A Divine and Supernatural Light

Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 16:17

In 1734, before the revival that would make him famous, Edwards preached a sermon at Northampton whose title states its whole argument: A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shown to be both a Scriptural and Rational Doctrine. It is the hinge of his theology of conversion, and it answers a question that troubles thoughtful believers everywhere. How can two people hear the same sermon, read the same verse, receive the same information — and one be transformed while the other is merely informed?

What the light is not

Edwards was careful to fence the doctrine before building it, because he knew where enthusiasts would take it. This light is not new revelation. It does not add doctrines to Scripture, supply information not contained there, or grant impressions that carry the authority of the Word. Edwards was severe about that, and grew more severe as the awakening produced men claiming direct messages from heaven. Nor is it a vision, a voice, a feeling of excitement, or a sudden rush of emotion. Nor is it merely being deeply moved by a sermon — an experience available to anyone with a working imagination and a good preacher. What is it, then? A real sense of the divine excellency of the things already revealed in Scripture. Not new content. New perception of old content.

Knowing about, and knowing

His illustration is the one everybody remembers, and it is perfect. There is a difference, he said, between knowing that honey is sweet and tasting its sweetness. A man may have read every treatise on honey ever written. He may be able to describe its chemistry, its colour, its use in cookery, and give a lecture that would satisfy an examiner. And if he has never had honey on his tongue, there is something he does not know — something the lecture cannot supply and the taste conveys instantly.

O taste and see that the Lord is good. PSALM 34:8

Edwards called this the sense of the heart, and distinguished it sharply from what he called notional understanding. Notional understanding grasps the proposition. The sense of the heart apprehends the loveliness of what the proposition describes. A person may hold, correctly and sincerely, that God is holy, that Christ died for sinners, that grace is free. He may defend these against objection. And he may never once have seen them as beautiful. When he does — when the excellency of the thing lands on him — everything changes, and he cannot afterwards explain why he did not see it before.

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:6

Note the language: light. The same God who spoke at creation speaks again, and the result is not additional information but illumination.

Why it must be given

It follows that no one can produce this in himself or in anyone else.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:14

The difficulty is not that the natural man lacks intelligence. Edwards was emphatic on this, and it matters: a very clever person may be entirely blind here, and a very simple one may see clearly. The faculty required is not mental capacity. It is a spiritual taste that must be created. This is why Peter’s confession drew the response it did. He had said what others could have said. What the Lord commended was the source: flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee. Edwards would not let his hearers conclude that they should therefore sit passively and wait. God ordinarily gives this light through the means He has appointed — the reading and preaching of His Word. The farmer cannot make the rain, and he plants anyway.

The test of it

How does a person know whether he has this light or is deceiving himself?

Edwards gave a test that is impossible to counterfeit: the light produces love for the thing seen. A man who has genuinely perceived the excellency of God does not merely assent to God’s holiness; he finds it lovely, and he wants it in himself. The perception and the affection arrive together, because seeing beauty and loving it are one act. If a person’s religion consists of correct opinions that leave the heart unmoved and the life unaltered, he has notions, not light.

There is enormous comfort in this doctrine for those who feel their understanding is small. You are not required to be brilliant. Some of the people Edwards observed most transformed in the Northampton revival were servants, children and the uneducated, who grasped the loveliness of Christ while learned men debated at a distance. The light is not distributed according to intellect. It is given. Which means the right response to a passage of Scripture that has never moved you is not to study harder — though study — but to ask.

The means God uses

If this light is given and cannot be produced, does a believer simply wait? Edwards answered no, and his reasoning matters, because his doctrine has often been distorted into passivity. God ordinarily gives this light through means, and the chief means is His Word — read, preached, discussed and thought about. The Spirit does not usually illuminate a mind that has been given nothing to illuminate. Revelation is not an alternative to knowing the content of Scripture; it is the content becoming luminous.

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. ROMANS 10:17

He put considerable weight on this in his preaching practice. His sermons are densely doctrinal, and deliberately so. He believed the preacher’s task was to set the truth before the mind as clearly and fully as possible — and then to press it upon the affections — while knowing perfectly well that neither the clarity nor the pressing could produce the light. The farmer’s position is exactly analogous. He cannot make it rain. He ploughs anyway, because rain falls on ploughed and unploughed ground alike and only one of them yields a harvest.

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. 1 CORINTHIANS 3:6

This also explains why doctrine matters so much to a theologian of the affections, which surprises some readers. You cannot find beautiful what you do not know. A person with a thin, vague, sentimental idea of God has very little for the Spirit to make lovely. The richer and more accurate a believer’s grasp of who God is and what He has done, the more surface there is for the light to strike. So Edwards’s counsel to anyone who finds Scripture dull is twofold, and both halves are necessary. Study — learn the content, understand the argument, know what the passage actually says. And ask — because all the study in the world will not, of itself, produce a taste for what is there.

Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures. LUKE 24:45

Those disciples had walked with Him for three years and heard the Scriptures all their lives. They still needed their understanding opened, and He opened it.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before reading Scripture this week, ask specifically to see the beauty of what you read, not merely to understand it. 2. Identify one doctrine you believe correctly and have never found lovely. Bring exactly that one to God and ask for light on it. 3. Test yourself with Edwards’s test: does what you know about God produce love for God? Answer honestly rather than quickly. 4. Refuse to substitute strong feeling for spiritual sight. Ask whether a moving experience left you loving holiness or merely loving the experience. 5. If your understanding feels small, take heart, and ask. This light has never been distributed according to cleverness.

A PRAYER

Father, I have read Your Word for years and there are pages I have never seen. I know a great deal about You that has never once moved me.

I cannot manufacture sight. Flesh and blood will not reveal this. So I ask You, who commanded light to shine out of darkness, to shine in my heart.

Do not give me new revelations; give me eyes for what You have already written. Let me taste and see that You are good, and having tasted, let me want nothing else so much. Amen.