In 2000, my sister, Joy Dyer, tried to pay for a purchase at a department store but could not make her hand write out a check. That was the first sign that something sinister was attacking her body. Almost one year later to the day, cancer took Joy’s life. The following article is taken from the upcoming book, Suffering with Joy, which is comprised of letters that were written out of a desire to walk with Joy, her husband, Dean, and their family and friends through this hard journey. My hope is that these letters will provide comfort and encouragement in Christ to other fellow sufferers who are walking a hard path.

Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.

James 1:12

Joy had her first treatment of new chemotherapy on Monday. The side effects were hard on her. She was very sick Monday evening and night and unable to sleep at all until Tuesday afternoon. Her next treatment is scheduled for July 17. Continue to pray for Dean and Joy, specifically that this new treatment would eradicate the cancer cells and that the side effects would not be as difficult next time. Most importantly, pray that they will continue to experience God’s grace and strength to help them through this. Their faith remains intact. Despite the number and intensity of the assaults this ordeal keeps bringing against their faith, they continue to trust Christ. They are looking to God for strength day by day. In other words, they are fully engaged in what the apostle Paul calls the “fight of faith” (1 Tim. 6:12).

Our next Joy Verse comes from the same book as last week’s verse. James 1:12 says, “Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”

The word translated “temptation” is the same word translated in the plural as “trials” in verse 1:2. Trials become temptations to us because, when we go through them, we are often plagued with doubts about God’s goodness or sovereignty or wisdom. Such doubts are natural, and we might even say inevitable at points. But when doubts and questions give way to despair and unbelief, then we have moved from being tempted to actually sinning. While it is never right or helpful to fall into this kind of sin, it is easy to do.

Everyone who loves Joy and Dean is facing this temptation right now. Why has God let this happen? Why doesn’t He miraculously intervene? The simple truth is we do not have definitive, complete answers to these questions. So we must live by faith and trust God through this trial. The things we have learned about Him from His Word are still true. He is still good, sovereign, and wise. He does not make mistakes. Successfully resisting the urge to quit believing these truths during severe trials is what James means by “endur[ing] temptation.”

That person is truly blessed who lives through trial and does not give in to unbelief. Such endurance proves the genuineness of his or her faith. Real faith lasts. It doesn’t always soar on the wings of eagles. Sometimes it barely walks. But it never finally quits. 

What does real faith look like amid a severe trial? There is a great deal of confusion about this in our day. Some well-meaning but wrong-thinking Christians have taught that real faith will always be bright, almost happy-go-lucky, no matter what kind of trial it goes through. But this kind of superficial spirituality is foreign to the Bible. In the Old Testament, Job provides a great example of one whose faith was severely tried. He lost his family, his wealth, and his health. But he did not lose his faith. He faced his trial with genuine agony and sorrow. And at times he entertained serious doubts about God and looked like he was right on the brink of cursing God and turning away from Him. But in his weakness and brokenness, he persevered. And his faith was rewarded with a deeper knowledge of God. 

Real faith lasts. It doesn’t always soar on the wings of eagles. Sometimes it barely walks. But it never finally quits. 

An even better example is given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. As He hung on the cross, dying in the place of sinners, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46).He felt utterly abandoned by His Father and expressed His sorrow of heart in that cry. But even as He asked this question of His Father, He prefaced it with, “My God.” Jesus did not give up His confidence in God even at the point of feeling most forsaken by Him. 

So what did faith look like for Job in his trial? And what did it look like for Jesus on the cross? Glib, superficial pronouncements that all is well? No! Rather, in both cases real faith was demonstrated by what John Piper calls, “an uncursing hope in an unfelt God.”[1] For Job, the refusal to curse God, even when God seemed so uncaring, so distant, was faith. And for Jesus, the refusal to come down off the cross and to turn away from His planned death was faith. 

So for us, humble submission to God in steadfast hope may be the clearest demonstration of our faith when we are going through trials. James says such tested, proven faith will be rewarded with a crown of life, just as the Lord has promised. Like every reward that comes from God, this crown will not be given because we have deserved it. It is not because we have in any way earned it by our faith. Faith does not earn or merit God’s gifts; rather, it accesses them. 

The crown of life, which is eternal life with God in heaven, is given to everyone who loves God. We love Him because He first loved us. We trust Him because He has given us faith to believe. As we go through trials, we must fight to keep trusting Jesus Christ. We must remember all that God has done for us and is for us. And we must hope in God, knowing that a crown of life awaits us on the other side of the grave.

