Distress discloses who we really are. It wrings us, bleeds us, drags the soul to the surface to account for itself. I am the best me with a happy wife, obedient children, loyal friends, suitable bank account, and (as a pastor) humble sheep. But when the child screams inconsolably (again), when the wife is anxious, when friends and finances blow away, when sheep refuse to be shepherded, then who am I? Isn’t it easiest to “trust in the Lord with all your heart” when you don’t really feel any need to?

The devil thought so. In response to God’s celebrating Job, Satan sneers,

Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face. (Job 1:9–11)

In other words, prosperity props up his righteousness. That twisted spirit is always incredulous about integrity. What happens next will reveal the spirit; the squeeze will spill the juice.

Predators and Pray

David was a man squeezed repeatedly throughout his life — and aren’t we thankful? His psalms pour forth as sweetest wine pressed in adversity. As we (unwillingly) explore affliction and wander through nights of uncertainty, everywhere we go we seem to find the inscription: Here stood David. Travel into the valley of death, into utter despair, into conflicts of soul and with Satan — there he waits to sing to our griefs, name our sorrows, and point us to the light of hope in God. His music comforted the tormented Saul and many Sauls since.

Psalm 27 is another psalm juiced from the winepress. The exact circumstances remain unclear; all we know is that vultures circle overhead; he is being hunted.

When evildoers assail me     to eat up my flesh,my adversaries and foes,     it is they who stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me,     my heart shall not fear;though war arise against me,     yet I will be confident. (Psalm 27:2–3)

He knows men wish to murder him. If he pens this on the run from King Saul, his adversaries are mighty indeed. If he writes this later as king, he knows men would step over his carcass to hold his crown. He imagines his opponents, vast and cannibalistic: “when evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh . . .” These men are beasts, omnivorous, arrayed, teeth bared and lurking.

What emerges from the inner man? A defiant faith in God. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1). Here is the shepherd boy who stared down the predator of Gath and returned with the head of the foe. And with the foul stench of death’s breath upon his neck, he pens next his life verse. As the black dogs chase, what man comes forth from the depths? A worshiper.

One Thing I Ask

Feel how supernatural this is: as assassins lurk in the corridor, David’s distracting desire, his consuming passion, is to be away with his God. The hounds gather at the base of his tree, yet see him gazing up at higher branches, longing to be nearer the heavens.

One thing have I asked of the Lord,     that will I seek after:that I may dwell in the house of the Lord     all the days of my life,to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord     and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)

When fear showed its crooked smile, he longed to gaze upon the beauty of his God. Here we find no atheist in the foxhole, nor even a mere monotheist, but a lover of God whose mind, even in this nightmare, daydreamed about seeing the King in his beauty. As Charles Spurgeon writes, “Under David’s painful circumstances we might have expected him to desire repose, safety, and a thousand other good things, but no, he has set his heart on the pearl, and leaves the rest.”

While his own life teeters in the balance, he teaches us what ours is about. As the Miner sifts him, the sand falls through; the one jewel remains. He longs “to enjoy the constant presence of God,” comments Derek Kidner:

Note the singleness of purpose (one thing) — the best answer to distracting fears (1–3) — and the priorities within that purpose: to behold and to inquire; a preoccupation with God’s Person and his will. It is the essence of worship; indeed of discipleship. (Psalms 1–72, 138)

To dwell with God all the days of his life, to see something — see Someone — “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” and to speak with him in his palace — this was everything to him. Life was not to rule, to slay giants, to marry and have children, to amass wealth, to eat, drink, or be merry — the continuance of these was not his one request. Worship was. As evil men swipe at the silver cord, he, like Mary after him, chooses the good portion that cannot be taken from him: to sit at the feet of his Lord.

Most of us will never have people try to kill us. But we can learn the priority of worship from the dark distresses of David. The object at the end of his soul’s longing was a glory to be gazed upon. Traveling back to David’s game of thrones — life hanging in the balance, his picture on the dartboard — we find a man not only after God’s own heart, but after God himself. On the caption to his own wanted poster, he scrawls, David, a man seeking the face of God, was here.

Summons Behind Our Seeking

I am convicted by the singularity of David’s request and marvel at the circumstances from which it arose. When offered one thing, Solomon asked for wisdom; David, like Moses, asked to see God’s face. What am I asking for? As I audit my life, what is the one thing I am seeking after? Is it to see my God’s majesty all the days of my life? Do my desires reach nearly that high?

My tepid heart warms to discover that this seeing that makes eternally happy is not just the man’s desire, but God’s desire for the man. David’s obsession to see God was in obedience to his command. David sings the secret later in the psalm:

You have said, “Seek my face.”My heart says to you,     “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”Hide not your face from me. (Psalm 27:8–9)

Our highest worship never climbs higher than a response. Behind our one request is always his command: “Seek my face.” Christianity is not about us scaling to the gods and invading their heaven, but about God descending to us and giving us his. Which means we do not persuade him to be seen; he persuades us to see. And at what price he makes his argument. When did Jesus intercede most ardently for David’s one request on our behalf? On the eve of his securing it at the cross: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).

