Mention something “majestic” in nature, and many of us would think of mountains.

We might call to mind some great range of mountains, or a towering waterfall, or an expansive body of water with no end in sight. Majestic features are both imposing and attractive, both impressive and beautiful, both intimidating and inviting. They have a strange pull on the human soul, drawing on us to draw near, but with reverence and care.

In our language, as in biblical terms, the word majesty captures not only bigness but also beauty, awesome power combined with pleasant admiration, both great height or size and yet potential safety. Majesty brings together both greatness and goodness, both strength and splendor (Psalm 96:6). It’s not only a fitting descriptor for mountain majesties but also for God, who is, above all, “the Majestic One” (Isaiah 10:34). Psalm 76:4 declares in praise to him, “Glorious are you,” and then adds, “more majestic than the mountains.”

How Majestic His Name

Such divine majesty pulses with an expansive, evangelistic force. God is not only majestic in fact but also in renown. His greatness, his power, his glory are not to be hidden and kept secret, but to spread through sight and word far and wide, attaching his name to such greatness and glory. His majesty is to be known, and he to be known, by name.

In a song of high praise, Psalm 148 bids both kings and commoners, young men and maidens, old and young alike to praise God’s exalted name as an extension of his majesty:

Let them praise the name of the Lord,for his name alone is exalted;his majesty is above earth and heaven. (Psalm 148:13)

“Divine majesty pulses with an expansive, evangelistic force.”

So also Micah’s famous Bethlehem prophecy speaks of a great ruler arising, from the little town, who “shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth” (Micah 5:4).

Of course, nowhere is God’s majesty accented as memorably as in the first line of Psalm 8 and its refrain in the last. This is Scripture’s signature celebration of divine majesty. Yet here, God’s majesty is not like the renown of mere human splendor, whether of ancient Egypt or Babylon or Rome, or like the renown of a Washington or Napoleon, a Lincoln or Churchill. This psalm, perhaps surprisingly, largely assumes God’s natural majesty (as we might call it), equally visible to unbelieving eyes, while accenting his peculiar majesty — the summit of his beauty requiring a miracle of his grace to see and enjoy.

Two Modes of Majesty

Psalm 8 manifestly sings of glory — God’s glory, set above the heavens (verse 1), and man’s glory, appointed by God, as one he has “crowned . . . with glory and honor” (verse 5). And so, that memorable opening line, reprised as the final note, hails the majesty of God’s name:

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Here, under the banner of God’s majesty and excellence as his glory, we find two levels, or modes. First is what we might call a natural mode: the heavens (verses 1 and 3), the moon and the stars (verse 3), and we might presume the quintessential natural majesties like mountains and waterfalls and oceans, vast physical expanses that remind us of our smallness and the awe-inspiring bigness and authority and power of the one who made such majesties.

But then, second, is what we might call a special mode of his majesty, which is the particular emphasis of Psalm 8: verse 2 mentions the mouths of babies and infants (that is, the weak) testifying to his strength in the face of foes and the enemy and avenger. Then, at the heart of the psalm, verses 3–8 marvel at his grace toward mankind. In view of such natural majesties as the heavens (“your heavens”!) and moon and stars, and mountains, “What is man that you are mindful of him?”

“Yet,” says verse 5 — this is the “yet” of grace — God has made man “a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor.” In such a majestic creation, God has made man, with humanity’s smallness and limitations, in the divine image, and given him “dominion over the works of [God’s] hands.” The beasts of the field and birds of the heavens and fish of the sea are to be subject to man, thanks to God.

So, we find here both a natural majesty and special majesty. And Psalm 8, while acknowledging the obvious majesty of God in the bigness and beauty of creation, emphasizes “the unexpectedness of God’s ways” (Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 66) which further demonstrates his majesty — indeed is his majesty in full flower.

God reveals his greatness and power and glory not only through his heavens and moon and stars and mountains but also by confounding his foes with the praises of the weak. God shows himself majestic through the heavens and surpassingly so through humans — and in particular the ones we’re prone to least expect: the humble, the lowly, those who naturally seem least majestic.

Great God, Graced Man

The point of Psalm 8, then, is this: God’s grace toward man redounds to the glory of divine majesty, to the fame of God’s name, to the extension of his renown through his world. The sum of the psalm is not how great is man, but how graced is man — and how great is our God. And for the faithful, he is our God: “O Lord, our Lord.” He is majestic in his greatness, power, and glory — and exceedingly majestic in grace toward his people, so much so that he is our Lord.

Psalm 8 includes this striking dignifying of humanity, yet without leaving any doubt as to where the accent falls, thanks to the refrain. The first word, and the last word, lest we forget, is how majestic is God’s name. The primary emphasis, driven home in verse 9, is “God and his grace” (Kidner, 68).

High and Exalted, Exalting the Lowly

Behind Psalm 8, the second “song of majesty” is Psalm 145, where we also find “two modes” of divine majesty. The fourth stanza praises God’s regal highness in the more typical terms: glory and power, mighty deeds, situated in “his kingdom,” under his kingly dominion. This is the stuff of natural majesty. Then the fifth stanza unfolds this peculiar majesty for the enlightened eyes of his covenant people — the people to which God, amazingly, is kind, or literally loyal (verses 13b and 17) by his gracious covenant.

Psalm 138 also contains a parallel, at least in showing the surprising majesty of God, and the global advance of his renown, his name:

All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks, O Lord,for they have heard the words of your mouth,and they shall sing of the ways of the Lord,for great is the glory of the Lord.For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly,but the haughty he knows from afar. (Psalm 138:4–6)

“We thrill at God’s mercy for the lowly, and marvel at his justice for the wicked.”

Mark his royal highness. His greatness shines out all the more in how far he bends down to help the lowly. His majesty is on display not just in his capacity to resist and decimate strong foes, but in his merciful, gentle stooping to rescue his weak people. His majesty is unsurpassed both in its highness (above the highest heavens) and in its regard for the lowly, how far he can bend, and will bend, to rescue the needy, comfort the afflicted, provide for the poor, and exalt the humbled.

His majesty is unrivaled. His greatness, his power, his glory are unmatched. And yet, to this incomparable natural majesty he adds the very summit of his greatness: his peculiar majesty that stoops to show mercy, raise up the lowly, and rescue the humbled. He is surpassingly majestic in his person and capacities, and then, even more, in his grace and mercy. His people delight in his gentleness toward them, and in his fierceness with their foes. We thrill at his mercy for the lowly, and marvel at his justice for the wicked.

And now we know, as the psalmists could only anticipate, the personal manifestation of this surpassing and peculiar majesty. Which brings us to Isaiah’s enigmatic suffering servant.

No Majesty, Now Majestic

The great prophet foresaw one who would have “no form or majesty that we should look at him” (Isaiah 53:2). From beginning to end, the earthly life of Jesus magnified the majesty of his Father. Jesus so spoke, and so acted, that as Luke 9:43 reports, “all were astonished at the majesty of God.”

Yet, even then, in the earthly ministry of Christ, a greater and more stunning majesty remained. Luke continues, “But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men’” (Luke 9:43–44). That is, he would accent the display of this emerging majesty with an unexpected and special majesty.

To natural eyes, Jesus had no form or majesty that we should look at him. Now he became to the eyes of faith the supremely majestic one. After the resurrection, eyes now fully opened to grace, Peter testifies of being an eyewitness to his majesty (2 Peter 1:16–17). Now the one without natural majesty, who humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, has been super-exalted and seated at the right hand of Majesty.

Which might remind us of what Hebrews 2:8 comments about man in Psalm 8: “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” But then he adds in verse 9, “But we see him,” that is, the God-man.

We see Jesus, who — by virtue of his becoming man, suffering, dying for us, rising in triumph, and ascending to sit at the right hand of Majesty — has become the first to fulfill the vision of Psalm 8, with all things under his feet. Not only is divine majesty on display through this man, but he is divine Majesty himself, shining in the peculiar glory that outstrips and surpasses our best notions of natural glory.

When we turn to the highest majesty that can be conceived, we look and listen to Jesus.

Every morning summons us to a feast. With each new day, the inviting voice of Isaiah 55 beckons, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. . . . Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food” (Isaiah 55:1–2).

So, with the Book in hand, we turn Godward with the parched and famished soul of Psalm 63, acknowledging our need and anticipating his banquet: “My soul thirsts for you. . . . My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food” (Psalm 63:1, 5). In Christ, we come to God, through his word, as those who thirst come to water, to receive wine and milk without cost (Isaiah 55:1), as those who hunger to be satisfied with true bread.

Each new morning dawns with divine mercies to quench our thirst and satiate our souls.

Ideally, this is the main feel of morning meditation in God’s word: feeding, eating, drinking, being satisfied. Not the feel of battle and combat, but of feasting. But mark this: as sinners, in a cursed world, with a real enemy — to keep feeding, we also must fight.

Ordinary devotions are nothing less than war.

Devil Rise Early

“Did God actually say . . . ?”

From that very first temptation, the enemy has set his sights on the words of God. If we’ve already heard them, he’ll question them. But even better, he knows, would be to keep us from hearing God in the first place.

The devil and his team know how powerful are the words of God, and how vital they are for our life and health. They know the devastating power of ordinary Bible intake. They know the power of fire to warm coals, and the power of God’s word to feed saving faith and keep believing hearts soft. They know, and tremble at, the explosive, world-altering force of faithful Christians sitting down morning by morning — without fireworks or theatrics or applause — to the quiet glory of ordinary devotions.

So, the devils will do whatever they can to disrupt the morning feast. They launch their campaign under the cloak of darkness, and attack at dawn. But we are not left to be outwitted by their schemes, ignorant of satanic designs (2 Corinthians 2:11). The devil may prowl like a roaring lion, seeking to devour (1 Peter 5:8). Yet with sober-mindedness and watchfulness, we can observe, and reinforce, his likely points of attack.

Three Assaults on Bible Intake

Consider, then, how our enemy often leverages the patterns of our world, with the sins and weaknesses of our own flesh, to plot against the ordinary, quiet, unhurried, early-morning feeding of our souls in the word of God.

