By His obedience to God’s will, even in the things that He suffered, He secured salvation for us. As our high priest, Christ teaches us that we have no other way of dealing with our moral failure and its penalty than to come to God and say, “Nothing in my hand I bring, / Simply to thy cross I cling.”

For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. — JOHN 6:38
Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. — HEBREWS 10:7; CF. PSALM 40:7–8
Jesus came to earth to do the will of the Father. Ultimately, the will of God is His righteous decree that determines all that comes to pass and causes all things to work together for His glory (Eph. 1:11; cf. Deut. 29:29). Everything that comes to pass is the will of God, and He accomplishes that in Christ (Col. 1:16–17). But when Christ speaks about coming to do God’s will, He is referring to the will that God has revealed “unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). God’s revealed will is breathed out of His heart and establishes His expectations for His people.
It may surprise us, then, to hear Jesus refer to two wills: His own and His Father’s. In doing so, Jesus opens a window on His humanity. As Andrew Murray says, “Christ had a human will. For instance, he ate when he was hungry, and he shrank from suffering when he saw it coming.”1 While His will was not sinful, Jesus still had to deny it. In taking on flesh, Christ undertook the ultimate challenge of conforming His human will to His Father’s divine will.
Jesus met that challenge; He did the will of God in all things. He performed every duty of the law (Matt. 5:17) and resisted all temptation to transgress it. At the end of His earthly life He could say, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4).
James 4:17 says, “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” We commit sins of omission every day, but Jesus never did. Indeed, He sometimes went out of His way to heal just one person (Mark 5:1–20). He showed compassion to people who were guilty of notorious sins (John 4:1–30; 8:1–11). The disciples accused their master of being unreasonable when He fed crowds of five thousand and then four thousand, because no one could be expected to provide for such multitudes (Mark 6:35–37). But Jesus had compassion on them (Matt. 15:32).
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For many of our Reformed and Puritan forebears, death spelled victory. For them, death did not extinguish the light, but it merely put out the lamp because the eternal dawn has come. We die to die no more, for in and through Christ, death brings life and perfect and complete victory in its wake—forever!

Our lives are not just a journey to death. They are a journey to one of two eternal places: heaven or hell. In heaven all evil is walled out and all good is walled in. Heaven is an eternal day that knows no sunset. Hell is an eternal night that knows no sunrise. Which destination are you heading for? Are you a true Christian—a follower of Jesus Christ? Do you trust only in the doing and dying of Jesus—in His active and passive obedience—as your ground of acceptance with God? If you were arrested today for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Are you born again, justified by gracious faith alone, and on the narrow path to the Celestial City?
If so, you may have every hope that your death will be victorious; that, despite the discomfort and pain of the misery associated with dying, you may die joyfully and delightfully by looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith, resting in justification by faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone. As Paul put it, “We…rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2).
Dear believer, when we die, then “there shall be no more death” (Rev. 21:4). You will ascend triumphantly, gloriously, majestically, peacefully, and joyfully into the heaven of heavens, where you will be a blessed part of one undivided body of Christ and His church (see John 17). There Christ will present you as His bride to His Father without spot or wrinkle in soul or body to be permanently instated into heaven to dwell forever with your precious Lamb: “For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Rev. 7:17).
You will be in tearless glory living with Christ forever, crying out, “Worthy is the Lamb!” You will drink of the fountains of the full enjoyment of God, praising Him for all eternity in the most holy, glorious, and perfect activities: worshipping God, resting in Him, praising Him in song, serving Him forever in His temple, exercising authority with Him, and above all, gazing upon the face of Jesus while communing with Him, and enjoying loving the triune God more fully than ever. You will be communing with the holy angels and redeemed saints made perfect (cf. Luke 18:7; Rev. 6:9–11). Delightful, victorious, holy, happy, eternal day when we shall ever be with the Lord—sin-free in Immanuel’s land, ever growing in our capacity and fullness of knowing and relishing Him!