Jesus Christ, David’s son and David’s desire, offers us more than a psalm or sympathy in our darkest moments. He gives himself. As we fumble in despair, he doesn’t just point us to God; he tabernacles among us as God.

“Christianity is not about us scaling to the gods and invading heaven, but about God descending to us and giving us heaven.”

And somehow, he too was hunted. Satan protested of him, “Does he fear God for no reason?” The armies of men arrested him by night, mocked him, flogged him, and crucified him. They did assail him to eat up his flesh. Strong bulls of Jerusalem surrounded him; they opened their mouths wide at him like a ravening lion (Psalm 22:12–13). And who was he then, crushed in the winepress of the Father’s wrath? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Beneath the midnight of God’s wrath, in the valley of the second death, see inscribed upon a tree: The Son of God, the son of David, was here.

And he was there, Christian, so we could be where he is to behold his glory forever.

We Shall See Him

O saint, you will see him soon. How then shall we wait? Make David’s prayer your own so that when you see him you may have confidence before him and not shrink in shame at his coming (1 John 2:28). Imagine that coming. The sight of him will not only bless but beautify; you shall be like him, for you “shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). And we will see him as he is, no longer as he once was in his agony. Let the prince of preachers heat your heart:

We shall see him, not with a reed in his hand, but grasping a golden sceptre. We shall see him, not as mocked and spit upon and insulted, not bone of our bone, in all our agonies, afflictions, and distresses; but we shall see him exalted; no longer Christ the man of sorrows, the acquaintance of grief, but Christ the Man-God, radiant with splendour, effulgent with light, clothed with rainbows, girded with clouds, wrapped in lightnings, crowned with stars, the sun beneath his feet.

O Lord our God, heaven’s Radiance and our Desire, one thing we ask of you and one thing will we seek after: to dwell in your kingdom all the days of our lives, to gaze upon your beauty and to inquire of you in a world remade. When our hearts are now tried and crushed, may what comes out be a song that begs to see more, that pleads to see, finally and forever, your face, unveiled but not unrecognized — your face, a heaven of beauty and the beauty of heaven.

Then it came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave. (The Pilgrim’s Progress)

These words from Faithful still expose the sweet talk of the old self. We need the Holy Spirit to bring it hot to mind: whatever our lusts promise, however they compliment, when they get us home, they mean to throw us in a pit and sell us for a slave.

The apostle Peter rings the alarm: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). For somebody to assault your body is treacherous enough, but here we find an assault on the soul — and that by our own mutinous passions. Peter pleads, Don’t embrace your soul’s murderer; don’t welcome your soul’s foe through the front gates. These are compelling entreaties for anyone who knows what a soul is. One assumes that discovering our flesh with soul-daggers up its sleeves would be enough to motivate any reasonable person to mandate pat downs at the gates. But then again, we are not always reasonable.

Weaponized Hope

The liquor of sin makes us drunk and stupid. Sin crouches at the door, and its desire is for us. How adamant its demands, how loud its knockings, how dear and costly and bloody the necessary resistance — “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matthew 5:30).

With such a seductive tyrant, Peter sends another mighty reason to defend the gate, one easy to overlook: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” He does not appeal to us as farmers or carpenters or even as soldiers; he implores the church to kill sin based on our identity as pilgrims and outcasts. Refuse the world’s lusts as a people of the Spirit, a people not of this world, a people not yet home. Heaven’s joys will slay earth’s sins.

Has your heavenly hope ever reached its blade down to earth and stabbed your strongest temptations? Peter wants you to wield your heavenly citizenship; he wants your heavenly home and future to fill the skies with swords that everywhere reach down and behead the lusts of the flesh. “Christian,” Peter urges, “this world is not safe for you — its passions deceive, its pleasures enslave, its glories will perish. Our feet are not yet in Zion. The world and all its desires are passing away, sinking like a cannon-torn ship into the abyss. If you allow them, the appetites of the old you will fasten you to the deck.”

“As we pass through the world, we seek to bless the world with a knowledge of how they, too, can be saved from the wrath to come.”

But Peter also reminds us that a paradise awaits the faithful: a place you half-expect is too good to be real, with a Person you only half-believe will sit you at his table and serve you after all you’ve done (Luke 12:37). But the grace of our Lord is not like man’s, and he has prepared a place, solely from his good pleasure, for us who receive the kingdom. And he sends his apostle with a message: “Beloved, as sojourners and exiles, ready any minute to be called away to feast at my table, make war against that which makes war against your future with me.”

Moses, an Illustration

Isn’t Moses a vibrant example for us? The author of Hebrews thought so. He offers him as a living testimony of a man whose understanding of himself as an exile, a son of Israel in a foreign palace, armed him against the best the world could offer his flesh. His self-understanding birthed his self-denial.

