http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16557536/what-does-justification-mean
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The Safest Man for Women: A Guide Toward Sexual Purity
I can remember exactly where I was sitting, wrestling with guilt and shame and regret over failed relationships and sexual sin, wondering if I would ever overcome my broken history, when a friend recited Micah 7:8–9 from memory:
Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise;when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him,until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me.He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.
God pleads my cause. The one I betrayed kneeled down to appeal for me. His gavel landed, not on me, but on his Son. Having lived and hidden in darkness, I found a home in the light. The purity I thought I had lost was now suddenly and undeservedly possible.
As we raise up younger men in the church, and encourage them toward becoming men of God, how can we call them into the kind of freedom and purity God gave me in Christ?
Set an Example in Purity
Of course, raising up godly men is about far more than sexual purity. A man of God is more than his self-control in dating relationships. He’s more than his last Internet accountability report — far more. When grace grips a man, it more than curbs his lust for porn; it lights fires for good under every area of his life. And so, young men need strong, dynamic, ambitious pictures of what they might become in Christ.
Fortunately, God gives us plenty of great lessons on manhood in his word. First Timothy 4:12 has become one especially concise and compelling picture for me:
Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
The apostle Paul gives Timothy, his son in the faith, five cues for spiritual growth and development. The areas are not exclusive to men, but they are each critical for godly men. Each of those five words is a battlefield to be won, and each can become its own stronghold for holiness. Do this man’s conversations consistently say he belongs to God? Does his lifestyle set him apart from the unbelieving? Is he a man of surprising and sacrificial love? Does he fight for faith in the trenches of temptation and doubt? Is he pure?
In previous articles, we looked more closely at the first four — speech, conduct, love, and faith. Here we turn to purity, the area that may receive the most attention in young men’s discipleship (often for good reason), and yet often in ways that miss the heart of Christian purity.
In All Purity
First, what kind of purity did the apostle have in mind? The only other use of this Greek word in the New Testament — agneia — comes just one chapter later in the same letter:
Encourage [an older man] as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. (1 Timothy 5:1–2)
This suggests the purity Paul had in mind was sexual purity — a broad and consistent holiness that marks all of Timothy’s relationships with his sisters in Christ. Purity is bigger and wider than personal sexual morality, but sex and sexuality (then and certainly now) play a major role in setting followers of Christ apart from the world. Man of God, as you encourage younger women in the church, do so with purity. Don’t talk, behave, or daydream in ways that make them vulnerable to serve your lusts. Put to death sexual immorality within you (Colossians 3:5). Flee from sexual temptation (1 Corinthians 6:18). Treat young women with the respect and concern with which you would treat your own sisters — because they are (Matthew 12:50).
“Be the safest man on earth for a young woman to meet.”
And not just purity, Timothy, but all purity. Don’t treat women just slightly better than men in the world do, but wholly differently. When other men flirt with ambiguous messages and signals, be surprisingly clear and honest. When other men secretly gratify their lusts, make moments alone a training ground for self-control. When other men dishonor themselves and others through sexual sin, be a man who loves to honor and protect women. Don’t look for the lowest bar to crawl over, but be ambitiously pure — love any women God has put in your life with all purity. Be the safest man on earth for a young woman to meet.
‘Husband of One Wife’
Earlier in his letter to the younger Timothy, the apostle gives at least one other glimpse into how godly men relate to sex and sexuality.
When he names qualifications for pastor-elders, the majority of the list simply pictures a normal godly man, whether he ever serves in church office or not. He must be “sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, . . . not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money” (1 Timothy 3:2–3). These qualities mark every mature man who follows Jesus. And according to that same list, such a man is also “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2).
Now, Paul did not mean that an elder could not be single. Paul himself was unmarried, after all, and he was not only an elder, but an apostle. No, more fundamentally, this is a way of saying men of God are to be sexually pure. They are men, whether married or not, who refuse to indulge themselves sexually (in thought or action or suggestion) with any woman but their wife. “The husband of one wife” (literally, “one-woman man”) is a concise way of saying, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4).
So, do our thoughts and hands and clicks honor the spiritual wonder and purity of marriage? Or, when asked by God himself to stand guard along the walls around the marriage bed, have we instead gone missing? Worse, have we turned and fired the arrows he gave us against him and the women he has made? Have we indulged lustful thoughts, lengthy glances, wicked searches, sensual touching, sexual impatience, and self-gratification? Have we used God’s gift of sex to assault the hands that gave it?
