“Think Greatly of the Greatness of God”

In chapters 12 and 13 Owen discusses how having a big, holy, transcendent, mighty, and even “terrible” picture of God in our minds helps us kill sin, as it relates to the gospel; i.e., the same God who dwells in unapproachable light, whose glory causes people to despise themselves upon seeing it (Job 42:6), is the same God who lowered himself to become a man in order to redeem the lost by dying on a cross for the sins of the many. With the dual-thoughts of “fearful God” and “loving Savior” on our mind, it becomes increasingly less likely that we will entertain sinful thoughts, for our heart and our treasure will be in the same place: with Jesus. We will say with Joseph, “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9). “Would I yet sin against him?”

“Be much in thoughtfulness of the excellency of the majesty of God and your infinite, inconceivable distance from him. Many thoughts of it cannot but fill you with a sense of your own vileness, which strikes deep at the root of any indwelling sin. When Job comes to a clear discovery of the greatness and the excellency of God, he is filled with self-abhorrence and is pressed to humiliation (Job 42:5-6)… ‘With God,’ says Job, ‘is terrible majesty’ [Job 37:22]. Hence were the thoughts of them of old, that when they had seen God they should die. The Scripture abounds in this self-abasing consideration, comparing the men of the earth to ‘grasshoppers,’ to ‘vanity,’ the ‘dust of the balance,’ in respect of God [Isaiah 40:12-25]. Be much in thoughts of this nature, to abase the pride of your heart, and to keep your soul humble within you. There is nothing [that] will render you a greater unwillingness to be imposed on by the deceits of sin than such a frame of heart. Think greatly of the greatness of God” (Owen, p. 110)

Revelation 1:12-18, Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.

Chris