Every local church and ministry needs to remember that it is by this great qualification—love—that God assesses all our giftedness and service. It is no exaggeration to say that without these characteristics, a church will drift away from its mission and may even disintegrate. So while we can be known for any number of things, let us be known always as people who seriously, humbly, and realistically ask the Spirit of God to make our hearts and minds so full of love that it will overflow into the church and the world.

Though 1 Corinthians 13 is largely regarded as a cozy part of the Bible, a closer look reveals that these “feel-good” verses confront us, humble us, and begin to show us that the things we think matter most are not what matter most to God.
The church in Corinth faced circumstances from within that threatened its existence. So, in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul showed the church “a still more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31)—that is, the way of love, of agapē, rooted in the very character of God and revealed in the life of Jesus Christ. It is only by growing in Christlike love that the Corinthians could grow in Christian maturity and effectively handle such difficult situations.
Paul describes the beauty of God’s love with fifteen characteristics, like the facets of a diamond. His emphasis here is not so much upon what love is as what love does. Love behaves itself in a certain way. It is not only felt but acted on. And these actions and attitudes are to be habitual in the lives of those who love as God does.
Each facet of this Christlike love is worth taking a moment to meditate on. In a previous article, we considered the first eight. In this article, we consider the latter seven.
Love Keeps No Record of Wrong
Think of how the Lord Jesus has treated us:
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,and whose sins are covered;blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. (Rom. 4:7–8)
The Lord will not count forgiven sin! When we enter His presence, He’s not going to run the video and show it to us all over again. And when we try to play it back ourselves, the Lord essentially says, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
One of the great skills in life is learning what to forget. When people come to confess sin to us, we need to remember the grace God has shown us in response to the enormity of our offenses. Surely, then, we ought to forgive and do our best to forget the offenses done against us. When love invades a life, harboring a record of wrongs received ceases. Love knows there are greater truths worth remembering.
Love Does Not Rejoice in Evil
Human nature is intrigued by evil. To a certain extent, people seem even to enjoy witnessing evil, especially in others. The covers of newspapers and magazines are filled with adultery, indecency, cheating, lies, corruption, and filth because men and women have an appetite for it. But such hunger is inconsistent with godly love.
One of the primary ways Christians fall into the trap of delighting in the murky and sordid is in gossip—often even under the cover of prayer. When we gossip in this way, we violate agapē love by gloating over the sins and shortcomings of others.
Paul says that when the transforming love of Christ marks a fellowship, it’s going to make us the kind of people who do not rejoice when evil is exalted but turn their attention to better things: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). The challenge is clear: we ought to gauge our reading, viewing, speaking, and listening habits by this measure.
Love Rejoices with the Truth
J. B. Phillips gives us a wonderful paraphrase of verse 6b: love, he says, “is glad with all good men when truth prevails.” Love cannot rejoice when truth is denied. Love and righteousness cannot be separated. There is no love that is indifferent to moral considerations.
This is one of the ways cultural ideas of love fall short.
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When Jesus speaks of salt losing its salty quality, He’s referring to the method of mining salt unique to that period and region. People would harvest salt from either the Dead Sea or from the salt pans, and in those salt pans the water evaporated. In that process, the pure salt would leech out, leaving a residue of other minerals and causing the salt to “lose” its saltiness. So, Jesus poses the question to His disciples, “What good will you be if you lose your saltiness—if you succumb to the things that leech the salt out of your lives?”

Many have described Christ’s words in Mark 9:49–50 as being among the New Testament’s most challenging passages. They read,
Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.
These verses reinforce a familiar biblical theme: following Jesus is a serious business. Anybody who views Christianity as some kind of esoteric philosophical journey—a sort of crutch for the inept—must reckon with Jesus’ own claims. The call to following Him involves self-denial and suffering (Mark 8:34).
Jesus further clarifies the seriousness of discipleship in the verses immediately preceding the text in view (Mark 9:42–48). Warning against sin’s dangers, He doesn’t suggest that we negotiate with sin, trying to reconcile our sinful propensities with discipleship’s demands. Rather, He calls for its total eradication. We don’t toy with sin; we put it to death (Col. 3:5).
