Edwards's Positive Marks

Today's Reading

Read 1 John 4:1-6 alongside 1 John 4:7-12: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." John gives the doctrinal test in verse 2 and the ethical test five verses later. Both are his.

Read John 16:14, where Jesus says of the Spirit: "He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you." The Spirit's stated mission, from Jesus's own mouth, is to glorify the Son.

Read 2 Timothy 3:16-17: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." Where the Spirit is at work, the Scripture he breathed out is honored.

And read Matthew 22:37-40, where Jesus reduces the law to love of God and love of neighbor. The Spirit-produced life converges on those two loves.

Reflection

Yesterday Edwards swept the table — five things that prove nothing, however dramatic. Today he sets the actual test pieces in place. The Distinguishing Marks turns, in its second section, to the things that, when present, do show the Spirit at work. Edwards drew them straight out of 1 John 4 and the surrounding apostolic writings. Five marks again, this time positive.

The first is the Christological mark: the Spirit raises esteem for the actual Jesus — the one "born of the Virgin, and... crucified without the gates of Jerusalem." Edwards is doing exactly what we did on day two; he is following 1 John 4:2-3. A genuine work of the Spirit results in a higher view of, deeper love for, and clearer faith in the historical, incarnate, crucified, risen Christ. Not a vague Christ-figure. Not a personal-trainer Jesus. The one in the Gospels. That Jesus rises in stature in the convert's mind under the Spirit's work, and any movement that ends up demoting him, sidelining him, or replacing him with itself, however spiritual it sounds, has fallen out from under the Spirit's hand.

The second is the moral mark: the Spirit operates against the interests of Satan's kingdom, which lies in encouraging and establishing sin. Where the Spirit is at work, sin loses its appeal. Lust, pride, greed, malice, dishonesty, addiction — these become more painful to the conscience and harder to keep practicing. People begin breaking with patterns of evil. Marriages get repaired. Lying becomes intolerable. The cruelty that culture applauds becomes ugly. None of this is automatic, none of it is instant, but the trajectory is unmistakable. Edwards is following 1 John 3:8: the Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil. If a "spiritual" movement leaves people freer to sin, more grandiose, more sexually predatory, more financially manipulative — whatever it is, it is not Christ's Spirit, because Christ's Spirit makes war on those works.

The third is the Scripture mark: the Spirit produces a higher esteem for the Bible. Edwards observes that where the Holy Ghost is genuinely at work, people start reading the Scriptures more, trusting them more, and submitting to them more. They do not move past the Bible. They do not place experience above the Bible. They do not let new revelations override the Bible. They sit under it more deeply. This is one of the surest tests of any contemporary movement: ten years in, are the participants more shaped by Scripture, or have they functionally stopped reading it because their experiences have replaced it? Calvin would have nodded vigorously. The Spirit and the Word are inseparable.

The fourth is the truth mark: the Spirit is the Spirit of truth (1 John 4:6; John 16:13), and he leads people into truth, not away from it. He confirms the apostolic witness. He produces convictions that line up with the apostles' doctrine. He does not produce conspiratorial paranoia, esoteric private revelations, or doctrines no one in the historic church has held. Edwards saw, in his own awakening, people whose "spiritual" experiences led them deeper into doctrinal precision and people whose experiences led them into wild claims and personal exemptions. He could tell which spirit was at work because he asked which direction the experience pulled them — toward what the church has always confessed, or away from it.

The fifth is the love mark: the Spirit produces love — for God, and for the neighbor. This is John's own conclusion in 1 John 4:7-12, and it is Paul's conclusion in 1 Corinthians 13. Love is the test. Not affection-in-general; the specific double-love of Jesus's summary of the law. A real work of the Holy Spirit produces people who love God more — who pray more, hate sin more, treasure Christ more, worship more — and who love their neighbors more — who serve, forgive, tell the truth, give money, take in strangers, repent of resentments. If a movement claims the Spirit but is producing prouder, harder, more sectarian, more cruel people, the claim is false on its face. The love of God and neighbor is not optional fruit; it is the fruit. The Spirit is the personal love of the Father and the Son, poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5). He cannot help but produce love, because love is what he is.

Five years after The Distinguishing Marks, Edwards expanded all of this into A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections — a book that may be the most important thing ever written in English on this subject. Its thesis is the line we have already met: "True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections." Edwards refused both the rationalist who said religion was correct ideas and the enthusiast who said religion was strong feelings. Religion, for him, was affections — deep, durable, Christ-centered loves that reorder a life. He gave twelve signs of gracious affections, and the climactic one is striking: "Gracious and holy affections have their exercise and fruit in Christian practice." In other words: feelings that do not change behavior over time were not the Spirit's feelings. The proof is the practice. The proof is the life lived after the conference is over.

This is enormously freeing for the ordinary Christian. It means you do not have to discern in the moment. You can wait. The Spirit's work shows up in fruit, and fruit takes seasons to grow. The conference experience may have been him; you will know in three years by what it produced. The prophetic word may have been him; you will know in five by what it built. The quiet morning of prayer in which nothing felt powerful may have been him; you will know in a decade by the love it slowly grew.

It is also enormously demanding. Edwards is unsparing about the people in his own awakening whose dramatic experiences produced no lasting change. He says, in Religious Affections, that "gracious affections are attended with a change of nature." No change of nature, no gracious affections. The test does not stop at the altar call; it follows the convert home, into the marriage, into the workplace, into the long obedience.

Apply the five positive marks today, charitably but honestly, to one movement or moment in your spiritual life. Did it raise your esteem of the actual Jesus? Did it weaken your sin? Did it deepen your respect for and submission to Scripture? Did it pull you toward truth — historic, apostolic, catholic Christian truth? Did it produce in you a fuller love for God and a more practical love for your neighbor? If the answer to all five is yes, you have very strong grounds to believe the Holy Spirit was at work — quietly or loudly, undramatically or with fireworks. If the answer to several of them is no, the experience may still have been valuable, but it does not, by Edwards's lights or John's, have the Spirit's signature.

Going Deeper

Pick one of the five positive marks where you sense the most growth in your life over the last year — and one where you sense the least. Thank God for the first. Ask him for the second. The same Spirit who began the work is committed to finishing it (Philippians 1:6); the request is one he likes to answer.