The fruit of the Spirit is love for God and others.
Edwards’ spirituality focused on love for God and others as the supreme mark of Christian life. While serving as a temporary preacher in New York City, Edwards tried to express his love for God in words. In a sermon, Edwards tried to persuade his congregation to surrender to Christ. The ultimate motivation for doing so was Christ Himself’s kindness. Unlike human loves, which can be confused with filthy motifs or defective objects, “Love of Christ is love to those who are truly above all good and kind and, therefore, the pleasures that result from this love must be strong, real, substantial. and it will never fade ?. Only through the act of abandoning himself out of love for Jesus Christ will this union be experienced “more intimate than that of all other lovers”. [13]
- Considerably.
- In light of the sins Edwards struggled with.
- Love for God manifested itself in qualities of character toward others.
- Such as humility and goodness.
- Edward certainly yearned for humility to overcome his pride.
- And spoke of that virtue along with his discussion.
- Of love.
- ” How much more pleasurable is a humble pleasure than the lofty thoughts upon me!”Edwards exclaimed in his diary.
- O how much more pleasant is humility than pride!O may God fill me with great and excessive humility.
- And may He always protect me from all pride!The pleasures of humility are in fact the most refined.
- Intimate and rare pleasures in the world.
- Similarly.
- Edwards saw kindness as a trait.
- That others would realize.
- He lamented in his journal that one virtue I need to a greater degree to give beauty and brilliance to my behavior is goodness.
- If I had more of that air.
- Wouldn’t it take so much patches?[14].
Edwards never departed from this fundamental approach to the spiritual formation he had developed during his years of ministerial preparation. Those who seek to serve as pastors in Christ’s Church can learn important lessons from Jonathan Edwards, because he was like one of us. God make our hearts beat more like yours: that we may be those who seek God’s presence by offering himself wholeheartedly, out of fervent love for God and others, whose proof will be a humble dependence on God’s sovereign grace and benevolence. spirit towards God’s people.
[13]? Fragment: Application of Love to Christ, in Sermons and Speeches, 1720-1723, Works, 10: 612-13, 615, 617.
[14] Diary, March 2, 1723, Letters and personal writings, works, 16: 767; Diary, February 16, 1725, Ibid. , 787.
[15] Jonathan Edwards, “Charity and Its Fruits”, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 233, 243, 245-6.
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