Audio Transcript

Some of the best questions you all send to us come from the tensions you see directly in Scripture as you read the Bible — like the one we have today. Do we pray for the salvation of unbelievers directly? Or do we pray for the evangelists who bring the gospel? It’s an interesting Bible question on this Friday, as we close out week number 489 on the podcast.

The question today is from a listener named Tim: “Hello, Pastor John! Can you tell me if we are commanded to pray for unbelievers? It seems like the prayers and the instruction on prayer in the New Testament are focused on praying for believers in contexts of evangelism. I’m thinking of Colossians 4:3–4 and Ephesians 6:18–20. In those places Paul is seeking prayer for his bold preaching, not prayers for unbelievers themselves. Is this instructive for us? Are we to pray for unbelievers? Or pray for evangelists? How does the Bible instruct our priority here?”

Yes, the Bible teaches us to pray for unbelievers, and particularly to pray for their salvation — but not only for their salvation, but also lots of blessings of other kinds that flow from salvation or lead to their salvation.

But the question Tim asks is not uncommon because Tim is right that, ordinarily, Paul in particular asks for prayer for his preaching more than he asks prayer for those who are hearing his preaching. Now I’ll come back at the end to why that might be the case, but that is the case, and that’s why the question arises.

I can remember maybe forty years ago at a conference at Wheaton College where a person stood up in the audience and asked J.I. Packer point-blank, “Give me one text where we’re told to pray for unbelievers.” And I’ll tell you what he said in a minute when I get there, but this is not an unusual question. Now, my reason for saying the Bible does teach that we should pray for unbelievers is that there are at least five lines of evidence pointing more or less explicitly in this direction.

David’s Prayers for Enemies

First, there’s the Old Testament example. It may be surprising to you (it was to me) that this example turns up in a psalm where righteous indignation, the righteous indignation of the psalmist, is calling on God to vindicate him against his enemies. But listen to what brought him to this point in Psalm 35:11–14:

Malicious witnesses rise up;     they ask of me things I do not know.They repay me evil for good;     my soul is bereft.But I, when they were sick —     I wore sackcloth;     I afflicted myself with fasting;I prayed with head bowed on my chest.     I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother;as one who laments his mother,     I bowed down in mourning.

So, the psalmist had prayed for his enemy until, evidently, God showed him that he’s going to become an instrument of God’s judgment. That happens in the psalms. So we’ve got an Old Testament example of praying for our adversaries.

Jesus New-Covenant Commands

Second, there are Jesus’s instructions in Matthew 5:43: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Same thing in Luke 6:28: “Pray for those who abuse you” — not “pray against them.” These aren’t imprecatory prayers. This is, “Pray for them — pray for what they need.” And what they need most is faith in Christ and eternal life.

‘Bless Those Who Curse You’

I think this is what the command of Jesus to bless means as well. Jesus said in Luke 6:28, “Bless those who curse you.” Well, what does bless mean? It means we pronounce a Godward wish of well-being on someone. Blessing is the hope that things will go well with someone, and then that hope is directed to God in longing and expressed to our enemy in words. That’s the way blessings work, whether they’re to believers or unbelievers. You can see it in that famous blessing in Numbers 6:24–26: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you.”

So you’re asking the Lord to do something, but you’re speaking directly to a person. So this command to bless our enemies became a watchword in the early church. It’s amazing how frequent it is:

1 Peter 3:9: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless.”
Romans 12:14: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”
Paul set an example of this in 1 Corinthians 4:12 when he said, “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure.”

Now, these blessings are prayers; they’re prayers for unbelievers — that God would cause things to go well for them, for their ultimate good, for their salvation.

‘As in Heaven’

Then there’s another instruction Jesus gave. I think it indirectly tells us to pray for unbelievers, and this is the answer that J.I. Packer gave. I remember it all these years later because I didn’t expect him to go here at all. He went to the Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father in heaven,hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come,your will be done,     on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9–10)

“The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for unbelievers to believe and obey and do the will of God the way the angels do it.”

Well, when it says to pray for the kingdom to come and for God’s will to be done as in heaven, that phrase “as in heaven” means not just that God’s sovereign will would be done the way Judas did it — that’s not the way it’s done in heaven — but that it would be done the way angels do it. And the angels do it full of joy, full of faith. So, think of the Lord’s Prayer as a prayer for unbelievers to believe and obey and do the will of God the way the angels do it in heaven. I thought that was a remarkable, insightful answer.