Purity Tells the Story
Why would men of God be “the husband of one wife”? Because God has made marriage and sex an unusually compelling way of drawing attention to Christ and his love for his bride, the church.
It’s not the only way, by any means. Jesus himself never married. And single believers in Jesus often experience more of Jesus than married believers do (1 Corinthians 7:35). But from the beginning, God has joined one man with one woman, for one lifetime, to tell the world physically and relationally (though certainly imperfectly) about the depth and duration of his love for us (Ephesians 5:31–32). The fire in a new husband’s eyes is a flicker of the roaring flames in heaven. The brilliance of a bride, wrapped and radiant in white, is a glimmer of what it means for the church to be chosen, wooed, won, and made pure.
And so how men (and women!) treat sex and sexuality, whether married or not, sheds light on Christ for all to see, or obscures and slanders him. The world has found countless ways to distort, abuse, and vandalize God’s masterpiece, but the added darkness has served to make true purity a brighter and clearer picture of reality. Few phenomena are more spiritually revealing and provocative today than a man who consistently denies his sinful flesh and makes war against sexual temptation. It will make him an alien in the eyes of the world — and a king in the eyes that matter most.
Purity for Sexual Failures
What if we’ve already failed sexually? What if we’ve already spurned purity and fired our arrows back at God? Have we been dishonorably discharged and forever branded with our worst thoughts and actions? Is sexual purity possible for sexual failures?
It is — and I should know. Pornography and sexual immorality plagued me for years, even after coming to know Jesus. I know what it looks like to fire arrows at God because I was often pointing the bow. Sexual repentance, to my shame, was a decade-long war. I indulged desires outside of marriage that were meant to lead me to a bride. I flirted and dodged and disappeared in dating. I dishonored sisters in Christ, women whom Jesus had bought with his blood and who had entrusted themselves to me, a brother. With my thoughts and hands and clicks, I slandered the Lion of Judah and concealed his wondrous cross. I squandered opportunity after opportunity to be the man I knew God wanted me to be.
But God pled my cause. He brought me out into the light. After I had fired my arrows against him, he intervened and took my thorns, my nails, my wrath. “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience” (1 Timothy 1:16). By his grace, he forgave what I had done, and by that same grace, he trained my hands, my thoughts, my words for good. He made a once impure man pure — not perfectly, but genuinely.
“Stories of sexual brokenness have their own way of honoring the worth of Christ and his cross.”
Stories of sexual brokenness have their own way of honoring the worth of Christ and his cross. God wired sexual purity and marital fidelity to sing the truth about Jesus — a soaring and mesmerizing melody — but he sings something just as captivating over harlots, like me, who leave our sexual sin for him.
Pure Men Move Toward Women
One more lesson from Paul’s counsel to Timothy: setting an example in sexual purity does not mean avoiding women in the church. Notice the posture in his charge to the younger man: “Encourage . . . younger women as sisters, in all purity” (1 Timothy 5:1–2).
He could have said, “Play it safe and just keep your distance,” but instead he says, “Encourage younger women as sisters” — care for them like you would if they grew up next to you. Move toward them, Timothy. Look for ways to give courage — to strengthen their hearts in the Lord and their resolves to love. The picture here is the opposite of the kind of divide that can emerge between men and women in churches and ministries. To be sure, there may be certain women to avoid (Proverbs 5:3–8). Generally speaking, however, men of God do not sidestep their sisters in Christ, but engage and care for them in all purity. In other words, they treat women like Jesus did.
Safest Man for Women
When you stop to look, Jesus spends a surprising amount of time caring specifically and personally for women — in a day when these kinds of interactions were more socially scandalous. Even the disciples marveled at how he would stop and talk to women (John 4:27).
Listen to the warmth and tenderness in Jesus’s voice when a seriously ill woman grabs the edge of his garment: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace” (Luke 8:48). When he finds the woman at the well, with her deeply broken and painful history, he doesn’t look the other way or scramble to another well, but offers to refresh and restore her soul: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10).
When he saw the woman horribly disabled by a demon, he “called her over and said to her, ‘Woman, you are freed from your disability.’ And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God” (Luke 13:12–13). He reached out and touched her, in all purity, because that’s what a good brother would have done. When he saw a mother grieving over the death of her son, he drew near to her broken heart. “He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep’” (Luke 7:13).
And when he rose from the grave, what was the first name on his death-conquering lips? “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary’” (John 20:16). This is the truest, most manly picture of purity the world has ever seen — a man abstaining not from his sisters, but from mistreating them or neglecting their needs. A man who consistently and profoundly encouraged women in all purity.
