Aspiring missionaries are often the kind of Christians who ask questions like “How do I humble myself?” They have read their Bibles, and have sat under faithful preaching, and have noticed that, from beginning to end, God commends humility and condemns pride. For instance,

“Seek humility” (Zephaniah 2:3).
“Put on . . . humility” (Colossians 3:12).
“Have . . . a humble mind” (1 Peter 3:8).
“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5).
“Humble yourselves . . . under the mighty hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6; James 4:10).

And so the kinds of Christians who tend to make good missionaries genuinely want to be more humble, and they ask questions like, “How do I humble myself?” And when we turn to the places in Scripture that talk about self-humbling, what we find is that the answer itself is humbling.

Let’s look at what may be the two most instructive passages in the Bible about self-humbling. The first is in Exodus; the second, in Philippians.

Will You Refuse to Humble Yourself?

The first mention of humbling in the Bible is in Exodus 10, with Moses standing before Pharoah. Let’s set the scene with Exodus 5:1–2 as Moses first approaches him and speaks on God’s behalf:

Moses says, “Thus says the Lord [Yahweh], the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go. . . .” To which Pharaoh replies, mark this: “Who is [Yahweh], that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know [Yahweh] . . .”

Okay, Pharaoh. You may not yet know Yahweh. But just you wait. You will know him, and perhaps all too well. Note here, as Pharaoh rightly perceives it, this is about obedience: He says, “Who is [Yahweh], that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?”

Then, as you know, ten terrible plagues follow as Yahweh makes himself known as judge to Pharaoh, and as savior to his own people, as he rescues them from Egyptian oppression.

Now, fast forward from Exodus 5 to Exodus 9:17, just before plague number seven. God says to Pharoah, “You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go.” In refusing to obey God’s voice, Pharoah is “exalting self” — which is the opposite of “humbling self.” God then makes that explicit in the next chapter, before the eighth plague. He says again to Pharaoh in Exodus 10:3,

How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?

And this is the first mention of humbling self in the Bible. So, let’s pull together what we’ve seen in Exodus. Though Pharaoh pretends to be divine, the true God and Creator speaks to him as a creature. “Obey my voice. Let my people go.” And God refers to Pharaoh’s refusal as “exalting yourself” and instructs him to “humble yourself” in response to these painful, humbling plagues. That is, obey God. Acknowledge, Pharoah, that you are not God. He is God.

We might say that the basic confession of humility is “You are God, and I am not.” First, God acted; he humbled Pharaoh through plague after plague. Then, the question comes to Pharaoh, Will you humble yourself? Will you pretend that you are God and challenge or ignore Yahweh, or will you admit, “He is God, and I am not,” and obey?

God Acts First

This is the paradigm that then echoes throughout the Scriptures (especially in 2 Chronicles, and in the teaching of Jesus, Matthew 18:4; 23:12; Luke 14:11; 18:14), and is true for us today. God may not confront us with a knock at the door from a prophet like Moses, but God does confront us. He takes the initiative. His humbling hand descends. A family member, or brother or sister in Christ, confronts us. Or sickness in ourselves or in a loved one. Or death. Or the loss of a job. Or a breakup. Or whatever obstacles you will encounter on the mission field, or on your way to the mission field — and you will encounter them.

God takes the initiative in humbling us, and then the question comes: Now, will you humble yourself and receive what God is doing in your discomfort and pain, or will you push back?

Humility says, “He is God, and I am not.” Uncomfortable and painful as my circumstances are, I receive them as his humbling hand. That doesn’t mean I don’t pray for rescue. In fact, praying for rescue can be precisely the kind of self-humbling we’re taking about.

“The kinds of Christians who tend to make good missionaries genuinely want to be more humble.”

So, How do I humble myself? is a good question for aspiring missionaries to ask. And it has a humbling answer. We don’t just up and humble ourselves when we’re good and ready. We don’t take the initiative. Self-humbling is not an achievement. Rather, our self-humbling begins with God’s initiative. He takes the first step and humbles us. Then the question comes, Will you receive his humbling and humble yourself?

Jesus Humbled Himself

Now, let’s go to Philippians 2 and see it play out, in three great steps, in the greatest missionary who ever lived.

He Became Man

First, before he humbled himself as man, he first had to become man. Which is said to be an emptying of himself.

[being] in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:6–7)

His emptying of himself was not an emptying of divine attributes, as if that were possible. It was an emptying of privilege or comfort — the privilege of not becoming man and not being subjected to the finitude and pain of human life, and the difficulties of living in our fallen world. And Jesus’s emptying here, Paul says, was not a losing but a taking: “taking the form of a servant.”

So, first, God the Son becomes man.

Obedient to Death

Then, second, once human, Jesus fulfilled the human calling before God: “he humbled himself.”

being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:8)

What did Jesus’s self-humbling involve? He humbled himself (1) by becoming obedient. We saw with Pharaoh the issue of human obedience to God’s will. Jesus, as man, obeyed God. As much as his humanity wanted to avoid death, and avoid bearing our sin (having none of his own), and feeling forsaken by his Father, he prayed in the garden, “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). And he was obedient, Paul says, (2) “to the point of death.” He endured. He didn’t hit eject when obedience got hard. He obeyed all the way through. And this self-humbling obedience to death went so far as (3) “even death on a cross.”

Exalted for Humility

Now, third and finally,

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name . . . (Philippians 2:9)

As man, Jesus humbled himself in obedience to the divine will, and went to the cross — and God, in his perfect timing, three days later, raised him, and, forty days later, exalted him at his right hand.

Welcome God’s Humbling Hand

Let me close with two final words to you as 18–25 year olds at the CROSS conference:

First, your process from CROSS, to actually getting there — on the ground, into the cross-cultural ministry you aspire to — likely will take longer and be a more trying and patience-testing process than you imagined. God means to humble you along the way. And he means, as you seek to become a missionary — high a calling as it is! — that you learn obedience and humility, that you do not, in pride, jettison the call of Philippians 2:3–4, which verses 6¬–9 uphold, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Finally, my prayer for you is that you prepare ahead of time, daily and weekly, for God’s many humblings, for your good, before they come:

Humble yourself daily by sitting under (not over) his word and bowing before him in prayer;
And humble yourself weekly by sitting under faithful preaching and submitting yourself in covenant/committed fellowship in a faithful local church.

“Ask God to work a posture in your soul that is ready to receive, even welcome, God’s humbling hand.”

Ask God to work a posture in your soul — through his word, prayer, and covenant fellowship to his people — that is ready to receive, even welcome God’s humbling hand, painful as it may be when it descends.

Answering his call to invest your life directly in the Great Commission work of crossing oceans and borders and languages and cultures with the gospel won’t mean you avoid his humbling hand. It might mean, in his great mercy, his humbling hand descends in your life all the more. Read missionary biographies. Were they kept from his humbling hand? No, they were not.

Rather, his humbling hand kept them from vanity, from shallowness, from being ineffective, from laboring in vain, from walking away from Jesus, from being choked out by the cares of this life. God’s humbling hand was a painful and merciful means of his grace in sustaining and strengthening the souls of his missionaries, and in working through them to do his humbling and rescuing work in the lives of those they were sent to reach.

I won’t soon forget visiting “Angola,” the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and nation’s largest maximum-security prison. In November 2009, I accompanied John Piper as he preached in chapel to hundreds of inmates, broadcast to thousands. Beforehand, he spoke and prayed for half an hour with a man just seven weeks prior to his execution by lethal injection.

Much could be said about Angola, once considered the nation’s most dangerous prison, and its stunning transformation (not just morally but spiritually) under warden Burl Cain, beginning in 1995. Cain, a lifelong Southern Baptist, wasn’t shy about sharing his Christian faith and welcoming influences like Piper. He took fire for it over the years.

Doubtless, Cain instituted a breadth of important reforms and gospel-friendly initiatives, but he’s often remembered for prohibiting profanity from both inmates and guards. It was a striking decision. Seeing with unusual clarity the complex and catalytic relationship between words and behavior, Cain did the almost unthinkable: he outlawed cussing at the state pen.

How many of us would think a maximum-security prison of 6,000 murderers, rapists, armed robbers, and habitual felons had far bigger fish to fry than profanity? Why even bother?

Words Give Rise to Action

Cain believed that violent words not only express but also entrench, and cultivate, violent instincts in the soul that eventually give rise to violent acts. Giving voice to unrighteous anger puts us one step closer to acting on it.

Soon enough, even Cain’s many detractors found the results difficult to dispute. In 2004, The Washington Post reported on the rise in morale and the plummet in violence at Angola:

The year before Cain arrived, there were nearly 300 attacks on the staff and 766 inmate-on-inmate assaults, half of which were with weapons. . . . Since Cain took over as warden, inmate attacks on the staff have plunged nearly 70 percent, and inmate-on-inmate violence has dropped 44 percent.

“Giving voice to unrighteous anger puts us one step closer to acting on it.”

Surely, the ban against profanity didn’t do all the work. Hundreds of inmates, if not thousands, not only cleaned up their mouths, but testified to Christ’s cleansing their hearts — and that will transform any prison. Still, the correlation between words and eventual behaviors is not one to ignore. And it may be far more important to life outside of prison than many of us are prone to think.

Holy Fight and Flight

Healthy Christians do not make peace with sin. As we grow in love for Christ, we grow to delight in holiness. Yet we live in a world of sin, and still have indwelling sin within us. So, we often discuss various holy fight-and-flight tactics against temptation.

