Audio Transcript

Every once in a while, we talk about writing on the podcast. Several emails over the years have asked if you would coach aspiring writers, Pastor John. Obviously, many Christian writers gravitate to you as a master of the craft. That’s why, over the years, APJ episodes have covered the calling to write, how to write poems and write biographies, even down into the details of grammar and punctuation, on the no-nos of ghostwriting, and then (most popular of all) on productivity — how it is that you create so many books and sermons and articles and APJ episodes and all that, with advice for how all Christian creators can maximize their own output. All those topics have been well covered in the past, as you can see in my summary in the new APJ book on pages 411–16.

But we’ve never gotten down into the weeds of how to write a sentence. “Sentences change lives” — you’ve said that before on the podcast. But from your perspective, what makes a great, edifying sentence? How do you write and rewrite sentences like this? And what would be your five (or so) pieces of advice for crafting edifying prose, beyond all that we’ve already covered on the podcast — something relevant for book authors and for Christians who just want to send an edifying text message? What would you say?

I start with the conviction that our words, whether spoken or written, really matter. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). That’s powerful. “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life” (Proverbs 10:11). How many times have I prayed, “O God, for my children, for my wife, for my church, for my books, for my podcast, make my mouth a fountain of life.” Or as James says, the tongue is a fire that can set a whole forest ablaze with destructive power (James 3:5–6). So, I start there. This is serious. I take all my speech seriously and all my writing seriously.

And I thank God that he has spoken. He has used human language to communicate himself and to communicate how to communicate. So, when I ask, “What’s a good sentence?” I mean, “What does God have to say about a sentence?” and “Is it good in view of his word?”

Here are my eight marks of a good sentence.

1. True

A good sentence is true. It communicates what accords with reality; that is, it helps people know what is and what ought to be. This is because God himself “never lies” (Titus 1:2). He’s a “God of truth” (Isaiah 65:16). He has given us “the Spirit of truth” (John 16:13). Christians are people of truth. We speak and write true sentences.

2. Clear

A good sentence is clear. It does not indulge in deception or vagueness. It does not settle for undefined ambiguities that encourage people — like so many public figures encourage people — to believe contrary things while they affirm your sentence. One person reads and says, “Oh, it means this,” and the other says, “It means this,” and both of them have a good foothold because you’ve set it up that way. That’s not a Christian way to write.

Clarity stands in the service of truth. It seeks to help people get the clearest idea of what you believe and are trying to communicate. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:2, “We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” That is a beautiful goal for every Christian writer and speaker.

And just a little qualification here: there is a place for intentional ambiguity at times. For example, if a four-year-old asks about some sexual scene in the Bible, a wise parent finds an appropriate circumlocution appropriate to the age, not for the sake of deception but for the sake of helpfulness.

“A true sentence says what accords with the facts, and an authentic sentence says what accords with your heart.”

And there are certain kinds of poetic effort and moments in communication, if you’re writing poems or just want to be poetic in your speech, where truth can actually be served by coming at a reality in a slanted way rather than a direct way, which is not intended to create confusion but to illuminate reality. A whole other thing we could talk about is the appropriate place of slant or planned double entendres or ambiguities. We want to help people toward right thinking and right feeling. And it might be that that kind of speech now and then will do that.

3. Authentic

A good sentence is authentic. The difference between a true sentence and an authentic sentence is that a true sentence says what accords with the facts, and an authentic sentence says what accords with your heart. (And of course, one sentence can do both, should do both.) We are inauthentic to give the impression with our sentences that we are something we aren’t. It’s dishonest; it’s insincere. And the Bible says that Christians are people of sincerity (2 Corinthians 2:17).

4. Thoughtful

A good sentence should be thoughtful. The opposite of thoughtful, as I’m using it, is glib, superficial, frivolous, trifling. Many people treat their language as nothing but clever, lighthearted banter. It fills up sound space. The Bible refers to such people as “empty talkers” (Titus 1:10).

And I don’t mean there’s no place for humor when I say thoughtful. Life is often humorous, inevitably humorous. You cannot walk through days and not see something that is laughable, both positively and negatively. And those situations can be served well with well-placed, thoughtful sentences that might cause a person to buckle over with belly laughter.

