He Killed His Sin with Love John Owen 1616-1683
by John Piper
Some of us stand on the shoulders of men who
have stood on the
shoulders of John Owen. J.I. Packer, Roger
Nicole, and Sinclair
Ferguson, for example, are three contemporary
pillars in the house
of my thinking, and each has testified publicly
that John Owen is
the most influential Christian writer in his
life. That is amazing
for a man who has been dead for over three
hundred years, and who
wrote in a style so difficult to read that even
he saw his work as
immensely demanding in his own generation.
In the preface to his book The Death of Death in
the Death of
Christ, Owen does what no good marketing agent
would allow today. He
begins like this: “READER, . . . If thou art, as
many in this
pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and
comest into books as Cato
into the theatre, to go out again — thou hast
had thy entertainment;
farewell!”
Nevertheless, J.I. Packer and Roger Nicole and
Sinclair Ferguson did
not bid Owen farewell. They lingered. And they
learned. And today
all three of them say that no Christian writer
has had a greater
impact on them than John Owen.
Making of a Puritan
Owen was born in England in 1616, the same year
Shakespeare died and
four years before the Pilgrims set sail for New
England. This is
virtually in the middle of the great Puritan
century (roughly 1560
to 1660). Owen was born in the middle of this
movement and became
its greatest pastor-theologian, as the movement
ended almost
simultaneously with his death in 1683.
In 1642 the civil war began between Parliament
and King Charles.
Owen, a chaplain at the time, was sympathetic
with Parliament
against the king and Bishop Laud, and so he was
pushed out of his
chaplaincy and moved to London, where several
major events happened
in the next four years that stamped the rest of
his life.
1. Conversion
The first is his conversion — or possibly the
awakening of the
assurance of salvation and the deepening of his
personal communion
with God. Owen was a convinced Calvinist with
large doctrinal
knowledge, but he lacked the sense of the
reality of his own
salvation.
When Owen was 26 years old, he went with his
cousin to hear the
famous Presbyterian Edmund Calamy at St. Mary’s
Church Aldermanbury.
But it turned out Calamy could not preach, and a
country preacher
took his place. Owen’s cousin wanted to leave.
But something held
Owen to his seat. The simple preacher took as
his text Matthew 8:26:
“Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” It
was God’s appointed
word and appointed time for Owen’s awakening.
His doubts and fears and worries as to whether
he was truly born
anew by the Holy Spirit were gone. He felt
himself liberated and
adopted as a Son of God. When you read the
penetrating, practical
works of Owen on the work of the Spirit and the
nature of true
communion with God, it is hard to doubt the
reality of what God did
on this Sunday in 1642.
2. Marriage and Dying Children
The second crucial event in those early years in
London was Owen’s
marriage to a young woman named Mary Rooke. He
was married to her
for 31 years, from 1644 to 1675. We know
virtually nothing about
her. But we do know one absolutely stunning fact
that must have
colored all of Owen’s ministry for the rest of
his life. We know
that she bore him eleven children, and all but
one died as a child,
and the one daughter who survived childhood died
as a young adult.
That’s one child born and lost on average every
three years of
Owen’s adult life.
We don’t have one reference to Mary or to the
children or to his
pain in all his books. But just knowing that the
man walked in the
valley of the shadow of death most of his life
gives me a clue to
the depth of dealing with God that we find in
his works. God has his
strange and painful ways of making his ministers
the kind of pastors
and theologians he wants them to be.
3. Political Beginnings
The third event of these early years in London
was the invitation in
1646 to speak to the Parliament. In those days
there were fast days
during the year when the government asked
certain pastors to preach
to the House of Commons. It was a great honor.
This message
catapulted Owen into political affairs for the
next fourteen years.
Not only that, Cromwell in 1651 appointed Owen
to the deanship at
Christ Church College in Oxford, and then the
next year also made
him the vice chancellor. He was involved with
Oxford for nine years
until 1660, when Charles II returned and things
began to go very
badly for the Puritans.
Ever Studying, Ever Writing
In spite of all this administrative pressure and
even hostility
because of his commitment to godliness and to
the Puritan cause, he
was constantly studying and writing, probably
late at night instead
of sleeping. That’s how concerned he was with
doctrinal faithfulness
to Scripture.
During these administrative years, he wrote
twenty-two published
works, including Of the Mortification of Sin in
Believers (1656), Of
Communion with God(1657), and Of Temptation: The
Nature and Power of
It (1658). What is so remarkable about these
books is that they are
what I would call intensely personal and, in
many places, very
sweet. So he wasn’t just fighting doctrinal
battles — he was
fighting sin and temptation. And he wasn’t just
fighting — he was
fostering heartfelt communion with God.