It’s clear that Jesus deals here with weighty truths. And it’s against the backdrop of verse 48 (in which He describes hell as a place where the “worm does not die and the fire is not quenched”) that His puzzling teaching on salt appears. With the costliness of discipleship and the picture of fire fixed in His disciples’ minds, Jesus asserts, “Everyone will be salted with fire.” How should we understand this peculiar phrase?
The Old Testament Background
The sacrificial system in the Old Testament is a good place to begin. It would’ve been familiar territory for Jesus and His audience. Establishing the design for grain offerings in Israel, God had made the following provision: “You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt” (Lev. 2:13).
Further, these seasoned offerings were burnt offerings; they were consumed on the altar. In this sense, these Old Testament sacrifices were complete and irrevocable. Jesus appears to be reaching back to this practice, collating the pictures of fire and salt, to remind His followers that discipleship will involve a process whereby they’re “salted.” When they offer themselves to Christ’s cause, they will undergo a refining process, their allegiance to Him being complete and irrevocable.
Other places in the New Testament affirm this idea. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul describes a similar refining process:
No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. (1 Cor. 3:11–13).
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The church has been at the forefront of many social changes—in relationship to medical care, to slavery, to prisons, to workers, and more—all of those changes emerge from the conviction that Jesus Christ changes lives by the power of the Spirit. If we attempt to offer social change without transforming power, we will ultimately be able to offer neither. It is the Gospel that has transformed culture, and it has done so as it has transformed human hearts.

At the beginning of Acts 3, at the gate of the Jerusalem temple, the apostles Peter and John encounter a disabled man who thinks he needs one thing: money. If he doesn’t have any money, he thinks, he can’t eat—and if he can’t eat, then he’ll be dead. So he needs money.
And so we read that when Peter and John were on their way into the temple, “he asked to receive alms” (Acts 3:3). But the two apostles, having now witnessed the risen Lord and seen Him return to heaven, having received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, did something the man did not expect:
Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. (Acts 3:4–7)
When people today fix their attention on the church of Jesus Christ, they typically are expecting, like the beggar at the temple gate, to get something from it. Over the last century, the church has taught people to expect slogans, political agendas, and psychological cures—and in exchange, it has taught them to expect to be asked for money. But does the church really have anything worthwhile to offer? Does it have the power to remake a life?
A Message of Transforming Power
We may be tempted to say that the miracle of healing is what Peter and John had to offer. But the healing miracle, like all of the signs and wonders of the New Testament, was only a pointer to a greater miracle, which was the reconciliation of a sinful people to holy God.
That’s why Peter, when he saw that the overflowing joy of the healed man was drawing a crowd, seized the opportunity to share not an offer of healing or a promise of prosperity but the Gospel of forgiveness. It was the cosmic authority of the risen Lord, whom Israel had sent to the cross, that had made the lame man walk (Acts 3:12–16).
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We need to be aware of what the main things and the plain things are so that we can set theological alarms in our hearts and minds. Because these false teachers creep into our churches, our ministries, and our Christian schools, we need pay attention and measure everything we hear by the standard of God’s Word.

The end of the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom was a period when the authority and the sufficiency of Scripture were under vigorous attack. The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement faced ridicule, not from outsiders but from ministers of the church. During what became known as the Down-Grade Controversy, Charles Spurgeon recognized that God was being robbed of His glory and that men and women were being robbed of their hope. He wrote, “Avowed atheists are not a tenth as dangerous as those preachers who scatter doubt and stab at faith.”1
Throughout history, the church has triumphantly withstood attacks from the outside. Far more threatening have been the threats from within, whether in the nineteenth century, the first century, or today. Contemporary evangelicalism is still confronted by those within the church who attack Scripture’s authority and sufficiency and ridicule essential doctrines.
The New Testament letter of Jude speaks to these circumstances. Arguably the most neglected of all of the New Testament books, this short letter calls us to be on guard and resist attempts to distort the Gospel message that has been entrusted to us.
An Urgent Appeal
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. (Jude 3)
Jude, the author of this letter, was the “brother of James” (Jude 1) and so also the half-brother of Jesus according to the flesh (Matt. 13:53). Like James, though, he instead calls himself Christ’s “servant” (Jude 1; James 1:1). Jude had become a leader in the church, and he wrote out of a sense of concern for the church. He urged his readers “to contend for the faith”—not just faith in general but the objective truth of the Gospel that has been delivered to us and that we must believe to experience the Lord’s redemption and salvation.
