Sermons by Jonathan Edwards on the Epistle to the Galatians

Kenneth P. Minkema, Adriaan C. Neele, Allen M. Stanton, Kenneth P. Minkema, Adriaan C. Neele

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532685972
  9781532685989
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532685996
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This volume contains previously unpublished sermons by Jonathan Edwards on St Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. Edwards preached these sermons during his Northampton pastorate, and repreached some of them between 1728 and 1751. The importance of the Epistle to the Galatians has been recognized throughout the Christian practice of preaching. As such, these sermons have significance for its place in the Protestant tradition since the Reformation, but they also highlight Edwards's thought on the nature of faith and works, flesh and spirit, and Christ and the Holy Spirit. To assist the reader, preceding the sermons are two introductions that describe Edwards's preaching style and method, and provide an historical context for the sermons themselves.

The Gospel No Encouragement to Sin

(Gal. 2:17, 1731–32)

Likely preached towards the end of 1732, Edwards mustered all of his rational and theological faculties to curb any pretense that justification by faith alone encouraged sin. In his exposition, Edwards begins by considering the motivations by which sinners manipulate the teaching of the gospel to sanction ungodly behavior. Instead, he argued, if rightly understood, the gospel “will not have any tendency to promote wickedness of life, or to encourage any person to go on in sin, or to allow of any one sinful act.” He then proceeded to support his doctrine with twelve arguments.

What Edwards is concerned about here, as was the Apostle in Galatians, was that those who professed themselves to be justified in Christ nonetheless continued in sin. As such, many make the gospel a “foundation for sin,” because of what they read about the infiniteness of God’s mercy, Christ’s satisfaction for the sins of all, the worthlessness of individual righteousness for justification, and the pardon offered on “hearty acceptance” of Christ. Yet, the gospel is no encouragement to sin, for it states that sin is forbidden, that the duties of the law must be followed, that God’s wrath against sin abides, that universal obedience is still necessary, that it provides no encouragement to commit even one more sin, that there is no assurance of the continuance of life, that great sinners are more exposed to damnation than others, that the ungodly are exposed to great punishment, and dreadful punishment is threatened to those who go on in sin. All of this promotes obedience to Christ, insofar as the gospel teaches that the obedience of fallen creatures, as far as it goes, is acceptable; that eternal life is attainable by such obedience as sinners are capable of; and that no one act of sincere obedience will miss of its eternal reward. The gospel therefore affords “powerful motives” to avoid sin and obey God’s commands.

In this defense, some of Edwards’ challenges are worth mentioning. Edwards reminded his audience that, although the justified are freed from the law as a covenant, it is still a “rule of life.” He reinforces for them God’s immutable character and exhorts them to consider how the gospel reveals God’s hatred of sin and his wrath against it. He sounds an unusual note when he informs his audience that though they are not justified by works, “universal obedience is as truly necessary to salvation under the gospel as it was under the first commandment,” or first covenant. By that he appears to mean that obedience is a necessary by-product of justifying faith. One can only speculate as to what he intended by “universal” obedience, but he appears to mean either obedience in all believers or an obedience that extends to all of life.

Of further interest is Edwards’ use of the scholastic distinction between the sufficiency and efficiency of Christ’s atonement. He frequently appeals to these scholastic categories but decries pleading the sufficiency of Christ’s work as an excuse for sin, writing starkly: “God don’t bring to Christ everyone that the blood of Christ is sufficient for.” His final exhortation is similarly striking, as he threatens (using Matt. 11:21 as a proof-text) that “they that go to hell now, that have lived under the gospel, will go to a great deal worse hell, than if there had been no gospel.”

At one point, Edwards gives the audience a glimpse of his understanding how the saints reflect on hell. In the tenth defense of his doctrine, he considers how the godly respond to thoughts of hell. Although they are secure from damnation, nevertheless, thoughts of hell are sometimes useful in motivating the saints’ greater fidelity to God. He writes, “When persons are strong in grace or have grace in a lively exercise, they don’t need fear of hell to restrain ‘em from sin”; nevertheless, “sometimes, when grace is weak or lies asleep, and the saints are in an ill frame, they commonly need the fear of hell to restrain and curb their lusts, and make them strictly to avoid sin.”

For Application, Edwards begins by instructing his listeners in the wisdom of God’s work of redemption, wherein God gives mercy and provides a Savior. The wicked who taken encouragement to sin from the gospel are unreasonable. Indeed, what does give encouragement to sin? If not the gospel, neither is it law, nor reason or the light of nature; all conspire to teach obedience. Instead, he argues that reason teaches that God exists and that he is a rightful king who demands obedience and punishes disobedience. He maintains that even pagans believe this. Hence, the evidence of reason provides an apology for the truth of Scripture’s teaching on future punishment and on the need to flee to Christ for refuge. The final Use rehearses the points in the first and second heads of the doctrine, showing the encouragements that sinners take from the gospel to sin, and then reasserting that such encouragements have no basis.

