4: THE AFFECIONS IN PRAYER, PRAISE AND PREACHING

THAT HOLY AFFECTIONS ARE the essence of true spirituality can also be seen from what God has commanded concerning prayer and public worship.

We are not to pray as if our petitions inform God of what he doesn’t know or change his mind or prevail on him to bestow mercy that he was otherwise disinclined to give. Rather we pray “to affect our own hearts with the things we express, and so to prepare us to receive the blessings we ask.” In fact, virtually all external expressions of worship “can be of no further use, than as they have some tendency to affect our own hearts, or the hearts of others.”

Consider, for example, the singing of praises to God, which seem to be “appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned, why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections.”

Some actually orchestrate worship in such a way that the affections of the heart are reined in and, in some cases, even suppressed. People often fear the external manifestation of internal zeal and love and desire and joy. Though they sing, they do so in a way that the end in view is the mere articulation of words and declaration of truths. But if that were what God intended, why did he not ordain that we recite, in prose, biblical truths about him? Why sing? It can’t be simply for the aesthetic value of music or because of the pleasure it brings, for that would turn worship manward, as if we were now the focus rather than God. We sing because God has created not only our minds but also our hearts and souls, indeed our bodies as well, in such a way that music elicits and intensifies holy affections for God and facilitates their lively and vigorous expression.

The same may be said of how God operates on our souls in the preaching of his Word. Books and commentaries and the like provide us with “good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the things of the Word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men’s hearts and affections.” So with a view to “affecting” sinners and not merely “informing” them, God has appointed that his Word be applied in a particularly lively way through preaching.

Therefore, when we think of how public worship should be constructed and what methods should be employed in the praise of God and the edification of his people, “such means are to be desired, as have much of a tendency to move the affections. Such books, and such a way of preaching the Word, and administration of ordinances, and such a way of worshiping God in prayer, and singing praises, is much to be desired, as has a tendency deeply to affect the hearts of those who attend these means.”

When people object that certain styles of public worship seem especially chosen for their capacity to awaken and intensify and express the affections of the heart, they should be told that such is precisely the God-ordained purpose of worship. What they fear—namely, the heightening and deepening of the heart’s desire and love for God, and the expansion and increase of the soul’s delight and joy in God, what they typically call “emotionalism” or even “manipulation”—is the very goal of worship itself. For God is most glorified in his people when their hearts are most satisfied (i.e., when they are most “affected” with joy) in him.¹

Some would say that it isn’t the joy or love or desire to which they object, but the external manifestations, whether in weeping or celebration or bodily movement, that such affections so often produce. But as we have noted, God created us as a union of body and spirit such that alterations in the latter, whether growth in understanding or illumination of the Word, invariably affect the former. More on this later.

So much does true spirituality consist in affections that one may say “that without holy affection there is no true religion: and no light in the understanding is good, which don’t produce holy affection in the heart; no habit or principle in the heart is good, which has no such exercise; and no external fruit is good, which don’t proceed from such exercises.”

There is a lot of “religion” in the world, together with its anticipated rituals, rites, gestures, beliefs, acts of moral virtue, and charity, as well as organizations and institutions and traditions designed to perpetuate and promote it, ostensibly to the glory of God. But without holy affections, all such activities and the effort to advertise them are nothing but wind. Those who insist on the intellect of man or the doctrinal accuracy of his thoughts as the pinnacle of religious expression need to consider that no idea or attitude or theory or doctrine is of any value that does not inflame the heart and stir the affections in love and joy and fear of God. Those who argue that moral obedience is the essence of religion fail to see that such behavior is only good to the degree that it springs from and finds its source in the holy affections of the heart as they are described in Scripture.

Yet another proof of this is the scriptural portrayal of hardness of heart as the essence of sin and moral rebellion (see Mark 3:5; Rom. 2:5; Ezek. 3:7; Ps. 95:7–10; 2 Chron. 36:13; Isa. 63:17). “Now by a hard heart, is plainly meant an unaffected heart, or a heart not easy to be moved with virtuous affections, like a stone, insensible, stupid, unmoved and hard to be impressed. Hence the hard heart is called a stony heart, and is opposed to an heart of flesh, that has feeling, and is sensibly touched and moved.”

Scripture is also clear that a “tender” heart is the one that “is easily impressed by what ought to affect it.” For example, God commended Josiah because his heart was tender, by which he surely meant that his heart was “easily moved with religious and pious affection” (see 2 Kings 22:19).

Negative reactions to this argument are to some extent understandable. Many point to those who in a season of revival or renewal allowed their zeal and affections to lead them into error. Others experienced high affections but produced little fruit and even appeared to have “returned like the dog to his vomit.” But to dismiss affection altogether as having little if anything to do with true spirituality is simply an example of moving from one extreme to another. It is as much an error to dismiss affections entirely as unimportant to the reality of true religion as it is to focus on high affections without regard to their source or nature. Satan is happy with either error. He would as much have us fall into a lifeless formality as he would that we be stirred and energized by affections unrelated to truth.

