Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

by Kyle Strobel

When Edwards explains the means of grace, he uses several biblical images to illustrate his emphases. To help those of us who may not be familiar with the means of grace, I will focus our attention on three of these images. One of his more frequent illustrations comes from John 5, where Jesus heals the disabled man at the pool of Bethesda. If you remember the story, the man remains by the pool because angels stir the water. The first person in the pool after an angel stirs the water will be healed. He tells Jesus he has no one to lower him into the pool, so someone always gets in before him. Most of us, I assume, find this story a bit odd and focus our attention on Jesus’ healing of the man rather than the pool itself. Edwards focused on the reality of this pool as a God-given gift of healing. It’s important to note that there was nothing about the pool itself that was healing. There was nothing about the act of going into the water 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.[8] The means given to the church are not efficacious in their own right. God has, in his mercy, given us established means to come to him that we may receive this grace, even though our coming does not bind God to be gracious. Our task is to enter the pool with faith. Another image illustrating the means of grace is from the wedding where Jesus turns water into wine (Jn 2:1-11). Our role in...