3-D Rendering of Hitler’s proposed postwar Berlin reconstruction project, Welthauptstadt Germania, 'the capitol of the world.'

Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics by Frederic Spotts. (New York, NY: Overlook Press, 2002).

Book Review by Ryan Setliff

Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics is a masterful new historical perspective on the infamous German Führer Adolf Hitler and how he cleverly appropriated aesthetic aids to build his regime into a lively theatrical pageantry to awe the nation, and indeed the world. The artistic character of the Third Reich is frequently overlooked by scholars. Hitler led the National Socialist (NSDAP) movement from obscurity to total domination over Germany. Historians and laity are quick to dismiss Germany as barbaric, but forget that Germany was one of the most cultured and learned nations in the world in the early twentieth-century. This makes it all the more startling that they submitted to totalitarianism—and the acceptance of political violence as state policy.

Nazi aesthetic ideals were consciously elevated so as to invigorate the political movement, and make it both alluring and appealing to the masses. More so, it fitted a certain aesthetic ideal that Hitler was consciously trying to achieve and master. While it is fashionable for books on Hitler and his regime to euphemistically focus on the ‘abstract evil’ embodied in the Nazi movement and its warmongering. Ill regard is given to Hitler the artist — who is dismissed as a barbaric, flavorless, and unreflective politico. This simplistic critique glosses over the artistic side of Hitler, and how he shrewdly co-opted the arts into an elaborate, emotive theater — which channeled social energy into his political movement and mesmerized his followers. This artistic window-dressing did much to legitimize, promote and solidify his rule in the eyes of the masses, which is why it probably should be examined by scholars and historians. The pageantry itself drew throngs of crowds into the show. It made them enthusiastic spectators and participants in an elaborate ideological theater. It was artist Thomas Mann who reluctantly conceded in 1938 that Hitler was possessed of artistic talent: “Like it or not, how can we fail to recognize in this phenomenon a sign of artistry?”

The youthful Hitler made an aborted attempt at being artist, and pursuing art school. It is convenient for some to dismiss him as a bad artist as he did not pursue it professionally. But, in the post-Great War era, being a starving artist wasn’t the ideal career. Moreover, Hitler never lost his zeal for artistry; he simply applied it elsewhere — in the pursuit of politics. As an actor and orator, “Hitler ravished his audiences. He sensed what his listeners felt, not what they thought, but what they felt — frustration, anger, paranoia, xenophobia. Then he told them what to think.” His secretary said he possessed the “gift of a rare magnetic power to reach people…” Ernst Hanfstaengl remarked of Hitler, “His techniques resembled the thrusts and parries of a fencer, or the perfect balance of a tightrope walker.”

“Through his aesthetic sensibility Hitler also had an instinctive understanding of the emotive power of symbols — flags, uniforms, standards and so on — and applied this in designing the party’s iconography.” Though, he often lacked originality, but his real genius lied in his intuitive sense of which symbols to co-opt and integrate into his artistic tapestry. The swastika was an ancient symbol, which had an intimidating visual effect when emblazoned on red banners. To Hitler, it represented an unconquerable and inviolable Germany. “Colour, an art critic has observed, has a hot line to instinct. As such it can be used to demagogic effect, and so it was in his stark use of black, white and red.” The ‘colour red’ spoke to the working masses of the political Left and allowed Hitler to commandeer the socialist political base. Hitler devised the various party symbols, such as the taloned eagle, which he drew from ancient Rome. This was the artistic canvas upon which the elaborate staged military processions would be conducted. Everything was carefully chosen with the effect of awing and intimidating the audience by the sheer grandeur of the power and prestige it evoked. The intimidating black tunics of Hitler's Praetorian Guard, the Schutzstaffel with their electric runic ‘SS’ symbol added to the allure.

"For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication."
—Nietzsche

“Through bands as mass choruses [Hitler] created moods as though a composer.” Hitler “arranged regimented blocks of human beings in geometric formations as though he were an architect. He made over a hundred thousand men stand motionless and at the snap of his fingers had them turn, march, sing shout or raise their arms in the party salute as though a choreographer or stage director.” Thus, he demonstrated “the unity of the nation, his supreme power, and the desire of the masses to obey…” Germany was his stage. As Shakespeare penned, “All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts…” Hitler embraced this adage. “Hitler took the practice of the politics-as-an-art,” so far, that “he could, in an unguarded moment, style himself ‘the greatest actor in Europe.’ With no immodesty he might have added that he was the also the greatest theatrical impresario, the most daring playwright and the cleverest stage manager on the inter-war political scene.” Hitler knew this well.



The rousing musical processions and parades awed the crowds. It made many of them proud to be German, enamored of National Socialism, and willing to literally follow their Führer to hell and back. It awed and intimidated the silent skeptics and dissident foes of the regime. “Hitler also used his aesthetic imagination in less tangible ways to create a sense of national unity and collective submission to the Nazi state. Almost any occurrence — a funeral, a state visit, the laying of a cornerstone, the dedication of a building, the opening of an art exhibition, the signature or abrogation of a treaty — offered a pretext to stage public spectacles designed to overwhelm the public with a desire to surrender to a greater power.”

In a strange way the intricate theater acted as a panacea to the moods of Germans. Having come out of the postwar depression of the 1920s, they found Hitler’s economic policies of full employment and rearmament welcoming, but it came at the expense of access to consumer goods and luxuries, as much economic resources were diverted into the massive armaments buildup. Thus, theatrical bombast of the NSDAP state was a happy tonic to alleviate any dampened mood incidental to these economic sacrifices born by the German people. Indeed, the emotional chorus made ordinary Germans willing to embrace a spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of the movement, for the Reich and for their leader ("Führer") Hitler. It served as a grandiose psychological tool to evoke national unity on a road to perdition and war. The Germans day-by-day felt they were part of something great — a revived national community — and found their identity in the splendid pageantry of the Nazi regime. Even those later persecuted by the regime, recollected that the parades were alluring, spellbinding and they saw the emotional appeal they evoked in the hearts of ordinary Germans. Hitler was the master playwright, and his people were his willing participants. Goebbels boasted of Hitler, “His creativity is that of the genuine artist, no matter what field he may be working.”