The import of the phrase “once for all” is that the Gospel handed down to the apostles was complete and exactly what God intended for the church. It was not to be added to, tampered with, or diluted. It is the Gospel that God Himself delivered to us.
The sad truth, though, is that Jude’s urgent appeal is still necessary in our modern church context. Key biblical doctrines are not preached faithfully in all “evangelical” churches today. For example, certain churchgoers and ministers alike find the idea of God exercising wrath to be morally repugnant. They may sing, “O the deep, deep love of Jesus!”2 but never such lyrics as “On the cross when Jesus died, the wrath of God is satisfied.”3 They say, “God is not a violent God. He is opposed to violence! He could not plan from all eternity to do such a thing to His Son—never mind what the Scriptures say about God’s settled opposition to sin.”
When pastors and church leaders go astray, it’s because they have already gone wrong on the doctrine of Scripture. But the Christian faith is not an intellectual sandbox in which any view may be entertained just so long as the insight does not claim finality. It is “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” and we have not right to change it to suit our tastes.
Set the Alarms!
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 4)
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In Christ, the Gospel is the very ground we walk on. To leave it behind is to leave the faith behind altogether. Christians are people who, by God’s grace and not by any merit of their own, have been clothed in Christ’s righteousness and welcomed into God’s family. If we don’t return to the Gospel again and again, we will fall into worldly thinking.

Many Christians who sit in a church on a Sunday morning can say that they have already found the answer to the question What Is the Gospel? They have understood the saving grace of God in the cross of Christ, have taken hold of Christ by faith, and now find themselves in Christ, clothed in His righteousness, adopted as children of the Father, and walking in the Spirit’s power. In other words, at a particular moment in time, they were born again.
Yet while the Gospel may be the beginning of the Christian life, it is not simply an initiation. No, it is a fundamental principle to which we return again and again, not because we must be saved again but because our standing with God and our hope of redemption, once established, remains forever founded on that work of Jesus for us.
So, even for those who have been saved and experience assurance of their place in God’s family, a ministry of reminder is necessary. We need to remember the essential truths of our faith. And we may do so by considering the Gospel’s source, its substance, its scope, and its ongoing significance.
The Source of the Gospel
Throughout Scripture, the Gospel is described specifically to be “the gospel of God” (e.g., Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1; 1 Thess. 2:2; 1 Peter 4:17). In other words, the good news of Jesus is not a manmade contrivance, but it is a divine revelation. It begins with God Himself.
In Galatians 1:11, Paul writes, “I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel”—or, as J. B. Phillips paraphrases it, “no human invention.” The Gospel ministry of Paul and his fellow apostles was not a matter of calling people to listen to what they had to say. It emerged from their responsibility to proclaim the message God had entrusted to them.
When we proclaim the Gospel, we’re proclaiming God’s message on His behalf. We’re saying to humanity that the God who made them in His image has presented, in His Son, the only means whereby they may find salvation and meaning.
And this Gospel is not a contingency plan. It’s not as if God had one bad go with Adam, and then another with the law, and now He’s trying it another way with Jesus. God didn’t send His Son to fix His own mistake. No, the Gospel has been His eternal purpose since before the world’s creation (Eph. 3:11). Long before Jesus was born in the stable in Bethlehem, God was unfolding His eternal purpose. Peter tells us that the prophets and even the angels knew that something was coming, but they didn’t yet know it in its fullness; they longed to see it because they knew that it had its origin in God’s heart (1 Peter 1:10–12).
Temptations will confront us to leave the Gospel story behind for one reason or another, for this or that strategy, for an exciting new idea. But the Gospel is not a human story that we can take up or put down as we please. Indeed, we proclaim Jesus because “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). And so we must hold firmly to God’s message of salvation for us through faith in the Son.
The Substance of the Gospel
In Romans 1:17, Paul says that in the Gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed.” John Stott explains this “righteousness of God” well when he writes, “It is a righteous status which God requires if we are ever to stand before him, which he achieves through the atoning sacrifice of the cross, which he reveals in the gospel, and which he bestows freely on all who trust in Jesus Christ.”1 The four verbs of this definition can help us to grasp what the substance of the Gospel is.