But what I’m pleading for is that the bread and butter of our communication have substance in it. That is, people benefit from hearing what we say; there’s some measure of thinking behind our sentences. That’s the goal.

5. Creative

A good sentence is creative. I don’t mean that everybody becomes a poet. I mean that we aspire over a lifetime to grow in our ability to select words and arrange words in fresh and striking ways that have the greatest impact for good on others. When Jesus referred to himself as a thief in the night (Matthew 24:43–44) — are you kidding me? Who would dare? Who would dare to do such a thing? That was risky, striking, creative, utterly memorable. Mark Twain said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is . . . the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” That’s a good sentence, right? It not only is a good sentence; it captures the power of the right word at the right time.

“Abstractions and generalizations tend to be boring. Concrete language tends to be arresting.”

Part of being creative is using cadences that sound pleasing. And now I’m shifting gears from choosing the word to choosing the rhythm and the cadence. I once told an audience at our conference here that the title of our conference was “With Calvin in the Theater of God.” It was not “With John Calvin in the Theater of God” because the word “John” ruins the iambic-pentameter cadence. “With Calvin in the Theater of God.” You can’t stick “John” in there. It wrecks the sound.

And a lot of people think, Why in the world . . . ? No, no, no. Pastors, talkers, you should give thought to whether your sentences have cadences, rhythms that are pleasing to the ear. So, there are ten syllables, five beats in that sentence or that title, and it just wrecks it to put “John” in there. It doesn’t work. When you get a feel for cadences and what sounds pleasing, you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Over time, if you school yourself in trying to be thoughtful in your rhythms and cadences so that they sound pleasing, then it will become natural.

Part of being creative, again, is concreteness. Generalizations and abstractions are boring. They’re not as effective as particularities and specifics and concreteness. For example, say “peach”; say “Georgia peach” rather than “fruit.” Say “dog” rather than “animal,” “Dusty” rather than “dog.” Say “rain” rather than “weather.” Say “Neptune” rather than “planet.” Say “basketball” rather than “sports.” Say “bacon” rather than “breakfast.” Say “brown, woolen, pullover sweater” rather than “clothing.” Say “rusty socket wrench on the oily bench” rather than “tool over there in the corner.” Say “John and David” rather than “friends.”

Abstractions and generalizations tend to be boring. Concrete language tends to be arresting. When Paul says in Colossians 4:6, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt,” I take him to mean — at least partly — that our speech should not be bland and tasteless.

6. Well-Timed

A good sentence is well-timed. Proverbs 25:20: “Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda.” That’s another good sentence. It’s just full of concrete language. Take off a coat on a cold day. Put vinegar on soda, and it goes sizzle, sizzle, sizzle — makes a little smoke. And even more specifically, Proverbs 15:23 says, “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!” So, timing really matters.

7. Clean

A good sentence is clean. The apostle Paul said, “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place [for the Christian], but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:4). Thankful hearts don’t speak or write dirty sentences. Our sentences do not have to be sinful in order to take sin seriously. There are powerful and creative ways to speak of the corruption and wickedness of the world without participating in it.

8. Loving to People, Glorifying to God

Finally, number eight — and I would add that this casts a net over all seven of the others — the aim of the good sentence is to love people and glorify God. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And I think that would mean, “Whether you eat or drink or write sentences, do all to the glory of God.” And in addition to that, Paul says, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14). We want people to be helped. We want to help people toward their eternal happiness, and we want to make God look great. That’s what good sentences are for.

That’s good. It seems like your poetry training also trained your ear for cadence in prose. Is that true?

I think it is, yes. And I think it’s good that everybody just has a little bit of exposure to that kind of language where the author, a poet, has given serious thought to the cadences. And a lot of modern poetry doesn’t work at that.

“The aim of the good sentence is to love people and glorify God.”

So, you’ve got to go back a few centuries to see how it’s done, because those guys from three hundred years ago, they didn’t do that because it was boring. Alexander Pope wrote the way he wrote in iambic tetrameter and these couplets — page after page, like hundreds of lines — because it was being eaten up. People read it. People don’t read poetry today, but they did in those days.

