Every year as summer approaches, the world hastens to embrace its warmth. Restaurant patios shake out their snowy dust, kids trickle back into parks, sunscreen appears in the checkout aisle, teenage lifeguards ready the pools, vacation ads become relentless — and the clothing departments transform overnight.

Oversized sweaters vanish; swimsuits now welcome shoppers. Spaghetti-strap dresses stand in place of trench coats, and short shorts overtake long pants. A flock of oddly named tops — crop tops, tank tops, halter tops, tube tops — sidelines the long-sleeve section. Weatherproof boots no longer necessary, strappy shoes (of questionable durability) line the shelves.

The first glimpses of summer often appear on in-store mannequins and online models. For Christian women, that glimpse often causes not only anticipation, but anxiety, as that nagging and perennial question emerges: How might we dress modestly?

Asking Questions Carefully

So, how might we dress modestly? Of course, true modesty springs from the heart’s disposition, not the closet’s contents, and extends well beyond the clothes we keep. As one author states, “The external signs of what we call ‘modest behavior’ — not bragging, not showing off your body too much — are ultimately signifiers of modesty, not modesty itself” (Shalit, A Return to Modesty, xxv).

At the same time, when the summer months roll around, a choice in clothing still stands between us and the sun. So, to answer the question, I often find myself asking another: Would it be wrong if I wore this? I imagine many women can relate. In the pursuit of modesty, we tend to censure our clothing for sin — which can be an immature approach. Though the Bible commands modest dress (1 Timothy 2:9–10), it doesn’t include a list of modesty dos and don’ts. Were we to hold up an outfit and ask Matthew or Peter to tell us yay or nay, godly or sinful, we may get little response. “Thou shalt not wear . . .” is, well, nowhere.

As a result of Scripture’s supposed silence, we can begin to define “modest” as “not too immodest” — not too much like the world. That’s when the tricky questions really start firing: Are these shorts too short? Is this shirt too revealing? Are these pants too tight? And so we sift through summer clothing racks, hunting for items that won’t look too much like the way the world dresses in warm weather.

As such, we place modesty’s meaning (and expression) at the mercy of the masses, whose sense of “too far” only seem to inch further away. The tendency is not unique to our age. As early as the second century, church father Tertullian addressed the issue, in a work suitably called On Modesty:

The modesty of which we are now beginning to treat is by this time grown so obsolete, that it is not the abjuration [the rejection] but the moderation [the restraint] of the appetites which modesty is believed to be; and he is held to be chaste enough who has not been too chaste. But let the world’s modesty see to itself. (2)

So long as society sets our standard of dress, “modesty” simply means being less immodest than others. But “let the world’s modesty see to itself,” advises Tertullian. How might we? Is there a way to leave the house knowing not just that we tried our best to avoid worldliness, but that we actively aspired to godliness? Don’t we long for more than looking good without feeling too bad?

Perhaps the apostle Paul can assist us. Though the Bible is quiet on wardrobe particulars, it is loud on wisdom principles. One in particular from 1 Corinthians may help us to wade into the summer with truth and grace, rather than imprudence or stress.

‘Is It Helpful?’

Throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul tackles a similarly sensitive topic for first-century Christians: food. What can they eat, and what can’t they eat? The Corinthian believers want to know. (Sounds familiar!)

“In what ways does the desire to wear what we want when we want rule over us?”

Though Paul responds to this tension multiple times, we’ll focus on what he says in chapters 6 and 10. In both places, he begins by quoting a maxim the Corinthians themselves held: “All things are lawful” (1 Corinthians 6:12; 10:23). In other words: No food is unclean. Because in the new covenant, “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person” (Matthew 15:11). So, what can they eat? In theory, anything.

Even so, that’s not the end of his response. Upon declaring all foods clean, he adds, “. . . but not all things are helpful.” Eating this or that food isn’t inherently sinful — but that doesn’t make it helpful. “Not wrong” doesn’t spell “automatically good.” Could the same be said of our clothing?

God’s word outlaws no outfits, but that doesn’t mean every outfit “helps” — benefits, profits, serves, encourages — ourselves and others. So, while the questions “Is it wrong?” and “Is it too [blank]?” tend to flounder around, maybe we can begin to anchor our dress in another direction: Is it helpful? Following Paul’s lead, let’s consider the helpfulness of our clothing choices in two areas.

1. Is it helpful for my soul?

Paul first mentions lawful-yet-unhelpful matters in 1 Corinthians 6. There, he equates helpfulness with what is personally profitable: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (verse 12). In other words, we “help” our faith along only so far as we flee anything that seeks to dominate us — govern us, control us, dictate us — apart from God. What our hangers hold is no exception.