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Christian Unity in Three Steps
Audio Transcript
Happy Friday and welcome back. Pastor John is back in the studio with us to talk about Christian unity. We love Christian unity. We aspire for more Christian unity. But Christian unity is not uniformity. Differences exist among believers. So Christian unity gets complex, leading to questions like this one today on 1 Peter 3:8.
Here’s the email: “Hello, Pastor John! My name is Charlotte, and I live in Yorkshire, England. My question for you has puzzled me for years. In 1 Peter 3:8, Peter urges the exiled Christians to have ‘unity of mind.’” That’s Peter’s exact phrase. “I once heard a preacher say that this ‘unity of mind’ does not, however, mean uniformity. Since then, I’ve struggled to understand the difference. We have basic creeds and confessions that we must all agree on as the very foundations of Christianity. Beliefs otherwise would be heretical. How then can we not have uniformity? What is this ‘unity of mind’? Peter didn’t insert a clause that left this to church leaders only to pursue. So how does the individual Christian pursue this?”
I’ve often shared this perplexity about how unified our convictions, preferences, and opinions as Christians should be. But I’ve gotten help, especially in recent years, by distinguishing between, on the one hand, passages that deal with unified convictions or views of God, Christ, or salvation and, on the other hand, passages that deal with a unified mindset. We don’t have a better English word for this Greek idea, so we might call it a unified attitude set or disposition.
I feel warranted in making that distinction not only because there are some peculiar Greek words that Paul uses for mindset that are different, say, from theological convictions, but also because he actually deals with differences of conviction that Christians have without pushing them toward unanimity of conviction (for example, in Romans 14). Rather, he pushes them toward unanimity in a certain mindset about how to handle the differences.
Unity of Understanding
Let me try to illustrate what I mean about the difference between a theological conviction, on the one hand, and unified mindset, on the other hand. For example, in Ephesians 4:11–13, it says that Christ gave pastors and teachers to the church “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up of the body of Christ, until [this is where it’s all supposed to be moving] we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.”
So that’s what I’m referring to when I say that the Bible really does urge us toward seeking theological, biblical unity, a unified understanding of God, and Christ, and man, and salvation, and how to live the Christian life. I think the best strategy for moving toward that goal is to humbly and faithfully immerse ourselves in the Bible, seeking to understand it with all the resources — historically, devotionally, academically — that we can.
And then as we grow, and speak, and preach, and teach, and write, and live that truth, as we see it more clearly, we pray earnestly that God would bring more and more people into a true understanding of his word.
Unity of Mindset
But I don’t think that’s what Peter is referring to in 1 Peter 3:8, which is what Charlotte asks about. In 1 Peter 3:8, and in most places in the New Testament which refer to being “of one mind,” the idea is not mainly to urge us toward identical convictions, as good as that is, but toward a common, unified mindset or attitude.
Here we bump into those peculiar Greek words that I mentioned earlier. There’s this amazing Greek word that takes on lots of meanings when it combines with different prefixes. For the few Greek readers who listen to us, the stem I’m talking about is phron, like phroneō or phrones. The basic idea that phron conveys is “mindset,” or we could say “attitude set,” since we don’t have a word for it in English. It’s not just a way of thinking, but a combined way of thinking and feeling, or a combination of conviction and disposition.
For example, here are some of those combinations where the meaning is changed when you put the prefix on the front:
homophrones, oneness of mindset
tapeinophrones, lowly mindset
kataphrones, contrary mindset
aphrones, foolish mindset
huperphrones, self-exalting mindset
paraphrones, insane mindset
hupsēlophrones, a hearty mindsetIt’s amazing, that word. It does amazing service in the New Testament when talking about how we think and feel. Now, the point is simply to say that this stem phrones or phroneō is not mainly referring to ideas or viewpoints. It’s mainly referring to particular dispositions, or mindsets, or attitudes.
Humble, Not Self-Exalting
Now here we are in 1 Peter 3:8, which reads like this: “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind” — homophrones: one mindset, a unified, similar mindset. And then he goes on, saying, “. . . sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” — which is tapeinophrones. Homophrones, unity of mindset, is at the beginning of the list, and tapeinophrones, humble mindset, is at the end.
So Peter gives a list of five things that Christians are to have, and the list begins with a unified mindset, and it ends with a humble mindset. My understanding is that the humble mindset defines what the unified mindset is supposed to be: be unified in the humble mindset that all Christians should have.
