Scriptural Support for the Previous Post

I said I would give biblical support for Owen’s statement about the distinct way in which each Person of the Godhead communicates grace to the believer:

It remains only to intimate, in a word, in what this distinction lies, and what is the ground of it.  Now, this is, that the Father does it by the way of original authority; the Son by the way of communicating from a purchased treasury; the Holy Spirit by the way of immediate efficacy.

The Father does it by way of original authority.  The Father is the ultimate giver; the divine Initiator.  John 3:16 affirms this by telling us it was the Father’s love that led to the sending of the Son.  Every blessing we have in Christ is therefore due to the Father’s initiative.  Jesus said he didn’t do anything on his own authority, but only what his Father told him (John 8:28).  Owen points to James 1:18 (and I would add verse 17) which says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.  Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth.”  God was the great initiator in the work of Christ.  It is ultimately through the Father’s love, the Father’s will, and the Father’s authority that we receive grace.

The Son communicates grace from a purchased treasury.  Ephesians 1 says that we receive every spiritual blessing from the Father (another support for the previous point about the Father).  But if you scan the chapter you will find over and over again that we receive the Father’s spiritual gifts only and completely “in Christ.”  By the sacrificial shedding of his blood in death, Christ removed the wrath of God from us (Rom. 3:25), redeemed us (Eph. 1:7), brought us near to God (Eph. 2:13), conquered the Devil on our behalf (Heb. 2:14), purified our conscience so we can serve God (Heb. 9:14), gave us confident access to God’s presence (Heb. 10:19), sanctified us (Heb. 13:12), ransomed us from the futility of unbelief (1 Pet. 1:18-19; Rev. 5:9), freed us from our sins (Rev. 1:5), and keeps cleansing us from all sin (1 John 1:7).  That should be enough to show that Jesus purchased every bit of grace we receive from the Father.

The Spirit communicates grace by way of immediate efficacy.  He is the one acting directly in us to manifest God’s grace in our lives.  Owen points to Romans 8:11 which states that the Father raises us to life spiritually “through his Spirit who dwells in you.”  So regeneration comes from the Father, through the Son, by means of the Spirit.  I think this is true of all grace.  If you go a little further in Romans 8, verse 13 says, “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  This shows that, while we could legitimately say we are sanctified by the Father or by the Son, it is actually the Spirit who is working directly in us to enable us to kill sin in our life.  While we’re in Romans 8, we could note verse 26, which says, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”  Again, it is the Spirit who is the immediate worker in our spiritual lives.

So I think it is very biblical to have this perspective: Justification comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  Adoption comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  Sanctification comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  “Fill in the blank with any spiritual blessing” comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.

What is Communion in General?

I’m reading John Owen’s book Communion with God.  One of the questions I had at the outset was, “What does ‘communion’ mean?”  The things that come to my mind when I think of “communion” are things like relationship, a sense of warm closeness, fellowship, or the Lord’s Supper.  Owen has a brief section entitled “What is Communion?” and here is what he says: communion is “a joint participation in anything whatever, good or evil, duty or enjoyment, nature or actions.”  So communion is, most basically, a joint participation.  Sharing something in common, whether nature, duty, enjoyment, actions.

More specifically, Owen says “communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed upon some union between them.”  At first, this made me think of shared enjoyments.  If we share our common delight together, we are communing.  It made me think of John Piper’s book, The Pleasures of God, in which he discusses some things that God enjoys.  Communion with God would be sharing in his pleasures.  Loving what he loves.  Enjoying something in common and conversing about that enjoyment.

Then I noticed the odd word “bottomed.”  What it means is “grounded in.”  This communion is grounded in some union between the persons.  Of course, as Christians we have union with God through Jesus Christ.  We have been put in an unbreakable relationship with God through our union with Christ.  Built on the bedrock of that relationship, we can share with God “the mutual communication of” what delights us.

Then a couple paragraphs later I realized my initial understanding wasn’t quite what Owen was saying.  He writes, “Our communion, then, with God consists in his communication of himself to us, with our return to him of that which he requires and accepts, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him.”  So what Owen had in mind was not necessarily the mutual enjoyment of the same thing, although I don’t think that’s wrong.  What he describes here, though, is God’s self-communication to us of what delights us about him, followed by our giving back to him what he delights in from us.

