John Owen is considered one of the greatest Puritan theologians of all time. He was given the title of the “prince of the English divines.” John Owen was born in 1616 in Stadham, England, the second son of Henry Owen. Henry Owen was a Puritan Anglican minister who taught his son from a young age. John Owen showed a strong desire for learning and entered nearby Oxford University at age 12 and was a proven scholar, who loved the classics, mathematics, philosophy, theology, Latin, Hebrew, and rabbinical writings. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1632 at the age of 16 and continued with a Master of Arts at the age of 19 in 1635. Historians believe that Owen studied eighteen to twenty hours per day.
Owen left Oxford in 1637 because of pressures from Archbishop Laud’s new statutes of conformity to the liturgy of worship. Being out of Oxford, He became a private chaplain and tutor, during this time he devoted himself to more study, and historians say that God richly blessed Owen during this time. At the age of twenty-six, Owen began a forty-one-year writing span that produced more than eighty works. Many of those would become classics and be greatly used by God.
In 1642 Owen’s life was about to change drastically during a church service at St. Mary Aldermanbury, London. Despite embracing Puritan convictions from his youth, Owen lacked personal assurance of faith. He expected to hear the famous Edmund Calamy preach at St. Mary’s, but a substitute was in the pulpit. Owen’s friend pressured him to leave to listen to a more famous minister some distance away, but Owen refused. The unknown substitute preacher chose as his text, “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” God used that sermon from an unknown preacher to illuminate Owen’s heart to the Gospel and assured him of the faith that he was lacking in his young life. This may have been a watershed moment where he grew confident in his faith and was unapologetic about his convictions. Later in life, Owen tried to learn the identity of the preacher but had no success.
In 1644 Owen converted from Presbyterianism to Congregationalism convictions. He married Mary Rooke that same year who bore him 11 children, but, sadly, only a daughter survived into adulthood. Unfortunately, the daughter had an “unhappy marriage” to a Welshman and she returned home to live with Owen and his wife. She later died of consumption in her young adult life.
Owen’s fame spread rapidly in the late 1640s through his writing and preaching as an independent theologian while he was still in his 30s, Owen gained a wide reputation in England. This was not an easy time for him as Owen did not see the fruit of his labor which greatly discouraged him. It is said that he would trade all his learning for that of John Bunyan’s gift of “plain preaching.”
Due to Owen’s fame, he was asked to preach before Parliament on many occasions, including the day after the execution of King Charles I (1600-1649). The sermons he preached were impressive to Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), and this created many new opportunities for influence opened up to Owen. He accompanied Cromwell on trips to Ireland and Scotland to help reform religious institutions and to convince the people of the rightfulness of ending monarchy in England. During Cromwell’s travels, Owen accompanied him as chaplain to Ireland to regulate the affairs of Trinity College in Dublin. It is said that Owen traveled with 12,000 psalm-singing, Puritan soldiers who descended upon Ireland. Owen being an academic spent most of his time while touring with Cromwell at Trinity College where he studied and preached. He ministered to the troops during the terrible massacre at Drogheda. That dreadful event resulted in the killing of priests, monks, and Irish Catholics alongside English Royalists. Civilians as well as soldiers were massacred. The result was that the Irish Catholics hated the English due to the death of close to 3,000 people. Owen’s soul was grieved by the event that, upon his return to England after a seven-month stay, Owen urged Parliament to show mercy to the Irish. In 1650, Owen was appointed as an official preacher to the state. The same year, Owen accompanied Cromwell on his Scottish expedition. He assisted Cromwell in trying to persuade the Scottish leaders and people of the rightness of cutting off the monarchy.