For one, we want to be ready to resist sin when we encounter temptation. Not only do we “resist the devil” (James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:9), but we also resist “in [our] struggle against sin” (Hebrews 12:4) — against temptations from without and from within. In a moment of temptation, we want to fight, resist, make holy war.

Another important strategy is flight. When Potiphar’s wife tempted Joseph, he fled. So too, the apostle Paul writes, “Flee youthful passions” (2 Timothy 2:22), “Flee sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18), and “Flee from idolatry” (1 Corinthians 10:14). If you find yourself in the presence of some temptation, and it’s in your power to leave, then by all means flee.

Avoidance is a third time-tested plan. Before the moment of fight-or-flight confronts us, we seek to avoid some temptations altogether. For instance, avoid divisive people (Romans 16:17; 2 Timothy 3:5). Avoid quarreling (Titus 3:2). Avoid “irreverent babble” (2 Timothy 2:16). Avoid “foolish controversies” (Titus 3:9).

However, one particular tactic we might be prone to overlook in the multi-front war against sin involves the power of words. Warden Cain was onto something — not just (negatively) to curb violence at a prison, but also (positively) for the Christian life.

Our Own Words Shape Us

Not only is it true, as Jesus says, that “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart” (Matthew 15:18), but our heart-expressing words also echo back to move and shape us.

On the one hand, to speak evil is an additional step, subtle as it may be, to thinking and feeling evil. As we give vent and verbal expression to otherwise inaudible evil in us, we reinforce it. It takes root. One little word at a time, we habituate ourselves to sin. Now, we’re one small (but not insignificant) degree closer to acting on it. And on the other hand, when we speak against sin rising in us — and speak for the joy of righteousness — we marshal the power of words to mold our hearts for holiness.

To be clear, the point here is not “stop talking about sin” but rather, declare to your own soul sin’s deception, and miserable outcomes. In other words, do talk to yourself about your own sin. And in the moment of temptation, tell yourself “no” and why.

Evil Curbed and Smothered

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) knew of the power of our own words in leading to, or away, from sin. He writes in Life Together,

Often we combat evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words. . . [I]solated thoughts of judgment [against our neighbor] can be curbed and smothered by never allowing them the right to be uttered, except as a confession of sin. (90–91)

Before saying more about his insight, first note confession as an exception. To confess sin as sin is not to incline ourselves to relapse, but instead to make war against it. Which means that real confession is not mere admission, but a form of renouncing our sin.

“Real confession is not mere admission, but a form of renouncing our sin.”

But then notice the role our own words have to play in the pursuit of holiness, and the war against sin. Our souls can be cauldrons of good and ill. Dwelling in us, for now, is both remaining sin and the very Spirit of God. Evil thoughts grow as we voice them with approval, and they diminish — are “curbed and smothered” — as we deny them the dignity of utterance (or utter them only in spirit of confession).

Renounce Ungodliness

At the height of his letter to Titus, the apostle Paul writes about the appearing of God, in Christ, and the disappearing of our sin, in time, as we pursue holiness. And he uses the word renounce to acknowledge the place our words can have in combatting sin:

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age . . . (Titus 2:11–12)

The grace of God — manifest and incarnate in Christ — not only saves sinners by covering our failings but also trains us. God’s grace is too great to simply forgive our sins and leave us in them. He loves his sons and daughters enough to train us for new and better life, for genuine holiness, for the freedom and joy of an existence less and less encumbered by sin. And here, remarkably, the link between God’s training grace and our godly living involves our own words as we renounce ungodliness.

‘Be Gone, Satan!’

The pattern is one we find even in Jesus, who leveraged the power of his words against sin and the devil. In the wilderness, he renounced temptation audibly as he quoted Scripture to combat Satan’s enticements, culminating with “Be gone, Satan!” (Matthew 4:10). So too he later responded to Peter’s foolish statement (that Jesus would never go to the cross) with “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mark 8:33).

There is power, for good and godliness, in a clear, settled “no” — whether in our own heads, or out loud to ourselves, and all the better in confession to God or neighbor. Liberated and energized by God’s grace, and looking to the reward of superior joy, we are given the dignity of participating in God’s decisive action in making us holy. And even before it involves our behavior, it can begin with our words.

The words we speak, especially when pointed, shape our souls for good or evil. Renouncing sin, as an expression of holy desires in a divided heart, is no empty act. When our renouncing of sin and Satan proceed from a heart growing in its disdain for sin, and delight in holiness, our words reinforce and buttress and fortify our hearts. Words of renunciation against specific sins and temptations are not time-outs from the actual fight but a valuable weapon in the campaign.

Declare Your No

Because of this power in the act of renouncing, some baptismal traditions, going deep into an annals of church history, ask the baptismal candidate, right there in the waters, as we do at our church, “Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his ways?” Baptism itself is a kind of public forsaking of sin and Satan and a confession of Christ, but there is added power for shaping the soul, banishing demons, and strengthening the church, to not just depict it but declare it — and not just at baptism, but in the everyday waters of temptation.

When pride feeds us thoughts of being better than others, we respond with, “No, no good will come from boosting self, compared to others. I’m an unworthy servant, and any good in me is only by God’s grace. Pride, be humbled.”

Or, when feeling envious over another’s abilities or applause, “No, envy, my Father knows exactly what I need and when. Rejoice in his gifts to others.”

When tempted by lust, “No, God’s design and command is best: one woman, my wife, for life. Lust, you are foolish, and not welcome here.”

Tempted to gossip, “No, there is more joy in the self-control of holding my tongue than sinning against someone with my words.”

Or, when tempted by greed, “No, my Father owns it all, and I will share in it fully in due time. Greed, be gone.”

And all the better when we can renounce sin in the very words of Scripture: When angry with others, “No, the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). Anger, however righteous or not, be put away (Colossians 3:8).

Temptation thrives, and grows, when unacknowledged and unaddressed. But with the help of the Spirit, and through the power of words, we can say “No!” and drive it away with God’s better promises.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Little did they know how well they spoke — not only for themselves, but for the whole human race.

John 12:20 reports that “some Greeks” had come to worship in Jerusalem for that fateful Passover leading up to Jesus’s crucifixion. They approached his disciple Philip, who told another disciple, Andrew. Together, the two came to their Master with the request of the Greeks “to see Jesus” — to which Jesus gave this spectacularly unexpected response:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

That was not the answer they were expecting — the disciples or the Greeks. But their wish to see Jesus was not rejected but redirected. It was an admirable wish, profoundly so — and if they remain in Jerusalem for the week, they will soon see the most important sight of him, crushing as it at first will be. His time has come to be “glorified” — which will not mean leading a charge to overthrow Rome and seize the crown, but laying down his life. Like a grain of wheat, he will not bear much fruit unless he first dies.

These Greeks will indeed see him, and glimpse a sight far greater than they could have anticipated or imagined — far more horrible, and far more wonderful. They will witness the depths of his humiliation that will prove to be the very height of the glory of the one who truly
is David’s long-promised heir to the throne, as shocking and unexpected as it will be.

And as they see him — in his divine and human excellencies, united in one person, and
culminating in the cross and its aftermath — they will have all they wished and more in the request they made expressing the deepest longing of every human heart.

Infinite Abyss

Famously, Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensees of “the infinite abyss” in the human soul that we try to fill with all the wonders and the worst this world has to offer.

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate,
because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

So also the great Augustine, more than twelve centuries before Pascal, had spoken of the great, undeniable restlessness of the human heart, until finding its rest in God: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Moses, seeking to leverage God’s remarkable favor on him, was so bold as to ask to see God’s glory. God permitted him a glimpse of the afterglow of divine beauty, not his face, and Moses made no complaints. Yet redemptive history was not done at Sinai. Centuries would follow. The kingdom would be established in the land, and decline. Human kings would rise and fall, and the nation with them. And the same Gospel in which the Greeks expressed their wish to see Jesus opens with one of the most stunning claims possible:

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The desire to see Jesus was far more profound than these Greeks could have guessed. They wished for amazement in the presence of someone great. And what they got instead anticipated the heavenly vision the apostle John would receive while in exile on the isle of Patmos.

Behold the Lion

In John’s vision, none in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth, is at first found worthy to open the scroll of God’s divine decrees of judgment (for his enemies) and salvation (for his people). Sensing the weight and importance of the moment, John begins to weep — perhaps even wondering if his Lord, the one who discipled him, the one to whom he’s dedicated his life as a witness, is not worthy. One of heaven’s elders then turns to him, and declares, in Revelation 5:5,

Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.

Having heard the good news, John turns to look — and what does he see? Not a lion. He says in verse 6:

I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes . . . .

We might mistakenly assume this was a disappointment, that John, hearing “Lion,” experienced some letdown to see a Lamb. But that is not how John reports it. This Lamb is no loss. The Lamb is gain. The one who was just declared to be the only one worthy is no less the Lion of Judah. He is also the Lamb who was slain. The Lion became Lamb without ceasing to be Lion. He did not jettison his lionlike glories, but added to his greatness the excellences of the Lamb. He is a Lamb standing — not dead, not slumped over, not kneeling, but alive and ready — with fullness of power (“seven horns”), seeing and reigning over all (“and seven eyes”).

