This article was first published in Tabletalk, the Bible study magazine of Ligonier Ministries. Find out more at TabletalkMagazine.co.uk or try it free for three months today at TryTabletalk.co.uk.
When Sereno E. Dwight included the 70 resolutions in his biography of his great-grandfather Jonathan Edwards, he added the arresting comment: 'These were all written before he was twenty years of age.'
Doubtless the resolutions display the marks of relative youth – references to God are frequent, while references to Christ and to grace are noticeably infrequent. Edwards's sense of the need for radical consecration was then greater than his ability to show how such devotion would need to be resourced in Christ over the long haul. While this is not wholly lacking, there is no doubt that introspection dominates over divine provision.
That notwithstanding, the 'Resolutions' provide a very powerful illustration of an often-repeated divine pattern: those the Lord means to use significantly he often deals with profoundly in early years.
A lost art
Edwards stood in a great Puritan tradition of resolution-forming and covenant-making. Both are lost spiritual arts, substituted at best by life-plans that tend to focus on the externals. Edwards, by contrast, was deeply concerned with the internals.
