In 1733, an earnest 18-year-old Oxford undergraduate was striving to live a holy life. But something was missing. He had a circle of spiritual friends, and one of them passed him a book entitled The Life of God in the Soul of Man. It was a breakthrough. “I never knew,” he wrote, “what true religion was, till God sent me that excellent treatise by the hands of my never-to-be-forgotten friend” (George Whitefield’s Journals, 46–47).

That undergraduate was George Whitefield, and he would go on within a few years to become the leading preacher of a spiritual awakening that spanned both sides of the Atlantic. The friend who passed on this book to him was Charles Wesley, and he would become the great hymnwriter of that same revival. Indeed, almost all the leaders of the early evangelical movement read this book at some point and testified to its importance.

“This little book was there at the very roots of the evangelical revival.”

Somehow this little book was there at the very roots of the evangelical revival. It was like an underground aquifer that allowed life to appear in the soil above. What was it about this book that made such an impact on George Whitefield and so many others?

Henry Scougal, Protestant Mystic

The book was written by a young Scottish minister named Henry Scougal, who died at only 28 years of age. Published anonymously in 1677, it was originally a tender letter of spiritual direction to a female friend, Lady Gilmour, and it retains the warmth and directness of this personal correspondence. When we read it today, it feels like listening in on spiritual counsel.

Though young, Scougal had absorbed the spirituality of past classics like a sponge. He had read Augustine and many of the church fathers, medieval spiritual writers such as Thomas à Kempis, and more recent devotional authors such as Teresa of Avila and Madame Guyon. But somehow, he assimilated all this material such that when he wrote his own book, it was the core truths that came through. He didn’t need to mention any of these authors by name.

In his hands, the teaching of the mystics was neither particularly monastic nor Catholic. Shorn of its complexity, reduced to its essentials, it was the basic teaching of the apostle Paul for all Christians. His message was simple: we are all meant to experience a “union of the soul with God, a real participation in the Divine nature.” Scougal explains by quoting Paul’s letter to the Colossians: “In the apostle’s phrase, ‘it is Christ formed within us’” (44).

What Is True Religion?

A clue to the importance of this book is that Whitefield says it taught him “true religion.” For all his earnestness and discipline, for all his religious observance and sincerity, he had still not discovered the central reality about being a Christian. As he read this book, he was surprised to find that his religious duties were not regarded by Scougal as the essence of religion. Not at all. Whitefield later recalled the experience:

“Alas!” thought I, “if this be not true religion, what is?” God soon showed me; for in reading a few lines further, that “true religion was union of soul with God, and Christ formed within us,” a ray of Divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul, and from that moment, but not until then, did I know that I must be a new creature. (George Whitefield’s Journals, 47)

The breakthrough for Whitefield, as for others, was the discovery that union with Christ was the center of the spiritual life. Everything else flowed from this. John Calvin had said something similar at the beginning of book 3 of the Institutes. The work of Christ as our mediator is useless to us until we are united to Christ by the Spirit.

“The essence of Christianity or ‘true religion’ is to have a new vital principle animating the soul.”

Correct doctrine, correct practice, correct morality — all this is fine and good, but it isn’t the thing itself. The essence of Christianity or “true religion” is to have a new vital principle animating the soul. Christianity is not just an idea. “I know not how the nature of religion can be more fully expressed,” wrote Scougal, “than by calling it a Divine life” (44). It is to find God himself taking up residence and living in me. It is all contained in his title: The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

This then was Scougal’s great theme. After clearing the decks of all the mistaken ideas of religion, he focused his attention on this one imperative. He wanted his reader to experience this. “Here, here it is, my dear friend, that we should fix our most serious and solemn thoughts, ‘that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith’” (126).

Without this indwelling presence, a person is no more religious “than a puppet can be called a man” (48). But if Christ himself lives in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, then his very life shines like a candle in the soul. “Nay,” says Scougal, “it is a real participation in his nature, it is a beam of the eternal light, a drop of that infinite ocean of goodness; and they who are endued with it, may be said to have ‘God dwelling in their souls,’ and ‘Christ formed within them’” (49).

