One of my favourite things to do is care for other people. I love seeing a person’s face soften with relief when they realize someone else is looking out for them or sharing their burden, whether it’s a girl in our youth group struggling with a life issue, a library patron struggling with a research question, or an older family member struggling with a household task. I usually jump at the opportunity to help someone out, but once in a while I get tired—my mental list of people I need to check in on, respond to emails from, or make time to do an errand for feels out of control, and then I start to think about how much I wish I could volunteer more or donate more or pray more for those who are outside of my community, and then I feel powerless. I don’t know why it keeps surprising me, but again I’ve found encouragement about this specific issue in John Owen.
In 1673 Owen delivered a sermon titled “Gospel Charity” on Colossians 3:14, which reads: “and above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.” According to Owen, this passage teaches that love is “the principal grace and duty that is required among, and expected from, the saints of God, especially as they are engaged in church-fellowship.” [1] Thus Owen set out to describe the nature and importance of this evangelical love.
In the middle Owen’s explanation of how deep, wide, and awe-inspiring evangelical love is, he paused to answer a question: how can a believer love the entire church in this way as one, finite person? In his answer he argues that believers must love the whole church, be ready to love when the opportunity arises, and be a part of a local church, which is the immediate context of loving fellow believers. In fact, to be able to care for one another on a regular basis is one of the main reasons why Christ instituted the local church.
The thrust of this section in Owen’s sermon is not on limitations, but the opposite. Though Owen entertains the question, he really uses it as an opportunity to intensify his main point. Thus, he contends that loving the church is “indispensably required” and that if one does not love the church, that person is not a true Christian. He also describes true love as something that is habitual, radical, ready, not dissuaded by obstacles, equally given to all, felt inwardly as a “concern” for “their good,” and leading to outward action like “prayer, compassion, delight, and joy, according as their state and condition doth require.”[2] An especially moving sentence reads, “If there be a real love in any of us, of this kind, let it be but heightened and advantaged by an opportunity, it will break through difficulties, through reasonings, pleas of flesh and blood, to the exercise of itself.”[3] Further, Owen obstructs any lessening of love’s scope by describing its object as “the whole mystical body of Christ” and “all disciples of Christ throughout the world.”[4]
Yet, despite this depth and breadth of this evangelical love, Owen does not think that loving others, especially in and through the church, is an impossible thing to do. Though he laments that all have the “tendency to the weakening of love,” he clarifies that Christ has wisely provided all one needs to fulfill his command to love fellow believers.[5] In his words, Christ will “not leave us at an uncertainty, how, or where, or when we shall exercise it; but hath directed us to a particular way.”[6] This particular way is the local church, wherein Christ has placed “continual, immediate objects” of love right in front of believers’ faces, “as if we saw [each person] lying in the arms of Christ.”[7] Owen connects fulfilling the command to love so closely to the local church that he argues if one does not love the particular people in one’s local church, then one cannot claim to love the church at all. Here, he directly says to his listeners:
I declare unto this congregation this day, I witness and testify unto you, that unless this evangelical love be found acted, not loosely and in general, but among ourselves mutually towards each other, we shall never give up our account with joy unto Jesus Christ, nor shall we ever carry on the great work of edification among ourselves. And if God be pleased but to give this spirit among you, I have nothing to fear but the mere weakness and pravity of my own heart and spirit.[8]
Overall, Owen flips the problem of a finite human being loving the whole church on its head by showing that this is not a burden that leads to anxiety about finding a way to love all, but an opportunity to love those in one’s immediate context.
Thus, to tired carers Owen says don’t look at the needs of the entire world, feel overwhelmed, and freeze up, but look at those who God has placed in your life and persevere in caring for them, finding the desire, energy, and wisdom you need to do so in Christ, the primary caregiver of their souls and yours.
[1] Owen, Works, 9:256, 257.
[2] Ibid., 9:261.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., 9:262.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 9:263.