My view of preaching is that the preacher’s job is to receive from God a word through Scripture, hold it up before God’s people, point them to it, and say, “Look!” He then opens it with connections to Scripture and life, and exults over it in such a way that, by God’s grace, the hearers will be drawn into the enjoyment of it and obedience to it, so that the infinite greatness and beauty and worth of Christ might be manifest in our lives. If a preacher is not exulting over the realities revealed in his text, he’s not preaching.

Therefore, preaching is a happy business. Because even if the text is a hard word that devastates the hearers (and my text is not a hard word), the preacher connects the hard word with the gracious word and the hopeful word, and he catches them as they fall. So, in the end, all preaching is a happy business. Sometimes it’s a toe-tapping happy business, and sometimes it’s a tearful happy business. We preach good news. We preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Whether hard or comfortable, we herald good news, and we do it by exulting over the goodness of the good news. If there is no expository exultation, there is no preaching.

All of that is in part to say thank you. I owe you a debt of thanks for giving me the privilege of exulting over this word with you. Most of the pleasure of expository exultation is owing to the greatness of the good news. But some of it is owing to the sweetness of the fellowship. There is joy in the exultation. There is more joy in the shared exultation. And my experience has been that to preach among the people of Sovereign Grace provides an unusually sweet fellowship of exultation. So, thank you, Bob, and all of you for inviting me.

My happy assigned theme is “Union with Christ and the Promises of God,” and my text is 2 Corinthians 1:20, which says, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.”

There you have all three pieces of my theme: “all the promises of God,” “in him” (union with Christ), and both are connected with “Yes.” In Christ, all the promises of God are affirmed, not denied. It’s yes, not no. In Christ, all the promises of God are secured, guaranteed. For all of you who are in Christ, every promise of God will come true. That’s our text. And it is, as you can see, spectacular.

Travel Plans and the Promises of God

Before we dig in, there is one noncentral observation from the context that I don’t want you to miss because it is so pastorally significant. Paul explains his situation starting in 2 Corinthians 1:15. He says, “I wanted to come to you first,” meaning travel over from Ephesus to Corinth across the Aegean Sea, “so that you might have a second experience of grace,” meaning the grace of a second visit when he comes back from Macedonia, where he intends to go after he visits them. He explains now in 2 Corinthians 1:16, “I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia [probably Philippi or Thessalonica], and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea.”

Now, that did not happen. He explains why in 2 Corinthians 1:23: “It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.” But Paul’s adversaries at Corinth, probably the “false apostles” that he refers to in 2 Corinthians 11:13, who were challenging his authority, were all over this. And they were accusing him of vacillating. They were saying, “He’s fickle. He’s unreliable. He’s a hypocrite. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He says one thing and does another thing. He says he’s planning to come — he’s not planning to come. He says yes, but underneath it’s a no. And this is the one you want to follow as an apostle?”

Paul responds to this criticism in 2 Corinthians 1:17–18:

Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No.

In other words, “I am not a hypocrite. I mean what I say. I don’t tamper with the truth like that.” Now, here is the amazing thing. Up through 2 Corinthians 1:18, Paul is dealing with an ordinary kind of situation. He told them his travel plans. A new situation arose, and it caused a change. People who don’t like him are making it into a failure of integrity, and Paul is responding to this kind of criticism. That’s just an everyday situation that we all deal with from time to time.

But then in 2 Corinthians 1:19–20, Paul attaches that ordinary situation to a cluster of the most profound theological realities. Here’s what he says:

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.

Now, if I did that in my pastoral ministry, here’s what would happen. Someone would say, “Good grief, Piper. Lighten up. We’re talking about travel plans and a few cranks in the church, and there you go talking about the Son of God, all the promises of God, union with Christ, and the glory of God. My goodness. This is overkill.” Now, my pastoral counsel is that you patiently ignore these people and graciously proceed to root your ministry, your travel plans, and all the ordinary things of life in the most glorious realities in the universe. There aren’t too many people in the world who live this way and think this way.

That’s the one observation I wanted you to see from the context. Be known in your church as the person who is so God-besotted, so Bible-saturated, so Spirit-filled that people expect you to connect ordinary life to glorious realities — to God, Christ, cross, Spirit, promises, and glory.

Images of an Inexhaustible Union

Now let’s go to 2 Corinthians 1:20. It says, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” What does “in him” mean? The way I would say it is this. Beneath all our biblical efforts to conceptualize or picture what this attachment to Jesus is like, there is a reality, a union, that is unfathomable and inexpressible, which we will never exhaust with words or doctrines, but which the Bible gives expression to in many ways. That means there’s always more underneath, but the revelations, the pictures, and the conceptions that the Bible does give of this reality are indispensable and glorious.

For example, consider just briefly five such ways of expressing this inexhaustible union.

1. Called into Fellowship

First, 1 Corinthians 1:9 says, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The point where the union happens is the effectual call of God. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified” (Romans 8:30). There is a sovereign call that is predestined and effective in bringing into being a new reality. We call it new birth. We call it new creation. It’s the creation of spiritual life where there was deadness, spiritual sight where there was blindness, and faith where there was rebellion. All of it happens because simultaneously there comes into being a union with Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 1:9, the call of God is described as a call into the koinōnian (“fellowship”) of his Son. It’s coming into participation in the Son, a sharing of life in the Son, a oneness with the Son.

2. Union of Life

Second, that union is called a union of life. Colossians 3:4 says, “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” The union is such that Christ is my life. In Galatians 2:20, Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The uniting is so profound that there is a kind of “no longer I, but Christ.” Yet the verse goes on to say, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The “I” that is Christ is the “I” who trusts Christ. That’s our conscious experience of the subconscious, unfathomable “not I, but Christ.” So, this is a union of life. He is my life in this union.

3. Members of His Body

Third, there is the picture of each Christian being one with Christ as members of his one body. First Corinthians 12:12–13 says,

Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Christ is not head of the body here. He is the body. And the body is one — and every Christian an appendage. The hand is in the body, and the body is Christ. The foot is in the body, and the body is Christ. “The body is one.” So, it is a union of members in a body, who is Christ.