I feel especially confirmed in putting those two together, the word at the front and the word at the back of the list, because we find an amazingly similar combination of words in Romans 12:16. The ESV says, “Live in harmony with one another.” Literally, it says, “Be of the same mindset [homophrones] toward each other.” And then he explains, “Do not be haughty [that is, don’t have a self-exalting mindset, huperephronentes], but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.”
“The call to unity of mind is defined by Paul and by Peter as a humble mindset, not a self-exalting mindset.”
Or here’s another way of saying it: “Don’t have a self-exalting mindset; have a humble mindset” — which is the same cluster of thoughts that we had in 1 Peter 3:8. So the call to unity of mind is defined by Paul and by Peter as a humble mindset, not a self-exalting mindset.
Sacrificial, Not Self-Serving
Then probably the most important passage of all in the New Testament on the unity of mind or mindset is Philippians 2:2–5. It’s a remarkable sequence of thought. Paul says, “Complete my joy by being of the same mind [that is, having the same mindset], having the same love [which defines the mindset as a loving one], being in full accord [that is like him saying, ‘I’m with you heart and soul,’ just like in Acts 4:32, where it says the church was ‘of one heart and one soul’] and of one mind [that is, one mindset].”
So having called them to one mindset, one love, he lays out the nature of the mindset in three steps, and this just goes right to the heart of the Christian life and what it means to be unified in this way:
Verse 3: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” I think that means to count them worthy of your sacrificial service.
Verse 4: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
Verse 5, which is the most important: “Have this mind [have this mindset] among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”And then he unfolds that glorious display of service, and sacrifice, and self-emptying, and humility that Jesus did when he left his Father’s throne and became man.
“What’s being stressed in these texts is the same mindset, the same disposition of heart, the same attitude.”
So the unity Paul and Peter are calling for in these texts — namely, Peter in 1 Peter 3:8 — is focused not on having the same opinions, though there’s a level at which that really matters. But rather, what’s being stressed in these texts is the same mindset, the same disposition of heart, the same attitude — namely, a lowly, sacrificial servant-heart for others.
Knit Together, Not Quarrelsome
Let’s take one last glance at Romans 14 to draw out the way Paul handles disagreement between Christians. This chapter shows us that there are real differences of opinion, real differences of conviction, among Christians.
Romans 14:2 says, “One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.” They just can’t get it together in Rome. They don’t agree. And Romans 14:5 says, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike.” They’re just stuck. It’s a disagreement, and it’s not going away.
I’m sure Paul really would prefer that they all agree on these things because that would make life a lot easier, but they don’t. And his primary approach to that problem is not to get them all to agree, at least not in Romans 14. Well, what does he do? He does several unusual things, and you need to read the whole chapter to see all the ways he approaches this. I’ll only mention one thing he does, when he goes right to the heart of the matter. He penetrates to a common mindset that knits their souls together.
He says this in verse 6: “The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God. While the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.” In other words, he’s showing them how to lay hold on a unified mindset of doing all to the honor of the Lord and not despising each other. That’s what’s going to hold them together — that radical God-centeredness that puts the Lord first, however you may disagree on the application.
Worthy Pursuits
My conclusion for Charlotte’s question that she asked us is that theological, biblical unity of conviction is important, and we should pursue it, as Paul and Peter often did in their writings. The very existence of their writings is a pursuit of that kind of unity.
Nevertheless, just as often as they explicitly said things about that, Peter and Paul press us toward unity of mindset, or unity of attitude set, or unity of disposition that is marked by humility, and sacrificial service, and a Christ-exalting motive for all we do. That’s the unity that he’s talking about in 1 Peter 3:8.
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Worse Than Any Affliction: Why I Refuse to Grumble
Last year was a season of losses for me. It started in the spring when I was hospitalized 21 days for double pneumonia. The lung infection was bad enough, but the extended stay in bed left my right arm thick with lymphedema. Some of it was related to my long-ago therapy for cancer, but this was different. After my lungs cleared, I was sent home, but with a bulkier arm that was hard to lift.
Then in late summer, I developed a second respiratory infection, much worse than the first. During another lengthy hospital stay, I noticed more problems with my right arm. The doctors, however, stayed focused on the more life-threatening issue with my lungs. When the infection cleared and I was ready to go home, it was obvious my arm had suffered more damage. The already minuscule muscles I had used to feed myself were gone. Even with my hand splint, I could not lift the spoon to my mouth.