Above Left: Poster promoting the 1936 Summer Games of the XI Olympiad in Berlin, Germany

Above Right: The Dietrich Eckart Theater during a scene from Handel's Herakles

To Hitler's jubilation, the Germans won the bid for hosting the 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, an international multi-sport event which brought athletes and peoples from major nations around the world. It was Hitler's first serious bid to awe the world of Germany's renewed national prestige and power. Hitler commissioned the building of the Olympiastadion within a massive Olympischer Platz complex specially built for the occasion. Afterwards, National Geographic and Time magazines did pieces on the Third Reich. The world took notice.

By the mid-to-late 1930s, the scale of the staged party rallies was staggering. At the Nuremburg rally, to create, the cathedral of light, nearly every flak searchlight in Germany was utilized, and strategically placed at intervals of forty feet, to shoot beams of light into the sky at a height of 25,000 feet. Hitler remarked, “The actual effect far surpassed anything I had imagined.” “Hitler use[d] ceremonies and ritual — to create his ideal state — a Germany incorporating the racial purity and martial discipline of Sparta, the aesthetic ideals of Athens, and the imperial power of the Romans.” Even persecution could become an art, as the stage for Nazi theater incorporated bonfires for book burnings of ‘degenerate literature.’ While heralded as barbarism in the free West, thsing the Reich, and effectuating its renewal. While heralded as barbarism in the free West, this was a festive jubilee of celebration for the Nazis and symbolic of cleansing the Reich, and effectuating its renewal.

The Nazi Party commissioned architect Albert Speer to build a massive rallying stage
at the Zeppelin Field which hosted 340,000

Next, it warrants admission that the totalitarian character of the Nazi movement, entailed that it stifle certain artistic creativity with state censorship as much as it encouraged it elsewhere. Nazism was to subordinate all facets of life to the demands of the party-state including the artistic tastes and sensibilities of their citizens. In 1933, the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber) was charted with Josef Goebbels, Hitler's Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in charge. Branches within the Culture Chamber, representing the various individual arts (viz., music, film, literature, architecture, and the visual arts.) Member artists were willing to be compliant to the scale and tastes of Nazi art, and obedient to the Nazi idea itself. Goebbels candidly admitted the totalitarian seizure of Germany’s cultural life: "In future only those who are members of a chamber are allowed to be productive in our cultural life. Membership is open only to those who fulfill the entrance condition. In this way all unwanted and damaging elements have been excluded." By the mid-1930s, the Reich Culture Chamber had over 100,000 members.

"Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined."
—Nietzsche

At the behest of the Reichskulturkammer, Nazi art and architecture were sculpted to exalt the "blood and soil" ("blut und boden") values of national rebirth, racial purity, militarism, and obedience. The Nazi buildings were stages for communal activity, which were to personify the principles of the Nazi ideology. Hitler was enamored of Wagnerian operas and sought their revival. Nazi ideology met the big screen in Triumph of the Will, a propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl. Albert Speer's use of banners for the May Day celebrations in the Lustgarten is one example. As well the Nazi co-option of the Thingplatz (or Thingstätte), a meeting place of supposed historical significance, which were used for hosting festivals and dramatic plays. The Nazis wanted to link themselves to a mythical German past — both real and imagined. The German playwright Dietrich Eckart was a prominent ideologue in the Nazi Party from its earliest days, and exerted considerable influence upon Hitler. Eckart had hope to cultivate the Thingplatz festivals into remarkable impressive showplaces of theatrical splendor, and through its festivals it would echo the underlying themes Nazi ideology and/or hearkened back to an idealized primordial past. Myths like Atlantis were utilized too — for it embodied a mythical primordial golden age which the Nazis ostensibly were trying to resurrect.

The Nazis dismissed modernist experimentation and formless art in favor of a revived classical realism, which brought out the Romantic aspects of the Nazi movement. It was fortunate and ironic that rather than destroy some of the more valuable artistic works they possessed, the Nazis simply kept the collection and profiled it as a ‘degenerate art’ exhibit. It included such luminaries as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.

Hitler personally admired the classical culture of the Mediterranean, in the civilizations of Egypt, Rome and Greece, and Hitler leaped onto the bandwagon seeking its revival. It was these ancient civilizations that he drew his inspirations from in formulating aesthetic ideals. Greek culture in particular represented “a beauty that exceeds anything that is evident today,” in his mind.

I reluctantly admit, quite a bit of the so called degenerate art banned in the Reich isn’t very aesthetically appealing — as much of it was abstract, formless, surrealistic or just crude. Though one can fault the Germans for stifling creativity and free speech. There is a remarkable charm and aesthetic appeal to the heroic realism that animated artistry and sculpture commissioned under the Third Reich. It was far more appealing than the postmodern, formless garbage commissioned by the Soviet Union. But modern Germany had embraced this Greek Revivalism and Realism before the Nazis stepped on the scene. They were just riding the wave.

Above Right: Die Partei, Arno Breker's statue
representing the spirit of the Nazi Party

The Great Hall, though never built, was part of Hitler's postwar plans for Germania.

With the notion of his Thousand-Year Reich, Hitler wanted to immanentize the eschaton. At its core, Nazism was a millenarian religion. It had its own eschatology, whereby national salvation would be paid for in the cleansing blood of its own loyal foot-soldiers, dissidents and enemies alike. In the aftermath, full artistic expression of the Nazi vision was to be felt in Hitler’s postwar ambitions for reconstructing Berlin into Welthauptstadt Germania, the capital of the world. For this task, Hitler had commissioned Albert Speer as an architect. War memorials would be dedicated to fallen Germans from wars gone by. A staggering Victory Arch was to be erected on the model of the Arc d'Triumph in Paris. Hitler's anticipated postwar capital was to be an Axis showplace of German power and prestige. Implicit in this neo-classical architectural styling was a certain effort to evoke the legitimacy and continuity of the Third Reich with ancient Rome and the First and Second German Reichs. Vanquished enemies were to be awed into submission in forced marches through the reconstructed city, and be humbled by its sheer scale and grandeur, according to historian Michael Burleigh.