[1] John Piper, “We Do Not Lose Hope,” desiringGod.org, April 11, 1998, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/we-do-not-lose-hope. Accessed April 19, 2024

I have read Tom Ascol’s treatment of the discussion surrounding the supposed overthrow of Roe v. Wade and the implications that has for the future of abortion in the United States. His treatment is sensitive, fittingly nuanced, biblically sound, pastoral, legally aware, clear, and fraternal in areas of disagreement among pro-life Christians. He points out that one area of disagreement among those who are pro-life is the degree, if any, of culpability on the part of the mother. This article was prompted in a positive way by his. My desire is to focus on the theology of responsible motherhood in the critical months from conception to birth.
When an abortion occurs, is there culpability? Every Christian should say, “Yes.” Upon whom does this culpability fall? Certainly it falls on the one whose profession puts himself, or herself, in the position of terminating the person who has been conceived. With just as much certainty, a biblical theology would point to both parents as culpable, in varying degrees depending on circumstances. In particular, however, caring for life from the moment of conception falls on the woman whose body has been designed by God both to conceive, carry, nourish, bring to term and give birth to the person conceived. This article will argue that this is an absolute ethical responsibility derived from God’s purpose and mandate at creation, continued after the fall (even in difficulties), reinforced by the reality of the incarnation, analogically emphasized by the doctrine of the new birth, and planted in the heart as an ineradicable element of conscience and knowledge of God.
When God created mankind in the persons of Adam and Eve, he clearly stated that created humanity, arising from his power and purpose, was male and female (Genesis 1:27; 5:1, 2). Denial of these two genders in their respective roles is a denial of the wisdom and prerogative of God in creation, particularly his design for mankind.  Perversion of the very precise and purposeful order of creation is viewed throughout Scripture as sinful and an evidence of human perversity in rebellion against the knowledge of God and knowledge embedded within the conscience. This purposeful, God-established distinction, is obvious from the very phenomena of creation (Romans 1:20, 24-25, 26-27). Violations of the distinctions are described as exchanging “natural relations for those that are contrary to nature” (Romans 1:26). “Contrary to nature” means contrary to the designed purpose given at creation. In this sense, all actions contrary to nature, even as contrary to moral law, are sins. Redemption and justification forgive transgressions and cleanse from sinful corruption that include these kinds of perversions (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). If they were not sin and worthy of condemnation, then there would be no need of the grace of justification in light of them.
The first commandment that the man and woman received as a couple, after God made the woman from the very bone and flesh of the man, was “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 2:21-25 and 1:28). This places on the couple, and particularly on the woman the stewardship from God himself to populate the world with image-bearers through procreation. The woman has a particular stewardship to do all that she can to bring to completion the fruitfulness of her womb; a pregnant woman has a specific commission from God issued at creation that will be in force as long as the earth stands. A conceived child is not her property nor her prerogative but is a stewardship from the Creator. The involvement of her body does not give her sovereignty over the life of the child but presents her with a solemn responsibility for protection of that life. This responsibility descends on her from above derived from a command and creation ordinance from God. The claim that a woman has a right over her own body is, in this particular case, clearly false for her body was given by God, designed by him peculiarly for this purpose. Like the unnatural in sexual involvements, both the desire and the action of attack on life in the womb is unnatural, contrary to the created nature of the woman and the life concerned, and is thus unlawful, sinful, and any perpetrator is culpable.
A pregnant woman has a specific commission from God issued at creation that will be in force as long as the earth stands. A conceived child is not her property nor her prerogative but is a stewardship from the Creator.
After the fall, the first judgment issued was in the form of a prophecy of redemption. This prophecy involved the woman giving birth to one who would crush the serpent’s head. The gravity of such a pregnancy is intensified in that the one to be born in order to defeat the serpent is called “her seed” or “her offspring.” The woman will have a child that is not from the seed implanted by a human male. Its true humanity comes from her alone. Her seed and her body will give rise to what Isaiah prophesied, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (7:14). This cryptic language from Genesis and extended by Isaiah was not fully understood (Well, it has never been fully understood!) until Mary heard the announcement, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you: and for that reason the holy being conceived in you will be called, Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The Angel then told Joseph, after he had discovered that Mary was indeed pregnant, “The one conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” The woman’s body was created for the purpose of bringing into the world the Messiah, mysteriously God and man in one person so that Elizabeth could say, “And how has it happened to me that the mother of my Lord would come to me?” (Luke 1:43). She said this less than one month after conception—Mary was mother and the child was Lord. In this light Paul taught, “The woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through the childbearing—if they are continuing in faith and love and holiness with self-control” (1 Timothy 2:15). Though the pain of childbirth is a curse of the fall, it is in the context of that pain that salvation comes—the childbearing. Paul refers here to the specific childbearing mentioned in Genesis 3:15 as the seed that would undo the work of Satan immediately followed by the promise of pain in that, and in all, childbearing (3:16). Every childbearing is a reminder both of original sin and the promise of redemption. The termination of the childbearing nurses a sinful prejudice against purposeful creation, the justness of the curse, and the mystery of redemption. The woman was given the assignment of bringing into the world its, and her, Savior. The Savior covenanted to be “born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, in order that we might receive the placement as sons” (Galatians 4:4, 5). These realities connected with the bearing and birthing of children are primordially immutable absolutes, an attack upon which is a moral challenge to the covenantal integrity of the triune God.
The Baptist Faith and Message affirmation that “Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord” reflects the biblical teaching concerning conception. David testified that he was “shapen in iniquity” and “in sin” at the point of conception (Psalm 51:5), that is, corrupt morally through his connection with Adam. His being was of moral stature from conception. At the moment of the conception of the Christ, he was of moral stature, “the holy thing conceived,” (Luke 1:35) and was seen as a person, the Lord, (Luke 1:43). Also, through the marvel and mystery of the union of Christ’s two natures in one person, we know that from the moment that the Holy Spirit came on Mary, the human nature had personhood, for in that event the power of the Most High also overshadowed her. The Son of God eternally-generated by the Most High, by that dynamic of generation, became one in person with the seed of the woman impregnated by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Abortion is nothing less that the taking of human life. It is an unnatural and unlawful act of aggression against the wise purpose of God both for the child and for the woman’s body. Those who violate this purpose are culpable.
The analogy to new birth gives another level of clarity and sobriety of the unified responsibility for life from conception to birth. Jesus said, “You must be born again” and apart from the new birth one can neither see nor enter the kingdom of God (John 3:1-8). Birth is the natural consequence of begetting. “Enosh lived ninety years and begot Cainan” (Genesis 5:9). “Noah begot three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth” (Genesis 6:10). The male planted the seed—begot—for these children and the entire process from that time of conception to their birth is collapsed into a single event. Peter presented the new birth in this way when he wrote, “who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). In the analogy between the operation of human corruption and the operation of divine truth, James traces the effect of corruption from conception to birth: “Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15). The merciful work of the Lord in the new birth is described in these terms. “Of his own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures” (James 1:18). The point is, that the movement from begottenness to birth is seen as a unit. The one naturally gives rise to the other and it is God’s intent, as seen in his own action of regeneration, that nothing interrupt that connection.
Abortion is an unnatural and unlawful act of aggression against the wise purpose of God both for the child and for the woman’s body.
These moral realities are written on the heart. Both by observation of form and anatomy and by divine mandate, Adam and Eve knew their assigned places from the first consciousness of creation (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:20-25). Sabbath and fitting sexuality, representative of both tables of the law, were present in the earliest conscious experience. This knowledge does not leave the conscience.  In spite of the most precipitous decline into perfect lawlessness and aggressively flagrant abuse of fitness according to God’s purpose, Paul can write, “who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). When Paul wrote of a “conscience seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2), he is not referring to the loss of consciousness of right and wrong but to an aggressive and callous preference for one’s personal views over the God-centered propositions of implied rightness in creation and stated in Scripture. The point here is that no person is without a witness to the preeminent value of conceived life and our responsibility to nurture and protect it. One cannot argue that some women simply do not know what they are doing when they seek an abortion.
The implications of this doctrine first relate to the church and then to society. We can hope for no progress in society without an unequivocal conviction on the part of the church concerning both life at conception and parental, particularly female, stewardship of that life. We cannot present a theology that diminishes human responsibility for honoring with obedience God’s creation purpose, redemptive necessity, the new birth, and the law written on the heart. Those involved in an abortion should understand that this is not a neutral act in which some parties are innocent—except rarely—but each is culpable for the taking of human life. If the church is not convinced of this, we never will function as leaven to stop the rampant hideousness of abortion.