Just as our bodily life is characterized by sensation, so also our spiritual life is characterized by faith, “a kind of sense, or feeling persuasion of spiritual things.” And it is not just faith in general but “faith in Jesus Christ” (55). As an active vital principle, this divine life goes to work to make us more like Christ in love to God, charity to our neighbor, purity of heart, and humility of mind.

Excellencies of True Religion

A great spiritual classic not only tells you what ought to be, but it also helps you to desire it. Part of the power of Scougal’s book lies here. In the second part, he paints a compelling picture of the beauty of the divine life: it is what we have really been longing for all our lives, if we only knew it — what in fact we were made for.

He understood as well as any psychologist that human beings have an insatiable desire planted deep in our hearts. The soul “hath in it a raging and unextinguishable thirst, an immaterial kind of fire . . . importunate cravings” (112–13). But he redirects us to see that this most basic desire is fundamentally a longing of the creature for the Creator.

“What,” he asks, “is a little skin-deep beauty, or some small degree of goodness to match or satisfy a passion which was made for God?” Or again, “What an infinite pleasure must it needs be, thus as it were to lose ourselves in him . . . swallowed up in the overcoming sense of his goodness” (74, 78).

Infinite pleasure. I remember as a young person wondering whether following God might mean giving up the pleasures one might otherwise enjoy. A turning point came for me in reading Psalm 16, which concludes, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). In Scougal’s words, “Never doth a Soul know what solid Joy and substantial pleasure it is, till . . . it give itself fully unto the Author of its being, and feel itself to become a hallowed and devoted thing” (78).

Far from missing out on anything, living in union with God promises transcendent joys that are greater than we can imagine. All the streams of desire empty into this ocean.

Practical Guidance

Scougal also offers practical counsel on sustaining life in union with God. All heaven is engaged on our behalf and stands ready to support us. “Why should we think it impossible that true goodness and universal love should ever . . . prevail in our souls?” (96). And there are steps we can take. “We must not lie loitering in the ditch,” he says, “and wait till Omnipotence pulls us thence” (98).

In the first instance, he counsels us that if we desire the divine life in our souls, we can be careful to avoid sin and guard against temptation. We cannot expect to be healed while we are drinking poison. He outlines several practices of self-examination to assist us to a deeper watchfulness over our souls.

He also offers counsel on prayer and contemplation to help us keep our eyes on Christ, and he urges a practice of “consideration.” Just as a spouse might consider the qualities of the beloved, so we might consider God’s perfections. All this serves to increase love. We might also consider with gratitude God’s gifts: “Whatever we find lovely in a friend,” for example, can elevate our affections, for “if there be so much sweetness in a drop, there must be infinitely more in the fountain” (122).

Scougal knows too that in our continued pilgrimage here below, we are often tempted to despair. Yet Christ has sent his Spirit to assist such weak and languishing creatures as we are. He encourages us that where the Spirit has taken hold, where there is the faintest spark of God’s love in the soul, the Spirit will preserve this and “bring it forth into a flame, which many waters shall not quench” (95).

So, when we feel spiritually barren, we may humbly offer up to God a prayer of simple regard. “Here I am, and I present myself to you just as I am. I am here, and I am yours.” Or as Scougal writes, “Let us resign and yield ourselves up unto him a thousand times” (117).

Take Up and Read

Jonathan Edwards began his great treatise on the Religious Affections by saying that there was no question of greater importance to mankind than this: “What is the nature of true religion?” He had read Scougal, and I wonder if he was thinking of this book as he wrote.

Scougal gave what is still one of the best and simplest answers to this question. For any of us still asking today what true religion really is, and how to experience “the life of God in the soul of man,” it is worth turning again to read his little book.

The subordinate goal of this message is to explain and defend the claim that truth triumphs through pleasure. The ultimate goal of this message is that you, and your people through your ministry, would feel — and forever feel — the greatest pleasure in God through Jesus Christ.

To say that the ultimate goal of this message is a heart-experience — an enjoyment, a spiritual emotion — in you and your people is not a contradiction of the universal biblical teaching that the ultimate goal of all things (including this message!) is the fullest exhibition of the glory of God, filling the new creation without rival. And the reason it’s not a contradiction is because God’s ultimate goal for all things will not be reached until the bride of Christ experiences her fullest possible pleasure in her beloved Jesus Christ, who is God, blessed forever. Amen (Romans 9:5).