This “righteousness of God” is first of all the “righteous status which God requires.” To stand before a holy God, we must be in a state of moral and spiritual perfection. Yet we can never attain such a state by our own power. The law shows us our imperfections, making it clear that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6 KJV).
But nevertheless, it is also a righteousness that God “achieves” in the death of His Son. In the cross, God satisfies His perfect justice by meting out the punishment for sin upon the sinless God-man, Jesus Christ. And because Christ has taken the punishment for sin, God pardons those who believe in the Lord Jesus even though we have sinned and deserve condemnation.
Thirdly, God then “reveals” this righteousness in the proclamation of the good news of Jesus. That’s why Christians are Gospel men and women. That’s why we want to be about the Gospel. That’s why we want to declare the Gospel: because in this Gospel, in this great story, is God’s answer to our problem.
And fourthly, God “bestows” this righteousness on those who come to Christ in faith. Our sin is counted to His account, and His righteousness is counted to ours, so that we stand before God with the innocence of Christ.
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As Christians, our outlook is simple: we will be like Jesus. That is our priority. It’s easy to be concerned about what we’re going to do tomorrow, where we’re going to be, who we’ll be with, and so on. All of these questions about our future are uncertain. But we may know this: that God’s eternal purpose is to conform us to the image of Jesus. And that ought to transform how we view all of life’s moments and decisions—from the mundane to the extraordinary.

At one time or another, every Christian confronts the question “What is God’s will for my life?” When it comes to the specifics, the answer will differ for each of us according to context and calling, and we must exercise wisdom as we prayerfully study God’s Word and apply it in our lives. Most Christians will never know with certainty what their next step will be—only that it must be in faith as we obey the Lord’s commands.
One thing is certain, however: whatever our unique paths through life may be, God’s purpose is to shape us into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.
In the New Testament, there are three passages that especially point us to this reality. As we come to grips with them, we will begin to understand the purpose of our salvation and God’s plan for our lives, now and in eternity.
God’s Eternal Purpose
We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Rom. 8:28–29)
This well-loved passage from the apostle Paul reveals God’s eternal purpose. God has predestined His children “to be conformed to the likeness of his Son”—to be fashioned, shaped, molded in the way in which a potter molds clay. In the economy of God from all of eternity, He has made it His business to transform “those whom he foreknew.”
If we understand this reality in verse 29, we can then make sense of the oft-abused verse that precedes it: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” What is the “good” that He works for and guarantees? To conform us to the image and likeness of His Son! When we understand that, we will realize that even bad times may be for our good, for the ultimate good God is seeking is to ensure that we will become like His Son, Jesus.
Anyone who has been a maturing disciple for some time will have discovered that we make more spiritual progress along the pathway of failure and tears than along the pathway of success and laughter. Nevertheless, even maturing disciples are tempted to flee from trials that are clearly making them more like Jesus (James 1:2)—and in fleeing them, they miss their blessings. It is in the warp and woof of life, in the difficulties and in the disasters, that all of our rough parts are chipped away and we are fashioned into the image of Jesus.
When we read the Bible and look at the stories of those who have been saved, we can marvel at what God has done in their lives. Why should so great a witness as Stephen have been snuffed out so early on? Why should so faithful a man as Paul have endured all of those beatings and illnesses and shipwrecks? “Why, O Lord?” God’s answer is as profound as it is challenging: “I was making them like Jesus.”
God’s Ongoing Process
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:16–18)
This second passage from the apostle Paul reveals something about how our transformation takes place. If we know the Lord and therefore have God’s Spirit at work in us, then we “are being transformed into the same image”—a present-tense experience. In other words, the eternal purpose of God is the ongoing process of God in each of our lives.
In 2 Corinthians 3 broadly, Paul draws a contrast between the old covenant and the new.

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Our tongues may only be brought under control by the one who made them: Jesus, the incarnate Word (John 1:1–14). He had the power to still the waves because He made the ocean. He could give sight to the blind because He formed their eyes. He alone has the power to come to a swearing, cutting, barbarous, spiteful, gossiping tongue and make it brand-new so that it is trained and ordered to speak that which builds up, exalts, and encourages.

