Christian Practice

Ye shall know them by their fruits. MATTHEW 7:16

The twelfth and last sign in Religious Affections occupies more space than several of the others together, and Edwards left no doubt about its standing. Christian practice — how a person actually lives — is the chief evidence of grace, both to observers and to the believer himself. This is the conclusion of his life’s work on the question, and it is the most practically important thing he ever wrote.

Above every experience

The claim is stronger than we might expect from the theologian of the affections, and that is precisely what makes it significant. Edwards had spent his career defending the necessity of inward experience against those who wanted religion reduced to conduct. And having done so, he concluded that when it comes to evidence, conduct outranks experience — including our own memory of our own experiences. His reasoning is straightforward. An experience is a single event, remembered by a mind we already know to be self-deceiving, uncheckable by anyone else, and frequently improved in the retelling. A life is a long series of choices under varied pressure, visible to others, and very difficult to counterfeit for decades.

He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 1 JOHN 2:4

If ye love me, keep my commandments. JOHN 14:15

This carries a hard implication which Edwards did not soften. A person whose sole ground of assurance is a conversion experience years ago, unsupported by any subsequent alteration in how he lives, has weaker evidence than he supposes. The experience may have been genuine. But it is not the evidence he thinks it is.

Three qualities of the practice that counts

Not all obedience is evidence, and Edwards specified what kind is.

It must be universal. The believer does not select which commands suit him. Partial obedience is the signature of self-will, since a man who keeps the rules he agrees with is following himself. Edwards noted that we are most revealed by the command we quietly exempt ourselves from. It must be constant — maintained under pressure, not merely when convenient. Trial is the test, because trial is where motives are exposed. A religion that survives only in good weather has not been tested at all. And it must be persevering, continuing to the end of life. Edwards gave great weight to endurance, and it is one of the reasons he wrote after the awakening rather than during it. Anyone can be fervent in a season when everyone around them is fervent. What a movement produces ten years later is the measure of it.

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. MATTHEW 24:13

Not works-righteousness

It is essential to see why this is not a retreat from the doctrine of chapter nine. Edwards is not saying that practice justifies. He is saying that practice evidences. Justification is by faith alone, apart from works, received complete at the moment of believing. The question here is a different one entirely: how does anyone — including you — know whether that faith is present? The answer Scripture gives is fruit. Fruit does not grow the tree; it shows what the tree is.

Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. JAMES 2:17

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 7:21

Edwards was careful to add that Christian practice does not mean sinless practice, and the qualification matters for the tender conscience. What is in view is the direction and the general course of a life, not the absence of failure. The believer sins, and repents, and returns. The pattern is one of continuing return. What is inconsistent with grace is not falling but settling — the comfortable arrangement in which a person maintains a religious identity alongside a sin he has no intention of leaving. The question is not have you failed? It is which direction are you facing when you get up?

The evidence nobody sees

Edwards laid particular weight on a part of Christian practice that no congregation can observe: what a believer does when he is entirely alone. His reasoning is simple. Public religion has an audience, and an audience is a motive. A man may pray well in a meeting, give generously where giving is noticed, and speak warmly of Christ in company, for reasons that have nothing to do with Christ. Remove the observers, and the motive is exposed.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. MATTHEW 6:6

The Lord’s instruction, Edwards noted, is not merely about avoiding hypocrisy. It is about establishing a region of a person’s life in which the only possible audience is God — and therefore the only possible motive is God. He applied the same test to a range of hidden things. What occupies the mind when it is not directed at a task. What a person does with an unexpected free hour. How he behaves towards those who can do nothing for him and cannot damage him. What he thinks about while pretending to listen. Whether he gives when no record is kept.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. MATTHEW 6:3

There is a searching corollary. If a believer’s secret life is empty — no private prayer, no reading that nobody knows about, no giving that goes unrecorded — then his religion consists entirely of the parts that are seen. That is not proof of anything, since seasons of dryness are real and common. But it is a question worth asking, and asking honestly, because the answer is available to no one else. Edwards himself is a useful case. He rose very early, spent long hours in the study, prayed while riding alone through the woods, and pinned scraps of paper to his coat to record thoughts on those rides. Almost none of that was visible to his congregation, and there was nothing to be gained from it socially. It is the best evidence we have about the man, precisely because it had no audience. The question is not what your church sees. It is what happens in the hours nobody records.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask what your life would suggest about your faith to someone who could observe it for a year without hearing you speak. 2. Find the command you have quietly exempted yourself from. Everyone has one. Name it. 3. Test constancy: does your obedience hold under pressure, or only when it costs little? 4. If your assurance rests entirely on a past experience, do not discard it — but ask what has happened since. 5. Distinguish falling from settling. Identify anything you have stopped intending to leave, and stop making peace with it.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You said that we would be known by our fruit, and I would rather be known by my beliefs, or by an experience I once had.

Show me the command I have excused myself from. Show me where my obedience is selective, and where it holds only while it is easy.

I do not ask to be spared failure — I ask that I would always be found turning back. Keep me from settling anywhere You have told me not to stay.

Make my life the evidence, and not merely my words. Amen.