There are a lot more direct answers. I’m not sure why he went there — maybe that was just all that came to his mind at the time — but I thought it was remarkable.

Jesus’s and Stephen’s Dying Pleas

Here’s the third line of evidence: There’s Jesus example — not just the instructions that we just saw, but his example. While he is on the cross, he prays for his enemies: “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’” (Luke 23:34).

And then Stephen continued that same dying prayer as he was being stoned in Acts 7:60: “And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’” That’s amazing. He prayed for his unbelieving killers.

Paul’s Prayers for His Kinsmen

The fourth line of evidence is Paul’s example, not only of blessing, which we just saw for those who persecute him, but also of explicitly praying for the salvation of his lost Jewish kinsmen in Romans 10. I think, if somebody asked me in public, “Give me one example of the Bible teaching that we should pray for unbelievers,” I’d say Romans 10:1: “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.”

So I take this to mean that this was his steady prayer as he ministered in the Lord’s name: “Lord, save my brothers in Israel, and make them my brothers in Christ.”

Paul’s Personal Requests

And now the fifth line of evidence. Tim, when he asked the question, pointed to Colossians 4 as a typical way that Paul asks for prayer — namely, for the preachers and not the hearers. And I commented that this is typical. That’s right. Paul does that most often. He said this: “Pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison — that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak” (Colossians 4:3–4).

We see the same thing in Ephesians 6:19, where he says, “[Pray] for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel.” And we could add to this 2 Thessalonians 3:1: “Pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you.”

Now, none of these texts says explicitly that we are praying for the unbelievers — none of those last three that I quoted. But when you think it through, what they’re asking for is that Paul’s word would be bold and clear and unhindered and triumphant and glorified. You can’t avoid the fact this includes, “Lord, grant converts to Paul’s preaching.”

“God has bound salvation to the news of Jesus Christ so that Christ gets glory for the faith.”

So, I think Paul is indeed asking indirectly for prayer for unbelievers. And I suspect — this is my effort to answer the question of why Paul spoke the way he did most often — that one of the reasons Paul asks for prayer this way (namely, for himself and his preaching) is that he is so keenly aware that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). He knows that it is God who raises dead people spiritually and brings them to faith. And God gives them life and faith and eyes to see the glory of Christ by causing them to hear the word of God.

Paul really wants us to keep in mind that God does not move around through the world bringing people to faith apart from the hearing of the gospel. God has bound salvation to the news of Jesus Christ so that Christ gets glory for the faith. So let’s always keep these things together — namely, prayer for the salvation of unbelievers and prayer for the word to run and be glorified through more and more faith.

“Tell Bud, ministry isn’t everything. Jesus is.”

Ray Ortlund Jr. tells the story of his father’s last words for him. Ray and his wife were overseas on July 22, 2007, when Ray Sr. awoke in his hospital room in Newport Beach, California, and realized that day would be his last. The rest of the family gathered to read Scripture and sing. Then the dying patriarch went around the room addressing his beloved with final blessings and admonitions.

“Bud” wasn’t in the room, so Ray Sr. left these memorable, and beautiful, last words to pass along to the son who had followed him into full-time ministry.

For two decades, beginning in the late fifties, Ray Sr. had been pastor of Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, where he had pastored a young seminarian named John Piper and convinced him that, despite the talk of the late sixties, the local church had a future, and always would. Ray Sr.’s name and signature are affixed to Piper’s ordination certificate dated June 8, 1975.

Ray Sr. loved the church, and gave decades of his life to full-time Christian ministry. So, on his deathbed in 2007, he was no armchair critic throwing shade on his beloved son. But he was a man who knew his own heart, and his son’s. He knew both the remarkable joys of pastoral work and the attendant dangers. And he knew where his final counsel should terminate: on the one who is the sovereign Joy.

Good Work, Great Joys

At the outset of the pastor-elder qualifications, the apostle talks joy: “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Timothy 3:1). This labor is bound up with aspiration, desire, joy.

“Noble task” here is literally “good work.” He desires a good work. Christian ministry is good work — and work to be done by those who desire it. Ministry is not for those who don’t really want to do it but can exercise their will to make the sacrifice for Jesus. Rather, in this calling, aspiration and the desire for joy are nonnegotiable.