Other books like Peter Adams' Art in the Reich fall short of what author Friedrich Spotts achieves in this book. In attempting to separate Nazi art from its association with the modern Western rival of neoclassicism in architecture, (which was felt in cities like Paris, Rome and Washington, D.C.,) and then simply deeming Nazi art and architecture as a but another ugly bitter-fruit of a baneful ideology, the implication is that 'ideologically ugly' regimes can only produce unappealing art and architecture. This clashes with reality. The Third Reich had a seductive charm. Recognizing this is integral to understanding Hitler's phenomenal rise to power and popularity amongst the German people. Hitler cleverly understood and co-opted the power of aesthetics in sculpting his regime's image. Germany fell, not because it wasn't artistic and cultured enough, but because of its egotistical hubris. This pride finds an ironic display implicit in the artistic motifs and expressions of the Reich and in the cult of personality surrounding Adolf Hitler. It was also an existential pride that plunged the world into the chaos of the Second World War with Nazi Germany's aggressiveness against its neighboring countries. The seductive spell that Hitler cast upon the German people fit with his Mein Kampf conception of "the big lie" in which "there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie." Hitler co-opted the power of aesthetics to give credence and validity to the "big lie" in the eyes of the masses.



What is more, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics reveals how the brutality of collectivist totalitarianism can be given an aura of aesthetic appeal. In the discipline of axiology, that is the study of aesthetic value and beauty, it would be well to consider that perhaps beauty is to be found in the morality of actions. Hence, the ethical dimension of axiology. To the extent art embodies ideals within forms, it is an exhibition of morality. Accordingly, no artistic veneer, however, charming and alluring can give adequate cover to barbarism. It should go without saying that morality was something that Nazi Germany swept aside with its cruel Social Darwinism and ethnic chauvinism. Before Nazi Germany was vanquishing its enemies on the eastern front, it was quietly killing off its weak undesirables with forced euthanasia. The life and career of Adolf Hitler shows that artistry and beauty can be a seductive masquerade for cruelty and repression.

"Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is the world justified."
—Nietzsche

In his last days, as the red storm fell upon the Reich with the Red Army descending upon Berlin, Hitler hid away in his Berlin sanctuary. Hitler spent that time gazing upon a scale model designed by Albert Speer of a future reconstructed Linz, Austria. Erstwhile Hitler had his architects draw up extensive architectural plans for Linz. Hitler wanted his childhood hometown to be the main cultural centre of the Third Reich. His dying days were spent in fantasy, daydreaming and delusion of what might have been. Thus dream and reality were not poised to meet. The life and career of Adolf Hitler shows that artistry and beauty can masquerade as a cover for war-mongering, cruelty and repression. It also shows that art can be wickedly deceptive and charming. Here we see the power of aesthetics revealed in Hitler’s efforts to co-opt the arts and solidify the Third Reich for ages. In this regard, perhaps Hitler can lay claim that he was an artist more so than a politician.

"Divine destiny has given the German people everything in the person of one man. Not only does he possess strong and ingenious statesmanship, not only is he ingenious as a soldier, not only is he the first worker and the first economist among his people but, and this is perhaps his greatest strength, he is an artist. He came from art, he devoted himself to art, especially the art of architecture, this powerful creator of great buildings. And now he has also become the Reich's builder."
—Hakenkreuzbanner, (The Swastika Flag), June 10, 1938

Related Articles and Reviews:

Another Side of Hitler: the Führer as Art Critic

New Exhibit Explores Hitler's 'Germania' - Spiegel

How Hitler Would Have Rebuilt Berlin, Time Magazine.

Nazi Academy Found Buried Under Rubble - Electric Telegraph

Nazi Architecture - Wikipedia

Nazi Political Art - German Propaganda Archive

Visions of Grandeur - Deutsche Welle

Above: A gigantic scale model of Albert Speer's Germania,
which was to be showplace and capital of Hitler's postwar Europe

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
—Friedrich Nietzsche

"Dispensationalism has thrown down the gauntlet: and it is high time that covenant theologians take up the challenge and respond to them biblically."
—Robert Reymond

I would say it is high time that some one remonstrated against the specious, ahistorical, counter-Reformation theological framework foisted upon evangelical Christianity known as dispensationalism. This web site Against Dispensationalism does the job pretty thoroughly.

• Dispensationalism destroys the unity of Scripture by dividing it into distinct, hermetically sealed dispensations.


• Dispensationalism employs a naive interpretive system that contradicts the meaning of grammatical-historical exegesis.


• Dispensationalism is a relatively new theology which contradicts many important elements of historic Christian theology.


• Dispensationalism relegates the Church of Jesus Christ to a parenthesis in redemptive-history.


• Dispensationalism views the divinely-ordained goal of history as a establishing a Jewish political kingdom.

Related Reading:
Dispensationalism: Rightly Dividing the People of God? by Keith A. Mathison

John Newton wrote arguably one of the most famous hymns in modern history that told the story of his life. 1 Chronicles 17:16 was the verse that inspired him to write Faith's Review And Expectation. The verse reads, "And David the king came and sat before the LORD, and said, Who am I, O LORD God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?" The verse of the song that reflects the 1 Chronicles passage reads this way - "Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home."

Newton composed a song originally known as Faith's Review and Expectation, which we know today as Amazing Grace—how sweet the sound, that sav'd a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see!" To be sure, the song is Amazing Grace, perhaps the most beloved song of all times. The original title was Faith's Review.

But who is the self-proclaimed "wretch" who wrote the song? John Newton was born in London, England on July 24, 1725, the son of a commander of a merchant ship which sailed the Mediterranean. In July 1732, thirteen days before his seventh birthday, death overcame his saintly mother who had since his third birthday been his teacher and mentor. He took the death of his mother hard and with much grief. He found no consolation from his father. Newton wrote of him, "I am persuaded that he loved me, but he seemed not willing that I should know it. I was with him in a state of fear and bondage. His sternness broke my spirit." John became quite bitter at God over his circumstance because he began as one author puts it, "a decline into rebellion and degradation that lasted until his twenty-fourth year." At eleven years of age he went to sea with his father and made six voyages with him before the elder Newton retired. In 1744, John was pressed into service on a man-of-war, the H.M.S. Harwich. The conditions on board were inhospitable and intolerable to him, so he deserted but was soon recaptured and publicly flogged and demoted from midshipman to seaman. Newton was exchanged into service on a slave trader that departed for Sierra Leone. He then became the servant of a slave trader and was brutally abused. Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had known John's father. The slaves would often smuggle him food, and for him. He bore witness to the horrors and misery of the slave trade for the Africans in bondage. That experience represented a profound reflection of man's innate inhumanity and cruelty. It drove him to examine his own sinfulness. Amidst much soul-searching, he cried out to God, reflecting upon the teachings of his pious mother. It was several year later, however, he professed to be a true believer.

