Hungry?

Jonathan Edwards argued for this in a sermon that he preached on Song of Solomon 5:1. The text reads, “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!” Edwards drew out of the text the following doctrine: “Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites.” Instead, he says, they ought

“to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures. . . . Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can’t be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value…[Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement…There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.”

Therefore, be encouraged that God made you to rejoice in him. Do not settle for any lesser joy. Lay yourself in the way of allurement. That is, fix your eyes on the all-satisfying treasure of Jesus Christ who loved us and gave his life as a ransom for our everlasting joy. [ John Piper in What Jesus Demands from the World, pp. 90-91]

HT: Tony Reinke