God’s Flaming Glory – Post 14 – God’s Glory in Union, According to Jonathan Edwards

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            In the last post, we saw how God’s glory in His grand design of redemption. God’s plan is to communicate Himself to His Beloved Bride, the church. Now, in this post, we will ask how God’s grand design is worked out in the individual believer’s experience, and see God’s glory in the union believers have in Christ.

                        God’s Glory in Union

            How is such a glorious reality to be brought about in the lives of individual people? It is brought about through Christ and by marriage (union in Christ, or “the soul’s active uniting with Christ”) ^[1] with Him. Christ is hers, and she is Christs.

            All that Christ has becomes hers by virtue of her union with Him – all the blessings and the inheritance, and His relationship to His Father.

The spouse of Christ, by virtue of her espousals to that only begotten Son of God, is, as it were, a partaker of his filial relation to God, and becomes the king’s daughter, Psalm xiv. 13, and so partakes with her divine husband in his enjoyment of his Father and her Father, his God and her God.^[2]

This union happens at conversion, when the soul is saved to God:

The relative union is both begun and perfected at once, when the soul first closes with Christ by faith… The union of the heart of a believer to Christ, is begun when his heart is drawn to Christ, by the first discovery of divine excellency, at conversion.^[3]

            Such was Edwards view of salvation. A vital union with Christ which brings Christians into communion with God at conversion, and into ever-increasing conformity to Christ.^[4] By beholding Him in love, they are brought near to and are made more like God – further into communion with and conformity to Him – because “Love naturally inclines to a conformity [and nearness] to the beloved.”^[5] This goes on throughout all of life, and on into heaven. God’s sons and daughters are “brought to the unspeakable blessedness of that more glorious union with the Lamb of God….”^[6] Then, gloriously, in the new creation, God’s Bride will enjoy an “eternally increasing union… with God… that is ascending constantly towards that infinite height, moving upwards with… velocity; and that is to continue… to all eternity.”^[7]

            Why? Why is God so rich? Why is it that this is reality for poor sinners? Edwards gives a distinctly Trinitarian (and Biblical!) answer: “all the decrees of God some way or other belong to that eternal covenant of redemption which was between the Father and the Son [in the Spirit] before the foundation of the world.”^[8] The Trinitarian nature of God was far more than the foundation of Edwards’ theology of glory and of reality. God was all and in all to Edwards. He is all in all; everlasting to everlasting; Alpha and Omega; revealed as grace personified (Titus 2:11), the “goodness and loving kindness” of His fullness (Titus 3:4) – the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). The Father “poured out” His Spirit “on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:6). O how good and glorious are these things!

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            It is knowing God as He has revealed Himself (Triune: Father, Son, and Spirit) that gives definition to life and what it means to be His in union with Christ. Like Calvin, Edwards believed that those who repent and believe will be adopted, and will participate in God’s own fellowship:

Christ has brought it to pass, that those whom the Father has given Him should be brought into the household of God; that He and His Father, and His people, should be as one society, one family; that the church should be as it were admitted into the society of the blessed Trinity.^[9]

            It is plain, as explained already, what the end goal and desire of God in redemption is: to bring His elect spouse home to Himself, that they might rejoice in eternal glory before the Father (1 Peter 5:10). That which creation was a preparation for, and that which redemption ultimately accomplishes, is that day

when Christ will sweetly invite his spouse to enter in with him into the palace of his glory, which he had been preparing for her from the foundation of the world… this son and daughter of God shall, in their united glory and joy, present themselves together before the father… And they both shall in that relation and union, together receive the Father’s blessing.^[10]

            The Father’s goal in His grand design is the day when “Christ calls forth His spouse away from the world into retired places, that He may give her His sweetest love….”^[11] It is Christ’s desire that He will “bring His church into His Father’s house in heaven, as His bride, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.”^[12] It is the Spirit’s delight that, as Christians “partake of that holiness^[13] by which [God] himself is holy,” He communicates the “Divine Love in which the essence of God really flows out.”^[14] This is the very height and substance of all the goodness God gives to His elect: “The blessedness of the redeemed consists in partaking of Christ’s fulness, which consists in partaking of that Spirit, which is given [by the Father] not by measure unto [Christ].”^[15]

            God in His glory is to the redeemed both their King and Father; both their Lord and Savior. By union with Christ, Christians are both His spouse and disciples. They are at the same time the Father’s children and His subjects through their union in Christ. This means that Christians do not merely “get a glimpse” of triune glory. They get to bask in it!