‘The crook in the lot’, says Boston, ‘is the great engine of providence for making men appear in their true colors’. C.S. Lewis referred to sufferings as ‘blockades on the road to hell’. The same sun that melts the ice also hardens the clay. Andrew Fuller declares, ‘Afflictions refine some, they consume others’. The test of a person’s Christianity is what happens in the storm, when the house is battered in the winds of affliction. The Apostle Paul told Timothy he must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Adversity refined John Newton, and made him into a humble saint. He knew he was a great sinner, and he needed a great savior. For John Newton, in 1764, he became a radical minister and an even greater songwriter. And God gets the glory in using the weak instruments like him. He was instrumental in encouraging his friend William Wilberforce, a parliamentarian who led the charge for the abolition of slavery. He is best remembered for his hymn Amazing Grace.

"I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was."
—John Newton

Please utilize Adobe Acrobat. Click here to download the Adobe Acrobat PDF version of this book from Desiring God.

I've been reading a paperback copy of The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd by John Piper. It gives an account of the lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper and David Brainerd. The one character that I was drawn to was that of the famous Christian hymn writer William Cowper (pronounced Cooper.)

William Cowper was born in 1731 and died in 1800. That makes him a contemporary of John Wesley and George Whitefield, the leaders of the Evangelical Revival in England. He embraced Whitefield’s Calvinistic theology rather than Wesley’s Arminianism. But it was a warm, evangelical brand of Calvinism, shaped (in Cowper’s case) largely by one of the healthiest men in the eighteenth century, the “old African blasphemer,” John Newton. Cowper said he could remember how, as a child, he would see the people at four o’clock in the morning coming to hear Whitefield preach in the open air. “Moorfields [was] as full of the lanterns of the worshipers before daylight as the Haymarket was full of flambeaux on opera nights.”

From the standpoint of adventure or politics or public engagement, his life was utterly uneventful—the kind of life no child would ever choose to read about. But those of us who are older have come to see that the events of the soul are probably the most important events in life. And the battles in this man’s soul were of epic proportions.

From the standpoint of adventure or politics or public engagement, his life was utterly uneventful—the kind of life no child would ever choose to read about. But those of us who are older have come to see that the events of the soul are probably the most important events in life. And the battles in this man’s soul were of epic proportions.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 85.

Cowper rarely found his work fulfilling, and it was more his father's ideal of what he should do than his own:

From 1749 he was apprenticed to a solicitor with a view to practicing law. At least this was his father’s view. He never really applied himself and had no heart for the public life of a lawyer or a politician. For ten years he did not take his legal career seriously but lived a life of leisure with token involvement in his supposed career.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 86.

In 1752, he was struck by a paralyzing depression, which he recollected in his memoirs:

[I was struck] with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same, can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for those studies, to which before I had been closely attached; the classics had no longer any charms for me; I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had no one to direct me where to find it.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), pp. 86-87.

John Piper writes, "In 1752 he sank into his first paralyzing depression—the first of four major battles with mental breakdown so severe as to set him to staring out of windows for weeks at a time. Struggle with despair came to be the theme of his life. He was twenty-one years old and not yet a believer" (p. 86.)

So in December 1763 he was committed to St. Albans Insane Asylum, where the fifty-eight-year-old Dr. Nathaniel Cotton tended the patients. Cotton was somewhat of a poet, but most of all, by God’s wonderful design, an evangelical believer and a lover of God and the Gospel. He loved Cowper and held out hope to him repeatedly in spite of his insistence that he was damned and beyond hope. Six months into his stay, Cowper found a Bible lying (not by accident) on a bench.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 92.

Though, fearing damnation, Cowper came to believe that he was not utterly forsaken of God. He felt compelled to turn to the Bible for answers. The first that seered his conscience was Romans 3:25: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” (KJV). Of this magnanimous discovery, he wrote:

Immediately I received the strength to believe it, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel... Whatever my friend Madan had said to me, long before, revived in all its clearness, with demonstration of the spirit and with power. Unless the Almighty arm had been under me, I think I should have died with gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my voice choked with transport; I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and wonder.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), pp. 93-94.

He had come to love Dr. Cotton so much that he stayed on another twelve months after his conversion. Though one might wish the story were one of emotional triumph after his conversion, he continued to struggle with depression. One of Cowper's most renowned hymns, 'There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,' contained these heartening words: "The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away," wrote Cowper.

"Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be until I die."
—William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
—William Cowper, God Moves In A Mysterious Way

"No man is more relevant to the present condition of Christianity than Jonathan Edwards."
—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Please utilize Adobe Acrobat. Click here to download the Adobe Acrobat PDF version of this book from Desiring God.


The pious Congregational minister Jonathan Edwards knew and preached the beauties of heaven as much as the terrors of damnation. He was a humble and joyful servant of God, striving to glorify God in his personal life and public ministry. His ministry serves a light to future generations. And his renown as a theologian and philosopher is well deserved. A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor chronicles the theological work of the late Jonathan Edwards, and elucidates upon some of the core themes of Edwards' ministry. Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson calls Edwards "America's theologian."

Jonathan Edwards, born on October 5, 1703, was the son of Timothy Edwards (1668–1759), a minister at East Windsor, Connecticut (modern day South Windsor.) His mother, Esther Stoddard was the daughter of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Massachusetts. Esther seems to have been a woman of profound intellect and independence of mind. Jonathan, their only son, was the fifth of eleven children. Jonathan was trained for college by his family. He entered Yale College in 1716, at just under the age of thirteen. On February 15, 1727, he was ordained minister at Northampton Congregational Christian church and assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. That same year, Edwards married Sarah Pierpont. She was then aged seventeen and daughter of James Pierpont (1659–1714), a founder of Yale University and, and through her mother, great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker.

