I was in the spring semester of my freshman year at Furman University when I first encountered, and began to engage, the claim that God is happy. I don’t think I had ever thought about God being happy — truly, deeply, richly, infinitely happy as God — and not sullen, disappointed, nervous, or constantly frustrated by all the mess of this world and sinful humans.

At the time I was not a reader, but a college junior, living at the end of our freshman hall, started a Bible study with a handful of us midyear, and when spring semester came, he said we would read the book Desiring God and discuss.

At first, I was not happy about the plan, but I acquiesced to be part of the group. And in due course, my vision of God and the Christian life was radically changed. In particular, it was the chapter titled “The Happiness of God” that turned my world upside down. There I read on the opening page of the chapter:

Redemption, salvation, and restoration are not God’s ultimate goal. These he performs for the sake of something greater: namely, the enjoyment he has in glorifying himself. (33)

A few pages later, I read about the “two lenses” and the “mosaic”:

The infinite complexity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses . . . When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. . . . But when God looks . . . through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. . . . This mosaic in all its parts — good and evil — brings him delight. . . . [God] has designed from all eternity, and is infallibly forming with every event, a magnificent mosaic of redemptive history. The contemplation of this mosaic (with both its dark and bright tiles) fills his heart with joy. (40–41)

The whole book was life-changing, but far and away, it was chapter 1, on the happiness of God — that is, on the pleasures of God — that was the great catalyst.

In the months that followed, I took up The Pleasures of God, and it deepened and expanded and solidified such glorious, subterranean, bedrock truths like the infinite bliss and blessedness of God — and the good news that there is a chance that I could be truly happy forever. Because the pleasures of God, as he has revealed them in his word, are the great foundation and possibility for our happiness.

So thank you, John, for preaching on the pleasures of God in 1987 and for writing the book, first published in 1991. And thank you, God, for putting it in John’s head, while reading a line from Henry Scougal, to ask: What about God? “Is it not also the case that the worth and excellency of God’s soul is to be measured by the object of his love?” (18).

God’s Pleasure Conundrum

We turn in this final session to “the pleasure of God in the gospel.” Now, we could approach this topic in a more general sense or a more particular sense. Gospel can be an expansive word. We could stretch its meaning broadly and catalogue some of God’s many pleasures in the fullness and expanse of his reality we call “the gospel,” the good news that Jesus saves sinners. There is much we could say in general about God’s pleasure in the gospel. Like Luke 12:32: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

However, more specifically, at the very heart of the gospel is a pleasure conundrum. If “Jesus saves sinners” is a simple, general summary of the gospel, then the simple, straightforward answer to how he saves sinners is, in the words of 1 Corinthians 15:3, “Christ died for our sins.”

So Jesus died. Did that give God pleasure? Did the Father delight in the death of his Son? How can the God who does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23; 33:11) delight in the death of his own righteous Son? Where shall we go for guidance on the pleasure of God in the death of his Son?

Gospel According to Isaiah

Turn with me to “the fifth Gospel,” as some call it: the prophecy of Isaiah. In the high point of all his prophecy, Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12, the great passage about the Suffering Servant (who is Jesus), Isaiah deals head-on with our pleasure conundrum, and he does so seven centuries before the climactic events transpired in history.

Twice in this prophecy we have explicit mention of the pleasures of God. We also have mention of the pleasures of two other parties, as we’ll see. But before we focus on the desires and delights in this solemn passage, let me note a couple items not to miss in what is essentially the preamble to 53:2–12. Look at Isaiah 52:13–53:1:

Behold, my servant shall act wisely;     he shall be high and lifted up,     and shall be exalted.As many were astonished at you —     his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,     and his form beyond that of the children of mankind —so shall he sprinkle many nations.     Kings shall shut their mouths because of him,for that which has not been told them they see,     and that which they have not heard they understand.Who has believed what he has heard from us?     And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

First, note the opening declaration of the servant’s success and exaltation in verse 13: “Behold, my servant shall act wisely [literally, he shall succeed]; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.” So before we hear of his jarring humiliation and marring and piercing and crushing, we first hear that he will succeed, and be exalted.

Second, note that, given this declaration in verse 13, a banner of astonishment is unfurled in verse 14 and flies over the rest of the passage:

“As many as were astonished at you . . .” (Isaiah 52:14)
“Kings shall shut their mouths” in amazement. (Isaiah 52:15)
“Who has believed what he has heard from us?” he asks, because it is so surprising, so seemingly upside down. (Isaiah 53:1)
“ . . . who considered . . . ?” (Isaiah 53:8)

The whole of the vision foretells of an astonishing, startling, almost unbelievable work that “the arm of the Lord” will perform. This servant (God’s own Arm) will have his appearance marred beyond human semblance. And perhaps what’s most striking of all is not just that it will happen, but that this is God’s doing. This is God himself at work. In other words, the astonishment comes from the story of the servant being an expression not of human wisdom, but divine.

