Jeanne Guyon's Christian Worldview

Her Biblical Commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians with Explanations and Reflections on the Interior Life

Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon, Nancy Carol James

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781532604997
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Biographie biblique

In seventeenth-century France, Jeanne Guyon wrote about God, "I loved him, and I burned with his fire because I loved him, and I loved him in such a way that I could love only him, but in loving him I had no motive save himself." She called this the pure love of God. Guyon traveled throughout Europe teaching others how to pray and her books became popular bestsellers. She expressed her Christian faith that Jesus Christ lives within our interior life. As Guyon became increasingly popular, the church and state authorities used the power of the Roman Catholic Inquisition and arrested her, charging her with heresy. Guyon spent nearly ten years incarcerated, including five years in the Bastille, from 1698-1703. Finally the state authorities judged her innocent. After her release, she lived in Blois on the Loire River and welcomed visitors from Europe and the New World who talked with her about the Christian faith. This is the first English translation of Guyon's Commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians with Explanations and Reflections on the Interior Life.

Guyon’s Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians with Explanations and Reflections on the Interior Life

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. (Eph 1:1–3)

Paul begins his letter by saying that he was called and elected by God. Paul did not choose this himself but he was established as an apostle by the special will of God and a decree of God’s providence. God called him to this apostolic state and established him in this foundation through faith. Because of this, Paul succeeds and bears spiritual fruit as an apostle. If someone tries to act on her own will and desires, she will not have success. Instead, God has given Paul the apostolic state with the grace and fruit that this state brings.

Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. (Eph 1:4)

Here we see that God chooses and elects us before the creation of the world. Not only apostles are chosen, but God also chooses the faithful believers and makes them blameless before him. O God, you have the wonderful character of foreknowledge and perfect understanding! However, most people only reason about God from a human perspective and because of this they have only errors and misunderstandings about God. It is a strange thing that people who pride themselves on having justice misunderstand justice. They think God’s justice should be as they think. They reason about God from a human perspective. O, we are so blind! One day we’ll see the impenetrable depths of God’s judgments and how His ways are known only to Him! What we now in our ignorance regard as an injustice of God will appear to us then as God’s purest justice and strongest mercy.

He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Eph 1:5–6)

O, God! We should melt in gratitude because of your pure goodness and mercy toward us. We have no merit in ourselves. With our effort, we can do nothing except evil. My God! In your goodness you chose us. But what did you choose us for? To be mediocre, common and ordinary? No, you chose us to be your adopted children. The only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, is infinite and all powerful. He loves us with his infinite love. Through his love, he makes us his adopted children.

We are adopted through the Son and in the Son. In our adoption the Holy Spirit moves into our lives and communicates to us the Son’s Word. Jesus Christ testifies to this truth when he says, “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14). Through the Son’s love, we pass into the Son and love because we are in the Son. In the Son we lose all complacency. This is why Paul writes that he now lives in Jesus Christ who makes him strong. Through the Son’s adoption of him, Paul has passed into the Son. Only those within the Son can please the Son.

And the Son makes use of us to honor the praise of His glorious grace. So those who oppose living in the movement of the Spirit and oppose the transformation that the Word brings, oppose not only their own eternal happiness but oppose even more the glory of God. For us who believe, God gives us the Spirit of his Son to dwell inside of us and then we dwell in his Son. This is what Jesus Christ says in Revelation that all should hear that he is the beginning and the end, “I am the alpha and the omega” Revelation 1:8. The beginning is in creation when the Spirit of the Word inspired Adam. In redemption we live in the Word, so that the truth of redemption has its full effect on us, as long as we do not resist. Therefore, the beginning is when the Word lives in us and the end is when we live in the Son without which it is impossible to please God. Before the Word lives in us, we were hostile because of our sins. After we live in Christ, he makes us pleasing to Him and holds us in his loving gaze. Because the Son is the one who pleases God, we participate in the love between Father and the Son.

Paul supports what he says in Ephesians 1: 7–8 by what he has written in Romans 8:29, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.” Paul became conformed to the Son by the Spirit of Jesus Christ living in him and then, living in the Son, he was born again. We also need for the Son to move into our hearts and then we move into the Son.