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Hebrews 11:24–26)

Moses did not merely prefer to be known as an Israelite, a race of slaves; he refused to be named among Egypt’s household. He would be an exilic son of the true God and not a son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He was a sojourner in Egypt and thus considered the sufferings of his Messiah greater wealth than the dainties of the damned. Manful Moses said in his heart, “Away with this stick you call a ‘scepter,’ away with this name you call ‘noble,’ away with these pleasures you label ‘safe,’ these sins you call ‘joy,’ these idols you call ‘gods,’ and draw near you beatings, you banishment, you scorn and you shame, for I look beyond these griefs to the reward in Immanuel’s land.”

He knew, as Jeremiah Burroughs writes,

There is a great difference between the prosperity of the wicked, and that which the godly have. God carries his people when he exalts them, as the Eagle her young upon her wings, he exalts them to safety (Job 5:11). . . . But when God exalts the wicked, he lifts them up as the eagle lifts up her prey in her talons, he lifts them up to destroy them. (Moses, His Choice, 101)

By faith, he foresaw his people headed toward the promised land and Pharaoh’s crown sunk at the bottom of the sea, motionless. His choosing a home not with the women, the money, the power, the gods of Egypt was eminently practical. In leaving, he left to “a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called [his] God, for he has prepared for [him] a city” (Hebrews 11:16). So, as a sojourner and exile, he abstained from the passions of the flesh and even valued the reproach of the Messiah as better wealth because “he was looking to the reward.”

Exiled to Glory

Christian, you don’t belong in this world — how often do you consider that? Do you openly acknowledge it, and make plain through speech, that you seek a homeland (Hebrews 11:13–14)? And does the hope of home, the glory of home, the God who is your home, equip you to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul?

Peter writes his letter “to those who are elect exiles . . .” (1 Peter 1:1). But this tells us more than that we are not citizens of this world anymore — he does not leave our name tags blank. We are elect exiles, chosen exiles, estranged from the world and forgotten, but at home and remembered by our God, who chose us out of the world by his grace. And as elect exiles, God has chosen us out of the world to serve as a spiritual blessing while in this world:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10)

As we pass through the world, we seek to bless others with a knowledge of how they too can be saved from the wrath to come. We travel along, resisting the world’s temptations and the flesh’s enticements to them, living out our exile in the knowledge it soon will end. Peter summarizes:

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:13–19)

Isn’t that beautiful? Don’t you want to live like this? Shunning shameful and former passions, thriving as obedient children to our holy heavenly Father, fulfilling our earthly exile with that power purchased by the blood of Christ? Such a life requires a mind set fully on the grace to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Or, like Moses, a mind looking to the reward.

So, by faith, and as sojourners and exiles, we refuse “to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin,” for we look to a future with Christ. We are exiles, but exiles soon to be welcomed to that homeland of eternal life and glory and fellowship with God himself in the new Jerusalem.

One great feature of modernity, from Satan’s standpoint, is the sheer rejection of the soul. We live in a world stupefied by the material. Ask ten people on the street about their souls — if they don’t wonder aloud, “What does this babbler wish to say?” (Acts 17:18), they will tell you that if they do have a soul, they have not thought much about it. Even ancient pagan philosophers wrote dense treatises on the soul, but the mass of men today live as though they are soulless. And yet these same people investigate the silliest things under the sun. If anything is worth thought, is it not your soul? “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).

Yet perhaps this treacherous thoughtlessness is not so novel. John Bunyan (1628–1688) could plaster this over our age as well as his:

[The soul] is neglected to amazement, and that by the most of men; yea, who is there of the many thousands that sit daily under the sound of the gospel that are concerned, heartily concerned, about the salvation of their souls? — that is, concerned, I say, as the nature of the thing requireth. If ever a lamentation was fit to be taken up in this age about, for, or concerning anything, it is about, for, and concerning the horrid neglect that everywhere puts forth itself with reference to salvation. (The Greatness of the Soul, 105)

Hell is being filled not so much with a shaking fist as with a shrug. How little thought, how little attention, how little time or effort is paid to eternity. Many a sinner today thinks thoughts of his everlasting soul as deep as his belly button. His neglect offends both God and his own well-being — he suicides the immortal part of him by his thoughtlessness. If Jesus’s question was needed then, it is needed all the more now. Dip it in fire, carve it in granite, engrave it upon the conscience: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:36–37).

Three Lessons on the Soul

Do not pass on from his question. Answer it. What does it profit you to amass all this world has to offer you — if the genie emerged to grant your deepest wishes — if in the receiving you let slip your soul? Too many live for the world and whisper, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God will say to him on that dark day of judgment, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you” (Luke 12:19–20). If your soul be lost, all is lost, for you are lost.

Adrift in a naturalistic and atheistic West, you may need help considering the immaterial and immortal self. Satan the destroyer blinds man to the glory of Christ, but also to the glory of souls. Many do not know Jesus and do not want to know Jesus because they do not know what a soul is and what it means for it to be lost. Dear reader, do you know what it is to possess a soul? Do you know what it is to lose it? Consider then your own soul’s importance through three comparisons.