This is the same God who confounds human wisdom by saying “the older shall serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23); this is the same God who will say, through Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways . . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8–9).” This is the same God who will one day inspire another commentary after these forecasted events that reads,

The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. . . . Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:18–21).

God not only does it this way — confounding human wisdom and expectation — but he takes pleasure in it. He delights to astonish. As Jesus prays in Matthew 11:25–26, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will [literally, it was pleasing before you].”

So then, what is this enigma? What’s so astonishing, startling, unbelievable? Isaiah 52:2–12 unfolds the astonishing story, from the servant’s quiet birth and upbringing, to his unimpressive appearance, to the puzzle of his being rejected and despised, to his astounding conduct when treated unjustly (and that, shockingly, all the way to the grave). And finally, climactically, in Isaiah 53:10–12, most astonishing of all, through death comes delight — God’s greatest pleasures through, and because of, this unjust, horrific death of the righteous, undeserving servant.

Let’s unfold the astonishing action of God’s Arm, through the lens of the pleasures of three parties. Our focus here is the pleasures of God, and we’ll linger there longest, but this vision speaks to desires and delights beyond his, shedding light on the pleasures of God in the death of his Son.

1. The Pleasures of Natural Man

The preamble in Isaiah 52:13–53:1 might have us anticipate some big splash. We might expect such a servant will start his career by descending from heaven in glory. But then it all comes about so unexpectedly, so quietly. “For,” as we read in Isaiah 53:2, “he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground.”

So, no glorious descent (though there was a private angelic announcement to a small party of lowly shepherds), but the servant came from the womb as an infant and grew up as a boy. Verse 2 goes on to explain how, as man, he was not the kind to attract an Instagram following: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire [or take pleasure] in him.”

Rather, given his quiet upbringing and unimpressive appearance, the story takes another unexpected turn in Isaiah 53:3: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces [!] he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

Sinful Man Would Tell Another Story

The first pleasures mentioned in the vision are the desires of natural man. And they are not the same as God’s. The pleasures of natural man would have led to a very different story for the servant.

He would have a celebrated birth and celebrity childhood. Perhaps he would be the visible, well-known and well-discussed son of a beloved monarch. Or maybe he would acquire his fame through athletic achievement, or great triumphs as a warrior. Or even better, all three. And he would be tall, strong, and handsome. He would be both nobly born and accomplished in his own right. So are the desires of natural man.

But this vision of the servant and his story as astonishing points to a critical truth about natural man, that will come front and center in Isaiah 53:6: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way.”

The essence of this “going astray,” this turning — what we call “sin” — is preferring other things to glory of God (The Pleasures of God, 158). Which means that natural man, and his human wisdom, does not see the world aright. His wisdom, even as it seems wise, leads to folly.

Human Versus Divine Wisdom

If you ask, What is the fundamental difference between divine wisdom and human wisdom? I might point you forward a few pages in The Pleasures of God to the chapter on God’s pleasure in hiding himself from the wise and revealing himself to infants:

God’s wisdom has the supremacy of God’s glory as the beginning, middle, and end of it, but man’s wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self-determining, and not utterly dependent on God’s free grace. Divine wisdom begins consciously with God (“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” Psalm 111:10), is consciously sustained by God, and has the glory of God as its conscious goal. When divine wisdom is revealed to humans, its effect is to humble us and give us the same God-orientation that God himself has. (278)

Such human wisdom leads not only to overlooking the quiet, humble beginnings of divine wisdom (and to eventually being surprised by it), but also, in time, to despising and rejecting God’s wisdom. Sin is an assault on God, however much it may not seem like that at first. It may pretend to simply ignore him, but at bottom it is a despising and rejecting of him, and in time that will be manifest.

2. The Pleasures of God in Crushing His Son

First, we have the backdrop of the desires of thin, fleeting pleasures of natural man in verses 2–3. Now we come to our main focus, as we go to the culminating paragraph in Isaiah 53:10–12 and the greatest surprises of all.

Twice the ESV has the phrase “the will of the Lord” in verse 10. I don’t think that’s a wrong translation, but I suspect that the idea of “willing” in English is lost on many of us today. Many of us hear “willing” with a sense of acquiescence. “Well, I don’t want to do that, but I’m willing” (like when I agreed as a college freshman to read Desiring God).

But the Hebrew here implies more. It is a desirous willing — a wanting. This same root is translated delight elsewhere. Like in Isaiah 62:4: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.”

That’s the same word here in Isaiah 53:10: “It was the delight of the Lord to crush him.” The KJV reads: “It pleased the Lord.” Interestingly, the KJV has “bruised” and “pleased,” while the ESV has “crushed” and “will.” Verse 10 is so shocking — that it delighted Yahweh to crush him — it’s easy to imagine translators feeling the pressure to soften it. (Admittedly, the verse is so striking that it’s difficult to translate without being able to teach on it and provide context.)