In the late 1730s, the Puritan congregations, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, presided over a Great Awakening, which in turn, sparked revival in the churches, and invigorated believers in their faith, and brought in new converts. Edwards became acquainted with George Whitefield during this time. He also preached his most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in Enfield, Connecticut in 1741. Though, the Edwards who could warn people of God's wrath against sin, could also speak of the sweetness and joy of Christ. One of the core themes of the Puritans that they derived from Holy Scriptures was the holiness of God. From God's holiness emanates not only his justice, which entails wrath against sin, but also his love, which entails grace for believers, on account of Christ's righteousness.

Common to all of Edwards' theology and piety was a passion for God's glory. As a young man he reveled in what he called "sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God" and claimed, "Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God." In a work entitled The End for Which God Created the World (1765). Edwards carefully and logically defended the position that God's ultimate purpose is to glorify himself in all his works. Edwards applied this great truth to his own ministry as a pastor, theologian, scholar, and missionary by making it his passion to proclaim God's glory."
—Boice, James M. and Phillip Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002,) p. 49.

Edwards' theology, succinctly stated, could be encapsulated by the Westminster Shorter Cathecism's proclamation that "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

Jonathan Edwards was a tense, highly focused, and very intelligent man, a person of many parts. Ambitious too, while reserved and austere, as he himself recognized. Not just a preacher and revivalist, as he has come to be known to us through evangelical tradition, but a theologian, a philosopher, and a scientist. Part of the romance—or tragedy—of Edwards’ life is that he took it upon himself to play radically different roles at one and the same time. But he seems to have played each of these roles with characteristic thoroughness and commitment.
—Piper, John. A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 175.

Our reason for being, our calling, our joy is to render visible the glory of God. Edwards writes:

All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God. . . . The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God, and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair.
—Edwards, Jonathan, “The Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 526, 531.

One of the core themes of Edwards' theology is that 'God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him:'

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean. Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven, as it becomes us to make the seeking of our highest end and proper good, the whole work of our lives; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labour for, or set our hearts on, any thing else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness?
—Edwards, Jonathan, “The Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 531.

The Influence of the Puritans
Edwards belonged to a sect known as the Puritans who encompassed the earliest English migrants to the New World. C.S. Lewis said, "We must picture these Puritans as the very opposite of those who bear that name today: as young, fierce, progressive intellectuals, very fashionable and up-to-date. They were not teetotallers; bishops, not beer, were their special aversion..." For many generations, these Puritans were the "young bucks" who wanted to go all the way with God and the Bible.

If ever a group of Christians sought to glorify God in everything, it was the Puritans. Although the term "Puritan" has often been used as an insult, the Puritans themselves were simply Christians who wanted to honor God in their worship and doctrine. Richard Baxter, himself a leading Puritan pastor, defined them as "religious persons that used to talk of God, and heaven, and Scripture, and holiness." Their worldview is perhaps best encapsulated in the first answer in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."
—Boice, James M. and Phillip Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002.)

The Puritan's desire was for a yearning for the Holiness of God, and that deep yearning for the divine was nurtured amidst the sorrows and afflictions of life—and reinforced by the fellowship of believers. Puritan professed an abiding faith in the promises of God revealed in revelation. Their religious affections reflected their desire for righteousness. They saw providence in every aspect of life, and believed unflinchingly in the sovereignty of God. At the heart of Puritan theology was a concern for God's sovereignty: "God the great creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness and mercy" (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chp. 5. §1.)

God was to be praised even in the midst of loss, because the Almighty used even our afflictions and trials for our sanctification. ‘When God lays men on their backs, then they look up to heaven’, says Thomas Watson. ‘The vessels of mercy are first seasoned with affliction and then the wine of glory is poured in.’ Hence, even in the midst of loss, Puritans could savor the joy of God in eternity (2 Corinthians 4:17-18.)

The earliest Puritans were all English Calvinists who hoped to turn the entire Church of England into a Presbyterian national church—like Scotland's—and all of England into a Christian commonwealth modeled after Geneva. As the Elizabethan settlement became clearer and more firmly entrenched, they raised their voices in protest against what they considered 'popish' elements in the Anglican theology, worship and polity. That is, they considered the Church of England under Elizabeth and Hooker and the various archbishops of Canterbury too close to Roman Catholicism, and they sought to purge it and purify it of those 'Romish' beliefs and practices. All of them wanted to abolish the office of bishop and allow congregations to have greater say in choosing their ministers. They despised the Book of Common Prayer and sought simpler worship centered upon sermons. Most of them saw priestly vestments, incense, high altars, kneeling and genuflecting, and statues in churches as pernicious symbols of unbiblical, Catholic tendencies in the English churches. the label 'Puritan' was attached to them because of their desire to purify the English church of such traditions and bring it into conformity with their own vision of true Reformed theology and practice.
—Olson, Roger E., The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), 496.

The Puritans were not in lockstep unity, however, as they were divided over issues concerning baptism and the organization of church polity.

In the early decades of the seventeenth century the Puritans began to quarrel among themselves over the exact nature of the ideal church. Some of them wanted to stay with the Church of England no matter what and keep trying to reform it. Others insisted that the state church was hopelessly corrupt and polluted beyond reforming. These Puritans separated from the Anglican church and formed independent churches that followed a congregational form of church polity. Each church would be autonomous and self-governing, calling its own pastor and deciding on worship and practices. Among these radical, separatist Puritans were the so-called Pilgrims who settled first in Holland to escape persecution from the English government and then traveled on the Mayflower to to Massachusetts Bay in New England and founded Plymouth Colony in 1620. During the decade of the 1630s, thousands of Puritans left England and settled in New England wit the hope of establishing a Christian commonwealth. Most of them became congregationalists when they arrived in the New World, whereas the favored church polity of most Puritans was presbyterian.
—Olson, Roger E., The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), 496.

