John Owen (1616 – 1683) is by common consensus considered the most outstanding Puritan theologian and ranked along with Jonathan Edwards as one of the greatest Reformed theologians of all time.
Owen graduated with a bachelor’s degree at the age of 16 from Oxford University and went on to receive his master’s degree in 1635 at the age of 19.
Owen led an incredibly difficult life. He lived through the death of his first wife as well as the deaths of all of his children. When his last surviving daughter’s marriage fell apart he supported her.
In addition to being a pastor, a prolific writer, and later the vice-chancellor of Oxford University, Owen was deeply political. At one point he became the chaplain and adviser to Oliver Cromwell. Despite his political leanings, Owen increasingly began to realize that his focus should be on things eternal. And as a result, his great legacy became his writings. In fact, Owen became one of the most published writers of the seventeenth century publishing almost 8 million words on not only theology but politics and economics.
Owen, despite his many hardships and his political involvements, thankfully devoted much of his life to preaching and writing on his one great passion of helping Christians realize that the main goal of the Christian life was knowing God.
Owen had a giant intellect, and a great talent for writing, but perhaps more than anything else, a passion for sharing with other Christians the need to lead a holy life and commune with God.
Many Christians have commented on the life of John Owen but I believe Pastor John Piper summed up his life best when he said: “In all our life and ministry, as we care for people and contend for the faith, we can learn much from Owen’s pursuit of holiness in private and public. . . . I thank God for John Owen’s unwavering passion for communion with God. We are debtors to his mighty pen and to the passion for God’s glory . . . that drove it.”1
Below are just a few of his quotes on the importance of prayer, mortification of sin, and the need for living a holy life.2
“If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation.”
“Satan’s greatest success is in making people think they have plenty of time before they die to consider their eternal welfare.”
“We are never nearer Christ than when we find ourselves lost in a holy amazement at His unspeakable love.”
“To those to whom Christ is the hope of future glory, he is also the life of present grace.”
“Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
“The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.”
“He who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.”
“He that hath slight thoughts of sin, never had great thoughts of God.”
“Unless we are thoroughly convinced that without Christ we are under the eternal curse of God, as the worst of His enemies, we shall never flee to Him for refuge.”
“He that is more frequent in his pulpit to his people than he is in his closet for his people, is but a sorry watchman.”
“When someone sets his affections upon the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the cross of Christ and you will find no room for sin.”
“Before the work of grace, the heart is ‘stony.’ It can do no more than a stone can do to please God.”
“It is the Spirit alone that can mortify sin; he is promised to do it, and all other means without him are empty and vain. How shall he, then, mortify sin that has not the Spirit? A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.”
“The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.”
2 All of these quotes from John Owen are from the following website.
TOP 25 QUOTES BY JOHN OWEN (of 202) | A-Z Quotes (azquotes.com)