1. Keep Them Up Late

The campaign begins the night before, at dusk: keep them up too late. It could be a sleepless child. It could be some tangible, late-breaking need, requiring an act of love. It could be analog human conversation or a late-night event. All the old stuff. But these days, machines are now doing a good bit of the work. Our many screens — from big ones on the walls to the little ones in our pockets — are very efficient at burning the midnight oil.

The spiritual war for ordinary devotions begins long before the sun comes up. The sober-minded and watchful observe it, and act with wisdom — ready to sacrifice the good of sleep in the call of Christian love, and eager not to squander God’s gift for the follies of late-night bingeing and scrolling. One bad habit can knock other good ones out of sync. The enemy would have us be blinded to the cascading effects of empty late nights.

2. Distract Them

If we do retire at an actual human hour, not all is lost for the enemy: distract them in the morning. Which can be quick work.

In one sense, it’s always been easy. Even in the mid-seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) lamented our universal proneness to distraction: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” We don’t need endless news and the Internet to sidetrack our attention — yet now we have them and, oh, how susceptible we can be. The smartphone, its notifications, and infinite scrolls are particularly ensnaring.

3. Make Them Rush

A third enemy scheme is hurry. The devil would have the motor of our souls run at the same RPMs first thing in the morning as it does the rest of the day. He would have us move at the world’s pace, rather than the Word’s. He would even happily have us try to do too much in morning devotions, so that we do it all too quickly.

As columnist Thomas Friedman has written, we find ourselves living in an “age of accelerations.” Our world pressures us and conditions us to adopt its pace, and we are prone to internalize its speed as our own — and bring the rat race with us when we come to God’s word.

But the morning feast of Bible meditation is not fast food, and not to be treated as such.

Three Attacks on Temptation

How, then, might we combat the devil’s schemes? It’s one thing to anticipate how the demons will attack; it’s another to act on that knowledge. What will you do to thwart the evil forces set against daily Bible reading and meditation?

1. Handle Screens with Care

Among other practical strategies, we might learn to handle our screens with special care. Think how much less prone to morning distraction you might be if you kept the phone silenced, upside down, and further away than arm’s length. Or even better, in another room.

For our souls to start the day feasting on God, we need not only to make time, and be realistic about what we have, but also to guard it by getting to bed, getting up, and avoiding morning diversions. Both the night before and morning of, screens and their content, with their glittering pixels, are great distractors of souls.

For many of us in modern life, we can hardly avoid them. We work at them and use them for our jobs. We spend a shocking amount of our days and weeks on them, much of it for good. But exercising particular caution with our screens after dark, and before meeting with God in his word, is becoming the greater part of modern Christian wisdom.

You might also consider going old school with a paper Bible. Those do not ring, vibrate, or notify. And paper actually helps a reader slow down and experience “the precious milliseconds of deep reading processes.”

2. Gather a Day’s Portion

A glorious simplicity accompanies “ordinary devotions,” the kind that feed and sustain souls for a lifetime. Admirable as it may be to try to read this book and that commentary, and study these topics, and memorize those verses, and even pray long lists — and all that in addition to reading and meditating on God’s word — trying to do too much in the morning will undermine the rest and feast of being in God’s presence and enjoying him, and his Son, through his word.

One way to put it: seek simply to gather a day’s portion each morning. Like God’s people, collecting manna each day in the wilderness, aim to feed your heart’s hunger and quench your soul’s thirst for just that day. No need to catch up from yesterday’s missed readings, or try to get ahead to store up for tomorrow or next week. God will take care of tomorrow. Rather, come to eat and drink and be satisfied today. In other words, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t try to do too much, but cultivate a faithful realism for the long haul.

3. Chew Your Food Slowly

Finally, save your hustle for the rest of the day. Slow down, if you’re still able. It may take some time to learn how. Seek to chew your food slowly and enjoy it. Such savoring in the moment also helps us to carry it with us into the ups and downs, and pressures and accelerations, of the day.

The biblical image of meditation dovetails with the feasting pictures of Isaiah 55 and Psalm 63. Hebrew meditation is like an animal chewing the cud. I’m no farmer, but the few cows I’ve observed doing this did not seem to be in any sort of hurry. If you’re going to be like a cow, be it first thing in the morning as you chew slowly, unhurriedly, even leisurely, on the words of God in Scripture.

Ancient books in general, and the Bible in particular, were not meant to be read with speed, like we today have been conditioned to read (that is, skim). Learn a whole new gear for Bible reading. Read slowly, and reread. Seek to enjoy God and his world and his glory and his Son. Don’t swallow too quickly and move on, but chew slowly and savor his grace.

War is not the main mindset for early mornings. Come to God’s word to feast and be satisfied. But know this is nothing less than battle. Consider the devil’s common schemes, and fight to guard the feast.

Not many of us are farmers. Not anymore. And relatively few of us have served as soldiers in combat. But perhaps some of us have tried our hands at competitive athletics — the kind you train for, and not just show up to play.

You may not have been aware of it at the time, but if you have been a soldier, an athlete, or a farmer, you have been challenged, like increasingly few modern people, to learn how to really work. That is, you were presented with some objective, concrete challenge — train for battle, till the field, practice for gameday — and you either put in the required effort to be successful on the field, or you grew weary, cut corners, and soon gave up. You either demonstrated you didn’t have it in you to keep straining forward, against the obstacles, to persevere and achieve the goal; or you found it, doubtless with help from coaches or teammates.

However firsthand your experience as a soldier, athlete, or farmer, Scripture stands ready to fill in, supplement, recast, or override our personal experiences (or lack thereof) and teach us a Christian work ethic — for our own joy, the good of others, and the glory of Christ. And one of the classic places to anchor in Scripture to ponder our work ethic mentions the very concrete and objective occupations of soldiering, athletics, and farming.

Like the Apostle

What Paul has in view in 2 Timothy 2:1–7 is gospel advance through disciple-making. The gospel he has entrusted to his disciple, he now charges Timothy to “entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). That’s four generations in a blink: Paul to Timothy to “faithful men” to “others also” — and implied is that the “others also” will disciple still others also.

But simple as the plan for gospel multiplication may sound, the work will not be easy. It will be opposed by the world, the flesh, and the devil, almost constantly, and often at the most inconvenient times. Paul himself writes from prison. Timothy can read the writing on the wall: if such efforts dedicated to gospel advance landed Paul in jail, how long until it catches up with Timothy? But rather than shy away from the task, Paul calls his protégé to “share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” Then verses 4–6:

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.

Consider first, and together, the requirements of soldiers and farmers; then we’ll turn at greater length to athletics.

Like Soldiers and Farmers

Even if soldiering and farming are foreign to you, as they are to me, the broad nature of the work is plain enough.

Soldiers are men “under authority” (Matthew 8:9; Luke 7:8), who do not serve alone but alongside other soldiers (in bands or battalions). A single trained champion with a weapon may be a formidable foe — until met by hundreds or thousands trained to act as one. The power in soldiering comes from this collective force: men trained together, to act together, under the authority and clear direction of an able commander. And to do so — to both get battle-ready and stay ready — soldiers must overcome the temptation of getting “entangled in civilian pursuits.”

The soldier is one who has been called out of normal civilian life, and received into a new company, to train and stand ready to act to defend civilians. And good soldiers, Paul says, aim “to please the one who enlisted” them. They deny themselves the immediate appeals and comforts of civilian life to endure in their calling and, in the end, enjoy greater, more enduring satisfaction than abandoning their mission for trivialities.

“Maturity comes through training, not through coasting or indulging desires for comfort.”

Similarly, though distinctly, farming requires the hard work of both foresight and physical labor. Farmers plan, till and sow, weed, wait with patience for rain and growth, and in the end, engage in the arduous labor of harvesting. And in doing so, the farmer holds in his hands, and enjoys, the reward, as he ought: “the first share of the crops.” Farmers have much to teach us, not only about hard work, and anticipating rewards, but also patience: “See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient” (James 5:7–8).

Like Athletes

Paul in particular may have more to teach us through athletics than we first expect. In addition to 2 Timothy 2:5, he takes up athletic imagery in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27; Philippians 3:13–14; 1 Timothy 4:7–8; and 2 Timothy 4:7. Hebrews also (not written by Paul but someone in his circle like Luke) draws on athletic imagery (Hebrews 5:13–14; 12:1–2, 11–13). The lesson in 2 Timothy 2 is consistent with the portrait of athletics elsewhere in Paul’s letters and in Hebrews.

First, maturity comes through training, not through coasting or indulging desires for immediate comfort. That is, even before the competition, even before the discomfort of enduring on race day, is the obstacle of training. Effective training requires discomfort (Hebrews 12:11). The body is not conditioned by leisure but by stress and strain, and especially through persisting in discomfort. Both body and mind are “trained by constant practice” (Hebrews 5:14), leading to maturity. “Those of us who are mature,” Paul writes, “straining forward to what lies ahead . . . press on toward the goal for the prize” (Philippians 3:13–15). All training, whether bodily or spiritual, requires some measure of toil and striving (1 Timothy 4:7–10).

Second, then, in the competition itself, athletes press on through weariness, frustration, discouragement, and pain. Learning to press through and endure discomfort in training readies the body, and will, to press on through resistance on race day. Verse 5 highlights a specific temptation to overcome: cutting corners. “An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” Whether in training or competition, the successful athlete knows that his subjective desires do not rule over the objective rules of the contest. He is not bigger than the race or the game. He cannot train or compete as he pleases, according to his momentary wishes, but must exercise self-control. This is Paul’s own testimony in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Third, and most significantly, across the New Testament passages, the key to enduring discomfort is looking to the reward. Whether in training or in the event itself, Paul and Hebrews emphasize the reward, the crown, the prize — a vital element that makes the lesson for work ethic particularly Christian. Paul explicitly commends the prize: “So run that you may obtain it” (1 Corinthians 9:24). The imperishable crown that awaits is not icing on the cake but the reward to be kept in mind, and remembered, to keep us going when met with obstacles and resistance. Paul himself, as he comes to the end of his “race,” is not ashamed (but intentional) to draw attention to the reward, which, through anticipation, has fueled his perseverance:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7–8)

But not only Paul. Where did he learn it? No one teaches us to look to the reward like Jesus, in his teaching, his example, and more.