Do we fidget over how to appear expensive, or fit, or even perfectly unkempt? How much hold does an approving or affectionate glance have on our heart? In what ways does the desire to wear what we want when we want rule over us? If someone we respect and admire were to question our swimsuit choices, would we mutter to ourselves about “legalism,” or would we walk away from the conversation open to the notion? “Inward examination,” writes Kristyn Getty,

should not make us fearful. It is necessary as we seek to fix our eyes on Christ. We don’t keep the course of steadfast faith accidentally. It’s a costly path that requires diligence, repentance, and the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work. (ESV Women’s Devotional Bible, 1551)

If we value Christ above everything, then we will gladly consider whether any one thing (even our favorite dress) is competing for our affection. And when we do, we’ll grow in godliness and increase in joy. Happy is the woman who has no reason to pass judgment on herself for the clothes she buys, for she knows that her purchases proceed from faith, not fashion (Romans 14:22–23).

2. Is it helpful for my neighbor?

But dressing “helpfully” reaches beyond what bolsters our own faith. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul expands the meaning to include what is loving toward others: “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor” (verses 23–24).

When it comes to our clothes, we have the same freedom as Paul’s first-century readers. Neither dietary laws nor dress codes bind new-covenant Christians, no matter the era. But also like the early church, we have the same responsibility to use that freedom helpfully. “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13). A proper response to our freedom in Christ, explains John Piper, is not simply to assert our freedoms.

No, that’s not the way a Christian talks. We ask, “Will it be helpful? Will it be profitable? Will other people benefit from my enjoyment of this?” . . . That’s the principle of love.

With great freedom comes great love toward God and neighbor.

But how does that love dress on Monday mornings and Saturday nights, in church and at the pool? We must answer for ourselves. What is helpful for me (as a Coloradan wife and mother of little ones, with long-standing battles against pride and envy) may differ from you. Only let both of us answer the question “How might we dress modestly?” in a way that lovingly, sincerely seeks others’ good (1 Timothy 1:5).

For pews and grocery stores alike brim with people God loves, people for whom Christ died (John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 8:11). Given the astounding lengths to which the Godhead went to save them, might we be willing to adjust the length of our shorts?

“The principle of helpfulness enables us to be serious about our clothes without being legalistic about our clothes.”

Perhaps we have a friend sensitive to her size. More than likely we have sisters in Christ, whether teenage girls or peers, looking to us as models for modest apparel. Remember likewise our brothers, who may battle against lust. Though never responsible for others’ sin, we should seek not to provoke it unnecessarily (1 Corinthians 8:13). Maybe a new acquaintance, an unbeliever, learns that we’re Christian, and because we dress so differently, this person wonders aloud about the God we say we serve — not just with our lips, but with how we look too.

From Heart to Head to Toe

If we’ll let it, the principle of helpfulness enables us to be serious about our clothes without being legalistic about our clothes. Humbly we stand before the mirror, asking God to reveal to each of us, as women with different temptations and contexts, how to dress helpfully.

The more we prize God’s gaze above the world’s, the more we will take every outfit captive to obey him (2 Corinthians 10:5). The desire to honor him with our hearts can’t help but reach from head to toe.

Together, may we become so enthralled with pleasing and proclaiming God that we care more about “good works” than fitting into current fashion (1 Timothy 2:9–10). Sometimes, perhaps even often, the two can coexist. But when they cannot, may we happily decline to dress like the times for modesty’s sake — which is to say: for God’s glory, our joy, and others’ good. Seen this way, “How might we dress modestly?” sounds a lot less like a nagging question, and a lot more like an invitation.

ABSTRACT: Seventeenth-century poet George Herbert once likened the experience of meditating on Scripture to inhaling a shooting star: the Bible disrupted his insides, shook his heart, and demanded visceral expression. So, as pastor of a rural country parish in southern England, he expounded Reformation doctrine and spirituality in what would come to be recognized as some of the best devotional poetry in the English language. A look at Herbert’s canon reveals why he felt the need to express scriptural doctrine in heartfelt verse, and it also illustrates some of the differences between Protestant and Catholic spirituality at the time. By expressing the theology of the Reformation in poetry, Herbert’s work adorns Protestant doctrine with an appropriately affectional response.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Betsy Howard, assistant professor of literature at Bethlehem College & Seminary, to explore the craft of George Herbert’s devotional poetry.

In addition to his two English poems probing the intricacies of the Bible, George Herbert (1593–1633) viscerally describes the experience of meditating on Scripture in his Latin poem “In S. Scripturas,” or “On Holy Scriptures”:

Alas, what spirit, and ardent whirlwindTurns my thoughtsOver in my heart of hearts?Sitting by the doors at eveningHave I inhaled a shooting star,What’s more, not knowing howTo lie wholly hidden in a foul lodging,Is she considering escape?Did I, in eating honey, eat the beeSwallowing her home with the queen?1

In “In S. Scripturas,” Herbert links meditation not with its cognate descriptor, ruminating, and the metaphor of a cow’s slow digestion through its four-part stomach, but with windstorms, burning balls of gas ricocheting with uncontainable kinetic energy through the body, and the festering pain of an esophageal bee sting. For Herbert, Scripture moves forcefully and uncomfortably in a place that is “imo pectore” or, as he describes elsewhere, “hart-deep.”2 Tornados, meteors, and beestings are Herbert’s metaphorical amplifications of Scripture’s ability to disrupt one’s spiritual insides, much like the declaration in the book of Hebrews that the word of God can pierce “to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow” (Hebrews 4:12).