What precipitated this discourse? Perhaps two challenges of Edwards’ young ministry contributed to its composition. Following his elevation to sole pastor of the Northampton church in 1729, Edwards sensed an urgent need to stem the tide of Arminianism. This precipitated a number of printed and unpublished discourses, including this one, on the nature of justification. Reformed theology’s Arminian critics have often charged the doctrine of justification by faith with producing presumption, antinomianism, and licentiousness. There can be little doubt that Edwards had his Arminian critics in mind when he preached this sermon in 1732.

He also likely considered the youth of his congregation. Early in his ministry, adolescents in the town of Northampton indulged in behavior that troubled Edwards, particularly in the area of sexuality. It is likely that Edwards felt that these youths appeased their consciences by manipulating the teaching of justification and using it as a license for sin. When he preached his four-part series on justification by faith in 1734, the series caused a great deal of religious concern in the town, even amongst some of these licentious youths. In either case, Edwards’ sermon would have provided a challenge to the objections of Arminians and the godless lifestyle of the young people of Northampton. Herein, this sermon illustrates Edwards’ focus throughout his ministry on the religious behavior and speech of youth.

Further, this sermon nicely illustrates the relationship between Edwards’ exegetical, theological, and pastoral work, as contemporaneously written entries on the nature of justification in his “Blank Bible” and “Miscellanies,” as well as this sermon, interact. In the “Blank Bible” entry on Galatians 2:18, part of the text of this sermon, Edwards dwells on hatred of sin as part or evidence of justification; and in “Miscellanies” no. 504, on “Condition of Justification. Repentance. Faith,” he states that for God’s offer of freedom believers must will in their hearts to “quit” sin, concluding, “by faith we destroy sin.”25

* * * * *

The manuscript is twenty-seven duodecimo-sized leaves, comprising three preaching units, with the second beginning at the fifth subhead of the second head of the Doctrine, and the third at the Application.

25. WJE 18:102; WJE 23:183, and WJE 24:1080.

The Gospel No Encouragement to Sin

Galatians 2:17–18

But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.

These words, and the discourse of which it is a part, are introduced by the Apostle’s giving an account how he withstood Peter at Antioch in conforming to the legal and self-righteous Jews.

There were many of the Jews who, after they turned Christians, yet continued very zealous of the law of Moses, and especially was it so with the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem. They were, notwithstanding their profession of Christ as the Messiah, yet fond of circumcision and other ceremonies of the law of Moses and the customs which they had been bred up in, one of which was to avoid eating with the gentiles.

Peter knew better, for he was the first of the apostles that had it revealed to him that it was lawful freely to converse with gentiles as with Jews, by the vision that he had when he was sent to Cornelius [Acts 10]. And when he was at Antioch he used the liberty; he freely conversed with the gentiles and ate with them. But when afterwards some came from James, that is, from the church at Jerusalem, which was especially under the oversight of the apostle James, he withdrew and separated himself, and avoided the company of the gentiles, lest he should offend those Jews: and hereby he was guilty of an unwarrantable compliance with their legal and self-righteous practices.

Upon which, the apostle Paul, who was there and observed him, reproved him, as he gives an account in the 14th verse: “But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the gentiles to live as do the Jews?” The giving an account of this leads the Apostle to observe of [how] little avail works are in the affair of justification, contrary to the notion that those legal Jews were ready to entertain: “We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.”

But here in the text is an objection proposed and answered, against this doctrine of being justified by faith alone without works, viz., that this makes Christ the minister of sin, and the gospel an encouragement to sin. For if we are justified by Christ from the guilt of all sin, and good works are of no use in the affair of justification, then what are works good for? What matter is it how many sins we commit, as long as we may be justified by Christ from all of them, let them be as many as they will? And what matter how few good works we do, as long as they do nothing towards our justification? And so, is not Christ, while he is a justifier of ungodly men, an encourager of ungodliness? The Apostle by no means allows what is objected, and answers, “If I build again the thing...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Edwards the Preacher
• Introduction: Historical Context
• Sermons on the Epistle to the Galatians
• Only that Sort of Faith that Works by Love Avails Anything before God
• Christ’s Particular Respect to Every Believer in his Work of Redemption
• The Gospel No Encouragement to Sin
• Flesh and Spirit
• Christ and Believers One Mystical Person
• The Holy Spirit the Sum of the Blessings Purchased for Us by Christ
• Saving Faith Worketh by Love