My Favorite Puritan with Michael Reeves

For hundreds of years, Christians have benefited from the rich theological insights of the Puritans. On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History, Dr. Stephen Nichols gives special guest Dr. Michael Reeves the challenging assignment of naming one favorite Puritan.

Stephen Nichols: Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. Once again, we are at Ligonier's National Conference. You might hear folks in the background. We were talking with Dr. Reeves, I think last we saw him, we sent him off to a deserted island. Well, he's back from his deserted island.

Michael Reeves: Having had a wonderful time.

SN: I'm sure you did. I'm glad you did. I know that you have found the Puritans to be a rich source of help for your own discipleship, and then how you've helped others come to the Puritans and see how valuable their thought, their understanding of who God is can help us be faithful disciples in our moment.

So, I'm going to ask you a very hard question, Dr. Reeves, and that question is this: Who is your favorite Puritan, and why? And I know that is a very hard question for you because there's so many of them that you enjoy; but your favorite Puritan, and why.

MR: It is a very hard question to answer, but the reason why it's worth sticking with them is because what they're seeking to do is hold your gaze on the subject that they're looking at. So, hold your gaze on the person of Christ, or the work of the Spirit, or whatever it is they're looking at, so that there's a rich understanding, and you're turning that theology into doxology. They do that so well.

John Owen was the first Puritan I ever read, and he transformed my theology.

SN: So, when was that for you?

MR: I was a teenager, and I read some Reformers before; but John Owen was the first Puritan I got into. And it was volume four, Causes, Ways, and Means. It was Owen on Scripture that was just so helpful to me, to see how Scripture proves itself to be what it says. So, I'm so grateful to Owen, but I'm not actually going to pick Owen. I'm going to pick Richard Sibbes.

Richard Sibbes has also been very influential for me, and particularly because Richard Sibbes—his dates were 1577 to 1635—and he was known as the “Sweet Dropper,” the “heavenly doctor.” He was a preacher in Cambridge and London. In Cambridge, they had to have an extra balcony fitted in his church, Holy Trinity, to seat all the people he was attracting. It was said that hardened sinners around Cambridge would not go to Sibbes' preaching for fear they'd get converted.

You sense that when you read him. What Sibbes does so well, it's not that he was a merely genial personality. What he does so emphatically and most famously in The Bruised Reed, but in all his works, is he sets out Christ to those who would misunderstand him and shows you how Christ is a Savior for us, how Christ is more beautiful than anyone or anything else. Sibbes does that in so affecting a way that I always find I read some Richard Sibbes, transcripts of his sermons, and just as other Puritans were converted by reading Sibbes, I find I cannot read Sibbes without being spiritually edified, that it's not merely my theology is helped, and I'm thinking through the gospel, who Christ is, the nature of faith, but I'm left worshiping God.

SN: We’re back to the doxological aim of theology that the Puritans help us with.

MR: Absolutely.

Something that Sibbes was very clear on was that, in his day, there were many preachers, both Catholic and Protestant, who believed that our basic problem is that we behave wrongly, and what we need to start doing is behave rightly. So, what you’re trying to do in preaching is simply change people’s behavior. What Sibbes is really clear on is that our behavior is driven by something deeper, the state of our hearts. Therefore, what he’s seeking to do in his preaching is not merely change behavior, but through the renewing of minds to transform hearts and their affections, what they love, what they desire, so that they want Christ more than they want sin. That’s what you get in Sibbes, and that’s why it's so affecting.

SN: I think that’s a great reason why he’s your favorite Puritan.

Well, thanks for that, Dr. Reeves. We’re grateful for it.

MR: Thank you. Wonderful to be with you.

SN: That’s been Dr. Reeves on his favorite Puritan. I'm Steve Nichols, and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.