Reformation Poet

Given our modern cultural stereotypes of seventeenth-century Reformation spirituality, we might find ourselves surprised by the bizarre, violent beauty and the ludicrous aptness of Herbert’s comparing an evening spent meditating on Scripture to the shock of accidentally sucking in a shooting star. While the degree of vitality and imaginative energy in Herbert’s verse finds, perhaps, few contemporary peers,3 the activity of moving from scriptural and doctrinal study to composing verse adaptations of Scripture and devotional poetry was popular, even commonplace, in early seventeenth-century English Reformation culture.

Exploring the explicit connections that Herbert draws between scriptural study, the affections, and eloquence, and then setting this see-feel-say chain within the complex devotional culture developing out of and in response to various strains of the Reformation, may help to explain the popularity of theologically oriented verse in Herbert’s day. Within a larger diverse culture of devotional poetry encouraged by the Reformers and the Counter-Reformers alike, seventeenth-century English Protestantism tethered understanding to feeling and expression in ways that fostered theology expounded in poetry.

“For an early-modern English Protestant, believing a biblical truth did not stop with intellectual assent.”

To clarify how a widespread flurry of devotional poetry might accompany the exegetical and catechetical labors of the English Reformation, this essay appeals to Herbert’s canon to demonstrate how early-modern English Protestants turned to poetry to expound and amplify the theological convictions that they rooted in their readings of Scripture. Then, to answer how divergent Catholic and Protestant confessional approaches impacted a widespread culture of devotional poetry, this essay turns to the subgenre of lacrimatic poetry — or the poetry of devout sorrow — to explore how Herbert articulates a theology of godly sorrow. Herbert’s poetry of tears is both wary of Counter-Reformation treatments of penitence and eager to supplant mannered depictions of weeping in devotional poetry with probing, visceral ones. He expands facets of Reformation soteriology by linking tears of contrition to tears shed over Christ’s passion to tears wept for the sins and sorrows of others.

Devotional Poetry as Theological Amplification

One of the English Reformation habits of heart and mind that encouraged the composition of devotional poetry was a conviction that orthodoxy leads to doxology. In other words, for an early-modern English Protestant, believing a biblical truth did not stop with intellectual assent; instead, the more attention one gave to teasing out the implications of a particular doctrine or a passage of Scripture, the more one expected to be moved, and this affective response — whether love and admiration or distress and conviction — found a consistent outlet in the composition of devotional poetry. This is how Herbert’s metaphor of the shooting star works in “In S. Scripturas”: the narrator has taken in some portion of Scripture, and it not only comes in forcefully but will, we expect, come out again with significant force. Thus, in the poem’s argument, meditation on Scripture provokes the affections toward utterance.

Heart-Soaked Speech

Herbert’s “In S. Scripturas” is a doxological celebration of Scripture’s affective power, just as chapter 7 of his didactic prose work The Country Parson encourages parsons to bring to their congregation “texts of Devotion,” which Herbert defines as “moving and ravishing texts, whereof the Scriptures are full.”4 Here, Herbert not only assumes that parishioners can and will inhale their own shooting stars in Scripture, but he also expects that his fellow parsons will have already been so moved. He insists that, when parsons preach, they “dip . . . and season . . . all our words and sentences in our hearts, . . . so that the auditors may plainly perceive that every word is hart-deep.”5 In his culinary metaphor, Herbert exhorts fellow parsons to marinate their words in their affections, knowing that our affections help us to adorn what is already beautiful so as to help others see its beauty.

“For Herbert, ‘hart-deep’ words reflected a genuine desire to share beautifully what he had found to be beautiful.”

For Herbert, however, speech flavored by the affections is the opposite of affectation or what we might call performative, mannered speech. As a professionally trained orator who left his position at Cambridge for the pastorate, Herbert was acutely sensitive to slipping into sounding merely witty, or learned, or eloquent. He took with him to the Bemerton pulpit of southern England his skills of imaginative precision and persuasion, and he wrestled openly in his verse with a fear that the beauty of his poetry might be merely rhetorical show. At the same time, Herbert shouldered the particular responsibility and reality of shepherding in a rural country parish, where he recognized that he would need to take greater pains “by all possible art” to help his parishioners cultivate their attention to Scripture.6 Kate Narveson identifies Herbert’s posthumous collection of English verse, titled The Temple by his friend Nicholas Ferrar, as “didactic devotional guide” within a “culture of practical divinity.”7 If Herbert’s Temple displays his unique elocutionary talent, it simultaneously showcases a pastoral desire to stir up the affections of others toward God. For Herbert, “hart-deep” words reflected a genuine desire to share beautifully what he had found to be beautiful.8