Examples of Victorious Death
God gives dying grace to His people for death’s hour. Some of His people die with little fanfare. They depart this life quietly, serenely, with barely a sigh. For others, the king of terrors is more violent, but Jesus brings them through in the end and gives them the victory. Still others receive special measures of dying grace, so that their deathbeds become their best pulpits. Such was the case with the well-known Scottish theologian, Thomas Halyburton (1674–1712), who died at the age of thirty-seven. To read in his Memoirs the nearly seventy pages of his last sayings, which were recorded by those around his deathbed, is to dwell in the vestibule of heaven. Here is only one example: “Come, sweet Lord Jesus, receive this spirit, fluttering within my breast like a bird to be out of a snare. I wait for thy salvation as the watchman watcheth for the morning. I am weary with delays. I faint for thy salvation. Why are His chariot wheels so long a coming?”1
History is full of tens of thousands of saints who have died victoriously in Jesus with great joy, despite the affliction death brought. Biblical examples, such as those of Paul (2 Tim. 4:6–8) and Stephen (Acts 7:54–60), are well known. So are the cases of many martyrs, such as John Huss (1369–1415), Hugh Latimer (c. 1486–1555) and Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500–1555), and repentant Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556). Cranmer recanted under pressure from Roman Catholic Queen Mary (1516–1558), but he recanted his recantation, went to the stake, and as the flames crept up his body, he stretched his right hand into the midst of the flames, and cried out: “This hand hath offended”—and died horrifically but victoriously!
One of my (Joel Beeke) favorite simple accounts of a victorious death is that of a Scotsman, David Dickson (c. 1583–1662), well-known for writing the first commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith and for his commentaries on the Psalms, Matthew, and Hebrews. When his friends were gathered around his deathbed, one of them asked him when in the throes of a painful death what he was thinking. Dickson replied, “I have taken all my bad deeds and put them on a heap, and I have taken my good deeds as well, and I have put them on the same heap. And I have run away from that heap into the arms of Jesus. I die in peace.”2
Still others have written helpfully about dying and death. Affliction was a life-long companion to Puritan pastor, Richard Baxter (1615–1691). He wrote a 700-page classic, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, while suffering from tuberculosis (a severe respiratory disease with long-term debilitating effects), chronic pain, and the frequent prospect of dying. In this condition, Baxter looked death in the face and experienced the sufficient grace of God to sustain him until he fell asleep in Jesus in 1691.
Baxter impresses upon his readers that suffering, sickness, and death are to be expected in this life; they are the norm at present. According to Baxter, these miseries remind Christians they are not to seek physical comfort, rest, and healing here and now so much as we are to seek to know Christ better. He says that when we are “fastened to [our] beds with pining sickness, the world is nothing, and heaven is something.” Further, he writes:
O healthful sickness! O comfortable sorrows! O gainful losses! O enriching poverty! O blessed day that ever I was afflicted! Not only the green pastures and still waters, but the rod and staff, they comfort us. Though the word and Spirit do the main work, yet suffering so unbolts the door of the heart, that his word has an easier entrance.
Baxter describes disease, dying, and facing death as providential means God uses to permit “easier entrance” of the Spirit-blessed Word into the human heart, so that it may transform us and enable us to rejoice in the midst of sorrow.
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Contrary to the false hopes encouraged by agnostic modern thought and modern medicine, the death of the body is only the beginning of sorrows for those who have been so foolish as to live apart from God and continue in sin. After death there is a day of judgment slated on the calendar of God; all must appear before His tribunal, and none shall be spared (2 Corinthians 5:10).

There is a remarkable difference between how an unbeliever and a believer look at dying, death, and the afterlife. For the unbeliever or the agnostic, death is mysterious and the afterlife is even more dubious. For the believer, death is not an extinction or a terminus but only a transition, a junction. Though solemn, it is demystified in Christ and the afterlife is the best life. Let’s consider this contrast.