In the pastoral vocation, as distinct from other callings, laboring from joy, with joy, and for joy is essential. According to Hebrews 13:17, pastors must labor “with joy and not with groaning” if they are to be an “advantage” to their people’s faith, rather than a disadvantage. So too Peter requires that pastor-elders work “not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly” (1 Peter 5:2).

Christian ministry is good work, and often joyful, to be undertaken by those who desire and anticipate the joys that will make its many hardships sufferable. Yet in such good and joy-giving work lies a danger. It’s the good, more often than the overtly evil, that inches its way past Christ himself as foremost in the Christian minister’s heart.

Ministry Joys, Amen

Jesus himself puts his finger, and surpassingly powerful words, on this precise point in Luke 10:20.

“In the pastoral vocation, as distinct from other callings, laboring from joy, with joy, and for joy is essential.”

Jesus had sent six dozen “others,” beyond the twelve disciples, “on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go” (Luke 10:1). He commissioned these 72 with solemnity, warning them about rejection and being “as lambs in the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:2–16). Yet their training exercise proved far more fruitful than they might have anticipated, and they were thrilled. They return with joy, exclaiming, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” (Luke 10:17).

Jesus, the master teacher, seizes upon the importance of this moment. Here is an opportunity to leave an impression for a lifetime, and for the whole church age. To be sure, it is no evil to rejoice in ministry fruit, to find joy in what God Almighty graciously chooses to accomplish through his people in the lives of others, whether in preaching and teaching, or offering cold water, or dispatching demons.

Here the 72 marvel, in part, at “even the demons.” Their joys were not only those of steady-stream, ordinary ministry but the pulsing thrills of the extraordinary, the delight of the unexpected, the felt-sense of supernatural power. Clearly their ministry had been fruitful. The 72 were not mistaken in what they observed and reported. Jesus affirms it, and their joy: “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19). “Yes,” Jesus says, in effect. “These are real joys and good ones. It is right to rejoice at seeing God’s kingdom advance and oppressed souls set free.”

Then comes the twist.

Ten Thousand Times Better

Jesus stuns the delighted ministers by transposing their song into a different register. He honors ministry joys, and does so by taking them up into heaven, making the moment electric by drawing attention to what is even more important:

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10:20)

Surprising as it may be, spirits subject to you is really a small thing in Jesus’s way of reckoning. Even greater than what God does through his ministers, even over supernatural powers, is what he does for them. Far surpassing a ministry name below is the etching of their names above. With the declaration “your names are written in heaven,” Jesus puts ministry joys in their place — for the 72 and for us — not by talking them down, but by talking up something even better.

How much better? As good and right as it can be to rejoice in ministry fruit, here Jesus would have us feel the force of the contrast. He says, “Rejoice not in this . . .” Jesus does not oppose ministry joys, or charge us, universally, to never rejoice in them. Rather, Luke 10:20 is an acutely comparative statement, cast in these simple, stark terms to emphasize how much greater our rejoicing can be, should be, will be, in what God does for us than in what he chooses to do through us.

Which is why “names written in heaven” matters so much.

Where We Enjoy God Himself

“Names written in heaven” is so significant because God himself, in Christ, is the sovereign Joy, the Joy of all joys, and heaven is where he is. “Names written in heaven” is the surpassingly superior joy not because heaven gives us all that our hearts want apart from God, but because there, in the immediate presence of God, we get proximity to him, closeness to him, unhindered enjoyment of him.

“The heart of Christian ministry is the person and work of Christ, not the person and work of the minister.”

In heaven we get God himself. Heaven is where, finally, the many barriers and distractions and veils of earth are removed, that we, without further obstruction and distortion, might more fully know and enjoy the one we were made to know and enjoy.

Which brings us back to the dangers that accompany ministry joys, as good and important as they are.

Made for More Than Ministry

When working for Christ takes the place of Christ himself as the chief enjoyment in the soul, the shift is both subtle and significant. The incremental incursions can be so small as to be hardly recognizable at first, but if the pattern persists, the long arc will be utterly devastating — to the minister himself and to his people. Paul thought it perilous enough to issue repeated warnings to ministers to pay careful attention not only to the flock and to their teaching but to themselves. “Pay careful attention to yourselves” (Acts 20:28). “Keep a close watch on yourself” (1 Timothy 4:16).