So too for the Greeks in John 12 who wished to take counsel with the purported Messiah and Lion of Judah. Whatever disappointment they experienced in the moment in not having their immediate request fulfilled, and whatever devastations they endured on Good Friday as they watched in horror, it all changed on the third day. Then their wish, and perceptive inquiry, was answered beyond their greatest dreams — not just Messiah, but God himself, the very Lion of heaven. And not just divine, but the added lamblike glory of our own human flesh and blood,
and that same blood spilled to not only show us glory but invite us into it — Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian.

Looking to Jesus

Plain as it may seem, the author of Hebrews provides profound direction for the human soul when he says, simply, “Consider Jesus”. This is not a one-time exhortation, but continuous counsel, for every day and at any moment. And again, at the height of his letter, drawing attention to the great cloud of witnesses, Hebrews charges us to “lay aside every weight and sin” and “run with endurance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). There is unmatched power in the Christward gaze.
As Jesus himself would soon say, in John 14:9, to the same Philip who relayed the Greeks’ request: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

Paul too, in one blessed flourish in 2 Corinthians 4, would celebrate, and commend,
the unsurpassed glory of the Christward gaze: “beholding the glory of the Lord [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” Unbelieving eyes have been blinded to “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,”
but we, by the mercy of God, have eyes of the heart opened to “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

We might here speak of the manifest Christocentrism of the New Testament, and a kind of healthy asymmetrical trinitarianism in the Christian faith — “contemplating the Trinity through a christological lens,” as Dane Ortlund writes, “and Christ through a trinitarian lens.”
We wish to see Jesus. He is the interpretative key to the Bible, the pinnacle of history, and central in Christian preaching, evangelism, and sanctification, and so we fix our eyes on him. Biblical trinitarianism doesn’t constrain us to symmetrically parcel out our attention and focus to each of the three divine Persons, according to modern notions of fairness, balance, and equality. The New Testament is far from “fair” in this way. Rather, as humans ourselves, we receive a peculiar centrality of the God-man, as the one Person of the Godhead who has drawn near in our own flesh, taking our own nature, to no diminishing of the Father or Spirit, but precisely according to their plan and work to direct attention to Jesus.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus” would be a happy refrain to echo at key junctures in the Christian life. Before morning Bible meditation: “I wish to see Jesus.” Before conversations with the unbelieving: “I wish them to see Jesus.” For pastors, preparing to preach, to imagine these words on the lips of our people: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

Made for Him

We were indeed made for God — with an infinite abyss only he can fill, with a restlessness of soul satisfied in nothing less than him. And even more particularly, we were made for the God-man — for the greatness of God himself who draws near, in our own flesh and circumstances, in the person of Christ. The lionlike greatness of God in his divine glory is sweetened, deepened, and accented by his lamblike nearness and human excellencies. And his glories as the humble, meek, self-giving Lamb are enriched and magnified in the register of lionlike poise and majesty.

We wish to see Jesus — to know him as both great and near, and enjoy him forever.

Newly engaged, I was searching for a good book on marriage. I remember coming across one, commended as a modern classic, with this memorable question on the cover: “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than make us happy?”

Hmm. I didn’t like that way of framing it. Why pit holy against happy? Granted, it’s a “what if” teaser on the cover. Still, this didn’t seem like a worthwhile risk to me, even if the tagline was taking aim at a common idol in our generation.

Of course, at one level, I understand, and grant, that many people have a superficial definition of, and associations with, happiness. To the degree that “happiness” refers to our experiencing momentary, superficial, comfort-based, suffering-free, pleasant feelings — and requires no new birth — then yes, true holiness, on God’s terms, will often (if not relentlessly) be at odds with such “happiness.” However, I’m not ready to cede the word happiness to such thin, shallow assumptions. That is not what we find when we come to the Scriptures. Nor do we find a holiness in tension with true happiness. In fact, the two are tied together intimately.

Strange Notions of Holiness

Some of us, favored beyond words to be raised in Christian families and faithful churches, have needed to have our concept of holiness renovated after coming to genuine faith as teens or adults. Looking back, and being sober-minded, the fault was likely not our parents’ or our church’s (for many of us) but our own: we were dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5), alive in the flesh but lifeless in spirit; we needed to be born again. And when God made us alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:5), we began to see our Creator and his world with new eyes, and eventually also his holiness, and our call to be holy as he is.

The challenge to come awake to real holiness is not unique in our generation. Three hundred years ago, a young Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) encountered such a barrier, and found it, with God’s help, to be surmountable. Writing about the 16-year-old Edwards, biographer George Mardsen says,

Self-discipline had failed as much as it had succeeded. Self-examination was not encouraging either. As early as he could remember, he had resented much of the endless tedium of his parents’ teaching and discipline. Holiness seemed “a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing.” He did not find delight in lengthy church services. He still had a rebellious nature. He was proud. He had a difficult and unsociable personality, and he did not have signs of charity that were evidence of grace. He struggled with sexual lusts which, despite prodigious efforts, he could not wholly control. (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 36)

Here Marsden surmises Edwards’s thoughts as a teen (in quotes) based an admission Edwards made later in life, when writing on “the beauty of holiness”: “We drink in strange notions of holiness from our childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 13:163).

Edwards is not alone, in his generation or ours. Many of us, in our own unbelief, have imbibed “strange notions of holiness” that seem at odds with happiness, however thinly sliced and temporal our idea of happiness. Having been born again, we need to consider holiness afresh, starting with God’s own holiness, then ours.

Holiness Himself

Holiness begins with God. He is its epicenter. In fact, we might think of holy as an adjective for God himself. We would be hard pressed to take our bearings from any place better than Isaiah’s astounding glimpse of God in his holiness in Isaiah 6. In God’s presence, we overhear the seraphim call to each other, ascribing to God his infinite worth,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3)

Perhaps you’ve heard that God’s holiness refers to his otherness or separateness — that he is set apart from his creatures and their sin and their world. They are common; he is holy.

Otherness does get at an important aspect of God’s holiness, but it doesn’t include a vital dimension of what holiness is, as seen in the worship of the seraphim. When they say, “Holy, holy, holy,” they are not just crying, “Separate, separate, separate.” They call out in worship; they are praising God as holy, and delighting in him as holy. They are not disinterested. He is not just other, but good. The seraphim have seen and perceived God’s infinite intrinsic value and worth, and now declare, in the awe of glad worship, “Holy, holy, holy.”

And before the seraphim, and redeemed humans, see and perceive it, God himself perfectly sees and perceives his own value and worth. In other words, God is happy in himself. He is the blessed, happy God (1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15). As Edwards, having put away his formerly “strange notions,” came to see it,

God’s holiness is his having a due, meet, and proper regard to everything, and therefore consists mainly and summarily in his infinite regard or love to himself, he being infinitely the greatest and most excellent Being. (Works, 20:460)

“In Scripture, we do not find a holiness in tension with true happiness. The two are tied together intimately.”

At the heart of God’s own holiness is his perfect regard or love to, or happiness in, himself. Before God is holy with respect to his creation, he is holy with respect to himself — meaning he perfectly sees, perceives, enjoys, loves, and delights in own perfections as “infinitely the greatest and most excellent Being.” Far from holiness in God being in tension with his own blessedness or happiness, they are inextricably linked. The holy God is first and foremost happy in himself.

Heart of Holiness

What about “holiness,” then, in us, his creatures? Unavoidably, holiness refers to our living in this world, our words, our actions, and whether they accord with the value and worth of God. However, we should ask, What is the heart from which springs such external manifestations of creaturely holiness? The essence of holiness in redeemed humans is the heart that regards, loves, and delights in God according to his worth.

The process we call “sanctification” (meaning, to become more holy, to grow in holiness), writes John Piper, is “the action by which we bring our feelings and thoughts and acts into conformity to the worth of God” (Acting the Miracle, 36). Holiness in us, as God’s finite creatures, begins with our truly perceiving and duly prizing God’s excellence and value.

So, not only does true holiness give the greatest happiness, but happiness in God is the heart of holiness. As Piper says elsewhere, “Try to explain holiness without happiness, and you will fail. The essence of holiness is happiness in God.”

And holiness does not end, or stayed contained, in the human soul.

Holiness with Hands and Feet

Holiness also is to be lived in the world. The holiness that has its essence in our hearts is to be expressed and extended into words and actions that make God’s otherwise unheard and unseen value known to other humans. Just as God’s own happiness in himself “went public” in his creating the visible, audible, tangible world, so God means for our happiness in him to “go public” in his created world through our audible words and visible, fruitful lives.

True happiness in God is the heart of true holiness in us. And genuine holiness in us, soul and body, begins with souls happy in God, leading to bodily words and works that conform and testify to his worth.

Happy and Holy

Back to that book tagline that seemed to play off holiness against happiness. I wanted to ask, Why split friends into enemies? Why give place to that ancient scheme, that what God requires of his creatures must inevitably soil our happiness?

“To be truly holy in the world, we must be truly happy in God. And those truly happy in him will be holy.”

There is a kernel of truth we can acknowledge: God cares more about our holiness than the “happiness” that comes from mere temporal comforts. If our definition of “happiness” takes its bearings from secular society, as merely our experiencing momentary, superficial, comfort-based, suffering-free, pleasant feelings that require no new birth, then yes, God does indeed care more about our holiness than that. But I’m not ready to let the world have the word happiness without a fight.

When we see true happiness as deep, thick, enduring, God-rooted joy in God — dazzling in the radiance of the person and work of Christ — we find that such happiness, far from having nothing to do with holiness, is the heart of what it means to be holy. Which dispels our strange notions of holiness as melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant. Come, see holiness as beautiful, desirable, and wonderful.

