We have communion with the Father!
By Elizabeth Prata
John Owen wrote the following. Today is Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Please take a moment to contemplate the wonder of our being able to commune with the Father, in fellowship, love, and knowledge. Before we were saved, no such opportunity existed. No Light was in us. No possibility of peace. Yet, God loved us so He sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sin. Jesus died on the cross, was laid in the tomb, but no tomb could hold him and His Holy One did not see decay! He rose again, ascended to His Father, now our Father. We could not have designed a more perfect method for gathering a redeemed people to Him. God is sovereign, loving, and holy. He is pure and perfect. Worship Him today in truth and light.
OF COMMUNION WITH GOD THE FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST, EACH PERSON DISTINCTLY, IN LOVE, GRACE, AND CONSOLATION; OR, THE SAINTS’ FELLOWSHIP WITH THE FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST UNFOLDED.
BY John Owen 1657
Since sin entered the world, no man has had communion with God because of his sinful nature.
He is light; we are darkness; and what communion has light with darkness? (2Cor. 6:14). He is
life; we are dead. He is love; we are enmity. What agreement can there be between us? Men in
such a condition have neither Christ, nor hope, nor God in the world, Eph. 2:12. “Being alienated
from the life of God through their ignorance,” chap. 4:18. Now, two cannot walk together unless
they are agreed, Amos 3:3. So, while this distance between God and man exists, they cannot
walk together in fellowship or communion. Our first interest in God was so lost by sin, that no
recovery remained in ourselves. We deprived ourselves of all power to return to him. And God
had not revealed that there was any way to regain access to him. Nor did he reveal that sinners
could approach him in peace for any reason. Nothing that God made, and no attribute that he
revealed, provided the least hint of such a possibility.
The manifestation of God’s grace and pardoning mercy is the only door we have to such
communion. It is committed only to the one who atoned. He is the one in whom it is evidenced.
He is the one by whom grace and mercy was purchased. He is the one through whom it is
dispensed, and from whom it is revealed from the heart of the Father.
But in Christ we now have boldness and confident access to God, Eph. 3:12. The saints of old
were not familiar with this. This distance from God is removed by Jesus Christ alone. He has
consecrated a new and living way for us “through the veil, that is, his flesh,” Heb. 10:20. The old
way is sealed. “Through him we have access by one Spirit to the Father,” Eph. 2:18.”
From Wikipedia:
John Owen
Born 1616, Stadhampton, Oxfordshire, England
Died August 1683 (aged 66–67)
Ealing, Middlesex
Occupation(s): Theologian, pastor, academic administrator
Notable work: Communion with God, The Mortification of Sin, The Divine Power of the Gospel, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ
Spouse: Mary Rooke
Era: 17th century
Tradition or movement: Nonconformist Puritan Reformed Theology
