Mr. A is a member of the church. He was baptized years ago, still professes faith, and shows up routinely on Sundays. While he isn’t known for possessing much love to Jesus, or much zeal for spiritual things, neither is he known for being an open sinner. He is nice enough. He serves from time to time and doesn’t avoid getting into a conversation on his way out the door. He struggles with his set of sins, but who doesn’t?

While he sits in the same pew every week, truthfully, not many would notice if he left. He is not exactly a model of a hearty believer. But he is a member still — different members, different gifts.

Is he growing in holiness? You can’t really tell. Is he increasing in his knowledge of Christ? Hard to say. Does he really love the brethren? Well, what exactly do you mean? Does he warm at the love of God or delight in the Lord Jesus? Perhaps deep down. You’ve attended church with this person, maybe overlapped in a small group with him, but for all of that, his heart for his Lord hasn’t surfaced much. He blends into the pew from Sunday to Sunday like a fake plant in the corner of the sanctuary.

The years pass. He raises a family. His daughter sings in the children’s choir. His wife occasionally cooks meals for church gatherings. He never commits grave immorality. He never promotes heresy. He never stops coming. His gravestone eventually reads, “Here lies Mr. A., Christian husband, father, churchman.”

Over the years, I have been gravely concerned for this type of man — drawn to this man — probably because I used to be like this man.

Church for the Unconverted

To put it plainly: I believe that men like Mr. A are far too comfortable in too many churches as they sleep themselves into hell. Nominalism — or if you want the Bible word, lukewarmness — is perilous to the professor’s soul and is too often ignored in churches. Consider some words from Jesus.

Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. (Luke 14:34–35)

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, “Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?” (Luke 13:6–7)

I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. (Revelation 3:1)

Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:16)

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:37)

A saltless professor thrown away into the manure pile. A fruitless fig tree cut down. An empty reputation exposed. A lukewarm sip of water spit out of God’s mouth. A tepid lover unwelcomed as Christ’s disciple. I tremble at how many men and women follow the gentle slope of religious duty, and even church membership, peacefully into hell. These spiritual centaurs bore some resemblance to Christian people up top, but had their hooves dug into the love of this world beneath.

Propping Professors

What has come to bother me — and what I believe should bother you — is that too many seem to have no category for lifeless professors in churches. It seems to seldom occur, even to some doctors of divinity, that church directories can hold names of the dead. And while no local church will be constituted perfectly of the regenerate, my issue is with unscriptural vitals being taken for life, allowing for the broad way to become a highway through local churches.

“The longer I live, and the closer I come to heaven,” John Piper writes, “the more troubling it is that so many people identify as Christians but give so little evidence of being truly Christian.” This is my heart. “My sadness grows,” he continues, “when I consider that there may be millions of people who think themselves as heaven-bound, hell-escaping Christians who are not — people for whom Christ is at the margins of their thoughts and affections, not at the transforming center. People who will hear Jesus say at the judgment, ‘I never knew you; depart from me’ (Matthew 7:23)” (What Is Saving Faith?, 29).

“How many do we have in our churches who, year by year, give little to no evidence of being true Christians?”

How many do we have in our churches who, year by year, give little to no evidence of being true Christians? How many do we call “brother” or “sister” who seat Christ in the nosebleeds of their thoughts and affections? Do we notice them? Oh to consider that so many will have perished — not despite the church’s questions, pleadings, and warnings, but happily in the midst of a true local church with good men preaching. They strayed to hell unbothered by surrounding saints and ultimately unknown and unpursued by their pastors.

Lukewarmness is to be repented of in our churches, not reinforced through laxity. The great and first command — our born-again privilege — is to love the Lord our God with our whole being (Matthew 22:37–38; Deuteronomy 30:6). If we cast off this command in favor of our own standards for the Christian life, if we prop up the religious lost, insinuating that head knowledge and regular attendance make a Christian, local churches can become — of all places — the most comfortable for the spiritually dead.

Dangerous Imbalance

What can perpetuate this vicious cycle? What can contribute to nominal members feeling so at ease in Christian communities? I think one tendency Protestant churches can fall into is to overstate justification and understate regeneration.

Overstating Justification

When everything becomes about justification, when the story stops at what Christ has done outside of us in his substitutionary death, we can lean toward lax standards for what constitutes membership and discipleship. Everything can become reduced to cognitive assent — intellectually agreeing with what he accomplished — and we short-circuit the emphasis on the “obedience of faith,” bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, or “faith working through love” (Romans 1:6; Matthew 3:8; Galatians 5:6) — in other words, the life and actions of living faith.

“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” (James 2:14). Of course it can — salvation is by faith alone. What do you mean? too many answer. And in so doing, we countenance a dead faith — one that attends and says it believes certain creeds, avoids public scandal, but does not joyfully, fearfully “work out your own salvation” or “strive . . . for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Philippians 2:12; Hebrews 12:14) — all flowing from a true justification in Christ alone through faith alone.

A lifeless, pulseless, passionless religious life evidenced in routine attendance — is this the power of God for salvation? Our confessions answer plainly:

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. (Westminster Confession of Faith, 11.2)

Understating Regeneration

“Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Jesus turned Nicodemus’s world upside down by teaching that, in this new-covenant age, no one will be in heaven who has not born again on earth.

So it is. A heart-change, a love-change, a creature-change must happen if we will be in heaven — yet how many know the power of this change? Most members in our churches, we expect, but we must never lose sight that being born again proves itself over time with unmistakable fruit. Such is bound up in the new-covenant promise given to Ezekiel:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:25–27)

“Being born again proves itself by unmistakable fruits of salvation over time.”

God will give us a new heart, a new love, a new allegiance in this new birth. Therefore, John can make such black-and-white statements in his first epistle concerning how our assurance as Christians directly relates to our lives of obedience and love for other believers (1 John 2:29; 3:9–10; 4:7; 5:1, 18).

“Once a member, always a member” is more tidy, more clean, and more convenient for already-too-busy pastors, but it is also more tenuous — for them and us — in view of that great Day when we will stand with them and “give an account” for their souls (Hebrews 13:17).

Many Will Say on That Day

Many is one of the most comforting and one of the scariest words to proceed from Jesus’s lips in the Gospels. Here it is the scariest:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:21–23)

Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. (Luke 13:24)

Many lost men and women will go to that great judgment day believing themselves to be saved. They went to church; they did works in his name; they called him Lord. Let that sit with you a moment. Can anything be more miserable, more shocking, more pitiable than one of our people — or us — gasping in utter unbelief as angels drag them away? “But Lord, you are my Lord! I am one of your followers!”

Oh, before it is too late, resolve now, as far as it goes with you, not to let your people sleep their way into judgment. Will we not tell them to watch, to stay alert? Will we not call them to that discipleship found in the New Testament? Will we not be watchful over their souls in earnest prayer? Will we not encourage and exhort and rebuke and blow the trumpet of God’s word in their ears? Will they hear “I never knew you” from the Lord in heaven after we, their pastors and fellow members, did not know them on earth? Will we be their abettors unaware?

