But not all of his books are like wading through a literary slog. Owen does occasionally puts the cookies on the lower shelf for those of us more feeble in mind. One such work was recently republished by Reformation Heritage under the title of Rules for Walking in Fellowship.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THIS GEM

RHB says, “In Rules for Walking in Fellowship, John Owen supplies struggling congregations with biblical guidelines for making church life in the present a foretaste of heavenly fellowship to come. He discusses both the responsibilities congregations have toward pastors as well as the duties members have toward one another. Together, Owen presents twenty-four rules for fostering gospel fellowship, supporting them with numerous proof texts, brief explanations, and words of motivation to keep them. His simple approach makes this book ideal for personal or small group study. Here, then, is a collection of indispensable biblical rules that will challenge Christians in any given congregation, of whatever denomination—a little gem that is at the same time doctrinal, practical, and ecumenical.”

The book’s usefulness is quite clear when you browse the Table of Contents . . .

PART 1: Rules for Walking in Fellowship, with Reference to the Pastor or Minister Who Watches Over Your Souls

1. Attending to the Ordinances Dispensed by Your Pastor
2. Following Your Pastor’s Example
3. Praying for Your Pastor
4. Esteeming Your Pastor
5. Paying Your Pastor’s Salary
6. Standing by Your Pastor in His Trials
7. Gathering to Worship when Summoned

PART 2: Rules to Be Observed By Those Who Walk in Fellowship, to Remind Them of Their Mutual Duties Toward One Another

8. Loving One Another
9. Praying for the Church
10. Taking a Stand for the Church
11. Preserving Unity
12. Separating from the World
13. Engaging in Spiritual Conversation
14. Bearing with One Another’s Faults
15. Bearing One Another’s Burdens
16. Helping the Poor
17. Being Wary of Those Who Divide the Church
18. Sharing the Church’s Lot, No Matter What
19. Associating with the Lowly
20. Praying for the Afflicted
21. Keeping Each Other Accountable
22. Being Holy

In many ways, this is the Puritan answer to the question of, “What is a Healthy Church Member?” Grab a few copies, a few friends, and tolle lege!

Have you read any of his works?

“HEAVY AND HARD TO READ”

If you haven’t, you are in the vast majority. Owen is notoriously hard to read. Spurgeon said, “I did not say that it was easy to read [Owen’s works]!—that would not be true; yet I do venture to say that the labour involved in plodding through these ill-arranged and tediously-written treatises will find them abundantly worthwhile.” To discover Owen’s abundant usefulness you simply need to read his timeless work The Mortification of Sin. Just how helpful is this “little” book?

Jerry Bridges said, “John Owen’s treatises on Indwelling Sin in Believers and The Mortification of Sin are, in my opinion, the most helpful writings on personal holiness ever written.” JI Packer feels indebted to Owen, for he once wrote, “I owe more to John Owen than to any other theologian, ancient or modern, and I owe more to this little book [The Mortification of Sin] than to anything else he wrote.”

Around this time last year I had a few dozen men in my church read The Mortification of Sin (the Puritan Paperback version from Banner) a good handful of them said something to the effect of, “This is one of the most useful books I’ve ever read!”

Indeed.

LAY DOWN THE AXE

The book is also oh so useful for pastors in their personal pursuit of holiness and faithfulness in pastoral ministry. Here’s what I mean. Chapter seven closes with a luscious aside directed to preachers who aim to be instruments of mortification in the hearts of their hearers. The Prince of Puritans warns,

Let me add this to them who are preachers of the word, or intend, through the good hand of God, that employment: It is their duty to plead with men about their sins, to lay load on particular sins, but always remember that it be done with that which is the proper end of law and gospel;—that is, that they make use of the sin they speak against to the discovery of the state and condition “wherein the sinner is; otherwise, haply, they may work men to formality and hypocrisy, but little of the true end of preaching the gospel will be brought about. It will not avail to beat a man off from his drunkenness into a sober formality.

A skillful master of the assemblies lays his axe at the root, drives still at the heart . . . To break men off particular sins, and not to break their hearts, is to deprive ourselves of advantages of dealing with them.

. . . Can sin be killed without an interest in the death of Christ, or mortified without the Spirit? . . . If such directions should prevail to change men’s lives, as seldom they do, yet they never reach to the change of their hearts or conditions, they may make men self-justiciaries[sic] or hypocrites, not Christians.

I believe the margin next to this section in my copy reads, “Boom! and Amen.”

The “series is designed to introduce the spirituality and piety of the Reformed tradition by presenting descriptions of the lives of influential Christians with select passages from their works. This combination of biographical sketches and primary sources gives a taste of each subject’s contribution to the Reformed tradition’s spiritual heritage and direction as to how the reader can find further edification through their works.”

The next installment, due in just over a month, is entitled “The Foundation of Communion with God: The Trinitarian Piety of John Owen.” Ryan McGraw, who did his PhD on Owen’s liturgical theology, offers up a digestible feast from the Prince of the Puritans. Which is no small accomplishment!

AN ACCESSIBLE OWEN

Owen is notoriously difficult do read, and so RHB and McGraw ought to be commended for their hard work in making Owen accessible to the average church member.

The book’s forty-one chapters are broken down into the following four sections:

1. Knowing God as Triune
2. Public Worship and Scripture
3. Heavenly Mindedness and Apostasy
4. Covenant and Church

I have read quite a few of the other volumes in this series and each one has been fantastic. They are great for discipling and are also suited nicely for morning devotions. Make sure to grab this one when it comes out and then consider which installment you might read next.

Tolle lege!

After calling Christians to store up gospel treasure in their hearts, John Owen provides the normative response of such a heart – universal obedience:

He that, having a due acquaintance with the gospel in its excellencies, as to him a word of mercy, holiness, liberty, and consolation, values it, in all its concernments, as his choicest and only treasure,–makes it his business and the work of his life to give himself up unto it in universal obedience, then especially when opposition and apostasy put the patience of Christ to the utmost,–he shall be preserved from the hour of temptation.

– Owen, Overcoming Sin & Temptation, 211-212.

In Of Temptation, John Owen encourages Christians to store up their hearts with truth in order to stand against temptation:

But store the heart with a sense of the love of God in Christ, and his love in the shedding of it; get a relish of the privileges we have thereby,–our adoption, justification, acceptation with God; fill the heart with thoughts of the beauty of his death;–and thou wilt, in an ordinary course of walking with God, have great peace and security as to the disturbance of temptations.

– Owen, Overcoming Sin & Temptation, 202.

In his great work on temptation John Owen begs his readers to consider that, in and of themselves, they have no strength or power to withstand temptation. He says, “Confidence of any strength in us is one great part of our weakness.”

To prove his point he offers the following analogy:

If a castle or fort be never so strong and well fortified, yet if there be a treacherous party within, that is ready to betray it on every opportunity, there is no preserving it from the enemy. There are traitors in our hearts, ready to take part, to close, and side with every temptation, and to give up all to them; yea, to solicit and bribe temptations to do the work, as traitors incite an enemy. Do not flatter yourselves that you should hold out; there are secret lusts that lie lurking in your hearts, which perhaps now stir not, which, as soon as any temptation befalls you, will rise, tumultuate, cry, disquiet, seduce, and never give over until they are either killed or satisfied. He that promises himself that the frame of his heart will be the same under a temptation as it is before will be woefully mistaken.

Trust not in your own power and your own heart. Trust in Christ’s power that is in you.