The Cure for Cold Religion

// February 4th, 2010 // Affection, Doctrine

I came across this quote today by Thomas Watson and it got me thinking about a study I just did on Romans 8:1-11, about life in the Spirit and being spiritually minded. Watson writes:

The reason our affections are so chilled and cold in religion-is that we do not warm them with thoughts of God. Hold a magnifying glass to the sun, and the glass burns that which is near to it. So when our thoughts are lifted up to Christ, the Sun of righteousness, our affections are set on fire. No sooner had the spouse been thinking upon her Savior’s beauty-but she fell into love-sickness. (Song of Sol. 5:8). O saints, do but let your thoughts dwell upon the love of Christ, who passed by angels and thought of you; who was wounded that, out of his wounds, the balm of Gilead might come to heal you; who leaped into the sea of his Father’s wrath, to save you from drowning in the lake of fire! Think of this unparalleled love, which sets the angels wondering-and see if it will not affect your hearts and cause tears to flow forth! – Thomas Watson (The Great Gain of Godliness), p. 87

God-ward thoughts are a magnifying glass to set the heart on fire. I love this. Many people think that theological rigor produces spiritually dry people, robots who simply spew out data and have no experience of God. That’s why I love reading the Puritans. If you read guys like Thomas Watson, John Owen and Jonathan Edwards, you see an amazing combination of reason and affection, thought and feeling, head and heart, study and worship. Edwards hardly ever used the word “Theology”, but rather referred to the pursuit of spiritual understanding as an awareness of “Divinity”. The joy that comes from thoughts on God is what the Puritans called “logic on fire.” Many people these days would discourage other believers from putting an emphasis on the study of theology, but in the lives of the saints who came before us, it is plain to see that the renewal which comes from a mind set on the things of the Spirit–a mind entranced by the beauty of the Gospel–is truly the only cure for cold religion.

HT: Irish Calvinist

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