PUBLISHING
Jonathan Edwards, the Christian life, and calm Dane Ortlund What a deep breath does for your
How do you slow down the inner
Edwards liberally used two other
RPMs? How do you move through
synonyms when talking about calm:
life without feeling on the inside like
‘tranquil’ and ‘serene’.
your soul. A sinner being given
the wheel? How do you get your
But he especially loved the word
child being given an inhaler.
frantic heart (not just lungs) to take
‘calm,’ as evidenced by the fact
a deep breath? Haven’t you been
that it crops up 442 times in the
around someone, and find your heart
online Works of Edwards that Yale
slowing down? Have you ever been
University hosts.
But all the world’s strategies are
radiated outward and caused you to
Jonathan Edwards shows us that
tells us to go in. Edwards tells us to
breathe more easily just by being in
the Christian life is not only a matter
their presence?
of being justified and adopted and
a hamster running frenetically on
around someone whose inner calm
reconciled and purchased and
lungs, Jonathan Edwards does for Jonathan Edwards is like an asthmatic
The world has strategies for controlling our inner scurrying about. limited to self-resourcing. The world go out. Jonathan Edwards shows us how to walk into true calm, by being drawn out of yourself, and stepping out of your unsustainably fast-paced
Jonathan Edwards takes us into such
liberated and cleansed. It is also a
calm. Let me be clear that by ‘calm’ I
matter of being calmed.
mental universe.
Have you tasted this?
Definitive
What is ‘Calm’?
How does Edwards help calm us
Internally, we move from frantic
By ‘calm’ we’re not talking about
clear is that this blanketing soul-calm
hastiness to calm.
yawning indifference or stoicism or
do not mean working any less hard. Life in Christ energizes us in one way, and calms us in another. Externally, we finally get traction with being truly productive, fruitful, and active.
apathy or lethargy. Edwards wrote
down, then? The first thing to get is definitive of the Christian life. It is not peripheral. It is not optional. In Religious Affections he wrote:
Isaiah 28:16 says, ‘Whoever believes
that ‘lukewarmness in religion is
will not be in haste.’ Our evangelical
abominable.’ By calm Edwards had
and reformed instincts might cause
in mind a settled, inner, unflappable
us to expect that sentence to
repose of soul, beyond the reach of
conclude ‘condemned’ instead of ‘in
circumstance.
than in steadfastly maintaining a
be condemned.’ But the text takes
Like the eye of a tornado, it is an
benevolence of his mind, amid all the
trust in God in a different direction,
inner quiet when all around is chaos.
identifying a different benefit. And
It is deeper than simply not getting
as I consider all that God gives us
angry. After all, sometimes we should
through Jonathan Edwards, in living
get angry and are wrong not to (cf.
the Christian life, among the most
Eph. 4:26). Edwards has in mind
personally meaningful today—and
something more wonderful, more all-
at the same time most neglected—is
of-life-encompassing.
haste’ – ‘Whoever believes will not
captured by the little word ‘calm.’
WWW.THEOLO.GY
‘The strength of the good soldier of Jesus Christ appears in nothing more holy calm, meekness, sweetness, and storms, injuries, strange behavior, and surprising acts and events of this evil and unreasonable world.’ Do you think of the Christian soldier’s central battle as ‘maintaining a holy calm’?