1. Your soul is greater than safety.

We need to study this before we are tested on it: your soul is worth any suffering to keep. Jesus introduces his question about soul-losing in the context of cross-bearing. He refuses to hide the cost of discipleship. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Look ahead of you; there it is, a horrid sight to the flesh: a cross. But not just any cross, an empty cross. You get closer; what sick joke is this? Your name is etched upon it.

“Hell is being filled not so much with a shaking fist as with a shrug.”

You, die that death? Impossible. By no means. Absolutely not. And yet this is the instrument Christ puts before his disciples. Nails. Nakedness. Shame. Torture. All chosen — daily (Luke 9:23). What argument can even a divine mind produce to prod trembling sheep to such a slaughter? One word: life. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

Jesus’s question — What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? — assassinates all alternatives. What does it gain us to refuse our cross, refuse his way, sidestep his suffering, to keep our brief life in this world and lose our life with him in the next? If you live for anything, live for that which will bless your soul; if you die for anything, die pursuing the good of your soul and the souls of others.

2. Your soul is greater than your body.

Local gyms, hospitals, makeup departments, medicines, and fashion all prove man cares about his physical self. A man cannot suffer a hangnail without it becoming a preoccupation. How much money must he spend to make the illness go away? How much to drink from the fountain of youth? We’ll pay it. How anxious he is to swell that bicep but a few centimeters or trim that midsection a few inches — how many hours, how much pain, what inconvenience he will endure for the body.

In all of this, we spend our focus on the wrapping paper of God’s far greater gift. The mass of humanity cares more for healthy and beautiful bodies than they do for healthy and beautiful souls. The one they can see in the mirror; the other is immaterial and, thus, to them unreal. What a tragedy. Not only is your soul that which can commune with God and that which will live forever, but it is that which will determine your resurrected body’s fate. A soul in heaven shall not have a body in hell, and the soul in hell will not have a body in heaven. The two will join: where the soul is, there the body will be also.

3. Your soul is greater than all the world.

Oh, how man excavates the ground for gold. How he crosses oceans, sails from shore to shore, sifts dirt for diamonds — in these he thinks he finds treasure. In these he thinks he finds what matters.

How differently does Jesus teach man to compute. Find the buried treasure, capture the pot of gold, unearth Atlantis, fill your barns, attain that celebrity, wealth, and status, and you will gain nothing worth considering, nothing even worth comparing to what you lose if you lose your soul. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? It profits him nothing. If the whole world could fit in your right pocket, but your soul should slip through a hole in your left, you’ve lost everything worth keeping.

In other words, you will never obtain anything in this world more valuable than what you lose by forfeiting your soul. Yet, like a madman who has escaped from the asylum, we scour the middle of the freeway looking for lost pennies. What are these compared with our very lives? What are a few gold coins compared to our souls? The world and all its desires are dust, rotten trash, a loathsome disease compared to riches you already possess by virtue of being a creature with a soul.

Lose Not Your Soul

Consider, really consider, Jesus’s second warning shot: What can a man give in return for his soul? “Return for his soul” — does Jesus not speak from the vantage point of hell? The man has lost his soul and wishes to buy it back. What can he give for its return? What would he not give for its return? Yet he does not have the funds. He sold himself cheaply and cannot buy himself back. He has hated himself. The bowl of red stew is empty; only tears remain; how foolishly does Esau barter his birthright!

What can a man give in return for his soul? Let a lost soul answer. What coin or feast or pleasure would that rich man in the torment spare to ferry his soul over that uncrossable chasm to where Lazarus sat? How vain the world now appears to him — less than a single drop of water upon his tongue to reduce his anguish. What can a man give in return for his soul? “Nothing now!” he groans through sobs.

Reader, you can lose your soul — most do. To lose your soul by thoughtlessness is an easy road and natural. To keep one’s soul in following Jesus to our crosses and beyond — this is supernatural. Do not lose your soul!

Wars rage for it, blood spills for it, leaders trade men for it — the crown.

Souls exchange God for it, young men deceive for it, Christ has been sold for it — money.

Fathers desert families for it, Pharisees crucify their Messiah for it, men sell their souls for it — glory.

Yet what are these when placed beside that which God himself says it is not good for man to be without (Genesis 2:18)? What crown is brighter? “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband” (Proverbs 12:4). What treasure is more desirous? “She is far more precious than jewels” (Proverbs 31:10). What splendor better demands his attention? “Woman is the glory of man” (1 Corinthians 11:7).