The 1650s were Owen’s most productive years. During that time he became dean of Christ Church College, Oxford, and later was made vice-chancellor of Oxford University, under the chancellorship of Cromwell whom Owen supported. He worked closely with Thomas Goodwin and shared the pulpit at St. Mary’s where they preached alternating Sundays, mortification of sin and dealing with temptation were common themes. Owen presided at most university meetings as administrator, his strong biblical convictions prevented much worldliness from entering the university. Owen established a strong reformed theology and Puritan lifestyle within Oxford, for example, he established boards to ensure Christian living at the university. Undergrads were required to share Sunday sermons with someone of “known ability and piety.” Owen established private evening prayer meetings for students and their mentors, and the houses where students lodged were to have frequent preaching within their homes. Under Owen’s leadership Oxford was revitalized and began to flourish after many challenges of the civil war years in England.
Owen published many books in the 1650s including books on the doctrines of grace, mortification of sin, communion with the Trinity, the authority of Scripture, and many more. In the late 1650s, he helped write the Savoy Declaration which is an independent Presbyterian congregationalist document, he was the primary author of its preface.
Owen fell out of favor with Cromwell when he opposed Cromwell becoming king. Owen’s large influence took a major blow when Cromwell resigned from being chancellor at Oxford and was replaced by Richard, Cromwell’s son. Under Richard’s leadership as chancellor, Owen was replaced as vice-chancellor, removed as dean of Christ Church, and preacher at St. Mary’s along with Goodwin. Simultaneously there was the Great Ejection of 1662 when 1,000-2,000 Puritan Church of England ministers were expelled from their pulpits by law following the Act of Uniformity of 1662 which Puritan ministers refused to subscribe to the Book of Common Prayer as the only book to be used in liturgical worship. Due to these circumstances, every position of influence was taken from him. Owen continued to be a minister of the Gospel where he lived in seclusion. John Cotton even offered Owen a position to be a minister in Boston, Massachusetts but he declined.
In 1665, Owen was charged and tried in Oxford for holding religious sermons in his home. Thankfully, Owen escaped without imprisonment, and like many ministers after the Act of Uniformity, he returned to London to preach to a small congregation. It was during this time he wrote his famous commentary on Hebrews. Owen continued his writings and theological battles by writing anonymous tracts on religious liberty and information against Arminian teaching.
In 1673, Owen joined his congregation with Joseph Caryl, and through his ministry, he sought to help his Independent (baptistic) brothers such as Robert Asty and John Bunyan by offering them financial support and spiritual advice. In 1676, Owen’s wife died and eighteen months later he married a widow. The years that followed were filled with much personal suffering where Owen experienced bouts of asthma and gallstones which kept him from preaching but did not stop him from writing many more books and treatises.
Owen died on August 24, 1683, and was buried in Bunhill Fields, London. Few have impacted Christianity the way Owen did. This was seen not only through his writings but also that he was also a pastor of people’s hearts. Some have dubbed him the “theologian’s theologian,” but Christians must not forget that he still cared for the souls of people as seen in the writings on the importance of mortifying sin and honoring Christ in all areas of life because it is a privilege that Christians can enjoy communion with God.
John Owen was a man who stuck to his convictions throughout his life. Owen kept his eyes fixed on Christ and equipped his students and future generations for Christ. He faced trials by being removed from positions of influence, possible imprisonment, and experiencing the loss of many children. Owen could have easily compromised by giving into the convictions of Parliament’s actions toward the Irish under Cromwell or in the Act of Uniformity of 1662 under Charles II, but he stood firm in his convictions to proclaim the Gospel whether that was through his preaching or writing. His preaching motivated many others to stand firm in the Gospel. Owen’s writing impacted his readers then and now, the power of his was both theological and pastoral impacting both the head and the heart. John Owen motivated people to know God and to “be killing sin or sin be killing you.”
J.I. Packer said, “I owe more to John Owen than to any other theologian, ancient or modern; and I owe more to The Mortification of Sin than to anything else he wrote.”
With Packer’s quote in mind, if you were to read one book by John Owen it should be: The Mortification of Sin. It will give you a glimpse into the reality of sin and how we need to be killing sin in our pursuit of communion with God.