What then does such genuine, heart-soaked speech sound like? Although in The Country Parson Herbert is teaching on the genre of sermon-craft, marinated speech readily suggests rhetorical genres like poetry that linger, amplify, and expound. Fresh paraphrase, arresting comparisons, and resonating word pairs reframe even the most quotidian truths and underscore the most astounding. In The Temple, Herbert returns again and again to spiritual themes demanding further consideration. He has five poems titled “Affliction,” all of which wrestle with the question of suffering from a different angle; he also has three poems on Scripture, three on love, two on prayer, two on baptism, and two on the temper, not to mention the times that each of these themes reappears in other poems. In his poetry, Herbert makes a “study of himself,”9 laboring to explicate his own desires and motivations, his agonies and his joys, as a means of working Scripture’s claims into the woof and weave of his everyday life, making them square with the varied, uneven nature of his own experience.

Scripture in Paraphrase

Herbert’s spiritual-literary habit of writing and rewriting poems on passages of Scripture and doctrines derived from Scripture against the grid of his own experience evinces his participation in a larger early-modern English Protestant surge of scriptural studies, which extended well beyond family and private Bible reading or exegetical homilies into a wide range of Scripture-based activities.

Chana Bloch has described Herbert’s poetic style as “a kind of biblical shorthand,”10 and as Brian Hanson illuminates, Herbert was hardly unique in his habit of amplifying Scripture: alongside devotional poetry, the seventeenth century witnessed a proliferation of devotional prayer books and catechisms.11 Gary Kuchar describes entering a seventeenth-century Anglican church as an experience akin to entering a “scrapbook of scripture,” given the prominence of biblical texts on the walls and windows and in the daily liturgical reading from the Book of Common Prayer.12 Narveson roots the flourishing of devotional poetry, in particular, in the seventeenth-century Protestant treatment of the Psalms as “infinitely expandable” by elaboration and paraphrase, since they provide an example of how to “express and anatomize the godly heart.”13 Catholics and Protestants alike shared a preference for the popularly designated “seven penitential psalms” as “the foundation of domestic devotional culture,”14 particularly in new metrical renderings.15 Even Sir Francis Bacon published a “translation” (an adaptation) of these seven psalms.

The easy metric adaptability and the expressive vulnerability of the Psalms were not the only devotional models that scriptural study provided early-modern readers; Herbert’s “Holy Scriptures II” underscores Scripture’s syntopical mode, where “this verse marks that, and both do make a motion / Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie.”16 Early-modern Protestant devotional poetry, including a significant corpus by women poets, cultivated habits of comparative reading by joining and juxtaposing passages.17 Like the handmade Scripture harmonies produced by Herbert’s friends at Little Gidding,18 composing devotional poetry was often an activity of analysis and organization just as much as it was an exercise in spiritual reflection and expression. Its beauty, therefore, was often one of parataxis and collation.19

Poetry of Tears

As cataloged by Hannibal Hamlin, however, seventeenth-century English devotional poetry’s popularity was not limited to Reformation spiritual practices. The Catholic Counter-Reformation also placed a strong emphasis on a culture of devotion, including the composition, circulation, and reading of devotional poetry. While we could catalog the general differences between Catholic and Protestant English devotional poetry, it might be more helpful to pick one shared mode — the poetry of tears, which Kuchar identifies as a “literary agon” of the day — and use it to distinguish between Counter-Reformation impulses and Protestant ones.20 We can then assess how Herbert engages this popular (and theologically contested) subgenre as he explores the characteristics of godly sorrow.

Kinds of ‘Devout Sorrow’

While the connection between tears and contrition was common and significant both to Catholic and Protestant devotional traditions in the seventeenth century, Richard Strier distinguishes two important differences between the Catholic and Protestant traditions as it relates to tears’ role in repentance: early-modern Catholicism approached repentance as a multiple-step process, including contrition, confession to a priest, and satisfaction.21 Strier clarifies, and Hanson corroborates, that Protestant traditions expected contrition and its visible tears as integral to repentance, but they understood such tears to be the fruit of forgiveness rather than its cause.22 Hamlin summarizes the distinction: both seventeenth-century Counter-Reformation and Protestant theological traditions shared practices of penitential devotion, including rewriting, reciting, and adapting the penitential psalms, but only Catholic practices of penitence required further acts of penance.23 As a result, in devotional verse, Counter-Reformation depictions of weeping are often mannered or stylized, as seen in the poetry of Herbert’s Catholic contemporary Richard Crashaw, as distinct from a rawness and “introspective intensity” in Protestant verse employed to communicate what Barbara Lewalski identifies as a markedly affective response to God’s work in the heart.24