Like Jesus

In his teaching, Jesus again and again draws our attention to the reward that is “from your Father” and “great in heaven.” In Matthew 5–6 alone, he explicitly mentions the reward some nine times (and then does so again in 10:41–42; see also Mark 9:41 and Luke 6:23, 35). Perhaps it was this plain, almost hedonistic thread that prompted Paul to capture an aspect of Christ’s teaching as “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Yet every bit as clear as Jesus’s teaching is the power of his example. The climactic eleventh chapter of Hebrews turns our attention, several times, to the coming reward (10:35; 11:6, 26) and then presents Christ himself as the paradigm of pressing on, and persisting through pain, by looking to the reward:

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)

“Christ’s perfect grit comes first, which then makes our imperfect but growing effort possible.”

When we look to Jesus, we look to one who himself endured the greatest of pain and shame — the cross — by looking to his reward: for the joy that was set before him, that is, being seated at his Father’s right hand. He finished his course, looking to the reward. And so too, in like fashion, and looking to him, Hebrews would have us run our race with endurance, not grow weary or fainthearted, but lift our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees (Hebrews 12:1, 3, 12).

Like a Christian

But Jesus not only taught us to look to the reward, and then practiced what he taught. In finishing his course, and achieving the victory of the cross, he secured us, who have faith in him, as his own. Mark this: we do not earn him with our holy grit, but he earned us with his. We press on, as Paul did, “because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). Don’t reverse the order. Slavery or freedom hangs on the sequence. Christ’s perfect grit comes first, which then makes our imperfect but growing effort possible. Or, you might say, Christ’s full acceptance comes first; then he goes to work on our work ethic.

So, a common thread links the work ethic of soldiers, athletes, farmers, Christ himself, and Christians alike: we recognize and own the particulars of our calling; we exercise self-control to overcome the immediate desires of the flesh; we endure in discomfort, with God’s help, for the reward, the greater joy promised at the end, which streams into the present to give meaning and strength to keep straining and striving.

And what makes it particularly Christian, and not simply human, is this: we do all our pressing on, from fullness and security of soul, not emptiness and insecurity, knowing that Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Some Christians today might be surprised to learn that the apostles command us, five times, to “greet [each other] with a holy kiss” (Romans 16:16; 1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:26; or “kiss of love,” 1 Peter 5:14). Really? How’s that supposed to work? When you arrive at church? When you cross paths during the week? And is it okay that many of us today, at least in my Christian circles, are not obeying this command? Or are we?

Previously, we surveyed a theology of kissing by tracing the theme across the Old Testament and identifying a key takeaway for the church age. We then turned to the two signature instances of kissing in the New Testament, both of them in the life of Christ: the holy kisses of one “woman of the city,” from a heart of love and worship (Luke 7:37–38), and the unholy kiss of betrayal from one of Jesus’s own disciples (Luke 22:47–48).

In this scriptural context, then, how do we understand the apostles’ charge about the holy kiss, and how might we apply it today across the stretches of our varying times and customs?

We Are Family

First and foremost, one of the main contributions of the survey was the familial (rather than romantic) nature of kissing in both ancient Israel and the early church. A massive and easily overlooked assumption beneath the apostles’ charge is the familial claim implicit in such instruction. Christ came to create a social reality that transcends that of blood relatives. He came to establish and build his church, as not only a people who receive his grace and salvation but as a family joined together to him, the elder brother, and through him, to the Father, by faith.

The holy-kiss charge communicates more than simply the implicit “we are family” as brothers and sisters in Christ, but we should not ignore this remarkable reality, nor a second truth which flows from it.

We Love Each Other

Not only are we, in Christ, family in fact, but we also are to be familial in affection. That is, we come to be like King David, not only in our words and acts but in our affections, when he says of fellow believers in Psalm 16:3,

As for the saints in the land,they are the excellent ones,in whom is all my delight.

As sinners ourselves, we often find fellow Christians to be some of the hardest people to love. But in our new selves, by the Spirit, the saints — our fellows in Christ, joined also to him — become our delight. However strange and quirky and annoying and difficult, however foolish and weak by the world’s standards (1 Corinthians 1:26–29), we learn to see our family members in Christ, despite their many flaws, as “excellent ones.”

We might then check ourselves with every “holy kiss,” whether a literal kiss (if acceptable still in some places) or in every kind word of greeting, expression of affection, handshake, or hug to a fellow Christian: Do I really manifest the new birth I have in Jesus, the heart that first loves God and also loves those who too have been born of him (1 John 5:1)? Are my demonstrations of affection toward other believers sincere expressions of love? Are my greetings holy, like that of the redeemed “woman of the city” in Luke 7? Or are they deceptive, even conniving, and unholy like the Judas kiss?

“The holy-kiss charge is a rebuke to any who claim Christ and yet nurse a hard heart toward his people.”

When affectionate ways of greeting one another in Christ become our norm, we may notice more readily emerging breaches in relationship. When we newly feel hesitant to embrace, say, some fellow believer (or extend a handshake, heartfelt word, or warm smile), that may indicate some unaddressed issue that needs attention and resolution (at least in our own hearts). Just as it’s hard to sincerely pray for someone while remaining angry at him, it would likewise be hard to give someone a “holy kiss” (or whatever culturally appropriate sign) while harboring bitterness.

Reticence to kiss between spouses may signal unresolved issues in a marriage. So too, in our churches, reticence to greet each other with manifest and unqualified warmth may signal a problem (and lead us to revisit Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5:23–24). This leads to a third and final truth informing how we think of, and apply, the holy kiss today.

We Love with Sincerity

Surely, “the holy kiss” meant, at least, kissing without lust. But again, kissing in the ancient world (and in Scripture) was far more familial than romantic. And very likely, at the end of five New Testament Epistles, the emphasis is not as much on the charge to kiss, as if early believers were not greeting each other with kisses and needed to introduce this new act. Rather, the emphasis, given that the kiss of greeting was already common and assumed, was that early Christians do so, unlike Judas, with holiness. Greet each other, as family, and without sin.

In other words, express your affection with sincerity, not pretense. When you greet each other, in word or deed, mean it. Don’t flatter or deceive. But first and foremost, genuinely love one another from the heart, as family, brothers and sisters in Christ; then express it genuinely.

No Judas Kisses

Perhaps often overlooked, against the background of Scripture’s most infamous kiss, is the charge to holiness and sincerity in our demonstrations of affection to our fellows in Christ. Imagine how Judas’s unholy peck of betrayal would have freshly dominated the connotations of the kiss for early Christians.

The apostles’ charge for holy kisses means, at least, “Let there be no Judases among us.” Not in the church. Heaven, forbid it. May we never leverage the familial trust of our shared faith in Christ to deceive, use, trick, or exploit other Christians.

So, we resolve with every “holy kiss” not to betray or backstab each other, not to “bite and devour one another” (Galatians 5:15). Rather, we resolve to serve each other, be loyal to each other, love each other in ways that show the world, the flesh, and the devil what kisses are for — not to con or manipulate but to convey heartfelt affection. We greet each other, as family, with sincere love — and resolve to live consistently with our greetings.

Holy Kisses Today

Christians today, in our differing times and cultures, can feel the freedom not to greet each other with literal kisses. But some still may. And regardless, we are enjoined to greet each other — and not without holiness — whether with a hug, handshake, heartfelt word, or whatever similar expression. And perhaps our lingering today over the repeated holy-kiss charge will remind us how important it is to cultivate, and express, affection for our fellows in Christ, who are family, even deeper and more enduringly so than blood relatives.

The holy-kiss charge is a rebuke to any who would claim Christ and yet nurse a critical disposition toward his people. It exposes the folly of Christians who would claim to love our brother Jesus but find his other brothers and sisters merely annoying, or maddening, or to be flattered or exploited.

The holy kiss also reminds us of an important dynamic in corporate worship, to ready our hearts for each Sunday. Indeed, we gather to worship Jesus — and we gather that we might do so together.

Which might lead to an application almost as uncomfortable to modern people as a kiss of greeting: slowing down. What if we considered how hurried we are before and after worship — how late to arrive before the call to worship, and how quick to rush off to lunch or the next event?

We will hardly greet each other with sincere expressions of holy, familial affection without the time and space to greet each other at all.

Let’s admit, kissing is not what it used to be.

With the passage of time, the act has been romanticized and its applications narrowed. Once its associations were far more generally familial and brotherly; now they are more specifically marital, even sexual. Once kissing was a frequently exchanged sign of affection, particularly among close friends and extended family, and especially among the people of the one true God, both first covenant Jews and the new covenant Christians of the early church. Being a kissing people had something to say about their God. His people not only thought rigorously; they felt deeply. They not only spoke of familial allegiance, but showed familial affection. They not only confessed their love; they kissed.

That may sound well and good looking back at the past, but, closer to home, what do we do with the apostles’ repeated charge to Christians like us, “Greet one another with a holy kiss” (Romans 16:16)? Paul ends four of his letters with the command, and Peter adds his own: “Greet one another with the kiss of love” (1 Peter 5:14). So, do you? And if not, why not?

Previously, we surveyed a brief theology of kissing by tracing the Old Testament backdrop, and identifying a key takeaway for the church age. Now we turn to the two signature instances of kissing in the New Testament, both in the life of Jesus.

He Came to Be Kissed

Before reviewing the two sets of lips that kissed Jesus, let’s first marvel at the very reality of the incarnation, that the eternal second person of the unkissable Godhead became man, and dwelled among us — and could be kissed. Doubtless his mother showered his newborn cheeks with countless kisses as she “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Surely Joseph too. And Jesus’s relatives and younger siblings, in those frequent moments when they appreciated his holiness (rather than being unnerved by it).