After Death—Agnosticism’s Version
Sally, the hospice nurse, stood by Bruno’s bedside.1 Bruno was a prisoner with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), who had been transferred to the hospital with his fifth bout of pneumonia in the past six months.2 He was serving a life sentence for the murder of his elderly neighbor, who had attempted to stop him from stealing his narcotic pain medications. While incarcerated, he developed ALS, underwent a tracheotomy, and became dependent on a ventilator to breathe.3 Bruno had a choice: return to prison on the ventilator until suffering the next bout of pneumonia with the possibility of dying by suffocation; or, have the ventilator withdrawn, receiving medications to manage his respiratory distress, and dying in the luxury of a hospice facility. Needless to say, Bruno, who thought he was the victim of injustice, did not like his choices.
As he lay silent with expressive eyes, paralyzed, his right wrist handcuffed to the bedrail, and a prison guard by his side, Sally presented her case for hospice care: “Bruno, I know this is a difficult choice to make, but we will keep you comfortable after the ventilator is removed. You won’t have to go back to prison—you won’t suffer anymore.”
Sally was presenting the common view that what happens after death is in some way better than persisting in this present state, even for unrepentant murderers who see themselves as victims of the system. In Europe and America, it is quite acceptable to choose or create a self-customized hereafter. If one wants to believe in nirvana, reincarnation, a happy hunting ground, heaven, any combination of these possibilities, or else simple annihilation, the modernist will not object—provided the belief is not imposed on others. According to the modern mindset, no one really knows what happens after death. “What is emphatically clear is that everyone is dying, and one day, we will all die,” says the modernist, “so why not permit the imagination to wander when it comes to the hereafter?”
For many centuries the church was the predominant institution addressing dying, death, and what happens after death, not hospices and medical institutions that could be indifferent to or at odds with traditional Christianity. Following the beginning of the scientific age in the seventeenth century, the medicalization of death in the nineteenth century, and the increasing effectiveness of medical science in the decades that followed, the church was pushed aside. A paradigm shift occurred. The church is now on the periphery and modern medicine has shifted to the center. Moving into the twentieth century, many hospitals in the West, once Christian institutions in purpose, ethics, and practice, have become Christian in name only. Influenced by the rise of higher criticism, liberal theology, and the social gospel, these hospitals no longer affirm a supernatural-natural Christ-centered worldview grounded in Holy Scripture. In the twenty-first century, modern medicine is eager to fill the void left by the traditional, confessional, and biblical church.
Since the two absolutes of dying and death have become medicalized—that is, as aspects of human experience to be addressed by doctors and nurses rather than by ministers of the Word or one’s fellow Christians—it is not surprising to see healthcare professionals, like Sally, asserting an unqualified view of what happens after death to provide answers, comfort, and hope. This position is commonly referred to as agnosticism, which is derived from the Greek agnosis meaning “a state of unknowing,” that is, with respect to metaphysical questions such as the existence of God or an afterlife. Thus, an agnostic claims not to know matters beyond his or her ability to observe or quantify them. This approach to empirical or scientific facts has the appearance of humility. As a philosophical system, however, agnosticism is a proud and unconditional assertion in which all that can be known with certainty must be measured, tested, demonstrated, and verified by hands-on experience. Agnosticism is an outright rejection of non-empirical truth, which claims, without empirical validation, the impossibility of knowing truth outside the process of scientific investigation!
Two major issues stand behind agnosticism in the contemporary West: pluralism and the eventual failure of medical science to sustain life. In western democracies, citizens have a right to believe what they choose, so long as they do not act on their beliefs in violation of civil law and they tolerate other people’s beliefs. All of these personal views address the hereafter in some way, so agnosticism provides a vehicle for tolerance and affirmation.