True holiness in the world begins with true happiness in God. And those truly happy in him will be holy.

All of Jesus’s human life led him to this garden. As he knelt and prayed in Gethsemane, waiting in agony — with beads of sweat “like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44) — here he made the Choice.

Countless decisions, big and small, brought him here, but only in the garden did he finalize the decision to go to the cross. Gethsemane marked his last and most distressing moments of deliberation. He chose to enter the garden, and he could have chosen to flee.

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me,” he prayed. “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). There, on his knees, Jesus chose — with his human will, like ours, which naturally recoiled at the threat of pain and death — to embrace the one divine will of his Father, which was also his, as eternal Son.

When he rose from prayer (Luke 22:45), the decision was done, his fully human will in perfect synch and submission to the divine. Now, as Judas and the soldiers arrived, he would be acted upon: arrested, accused, tried, struck, flogged, and crucified.

Two Wills in Christ

For centuries, dyothelitism is the term the church has used to refer to the two wills of Christ — the one divine will he (eternally) shares as God, with his Father (and the Spirit), and a natural human will that is his by virtue of the incarnation and his taking on our full humanity. We speak of two wills in the one unique person of the God-man.

“Jesus has a human will, like us, with which he sympathizes, strengthens, and saves.”

In multiple places in John’s Gospel, Jesus refers to his human will in distinction from that of his Father, “the one who sent me.” “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34). “I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30). “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).

Yet the place where Jesus’s distinctly human will stands out most is Gethsemane, in those final moments of Choice before he is taken and, humanly speaking, there is no turning back. Not only did Jesus teach his men to pray to his Father “your will be done” (Matthew 6:10), but in the garden, Christ himself prayed, “not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39), and then again, “your will be done” (Matthew 26:42). And in doing so, he embraced the divine will with his human volition.

Human All the Way?

The early church endured attacks against both Jesus’s deity (from Arians) and his full humanity (from Docetists and Apollinarians), questioning his fully human body, emotions, and mind. The battle for his human will came last and was the most sophisticated. The conflict, prompted by political intrigue, raged in the seventh century and led to a sixth ecumenical council in 680–681, the third at Constantinople. Obscure as the refined nature of the controversy may seem to us today, the debate between dyothelitism and the opposing view (monothelitism) still carries the theological significance it did more than twelve centuries ago, and warrants our attention, perhaps all the more in circles where it has been neglected or forgotten.

In contrast to monothelitism, which claims the divine will of the Son animates the human body and soul of Jesus, dyothelitism presses for the full, uncompromised humanity of Christ. We find two wills in the agony of Gethsemane in the one person of Christ. There is a human nature in him that desires the removal of the cup — that there be some other way, if possible, than the divine will. The question, then, is when Christ prays, “not my will, but yours, be done,” whose will is “my will,” and whose is “yours”?

When the question was freshly pressed on the church in the seventh century, the explanation that emerged as most compelling, and enduring, was that of Maximus the Confessor (born 580) — even though he did not live to see the triumph. At the time, dyothelitism was not politically expedient to the emperor Constans’s ambitions to reunite Christian regions against the threat of Islam. Maximus was arrested and exiled, and he died in exile eight years later at age 81. Seven years later, Constans was assassinated. Soon the imperial attitude changed, and twenty years after Maximus’s death, his theology carried the day at the ecumenical council.

It was Maximus, claims Demetrios Bathrellos, who “was really the first to point out in an unambiguous way that it is the Logos (the eternal Son) as a man who addressed the Father in Gethsemane. . . . [Maximus] emphasized the fact that in Gethsemane Christ decided as man to obey the divine will, and thus overcame the blameless human instinctive urge to avoid death” (The Byzantine Christ, 146–147).

In this way, we confess two wills in the unique divine-human God-man. As God, Jesus “wills by his divine will and as man obeys the divine will by his human will” (174). In Maximus’s own words, “The subject who says ‘let this cup pass from me’ and the subject who says ‘not as I will’ are one and the same.” So, writes Bathrellos, “[B]oth the desire to avoid death and the submission to the divine will of the Father have to do with the humanity of Christ and his human will” (147).

Why His Wills Matter

Obscure as the ancient debate may seem at first, one reason for its enduring relevance is our own humanity. We are human as they were human. And in particular, our wills are human, constrained by finitude. Humans like us have an interest (not just intellectually but very practically) in the question, Was Christ indeed “made like [us] in every respect” (Hebrews 2:17)? And is he able “to sympathize with our weaknesses [as] one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15)?

“If Christ is not fully human, there is no great salvation for humans.”

Even more than sympathy, Is Christ truly able to save us? If he is not fully human, there is no great salvation for humans. As the famous maxim of Gregory of Nazianzus claims, that which Christ has not assumed, he has not healed. And not just healed eternally, but even in this life. What hope do we have of his reclaiming, sanctifying, and redeeming our own fallen, sinful human wills if the eternal Son has not descended to the full extent of our humanity, yet without sin? As Edward Oakes writes, “Since will is the very seat of sin, its fons et origo, we are still left in our plight if Christ did not have a human will” (Infinity Dwindled to Infancy, 162). Would Christ come in human flesh and blood, emotions and mind, and leave the human will, “the very seat of sin,” untaken, untouched, and unredeemed?

Also, a “trinitarian logic” informs and reinforces the two wills of Christ. According to Donald Fairbairn and Ryan Reeves, “Maximus argued that since in the Trinity there are three persons and one nature, and also one will, the will must be a function of the nature, not the person” (150). That is an important distinction: that the will, whether divine or human, is a function of the theological category “nature,” not “person.” Two wills in Christ (one human, one divine) correspond with one will in God. One will in Christ (divine only) would mean that the two wills in tension in Gethsemane would be between divine “persons” (Father and Son) rather than between “natures” (divine and human), challenging oneness in the Godhead, and thus revising not only orthodox Christology but also trinitarianism.

Yet, “even more significant,” notes Fairbairn and Reeves, is the “soteriological conviction that the unassumed is unhealed” (150). Human salvation in Christ is at stake in the human will of Christ, not only in his receiving in himself the penalty of our fallen wills (as we’ve seen), but also in his own obedience, as the God-man, to his Father. As man, Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8), and as man, “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8). “The many will be made righteous,” says Romans 5:19, “by the one man’s obedience” — a human obedience, by virtue of the incarnation, he could not have rendered apart from a human will.

Cult of Will

Not only does dyothelitism correlate best with God’s triune nature, our human nature, and the nature of the atonement, but in locating the will as a function of the “nature,” rather than the “person,” dyothelitism guards us against the modern “cult of will.” Oakes warns, “When personhood is identified without further ado with the will, then the cult of will in Friedrich Nietzsche and his postmodern successors inevitably follows” (164). Oakes points to Bathrellos’s “extremely thought-provoking observation that so many of the ethical outrages of today can be traced to the . . . error of identifying nature with person.” Says Bathrellos,

The tendency to identify personhood with nature or natural qualities and especially with the mind . . . seems to occur quite often in the history of human thought. It is remarkable that in our own day some philosophers of ethics give a definition of “person” based on mental and volitional capacities, and in doing so make it possible to justify, for example, abortion and even infanticide. (14)

However far-reaching the implications of Christ’s two wills, and full humanity, we as Christians are worshipers first and foremost. We declare, as the cardinal confession of our faith, “Jesus is Lord” — and when we do so, we submit to a Sovereign not only infinitely high above us as God but one who has drawn near as our own brother and friend, and went so low to serve and sacrifice himself for us. In addition to his divine will as God, Jesus has a human will, like us, with which he sympathizes, strengthens, and saves.

Recently, I completed a long journey with my twin 11-year-old boys. The trek took us months, yet required no planes, trains, or automobiles. In fact, we never left the house for this particular voyage, though we did venture outside once to sit by an autumn fire.

This was a journey of over one million words — 1,084,170 to be exact. And it was a trek on which we traveled every mile, every chapter, and every word together.

Over the course of about 18 months, beginning when COVID “lockdown” descended in the spring of 2020, and ending in September 2021, I read aloud to my sons the seven books of the Harry Potter series. We invested two or three bedtimes each week to it, pausing for a few weeks between books. But we kept plodding forward a chapter (or two) at a time.

My best estimate is that it took us, in all, about one hundred hours.

Read-Aloud Revival

As a new dad, reading aloud more than a million words, for one hundred hours, would have seemed not only daunting but impossible. Perhaps you feel the same way right now. I get it; I’ve been there. But please don’t give up yet. Reading aloud, especially to our children, is a skill worth developing — one that is honed not just over weeks and months, but over years.

“Reading aloud, especially to our children, is a skill worth developing.”

My dear wife, with input from friends and a podcast called Read-Aloud Revival, first bent my ear to consider what an opportunity and joy it could be to read aloud as a habit to our children — not begrudgingly, but eagerly. We decided early on as parents that we would spare expenses in other areas to be able to invest well in good children’s books. And that we would do our best to limit and say no to other activities — especially ones involving screens! — to put life on pause, sit down, slow down, and enjoy reading aloud to our children.

Ten years ago, with no read-aloud experience, I felt almost winded to read a longish children’s book to our toddlers after a tiring day of work. I had not yet developed any read-aloud stamina. I hadn’t done any significant, regular reading aloud in my life. But most critically, I had not yet discovered the joy it can be to be present, and engaged, and contagiously happy with your children in these moments gathered around an open book.

