In a previous post, I narrated what I called the through-line of Reformed spirituality as one guided and governed by love. There is a long tradition in Reformed theology that didn’t hesitate to speak of God and his love in very romantic, even erotic ways. For many of us, this is incredibly uncomfortable.

This hesitancy is a bit of a double-edged sword. There is probably something good about it. But at the same time, there is certainly something undiscerning wrapped up in this hesitancy. Too often, erotic love is sent abroad to the world, flesh and devil, as if it were not a part of the goodness of God’s creation. Too many cannot fathom this sort of love sanctified and ordered to God.

Jonathan Edwards, in an interesting passage, wrestles with the human temptation toward “carnal appetites” of the flesh (often just named as lust), and how those lusts are shadow-desires of the heart longing for God. Our desires have an infinite horizon, only able to be satisfied in the infinite fountain of love that is the Triune God of glory.

Listen to Edwards’s pastoral guidance as one being shepherded to their Lord:

Endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement. We are to avoid being in the way of temptation with respect to our carnal appetites. Job made a covenant with his eyes [Job 31:1]. But we ought to take all opportunities to lay ourselves in the way of enticement with respect to our gracious inclinations. Thus you should be often with God in prayer, and then you will be in the way of having your heart drawn forth to him. We ought to be frequent in reading and constant in hearing the Word. And particularly to this end, we ought carefully and with the utmost seriousness and consideration attend the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: this was appointed for this end, to draw forth the longings of our souls towards Jesus Christ. Here are the glorious objects of spiritual desire by visible signs represented to our view. We have Christ evidently set forth crucified {in this sacrament}. Here we have that spiritual meat and drink represented and offered to excite our hunger and thirst; here we have all that spiritual feast represented which God has provided for poor souls; and here we may hope in some measure to have our longing souls satisfied in this world by the gracious communications of the Spirit of God.

The problem with our lust, for Edwards, is not enticement, but is being enticed by worldly lusts rather than godly ones. To put ourselves in the way of this allurement we have to partake of the means of grace as offered to us by Jesus himself, calling us near to rest in his grace, mercy and love.

While we walk by faith and not by sight, in other words, God has still given us places to cast our vision. We look to our baptism. We look to the bread and cup offered to us by the Lord himself. We look to the communion of saints who can speak to us in our darkness. We look to the Word declared — the Word we stand under as those simultaneously undone by the law and raised in and by the Spirit — and stand there as hearers of the Word who are “made clean because of the Word” he has spoken to us (John 15:3).

We are those who stand before God justified because we have put our faith in him. We are his and he is ours. In the union we know in Christ, we stand as those who trust by faith that Christ is our righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).

Therefore, we stand as those undone by his kindness. We come as those captivated by his goodness and beauty. We declare with David, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4).

Christians are those who gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and who inquire in his temple. This is the Christian task of contemplation. As Andrew Louth notes, “con” means “with,” and templum refers to the temple, such that contemplation means “to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”

This is how we put ourselves in the allurement of God. This is how we set our minds on things above, even as we set our eyes on the means of grace placed before us.

This post and more can be found on Kyle Strobel’s Substack.