O Lord, for our sake and theirs, may it not be.

The kind of man you hate reveals what kind of man you are. “But I hate him,” Ahab declared of Micaiah, God’s prophet.

Jehoshaphat, the righteous king of Judah, sat with Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, to deliberate one question: Should they go to war together against Syria? Peace had lasted three years with the pagan nation, but Ahab desired the strategic city of Ramoth-gilead for Israel. He questioned aloud to Jehoshaphat, “Do you know that Ramoth-gilead belongs to us, and we keep quiet and do not take it out of the hand of the king of Syria?” (1 Kings 22:3).

Jehoshaphat consents to fight with Ahab, but desires to hear first from the God of Israel. Ahab calls his four hundred prophets, who, with one voice, give their hearty Amen! “Go up,” they say, “for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king” (1 Kings 22:6).

The kind of men from whom you solicit counsel tells us what kind of man you are.

These men were no messengers of Yahweh, and King Jehoshaphat knew so. Diplomatically, he asks, “Is there not here another prophet of the Lord of whom we may inquire?” (1 Kings 22:7). To Jehoshaphat, four hundred counselors of any other god could not substitute for one man of Yahweh. There is one, Ahab reluctantly responds, Micaiah. “But I hate him,” Ahab gasps before discretion tutors the statement.

Why did Ahab hate the true prophet? “I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil” (1 Kings 22:8).

“The kind of man you hate can reveal what kind of man you are.”

Ahab loved the four hundred yes-men around him. He loved prophets feasting with him, prophesying pleasantries. He loved to hear his own positive thoughts returned to himself unaltered. He loved only affirming words, positive words — not the untamed and unpredictable words of God’s true prophet. The kind of man Ahab hated revealed the kind of man he was.

What Kind of Man Are You?

Now, to turn and see the story from Micaiah’s perspective (the point of this article): The kind of person who despises you also may tell you what kind of man you are. Ahab hated Micaiah because Ahab hated Micaiah’s God.

Wasn’t this because Ahab couldn’t comfortably untether the servant from his Master? Micaiah’s allegiance to the living God was not superficial — wasn’t a religious hobby to be picked up and put down. Ahab knew Micaiah didn’t serve the Lord just during office hours. His devotion went to the heart. Ahab would kill the prophet before he killed the prophet’s faith. Can the like be said of us?

This son of Imla was God’s man through and through. Whether talking to the false prophets or to the king himself, he was his Master’s man. Whether struck in the face and questioned by Zedekiah or thrown into jail by Ahab, he was his Master’s man. Whether Ahab invited him to feast at Jezebel’s table, or invited him for a wine-tasting from Naboth’s vineyard, or asked him about going to war with Syria — Ahab knew what he could expect from this lone prophet of the Lord: to deal with the Lord’s man. Ahab could expect God’s truth spoken through God’s messenger. And he hated him for it.

Confrontational Christlikeness?

So, we might then ask, do the right people dislike us?

What? you might think. If we are mature believers — truly humble and gentle and patient and loving and compassionate — will we really ever be disliked? Hatred and disgust may be reserved for those argumentative and obnoxious professors — but not us. Clanging cymbals, flies buzzing about the ear, hornets stinging any who disagree — these are rightly disliked. But we give the gentle answer. We listen and respect others.

Many Western Christians, it appears to me, are tempted with and indulgent in an agreeableness unknown to Micaiah. We stand ready to give the compassionate word, the soft encouragement, the positive uplift — but do not go on to ever risk anything that might displease. We are not disliked more because we do not say many things that are dislikable to the spirit of the age. Unbelievers at work or online or in our families feel free to parade their profanities and perversities before our ears and eyes without restraint, but it is ours, apparently, to keep quiet and let them perish out of politeness.

Nobody mistakes us for Jude, or Elijah, or Paul, or John the Baptist, or the Sons of Thunder. Or Jesus, for that matter. Zeal for our God and his house does not consume us. We avoid having to report, “the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me” (Psalm 69:9). Jesus, in such whip-making, temple-clearing aggression, is not our choice brand of Christlikeness. Indeed, confrontational Christlikeness seems to them no Christlikeness at all — despite the New Testament’s consistent testimony to it.

Hated for the Master

Now, we need our gentle and beloved Johns. But we need to also acknowledge that our gentle and beloved John was also persecuted and exiled for being uncompromising with his Master’s truth. He wrote his last letter as a brother and partner in the tribulation, banished to “the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Revelation 1:9). Polish as we may, we cannot smooth over the offense of the cross.

So what am I saying? If no one dislikes you on account of Christ, it’s probably not because you have become greater, more endearing, more friendly to the lost than Jesus, the apostles, or the lineage of persecuted Christians and martyrs throughout church history. If no one dislikes you on account of Christ, it is likely because you have been too quiet about Jesus, too lukewarm for him, or too much like the world for them to notice the difference.

Was this not part of Jesus’s message to the disciples in the upper room?

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. (John 15:19–21)

If we bear authentic witness to Jesus for long enough, the world will hate us. We don’t pursue their hatred, but we do prepare for it. Do you have a category for this? Do you expect pats on the head from those who would again nail your Master to a cross if they could? Should they treat us better than him? I have thought so — at least hoped so. My wrestlings in the quiet moment have been,

Must I be carried to the skiesOn flowery beds of ease,While others fought to win the prizeAnd sailed through bloody seas?

Are there no foes for me to face?Must I not stem the flood?Is this vile world a friend to grace,To help me on to God? (“Am I a Soldier of the Cross”)

“Woe to you,” Jesus taught, “when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). It is an ill omen for Ahab and his four hundred men to applaud. “What did I do wrong,” Socrates once asked, “that yonder villain praised me just now?” Spurgeon comments, “And so may the Christian say, ‘What, have I done wrong, that So-and-so spoke well of me, for if I had done right he would not; he has not the sense to praise goodness, he could only have applauded that which suited his own taste’” (“Citizenship in Heaven”).

The world’s hatred doesn’t always confirm our faithfulness to Christ. It may be owing to our own sin. But in this unruly world, we must consider, as Micaiah, that frowns, and even a jail cell, can be a better sign of fidelity than smiles and congratulations.

Love in a Hypersensitive Age

After a soft rebuke from Jehoshaphat, Ahab sends for the prophet of his disgust. When found, Ahab’s delegate preps Micaiah for the meeting: “Behold, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king. Let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably” (1 Kings 22:13). Speak favorably, Micaiah. Mind your tongue. Don’t worry — everyone else is doing it. Micaiah responds,

As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak. (1 Kings 22:14)

As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak. Is that my motto? Is it yours? Even when it will cost us?