Decades ago, after suffering quadriplegia in the wake of my accident, doctors warned me that my partially paralyzed muscles would atrophy, and I knew that my “good” arm and my fragile lungs would eventually deteriorate. I just didn’t realize how hard it would be, losing the capacity to breathe well and losing my independence at mealtimes. Like I said, it was a tough year.
My flesh is wasting away, and who would blame me if I complained? Certainly not the world — it’s natural for them to expect an old lady in a wheelchair to grumble over her losses. But followers of Jesus Christ should expect more from me. Much more.
Why Do You Quarrel with God?
The Bible first addresses complaining in the book of Exodus. Things start off well enough after the Lord performs a great miracle at the Red Sea. At first, everyone’s ecstatic about walking through a sea parted on either side like glass skyscrapers. With their hearts bursting with joy, the entire fifteenth chapter is one long praise song:
I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation;this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. (Exodus 15:1–2)
A few verses later, though, their song fizzles. Only 72 hours of traveling in the desert without finding water, they grumble and demand of Moses, “What shall we drink?” (Exodus 15:24).
How ironic that they should complain about water! Didn’t they recall that God had just parted a whole sea of it? Their memory was jogged when God made bitter desert water good enough for them to drink. Yet only a couple of campsites later, they put up another stink about water. This time Moses replies, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” (Exodus 17:2).
Moses sharply rebukes them for disputing with the God who has just wondrously rescued them out of slavery. So, “he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’” (Exodus 17:7).
Do Not Harden Your Hearts
Nowadays, who among us would dare quarrel with God like that? Yet we do, every time we bellyache, quibble over some inequity, or whine about God’s timing or lack of provision. Even when we mutter (thinking it’s barely audible), all of our bemoaning is an assault against one Person: Jesus, the great I Am, who spilled a red sea of blood to wondrously rescue us out of slavery. When things don’t go our way and we grumble about it, we are inasmuch stamping our foot, crossing our arms, and demanding, “Lord, are you among us or not!”
Psalm 95:7–10 is a repeat of the Exodus debacle, except this time it’s not Moses speaking; it is Yahweh himself. And he has a message for us:
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. . . . They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. (Psalm 95:8–10)
When God’s people make a habit of complaining, they’ve gone astray and abandoned God’s ways.
“If this is what Jesus endured to rescue me, I refuse to dignify any sin that impaled him to that cursed tree.”
“Wait a minute,” some might say. “Cut us some slack — we’re just letting off a little steam.” If complaining were only a slip of the tongue, I might understand — especially if that person were an immature believer. But when a Christian’s default setting is to grumble, it develops into a character trait — a complaining spirit. A rebellious spirit. Some Christians may not see themselves as stiff-necked rebels when they squawk if it rains on their picnic, but Scripture speaks of a complaining spirit far differently.
Trembling over Our Grumbling
Whenever a group of Christians tour Joni and Friends and stop by my office, I like to spend some time and explain to them the reason behind my smile in this wheelchair. After introductions and a few comments, I’ll pick out someone to reach for the Bible on my shelf and flip to the book of Jude (I have the page marked). Then I’ll ask, “Read the fifteenth verse, please.”
Adjusting her glasses, the reader will say,
Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. (Jude 14–15)
“Who are these ungodly people?” I’ll ask. “Pedophiles? Mass murderers? Drug dealers in schoolyards?” A few will nod. I then turn to the one with the Bible and ask her to read the next verse: “These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires” (Jude 16).
I close the little lesson, explaining how we tend to think of sin on a sliding scale. We place on one side gross wickedness like barstool swearing and Satan worship, and on the other nitpicking (complaints that appear respectable). We think we are not as ungodly as those evil reprobates who take part in orgies and follow the horoscope. We’re not ungodly at all; we’re merely spewing off about things now and then.
Jude’s scathing judgment, however, proves that God does not split hairs when it comes to sin, especially the sin of complaining. So, he does what we’d consider scandalous: he places grumblers at the top of a sordid list of apostates, connivers, and loud-mouthed boasters “for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever” (Jude 13).
It should make us tremble.
My Life Is Not My Own
After those two times in the hospital, I began rigorous home therapy for my damaged lungs. Twice a day, I must wear a tight vest that violently vibrates my chest for fifteen minutes as I inhale steroids through a nebulizer. “How long do I have to keep this up?” I asked my pulmonologist.
“Indefinitely,” he replied, “if you want to live.”
I was numb. That first week I tried to ignore the whole routine, the terrible jackhammering of the vest-machine, as well as the pungent vapors from the nebulizer. I viewed the routine as an unpleasant detour, an inconvenient interruption until I could get back on the main road of life. Ah, but this is your life, I heard the Spirit whisper.