For thousands of years, the Creator God, existing above and outside his created world, though ever present and watchful and near, could not be physically kissed by human lips. Lips and tongue could kiss him with expressions of worship and praise, but he had no human forehead, cheeks, or feet to literally kiss — that is, until the Son came, to be heard with human ears, seen with physical eyes, looked upon and touched (1 John 1:1), with both hands and lips.

“The unkissable God became man — and kissable.”

So, the unkissable God became man — and kissable. And in a striking contrast, the Gospels’ two reported touchings of human lips to the flesh of God himself come from the most unlikely of persons: “a woman of the city” kissing his feet in humble worship, and one of his own disciples kissing his face in awful betrayal.

Her Holy Kiss

First is the kiss of worship and glad submission in Luke 7 — a holy kiss, however difficult it was for his fellow dinner guests to stomach. Jesus was eating at the home of a Pharisee named Simon when,

behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. (Luke 7:37–38)

Unsettling for the pious in the moment, the event is rich with significance, in retrospect, through Christian eyes. Anointing has royal connotations, as she consecrates the one she now believes to be the kingly Anointed One, the long-promised Messiah. And she kisses his feet. Aware of her unworthiness, she dares kiss only his lowly feet. As she weeps, Jesus sees both her sorrow for sin and hope of rescue in him. With her tears and kisses, she mingles grief for her own depravity and love for her anointed deliverer.

Here, to use the later words of 1 Peter 5:14, is the quintessential “kiss of love,” from a sinner to her Lord and Savior. The one “forgiven little, loves little,” Jesus tells the stunned Pharisees; however, “her sins, which are many, are forgiven — for she loved much” (Luke 7:47). This “woman of the city” is no fellow dignitary, like the kings and rulers addressed in Psalm 2; yet, as they were commanded, she takes refuge in God’s Anointed, obeying, with joy, the charge of verse 12: “Kiss the Son.” And so, such a woman as this goes before them into the kingdom.

His Unholy Kiss

Second is the infamous kiss of betrayal in the garden. Unlike the first, this is a manifestly “unholy kiss” — and more than that, the archetypical unholy kiss, a literal kiss of death.

“Betrayal is awful. Betrayal with a kiss? Even worse.”

We may have heard the story so many times that it’s easy to miss the gall of it all. The traitor approaches with, “Greetings, Rabbi!” (Matthew 26:49) and draws near to apply a kiss of greeting. Under the pretense of discipleship, even familial familiarity, Judas desecrates God’s Anointed with the atonement’s first blow to the face — his unholy kiss.

Like the unholy kisses of old — whether of idolatry (1 Kings 19:18; Hosea 13:2) or flattery (2 Samuel 15:5; Proverbs 27:6) or adultery (Proverbs 7:13) — this kiss of betrayal prostitutes an otherwise admirable act. Yet, this kiss of betrayal takes on a deeply sinister meaning, maybe the unholiest of all. Betrayal is awful. Betrayal with a kiss? Even worse. Where conquered kings and slaves bow, dearly loved friends and family are entrusted with kissing proximity. Then, like Joab calling Amasa his “brother” and taking him by the beard to kiss him, while concealing his deadly sword in the other hand (2 Samuel 20:9–10), Judas comes near, within striking distance, to his “Rabbi,” for this peculiarly depraved peck.

Knowing the intent full well, and carrying himself with messianic grace and restraint, Jesus allows the traitor such access. He permits his insincere and exploitative kiss (Luke 22:47), but not without asking, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48). This is not what kisses are for. This is a deceptive, conniving, evil kiss, a kiss of hatred rather than love, of death rather than life. And given the Old Testament background of the kiss, and the specific duplicity and depravity of this kiss, we might ask whether this, under the pretense of a greeting, is actually an act of good riddance. At least it would prove to be such.

Son Kissed

For both the traitor and his rabbi, the unholy kiss led quickly to death — Judas in devastating regret and suicide, Jesus in sacrificially offering himself to the depths of horror and shame. Within 24 hours, the bodies of both would be dead, suspended between heaven and earth, one from a noose, another nailed to a cross. Might one tormented soul in hades have lifted up his eyes, seen his rabbi far off, with Abraham at his side, and called out for mercy? Alas, none would have known better than this disciple that now the great chasm had been fixed. Now none could cross.

For Jesus, that unholy kiss soon gave way to the holy love of the nations, anticipated by the worship of that nameless “woman of the city” who knew her sin and need. Sunday came. His dead heart beat again. The same body that lay dead, sown perishable, was raised, glorified and imperishable. And then, at his ascension, raised again, from earth to heaven, and exalted to the very throne of the universe, where the Father himself fulfilled the words of Psalm 2, declaring at his coronation for the ears of all, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you” (Psalm 2:7). Then, at long last, commanding the hosts of heaven, and the greatest of men, he issued anew history’s most terrifying and marvelous ultimatum:

Kiss the Son,     lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,     for his wrath is quickly kindled.Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:12)

And so, we gladly obey. We kiss him now, from afar, by faith — in our worship, and praises, and glad confessions that he is Lord. And we remember that one day soon we will stand before him, in glorified flesh and blood. He will appear, says 1 John 3:2, and “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” — that is, our brother, our friend, the God we can kiss.

Some have their fifteen minutes of fame. Henry Tanner had his forty days.

In the summer of 1880, the Minneapolis homeopath shocked the medical establishment by fasting on stage in Manhattan, under round-the-clock supervision. Tanner had something to prove, as journalist Steve Hendricks tells the story in his recent book The Oldest Cure in the World. Tanner believed in the “restorative biochemistry” of fasting — that going without food for extended periods could be “regenerative” or even “curative.” By depriving the system of food, and relieving the burden of digestion, the human body could turn its energy elsewhere. Give the gut a break for days, even weeks, and the body could “cure itself” from a number of conditions.

For Tanner, this was no mere theory. He claimed to have fasted for forty-two days in 1879 and been healed of several ailments. When his report was doubted, he offered to go forty days again, the following year, this time under full surveillance.

So, for forty days, Tanner ate no food and drank only water. Doctors claimed he would die in ten or twelve days. From Day 6 to 40, the New York Times and other major outlets reported on Tanner’s progress. In the end, Tanner succeeded both in accomplishing the feat and playing well to the crowds who came daily to the theater.

Thanks to a Little Fast

Fasting as a cure for disease has a long and varied history, though often at the civilizational margins. Hendricks writes,

Skip dinner tonight, and by the time you rise tomorrow, your body will have spent a few hours making the most intricate fixes to cellular components that were damaged during the day, and it will have recycled other parts too far gone to be fixed. Defects that might have turned into cancer or a stroke will have now, thanks to a little deprivation, been refashioned to yield a healthier cell. These processes occur in us every day when our only fast is from the midnight snack to breakfast at dawn, but they’re accelerated enormously when we extend the nightly fast, and fasting for multiple days supercharges them. (30)

“Who knew that giving our stomachs a break might actually do us some good?”

Who knew that giving our stomachs a break might actually do our bodies some good?

Yet in our age of abundance, even decadence, such claims can be unnerving to consider. Very likely, this was not your mother’s counsel. Have we long assumed not eating to be the path to sickness and disease, while slowly eating ourselves to death?

Eat God’s World

God made us to eat. And he created a wonderfully edible world.

The opening chapters of Genesis tell us that God made trees “pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9), and he designed us to eat his world, both plants and animals (Genesis 1:29; 9:3). For millennia, humans did just that, until God led a special people out from Egyptian slavery and assigned them various dietary restrictions. From Moses until Jesus, under the terms of the old covenant, God taught his people — and the nations, through them — of their sin and need for him, and anticipated the coming of his Son.

With the coming of Christ came the fulfilling of the old covenant, bringing it to its appointed consummation. Jesus inaugurated a new covenant, for people from every nation. In the course of his ministry, Jesus “declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19; also Romans 14:20), and yet his own approach to food was not simplistic, but varied and flexible — marked by the kind of resilience we might expect the “fearfully and wonderfully made” human body to be capable of (Psalm 139:14).

When You Feast

Some of us might be surprised to learn that Jesus feasted. But he was, after all, a first-century Jew. The nation’s collective life turned on annual feasts — and three in particular, which the Gospel of John mentions Jesus participating in (John 2:23; 7:2; 10:22; 13:1). Jesus attended nonnational feasts as well, like Levi’s “great feast” (Luke 5:29) and the famous wedding feast at Cana (John 2:8–9), where he blessed and enhanced the feast by turning water to wine. In his parables, Jesus compared his kingdom to such feasts (Matthew 22:2–9; 25:10; Luke 12:36). Unlike his cousin John, who was known for abstaining, Jesus came “eating and drinking,” and was slandered as “a glutton and a drunkard” (Luke 7:34).

Significantly, in Luke 14:13–14, Jesus assumes his followers will celebrate occasions of feasting: “When you give a feast,” he says — not if, but when — “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” So too Christ’s apostles, without commanding any particular Christian feasts (Romans 14:4–6), assumed that Christians would, at times, feast (2 Peter 2:13; Jude 12). Feasting, in gratitude to our God and with delight in him, honors him as the all-sufficient Giver. We rejoice in him in and through the joy of food and drink, with friends and family.

Yet in all that commendation of feasting, those of us today, living in the breadbasket of modern abundance, will do well to hear the implicit warning our Lord leaves in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. He introduces the rich man, who we learn now to be in torment in Hades, as one “who feasted sumptuously every day” (Luke 16:19). The caution for us, among other aspects of the parable, is feasting every day — a temptation all too real in the modern world.

When You Fast

Of course, Jesus assumes not only that we will feast, but also that we will fast. In Matthew 6:16–17, he says to his disciples, “when you fast,” not if. And without explicitly commanding his followers to fast on specific occasions, he promises, in Matthew 9:15, “they will fast.” (We see the promise play out in Acts 13:2–3 and 14:23, when the early church, with her groom away, takes up the old practice now made new.)

