The first distinguishing mark of genuine religious affections is that they are spiritual . The second distinguishing mark is that,
2. Genuine religious affections are Godward.
One hitch with hypocrites is that they are pleased first or primarily with the benefits and happiness they receive from God, rather than being happy with or in God Himself. They don’t appreciate God as the greatest, but their affections for God come because they see what they get from Him. Edwards relates that,
They first rejoice and are elevated with it, that they are made much of by God; and then on that ground He seems, in a sort, lovely to them. (p.176)
The joy of hypocrites is in themselves…. What they are principally taken and elevated with is not the glory of God, or the beauty of Christ, but the beauty of their own experiences. They keep thinking with themselves, What a good experience this is! What a great discovery is this! What wonderful things I have met with…. They take more comfort in their discoveries than in Christ discovered. (p.177)
But true saints are not great talkers about themselves; they are talkers about the great Jesus. Genuine religious affections are not articulated with ourselves as the hero of every story, but of God as the Lord and Savior. The goal of spiritual life is not for Christians to get gifts from God, but to get God Himself. So God does not exist to serve Christians, but they to serve Him.
The the song Much of You by Steven Curtis Chapman is a spot on sample of this Godward posture. The first verse asks,
How could I stand here
And watch the sun rise
Follow the mountains
Where they touch the sky
Ponder the vastness
And the depths of the sea
And think for a moment
The point of it all was to make much of me
The refrain is a commitment,
I want to make much of You, Jesus
I want to make much of Your love
I want to live today to give You the praise
That You alone are so worthy of
I want to make much of Your mercy
I want to make much of Your cross
I give You my life
Take it and let it be used
To make much of You
A true saint forgets himself when he sees God. He doesn’t even want to be in the picture. Edwards admits,
It would be a diversion and loss which he could not bear to take his eye off from the ravishing object of his contemplation, to survey his own experience and to spend time thinking with (about) himself…. (p.178)
It is silly to spend time thinking about ourselves when we could be thinking about God. I was running on my treadmill one day, wrestling through this concept and trying to think about how to illustrate this. I was trying to be Edwardsian in my imagery, so we’ll see how that goes.
The difference between religious affections that are manward or Godward is like the difference between seeing your reflection in a mirror or in a window. The hypocrite prides himself that he’s not looking directly on himself, since he is looking away from himself. But in his looking out, he’s actually aiming to get a bigger or better view of himself. The true saint looks out, as it were, through a window at God. Though he could position himself to catch his reflection in the window, it would be ridiculous to focus on himself when the beauty and glory of God is visible. It would a a “diversion and loss which he could not bear.”
It isn’t that we don’t see and appreciate all the benefits and happiness in what God gives us. But these things are second in line, not first. God is first. We prize God’s infinite worth and precious value for its own sake.
That is the reason hypocrites don’t value God’s holiness. They can appreciate His power since that can get them out of trouble. They can appreciate His grace since that will cover their sins. But there is nothing in His holiness that they can appreciate. It doesn’t benefit them that He is holy. So Edwards wrote,
Wicked men and devils will see and have a great sense of everything that pertains to God, except the beauty of His moral perfections. (p.190) A true love to God must begin with delight in His holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute. (p.183)
Genuine religious affections are Godward, not focused on ourselves and focused on God as He truly is in His sovereign holiness.