Fugitive Pastor to the End
Owen was relieved of his duties of the deanship
in 1660 (having laid
down the vice chancellorship in 1657). Cromwell
had died in 1658.
The monarchy with Charles II was back. The Act
of Uniformity, which
put two thousand Puritans out of their pulpits,
was just around the
corner (1662). The days ahead for Owen now were
not the great
political, academic days of the last fourteen
years. He was now,
from 1660 until his death in 1683, a kind of
fugitive pastor in
London.
Because of the political situation, he was not
always able to stay
in one place and be with his people, but he
seemed to carry them on
his heart even when he was moving around. Near
the end of his life
he wrote to his flock, “Although I am absent
from you in body, I am
in mind and affection and spirit present with
you, and in your
assemblies; for I hope you will be found my
crown and rejoicing in
the day of the Lord.”
His Aim: Holiness
Let’s stand back now and try to get close to the
heart of what made
this man tick and what made him great. I think
the words that come
closest to giving us the heart and aim of his
life are found in the
preface to the little book Of the Mortification
of Sin in Believers:
I hope I may own in sincerity that my heart’s
desire unto God, and
the chief design of my life . . . are, that
mortification and
universal holiness may be promoted in my own and
in the hearts and
ways of others, to the glory of God, that so the
Gospel of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ may be adorned in all
things. (9)
Mortification means warfare on our own sin with
a view to killing
it. He paraphrased this truth in the memorable
phrase, “Be killing
sin or it will be killing you.”
Owen’s personal holiness and public fruitfulness
did not just happen
to him. He pursued them. There were strategies
of personal
discipline and public authenticity that God used
to make him what he
was. In all our life and ministry, as we care
for people and contend
for the faith, we can learn much from Owen’s
pursuit of holiness in
private and public.
He Communed with God
It is incredible that Owen was able, under the
pressures of his
life, to keep writing books that were both
weighty and edifying.
Andrew Thomson, one of his biographers, wrote,
It is interesting to find the ample evidence
which [his work on
Mortification] affords, that amid the din of
theological
controversy, the engrossing and perplexing
activities of a high
public station, and the chilling damps of a
university, he was yet
living near God, and like Jacob amid the stones
of the wilderness,
maintaining secret intercourse with the eternal
and invisible.
(Works of John Owen, I:lxiv–lxv)
Writing a letter during an illness in 1674, Owen
said to a friend,
“Christ is our best friend, and ere long will be
our only friend. I
pray God with all my heart that I may be weary
of everything else
but converse and communion with Him” (God’s
Statesman, 153). God was
using illness and all the other pressures of
Owen’s life to drive
him into communion with God and not away from
it.
He Believed, Then He Spoke
One great hindrance to holiness in the ministry
of the word is that
we are prone to preach and write without
pressing into the things we
say and making them real to our own souls. Over
the years words
begin to come easy, and we find we can speak of
mysteries without
standing in awe; we can speak of purity without
feeling pure; we can
speak of zeal without spiritual passion; we can
speak of God’s
holiness without trembling; we can speak of sin
without sorrow; we
can speak of heaven without eagerness. And the
result is an
increasing hardening of the spiritual life.
The conviction that controlled Owen in this was
the following:
A man preacheth that sermon only well unto
others which preacheth
itself in his own soul. And he that doth not
feed on and thrive in
the digestion of the food which he provides for
others will scarce
make it savory unto them; yea, he knows not but
the food he hath
provided may be poison, unless he have really
tasted of it himself.
If the word do not dwell with power in us, it
will not pass with
power from us. (Works of John Owen, XVI:76)
It was this conviction that sustained Owen in
his immensely busy
public life of controversy and conflict.
Whenever he undertook to
defend a truth, he sought first of all to take
that truth deeply
into his heart and gain a real spiritual
experience of it so that
there would be no artificiality in the debate
and no mere posturing
or gamesmanship.
He Prepared to Meet Christ
The last thing Owen was doing, as the end of his
life approached,
was communing with Christ in a work that was
later published as
Meditations on the Glory of Christ. His friend
William Payne was
helping him edit the work. Near the end Owen
said, “O, brother
Payne, the long-wished for day is come at last,
in which I shall see
the glory in another manner than I have ever
done or was capable of
doing in this world” (God’s Statesman, 171).
John Owen contended for the fullness of biblical
faith because he
wanted generations after him to enjoy that same
“long-wished for
day” when we will see the glory of Christ “in
another manner” than
we have ever seen it here. He never made
controversy, nor its
victory, an end in itself. The end was to see
Jesus Christ, be
satisfied with him, and be transformed into his
likeness.
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