season and work (in which yet, as to the general love, faithfulness, and kindness, manifested and revealed in them, the concernments of the saints in all succeeding ages do lie); they are proper to all believers as such. For whom he did equally intercede, to them he makes promises alike. They belong no less to us, on whom, in an especial manner, the ends of the world are fallen, than to those who first followed him in the regeneration. Let us, then, attend to the testimony in this place (and as he shall be pleased to increase our faith, mix it therewithal), that the Spirit he procureth for us and sends to us shall abide with us for ever; and whilst the Spirit of the Lord is with us we are his. Doubtless, it is no easy task to raise up any pretended plea against the evidence given in by this witness, the Amen, the great and faithful Witness in heaven. He tells us that he will send the Spirit, to abide with us for ever; and therein speaks to the whole of the case in hand and question under debate. All we say is, that the Spirit of God shall abide with believers for ever. Christ says so too; and in the issue, whatever becomes of us, he will appear to be one against whom there is no rising up.

Against this testimony it is objected by Mr Goodwin, chap. xi. sect. 14, p. 234: “This promise,” saith he, “concerning the abiding of this other Comforter for ever must be conceived to be made either to the apostles personally considered, or else to the whole body of the church, of which they were principal members. If the first of these be admitted, then it will not follow that because the apostles had the perpetual residence of the Spirit with them and in them, therefore every particular believer hath the like; no more than it will follow that because the apostles were infallible in their judgments, through the teachings of the Spirit in them, therefore every believer is infallible upon the same account also. If the latter be admitted, neither will it follow that every believer, or every member of the church, must needs have the residence of the Spirit with them for ever. There are principal privileges appropriated to corporations, which every particular member of them cannot claim. The church may have the residence of the Spirit of God with her for ever, and yet every present member thereof lose his interest and part in him; yea, the abiding of the Spirit in the apostles themselves was not absolutely promised, John xv. 10.”

Ans. 1. The design of this discourse is to prove that this promise is not made to believers in general, or those who through the word are brought to believe in Christ in all generations to the end of the world, and consequently that they’ have no promise of the Spirit’s abiding with them; for that is the thing opposed. And this is part of the doctrine that tends to their consolation and improvement in holiness! What thanks they will give to the authors of such an eminent discovery, when it shall be determined that they have deserved well of them and the truth of God, I know not; especially when it shall be considered that not only this, but all other promises uttered by Christ to his apostles, — as we had thought, not for their own behoof alone, but also for the use of the church in all ages, — are tied up in their tendency and use to the men of that generation, and to the employment to which they to whom he spoke were designed. But let us see whether these things are so or no. I say, —

2. There is not any necessary cause of that disjunctive proposition, — The promise of the perpetual residence of the Spirit is made “either to the apostles personally, or to the whole body of the church.” By the rule formerly given for the interpretation of these promises of Christ, it appears that what in this kind was made to the one was also given to the other; and how Mr Goodwin will enforce any necessary conclusion from this distinction, framed by himself for his own purpose, I know not. The promise was made both to these and those, the apostles and all other believers, because to the apostles as believers.

3. The making of the promise to the apostles personally doth not argue that it was made to them as apostles, but only that it was made to their persons or to them, though under another qualification, namely, of believing. It is given to them personally as believers, and so to all believers whatever. This also sets at liberty and plainly cashiers the comparison instituted between the apostles’ infallibility as apostles and their sanctifying grace as believers, by the Spirit of grace given for that end. The apostles’ infallibility, we confess, was from the Spirit; for they, as other holy men of old, wrote as they were moved by the Spirit of God, 2 Pet. i. 21: but that this was a distinct gift bestowed on them as apostles, and not the teaching of the Spirit of grace, which is given to all believers,1 John ii. 27, we need not contend to prove.

Besides, to what end doth he contend that it was made to the apostles in the sense urged and by us insisted on, seeing he denies it in the close of this section, and chooseth rather to venture upon an opposition unto that commonly received persuasion that the apostles of Christ (the son of perdition only excepted) had an absolute promise of perseverance, than to acknowledge that which would prove so prejudicial and ruinous to his cause, as he knows the confession of such a promise made to them would inevitably be? He contends not, I say, about the sense of the promise, but would fain divert it from other believers (at the entrance of the section) by limiting it to the apostles; but considering afterward better of the matter, and remembering that the concession of an absolute promise of perseverance to any one saint whatever would evidently root up and cast to the ground the goodliest engine that he hath sot up against the truth he opposeth, he suits it (in the close of the section) to an evasion holding better correspondency with its associates in this undertaking.

4. I wonder what chimerical church he hath found out, to which promises are made and privileges granted otherwise than upon the account of the persons whereof it is constituted. Suppose, I pray, that promises of the residence of the Spirit for ever with it be made to the church, which is made up of so many members, and that all these members, every one, should lose their interest in it, what subject of that promise would remain? What universal is this, that hath a real existence of itself and by itself, in abstraction from its particulars, in which alone it hath its being? or what whole is that which is preserved in the destruction and dissolution of all its essentially constituent parts? The promises, then, that are made to the church are of two sorts:— (1.) Of such grace and mercies as, whether inherent or relative, have their residence in and respect unto particular persons as such. Of this sort are all the promises of grace, of sanctification, as also of justification, etc.; which are all things of men’s personal spiritual interest. The promises made to the church of this nature are made unto it merely as consisting of so many, and those elected, redeemed persons, whose right and interest as those individual persons they are. (2.) Of all such good things as are the exurgency of the collected state of the saints, in reference to their spiritual, invisible communion, or visible gathering into a church constituted according to the mind of Christ and his appointment in the gospel. And these also are all of them founded on the former, and depend wholly upon them, and are resolved into them. All promises whatever, then, made to the church, the body of Christ, do not respect it primarily as a corporation, which is the second notion of it, but as consisting of those particular believers; much less as a chimerical universal, having a subsistence in and by itself, abstracted from its particulars. This evasion, then, notwithstanding, this promise of our Saviour doth still continue to press its testimony concerning the perpetual residence of the Holy Spirit with believers.

The scope of the place enforces that acceptation of these words which we insist upon. Our blessed Saviour, observing the trouble and disconsolation of his followers upon the apprehension of his departure from them, stirs them up to a better hope and confidence by many gracious promises and engagements of what would and should be the issue of his being taken away, John xiv. 1. He bids them free their hearts from trouble, and in the next words tells them that the way whereby it was to be done was by acting faith on the promises of his Father, and on those which in his Father’s name he had made and was to make unto them. Of these he mentions many in the following verses, whereof the fountain head and spring is that of giving them the Comforter, not to abide with them for a season, as he had done with his bodily presence, but to continue with them as a comforter (and consequently to the discharging of his whole dispensation towards believers) for ever. He speaks to them as believers, as disconsolate, dejected believers, quickening their faith by exhortations; and gives them this promise as a solid foundation of peace and composedness of spirit, which he exhorted them unto. And if our Saviour intendeth any thing but what the words import, — namely, that he will give his Holy Spirit as a comforter, to abide with them for ever, — the promise hath not the least suitableness to relieve them in their distress, nor to accomplish the end for which it was given them. But against this it is excepted, chap. xi. sect. 13, p. 233:—