There and Back Again

One on-ramp for some dads is that we love to do voices. This brought me particular pleasure once the boys were old enough (I think it was age 5) to read them The Hobbit, using my amateur British accent for Bilbo, gruff voices for the dwarves, and (of course) my best impressions of Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis for Gandalf and Gollum. Now, this was no board book — it took weeks, and patience. At times, the boys were bored (Tolkien doesn’t do candy), but we pressed through. There were life lessons in that for all of us. And in the end, we felt like we had accomplished something significant together. We read a big book together — and my concerns that Gollum might be too scary, and show up in nightmares, were addressed by my being there with them, reading to them, and talking to them about their fears. I was there to mediate the scariest moments, like riddles in the dark.

So too, my uncertainty about whether the boys, at age 10, were ready to handle the whole Harry Potter series was a good reason to make the trek with them. Being unsure, I had two lazy options in front of me. I could have shelved my concerns and just turned them loose to read for themselves or listen to the audiobooks. Or I could have erred on the side of caution and kept telling them, “Not yet, not yet.” Instead, I decided to make the trek with them. What they were ready for, we enjoyed together. What they weren’t, I was there to mediate, ready to pause and give context, ready to stop and explain, ready to answer questions, and ready to ask how their minds and hearts were receiving it. Most of all, being there, I was ready to process out loud how I myself was receiving the story with Christian eyes, ready to highlight not only pointers to the gospel (and there are many, especially in the final book!), but also important life lessons (there’s no lack of those either, particularly in Dumbledore’s monologues).

And all the while, with kids aged 3 to 6 to 11, Dad’s stamina for reading aloud was increasing. And as my read-aloud stamina and experience have increased, so has my joy.

God’s Word, Read Aloud

As my wife so helpfully prodded me to read aloud to our children, I would encourage other Christian moms and dads to do the same — to discover for yourself what an opportunity and joy reading aloud to your children can be. Reading aloud is, after all, a remarkably Christian pastime.

For twenty centuries, reading aloud has been critical for how the people of Christ have heard his voice. The printing press has been around for only a quarter of church history, and only recently have our shelves at home been filled with multiple Bibles. Christ has spoken to his people across history through the reading aloud of Scripture, at the heart of the gathered assembly of the church. As the apostle Paul directs his protégé and delegate in Ephesus, “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture” (1 Timothy 4:13). Without personal copies of the Bible at home, and on smartphones, how else would the people of Christ hear his word in the words of the apostles? The pastors had to read it aloud.

So Paul wrote his letters to be carried to the churches and read aloud (Ephesians 3:4; Colossians 4:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:27). So too, the apostle John wrote down his apocalyptic vision, anticipating its reading aloud (Revelation 1:3). And this, of course, happened in a first-century Jewish context, in which the people of God had long been people of a Book, and at the center of the life of the synagogue was the reading aloud of the Scriptures (Acts 13:15, 27; 15:21, 31; 2 Corinthians 3:14–15), as Jesus himself did on that memorable occasion in his hometown of Nazareth (Luke 4:16).

Joys of Analog Life

As parents who cherish these quickly passing years with our children, we love how reading aloud together builds our kids’ vocabulary, teaches them about the world and the experiences of others, and develops bonds and relationship with us. And of course, time spent reading aloud to our kids is time not on screens — which can be good for both them and us.

And for dads in particular, Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, now in its eighth edition, notes “the important role of fathers in developing boys as readers.” Trelease says when he wrote the first edition in 1982, “I thought we had a bit of a male reading problem. Not anymore. Now it’s a huge problem.” His first edition had a few pages for dads. His latest edition has a whole chapter called “The Importance of Dads.”

Not Too Late

For moms and dads who are not currently reading aloud with regularity to your kids, I’d encourage you to try it, and stick with it for the long haul, despite the initial friction. Once or twice, or a few weeks, won’t be long enough for you to really see the effects, develop your stamina, and learn how to enjoy what a real habit can produce.

Perhaps my main piece of counsel would be to read with energy. When Dad and Mom put more into it, the whole family gets more out of it. Even after a long day, it’s worth pushing yourself to not just go through the motions and read monotone. Put energy into it. Pour in more enthusiasm than you first think is needed. Read with color and warmth. Do voices, if you’re that type. Pursue contagious joy, not infectious boredom. You are the teacher, not the book. The book is your prop, your medium, your context for relationship with your children, and your opportunity to invest in them, their maturity, and their personality.

Crowning Jewel

For parents like me, who want to make the most of reading aloud not just to entertain our kids but to disciple them, one caution might be not to preach or moralize too often — and on the other hand, not to miss the important teachable moments altogether. I try to be sensitive to my children’s hearts, alertness, and levels of interest. When they’re bored or grumpy or the tank is low, I lean on the book, and read for shorter spans. When they’re enraptured in the story, I consider it a better time to pause and impart key principles or life lessons, and read for longer.

“The crowning jewel of reading aloud is not Tolkien, Lewis, or Rowling. It’s God.”

Similarly, I’d encourage both funny books, where you laugh together (like Silly Tilly, or Caps for Sale) and serious books. Kids are ready for different stories at different ages. Because of my special love for Middle-earth, our first big, serious book was The Hobbit. Then we started Narnia, and then went on to another series. When COVID came, time finally seemed right for Potter. Now, with that journey behind us, we’ve started Lord of the Rings for our 11-year-olds, and The Hobbit with our 7-year-old daughter.

But the crowning jewel of reading aloud is not Tolkien, Lewis, or Rowling. It’s God. All along, from board books to storybook Bibles, to reading the Real Thing, we are training our children to hear the very words of God himself in Scripture, and receive them with joy.

The greatest read-aloud privilege of all is reading aloud the Bible.

We have surrounded ourselves with screens. On the desk. In the family room. Even in bedrooms and kitchens. Increasingly in automobiles. One for every passenger on the airplane? And most importantly, hitchhiking on our person everywhere we go, the Precious in our own pocketses and handses.

Once upon a time, screens came attached to heavy, unwieldy boxes. Not anymore. Now they’re as thin as picture frames, and thinner. Some of us can count more screens in our homes than wall décor.

We are living in stunningly image-driven and visually-oriented times. We do well, then, to query ourselves regularly, and thoughtfully, about what images we’re allowing to pass before our eyes, and how they are shaping us. Moving pictures are powerful. They can arrest and extract attention we don’t mean to pay them (say, at a restaurant). And our habits related to screens don’t leave us unchanged.

Yet, in such days, it could be easy to be captivated by the screens and overlook the deeply formative and re-formative power of the great invisible medium that accompanies them: words. Words, especially spoken words, are the great unseen power that give meaning to our world of images and shape how we choose to live.

Words for Good, and Ill

Perhaps even more than our other four celebrated senses, our ability to hear makes us deeply human.

“Words are the great unseen power that give meaning to our world of images and shape how we choose to live.”

After touch (at three weeks), hearing is the next sense to develop in the womb, at about twenty weeks, and it is widely considered to be the last sense to go while dying. Which makes sense for us as creatures of the Creator who is (amazingly!) a speaking, self-revealing God. First and foremost, he made us to hear him, to receive and respond to his words. He created the world, through words, saying, “Let there be light.” He speaks new creation into our souls by effecting new birth through his word, the gospel (James 1:18; 2 Corinthians 4:6). And he grows and sustains our souls in the Christian life through his words (1 Corinthians 15:1–2; 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

When the serpent slid into the garden, he didn’t show Eve an Instagram video, or perform a TikTok dance. He spoke. He slid his poison into her heart through her ears. After all, God had spoken to create the world. He had given Adam instructions through words about how to live in the world. So too, when Satan attacked, he came with something more perilous than a sword or boulder. He came with words, leaning on the stunning power of the audible and invisible, seeking to unseat God’s words. “Did God actually say . . . ?” (Genesis 3:1).

Who’s in Your Head?

In our day of striking media saturation and consumption, we will do well to remember the profound shaping, world-changing power of words.

Whether they are the words accompanying television and YouTube, or the written words of articles and tweets, or the purely audible media of podcasts and audiobooks, words form and fill our inner person, penetrate deeply, and quickly shape our desires, decisions, and outer lives — the whole of who we are. It’s not a matter of whether words are shaping us but whose.

Whose voice — whether through audio or written words or video, or old-fashioned face-to-face talk — whose voice is most regularly streaming into your ears, and going down into your soul? Whose voice captures your finite attention, and focuses you, or distracts you? Which voices do you long to hear most? Whose words are you welcoming most to enter into your soul, to sow seeds of life — or death? Whom do you welcome into that intimate space that is your ear?

Entertaining Demons

Do the words you hear and cherish most “follow the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2)? Are you becoming “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2) rather than “transformed by the renewal of your mind”? How “highly online” and “Internet-formed” are you? Some have entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:2), but are we showing hospitality to demons?

Two lines from a recent Gospel Coalition email stopped me in my tracks:

Internet-formed Christians are increasingly being catechized by partisan politics and secular pop culture. The result? Divided and fragmenting churches, declining church membership, and weary leaders.

It stopped me in my tracks as a spot-on diagnosis. Christian parents, pastors, and disciple-makers were once the most formative catechizers. What happens when the words, and perspectives, of television and the Internet shape Christians more than their churches? We’re already seeing it.

Whose Words Are Changing You?

For many, the fight for faith in this generation — to not only survive but thrive as a Christian — is about not just what we see, but perhaps just as pressing (if not more so), what we hear and to whom we listen.