A lost art that helps us with prose.

I think so.

Audio Transcript

Yesterday, in our Navigators Bible Reading Plan, we read Psalm 90 together. Or maybe you’re catching up with the reading still. That’s fine. No problem there. When you get to it, you’ll see why Psalm 90 is the special, much-beloved psalm that you, Pastor John, have referenced in thirty different episodes of this podcast already to answer all sorts of listener questions. Psalm 90 is rich. Sometimes you’ll focus your attention on verses 12 or 17. As you approach eighty years old, verse 10 looms more and more on your mind.

But no verse in Psalm 90 gets more mentions from you than verse 14. And that’s just it. It only gets mentions from you — brief mentions — usually simply listed in the texts you string together in a prayer you call I.O.U.S. (an acrostic), a one-minute prayer that you pray before you read the Bible in the morning. You’ve told us about that prayer in several episodes, which you can see in that new APJ book, if you have that. On pages 16 and 17, I put those episodes together on that I.O.U.S. acrostic.

So, you often mention but rarely dwell on Psalm 90:14: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” For Christian Hedonists dedicated to the daily discipline of seeking our joy in God, this text is so huge. So, draw out ten minutes of insights from what you see in this text alone about our daily desire for God.

“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14). There are few things, Tony, that I love to do more than to take a Bible verse like this, a word from God — and I want to underline that: this is a word from God — and then squeeze it like a sponge that has been dipped in the river of God’s delights, and see how many cups I can fill. That’s what I love to do. That’s my life.

Sometimes, a sponge is so big and so squishy with glorious truth that you have to squeeze one end and hold that and then squeeze another end and hold that. So, I’m going to squeeze this verse four times.

“Satisfy us.” I’m going to squeeze that.
“In the morning.” I’m going to squeeze that.
“With your steadfast love.”
“That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

So, that’s the plan.

‘Satisfy Us’

“Satisfy us.” Squeeze that end. This is a God-inspired prayer to God. That’s what the Psalms are. This means that it is God’s will for his children, for us, to experience satisfaction. It is God’s will that Christians live with hearts that are deeply content and satisfied. He does not will that our hearts be continually restless or fearful or joyless.

“It is God’s will that Christians live with hearts that are deeply content and satisfied.”

God’s will for us is that we be able to say with the apostle Paul, with complete authenticity, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” (Philippians 4:11) — that is, to be satisfied, to enjoy peace, contentment, confidence, gladness, joy. And notice that he’s not equating satisfaction with pleasant circumstances. They may be pleasant, and they may be devastating. God’s will is that we be satisfied. The rest of this psalm is pretty devastating.

And don’t miss that this is a prayer, which means it’s a battle. If it came naturally, we would not need to cry out for satisfaction. This is a gift from God. It’s not something we can make happen with food or caffeine or drugs or sex or wealth or health or friendships or family.

‘In the Morning’

So, the question, then, is, Well, what kind of satisfaction is it? What’s the actual source of the satisfaction? And before I tackle that — because he does answer that — he says one other thing first. So, number two, squeeze the sponge again: “in the morning.” “Satisfy us in the morning.” Why does he say that — “in the morning”? Because the morning is when we face the day.

According to this psalm, our days are filled with toil and trouble (Psalm 90:10). We’re like grass that is renewed in the morning and then in the evening fades away (Psalm 90:5–6). We are about to walk into a new day and experience the consequences of sin in this world, the limits of our own finiteness, the opposition of evil people, the futility of the fallen world system. That’s what the day is going to bring as we get out of bed and go to our kneeling bench and cry out to God.

So, what do we cry out for in the morning, facing that kind of day? We cry out in the face of sin and finiteness and opposition and futility. We cry out for satisfaction. We don’t expect all the circumstances to change; it’s just the fallen world we live in. We won’t be of any good to anybody — as George Müller taught us — if we all share in the moaning and the groaning of this sinful and broken world. What good is it to add to the world more of our own moaning and groaning?

