The secret to happiness, some have wisely said, is to want what you already have.

How many of us can truly say with C.S. Lewis’s character in Shadowlands, “You know, I don’t want to be somewhere else anymore. I’m not waiting for anything new to happen . . . not looking around the next corner and over the next hill. I’m here now. That’s enough.”

Instead, unhappiness finds us wanting a life we don’t have. If this, this, and this happens, then I’ll be content. The easiest loves are the ones we don’t have. Our neighbor’s grass grows greener as we keep staring at it. If our desires could remain on our own property, we would be happier. We would better love the life we have.

This secret to happiness is not a new one. Centuries ago, puritan Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646) wrote in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment that “A Christian comes to contentment, not so much by way of addition, as by way of subtraction” (45). He meant that the Christian achieves happiness not by adding more to life to satisfy his gaping desires, but instead by subtracting from his desires, bringing them down to the situation God has placed him.

Paul practiced this when he sought to curb young Timothy’s desires for money, reasoning that we come into the world and leave it with nothing and that many have apostatized by this love. The apostle gives us a window into his own happiness, saying, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:8). With just the basics of what we need for an adequate human existence, Paul will find what many kings with lavish palaces could not: contentment.

You Shall Not Covet

Long before Burroughs, the great Architect of man’s happiness wove this happiness principle into creation itself. He etched instructions for his creatures’ gladness in stone, saying, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17). In other words, keep your desires at home, want what you have, not what your neighbor has.

And he reiterates this word to the Church, yet adds something we cannot afford to miss. The writer of Hebrews begins with the command,

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.” (Hebrews 13:5–6)

Here again, want what you already have. Don’t slave to make your bank account rise to match your desires, but bring your desires down to match what God has put in your bank account. He reminds us that the answer to happiness is not bigger and better, but simpler and more grateful. “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.”

Be Content with Who You Have

But the verse continues:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)

You might need to read the verse again. Did you see the shift?

God changes the focus for the Christian from what he has, to who he has. God tells us to do more than match our desires to our circumstances; we reconsider our circumstances based on the promise of enduring relationship with our God: I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Dissatisfaction has a voice. You should have that car. . . . You would be happy with his job or her husband. . . . If only you made double what you make now. . . . To this internal proposal, God means to add his own voice: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

When discontent suggests, Your current job is okay, but you would be happier to have one that grants more recognition. . . .

God says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Your car does fine, but imagine how you would look if you had that one. . . .

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

This church is technically faithful, but the pastor could be more entertaining — and the children’s program . . . .

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Why don’t I have a husband or children like she has?

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

When we hear temptations to desire more and better, which voice do we listen to?

Shallow Wells

Now, getting a new job, a new car, or even a new church — or longing to be married and have children — these are not the issue. The issue is the internal restlessness and misguided search that leads us to climb from hill to hill expecting happiness just atop the next one. As we ascend the hill called “prestigious career,” or “beautiful wife,” or “bigger house,” we keep climbing, keep mumbling, keep searching for what we haven’t found.

“God gives himself as the grand punctuation to end our search for more.”

And while the world, the flesh, and the devil tempt us to chase and chase, God offers himself as the end of our satisfaction. He gives himself as the grand punctuation to end our search for more. Wonder of wonders, God does not merely say to his child, “The secret to happiness is to want what you already have.” He says, “The secret to happiness is to want what you already have in me.”

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus promises, “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:13–14). The only search that remains is to go deeper in communion with him.

All We Could Want

As sons and daughters of Adam, we ache under the dim memory of a forgotten past. A time when man walked with God, communing with him in perfect fellowship. Of gardens full of fruit, of a mission bestowing purpose, of pleasure and delight and satisfaction — none more than in the King of that realm.

“God says, ‘The secret to happiness is to want what you already have in me.’”

And though we have exchanged such knowledge and such glory for mere trifles of earth, for a life elsewhere, it has not worked. We look this way and that in vain for the kind of happiness our sin and Satan promised. In such condition it is not enough to scale back our desires to our circumstances. The darkness, the thirst, the sense of something else, the lost stare out the window will not subside on their own.

Jesus himself must be the Vine to withering branches, Living Water to parched places, Bread of Life to starving souls, Resurrection to lifeless bodies, the Way to lost wanderers, the Truth to deceived minds, the Shepherd for missing sheep, our Light in this present darkness. The secret to happiness is to be in union with this Christ, forgiven by this Christ, welcomed and forever belonging to God in this Christ. A Christ who promises that he will never leave us nor forsake us nor ever tire of being all we could ever want.

A slight breeze of discomfort blows a thought through my mind: What am I doing here? The room I’ve known for years suddenly takes an awkward shape. The silence, the stillness gives everything an unnatural quality, like a deer’s head mounted on a wall. Eyes are open, yet nothing moves.