Christian ministry is undermined, and soon utterly corrupted and ruined, when the ministry itself becomes first and foremost in the soul. The nature of Christian ministry is such that it cannot long operate, and will not in the end prove fruitful (no matter how successful it seems in the moment), if it turns in on itself as the sovereign joy. The very nature of Christian ministry is that the person and work of Christ himself is the origin and essence, not the person and work of the minister for him. The minister’s work is important, but as a second principle; Christ’s work, and Christ himself, is vital as the first and final principle.

Ministry for the King can be treasonous if it becomes a replacement of the King himself. And the peril is in how subtle and common a shift it is, even for the healthiest of Christian workers. Yet we have this hope: how readily the hearts of healthy ministers fly back to their first love when awakened to marks of the subtle shift.

Practically, the return can happen each new morning, with our nose in the humbling word and prayer. It comes through knowing our sin and being honest about our ongoing failures, weaknesses, and needs for change. It comes, then, through never letting the world-changing weight and wonder of Matthew 9:2 become old hat: “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” And apart from our initiative, it comes through God’s special brew of providence in our lives, his particular humbling moments, seasons, and conditions for each of us. He has his ways. For some, it’s marriage or parenting. For others, it’s finances. For others still, disease, disability, chronic pain, the devastating setback.

Ministry Isn’t Everything

Ray Sr.’s final words to “Bud” were perceptive. And much like Jesus’s own to the 72. And every pastor and minister and missionary — all those in full-time ministry vocations and beyond, in all posts of formal and informal labor — will do well to heed them from Ray Sr., as Bud did, and all the more from Jesus.

Jesus is the Joy of all our joys. Apart from him as central and supreme, ministry joys soon hollow and spoil. Yet, with the King of kings himself on the throne of our soul, the ministry joys of sharing him with others are real and substantial, and continually lead us back to him.

Audio Transcript

We’re in our tenth year on the podcast, coming up on 1,800 episodes in the archive. And over the course of that decade, we’ve covered a lot of different topics. And that includes the topic of birth control, or, better, conception control. It’s arisen three times on the podcast, in three episodes 230, 552, and 1347. The most recent being three years ago. But today we have a follow-up question, built off something you said on the podcast seven years ago, Pastor John. Here it is, from an anonymous wife and mother.

“Hello Pastor John, and thank you for taking my question. Here’s the context. My husband and I have two wonderful boys. I believe our family is complete. He does, too. We have each independently decided that two children is enough. I’ve asked my husband to consider a vasectomy. He’s interested, and feels that he is done having children himself, so the potential for children in a re-marriage, if death were to end our present marriage, seems to not necessarily factor in here, a very important argument you made in a previous episode. But ultimately my husband is undecided because he’s not sure if God permits such an action. In your view of the Bible, is it okay for a monogamous husband and father of two, who is done having children with me, or any future wife, to get a vasectomy?”

The older I get, the more skeptical I become of the freedom I think I have from being formed by my own culture. Let me put it in another way. The older I get, the more suspicious I become that I am more a child of my historical and cultural circumstances than I once thought I was.

Now, one of the reasons I say this is to help people like this couple not take offense when I wave a yellow flag (not a red flag, but a yellow flag, a big yellow flag) warning us all that when it comes to children and sex and family and personal freedom and comforts, we are almost certainly deeply infected by a contemporary culture that for decades, through television, movies, videos, advertising, books, articles, and podcasts, has shaped our mindset about marriage and children and sex and freedom of the unencumbered self.

None of us comes to the Bible with a blank slate in these matters. We are profoundly shaped by the cultural air we breathe. And that culture (and it’s been this way for a long time) does not rejoice at the blessing of children. It does not gladly embrace the enormous cost and effort of raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It does not see marriage as forming a beautiful, meaningful, lifelong, faith-building, character-forming matrix for growing the next generation.

“Our culture has virtually stripped the pleasures of sex from the place God appointed for them.”

It doesn’t put any value on the pain that inevitably comes with deep covenant commitments to spouses and children, but instead justifies every possible means of minimizing our own personal frustration and pleasure and maximizing personal freedom, whether through postponing marriage, or not having children, or avoiding any kind of commitment, or divorcing in order to get out of an uncomfortable marriage, or neglect of children, sticking them in some kind of institution while we go about our careers.