God’s will is that we’d be satisfied in the face of all the trouble every new day will bring, which now brings us to the third squeezing of the sponge.

‘With Your Steadfast Love’

Where does the satisfaction come from amidst all this trouble? And the answer given is this: “with your steadfast love.” “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.”

So, when you get up in the morning, and you see before you a day of trouble and problems — problems upon problems that you cannot solve — and you feel weak and sick, and the things you thought were going to bring you some happiness have all crumbled, where do you look for satisfaction?

And Moses’s (this is a psalm of Moses, by the way) answer was, “I look to the love of God for me.” Isn’t that amazing? “God loves me,” Moses says. “God chose me before the foundation of the world,” we Christians say, “to be his treasured possession. God gave me existence. God sent his Son and paid for the failures that I’ve committed and offenses against him. God opened my eyes to see the worth and greatness and beauty of Christ. God promises to be my treasure. God promises to make everything, including all my troubles and problems, work together for my eternal joy. God loves me.”

That’s the source of his satisfaction: his steadfast love. And we pray for the ability to taste it. That’s what he’s asking. “Satisfy me in that. Help me enjoy that. Help me be satisfied in that every morning,” because his mercies are new every morning.

‘That We May Rejoice’

And now comes the fourth part of the sponge to squeeze — namely, “that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

“God’s will is that we’d be satisfied in the face of all the trouble every new day will bring.”

So, with the words rejoice and be glad, he underlines the emotional richness of the word satisfaction. God is telling us to ask him to make us satisfied, to make us happy, to make us glad, to make us rejoice no matter what. And the amazing thing is that he says “all our days” — not just sunny days, happy days, but all our days. The reason it’s amazing is because, in the first thirteen verses of this psalm, our days are being swept away like a flood. We are returning to the dust. We are fading and withering like grass. We pass away like a sigh. All our days are full of toil and trouble. Those are words from this very psalm.

And yet now Moses prays, “God, do your amazing, internal, miracle work of satisfying us with your love, so that in all those days — all those terrible days, including the very last one — short or long, whether the days last a long time or whether they get blown away overnight, we might rejoice and be glad.”

Psalm 90:14 is a glorious word of God to his children in the midst of their troubles in this real world. And I pray that you and I, Tony, and all of our listeners would take hold of it and wring out of it every cup of blessing that we need.

Audio Transcript

Am I confident, or am I just arrogant? We get this question a lot, and we have to answer this question for ourselves. Lionheartedness and humility are not contradictions in God’s will, nor are they contradictions in the life of our Savior. He came to bring peace, and he came to bring a figurative sword too. But in our own lives, we must figure out the difference between confidence and arrogance, and that’s the challenge a listener named Max wants to figure out today.

“Hello, Pastor John!” Max writes in his email to us. “My question for you is this. Can we feel powerful or confident or have a high self-worth in who God has made us to be through Christ? How do you distinguish this from pride that leads to destruction? If so, how do we do this? How do we pursue the feeling of power or confidence or high self-worth in living out what God has created us to be, but humbly so? You seem like someone who does it well. Thank you!”

Well, I have to admit that I gag on the term “high self-worth.” The reason I do is because I have watched now for fifty years — yes, fifty years — that term (and its sister term “self-esteem”) be used by secular, godless culture as an explanation for most negative psychological conditions and as a remedy for how to make a person more useful and productive. Lack of self-esteem is the diagnosis for a thousand problems today. Higher self-esteem is the prescription for a thousand improvements.

And the reason for that, it seems to me, is pretty obvious. When God disappears, the next most likely focus for esteem and confidence and reliance and trust is me — self. I think that was exactly the temptation in the garden of Eden. I think that’s the biblical essence of sin — replacing God with self as our treasure, our trust, our esteem, our worth.

Okay, now I’ve got that off my chest.

‘Well Done’

The question is still valid, because I do know from the Bible that God intends for us to lead lives that are significant, effective, productive, joyful, confident, courageous, fearless, competent. The world would just default to interpret every one of those in terms of self-exaltation, and I don’t interpret any of them that way. The Bible worldview says all those words in a completely different view of things.

“Do you love to see Christ made much of above all things, whether you get any recognition or not?”