As I finally settle into the stillness, distractions offer themselves from all sides. “My Father who art in heaven,” I begin to pray, “hallowed be thy name. In my city, exalt your name. In my life” — why are my feet so cold?

After I tiptoe back with socks, I kneel. Where was I?

Oh yes. “Exalt your name in my life, Lord. And please make your kingdom come and your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” — wait, what was that sound? One of the kids? What time is it? It cannot be.

As I glance down the hall, I notice books disjointed on the shelves beside me. Hmm, I should really read Holiness again. . . . I still can’t believe Amazon shipped the book with that damaged corner — I should have returned it. Packages, packages . . . wasn’t something supposed to come yesterday? What was it again?

Running from Solitude

Of late, I’ve noticed I’ve been getting worse at being alone. That sanctuary of solitude with God, a place where hours could pass unnoticed, has fallen victim to a life filled with activity. “Quiet times” have become harder to bear. Money-changers now sit in my house of prayer, noisily selling pigeons and livestock. And what is worse, I invited them in. But why?

“That sanctuary of solitude with God, a place where hours could pass unnoticed, has fallen victim to a life filled with noise.”

Blaise Pascal explains well enough why the unredeemed world hates silence. “Diversion. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things” (Christianity for Modern Pagans, 170).

Pascal sees men without God fleeing their Creator, and themselves, at every turn. This world swirls with hustle and bustle, men busily chase what they don’t want because fallen humanity will not — cannot — endure the frowning thoughts that meet them in stillness.

Thus, clamor keeps back the awful light of self-knowledge, the unwelcome truth that Adam’s race is a terminal patient, busy building vanities upon the seashore to keep him from considering that he is a creature, dying. Or as Jesus depicted, a branch withering, soon to be cast into the fire and burned (John 15:6). Pascal ventures, “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room” (172).

Threats to Quiet

But of course, this is not the Christian’s case. God found us at midday, drawing water alone from the well. There, he told us of our sin and situation. But there too, he offered himself to us as living water. In the quiet moment, a bush burned before our souls; we removed our sandals to be broken and healed by his voice.

And this begins a pattern: Daily quiet times become opportunities to meet with God. Journals are filled. Words underlined. Prayers spoken. Tears shed. Songs sung.

“Slowly, if we fail to keep watch, the good portion, the one thing necessary, the quiet closet becomes forgotten.”

But slowly, if we fail to keep watch, the good portion, the one thing necessary, the quiet closet becomes forgotten. That rural religion — green, organic, discreet — moves closer to the city of metal, machines, and commotion.

Three dangers, I notice, threaten my desire for solitude with God.

First, a Friendly World

The world outside my room stands with hand outstretched, ready to invite me into its fellowship. John Bunyan described Christian’s path as leading through the stir of Vanity Fair. And so it is.

Some of what I have called “busyness” — building a career, seeking a spouse, pursuing happiness — Jesus calls indulging the “cares of this world,” the “deceitfulness of riches,” and “desires for other things.” When they threaten to choke out his voice in my life, gifts become thorns.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus says,

Others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. (Mark 4:18–19)

God’s truth gets strangled in hearts and minds, not just by the fierce grip of persecution, but by the gentler hold of the American dream.

I need to be reminded,

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15)

At times, I need to be confronted,

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? (James 4:4)

At other times, I need to be shown,

Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. (2 Timothy 4:10)

And always, I need to pray,

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)

Second, a Thinning Soul

When I desire the world, when I grow too busy to be alone with God, when the world in my pocket entices me more than the world of the Scriptures, my soul stretches and thins, “like butter scraped over too much bread.”

My weakened desires take me away from God into my phone. I follow Jonah into the Tarshish of technology. And when I set sail several times, it becomes easier and easier to go again, and harder and harder to sit with God as before. My soul fidgets, anxious for something, anything to distract and entertain me. As I stick my hand in again and again for more and more salty snacks, my appetite for the great feast diminishes.

Third, a Shrunken Faith

Cutting myself off from the means of grace injures my faith. When I do return, the silent room questions me: Is all this really real? Against this suggestion, I must take up the shield of faith to endure the initial discomforts.

With warming feet, I continue, “Lord, please give me this day my daily bread, and forgive me — for my many distracted, neglectful, worldly transgressions — as I forgive those who trespass against me.”

Are you sure God hears you? the thought comes. Hours and hours that add up to days upon days amassing to years and years of nothing — if it’s all untrue.

“Lord, lead me not into temptation — nor into distractions — but deliver me from them and the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen.”

Upon that floor I return from a cold world to my Father’s presence.

Drawing near to him in solitude tests my faith that he exists and rewards those who will meet him there (Hebrews 11:6). If God does not exist or meet us, we do waste precious moments on a dream and a shadow. But blocking out the world and turning our back on doubt, our seeking says, I trust you. I need you. I long to be with you.

Will You Return?