God made us for the gospel, which is first and foremost a message to hear. “Faith comes from hearing,” says the apostle Paul, “and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). And how did you receive the Spirit? “Hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:2). “He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you” does so not “by works of the law,” he writes, but “by hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:5). The voices we habitually allow and welcome into our heads have profound shaping power. “In the sensorium of faith,” writes Tony Reinke in his book on today’s countless visual Spectacles, “the ear is chief” (148).

“Whom you hear with delight today will be who you become like tomorrow.”

A new year is as good a time as any to take inventory of the audible voices and written words we encounter daily, especially those we habitually choose. Whose words do you welcome? Whose words do you not only hear, but listen to with rapt attention? Whose words fill your social feeds and podcast queues? What do you listen to on the way to work, or while you walk, exercise, or clean? To whom do you turn for advice? What podcasts, what shows and series, what musicians, what audiobooks? Are your choices governed by the pursuit of entertainment, or the pursuit of God? Instant gratification, or progressive sanctification? Shallow, mindless consumption, or careful, thoughtful growth?

Whom you hear with delight today will be who you become more like tomorrow. As Jesus himself says seven times in the Gospels, and then seven times more in Revelation, “He who has an ear, let him hear.”

New Year’s Defiance

As we continue to sort out the effects of new media and algorithms, and how the Internet shapes Christians and our churches in particular, we do have one clear, simple, ancient, decisive act of defiance.

To those of us willing to hear and heed the cautions, the solution, of course, is not to plug the ears that God has so wonderfully dug, but to open them and eagerly receive words and voices that are true, good, life-giving, balanced, and Christ-magnifying. Even more important than what we keep out of our heads, and hearts, is what we fill them with — and none are more worthy than the words of God himself.

God made us to meditate, not flit endlessly from one message to the next. It is a remarkable design feature of humans, that we can pause and ponder, ruminate and think, that we can stew over truth (and not just lies), and over the good God has done (and not just the evil of others). Perhaps, if you’re honest, you find your mind fragmented. Texts and notifications, tweets and memes, audio and video ads and clips seem to have eroded your capacity for serious, meaningful attention, and you’re not sure where to turn next, but just hit refresh. Make the word of God be where you turn.

Make his voice, in Scripture, the first you hear each day. And his voice, above all, the one that you welcome most, and try to take most deeply into your soul through his words. Let his words be your unhurried meditation, in the morning, and the place you return to regain balance in spare moments. Pray for, and aim to have, his word be “on your heart,” and central in your parenting, and present in conversation, with you “when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).

Discover Good

Let meditation on God’s word be one great new-year’s act of defiance in our media-driven age. Half an hour of such unhurried, even leisurely, lingering over and enjoying God’s words just might fortify your soul for the unavoidable drivel of distant dramas, hot takes, and idle words we seem to encounter at every turn in this world. “Whoever gives thought to the word will discover good, and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord” (Proverbs 16:20).

You will find, over time, that God can indeed restore what the locusts have eaten. He can rebuild your mind, and your capacity for focus and sustained attention, and he can restore your heart, and give you wisdom and stability.

How different might the next year be because of what you resolved to do with your ears?

In 1539, about twenty-two years after the Reformation had begun, a Catholic cardinal named Sadoleto wrote a letter to Protestant Geneva, trying to convince the city to return to the Catholic Church. John Calvin had been a pastor in Geneva, but he was exiled the year before. Even so, Geneva turned to Calvin to write a response to the cardinal.

In it, Calvin identifies the main issue of the Reformation as this: the glory of God. Calvin says to the cardinal, “[Your] zeal for heavenly life [is] a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God.”

In other words, Catholic theology is man-centered, and does not honor God as it ought. “It is not very sound theology,” writes Calvin, “to confine a man’s thoughts so much to himself, and not to set before him, as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God.”

Three hundred and fifty years later, in 1891, New Testament scholar Geerhardus Vos identified this “zeal to illustrate the glory of God” as what enabled Reformed theology to grasp the fullness of Scripture unlike any other branch of Christendom. He said,

Reformed theology took hold of the Scriptures in their deepest root idea. . . . This root idea which served as the key to unlock the rich treasuries of the Scriptures was the preeminence of God’s glory in the consideration of all that has been created. (Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, 241)

So this morning, on Reformation Sunday, and on Reformation Day itself, we remember our heritage as Protestants as “zeal to illustrate the glory of God,” as Calvin argued, and taking hold of “the preeminence of God’s glory,” as Vos later wrote. It is a sweet providence, as we continue our Exodus series, to open together to where Moses prays, “Please show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18).

From Ten Words to the Golden Calf

This fall we have journeyed from Exodus 20, the giving of the Ten Commandments, to the refracting of the Commandments in the case law of chapters 21–23, and to God formally making a covenant with the people in chapter 24. Then Moses goes up the mountain for forty days and nights (Exodus 24:18) and there receives God’s plan for the nation’s worship: detailed instructions for a traveling temple, called the tabernacle, along with its furniture and utensils, and garments for the priests and their consecration. All of this is in chapters 25–31.

Then we saw last week the screeching, tragic fall of Exodus 32. Just as God finishes speaking with Moses on the mountain, he informs him that the people “have corrupted themselves” (Exodus 32:7). “They have turned aside quickly out of the way that [God] commanded them” (Exodus 32:8). In their impatience, and pride, they “have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it” (Exodus 32:9). Within forty days of making a covenant with God, they have broken it, flagrantly. God says to Moses in 32:9–10, “Behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.”

Moses implores God not to destroy the people, for the sake of God’s own name and reputation, and in faithfulness to his promises. And God relents. At least for now, he will not wipe out the nation, great as their sin is. Chapter 32 ends with Moses wondering aloud whether atonement might somehow be made, whether God might somehow forgive their sin. That’s the question in the air as we come to chapter 33.

Reformation Truths in Exodus 33

On this Reformation Day, let me draw your attention to three great Reformation truths on which the account of Exodus 33 turns.

1. Total Depravity

First, the people receive a “disastrous word” about their sin and how it separates them from the holy God — which is not just a word for Israel. Look at Exodus 33:3–6, which begins with God saying,

“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey [so God is fulfilling his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob]; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’” Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

Stiff-necked. Twice God says here (to the people) what he had said (about them) to Moses in 32:9. Then: “Behold, it is a stiff-necked people.” Now: “You are a stiff-necked people.” It isn’t that chapter 32 made them stiff-necked. The great sin of the golden calf didn’t cause their necks to be stiff with pride; it revealed the stiffness of their necks. They were arrogant. They did not submit to God’s law and God’s timing. They were haughty. Stubborn with pride.

“In our sin, we do not have untainted hearts that can see God for who he really is and sin for what it really is.”

Another way to speak about this stiff-necked people, and the condition into which we ourselves were born, is the Reformation term “total depravity.” In our sin, whether at Sinai or in the modern world, we do not have untainted hearts, or untainted minds, with which to see God for who he really is, and sin for what it really is.

Total depravity does not mean we are as depraved as we could be, but that we are depraved in all our faculties. Sin has infected every aspect of our being. We do not have the ability to think or feel or choose or achieve our way out. We are “dead in our sins” (Ephesians 2:1, 5), “darkened in [our] understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in [us], due to [our] hardness of heart” (Ephesians 4:18). We are born totally depraved, as Israel was. Stiff-necked as Israel was.

Exodus 33:4 calls it a “disastrous word.” Because of their sin, God will not “go up” among them to the promised land. He will fulfill his word and send them on, but he will not be among them, lest his holiness consumes them. (This is a ray of hope, and Calvin would be pleased, that the people are not content to have the promised land without the presence of God — at least in this humbling moment.)

So Israel’s honeymoon with God is over. Their sin has been exposed; his holiness has been revealed. The nation has been humbled. They remove their ornaments in Exodus 33:4: “When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.” Now they know their sin, and what they deserve; now they will put away triumphalism and pretense, and walk with a limp, from Sinai to Canaan.

2. Unconditional Election

Moses’s advocacy for the people that began in chapter 32 comes to its culmination in his brief and audacious request in Exodus 33:18, and in God’s response in Exodus 33:19–23.

By this point, Moses is caught in the tension between God’s holiness and the nation’s need for mercy. On the one hand, the people deserve to be consumed. And God, in his holiness, cannot simply be among them, in their sin.

Given God’s holiness and the people’s sin, how can Moses confidently “go up” from Sinai to the promised land? Will this not end in disaster? So Moses wants to know more about this God. Who is he? What kind of God is he? Will he forgive? And so Moses says in Exodus 33:18, “Please show me your glory.”

God’s response, then, in Exodus 33:19–23 has two parts: a revelation and a limitation.

God’s Goodness Revealed

First, the revelation. God says,

“I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’ [Yahweh, as we saw in Exodus 3]. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” (Exodus 33:19)

This is the kind of answer Moses was looking for. When God says, “I will make all my goodness pass before you,” he addresses Moses’s fear about the badness of the people, their depravity, their stiff necks. God does not point to the people’s lack of goodness, but to the reality of his own.

“God will uphold the covenant with his people — not because of their goodness, but because of his goodness.”

He will uphold the covenant with his people — not because of their goodness, but because of his goodness. His choice of Israel to be his people is not based on their deservedness. His election of his people is without their meeting any conditions. That is, unconditional election — true at Sinai, true of the church.

God is utterly free to choose whom he will as recipients of his mercy, with no external constraints. He is not dependent on Israel’s choice. He is not dependent on our goodness. He is free to choose any people, and any persons, he so chooses. You want to know why you can count on his commitment to his people? Not because of their goodness, God says, but because “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19).