When our lives are done, and we have trusted him for his enabling grace for every good work, God wants us to hear the words “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It’s not wrong to want to hear from Christ the words “Well done. You’ve been faithful.” The question is, Will he say, “Well done” to a person who had high self-worth, or to a person who has been a God-dependent, God-centered, God-reliant, Christ-exalting servant of others? That’s the question.

So, I would rephrase the question that I’m being asked to something like this: What’s the difference between acting in pride and acting so that our lives are significant, fruitful, fearless, competent, productive, happy, confident without pride?

Questions for Diagnosing Pride

Here are eight diagnostic questions to detect the rising of pride in our lives as we pursue those goals.

Question 1: Do I believe and happily embrace — and they’re both important, believing in your head and happily embracing in your heart, your will — the fact that my very existence and personality and gifting are owing to God, not me?

“By the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).
“What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

The question is not just “Do I believe this principle?” but “Do I love to have it so?” Do you delight and revel in the absolute dependence on God for who you are?

Question 2: Do you believe and happily embrace the fact that every one of your circumstances, in all of its details, is owing to God and not yourself?

“You ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil” (James 4:15–16). In other words, if something happens in life that takes you up or takes you down, it’s from the Lord. Are you glad that he’s in charge to that extent in your life?

Question 3: Do you believe, and are you happy to embrace, the fact that all your hard work and your personal effort and your willpower to accomplish things are owing to God?

Some people say, “Well, yes, God is in charge of my circumstances, but what I make of them, yeah, that’s owing to me, and that’s why I can be proud and boast. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps, while other people are languishing down there.” That’s not true. Paul said, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). So, Paul attributed to God’s grace not only his existence and his salvation and his circumstances, but also his willpower to work hard.

Are you glad that, when your day’s work is done, you can say of all your efforts, “Not I, but the grace of God that was with me”? Are you glad? Or does that feel like God is robbing you of something?

Question 4: Do you make it your aim to be consciously dependent on God in all you are doing in such a way that, when your service is complete, God will get the glory rather than you?

I’m thinking of 1 Peter 4:11. It’s been just a hallmark of my prayer as I move toward any ministry — like I’ll move toward a ministry midday today that I need help with. “Whoever serves, [let him serve] by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory . . . forever and ever. Amen.” So, what that says is this: it’s not only true that God gives me what I need; I actively trust him in doing it. I’m conscious of the fact that I’m nothing here. I can’t do anything on my own.

Question 5: Are you hungry for the praise of man, and do you try to position yourself so that people will see your good works and give you praise?

Jesus warned against those who love the praise of man. “Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces” (Luke 11:43). Oh, how we need to test our hearts — when we’re 25 and 75. Do I love and crave and angle for the praises and recognition of other people?

Question 6: Do you associate with the lowly, or do you always need to be hanging around with important people?

“Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight” (Romans 12:16).

Question 7: Do you feel entitled to recognition and comfort and respect so that you’re angry when you don’t get it instead of responding the way Jesus said to — namely, “Rejoice when people persecute you, speak evil of you, don’t give you the respect you deserve” (see Matthew 5:11–12)?

A sense of entitlement is one of the clearest signs of deeply rooted pride.

Question 8: Finally, and swimming among all the others, do you love to see Christ magnified? Do you love to see Christ made much of above all things, whether you get any recognition or not?

“God intends for us to lead lives that are significant, effective, productive, joyful, confident, courageous.”

“He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Paul said, “My eager expectation and hope [is] that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). I think that was one of the first sermons I preached when I came to Bethlehem. My goal, folks, my eager expectation, is that Christ be magnified. I want to preach in such a way, I want to write in such a way, I want to do podcasts in such a way so that Jesus looks great, and people come away saying, “Christ is great. God is great.”

To Him Be Glory

So, by all means — this is circling back now to the essence of the question that I think he was asking — use all your gifts and all your intelligence and all your circumstances and relationships and competence and courage to live the most productive, significant life possible. And do it all to make Christ look great and beautiful and precious by saying and by loving the truth that “from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever” (Romans 11:36).