Astonishing Delight

Let’s read Isaiah 53:10–12, in the ESV, and then ask how this text might help us approach our pleasure conundrum:

Yet it was the will [delight] of the Lord to crush him;     he has put him to grief;when his soul makes an offering for guilt,     he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;the will [delight] of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,     make many to be accounted righteous,     and he shall bear their iniquities.Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,     and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,because he poured out his soul to death     and was numbered with the transgressors;yet he bore the sin of many,     and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Remember our banner of astonishment. The shock of the servant’s story continues, through verses 4–9, as we’ll see, but now it hits a new register in verse 10. God himself did this, and he was pleased to do it. He didn’t do it by accident or acquiesce. He delighted to do it.

Which not only raises our question today, but also functions for Isaiah to confirm that this did indeed satisfy God’s demands. Our iniquities and transgressions and guilt were against God. It matters very little what this servant does if it does not please or satisfy God.

Happy to Save

So, God’s pleasure in the death of his Son might raise our pleasure conundrum, but let it not be lost on us what great assurance his settled delight provides for saved sinners. Brothers and sisters in Christ, God doesn’t just save sinners; he delights to save us. He doesn’t just go through the motions at Calvary. He doesn’t bite his lip. He doesn’t hold his nose with his people at arm’s length.

As Jesus says in John 16:27, “the Father himself loves you.” God doesn’t only accomplish the gospel and apply it through his Son, but it pleases him to do so. The happy God is happy about his own Son dying to save us. The gospel is not a divine concession. It is a divine delight.

Salvation in Christ is not based on a whim or accident. God designed it, and did it, and it pleased him to do it. And neither Satan nor sinful man can change that! Regardless of what questions it raises, God’s settled pleasure in this gospel gives us great confidence in the solidity of our salvation in Christ.

So, let’s linger here and consider three aspects of God’s pleasure in the crushing (to death) of his Son in this culminating paragraph. (As verse 12 makes clear, this crushing was a crushing to death: “He poured out his soul to death.”)

First, the pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of God in substitution.

Isaiah 53:10 tell us, “His soul makes an offering for guilt.” And then we read in Isaiah 53:12: “He bore the sin of many.” Which leads us to consider the very heart of the passage in verses 4–6. And here’s how it flows under the banner of astonishment: Why was such a servant a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? Because his sorrows and griefs were not his own but ours!

Surely he has borne our griefs     and carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed him stricken,     smitten by God, and afflicted.But he was pierced for our transgressions;     he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,     and with his wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray;     we have turned — every one — to his own way;and the Lord has laid on him     the iniquity of us all.

Our griefs. Our sorrows. Our transgressions. Our iniquities. Our chastisement, our punishment, laid on him. There is no getting around this being “substitution.” This is unmistakably Levitical language. These are the categories of the sacrificial system. The animal, albeit imperfectly and temporarily, stands in (by God’s gracious provision) as a substitute for the chastisement sinners deserve.

Yet here in Isaiah 53, the substitute is manifestly human. Isaiah dares to tread where Moses only pointed. The whole sacrificial system hinted at this and inevitably anticipated something like this, but the arm of the Lord is not yet revealed until Isaiah — and then not yet enacted for another seven centuries.

Second, the pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of God in justification.

Isaiah 53:11 declares, “The righteous one, my servant, [shall] make many to be accounted righteous.” The servant not only bears the griefs of others and carries their sorrows, but he literally “will provide righteousness for the many” (Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 442).

“Justification” refers to God’s declaration of “Righteous!” over the sinner on the basis of the righteousness of Christ to whom the repentant sinner is joined by faith alone. In other words, the servant (Christ) will “provide righteousness” for the many joined to him by faith. This is an additional pleasure to substitution. The servant (Jesus) not only “bears their iniquities,” but also “provides righteousness.”

But what about “the many” that’s repeated in this text? This is one of the most important questions in the vision because it appears over and over: “Many were astonished” (Isaiah 52:14); “He bore the sin of many” (Isaiah 53:12); “Many to be accounted righteous” (Isaiah 53:11); and he will share his “portion with the many” (Isaiah 53:12). And this repetition of “the many” leads to a third pleasure of God.

Third, the pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of definite atonement.

“The many” who are astonished in Isaiah 52:14 become the witnesses who speak in Isaiah 53:1 (“us”) and Isaiah 53:2 (“we”). “The many,” then, is “my people” in Isaiah 53:8. “The many” is “his offspring” in Isaiah 53:10. And it’s these “many” who now say, in Isaiah 53:4–5:

“He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”
“He was pierced for our transgressions . . . crushed [to death] for our iniquities.”
“[He] brought us peace.”
“With his wounds we are healed.”