And this goodness of God on display in his grace and mercy is his glory — his weight, his character, his heart. And this is the answer Moses needed to go forward. This is not on the people. And this is not on Moses. This is on God. He has chosen his people. He will see them through. His goodness and sovereign freedom in choosing whom he will sustains the covenant. And so the Reformation slogan was soli Deo gloria — to God alone be the glory.

So, God’s unconditional election of Israel was a precious word to Moses and to the people. And it is a precious balm to God’s people today, and especially to the weak in faith, to those who doubt, to those who are honest with themselves about their own lack of goodness, to those who wonder, “Can God really show someone like me grace? Can he really have mercy on me? Can he forgive? He knows how bad I am.”

If that’s you this morning, I want you to hear your Father reply, without equivocation, and with a smile, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19). Hear him say, “I choose you not because you are good, but because I am. Your badness cannot stop my choice. Your evil cannot spoil my freedom when I set my love upon you. I am free to show you mercy, free to show you grace, free to choose you, despite your sin; free to love you, however unworthy you feel.”

God’s Glory Concealed (for Now)

But God is not done. There is not only the answer Moses needs — the revelation — but also a limitation. God continues with “but” in Exodus 33:20–23:

“But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

Moses will get to glimpse the glory of God, but it will be only a glimpse — not God’s face, but his back. Moses may know more of God, but not all of God, a glimpse Moses will have to be content with for now. But God is not done revealing himself to Moses and to Israel.

As God has shown his glory in redeeming his people from Egypt, he will show his glory in preserving them in the wilderness for forty years, and in making the walls of Jericho fall, and in bringing his people into the promised land, and in delivering his people through the time of the judges, and in taking a humble shepherd boy and putting him on the nation’s throne. And God will show his glory as he justly punishes the nation’s idolatry in decline and exile, and when he raises up prophets to proclaim hope beyond exile.

And he will show his glory when he himself enters the world as a humble infant, laid in a manger, and lives in obscurity for thirty years. He will show his glory when he calls and trains disciples and heals the sick and proclaims good news. And climactically he will show his glory on a hill called Calvary outside Jerusalem, where God himself, in the person of his Son, bears the sins of his people — like Moses could not do — and takes upon himself all the destruction we deserved for depravity and stiff necks. And then the glorious God will rise again in triumph.

“What Moses could not yet see of God’s glory, we see far more fully in Jesus, especially at the cross.”

What Moses could not yet see of the glory, we see far more fully in Jesus, especially at the cross. When Moses cried, “Show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18), it’s as if God responds, “Just you wait. For now, Moses, I’ll proclaim my name. I’ll renew the covenant. You’ll see part. And one day, I’ll show you and the world far more of my glory.” And that glory is the gospel message that Jesus, who is God himself, died to save idolaters like us. The gospel of Jesus is the culminating revelation of God’s glory.

3. Alien Righteousness

Now, finally, with Jesus already in view, let’s marvel at the Christlike intercession of Moses in Exodus 33:7–17 as he leverages his own favor with God for the sake of the people.

Verses 7–11 create a striking tension with verses 1–6 and the “disastrous word” about the people’s stiff necks and depravity. Verses 7–11 present an amazing contrast in God’s favor on Moses. God has said to the people, “You are stiff-necked; if I go up among you, I’ll consume you.” Yet, the holy God speaks “to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11).

You might wonder at this point, Didn’t we just see in Exodus 33:20 that God said, “You cannot see my face,” and in Exodus 33:23, “My face shall not be seen”? But here, in Exodus 33:11, God speaks “to Moses face to face.” How? That’s a good question. As one wise commentator says about verse 23, “The attempt to describe the indescribable strains language to its limit” (Alec Motyer, Exodus, 299). And verse 11 includes “two idioms for direct communication” (Robert Alter, Hebrew Bible). The point is God’s stunning favor on Moses, and that Moses cannot see God without accommodating and limitation.

Watch, then, in Exodus 33:12–17 how Moses leverages his favor with God (he mentions it four times!) to intercede for the people — the people that God has been saying to Moses are “your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:7; 33:1):

When Moses asks in Exodus 33:12 about the identity of the angel, he slides in, at the end of Exodus 33:13, “Consider too that this nation is your people.”
Then in Exodus 33:15, after God has promised to go up with him, Moses moves from “me” to “us”: “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.”
Then twice in Exodus 33:16, he identifies himself with the people: “How shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

In other words, Moses, knowing he has found favor in God’s sight, seeks to leverage that favor for the sake of the people. And God is not tricked by it but welcomes it. He’s prompting this from Moses, and he grants Moses his request. Exodus 33:17: “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

And if God would do that for Moses, how much more for his own Beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased (Matthew 3:17)?

Jesus’s Favor and Faith Alone

“Alien righteousness” is the term Protestants have used to talk about the righteousness on which we are justified, fully accepted, before the holy God.

On our own, we, like the people of Israel, are ungodly, stiff-necked, totally depraved, unrighteous. But Jesus Christ is righteous. He is God’s beloved Son. He has found full favor with God, and deservedly so. Christ is our righteousness before God. It is not our own. So, our righteousness is an alien righteousness, not native to us.

Jesus is not only the better glimpse of divine glory but also, as man, the better Moses who leverages his favor with God for the sake of his stiff-necked people, joined to him by faith alone.

Christ does not call us to scrape by spiritually year after year.

He can handle our down seasons and weak times. Jesus is gentle and merciful when our souls seem to be running on empty. He will not snuff us out when smoldering, or break us when bruised. And he is gracious enough to not leave us stuck forever in the state of “just enough”: believing just enough, hoping just enough, loving just enough to scrape by.

Jesus does not abandon his own when our spiritual tanks are low — and he bids us not to settle for threadbare spirituality or devotional minimalism. He invites us to more, and promises more, and empowers more.

Mature, healthy Christianity is maximalist, not minimalist. Those who are born again long for more of Jesus, not less. They’re not occupied with meeting bare minimums but want to see more, know more, enjoy more of Jesus, and then believe more, hope more, and love more, to his honor.

“Mature, healthy Christianity is maximalist, not minimalist. Those who are born again long for more of Jesus, not less.”

In time, the heart indwelt by the Holy Spirit recovers from its ebbs and cries more, more, more — not less, less, less — to see Jesus more clearly, love Jesus more dearly, follow Jesus more nearly.

So as an old year passes, and the new dawns, we don’t try to grope our way to find minimums of Bible intake, prayer, and covenant fellowship in the local church. We want to make the most of a new year.

We want more of Jesus in 2022.

Christ Honored in Death — or Life

Few passages shine with as much maximalist impulse as Philippians 1:22–26. Paul, in prison of all places, writes with confidence of his coming deliverance. Soon a verdict will come down, and either he will be released from prison or, through death, be released from this life. Paul is not anxious though: to die is “far better” because that is “to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:24).

His first desire, and personal preference, is to be as proximate to Jesus as possible — and so, “to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Yet Paul sees in Christ himself that personal preference doesn’t carry the day — at least not as a rule.

Paul has gladly dedicated his life to the advance of the gospel, not the advance of his own preferences. Nice as it would be, in his reckoning, to “depart and be with Christ” right now, Paul expects God’s work through him on earth isn’t yet complete. The very pattern and example of Christ’s own life did not move immediately toward his own immediate preferences but often laid them aside for the good of others. Paul anticipates that this too will be his call, for now: to “remain in the flesh” and “continue with you all” for their “progress and joy in the faith” (Philippians 1:24–25).

How, then, in his new, post-prison life to come, will Paul seek that Jesus “be honored in my body . . . by life”? What will “to live is Christ” mean for him in this new season? The dawning of a new year may be as good a time as any to rehearse Paul’s own vision of maximalist Christianity in Philippians 1:22–26.

Fruitful Labor

First, Paul highlights fruitful labor: “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me” (verse 22). This is not a manifestation of pride — as if Paul thinks so highly of himself as to presume effectiveness. Rather, this is a humble recognition of Christ’s call and the Spirit’s power: ongoing life in this age is an invitation to fruitfulness for Christ’s kingdom — perhaps particularly for an apostle, but no less so for the rest of us. As Paul writes to a young pastor and protégé, “Let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14). He dreams, and plans, and teaches toward not only fruitful apostles, but a whole church of fruitful laborers.

Fruitful labor isn’t magic, though it is supernatural. Christ calls his people, in the grip of his grace, to give themselves to the good of others, and to learn to do it, including the ups and downs of real-life trial and error. We cannot produce genuine spiritual fruit in our own strength, nor do we presume it will happen through us at the drop of a hat, in our own timing.

But we can learn. This is where genuine labor comes in. It is work. We engage. We invest energy and effort. We take modest and patient steps and over time devote ourselves to various initiatives and acts for the good of others, knowing that Christ means to empower our labor by his Spirit and make them fruitful in his timing.

Others’ Progress and Joy

Paul then spells out further, in verse 25, what this “fruitful labor” will be: “your progress and joy in the faith.”

In our day of self-focus, and shameless self-promotion, how refreshing to see the marked other-ness in Paul’s ambition. Modern ambition — and perhaps American ambition in particular — can subtly seep into our souls and color our seemingly Christian ambitions. But Paul’s perspective is that he remains in this life, as long as he remains, for the sake of others.