Another distinctive hallmark of Puritan theology was the covenant relationship between God and His elect:

Puritan divines faced one of the dilemmas of Calvinism head-on and sought to solve it through what is known as federal, or covenant theology. While this type of thinking about God's relationship with humanity was developed among Calvinists before the heyday of Puritanism, it was the Puritans—especially in New England—who made it central to their whole theology. One dilemma faced especially by Puritan Calvinists of New England was this: If human are to strive for conversion and sanctification (signs of grace,) how is it compatible with divine sovereignty in predestination? In other words, how may strong belief in predestination be reconciled with equally strong insistence on Puritan piety? For "if predestination affirms the ultimacy and final efficiency of God's choice, piety urges at least some effective free participation on the part of the human subject." A related dilemma was this: If God is so sovereign that His will is not bound by anything, including his own nature and character, how can believers ever be sure of their election? The underlying nominalism or at least divine voluntarism within high Calvinism raised this question intensely for Puritans who sought assurance of election through signs of grace. How can one trust God not to be capricious? Are the elect secure, or might God change His mind?

The solution to these and other problems was found in covenant theology, which affirms that God has initiated and bound himself to contracts with humans. The first covenant God offered to Adam and Eve was the covenant of works. God promise to bless them in paradise so long as they obeyed him and did not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The covenant of works was broken by humans and the result was exactly what the contract required—condemnation and corruption for covenant breakers. The Puritans assumed that all of Adam and Eve's posterity were born covenant breakers. They accepted the strong Augustinian idea that, as they put it, "in Adam's fall we sinned all." Part of the covenant of works was the condition that if original humans failed in their obligations, their posterity would suffer corruption and condemnation. God's covenants are not just with individuals. They are collective and apply to groups in history.

Covenant theology posited a second contract God mercifully established with fallen humanity—the covenant of grace. According to it, "God's promises of redemption and renewal are to those who will receive them in faith and respond to them in obedience. The good news is proclaimed but a requirement is exacted. The covenant of grace requires only that humans be sorrowful for their sinfulness, believe God and trust in his promises (e.g., to provide a perfect sacrifice for sin,0 and strive to glorify him in their lives. As the nineteenth century gospel song says, "Trust and obey.
"—Olson, Roger E., The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), 501-502.

Additionally, another climatic "hallmark of Puritan theology was the ideal of a Christianized society:

New England Puritans especially believed fervently in what has been called theonomy, or "kingdom now theology." That is, they believed that one of the God's promises in the covenant is not only to bless individuals, families and the church for trusting and obeying but also to bless human society if it will strive for godliness in its order. The Puritans believed in God's promises of blessing to Israel applies to them as extension of Israel under the second phase of covenant of grace known as the new covenant. The church is the 'New Israel' and the kingdom of God on earth is promise to it if it permeates all of human society and brings social structures into confirmity with God's law. When the Puritans exiled themselves from England in the 1630s, they sought a New World where this Christian commonwealth (modeled after Calvin's Geneva) could be built unhindered by the godless crown and impure state church. They saw North America as the promised land and sought to occupy it for God and his kingdom.
—Olson, Roger E., The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), 503.

After leaving Northhampton, Jonathan Edwards declined posts in Virginia and England to become, in 1750, pastor of the congregational church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and a missionary to the Housatonic Indians. To the Indians, Edwards preached the Gospel message through an interpreter. Their interests Edwards boldly and successfully defended by decrying the whites who were exploiting and oppressing the Indians. Edwards believed that the Gospel should be preached in earnest to all peoples throughout the Americas.

Closing Salvos
So, do we need the Puritans today? It is no understatement to say that the rebound of Reformed theology in the late 1990s and twenty-first century owes to the resurgence of interests in the old Puritans. Christianity Today journalist Collin Hansen recently chronicled the popularity of Reformed theology with young twenty-somethings, in his book Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists, which grew out of a 2006 article in Christianity Today:

In many ways the Calvinist resurgence that Piper is leading owes more to the British Puritans than even Calvin or any other stream of Reformed theology. John Owen, known for penetrating insight into sanctification, emerged as the top theologian from the era of Puritan rule in Britain. John Bunyan endured persecution for his Puritan faith and produced the defining work of Christian pilgrimage literature, Pilgrim's Progress. Charles Spurgeon, a Baptist like Bunyan, zealously evangelized and during 1800s built possibly the world's first megachurch. Jonathan Edwards, the only American whose portrait hung in the library, died nearly two decades before the colonies became the United States. In recommending Desiring God, J.I. Packer said, "Jonathan Edwards, whose ghost walks through most of Piper's pages, would be delighted in his disciple."
—Hansen, Collin. Young, Restless, and Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2008), p. 35.

Related Reading:

Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University

The English Puritan's Beginnings - A Puritan's Mind

The Example of the English Puritans - Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings

In Defence of the Puritans - Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings

The Pilgrims & Puritans: Total Reformation for the Glory of God - Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings

"God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him."
—John Piper

"Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness."
—Genesis 15:6

Solomon Stoddard, (the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards,) wrote in his book The Righteousness of Christ, the summation of the righteousness of the law:

It is sufficient for us if we have the righteousness of the law. There is no danger of our miscarrying if we have that righteousness. The security of the angels in Heaven is that they have the righteousness of the law, and it is a sufficient security for us if we have the righteousness of the law. If we have the righteousness of the law, then we are not liable to curse of the law. We are not threatened by the law; justice is not provoked with us; the condemnation of the law can take no hold upon us; the law has nothing to object against our salvation. The soul that has the righteousness of the law is out of the reach of the threatenings of the law. Where the demand of the law is answered, God has bound himself to give eternal life. Such persons are heirs to give eternal life. Such are heirs of life, according to the promise of the law. The law declared them heirs of life, Galatians 3:12, 'The man that doth them, shall live in them.'

One of the hallmarks of the Reformation was the doctrine of imputation. It is by the imputation of Christ's righteousness on the basis of faith that believers are justified in the eyes of God. Through, Christ, our sin debt is wiped clean, and we are reconciled to God the Father in love. Stoddard's remarks ultimately hearken to the doctrine of imputation.

According to the Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, imputation is "a transfer of benefit or harm from one individual to another. In theology imputation may be used negatively to refer to the transfer of the sin and guilt of Adam to the rest of humankind. Positively, imputation refers to the righteousness of Christ being transfered to those who believe on him for salvation."