Did I have a right to complain? Actually, I possess no real rights. I laid them all at the foot of the cross, agreeing with 1 Corinthians 6:19–20: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” The Son of God was ripped to shreds, and then hung up to drain like a bloodied piece of meat on a hook. And if this is what Jesus endured to rescue me, I refuse to dignify any sin that impaled him to that cursed tree.
I will not coddle anything that helped drive the nails deeper. I relinquished my right to complain so that I might glorify Almighty God through my hardships. Anything less shrinks my soul.
Woes of a Complaining Spirit
A complaining spirit abuses the kindness of Christ, for God “raised us up with [Christ] . . . so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6–7). God will one day raise us up to showcase the riches and kindness of his grace through us. I dare not diminish that glorious moment with a negative tongue. A grumbling spirit would only prove from heaven that I viewed his kindness as sorely lacking to me on earth.
A complaining spirit reveals a warped understanding of God’s ways with suffering. Through the years, Christ has used my quadriplegia to wrench my heart off of this world and affix it to his own. Jesus has captured my heart, totally ruining me for worldly delights (thus lessening any tendency to complain). My satisfaction is not bound to earthly things; I have been set free to pursue the joys of eternity (2 Corinthians 4:18). Complaining lessens the eternal reward my suffering might have gained. It shrinks my heavenly inheritance.
A complaining spirit weakens our confidence in God’s promises. Psalm 106:24–25 says, “Then they despised the pleasant land, having no faith in his promise. They murmured in their tents, and did not obey the voice of the Lord.” The Christian who wallows in complaining is tempted to believe that God might leave him, that God isn’t always helpful in times of trouble, or that divine grace is lacking for every need. He’s increasingly suspicious whether God’s word is always trustworthy. He feels that suffering is not worth what little eternal benefit it earns (Hebrews 13:5; Psalm 46:1; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Psalm 62:8; 2 Corinthians 4:17).
Chest-percussion therapy at home was a kick in the right direction. Without wasting another week, I decided to use that time to memorize Scripture. My husband opened the white three-ring binder containing passages I’ve either memorized or am in the process of learning by heart. He placed the binder on my bed where I could see it, and while the nebulizer hissed, and the vest rattled my chest, I memorized a batch of Scriptures. Ephesians 1 and part of chapter 2 have become an inoculation against any thought of murmuring, as has the Nicene Creed and Psalms 84, 92, and 121.
I’m sure you’d agree that suffering naturally contains the seeds of complaining. But when cultivated by the Spirit of God, suffering “yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).
Grumbling Is a Contagious Disease
Every morning a girlfriend or two arrives at our home to start the coffee and give me a bed bath, do toileting routines, get me dressed, and sit me up in my wheelchair. Sometimes I can hear them in the kitchen getting things ready, and I think, Lord, I’m in enormous pain, and I have no strength for this day, let alone for these dear helpers. I have no smile for them. But you do! So, please let me borrow your smile.
By the time they open the bedroom door with a fresh cup of coffee, my attitude has been cast for the day. I have God’s smiling grace. I am ready to serve them as they serve me. Ephesians 4:16 says we are one with other believers, and we are expected to act like it: “From [Christ] the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” My work in the body is to build others up, facing my problems with them in mind.
If I were to growl about my pain and paralysis, it would diminish the spiritual walk of these girls. It would sow negative seeds of discord, releasing them to complain about their own headaches and hardships. This exact thing happened in Numbers 14:36–37: “The men whom Moses sent to spy out the land . . . returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land.”
I cannot provide a better service to the people around me, including the girls who help me in the morning, than to not complain.
Will We Expect More of Us?
Whatever happened to my arm and the problem with feeding myself? Well, it never got better, but I don’t want any complaint to dare shrink my soul, dishonor my Lord, diminish my inheritance, or impact others negatively.
So, every Friday evening, my neighbor Kristen comes to our house around mealtime to cut up my food and lift it to my mouth so that I can enjoy dinner while my husband enjoys his. But to make sure I don’t allow myself a centimeter of self-pity, I’ll always take a moment to bless her hands: “Lord, shine your favor on Kristen, who is serving you tonight by serving me” (Colossians 3:23–24). The blessing probably helps me as much as it does her.
Do I sound like a saint on a pedestal? Hardly. For I should not be the exception. After all, Titus 2:7 was written for all of us: “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works.” And there’s nothing good about a complaining spirit. Yes, followers of Jesus Christ should expect more from one another. Much more.