4. Members of His Family

Fourth, in adoption and new birth, God brings us into a family union where we are fellow heirs and have a single spiritual DNA. Romans 8:16–17 says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” The family union is such that we are coheirs with the Son of God.

Peter explains in 1 Peter 1:23, “You have been born again, not of perishable seed [DNA] but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” Paul concurs with his reference in Galatians 4:29 to those who are “born according to the Spirit.” The Spirit becomes the DNA that makes us not only legally part of the family by adoption, but also, by some unfathomable supernatural genetics, we are one with Christ by the new birth, with the same spiritual DNA as the Son of God. So, this is a union of family identity.

5. Counted Righteous

Fifth, I’ll mention one more picture of this inexhaustible union — namely, the judicial experience of union with Christ. The union becomes our righteousness. Philippians 3:8–9: “that I may . . . be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” In union with Christ, a righteousness not our own is ours.

In summary, being in Christ means we are called into his fellowship. In that fellowship, Christ is our life. We are one with him as members of his body and one with him as members of his family. And in him we are counted righteous with his righteousness. All of this results in 2 Corinthians 1:20: all the promises of God are yes for us in Christ. In his fellowship, in his life, in his body, in his family, in his righteousness, everything he has and ever will have is ours.

Every Promise Secured in Christ

“All the promises” means every good that God can conceive of is ours in Christ. First Corinthians 3:21–23 says, “So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” That’s the same as saying, “All the promises are Yes in him.” Romans 8:32 ties all the promises to Christ’s death as the way he secured them for all who are in Christ: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” “Graciously give us all things” is the same as saying, “All the promises are Yes in him.”

No good thing does he withhold from those who are in Christ (Psalm 84:11).
He will put his Spirit within you and cause you to walk in his statutes in Christ (Ezekiel 36:27).
Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life in Christ (Psalm 23:6).
Everything will work together for your good in Christ (Romans 8:28).
He will never leave you nor forsake you in Christ (Hebrews 13:5).
He will strengthen you, he will help you, and he will uphold you with his righteous right hand in Christ (Isaiah 41:10).
He will finish the work he began in you in Christ (Philippians 1:6).
No one will be able to snatch you out of his hand in Christ (John 10:27–29).
He will raise you from the dead in Christ (Revelation 2:10).
He will make known to you the path of life so that you find your way to God, in whose presence is fullness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures forever in Christ (Psalm 16:11).

Why did Paul declare such a lavish truth in 2 Corinthians 1:20? Because he was fighting for his apostolic life and their faith, joy, and love, which he would defend through his own faith, joy, love. His defense began in 2 Corinthians 1:18. Paul is saying, “It’s this faithfulness of God, this guarantee of the Holy Spirit, this union with Christ, and this fulfillment of all the promises that enables me to keep on rejoicing through affliction so that the overflow of my joy will be your joy. That’s how I love you. That’s how I pour out my life for you. I don’t manipulate, I don’t deceive, I don’t exploit you. I love you.”

Paul is not just defending himself; he is inviting the Corinthians, and us, into this life in the promises of God — sustaining joy in affliction, overflowing in love for others. He says, “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No” (2 Corinthians 1:18). My life is built on the faithfulness of God to all his promises. He continues his defense in 2 Corinthians 1:22: “[He] put his seal on us and [gave] us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” He is saying, “My life is built on God’s Holy Spirit seal that his promises stand.” Therefore, 2 Corinthians 1:20 says, “All the promises of God find their Yes in him.”

Joy in Affliction, Overflowing in Love

Let’s turn to see how Paul in the rest of this letter moves toward joy in affliction — sustained by promises, overflowing in love. He sounds the note immediately in 2 Corinthians 1:4 that this is where he’s going: “[God] comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” This is comfort in affliction — joy in affliction — for the sake of love.

Then there is this amazing statement in 2 Corinthians 7:4: “I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.” Lest we pass by the word affliction too lightly, listen to his list of afflictions in 2 Corinthians 11:

Labors . . . imprisonments . . . countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. (2 Corinthians 11:23–27)

Now, here are his words again from 2 Corinthians 7:4: “I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.”

He says it again in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10. The Lord refused to take away his thorn in the flesh.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Gladness in calamities? Here it is again in 2 Corinthians 12:15: “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?” This is gladness in affliction, overflowing with love.

“In union with Christ, a righteousness not our own is ours.”

Here is one more text on this point. Second Corinthians 13:9 says, “We are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for.” It’s gladness in weakness, overflowing in love. How in the world did Paul maintain such a life of suffering with joy for decades? The answer is this: “All the promises of God are Yes in Christ.” Here’s the way he expressed it in 2 Corinthians 4:16–18. How does he not lose heart?

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison [that is a promise that is Yes in Christ Jesus], as 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.

By faith, he looks to the unseen and banks his life on the promise that all the afflictions happening in this world are not meaningless but are preparing for him an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. By this, he not only survives but rejoices in all his affliction. Second Corinthians 7:4: “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.”

Our Glad Amen

With one more clear, indisputable demonstration, he shows that this promise-sustained joy is the source of love. In 2 Corinthians 8:1–2, he describes how the Macedonians became a model of generosity for the Corinthians. Paul was collecting money for the poor in Jerusalem. Here’s what happened in Macedonia. In 2 Corinthians 8:8 he calls it “love.” This is one of the most amazing texts in the Bible on the spring and power of love:

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. (2 Corinthians 8:1–2)

Where did this wealth of generosity (this love) come from? He says it is the overflow of their abundance of joy. And what kind of joy was this? What were they so glad about? It wasn’t the absence of affliction. It wasn’t the absence of poverty. Contextually, one answer is left from 2 Corinthians 8:1 — “the grace of God.” Paul says, “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia” (2 Corinthians 8:1). This is the grace that says to sinners, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the promises of God are yes for you in Christ Jesus.” They believed, and despite affliction and poverty, their joy was so abundant that it overflowed in love to the poor whom they didn’t even know.

In the second half of 2 Corinthians 1:20, Paul brings it all to a climax with these words: “That is why [namely, because all the promises of God are Yes in Christ] it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” Amen is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew expression for yes. Amen! Truly! Surely! Yes!

