Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. On Monday we looked at what distinguishes our lives from the lives of non-Christians around us. There, in APJ 1858, we touched on spiritual gifts. And then in the episode before that, we asked, “What are my skills worth?” That was APJ 1857, and it was a fascinating discussion because in many churches you have a doctor, a lawyer, a plumber, a carpenter, an auto mechanic — someone who makes money from their skills. And sometimes those skills can be exploited by people in the local church for free. Maybe you have experienced that very thing yourself. Piper’s conclusion in that episode was, “Be willing to pay for the service. If the skilled person wants to make a special gift to you, that’s his or hers to decide, not yours to expect.”

So if skilled Christians in the church share the same skills you will find among non-Christians outside the church, what makes a spiritual gift spiritual? As we will hear today, “many unbelievers have great abilities” — abilities to lead and administrate and teach — but those gifts are not automatically spiritual gifts. What makes a spiritual gift spiritual?

In a sermon, Pastor John turned to Paul’s testimony in Romans 1 for the answer. There Paul writes, “I long to see you [the church in Rome], that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you — that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine” (Romans 1:11–12). Here’s Pastor John to unpack and apply it.

The basic problem is becoming the kind of person who wakes up in the morning and thanks God for life and for salvation and then says, “Lord, oh how I want to strengthen people’s faith today at work. Lord, let me come to the end of this day and be able to look back and say, ‘Somebody has more confidence in your promises today because I crossed their path. Somebody is more happy in your grace because I crossed their path.’” That’s the main problem, waking up and being that kind of person.

“Let’s apply ourselves to becoming the kind of people who more and more long to build up each other’s faith.”

The reason I say that’s the basic problem and not the discovery of spiritual gifts is because, if there were 550 people in this church waking up and saying that and praying that and meaning that, the Holy Spirit would not leave you frustrated in finding ways to do that. He will not let a person whose heart is earnestly desirous of building other people up go without building them up. He will help you find those ways, and the finding of those ways will be the discovering of your gifts. It doesn’t matter whether you can find a name for it or not. Let’s apply ourselves to becoming the kind of people who more and more long to build up each other’s faith, to make each other happier in the Lord, and to make each other more confident in his promises.

Mutual Strengthening

Now there are really interesting insights that come from comparing Romans 1:11 with 1:12. Paul restates Romans 1:11 in different words; that’s what you do when you start a sentence with “That is.” You’re restating what you just said. “I [want to] impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you — that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine” (Romans 1:11–12).

Now, Paul does two things here. The first thing he does is the old “it’s my pleasure” tactic. You remember that sermon back in the fall that I preached called “It’s My Pleasure: Christian Hedonism and Humility”? Paul is doing that right here. Notice that when we say, “Oh, it’s my pleasure” after we do a benefit for somebody, a favor, what we’re doing is trying to be humble. We’re saying, “Well, don’t get too worked up about my self-sacrifice because I just did what I wanted to do.” You cut off too much praise. You try to humble yourself after having done a good deed.

Now that’s what Paul is doing here, I think. Paul rereads verse 11, and he says, “Hmm, I sure don’t want to give the impression that I’m coming on strong there as the great benefactor who’s going to do them all this good and get no benefit.” See? So he backs off and he restates his goal to say, “It’s going to be a two-way street in Rome. I am going to get encouraged, and you’re going to get encouraged. It’s my pleasure. Don’t give me too much praise. I’m just doing what I like to do when I go around preaching and getting encouraged by other people’s faith, as well as encouraging them.” That’s the first thing he does in this text.

Now the second thing he does is to show that the way he’s going to strengthen their faith by using his spiritual gift is by encouraging them with his faith. Now notice the parallel between the two verses. In verse 11, he aims to strengthen them. In verse 12, he aims to encourage them. So those two words are parallel. In verse 11, he aims to strengthen them by his spiritual gift. In verse 12, he aims to encourage them by his faith.

