Scripture: Selected Scriptures
Date: May 15, 2011
Speaker: Sean Higgins
See the notes for Part 1 here. Picking up with The Evidences for Religious Affections in Scripture:
Affections are not in the margins of our Bibles, they are in the center of the page. Here is a grocery list of affections you’re familiar with:
Fear is more than information, it is a response. In the Bible, “the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him” (Psalm 147:11), not just those who study about Him.
Jesus taught that, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4). This is more than grasping that our sin is bad, but grieving that our sin offends God.
Hatred is one of the strongest affections and is certainly more than a simple awareness of sin. And this reaction is required for proper reverence, since “The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate” (Proverbs 8:13).
We are commanded to this positive affection. “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4). “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord” (Philippians 3:1). “Rejoice always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16). It is not imperative that we know why we should be glad, but that we actually are glad in Him.
The Lord takes pleasure not only in those who fear Him, but also “in those who hope in his steadfast love” (Psalm 147:11).
We are always to “be thankful” (Colossians 3:15). We are to “put on…compassion” like Christ (Colossians 3:12). Christ’s work includes purifying people “who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).
Jesus declared explicitly,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)
The Holy Spirit works to produce this affection in us, as we see that “the fruit of the Spirit is love” (Galatians 5:22). Teaching and shepherding is not fulfilled without producing affection, as Paul states that “the aim of our charge is love” (1 Timothy 1:5).
Love is the preeminent affection. That is why Edwards wrote,
The Scriptures do represent true religion, as being summarily comprehended in love, the chief of the affections and the fountain of all other affections. (p.35)
Love is the source of all the other affections. When we love God, we will hate what He hates. When we love God we grieve when we sin against Him. When we love God we are naturally drawn to rejoice in Him, hope in Him, and give thanks to Him. And when we love God we will give our lives for Him and for others.
While more verses could be listed for each affection, but the purpose was merely to provide an overview that Scripture everywhere puts religion in the affections, ultimately in the affection of love. That is why we ought to do everything For the Love of God.
Those who are elevated as great examples in Scripture are those with great affections. King David was such an example, as “a man after God’s own heart” who wrote songs of intense love to God. He admired God’s glorious perfections. From his soul he desired and panted and thirsted after God. He exulted in God’s faithfulness, and grieved over his sin and the sins of the nation. One of my favorite passages of David’s desperate desire for God is Psalm 42:1-2.
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
The apostle Paul was also a man of considerable affections. Edwards observes from Paul’s letters
that he was, in the course of his life, inflamed, actuated, and entirely swallowed up by a most ardent love to his Lord, esteeming all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Him, and esteeming them but dung that he might win Christ. (p.38)
Paul himself declared,
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:8)
A person doesn’t count everything as loss or rubbish unless they’ve found something else more desirable. Philippians 3:8 is a confession of affection for God and Paul demonstrated the reality of that commitment in his affection for others. He regularly spoke of his tender love for others like that of a nursing mother. He referred to his “bowels of mercy.” He wrote of conflict of soul for his sheep. At times people thought he was beside himself. He shed tears day and night. All those describe a life driven from the heart.
David and Paul are only two of God’s examples that the religion of distinguished saints is much in the affections.
Edwards makes the fantastic observation that,
The way to learn the true nature of anything is to go where that thing is to be found in its purity and perfection. (p.43)
And therefore,
There is doubtless true religion in heaven and true religion in its utmost purity and perfection. (p.41)
If we could visit heaven we would see what true religion looks like. No one in heaven knows God and remains indifferent. There is no sin that soils their desires or behavior. And Scripture makes it clear that those in heaven have consummate, holy, animating, engaging love for God. Their joy is expressed in fervent and exalted praise. Thousands and thousands of creatures sing with loudest voice and hottest affection.
Revelation 5:11 Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders [the redeemed] the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
It must be constant goose-bumps in heaven with so much affection and excitement. But as we anticipate that day we should remember that the nucleus of these affections ought to be present in us now.
The love and joy [and other affections] we have on earth is the beginning and dawning of the light, life, and blessedness of heaven. (p.42)
The difference between the affections of heaven and our affections is not nature and kind, but degree. Though theirs are unmixed and unpolluted, they are not an entirely new flavor. Ours is just a small taste of what we’ll partake of in heaven. But considering true religion in heaven educates us that true religion here and now is no less in the affections.
Of all the examples of great affections, Jesus is preeminent. Edwards wrote that Jesus is
the perfect example of true religion and virtue, for the imitation of all, the Shepherd whom the whole flock should follow where He goes…was a person who was remarkably of a tender and affectionate heart, and His virtue was expressed very much in the exercise of holy affections. (p.40)
Jesus was full of zeal (John 2:17). He was often angry at sin (Mark 3:5). He had compassion on those with physical and spiritual needs. He wrestled with tears like drops of blood in His praying. His was a life dominated by affections.
And most importantly, He was and is the great example of love to God and man. His love for the Father is what enabled Him to overcome the natural fear and struggle when He faced the cross, “who for the joy that was set before him endure the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). It was not knowledge that moved Him to give His life on the cross. What motivated Christ’s sacrifice was His love.
The final scriptural proof that true religion is found in the affections is that lack of affections is a great sin.
Now by a hard heart is plainly mean an unaffected heart, or a heart that is not easy to be moved with virtuous affections, like a stone, insensible, stupid, unmoved, and hard to be impressed. (p.46)
How dangerous it is to have a hard heart. That is exactly what God hates. That is exactly the kind of disregard for God that is infinitely wicked, and that is exactly the kind of heart that will be judged. As the apostle Paul told the Romans,
But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. (Romans 2:5)
A hard heart is not necessarily missing knowledge, it is absent of affections. It is “impenitent,” unmovable, and unashamed. So God’s sends His grace to overtake the heart of stone and create a heart of flesh, one that is tender and sensitive and affected, and make that heart “easily susceptible of such affections” (p.47).
