A Teenager’s Resolutions (Part 1)
Many people, especially young people, don’t know much about Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Most people don’t know that he is considered by both secular and evangelical historians to be the greatest Protestant thinker and theologian America has ever produced. Most people don’t know that he was not only God’s kindling for the Great Awakening, but also its most penetrating analyst and critic.
Pastor John Piper of Desiring God Ministries, writes of Jonathan Edwards: “Alongside the Bible, Edwards became the compass of my theological studies. Not that he has anything like the authority of Scripture, but that he is a master of that Scripture, and a precious friend and teacher.
One of my seminary professors suggested to us back in 1970 that we find one great and godly teacher in the history of the church and make him a lifelong companion. That’s what Edwards has become for me. It’s hard to overestimate what he has meant to me theologically and personally in my vision of God and my love for Christ.”
This is a man we can heartily recommend to you. And this week we will be enjoying “The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards” — written while he was still a teenager, at 19-years-old. We pray that they might inspire you as they have inspired us.
THE RESOLUTIONS OF JONATHAN EDWARDS
BEING SENSIBLE THAT I AM UNABLE TO DO ANYTHING WITHOUT GOD’S HELP, I DO HUMBLY ENTREAT HIM BY HIS GRACE TO ENABLE ME TO KEEP THESE RESOLUTIONS, SO FAR AS THEY ARE AGREEABLE TO HIS WILL, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.
1. Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’ s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many soever, and how great soever.
2. Resolved, to be continually endeavoring to find out some new contrivance and invention to promote the aforementioned things.
3. Resolved, if ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these Resolutions, to repent of all I can remember, when I come to myself again.
4. Resolved, never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God; nor be, nor suffer it, if I can avoid it.
5. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
6. Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.
7. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.
9. Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.
10. Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.
Read Part One - Resolutions #1-10
Read Part Two - Resolutions #11-20
Read Part Three - Resolutions #21-30
Read Part Four - Resolutions #31-40
Read Part Five - Resolutions #41-50
Read Part Six - Resolutions #51-60
Read Part Seven - Resolutions #61-70
Read Closing Statements
February 28th, 2006 at 2:53 am
Those are inspiring, convicting, and beautiful all at once! I especially like it that Jonathan Edwards clearly valued action (#6). No passive Christianity for him…and see what he accomplished!
February 28th, 2006 at 6:11 am
Jonathan Edwards was simply amazing. Every Christian should take a serious look at how he truely lived for Christ.
February 28th, 2006 at 7:11 am
sjoe! that is inspiring! i think i should change all the resolutions i’ve ever made in my life and add some of these…. that is truly inspiring!
February 28th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
I’ve developed a habit of reading Edward’s resolutions at least once a month. It really helps you to focus on what is really important.
February 28th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
I read some/all of these resolutions in Piper’s book and was greatly encouraged by them. Thanks for posting them here. I won’t be removing them from my Google Sidebar for quite a while!
February 28th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Viva Edwards!
…I am writing in a library just down the hall from one of his firs classrooms and the Jonathan Edwards Center, the world’s largest repository of his works and archived personal material. I HIGHLY recommend that anyone interested in Edwards check out the Center’s new website (Jonathan Edwards Online) and the brand- new book on Edwards which one of my friends recently co-edited… (”Jonathan Edwards at 300 : Essays on the Tercentenary of His Birth”)
… of special interest to rebelutionaries might be the fact that this godly co-editor is only in his early twenties! (I link to his blog at my blog-)
February 28th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
MM: Who is this young co-editor? Would you mind emailing us the link to his blog?
rebelution [dot] blogspot [at] gmail [dot] com
February 28th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
MM: Thanks for the recommendation, MM. I’m actually already a beta tester for JEO, and looking forward to when it goes live.
March 1st, 2006 at 2:00 am
Alex, good for you! - exciting stuff, no? Brett, I will get info to you ASAP. In the meantime, you will find the blog mentioned under “180 Colony” in my sidebar. I notice that it has not been updated in some time- probably due to the book itself…:/
March 2nd, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Bravo! I love Jonathan Edwards–he’s probably my biggest hero. Just the fact that he was homeschooled by his dad even though there were nine or ten other children AND got into Harvard at 11 is pretty amazing. I’m so glad he put his amazing intellect to work for the Great Awakening. He would have made quite a formidable opponent.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Um yeah, 1703-1758. Notice a slight disconnect between this guy and you? Why not look forward and see how you can influence your world instead of locking yourself to some 400 year old dogma?
August 29th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
ARRGH! Would somebody please delete all these spamy ads?
Baffled by your stupidity-
Please tell me how admiring a man who lived 400 or so years ago is being locked to some dogma. Furthermore, why does it matter that he lived back then? God hasn’t changed since, so time shouldn’t be an issue. (Culture might be, but not time itself.)
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
#10 is the one that really hit me. When i here the word pain i think of getting hert or something that would happen to me on this world. But what was said about hell being the pain that would pop up into his mind is something that i thnk should have gone into my mind as well. Because that is really the most sever pain that we could get.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:50 am
That was great! My church did Alex and Brett’s book as a devotional on our youth mission trip.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
wow..those are very inspiring! especially #8: “to act as if no one had been so vile as i…” that is something i really need to practice because i am so quick to see fault in others and never in myself…=/
October 29th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
This nice. I’m doing this report on Jonathon Edwards and finding all his resolutions helps me a lot. I think I might include some of these resolutions in my report.
January 29th, 2009 at 10:56 am
That is really great! I absolutely loved those! My mom read those to me a long time ago and now that I hear them again, wow. Cool.
March 24th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
“Resolved, if ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these Resolutions, to repent of all I can remember, when I come to myself again.”
I love the phrase ‘when I come to myself again’, because I never really thought of it that way. The real selves that God created would never have sinned, but what we do now is a product of sin. Thus, when we realize what we have done wrong, we are coming that much closer to the real us that God created.
September 27th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
WOW! Definatly some “hards things” to concour (if that’s possible). Great goals.
December 1st, 2009 at 1:50 pm
That was great
December 30th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Amazing! It inspired me to write some resolutions of my own.
July 15th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
I love how you call Jonathan Edwards “God’s kindling”. It is so right because God used him to do great things but the flipside of that also occured to me. The purpose of kindling is to start a great fire but the kindling will be consumed by that fire in the process. It is a good thing to want to be God’s kindling but we must also go into it with the knowledge that we will be consumed in the process. We must be prepared for that holy consumption.