In addition to the penitential verse that often foregrounded the activity of weeping, Kuchar identifies a shared Protestant and Catholic devotional tradition of devout sorrowing over Christ’s passion and his agony, what he calls the “compassio” — one in which the weeper suffers in remembering Christ’s suffering.25 Herbert’s poetry of tears reflects Kuchar’s first two modes of devotional sorrow: penitential and compassio sorrow. Herbert’s “Grief” and the weeper in “The Thanksgiving,” who responds to Christ’s tears in “The Sacrifice,” for example, display penitential tears as the fruit of genuine repentance that then overflow in remembrance of Christ’s suffering. But Herbert’s canon offers us a distinct third category of devout sorrow — a weeping over the sin and suffering of others, as demonstrated in Herbert’s “Church-Rents and Schisms.” I identify these tears on behalf of others as second kind of compassio, which is at its heart an evangelistic compassion — modeled after God’s grieving for us, whether Christ’s in “The Sacrifice” or the Holy Spirit’s in “Ephesians 4:30,” and rooted in Herbert’s understanding of genuine love as a concern for another’s holiness.

In his penitential mode, in his compassio meditations, and then in his compassionate tears, Herbert presents crying as a form of labor doomed, in part, to the failure of insufficiency. Nonetheless, across his poems, he suggests the real possibility of spiritual gain by means of tears in the midst of and even because of their insufficiency. If tears cannot be proportional to that which there is to grieve, what does the apparent failure of tears in Herbert teach us? In presenting the insufficiency of our tears, Herbert recalibrates devotional expectations for the “literature of tears” in Protestant practice by illuminating how tears of contrition, tears of compassio for Christ, and tears of compassion for others all transform the weepers, drawing them closer to Christ in an increased knowledge of self, an increased gratitude for Christ’s atoning death, and an increased imitation of Christ.

Sorrow over Self

If the knowledge of one’s sin is ever expanding, such a theological framework demands an ever-increasing degree and scope of mourning over sin. No matter the amount of tears, Herbert’s logic runs, our sins are more, such that we never grieve proportionately to our offenses. That one weeps more for one’s sins, nevertheless, is perceived as spiritual growth. It is much like the experience of sitting for one’s doctoral exams: the more one studies, the more one is acutely aware of how little one knows, but this sense of an increasing lack of knowledge over time quantitatively translates to more knowledge than any earlier moment.

“That one weeps more for one’s sins is perceived as spiritual growth and increased self-knowledge.”

These ever-increasing tears of contrition are the tears of “Grief,” in which Herbert modifies the pathetic fallacy: nature does not weep for him or his sins; instead, Herbert’s narrator wishes he could harness the natural world to augment or supplement his own tears. Because “Grief” pits tears and what Kuchar calls their “raw sincerity” against mannered speech as a test of genuine contrition, it is not to be lost on us that the narrator wishes to supplement his tears with other forms of “raw” water: springs, clouds, rain.26 The narrator’s crying is a primordial moment summoning the undistinguished watery chaos before creation; Herbert’s narrator wishes to “suck” into his veins “all the wat’ry things / That nature hath produc’d.”27 Herbert demands an absurd amount of water, reflecting a high degree of the narrator’s self-knowledge: he needs ocean-faucets for eyes.

Sorrow over Christ

A devotional compassio mode, meanwhile, is the epistemological counterweight to an ever-increasing sense of one’s own sorry state — to know one’s sins better is to come to better see the sufferings of Christ. As the covering of our sins is made possible only by the sufferings of Christ, any meditation on one’s own sins is always opportunity to weep for the weeping Christ. As John Drury describes, Christ’s suffering for Herbert is a double “epiphany”: that Christ suffered is inextricably bound up with why Christ suffered.28 Christ cries out in “The Sacrifice” to the disciples, “Weep not, dear friends, since I for both have wept / When all my tears were blood, the while you slept: / Your tears for your own fortunes should be kept: / Was ever grief like mine?”29 The poem’s dominant epiphany is that Christ has suffered. But “The Thanksgiving” is quick to pair Christ’s agony with its cause — which then translates to more tears for the narrator:

O King of grief! (a title strange, yet true,     To thee of all kings only due)O King of wounds! how shall I grieve for thee,     Who in all grief preventest me?Shall I weep blood? why, thou hast wept such store     That all thy body was one door.30

Beyond the arresting image of Christ depicted as a huge bloody, weeping eye, the increased agony of the weeper also registers strongly in the stanza. Here Herbert captures the contradiction of Christ’s passion: if our reckoning with our sins doesn’t lead to despair, it inevitably leads to relief as meditation on our sins is transformed into gratitude for Christ’s suffering. Simultaneously, however, our own discomfort increases, for compassio easily flows out of a contrition that recognizes Christ’s suffering as a result of our sinning.31

Sorrow over Others

The sufferings of Christ increase our tears shed for him, but Herbert returns to Christ’s tears as yet a final model for our own devotional sorrow. In his depiction of Christ’s passion, Herbert’s “The Sacrifice” introduces a Christ who weeps not only for himself and his own suffering, but also for us, and therefore he creates a final category of devout sorrow: compassion for a sinner or sufferer for whom one does not bear any culpability. “The Sacrifice” announces that Christ “has wept” for both himself and the disciples. Beyond the contrite narrator-sinner weeping, Christ figures as the most prominent weeper in Herbert’s poems. Because Christ does not sin, Herbert makes clear that devout sorrow extends beyond sorrowing for our own sin. Christ’s suffering on our behalf is closely tied to his sorrowing for our sins and our state — it is a compassionate, personal weeping, like Rachel weeping for her children who are no more.

