Religion—even Christian religion—can become fixated upon earthly hopes, personal and public, that we already desire on other grounds. Jesus and the gospel can easily become instruments or means to gaining what we otherwise want or value. There is the potential of drifting into something more subtle than overt anti-religiosity, and that’s to stumble toward a religious instrumentalism. How might Reformed churches be equipped and alerted to such drift? We are wise to consider ways in which even religion can be secularized; wiser still to attend to those pathways where Scripture instills in us means of maintaining spiritual attentiveness. In both regards, we do well to glean from the order and passion of the Puritan John Owen’s classic account regarding “The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually-Minded” (in Sin and Grace [Banner of Truth Trust, 1965], 263–497).

In that text, Owen not only attested the significance of the spiritual but the very way in which the God who is Spirit had turned, in grace and of his freedom, to bless us with all that which he possesses in and of himself. Out of his fullness he has filled us (Eph. 1:23). Because he fills us, we are called to find our very being and our every blessing where he is, in the heavens (Rom. 8:6; Col. 3:1).

Owen observed “the present importunity of the world to impose itself on the minds of men, and the various ways of insinuation whereby it possesseth and filleth them” (263–264). Whereas Paul commended God’s being as that from whom all are filled (Eph. 1:23; 3:19), Owen saw a climate whereby the world insinuates its capacity to fill or satisfy. In speaking of imposition and even importunity, Owen speaks to its pressure (especially subliminally). The claims of the world, however, do not sit well with our design, so the words of Paul remind us that only the spiritually-minded experience life and peace (Rom. 8:6). Owen begins by speaking to the necessity of this mindset: “To be spiritually minded is the great distinguishing character of true believers from all unregenerate persons.” Indeed, “where any are spiritually minded, there, and there alone, is life and peace” (271). His text will trace out the nature of this celestial claim upon our minds and our very lives.

Three Duties of the Spiritually-Minded

What does it mean to be spiritually-minded? Owen answers:

Three things may be distinguished in the great duty of being spiritually minded . . .

(1) the actual exercise of the mind, in its thoughts, meditations, and desires, about things spiritual and heavenly;

(2) The inclination, disposition, and frame of the mind, in all its affections, whereby it adheres and cleaves unto spiritual things;

(3) A complacency of mind, from that gust, relish, and savour, which it finds in spiritual things, from their suitableness unto its constitution, inclinations, and desires. (270)

Owen views thoughts as manifesting and molding affections. “Ordinarily voluntary thoughts are the best measure and indication of the frame of our minds” (275, where he is drawing on Ps. 23). Thus, a first evidence of being spiritually-minded comes when one’s inward promptings are unto heavenly realities, occurring not only when suggested by external forces but also by personal intuition. When one intuitively turns to heavenly matters, then one has internalized heavenly affections in a significant way. “The second evidence that our thoughts of spiritual things do proceed from an internal fountain of sanctified light and affections, or that they are acts or fruits of our being spiritually minded, is, that they abound in us, that our minds are filled with them” (298). In order to gauge the intuitiveness and extent of spiritual-mindedness, he suggests that Psalm 119 may be used as a canon for self-examination (301). In so doing, the Puritan divine suggests that we look not only at our thoughts or meditations but also at our joyous delights so to assess their spiritual caliber. Affection, not mere thought, is the aim whereby life and peace are enjoyed in Christ.

To sum up thus far, “Spiritual affections, whereby the soul adheres unto spiritual things, taking in such a savour and relish of them as wherein it finds rest and satisfaction, is the peculiar spring and substance of our being spiritually minded” (395). We are not left to this duty alone, but God commits himself to our cause as Father and Redeemer. So Owen says: “I shall consider and propose some of those arguments and motives which God is pleased to make use of to call off our affections from the desirable things of this world” (397). Before spiritual-mindedness is duty, it is grace.