As a Jew, Jesus himself observed the annual fast, that is, the Day of Atonement, with the whole nation. We might assume he also fasted on other spontaneous occasions, as modeled in the Old Testament. Most notably, Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness, in preparation for his public ministry (Matthew 4:2; Luke 4:2). Significantly, the Gospels only mention his hunger and him not eating. Unlike the miraculous fast of Moses at Sinai (Exodus 34:28), no mention is made of Jesus going without water. Which likely means this was a natural, fully human fast — one like Henry Tanner would demonstrate humanity capable of.

God designed our bodies not only for food — to eat and enjoy his world — but also to be able to go long periods of time, longer than most of us are comfortable thinking about, in fasting. Fasting accompanies heartfelt prayer in expressing special longing for some particular divine provision or help, and going without such a basic comfort of daily life highlights God’s value beyond his blessings and focuses our affections afresh on him.

As with feasting, Jesus both models and commends fasting, and leaves us a caution. In the parable of the Pharisee and publican, he takes aim at “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). Among other boasts, the Pharisee declares, “I fast twice a week” (Luke 18:12). The publican, on the other hand, acknowledges himself a sinner and begs God for mercy. Jesus then comments, hauntingly, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other” (Luke 18:14).

Jesus’s warning, reminiscent of the condemnations in Isaiah 58, reminds us that the act of fasting can be hollowed of its God-honoring meaning and made into an effort to twist his arm. Similarly, we find in the letters of Paul a handful of warnings against the misuse of fasting (Romans 14:3, 6; 1 Timothy 4:3; Colossians 2:16).

Whether You Eat, Fast, or Feast

While Jesus commends (and cautions) both feasting and fasting — and assumes his followers will do both — his model prayer for his disciples brings everyday moderation to the fore: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).

Far and away, most days are daily-bread days. They are occasions neither for feasting nor fasting, given neither to indulgence nor abstaining, but rather devoted to a virtue that can be one of the hardest of all in times of plenty and lack: self-control. The Christian’s day-in, day-out relationship to food is one we navigate in the fuzzy, though real, bounds of moderation, in between the punctuations of fasting and feasting. That is, we receive God’s regular provision of food with enjoyment, marked by thanksgiving and self-control (1 Timothy 4:4–5).

“Many of us today neither feast well, nor fast at all.”

Many of us today neither feast well, nor fast at all. Oh, we feast. We live with such abundance, much of it edible, that we can hardly keep from daily overindulgence, without pushing against the grain of our society. We feast often, and without even recognizing it. What used to be feasting is now just the “standard American diet” (SAD). Without some countercultural moxie, many find themselves drifting toward obesity unawares.

But if our assumptions and habits have conditioned us one way, then we do have hope for training our stomachs differently.

Here we again accent the amazing biology of the human body. Our bodies can be far more resilient than we’ve learned to expect, and with some thoughtful conditioning they can become even more so, ready to flex for both fasting and feasting, to both enjoy occasions of abundance and endure times of famine. We can train ourselves to go longer without food than we’re prone to think. As Jay Richards writes in Eat, Fast, Feast, “God fitted the human form to thrive in a host of different ecosystems and diets, as we would expect of a Creator who called us to multiply and fill the whole earth” (11).

Richards advocates what he calls a “fasting lifestyle” in which we condition ourselves, over time, to be “metabolically flexible.” With less thoughtless everyday feasting, and more regular fasts (beginning with a meal, then two, then working up to a few days), many of us (some medical conditions notwithstanding) can train our stomachs, and souls, to be like the apostle who testified,

I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11–13)

Christians in general, and perhaps Protestants in particular, haven’t always excelled at such learning — which is not simply a learning of the mind but of the body. In our good and right emphasis on God’s astounding grace in Christ, have we undersold the astounding abilities of the God-designed human body? And have we failed to put our metabolic flexibility to spiritual use, through Christian fasting, not just intermittent fasting for bodily health?

Every Meal Holy

How fitting that Paul’s penetrating charge to consecrate our every action to God’s glory mentions such trivial (and massive) realities as eating and drinking: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And not just to the God of monotheism, but the Christ of Christianity: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

In the end, we may discover all sorts of human wisdom in countercultural daily moderation, flanked by a learned metabolic flexibility primed for occasional feasts and fasts. Such seems far more enduringly human than our modern context of excess and overreaction. But as Christians, our goal isn’t merely to be more human looking backward (to Eden). We long to be more human looking upward, to the God-man, now risen and glorified, seated at his Father’s right hand. And we look forward, beyond the final conquest of sin and the curse, to the city that is to come, where we will, at last, fully enjoy God in the unencumbered humanity we were destined for. “The Lord Jesus Christ . . . will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 3:20–21).

We pray, with Jesus, for the daily bread of moderation. We hear his commendation, and see his example, of occasional feasting and fasting, and consider their God-glorifying potential. We hear his cautions about everyday feasting and about pharisaical fasting. And we again consecrate ourselves, and our stomachs, to him, “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” the one who strengthens us.

Among New Testament commands we’re quick to qualify today (or just ignore altogether), Romans 16:16 may stand out:

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

Really? We might chuckle at the thought of everyone kissing each other before the Sunday service. At least not in our time and place, we think. Maybe other cultures; not ours.
And we might be reasonable to respond that way.

Then we find the apostle repeating the charge again at the end of three more letters (1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:26), and Peter too (1 Peter 5:14). Even if Jesus might approve of our not doing exactly what his apostles said, but finding appropriate expressions for today, do we have a “theology of the kiss” to guide us?

Look across the breadth of Scripture, and we discover a surprising (and perhaps uncomfortable) amount of kissing — almost fifty instances. And the nature and kinds of these kisses show that this isn’t simply an ancient-world custom. Rather, this kissing is distinctive to the people of the one true God, and a mark of his glory. Their lips bring him honor. A kissing kingdom says something about its sovereign. Its kisses reflect a king who captures human hearts, not just minds and duty.

“A kissing kingdom says something about its sovereign.”

Here, we’ll survey a theology of kissing in the Old Testament, and identify one key takeaway for the church age. Then, in a future article, we’ll draw attention to two special instances of kissing in the New Testament, and further fill out the rich background against which the apostles enjoin the holy kiss.

What’s in a Biblical Kiss?

Before looking at several kinds of kissing in Scripture, let’s first ask about the nature of the act itself and its meaning. What makes a kiss significant?

First, to state the obvious, but necessarily so in increasingly digital and remote times, kissing requires bodily, physical proximity. It assumes nearness, even intimacy. No one blows kisses in the Bible. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim, he said to Jacob (who he thought was Esau), “Come near and kiss me, my son” (Genesis 27:26). A filial kiss would bring him close enough to smell and touch, and confirm which son it was. So too, a generation later, when Jacob himself was old, eyes dim with age, he brought near Joseph’s sons that he might kiss and bless them (Genesis 48:10). Such nearness requires a willingness to touch and be touched, and that with a sensitive and sacred member: the lips.

Kissing, then, also requires trust — that is, neither party fears imminent physical harm from the other (which could be easily enacted at such close range). The notorious offender here is Joab who twice abuses such trust. In 2 Samuel 3, he drew near to Abner under the pretense of peace and stabbed him in the stomach to avenge a brother’s death in battle. In 2 Samuel 20, Joab drew near to Amasa and took him “by the beard with his right hand to kiss him.” Assuming friendship, Amasa did not anticipate a sword in Joab’s hand (2 Samuel 20:9). Kissing requires a level of trust, making it a mark of peculiar depravity to betray, and exploit, a seeming ally under the pretense of a kiss.

Given the requisite nearness and trust, the kiss, in its essence, shows affection. It is a “sign,” an outward expression of an inward posture of the heart. Early in the biblical story, the kiss is typically a demonstration of heartfelt affection at the reunion of long-estranged relatives, whether Jacob with Rachel (Genesis 29:11), or Laban with Jacob (Genesis 29:13), or Esau with Jacob (Genesis 33:4), Joseph with his brothers (Genesis 45:15), Jacob with his sons (Genesis 48:10), Moses with Aaron (Exodus 4:27), or Moses with his father-in-law (Exodus 18:7). These are family members reuniting, not enemies securing new peace. The kiss is an act of trust and love among those who already share in peace.

Kinds of Kissing

As we work through the many instances of kissing in Scripture, we find several distinct types. Far and away, the most common are the greeting kiss or farewell kiss. They demonstrate familial affection, expressing ongoing love within established relationships. Such kisses, as we might expect, often accompany an embrace (Genesis 29:13; 33:4; 48:10; also Luke 15:20). Biblical figures also kiss goodbye, often with tears: Laban kissing his grandchildren (Genesis 31:28, 55); Joseph, his dying father (Genesis 50:1); and Naomi, her daughters-in-law (Ruth 1:9, 14). David and Jonathan, in an unusual covenant of friendship, kiss each other and weep at their parting (1 Samuel 20:41).

A second type of kiss is the kind that we today (at least in the West) probably assume would be the majority, though it’s not: the marital kiss. We might think to flip first to the Song of Solomon, and there it is, at the very outset: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine” (Song of Solomon 1:2). While the couple is here not yet married, they are anticipating their covenant love. Their kisses, then, are no less familial, but now they are becoming familial in the most exclusive and intimate of senses. The foil to this kiss, of course, would be the adulterous kiss of Proverbs 7. The “forbidden woman . . . dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart” lies in wait for the fool. “She seizes him and kisses him” (Proverbs 7:5, 10, 13). This is an evil, unholy kiss, the literal prostituting of the lips.

If readers today are most familiar with romantic and marital kisses, we likely least expect the regal kisses wrapped up with ancient kingship. When the kiss comes from a subject to his king, we might call it a “kiss of homage.” More than just a bow, which can happen at a distance and accents submission, the kiss expresses a heart of devotion and love, even delight. The kiss of homage also presumes the trust of the king, who allows a subject into such proximity with the dignitary. When the prophet Samuel anointed David king, he “took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him” (1 Samuel 10:1). As he does, Samuel expresses his glad devotion to the newly anointed king.

