On New Years at our Church, we considered “seeking first the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33) as being the ultimate resolution. For Christians, making resolutions at the beginning of the year, like everyone else, is not necessarily a bad thing…as long as these goals do not distract our fixed gaze away from Christ, plumitting our hope to our own puny strength rather than renewing us constantly in life to soar upon wings of eagles to the heights of heaven where Jesus is in His omnipotence. Rather than pulling away from communion with God and loosening our dependant grip on His nail-scarred hand (He won’t ever let go…John 10:28-29), proper resolutions should only make us grip Jesus’ hand, that wonderous Arm of Salvation (Isaiah 33:2) and righteous Right Hand (Isaiah 41:10) that is graven with our names (Isaiah 49:16), more tightly as we desire to look more and more like Him, by His grace, in growing & grateful obedience. So, as we meditate on Christ in the preaching of His Word this past Lord’s Day, we may be over and over asking ourselves: What are resolutions? What does it mean to be resolved? For 300 years, God has used our brother Jonathan Edwards’ personal meditations on these very questions to remind generations of Christians to look straight to Christ Himself as the perfect definition of resolve.
Jonathan Edwards was born in 1703 and born again in 1721 at the age of 17. Just one year later between 1722 and 1723, he wrote his famous resolutions. For Edwards and many Christians today, these 70 resolutions are 70 guardrails firmly cemented and paved out in the concrete, forever-standing (Isaiah 40:8) truth of the Bible we cherish…70 trailmarkers along the pilgrim’s path as we follow our Captain under His banner with the motto, “cross before crown”…70 signs raised up in the air by that great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) in the crowd-stands to be watchful for hurdles along the race track as we press on towards Jesus ahead at the finish line…70 vital signs to keep a finger on our pulse and see how we CONSTANTLY are in utter need to be hooked up on an IV to Jesus for life support and receive His perfectly exclusive blood transfusion. No other blood will do…and yet, it is a free & gracious gift! Consider how the Great Physician Himself (Mark 2:17) sacrificially gives His own life to bring new life to His patient!
Like all of us in Christ, Edwards experienced how “the dungeon flamed with light” (“And Can It Be”). We realize God has saved us completely from darkness and death. In Christ, we finally know what it means to truly LIVE!! Every morning is a precious new mercy (Lamentations 3:22-23) and gift from above to feel waves of grace upon grace in Christ (John 1:16) and to mine deeper into all the inexaustible, all-satisfying, unfading riches stored exclusively in Christ. We are given eyes to see God’s sovereign & providential hand lovingly carve God’s initials over each second of our lives. On the chalkboard of our renewed minds (Romans 12:2), RC Sproul’s handwritten “right now counts forever” is in bold and underlined. Only a young man, Edwards now suddenly felt the utter weight of time pressing against his mortal life…and eternity was in view. “Night is coming…” (John 9:4) was constantly roaring in his ears. He was no longer a child. He lost his tastebuds for worldly comforts and the delicacies of Egypt (Numbers 11:4-5). Just as we are weaned off the world and sing, “…earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away…” (“Abide with Me”), Edwards was ready to toss out all the temporal toys of this world and trade them in for eternal joys found in God alone. He cheerfully sold everything he had when he found that priceless treasure of Christ (Matthew 13:44).
Again, the context is crucial as this was a significant time of change in Edwards’ life. On top of Edwards having just been converted only a year before, like many of us, he was a young person in school preparing for life ahead. As this season of life is bound to sprout difficult & intimidating decisions, Edwards went to the right place for preparation. Edwards did not ask himself, “What is my heart telling me to do?”. Instead, he remembered the teaching to the young man in Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.” Edwards knew where to find true wisdom because he was grounding his search in the everlasting truth of God’s Word. Wise King Solomon grew up hearing his father’s heart’s melodies to God and knew to ask God for the right thing: wisdom – springing from God — in prayer. Every step of life must be brought here…all our steps are so well-directed (Proverbs 16:9) when we go to our ALL-WISE and LOVING and ALL-POWERFUL Father in this means of grace. In ALL our ways — both small & big aspects of life — we are to come to Him. When we humble ourselves in prayer and approach our Father in utter dependence, echoing His Word back to Him and our desire to look more and more like His Son, it will fuel diligent GRATEFUL action on our part. We cling tighter to Jesus’ hand and LIVE BY FAITH.