She is the night to his day, the moon to his sun, the suitable one God fashioned from him and for him (Genesis 2:18; 1 Corinthians 11:8–9). Man’s first recorded words sing not to Eden’s garden nor even to Eden’s God, but to her, Eden’s queen. The libraries of the world burst with man’s adoration, continuing stanzas started in the garden:

This at last is bone of my bones     and flesh of my flesh;she shall be called Woman,     because she was taken out of Man. (Genesis 2:23)

Yet, as with lesser crowns, lesser jewels, lesser glories, she too can draw unwatchful hearts from supreme love for God. Pure loves, towering loves, as the angels high and fair, fall faster and descend deeper, down to the depths of devils. Brother has backstabbed brother for her, a thousand ships have sailed for her, heaven has been refused for her — woman.

Jesus warns against a man’s inordinate love for his helper with utter seriousness: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own . . . wife . . . he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

Romantic Suicide

Any love that leads a husband to disobey God, abdicate his responsibility, choose her over Christ in the moment of decision or the drift of a lifetime — such is not love from above. This age catechizes with romance novels and Romcoms, commends a carnal love, a love that pinches its incense before Aphrodite and Eros. As with Romeo and Juliet, it is a godless, idolatrous infatuation, a romantic suicide.

But this is not Christ’s love for his bride. Although Christ’s love for his bride is unrivaled — it travels to hell and back, sheds its precious blood, wears her sin and shame, empties itself to raise her to his throne — still, it contains not one ounce of idolatry. It never trades light for dark. It never terminates on just the two of them. It does not surpass or exclude or impede his love for his Father. Instead, love for his church is cast within the wild sea of masculine love between a Father and his only begotten Son. He draws us up into a love older and higher: “O righteous Father, . . . I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:25–26).

So when Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own . . . wife . . . he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26), he does not mean, “Love your wife less or you cannot be my disciple.” He means, “Love her to the full, as I have loved my church, and love me with all.” He means, “You shall love me, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” When juxtaposed, when put as rivals, when one must be chosen and the other denied, a husband and wife must both choose God above their spouse. His throne is so exalted that even the highest love for a wife is considered hatred in comparison. “You shall have no gods, no other beauties, no other loves above me or apart from me.” As Augustine prayed, “He loves thee too little, who loves anything together with thee, which he loves not for thy sake” (Confessions, 10.29.40).

This is personal to me because I grew up believing the “you-complete-me” love story that chases happiness away from God. She would be my morning, my meaning, the Alpha and Omega of my heart. I offered my confession of a helpless romantic. Maybe other men didn’t need to be warned of a distorted love for wife, but I did, even before I had one. Maybe other men needed to be warned to get serious about cherishing and nourishing their wife. Still he offers the same to all would-be disciples: husbands, if you come to Jesus and do not hate your own wife — that is, love her significantly less than the all you love him with — you cannot be his disciple.

Heeding Her Voice

Ever since the garden, man has struggled to keep proper boundaries. Consider Milton’s commentary on Adam as he follows Eve into rebellion:

However, I with thee have fixed my lot,Certain to undergo like doom; if deathConsort with thee, death is to me as life;So forcible within my heart I feelThe bond of nature draw me to my own,My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;Our state cannot be severed; we are one,One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself. (Paradise Lost, 9.952–59)

Milton’s picture is of a perverse fondness. This is plausible, as God does not just confront Adam about eating from the tree, but says, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you . . .” (Genesis 3:17). The issue is not that he listened to what she said; the issue is that he preferred what she said to what he knew God had said. Her wish became his command. In that moment, when she nakedly offered him the fruit, he did not, as it were, hate his wife by refusing her. In his heart, her voice became a god’s.

A woman’s voice is powerful to a man. I have seen men double, triple in stature by their wife’s word, just as I have seen men shrink by half and run to ruin by heeding her voice. These latter once slew a thousand Philistines with a jawbone. I knew them long-haired, in the prime of their strength and power. But then they married (often ill-advisedly). The wayward wife made for a wayward husband — one flesh.

“We love her as she ought to be loved — we love her best — only when we love her as our wife and not our god.”

False teachers crept into homes through podcasts and feeds, capturing weak women first, and their deferential husbands next. Her social media posts foretold his theological compromise. Her response to tragedy infected his: “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Instead of preferring God’s voice, replying that she speaks as one of the foolish women might, he listens. He considers. And soon, he chooses his rib over his soul. “If death consort with thee, death is to me as life,” I fear will be written upon their tombstones.

Toppling Kingdoms

Adam knelt to this distorted love for wife, but Solomon was ruined by it. Even though God’s law explicitly stated, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods,” we read of the wisest of men,

Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. (1 Kings 11:1–4)

Nehemiah — leveraging the sins of Solomon to confront husbands of his generation who married unbelieving women — struck fellow men over the issue. His public diary reads,

I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin.” (Nehemiah 13:25–26)

Idolatrous wives made even Solomon sin. He was beloved of God, he was given unmatched wisdom, he stood lofty in the annals of kingship, and yet even he was led into idolatry, first of these women, then of their gods. Is this not in Paul’s field of vision when he reiterates, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14)? None. And I have watched a man I discipled wander into the dark forest after her, never to return.

