Some Exhortations Concerning Religious Affections

Edwards makes three inferences from the Scriptural evidence for affections and I’ve just turned his statements into three exhortations.

1. Don’t disregard or minimize affections.

While it is true that there are excesses of enthusiasm, false excitement, or perhaps even more precise, there are some kinds of religious affections that are counterfeits, the answer is not to reject affections altogether. Disingenuous affections are not fixed by disregarding affections. Most truth-driven persons tend to respond by swinging the pendulum to the opposite extreme, but stoicism in the name of Christianity can be just as dangerous. In fact,

This…is the way to bring all religion to a mere lifeless formality…For although to true religion there must indeed be something else beside affection, yet true religion consists so much in the affections that there can be no true religion without them. He who has no religious affections is in a state of spiritual death, and is wholly destitute of the powerful, quickening, saving influences of the Spirit of God on his heart. (p.49)

So, both heat and light are necessary. “Heat” is represents the fire of affections and “light” pictures truth. One is not sufficient without the other. So there must be light in the understanding, but light without heat (a head filled with facts but with a cold and unaffected heart) is no good. And heat without light (a heart of excitement apart from truth) is not spiritually profitable either. Edwards put it this way:

A man’s having much affection does not prove that he has any true religion; but if he has no affection, it proves that he has no true religion. (p.50)

We must not disregard or minimize affections.

2. Seek to stimulate your affections with truth.

This should be a natural response for the believer. If true religion is in the affections, it is right to raise those affections and cause the fire to burn brighter. Edwards said,

If it be so that true religion lies much in the affections,…we may infer that such means are to be desired as have much of a tendency to move the affections. (p.50)

This is not just any means, however. Edwards is not encouraging us to manipulate others (or ourselves) with emotionalism; mood lighting and hypnotic music or heart-wrenching stories or drama or anything that natural man can be stirred by. Edwards is encouraging us to stimulate affections with truth and the spiritual disciplines given to us by God for that purpose.

I don’t think that ministers are to be blamed for raising the affections of their hearers too high, if that which they are affected with be only that which is worthy of affection, and their affections are not raised beyond a proportion to their importance….I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth.

Affections for God cannot get too high since God is infinitely worthy of our affections. Edwards himself sought to fuel his affections through the God-appointed disciplines and then sought to spark the affections of others in his ministry of public teaching and private counseling and published writing.

The connection between heat and light is also made by the apostle Paul as he prayed for the increase of love in knowledge:

Philippians 1:9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, [NIV]

We should never be satisfied with thin joy or watery love. We must stimulate our affections with the truth of God.

3. Be ashamed that your affections are not what they should be.

If true religion lies much in the affections, hence we may learn what great cause we have to be ashamed and confounded before God that we are no more affected with the great things of religion. (p.51)

Moving three baby steps past the line of indifference is no reason to throw a party for our religious selves. The chief end of man is at stake in our affections.

God has given to mankind affections for the same purpose which He has given all the faculties and principles of the human soul…that they might be subservient to man’s chief end, and the great business for which God has created him, that is the business of religion. And yet how common it is among mankind, that their affections are much more engaged in other matters than religion. (p.51)

Our loves are often directed toward worldly interests: reputation, relationships, appearances, possessions, etc. We show that our affections are stronger for things under the sun than for the Creator beyond the sun.

How insensible and unmoved are most men about the great things of another world. How dull are their affections. (p.52)

The things of the gospel and of our Redeemer ought to get us a-going! Relationship with God ought to rouse us. All the virtues and beauty of the Lamb, His patience and long-suffering and compassion should affect us. All the strength and majesty of the Lion, His justice and His holiness should affect us. All of that intersects at the cross where our sin was judged as the infinitely wicked thing it is, and sinners were set free. But we are not affected. It ought not be so.

God has done everything and revealed what He has in such a matter as to have

the greatest possible tendency to reach our hearts in the most tender part, and move our affections most sensibly and strongly. (p.53)

May we repent from our weak and dull and misdirected affections.

As we finish our discussion on the nature and importance of religious affections, remember that it is not a question of if you have affections, it is a question of for what do you have affections? And what do your affections say about you? More importantly, what do your affections say about God?