When the saints get to heaven, they shall not merely see Christ, and have to do with him as subjects and servants with a glorious and gracious Lord and Sovereign, but Christ will entertain them as friends and brethren. This we may learn from the manner of Christ’s conversing with his disciples here on earth: though he was their sovereign Lord, and did not refuse, but required, their supreme respect and adoration, yet he did not treat them as earthly sovereigns are wont to do their subjects. He did not keep them at an awful distance; but all along conversed with them with the most friendly familiarity, as a father amongst a company of children, yea, as with brethren … This will be the improvement Christ will make of his own glory, to make his beloved friends partakers with him, to glorify them in his glory….^[16]

            Incredibly, to glorify them is His glory, because He is in and of Himself that glorious. Because of their union with Christ, they will not be far away observers. They will be partakers in the very fellowship of the Trinity – in His own Triune glory: “being members of God’s own Son, they are in a sort partakers of his relation to the Father: they are not only sons of God by regeneration, but by a kind of communion in the sonship of the eternal Son.”^[17] For “the greater [degree of] the union, the more full the communion, and intimate the intercourse.”^[18]

            Christians are even now partakers in the glory of the Triune God. Edwards preached that this was not some far off reality awaiting Christian beyond the grave. This is what every true Christian possesses now, in whatever state or frame of heart they find themselves in. And it is the obtaining of this Gift for which the whole universe was made, and for which reason it has been governed over thus far. This Gift is the Holy Spirit – God Himself. In union with Christ, all that Christ has becomes the possession of His Bride. Because the fulness of Christ as mediator is the Spirit on Him without measure, Christians, “by receiving the Holy Spirit from Christ, and being made partakers of His Spirit, are said ‘to receive of his fulness, and grace for grace.’”^[19]

The inheritance that Christ has purchased for the elect, is the Spirit of God; not in any extraordinary gifts, but in his vital indwelling in the heart, exerting and communicating himself there, in his own proper, holy, or divine nature. The Father provides the Saviour, and the purchase is made of him; the Son is the purchaser and the price; and the Holy Spirit is the great blessing or inheritance purchased, as is intimated Galatians 3:13-14. and hence the Spirit is often spoken of as the sum of the blessings promised in the Gospel.^[20]

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[1] Union with Jesus is not a reward for faith, but “is the soul’s active uniting with Christ” [Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 2298].

[2] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 78.

[3] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 75.

[4] This “conformity” happens because a believer is united to Christ in such a way that growth is a natural supernatural: “consequent on this drawing and closing of his heart with Christ [i.e., conversion], is established a vital union with Christ; whereby the believer becomes a living branch of the true vine, living by a communication of the sap and vital juice of the stock and root; and a member of Christ’s mystical body, living by a communication of spiritual and vital influences from the head, and by a kind of participation of Christ’s own life” [Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 75].

[5] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 394.

[6] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 62.

[7] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 857.

[8] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 2273.

[9] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 2562.

[10] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 60.

[11] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 1412.

[12] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 2269.

“Not that the saints are made partakers of the essence, of God – or godded with God, and christed with Christ, according to the blasphemous language of some heretics – but, to use the scripture phrase, they are made partakers of God’s fulness, (Eph. iii. 17-19. John i. 16.) that is, of God’s spiritual beauty and happiness, according to the measure and capacity of a creature” [Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 1281].

[13] “[The Holy Spirit] is not only infinitely holy as the Father and the Son are, but He is the holiness of God itself in the abstract. The holiness of the Father and the Son does consist in breathing forth this Spirit” [Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). A Treatise on Grace. Christian Classic Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 29].

[14] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). A Treatise on Grace. Christian Classic Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 35.

[15] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 391.

[16] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 2559.

[17] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 2561.

[18] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 409.

[19] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). A Treatise on Grace. Christian Classic Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 30.

[20] Jonathan Edwards (n.d.). The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Grand Rapids, MI. p. 1304.