Another primary factor already alluded to is the innate human need for answers, comfort, and hope. Dying and death are absolute—we are dying, and one day we will cease to be as we are now. This is mysterious, uncomfortable, and even dreadful. Someday medical science will fail us, when the doctor says he can do no more for us. After all the optimistic counsel from well-meaning healthcare professionals and hopeful state-of-the-art medical treatments, dying and death stand firm and fixed on our human agendas—then what? In modern medical practice a referral to hospice is made, and end-of-life experts come alongside to support individualized answers, provide comfort in the midst of suffering, and affirm one’s self-customized hopes for some good or life after death.
Death as a Natural Part of Life
In a similar way, modern medicine commonly promotes the view that death is a natural and normal part of human existence. Since dying is a process running parallel with life, in modern medicine the death of the body has become associated with the outworking of natural laws of life. In medical literature, one will often find dying and death associated with pregnancy and birth, or as a stage in a natural process, much like a caterpillar emerging from a cocoon as a butterfly. This interpretation is rooted in the rise of evolutionary biology in the late nineteenth century. According to this viewpoint, no line exists between dying and the death of the body, because they are both the outworking of natural laws of survival occurring in the larger cycle of life. Thus, people facing death should accept and even welcome death with optimism as a transition to a self-customized hereafter.
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Great sinners need a great Savior. That is exactly what Christ is, for He is “able also to save them to the uttermost” (Heb. 7:25)! That is life-changing news for the “chief of sinners.” If Christ can save Paul, who was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurer of innocents, He can also save you, no matter how hell-worthy you may be. Ask Jesus Christ for the grace of repentance and faith that you may put all your trust in Him (cf. Acts 5:31).

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. — 1 TIMOTHY 1:15
For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. — HEBREWS 9:26; CF. 1 JOHN 1:9; 3:5
In Christ’s first coming, He implemented a rescue plan conceived in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. He did not come to promote holiday cheer, boost end-of-year sales, or serve as the central figure in a nativity scene. He came to save sinners.
To save sinners, Christ had to put away what makes people sinners— namely, sin. At the dawn of man’s history, sin, like an unwelcome virus, infected mankind easily enough. But how could it be exterminated? God was already answering this question through the Old Testament sacrificial system. One of the main themes in the epistle to the Hebrews is the repetitious labors of Old Testament priests: “And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death” (Heb. 7:23). Morning and evening, priests placed burnt offerings for sin on an altar, the fire of which was never to go out (2 Chron. 13:11; Lev. 6:12).
Nonetheless, sins were not fully extinguished through this system (Heb. 10:4). Old Testament sacrifices were merely a shadow, or copy, of what was to come (Heb. 9:23); thus, the priesthood of Aaron could have sacrificed burnt offerings for a million years without putting away a single sin. The writer of Hebrews says the seed of Adam needed a better priesthood to put away sins—a priesthood “after the order of Melchisedec” (Heb. 7:17; cf. Ps. 110:4). Likewise, a better sacrifice offered in a better tabernacle was necessary. When a truly perfect sacrifice was offered in the tabernacle of heaven, sin would finally be put away.
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The cross looms large and men, women, boys, and girls see themselves as crucified with Christ. The gospel humbles us lower than the most scathing human criticism, but it simultaneously exalts us into God’s gracious favor so that the negative appraisal of our fellow man no longer devastates us.

A healthy church is one that is shaped by the gospel. Our people need to see the beauty of Christ. Nothing will enable them to lovingly and humbly give and receive constructive critique more than heart-searching, expository gospel preaching. This is our great task and privilege as ministers—to proclaim Christ. And as we do, whether we recognize it or not, we will be promoting a healthy culture of criticism.
What is it that fuels both a hypercritical spirit and an aversion to criticism? It is a high view of self. Man criticizes incessantly in order to feel better about self. Man runs from or suppresses criticism directed his way for the same purpose, to protect and promote the self. There is a certain high-mindedness native to us all that is averse to both giving and receiving constructive critique.