I’m an Edwardsean lover of the glory of God down to my toes. When Edwards speaks of
God’s glory as the goal of all things, my heart soars:

It appears that all that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works is included in that one phrase, “the glory of God”; . . . In the creature’s knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged; his fullness is received and returned. Here is both emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair. (The End for Which God Created the World, 526, 531)

Amen. Could anything be more God-centered, God-exalting, God-entranced! And yet tucked away in that God-besotted paragraph is an explosive statement worth giving your life to: “In the creature’s . . . rejoicing in . . . God, the glory of God is exhibited.” That is, “In the creature’s pleasure in God, the glory of God is exhibited.” If that is true, then truth triumphs through pleasure. And for you and your people to attain that pleasure is to share in the triumph.

So, to explain and defend this claim from Scripture, I will try to clarify four connections.

The connection between truth and ultimate reality
The connection between ultimate reality and God
The connection between God and preciousness
The connection between preciousness and pleasure

1. The Connection Between Truth and Ultimate Reality

The biblical words for “truth” (emet and amunah in Hebrew and alētheia in Greek) are used with many different connotations and nuances. When you preach, you don’t take a definition from Piper or MacArthur at a conference and lay it on that text. You pay close attention to the peculiar usage of the word true or truth in that text to see that it carries its own weight.

What I’m going to do here is take hold of two of those many connotations in order to draw out the point that’s relevant for this message, especially the connection between truth and ultimate reality.

First, then, most commonly we speak, and the Bible often speaks, of “truth” as a characteristic of things we say, a characteristic of assertions or statements or propositions. For example, Proverbs 12:17: “Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit.” When we think of truth in this way, it means that our statements correspond to reality. If I say, “My wife is 5 feet, 7 inches tall,” that would be true. But if the reality is that she is 6 feet tall, that statement would not be true. It would not correspond to the reality.

But, second, what is not as common in our speech, but is also a view of “truth” in the Bible, is that the reality to which true statements correspond is called “truth.” For example, when Peter was being delivered by the angel from prison in Acts 12, Luke writes, “[Peter] went out and followed [the angel]. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real [or true], but thought he was seeing a vision” (Acts 12:9). Or Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:8, “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true.” Meaning: We are not fake apostles. We are real.

This is the meaning of truth that I want to take hold of and press into. Truth not only states reality; it is reality. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). “I am . . . the truth.” And Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 1:9, “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” — the real God, the God who is reality. And Jesus Christ is the truth not only because he speaks the truth, but because the ultimate reality about which he speaks is himself.

So, two things have become clear. One is that the Bible uses the word truth or true to refer to what is real, not just statements about what is real. What is real? Truth refers to reality. Truth is not just the opposite of a lie; it is the opposite of an illusion, the opposite of the unreal.

And the second thing that has become clear is that we are confronted with the question of ultimate reality, that is, ultimate truth. When Jesus said, “I am . . . the truth,” and Paul said you serve “the . . . true God,” both are pointing us to the fact that there is such a thing as ultimate reality.

So, we turn to our second point.

2. The Connection Between Ultimate Reality and God

This is the most obvious. But we need to see it and say it to get us where we are going — to preciousness and pleasure. What is ultimate reality? Which we have seen is the same as asking, What is ultimate truth? I think the most fundamental response that God ever gave to that question is found in Exodus 3:13–14.

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”

The very least God intends to communicate when he says, “I am,” is “I! A personal being! I am talking to you. I am a person. This is not wind. Or thunder. Or an earthquake. Or a waterfall. I am talking to you. And I am about to electrify you with this truth, this reality: ‘I am who I am.’”

And the next most obvious thing he means is, “I exist. I am real. I am not a myth. I am not imagined. I am not an opiate for the masses. I am not a Freudian projection of wish-fulfillment. I am real. I am more real than the ground you stand on, more real than the sun in your solar system, the skin on your bones, the galaxies at the end of the universe. And the reason I am more real than they are is because their reality is dependent on my reality. Their being depends on my being. Only I can say, ‘I am who I am.’ Everything else must say, ‘I am because he is.’”