God gives himself in the economy of creation and redemption to place Spirit of the Word in all his people, to reproduce himself, so to speak, in humanity. God made human beings in the image of God and gives us his identity. God is pleased to remake us in his image by his Word by inviting us to live within him. O, adorable grandeur! O, the wonderful marvel that we discover in our interior! We receive this wisdom by dwelling within you! Paul describes the experience of all those who discover this wisdom within. If this wisdom is outside of ourselves, it appears foreign and strange to us but, if we pray even a little, wisdom comes within. We have light that is the light of God. Oh, then we discover, taste and feel the wonderful and glorious presence of God.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he lavished upon us. (Eph 1:7)

But it was impossible after having sinned to return to the Word and pass into God again. We are no longer fully imprinted with the beautiful image of God given to us before the creation of the world. Our sins blotted out the image of God, that had expressed the Word in our Spirit, and now instead we had traces of the Devil. Without the character of God, a person cannot be received in the Word. Without the Word as our life’s motivation and principle, we only struggle and subsist. Without a place in the Word, the person’s place is in hell and life is one of sin.

So what does God do? God loves us with excessive goodness. This love does not follow ordinary rules of love that are grounded in reserve and prudence. O, God, you love with strength and without reservation! If we love with only ordinary wisdom and prudence, and if do not have innocent generosity and enthusiasm for your love, we cannot connect with the force and excess of your love for us! Therefore God places human beings in a place where they can find consummation through his abundant love. The Word reaches out and unites with us. And how does God do this? He pours out his blood that bathes and cleanses us, thus destroying the image of the devil. God is reestablished within. By this purification, the person finds salvation and lives within Jesus Christ.

Thus it is easy to see that the Word makes and operates salvation. The Word is the principle of creation and the way of redemption. In his glorification people reach their fulfillment and end.

Therefore, it is the blood of God shed so graciously that surpasses the grace of creation. Through his superabundant love, God puts love into us, filling us with true wisdom and prudence. This love between God and humanity is a love beyond anything else.

O, the mysteries of the Christian religion, that you are not known by all Christians! But why is it that you are not known? O, Jesus, why cannot I die a thousand times to make you known among human beings! Jesus Christ, you are not known among Christians. Actually God suffers less outrage from pagans and heretics from other religions than from Christians who have little knowledge and love for God. This makes many troubles. God suffers much pain from the idolatry of ignorant Christians. O, Christians, do you want to prevent all these misfortunes? Then, Christians, love and know Jesus Christ. You cannot love and know him without prayer, surrender, faith and love.

He has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph 1: 9)

My God! This Scripture is clear and transcendent. God works on behalf of humanity. God makes all things for the perfection and consummation of human beings. God plans for their joy and happiness by giving them the knowledge of the mystery of God’s will and grace to follow this divine will always.

When the person loses her own will, she is placed in the essential will of God. Then nothing remains for the person on earth but to remain open, submerged and consummated in the will of God. The person never wants to leave.

It is appropriate that when the person begins to seek for union with God, she has to cross a desert and go through dreadful places. When the person arrives in God, she realizes that this is just a new beginning and she will go to a new infinite and immense home. The journey to God is a narrow but long way. The way takes her into in God’s will where she moves already in eternity.

It is good when a person begins to do the will of God. Previously the person only did her will while believing that it was the will of God, but it was only the person’s will.

When the person begins to do the will of God, she recognizes an unknown truth: God’s infinity and eternity fulfill and consummate the person both now and forever. While close to the beginning of the spiritual journey, the person already has faith in the consummation but sees nothing with her eyes, yet in faith believes in the fulfillment. Later, after being led by God, the believer sees the way and the final destination, according to the measure of her advancement. If the person grows more, she sees that everything will be perfectly fulfilled and consummated, but this will take time. If the person is blessed to enter into God, she will soon be transformed.

Yet our sins can remove us from the way when we do not walk the right way because we do not follow the guidance of God.

We know that after a very long time, the believer finally arrives in peace if the person believes in consummation. Truly, this consummation brings about good and pure fulfillment. But we know that at the beginning of conversion, the person is not entirely consummated. It is then that the person discovers that in God there is an infinite country and that God always fulfills the person within the divine being and that throughout all eternity, the blessed will always be consummated in God in a wonderful way. This infinite consummation never exhausts eternity. Because God is infinite, eternity is endless. God communicates both eternity and infinity. If the believer reaches an end to their consummation, they would be like God and that is impossible.

Therefore I say that throughout eternity, the saints will be consumed more and more in God and discover throughout eternity inexpressible profundity of the divine. When the saints enter heaven, God makes them fully beatified and nothing could be added to their satisfaction. Because it is ineffable, they can never desire more consummation or any other thing, because they are perfectly transformed in the will of God.

Always we discover with an indescribable pleasure God’s sweet kindness and the new profundity with which God ravishes us. Never throughout eternity can this be exhausted. We will always know and love God with growing passion. When we kn...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Guyon’s Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians with Explanations and Reflections on the Interior Life
• Guyon’s Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians with Explanations and Reflections on the Interior Life
• Guyon’s Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Colossians with Explanations and Reflections on the Interior Life
• Bibliography