So, what is Paul saying? He is saying, “The response of my life (2 Corinthians 1:20) will not be a grumbling No to God’s promises. My life will not be a self-pitying, reclusive No to God’s promises. My life will not be a loveless No to God’s promises. My life, in all its afflictions, will be a radiant Yes to the promises of God. When God says Yes to me with all his promises, my response is Yes to him. I say, ‘Amen! Yes, they are true. Yes, they are enough. Yes, I am content. Yes, I am glad to spend and be spent for your souls.’”

And from such a life — promise-sustained, overflowing in joy, poured out in love — Paul says God gets great glory (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday, and thanks for listening. Tomorrow we read Isaiah 62–64 together in our Bible reading plan. And that leads to today’s question from a listener named Mattie: “Pastor John, hello to you! I’m a doer. I’m always doing the next thing. I have a lot of energy. If I see something I need, or that others need, I get to work. And then I read a verse like this one in Isaiah: ‘No eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him’ (Isaiah 64:4). I’m not a wait-er. I don’t wait for anything. My groceries, my coffee — everything — I preorder on an app so I can just drive up to the store and get my stuff and drive off. What does an active person like me need to learn about waiting on God to act? What does waiting look like for an active person like me?”

Tony, one of the things that you and I both hope for in doing these podcasts is that, over time, people will not only get answers from the Bible to their questions but will learn how to go to the Bible and get answers for themselves. And it may be helpful with this particular question to give a simple glimpse into how I prepare to answer a question like this, or how she might answer her own question.

Searching the Scriptures for Ourselves

I do this with most episodes. I take the key word or idea that someone asks — in this case, “waiting for the Lord.” I use a concordance or the word-search feature of my Bible software to look up how that word or idea is used in the Bible. So, if you look up in the ESV, for example, the word “wait,” with all of its forms (like “waited” and “waiting”), you get 135 uses in the Bible. If you look up the phrase “wait for,” you get 75 uses, and if you look up the phrase “wait for the Lord,” you get 12 uses with that precise wording. So, that’s what I did.

The point of reading all of these uses of the word “wait” in the Bible is to see what we can find out about how God intends for us to understand and practice this reality of waiting in all kinds of circumstances, including living a very busy, active life, which Mattie lives and most of us live today. I take then a piece of 8.5-by-11 paper — I do this for sermon preparation; I do this for APJ preparation — and I fold it in half. I fold the 8.5-by-11 paper in half. I use a lot of scrap paper, so that I can just fold it and use the back side, and as I read all those uses in the Bible, I make notes on the paper how it’s being used.

“The Christian life is essentially a waiting, longing, expecting, hoping life, because Christ is our supreme treasure.”

Then, as I collect all these notes, I mark similarities and differences. I’ll circle, “Oh, there in that psalm it had this meaning. Down here in Proverbs, it has a very similar meaning.” I’ll circle those and draw a line between those two so I can connect those and see if there’s a pattern emerging. When I’m done, I step back and look at that big messy piece of paper and try to fit it all together to see whether or not there’s some pattern that’s emerging or some unifying theme that’s growing out of it. So, that’s what I did with “wait for the Lord.”

When We Wait for God

So, here’s a glimpse into what I saw concerning the meaning of “waiting for the Lord.” I’ll just give my running glimpses and then draw some inferences for Mattie at the end.

1. Psalm 106:13: “They did not wait for his counsel.” So, the first meaning of waiting that I saw was this: when you have a decision in front of you, don’t run ahead, consulting your own intelligence, your own preparation, consulting your own expert, your own doctor first. All that’s fine, of course, but first, consult the Lord. There are a lot of texts in the Bible that criticize God’s people for running ahead to Egypt or running ahead to some helper rather than running to the Lord. So, turn to the Lord first and wait for his direction rather than just blundering ahead.

2. Psalm 33:20–21: “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.” So, waiting for the Lord means not only that we pause to consult his will, searching his word, but that, once we know God’s direction, we trust him. We trust him. There’s a heart disposition to expect and wait for him to act in a trustworthy way.

3. Psalm 39:7–8: “Now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. Deliver me from all my transgressions.” Psalm 130:6: “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” So, waiting for the Lord means not only taking time to consult him, then trusting him, but also eagerly expecting and hoping that he will act. We are looking for his action in our lives. That’s the text she quoted: the Lord “acts [works] for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4).

4. Proverbs 20:22: “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.” In other words, since God says that he will settle accounts for you and that you should not return evil for evil, then don’t take matters into your own hands. Go about your business and wait for the Lord to bring justice. Wait for the Lord to vindicate your cause.

5. Isaiah 8:17: “I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.” There are times in the Christian life when God hides his face from us and puts us to the test. Will we forget him? Will we start to build our lives on another foundation when his visage has grown dim? Or will we wait for him with patience in seasons of darkness until God returns and gives us light?

6. Romans 8:23: “We . . . who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies,” and “we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25). The whole posture of the Christian life is one of eagerly waiting for the coming of Christ and the redemption of our bodies. The absence of the one we love, Jesus Christ, from this earth — his absence physically from our presence and this earth — implies that the Christian life is essentially a waiting, longing, expecting, hoping life, because Christ is our supreme treasure, nothing on the earth.

7. Finally, there is a cluster of texts that make clear that this life of waiting is a life full of Spirit-dependent action. Now Mattie’s ears should perk up. For example, Titus 2:11–14: “The grace of God . . . [is] training us to . . . live self-controlled, upright, godly lives” — it sounds like Mattie is very self-controlled — “in this present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself . . . [to make us] zealous for good works.” So, this is a very active, zealous, working waiting. We are “waiting for our blessed hope,” and he makes us in that waiting zealous for good work.

Busy but Waiting

So, we step back from our very brief survey of some of those 135 instances of waiting. We step back from our collection of biblical revelation concerning the meaning of waiting and ask, Are there any common denominators running through all of these uses of the word “waiting”? And I would sum it up like this:

1. The person who waits for the Lord is first continually conscious of God — his will, his promises, his grace to help. It’s a God-conscious person, not a person who forgets God all day long. You’re not waiting for God all day long if you’re forgetting God all day long.