Will he “who is [our] life” (Colossians 3:4) woo us away from the busy and noisy world? It is today as it was with Elijah:

Behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. (1 Kings 19:11–12)

Literally, God revealed himself to Elijah in “a voice, a thin silence.” God often forgoes the thunder, the tearing winds, the earthquake, the roaring fire, preferring to whisper to us through his word and Spirit in the quiet room. Will we visit our prayer closets, get alone, shut out the world and its distractions to sit again with our God who delights to meet with us?

I can remember my first time hearing Luther’s famous first thesis: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” While others around me offered solemn nods, the less-sacred thought flashed across my mind, Well, that sure sounds like fun.

I knew the repentant life to be good for me, as I knew going to the dentist to be good for me. I did not look forward to a life of feeling bad about myself. Wasn’t it punishment to bring the dog’s nose back to its mess? My childlike faith heard, “The Christian life is one of sitting in the corner, muttering apologies.” Necessary? Perhaps. Exciting? Far from.

My life of repentance so far had been the same somber note on repeat. Whenever I felt an elevated sense of my own sin, I threw myself into the deep pit of penance. Like Jonah, I marked myself guilty and consented to being cast into the sea. Or like the prodigal, I made my long return home, rehearsing how unworthy I was to be his son, and how I ought to be treated as a hired hand.

I deserved despair. I wouldn’t, couldn’t pursue happiness. I had sinned. I needed to serve my time before I could freely smile again. I did not know — indeed, I am still learning — about the joyful life of repentance.

Have Mercy on Me

King David confronted how I think in his beloved psalm of penitence.

The desperate and fallen king wrote Psalm 51 in the bleakest of days, detailed at the very beginning: “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

In the time when kings go to war, David saw the naked woman from his rooftop. He called for her and took her for himself; she conceived. To cover his sin, David arranged her husband’s death. After Uriah lay dead, God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his adultery and murder. Under sin’s thick clouds, David sits to pen this psalm, beginning the only way sinners can: beseeching God for mercy.

Have mercy on me, O God,     according to your steadfast love;according to your abundant mercy     blot out my transgressions. (Psalm 51:1)

Sinner’s Broken Bones

I understood David’s sorrow for sin. I knew how sin upbraids my spirit, sends my conscience to berate me, and lays a crushing weight of God’s displeasure upon my soul.

David describes this experience by saying God broke his bones (Psalm 51:8). The weight of sin pressed upon the very core of him, down to the bones, fracturing his inner man. Sin eroded him, as he describes in another psalm: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psalm 32:3). I’ve known how sin deteriorates a man.

And while some today might seek to rescue us from feeling the brokenness our iniquity produces, David knows such a severe response to sin as fitting.

You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;     you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;     a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16–17)

“The truly repentant heart, the one God will in no way despise, is broken and contrite toward God.”

The truly repentant heart, the one God will in no way despise, is broken and contrite toward God, not unconcerned and insensible. Brokenness I knew; the bitter cup of contriteness I tasted. Thus, when I pictured a life of repentance, I imagined living only in this dark and stormy night, sitting under its pouring rain, rubbing mud on my head remorsefully, waiting for God’s favor to return.

Make Me Smile Again

But David says more. He requests something that changed how I view repentance:

Let me hear joy and gladness;     let the bones that you have broken rejoice. (Psalm 51:8)

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,     and uphold me with a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:12)

Joy and gladness? Let the broken bones rejoice?

David, you committed adultery with Bathsheba, and orchestrated the death of her husband — and you ask God to restore your joy? Are you taking your sin seriously? Do you care about the pain you caused? How can you so quickly ask for restoration of joy, while Uriah’s body still lies fresh in the tomb? Or so I am tempted to ask.

Behold the beautiful collage of true repentance: it bows low in brokenness and contrition, leads us to confess gross sin to the God we have offended, and yet it also bids us to request more happiness in this God. With broken bones, David boldly asks for the inheritance of the righteous: joy. He hears accusations and groans and torturing silence, but he asks to hear former music and festive song; he is caught in caves of guilt but wants to again feel the sunshine of salvation.

His repentance before God is a plea for mercy and a return to God for more joy in God. He wants forgiveness, cleansing, a renewed spirit — to walk again with God, as it were, naked and unashamed. This prodigal knows the scandalous love of the Father, and asks to be received as a son, as loved. Though unworthy in himself, he pants to return to his Father’s table, asks for close communion again, for his broken bones to laugh again, according to his Father’s steadfast love.

Restore Me, Then Others

In David’s prayer, I learned that Luther’s vision of lifelong repentance means turning from broken cisterns to the fountain of living water (Jeremiah 2:13). A life of restoration, renewal, happiness, closeness to God. I learned that the life of unrepentance leads us to take steps farther and farther away from God and hides us from happiness. And this joy, rather than being whipped cream atop salvation, is essential to continue in it, the fuel to persevere in faith and obedience.

