Meet The Puritans

John Owen on Christ’s Active Obedience

Posted on 11. Sep, 2009 by Danny Hyde in John Owen

In Andrew Thomson’s (1814–1901) biography of John Owen, which may be found in Owen’s Works 1, xxi–cxxii, or reprinted on it own as John Owen: Prince of Puritans (1996 ed., repr., Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2004), Thomson appended several of Owen’s important letters. The first of these letters was to Pierre Du Moulin, Jr. (1601–1684), son of the famous French Huguenot, Pierre Du Moulin, Sr., and staunch Royalist and advocate of prelacy (i.e., episcopacy). Owen’s letter was in response to Du Moulin’s critique of the Independants’ Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (1658), of which Owen was a member of the composition committee.

In his letter to Du Moulin, Owen recounted that Du Moulin accused Owen of contradiction, speaking of the “active obedience of Christ imputed to us” on the one hand, and saying that “Christ acquits us by his obedience in death and not by his fulfilling of the law” on the other (Thomson, 144–145). It is telling that the longest section of Owen’s letter deals with a refutation of this accusation.

Owen’s reply to Du Moulin was gentle: “I fear you make use of some corrupt copy of our Confession” (Thomson, 145). Contrary to Du Moulin’s charge, Owen retorted: “…but we say that Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those who are justified – which comprehends both his active and passive righteousness” (Thomson, 145). To Du Moulin’s attempt “to disprove this doctrine of ours concerning the imputation of the active righteousness of Christ unto our justification,” Owen forcefully said, “Pray, sir, do not mistake that such mistaken reasonings can give us any occasion to change our judgments in an article of truth of this importance” (Thomson, 145).

Owen summed us his response to this point, with a wonderful paragraph on the twofold obedience of Jesus Christ for our justification, when he said,

“In the meantime I tell you, we are by the death of Christ freed from all sufferings as they are purely penal, and the effects of the curse, though they spring out of the root; only, sir, you and I know well that we are not freed from pains, afflictions and death itself – which had never been, had they not proceeded from the curse of the law. And so, sir, by the obedience of Christ we are freed from obedience to the law as to justification by the works thereof. We are no more obligated to obey the law in order to justification than we are obligated to undergo the penalties of the law to answer its curse” (Thomson, 145).

Tags: active obedience, Christ, justification, Owen