Of Faith, for Faith

Now I think you can draw as the conclusion, therefore, this definition of spiritual gifts: a spiritual gift is an expression of faith that aims to strengthen faith. Wouldn’t that be a fair definition, having put those two verses together and seeing that verse 12 is an explanation of verse 11? A spiritual gift is activated by faith and aims to produce more faith in another person. Or another way to put it would be this: a spiritual gift is an ability given by the Holy Spirit to express our faith effectively for the upbuilding of another’s faith. That’s what a spiritual gift is, I think, from these two verses.

“A spiritual gift is an expression of faith that aims to strengthen faith.”

Now that to me is very helpful because it helps me distinguish and keep separate natural abilities and spiritual gifts. They aren’t the same. Many, many unbelievers have great abilities — administration and teaching, for example — and these are given by God. Everybody has what he has from God, whether they acknowledge it or not, but they’re not spiritual gifts in the New Testament sense, are they? Why? Because they do not come from faith, they’re not expressions of faith, and they’re not aiming to strengthen faith.

Our faith is the channel through which the Holy Spirit flows on his way to building up another person’s faith. Therefore, for any ability that we have to be a channel for the Spirit and therefore spiritual, it has to flow from faith in him and aim toward faith in another person. No matter what abilities we have, if we’re not relying on God (having faith) and we’re not aiming to help others rely on God (produce faith), our ability is not spiritual. It’s not a spiritual gift because the Holy Spirit is not flowing through it from faith to faith.

Now that has tremendous implications for a church in the selection of its staff, the choice of its officers, and its board members. The implication is this: It means that we will never simply say, “Who has the ability to efficiently do this job?” Never. That’s a wholly inadequate criterion for determining a person’s suitability for staff or for office in the church. We will go on and ask, “Does this person use his skill or her ability to express their lively and hearty dependence on the Lord?” And we will ask, “Does the exercise of that skill aim always to be helping other people believe more, or does the way they go about doing their work always manage to put people down or make people feel unbelieving rather than believing?”

A church where the Holy Spirit is alive and powerful will always be sensitive to the difference between natural abilities and spiritual gifts.

Audio Transcript

Well, as most of you know, maturing in our knowledge of the Bible means facing the hardest questions it raises. On the podcast, we’re working through three of those hard Bible questions, prompted by your reading in the first two chapters of 2 Thessalonians. Namely, is God present or is he absent in his eternal judgment? Second Thessalonians 1:9 seems to say he’s absent. We addressed that question in APJ 1801. Then many of you have asked about the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2. Who is it? That was a week ago, in APJ 1803. And now finally, the third question, one about God sending strong delusions into the world. Does he still do that today? If so, how so? And what does it mean? That’s a question raised by 2 Thessalonians 2:11. That one is on the table today.

Pastor John, on Monday, in that man of lawlessness episode (in APJ 1803), you read our text for today, 2 Thessalonians 2:11, that God “sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false.” We’ve never addressed this text on APJ. But it’s been asked several times. Particularly from two listeners. Deborah asks this: “Pastor John, hello. Can you explain God’s providential work in 2 Thessalonians 2:11, and his sending of ‘a strong delusion’ on those who do not love or obey the truth? I stumble over this text. Thank you.” And David writes in to ask it this way: “Hello, Pastor John. Can a professing, nominal Christian who doesn’t think they’re saved ask God for them to be able to love the truth, when they’ve previously not embraced it in faith? Or would such a one be given to ‘strong delusions’ like we read about in 2 Thessalonians 2:11? In fact, what does that phrase even mean?”

So both Deborah and David are asking about the meaning of God’s sending a “strong delusion” on people at the end of the age, in connection with the man of lawlessness and the great deception that Satan worked through him just before the Lord’s coming. And David more specifically is asking about whether a person in the midst of this kind of deception can cry out to God with any hope of acceptance that God would enable him to love the truth, when in previous times he stiff-armed it.