Everything in Scripture displays that true religion is placed not just in our knowledge about God, but in our love for God. Christianity has so much to do with the affections that,
the degree of religion is rather to be judged of by the fixedness and strength of the habit that is exercised in affection. (p.47)
In other words, true religion consists great in affections. Those affections might not always be as obvious as possible, but they will always be moving in some measure. Affections will demonstrate themselves over time, but make no mistake,
without holy affections, there is no true religion. (p.48)
In other words, if you don’t love God, if you are not drawn to Him, if He is not your greatest delight, you are not a Christian. Religious knowledge is not the issue nor are religious works. The issue is affections, stimulated by knowledge and manifested in works. The importance of affections should not be underestimated.
Edwards makes three inferences from the Scriptural evidence for affections and I’ve just turned his statements into three exhortations.
While it is true that there are excesses of enthusiasm, false excitement, or perhaps even more precise, there are some kinds of religious affections that are counterfeits, the answer is not to reject affections altogether. Disingenuous affections are not fixed by disregarding affections. Most truth-driven persons swing the pendulum to the opposite extreme, but stoicism in the name of Christianity can be just as dangerous. In fact,
This…is the way to bring all religion to a mere lifeless formality…For although to true religion there must indeed be something else beside affection, yet true religion consists so much in the affections that there can be no true religion without them. He who has no religious affections is in a state of spiritual death, and is wholly destitute of the powerful, quickening, saving influences of the Spirit of God on his heart. (p.49)
So, both heat and light are necessary. “Heat” is represents the fire of affections and “light” pictures the clarity of truth. One is not sufficient without the other. So there must be light in the understanding, but light without heat (a head filled with facts but with a cold and unaffected heart) is no good. And heat without light (a heart of excitement apart from truth) is not spiritually profitable either. Edwards put it this way:
A man’s having much affection does not prove that he has any true religion; but if he has no affection, it proves that he has no true religion. (p.50)
We must not fail to drink from the living fountain by disregarding or minimizing affections.
This should be a natural response for the believer. If true religion is in the affections, it is right to raise those affections and cause the fire to burn brighter. Edwards said,
If it be so that true religion lies much in the affections,…we may infer that such means are to be desired as have much of a tendency to move the affections. (p.50)
This is not just any means, however. Edwards is not encouraging us to manipulate others (or ourselves) with emotionalism; mood lighting and hypnotic music or heart-wrenching stories or drama or anything that natural man can be stirred by. Edwards is encouraging us to stimulate affections with truth and the spiritual disciplines given to us by God for that purpose.
I don’t think that ministers are to be blamed for raising the affections of their hearers too high, if that which they are affected with be only that which is worthy of affection, and their affections are not raised beyond a proportion to their importance… I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth. (Edwards, Thoughts on Revival)
Affections for God cannot get too high since God is infinitely worthy of our affections. Edwards himself sought to fuel his affections through the God-appointed disciplines and then sought to spark the affections of others in his ministry of public teaching and private counseling and published writing.
The connection between heat and light is also made by the apostle Paul as he prayed for the increase of love in knowledge:
Philippians 1:9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and depth of insight
We should never be satisfied with thin joy or watery love. We must stimulate our affections with the truth of God.
If true religion lies much in the affections, hence we may learn what great cause we have to be ashamed and confounded before God that we are no more affected with the great things of religion. (p.51)
Moving three baby steps past the line of indifference is no reason to throw a party for our religious selves. The chief end of man is at stake in our affections.
God has given to mankind affections for the same purpose which He has given all the faculties and principles of the human soul…that they might be subservient to man’s chief end, and the great business for which God has created him, that is the business of religion. And yet how common it is among mankind, that their affections are much more engaged in other matters than religion. (p.51)
Our loves are often directed toward worldly interests: reputation, relationships, appearances, possessions, etc. We show that our affections are stronger for things under the sun than for the Creator beyond the sun.
How insensible and unmoved are most men about the great things of another world. How dull are their affections. (p.52)
The things of the gospel and of our Redeemer ought to get us a-going! Relationship with God ought to rouse us. All the virtues and beauty of the Lamb, His patience and long-suffering and compassion should affect us. All the strength and majesty of the Lion, His justice and His holiness should affect us. All of that intersects at the cross where our sin was judged as the infinitely wicked thing it is, and sinners were set free. But we are not affected. It ought not be so.
God has done everything and revealed what He has in such a matter as to have
the greatest possible tendency to reach our hearts in the most tender part, and move our affections most sensibly and strongly. (p.53)
May we repent from our weak and dull and misdirected affections.
As we finish our discussion on the nature and importance of religious affections, remember that it is not a question of if you have affections, it is a question of for what do you have affections? And what do your affections say about you? More importantly, what do your affections say about God?
From Edwards’ The End for Which God Created the World:
God glorifies Himself toward the creatures…in two ways: 1. By appearing to…their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying the manifestations which He makes of Himself… God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might be received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God’s glory doesn’t glorify God so much as he that testifies also of his approbation (praise) of it and his delight in it.
Yes, counterfeits exists. But truth and affections are not opposites. The opposites are truth and falsehood, and affections can either be based on truth or falsehood. If your head hurts, it may not be because a concrete block hit it. But if a concrete block hit your head, it will hurt. Delight may come from somewhere other than truth, but truth without delight closed up shop too early.