The Soul Itself Becomes a Precious Jewel

The meeting house where Edwards
preached "Charity and Its Fruits"

Jonathan Edwards' sermons on 1 Corinthians 13, preached in 1738, in Northampton, MA, shortly after the fervors of the first "Great Awakening" had passed, are a precious treasure for the Christian Church. Whenever I return to Charity and Its Fruits, I find myself simultaneously devastated and invigorated. I say "devastated" because Edwards' preaching on what real faith looks like as it works itself out in love leaves me feeling my shortcomings considerably more than the much less probing preaching common in the church today, preaching that rarely disturbs the comfortable, and comforts the disturbed. And I say "invigorated" because of how life-giving and renewing and refreshing is Edward's vision of the Christian life. It is beautiful, excellent, altogether lovely. It is life-giving, since it is itself swallowed up in the life of God.

And so I wish in this place to give my reader a flavor of what I'm talking about. The following excerpt comes from the second sermon in the series, entitled: "Love More Excellent than Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit." And here Edwards is distinguishing between the "ordinary" (by which he means what all Christians are ordinarily given in the gift of the Spirit) and "extraordinary" (by which he means "miraculous") gifts of the Spirit. One paragraph ought to be enough to send you off longing and panting for more. Note especially the last two sentences of the quoted material below, where Edwards is illustrating his point.

This blessing of the saving grace of God is a quality inherent in the nature of him who is the subject of it. This gift of the Spirit of God, working a saving Christian temper and exciting gracious exercises, confers a blessing which has its seat in the heart; a blessing which makes a man's heart and nature excellent. Yea, the very excellency of the nature consists in it.  

Now it is not so with respect to those extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. They are excellent things, but not properly the excellency of a man's nature; for they are not things which are inherent in the nature. For instance, if a man is endued with a gift of working miracles, that power is not anything inherent in his nature. It is not properly any quality of the heart and nature of the man, as true grace and holiness are. And though most commonly those who have these extraordinary gifts of prophecy, speaking in tongues, and working miracles have been holy persons, yet their holiness did not consist in their having these gifts; but holiness consists in having grace in the heart; grace and holiness are the same thing. 

Extraordinary gifts are nothing properly inherent in the man. They are something adventitious. They are excellent things; but they are not properly excellencies in the nature of the subject, any more than the garments are which he wears. Extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are, as it were, precious jewels, which a man carries about him. But true grace in the heart is, as it were, the preciousness of the heart, by which it becomes precious or excellent; by which the very soul itself becomes a precious jewel.

—Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 157–158.