King over Crown

I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. (Luke 14:20)

The feast is ready; God now calls those formerly invited to come to his banquet. Yet in Jesus’s parable, “they all alike began to make excuses” (Luke 14:18). The first bought a field and needed to go see it. The second bought oxen and headed off to examine them. The third married a wife and thought to excuse himself. The master, incensed at their refusals, swore, “I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet” (Luke 14:24).

Some men will not be in the kingdom of God because they were too busy with their marriages. They had vacations to get to, dates to go on, sex to enjoy, dreams to accomplish. They would love to come to Christ, really, but you know . . . the marital life. Maybe next time. Notice that, in what follows, Jesus does not elaborate upon the land or the oxen but on the relationship.

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:25–26)

God gave her to him that he would lead her to the banquet, and she would help his journey there, to go hand in hand to taste of real life together with the children God gave them. The Master, not she, must have preeminence. She did not create you. She did not die for you. She is not Lord of heaven and earth. She cannot raise the dead. She cannot pay for one sin or sustain your life one second. She does not give every grace, bestow every gift.

She is a gift from him. She was never created to bear that awful burden of love. We love her as she ought to be loved — we love her best — only when we love her as our wife and not our god.

Have you ever assumed that you’re enjoying spiritual progress or making the most of life simply because you know you should be? I have. The logic ran like this:

Christians redeem the time.
I am a Christian.
Therefore, I must be redeeming the time.

We walk by faith, not sight — but that does not mean wandering in fiction. Perhaps this application will resonate. You may wonder many days, Why is my Christian life so pedestrian? So underwhelming? So stagnant? Instead of letting this dryness expose us, we remind ourselves that we are Christians, after all, and if anyone is enjoying the benefits of the Christian life, we must be. We should be, by the flick of faith’s wand, becomes, we actually are. I know that Jesus came to give me life to the full, I am his disciple, and therefore, by faith, I really am supping on the full plate. I believe; therefore I am.

But we might not be. In reality, we may really be walking unworthily of our calling, domesticated in our witness, living but half-awake. We really can be wasting time, living backward to our calling, playing footsie with the world. We shouldn’t be content and happy living well beyond a cannon-shot away from the front lines where fullness of joy dwells, where the Savior dwells.

In other words, the yawning might indicate that you and I really can live a slouching, blunted, anemic, sleepy, weak, unconvinced Christian life — not in all things, perhaps, but often in one main thing: mission. Too many of us live civilian lives in this Great War and, therefore, remain only half-happy, half-alive, half-thrilled. And instead of realizing it (and repenting of it), we can believe this must be it for now. But small joys and puny purpose should find us out. Our spirits groan, and our indwelling and grieved Friend whispers, implores, There is so much more. And there is.

So, I’d like to rouse us from our Western Shires with a song, as the dwarves’ music did for Bilbo when “something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick” (The Hobbit, 16). This hymn will make you want to wear a sword instead of a walking stick, to explore mountains perilous and great. It reminds us that the story is still being written, that souls still need saving, that we face a task unfinished — one that our Lord calls us to complete.

Facing a Task Unfinished

“Facing a Task Unfinished” was written in the early twentieth century by Frank Houghton, an admirer of Hudson Taylor and a missionary himself to China. The song boasts a rich history as part of the battle cry for missions to the Pacific Rim, according to Keith and Kristyn Getty, who have repopularized the hymn.

As more is done by prayer than prose, I would like us to ask the Lord of the harvest to make and send us as laborers, using Houghton’s lyrics as a guide. But be careful as you join in these four prayers, for when we shut our closet doors, we never know what adventures he will sweep us off to. O trustworthy Lord, awaken in us a daring faith — one we shall have no cause to regret in this life or the life to come. Hear us for your great glory and for our everlasting delight.

Rebuke Our Slothful Ease

Facing a task unfinishedThat drives us to our knees,A need that, undiminished,Rebukes our slothful ease,We who rejoice to know theeRenew before thy throneThe solemn pledge we owe theeTo go and make thee known.

Father, we start with confession. The commission your dear Son charged us with — the commission he himself sends us on and promises his presence for — how little do we concern ourselves that it is left unfinished? How little does it send us across sea, or street, or down to our knees? This world needs Christians shining in the darkness; how often have we pulled baskets over ourselves? The need is undiminished; how little can we say the same of ourselves? If anything in this world calls for energy, for tenacity, for wakefulness, for risk, is it not your mission? And yet how often do we answer your imperial claims with slothful ease? So much consumption, so little commission.

By our confession as Christians, by our baptism, by our membership in the visible church, we have solemnly pledged to participate in your mission. Give us grace to proclaim your excellencies. Souls are dying. What are we still here for if not to make you known?

May We Heed Their Crying

Where other lords beside theeHold their unhindered sway,Where forces that defied theeDefy thee still today,With none to heed their cryingFor life and love and light,Unnumbered souls are dyingAnd pass into the night.