This is the way ultimate truth talks: “I am who I am.” Ultimate truth says,

Nobody made me this way. I simply am. I never had a beginning. I never became. I simply was, from all eternity. Nor will I ever end. I depend on nothing to be what I am — no cause, no support, no counsel. Instead, everything depends absolutely on me. Everything is secondary to me. The universe is infinitesimal to me. I carry it in my pocket like a peanut. I never develop, and I cannot be improved. I am absolute fullness, perfection. I conform to nothing outside myself, and therefore I am the standard and measure of all truth and goodness and beauty. There are no constraints from outside me to prevent me from doing what I please. My actions are always free, never dictated from outside. The good pleasure of my will always holds sway. I always act in perfect conformity to the infinite value of my inexhaustible fullness. I am who I am.

For many years I have circled back to this text like a lightning bug staring at the sun and have found it to be electrifying — that God simply is. Explosive. Wild. Untamable. A brightness that changes absolutely everything. God is ultimate reality. That is, ultimate Truth.

Which brings me now to the third point.

3. The Connection Between God and Preciousness

So, step one was that one biblical facet of truth is that it refers to reality, and we are led to see that there is an ultimate reality. And the second step was that this ultimate reality is God, absolute reality, “I am who I am.” And now step three: the connection between God (reality, truth!) and preciousness.

Is ultimate reality ultimately valuable? Is ultimate reality of infinite worth? Is ultimate reality ultimately precious? Let me ask the questions in another way (and then tell you why I’m doing it): Is ultimate reality ultimate value? Is ultimate reality infinite worth? Is ultimate reality ultimate preciousness? Perhaps you see what I’ve done. I’m going beyond saying God has value, has worth, has preciousness, and I’m pushing it further to say that God is value, and God is worth, and God is preciousness. Worth and value and preciousness are intrinsic to God. They are aspects of who he is.

Here’s why I go there. The vast majority of human beings are not born again. Our calling is to do what we can to win them. They are perishing. And we do not want them to perish. “Though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. . . . I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:19, 22).

But if we ask any of those people, before they are born again, whether ultimate reality (God) is valuable, the only categories they have in their minds (the mind of the flesh) for assessing value are the categories that make themselves the measure of God’s value. So, they might say, “Well, if there is ultimate reality, I would hope that he or she or it would help me with my marriage, or my job, or my health, or my children, or my finances. That would be valuable.” In other words, the measure of God’s value would be the measure of his usefulness in helping them attain the pleasures that this world provides.

“If the kingdom of heaven is a precious treasure, it’s because the King is a treasure.”

Some of those people come to your church. And many of your people are talking to them every week. I’m suggesting that this new set of questions might jar them loose from the limits of their categories. (It might jar you loose!) Is God ultimate value? Is God infinite worth? Is God ultimate preciousness? Not just, Does God become useful to me? but, Is God in himself infinite worth and value and preciousness?

I think if we don’t answer that question with a resounding yes, either explicitly or implicitly, our theology, our worship, and our obedience tend to go off the rails. Profound things are at stake here in the way we live, in the way we do ministry.

So, let’s look at some Scriptures to see whether or not we have biblical warrant for giving that resounding yes.

Matthew 13:44

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

If the kingdom of heaven is a precious treasure, it’s because the King is a treasure. Heaven will be heaven because God is there. That is the ultimate promise: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). That’s the consummation of the kingdom, and that is ultimately why the kingdom is a treasure. God is a treasure. God is infinite preciousness.

2 Corinthians 4:6–7

God . . . has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

The glory of God in the face of Christ is treasure in the jar of clay. The presence of God is the presence of infinite preciousness.

2 Peter 1:3–4

[By God’s] glory and excellence . . . [God] has granted to us his precious and very great promises.

The promises of God are precious, because they ultimately hold out to us the presence of God, the presence of Christ. Here’s what I lay myself down to sleep with each night: “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:9–10). The end and goal of all the promises is “live with him.” We know that “in [his] presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

1 Peter 1:18–19

You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

The blood of Jesus is not precious because it saved us. It saved us because it’s precious. And it’s precious because he’s precious.