Words are not trivial. As Proverbs says, “The tongue has the power of life and death” (18:21). Words hurt, and they heal; they destroy, and they restore. Leaders can move markets, nations, and peoples—toward both greatness and disaster—with their words. Mothers and fathers nurture their children—and wound them—with their words. We may never take up arms against others, but many of us do far greater damage with words than we could ever manage with a weapon. Yet the wise person, God teaches, uses words to bring life.
The book of Proverbs is the Bible’s book of wisdom for living, and standing out among its many concerns is the matter of words and how we use them. If we want to speak in a way that brings life instead of death, there is practical advice to heed in this book of Scripture. We may look to them to learn how our words can glorify God.
Our Words Should be True
Whoever gives an honest answer kisses the lips. (Prov. 24:26)
Sales are often secured on promises that salespeople know they won’t keep. And this problem is not unique to them. In academia, in politics, in families, and even in churches, dishonest speech is rampant.
But if we want our words give life, then they need always to be true—not just technically true, but fully honest. We need to tell it straight and not deceive others with clever evasions and strategic silences. That is not to say that absolutely everything we know to be true needs to be said, but every answer we give ought to be both true and sincere. This sort of honesty is a refreshing gesture of love to our neighbor: it “kisses the lips.”
When Paul describes our spiritual armor in Ephesians 6, the first piece, and the one that holds everything else in place, is “the belt of truth” (v. 14). If we leave off truth, if we talk out of both sides of our mouth, if we cease to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15), we will wreak havoc in our relationships and in the fellowship of God’s church. But choosing honest speech honors God and brings blessing to those around us.
Our Words Should be Few
When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. (Prov. 10:19)
There are many reasons we speak when we shouldn’t. Sometimes we speak because we feel bad, and it makes us feel better to lash out. Other times, our words come because we are under pressure, and we try to relieve our stress by spreading it around to others.
This verse is a helpful reminder that we should speak with intentionality and not just for the sake of speaking. The difficult truth is that when we give our tongues free rein, they tend to do more harm than good. It is far better to refrain from speaking at all unless we are doing so to give life with our words.
If we would sit down at night and honestly review our day, we would quickly discover the prevalence of sin in our many words. Perhaps our words were true but unkind, true but unnecessary, true but unhelpful.
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Jesus’ deity a matter not of triviality but of reality. The great, staggering truth of Christianity is that Christ, the God-man, was nurtured in a womb—that He who had always existed became part of God’s space-time economy. Jesus, while true man, is also true God.

Maybe you’ve heard this description somewhere: He was born in poverty, lived only thirty-three years, spent most of His life in obscurity, never wrote a book, never had any position in public life, was crucified with two thieves—and yet two thousand years later, millions still follow Him. It’s certainly not the whole story of Jesus Christ, but it is a helpful, thought-provoking summary of His legacy. Whether we’re convinced in our faith or questioning in our agnosticism, there’s no escaping the fact that Jesus of Nazareth has left an indelible mark on human history. All of us must reckon with the question of His identity.
Rumors, conversations, and confusion surrounding Jesus’ identity are nothing new. Many were trying to sort out who He was during His earthly ministry. At one point, Jesus asked the twelve disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matt. 16:13). To this they replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” When Jesus asked them in response, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (vv. 14–16)
The variety of responses received then are more than matched today. Consider, for example, Gandhi’s view: he maintained that “the soul of religions is one, but is encased in a multitude of forms.”1 Certainly this position isn’t tenable for the Christian, for we serve the God who claimed, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Tragically, though, many professing Christians would either respond to Gandhi’s sentiment with ambivalence or, in the spirit of inclusivity, embrace it outright. But we must be clear: we cannot be orthodox in our faith while holding to an unbiblical view of Christ.
As we build the case for the authentic Jesus, there are four factors we ought to consider: His humanity, His deity, His unity, and His authority.
Jesus Is a Man
The authentic Jesus, first of all, is a human Jesus. Irrespective of His supernatural conception, Jesus’ birth itself was, in fact, normal. He entered life as an infant who learned how to walk and speak. Joseph and Mary would have trained Him in the details of His daily routine. (See Luke 2:52.) The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said of Jesus, “His life ran, like ours, ‘from womb to tomb.’”2
That Jesus was human is evident in both His human experience and His human emotion.