Father, other lords vie with you. Their servants are zealous for wickedness; their evangelists cross land and sea to make sons of hell. The god of this earth seeks dominion, and while his demons trembled on earth before your Son, his forces have not yet retreated. And the chief place of their dominion is over the souls of men, blinding men from your Son’s glory and dragging them down to hell with themselves.

“Too many of us live civilian lives in this Great War and, therefore, remain half-happy, half-alive, half-thrilled.”

Look out upon the dying masses, Father. Have compassion on these unnumbered souls unable to discern their left hand from their right. And work your compassion in us. They live next door; they work with us; we eat at the same restaurants and play the same games. Give us wisdom to hunt souls, to labor while it’s day, to be uncomfortably bright witnesses to your beloved Son. And send the required number of us into those lands drowning in false religion to draw in a people from every language, tribe, and nation for your name’s sake.

To Thee We Yield Our Powers

We bear the torch that flamingFell from the hands of thoseWho gave their lives proclaimingThat Jesus died and rose;Ours is the same commission,The same glad message ours;Fired by the same ambition,To thee we yield our powers.

Father, let us know what it is to bear this flaming torch. Love compels us, your glory spurs us, duty points us, and the cloud of witnesses cheers us to bring the gospel to the lost. Where would we be without former generations who resolved to give their lives proclaiming that Jesus died and rose and reigns? May we not be a generation of vile ingratitude that receives knowledge of eternal life from the bloody labors of others but is unwilling to pass such knowledge along ourselves.

Give us that same ambition. Whatever powers we have, hone them; whatever gifts we have, wield them. Turn the world upside down yet again. May we not shrink from any cross, lest in so doing, we refuse every crown.

From Cowardice Defend Us

O Father, who sustained them,O Spirit, who inspired,Savior, whose love constrained themTo toil with zeal untired,From cowardice defend us,From lethargy awake!Forth on thine errands send usTo labor for thy sake.

O great and triune God, as you have sustained them, sustain us; as you moved them, move us; as your love constrained them, rouse us with zeal untired. Light the beacon. Many of us are wood three times doused; flame the altar.

Two great lions stand in the street and block the way. The first is cowardice — an unwillingness to bear a costly witness. O Lord, help us to see the immeasurable gain on the other side of temporal loss. Let us see all that is at stake in our negligence and fear.

And Lord, stir us from the second lion, lethargy. Let us learn from the ant or from the foolish virgins or the cursed fig tree. Don’t let us drool upon our pillows undisturbed. Awaken the militant church dissatisfied with playing defense. Awaken the church whose witness is unmistakable, whose power is undeniable, whose advance the gates of hell cannot withstand. Awaken the church that so out-rejoices and out-loves the world that onlookers see it and must give you glory. Here we are, Lord; we will go. Send us forth on your errands to labor for your sake — but only as you go with us.

Church, we have a task unfinished that towers over your best life now. We will more fully taste the joy of our salvation as we go extend our hope to others.

I keep hearing stories about young couples who do not want children.

Many are refusing kids for no better reason than preference (a euphemism for selfishness). Articles are written of lonely grandparent-age adults who “empowered” their kids to chase their career ambitions (and to neglect having children), and now are no grandparents at all. They feel something missing. You can’t read books or play catch or have sleepovers with a new boat. You don’t hang pictures of your country club on the fridge. But that is what their successful children have to offer.

The last name seems close to becoming an endangered species. We live for first names — it is John, just John — as if we came from nothing and have nothing to extend. These couples seem content to be the end of a family tree that branches no farther than them — all their ancestry leading, fortunately for them, to their personal happiness, vacations, and easy retirement. You only live once, you know; why spend it on children? If we want companionship, get a dog.

Now contrast this portrait of living for us and our first names with the alternative (men, pay close attention to your part):

Man rises above time. He can grasp his existence, he can see it in the context of a family that extends far into the past and will extend far into the future. And it is more than a blood relationship. It is also cultural: there is a sense in which he can say, We are the Smiths, and mean to include not only persons but their histories and their way of life. The father is the key to this transcendence. Think. Forget the slogans, the ideology of sexual indifference, and face what is real. A child’s connection with his mother requires no explanation. Body depends upon body. It is the father who requires explanation. (Anthony Esolen, No Apologies, 127)

Living by yourself, for yourself, requires no explanation. Living for money, for fame, for personal gratification requires no explanation. But to birth and guide and nurture immortal souls, to live and build a name and family history that transcends you, to bow as a foundation stone to a new way of living for Christ or to place your stone upon a pile already stacked — especially as a man, Esolen argues — requires explanation.

Generation of First Names

One of the most famous discussions about names shows the difference between living for one’s first or last name. What’s in a name? lovesick Juliet asks. Thinking upon her Romeo, the forbidden son of the rival Montague family, she sighs that the romance should remain a dream because of a last name. If he had another, they could be together. “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy,” she reasons upon her balcony.