“The many,” then, is the “we” in Isaiah 53:6 who say, “All we like sheep have gone astray . . . and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” — that is, all “the many.” The “we” talking in verse 6 are “the many,” the “offspring,” the “my people” — all those whom God has moved from seeing the servant with the desires of natural man, to seeing him with the pleasures of God.

So, the “alls” of verse 6 are constrained by the “we” of verse 6, which goes back to the “we” and “us” of verses 1–2. As Alec Motyer argued at length in his contribution to From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: “The intended recipients and the actual beneficiaries of the Servant’s atoning death are one and the same group” (266).

That is, the servant’s work is definite. It is particular. Which means that the servant can say, as Jesus does in John 19:30, “It is finished.” He doesn’t say, “Well, I did my part.” He says, “It is finished.” The servant does not leave the work undone. Nothing here in Isaiah 53 is open-ended. And this finality, this completeness, this definiteness, this particularity is all part and parcel of the achievement of the incarnate Son that delights his Father.

One more quote from Motyer:

The “we” of these crucial verses were locked into a failure to grasp what the Servant was all about, but our iniquities were laid by Yahweh on his Servant; and this is what led to our “seeing.” The theological implications are profound: the atonement itself, and not something outside of the atonement [like the human will], is the cause for any conversion. The resources for conversion are found in the Servant’s death; they flow from it. Thus, it is the atonement that activates conversion, not vice versa. (261–62)

“The pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of God in substitution, justification, and definite atonement.”

The pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of God in substitution, in justification, and in definite atonement — but still our problem remains, however layered and multi-dimensional these pleasures: Why does God delight in the death of his Son?

Four Reasons for the Father’s Pleasure

Here are four reasons (and the fourth leads us to the third and final party to whom Isaiah attributes pleasure) that answer the question, Why does God delight in the death of his Son?

First, God delights in the magnitude of his Son’s achievement — and his death is an achievement. In fact, it is the single greatest achievement in the history of the world: the eternal Son of God became man, lived sinlessly for more than three decades, and with silence and without violence, willfully submitted himself to unjust arrest, torture, and even death to rescue a chosen multitude from every tongue and tribe and nation. And then he rose again in triumph over sin and death and Satan.

This is the singular achievement for which the world was made and set up. This is an achievement of which we have only begun to grasp its magnitude. We will celebrate it forever. When God delights in the death of his Son for sinners, he delights in his Son achieving the single greatest feat in history.

Second, God delights in the pleasure of “the many” rescued by his Son. He takes pleasure in once natural men now born again to delight in him. And nothing produces holy delight in his redeemed people like the achievement of his Son at the cross.

To be accounted righteous, and to be apportioned to the Son — what does that produce? Obligation? Duty? Joy! Real pleasure, not thin and shallow, but the kind that endures forever! And note, the joy of “the many” here is not our getting the Son’s portion as much as our being the Son’s portion (“all are yours, and you are Christ’s,” 1 Corinthians 3:22–23).

If you wonder, Am I among “the many”? here’s the question for you: Do you see the servant and his work as folly or wisdom? Do you see him as nonsensical or glorious, embarrassing or delightful? Does your soul find pleasure in him, or despise him?

At bottom, what do you do with Jesus? There’s no finding out if you’re included in “the many” apart from him and how you orient on him. Those whom God has been pleased to move from despising and rejecting Jesus to worshipful astonishment of Jesus can count themselves among “the many.”

Third, God delights in the Son’s love for God and his glory. The Son “acts wisely”; he does the Father’s will; he lives, and dies, to glorify his Father. He does not take sin — as the preferring of other things to God — lightly. Rather, he takes it with utter seriousness by going to the cross to die for the sins of “the many.” Back to Piper in The Pleasures of God:

The depth of the Son’s suffering was the measure of his love for the Father’s glory. It was the Father’s righteous allegiance to his own name that made recompense for sin necessary. So when the Son willfully took the suffering of that recompense on himself, every footfall on the way to Calvary echoed through the universe with this message: The glory of God is of infinite value! The glory of God is of infinite value! (176)

“Nothing magnifies the glory of God like the Son of God embracing the cross.”

Or, we might say, God is most glorified in his Son when he is most satisfied in his Father. God is most glorified in his incarnate Son when, “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2), he endures the suffering and shame of the cross, for his Father’s sake. Nothing magnifies the glory of God like the Son of God embracing (willingly, gladly) the incomparable suffering and shame of the cross.

Which leads both to a fourth reason for the Father’s pleasure and, at the same time, the third and final personal mention of pleasure in Isaiah 53: the pleasure of the servant himself.