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Henry David Thoreau was an eccentric 19th century American author, philosopher, and naturalist. He spent 2 years, 2 months and 2 days living in a small cabin he built himself outside of Concord, Massachusetts. He chronicles his reflections during that experience in his 1854 book, Walden. He explains the rationale for his exile in the wilderness in the following words.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Thoreau commendably wanted to live life to the fullest, to experience its richness at its deepest levels so that when he died, he could die without regret. Eight years after publishing Walden, on May 6, 1862, after a lingering case of tuberculosis, he did die. While on his deathbed, his Aunt Louisa asked him if he had made his peace with God. Thoreau’s response was, “I did not know we had ever quarreled.”
Those words, no doubt spoken in sincerity, reflect the kind of willful ignorance that has tragically plagued mankind since our first parents turned away from our Creator. I call it “ignorance” because it reflects a lack of knowledge about the way things actually are.
The Bible teaches us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 6:23) and that because of sin we are all “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3), that is the wrath of God. The Apostle Paul says that we are all naturally “enemies of God” (Romans 5:10).
That is undeniably the way that life is now. But it is not the way it was in the beginning. Originally, God made Adam and Eve “upright” (Ecclesiastes 7:29) and enjoyed perfect fellowship with them. Sin caused them to be separated from Him and at odds with Him. Failure to acknowledge that is to be ill-informed. It is ignorance.
Such ignorance is willful because, as Romans 1:18-20 says, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
So yes, we all have quarreled with God—including those who, like Thoreau, are willfully ignorant of it. Sin has placed everyone in jeopardy and exposes us all to His wrath. The result is that, left to ourselves we cannot ever have peace with God.
But the good news that is revealed to us in the Bible is that God has not left us to ourselves. On the contrary, in our weakness and helplessness, He has come to us. Through His Son, Jesus Christ, He has provided salvation for us—a way for us to be restored to Him; to have our sin forgiven and to experience genuine peace with God.
Because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God now reconciles to Himself all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus as Lord.
That truth is what empowered the Apostle Paul to live the way that He did as a minister of Jesus Christ. And that truth is the very foundation of His church throughout the ages. It is what Christians live for; what we stand for. It is the one message that we have that we must declare to men, women, boys and girls today: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

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