“The kiss, sincerely expressed, communicates not only welcome but delight.”

But in a king’s presence, kisses can go both ways. When a kiss comes from the king to his subject, it serves as a great sign of blessing. In 2 Samuel 14:33, when Absalom has been estranged from his father for two years, he comes into the king’s presence for the first time and bows. David then welcomes his estranged son with a kiss that is not only a familial (and filial) greeting but a kingly kiss of blessing. The king communicates that he holds no grudge against his son (a father welcomes home his prodigal, Luke 15:20), and as king, his kiss expresses not only his own personal acceptance but the whole kingdom’s.

Kiss the Son

Among the many instances of kissing in the Old Testament, one regal kiss stands out above the rest — the one of Psalm 2:12:

Kiss the Son,lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,for his wrath is quickly kindled.Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Here “the Son” is God’s anointed king over his people (Psalm 2:2; Acts 4:25 attributes the psalm to David). Hostile nations rage and unbelieving kings take counsel against him, and in doing so they plot against the God who has installed him — that is, the God who laughs at such hubris, and speaks in holy wrath, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:6). This turns the threat utterly on its head. It is not God’s appointed king, “the Son,” who’s actually in danger, but any and all who oppose him.

The king then issues his enemies a warning: “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 2:11). The next utterance declares what form such a dramatic change of heart should take:

Kiss the Son.

This is not just a bow of submission. Any defeated foe can cower, and fall to his knees, when overpowered. But Psalm 2 calls for a kiss of homage, and kissing expresses the movement, and transformation, of the heart. Former enemies not only become servants and kiss their new king; they become worshipers in their very soul.

Why So Many Kisses?

In the end, the nature of the kiss speaks volumes about the God who rules over all, the glory of his Anointed, and the faith of his people in him. A people who kiss — whether to greet each other or in the act of worship — testify to a dynamic life of the heart, much like a people who sing. The people of the one true God not only think; they feel. They not only confess; they kiss. They not only affirm, but they do so with affection. And the people of God, in ancient Israel and the early church, are singers and kissers.

The kiss, sincerely expressed, communicates not only welcome but delight. It is no mere exchange of niceties, but a communication of steadfast love. While, for many of us, the “holy kiss” may not, at present, fall in the acceptable (or comfortable) range of normal greetings, we will do well to expand our expressions of holy affection, and find meaningful ways to communicate not only acceptance to our fellows in Christ but affection for them.

And all the while, in expressing our affection for his people, we say something about our God and King as the one who not only moves the human heart, but himself is our final satisfaction. When we “kiss the Son,” we not only acknowledge him, in word and in worship, as Lord and Savior, but we express delight in him, in our hearts, as our supreme Treasure. And so we are, in Christ, a kissing people.

Have you ever wondered why we Christians so often sing about Jesus’s blood? It’s a very strange thing to emphasize, is it not? Not simply the cross and his death, but his blood. Just last Sunday, our church sang twice about the blood of Jesus. First in an old hymn: “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?” Then in a newer song: “By his blood and in his name, in his freedom I am free.”

Growing up in the South, I often sang, “There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-workin’ pow’r in the blood of the Lamb.” That was my dad’s favorite. Or one that many of us know: “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

We Bible-believing Christians do not simply recognize the reality of Jesus’s blood and refer on occasion to Jesus’s blood, but we sing about it. We glory in it. That is, in a spirit of worship, in declaring Jesus’s worth to each other, and in praising him for his greatness, we often sing about the otherwise morbid topic of blood.

Have you ever stopped to ask why? What is it about Jesus’s blood that makes us sing? How does his blood work? What does it do? If someone asks you, “Hey, so how does the blood work?” how would you respond? Would you be at a loss to explain it?

As well as any passage in the Bible, Hebrews 9:15–22 explains it. In one of the densest and most complex and richest chapters in the Bible, we learn why it was necessary for Jesus to die — and not just die but shed his blood. You could say that this sermon is an attempt to explain why we sing about Jesus’s blood. Not just talk, but sing! We worship him in light of his “precious blood” (as 1 Peter 1:19 calls it), and we should know why.

At the Heart of Hebrews

Hebrews 9:1–10 rehearses the setup of the old covenant tabernacle, related to the Day of Atonement, and first mentions the essential place of blood to cover sins in verse 7.

Then Hebrews 9:11–14, which is the high point of chapters 8–10, summarizes the achievement of Christ at the cross in contrast with the old system. In the first covenant, the high priests entered the earthly tent with animal blood offered according to law, which temporarily purified the flesh. But Jesus is a superior priest who has entered heaven itself by means of his own blood offered willingly, which eternally purifies the conscience.

Which brings us to verse 15, where Hebrews says, “Therefore . . .” In light of these marked contrasts with the first covenant (and the superiorities of Christ), the terms of arrangement for sinners to relate to God must be different. Jesus mediates a new covenant. Not renewed. Not added on. Not extending the previous administration with some nice upgrades. New.

Now, in verses 15–22, Hebrews will show us, in covenantal terms, why Jesus had to die — that is, why it was necessary for him to shed sacrificial blood.

Oh, the Blood

Blood was introduced in verse 7. Then blood appears four more times in verses 12–14. Then six more times in verses 18–22. Then again in verse 25. And four times verses 15–17 refer to death, which is essentially synonymous with blood in this context.

That’s what blood symbolizes here: sacrificial death, or life sacrificially taken. The death in view here is not a natural, bloodless death. Rather, blood represents life that has been violently taken, life ended early, for sacrificial purposes. One party bleeds (to the point of death) in order to stand in for the sins of another who deserved death, but now, through the sacrifice and by God’s provision, continues to live.

The reason this matters in the context of a covenant with God is because of human sin. We all have disobeyed and dishonored the infinitely valuable God, and our offenses, however small they seem, are infinitely great because of the value of the one we’ve sinned against. Verse 14 mentions “dead works” — that is, acts that deserve and lead to death because they have been perpetrated against the infinitely valuable God.

So, God’s people deserve death. And in order for God to draw near to his people and for them to draw near to him in a covenant relationship of ongoing life, their sin must be addressed. Under the terms of the old covenant, God made provision for the sin of his people through animal blood (that is, life violently and sacrificially taken) to stand in temporarily to hold back his righteous judgment — while anticipating some final reckoning with sin to come.

What Does the Blood Do?

And so, everywhere you turn in Leviticus, blood is being shed (mentioned almost one hundred times in chapters 1–20). Now, here in Hebrews 9, there is blood and sacrificial death all through verses 12–22. Which leads us to ask, What does Jesus’s blood do? Or, How does the cross work? What is the blood of the new covenant for?

There are at least three answers in Hebrews 9:15–22.

1. Jesus’s blood redeems from former sins.

Remember the original audience, Greek-speaking Jews. They grew up in the Jewish faith and came to embrace Jesus as Messiah, but now they are becoming sluggish in their faith. The passing years and ever-present pull of the world have made them spiritually dull. They are tempted to give in to their world’s pressures and just reacclimate to Jewish life apart from Jesus.

So, Hebrews appeals to them, again and again, that Jesus and his priesthood and his sacrifice and his new covenant are better. And in fact, once Jesus has come, the old covenant has come to its planned fulfillment and is no longer valid (“no longer any offering for sin,” Hebrews 10:18). You cannot go back.

In verse 15, we see Hebrews’s focus on Jews, his audience, those who once lived under the old covenant: “[Jesus] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.”

Hebrews’s audience needs to know how Jesus’s new covenant relates to the old and to the status of their obligations in their former covenant. And so verse 15 tells them how Jesus’s death, his sacrificial blood, redeems them from any debt of obligation they once had under the old covenant. The old arrangement is dead; you owe it nothing further.

What About Gentiles?

But what about us Gentiles? Here we are, on the other side of the world, two thousand years later, most (if not all) of us totally Gentile. If Jesus’s death “redeems . . . from the transgressions committed under the first covenant,” how does his blood relate to those of us who never lived under the old covenant?

The rest of the sermon is about that, but in verse 15, notice that phrase “those who are called.” This is where we Gentiles come in. The death of Christ not only redeems Jews but also Gentiles. As Paul says in Romans 1:16, “The gospel . . . is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

And twice Paul writes about “those who are called, both Jews and Greeks” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and “even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (Romans 9:24). The “called” are not Jews alone, but also Gentiles. Hebrews has his particular Jewish audience in view, but when he mentions “those who are called,” we see our window.

Romans, we might say, explains the gospel to Romans, to Gentiles, to the Greeks, with special reference to Roman legal categories of justice and righteousness; meanwhile, Hebrews explains the gospel to Hebrews, to Jews, with special reference to Hebrew cultic categories of holiness and purification.

Which is the reason many of us Gentiles find Romans easier to understand. We don’t understand Leviticus very well, and the sacrificial system, and priests and sacrifices and blood. But that’s why Hebrews can be so valuable to us Gentiles: we get to know our gospel in multiple dimensions — not only in Roman-Gentile terms, but also in Jewish-Levitical terms.

All Are Accountable

Also, for us Gentiles, Romans 3:19 says something very similar to Hebrews 9:15 about how God’s revelation to the Jews relates to us: “Whatever the law [that is, the old covenant] says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.”

God speaking in and through the law, the old covenant, is relevant to us as Gentiles — not as our covenant but as our Scripture — to stop our mouths and hold us accountable for our sin. “The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2) that it might be made clear that “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (Romans 3:9).

So, Romans and Hebrews are well named. Romans explains to Gentiles why Jesus had to die. Hebrews explains to Jews why Jesus had to die. And God’s first covenant with the Jews showed not only them their sinfulness and need of Christ’s final atoning sacrifice, but also us Gentiles. There is a kind of organic relationship between what God specifically requires of his first-covenant people and the accountability of all humans, Jew and Gentile, to the God who made them.

So, what does the blood of the new covenant do? First, for Christ’s new covenant people, Jesus’s blood redeems from former sins.