3. The Pleasures of the Son in Being Crushed (53:11–12)

This is critical: the pleasure of God in crushing his Son is not apart from the pleasure of the Son in being crushed. That the Son was pleased to be crushed — that in the agony, he endured for the joy set before him — does not mean it was easy. This is not pleasure light. This is pleasure deep, deep enough to sustain and animate the soul against the greatest of earthly deterrents. Consider two aspects of the Son’s pleasure.

One, consider how he went: willfully. Not kicking and screaming, but voluntarily — that is, he tasted enough pleasure in the moment to embrace the cross. We stand in awe of Isaiah 53:7–9:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,     yet he opened not his mouth;like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,     and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,     so he opened not his mouth.By oppression and judgment he was taken away;     and as for his generation, who considered [astonished!]that he was cut off out of the land of the living,     stricken for the transgression of my people?And they made his grave with the wicked     and with a rich man in his death,although he had done no violence,     and there was no deceit in his mouth.

This, again, all under the banner of escalating astonishment. Verses 4–6 gave us the unexpected reason for his sorrow and grief. Verses 7–9 give us the unexpected conduct of the servant. He could have called ten thousand angels. But in the garden, the holy hesitations of his human will gave way to glad submission to the divine will, which — as the God-man — was also his will. He prays, “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42), and in doing so, his human will embraces the divine.

So, he offered himself voluntarily. He consented. He did not just acquiesce. He willed it. He embraced it. He owned it. He “let himself be brutalized.” It was his pleasure — not a thin, shallow immediate human pleasure, but a deep, divine, supernatural pleasure — to be crushed for the glory of his Father, and his own joy, through saving many sinners.

Then, consider the source of the joy that sustained him. Isaiah 53:11 says, “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.” In the agony of the cross, he looked forward to the pleasure he would enjoy on the other side, and tasted enough of it in the moment, to keep going. And this requires resurrection.

No Resurrection, No Delight

This is essential for God’s pleasure in the death of his Son, and the Son’s pleasure, and our pleasure in him. If there is no resurrection, there is no divine pleasure in the death of the divine Son. And no pleasure in the Son in being crushed. But the resurrection turns death upside down. And God’s pleasure in the death of his Son is always pleasure that has the resurrection in view.

“If there is no resurrection, there is no divine pleasure in the death of the divine Son.”

Isaiah 53:10 tells us that the Lord “shall prolong his days.” And the pleasure of the Lord “shall prosper in his hand.” God’s pleasure in the death of his Son is a pleasure in prospering his Son after death. Through the achievement of the cross, and by the resurrection, Jesus enjoys the reward of his achievement, “the many” as his portion. The Groom receives his bride.

And the one who once had no majesty that we should look upon him, becomes the majestic one, upon whom the redeemed gaze as the one who died to bear their sins and lives to be their greatest delight. Which brings us back to the first line of the vision in Isaiah 52:13: “He shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.”

God’s pleasure in the crushing of his Son is the pleasure of God in lifting up his Son — both at the cross and in the resurrection (as in John 12:32). Just as God the Son delights in the glory of his Father, so God the Father delights in the glory of his Son.

And just as nothing moves the born-again human heart like the exaltation and glory of Christ, so nothing moves the divine heart like the exaltation and glory of his incarnate, perfect, crucified, risen, reigning Son.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning. If you are driving to work or to school, or walking the dog, welcome back, and thanks for making the podcast part of your routine. We start this week with a question from a listener named Kate who lives in the bustling city of Cape Town: “Pastor John, hello! I appreciate you and your ministry from down here in South Africa, a country with an unemployment rate at 35 percent — a rate often mentioned as the highest in the world. On the ground, navigating beggars is daily life for us.

Here’s a daily scenario. You’re sitting in your car at a stoplight. Someone approaches your window to ask for money or food. You sit facing forward, ignoring them to focus on the traffic light ahead, until you finally drive off. Every time I do this, something doesn’t feel right here, especially with regards to Luke 6:30 — we should give to everyone who asks. But then what about 2 Thessalonians 3:10, a text that calls for diligent work, or else you will not eat? I listened to APJ 80, “How to Handle Panhandlers,” from over nine years ago, but there you didn’t address this second text. And I feel pulled between them. What suggestions would you have to offer me?”

Before I give some specific suggestions for how to put together Jesus’s command to give to everyone who begs from you (Luke 6:30), and Paul’s command that those who are unwilling to work should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10), let me lay a little bit of foundation that I think Jesus wants us to hear. And I’m really preaching to myself here, mainly as I’ve, over the years, analyzed my heart in dealing with folks who stand on the corner. I walk by them almost every day. So, she’s not alone in South Africa. Here in the middle of Minneapolis, I deal with this on foot, not just in the car, which it makes it even more poignant, I think.