At the cross, however, man’s high-mindedness is utterly decimated as he comes face-to-face with the savage heinousness of sin. Sin is insurrection of the highest sort, a rebellious uprising against the Creator and Ruler of all things. While the law certainly does much to show us our sin, it is actually the gospel that gives us the most alarming impression of the infinite affront that our sin is to God.
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To have a firm foundation for keeping the Sabbath in a profitable manner, you must be convinced from the Scriptures that the Sabbath is the sacred day of God. Then you are able to wake up on the first day of the week and say to yourself, “My God has set apart one day in seven for Himself since the beginning of time. Christ declared that He is Lord of the Sabbath. I am Christ’s disciple, and because I love Him I will keep His commandments. Today is the Lord’s Day, and I will keep it holy.”

Isaiah 58:13 says, “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable” (emphasis added). You will not be able to wholeheartedly pursue a profitable Sabbath day until you are convinced that the Lord’s Day is truly set apart by God as sacred time devoted to Him. You must be able to say with absolute conviction, “This is God’s holy day.” If your conscience is gripped with a sense that God commands us to honor the Lord’s Day, then you will do what it takes to honor it. And, if you love the Lord, you will do it with pleasure because it is His will.
The Sabbath was instituted by God as His holy day.1 In the fourth commandment God says, “The seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God” (Ex. 20:10). These words remind us that God commanded us to observe the weekly Sabbath and that He claims the day as His own. As God said through Isaiah, it is “my holy day.” Not to devote the day to the purposes and activities commanded for its sanctification robs God of that which belongs to Him.
The Sabbath is a creation ordinance. Genesis 2:1–3 recounts how on the seventh day of the creation week, God rested from all His work as Creator. God, who does not need to rest, rested as an example for the man and woman He had created in His image. They were to follow His example, resting from their work as He did from His; thus it is a divine institution which God crowned with His blessing, setting it apart for all of time. A common error is to assume that the Sabbath originated with the giving of the law at Sinai. Such a view ignores the fact that Exodus 20 does not introduce the Sabbath as something new but rather acknowledges something ancient and historic that is to be remembered and observed by God’s people: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8).
What, specifically, is to be remembered in the pattern of six days of work punctuated by a day of holy rest? “In six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Ex. 20:11). Every Sabbath we remember that we are not in this world by chance; we are not products of evolution. Every Sabbath God declares to us, “Remember that you are accountable to Me. Remember that you are under My authority as your Creator.” Jesus Christ owned the Sabbath. The first three evangelists record that He said, “The Son of man is Lord of the sabbath” (Matt. 12:8; Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5).
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If you had the opportunity to spend a whole day with someone very dear to you, wouldn’t you be glad for it? Imagine a day to be with a kind father or mother, a loving spouse, or a dear friend. Would you resent putting aside your work to be with this loved one? Wouldn’t you avoid anything that would distract or interrupt your time together? Let that be your attitude towards the Sabbath. Make it a day of love for God and love for Christ as Lord of the Sabbath day.

If we keep the Sabbath with delight, then the Lord promises us that He “will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.” To “ride upon the high places of the earth” refers to the way God provided for all of Israel’s needs in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land (Deut. 32:13).1 The “heritage” or inheritance of Jacob is more than the land of Canaan; according to Isaiah 54, it is the spiritual and eternal riches promised in the new covenant.2 This is not then just a promise of provision for our daily needs, but a promise of inheritance in the eternal kingdom of God.
The Sabbath is a sign of the ultimate glory of the church’s future.3 The prophecy of Isaiah closes with the announcement of the promise of the new heavens and the new earth for God’s people: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isa. 65:17). In this new creation, the labor of God’s people shall be wholly redeemed from the curse that has mingled pain and death with all our work: “They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them” (v. 23).
This new (or renewed) order of creation will abide as the consummation of the promise of redemption. Not only is the labor of God’s people to be wholly redeemed from the curse; the Sabbath also will at last come into its own as the universal day for the worship of Jehovah. Such is the promise of God: “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD” (Isa. 66:22–23).