Herbert’s Christ in “The Sacrifice” echoes the grieving Holy Spirit in his poem “Ephesians 4:30,” where Herbert’s narrator grounds his grief in the grief of the Holy Spirit. The compassionate grieving of God for him motivates him to grieve his sin, and thus God’s compassion for our sin and our state provokes the grieving of contrition and, in turn, the compassio: “Then weep mine eyes, the God of love doth grieve: / Weep foolish heart, / And weeping live.”32 Herbert moves from God’s grieving for him to his acknowledgement that such sorrow is beyond his nature: “since still to wail / Nature denies; / And flesh would fail” to weep enough for his sin. He finds his resolution, therefore, in the blood/tears of Christ in a contrition that lingers in the compassio mode: “Lord, pardon, for thy son makes good / My want of tears with store of blood.”

The compassion of Christ for sufferers and sinners, in turn, creates the model for Herbert’s weeping narrator in “Church-rents and schisms.” Herbert’s narrator cries for the global church in her decline, personalizing the crisis by personifying church as mother:

O Mother dear and kindWhere shall I get me eyes enough to weep,As many eyes as stars? . . .. . . would at least I might     With these two poor ones lick up all the dew,     Which falls by night, and pour it out for you!33

Herbert’s speaker mourns for a bickering church as Jeremiah weeps for the Israelites: “Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (Jeremiah 9:1). The tears in Herbert’s poetry display a strong ethos of sorrowing over sin and suffering — both one’s own and another’s. Because the diverse occasions to sorrow and the degrees of human sorrow are seemingly endless, so too Herbert’s call for tears without end.

But in the same way that Herbert’s metaphors turn to the natural world that God has made to augment insufficient tears, Herbert’s poems assert that God himself will provide a stock of more tears in the dew that comes like new mercies in the morning. Herbert’s poetry of devout sorrow offers a twofold consolation model. On the one hand, his sorrowing over sins repeatedly resolves itself by pivoting from a greater knowledge of one’s sins to meditations on Christ’s passion, with ever-increasing gratitude because Christ’s death cancels all manner and degree of sin. But in Herbert’s poetry of tears, Christ is not only our Savior; he is also a model to us. If Christ has wept for us, so we also are to weep for ourselves and for one another.

Among his contemporaries, Herbert weighs in on the theological meaning of tears by illustrating how tears evidence that contrition is a fruit of repentance prompted by the work of the Holy Spirit. In Herbert’s poetry, the tears shed in remembrance of Christ’s passion highlight his suffering for our sins such that our own tears need not be those of despair but of gratitude. As Christ weeps for us, Herbert also finds it fitting that Christians weep for others in their sin and suffering.

Pastor and poet, George Herbert participated in an early-modern English Reformation theological culture that understood devotional poetry as an appropriate, even expected, affective response to meditating on Scripture. Poetry provided for Herbert both a genre in which to anatomize his own motives and affections as well as a platform to amplify Christ’s death on his behalf and God’s (often inscrutable) work. By leaving a collection of his poetry at his death to Nicholas Ferrar for potential publication, Herbert recast his poems of private devotion as those of pedagogical devotion, provoking others to engage heart-deep with Scripture and Scripture’s God.

Hebrews 13 is not mainly about leadership, even though verse 7 says to imitate your leaders, and verse 17 says to obey and gladden your leaders, and verse 24 says to greet your leaders. This chapter is mainly about a radical Christian way of life, which is purchased by Jesus Christ through his suffering, and then worked out through us by God the Father through Christ.

Nevertheless, as much as any other chapter in the New Testament, Hebrews 13 relates that radical Christian way of life to the leadership of the church. So, in an unusual way, this chapter gives me the opportunity to summon you, South Cities Church, to this radical Christian way of life, and to draw attention to the gift that you and I have received for 35 years in David Livingston’s pastoral leadership.

Let me draw your attention to the radical Christian way of life in this chapter, and then we’ll focus on how it was purchased for us by Jesus and how it is worked out through us by God the Father through Jesus. Then we’ll close with a look at how leadership in the church relates to all of that, as we give thanks for God’s faithfulness to us and to David and Karin Livingston, in 52 years of pastoral ministry.

Four Marks of Radical Christian Living

The first six verses of the chapter give some examples of this radical Christian way of living. They address brotherly love, hospitality, compassion for imprisoned Christians, marital fidelity, and the dangers of the love of money.

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have. (Hebrews 13:1–5)

So, the first and overarching command is to keep on loving each other in the Christian community (v. 1). Then he gives four examples of what love looks like.