And lest we assume this is selfish, note how he plans his joy extend beyond himself.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways,     and sinners will return to you. (Psalm 51:13)

Though repentance is inescapably personal, it is not only personal.

Unlike a stagnant swamp, true repentance flows onward and outward. Here, David resolves that the cleansing, the joy, the renewed spirit, will send him forth to teach others caught in sin. He determines that if God grants him his pardon and presence, he will go forth and encourage the repentance of others, leading to their return.

New Year, New Repentance

Is your Christian life one of repentance?

Perhaps some of us need to resolve differently this year. Often, we look away from the past year and its failures toward what we hope to be a brighter future. The whole sense of New Year’s resolutions usually gives exclusive attention to what’s ahead — we resolve to do better, be better, live better, starting now.

“Sin needs to be acknowledged, confessed, repented of, not buried beneath a few good intentions.”

But as Christians, we remember that we can’t just leave everything behind us. We have said things and done things this past year — things maybe no person alive knows — that will not die quietly before promises of never again. Some of our sharpest disappointments this past year resulted from sin — and sin needs to be acknowledged, confessed, repented of, not buried beneath a few good intentions.

So let January mark a fresh beginning of repentance. Repentance is, in itself, a kind of January, a newness through which God renews a right spirit within us and restores our first joy in salvation. Take one or two sins to your gracious Father, ask for forgiveness through the blood of Christ, ask for freshness of happiness in your salvation, and go forth, telling others of the joyful repentance you’ve found in your Lord.

My grandfather is no longer here for Christmas.

I scarcely remember one without him, and yet now his absence is becoming the new normal. We no longer gather in his living room to read Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth, sing “Joy to the World,” open presents together, or eat the Christmas dinner he prepared. His chair, once so full of fondness, infectious laughter, and gentlemanly repose, now sits silent, full of memories.

A new sensation now dines with me during my favorite time of year. As the dining table crowds with new faces, new grins, and new babies, nostalgias of past Christmases unfold in the background. Here, more than at any other place or time, days past and days present meet. Here I behold fresh holiday scenes with old eyes. So much is the same, and so much is different.

Loss has made me older.

I look around the table at the bright eyes of the children, and see a joy unburdened. The Christmas they have known is the same today. They can’t see what their parents see. They cannot detect the soft-glowing faces or hear the unspeaking voices. To them, chairs aren’t empty, they’re yet to be filled. They don’t know the ache in our celebration, the wounds that never fully heal.

I now know Christmas as my grandfather had for years — as a mixture of gladness and grief, gratitude and regret, Christmas now and Christmas then. I could not discern the others who dined with us around the table from another life ago — parents, friends, his beloved wife. I never realized his Christmases filled with more than just that single Christmas. I now see the unspoken dimension. I better understand that weathered smile, brimming fuller, yet sadder than once before.

Suffice it to say, Christmases these days aren’t quite the same.

Out with the Old?

With this new experience of Christmas with an empty chair, comes certain threats and temptations.

Jesus once warned about sewing a piece of new cloth onto an old garment; or putting new wine into old wineskins. The wineskins might burst, he taught; the cloth might tear. But here we are. In the mind of the man or woman who has lost, the new is patched with the old; new wine pours into old family wineskins.

Perhaps you can relate. The pressure of sitting and eating and singing where he or she once sat and ate and sang can tear at the heart. You may have lost more than a grandfather. The strain of grief you feel around the holidays nearly concusses. The spouse whose name inscribed upon the ornament is no longer here. One stocking is missing. The beloved child you watched run down the stairs Christmas morning has not made it down for some years now. Christmas, this side of heaven, will never be the same.

I do not pretend to know such depths of despair. But I do know twin temptations that greet those of us who have lost someone. I hope that naming them might help you this Christmas.

Past Swallows Present

The first temptation is to the variety of grief that kidnaps us from life today. This bottomless ache comes when we begin to stare and stare at the empty chair. The grief overwhelms all gladness; the past swallows the present. The good that arrives is not the good that once was, so all current cause for happiness becomes spoiled or forgotten.

This is to step beyond the healthy grief and remembrance of our losses. It poisons the heart by entertaining the question the wise man bids us not to: “Say not,” he warns, “‘Why were the former days better than these?” For, he continues, “it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). This grief poisons the what is with the what used to be. It hinders the ability to go on.

Grief threatens to lock us in dark cellars of the past, keeping us from enjoying the child playing on the floor or the new faces around the table.

Over-the-Shoulder Guilt

Second is the temptation to bow to the over-the-shoulder guilt bearing down on us. Lewis captures this in A Grief Observed:

There’s no denying that in some sense I “feel better,” and with that comes at once a sort of shame, and a feeling that one is under a sort of obligation to cherish and foment and prolong one’s unhappiness. (53)

“The empty chair can threaten to overwhelm all joy in this Christmas or shame us for feeling any joy this Christmas.”