2. Jesus’s blood enacts a new covenant.

The blood of Christ not only releases Jewish and Gentile sinners from their former sins, but also enacts a new covenant. The ending of the old arrangement takes sacrificial blood, as does inaugurating the new.

Now, verses 16–17 are very difficult. Verse 15 mentions an “inheritance,” and verses 16–17 mention “death,” and many commentators and translations think that Hebrews here jumps from talking to his Hebrew readers about Hebrew covenants to a Greco-Roman last will and testament. You’ll see the ESV has the word will in verses 16–17. I think that’s a mistake, and a growing number of Hebrews scholars do as well. Before I read verses 16–17, let me give you five quick reasons why “will” doesn’t work here, and why it should say “covenant”:

Verse 15 mentions the new and first covenants; verse 18 mentions the first covenant; chapters 7–9 have clearly been talking about a Hebrew covenant, the old covenant, not a Roman will. Hebrews uses the word for “covenant” 17 times in chapters 7–13, and every other time, it clearly means “covenant.”
It is not true that a will takes effect only at death; a will takes effect as soon as it is made. It is executed at death (well, after death), but only because it took effect previously. However, a Hebraic covenant, as we see in Exodus 24 with the inauguration of the first covenant, does take effect precisely at death — namely, the death of the sacrificial victims in the covenant-ratifying ceremony.
The word behind “death” in verse 17 is plural; verse 16 mentions “the one [singular] who made it,” but verse 17 references plural deaths, which refer not to the death of a person who made a will but to the sacrificial victims that were “cut” and bled and died in the cutting of the covenant.
The syntax and logical flow of verses 15–18 do not work if the meaning of the same Greek word (diatheke) switches from Hebraic covenant to Greco-Roman will and back. The passage is very tightly knit together with “for” at the beginning of verses 16 and 17 and “therefore” in verse 18.
Finally, the word for “established” in verse 16 (phero) would be better rendered as “carried forward” or “brought forward.” This is sacrificial language. The death owed by sinful people who are making a covenant with God is “brought forward” in the sacrificial victims’ blood to make purification for sins, so that sinners might enter into covenant with the holy God.

We could say more, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Now let me read verses 16–20, accounting for Hebraic covenant rather than Roman will, and then explain how it relates to the blood of Jesus. Here’s my version of verses 16–20:

For where a [covenant with God] is involved, the death of the one who made it must be [brought forward]. For a [covenant] takes effect only [with the death of sacrificial victims], since it is not in force as long as the one who made it [and deserves death because of his sin still lives]. Therefore [because of human sin] not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood [in Exodus 24]. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.”

I know that’s complicated and a lot to take in all at once. Here’s the payoff: Jesus’s blood not only redeems us from the death penalty of our former sins, but his blood provides purification from sin to enact a new covenant relationship with God. Former sins must be dealt with, but also the ongoing sinful condition of our hearts if we are to enter into a covenant relationship with God. Jesus’s blood makes possible life with God in a new covenant arrangement. It is the covenant-ratifying blood.

“God’s arrangement is that sacrificial blood purifies sinners, so that they can enter into communion with him.”

When Moses said in Exodus 24:8, at the inauguration of the first covenant, “Behold the blood of the covenant,” the meaning of “the blood” — in however many meanings it may have had — is at least this (according to Hebrews 9): forgiveness of sins. That’s what verse 22 says, as we’ll see. God’s arrangement is that sacrificial blood purifies sinners, so that they can enter into communion with him. This is what “the blood of the covenant” does.

So, Jesus’s blood redeems from former sins, and it enacts a new covenant.

3. Jesus’s blood upholds the new covenant.

Just as sacrificial blood not only inaugurated the old covenant, but it endured and operated on sacrificial blood at every turn, so Jesus’s blood not only enacts the new covenant but sustains it, upholds it, maintains it, keeps it going.

Hebrews hints at this in chapter 9 by expanding his focus from the inauguration of the old covenant in Exodus 24 to the annual Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16, and beyond to other sacrifices as well. He already begins that expansion in Hebrews 9:19 when he mentions “and . . . goats” and “water and scarlet wool and hyssop” (none of which are mentioned in Exodus 24 but brought in from elsewhere in the old covenant).

Then the expansion is more pronounced in verses 21–22: “And in the same way [Moses] sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Not just the people, but also the tent and all the vessels.

And then comes the sweeping claim of verse 22 that in the old covenant “almost everything is purified with blood.” Which leads into verses 23–28, where the focus is on Jesus entering into the holy place that is heaven itself, and doing so not annually (like the Day of Atonement) but once for all.

Jesus not only inaugurates a new covenant, but (as verse 15 says) he mediates it. His blood is “for all time,” as Hebrews 10:14 will tell us: “By a single offering [Jesus] has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”

And to be clear, Hebrews 9:22 states the underlying point in this otherwise complicated passage: both the inaugurating and maintaining of a new covenant with the holy God deal with the sins of the people.

So, according to Hebrews 9, “the blood of the covenant” does at least three things: (1) it redeems from former sins (and for Jews cancels any obligation to the first covenant), (2) it enacts a new covenant relationship of life with God, and (3) it upholds that new covenant “for all time.” And all that because the sacrificial blood of Christ decisively “deals with” or “puts away” or forgives our sins.

Great in the Blood of the Covenant

Now, there is at least one more detail in this chapter, and in Hebrews, that I can’t help but mention as we close. Look at verse 12: “[Jesus] entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” What does it mean that Jesus entered into heaven “by means of his own blood”?

What it does not mean is that this High Priest needed blood to cleanse him from sin. That’s an important contrast with the old. The old high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year, says verse 7, “not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.” But not Jesus. He has no sin. So then, what is the function of his blood when he enters heaven “by means of his own blood”?

The answer is clarified by the great doxology of Hebrews in 13:20–21, where “the blood of the covenant” appears again. The question is, What does the blood of the covenant do here?

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

It’s hard to show in an English translation, but the phrase “in the blood of the eternal covenant” modifies the word great. A literal translation would read, “. . . the shepherd of the sheep, the great one in the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus . . .”

Which means, the blood Jesus shed, the blood of the eternal (new) covenant, is a mark of Jesus’s greatness. It is an achievement, the greatest achievement in the history of the world, that merits reward. Like Hebrews 9:12, “He entered once for all into the holy places . . . by means of his own blood.”

Jesus’s blood not only accomplishes our salvation; it shows us his greatness and worth. His sacrificial blood not only deals with our sin but shows us the greatness of the one for whom our hearts long. We not only receive forgiveness; we worship. We not only thank him for his blood. We praise the one whose very greatness we see in the shedding of his blood for us. And so we sing about his blood.

New Covenant in His Blood

As we come to the Table, we find sweet confirmation for what Jesus means by “the new covenant in my blood” when he instituted the Supper on the night before he died.

Luke 22:20 says Jesus called it a “new covenant”: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And Matthew 26:28 clarifies what the blood of the covenant does: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Former sins forgiven, and a new covenant inaugurated and sustained — by his blood. And in the blood of his eternal covenant, we see his greatness, and come in worship, and drink together the cup of blessing.

ABSTRACT: Those who celebrate the God-centeredness of God might expect to find in the Gospels a clear Christ-centeredness of Christ. As Jonathan Edwards argues in two of his greatest works, however, Jesus’s pursuit of glory is complex, multilayered, and dynamic as he moves from the manger to the cross. The Gospel of John in particular shows how Jesus renounces the pursuit of his own glory during his earthly life, seeking instead the Father’s glory as his last and ultimate end. Yet, as he moves closer to the cross, Jesus increasingly looks forward to the glory he will receive from his Father — indeed, the glory he and his Father share. Along the way, we learn from Jesus’s example of holy creatureliness, and we worship him as the one who died, rose, and now sits with his Father in unsurpassed glory.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, David Mathis traces the God-centeredness of Jesus through the Gospel of John, with help from Jonathan Edwards.

“That one phrase, the glory of God” — says Jonathan Edwards — includes “all that is ever spoken of in Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works.”1

This might be Edwards’s most memorable, and often quoted, summary of his Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World. In the final section, he argues that God’s supreme end in creation is one (not many), and that this one end is best captured as the glory of God — that is, the “true external expression of God’s internal glory and fullness.”2 God made the world, and rules all of history, to display his own glory.

So, many of us, gladly persuaded by the biblical refrain, speak reverently of “the God-centeredness of God.” As the Scriptures testify at many times and in many ways, and as Edwards catalogs and presents, our Creator righteously has a “supreme regard to himself,”3 rather than any mere humans. With patient instruction and careful reflection, biblically shaped minds often see the sense and rightness of the infinite value of the Creator compared to his creatures — yet the incarnation and human life of Jesus raises some fascinating questions.

What happens when the Creator himself, in the eternal person of his Son, takes on our full humanity, and in this way becomes a creature, with us, in the created world? How does the earthly life of Jesus, the God-man, in his so-called “state of humiliation,” from birth to the cross, relate to God’s God-centeredness? And how does this God-centeredness relate to Christ’s subsequent “state of exaltation,” beginning with the cross and resurrection, and including his ascension and sitting down on heaven’s throne?

Developing Theme

In both Edwards’s dissertation and his most celebrated work, The Freedom of the Will, he addresses (albeit indirectly) this often-overlooked aspect of our doctrine of Christ. In End, chapter 2, section 3 (on “particular texts of Scripture, which show that God’s glory is an ultimate end of the creation”), Edwards briefly notes that “Scripture leads us to suppose that Christ sought God’s glory as his highest and last end,”4 a theme to which he returns in section 6. In Freedom, Edwards draws in a relevant aspect of his christology as “a point clearly and absolutely determining the controversy between Calvinists and Arminians.”5

As we’ll see below, in both instances, Edwards leads us to consider our question diachronically, rather than statically. In other words, despite our tendency to press for a simple timeless answer, Edwards observes a progress and development of the theme across time as the incarnate Christ moves through his “state of humiliation” to his “state of exaltation.”