First, open your homes to Christians in need (v. 2). This command is not mainly about friends hanging out; it is mainly about Christians being driven out of certain areas into others and having no place to stay. They need brothers and sisters to open their homes, lest they sleep on the streets. You can tell that this verse is mainly about strangers because it says you might wind up “entertain[ing] angels unawares.” If you were not aware that it was an angel, clearly you didn’t know the person. The people you know are not angels. They are people you don’t know, which is one reason I call it a radical way of life.

Second, when fellow Christians are arrested and put in prison, be courageous enough to go visit them and supply what they need, even if you risk getting in trouble (v. 3).

Third, never commit adultery, and never commit fornication (v. 4). Notice how at the end of this verse both kinds of sexual immorality are mentioned: “God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” In other words, sexual immorality before marriage and in marriage is not only about your own personal purity before God, but also about being a loving person toward others.

“Jesus died to provide not only pardon for sins, but also power to stop sinning and start loving.”

We are still under the banner of verse 1. It is never, ever loving to sleep with somebody who is not your spouse. It doesn’t matter how good it feels. If you, as a man, sleep with a woman who is not your spouse, you are hating her. And if you, as a woman, yield to a man who is not your spouse, you are hating him. I say that because, as you can see at the end of verse 4, you are confirming the other person in the path of God’s judgment. Only sexual purity is an act of love, no matter how “loving” sexual immorality feels.

And fourth, keep your life free from the love of money (v. 5). Covetousness and greed are great love-killers. As soon as money-craving takes over your heart, love for people moves to the back burner (at best). Money and God, Jesus said, cannot both be your God (Matthew 6:24). And when God is not your God, you can’t love people — not in a way that honors God and does people good forever.

So, there’s a glimpse of the radical Christian life that Hebrews 13 is calling for: persevering, sacrificial love expressed in open, welcoming homes; compassion for persecuted, imprisoned Christians; sexual purity inside and outside marriage; and putting greed to death so that the love of money does not get in the way of loving people.

Radical Through and Through

There are several other references to this radical Christian life. Notice verses 12–13: “Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.” That’s a picture of a lifestyle of risk-taking. Going “outside the camp” means going outside the places we feel secure. Christians move toward need, not comfort. And “bear[ing] the reproach he endured” means that we are willing to follow Jesus into the very circumstances where we know people will not like us.

Verses 15–16 give us another look at the radical Christian life for which this chapter calls:

Through [Christ] then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

So, there are two kinds of sacrifices we are called to make: the sacrifice of lips in praise to God (v. 15) and the sacrifice of life in practical service as we seek to meet needs (v. 16). When this passage says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God,” we know that this “doing good” is the same as what we saw in verses 1–5 — namely, love, hospitality, prison ministry, not defrauding anyone sexually, freedom from greed.

Let’s look at one last reference in the chapter to this radical Christian life: verses 20–21. It’s part of the closing benediction, which says, “May God . . . equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” Doing God’s will — namely, doing what is pleasing in his sight — is the aim of the Christian life.

So, that’s the radical Christian way of life Hebrews 13 calls for: doing God’s will, pleasing him (v. 21); doing good, sharing what you have as a kind of sacrifice to God, praising him at all times (vv. 15–16); and persevering love, open homes, compassion for prisoners, sexual fidelity, and freedom from the love of money (vv. 1–5).

Purchased for Us

We turn now to the origin of such a way of life. Where does it come from? I suggested it was purchased for us by Jesus and worked out through us by God the Father through Jesus. Where do I see that? First, consider verses 9–12:

Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

The “diverse and strange teachings” of verse 9 are tempting Christians to go back to Jewish sacrifices and to get strength from eating meat that has been sacrificed on a Jewish altar, the remains burned outside the camp. To this the writer says, “No!” As verse 9 puts it, we will be strengthened by grace, not foods. Then he compares Christ to the old sacrifices to show where the power for our sanctification — for this new way of life — comes from. Verse 12: “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.”

Jesus has taken the place of all animal sacrifices. His blood replaces and brings to an end all blood-shedding as a way of strengthening or purifying God’s people. From now on, all our strength comes from the grace purchased by Jesus’s sacrifice.

And notice in verse 12 precisely what he suffered to achieve: “Jesus suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.” In other words, this radical, sanctified way of living that we have seen in Hebrews 13 was purchased for us by the blood of Jesus. Jesus died to provide not only pardon for sins, but also power to stop sinning and start loving.

It’s power for sanctification, power for the radical Christian life that Hebrews 13 describes. God’s power for this kind of life flows to us because the death of Jesus removes the barriers of guilt and wrath. When they are gone, omnipotent grace flows out to help us live this life.