I think that Jesus’s radical, sometimes unqualified, commands are intended especially — not only, but especially — to sever the nerve of our deep, deep, deep selfishness as human beings. He meant to expose the most fundamental problem with human nature — John Piper’s human nature — namely, our sinful condition that consists essentially in a deep bondage to self-exaltation, self-preservation, worldly self-gratification, all of which more or less conceals a self-asserting resistance to God’s right to tell us what’s good for us and to be for us what’s good for us.

“I think Jesus’s radical commands are intended especially to sever the nerve of our deep selfishness.”

I think Jesus cares more about exposing and healing this disease of our evil self-centeredness than he does about working out all the details of how our healing and liberation from self will express itself in ways that help other people — like the way we deal with panhandlers, or the way we deal with idle busybodies in church who won’t work.

Severing Deep Selfishness

Maybe you can sense what I see if I read the passage that Kate referred to in her question — namely, Luke 6:30. But I’ll do the surrounding verses so we can really feel the force of what Jesus says:

I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. (Luke 6:27–31)

Now that last command is what we call the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that Golden Rule is really an alternate form of Jesus’s second great commandment in Matthew 22:39, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I think doing unto others as you want them to do to you means, “Take the measure of your own self-regard, your own self-care, your own self-comfort, and make that the measure of your regard and your care for others.”

Now that’s a devastating command. It is a mortal threat to our own self-exaltation, self-preservation, self-gratification, self-centeredness to take all that deep commitment that we have to our own well-being and make it the measure of our commitment to the well-being of others. That’s simply gloriously astonishing, something nobody can do apart from a miracle of God. I think it’s the same thing Jesus was calling for when he said, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Being the servant of all is virtually the same as loving others as you love yourself and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

So, I’m saying all of this as a preface to the ethical effort to sort out the details of what love looks like, what liberation from self-centeredness looks like. Because if we don’t come to terms with our own sinful selfishness, we will almost certainly twist the teachings of Jesus and Paul to make them fit into our bondage to self-gratification.

Tough Love in Thessalonica

So, now to Kate’s specific question regarding 2 Thessalonians 3:10. The situation at Thessalonica is that some people were using the nearness of Christ’s coming to justify their unwillingness to go to work and in an ordinary way earn their own living. Instead, they were acting like busybodies and going from house to house and were expecting others to provide the food and the needs that they should be providing for themselves by their own gainful employment. So, Paul says to the church in 2 Thessalonians 3:10–12,

Even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now, such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

So, these are professing Christians. He’s exhorting them “in the Lord Jesus.” And it’s not that they can’t work, like they have a disability, but that they won’t work. They don’t want to. You can see that in the word “not willing to work.” So, Paul is saying that one strategy, one brotherly loving strategy, to pressure these people back to doing what they ought to do — namely, earn their own living — is making it harder on them to depend on the work of others. You might call this a form of tough love.

Inclined to Give

But it would be very careless, I think, to take 2 Thessalonians 3:10 and apply it to every beggar or panhandler or homeless person on the street. We simply do not know why they are there, not without getting involved with them and talking to them. So, I think it would fly right in the face of the intention of the teachings of Jesus to use 2 Thessalonians 3:10 to make us resistant to beggars, assuming that they are lazy — unwilling to work for their own living — when we don’t know. That might be the case, but it might not be. We just don’t know.

“When Jesus says, ‘Give to everyone who begs from you,’ I think he means that that is our default inclination.”

When Jesus says, “Give to everyone who begs from you,” I think he means that that is our default inclination when we are set free from our bondage to self. That’s our default inclination. That is our declaration of freedom from bondage to self and this world. That’s our declaration of desire to be gracious, even to the undeserving. “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who abuse you,” and so on.

To be sure, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 cautions us that there are situations in which giving to the one who asks would do more harm than good. And I think Jesus already implied that when he said earlier in that paragraph, “Do good to those who hate you.” That means we need to think seriously about what is good for people. And when he said, “As you wish that others would do to you,” you would want people to do what’s really good for you, what helps.

What Might Help Most?

So I encourage all of us to do a little bit of research, a little bit of homework of what would be really most helpful to people on the street, all things considered. It’s not an easy question. And since we’re so prone towards selfishness, I think we should err on the side of being taken advantage of rather than erring on the side of shrewdly protecting our wallet and our ego.

At the last judgment — I’ve thought about this many times — I think Jesus will be much more prone to commend lavish generosity to the undeserving than he will be to commend how shrewd we were in keeping for ourselves our few dollars rather than giving them away. I just can’t imagine Jesus saying, “Wow, you were especially good at being shrewd at not being taken advantage of.” I don’t hear anything like that in Jesus’s teachings.

So, let’s know our own hearts, let’s confess the sin of selfishness, let’s pray for the compassion of Jesus and the far-seeing wisdom of Jesus, and let’s do our homework, a little bit of research to find out how our lives as a whole can bring blessing into people’s lives, especially eternal blessing.