This temptation sees the empty chair frowning at us. “Why aren’t you sadder? How can Christmas still be merry? Didn’t you love him?” The memory, not remaining in its proper place, looms over our shoulder, patrolling our happiness in the present. This shame is a sickness that tempts us to hate wellness.

So, the empty chair can threaten to overwhelm all joy in this Christmas or shame us for feeling any joy this Christmas — both must be resisted.

Melt the Clouds of Sadness

So what do we do? There the empty chair sits.

Fighting both temptations, I need to remind myself: Christmas is not about family around a dinner table, but about Jesus. And Jesus has promised that for his people — for my grandfather — to be absent from the Christmas table is to be present with him.

I ask myself, Should I wish my grandfather back? Would I, if it stood within my power, recall him from that feast, reunite his soul with his ailing body — reclaim him to sickness, loneliness, sin — summon him from the heaven of Christ himself to a shadowy celebration of Christ on earth?

Somedays I half-consider it.

But I know that if I could speak to him now, he wishes me there. The empty chair heaven longs to see filled is not around our Christmas dinner, but the empty chairs still surrounding Christ. Our places are set already. Better life, real life, true life, lasting life lies in that world. That empty chair of our loved ones departed is not merely a reminder of loss, but a pointer to coming gain.

“That empty chair of our loved ones departed is not merely a reminder of loss, but a pointer to coming gain.”

This place of shadows and darkness, sin and Satan, grief and death, is no place yet for that Happy Reunion. The dull Christmas stab reminds me that life is not what it should be, but it can also remind me life is not what it will soon be for all who believe.

Jesus will come in a Second Advent. He will make all things new. Christmases with empty chairs are numbered; these too shall soon pass. And the greatest chair that shall be occupied, the one that shall restore all things, and bring real joy to the world, is Jesus Christ, the baby once born in Bethlehem, now King that rules the universe. He shall sit and eat with us at his eternal supper of the Lamb.

And until then, while we travel through Christmases present and future, I pray for myself and for you,

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;Drive the dark of doubt away;Giver of immortal gladness,Fill us with the light of day!

Some people have written bestsellers documenting their entrance into heaven. They claim to have died and returned to tell us what they saw. Suffice it to say, their accounts rarely match accounts of similar events recorded in Scripture. Those taken into the throne room — like Isaiah, for example — do not tell us about seeing their favorite loved ones or eating their favorite snacks.

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne” (Isaiah 6:1), Isaiah begins. He details how the end of this King’s robe filled the entire temple. He documents mighty beings lit on fire, flying around the King’s throne, shouting, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of armies.” The foundations tremble at the sound of their thunderous voices (Isaiah 6:1–4).

Isaiah does not sigh with relief, or whistle for his long-lost dog. Eyes from the throne pierce him like sword thrusts. The prophet, in response, calls down a curse upon himself: “Woe is me! For I am lost” (Isaiah 6:5).

Isaiah unravels before the Holy One who knows him completely: every sin, every twisted motive, every secret deed. He throws the gavel down upon himself and immediately pleads guilty. Did he even know what sin was before this moment?

And as Isaiah sees what I take to be the preincarnate Son upon the throne (John 12:41), he smites himself for, of all things, the use of his tongue.

Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies! (Isaiah 6:5)

His eyes see the Holy King of Israel, the God of armies, and he does not run to sit on his lap, but falls to his face, confessing the evil, not only of his tongue, but of the tongues he lived among on earth. Here he did not lament that he dwelled among a people of sexual immorality, murder, or idolatry. What he said, and what the people said — their conversation — horrified him before the Righteous One.

The Sin of Careless Speech

If we each saw the Lord today, we would dread how unclean our mouths have been. Take inventory of yourself: hasty words, cursing words, violent words, lustful words, blaspheming words, false words, lying words, gossiping words, flattering words, harsh and belittling words. Just how many rats have proceeded from that sewer?

Paul, in bringing all humanity under condemnation before God, quotes the Psalms to indict us:

“Their throat is an open grave;     they use their tongues to deceive.”“The venom of asps is under their lips.”“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” (Romans 3:13–14)

But this is the Old Testament, we may think. Isaiah and the psalmists didn’t know Christ as we do. Their God, all lightning and thunder, had not yet fully revealed his merciful side.

Yet hear what Christ himself says:

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:36–37)

“If we each saw the Lord today, we would dread how unclean our mouths have been.”

In confronting the Pharisees about blaspheming the Holy Spirit, Jesus, arguing from lesser to greater, adds a category to our dark speech: careless words. Even thoughtless words — not just blasphemies against the Holy Spirit — will be measured and weighed. People will give an account of every one. All of them. Millions and millions per mouth. Recorded. Remembered. Required at the judgment seat of Isaiah’s God.

Only Human After All

What exactly are careless words?

