What Is Communion with God? — Owen’s Working Definition
⏱ 15 min read
The phrase communion with God arrives most often in the modern Christian woman’s life as a thing she is told she should be having more of, and which she suspects she has not had recently. The sentence in the devotional book — spend time in communion with God this morning — closes the page on the woman who, on a difficult Tuesday, would not be able to say with any precision what she has been asked for. She knows what prayer is. She knows what quiet time is. She knows what worship is. Communion sits somewhere among them, slightly more elevated, possibly meaning the rare moment when the prayer goes deeper than usual — and possibly meaning nothing she has personally experienced in months.
This is the slow version of the answer. John Owen, the seventeenth-century Puritan who wrote Of Communion with God across several hundred pages because he could not stop unfolding the same simple thing, gave the church its most careful working definition of the phrase. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow doctrinal reading into a daily companion, if you would like a place to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
Owen’s working definition, kept short, is this: communion with God is not the rare moment. It is the daily mutual abiding built underneath it. The rare moment, when it comes, is the surfacing of the deeper continuous thing. The deeper continuous thing is what scripture means by communion. The Christian woman whose communion has felt thin has not been failing at the rare moments. She has, very likely, been treating the rare moments as the whole thing, and underneath the moments — where the slow continuous communion is meant to be — the soil has been thin. Owen’s project, across the whole treatise, is to walk the difference. (For the faith-companion to this communion essay, what is faith according to the Bible? — Owen’s working definition walks Owen’s parallel three-part account. For the warfare-side of the same walk, what is the armor of God? — Owen on Ephesians 6 is the protective companion to the abiding. And if the daily practice of confession is the part of communion that has been broken in your week, how to confess sin to God — Owen on mortification walks the mortification-side of Owen’s communion theology.)
Communion, in Owen’s hand, is mutual — God toward the soul, the soul toward God, in a continuous slow exchange that is the substance of the Christian life. Three passages from Of Communion with God will let you see the working definition in its full form.
The first passage: the soul brought into the bosom of God
“The soul being thus, by faith through Christ, and by him, brought into the bosom of God, into a comfortable persuasion and spiritual perception and sense of his love, there reposes and rests itself.”
— John Owen, Of Communion with God
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
This is the line Owen builds the entire treatise on, and it is the line that names the structure of communion before it names the experience of it. Notice the verbs.
Brought into the bosom of God. Not climbing into. Not earning entry. Brought. The soul is the object of the verb, not the subject. Communion with God begins, in Owen’s reading, on the day the soul stops trying to construct communion through its own effort and discovers, slowly, that the communion has already been established — that the bringing was done by Christ, through faith, on a ground the soul did not lay. This is the first move in Owen’s definition. Communion is not a thing you produce. Communion is the state of having been brought, and the state, once given, is the ground of every subsequent practice the Christian undertakes.
Into a comfortable persuasion and spiritual perception and sense of his love. The phrase is doing precise theological work. Comfortable persuasion — meaning, in seventeenth-century English, the strengthening certainty, the kind of inward assurance that fortifies the soul from underneath. Spiritual perception — the inward seeing of God as He actually is, not as the unregenerate mind imagines Him to be. Sense of his love — the embodied registration in the soul of the love directed at this specific person, this specific Tuesday. The three together are the inward atmosphere of communion. They are not three different things. They are three angles on the same inward state.
There reposes and rests itself. This is the line that names the final form of communion. The soul that has been brought — into the persuasion, the perception, the sense — reposes. Rests itself. The verb is reflexive in seventeenth-century English. The soul rests itself. It does the resting. The communion is what produces the soul’s capacity to do this reposing. Before communion, the soul cannot repose; it has nowhere to repose to. After communion, the soul can. The reposing is the inward visible sign that the bringing has happened and the soul is now in the state communion describes.
For the modern Christian woman, this is the first diagnostic of whether you are operating from communion or only from religious practice. Can your soul, in the small spare moments of the day, repose? Not perform, not produce, not pray productively — repose. The capacity for inward reposing is the inward signature of a soul that has been brought into the bosom of God. The capacity grows over years. It is small in early seasons. It deepens with practice. The question is not do I repose perfectly. The question is is the capacity for reposing growing in me, year over year, as the daily small returns to His presence accumulate.
This is the first definition. Communion with God is the brought-state of the soul that has been drawn into the bosom of God by Christ, established in the comfortable persuasion of His love, and is, from that ground, learning to repose.
