Of First Importance

“Make God the peculiar object of your praises. The doctrine of electing grace shows what great reason you have to do so. If God so values you, set so much by you, has bestowed greater mercies upon you than on all the ungodly in the world, is it too little a requital for you to make God the peculiar object of your praise and thankfulness? If God so distinguishes you with his mercies, you ought to distinguish yourself in his praises. You should make it your great care and study how to glorify that God who has been so peculiarly merciful to you.

And this, rather, because there was nothing peculiar in you differing you from any other person that moved God to deal thus peculiarly by you: you were as unworthy to be set by as thousands of others that are not regarded of God, and are cast away by him forever as worthless and filthy.”

- Jonathan Edwards

(HT: Jerry Deckard)

“In every generation, it [is] the church’s privilege to taste the Lord’s goodness and love; in all seasons, it [is] the church’s mission to celebrate and magnify this goodness in a foreign and hostile world.”

- Owen Strachen and Doug Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards on Beauty: The Essential Edwards Collection (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Publishers, 2010), 100.

“The people of God who form the church in all its rich diversity share the highest privilege known to mankind, that of participating in the beauty, joy, and goodness of the Lord, of being satisfied in Christ and giving Him satisfaction.”

- Owen Strachen and Doug Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards on Beauty (Chicago, Ill.; Moody Publishers, 2010), 113.

“When Christ had once undertaken with God, to stand for us, and put himself under our law, by that law he was obliged to suffer, and by the same law he was obliged to obey: by the same law, after he had taken man’s guilt upon him, he himself being our surety, could not be acquitted, till he had suffered, nor rewarded till he had obeyed: but he was not acquitted as a private person, but as our head, and believers are acquitted in his acquittance; nor was he accepted to a reward for his obedience as a private person, but as our head, and we are accepted to a reward in his acceptance. The Scripture teaches us, that when Christ was raised from the dead, he was justified; which justification . . . implies, both his acquittance from our guilt, and his acceptance to the exaltation and glory that was the reward of his obedience: but believers, as soon as they believe are admitted to partake with Christ in his justification: hence we are told that he was ‘raised again for our justification’ (Romans 4:25).”

- Jonathan Edwards, quoted by Owen Strachan and Doug Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards on True Christianity (Chicago, Ill.: Moody, 2010), 80-81.

“The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ has purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world.

The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘the river of the water of life’ that runs, and the tree of life that grows, ‘in the midst of the paradise of God.’ The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.

—Jonathan Edwards, “God Glorified in the Work of Redemption,” in The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach, et al (1999): 74-75

(HT: Reformation 21)

“In all your course, walk with God and follow Christ as a little, poor, helpless child, taking hold of Christ’s hand, keeping your eye on the mark of the wounds on his hands and side, whence came the blood that cleanses you from sin and hides your nakedness under the skirt of the white shining robe of his righteousness.”

—Jonathan Edwards, letter to Deborah Hatheway (June 3, 1741)

(HT: Tony Reinke)