Our culture has virtually stripped the pleasures of sex from the place God appointed for them, namely woven into the covenant commitments of lifelong marriage. These and dozens of other ways, we are all infected by the spirit of our times. All of that to say, I speak with the kind of trembling that I may be more a child of my times than I wish. I try to be under the Scriptures. I want to be shaped by the Scripture. I want to be counter-cultural in a biblical way. I want to be radical for Jesus, but I know how inevitable it is that I speak from a particular cultural time, place, not to mention my own sinfulness and intellectual limits.

Are Marriage and Children Normative?

So, with that confession, let me just rehearse briefly what I have said more extensively elsewhere. I believe marriage is normative for Christians, normative. It’s normative to be married because Genesis 2:18 says it’s not good for man to be alone.

And because we are so wonderfully designed, I think physically and psychologically, by God to form covenant commitments, consummated in sexual union with the glorious wonder of making and raising babies. Nevertheless, though I believe that’s normative, I can see in the life of Jesus and in the life of the apostle Paul and their teachings, that marriage is not an absolute requirement of Christians, but that for kingdom purposes, for God-centered, Christ-exalting, mission-advancing, church-building, soul-saving, sanctifying purposes, one might choose a life of singleness.

“Children are a great blessing. They are one of the purposes and miracles of sexual union.”

By analogy, I believe having children in marriage is normative. Children are a great blessing. They are one of the purposes and miracles of sexual union. To turn away from procreation in marriage for the sake of some worldly gain rather than being motivated by God-centered, Christ-exalting, kingdom advancement is a sin.

Nevertheless, on the analogy of marriage, just as for kingdom reasons singleness may be chosen, it is possible for Christ’s sake and for holy purposes that limiting the number of children would be chosen also. The principle in both cases, getting married and having children is one of self-denying, Christ-exalting, mission-advancing motivation — what’s your motivation? — rather than simply following the course of the age in order to maximize worldly freedoms and worldly comforts.

Now that puts a huge burden on all of us to honestly know our own hearts, doesn’t it? Search me oh God and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me governing these choices. This must be our cry because we are also prone to come up with a theology and an ethics that justify our desires. So, I think you can see in these observations that I don’t regard all birth control, or better conception control, as sinful.

Using abortifacients that kill a conceived child would be sin. But choosing not to conceive may not be a sin, which means that the methods and the timing of such choices will become a matter of biblically and medically-informed wisdom.

Three Questions About the Question

So what would my advice be that might contribute to the wisdom of this couple besides what I’ve tried to say?

Let me pick one sentence from what she wrote. She says, “I’ve asked my husband to consider a vasectomy. He’s interested and feels that he is done having children. So the potential for children in a remarriage, if death were to end our present marriage seems not necessarily to factor in here.” Three questions about that sentence. First, the word feels, he feels that he is done having children.

Feelings are notoriously temporary. And even if she had said, “He thinks that he is done,” I would say the same thing. We just don’t know in such circumstances what may happen in our lives that would make an irreversible sterilization tragic.

Second question. The word “seems.” She says the potential for children in a remarriage if death were to end our present marriage “seems not to necessarily factor in here.” Seems is a pretty weak word. Death is a real possibility in a marriage, and in that case, remarriage would be both likely and I think good. How does he know what his heart would say in that new marriage? How does he know? “It seems that it may not be a factor.” Well, that’s pretty flimsy.

Third, nothing is said about the wife in that possible new marriage. Seems like he would be only taking into account his own preferences about whether he would want children in that new marriage. What about hers? And be careful about assuming that you’re too old to become a parent. Noel and I adopted when I was 50. What if a 50-year-old man marries a 35-year-old single woman who has always dreamed of giving birth to her own child?

Plead with God for Guidance

So my fallible contribution to your effort to act biblically — and I admire you for it — and to act wisely is to simply say one, search your hearts so that your decision to have no more children is a Christ-honoring decision, a mission-advancing decision.

Second, be very slow to implement that decision with a kind of sterilization that would cut off godly future possibilities which you cannot presently see.

And maybe just one other word of counsel. Sit down together and open your Bible and read the first 12 verses of Psalm 25. I say that because I don’t know any other passage of Scripture that is better for putting into word words our cry for guidance and wisdom from God.