Church planting is one-half asking people for favors and one-half asking for money. I exaggerate, but not by much. Church planters are needy.

By God’s grace, Trinity Baptist Church of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, recently covenanted as a church. We’re up and running but still in startup mode. Ultimately, of course, we look to God to meet our needs. That’s one reason we have a weekly prayer meeting. And in his generosity, God has provided dozens of founding members who are eager to give and serve and sacrifice for the good of this new body.

But founding members are not the only ones who have played a vital role. In this article, I want to glorify God, and encourage and counsel church planters, by reflecting on ways we’ve benefited from partnerships with, and the generosity of, other local churches. I also hope to encourage pastors of established churches to consider ways they might support new gospel work in their area.

Here are seven ways we’ve benefited from the help of other churches in our town and region, along with some biblical principles that account for why these other churches have been so helpful to us.

1. Partner with Counsel

Kingdom-minded pastors don’t just care how their own churches are doing. They care about the progress of the gospel and the state of God’s churches throughout their region. Consider, for instance, how Paul and Barnabas set out on their second missionary journey not to evangelize an unreached area but to check on the state and soundness of the churches: “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are” (Acts 15:36). I benefited from pastors who modeled this kind of kingdom-minded concern for their whole region from the very beginning of my planting efforts.

When I first started thinking about planting a church in Chapel Hill, I called a handful of pastors I knew in the area. I asked them whether they thought Chapel Hill could use another faithful church and whether they thought I’d be a good person to lead it. Their responses were encouraging and affirming. If they hadn’t been, I would’ve taken that seriously. They also gave me their read on the area’s culture, spiritual needs, and other churches. If you’re a pastor who’s been ministering in a region for a decade or more, a little counsel from you can go a long way in helping a potential planter get his bearings.

2. Partner with Encouragement

There’s no need for church plants in the same area to develop a sibling rivalry. Instead, even young churches can be a model for and help to other churches. Consider how Paul commended the Thessalonians, who were barely out of their “planting” phase when he wrote to them: “You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia” (1 Thessalonians 1:6–7). Church planters working to establish new works near each other can generously share with each other what the Lord has done in and through them, along with what they’ve learned even in a short journey so far.

When planting in Chapel Hill was an idea still in the “maybe” phase, I got a call from Shane Shaddix, then one of the pastors of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh. He was also in the beginning stages of planting a church there, just a few steps ahead of us. Shane wanted to encourage me and help our efforts. Shortly after, on one of my first trips to the area, he and his fellow planter, Manny Prieto, bought me lunch and asked how they could help and encourage our work. They have consistently supported me and my fellow pastor, Michael Abraham, by texting us, praying for us privately and publicly, warmly welcoming founding members of ours for a season of attendance at their church, and in many other ways. Their church, Risen Christ Church, is a new faithful gospel witness in Chapel Hill. If you’re in the area, I would gladly encourage you to check them out.

Another local-church planter who’s been a huge help to us is Chase Jenkins. First Baptist Church of Durham recently sent out Chase and another FBC pastor, Wes Treadway, with about 72 (!) of their members to plant Parkside Baptist Church in South Durham. Chase has encouraged us relentlessly. He has been so affectionately invested in our work that I sometimes wonder if he cares more about our church’s success than his own!

3. Partner with Local Knowledge

Paul commended the Philippians for partnering with him from the very beginning of his gospel ministry: “You Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only” (Philippians 4:15). Many churches in our area have been eager and generous to partner with us in seemingly small but practically crucial ways — for instance, by sharing local knowledge, connections, and church-planting hacks.

Eric Gravelle, campus pastor of the Summit Church’s Chapel Hill campus, generously shared contacts in the school system and advice about meeting in a school. Travis Bodine, the pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church west of downtown Chapel Hill, pooled local knowledge from his church members to generate all kinds of leads for us to chase down. And Manny and Shane of Risen Christ shared a detailed spreadsheet of possible meeting spaces. After Michael and I made dozens of inquiries, with a perfect fail rate of 100 percent, the venue that agreed to host us was from the list Risen Christ had given us. I was recently able to return the favor by sharing about a location we checked out that might prove to be a good fit for their next home. And both sets of these planting-pastor peers, from Risen Christ and Parkside, have given us advice about incorporation, nonprofit status, banking processes, and many more of the interminable logistics of planting a church.

“There’s no better way to encourage a church planter than by praying for him and his church, publicly, by name.”

On the last Sunday morning before we covenanted, I had the joy of worshiping with the saints at Parkside. Like we would soon, they baptized someone in a horse trough. (They at least got to bring the trough inside their building — our baptisms take place in a large outdoor patio next to our meeting space.) Long story short, Parkside offered us not only helpful equipment for pulling off a horse-trough baptism, but one of their deacons even assisted us with our first one the following Sunday. That’s more help than I even would have thought to ask for.