To generalize, then, communion is two people who have a relationship giving and receiving what brings joy to the other.  Owen then applies this to us and each Person of the Godhead in the rest of the book.  It occurred to me, however, that this description of communion could be applied to any relationship.  If communion were only the shared enjoyment of the same thing, it would be hard to commune with people with whom we don’t have much in common.  But if communion is giving and receiving what gives joy to the other, then we can commune with anyone, if we love them and are willing to work at it.  At a “less spiritual” level, a rabid football fan and I could have communion if I make an effort to communicate to him what he loves, namely football, and he makes an effort to communicate to me what I love, namely biblical studies.  Not that we have to talk football and theology in every conversation, me saying, “How ’bout that awesome touchdown?” and he replying, “Yes, it reminds me of the perseverance of the saints.”  Rather, in the dynamic of the relationship (that which we are “bottomed” upon, as Owen put it), we try to take an interest in what delights the other.  This requires love and should produce increasing closeness.

These thoughts made me think of the book about the “love languages,” (which I’ve never read) that basically describes how different people feel loved through different means, and we should learn how to express love in the particular ways that are meaningful to each person.  This observation has proven true in my marriage.  What makes me feel loved doesn’t work for my wife, and what makes her feel loved doesn’t work for me.  We speak different love languages.  Yet I constantly try to love her in the way that makes me feel loved.  I babble at her in my foreign love language and get annoyed when she doesn’t understand.  According to Owen, if I want to have communion with my wife, then I need to give her what brings her joy, and she needs to return to me what gives me joy.  I shouldn’t selfishly insist that she be the same as me, but in love give to her what brings her joy.  We must have “the mutual communication of such good things as wherein . . . [we] are delighted, bottomed upon some union between” us.

NOTE: It’s either David Powlison or Ed Welch (both biblical counselors) who has a critique of the love languages book, in which he notes positives and negatives, specifically that if our goal is to make a person feel loved we must be careful that we are not merely pandering to the idols of their heart.  I’ve read the critique of the book, but not the book itself, so I’m not qualified to weigh in at this point.

Loved Because Valuable, or Valuable Because Loved?

There’s a song that plays on Christian radio that I just can’t stand.  It’s not that the entire song is horrible; it’s just that there’s a line in there that makes me grimace in pain every time I hear it.  It says (talking to Jesus), “‘Cause you would rather die than to ever live without me.”  Uggh!  That idea just irks me!  To me it says, “I’m so wonderful, so valuable, so lovely that Jesus just couldn’t stand the thought of life without me, and it was worth going through hell for him to have the prize which is me!”  I hope that’s not what the songwriter had in mind, but that’s what it conveys to me.  It conveys the attitude that Jesus loves me and desires me because I am inherently valuable.  There’s something in me that is so wonderful that it’s worth more than the life of God’s Son.  I am loved by God because I am valuable.

There are some other songs that I actually enjoy that say things like, “I am nothing without you [God],” and “I try to be good enough, but I’m nothing without your love.”  That last phrase, especially, got me thinking a little bit.  I started thinking about why things are considered valuable.  Take gold, for instance.  Well, don’t actually take it unless it belongs to you, because if you do you’ll be in big trouble.  Why?  Because gold is very valuable!  But why is gold valuable?  It’s just heavy, shiny yellow metal.  Who decided way back when that the metal gold had great worth?  On what basis did they decide that?  Because it’s heavy?  Because it’s pretty?  The fact is that there’s nothing inherently valuable about gold.  It is only valuable because human society has assigned value to it.  What if you took a trunkload of pure gold to a culture where old socks were considered of great value, but gold was not even noticed?  All your gold would be worthless, but your socks might make you rich!  Material things on this earth have value only to the degree they are desired or loved by people.  Gold is not loved because it is valuable, it is valuable because it is loved.

I think it’s the same with us and God.  God doesn’t love me because I’m inherently valuable; rather, I am valuable because God loves me!  It’s not that he would rather die than live without me because I’m so inherently wonderful he couldn’t stand the thought of eternity away from my presence; rather, it is that his loving me makes me a thing of worth.  I am nothing without his love.  Isaiah 40:15-17 says:

¹⁵Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. ¹⁶Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. ¹⁷All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

Also consider Daniel 4:34-35, which reads as follows:

For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; ³⁵all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

In and of myself, I am–like all the other inhabitants of the earth–nothing.  Indeed, less than nothing!  Yet God chose to pour out his love on this pathetic piece of nothingness, and that makes me something special.  I’m still nothing in myself (so I cannot boast in me), but in Christ I am an adopted child of the Most High God, heir to everything he has to give, which is . . . well, everything!  I have been raised with Christ and seated in the heavenlies with him.  I will reign with him in his kingdom.  I will shine like the stars of heaven.  I will one day be glorified with him, rejoicing forever as living proof of his glorious grace.  Oh, I have great value!  Not because I am inherently valuable, but because I am loved by the Supreme One.  And all who are recipients of his redeeming love become vessels of honor.  I am valuable because I am loved by God!