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God grafted human nature into His divine Son. The result was not a hybrid demigod like Hercules or some kind of Superman. Rather, both the divine nature and the human nature retained their individual, essential properties. But now man was joined to God in one living Person, Jesus Christ. In Him, believers draw life from the divine root and bear fruit for God’s glory. In botanical grafting, two plants of the same genus or of like nature are combined. The miracle of the Incarnation is that God grafted the finite into the infinite. Thus, the Infinite One became bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh.

Teaching is hard work. When Jesus and His disciples got into a boat after a full day of teaching, the disciples were not surprised that Jesus fell asleep. The gently rocking waves of the Sea of Galilee might have lulled them to sleep, too. But on their way across the big lake, a terrible storm arose.
The southern end of the Sea of Galilee is a deep valley lined by cliffs. Wind can suddenly come roaring into that valley and whip the sea into a storm.[The Reformation Study Bible, ed. R. C. Sproul (Orlando: Ligonier, 2005), 1422. Thanks to Paul Smalley for his assistance on this article, which is slightly enlarged from an address I gave for a regional conference of the Philadelphia Conference of Reformed Theology (PCRT) in Quakertown, Pennsylvania on November 12, 2010.]
Andrew, Peter, James, and John had seen many storms in their lifetime of fishing, but this one overwhelmed them. The wind howled and the waves crashed. The boat began taking on water. It rode lower in the water so that each wave threatened to fill it. Fear gripped the men. Their boat was sinking; would they all die?
They turned to Jesus, who was still sleeping, and shouted over the roaring sea, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” Jesus stood up and rebuked the wind and the sea. In an instant, wind and sea were stilled. But the men were still terrified. “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” they asked (Mark 4:35–41; cf. Pss. 65:7; 89:9).
Why was Jesus asleep in the midst of the storm? Why didn’t the storm awaken Him? The obvious answer is, His humanity. He was tired. He was worn out after a long day’s work and needed rest to renew His strength.
How did Jesus calm the storm? Again, the answer is obvious: His deity. Jesus had such power over creation that His words instantly changed the weather. He did not use technology, magic charms, or rituals. Jesus didn’t even pray. He just said to the storm, “Be silent!” Christ has the power of God, and His disciples recognized it when they said, “Even the wind and the sea obey Him.”
But the mystery here is whether Jesus was tired or all-powerful. Was He drained of energy or full of energy? Was Christ limited so He needed restoration, or was He infinite in ruling over creation by His mere word? The answer, according to Scripture, is both. Jesus is both limited in His humanity and infinite in His deity as Lord over creation.
Jesus Christ the God-Man
John 1:14 says, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” As is typical of him, John uses simple words to express a very deep truth. Incarnation is a Latin word that means “becoming flesh.” In the Incarnation, God became human flesh.
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Gouge presented a remarkably insightful treatment of the beauty and glory of Christian marriage. His vision for matrimony was holistic and practical, yet very much centered around the Lord. Husbands and wives have different roles, but do not live on separate levels. Instead they live together as companions and coworkers for the glory of God, for the good of each other, and for the good of others, especially their children.

The Puritans often spoke of “duties,” and Gouge was no exception. By “duty” he did not mean something done out of mere obligation and without heartfelt joy. We must serve the Lord with gladness (Ps. 100:2). But the word duty does remind us that God’s will is not just a principle for successful living or personal fulfilment; it is God’s command and our responsibility. Like most Puritans, Gouge treated the duties of marriage in three sections: mutual duties, the husband’s duties, and the wife’s duties. The following four principles come from Gouge’s first section on mutual duties.