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to this new week on the podcast on this Monday. Well, 2023 ended with two huge declarations that got a lot of attention online and led to a pile of emails for you, Pastor John. First, and most talked about, the pope said Roman Catholic priests can now “bless” (so-called) same-sex couples, which is a move that confused and angered many Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as you would expect.

According to the Vatican’s statement, this blessing is “for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.” This so-called divine blessing is for “those who — recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of [God’s] help — do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.” The pope is trying very hard to thread a needle here.

More bluntly, two weeks after this, Reuters reported that Burundi president Évariste Ndayishimiye called on his citizens to respond in a different way. “If you want to attract a curse to the country, accept homosexuality,” he told journalists. Then he said, “I even think that these people, if we find them in Burundi, it is better to lead them to a stadium and stone them. And that cannot be a sin.” This was a statement made to his predominantly Christian nation, perhaps drawing from a text like Leviticus 20:13. So, Pastor John, how would you respond to the pope and the president of Burundi?

Well, let me preface my thought with the fact that I’ve tried very hard to understand the pope and that needle that you said he’s trying to thread. I can’t quite make sense out of it. It just seems contradictory. But let me take it for what I do see.

I think the New Testament directs us away from the kind of blessing that the pope is endorsing and directs us away from the mob rule or the official capital punishment that the president of Burundi is endorsing. In other words, the New Testament is pushing us away from both of those steps.

And I think the New Testament also gives Christians another way to disapprove and another way to love those that we think are walking in behaviors that are ultimately and eternally destructive. So, let’s start with the Old Testament and the threat of the president of Burundi to stone those who practice homosexuality.

Excommunicate, Not Execute

Do the laws of capital punishment in the Old Testament — for things like adultery, dishonoring parents, having sex between two men or two women — define the way that the Christian church is to deal with those sins? And the answer is clearly no.

We’ve had several podcasts in which we try to unpack how the Old and the New Testament relate to each other. And I say that without denying the authority of the Old Testament — with its validity for Israel at the time and its ongoing authority for Christians, with an awareness of how the coming of Jesus the Messiah has changed things.

“When you curse others, you want them destroyed. When you bless others, you want them saved.”

When the New Testament deals with immorality like adultery or incest, which would have been a capital crime under the old covenant, the way it handles that sin — for example, in 1 Corinthians 5 — is to excommunicate the sinner from the church rather than execute the sinner. In the church, the new people of God (which is not a political or ethnic or civil body), excommunication has replaced capital punishment in cases like this.

Blessing Sin?

When we turn to the instructions of the pope that faithful Catholic priests may bless same-sex unions, we need to be very careful how we are understanding the nature of blessing.

I’ve tried, like I said, to understand the wording of the pope’s proposal, and I have listened to a Catholic priest defend the pope’s proposal, and I cannot escape the impression that even though the effort is being made not to consecrate the so-called “irregular situations” as marriage, nevertheless, the very effort to provide an official way for there to be a blessing on a kind of same-sex togetherness, which the Bible warns is evil and eternally destructive, inevitably communicates that the pope does not hold that biblical view, at least not with the same ultimate seriousness that the New Testament does.

And the reason I say that we need to be careful how we understand the nature of blessing is that the New Testament does tell us several times, very clearly,

“Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28).
“Bless those who persecute you” (Romans 12:14).
“Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called” (1 Peter 3:9).
“When reviled, we bless” (1 Corinthians 4:12).

Now, none of those uses of the word bless is intended to signify an official or unofficial gathering in which you bring people together who in their hearts are celebrating sin. That’s not what blessing means. Whether it’s two men having sex or people celebrating fraud or celebrating witchcraft or celebrating slander or celebrating devil worship, whatever the sin is, the biblical commands to bless our adversaries, our opponents, our enemies are not a command to hold a service in which you extend a hand of blessing over those who are celebrating behaviors that lead to their own destruction and which God calls an abomination.

That gathering will not communicate the biblical truth of heartbreak and danger and warning. If you made those dangers and those warnings part of the service of blessing, we know the so-called couple would reject it. They would reject it. If the warning of hell were made part of the service of blessing, if the sin were called an abomination in the service of blessing, the couple would not have the service.