We must never forget that whereas there is more to true spirituality or religion than affections, “yet true religion consists so much in the affections, that there can be no true religion without them. He who has no religious affection, is in a state of spiritual death, and is wholly destitute of the powerful, quickening, saving influences of the Spirit of God upon his heart. As there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection. As on the one hand, there must be light in the understanding, as well as an affected fervent heart; where there is heat without light, there can be nothing divine or heavenly in that heart; so on the other hand, where there is a kind of light without heat, a head stored with notions and speculations, with a cold and unaffected heart, there can be nothing divine in that light; that knowledge is no true spiritual knowledge of divine things. If the great things of religion are rightly understood, they will affect the heart. The reason why men are not affected by such infinitely great, important, glorious, and wonderful things, as they often hear and read of, in the Word of God, is undoubtedly because they are blind. If they were not so, it would be impossible, and utterly inconsistent with human nature, that their hearts should be otherwise than strongly impressed, and greatly moved by such things.”

The fact that a person has much affection doesn’t prove he is truly spiritual. But if that individual has no affection it most assuredly proves he has no true religion. “The right way, is not to reject all affections, nor to approve all; but to distinguish between affections, approving some, and rejecting others; separating between the wheat and the chaff, the gold and the dross, the precious and the vile.”

If our thesis is correct, and true spirituality lies in the experience, enjoyment, and expression of holy affections, it is to our shame that we are no more affected with the great truths of Scripture than we are. This is especially the case when we consider how profoundly moved and affected people are by worldly things that have little if anything to do with God and the revelation of himself in the face of Jesus Christ.

And yet how common it is among men “that their affections are much more exercised and engaged in other matters, than in religion! In things which concern men’s worldly interest, their outward delights, their honor and reputation, and their natural relations, they have their desires eager, their appetites vehement, their love warm and affectionate, their zeal ardent; in these things their hearts are tender and sensible, easily moved, deeply impressed, much concerned, very sensibly affected, and greatly engaged; much depressed with grief at worldly losses, and highly raised with joy at worldly successes and prosperity. But how insensible and unmoved are most men, about the great things of another world! How dull are their affections! How heavy and hard their hearts in these matters! Here their love is cold, their desires languid, their zeal low, and their gratitude small.

“How they can sit and hear of the infinite height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of God in Christ Jesus, of his giving his infinitely dear Son, to be offered up a sacrifice for the sins of men, and of the unparalleled love of the innocent, and holy, and tender Lamb of God, manifested in his dying agonies, his bloody sweat, his loud and bitter cries, and bleeding heart, and all this for enemies, to redeem them from deserved, eternal burnings, and to bring to unspeakable and everlasting joy and glory; and yet be cold, and heavy, insensible, and regardless! Where are the exercises of our affections proper, if not here? What is it that does more require them? And what can be a fit occasion of their lively and vigorous exercise, if not such a one as this? Can anything be set in our view, greater and more important? Anything more wonderful and surprising? Or more nearly concerning our interest? Can we suppose the wise Creator implanted such principles in the human nature as the affections, to be of use to us, and to be exercised on certain proper occasions, but to lie still on such an occasion as this? Can any Christian who believes the truth of these things, entertain such thoughts?”

If ever there were occasion for the exercise of human affection, it would be in regard to those things or objects that are most worthy of our energy and joy and delight. “But is there anything which Christians can find in heaven or earth, so worthy to be the objects of their admiration and love, their earnest and longing desires, their hope, and their rejoicing, and their fervent zeal, as those things that are held forth to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ? In which not only are things declared most worthy to affect us, but they are exhibited in the most affecting manner. The glory and beauty of the blessed Jehovah, which is most worthy in itself, to be the object of our admiration and love, is there exhibited in the most affecting manner that can be conceived of, as it appears, shining in all its luster, in the face of an incarnate, infinitely loving, meek, compassionate, dying Redeemer. All the virtues of the Lamb of God, his humility, patience, meekness, submission, obedience, love and compassion, are exhibited to our view, in a manner the most tending to move our affections, of any that can be imagined; as they all had their greatest trial, and their highest exercise, and so their brightest manifestation, when he was in the most affecting circumstances; even when he was under his last sufferings, those unutterable and unparalleled sufferings he endured, from his tender love and pity to us.

“There also the hateful nature of our sins is manifested in the most affecting manner possible: as we see the dreadful effects of them, in that our Redeemer, who undertook to answer for us, suffered for them. And there we have the most affecting manifestation of God’s hatred of sin, and his wrath and justice in punishing it; as we see his justice in the strictness and inflexibleness of it; and his wrath in its terribleness, in so dreadfully punishing our sins, in one who was infinitely dear to him, and loving to us. So has God disposed things, in the affair of our redemption, and in his glorious dispensations, revealed to us in the gospel, as though everything were purposely contrived in such a manner, as to have the greatest possible tendency to reach our hearts in the most tender part, and move our affections most sensibly and strongly. How great cause have we therefore to be humbled to the dust, that we are no more affected!”

1See John Piper, Desiring God (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2003).