A word to fellow pastors: We love to comfort our people. We love to encourage them. We love to bring them glad tidings of great news of God’s grace. This we not only must do — we get to do. We labor with them for their joy (2 Corinthians 1:24). And yet, in an age hypersensitive to hard words, we still must warn, must correct, must rebuke sheep and wolves out of love — come what may.

“Some curses can be compliments — and more than compliments, blessings.”

Just as we can find too much Ahab in the culture (and even in the church), we also might find too little Micaiah in us. But as Christ lives, what our God says, that must we speak.

Sacred Fools

David Wells, in his classic No Place for Truth, gives us the picture of the pastor in the modern world as “the Sacred Fool.” Refusing to “lead by holding aloft moist fingers to sense the changes in the wind,” this man stands beholden to his Master. Wells explains,

So long as they cloaked their advice in humor, jesters were able to say things to kings and princes that might have been fatal for anyone else to say. Happy was the king who had a good fool. And happy are those churches whose ministers are likewise emancipated from the bonds of class interest and social expectation, freed to expose the follies of modernity in light of God’s truth. (250)

What kind of men are we? Are we sacred fools for Jesus who have been liberated from class interest and social expectation? Are we the King’s men? Curses can be compliments — and more than compliments, blessings. “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!” (Luke 6:22).

The kind of men who hate us will reveal what kind of men we are.

The sluggard’s Instagram is unforgettable. If you have followed him in the Scriptures, you readily picture this creature sticking his hand in the bowl of Cheetos, unwilling to lift it back up to his mouth (Proverbs 19:24). We picture the man marooned on his bed, energetically telling about all the lions that prowl the streets (Proverbs 26:13–14).

But if you know the man in real life, his comic profile is not that funny anymore. As smoke in the eyes, he comes to irritate us because we have found repeatedly that we cannot depend upon him (Proverbs 10:26). You might roll your eyes at him at first, but soon you give an exasperated, Really? “How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?” (Proverbs 6:9). He refuses to plow in autumn (Proverbs 20:4). His hands refuse to labor (Proverbs 21:25). Yet calling up to us from his mother’s basement, he insists that he is wise and life is right where he wants it (Proverbs 26:16). He is a blend of satire and shame, a tragi-comic figure, as Derek Kidner names him (Proverbs, 39).

So to me, the sluggard was always someone else.

I had never considered Scripture’s testimony of the more sophisticated lazy man — one with his shirt tucked in, going about his work, busily adding events to his calendar. I dismissed the cartoon, never taking time to examine myself against one species of sloth given to us in Proverbs: the man who busies himself with starting many things, but doesn’t bring them to completion.

Hunting Sloth

The wise king of Proverbs shows us this active sluggard. He, unlike the traditional sloth, is up early in the morning. He has his eggs and drinks his coffee. Instead of being discovered in the sloth’s usual habitat — buried beneath sheets and pillows — he is up and about, stalking through the forest, pursuing his prey. He is a hunter.

See him tracking his animal — thoughtful, calculated, alert. He sets his traps and camouflages himself for the kill. He knows his target; he knows his weapon; he lies in wait. While his brother sloth is sleeping in the trees, he is armed in the bushes. While the other excuses inaction by complaining of lions in the streets, he is crouched where lions roar. When he sees his quarry, he times his assault perfectly and springs violently. The king sees this man return in the morning with a carcass draped over his shoulder.

So far, he is full of manful action. But notice where the laziness of this hunting sluggard manifests:

The lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting. (Proverbs 12:27 NKJV)

What a strange picture. The man woke up early. He prepared his tools. He lay in wait. He acted deliberately, forcefully. He took the prize, brought home the meat — but never cooked it. Perhaps he decided he had worked hard enough for one day. Perhaps he realized just how tired he felt. His enthusiasm died before the meal was prepared.

He labored promisingly, for a time. He remained focused, for a while. His was hard but unfinished work. In the end, his plate is just as empty as that of the other sluggard, waking at his return.

Incomplete

Men, how many tasks have you started strong and finished weak (or not at all)? How many deer have we killed but never tasted? How much nourishment has laziness robbed from our souls, our families, our churches, our world?

“How much nourishment has laziness robbed from our souls, our families, our churches, our world?”

I think this spirit of so-far-and-no-farther plagues our generation. We recreate at life; we rarely commit. Manhood seems less tethered to follow-through, to roasting the meat we hunt. Consider just a few examples.

Relationships: date, but never marry.

Some men enjoy the chase of dating without taking any real steps toward marriage. They love the excitement, the hunt, the thrill, the flirt, the challenge — but lazily want nothing to do with lifelong commitment. Covenant panics them. They live unwilling to vow,

I take you to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honor, comfort, and cherish you, and forsaking all others to keep myself only unto you as long as we both shall live.

So they date for fun; they go hunting but never roast. Their catch-and-release policy might be less offensive if it didn’t leave behind a trail of pierced and discarded hearts. They put in effort to get to know daughters of the King, but never know the feast that marital love provides nor the lasting fruit it bears.

Church: attend, but never join.

How many men can leave their local church without anyone noticing? They never joined, never served, never devoted themselves to God’s people. Their schooling or career earned their talents and commitment. Their intramural basketball team or local gym received their dedication and time. While they placed their bodies in the church on Sundays, their hearts remained in the world.

Such are the many who know little of belonging to a local church. They come, but bolt at the soonest opportunity. They will listen to the sermon but search for any excuse to stay home and watch the livestream. They disappear for weeks at a time to their cabin or vacation and never get around to joining because of the weight of expectations. These play at Christianity, hunting theological game but never roasting it.

Work: labor, but for appearances.

How many men really commit themselves to excellence, to comprehensiveness in their work? How many drape the kill of their life’s work over their shoulder and take pleasure in the careful roasting of the meat? To the Christian man who found himself a slave in the early Colossian church, Paul instructs, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23–24).

Work heartily — literally, “from your soul” — even in this, the most unpleasant of work situations. How many of us are eye-pleasers in our work — working hard when others watch us, but switching tabs and scrolling Twitter as soon as they walk away? How often have you and I stopped short of cooking the meal God would have for us?

Great Hunter

Where would we be if Jesus were the hunter many of us have been? If he came and lived a couple of decades among us and called it quits? If he fell upon his knees in Gethsemane and went no farther, or felt the first nail through the wrist and summoned his army of angels? What if he came to save as an eye-pleaser, a hired hand who turned tail and ran when Satan, our sins, and God’s righteous wrath bore down on him?

If he stopped short, if he left even one step of the journey for us alone to achieve, we would be lost. If even one ounce of atoning blood needed to come from our veins, we would have no hope. If even one perfect work was yet required to fulfill the law on our behalf, all would remain undone. If Jesus somehow proved only a partway Prophet, a mostly Messiah, a nearly sufficient Savior for us — we all would submerge beneath the burning waves forever.