Longing for Another’s Good

The meaning of blessing in Luke 6:28, Romans 12:14, and the others is that we seek the temporal and everlasting good of our enemies — or those we disagree with; they don’t have to be just enemies, but just anybody we disagree with. That’s what blessing means. We seek the temporal and everlasting good of our adversaries, both with words and with deeds, even if it costs us our lives. We are not eager for the destruction of anyone. Blessing is the opposite of cursing. When you curse others, you want them destroyed. When you bless others, you want them saved.

We want our words and our actions to count for their good. It’s not a blessing to give the impression of treating lightly something that God treats dreadfully. It feels kind — it’s not kind. It feels tender, but tenderness is not love where clarity and firmness are needed to save life.

The form the blessing takes in Romans 12:20 is this: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” In other words, the aim is not affirmation but contrition and repentance and salvation. We want them to be our brothers or our sisters in the presence of God forever, forgiven and transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Final Warning

And before I go, I think I should conclude by warning Roman Catholics that they need to be especially concerned about this pope, Pope Francis, because this is not the first time he has gone astray. He has espoused unbiblical thinking in other ways, not only on this matter.

I watched him in a video counsel a child — about a six- or eight-year-old child — who had lost his father in death. The child said that his father was an atheist — never went to church, didn’t believe in God — and then he asked where he was. And the pope said that his father was in heaven. The pope said that that was the case.

“It’s not a blessing to give the impression of treating lightly something that God treats dreadfully.”

Now, that’s very contrary to what the Roman Catholic Church and all other Christian churches have taught. I doubt that this pope believes anyone will suffer eternally in hell. I could be wrong about that, but if so, then the warnings of 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 — that those who practice homosexuality will not enter the kingdom of God — lose their ultimate seriousness for him. That’s the direction our culture has moved for decades, and that’s where the pope appears to be moving as well.

So, by all means, let us bless those who curse us — but not extend a blessing over a same-sex union.

Audio Transcript

This week in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, we read together Psalm 79. So, this question — from Kimberly in Houston, Texas — is timely. She writes in to ask this: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast. In Psalm 79:9, the psalmist prays like this: ‘Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake!’ I want to pray like this. But how? How do I pray for things that would benefit me and the people I know and love and would also glorify God at the same time in answer to those prayers?

“It seems very Christian Hedonistic. We get the help; he gets the glory. Except I just don’t know how to frame my praying like this. I thought it would be easy until I tried to do it. It’s actually very hard and limiting because I’m finding that most of my prayers have no conscious relation to God’s glory. Can you teach me to pray the Psalm 79:9 way?”

Well, Kimberly has one problem already solved, which many people stumble over. And the problem is expressed in the question, “How do I pray for things that would benefit me and glorify God at the same time?” And many people stumble over that tension as though it were a tension. For me, for God — which is it?

But Kimberly knows there doesn’t have to be a tension, because she says, “We get the help; he gets the glory.” So, she’s got that one wonderfully, biblically figured out, which is exactly what Psalm 50:15 says: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” We get the deliverance; he gets the glory. That’s what it says. If we keep in mind that the giver gets the glory, then there doesn’t have to be a tension between our asking for what we need and our asking that God be glorified.

“There doesn’t have to be a tension between our asking for what we need and our asking that God be glorified.”

But Kimberly says that she does not have an answer to the question (or the problem), “I just don’t know how to frame my praying like this. I thought this would be easy until I tried it. It’s actually hard and limiting because I’m finding that most of my prayers have no conscious relation to the glory of God.” So, let me see if I can make a few biblical observations. I think I have five that might reorient Kimberly’s (and all of our) thinking so that it feels natural that every request we make in prayer relates to the glory of God.

1. Remember why God does everything.

So, here’s number one. Never forget that God does everything for his own name’s sake — that is, for his glory. He does everything for his glory. He delivers us for his name’s sake (Psalm 79:9). He blots out our transgressions for his own sake (Isaiah 43:25). He leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). He does not forsake his people for his great name’s sake (1 Samuel 12:22). He saves us for his name’s sake (Psalm 106:8).