In Romans 4:3 Paul quotes Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.” Thus the idea of “imputation” is introduced by the word “credited” from Genesis 15:6. This idea of imputation or crediting is introduced in connection with Romans 4:2 to show that Abraham was not “justified by works.” (“If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about.”) So Paul is forging the link here between “justification” and “imputation.” We know, Paul says, that Abraham was not “justified” by works because Genesis 15:6 says “faith was credited to him for righteousness.” Thus we learn that when Paul thinks of the justifying work of God he thinks of the imputing or crediting work of God. How then does Paul conceive of this crediting or imputing work of God? There are clues as we consider the flow of thought through verses 4-6.
—Piper, John. Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2002), pp. 54-55.

Did Jesus Die on the Cross and Bring the Gospel Message Into the World So You Could Own BMW and be rich? I was watching TV once at a friend's house, and we were channel surfing and stumbled upon televangelist Joel Osteen, and stopped long enough to hear him say, "You can have a better life, a better car, a better house..." In other words, he is just appealing to touchy-feely positive messages, the health-and-wealth non-sense. It's about making people feel good in much the same way secular humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow can speak of gratification of our needs and our self-actualization! It's holier than thou heterodoxy garbled in religiosity and "Christian clothing" for the spoiled "me generation" of the 1960s. Before I could just accuse Joel of being a fluff preacher, until I heard of the Larry King interview with Olsteen. In a nutshell, Joel struggles to affirm that Christ is truly the only way! Having said that, it's all the more reason to devote an expose of a false teacher... Joel tacitly denies John 14:6 when asked about the salvation of Jews and Muslims who have not accepted Christ: "You know, I'm very careful about saying who would and wouldn't go to heaven. I don't know ..." There are hundreds, even thousands of Joel Osteens—errant, false prosperity theologians who preach idolatry wrapped and clothed as "Gospel" and echoing the name of "Jesus." Millions are deceived into believing that Christianity promises near-Heaven on Earth—as if prayer can be used as incantations for summoning wealth.

Christ is gain. It is true that every blessing is a providence of God. God's design for this natural order to reward deliberation, hard work, labor, frugality and saving over the course of time. Indeed, God does prosper many of His flock. But "Those who trust in their wealth and boast in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother,..." (Ps. 49:6) Job was counted blessed of God, and was prospered after much suffering, but prosperity is not promised—none whatsoever on this earth. Prosperity is part of God's common grace, and ironically too, the Bible admits that riches are a stumbling block to all men. Riches impedes their desire for spiritual concerns. God often humbles His servants first in preparation for a blessing that they might be exalted.

This life is a vapor. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal" (Mt. 6:18-20.) As Stonewall Jackson used to quote to his wife, "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." (2 Cor. 5:1) Where are your treasures?

Related Reading:
Joel Osteen: False Teacher

Saved from an addiction to methamphetamines and a life of sin, guitarist Brian Welch experienced a radical Saul to Paul transformation when he was called out by God to be a Christian. Read it about on his web site Head to Christ.

Today, is the set day in observance of the atoning death, burial and resurrection of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (John 19:30-31; Mark 16:1; Mark 16:6).

A Psalm of David.

1 The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
2 He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
3 He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell[a] in the house of the LORD
Forever.

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ by John Piper (Editor), Justin Taylor (Editor), Ben Patterson, David Powlison, R. Albert Mohler Jr., Mark Dever, Michael Lawrence, Matt Schmucker, Scott Croft, C. J. Mahaney, Carolyn McCulley, Carolyn Mahaney. $15.99.


I've blogged about just about everything from current affairs to economics to history to politics to theology, so why not sex? Albeit sex from a Christian perspective. Genesis 2:18 notes, "The LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.'" So, God made Eve for Adam, and thus this blogpost got inspired.

To kick off this feature, here is an excerpt from a tongue-in-cheek chat conversation this past summer with one of my mischievous, albeit humorous Christian friends. And to protect the innocent, we will just call him Scott, since that's his name.

4:37 PM	Scott: something a friend of mine did is both amusing and outlandish - very in the spirit of certain gadfly PB posts of late he posted a countdown on his website me: what's that? oh
4:38 PM	Scott: entitled: "Sex Time! (aka marriage aka, lifelong comittment, etc...)" - 34 days and counting down his fiancee's response: Umm... THAT does not start at 6:30 ;) But I love you and am looking forward to you! me: did i just hear the s word?
4:39 PM	me: there is more to marriage than just making love to a woman... okay lets see there is... hmmm... still thinking... uggh well hmmm well, i'll have to get back to you on that but i am sure there is something else to marriage :P lol
4:40 PM	Scott: lol

Please utilize Adobe Acrobat. Click here to download the Adobe Acrobat PDF version of this book from Desiring God.



Recently, in 2005, Crossway Publishers released an anthology of essays entitled Sex and the Supremacy of Christ edited by pastors John Piper and Justin Taylor. For many Christians, it's a taboo subject—unspoken but sometimes tacitly alluded to. What this book does is go beneath the surface, and examine a pivotal issue in light of Scriptural teaching. Sex is how us humans go about procreation. It's also a recreation.

God has a design for this: and the model sexual relationship between a man and a woman is based upon monogamy within the confines of holy matrimony (Genesis 2:24). Monogamy is the condition of having only one mate in a relationship, thus forming a couple. The word monogamy comes from the Greek word monos, which means one or alone, and the Greek word gamos, which means marriage. (It does NOT mean serial monogomy however. i.e., a series of long- or short-term, exclusive sexual relationships entered into consecutively over the lifespan.) Intimacy of this kind, (that is monogamy,) is subsumed in marriage vows, lifelong commitment, trust, and mutual fealty. God does NOT sanction sex outside of marriage which is fornication, which is sinful and not at all characteristic of the new man in Christ (1 Cor. 6:9-10; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; 1 Pet. 4:3). The Scriptures tell us to "flee fornication," and to "flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness" (1 Cor. 6:18, 2 Tim. 2:22). In other words, avoid all sexual lasciviousness like the plague.