1 Peter 2:4–6

You come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious. . . . It stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,     a cornerstone chosen and precious.”

This is God’s evaluation, not man’s: in God’s sight God the Son is precious.

Revelation 21:10–11

He . . . showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare [precious] jewel.

The glory of God filling the city is the city’s preciousness.

Revelation 5:12

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,to receive power and wealth and wisdom and mightand honor and glory and blessing!

To be sure, the creative power of the Lord and the saving deeds of the Lord are sometimes given as reasons for why we praise him as worthy. But oh, how artificial it would be, especially in view of this text, to abstract the deeds from the Person, and to say that his actions create his worthiness, rather than that his worthiness is being shown through his actions. No. No. “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain” means worthy is the Lamb, and therefore he was slain, and accomplished everything, because he is infinitely precious.

“The promises of God are precious because they ultimately hold out to us the presence of God.”

From these texts and many others, I can conclude infinite worth, and infinite value, and infinite preciousness are in God. God the Father enjoys God the Son as infinitely precious (1 Peter 2:4–6). Preciousness is in the Trinity. Preciousness is from eternity. It belongs to the nature of God.

Which brings us now to our fourth and final connection.

4. The Connection Between Preciousness and Pleasure

So, the first point was that one biblical facet of truth is that it refers to reality (not just statements about reality), and we are led by Scripture to see that there is an ultimate reality, ultimate Truth. Second, this ultimate reality is God. Absolute personal reality. “I am who I am.” Third, this God is infinite worth. He is in his very nature infinite preciousness.

Now, how does pleasure connect to this preciousness and bring about the triumph of truth? We see the answer when we ask the Bible, “What is the fitting response of a human soul to infinite preciousness?”
You decide what the answer is from four clusters of biblical texts.

Matthew and Hebrews

First, we go back to Matthew 13:44.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field [a very precious discovery], which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

The human response that correlates with treasure is joy. A joy that is so deep and comprehensive that it prompts one to happily lose everything to get the treasure — to get the preciousness.

Then we see this lived out in Hebrews 10:34 with a beautiful sacrifice of love:

You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one [more precious, more lasting].

And the human response that correlates with that more precious, more lasting possession was joy: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property.”

Philippians and Habakkuk

The second cluster of texts is from Philippians and Habakkuk. Twice in Philippians Paul says to rejoice: “Rejoice in the Lord” (Philippians 3:1), and then doubly, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Why is that so fitting? Why joy?

He answers in Philippians 3:8: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Joy in the Lord is fitting because the Lord has surpassing worth. He is infinitely precious.

He is more precious than food, and life itself, as Psalm 63:3 says, “Your steadfast love is better than life.” But this is most graphic in Habakkuk 3:17–18:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,     nor fruit be on the vines,the produce of the olive fail     and the fields yield no food,the flock be cut off from the fold     and there be no herd in the stalls,yet I will rejoice in the Lord;     I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

In other words, God himself is so precious in himself that when life has become impossible, and starvation is imminent, this man of God will rejoice. Because the proper and fitting response of the human soul to infinite preciousness is joy.

Hebrews and Psalms

The third cluster of texts is from Hebrews and Psalms. When Moses faced the choice of whether to remain in the riches and comforts and securities and pleasures of Pharaoh’s house, or lead God’s people through the wilderness at great cost to himself, here’s what happened in his soul according to Hebrews 11:25–26.

[Moses chose] rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

On the one hand I have pleasures, so goes Moses’s logic, in the land of Egypt that are fleeting. And on the other hand, I have greater wealth, greater preciousness, than all the treasures of Egypt, in the reward that is coming to me in the presence of God. The pleasures with God are greater and longer than the pleasures of Egypt, because God is a greater reward, a greater preciousness.

And David in Psalm 16 has no hesitancy to call our experiences in God’s presence pleasures.

My heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices. . . .

You make known to me the path of life;     in your presence there is fullness of joy;     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (verses 9, 11)

The gladness of the heart now is a foretaste of those pleasures, as we taste and see even now the preciousness of the Lord.

Matthew and 2 Thessalonians

The final cluster of texts to show us which human response is fitting to God’s preciousness are texts that call this response love, and bring us finally to the triumph of truth.

Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 10:37,

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

What makes this text so relevant and so radical is that the kind of love he’s talking about is not the kind of love we have for our enemies. This is not blessing those who curse us or doing good to those who hate us (Luke 6:27–28). This is the love we have for our children and our parents. It is the kind of love we have for those who are especially precious to us. To paraphrase: “Whoever loves their most precious human relationship more than Jesus is not worthy of him — won’t have him.”

We are not talking about peripheral or secondary or optional affections here. This is life and death. And the response that corresponds to the superior preciousness of God in Christ over our most precious human possessions and relations is love — the kind of love that finds greatest pleasure in the Beloved. The kind of love that says,

I love your commandments     above gold, above fine gold. (Psalm 119:127)

More to be desired are they than gold,     even much fine gold;sweeter also than honey     and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:10)

This is delight, enjoyment, pleasure. It is the fitting human counterpart to infinite preciousness.

Which brings us finally to a text that connects this pleasure with the triumph of truth.

Beloved Truth Is Triumphant Truth

In 2 Thessalonians 2:9–12 Paul is describing the final appearance of the lawless one whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth.

The coming of the lawless one is . . . with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth [the same kind of love we were just talking about] and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

They did not love the truth. They didn’t treasure the truth. They didn’t find pleasure in the truth as precious. And so, they did not believe the truth, but instead had pleasure in unrighteousness. “The truth” — here it is the word of truth, the gospel of the glory of Christ. This truth is to be loved supremely. We are to find supreme pleasure in the truth because it is the revelation of supreme preciousness.

When, in the final glorification of the saints, the bride of Christ experiences her supreme pleasure in the infinite preciousness that God is in Christ, then the supreme worth, the ultimate value, the infinite preciousness that God is will be fully exhibited in the new creation, and truth — ultimate reality, God himself, infinite preciousness — will be vindicated. Truth will triumph through the pleasure of God’s people in God. Not without it.

“Find a piece of paper and something to write with.” With a smirk, my wife complied and braced herself for what might follow.

The task was simple: Take ten minutes and write down as many names or descriptors of Christ as we could each recall. After ten minutes, we returned together with our lists. As we shared together, we began to worship as the Jewel of unending generations turned and turned and turned before our eyes of faith. Each name, worth a lifetime’s reflection.

Messiah. Master. Teacher. Creator. Friend.

Bridegroom. Savior. Lord. Mediator. Redeemer.

Beloved. Worthy. Our blessed hope. Our propitiation. The Good Shepherd.

Wonderful Counselor. Prince of peace. Image of the invisible God. Ruler of the kings on earth. The Door. The True Vine. The Bread of Life. The Lamb of God. The Way, the Truth, the Life. The rock of offense. The Morning Star. The Holy One. The Beginning.

The King of glory. Lord of the Sabbath. The faithful witness. The Head of the Church. The Lion of Judah. The Suffering Servant. The Prophet greater than Moses. The One who loves us.

The Light of the World. The Author and Perfecter of our faith. The Great High Priest. The Son of David. Son of Man. Son of God. Our Wisdom. Our sanctification. Something greater than Solomon. The firstborn from the dead. The Resurrection and the Life.

The Alpha and Omega. Almighty God. Man of Sorrows. The radiance of the glory of God.

To give just a few.

The One Above His Names

The exercise revealed one simple thing: Jesus Christ lives beyond each sacred name. The Spirit inspires so many names because the reality of Christ towers above each descriptor individually (and as I am hinting, collectively as well). Though Jesus is known truly through human language, he transcends human language.

Take the ancient poets, take the epic storytellers of our time — spare no crafters of language — employ them all, young and old alike, in the singular task of telling the full value and merit of Christ to us, and they shall fail — as children fingerpainting stars fall far below the glory of the galaxies.

“The most excellent language we have cannot capture his excellencies.”

He is he of whom there can be no exaggeration: His worth, his significance, his relevance, his power, his kindness, his command, his faithfulness, his beauty soars above human language as the seraphim above the ladybug. The most excellent language we have cannot capture his excellencies.

And that is no slight to the words God himself has given to us.