His Human Experience
We can piece together a very human Christ from the Gospel records. In the account of the woman at the well, for example, we find Jesus “wearied … from his journey,” bidding His disciples to go on while He rested (John 4:6). He also experienced real hunger (Matt. 21:18) and thirst (John 19:28). Incidentally, this is in part why the Pharisees were annoyed with Jesus: because in His hunger and thirst, He would even dine with sinners (Luke 5:29–30).
Further, Jesus knew human pain. In Mark 14, which records the scene in the garden of Gethsemane, we’re told that Jesus was “greatly distressed and troubled,” and His soul was “very sorrowful, even to death” (14:33–34).
Still other examples of Jesus’ human experiences include His customary Sabbath observance (Luke 4:16) and His being tempted (Heb. 4:15). Such experiences underscore the fact that portraying Christ as anything less than fully man is simply unfaithful to what is recorded about Him. Any attempt to show that Jesus is God by diminishing His humanity is to introduce an unauthentic Jesus.
His Human Emotion
In addition to human experiences, Jesus also felt the full gamut of human emotions. He knew what it was to be joyful. Speaking to His disciples about the realities of their salvation in Him, Luke records in his Gospel that Jesus “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” and began to pray (10:21). In other words, in His humanity, He experienced a very natural, yet also supernatural, joy.
On the other hand, Jesus endured great sorrow. He loved, and He lost those He loved (John 11:5). Matthew paints a vivid picture for us also of our Lord’s compassion: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36). Humanity’s lostness weighed heavily on Christ’s heart.
Jesus was not some unfeeling creature, an alien from another place. He cannot be thought of in those terms. He was able to sit and empathize with men and women in their thirst, hunger, joy, sorrow, love, and pain. As Isaiah prophesied, He was a man “acquainted with grief” (53:3).
Docetism: A Deficient View
Despite the straightforward teaching concerning Christ’s humanity, deficient views of His nature abound. Among the earliest of unorthodox teachings was Docetism. Its name comes from the Greek word dokeō, “to appear.” Based on the Gnostic worldview that matter is evil and spirit is good, Docetism taught that God could never have taken on a real human body. Whatever the incarnation was, Docetism maintained, it was merely appearances. Jesus wasn’t a real human being. He looked like one, He sounded like one, but according to the Docetists, He wasn’t one.
Responding to this claim in his first-century context, John made this statement regarding Jesus’ true humanity:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:1–4)
Jesus was, in fact, a real human being.
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Repentance is both the beginning of the Christian life and its continuation. While our place in Christ is doubtlessly secured when we come to Him in faith, part of what it means to be in Christ is to routinely and readily reject sin as the Holy Spirit makes us aware of it. As we read our Bibles and come to a greater knowledge of God’s holiness, He reveals sin to us that we had been ignorant of before as well as sin that arises from new temptations. A healthy Christian walk involves a habit of self-examination and repentance as we steadily draw nearer to Christ.

Repentance is a key doctrine of Christian faith. From John the Baptist’s wilderness cry in the Gospels (Matt. 3:2, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3) to Paul’s defense before King Agrippa (Acts 26:20) and beyond, it’s a regular topic of the New Testament’s teaching. In fact, right after His resurrection, Jesus told His disciples, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:46–47). A call to repentance, the Lord said, is a fundamental part of Gospel proclamation.
Nevertheless, many Christians don’t seem to understand what repentance is, and even those who believe it’s important tend to embrace an incomplete picture. Some dark and gloomy churches constantly urge confession of sin but never offer the adequate cure. Others urge us to “let go and let God,” rightly treating Jesus as the antidote to loneliness and purposelessness but never really confronting the overarching problem He came to deal with: our sin.
In contrast to both of those incomplete pictures, biblical repentance is a fundamental life change that requires both a turning from sin and a turning to God. It involves both a change of mind and heart and a change of behavior. As we come to understand the fullness of repentance, we can begin to grasp its importance for our Christian walk and ask ourselves the key question: “Have I truly repented?”
Biblical Repentance Means Turning from Sin
Human beings are sinners. We all walk according to our own self-centered concerns unless God renews our hearts. While there may be a religious component to our lives—we may attend church frequently or do good works—at our core we are each going our own way (Isa. 53:6). But if we discover God’s holiness revealed in His law and commandments, we will recognize that we are not meeting God’s standard of right living. Because of that, we are guilty before Him.