It helps to see our prayers as fitting into this overarching, global, historical purpose of God in everything that he does. He does all that he does for his name’s sake — that is, to display and communicate his beauty, his worth, his greatness, his glory. So, if we have just an overarching, pervasive mindset that God does all he does for his glory, then our prayers assume a new fitness as we think that way, as we dream that way, and as we ask that way.

2. Pray beneath God’s righteousness.

Number two, this unwavering commitment of God to uphold the glory of his name is at the heart of what is his righteousness. We see that in Psalm 143:11: “For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life!” So, we pray like that: “For your name’s sake, preserve my life! In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!” So, God’s acting for his name’s sake and his acting in righteousness are parallel. They explain each other; they interpret each other.

And when you think about it, this makes really good sense. What is the ultimately right thing for God to do when God has no book to consult outside himself about what’s right and wrong? He only has himself to consult. There’s just God. There’s nothing else before he creates anything. He is the measure of all that is right. The right thing to do, I would argue, is for God to always act in accord with the infinite worth of his own name, his own being. I think that’s the essence of his righteousness. It’s right for him to always act in accord with the infinite worth of his name.

And I think that helps us in our praying, because we always want God to do the right thing in answer to our prayer. “Do the right thing” — which will mean, “Act for the sake of your name.” That’s the ultimately right thing for God to do.

3. End your prayers in Jesus’s name.

Number three, keep in mind what it means to pray in Jesus’s name. I used to say to my kids when they were growing up and they’d end a prayer with a throwaway sound, “In Jesus’s name” — I said, “Let’s just pause here. That’s not a throwaway phrase.” It may be that one of the reasons we stumble over seeking God’s glory in our prayers is that we forget what we’re saying when we pray, “In Jesus’s name, amen.”

In John 14:13, Jesus taught us to pray in his name. To pray in Jesus’s name means that it is his death in our place that makes it possible for God’s wrath to be removed and God’s grace to pour down all over us in answer to our prayers. So, Jesus’s name refers to the basis or the foundation of every single gracious answer to prayer. “In Jesus’s name” means, “because Jesus died for me and purchased the grace of every answered prayer.” No cross, no answered prayer. But “in Jesus’s name” also means that the giver gets the glory. If he paid for every answered prayer, he gets the glory for every answered prayer.

So, let the meaning of “in Jesus’s name” have its full effect as you speak it. End every prayer with the thought, “You, Jesus, are my only hope for any gracious answer to this prayer. And when it comes, I will be glad for you to get the glory.”

4. Let the Lord’s Prayer shape yours.

Number four, keep in mind that there is a reason that the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). Hallowed means “sanctified” — that is, set apart as sacred, holy, precious, valuable, infinitely worthy of all our admiration and desire and praise. It would not be far off to translate it, “Glorified be your name,” “Admired be your name,” “Praised be your name,” “Treasured be your name.” Which means that, every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are asking, first and foremost, that the Lord would cause his name to be glorified.

“If Jesus paid for every answered prayer, he gets the glory for every answered prayer.”

You don’t have to add that later as you just stick on an artificial, “Be sure you get glory from my prayer, Lord.” You began with it. Jesus begins with it. “Lord, my heart’s number-one desire is that your name be glorified in every answer to my prayer.” So, let the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer remind you that the first concern of every prayer is that God be glorified.

5. Pray with one main passion.

Finally, number five, whether you say it out loud or not, let every request that you make in prayer be like Paul’s desire in Philippians 1:20, where he said, “It is my eager . . . hope” — and, thus, you could say, “It is my prayer” — “that . . . Christ [be magnified or glorified] in my body, whether by life or by death.”

In other words, even if you don’t say it out loud, let your whole mindset in prayer be this: “Lord, I pray that you would deliver me from my enemies and let me live another day that I might serve you. But whether I live or die, the main passion of my heart, with the apostle Paul, is that you would be magnified in my life, whether I live or whether I die.”

So, my prayer is that these five observations from Scripture will help us all to build into the mindset of our prayer a constant desire, a primary hope, that God be glorified however he answers our prayer.