It was this inevitable appearance of tension in the resolutions between self-reliance and dependance upon God that Edwards attacked in the introduction to his resolutions. He outlined there that the entire pursuit of living for God must be in total dependence upon God with no room for any self-reliance…no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3). We are reminded of Jesus’ words: “Apart from me, you can do NOTHING.” (John 15:5). The spotlight must always shine on Christ — our eyes must be fixed on HIS beauty, HIS power, HIS…perfection! And so, Edwards’ resolutions — like our resolutions — must be God-centered through-and-through, NOT self-centered. In self-denial, with John the Baptist, we say, “He must increase, I must decrease.” (John 3:30). We are to be quick to shout and sing: “Soli Deo gloria!”…“To God be the glory!”…to humbly attribute all things to God’s grace (1 Corinthians 15:10)…to cast all our crowns to Jesus’ feet (Revelation 4:10). With that foundation laid, Edwards moves to the resolutions themselves and starts with the first 4 resolutions just as the catechism we learn as children teaches us…to remember our chief end. For those of us who know the answer well, we recognize our joy is not opposed to God’s glory (Psalm 37:4, Psalm 40:8). For Edwards, the result of realizing this was an obsession with God! We must recognize the glory of God superceeds EVERYTHING. Every thought, every word, every deed. And this was the compass pointing to true north as Edwards laid out the map of his resolutions. With every fork in the trail to come, Edwards was forced to pull out this map and ask again that first driving question of the Shorter Catechism. And as various turns in life were forseen, each resulting resolution itself became a prayer petition. Edwards’ questions included “What do I want to be like when I grow up?”, “Who am I going to marry?” (Edwards would meet Sarah in 1724, and God had prepared him with trained eyes for providence and what to desire in a wife), & “Where will I live?”. And the questions kept coming…and he kept writing resolutions that year. He considered his habits of diet, exercise, sleep, recreation, work, and study…asking, “How can I steward each of these things for God’s glory (1 Corinthians 10:31, Colossians 3:23)?”. These are all questions we need to consider. How will I prioritize the local Church in life? What vocation will I enter that God is calling me to work as unto Him with the gifts He’s given me and for His glory? How will I be a diligent steward of God’s providence to love my neighbors? In times of trial and times of prosperity (Ecclesiastes 3), what do I cling to most and run to first? What is the cornerstone and foundation of my contentment? When temptations come, how do I fight, resist, or run away? What are the rules of engagement for war with the world, flesh, and devil? How will I die? Will I spend my whole life preparing for that moment? Will my last words be like Edwards, that I “cheerfully submit to God’s will”, or like Paul, that I’ve “faught the good fight” (2 Timothy 4:7)?
Edwards wanted to experience life finally as it is exclusively found in Christ alone…to consiously live, and move, and have his being in Him (Acts 17:28)…he was ready to truly LIVE. What is the ultimate desire of a redeemed heart? What is the Spirit-fueled longing of all Christ’s sheep? It is to look more and more like our faithful Savior Jesus…to put off the old and put on the new…to grow to HIS stature…to be found mature and conformed to His image. We pray to God for help in this pursuit to honor Christ’s name stamped upon our lives. When we look in the mirror…when we mark our height against the wall, let us strive to be perfectly swallowed up in Jesus’ shadow. Let our alarm clock match Jesus’ alarm clock. In the solitude of our prayer closets in the early morning hours (Psalm 119:147, Mark 1:35), let us rise up with the first priority to go in prayer with our Great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14) and approach the Father together (Ephesians 2:18). Let our daily agenda be a perfect copy of Jesus’. Let us desire the God-centered weekly rhythm of work & Sabbath rest like Jesus. As Joseph in Egypt & Daniel + his friends in exile pointed to Christ’s PERFECT example for all of us pilgrims in a strange land, we plead in prayer for our three-fold increase in wisdom, stature, and favor with God & man. In utter gratitude to God who has brought us out of the house of slavery to worship Him with the comprehensive entirety of our first-fruits, we pray to look more like Jesus our worship leader who perfectly fullfilled all righteousness in His perfect love to God with ALL His heart, soul, mind, and strength and His neighbor as Himself (Luke 10:27). Like Jesus, we want to constantly be looking ahead with preparedness for “the hour” of death. And what an encouragement it is to us all who are united to Christ that the best is always to come, as we confess together in the Nicene Creed, “I LOOK for the resurrection of the dead, and to life in the world to come.”
Edwards raced to matriculate in the school of Christ to learn how to number his days God had given him (Psalm 90:12). Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once recalled about Edwards: “I am tempted, perhaps foolish, to compare the Puritans to the Alps, Luther & Calvin to the Himalayas, & Jonathan Edwards to Mount Everest! He has always seemed to me the man most like the Apostle Paul.” And at that schooldesk within the walls of Christ’s schoolhouse – where Paul himself once sat on this side of the race as a star student athlete on the track & cross-country teams — young Edwards, on fire in zeal for God, grabbed his pen. Edwards was RESOLVED to properly let the rich theology of God’s profitable (2 Timothy 3:16) Word fuel doxology into all corners of the life God had in store for him (Westminster Confession chapter 1 section 2). He would dedicate this new life, a gift to him and chiefly to Christ, as a hymn of worship…a sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15) to his Teacher & Master.
This year, as the resolutions of Jonathan Edwards celebrate 300 years, like so many other saints who have gone before us, imperfect lives of our brothers and sisters shout “by faith in Him!” (Hebrews 11) and point us to receive & rest (Westminster Shorter Catechism Question #86) in our perfect Author of Life (Hebrews 10:14, Acts 3:15) all of our days – both now and forever. God humbled & taught Edwards with the resolutions of his youth to rely more and more on Jesus Christ, the God-Man with perfect resolve who keeps His promises and accomplishes what He purposes to do, and not to rely on Jonathan Edwards…to abide & dwell under God’s shadow (Psalm 91:1)…to simply want Jesus Himself (Philippians 3:7-14), our living & blessed hope (Titus 2:13, 1 Peter 1:3). With eyes locked on Jesus in joyful gratitude, let us all run with readiness to tell others along the way about Him (Ephesians 6:15) and follow after His perfect example (1 Peter 2:21) in passionately seeking & pursuing God’s glory.
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…”
~ Matthew 6:33 ~