2. The person who waits for the Lord is desiring God to show up and reveal himself and act in whatever way is needed.

3. The person who waits for the Lord has a spirit of moment-by-moment dependence on the ever-arriving future grace of God — like a river coming toward you moment by moment. We’re depending on that.

So, for Mattie, this would mean that, in all her busyness, she doesn’t lose her consciousness of God, she doesn’t lose her continual desire for him to act, and even in her most busy moments, she realizes that, unless the Lord acts for her, in her, through her, all her busyness is in vain. So, she’s ever expecting, ever waiting for the moment-by-moment arrival of the sustaining, guiding, helping grace of God.

Audio Transcript

Worldliness — a theme addressed many times here over the years. Especially worldly media. I just glanced at the APJ book here, on pages 291–307, to be reminded of how big a theme worldliness has been for us over the years, Pastor John. A permanent challenge for the church. But not one every preacher wants to address in the pulpit, it seems, according to this note of concern from an anonymous young woman, who sees worldliness creeping in around her, in the lives of the professing Christians in her life.

She wrote us this: “Pastor John, thank you for the innumerable ways in which this ministry blesses me and other Christians around the world, as well as for your and Tony’s books, which also contribute to that. I don’t want to exclude myself; I am sure I also have blind spots, but when I see the ways in which Christians today use their free time and celebrate events in their lives, my heart feels heavy and saddened because of what I perceive to be worldliness. The celebrations are just like those of unbelievers; they often go to concerts by popular artists, stay out late on Saturday nights, then skip church the next day or arrive one hour late. They’re usually absent from prayer meetings. They vacation without giving Sunday worship so much as a moment of consideration. Christ is not present in most of their conversations.

“Some of these individuals are locally seen as mature, model Christians. My own church has solid Bible- and Christ-centered preaching. Yet I don’t see the subject of worldliness mentioned often. Nor do I see it even on websites with solid theology. In APJ 603, titled “What Qualifies as Worldly Music?” you said, ‘Worldly isn’t a sound; worldly is leaving Christ out. That is why it is called worldly and not Christ-ly. And it approves of what he disapproves. It is called worldly because it treasures the world above the one who made the world.’ Could you expand on that in relation to my concerns above? What can Christians do to encourage one another in faith and treasuring Christ? I am saddened and worried about the future of the church and Christianity because of what I see being normalized in the church today.”

I share your sadness and your concern for the church. In fact, I see most of my ministry as a ministry devoted to weaning the church off of the world and its pleasures onto Christ and his pleasures. I try to speak and write in such a way as to create spiritual taste buds in people’s hearts, so that they find distasteful things that don’t honor God and find desirable the things that do.

We Long for Revival

I think what we are longing for together has historically been called “revival” — a work of God in the church first. We call it “awakening” when it touches the world, but in the church first, “revival,” a work of God that causes the hearts of God’s people to burn — like in Luke 24:32: “Did not our hearts burn within us when we walked with him?” Revival causes our hearts to burn with love for God’s word and love for God’s people, love for God’s service, all rooted in an increasingly intense love for God himself, and for communion with God in prayer and meditation, with a growing delight in holiness and a growing horror at sin (especially our own), and a growing concern for lost people.

I think one of the greatest signs of worldliness is little concern for the reality of hell and people going there because they don’t believe, and in all of that, a greater intensification of our sense of spiritual truth and spiritual realities. That’s my sense of what revival is and what the church needs today. This is a sovereign work of God. We can pray toward it and we can preach toward it, teach toward it, write toward it, embody in our individual lives as much of it as possible, but in the end, it’s a gift God gives to his church with irresistible, sovereign power, and I agree that we are certainly in need of it.

Why Such Worldliness?

When I was in college, a popular little book by J.B. Phillips — called Your God Is Too Small — was very effective in many of our experiences and lives. It was a provocative little book that pleaded with the church to stop treating God as though he were a side issue in life and to wake up to his massive centrality — the fact that all things are “from him and through him and to him” (Romans 11:36). It had a significant awakening effect upon me.

“We can pray toward revival, but in the end, it’s a gift God gives to his church with irresistible, sovereign power.”

About forty years ago, David Wells wrote a book called No Place for Truth, which made the case that in the American church, God rests far too lightly on the people of God. He doesn’t have weight. It was the same heart cry from Dr. Wells as from J.B. Phillips. God is marginal. God has little weight in our worship services and little weight in our lives. He’s taken lightly. He’s simply one among many factors rather than the all-consuming factor, and I have thought that if I were to write a book today with a similar burden, it might have this title: Your Christ Is Too Cheap, Your Heaven Is Too Distant, Your Earth Is Too Big.

Christ Too Cheap

When I say, “Your Christ is too cheap,” I have in mind Philippians 3:8. Do the people who flirt with the world and seem to be totally at home in secular entertainments that are void of God, Christ, Christian morality — do those people really say, with the apostle Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”?

For Paul, Christ was the supreme and all-pervasive treasure of his life, and I would ask all of us, How does our treasuring of Christ compare to our treasuring of entertainments offered us by the world? Where are our affections? Because that is the key bottom issue. Where are our affections? Not first our behaviors, but our heart.

Heaven Too Distant

When I say, “Your heaven is too distant,” I mean that the reality of the afterlife is simply not operational in the daily mindset of many believers and virtually all unbelievers. But as I read the New Testament, the call to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven and not on earth is pervasive (Matthew 6:19–21). We are called to set our minds on things that are above (Colossians 3:1–2). We are called to look to things that are eternal, not transient (2 Corinthians 4:18). We are called to bank our hope on the rewards of the resurrection, not the rewards of this life (1 Timothy 6:17–19).

Heaven is a dominant, life-shaping reality in the New Testament, but a minor reality in most people’s lives today. It is too distant and, therefore, ineffective, leaving us sitting ducks for worldliness.

Earth Too Big

When I say, “Your earth is too big,” I mean that people are simply not thinking clearly when it comes to how tiny this earth is — not only in the universe, which is not very significant, but in the scope of eternity, which is very significant. I wonder if people ever think that, in one hundred years, virtually every person alive today will be gone — eight billion people gone. There is a complete turnover of humanity on the earth every ten decades, which seems very short to me now because I’m in my eighth. The number of people who live longer than one hundred is 0.0002% of the population. It is statistically insignificant. Every one hundred years, there is a complete turnover of humanity. Virtually everybody who was 22 years old when I was born is gone, and in 22 years, everybody born before me will be gone. That turnover has been happening for thousands of years.

