So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him, and no more. Every other discovery of God, without this, will but make the soul fly from him; but if the heart be once much taken up with this the eminency of the Father’s love, it cannot choose but be overpowered, conquered, and endeared unto him. This, if anything, will work upon us to make our abode with him. If the love of a father will not make a child delight in him, what will? Put, then, this to the venture: exercise your thoughts upon this very thing, the eternal, free, and fruitful love of the Father, and see if your hearts be not wrought upon to delight in him. I dare boldly say: believers will find it as thriving a course as ever they pitched on in their lives. Sit down a little at the fountain, and you will quickly have a further discovery of the sweetness of the streams. You who have run from him, will not be able, after a while, to keep at a distance for a moment.

—John Owen
Communion with the Triune God

Via: Tim Challies

When we ask pardon for sin, with secret reserves in our hearts to continue in sin, we ask the choicest mercy of the covenant, to spend it on our lusts. The end of the promise the apostle tells us, 2 Corinthians 7:1, “Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all pollution of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” When we ask what is in the promise, as it is in the promise, to this end of the promise, our supplications are according to the will of God.

—John Owen
Of Communion With God

Via: The Essential Owen

Be killing sin or it will be killing you… Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who doth not kill sin in his way takes no steps towards his journey’s end. He who finds not opposition from it, and who sets not himself in every particular to its mortification, is at peace with it, not dying to it.

—John Owen
Mortification of Sin in Believers

Via: Denny Burk

So, then, this also is hid in Christ — the great and unspeakable riches of the wisdom of God, in pardoning sin, saving sinners, satisfying justice, fulfilling the law, repairing his own honour, and providing for us a more exceeding weight of glory — and all this out of such a condition as wherein it was impossible that it should enter into the hearts of angels or men how ever the glory of God should be repaired, and one sinning creature delivered from everlasting ruin. Hence it is said, that at the last day God “shall be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe” (2 Thessalonians 1:10). It shall be an admirable thing, and God shall be for ever glorious in it, even in the bringing of believers to himself. To save sinners through believing shall be found to be a far more admirable work than to create the world of nothing.

—John Owen
Of Communion With God

Via: The Essential Owen

Since our subject is theology, the truths of almighty God and the worship and obedience which is his due, we must ever consider our mental faculties and the degrees to which we are able to understand such matters as these, allowing always for our fallen and finite nature, if we wish to avoid running into confusion and ambiguity.

—John Owen
Biblical Theology: The History of Theology from Adam to Christ

Via: The Essential Owen

Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of your sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this, and you will die a conqueror; yea, you will, through the good providence of God, live to see your lust dead at your feet.

— John Owen
Overcoming Sin and Temptation ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor

Via: Of First Importance

The saints’ delight is in Christ: He is their joy, their crown, their rejoicing, their life, food, health, strength, desire, righteousness, salvation, blessedness: without Him they have nothing; in Him they shall find all things. ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Galatians 6:14). He has, from the foundation of the world, been the hope, expectation, desire, and delight of all believers.

—John Owen
Communion with the Triune God

Via: Tolle Lege

He that has light thoughts of sin never had great thoughts of God.

—John Owen

Via: Twitter post by Bob Kauflin

The Holy Spirit communicates the great, permanent, positive effect of holiness to the souls of believers and he guides and assists them in all acts works and duties of holiness…Herein, consists the image of God whereunto our natures are repaired by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby we are made conformable unto God, firmly, steadfastly adhering to him through faith and love.

—John Owen

Via: A Puritan At Heart

I discovered the following quote by John Owen while spending some time tonight reading about justification and imputation. Dr. Owen made the following statement regarding the doctrine of justification in a chapter titled “Imputation, and the Nature of It.”

yet is it so fallen out in our days that nothing in religion is more maligned, more reproached, more despised, than the imputation of righteousness unto us, or an imputed righteousness.

—John Owen
The Doctrine of Justification by Faith Through the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ Explained, Confirmed, and Vindicated

While that quote is very applicable to the times in which we live, it is actually from a book published in 1677. Here is a photo of that text from the Google Books edition of Volume 5 from the Complete Works of John Owen.

The notion that there is enough inherent goodness and righteousness in man to please God sounds very appealing to a pragmatic culture like ours – but it is not biblical. When people try to take credit, even partial credit, for the grounds of their salvation, they rob Christ of His glory and diminish His perfectly obedient life and atoning sacrificial death.

These were the closing remarks from John Piper’s presentation at T4G 2010 and they merit repeating:

Give Christ all his glory in the work of salvation, not just half of it. Half is the work of pardoning sin by becoming our wrath-absorbing punishment. But the other half is the work of providing our perfection by fulfilling everything that God required of us, and then imputing it to us.

Don’t rob the Lord of half his glory in bringing you to God. Christ is our pardon. Christ is our perfection. Therefore, knowing that Jesus and Paul preached the same gospel, let’s join Paul from the heart in saying:

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

—Philippians 3:8-9

We can sing with the great hymn write Edward Mote, who in 1834 wrote the following words:

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found,
Clothed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne!
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

Amen. Hallelujah, what a Savior!