Worked Out Through Us

I said this life was not only purchased for us by Jesus, but also worked out through us by God the Father through Jesus. You can see this fact in the chapter’s beautiful benediction, verses 20–21, which we partially read before:

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

The radical Christian life of Hebrews 13 is not only purchased by Jesus; it is worked out through us by God the Father through Jesus. We see this twice in verse 21: he “equip[s us] with everything good that [we] may do his will,” and he “work[s] in us that which is pleasing in his sight.” This is how it happens. We don’t just wind up our willpower and become radical risk-takers. It’s a gift. It’s a miracle. God works in us and through us.

And one of the ways he does this work is by securing all his promises for us in Christ. How shall we be freed from the love of money? How shall we be freed from the deceitful promise of sexual sins? How shall we have the courage to visit the prison and open our homes and take the risks of love? How can we have contentment in God that frees us for risk-taking love? Look back at verses 5–6: “Be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’”

“We break the back of sin’s deceitful promises by believing the superior promises of God.”

We break the back of sin’s deceitful promises by believing the superior promises of God, who says, “I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you. I’ll always help you. Don’t be afraid of strangers, prisons, a lifetime of sexual chastity, or the scarcity of money. Don’t be afraid to go outside the camp. Don’t be afraid. Trust me. Look to the blood of Jesus, and realize how committed I am to you! I will keep my promises.”

Imitate the Faith of Past Leaders

We have seen the radical Christian life Hebrews 13 calls for, and we’ve seen the way Christ purchased this radical, holy life by his blood, alongside the way the Father works it in us through Christ by his superior promises. Now we look, finally, at how leadership in the church relates to all of this, as we give thanks for God’s faithfulness to us and to David and Karin, through 52 years of pastoral ministry. Three times, the writer calls us to think about our leaders in the church.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:7–8)

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

Greet all your leaders and all the saints. (Hebrews 13:24)

The “leaders” of verse 7 are leaders of the past. You can see this in the words remember (your leaders), spoke (to you), and outcome (of their way of life). Evidently, significant leaders had passed off the scene. They had spoken the word of God. They had modeled a life of faith.

The way these leaders relate to this radical Christian life of love is that they spoke it and they lived it. They spoke the word of God — the will of God and the work of God in Christ. And they lived a life of faith in God’s promises. This is Christian leadership: preach the word, and practice what you preach. Then the job of the church is to listen to the word, to look at the life, and to imitate the faith. After 52 years of pastoral leadership in three churches, David Livingston never brought any reproach on the gospel. He has spoken it, and he has lived it, and many of us have been inspired to imitate it.

I think the reason this word about leaders in verse 7 is followed by verse 8, which says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” is because the writer wants us to realize that even though those beloved leaders are gone, Jesus is not gone. The Jesus those leaders trusted — the Jesus that enabled them to live the radical life of risk-taking love — is the same Jesus who is alive and at work in the church now. The turnover of leadership is never a turnover of lordship. He is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Gladden the Hearts of Present Leaders

But the leaders in verse 17 are present, not past: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” The basic idea is this: when your leaders — your elders — bring forward a proposal, a vision, a plan, let your inner response be support, not suspicion.

We know that all the biblical relationships of authority and submission are not absolute. Government and citizen, husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant, pastors and people — all of these imply real authority, but it is not absolute. Allegiance to Jesus is always greater than allegiance to any human authority. Nevertheless, God has put in place these authority structures for the good of his people and the good of the world. In a healthy church, the elders are wise and loving shepherd-leaders, and the people are glad supporters of that leadership.

But the really unusual thing about verse 17 is the second half: “Let [the leaders] do this [watch-care over your souls] with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” In other words, your job as a church is to gladden the hearts of your pastors and elders. Do all you reasonably can to make the ministry of your pastors a happy ministry. Why? Because a sullen pastor, a groaning pastor, will be of no advantage to you.

“If you seek the gladness of your pastors, you seek the health of your own souls.”

Which has this amazing implication: If a pastor does not find his own delight in serving his people, he will be of no advantage to them, and he will not be loving them. To love them is to delight in serving them. Unhappy pastors make unhealthy churches. This means that if the people would be a happy and healthy people — if they would flourish in this radical, risk-taking life — they must seek the joy of their leaders. If you seek the gladness of your pastors, you seek the health of your own souls.

Over Fifty Years Faithful

So, David, thank you for speaking the word of God to your people — to Olivet and to Elkhorn, to Bethlehem and to South Cities Church, in season and out of season, to groups large and small. Thank you that the outcome of your faith has been 52 years of ministry unsullied by moral failure. You have never brought disrepute on the people of God. Your stability and constancy in Christ are worthy of imitation.

And thank you for being a glad pastor, a happy partner in the work. We were on the same pastoral team at Bethlehem for 26 years. We have been friends for almost 50 years. You have been a rock of happy constancy for me in the ups and downs. You have made me healthier in the ministry and in my marriage, and you have been a glad shepherd of a healthy South Cities Church from the beginning. We thank you.

The other text about leaders in this chapter is verse 24, which simply says, “Greet all your leaders.” You might say that this is what this day is for — to greet you and Karin and to say, “Well done.”