The second passage: would a soul continually eye his everlasting tenderness
The second passage is the one where Owen names what the continuous practice of communion looks like, day by day. It is one of the longest and most pastorally accurate sentences in the treatise:
“They that know thee will put their trust in thee. Men cannot abide with God in spiritual meditations. He loseth soul’s company by their want of this insight into his love. They fix their thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness; and so their spirits are not endeared. Would a soul continually eye his everlasting tenderness and compassion, his thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, his present gracious acceptance, it could not bear an hour’s absence from him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour. Let, then, this be the saints’ first notion of the Father — as one full of eternal, free love towards them.”
— John Owen, Of Communion with God
Read it twice. Slowly. Notice the diagnostic in the middle and the prescription at the end.
Men cannot abide with God in spiritual meditations. This is the diagnostic. The soul, in modern Christian practice, often cannot stay with God for very long. Five minutes in, the mind has drifted. Ten minutes in, the chair has become uncomfortable. The hour the older traditions used to spend in communion has become, for most modern Christians, fifteen minutes — and even those are spent fighting the inward pull toward the next thing on the calendar. Owen has seen this in his own century. He names the cause precisely: He loseth soul’s company by their want of this insight into his love. The soul cannot abide because the soul has not been given the insight into His love that would make abiding the natural thing for the soul to do.
The cause is content, not effort. The mind has been operating on a knowledge of God that is too one-sided to produce abiding. They fix their thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness; and so their spirits are not endeared. The soul that meets God only as the terrible majesty — true as that is — will not naturally want to stay with Him. The soul that has been allowed to also meet God as everlasting tenderness and compassion — equally true — will not want to leave. The communion that does not stick has, in Owen’s reading, almost always been built on a half-knowledge of the Father. The fix is not to try harder at abiding. The fix is to complete the content the soul has been meditating on.
Would a soul continually eye his everlasting tenderness and compassion, his thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, his present gracious acceptance, it could not bear an hour’s absence from him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour. This is the line that names the inverse the daily practice is aiming for. The soul that has been given the full knowledge of God — the tenderness alongside the majesty — cannot bear an hour away. The soul that has been given only the partial knowledge cannot bear an hour with. The two are mirror images. The practice of communion is the slow re-feeding of the soul on the missing half of the knowledge, until the inward pull reverses — until the chair, instead of being the place the soul cannot stay, becomes the place the soul cannot leave.
This is the second move in Owen’s working definition. Communion with God is the continuous eyeing of his everlasting tenderness — the daily small slow returning of the soul’s attention to the warm half of His character, until the attention itself becomes the soul’s natural inward posture and the abiding becomes the soul’s natural inward state. Let, then, this be the saints’ first notion of the Father — as one full of eternal, free love towards them. The first notion. Not the last notion. Not the optional supplementary notion. The first notion. The soul that begins its daily walk with this notion is the soul that ends its day still in communion, because the notion has held the soul there.
For the modern Christian woman, this is the second diagnostic. Is the first notion of the Father, when His name arises in your day, His eternal free love toward you — or something else? The something else might be the audit-engine — the inward question of whether He is currently pleased with you. The something else might be the distant majesty — the inward sense of Him as an unapproachable figure. The something else might be the dimmed presence — the inward sense of Him as someone who has not been particularly real in recent months. The first notion is the inward soil communion grows in. Move the first notion, and the communion follows.
The somatic — feeling for the first notion in the body
Pause here. The teaching has a body to it, and the body holds the first notion in a way the mind has often forgotten how to ask.
Sit somewhere quiet. Let both feet press flat against the floor. Let one hand rest, lightly, on the chest, just below the collarbone. Take one slow inhale. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale.
Now let the word Father arise inwardly — just the word, not a verse, not a doctrine — and watch what the body does. Does the chest open slightly, as if at a small inward warmth? Does the chest tighten, as if at the approach of an authority figure who is currently displeased? Does it do nothing, the word passing through without the body registering anything at all?
The body’s response is the first notion in its honest form. The notion is not what you would say theologically about the Father. The notion is what the body has been carrying about Him underneath the theology — and the carrying has been quietly shaping the communion, or the absence of it, for years. The good news is that the carrying can change. Owen’s whole pastoral programme assumes it can. Slowly. By daily small returns to the side of His character the body has not been allowed to feel. The first notion of the Father can become eternal free love — even in the body, even at the level the chest registers Him — and when it does, the abiding will become the soul’s natural inward state. Take one more slow exhale. Take the hand away. Continue reading.
A daily home for the practice — between the second and third passages
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built for the slow re-feeding of the first notion. A short passage each evening, anchored in the tenderness-side of the Father’s character. Room for the honest sentence. No demand to perform. The continuous communion Owen describes is not produced by an intense moment; it is produced by the small daily returning of the soul’s attention to the warm half of the knowledge, until the warm half becomes the inward atmosphere the soul lives in. The workbook is the daily room. The communion is His to grow. The room is yours.
