Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. Read the rest of this entry »
When Sereno E. Dwight included the seventy resolutions in his biography of his great-grandfather Jonathan Edwards, he added the arresting comment: “These were all written before he was twenty years of age.”
Doubtless the resolutions display the marks of relative youth — references to God are frequent, while references to Christ and to grace are noticeably infrequent. Edwards’ sense of the need for radical consecration was then greater than his ability to show how such devotion would need to be resourced in Christ over the long haul. While this is not wholly lacking, there is no doubt that introspection dominates over divine provision. That notwithstanding, the “Resolutions” provide a very powerful illustration of an often-repeated divine pattern: those the Lord means to use significantly he often deals with profoundly in early years.
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Author’s Note: This article begins a series of study through John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. The desire is to read through the institutes in a devotional manner, learning from Calvin’s wisdom as well as his pastoral heart. Quotations, unless noted otherwise, are from the McNeill edition of the Institutes.
Calvin notes, as a matter of great importance, the relationship between man’s knowledge of God and his knowledge of self. You cannot have one without the other, though it is not possible to discern which comes first. As we look upon ourselves our thoughts should immediately turn to thoughts of him. Likewise, we cannot think about God apart from consideration of his creative activities (he made us) and his ongoing governance of the universe in which we dwell.
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