He resolves to honor Christ through his ongoing life by giving himself to the progress and joy of others’ faith. Paul’s life, as long as he lives, is dedicated to the glory of Christ through advancing others’ joy in Christ. Paul is not scraping by. He is not groping for spiritual minimums. He is not focusing his planning on a single act or word or two. He means to abound in doing good (2 Corinthian 9:8). He hopes for his life to overflow in countless acts and words for the good of others. His impulse is not only maximalist but others-oriented.

Ample Cause to Glory

Finally, we find one further degree of specificity in verse 26. The apostle will remain, for now, in this life, for the advance and joy of others’ faith, “so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.”

When released, Paul means to make another visit to Philippi, and his intentions are plainly maximalist. He means not only to give them a cause, or some cause, to glory in Christ. Rather, his plan, God helping him, is to live in such a way among the Philippians that they will have “ample cause to glory in Christ” when Paul comes to town. Ample cause. Literally, “so that your boast may abound in Christ Jesus because of me.” Not threadbare boasting in Christ, but boasting that abounds. And not minimal effort and energy on his part to provoke it, but maximal.

“If we content ourselves with just scraping by spiritually, we deprive not only ourselves of joy but also others.”

Which might inspire us to have such hopes and dreams, and pray such prayers, for a new year. If we content ourselves with just scraping by spiritually, with angling to just get by, do just enough, we deprive not only ourselves of joy but also others. Not only is our own boasting in Christ diminished, but also others boasting in him. Observe, then, the contagious power of joy in Christ. When our gaze attends to Jesus, and we devote our remaining lives to his honor, we give others not only cause to rejoice in Christ, but ample cause — boasting in Christ that abounds — to the honor and praise of our Lord.

Catalyzing Joy

Living to the glory of Christ is not just for Jesus and me, but also includes others — not just that they would see our lives and give God glory, but also that our lives would become part of catalyzing joy in Christ in them, such that they too would live to Christ’s glory and so multiply our life being poured out for Christ.

So 2022 provides a fresh opportunity to make such Pauline resolutions. Rather than the often self-focused mood of new-year resolves, what if we kept in mind how the joy of others is critical, for the fullness of our own joy, and for the maximizing of Jesus’s honor through us?

Our Lord has more grace to give — to empower us to thrive and not merely survive. And he is worthy of our earnest, humble resolves. Such maximalist Christianity could only be unattractive if we have a minimalist view of the value of Christ.

Closed for Christmas. No birth in history has changed the world like that quiet, unsuspecting night in Bethlehem. Two thousand years later, no day marks as many calendars, determines as many schedules, pauses as many businesses, and draws together as many friends and families.

No prophet’s or great teacher’s origin, no king’s or president’s birth, no other single event in the history of the world transcends tribes and nations, continents and hemispheres, epochs and ages, liberal college campuses and secular places of employment, as the birth of one Jesus of Nazareth. Even the annual calendar at Hogwarts is set in time with Christmas Day.

And this peculiar influence is no accident of history. When we pause to ponder the surprise that this “present evil age,” at least for now, nearly shuts down for Christmas, we see the wink and smile of God. Rightly has no birth story, the world over, been rehearsed even nearly as often as the day that God himself, in the person of his Son, was born among us as one of us, fully God and fully human, to save his people from their sin.

God and Man in One

Of course, to mark the birth of “God himself” is far more controversial than just “Jesus of Nazareth.” Historically, the birth of the latter is hard to deny with a level head. Yet, the heart of the Christian faith pulses with “Jesus of Nazareth” as “God himself.”

“On Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of ‘the God-man’ — man like every other, and God like no other.”

On Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of “the God-man” — man like every other, and God like no other. A long history of devout and deliberate thought and tense dialogue has taught us to call him, among countless other names, “the God-man.”

Names from Scripture

Most of our many names and titles for Jesus come from the Scriptures themselves: He is “the Word,” the eternal, uncreated Logos who was in the beginning with God, and through whom God made the world. He is the long-promised, singular “seed of the woman,” who crushes the serpent’s head. He is the prophesied Son of David, anointed heir to Israel’s throne, the shoot and branch that grow again from the severed tree, and stump, of exile. As David’s son, he is “son of God” as Israel’s king, and “Son of God” as the eternal Son of the divine Father.

Veiled in flesh, he moved among us as the enigmatic “Son of Man,” manifestly human, but also harkening to Daniel’s shadowy figure approaching the throne of heaven to receive worldwide dominion from the Ancient of Days. He comes as Alpha and Omega, yet Suffering Servant and Lamb of God, giving himself to rescue sinners. And most shockingly, breathtakingly, awe-inspiringly, as the apostles make plain, he is God himself, not only divine in some general sense but specifically, and even more daringly, as Lord (kurios), somehow Yahweh himself among us, as one of us.

But nowhere in Scripture do we hear, in as many words, that he is “God-man.” When we call him that, and mark Christmas Day as the birth of such, we are not repeating strictly biblical terms. Rather, we are drawing on the fruit of theology. We are benefiting from the sweat and blood of centuries of faithful voices who responded to those who erred in trying to bottle up the mystery.

Enter God-Man

For the apostles, and first Christians, it was very clear that Jesus was fully human. None doubted it in that first generation. His mother knew it; she birthed him. His brothers and sisters knew it; they lived with him, ate with him, touched him, heard his voice. So too his disciples who walked with him for three years, and saw his undeniable humanness in public and private. Large crowds witnessed his teaching and miracles, saw him ride into Jerusalem on a humble steed, stand trial, endure slander, carry his own cross, and die on it horrifically under a sky that went black. And Paul writes that “more than five hundred brothers at one time” (1 Corinthians 15:6) saw Jesus alive again after his crucifixion.

But what wasn’t yet plain — and what his disciples progressively came to realize, all too slowly, during his life and ministry, and then climactically with his resurrection from the dead — was that this Jesus was no mere human. Human he was, without dispute. But somehow Yahweh himself had come in this man, not figuratively but literally — not just “in spirit” but actually in the flesh, truly man, with a reasoning soul and body.

The disciples, and those being added to their number, came to worship Jesus, as first-century Jews otherwise could not fathom. Jews inarguably did not worship Moses. They did not worship David. They did not worship Elijah. But remarkably, Jewish though they were, the risen Christ they worshiped (Matthew 28:9, 17; Luke 24:52).

So, the first question of Jesus’s disciples and their contemporaries was not, Is he human? but, Is he God? That question came to be answered by the resurrection.

Can God Be Man?

Consider, then, how this changed in subsequent generations, at least among those who confessed “Jesus is Lord,” as the starting place of their faith and worship. For later Christians — who worshiped him, but did not hear him, see him, touch him for themselves — his Godness was the given; his humanity might be less certain. Some were prone to ask, Can the one who is God be truly man?

To far oversimplify, but give some sense of the challenges from all sides, Greek influence led to Gnostic claims that Christ couldn’t really be man, but only seemed to be (Docetism), while the heights of Hebrew monotheism led to Ebionite claims that he couldn’t really be God. And as test after test arose in those first centuries, the central truths about who Jesus is were not developed as much as defended.

The church and her councils did not provide further revelation about Jesus — the apostles did not waver on his humanity or deity. Rather, the Fathers and creeds sought to protect the faith once for all delivered to the saints. No ecumenical council made Jesus the God-man in a way that he wasn’t already in the apostolic writings and at the Father’s right hand.

Can Man Be God?

When third-century Arians asked, Is he truly God and not just God’s first and greatest creature? the council at Nicea (325) answered, He is truly God: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence as the Father.” Then subsequently, when Apollinaris of Laodicea, renowned defender of Christ’s deity, raised new questions about the extent of his humanity, the council at Constantinople (381) answered, Jesus is fully man, including a human mind in addition to the divine.

Later, when the influence of Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople, led some to question, Is he really one person, or two? the council at Ephesus (431) answered, He is one person indeed. And when Eutyches of Constantinople and others, in response, so emphasized Christ’s oneness to question, Does he have two natures? the council of Chalcedon (451) answered, He is fully God, and fully man — one person with two complete and uncompromised natures: “inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.”

Jesus was not first declared to be the Son of God at Nicea in 325. He went fully public as divine Son by his resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4). The church received him as such, then and there, and so became the church. The entirety of the New Testament documents received him as such, not only by the prose of direct assertion but through a web of poetic hints, divine overtures, frank acknowledgment, and glimpses of peculiar glory that stretch across and attach to every page from Matthew to the book of Revelation.

Made for Christmas

On Christmas Day, we celebrate a great heritage in remembering the birth of the Lord God Almighty. Jesus is Lord: preexistent, uncreated, God himself and fully God. Jesus is Savior: fully human, all the way from humble birth to sacrificial death, assuming our human body, emotions, mind, and will to save us. And he is Treasure: fully God and fully man in one spectacular, risen, reigning person. He is the Pearl of Great Price (Matthew 13:46), the Surpassing Worth (Philippians 3:8), who not only satisfies all that God requires of man, and satisfies the requirements of divine justice in view of our sin, but uniquely satisfies the human soul with his unique human-divinity.

“We were not only made for God; we were made for the God-man.”

We were not only made for God; we were made for the God-man.

Which may help explain why his birth still stubbornly haunts the calendars of the professing secular today. Perhaps it’s more than just historical and practical. Perhaps the goodness that Christmas whispers not only closes businesses on December 25 but lingers in the subconscious,
leaving even calloused hearts longing for such a rescue.

The God-man has come, for us and for our salvation.