We tend to think of humanity in terms that don’t really fit individual experience. Humanity has been around for thousands of years on the earth, but the earth has been home to individual humans no more than one hundred years and, in most cases, way shorter than one hundred years. And after that brief eighty to one hundred years (or less), every single one of those humans enters eternity and, compared to eternity, those one hundred years on earth were nothing. The Bible calls it a vapor (James 4:14). It lasts two seconds when you breathe it out on a cold winter morning.

If people were rational, they would not be earthly minded; they would be heavenly minded. And if they were heavenly minded, they would not find their greatest pleasures in the entertainments produced by earthly minded people. So, we pray and we teach and we live with the hope that God would break in with sovereign, reviving power, and cause his word to be so loved that it will no longer be, as Jesus says, choked out “by the cares and riches and pleasures” of this world (Luke 8:14).

If I were in your shoes, and a new preacher comes to town and presumes to stand in this sacred place where the word of God has been so faithfully proclaimed by your pastor, I would want to know, “Who are you?” Not your name. Not your address. Not your job. Not your education. But, “What do you stand for? What are you committed to? What’s your standard of truth? What’s your authority? What’s your aim in coming here?”

Let me begin with three statements about my commitments so that you can decide whether you want to lean in or not.

Committed to Scripture, God — and You

First, I come with a total allegiance and submission to the Bible — the Christian Scriptures — as our only infallible authority. Which means I come to you with no authority except what I am able to see in the Scriptures, to savor in my own soul, and to show in the power of the Holy Spirit for your building up. If you don’t see what I say in the Bible, don’t believe it just because I say it.

Second, my life mission statement is “I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” Which means: I’m not in Cincinnati and in this church willy-nilly, or aimlessly, or to tickle anybody’s ears. I am here on a mission. My aim in this message is to speak God’s word to you in the hope and the prayer that your passion for the supremacy of God in every area of your life will soar, with joy, through Jesus Christ. Which leads me to the third commitment (about how God’s supremacy and your joy fit together).

Third, I am driven by a particular truth that became clear to me from Scripture about 56 years ago (when I was 22 years old), which has a profound and pervasive effect upon the way I think and feel about the glory of God and the joy of the human soul. That truth is this: God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him, especially through your suffering in the path of love.

In other words, when you experience the living God himself (not his precious gifts, but himself), through his Son, Jesus Christ, as so satisfying to your soul that no suffering in your life can rob you of that satisfaction in God, you make him look great! Which he is. I call that kind of joy “serious joy.” You can hear what I mean by “serious joy” in Paul’s phrase in 2 Corinthians 6:10: “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

How Can We Be Freed?

Therefore, under those three commitments, I invite you to look with me in the Scriptures at Hebrews 12:1–2. And what I hope to show is that this kind of joy is the spring of love — and I mean love for people, especially the kind of love that is very costly. So, the question I am trying to answer is, How can I be set free from selfishness so that — at any cost to myself — I will love other people in a way that makes Christ look great?

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We’re not going to focus on everything in the text, but rather almost entirely on these words in verse 2: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.” But let’s at least get these words situated in the flow of thought so that they don’t dangle in isolation.

Run, Christian, Run

Chapter 11 celebrates the faith of Old Testament saints who, though they are dead, yet continue to speak (Hebrews 11:4). That is, their lives remain a living witness to us about the value of living by faith. So, you can see at the beginning of chapter 12, in verse 1, that the writer pictures us as running our own race, with the lives of these saints, as it were, crying out to us, “You can do this! You can make it to the end! We finished our race in faith. You can finish yours. Don’t quit!”

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [all those stories from chapter 11], let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

In other words, life is a marathon. It’s not a 100-meter dash. It is long, and there are hills that make your muscles burn to the point where they are screaming at you, “You can’t finish this!” And all these witnesses are saying, “Yes, you can!” There may be hills and sleet and heat and wind in your face. But the book of Hebrews was written to help us finish in faith and love.

And verse 1 says that you don’t run this marathon with an overcoat on your shoulders and that you don’t run this marathon with performance-enhancing drugs in your veins. Do you see that in the middle of verse 1? “Let us lay aside every weight, and sin.” We’re not stupid, and we don’t cheat. It’s stupid to wear an overcoat, and it’s cheating to use drugs. Weights and sins.

I tried to raise four sons and one daughter in the Lord. And I recall times of them wanting to do something I disapproved of. They would ask, “What’s wrong with it?” With this text in my mind, I would say, “Don’t ask about your music, your movies, your parties, your habits, ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Ask instead, ‘Does it help me run the race? Does it help me to run with all my focus and energy and love for Jesus? Does it help me to be the best Christ-exalting marathon runner I can be?’” Don’t set your sights on the minimal standard of avoiding cheating. Set your sights on the maximal standard: “How can I be the most devoted, Christ-exalting runner possible?”

So, the main point of this text is this: Run! Get rid of all the sins that you can. Get rid of all the weights and hindrances that you can. Take hold of the marathon of your life, and don’t just set the pitifully low standard that asks, “What’s against the rules?” But rather: “How can I train, and eat, and think, and dress to be the best runner possible? How can I live my life and finish my course with maximal, Christ-exalting faith and sacrificial love?”

Selfishness-Killing Power

Verse 2 now gives us perhaps the deepest answer to that question. You are going to face the hills, and cold, and heat, and wind, and the burning in your legs, and the thundering of your heart and the thoughts of hopelessness about finishing — you are going to face them like this:

. . . looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

You are going to look to Jesus as you run. And what you are going to focus on, as you look to him, is this: He too ran. His race was 33 years long. And it ended with a horrific gauntlet of opposition and suffering — namely, with the unspeakable torture of the cross and the immeasurable shame of such a death. He ran it. He finished it. How?

“Go deep with Jesus until he is the all-satisfying joy set before you at the end of your marathon.”