Careless words are idle, purposeless, lazy, and useless. The Greek word for “careless” (argos) is used to describe men who stand around in the marketplace when they should be working (Matthew 20:3–7), people who go from house to house wasting time and causing trouble (1 Timothy 5:13), Cretans who do not produce the good they ought (Titus 1:12). Idle words wander about unproductive, travel around causing trouble, refuse to bless as they ought. And we will give an account for every single one.

Perhaps you share my fallen response: That seems a little excessive. We’re only human, after all.

But as Isaiah found out firsthand, that excuse will not work. Whatever thoughts he had before he saw this God, they all changed the moment he stood before the throne. The prophet voiced the sentence of death against himself. When we are tempted to think this standard too harsh, John Calvin points us in the right direction:

Many look upon this [being judged for every careless word] as too severe; but if we consider the purpose for which our tongues were made, we will acknowledge, that those men are justly held guilty who unthinkingly devote them to trifling fooleries, and prostitute them to such a purpose.

Each will give an account for exactly the reason Calvin cites: our tongues were made for glorious purposes.

Fountain of Life

I am tempted to have low expectations of judgment because I have a low view of words — a view Jesus does not share. He will review our careless words with us because he expects our words to incline toward usefulness, to yield godly effect, to be seasoned with salt, to give grace to our hearers.

To avoid blasphemy, slander, and lying is too small an aim for a human mouth. Silly, careless words also stink as sinful words because all our words ought to be worth speaking. They should work for good, produce fruit, aim at others’ benefit, and stand in unflagging support of God’s glory. Each mouth, given power of life and death (Proverbs 18:21), should be overflowing with life — and with God’s words of eternal life, even if the hearers only hear death.

“To avoid blasphemy, slander, and lying is too small an aim for a human mouth.”

Redeemed hearts and new creatures alone will beget this kind of speech. All of humanity, like Satan himself, “speaks out of [their] own character” (John 8:44). After telling the Pharisees that they cannot speak good because they are evil, Jesus offers the contrast: “The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good” (Matthew 12:35). Good words originate from good hearts, which God gives in new birth.

Learning from Seraphs

Isaiah felt crushed by the weight of a world of wicked and worthless words pressing down upon him. Seeing God and hearing the flaming voices, singular in purpose of praise, exposed Isaiah’s own life of unclean speech. In that room, profane and purposeless talk held no place.

But this did not end his story. He judged himself worthy of death, but God had more grace to give, as he does with us. A flaming messenger brought to Isaiah’s lips coals from the sacrificial altar (upon which the King himself — the Lamb of God — would rest as Isaac’s ram, slain). And when the Lord asks whom heaven should send, Isaiah turns from cursing himself for his mouth to eagerly volunteering to go forth to speak as God’s ambassador. “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

Forgiveness met him as it meets us, repurposing and commissioning the mouth of even the most foolish and idle talkers. What was once given over to darkness can now be used to praise God and bless mankind. Seeing the glory of Christ banishes small purposes for redeemed tongues. And amazing grace sends us forth as the seraphs to speak of Christ.

“Find a piece of paper and something to write with.” With a smirk, my wife complied and braced herself for what might follow.

The task was simple: Take ten minutes and write down as many names or descriptors of Christ as we could each recall. After ten minutes, we returned together with our lists. As we shared together, we began to worship as the Jewel of unending generations turned and turned and turned before our eyes of faith. Each name, worth a lifetime’s reflection.

Messiah. Master. Teacher. Creator. Friend.

Bridegroom. Savior. Lord. Mediator. Redeemer.

Beloved. Worthy. Our blessed hope. Our propitiation. The Good Shepherd.

Wonderful Counselor. Prince of peace. Image of the invisible God. Ruler of the kings on earth. The Door. The True Vine. The Bread of Life. The Lamb of God. The Way, the Truth, the Life. The rock of offense. The Morning Star. The Holy One. The Beginning.

The King of glory. Lord of the Sabbath. The faithful witness. The Head of the Church. The Lion of Judah. The Suffering Servant. The Prophet greater than Moses. The One who loves us.

The Light of the World. The Author and Perfecter of our faith. The Great High Priest. The Son of David. Son of Man. Son of God. Our Wisdom. Our sanctification. Something greater than Solomon. The firstborn from the dead. The Resurrection and the Life.

The Alpha and Omega. Almighty God. Man of Sorrows. The radiance of the glory of God.

To give just a few.

The One Above His Names

The exercise revealed one simple thing: Jesus Christ lives beyond each sacred name. The Spirit inspires so many names because the reality of Christ towers above each descriptor individually (and as I am hinting, collectively as well). Though Jesus is known truly through human language, he transcends human language.

Take the ancient poets, take the epic storytellers of our time — spare no crafters of language — employ them all, young and old alike, in the singular task of telling the full value and merit of Christ to us, and they shall fail — as children fingerpainting stars fall far below the glory of the galaxies.

“The most excellent language we have cannot capture his excellencies.”