Deception and Delusion

So let’s get the text in front of us. It really is a sobering text, and in some ways a surprising one in the way it talks about deception and truth and pleasure. At least, I’ve learned a lot about the nature of saving faith and the nature of deception in this text. So, here are the few verses:

The coming of the lawless one [that would be the final manifestation of antichrist just before the return of Christ] is by the activity of Satan with all power and lying signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception [of unrighteousness] . . . (2 Thessalonians 2:9–10)

Now, that’s not yet the strong delusion from God, but rather the deception from the lawless one, because we haven’t even gotten yet to God’s kicking in with deception. Here you have the Satanic deception for those who are perishing.

. . . because [that’s important, because this is happening before God’s strong delusion] they did not welcome the love of the truth in order to be saved. Therefore [and that’s crucial], God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:10–12)

Refusal to Love the Truth

Now, let’s see if we can put some of these pieces together. It’s true that there are passages in the Bible that ascribe to God the right and the power to decide from eternity who will believe and who will not. But this is not one of those passages. This passage only traces unbelief back to the resistance of the human heart to welcome a love for the truth. Now that’s a strange phrase, “welcome a love for the truth.” But it’s a literal translation. Verse 10 says they are “perishing because they did not welcome a love [or ‘the love’] of the truth in order to be saved.”

In other words, this is a worse indictment than saying, “They did not welcome the truth in order to be saved.” They were not just resistant to the truth; they were resistant to a love for the truth. This is a love issue in the human heart. They didn’t want truth in their head. They didn’t want love for truth in their heart. They were totally resistant. It reminds us of Ephesians 4:18, where Paul traces unbelief down, down, down to the bottom of the human problem, which is not ignorance, he says, but hardness. This is what Ephesians 4:18 says: “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from life of God because of the ignorance that is in them [and then he goes deeper], due to their hardness of heart.”

“They were not just resistant to the truth; they were resistant to a love for the truth.”

So here in 2 Thessalonians, Paul is describing that hardness as a refusal to welcome a love for the truth. It’s as if love for truth is being offered, and the human heart says, “No, no. Not only do I not want truth, I do not want to love the truth. I don’t want truth in my mind. I don’t want love in my heart.” And that condition — that deep resistance to truth, to God, to gospel, to reality, and to love for truth, and love for the gospel, and love for God — is described as the reason for both Satan’s deceiving and God’s deluding. It says that Satan, in the form of this lawless one, comes with “deception of unrighteousness for the perishing.” And then it says, “because they refused to love the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). And verse 11 says, “God sends a strong delusion” because they refuse to love the truth.

Handed Over

Now, Paul doesn’t explain how God does this — that is, how he sends this delusion. It may well be that God does it by means of removing all the barriers to that satanic deception. There are many places in the Bible where God governs the acts of unrighteous men and demons in order to achieve his righteous purposes. So this is not unusual. It’s as if God would say, “Okay, if you want to love falsehood and love unrighteousness instead of loving the truth, I’ll see to it that your delusion is overpowering.”

In other words, God gives them up to their own mind, just like Paul says in Romans 1:28. He says, “Since they did not approve of having God in their knowledge . . .” That’s so close to what 2 Thessalonians is saying. They refuse a love for the truth. They don’t want God in their knowledge. They don’t want to love God. Therefore, “God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:28). That would be a great delusion.

So their deception comes not only as their crime, but also as their punishment for the crime.

Our Pleasure in Sin

I said a minute ago that this text is surprising to me in the way it talks about deception and truth and pleasure. Looking at this idea of pleasure helps get at David’s question — his other question that we haven’t touched on yet about whether we can pray to God to deliver us from deception and delusion when up till now we haven’t welcomed the love of the truth. We’ve been resistant to it. Are we hopeless?

What’s surprising is the way pleasure figures into this text. Verse 12 says that the reason people are condemned is because they “did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” What an interesting contrast: believing versus pleasure. It’s full of implications. Back in verse 10, their deception is called “deception of unrighteousness.”

So I put it together like this. Their unwillingness to welcome a love for the truth was owing to their love for — that is, their pleasure in — unrighteousness. “I love it. I love it. I find pleasure in it.” This was their most basic condition: deep, deep heart love, heart delight, heart pleasure in unrighteousness. And since the truth stands over against unrighteousness, that more basic love for unrighteousness prevented them from loving the truth.