What’s Montague? It is not hand, nor foot,Nor arm, nor face, nor any other partBelonging to a man. O, be some other name!What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other word would smell as sweet. (2.2.41–47)

An arm is not a name. A smile is not a name. A man is not a name. A rose, whatever you call it, still smells as sweet, still looks as fair. Call the flower crimsonella, and the thorny stem and red petals remain. In a world of ever-expanding names to keep pace with our so-called ever-evolving self, we are tempted to ask the same question — what’s really in anything but a first name?

Teenage Juliet spoke of last names as arbitrary symbols keeping her from her desire. Reality, to her, remained untouched by swapping one label for another. In one sense, this is true. God, the first namer, could have called the waters “land” and the lands “water,” the moon “sun” and the sun “moon,” the night “day” and the day “night.” Adam, likewise, could have called the tiger “zebra” to no effect on either’s stripes.

“We are Christians, a people who have the Father’s name and Lamb’s name written on our foreheads.”

But her elders knew that more lay in the personal name Montague. For the elder Montagues, history lay in the name — deeds done, and deeds done against. Honor or shame was bound in the name, and bitter enmity too. More than a name lived in Montague; a past did too, ground as sacred as the graves of buried ancestors. To them, that name held something larger and older and deeper than a fleeting teenage infatuation. Montague was a body with different parts, a tree with different branches, something that outlived and outweighed the individual. A family name not to be cheaply sold as Esau’s birthright.

Erased from Earth

The spirit of Western individualism inclines us toward our own balconies, happy to cast lineage — or even biology — aside for personal desire. Each is his own author, his own alpha and omega. Families and their names are mere formalities when roadblocks to personal happiness or self-definition.

But most in the past (as well as many today in the East) did not think this way. A lot was in a name; they valued genealogies. Hear the blessing that God promises Abraham: “I will bless you and make your name great” (Genesis 12:2). Great, that is, not through his life alone, but through the lives of his offspring. Conversely, a chief curse in Israel was to “blot out [one’s] name from under heaven” (Deuteronomy 29:20). We do not know enough to rejoice in the benediction or shiver at the warning. How was a name blotted out? Overhear Saul pleading with David, “Swear to me . . . by the Lord that you will not cut off my offspring after me, and that you will not destroy my name out of my father’s house” (1 Samuel 24:21).

To have your name blotted from heaven usually meant to have your lineage end (especially without a male offspring), leaving no continuance of your memory under heaven. “Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself the pillar that is in the King’s Valley.” Why make this pillar? “For he said, ‘I have no son to keep my name in remembrance’” (2 Samuel 18:18). Declining birth rates tell of a people building pillars in the valley because they don’t prefer sons. Yet to be finally erased from earth — physically in death, and intangibly in name — often resulted, in the Old Testament, from God’s wrath.

In that day, your name was your memory, a thread of immortality, a part of you that lived on earth after death. Solomon used “memory” and “name” interchangeably: “The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot” (Proverbs 10:7). The memory of the righteous man would live on as a blessing to his children, but the name of the wicked would rot and be forgotten. Juliet was right: Montague was not a hand or a foot — flesh and blood were mortal. But a name blessed of God lives forever.

Names in Heaven

The modern story has become no larger than our personal stories. We clamor to write our autobiographies — of our triumphs, oppressions, abuses, sexuality, freedoms. Self-consciousness, self-determinism, and self-expression are inalienable rights. We build to the heavens to make names for ourselves. Family, legacy, past generations, future — what of it? It’s Romeo, just Romeo. We are a people of first names. God, come confuse our speech to cure our madness.

But (and this narrows the point) we are not mere collectivists; we are Christians. Idolatry can be both self-absorbed or family-consumed. A people can refuse the only name given among men by which they must be saved in favor of their first name or their last. Our great hope is not in any name we have, but in the name of Jesus Christ, who, for his great name’s sake, has acted to save us.

We care about our children and future generations because we care about Christ. We care about our last names because we want a household to serve the name of Jesus Christ. What we labor to build is no Babel to either of our names, but a spiritual legacy to his. What is a Smith, a Morse, a Melekin, or a Montague? What is a Johnson or Jerome compared with Jesus? His is the name raised far “above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:21). “On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16). Those in hell live to curse this name (Revelation 16:9); we love his name, bless his name, hallow his name.

Jewels in His Crown

Before his name, all names shrink into obscurity. What is really in a name? Only that which finds its place next to his. He alone bestows upon us that name worth having beyond death; he alone makes his sons into his pillars:

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. (Revelation 3:12)

We are Christians, a people who have the Father’s name and Lamb’s name written on our foreheads, inscribed by the Spirit of God (Revelation 14:1; 22:4). He names us sons, daughters, citizens, saints, children, conquerors. We name him Lord, Savior, Groom, Master, Friend. We live to bring all glory to his name. We raise families, not simply for our family name, but (we pray) for his. We live and breathe and have our being in relation to his name. It is our sun by day, our North Star by night. Our names shine as diadems set within his crown, as spoils from his victory, as letters written in his book recording his great triumph — “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8).