The third passage: the soul watcheth all temptations
The third passage is from later in the treatise, where Owen names what communion produces in the soul that has actually entered it — the inward sign that the abiding has begun:
“When once the soul of a believer hath obtained sweet and real communion with Christ, it looks about him, watcheth all temptations, all ways whereby sin might approach, to disturb him in his enjoyment of his dear Lord and Saviour, his rest and desire.”
— John Owen, Of Communion with God
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly. Notice what the soul does once the communion has begun.
It looks about him, watcheth all temptations, all ways whereby sin might approach. The soul in communion is not a passive soul. It is a watching soul. The watching is not anxious; it is protective. The soul has finally found something worth protecting — the sweet and real communion it has been brought into — and the watching is the natural protective response of a creature that has finally found home. This is what communion looks like in its mature form. Not a soul straining toward God. A soul with God, watching gently against the small things that would interrupt the with-ness.
Notice the verbs. Looks about him. Watcheth. The watching is continuous, low-grade, not effortful. It is the watching of a woman who has finally come home and is now keeping the small doors of the house closed against the drafts that would chill the room she is in. The watching is not against the world; it is for the continuance of the communion. Owen is not naming an anxious vigilance. He is naming the natural protective attentiveness of a soul that has found the thing it was made for and has begun to value it enough to keep it.
His enjoyment of his dear Lord and Saviour, his rest and desire. The four nouns are doing the work of naming what the soul has actually found in communion. Enjoyment. Rest. Desire. And the One who is both dear Lord and Saviour. The soul has not found a doctrine. The soul has found a Person, and the relationship with the Person is the substance of communion. The enjoyment is the warm inward register of His presence. The rest is the cessation of the inward straining. The desire is the soul’s continuing pull toward more of Him — not because it does not have Him, but because having Him produces a hunger for more of Him, the way every deep love does.
This is the third move in Owen’s working definition. Communion with God is the sweet and real mutual abiding in which the soul enjoys the Person of Christ, rests in His presence, desires more of Him, and gently watches against the small things that would interrupt the abiding. The abiding is continuous. The watching is the natural protective response. The enjoyment is the inward warmth. The rest is the cessation of the strain. The desire is the soul’s deepening pull toward the One who is now its home.
(The sibling articles in this contemplative-fathers series sit at what is the kingdom of God? — Augustine on the two cities and what is biblical hope? — Owen on hope that anchors the soul. The three together walk the doctrines the daily companion practice of the workbook is built to feed.)
What this means for the way you have been seeking communion
Most modern Christians seek communion the way modern life seeks every other valuable thing — through intensity. They look for the rare moment. The intense prayer experience. The retreat weekend. The conference where the worship moves them deeply. These moments are not bad. They are sometimes given by God as gifts. But they are not what Owen means by communion with God. They are the surfacing of a deeper continuous thing — and where the deeper continuous thing has not been built, the surfacing cannot happen, because there is nothing underneath to surface.
The work is not, then, to chase the rare moments. The work is to build the deeper continuous thing — the daily, low-intensity, slow mutual abiding in which the soul learns, over years, to eye His everlasting tenderness, to repose in His love, to watch against the small things that would interrupt the abiding. The continuous thing builds the soil. The rare moments grow in the soil. You cannot grow the moments by chasing them. You can grow the soil by faithfulness in the chair. The moments will come when they come, and the soil — by then — will be deep enough to hold them.
What communion with God will actually look like in a year of small practice
The communion Owen describes will not look, in your day-to-day, like an extraordinary spiritual life. It will look, mostly, like a quietly different one. The chair time, which used to feel like a duty, will gradually begin to feel like a home. The first inward register of the name Father, when it arises in the spare moments of the day, will gradually become a small warmth rather than a small bracing. The capacity for reposing — for the soul to settle inwardly without an agenda — will grow, slowly, until the soul finds itself reposing in places it could not have reposed in last year. The watching against the small interrupting things will become a natural protective attentiveness, not an anxious vigilance. The desire for more of Him will deepen — not because you have less of Him, but because the having has produced the deeper hunger. These are the slow inward signs of what communion with God actually is, in Owen’s careful pastoral reading. Not the rare moment. The daily mutual abiding, built underneath it, on the slow ground of years.
Get Seven Days of Stillness — free
A free gift from Hayley Louisa Mark. A short devotional companion drawn from the 140-Day series — seven passages, seven contemplative practices, sent to your inbox over the coming week.
No noise. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you wish.
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women.