He is he of whom there can be no exaggeration: His worth, his significance, his relevance, his power, his kindness, his command, his faithfulness, his beauty soars above human language as the seraphim above the ladybug. The most excellent language we have cannot capture his excellencies.

And that is no slight to the words God himself has given to us.

Christ Beyond Vocabulary

The excellency of language can take us many places: from the frontlines of World War II, to a hobbit hole in the Shire, from plantations in the antebellum South, to a cave in the mountains overlooking Whoville, into the very throne room with John and Isaiah. Language can cause us to feel deeply: from compassion to bravery, from disgust to horror, from love to hatred. Language is a tool, a divine brush that can color transcendent realities within our imaginations and conceptions. God wrote a book.

But with regards to Christ, we fumble with candles in the dark — he is like this, like this, like this. He stands outside the full reach of the vocabulary of this world, dazzling with the strength of ten suns. He is more holy than we can conceive the word “holy” imparts. More lovely than the scent “lovely” can give. Our language, too enfeebled to capture his might, is too hushed to convey his full glory. We truly gaze through faith and the Spirit to see and love him (1 Peter 1:8–9) — yet dimly.

“Our language, too enfeebled to capture his might, is too hushed to convey his glory.”

Although the Spirit employs the highest human colors our language affords — analogies, metaphors, titles, types, parables, poetry, and more — the painting is of him whose riches the Spirit himself calls “unsearchable,” him whose love surpasses knowledge (and therefore language), him of whom the world itself is too small a library to contain all the books documenting his wondrous deeds (Ephesians 3:8, 19; John 21:25).

The Stage for Self-Revelation

Now, although Christ, the Transcendent, cannot be finally portrayed or singularly named, we should marvel that God planned to reveal the marvelous names of the Son we have in Scripture.

Although God gives us some names in a moment while others took centuries to unfold in redemptive history, God held all these names in mind before he architected the world — crafting reality and human experience to give context to his Son’s glorious revelation, not vice versa.

In other words, God didn’t work with the props that already existed and do the best he could. From the beginning, God created the stage of human experience to communicate his Son to us. Marriage, as one example, exists to communicate what his Son is for the Church; who he is as “Groom” (Ephesians 5:32).

Or consider that before he created the world, John tells us, God wrote a hardcover entitled, “The Book of Life of the Lamb Who Was Slain” (Revelation 13:8). God did not fumble about and think of books and lambs and blood and sacrifice after the world and sin already existed. These entered the world because, before the world existed, God freely chose to reveal his Son as the Slain Lamb.

The point is that God created the world in order for the eye of faith to behold the Lamb. This is his story, his world — the props on stage were constructed to testify to Jesus.

What’s in a Name?

Is this good news for you? You may wonder with the love-stricken Juliet, what’s in a name?

We could speak of God’s concern for his own name — which communicates his character, his reputation, his praise, his renown — which is at the heart of our salvation:

Thus says the Lord God: “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them.” (Ezekiel 36:22–23)

Yet Christ’s names, on the ground level, provide anchors to our souls, don’t they?

How many sheep have been comforted through the valley of the shadow of death by his name “the Good Shepherd”?

How many have had a cold breeze still their mad lusts at his title “Lord”?

How many in despair have revived from the one who is “our blessed hope” (Titus 2:13), or endured persecution with eyes fixed on “the Suffering Servant”?

How many deaths has pride died before “the True Vine”? Or how many times have our heads been lifted from the dust by our “Great High Priest”? Or our fears of falling away been quieted by considering “the Author and Perfector of our faith”? How many tempests has this “Prince of Peace” calmed? How many questions does “the Ruler of the Kings on earth” solve? How many regrets and dead hopes rouse at his name “the Beginning”?

The woman with the naked finger can cling to the Bridegroom. The unloved child can grip to “the One who loves us.” The mother who visits the grave of her child, to “the Resurrection and the Life.” The pastor tempted with envy, to “the Head of the Church.” The man or woman dissatisfied with living, to “the Bread of Life.” The one feeling all alone in the world, to the great “Friend.”

His names, above all other names, are dear to us, because he is dear to us. Each provides a different angle, a different snapshot of what we can’t yet behold face-to-face. None overstate Christ. None alone capture him. When we sit on the eternal shore and drink deeply of one, the ocean is never emptied. More always to see. More always to drink. More always to know and enjoy.

The tide ever rises. Our Savior will always remain better than our best thoughts of him.

The racing heart, the watering eyes, the abrupt disinterest withering the world outside. The carnivorous appetite, the volatile urge. The hungry stare. The inner burn (1 Corinthians 7:9). The dry mouth, the blinking eyelids, the jittering hands. The hidden force. The haunting whispers. The inescapable desire. The sweet slavery. The roaring drumbeat silencing music. The fight to death, a civil war. The silent suspicion of inevitable defeat; the dark desire for your downfall. Lust.

