One of the best books I read in 2013 was Kyle Strobel’s Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards.

Chapter 4, “Spiritual Disciplines as Means of Grace,” contains a very helpful discussion on the nature of the means.¹ When Edwards speaks of the means often used three different biblical images to illustrate his emphases.

THREE ILLUSTRATIONS FOR UNDERSTANDING THE MEANS

One of his more common illustrations is taken from John 5 and the story of Jesus healing a man at the pool called Bethesda. If you remember the story, a disable man constantly remains by the pool because angels stir the water. The thought at the time was the first person in the pool after an angelic stirring would be healed from his infirmity. The disabled man tells Jesus he has no one to lower him into the pool, so he never is first in the water. Edwards focused on the reality of this pool as a God-given gift of healing. Strobel says, “It’s important to note that there was nothing about the pool itself that was healing. But God had established this way as the way of healing, and therefore people were called to enter the pool with faith that God would heal.” The means of grace God gives to the church are not effectual in and of themselves. God has, in his mercy, given us established means to come to him that we may receive his grace, even though our coming does not bind God and force Him to be gracious. Our task is to simply come with faith.

A second illustration Edwards turned to was in John 2 when Jesus turned the water into wine. Our role in the Christian life is to “fill the water pots,” and Christ’s role is to turn our water into wine. The means of grace are ways to fill us with water, water that God can turn into wine. The means of grace Edwards uses with this illustration is preaching: “They can be abundant in preaching the word, which, as it comes only from them, is but water, a dead letter, a sapless, tasteless, spiritless thing; but this is what Christ will bless for the supply [of] his church with wine.”

A third image looks to the story of Elijah and his challenge to the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. Elijah built an altar and put wood on it with an offering. He then prayed to God and God descended with fire to consume the offering. In light of the precious illustrations, the correlation of Elijah’s altar building encounter with the means should be clear. Our actions do not create grace; our actions cannot even create holiness, any more than Elijah’s building of an altar could create fire. We use the means out of faithfulness to God, trusting that he will descend with the fire.

These three illustrations narrate two specific realities Edwards hoped to convey . . .

TWO CONVEYANCES ABOUT THE MEANS

First, we are called to specific actions – “means” – to receive grace. These actions are powerless in themselves to change the heart or make one holy. If they could the Christian life would inevitably become a self-help project. Instead, we are called to enact them and put our faith in God to do with them what He will.

Second, if God chooses, he will endow the means we do in faith with his grace. God does this by His will and sovereign grace alone. Strobel writes, “Our call, in other words, is not to grow ourselves, but to present ourselves to God through the means He has provided. Means of grace are spiritual postures to receive God’s grace.” We would be wrong to assume that these practices are easy; in actuality they require hard work. Many of them, as we know from experience, are deeply trying. They are designed to put us in a spiritual frame that runs contrary to our fleshly dependence and worldly fascination. But they do not, and cannot, grow you. What they ordinarily do is open your soul to receive the grace that alone can transform and beautify.