It’s common today to suppose that any sense of guilt is counterproductive and wrong. While there is a pathological sense of guilt from which we need to be set free, we also do indeed bear real guilt before God. When we sense this guilt, we shouldn’t ignore it, nor should we think we have done enough simply by feeling it. We need to respond to it. Understanding our guilt opens the door to the possibility of forgiveness and liberation as we turn from the sin that made us guilty in the first place.
A biblical response to guilt involves an internal change first and an external change second. The Westminster Confession describes this well when it says, “A sinner, out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God, and upon the apprehension of His mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, so grieves for, and hates his sins…” This is an internal response to sin, a change in outlook and affections. And it results in a change of behavior: “… so grieves for, and hates his sins, as to turn from them all.”1 Repentance, in other words, is more than simply sorrow at having been found out or regret for bad choices in the past. Godly sorrow for our sin will cause us to hate sin and to turn and seek to do right (2 Cor. 7:10).
Biblical Repentance Means Turning to God
Of course, we may understand our predicament before God, come to a point of remorse, and reject our former sin and yet not be fully repentant. It is not enough that we only turn from sin; we must also turn to God. As the Westminster Confession continues its definition of repentance, it says this very thing: “A sinner … grieves for, and hates his sins, so as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavoring to walk with Him in all the ways of His commandments.”
Sin is not a problem that human beings can overcome in their own power.
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In Peter’s unique experience we find a model for facing our deepest failures. His example teaches us that we ought not to run from or ignore our collapses, since they are actually opportunities to repent of self-sufficiency and to depend on God’s grace—to show that we are weak but that He is strong.

From a literary perspective, one of the unique aspects of the New Testament is its frank portrayal of the phenomenal failures of many of its authors and main subjects. This is nowhere more apparent than in the lives of the twelve disciples, and one of the clearest examples is in Peter’s denials of Jesus.
The Bible is not a touched-up document designed to make its human authors look good—and that’s because God is its true Author, its ultimate Subject. And God has a purpose in telling the story the way He did: to reveal Himself as a God of grace. Scripture tells us of the failures of the saints to encourage us—because we will surely fail too. It reminds us that even in our failures, God forgives, and God restores.
As we consider Peter’s failure as recorded in the Gospel accounts, we ought to face our own failures that haven’t yet been dealt with and take the opportunity to bring them before God. If we acknowledge them and repent, God will sanctify us through them and draw us nearer to Him in deeper dependence. There, we’ll have opportunity to realize that if dependence is God’s goal, then weakness is to our advantage.
Peter Follows
Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house, and Peter was following at a distance. And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. (Luke 22:54–55)
In the Gospels, we often see Peter bouncing between faith and failure. He is the type to take one bold step forward and then two steps back. Earlier on, he had stepped onto the waves with Jesus, but then he had sunk when he’d seen the wind (Matt. 14:28–31). He had confessed that Jesus was the Christ (Matt. 16:15–16), but then he had received a severe rebuke for audaciously resisting God’s plan (Matt 16:21–23). It was Peter who had defended Jesus with a sword in the garden of Gethsemane—before Jesus had commanded him to stop (John 18:10–11). Now, though all the other disciples had “left him and fled” (Mark 14:50), Peter stepped forward, setting himself apart from the others by “following at a distance.”
There was a measure of bravery and bravado in this. Peter had told Jesus, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death” (Luke 22:33). Now he was making his effort to do so. Perhaps he was motivated by a measure of curiosity—a need to “see the end” (Matt. 26:58) to which His Master would come. There was likely also a measure of loyalty, as Peter had expressed before: “Even though they all fall away, I will not” (Mark 14:29). And there was almost certainly a measure of love. Peter couldn’t leave Jesus now. He couldn’t desert Him absolutely. He loved Jesus so much that he put himself in a place of considerable risk. He seemed to be the bravest of all of them in that evening hour.
And yet, nevertheless, it is at this point that Peter crumbled.
Peter Fails
Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” And a little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. (Luke 22:56–62)
Confronted in the courtyard, Peter denied Jesus—not just once but three times. Jesus had predicted this would happen, and Peter had assured the Lord he would never do such a thing (Luke 22:34). How are we to explain such a collapse?
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