4. Partner with Local Connections

One of the ways Paul used his pastoral (or I should say, apostolic) capital to help churches take root and grow was by connecting them with, and commending to them, other leaders. For instance, Paul commends Timothy to the Philippians and urges them to trust him because of his proven character (Philippians 2:19–24).

Similarly, another way that local pastors have helped us is by connecting us to other local pastors in their relational networks. On another of my early trips down, Lawrence Yoo and Danny Castiglione of Waypoint Church generously bought me lunch and gave me their take on spiritual dynamics throughout the Triangle region. Lawrence then connected me with David Kwon, pastor of Journey Community Church, because he thought they might have space for us to rent. When Michael and I met with David, he emptied out his mental Rolodex of places we might consider for a meeting space and pastors we might consider connecting with. We wound up renting space from Journey for our Wednesday-night Bible studies.

5. Partner with Space

We know from Scripture that the church is a people, not a building (1 Corinthians 1:1–2). Some churches in the New Testament likely met in homes (Romans 16:5). Paul carried out evangelistic ministry in a rented hall (Acts 19:9). So we know that churches can gather wherever they have permission and room. But many of us (like me!) are so used to doing ministry in a well-appointed church building that planting can be a shock to the system.

I’m used to doing ministry in a 150-year-old city-center church with a large and well-maintained workhorse of a building. Having no building to take for granted is like learning to throw a baseball with my weak arm. Once a church plant hits a certain size, it will gather more people than can comfortably fit in someone’s home. Which means that for every meeting you’re either renting or asking for space.

On this front, the Lord has been generous to us through many different churches. Parkside is not the only local church to offer space for occasional meetings. Chapel Hill Bible Church graciously allowed us to host an early interest meeting in their chapel. And First Baptist Durham let us meet first in their fellowship hall and then in their sanctuary every Sunday night for the whole summer before we covenanted, for free. In addition to some key members’ homes and garages, our church essentially incubated in First Baptist. Your church might not have a large building or budget margin to give to a new church plant, but do you have enough spare space to incubate one for a season?

6. Partner with Prayer

Because the gospel advances through God’s gracious, sovereign work of saving sinners, the gospel advances through prayer. And because the gospel advances through prayer, church planting advances through prayer. So, not only should planters pray, but other churches can have an Epaphras-like ministry of wrestling in prayer on behalf of new plants: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God” (Colossians 4:12).

Over a couple months’ worth of Sunday mornings leading up to our covenanting, my family and I visited just about every church we had founding members coming from, and a couple of others that wanted to partner with us. During at least three of those visits, the pastor or elder leading the pastoral prayer prayed for our work.

There’s no better way to demonstrate a spirit of catholicity than by leading your church to publicly pray for other churches. There’s no better way to say and show that we’re all on Jesus’s team. And there’s no better way to encourage a church planter than by praying for him and his church, publicly, by name.

7. Partner with Members

For the Great Commission to be fulfilled, some gatherings of Christians must support and encourage some of their members to scatter. It’s painful. It’s costly. It’s hard to part. But it comes with the territory of trying to establish new kingdom outposts. Sometimes God uses persecution to do it: “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4). But a more proactive way to scatter for the sake of the Great Commission is for pastors to encourage members to consider uprooting their membership and perhaps even their livelihoods for the sake of advancing new gospel works — and for churches to joyfully bear that cost.

Our main sending church, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, where I served as a pastor for seven years, was exemplary in this. Amid a difficult season of transition in which another long-term associate pastor was leaving to pastor elsewhere, along with several other elders doing the same, Mark Dever graciously gave public airtime to discussing our planting efforts in the church’s evening services and encouraged members to consider moving to join the work.

In similar fashion, First Baptist Church of Durham has demonstrated exemplary partnership with us in their willingness to joyfully give members away. Even amid planting their own sizeable, full-grown church, they have encouraged and supported their members who have considered joining our work. And in their service the Sunday before we covenanted, they commissioned those who were leaving FBC to join Trinity by bringing them onto the platform and praying for them. And Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Mebane did the same with the members they sent, a tremendously encouraging sign of their support and commitment to the work at cost to their own body.

Partners in the Greatest Cause

The apostle Paul knew what it was to be needy. Through Christ he learned the secret not only of abounding but of lacking (Philippians 4:11–13). And when Paul wrote those words to the Philippians, he lacked much more than a church building or office or staff. Yet Paul thanked God for the Philippians’ contribution to his needs, and he called their relationship a partnership (Philippians 1:5; 4:15). Partnership includes financial support, but as I can gratefully testify from experience, it goes well beyond money.

Church planter, your neediness is an opportunity for other Christians, pastors, and especially churches to forge new gospel partnerships. Pastor, a new church plant coming to town is not a competitor or an opponent, but a partner in the gospel. How can you lead your church to partner with them?