“At the root of our human condition is a strong pleasure in sin — a strong preference, gladness, delight.”

So, at the root of our human condition is a strong pleasure in sin — a strong preference, gladness, delight. Oh, how delectable is selfishness and self-exaltation and pride. Sin feels good at the depth of our being, and that pleasure in unrighteousness prevents a welcome of a love for the truth, and surprisingly prevents belief in the truth, as he says in verse 12.

Our Hope in the Sovereign Savior

So here’s David’s question. Can a person pray in that condition? Can a person pray for deliverance from deceptive bondage to pleasure in unrighteousness, which prevents love for the truth and belief in the truth? And my answer is yes. In fact, the bondage is so great that God is the only one who can cause a reversal of this dreadful bondage. That’s what has to happen. And so that’s how we ought to cry out in desperation for God to act in our lives and in the lives of those we love who are blind to this.

Remember in the book of Lamentations — oh my goodness, this is encouraging. Lamentations is the most horrible book in the Bible in one sense, because of the descriptions of the devastation of the apple of God’s eye, Jerusalem. It says in Lamentations 1:5, “The Lord has afflicted [Jerusalem] for the multitude of her transgressions.” So you would think this is hopeless. She’s under judgment. But here’s how the book ends: “Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!” (Lamentations 5:21). What a prayer! That’s the same way people pray in Jeremiah 31:18: “Bring me back that I may be restored.” Same thing in Psalm 80:3: “Restore us, O God.”

Ultimately, I don’t think it matters whether Satan is deceiving or God is deluding. It’s not hopeless to cry out, “O God, I cannot change my heart. It’s hard. It’s lifeless. It’s cold. And it takes pleasure in unrighteousness. O God, do anything — do whatever you have to do to take out my heart of stone. Cause my heart to find pleasure in your truth, your gospel, yourself. If you don’t do it, O God, I am undone.” I don’t think that’s a hopeless prayer.

Andrew Walls (1928–2021) has been called the “most important person you don’t know.”1 He was a Scottish scholar with an Oxford pedigree who devoted much of his life to serving the African church and challenging the academic community to turn its attention to the remarkable growth of Christianity in the non-Western world.

The numbers are staggering. In the year 1900, some 82 percent of the world’s Christians lived in Europe and North America. By 1970, the number of Christians in the Global South had grown to more than 40 percent, reaching nearly 70 percent in 2020!2 Walls could feel the changes taking place around him while he was teaching church history in Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s, and he remained active in teaching World Christianity right up until his death at the age of 93.3

How could historians make sense of the explosive growth of Christianity in the Global South?

Missions Is Not the Bomb

One of the many trends Walls noticed was that the church was growing in the main through indigenous witness and local revivals. This was instructive for teaching church history and understanding Christian missions. He insisted that scholars needed to place a greater focus on the African, Asian, and Latin American church in situ rather than simply relegating their entire story to a summary chapter on the history of missions.4 He pleaded with scholars to start teaching “church history” and stop teaching “clan history.”5

At the same time, Walls stressed that “it is difficult to imagine that the change [the rapid growth of Christianity in the Global South] could have occurred without the missionary movement.”6 And then he captured the importance of Christian missions in one sentence: “Missions were not the bomb, but they were the detonator, and as a result Africa and Asia and Latin America have become important theaters of Christian activity, the representative Christianity of the twenty-first century.”7 Missions had triggered the explosive growth of Christianity in the Global South.

Indispensable Detonator

Christian missions as the “detonator” for the explosive growth of Christianity is an insightful metaphor. On the one hand, it tames our pride, reminding missionaries (especially those from the West) that they are part, not the whole, of the work that God is doing in the global church. The Lord of the harvest has poured out his Spirit on all flesh and is using people all over the world to spread the gospel. The work of Western missionaries is only part of the story.

