How do we communicate the connection between spirituality and good works? John Gill lays out a rich experiential approach to spirituality that ought to be recognized. Not only does he examine more than twenty spiritual characteristics in A Body of Practical Divinity, ‘Book I. On the worship of God,’ but Gill preached on these characteristics to his congregation in his biblical, applicable manner. Gill’s pastoral work demonstrates a reformed, experiential spirituality that communicates both mystical union with Christ and adherence to the obedience of faith.
With particular attention to Gill’s sermons, as a means of instructing believers, we discover that Gill’s evangelical Calvinism is not without a warm embrace of spiritual fervor. Rather, through his instruction to his people, Gill should be regarded for his underpinning particular Baptist spirituality with his encouragement of lively spiritual hunger. The following three-part article attempts to capture just a snapshot of Gill’s view of love as the motivating factor in his own ministry, his understanding of obedience, the significance of his terminology for good works, and a rich theology concerning union with God and its experiential pursuit.
Keeping with the Reformed Tradition
Gill describes spiritual characteristics, or virtues, as those exercises or worshipful demonstrations of the Spirit at work— terminology much in keeping with the Reformed tradition. Gill knew well the voices of the past who spoke to issues of orthodox spirituality. He understood the framework of Puritan spirituality, that our regeneration leads to a deeper experience of “searching, probing, and powerful reconstitution of the souls of persons,” which simultaneously satisfies and produce faithfulness in inward and outward piety, especially through the circumstances of challenge.[1] Reformed theologians were adamant concerning the expectations of God’s people. Rather than a view of perfectionism or veneration, the people of God face trials and tribulations, failures and spiritual draughts in their sense of God’s nearness. Even so, as Joel Beeke discerns from Herman Witsius’s works, “God does not grant perfection to us in this life.”[2] God teaches patience, humility, and dependence upon his grace by way of progressive sanctification. Sanctification, according to Witsius, is enjoyed through the “practice of experiential piety” based in “heartfelt communion [with] the faithful covenant-keeping God.”[3] Such served as the starting point for Gill’s preaching on spiritual formation.
Spiritual life born out of love
Unlike the caricature of a stoic, cerebral intellectual, John Gill had great concern for the spiritual vitality of his church, and believers in general. William H. Brackney stylizes Gill as having greater concern for church purity and spiritual formation than necessarily prompting his hearers to evangelize the unconverted; even if Gill did not stress evangelism, hyper-Calvinism is an unfair assessment.[4] Gill’s charge to relinquish carnal attitudes and antinomianism is not inconsistent with evangelical Calvinism. If a person professed faith in Jesus Christ, then Gill understood this person to evidence experimental religion—a faith borne out of “passionate love for Christ” that moved them in internal growth and external demonstration. Just as Gill was “enraptured by a realization of Christ’s love for the church,”[5] so he saw the church as called to experience delight in Christ’s love, obedience to it, and a hunger for it to thrive and continue in the ministry of his churches until the Shepherd’s return.
Countenance and faith
Gill often addressed such virtues as “resignation to the will of God,” “self-denial,” and “fortitude” which show up through his preaching as collective terms for the outward manifestations of the Spirit’s graces internally revealed through believers’ obedient faith. Through a spiritual hunger to delight in the Lord, repentance brings forth not only sin and temptation, but necessarily “springs from and is heightened and increased by the discoveries of God’s love, pardoning grace, and mercy.”[6] The observed “countenance” of a repentant believer—or the manner by which a person carries and conducts themselves—evidences their spiritual health. Gill addresses the countenance both for personal, self-examination, as well as an evangelistic caution that others may see and take note of the pilgrim’s heart.
The exercise of faith, observed in obedience, likewise serves to demonstrate the graces of the spirit. When these exercises are shown and demonstrated, the countenance of the believer is proven healthy; “when he abounds in hope, and love to God and His people, then he is in good health.”[7] Gill notes elsewhere on the spiritual life, “as is the countenance of a believer, so is his health. As it his faith, so is every other grace.” Gill even calls upon the church as a whole to carry the countenance as a gathered community received through the love of Christ. This love, as an impassioning work, reveals desire for continual obedience.
Moving forward
Gill makes the improvement unto us still today. The experience or demonstration of the faithful work of spiritual hunger comes through a hunger to explore and expose the life of the Spirit at work in the believer through obedience. Thus, we turn next to the expression of spiritual vitality in an obedience that does not save but demonstrates the glorious work of salvation. Keeping within orthodox tradition, Gill held to a spirituality born of Christ’s love to His people, demonstrated in the experience of redeemed living even on this side of heaven. How that life can be experienced comes in the next installment.
About the Author
Christopher Ellis Osterbrock (DEdMin. in Biblical Spirituality, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; PhD Student in Historical Theology, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Wellsboro, PA. He is the author of What is Saving Faith? (March, 2022), as well as editor of several reprints
Stay in touch with CBTSeminary
For more information about CBTS, go to CBTSeminary.org
Consider giving to CBTSeminary to help us train the next generation of gospel ministers.
Apply to CBTS today to be sharpened for a lifetime of faithful ministry.
Follow CBTS on our socials: X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Sign up for our newsletter and receive monthly updates related to the Seminary.
[1] Richard A. Lovelace, “Afterword: The Puritans and Spiritual Renewal,” in The Devoted Life: An Introduction to the Puritan Classics, eds. Kelly M. Kapic and Randall C. Gleason (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 301.
[2] Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality: A Practical Theological Study from our Reformed and Puritan Heritage (Webster, NY: Evangelical Press, 2006), 345.
[3] Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality: A Practical Theological Study from our Reformed and Puritan Heritage (Webster, NY: Evangelical Press, 2006), 345.
[4] William H. Brackney, A Genetic History of Baptist Thought (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 118–119.
[5] Robert W. Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists 1771–1892 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2006), 12–13.
[6] Gill, “The Doctrines of God’s Everlasting Love to His Elect,” in Sermons and Tracts, vol. 5 (1814; repr., Choteau, MT: Old Paths, 1997), 59.
[7] Gill, “The Dejected Believer’s Soliloquy,” in Sermons and Tracts, 4:152. Such it is that these graces are made effectual for the believer by God’s own design and means (see also Gill, “The Doctrine of the Saints Final Perseverance,” 80).
This blog post is authored by a student of Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary.