But oh for a thousand tongues to praise the completeness of our Mediator’s work. Our Shepherd did not bring most of his sheep nearly all the way home. He fulfills: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one” (John 18:9). This great high priest “saves to the uttermost” those who draw near to God through him (Hebrews 7:25). “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). His towering declaration from the height of the cross dealt not with nearlys, almosts, or mostlys, but rather — “It is finished!” (John 19:30).

Finishing with Feast

Brothers, our work is not his work, but let us learn from our Master, who embodied the second half of the proverb perfectly: “The lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting, but diligence is man’s precious possession” (Proverbs 12:27 NKJV). Where are the men of diligence in the church today, men who follow-through, men who sprint through the finish line? Athletic men in the world exercise self-control in all things, but do so for a perishable wreath — should we not much more do so for the imperishable (1 Corinthians 9:25)?

“May we enjoy the feast from the good works for which we labored.”

Let’s be the few men on earth known for finishing the good we start in our families, our work, our churches, our communities, our nation, our world. Let our “yes” be yes and the quality of our commitments never be questioned. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). You serve the Lord. Let each of us, in our own ways, end our lives saying after our Master, “I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do” (John 17:4 NKJV).

And may we enjoy the roasted feast from the good works for which we labored with all our might.

When I talk with modern men who dismiss God without a second to even consider him, I cannot help hearing a herd of cows mooing upon a hillside. These scientifically minded men (they claim) live to stare at the patch of grass in front of them and call the scheme real life. That is all they can prove exists, after all. They can feel the field under hoof, chew the cud in their mouths, feel the rain upon their backs — these are objective realities.

They show no interest in anything beyond their immediate experiences and senses.

Sure, crows may bring them tales of mighty birds exploring worlds above the clouds, or rumors of far-off sea kingdoms and mythical beasts buried in water, or even of goats prancing upon mighty rock hilltops in the skies — but they see no towering mountains, nor swelling oceans, nor lofty heights — nothing to even suggest such a possibility. Foul tales from fowls is all; ravens raving ill dreams. Cows who live to watch the skies have more than sun dropped in their eyes.

Myths and stories, like viral diseases, infect some in their farm society, but not them. Some hoot and chirp and baa of worlds elsewhere. But claiming to be wise, they always knew some chickens are a few eggs short of a dozen; some pigs hit their heads rolling in mud; some horses will remain unbridled. Truth be told, if these dreamers did not bring ethical claims with their feverish imaginations, they might deserve pity. Who wouldn’t mind worlds beyond this? But reality, they’ve come to know, is less enchanted. These hills and gates and patches of mud are all that have been or will be.

Foundation of Reality

We live increasingly in a culture of cows. These do not need to cling to children’s tales or superstitions. They know the world is not flat. Science and reason solve mysteries formerly left to religion. Now we have morphine and highways and YouTube. As David Wells stated of our modern world, “The hand that gives so generously in the material realm also takes away devastatingly in the spiritual” (No Place for Truth, 56). What spiritual realm? many even ask.

But such questions are nothing new. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” wrote the ancient poet (Psalm 14:1). They cannot tell us who or why man is or how he got to this hill — but here he is and here he remains. Nothing lies above or beyond his existence on this patch of earth. He has bravely looked the situation in the face and contents himself to live head down, grazing this world for all it’s worth, unbothered by distant horizons. Out of sight, out of existence.

Christians know better. We understand that the physical realm — full of bones, flesh, trees, stones — is derivative of the spiritual. It must be so, for the God who created the physical is spirit (John 4:24). His immaterial speech created the material world; the invisible begot the visible. “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Hebrews 11:3).

But we must ask how much of this secular spirit we have unknowingly adopted. Here is probably the most important question you will be asked today: What is most real to you — this world or the next? What holds greater reality — the seen or the unseen? What is more ultimate — this physical realm or the spiritual?

“Can your life be explained apart from faith in God and the Lord Jesus Christ?”

You don’t necessarily need to tell us; your life answers well enough. Where do you spend your attention, energy, affections, time, talents? Can your life be explained apart from faith in God and the Lord Jesus Christ?

This can be a Copernican revolution, or a caution and reminder, if you accept it: The invisible world — the unseen, untouched, unmeasured — is most substantial, most enduring, most real. The immaterial world does not orbit our physical realm; the physical orbits the immaterial. Theirs is the unyielding reality; we inhabit silhouettes and shadows.

People Who Saw the Invisible

Faith, in other words, tells us that the world is turned upside down, flipped inside out. Faith does not regard the physical as unreal or unvaluable simply because it is physical — what the apostles saw with their eyes and touched with their hands is paramount to their witness to Christ (1 John 1:1). But faith sees beyond to the unseen. It demotes this world — its values, its dictates, its desires — in preference for the world to come. And it waits for this current physical world to be remade into that place where spiritual and physical perfectly abide: the coming New Heavens and New Earth.

Our spiritual forefathers — though without flushable toilets and supercomputers — knew to give precedence to the just-out-of-view, and wagered their very lives upon it. The history of the saints in Hebrews 11 shows the contrast of sights.

They were convinced of things they hoped for, were assured of things they could not yet see (Hebrews 11:1). Noah, for example, spent decades building a boat on dry land, preparing for the unseen flood. Abraham looked upon the only home he knew, turned his back, and wandered into the unknown to live in tents. He and Sarah then eyed wrinkled skin and aged bodies and waited to see children more numerous than the stars. Moses gazed at the shackles and the scarred backs of the Israelites and chose these over the gold coins, luxuries, and lush pleasures of Pharoah’s house — “for he looked to the reward” and “endured as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:26–27).

Others gazed past beatings and mockings and jail cells and death in this world to see a resurrection to a higher life (Hebrews 11:35–36). Salvation from their God was more real than swords of the enemy; conviction about the Christ felt more solid than their chains. They were those of whom this world was not worthy (Hebrews 11:37–39).

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised,” the writer admits. But notice their vision: “Having seen them and greeted them from afar,” they “acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). Their hearts smiled as they bowed into the grave because they saw promises coming. Promises more powerful than death. They declared plainly that they sought the life over the hill, their distant homeland (Hebrews 11:14). And their God did not disappoint, and will not disappoint them, when they awake in the better country they longed for, a city built by God, a heavenly one (Hebrews 11:14, 16). Do you see as they did?

This World, a Dream

This passing world is the phantom, the shadow. While great things are gained or lost in its short span, this age will soon break upon eternity as a tiny bubble against the rock shore. This life, so fragile, so fleeting. “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow” (Psalm 144:4). The wind passes over us, and we are gone (Psalm 103:16). Only a few more sunsets, a couple more nights of sorrow, a handful more days of laughter, and you will be gone. To chase this world and all its pleasures is to chase nothing but the wind.

“This age will soon break upon eternity as a tiny bubble against the rock shore.”