On the other hand, the “detonator” imagery infuses the entire church with a sense of urgency: someone must ignite the Spirit-primed explosion that will set the world aflame with the love of God. As John Piper has taught us, we aim in missions “to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory.”8 Missions is essential for this task.

God has been working in powerful ways through the missionary efforts of his people for two thousand years. When the Spirit of God came blowing in, setting tongues on fire in Jerusalem in the early first century, he translated the message into the languages of the earth. The miracle at Pentecost made clear that the good news was for all people “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). The Acts narrative shows that “word of God increased and multiplied” through missionaries and martyrs who could not remain quiet about the things they had “seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).

In the world of late antiquity, the Christian faith spread along Roman roads to the West, and silk routes to the East. To borrow from the mission historian Stephen Neill, these early witnesses to the gospel were possessed with a “burning conviction” that “a great event had burst upon them in creative power.”9 During the medieval period, contrary to popular imagination, the flame continued to spread through missionaries who followed Paul’s counsel to remain single so that they could offer their lives “with undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:35). Missionary monks gave up homes and families to carry the gospel to the “ends of the earth.” 10 During the Age of Discovery, following the European Reformations, Catholic and Protestant missionaries boarded ships, leaving kith and kin, bound for Africa, Asia, and the New World, inflamed by the love of Christ for the salvation of the world.

The evangelical revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created an unprecedented wave of missionary fervor, and helped usher in the new era of world Christianity in our own day.

Igniting Transformation in the Dark

By the year 1900, there were some 62,000 cross-cultural missionaries, increasing to 240,000 by 1970, and some 420,000 by century’s end! 11 Most were young, more than half were women, and many left prestigious schools like the University of Cambridge to lay down their lives for the gospel.12

“Missions is the means God has chosen for igniting transformation in the dark corners of the world.”

Academic presses are now churning out research showing direct causation between missionary fervor and the new era of world Christianity. As it turns out, Barbara Kingsolver’s missionary caricature of a failed Southern Baptist missionary in the Congo is misleading. To quote Philip Jenkins, “The runaway success of Christian missions to Africa and Asia are all the more striking in view of the extraordinarily poor image that such activities possess in Western popular thought.”13 Missionaries set off an explosion that has changed the course of human history.14

The rapid growth of Christianity is cause for celebration, but not complacency. About 40 percent of the world’s population, or approximately 3.5 billion souls, remain culturally cut off from the gospel. The vast majority of these unreached people groups do not know a Christian, do not have access to the Scriptures in their own language, and do not live in proximity to a local church. Missions is the means God has chosen for igniting transformation in the dark corners of the world.15

Can Local Pastors Change the World?

I know from personal experience that one of the great perils of pastoral life is that we become so preoccupied with important matters in our local churches that we can fail to see the urgent needs in the world. It is instructive that the word parochialism, meaning “narrow-minded,” is derived from the Anglo-French word parish. Pastors can become so involved in their local parish that they become parochial parsons. It is easy to do. It can happen to any of us. If you are a pastor or a Christian leader, bringing change to the world may need to begin with you.

“We become so preoccupied our local churches that we can fail to see the urgent needs in the world.”

How might pastors help fan the flame of missions today? Take up and read in order to learn about the work God is doing in the world and the work that remains unfinished. These developments are not happening in a corner. Go and see the church at work in the world — and go to learn. Like Peter in Acts 10, eat and drink with your brothers and sisters and let God change you by your encounter with people in other lands. Encourage people you know to go on short-term trips, and use the help of experienced guides. Don’t just send your people to go paint the orphanage.16 Challenge your people to give to ignite change through giving to worthy causes, such as sending a missionary, translating the gospel into a local language, planting an indigenous church, or equipping underserved pastors, evangelists, and missionaries who have ready access to unreached people groups. Finally, send missionaries out, laying hands on no person quickly (1 Timothy 5:22). Combine zeal with knowledge (Proverbs 19:2).

Don’t waste your influence. Don’t let your people waste their lives. Fan the flame that is in you, and help start a blazing fire somewhere in the world.