When Jesus plucks us out of our own ashes, he doesn’t expect perfection—he has already attained that on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21). We have died with Christ, and he will raise us to life. He has purchased our right-standing with God. Still, he does want to change us, little by little, to love sin less and to desire him more.

The light was dim in my bedroom that night. I knelt, face-down, the fibers of the carpet tickling my nose. The world felt like it was shrinking around me to contain only this room, this moment. I had been blind for so many years, living—no, relishing—in sin. I chased it and held it near to me like my favorite pet. But that night the veil was lifted, and my sin was exposed before me. No longer could I take cover under the guise of being a “good person.”
Tears dropped to the floor as conviction crumbled the hardness of my heart. It was in this crumbling of everything I thought I knew that Jesus found me. As I was pursuing sin, he was unrelenting in his pursuit of me. This was my “go and sin no more” moment. In a blink of an eye, my worldview shifted in alignment with the God who created me, and the trajectory of my whole life changed.
He sought me, he saved me, and there was no way he wouldn’t change me.
A Woman and a Trap
There’s another woman whose life held a similar story. She was merely a pawn in their game—a test and a trap for the Lord Jesus Christ. The scribes and Pharisees discovered her sin of adultery and decided to use it to make a point. To them, her life meant nothing. They didn’t care if she lived or died. Dragging her into the middle of the crowd where Jesus was, they said, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” (John 8:4–5).
Scripture doesn’t tell us how this nameless woman felt as she stood in front of these men with their threatening looks. Perhaps she was bowed down with the weight of her shame and terrified as she seemingly stared death in the face. Maybe she was imagining what was to come, already dreading the sharp stones striking her flesh. Would God be gracious enough to let one hit her in the temple, ending her life quickly, or would she experience a slow, pelting death? Did she feel utterly hopeless?
The woman waited for the verdict as Jesus wrote something in the dirt with his finger. The Pharisees and scribes kept asking him until finally he silenced them saying, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).
In pretending to care about the law and holiness, these men exposed their hard and darkened hearts. They sought to catch Jesus and find him guilty; instead, he caught them. One by one he exposed their sin, and each of them walked away (John 8:9).
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Sin is the master of our lives before the Spirit changes our hearts, which means we are in bondage that we cannot will ourselves out of (Isaiah 53:6, Romans 3:9-12), partly because we cannot, but also because we love it. 

Yesterday, I found myself in the enviable position of explaining the difference between reformed theology and “not” reformed theology. I was asked by my small audience for an example of the difference, and the first example that came to mind was God’s sovereignty in salvation. As I spoke about this doctrine, I could see the gears cranking in her mind. Her eyebrows furrowed, her head tilted, and then came the inevitable question: “how is that fair?”
The Sweet Aroma of Tulips
The question of fairness in salvation should first be understood within the proper context. It makes sense for someone to reason something like: “if everyone is born a sinner, and God only saves some and condemns others, but has the ability to save all, then isn’t that unfair?” Now, once deeply immersed in the sweet aroma of tulips, it may offend our sensibilities to think this way. But, we must remember that a scant few were saved as Calvinists, but rather we were eventually shown this by the Spirit’s kind mercy. What the person who thinks this way must fully grasp is the deep and abiding wretchedness of sin, and its repugnance to God.
The very existence of sin requires salvation. Few Christians will refute that Christ came to save us from sin, but a great many may argue over the effect that sin has on our nature. They may argue that while sin has seriously affected man’s nature it has not left us spiritually helpless. They’ll say that God graciously enables every sinner to repent and believe, but he does so in a manner as not to interfere with man’s free will, and his eternal destiny depends on how he uses it. However, the bible paints a drastically different picture.
A Red Flag
On the sixth day of creation, God made the first man: Adam. Adam was placed in a garden, given dominion, and freedom, but with one restriction – a prohibition from the fruit of one particular tree. Well, the story ends poorly. Adam is disobedient, he eats the fruit, and God makes good on his promise: he dies (Genesis 2:17). But a red flag is raised by some, “but he did NOT die! He was only banished from the garden!” This is true. However, God was not speaking only of literal death, but also spiritual death. He did eventually die, but because of Adam’s sin, all of his progeny would also be dead in their sin and completely unable to come back to a right relationship with God, which would be proven true by the fact of their eventual literal death. (Romans 5:12; Ephesians 2:1-3; Colossians 2:13)
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In 2021 American pastor Eric Tonjes wrote Either Way, We’ll Be All Right (NavPress). He and his wife married young, and while still quite young, Elizabeth got cancer and eventually died from it. This book is about his story, and his wrestling with God. I want to highlight one chapter here. Given that I wrote a piece yesterday discussing purpose and meaning, how does cancer fit into this? Is there a reason for it – does God have a purpose in it? Most believers are aware of the famous statement that our chief aim in life is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.” But with cancer?

In the West at least, the related topics of suffering, grief, dying and death are not something we like to talk about. Sure, these are not pleasant things, so one can understand the reticence. But they are also universal things – we ALL experience them.
In fact, to speak of certain people having a terminal condition is misleading – we all have a terminal condition. Because of the universality of sin, death is universal as well. We will all die. But unless one is going through this, or knows someone who is, we shy away from it and really try not to think or talk about it.
And that includes most Christians. But it should not be this way. We all pay lip service to the truth that ‘this is not our home, we’re just passing through’. However most believers live as if the opposite is true. We avoid thinking about the next life and we put everything into this one.
It often takes some tragedy or illness to get our attention, and to get us to refocus. Cancer – whether in yourself or a loved one – will certainly do that. Millions of people right now are struggling with cancer. Some of it is curable, some not. Some people seem to get through it, yet often remission occurs.
We have friends in this situation. And much closer to home, my own wife is in this boat. While we all know about the word ‘cancer’ and many would know the word ‘metastasis’, it is usually not until it happens to us or someone we love that we really stand up and take notice.
There are different ways to deal with this. If you are like me – a hardcore reader – you will start buying books on the topic. I already have many hundreds of books on the broader topic of suffering and evil, and many of those books would cover practical matters such as dealing with grief. A subset of this would be dealing with cancer.
There are hundreds of books out there on this. Let me highlight just one very good volume. In 2021 American pastor Eric Tonjes wrote Either Way, We’ll Be All Right (NavPress). He and his wife married young, and while still quite young, Elizabeth got cancer and eventually died from it. This book is about his story, and his wrestling with God.
I want to highlight one chapter here. Given that I wrote a piece yesterday discussing purpose and meaning, how does cancer fit into this? Is there a reason for it – does God have a purpose in it? Most believers are aware of the famous statement that our chief aim in life is to ‘glorify God and enjoy him forever.’ But with cancer?
Tonjes cites Isaiah 43:7 among other passages: “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Says Tonjes, “Isaiah’s point is inescapable: God’s purpose, and the purpose of his people, is his glory.” He continues:
How does God’s glory meet our grief? We think that happiness is the goal of life, but happiness is a mediocre purpose. Those seeking it never accomplish much of worth. Given that life includes suffering and, ultimately, death, what we need is a purpose big enough to make that struggle worthwhile. We need something worth laboring for, and there is no worthier goal than God’s glory embodied in our lives.
Pursuing the self cannot sustain us in the face of this world’s brokenness.
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