In accordance with Scripture, Michael Lawrence observes that:

Sexual intimacy is all about union. Physically, of course, that's obvious. But there's so much more. In sexual intimacy, we also know a union that is emotional, as our hearts are knit together even as our bodies are. We know a union that is intellectual, as we come to understand and know one another in intimate detail. We know a union that is even spiritual, for as every married couple figures out, the best sex isn't when I make sure I get what I want, but when I forget about myself, and give myself for the blessing and delight of my spouse. And at that moment, we are very close to the heart of Christ, "who loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:25).
—Lawrence, Michael, Sex Is Not About Waiting. Boundless. 7 Dec. 2006.

Because, a multitude of people in this day and age are not willing to accept the consequences of sex (namely children,) and it's often times pursued merely at convenience and not within the confines of holy matrimony, there is a widespread societal disconnect between sex as God intended it to be and the popular conception of sexuality which is promiscuous and without real commitment. Increasingly, many people want to separate sex from its consequences, but they cannot. It's no coincidence that sexual primuiscuity has correlated with a significant rise in sex-out-of-wedlock relationships, divorce, the proliferation of pornography, the rampant proliferation of venereal disease, and the rise of abortion-on-demand since its ostensible 'legalization' in the U.S. in the 1973.

Why exchange marriage vows? Why wait? Marriage signifies a life-long commitment, and the solemnity and sacredness attached to the occasion inculcates the integrity of the ordinance of marriage in the hearts of the marrying party. Marriage is about lasting love, trust, mutual fealty, commitment, and compassion, and sexual intimacy is not what defines marriage, but complimentary to it.

Biblical Greek scholars know that "agape" in Greek speaks of a deep, intimate, selfless, and unconditional love. But "phileo" on the other hand is sort of a casual, friendly brotherly type of love. When Jesus asked of Simon Peter do you agape love me, Peter could only say he phileo loved his Savior. Jesus repeated the query, and Peter responded again in similar fashion. Jesus finally changed his query to do you phileo love me? (John 21:15-17) An underlying message can be drawn out of that message—specifically as it relates to Christian marriage. First, work on the brotherly love before laying claim to the unconditional love. Next, those living expressions of phileo and agape must be realized following marriage vows before laying hold of any claim to eros (i.e., erotic love.) If we are not ready for the commitment of the former love, trust and communion, than we are simply not ready for the later physical intimacy and marriage.

The Puritans have been derided as sexually-repressed prudes by modern secularists. While the Puritans sheltered public exhibitionism in favor of chastity, they extolled the purity and virtue of marital intimacy in fact. The Puritans rested their societal norms on a foundational expectation of public chastity and modesty precisely to guard the sanctity of marital intimacy from temptation. In their view:

Marriage was a gift from God that established two Christians as partners in grace. One of its purposes was edification; husbands and wives were to encourage each other in spiritual things. at the same time, the Puritans viewed marriages as a romance. This was virtually an innovation, for the Renaissance ideal was courtly love, in which romance transgressed the boundaries of marital fidelity. But the Puritans combined love and matrimony to promote the Biblical ideal of romantic marriage—a passionate partnership in which even the sexual act of love (or "due benevolence," as they called it) was a means of glorifying God in the body. To summarize, the Puritans viewed marriage as a "high, holy and blessed order of life, ordained not of man, but of God, ...wherein one man and one woman are coupled and knit together in one flesh and one body in the fear and love of God, by the free, loving, hearty, and good consent of them both, to the intent that they too may dwell together as one flesh and one body, of one will and mind, in all honesty, virtue and godliness, and spend their lives in equal partaking of all such things as God shall send them with thanksgiving.
—Boice, James Montgomery, and Phillip Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005,) p. 46.

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."
—Genesis 2:24

Awww. That's so sweet. I'm gonna cry. NOT!

Love and marriage can yield a fruitful, satisfying relationship when properly nurtured, and a relationship to conducive to happiness, joy, and emotional and spiritual well-being. The secret to having a successful marriage from a Biblical perspective is abiding in Christ and His Word. Jesus says in John 15:5, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.” Abiding in Christ, entails sexual morality, and for a married couple their desire must be for another, and no one else. That's a significant part of the "one flesh" concept. The essence of sincere, marital love, Martin Luther argued, was wholehearted devotion to the good and well-being of one's spouse:

Where conjugal chastity is to be maintained, husband and wife must, above all things, live together in love and harmony, so that one cherishes the other wholeheartedly and with complete fidelity. This whole-hearted devotion is one of the chief requirements in the creation of a love and desire for chastity. Where it is found, chastity will follow as a matter of course, without any command. Therefore St. Paul (Eph. 5:22-25) so diligently admonishes married people to love and honor each other. Conjugal love or the desire to marry is a natural affection, implanted and inspired by God. Therefore conjugal love is praised so highly in Scripture and is so frequently adduced as an example of the relations existing between Christ and His Christendom.
—John Piper and Justin Taylor, Sex and the Supremacy of God. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005,) p. 240.

There is a strong emotional attachment to sexual intimacy, and there is likewise strong emotional withdrawal when a person one is intimate with is suddenly removed from the scene. God never intended men/women to be promiscuous, and even the pagans lament the perils of promiscuity. Christians should deplore the way of the world, which is: Hook up. Shack up. Break up. The pleasures of sin only last a season (Heb. 11:25). The world says immediate gratification, whereas the Bible more or less tells us that marriage embodies life-long commitment, mutual fealty, unconditional love, and a spirit of self-sacrifice and trust.

Again, in point of emphasis, God's design for sex is between a man and woman, and such a relationship is only properly consummated only within the bonds of holy matrimony. For those that stumble into sexual immorality, there is forgiveness in Christ with repentance. However, there is no guaranteed immunity from the emotional withdrawal and the guilt of sexual immorality. Sin has consequences.


C.J. Mahaney Sermon on Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

The Holy Scriptures reminds us that the intimate love of physical intimacy is something to be belated (Song of Solomon 8:4), but nonetheless something to be embraced with joy within the confines of holy matrimony. The tenor of Scriptures is quite clear that there is no shame in intimacy so long as it is within the bonds of marriage between one man and one woman (