Christ Beyond Vocabulary

The excellency of language can take us many places: from the frontlines of World War II, to a hobbit hole in the Shire, from plantations in the antebellum South, to a cave in the mountains overlooking Whoville, into the very throne room with John and Isaiah. Language can cause us to feel deeply: from compassion to bravery, from disgust to horror, from love to hatred. Language is a tool, a divine brush that can color transcendent realities within our imaginations and conceptions. God wrote a book.

But with regards to Christ, we fumble with candles in the dark — he is like this, like this, like this. He stands outside the full reach of the vocabulary of this world, dazzling with the strength of ten suns. He is more holy than we can conceive the word “holy” imparts. More lovely than the scent “lovely” can give. Our language, too enfeebled to capture his might, is too hushed to convey his full glory. We truly gaze through faith and the Spirit to see and love him (1 Peter 1:8–9) — yet dimly.

“Our language, too enfeebled to capture his might, is too hushed to convey his glory.”

Although the Spirit employs the highest human colors our language affords — analogies, metaphors, titles, types, parables, poetry, and more — the painting is of him whose riches the Spirit himself calls “unsearchable,” him whose love surpasses knowledge (and therefore language), him of whom the world itself is too small a library to contain all the books documenting his wondrous deeds (Ephesians 3:8, 19; John 21:25).

The Stage for Self-Revelation

Now, although Christ, the Transcendent, cannot be finally portrayed or singularly named, we should marvel that God planned to reveal the marvelous names of the Son we have in Scripture.

Although God gives us some names in a moment while others took centuries to unfold in redemptive history, God held all these names in mind before he architected the world — crafting reality and human experience to give context to his Son’s glorious revelation, not vice versa.

In other words, God didn’t work with the props that already existed and do the best he could. From the beginning, God created the stage of human experience to communicate his Son to us. Marriage, as one example, exists to communicate what his Son is for the Church; who he is as “Groom” (Ephesians 5:32).

Or consider that before he created the world, John tells us, God wrote a hardcover entitled, “The Book of Life of the Lamb Who Was Slain” (Revelation 13:8). God did not fumble about and think of books and lambs and blood and sacrifice after the world and sin already existed. These entered the world because, before the world existed, God freely chose to reveal his Son as the Slain Lamb.

The point is that God created the world in order for the eye of faith to behold the Lamb. This is his story, his world — the props on stage were constructed to testify to Jesus.

What’s in a Name?

Is this good news for you? You may wonder with the love-stricken Juliet, what’s in a name?

We could speak of God’s concern for his own name — which communicates his character, his reputation, his praise, his renown — which is at the heart of our salvation:

Thus says the Lord God: “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them.” (Ezekiel 36:22–23)

Yet Christ’s names, on the ground level, provide anchors to our souls, don’t they?

How many sheep have been comforted through the valley of the shadow of death by his name “the Good Shepherd”?

How many have had a cold breeze still their mad lusts at his title “Lord”?

How many in despair have revived from the one who is “our blessed hope” (Titus 2:13), or endured persecution with eyes fixed on “the Suffering Servant”?

How many deaths has pride died before “the True Vine”? Or how many times have our heads been lifted from the dust by our “Great High Priest”? Or our fears of falling away been quieted by considering “the Author and Perfector of our faith”? How many tempests has this “Prince of Peace” calmed? How many questions does “the Ruler of the Kings on earth” solve? How many regrets and dead hopes rouse at his name “the Beginning”?

The woman with the naked finger can cling to the Bridegroom. The unloved child can grip to “the One who loves us.” The mother who visits the grave of her child, to “the Resurrection and the Life.” The pastor tempted with envy, to “the Head of the Church.” The man or woman dissatisfied with living, to “the Bread of Life.” The one feeling all alone in the world, to the great “Friend.”

His names, above all other names, are dear to us, because he is dear to us. Each provides a different angle, a different snapshot of what we can’t yet behold face-to-face. None overstate Christ. None alone capture him. When we sit on the eternal shore and drink deeply of one, the ocean is never emptied. More always to see. More always to drink. More always to know and enjoy.

The tide ever rises. Our Savior will always remain better than our best thoughts of him.