Mark the words in the middle of verse 2: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the shame.” And surely you will agree that the marathon Jesus ran was a marathon of love. He ran the last several hundred yards of the marathon with nails in his hands and his feet, and a spear in his side, and a crown of thorns on his head. Surely this was the greatest act of love that has ever been performed in the history of the world — because he was dying for our sins, not his own.

My question for my life — and your life — is, How can I run like this? How can I be set free from my selfishness so that — at any cost to myself — I will love other people in a way that makes this Christ look great? And the central answer of this verse is that the greatest act of love that was ever performed was performed “for the joy that was set before him.”

So, perhaps you can see where I got the title for this message, namely, “How Is Joy the Root of Sacrificial Love?” Verse 2 teaches us that Jesus was sustained through the cross and through the shame by the joy that he anticipated at the end of his marathon. That does not mean that there is no powerful, sustaining experience of joy on the marathon itself, that there is only joy at the end.

And I say that because the book of Hebrews defines faith, by which we run the marathon, like this: “Faith is the assurance [or substance] of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). Which means that the full, complete, all-satisfying, everlasting joy in God that we are hoping for at the end of our marathon becomes, in some measure, an experience right now, by faith, in the midst of our “cross,” in the midst of our “shame” — our marathon. That’s why it has such selfishness-killing, cross-bearing, shame-enduring power.

Selfishness Wouldn’t Die

What if someone says, “Doesn’t that turn the love of Christ, at the cross, into selfishness? If he’s just seeking his own joy at the end of the race, is he loving us?” The answer is this: in being sustained through the cross by the joy at the end of his race, he’s not being selfish, because selfishness is when you use other people to get your own happiness.

But nobody calls it selfishness when you’re willing to die to include other people in your happiness. This joy, which Jesus was sustained by at the end of his marathon, was precisely designed to be shared by everyone for whom he died. It was the joy of being surrounded by countless blood-bought people supremely happy in Jesus.

Which means that for you and me, in all the sufferings of our marathon, it is not selfish — it is love — to be sustained by the hope of everlasting joy in God, into which we are bringing as many people as we can. That’s what the marathon is for — joy in Christ, sustaining you through the sacrifices of love, that makes Christ look so satisfying, others want to go with you.

So, let’s ask this question: If this joy that’s set before us — this spring, overflowing from the future back into the present — is so powerful in producing and supporting the sacrifices of love, and if this is not only the way Jesus was sustained in the greatest act of love, but the way we should be sustained in our acts of love, are there examples elsewhere in the book of Hebrews that would show us what this experience is like?

Yes, there are. I’ll show you two.

Joyfully Plundered People

First, consider Hebrews 10:32–34. Listen for echoes of “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.”

Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

Cincinnati, where you live, and Minneapolis, where I live, need to see Christians like this more than anything. Some of them had been thrown into prison. The others had to decide whether to identify with them as fellow Christians and risk the plundering of the property or to go underground and save their skin. They conquered their fear and selfishness, and they took the risk of visiting the prison and paid the price of plundered property.

How did that happen? How did they become people like that? How did they overcome their selfishness and their love of comfort and security? The answer is that joy streamed from hope in the future back into the present and sustained them and empowered them for love. Let’s read it in verse 34: “For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property [How? Where did that costly compassion come from? Answer:], since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”

This was the joy that was set before them. They might lose their reputation. They might lose their houses. They might lose their positions. They might lose their lives. But those were not the spring of their joy. That was with Christ, in the future, streaming back into the present, by faith, making love possible. If this world is your treasure, rather than the immeasurable pleasures of being with Christ forever, you will not be able to love in a way that makes Christ look great. But if Christ is the all-satisfying joy set before you, you will.

Joyfully Reproached Leader

Here’s the second example: Hebrews 11:24–26, a description of how Moses was able to choose the hard path of loving the people of Israel rather than staying in the comforts of Pharaoh’s palace.

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God [like Jesus chose the cross] than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin [there are sinful pleasures, but they’re not the ones we’re after, because they are too short — they only last eighty years or so]. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

This was the joy set before him. More precious, more satisfying than all the treasures of Egypt was the reward of finishing his marathon with Israel through the wilderness — through the cross, the shame — and joining all those Old Testament witnesses in the presence of the Messiah.

Go Deep with Jesus

My concluding plea is this: Get to know Jesus Christ. Go deep with Jesus until he is the supreme Treasure of your life and the all-satisfying joy set before you at the end of your marathon.

Go deep with the vastness of his wisdom, far greater than Solomon’s.
Go deep with the greatness of his power, upholding the universe with his mind.
Go deep with his majesty, this very day above all governments and armies.
Go deep with the tenderness of his kindness — blessing children and everyone like them.
Go deep with the uniqueness of his words — no one ever spoke like this man.
Go deep with the length of his patience, perfect toward all penitent sinners.
Go deep with the suffering of his love, even for enemies.
Go deep with his mercy, touching lepers, putting ears back on to attacking soldiers.

Get to know him until he is the joy set before you at the end of your marathon.

If he becomes that for you, three things will happen: (1) Your joy, even in the sufferings of this life, will overflow. (2) That joy will sustain a life of sacrificial love for others. And (3) that joy-sustained love will make Jesus look like the all-satisfying Savior that he is.

Audio Transcript

There are certain Bible texts that are so important to Pastor John’s life and ministry that we need to stop and focus on them. We saw one last time, on the “gutsy guilt” of Micah 7:8–9, looking at what we do when we come face to face with the guilt of our darkest sin. And today we look at another important text, Isaiah 43:6–7. It’s essential to know and study and maybe memorize. It’s so rich, which is why it comes up all the time on this podcast, which you’ll see in the APJ book on pages 87–88.

Isaiah 43:6–7 is on my mind today because we read it today. We read Isaiah 42 and 43 together in our reading plan, alongside three other texts. It’s a lot of reading today. And again, Pastor John, one of my fears with a reading plan like this one, trying to read the whole Bible in one year, is that it just makes it so easy to breeze past important texts, especially ones you draw from all the time. So, I want to hit pause and have you slow us down to meditate on Isaiah 43:6–7 for ten minutes or so to draw out the points we need on this text. It seems like a huge and awesome blessing that the Creator would explain to us why we exist.

