The Matter of Communion with God

Chapter 3 of part 1 in On Communion with God is, all of it, marvelous stuff.  It makes my heart sing and dance, thrills my soul with pleasure and refreshment, renews my mind with the triune love of God.  Along with chapter 4, it treats of the matter of communion with God.  The whole of it is worth reading and meditating upon at length, again and again.  And I will do this.  I do not by any means intend here to reproduce all that is valuable, but I will set forth some of the sweetness to point to the pot of honey.

Communion with the Father consists in love.  The saints do peculiarly and eminently have communion with God the Father in love—and this love is free, undeserved, eternal.  This is, says Owen, the great discovery of the Gospel.  Indeed it is.  To know God not as our angry judge but as a loving heavenly Father is the best news in all the world.  Owen cites "God is love" (1 Jn. 4:8) and shows that clearly the love of the Father is in view in the context.  He then shows how Jesus purchases and mediates this love and the Holy Spirit sheds it abroad in believers' hearts.

The Requirements of Believers for Complete Communion with the Father in Love.  Now the first bit was important and antecedant to this second bit, but this second bit is important for modern American Christians to consider and practice.  There are two requirements for complete communion with the Father in love according to Owen:  First, that we recieve the Father's love; and second, that we make "suitable returns" unto the Father. 

"Communion consists in giving and receiving."  And we do not hold communion with the Father until we receive his love.  How then is this love received?  Answer: by faith in the Son crucified, risen, exalted.  It is through Christ alone that we have access to the enjoyment of the Father's love (e.g., Jn. 14:6; Eph. 2:18; 1 Pet. 1:21).  "When by and through Christ we have an access unto the Father, we then behold his glory also, and see his love that he peculiarly bears unto us, and act faith thereon."  So we may not receive the light of God's love except by the beams of the Son; by the beams of the Son we see the sun of the Father's love, which is the Fountain of all light. 

So "Jesus Christ, in respect of the love of the Father, is but the beam, the stream; wherein though actually all our light, our refreshment lies, yet by him we are led to the fountain, the sun of eternal love itself.  Would beleivers exercise themselves herein, they would find it a matter of no small spiritual improvement in their walking with God."

Owen then goes on to describe the "suitable returns" that believers make in love to God.  He rounds off chapter 3 by describing wherein our love and God's love are similar and different.  The riches in this chapter are worth mining and offering up to God in love, delight, satisfaction, obedience, worship.  For God the three-in-one and one-in-three is infinitely worthy of our deepest longings, most intense affections, highest delightings, absolute obedience, and consummate trust.  All praise and worship and love and honor and glory be to him who lives and reigns forever—one God, Father, Son, and Spirit—world without end.  Amen!