What is coming, what is near, what is not yet seen with physical eyes is most real. Light and momentary were Paul’s calculations of all his heaviest sorrows compared to the nearing “eternal weight of glory” for Christ’s people (2 Corinthians 4:17). He saw as we must see: “We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

So what now? Henry Scougal paints it perfectly when he writes in a letter to his friend,

We must therefore endeavor to stir our minds towards serious belief and firm persuasion of divine truths and the deeper sense and awareness of spiritual things. Our thoughts must dwell on divine truths until we are both convinced of them and deeply affected by them. Let us urge ourselves forward to approach the invisible world and fix our minds on immaterial things till we clearly understand that they are not dreams. No, indeed; it is everything else that is a dream or a shadow. (150)

Indeed; it is everything else that is a dream or a shadow.

So turn off the screen and gaze — and keep gazing — up at the heavens, where Christ is (Colossians 3:1–2). Despise the tantalizing trivialities, and keep your heart fixed on the next world — its glories, and foremost, its God. Wipe the crust of materialism from your eyes, wake from the sedative of worldliness, rise from slumber in this Enchanted Ground and look at Christ by faith until you see him more clearly than as trees walking. Spend your life exploring the mountains of glory summed up: “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

“Though you have not seen him,” Peter wrote to the early church, “you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8–9).

Beloved, we travel to a world unseen, a place to make this all a dream.

The first step is to survive the coordinated attacks from the children. An ex-nihilo stain suddenly appears on my daughter’s dress. An episode from my son responding to his sister’s “help.” A well-placed plastic Lego planted strategically at the bottom of the steps. And of course, a soiled-through diaper just as we head for the door.

Safely in the car, we prepare to play our part of our church’s ministry for that Sunday’s gathering. I have no formal duties this week — I am not preaching or welcoming or giving the prayer of thanksgiving — but I ready myself and my family for ministry nonetheless.

A worship song plays. Swerving along the main road cratered as the moon, we arrive at the chosen traffic light signaling time to pray for the service. The music pauses, and a hush falls on the car.

Father, please be with us as we worship you in spirit and in truth. Bless the pastor to preach your word with power. Give us ears to hear and obey your word. Have mercy on your beloved people. Let us see Christ. If any do not truly know you, save them. And Lord, prepare us now to be a blessing to your people.

After we park, we turn our energies to greeting the saints and getting all of our kids into the pew.

As the service begins, we focus on the lyrics being sung, asking God to warm our hearts and the hearts of those around us. My two oldest, imitating their parents, throw up their hands. We praise him with our whole person. Lord, accept our songs in your Son. Forgive our coldness and distractions.

As worship continues, my wife and I see some new faces, some faces we have not seen in a while, some faces we have been praying for. We note people we want to make sure to talk to after the service.

The preacher soon mounts the pulpit. O Lord, give him love for your glory, love for your people, love for your word. Bless him to preach as one speaking your oracles. Speak to us through this man.

After the preaching, after the final song and benediction are given, we look around — a big part of our ministry begins. Who would you have us speak with, encourage, welcome to the church, pray for, confront? How do you plan to use us to bless those around us in the pews this week?

Does My Church Need Me?

Here is the main point, the truth that can revolutionize your walk with the Lord and your experience of the local church: If you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, you have something to contribute to your local church every Sunday morning.

Do you believe that? Do you come not only to receive — which you should — but to also bless?

“If you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, you have something to contribute to your local church every Sunday morning.”

This has been hard for “normal” Christians to believe ever since the beginning. In the early church, members looked around the house churches in Corinth and saw different usefulness in the Lord, different giftings. Some seemed more essential, and others more dispensable.

Responding to such thinking, Paul writes, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. . .” (1 Corinthians 12:21–22).

Indispensable.

In too many churches today, the feet, hands, and ears say of themselves, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body” (1 Corinthians 12:16) — because we do not preach, teach, or host small group — we are not needed. Hands show up on Sundays, listless, merely to listen to the mouth speak. They rest in the audience, treating the local church as a theater that welcomes spectators to watch more prominent saints do actual ministry.

You are not leading worship. You are not formally greeting, nor praying in the service, nor giving communion. You aren’t ushering, or serving in the nursery, or leading a women’s ministry. What part do you really play? Everything, you think, would run just as smoothly without you.

I hope, normal Christian, that this liberates you from inactivity and relative anonymity on Sunday mornings: God has a vital part for you to play every time your local church gathers.

Ministry of the Pew

May I introduce you to what others have called the ministry of the pew? Ministry that you — normal Christian — perform every Lord’s day. Such is the ministry of the Not-Up-Fronts, the army sitting facing the pulpit.

“Some of the best ministry in healthy churches happens by those who never hold a microphone.”

For years I did not have any notion of this. I might bring people to church, to my pastor’s ministry. But over time I discovered that the pastor’s ministry does not replace mine; it refines mine. It makes our ministry better, more effective. Your pastor equips you for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ into mature manhood (Ephesians 4:12–13). This ministry finds some expression on Sunday mornings as you serve, you prepare, and you exercise your own gifts and acts of love within your local body. Much of the best ministry in healthy churches happens by those who never hold a microphone.

So what can this ministry look like? The possibilities are endless, but here are a few principles to get you started.

1. Arrive Early, Stay Late

Consider how the author of Hebrews describes the alternative to not gathering together on Sundays:

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24–25)

The opposite of neglecting to meet together is not just technically going to church — sneaking in the back and bolting at the last amen. Failing to meet entails not just a failure of proximity but a failure of encouragement. The writer assumes that meeting together will to lead to stirring each other up to love and good works. And not just the pastor stirring us up. You stirring me, and I stirring you. Or, in shorthand, we encourage one another as we see the Day draw near.

How can we do this if we avoid speaking with God’s people? How can we encourage one another if we come late and leave early? And consider creating space for after-service fellowship to carry over into lunch. It wasn’t too long ago when many churches considered the “Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10) as the Lord’s day. All day. Time around the saints is imperative for pew ministry.

2. Pray for a Burden for Someone

But do not just stay and linger around the church water fountain.

Lookout for the member you have not talked much with. Lookout for the new face, caught mid-pew, no one to talk with. Pray for the Lord to give you a burden for someone in the congregation — and then take courage and go speak with them.

What if it is awkward? Consider your Savior. The Son of God took on human flesh, allowed it to be flogged, broken, tortured, as his soul drank down the bitterest parts of his Father’s wrath as he considered our interests above his own. We are to share his mind. Can we not risk going introduce ourselves to others, or missing part of that football game, to have a real conversation with someone?

One thing I’ve had to learn is to not avoid eye-contact with people for fear of a conversation. Love looks people in the eye and invites dialogue. Prepare for such conversations. Arrive with a verse to share with someone. Arrive with the intention to leave with one person’s prayer request. Do not leave until you have met someone new. A dear saint at our church bakes banana bread and hands out a loaf every Sunday to one new guest. Get creative.

3. Risk Having Real Conversations

Once you’ve started to talk with someone new or a member you don’t know well, or someone you know already but mean to encourage, take risks in conversation. Instead of only discussing afternoon plans, how the weather has been lately, whether they have been enjoying work, steer the conversation into deeper waters.

I find in most conversations the point comes when I wonder, Are we really going to talk? Will we take things deeper, closer to the heart?

Will we talk at all about the sermon? Will we share how we can be praying each other’s families? Will we speak at all about our glorious Christ? Or maybe we need to risk asking why we haven’t seen them around much recently.

A way I try and take steps away from the shallows is to answer questions more honestly myself. How am I doing? I can tell them pretty good and thank them for asking. Or I can confess that I have been tired and irritable with my kids lately. If applicable, how have they grown in patience over their time parenting?

In conversation, deep usually calls to deep. Share with discretion, but invite depth. Show more of your heart, your victories, your struggles. It often frees others to do the same. I have found it usually only takes someone to jump in first.

Bring Your Baked Beans

This vision of pew ministry, as brief as it is here, takes intentionality. Takes effort. Takes prayer. Takes risk and sacrificing the easier road of: come, sing, listen, leave. The rewards more than compensate. Some of my most precious friendships sailed through the slim channel of decision: Will I ask for the Lord’s help? Will I stick around? Will I go over and talk to him? Will I go deeper? I’ve found that on the other side has been an ocean never enjoyed by the unwilling.

If you are Christ’s, you have an indispensable role every gathering. Refuse to squeeze church in. Refuse to be anonymous. Refuse to bring nothing to this spiritual potluck simply because you are not bringing the main dish. Bring your baked beans, your Sicilian Brussel sprouts, your honey-lemon asparagus. You never know how God might use what you bring to satisfy or sustain or even save a soul this Sunday.

Every Sunday morning, they perch among us. Listen closely and you can hear their wings flapping overhead. Singing voices have quieted, the preacher mounts his summit, the book is laid open. As the people fidget in the pew, readying to hear God speak through a man, the crows and ravens stir in anticipation. Caws and muffled croaks murmur in the rafters. Some sound eerily like a chuckle.

Jesus heard them as he got up to preach.

Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. (Mark 4:3–4)

As the preacher begins to scatter the good seed of God’s word about the congregation, it meets the path — the hard and trampled, unploughed and unhumbled heart. Disinterest, distraction, carelessness, laziness, ignorance all keep the seed out. The truth of Christ, of sin, of salvation goes into this person’s ear, rests atop the heart — never to enter it. Hearing, they do not hear. Seeing, they do not see. They never hear the word enough to turn or be forgiven.

Yet, the seed does not remain atop the hardened path — Jesus watches it get eaten by birds.

They watch from above. Heads jerk up-down-left-right-tilt. Eyes scour below, looking for seed uncovered, defenseless. There. A kernel rests for a few moments, exposed. Swoop — a dark flash falls as lightning from heaven — the seed disappears. The word about the dying God, the word of life, the word of warning, gone. Devoured. Perhaps a feather is left in its place.

Fowl Play

The picture Jesus gives within the parable of the sower unsettles. What could the birds refer to? We eavesdrop on what he said to his disciples:

The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. (Mark 4:14–15)

Who devours the rejected seed from sermon-hearers then and now? Satan. He and his legions perch overhead. He pecks at the soil of our hearts. His crooked beak steals away the miracle seed. His twitchy eyes shift to and fro looking for gospel truth to devour.

This is a horrible revelation: Demon birds hover overhead — keen, surveying — looking down upon your congregation for ignored gospel words, hungry. We can imagine our discomfort if physical birds lofted above us during the sermon. How agitated we would feel if every time Jesus was mentioned they swooped down and came pecking at our ears. But Jesus reveals something more alarming, more disturbing to his disciples: these ravens feed with malice upon words that would save sinner’s souls.

Most Regular Church Attender

Many of us do not think of Satan much; yet he thinks much of us. You might imagine him among the murderous, adulterous, and false religionists on a Sunday morning — not the church. Yet behold one of his great objects of villainy every Sunday: to rob hearts of truth-filled, Christ-exalting sermons.

“You and I might miss a Sunday sermon — Satan doesn’t. You and I might neglect feasting upon the word — he won’t.”

You and I might miss a Sunday sermon — he doesn’t. You and I might neglect feasting upon the word — he won’t. The devil is the most regular and most attentive church attender.

He does not feast for nourishment; he feasts so you won’t, that sinners might not find or continue with Christ. Luke’s account has it, “the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved” (Luke 8:12). Paul calls it, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Jesus would have us hear and through hearing with faith see his glory. “Listen! Behold!” he began his sermon. “Dismiss! Ignore!” is what the birds shriek.

But how do they do it?

How They Devour

How do demons steal the word from hearts? How do these birds devour the word? And while they do so decisively and finally with the unregenerate and dismissive sermon-hearer, my assumption and sad experience is that he has stolen ignored, half-heard sermons from God’s children’s mouths as well — though he cannot finally starve them into hell.

C.S. Lewis gives us an answer at the beginning of The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape, a senior demon, counsels his nephew, Wormwood, to stop employing argument to secure his patient’s unbelief. Rather, simply give him jargon, he counsels. To illustrate, he tells a story of one of his humans who wandered off into dangerous thoughts (Christian thoughts) while at the British museum.

Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years’ work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defense by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. (3)

Sunday afternoon lunch. How many profitable sermon words has the contemplation of the after-service meal stolen from believer and unbeliever alike? Simple suggestions from the enemy — about lunch, that annoying mannerism of the preacher, the volcanic warmth in the sanctuary, Mr. Jones’s glaring bald spot staring from the pew ahead, Mrs. Jones’s unavoidable perfume — anything and everything but the word.

Pecking at the Mind

But can Satan really distract us by placing thoughts into our minds? He can and does.

Satan distracts, suggests, and lies in order to steal the word from us. Satan incited David to sin and take a census of Israel (1 Chronicles 21:2). The devil filled Ananias’s heart to lie to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3). Satan “put it into the heart of Judas” to betray Christ (John 13:2). Paul warns us not to be deceived and have our thoughts led astray from a pure devotion to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:3). Satan lies to us, and when he does, he speaks out of his character as the father of lies (John 8:44). He captures people to do his will by untruths. His stratagems against us haven’t changed since the garden. Our enemy brings thoughts to our mind that are not wholly ours.

Commenting on this text, John Piper highlights threes ways Satan steals the seed: through inattention, ill-will, and ignorance. Commenting on inattention, he writes,

Satan works overtime to keep people from giving serious attention to the word of God. He may keep you up late Saturday night so that you can’t stay awake during the sermon or Sunday School. He may put a dozen different distractions around you in the service to take your mind away from the message. He may send thoughts into your mind about tomorrow’s meeting with your supervisor. If he can only distract you so that the sounds coming out of the preacher’s mouth go in one ear and out the other, he will have successfully taken away the word of God and made it ineffectual for you. Inattention is his game.

“When we long for a distraction, Satan will provide it.”

Now see Satan hovering above you, suggesting trifles, mocking, and bringing endless distractions to your mind to keep the truth from germinating. When the good word meets hard soil — or good but unprepared soil — he strikes to steal. When we long for a distraction, Satan will provide it. How many well-timed daydreams about the football game or this week’s plans have stolen serious contemplations about Christ from our own hearts Sunday after Sunday?

To Those Who Hear Sermons

Dear Christian reader, the pew is a battleground. Every week, either we will feast on the word or Satan will. He sees the significance of the word preached weekly to us — do we?

He visits your church. “That malicious spirit is unwearied in his efforts to do us harm,” J.C. Ryle assures.

He is ever watching for our halting, and seeking occasion to destroy our souls. But nowhere perhaps is the devil so active as in a congregation of Gospel-hearers. Nowhere does he labor so hard to stop the progress of that which is good, and to prevent men and women being saved. From him come wandering thoughts and roving imaginations — listless minds and dull memories — sleepy eyes and fidgety nerves — weary ears and distracted attention. In all these things Satan has a great hand. People wonder where they come from, and marvel how it is that they find sermons so dull, and remember them so badly! They forget the parable of the sower. They forget the devil. (Expository Thoughts on Luke, 158)

Is it not the case that sometimes we do not even make it to the parking lot before it is as though we never even heard a sermon? Let us remember Satan on Sunday mornings. Not out of paralysis — “for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4) — but out of preparation — “put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11).

And unconcerned sermon hearer, may I plead with you in closing? A man may refuse to leave his jail cell for the promise of freedom that Christ offers, but he might reconsider if he knew a tiger is in his cage. You are not alone in your unbelief; Satan is with you. He abets your pretense of atheism and lays siege on your attention and blinds you from the glory of Christ. Before you get to that parking lot bereft of what you just heard, Satan has visited you and ate what you would not.

Let us all, then, heed Jesus’s warning to be more careful how we hear (Luke 8:18).

What thoughts raced through the angels’ minds as they beheld their Creator stoop down to wash human feet? How much those burning seraphim must have wondered. They themselves blushed to expose such creatureliness before their King — worshiping the Son around the throne with feet wing-covered (Isaiah 6:2). What did they think now to watch the Holy One take water and clean those calloused, sweaty, unbeautiful toes?

Did they sing with the psalmist, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4). Did they sympathize with Peter’s astonished “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Did they see something right in Peter’s insistent “You shall never wash my feet” (John 13:6, 8)?

From heaven’s view, this moment must have outstripped Jesus’s many signs and wonders thus far. The angels had stood by when the Son created the world, when “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). What was multiplying bread compared to speaking the land and wheat into existence? The calming of a storm to the very creation of seas and wind and waves with a mere word? They already knew their God had power to raise the dead; they knew him as the God of all life.

But this sight was different. The King of kings played the part of slave of slaves. Had their eyes seen anything like it since he took on human flesh? Armies of angels watched their Captain — the eternal God from the Father’s right hand — bend before his creatures to wash their feet, hours before those feet fled in fear. Here bowed an act beyond omnipotence, an act Matthew Henry named a “miracle in humility.” Former wonders proved he was God; this proved what kind of God he was.

Psychology of Service

Oh, to see this act as angels did. Or better, to see this act as God does. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit moved John’s pen to capture it. Contained within his account are two utterly profound, God-revealed details that I too often have read past.

For years, this is how I (and perhaps you) recalled the spectacle:

Jesus . . . rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. (John 13:3–5)

We remember merely the external act. Jesus washed feet, and so should we. But how much better is the Bible’s telling than our remembering. Two discreet phrases get omitted:

During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper . . . and began to wash his disciples’ feet. (John 13:2–5)

The Holy Spirit, who searches even the mind of God (1 Corinthians 2:10), gives John insight into the very thoughts of Christ just before he bent low to serve. We get an open window into Jesus’s meditations of soul. These cannot be irrelevant details. John will not allow Jesus’s hands to wash until we know what sceptered him for service. The Spirit gifts us with the psychology of Jesus’s heavenly servanthood as he foreshadowed the coming cross.

So let us think after his two thoughts before he rose from dinner. And may what we see animate a lifetime of lowly service.

1. I am rich in God.

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands . . . rose from supper . . . and began to wash the disciple’s feet. (John 13:3–5)

That the Father had placed “all things” into Christ’s hands was no new thought for him. He felt the fullness from the beginning of his ministry: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35).

Christ’s service, here and from the beginning, was not an impoverished service. He did not consider that he had nothing in his hands, or had nothing better to fill them with than human feet. He never needed from his disciples; thus, he could give richly to his disciples. A rich King condescended.

By the Spirit, John makes known that Jesus again deliberates upon all that God had given him. He felt the treasures over in his mind and heart. What golden coins did he feel?

He felt the work, so far accomplished, that the Father gave him to do (John 17:4) — the teachings, the perfect acts of righteousness, the mighty works that a world full of books could not contain (John 21:25) — with the chief jewel now before him. Perhaps he felt the life surging in himself or pondered his authority over all flesh (John 5:25–27; 17:2). No doubt he felt the diamonds and rubies of the glory given him and the glory to be his again, now to be exalted as the God-man, in the Father’s presence (John 17:5). But most often in John, Jesus speaks of the Father having given him a people (John 6:35–40; 10:28–29; 17:1–3, 6–9, 11–15, 22–25).

That night he prays “for those whom you have given me” (John 17:9):

I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. (John 17:11–12)

“Jesus went low to his knees to wash his Bride’s feet — and down into the depths to raise her to himself.”

The Father had given him a people. Later that evening, he steps in front of them at his arrest to fulfill his promise: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one” (John 18:9). Death, Satan’s accusations, the Father’s just wrath pursued them. He was no hired hand — he laid down his life for his sheep. He had to, if they would be saved. He went low to his knees to wash his Bride’s feet — and down into the depths to raise her to himself and to the Father in heaven. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

2. I am going home to my Father.

Jesus, knowing that . . . he had come from God and was going back to God . . . began to wash the disciples’ feet. (John 13:3, 5)

We are not from the Father in the same way Jesus was. He is the Son, fully God, eternally existent “in the beginning” with God, in the beginning as God (John 1:1–2). The Father sent the Son from eternity past (John 7:29). The Son took on flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14); God entered his own story.

Jesus knew this. He incensed the Jews by claiming that before Abraham existed, he was (John 8:58). He would pray that evening, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). Jesus, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, came from the Father into the world to save his people from their sins.

During dinner, Jesus’s thoughts fed upon his future with his Father. A few verses earlier, John summarizes the whole brutal cross with a most beautiful phrase: “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father” (John 13:1). Jesus viewed his coming death, even the most horrific, shameful death, as the ferry to bring him home to his Father.

The joy outweighed the anguish: for the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame. For him (and for all his people), death does not submerge into the abyss; it carries the soul to the God it calls “Father.” Beyond the feet-washing and beyond the cross and beyond even his people and glory on the other side, Jesus reflected upon the one to whom he went: the Abba his soul loved.

No Service Too Low

The Master’s foot-washing foretold of his cleansing cross-work. And with it, he left us an example.

I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. (John 13:15–17)

Christ, our great Master and filth-washer, has left us an example — not just in his actions, but in his considerations. In the psychology of the God-man’s service, he shows us that we too must serve from knowing our fullness and our future in him.

“Born of God, our destiny is to be with God, forever. What service is too low when you consider a future so high?”

We often do not serve because we think ourselves wanting. To serve others, we believe, increases our deficits. Yet consider that in Christ, all things are yours. Remove your outer robe, and you have not removed God’s favor. Tie the servant’s towel around your waist, and you have not forfeited your room in your Father’s house. Take in your hands the mud-stained, smelly, unlovely feet of fellow saints and sinners, and you shall still take hold of your place next to the Son to reign. What can separate us from the love of Christ? While you and I are enveloped in such blessing — the least of which is experienced now — whose feet can we not wash?

Or consider that, like Christ, you sail upon a vessel heading to the Father. Jesus made it so. He went to Calvary to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house (John 14:2–3). Peter writes of the cross, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Born of God, our destiny is to be with God, forever. What service is too low when you consider a future so high?

You are rich in God now, and richer still as you head to God, your full inheritance. Whom can we not serve along the road to such a glory? The angels saw the Son wash human feet: may they see such beautiful service replicated by his people throughout this selfish world. May they see our satisfaction in God performed in our service of others.

The King returns to his kingdom after a long journey. His castle stands tall. The banners flap above the fortress. The soldiers still wear his colors and speak his language. All is as it was, externally.

He first notices something amiss as he walks among the people. They still consult his precious book he left them — but not with one eye anxious for his return. The people keep many of his wise precepts, it is true, yet he himself is little sought after, little missed. He overhears prayer in his name, yet few gaze over the walls, pleading at the heavens for him to come again.

How many have made his return their lifelong psalm?

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,     and in his word I hope;my soul waits for the Lord     more than watchmen for the morning,     more than watchmen for the morning. (Psalm 130:5–6)

We have his laws, his book, his name, his people, his songs, his ordinances — but not him as he intended it to be. Have we really noticed? Have his good gifts become enough for us? Are you and I really waiting for him to return?

Behold, He Comes

The final picture of the church recorded in Scripture shows her in a posture of yearning. Her best hopes and expectations find summary in one word: Come!

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” (Revelation 22:17)

Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22:20)

When the deep enchantments of worldliness wears off, we better hear this groaning of the Spirit within, crying out for Jesus to return to us. This alone is the consummation of heaven for God’s people:

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21:3)

Immanuel, God with us, is not just his Christmas name. This must be his everlasting name, lest our heaven live elsewhere.

“The church’s best hopes and expectations find summary in one word: ‘Come!’”

A tearless eternity? Pointless, if the King of glory is not there to wipe sorrows away. Reigning on the throne of the cosmos? Child’s play, if we reign not with him. The death of death, the abolition of sin, perfection of life with angels and endless comforts? A cage and a prison, if Christ be not with us. The insistence at the bottom of every born-again heart, the one desire it will not be refused: Come, Lord Jesus!

Come Quickly

It is not enough for our faith to know simply that Jesus is coming back. Eventually works drowsiness and mischief in our hearts. Unintentionally, we banish him to the ever-Tomorrow, the distant Never. We no longer expect him anytime soon, so we drop anchor and make do without him. “Your kingdom come,” we begin to pray from memory, but not from the heart.

Thus, in the final chapter of Scripture, Jesus tells us more.

Behold, I am coming soon. (Revelation 22:7)

Behold, I am coming soon. (Revelation 22:12)

Surely I am coming soon. (Revelation 22:20)

He exclaims that he is not just coming, but coming quickly. This little adverb moves his return from inevitable to imminent, from someday to any day.

Jesus would have us waiting, expectant, peeking again and again at the clouds with childlike anticipation. Quickly sends us to live atop the watchtower, squints for his appearance upon the horizon. Jesus would not have his people take naps at the news of his return.

Stay awake — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning — lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake. (Mark 13:35–37)

He wants us talking about his return, hoping in his return, praying for his return. He expects us to trim our lamps, prepare the house, and ready the Master’s favorite meal. He is coming back, soon.

Counting Time

How do we appropriate this revelation two thousand years later? Quickly, the scoffer thinks. Two thousand years stretches the word beyond credibility. How can we truly believe such a promise?

What is this but the insect speaking back to the mountains about time? The God spanning everlasting to everlasting — not the gnat of a few seconds — says quickly. The forest of Lebanon — not the housefly — bellows, “I come soon.” We sprout in the morning and die in the afternoon; his roots go deep. The Ancient of Days is his name.

The humble psalmist teaches Israel to sing to her Maker, “A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4). The apostle tells us not to overlook this fact, “that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). Generations of men have come and passed; his moon has only seen two nights. He “is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:9).

And he waits purposefully. He waits for the last sheep to come into the fold, and then he shall return. Yet his return will be swift and when most do not expect. As with the final days of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the last morning before the Flood, when he comes, all wedding planning, football games, and vacations will be rendered obsolete.

Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. (Revelation 22:12–13)

Men will reap what they have sown. Repent and believe.

For Love and War

Christian, your Lord comes quickly. Does this not speak of your Savior’s love?

As the Bride cries, “Come! Come! Come!” he does not respond, “Fear not; I will come back when I get around to it.” He doesn’t say he’ll add it to his list. He assures, “Behold, I will come with haste, with intention, in earnest.” Quickly lays this promise upon our hearts: “I will not tarry a moment beyond what is best.”

Once the last recipient of my crimson blood is washed, once the final sheep makes it into the fold, I will be there and bring you where I am. In a moment shorter than a lightning flash, I will be there. I will not walk. I will not delay.

“In a moment, the trumpet shall blast, the wall between this world and the next shall fall, and the Lord will be before us.”

Will he find us looking over the walls for his coming?

This world is not our home. We are not yet in our element. We open the window and send our dove to and fro about this earth, finding that it returns to us having found no solid homeland. But in a moment, the trumpet shall blast, the wall between this world and the next shall fall, and he will be before us, with us. The Lord of lords and King of kings, dazzling as the sun in all its strength. This present world will pass as a dream. We will look and shout and point,

Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him,     that he might save us.This is the Lord; we have waited for him;     let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. (Isaiah 25:9)