Sometimes custom causes us to neglect beauty. Sometimes we are so used to doing or saying something that we forget the sheer wonder of it. Such may be the case when we end our prayers with the words, “for Christ’s sake” or “for Jesus’ sake.” Don’t miss what De Witt Talmage has to say about these simple words.

The most important part of every prayer is the last three or four words of it—” For Christ’s sake.” Do not rattle off those words as though they were merely the finishing stroke of the prayer. They are the most important part of the prayer.
When in earnestness you go before God, and say—” For Christ’s sake,” it rolls in, as it were, upon God’s mind all the memories of Bethlehem and Golgotha.
When you say before God— “For Christ’s sake,” you hold before God’s mind every groan, every tear, every crimson drop of His only begotten Son.
If there is anything in all the universe that will move God to an act of royal benefaction, it is to say—”For Christ’s sake.”
If a little child should kneel behind God’s throne and should say—” For Christ’s sake,” the great Jehovah would turn around on His throne to look at her and listen. No prayer ever gets to Heaven but for Christ’s sake. No soul is ever comforted but for Christ’s sake. The world was never redeemed, but for Christ’s sake.
Our name, however illustrious it may be among men, before God stands only for inconsistency and sin; but there is a name, a potent name, a blessed name, a glorious name an everlasting name, that we may put upon our lips as a sacrament, and upon our forehead as a crown, and that is the name of Jesus…

If you have ever visited Wittenberg, Germany and have taken the time to tour its famous Castle Church, you may have made the same observation I did: The best part of the building is its doors. Castle Church is, of course, the spot where Martin Luther chose to post his Ninety-Five Theses. Centuries later, King Frederick William IV chose to commemorate the event by commissioning a beautiful set of bronze doors inscribed with Luther’s words. And, though they’ve been refurbished in the years between, they hang there still as the city’s foremost landmark.

Any tour of the cathedral begins with the doors. Once the tourists have gazed at them for a time, snapped the requisite photographs, and heard how Luther inadvertently sparked what we now know as the Protestant Reformation, the tour leads inside. And the inside is rather uninteresting by comparison. There are a few sculptures high up on the columns and a number of graves embedded in the floor, including Luther’s. But in most ways it is just another of Europe’s innumerable cathedrals without much to distinguish it from all the others.
I don’t know about you, but I consider it a disappointment when the doors to a building are the best part of the building. Likewise, it’s a disappointment when the opening scene of a film goes unsurpassed by any that follow over the next two hours, and a disappointment when the opening strains of an oratorio are the composer’s best. Handel was no fool when he made the “Hallelujah” chorus Messiah’s forty-fourth movement rather than its first.
This life can be pretty good at times. By God’s grace, we experience many pleasures and many joys. This world is full of delights and we honor God when we acknowledge them, experience them, and express gratitude for them. “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun,” says Solomon metaphorically. “So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all” (Ecclesiastes 11:7–8a). We honor God when we marvel at a sunrise, when we savor a cup of coffee, when we raise our hands in worship, when we fall into bed with the husband or wife of our youth.
But even as we acknowledge all this, we must also acknowledge that this world is not Wittenberg and the Christian gospel is not Castle Church. The doors are not the best part. Rather, the pleasures of this life are nothing more than the the foyer, the atrium, the entranceway to much greater joys beyond. After all, no joy here is untouched by at least some measure of sorrow and no pleasure here is unattended by at least some element of pain. None of our pleasures are pure and unadulterated, but all are in some way clouded, all in some way alloyed. Every pleasure that fulfills some longing simply exposes another.
There is freedom in understanding and admitting this, for it means we can enjoy our pleasures as they are instead of being disappointed that they are not all we might wish them to be. We can enjoy them even though they are incomplete, even though they inevitably leave us ultimately unsatisfied. We can enjoy them as pleasures that gesture us toward greater pleasures to come. And we can understand that, when compared to the glory that will someday be ours, they are but the plain and unadorned doors that open into a splendid palace that is far beyond all we have ever imagined.

I still remember, and may never forget, the first time I stopped to consider envy. I was reading a book by Os Guinness and was blindsided by a section on that particular sin. I immediately understood that it was prominent in my life and immediately began to take steps to address it. The process took some time and the sin still lingers, but its power has been broken and its grip diminished. I am still prone to occasional bouts of envy, but, by grace, I have learned to identify it and counter it.

Envy

Because I know I am prone to the sin of envy, I find value in pausing to consider it from time to time. Most recently this took the form of Mike Fabarez’s new book Envy: A Big Problem You Didn’t Know You Had. That one little word envy, he says, “represents an injurious threat to your sanctification. It has probably already racked up a multitude of hits in your life. And much of the pain it has caused has been lamented and grieved. But I find we all too often fail to connect the dots.” It is, after all, a sin that has a way of flying under the radar. We identify its consequences and lament them, but rarely identify the sin, admit its presence, and put it to death.
Every book on envy makes it clear that envy is a particularly insidious sin. They all make it clear that it has long been considered among the worst when it comes to the evil it works within our hearts and lives. They all make it clear that Christians of bygone eras were far more concerned about it than we are today and far more dedicated to dealing with it. It’s for good reason that it appears on the list of the “seven deadly sins” and that it is the father of many other transgressions.
Fabarez’s purpose is to provide some biblically guided exposure to this sin—to show where it may exist in our lives, how it may be manifesting itself, and where it may be reaping evil consequences. For it is only when we are familiar with the sin that we can identify it and put it to death.
What is envy? Envy is begrudging another person their joy or success. It is being resentful and frustrated at what another person has received, has earned, or has been blessed with. It is not merely wanting what another person has, but wanting that other person not to have it. It is feeling low, diminished, and hard done by when another person receives some good. And it always expresses itself in other forms of sin—hatred, gossip, ingratitude, and even murder.
Fabarez begins his book by showing where and how envy exists in the Bible, beginning in the opening pages of the Old Testament and continuing well into the New. He considers how it exacts a heavy internal cost to those who allow it to put down deep roots, then how it exacts a relational cost and even a societal cost. It turns out that much of the sin that mars the church and much of the sin that causes conflict in the world can be traced back to envy.
Having shown the ugly consequences of the sin, Fabarez provides instruction on countering it. He calls Christians to diligently examine themselves to see if and how this sin is present in their lives. Then he calls them to combat the sin with love and rejoicing—to love other people and to rejoice in their happiness, joys, and successes.
This is a short book, but one that packs a punch. It is a helpful examination of a particularly deceptive and odious sin and it offers a biblical solution to it. Those who read Envy may just find themselves grappling with a big problem they didn’t know they had. Even better, those who read it will be equipped to repent of that problem and to put to death that sin.