1. Guard the oneness of your marriage.
The Author of marriage is God, and by His ordinance He makes two people into “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Gouge called this “matrimonial unity,” and said that “they two who are thereby made one, [are] constantly to remain one, and not to make themselves two again.” He quoted 1 Corinthians 7:10–11: “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.”1
Husbands and wives should stay together, not only in the legal bond in marriage, but actually sharing life as they dwell together (1 Peter 3:7). At times, “weighty and urgent affairs” of church or state require absences, or one’s occupation takes one away on travels for a time. But such separations should be received with sadness, and the couple should quickly return to share the same home and the same bed. The first step to helping each other is being with each other.2
2. Enjoy the sexual purity of your marriage.
Gouge called this “matrimonial chastity,” for the Puritans regarded as chastity not only single people abstaining from sex, but also married people enjoying sexual intimacy with their spouses (1 Cor. 7:2–4; Heb. 13:4).3 Adultery was a horrendous crime against the marital covenant, and Gouge condemned it in both men and women.4 To avoid this, Gouge urged spouses to give each other “due benevolence,” which was a euphemism for sexual love. He wrote:
One of the best remedies that can be prescribed to married persons (next to an awful fear of God, and a continual setting of Him before them, wherever they are) is, that husband and wife mutually delight each in the other, and maintain a pure and fervent love between themselves, yielding that due benevolence to one another which is warranted and sanctified by God’s word, and ordained of God for this particular end. This “due benevolence” (as the apostle calls it [1 Cor. 7:3]) is one of the most proper and essential acts of marriage: and necessary for the main and principal ends of it.5
This teaching was revolutionary in its day. Marriage and especially sex had fallen under a dark cloud in the early church. Such notables as Tertullian, Ambrose, and Jerome believed that, even within marriage, intercourse necessarily involved sin.6 This attitude inevitably led to the glorification of virginity and celibacy. By the fifth century, clerics were prohibited from marrying.7 The archbishop of Canterbury wrote in the seventh century that a husband should never see his wife naked and that sex was forbidden on Sundays, for three days before taking Communion, and for forty days before Easter.8 Tragically, romance became linked to mistresses and adultery, not marriage.9
Puritan preachers taught that the Roman Catholic view was unbiblical, even satanic. They cited Paul, who said that the prohibition of marriage is a doctrine of devils (1 Tim. 4:1–3).10
The Puritans viewed sexual intimacy within marriage as a gift of God and as an essential, enjoyable part of marriage. Gouge said that husbands and wives should make love “with good will and delight, willingly, readily, and cheerfully.”11 However, the couple’s sexual life should be tempered in measure and timing by proper concern for each other’s piety, weakness, or illness.12
The ideal of marriage as romantic companionship was a far greater revolutionary concept in Puritan teaching than is often realized today.
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Christian prayer is an act of worship (Ps. 65:1–2). As we come to know God in Christ, we are moved to praise Him as Almighty God and our Father in heaven. As we experience God’s work in our daily lives, we learn to thank Him for the many good and perfect gifts He offers us as mercies from His fatherly hand (James 1:17). We also learn to rejoice in trials, hardships, loss, and sorrow, since these come to us not by chance but according to God’s will to accomplish His purpose for us (Rom. 8:28, 29).

Prayer is the act of forging a connection between two specific points: our human needs and the resources of God offered to us in Christ. You can start at either point, and reach to the other in prayer.
True Christians have discovered that God, in Christ, offers them grace, mercy, pardon, peace, life, and love. This is revealed in the gospel, or “good news” of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:2–4). And true Christians have experienced how much they need these things—indeed, how the heart cries out for them in prayer (Ps. 84:2).
Prayer identifies the desires of the heart and expresses them to God. It can be silent or spoken. It can be as simple as “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13) or as detailed as the high-priestly prayer of Christ (John 17), in which He poured out everything He wanted God the Father to give to those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It can even take the form of a song. The Psalms are called “the prayers of David” (Ps. 72:20).
Christian prayer embraces God’s will as revealed in Scripture for its rule or guide. The goal is to ask for things in harmony with what God wants for us.
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