My Year with Owen #13

I will be sharing some John Owen quotes this year. The first book I'll be reading is Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656).

• Use and exercise yourself to such meditations as may serve to fill you at all times with self-abasement and thoughts of your own vileness. ~ John Owen
• Be much in thoughtfulness of the excellency of the majesty of God and your infinite, inconceivable distance from him. ~ John Owen
• Think greatly of the greatness of God. ~ John Owen
• Think much of your unacquaintedness with him. ~ John Owen
• We speak much of God, can talk of him, his ways, his works, his counsels, all the day long; the truth is, we know very little of him. ~ John Owen
• Our thoughts, our meditations, our expressions of him are low, many of them unworthy of his glory, none of them reaching his perfections. ~ John Owen
• We know him rather by what he does than by what he is--by his doing us good than by his essential goodness. ~ John Owen
• We know little of God, because it is faith alone whereby here we know him. ~ John Owen
• The truth is, we all of us know enough of him to love him more than we do, to delight in him and serve him, believe him, obey him, put our trust in him, above all that we have hitherto attained. Our darkness and weakness is no plea for our negligence and disobedience. Who is it that has walked up to the knowledge that he has had of the perfections, excellencies, and will of God? God’s end in giving us any knowledge of himself here is that we may “glorify him as God” [Rom. 1: 21], that is, love him, serve him, believe and obey him— give him all the honor and glory that is due from poor sinful creatures to a sin-pardoning God and Creator. We must all acknowledge that we were never thoroughly transformed into the image of that knowledge which we have had. And had we used our talents well, we might have been trusted with more. ~ John Owen
• The intention of all gospel revelation is not to unveil God’s essential glory that we should see him as he is, but merely to declare so much of him as he knows sufficient to be a bottom of our faith, love, obedience, and coming to him— that is, of the faith which here he expects from us; such services as beseem67 poor creatures in the midst of temptations. But when he calls us to eternal admiration and contemplation, without interruption, he will make a new manner of discovery of himself, and the whole shape of things, as it now lies before us, will depart as a shadow. ~ John Owen

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible