Charity and Its Fruits. Jonathan Edwards
of the Spirit of God, working the grace of charity in the heart, is a far more excellent privilege than any of them: a greater blessing than the Spirit of prophecy, or the gift of tongues, or of miracles, even to the removing of mountains; a greater blessing than all those miraculous gifts that Moses, and Elijah, and David, and the twelve apostles were endowed with. This will appear, if we consider,
1. This blessing of the saving grace of God is a quality inherent in the nature of him that is the subject of it.—This gift of the Spirit of God, working a truly Christian temper in the soul, and exciting gracious exercises there, confers a blessing that has its seat in the heart, a blessing that makes a man’s heart or nature excellent; yea, the very excellency of the nature does consist in it. Now it is not so with respect to these extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. They are excellent things, but not properly the excellency of a man’s nature, for they are not things that are inherent in the nature. For instance, if a man is endowed with a gift of working miracles, this power is not anything inherent in his nature. It is not properly any quality of the heart and nature of the man, as true grace and holiness are; and though most commonly those that have these extraordinary gifts of prophecy, speaking with tongues and working miracles, have been holy persons, yet their holiness did not consist in their having these gifts. These extraordinary gifts are nothing properly inherent in the man. They are something adventitious. They are excellent things, but not excellencies in the nature of the subject. They are like a beautiful garment, which does not alter the nature of the man that wee” it. They are like precious jewels, with which the body may be adorned; but true grace is that whereby the very soul itself becomes as it were a precious jewel.
2. The Spirit of God communicates, himself much more in bestowing saying grace than in bestowing these extraordinary gifts.—In the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, the Holy Ghost does indeed produce effects, in men, or by men; but not so as properly to communicate himself, in his own proper nature, to men. A man may have an extraordinary impulse in his mind by the Spirit of God, whereby some future thing may be revealed to him; or he may have an extraordinary vision given him, representing some future event; and yet the Spirit may not at all impart himself, in his holy nature, by that. The Spirit of God may produce effects in things in which he does not communicate himself to us. Thus the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters, but not so as to impart himself to the water. But when the Spirit, by his ordinary influences, bestows saving grace, he therein imparts himself to the soul in his own holy nature—that nature of his, on the account of which he is so often called in Scripture, the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit. By his producing this effect, the Spirit becomes an indwelling vital principle in the soul, and the subject becomes spiritual, being denominated so from the Spirit of God that dwells in him, and whose nature he is partaker of. Yea, grace is, as it were the holy nature of the Spirit imparted to the soul. But the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, such as knowing things to come, or having power to work miracles, do not imply this holy nature. Not but that God, when he gives the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, is commonly wont to give the sanctifying influences of the Spirit with them; but one does not imply the other. And if God gives only extraordinary gifts, such as the gift of prophecy, of miracles, etc., these alone will never make their receiver a partaker of the Spirit, so as to become spiritual in himself, i.e. in his own nature.
3. That grace or holiness, which is the effect of the ordinary influence of the Spirit of God in the hearts of the saints, is that wherein the spiritual image of God consists; and not in these extraordinary gifts of the Spirit.—The spiritual image of God does not consist in having a power to work miracles, and foretell future events, but it consists in being holy, as God is holy: in having a holy and divine principle in the heart, influencing us to holy and heavenly lives. Indeed, there is a kind of assimilation to Christ in having a. power to work miracles, for Christ had such a power, and wrought a multitude of miracles (John 14:12)—“The works that I do shall he do also.” But the moral image and likeness of Christ does much more consist in having the same mind in us which was in Christ; in being of the same Spirit that he was of; in being meek and lowly of heart; in baying a spirit of Christian love, and walking as Christ walked. This makes a man more like Christ than if he could work ever so many miracles.
4. That grace ace which is the effect of the ordinary influences of the Spirit of God, is a privilege which God bestows only on his own favorites and children, but the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are not so.—It has been observed before, that though God most commonly has chosen saints, and eminent saints, to bestow extraordinary gifts of the Spirit upon, yet he has not always done so; but these gifts are sometimes bestowed on others. They have been common to both the godly and the ungodly. Balaam is stigmatized in Scripture as a wicked man (2 Pet. 2:15; Jude 11; Rev. 2:14), and yet he had the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit of God for a while. Saul was a wicked man, but we read, once and again, of his being among the prophets. Judas was one of those whom Christ sent forth to preach and work miracles: he was one of those twelve disciples of whom it is said, in Matt. 10:1, “And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease.” And in the next verses we are told who they were; their names are all rehearsed over, and “Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him,” among the rest. And in ver. 8, Christ says to them, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.” The grace of God in the heart is a gift of the Holy Ghost peculiar to the saints: it is a blessing that God reserves only for those who are the objects of his special and peculiar love. But the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are what God sometimes bestows on those whom he does not love, but hates; which is a sure sign that the one is infinitely more precious and excellent than the other. That is the most precious gift, which is most of an evidence of God’s love. But the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were, in the days of inspiration and miracles, no sure sign of the love of God. The prophets were not wont to build their persuasion of the favor and love of God on their being prophets, and having revelations; but on their being sincere saints. Thus it was with David (see Ps. 15:1-5; 17:1-3; and 119 throughout), and indeed the whole book of Psalms bears witness to this. So the apostle Paul, though he was so greatly privileged with the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, was yet so far from marring these the evidences of his good estate, that he expressly declares, that without charity they are all nothing. And hence we may argue,
5. From the fruit and consequence of these two different things, that the one is infinitely more excellent than the other.—Eternal life is, by the promises of the gospel, constantly connected with the one, and never with the other. Salvation is promised to those who have the graces of the Spirit, but not to those who have merely the extraordinary gifts. Many may have these last, and yet go to hell. Judas Iscariot had them, and is gone to hell. And Christ tells us, that many who have had them, will, at the last day, be bid to depart, as workers of iniquity (Matt. 7:22, 23). And therefore, when he promised his disciples these extraordinary gifts, he bade them rejoice, not because the devils were subject to them, but because their names were written in heaven; intimating that the one might be, and yet not the other (Luke 10:17, etc.) And this shows that the one is an infinitely greater blessing than the other, as it carries eternal life in it. For eternal life is a thing of infinite worth and value, and that must be an excellent blessing indeed that has this infallibly connected with it, and of infinitely more worth than any privilege whatsoever, which a man may possess, and yet after all go to hell.
6. Happiness itself does much more immediately and essentially consist in Christian grace, wrought by the ordinary nary influences of the Spirit, than in these extraordinary gifts.—Man’s highest happiness consists in holiness, for it is by this that the reasonable creature is united to God, the fountain of all good. Happiness cloth so essentially consist in knowing, loving, and serving God, and having the holy and divine temper of soul, and the lively exercises of it, that these things will make a man l happy without anything else; but no other enjoyments or privileges whatsoever will make a man happy without this.
7. This divine temper of soul which the fruit of the ordinary sanctifying influences of the Spirit, is the end of all the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost.—The gift of prophecy, of miracles, of tongues, etc., God gave for this very end, to promote the propagation and establishment of tile gospel in the world. And the end of the gospel is, to turn men from darkness to light, and from the power of sin and Satan to serve the living God, i. e. to make men holy. The end of all the