God’s Grace Inlaid

Six facets of divine beneficence receive exposition:

First, he hath, in all manner of instances, poured contempt on the things of this world, in comparison of things spiritual and heavenly. . . . Secondly, God hath added unto their vanity by shortening the lives of men, reducing their continuance in this world unto so short and uncertain a season as it is impossible they should take any solid satisfaction in what they enjoy here below. . . . Thirdly, God hath openly and fully declared the danger that is in these things, as unto their enjoyment and use. . . . Fourthly, things are so ordered in the holy, wise dispensation of God’s providence, that it requires much spiritual wisdom to distinguish between the use and the abuse of these things, between a lawful care about them and an inordinate cleaving unto them. . . . Fifthly, God makes a hedge against the excess of the affections of men rational and, any way enlightened unto the things of this world, by suffering the generality of men to carry the use of them, and to be carried by the abuse of them, into actings so filthy, so abominable, so ridiculous, as reason itself cannot but abhor. . . . Lastly, to close this matter, and to show us what we are to expect in case we set our affections on things here below, and they have thereby a predominant interest in our hearts, God hath positively determined and declared that if it be so, he will have nothing to do with us. (397–410)

Expounding Paul’s teaching that sanctification is unto the “whole spirit and soul and body” (1 Thess. 5:23), Owen seeks to distinguish and thus highlight the breadth and variety of grace given to draw us from the darkness into God’s glorious light. Grace is the “principle,” so that God’s action serves as the ontological and ethical prompt. Various verbs are employed to speak of the gravity of this divine action: “changed, renewed, and inlaid.” And the character of the grace inlaid is confessed to be both “spiritual and supernatural,” noting that we are beyond the need for mere physical supplement or mental reorientation. We demand a truly transformative and renovating work—resurrection, mind you—of our very affections. A root canal is necessary rather than a mere crown placed atop the moral or spiritual status quo.

A Christological Inflection

This “spiritual and supernatural” prompt really does intrude so as to form “our affections,” so that we really do exist and act as human subjects. Owen calls his readers to consider God and all things in God. His account of God’s grace and our duty to be spiritually-minded should be read alongside his other text, “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, in His Person, Office, and Grace: With the Differences Between Faith and Sight; Applied Unto the Use of Them that Believe” (in The Glory of Christ [Banner of Truth Trust, 1955], 273–415). A Christological inflection flavors that treatise, although both texts point to meditation upon the glory of God in and of himself (“in his person”), in his works (“in his . . . office”), and of his benefits (“in his. . . . Grace”). Indeed, the span of spiritual-mindedness flows epistemologically from its ontological character, for Owen elsewhere notes that our benefits are all enjoyed by way of beholding him:

For if our future blessedness shall consist in being where he is, and beholding of his glory, what better preparation can there be for it than in a constant previous contemplation of that glory in the revelation that is made in the Gospel, unto this very end, that by a view of it we may be gradually transformed into the same glory. (The Glory of Christ, 274)

Being spiritually-minded and viewing the glorious Christ is not to be myopic, then, but to view all things in a transfigured light. It is no narrow icon, but the discipline of having one’s whole imagination recast.

The story of modern theology has sadly been one of functionalizing doctrine, tailoring it to deliver some this-worldly benefit, whether that’s the cleansing of the conscience or a sense of a meaningfulness in the psyche—the revolutionary impulse or the institutional order of the body politic. While this activistic impulse may seem most overt among liberals, it can take hold in seemingly traditional settings too. We too need to avoid being secularized. We also need to pursue spiritual-mindedness. And amid the tyranny of the urgent, the force of felt needs, and the glitz of the market, no one else is going to summon us to look upward. Hopefully John Owen’s wisdom, and his lead in listening well to that theme taught in Holy Scripture, helps prompt us afresh.

Michael Allen is professor of systematic theology and academic dean at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL. This article excerpts from and expands upon his book, Grounded in Heaven (Eerdmans). New Horizons, June 2023.