In a world coursing with sexual temptation, who can walk through unharmed? Who wants to? This enemy, so cherished and beloved by its victims, holds such a place in our affections that when God calls us to drive the stake through our passions, many ignore the threat or laugh it off.

“In a world coursing with sexual temptation, who can walk through unharmed?”

Sexual lust, even for those awake to their consciences, is often the tiger one wishes to leash but not kill. When told about chastity — an old word tasting of stale bread and smelling of their great aunt’s perfume — I’ve had decent men by worldly standards open their mouth and gasp, “How could anyone live without sex?” Air, food, water, and sexual gratification — the bare necessities of life.

Lay Lust on the Altar

Men should gasp at what God requires. William Gurnall puts the heavenly expectation vividly:

Soul, take thy lust, thy only lust, which is the child of thy dearest love, thy Isaac, the sin which has caused most joy and laughter, from which thou hast promised thyself the greatest return of pleasure or profit; as ever thou lookest to see my [God’s] face with comfort, lay hands on it and offer it up: pour out the blood of it before me; run the sacrificing knife of mortification into the very heart of it; and this freely, joyfully, for it is no pleasing sacrifice that is offered with a countenance cast down — and all this now, before thou hast one embrace more from it. (The Christian in Complete Armor, 13)

Gurnall comments,

Truly this is a hard chapter, flesh and blood cannot bear this saying; our lust will not lie so patiently on the altar, as Isaac, or as a “Lamb that is brought to the slaughter which was dumb,” but will roar and shriek; yea, even shake and rend the heart with its hideous outcries.

Our lust shrieks when injured. It roars, shakes, angers, and gives hideous outcries. But God calls us to kill it before him, joyfully, freely, now — before we take another embrace of it.

But how? cries the weary voice of many.

Help For Sexual Sinners

Perhaps you (both men and women) have tried and tried again.

You’ve cut off hands and gouged out eyes that tempt you (Matthew 5:29–30), but they regrow like Hydras’ heads. You succeed to put to death what is earthy in you (Colossians 3:5), but only for a time. You know this sin threatens ultimate harm, waging war against your very soul (1 Peter 2:11). You know to indulge is to sin against your own body (1 Corinthians 6:18), undermine your profession (1 Corinthians 6:8–9), and contradict the explicit will of God for your life (1 Thessalonians 4:3–5). But the madness returns, leaving remorse and shame.

Though I do not take Romans 7 to be describing a Christian indwelt by the Spirit, his anguished statements under the law certainly capture the experience of besetting sexual sin,

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . . . I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. . . . Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:15, 21, 24)

If you have, like me, jumped Lilypad to Lilypad in the swamps of sexual sin, hopefully I can contribute one emphasis that could make all the difference: focusing not so much on the how of sexual purity, but the why.

Highest Good in Purity

Covenant Eyes, passwords on computers, strong accountability, not kissing until marriage, daily check-ins, canceling phone internet, not living alone — I have heard (and used) many wonderful hows to make no provision for the flesh. By all means, devise a plan.

But in this article, I seek to travel further upstream. Why might we, along with Job, make a covenant with our eyes not to look lustfully at a woman (Job 31:1)? Or why with the Psalmist, should we store up God’s word in our heart that we might not sin against him (Psalm 119:11)? To avoid confessing the sin again during men’s group? To spare yourself a guilty conscience? To avoid hell?

These certainly motivate, but for lasting victory we need a bigger gun. Namely, to realize God’s highest good for sexual purity: God himself.

To See God

Did Jesus say, “Blessed are the pure in heart so that you save yourself embarrassment at accountability group?” No. He began his sermon, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Only later does he arrive at the cutting off of hands and the warning against hell.

To see God. What have you seen of God, learned of God, loved about God lately? This remains the question for devotions.

Notice how the story ends:

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. (Revelation 22:3–4)

After all uncleanness goes extinct, a throne will stand before us, and pure eyes will have their desire: to behold him.

“Father,” Jesus prayed on the eve of his death, “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). Lust is simply the anti-prayer.

Gazing at the Sea

“If you want to build a ship,” the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said, “don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Scripture certainly tells us to chop wood and heed orders, but it also unmistakably shows us the endless immensity of the sea: our God.

“As sure as lust distorts the world, purity reenchants it.”

Abstinence, self-control, chastity, cleanness of eyes and heart — for their own sake — are too small a reward. The appropriate end of boat-crafting is not to admire vessels sitting on dry land. Not work and discipline for their own sake. God means for us to sail. He means for us to feel the sea wind in our faces, to gaze upon the headwaters of all life and beauty himself, to see sunsets we’ve never seen before — and realize far more beauty remains to be seen.

Christian, God offers you something higher: to see his glory. As sure as lust distorts the world, purity reenchants it. As lust dims beauty and hides God’s face in night; purity cleanses our vision and dawns day upon the face of Christ for us to behold him. Our eyes cannot serve to masters.

Is seeing him robed in his splendor, shining like the sun, why you desire to be pure?