It is huge. One of the reasons these verses from Isaiah 43 have been so central to my thinking is that 55 years ago, when I was in seminary, I bought a book by the seminary faculty titled Things Most Surely Believed. In that book, Daniel Fuller, one of the faculty, my most influential teacher, had a chapter titled “Why God Created the World.” And that chapter was an exposition of these verses.

I was drawn into a living discussion of that text and what seemed to me to be just about the most important question in the world. Why do I exist? Why does anything exist? And I’ve never tired of returning to these verses, because when I read them in context over and over, I not only see fresh glimpses of God’s peculiar design for me as a human being, but I also feel welling up in my heart fresh zeal to bring my life into alignment with God’s ultimate purpose and so experience the greatest significance possible in this life and not waste my one single life that I have to live on this earth. And that just has been huge for me. I mean, over and over again, it has kindled in me, “Don’t waste your life. There’s a purpose for your life. God has revealed it. Get in line with it. This will make everything count.” And that’s what I would love for our listeners in this session.

So, hear the words that I’ve returned to over and over — this is Isaiah 43:6–7: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Let’s gaze at the wonder of this statement through five different lenses.

1. God’s Purpose for All Peoples

Let’s look at it through the Jewish lens. This is a statement made to Israel. We just have to own that right off. We’re Gentiles reading it, and we take it for ourselves (as we should), but you have to give that a little bit of thought. This is made to Israel. The paragraph — verse 1 — begins, “Now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel.” There are unique ways by which God is glorified in the history of Israel. No doubt about that. And he’s talking about that here.

But it would be a mistake not to see ourselves — as Christians, lovers of Messiah Jesus — in this verse and not to see his purpose for the nations as well in this verse. Because the Bible teaches that not just Israel but all the nations, indeed all humans created in God’s image — to image forth God; that is, to glorify God by virtue of being created in his image — all of us exist for the glory of God. “Every tongue,” Paul says in Philippians 2:11, willingly or unwillingly, will “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Not just confess Christ, but confess Christ “to the glory of God the Father.”

“People should put their eyes to the lens of our life and see through it the greatness of the glory of God.”

As far as Christians are concerned, the whole New Testament is designed to show that Gentile believers, like me and you, Tony, and most of the people listening, probably — Gentile believers in Jesus — are now included in God’s chosen people, the true Israel. So, if you are in Christ, in the Jewish Messiah, by faith, “you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:29). Therefore, the fullness of God’s blessing in Isaiah 43 applies not only to Jewish believers but also to Gentile believers. So, we should read this chapter and revel in it as ours — Gentiles, believers in Messiah.

2. God’s Self-Exaltation

Let’s look at it through the lens of God’s self-exaltation. Isaiah 43:7 says, “I created [my sons and daughters] for my glory” — whom I created “for my glory.” This is just inescapably and plainly an instance of God’s self-exaltation. He’s saying, in effect, “The universe is about me, folks. It’s about me. The bigness of the universe is about my bigness. The workings of the universe in their amazing, intricate wisdom are about my wisdom. The weight and greatness of the universe are about my power. The gift of the universe to the human race is about my grace.” God’s purpose in creation is self-exalting. It’s about him. “From him and through him,” Paul said, “are all things” (Romans 11:36). So, that’s the second lens, and we’ll circle back to that to show why that’s good news.

3. God’s Eternal Glory

To say that God created the world and us for his glory does not mean he created us in order to become glorious — that’s really important to clarify — but rather to show, display, communicate, share his glory. God’s sons and daughters do not magnify him like a microscope, which makes small things look bigger than they are, but like a telescope, which makes unimaginably great things look more like what they are. He created us to glorify him like a telescope. People should put their eyes to the lens of our life and see through it the greatness of the glory of God — how satisfying he is to us.

4. God’s Self-Sufficiency

Therefore, we are able to see God in this text through the lens of his self-sufficiency. He did not create out of need. He wasn’t desperate for a friend. If you heard that growing up, like God made you because he needed a friend — not true. He was free and not constrained by any defect or any deficiency. “It is no defect in a fountain,” Edwards said, “that it is prone to overflow” (see God’s Passion for His Glory, 165). God did not create out of the deficiency of need; he created out of the fullness of love.

5. Our Everlasting Joy

This brings us to the most wonderful part of this text that I hadn’t meditated on for a long time. And it really jumped out at me in a most wonderful way in getting ready for this — namely, looking at it through the lens of our own experience of God’s purpose to glorify God in us. If God created us for his glory, what does that imply about our experience of God’s glory? Now, here are the key words from verses 1–5, and if you read them slowly and you count them, they are simply glorious, amazing, wonderful, encouraging. Here they are:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;     I have called you by name, you are mine.When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;     and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,     and the flame shall not consume you.For I am the Lord your God,     the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. . . .Because you are precious in my eyes,     and [glorified], and I love you. . . .Fear not, for I am with you.

To have the Creator of the universe talk to you that way — what could be more glorious? “Loved,” “redeemed,” “called,” “owned,” “protected,” “precious,” “glorified.” God has said everything he can say, has he not? He said everything he can say to make it plain that his own self-exaltation is good for me, is good for us.

We fulfill the destiny of the universe — we fulfill God’s purpose to be glorified in us — when we revel in being loved by him, revel in being redeemed by him, revel in being called by him, revel in being owned by him, revel in being protected by him, revel in being precious to him, revel in being glorified, actually sharing in the glory that he created the world to display. God created us for his glory, and this is spectacularly good news because, as is so plain in this text, God is glorified in us when we are satisfied in him. That’s why he made the world.

Audio Transcript

Someone recently asked me to venture an answer to a question — this question: What’s the most common question we get on the podcast? And I don’t know the answer exactly. So, it truly is just a guess. And my guess, based on my experience, I would say, is this: Our most-often-asked-about question is about the unpardonable sin. And by that, I mean it in the broadest sense of the term — not only “What is the unpardonable sin (as defined in Scripture)?” but “Have I committed a sin that is so ugly, so gross, so heinous, so premeditated, so repeated, so high-handedly evil that God will surely not be able to forgive me for it?” That was my answer. That’s, in my best guess, the most common question. It’s certainly one of the dominant themes in APJ over the years, as you can see in the APJ book on pages 337–339.