Today, in his exalted state, with the Son’s redemptive work complete, the glory of the Father and his Son are seen to be the one essential whole that they are, and always have been. But in the earthly life of Christ, the plan of the Father and Son unfolded in history as Jesus moved toward the cross.

Christ’s Goal in Life

First, Jesus, the God-man, lived his human life in utter dedication to his Father and his Father’s glory. Rightly did the angels proclaim, “Glory to God!” at Jesus’s birth (Luke 2:14), as the glory of the Father came to the fore in the life and ministry of the Son. In his state of humiliation, from manger to cross, the man Christ Jesus did not glorify himself, he says (John 8:54; Hebrews 5:5), but his words and deeds, and the effect and intent of his human life, were in full and glad submission to the will, and glory, of his Father. As Jesus summarizes his earthly life and ministry in John 8:49, “I honor my Father.”

The Son loves his Father (John 14:31). And he lived as man, and set his face toward the cross, propelled by his great delight in and love for his Father. Jesus instructed his disciples to so live, and bear fruit, that his Father would be glorified (Matthew 5:16; John 15:8), and he taught them to pray for the hallowing of his Father’s name (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2). The night before he died, Jesus summarized, in prayer, his life’s work as “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). When Jesus sees that, at last, his “hour” has come for the cross, he turns heavenward in prayer, “Father, glorify your name” (John 12:28).

While the God-centeredness of God might lead us to expect a simple Christ-centeredness of Christ in his earthly ministry, this is largely not what we (yet) find in his state of humiliation. In End, Edwards points to John 7:18 (one of several statements from Jesus renouncing the pursuit of his own glory) as characteristic of Christ’s humbled state: “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.” The incarnate Christ does not “[seek] his own glory” but the glory of his Father, “him who sent him.” Jesus sought his Father’s glory, says Edwards, “as his highest and last end.”6

In Freedom, Edwards observes that “the words [of Isaiah 42:1–4] imply a promise of [Christ’s] being so upheld by God’s Spirit, that he should be preserved from sin; particularly from pride and vainglory, and from being overcome by any of the temptations he should be under to affect the glory of this world; the pomp of an earthly prince, or the applause and praise of men.”7

So, to be clear, the God-centered God becoming man in the life of Christ does not produce one who is, in essence, a self-centered human. Jesus’s preservation from sin, says Edwards, is “particularly from pride and vainglory.” As demonstrated in rebuffing Satan’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus did not pursue “the glory of this world.”

Rather, Edwards cites Isaiah 49:7 to show that Jesus, in his state of humiliation, is “one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation.” However, here in the same verse of prophecy comes the shift from humiliation to exaltation that will come at the cross: “Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves” before the one who once was deeply despised.

His Near Approach to Death

As Jesus draws near to the cross, we discover a significant development. Edwards turns from John 7 to the “now” of John 12, with Jesus’s crucifixion “in a few days.”8 Christ is “in this near approach” to his death, and where does he turn? Again to his ultimate and supreme end, praying,

Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. (John 12:27–28)

The Father’s voice from heaven then confirms it: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Edwards comments, “God had glorified his name in what Christ had done, in the work he sent him upon [in his earthly life so far]; and would glorify it again, and to a greater degree, in what he should further do [in his sacrificial death], and in the success thereof.”9

In his next statement, Jesus refers, however obliquely, to his own lifting up and exaltation. Now, writes Edwards, “in the success of the same work of redemption, he places his own glory, as was observed before.”10 As Jesus had said in John 12:23, with his imminent death in view, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

“God made the world, and rules all of history, to display his own glory.”

In this hour, not only will the Father lift him up, rather than Jesus lifting himself up, but this first lifting up will be a lifting, of all places, to the odium of the cross (Jesus “said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die,” John 12:33). Even as Christ, who is himself God, moves to acknowledge and affirm the coming lifting up, the glorifying of himself, he proceeds with a care befitting his humanity and creatureliness.

Though, at this key juncture, as he draws nearer to the cross, he rehearses his supreme end, to glorify his Father, Jesus also now acknowledges (and reveals that he desires) his own exaltation. As John 13:31–32 fills out Jesus’s multiple motivations in going to the cross, Edwards comments that “the glory of the Father, and his own glory, are what Christ exulted in.”11 Seeing that his hour has come, and that he will soon move beyond his “state of humiliation,” and enter into glory (Luke 24:26) with his great final act of self-humbling (Philippians 2:8), Jesus says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31).

In Jesus’s near approach to the cross, we see both glories, as it were — of Father and of Son — coming to the fore, not in competition, and each accentuating the other. Not only will the incarnate Son continue to glorify his Father, as he has since Bethlehem, but now he will do so in new measure “and to a greater degree” — and the Father too will glorify his Son. “So intertwined are the operations of the Father and the Son,” comments D.A. Carson, “that the entire mission can be looked at another way. . . . One may reverse the order.”12 Son glorifies Father, and Father glorifies his Son.

He Comes Yet Nearer

Edwards then moves to the far side of the Upper Room Discourse, to Jesus’s remarkable prayer in John 17, when Jesus “comes yet nearer to the hour of his last sufferings.”13 As in John 12, Jesus prays again for the glory of his Father, and yet here, remarkably, the prayer is, even more clearly, for his own glory, and that to the glory of his Father:

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:1–5)

Verse 1 captures the essence of this “hour” at the cross: the Son will be lifted up in the culminating humiliation that is simultaneously the first lifting up of his exaltation, and this glorification of the Son, at the cross, will be to the glory of the Father. The cross is both the final act and consummation of his humbling and the essential prelude to, even the first act of, his exaltation. Verses 4–5 trace, in sequence, the movement from his humbled earthly life (verse 4) to his coming exalted state (verse 5). Humbled: “I glorified you on earth.” Exalted: “Now, Father, glorify me in your own presence.”

How Did Jesus Endure?

Previously, Jesus had eschewed pursuing his own glory (John 7:18; 8:50), receiving glory from humans (John 5:44), and glorifying himself (John 8:54). In the “near approach” of John 12 and 17, in the quintessential creaturely act of prayer, Jesus reveals the heart that kept him going to the cross — a heart that was not simple, but complex. First, his lifework, and lead prayer, were for his Father’s glory (John 12:28; 17:1). Second, as he draws near to the cross, we see his holy desire for his proper glory and exaltation, not in place of his Father’s but with him, in his presence (John 17:5). And third, his desires for his Father’s glory, and his, come together with his heart of love for his people (John 13:34) and his acting to save them (John 12:46–47). Here Edwards connects John 12 and 17 with Hebrews 12:2:

The expressions of divine grace, in the sanctification and happiness of the redeemed, are especially that glory of his, and his Father, which was the joy that was set before him, for which he endured the cross, and despised the shame: and that this glory especially was the end of the travail of his soul, in obtaining which end he was satisfied.14

“‘The joy set before’ Jesus, through which he endured the cross (and thus loved his people), was his glory and his Father’s.”

In other words, “the joy set before” Jesus, through which he endured the cross (and thus loved his people), was his glory and his Father’s. “The travail of his soul” and subsequent satisfaction refer to Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant, who, “when his soul makes an offering for guilt, . . . shall see his offspring [that is, his redeemed people]. . . . Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:10–11). In both End and Freedom, Edwards points to Jesus’s looking forward to the reward of his exaltation as the key to his enduring in his state of humiliation, all the way to death on a cross. In End, he says, commenting on John 7:18,

When Christ says he did not seek his own glory, we cannot reasonably understand him, that he had no regard to his own glory, even the glory of the human nature; for the glory of that nature was part of the reward promised him and of the joy set before him. But we must understand him, that this was not his ultimate aim; it was not the end that chiefly governed his conduct.15

In Freedom, Edwards highlights that Jesus

had promises of glorious rewards made to him, on condition of his persevering in, and perfecting the work which God had appointed him (Isaiah 53:10–12; Psalms 2 and Psalms 110; Isaiah 49:7–9). . . . Christ had not only promises of glorious success and rewards made to his obedience and sufferings, but the Scriptures plainly represent him as using these promises for motives and inducements to obey and suffer; and particularly that promise of a kingdom which the Father had appointed him, or sitting with the Father on his throne; as in Hebrews 12:1–2.16

Glory Set Before Him

With Christ, we come to the unique and spectacular man who is also God — and the one person of the Godhead who also became man. We both learn from his imitable example of holy creatureliness, and we worship him as the one who inimitably died and was raised for us.

In doing so, we see that as Jesus came closer to the cross, his pursuit of the Father’s glory became increasingly distinct from ours. We, the redeemed in Christ, have a great “state of exaltation” to come, but not as the unique divine Son. Yet even here, in his unfolding pursuit of divine glory in his “near approach” to the cross, he shows us how we too acknowledge and righteously seek our own portion of creaturely glory. In asking for glory in John 12 and 17, Jesus is strikingly human. On his human knees, in human words, with his fully human mouth and soul, he asks of his Father. He prays. Rather than grasping or putting himself forward, he makes his holy request and walks in faith.

“As Jesus draws near to the cross, we see that the glory of the Father and his Son are one essential whole.”

For Christians, as it was for Christ himself in human flesh, our being glorified, exalted, lifted up by God is no sin or danger. The trouble is our self-glorifying, our self-exalting, our grasping. Jesus’s humble acknowledgment of his coming glory in John 12, and his prayer for his Father to decisively exalt him in John 17, are not instances of man seeking to take or seize glory, but rather man “by patience in well-doing seek[ing] for glory and honor and immortality” (Romans 2:7).

Yet Christ as our imitable example is not the final or most important word. We worship one whose glory is distinct and inimitable. As Jesus draws near to the cross, the glory of the Father and his Son is revealed to be one essential whole. We dare not pit one against the other. So, as Edwards says in End, “The glory of the Father and the Son is spoken of as the end of the work of redemption.”17 And as he writes in Freedom, “the glory bestowed on Christ” does not compete with or detract from the glory of his Father, or the Godhead as a whole.18

As Edwards had long preached, so he confirmed in two of his great works of the 1750s: God made the world “to communicate and glorify himself through Jesus Christ, God-man.”19