Will God forgive my very worst sin? That’s the question from an anonymous young woman who listens to the podcast. “Dear Pastor John, I had an abortion. That is the one and only thing I knew I would never, ever do. But I did it. I cannot begin to detail here the grief and damage it has caused me, and I know I deserve every bit of it. I feel as though I will always be a low-class Christian because of what I’ve done.

“I was a believer when I committed this sin. I did not do it to avoid ‘disruption’ in my life, but because I had no confidence that I could offer any quality of life to a child at the time. In my twisted mind, I felt I was doing the child better by preventing him or her from having to suffer in a broken family or a foster home. I understand that way of thinking is absurd. I just didn’t understand that at the time. I grew up in a family that was split before I was born, and I feared that my child would have that kind of life. I just couldn’t handle the thought of this.

“Now I feel this is something I should always be punished for. I haven’t been back to church in the years since this happened. I know I don’t belong. I don’t deserve to go. Does God even want to forgive me for this? Does he want me and still have the plans for me that he did before, or are those plans gone? I’m disgusted with myself. I just hope that there’s still hope for me, which I know that even wanting that is selfish and unwarranted at this point.”

When I hear this question that’s so filled with self-recrimination and doubt and fear and guilt, I want very much to introduce this woman — I wish I knew her name, as I could call her by name — to what I have for many years called “gutsy guilt.”

Real Guilt, Real Faith

I base that term “gutsy guilt” on the prophet Micah:

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;     when I fall, I shall rise;when I sit in darkness,     the Lord will be a light to me.I will bear the indignation of the Lord     because I have sinned against him,until he pleads my cause     and executes judgment for me.He will bring me out to the light;     I shall look upon his vindication. (Micah 7:8–9)

Micah owns his sin. He owns his guilt and the fact that he’s in darkness. He’s sitting there. It’s under the Lord. The Lord is disciplining him. He’s under God’s judgment. He knows it’s because of his sin. He says, “I sit in darkness. . . . I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned.” So, he’s not making any excuses. He’s not pretending this is from the devil. He knows this is from the Lord, and it’s awful.

So, he owns his sin. He owns his guilt. And then he says that he will sit in this darkness, under the Lord’s displeasure, “until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me.” Not against me — for me. “He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.”

That’s amazing. This is incredibly gutsy. I am under the Lord’s dark judgment, and I still trust him to be my God and vindicate me. So, “rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise.” That’s the only way I know how to survive as a saved sinner. Real guilt, real sorrow, real pain, real darkness under God’s discipline, and real gutsy faith that the very God who is disciplining me and displeased with me is on my side and will vindicate me. So, that’s the basic truth I’d love to build into her life.

Seven Responses to Hopelessness

With that as a background, what I’d like to do, and I think might be helpful, is to just take maybe six or seven of her little statements about herself and make a comment about them.

1. “I feel this is something I should always be punished for.” Well, yes it is. Abortion — and every other sin — is something we should always be punished for. And there is a universe of difference between “should be punished for” and “will be punished for.” Gutsy gospel guilt says, “I am guilty. I should be punished now and forever.” That is the very meaning of sin and justice. And gutsy gospel guilt says, “But I will not be punished. I will not be punished because Jesus bore my punishment for me, and I have forsaken all my self-reliance, and I throw myself wholly on his mercy.”

“If you want forgiveness because you want God, that’s not selfish. That’s what you were made for.”

I think of Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” And then here’s Isaiah 53:5: “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the [punishment] that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” So yes, you should always be punished for your abortion. Own that guilt, and then be gutsy and embrace the gospel that Christ bore our sins on his body on the cross. And now in him, God is for me, not against me. I should be punished, and I won’t be punished. That’s my response to that first comment.

2. “I know I don’t belong at church. I don’t deserve to go.” If the only people who belong at church are those who deserve to be with God’s people in his presence, worshiping and growing in him, nobody would belong to church. Nobody would go to church. When Paul described the members of the church in Corinth, he listed their sins like this:

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. (1 Corinthians 6:9–11)

The only people who belong in church are sinners who are washed and justified by faith. So no, you don’t deserve to go to church. That’s why you should go, because church is the one institution in the universe designed for people who don’t deserve to be there. That’s the meaning. That’s the meaning of gospel churches.

3. “I’m disgusted with myself.” Well, that’s fine. To look back on abortion and not be disgusted would be a sign of sickness. To see it with disgust is a sign of health. Unless there is gutsy disgust, you’ll collapse. Gutsy gospel disgust is not paralyzed. It gives up on self and walks into the power of grace. All of us are disgusting — and we should not run from it but through it, into God’s grace.

4. “I just hope that there’s still hope for me.” Good, because there is hope for you. Paul says that everything in the Scriptures is written so that sinners might have hope (Romans 15:4). Hope is the one thing you can always be sure pleases the Lord. I love Psalm 147:11: “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.” He loves people, he delights in people, who turn away from themselves — and hoping in the strength of the horse or the legs of a man — and hope in him.

5. “Hoping that there is hope is selfish.” Well, it would be selfish if you just wanted to use God to get a relieved conscience. But if you want forgiveness because you want God, that’s not selfish. That’s what you were made for. And it honors God, not you. It honors God. God is glorified when you want to be satisfied in God.

6. “Hoping that there’s hope is unwarranted.” No, that’s false. That’s just false. Hope is not unwarranted. It is infinitely warranted, not by your goodness, but by the blood of Jesus. If you stand before God and hope to get into his presence with joy forever, and he says, “What warrant can you have for hoping that I would receive you?” the answer is this: “The blood and righteousness of your Son. My Savior is my only warrant.” That’s true. There is no warrant for hope in us. There is infinite warrant in the blood of Jesus. So, that’s a false statement that your hope is unwarranted. It is not unwarranted.

7. Here’s the last statement: “Does God want me and have good plans for me?” And the answer is in the last chapter of the Bible, as though God wanted it to be the last thing ringing in our ears. The last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22:17, says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” So, if you’re thirsty for God, he invites you. He wants you. And when you come to him, he has plans for you. Your life will not be wasted if you come to him. “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).