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).

Audio Transcript

Thinking is essential in the Christian life. It’s essential to Bible reading. And we’ve spent time looking at how much we need to focus our minds to trace the logic flow of Paul’s thought as we read his letters — a dynamic you have shown us, Pastor John, using Romans 1:15–17 and 1 Corinthians 6:18–20 as great samples to show how the Bible assumes we will read. For that, see the APJ book (page 27 for those). Informative and inspiring.

But there are pitfalls to being a deep thinker, too. And Sarah, a thinker, wants to avoid those pitfalls. Here’s her email: “Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for taking my question. I’ve learned a lot from Ask Pastor John over the years, and I listen every week. Thank you, and thank you, Tony, for all your work in making it, and for compiling the new APJ book. It’s all very helpful.

“My question for you is about thinking. I am a thinker. It’s one reason why I love the podcast. You are a thinker. However, I have noticed that some thinking is very dangerous. Paul warns of the dangers of thinking in 1 Corinthians 8:1–4. And yet he also says that thinking is indispensable in Romans 10:1–4. Can you explain how knowledge is both indispensable and dangerous, and how you manage this balance in your own thinking? Thank you!”

I think that’s an excellent way to say it. Knowledge is both indispensable and dangerous. That’s good. Sarah doesn’t make a distinction between thinking and knowing. So, let me make that distinction. Thinking is the activity of the mind by which we gain knowledge. So, I would add the statement, “Knowing and thinking are both indispensable and dangerous.” The process and the product are both indispensable for the Christian — and dangerous.

Thinking Is Dangerous

Let’s start with the danger. I think the number one danger that the Bible warns against when it comes to thinking and knowing is pride. Qualification: that does not mean that people who don’t think and who don’t know much are automatically humble. There is just as much pride among ignorant people as there is among smart people. There is just as much pride among people who don’t know much as there is among people who know a lot.

But the people who don’t think, they boast in other things besides thinking and knowing — physical strength; sexual, alluring powers; ability to cook, play sports, sing, make music, make money, fight, be funny. The things we can boast in are endless. The possibilities of pride and boasting are endless, both for the ignorant and the intelligent.

“We know as we ought if our knowing produces love, not boasting.”

So, the point is not that intelligent, knowledgeable people are more proud than ignorant, unthinking people. The point is that the greatest danger about being intelligent and knowledgeable is pride. That’s the greatest danger people have if they are thoughtful and know a lot of things. And there’s something about thinking (and the skill you have in it) and knowing much that tempts us to exalt ourselves over others and think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.

Paul’s Warning

Sarah refers to 1 Corinthians 8:1–3:

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Now, I find those verses really puzzling. How do they fit together? And I’ve written a lot about them.

So, let me just give you my interpretation as best I can. I think what it means is this: How do we know that we know as we ought? Answer: we know as we ought if our knowing produces love, not boasting. If our knowing puffs up over others, it’s not right knowing. But if our knowing builds others up in love, then our knowing is right knowing.

When Paul adds a reference to loving God in verse 3 (“if anyone loves God”), he evidently implies that the love that builds up other people (by the way we use our knowledge for them and not to boast over them) is rooted in love for God, which he says originates in being known by God — that is, being chosen by God and loved by God, so that we are able to love him and thus be full of love for other people and thus use our knowledge rightly, lovingly. It’s a profoundly God-centered understanding of human thinking and knowing in those verses.

So, the first and foremost danger of thinking and knowing that Paul focuses on is that knowledge puffs up. Unless it is under the control of God-given love, it’s going to make us proud.

Jesus’s Warning

Jesus has a similar warning, I think, for the wise and understanding. He says in Matthew 11:25, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.” Now, I think “little children” there signifies humble people, lowly people, simple people who are not boasting in their wisdom and their understanding but are looking away from themselves to God, the way a child looks to his parent and is willing to receive whatever he says is true. “If God says it, I’ll believe it. I’m going to look to God for my wisdom.”

So, the great danger of being self-reliant, self-exalting in our understanding is that we cut ourselves off from God’s revelation. Dependence on revelation from God for wisdom is a humbling thing. We don’t like to depend on somebody else having total wisdom and telling us what reality is like. Humans don’t like to be utterly dependent on God’s revelation of himself in order to have a true knowledge of life.

Nebuchadnezzar’s Example

One last illustration about the connection between pride and the right use of the mind is the vivid example of Nebuchadnezzar. When he boasted in his power and intelligence to build a great kingdom, God struck him down, made him like an animal who ate grass. Here’s the way Nebuchadnezzar described his recovery from that bestial, animal-like loss of his mind, his right use of his brain. He said, “At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High” (Daniel 4:34).

Years ago, I put that verse on my office door at church, the verse that says, “I . . . lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me.” I love it. We will use our minds rightly when our eyes are lifted Godward. If we turn in on ourselves and begin to boast, our reason will become bestial and destructive.

Thinking Is Indispensable

Now, let’s shift gears and turn to the fact that knowing and thinking are not just dangerous; they’re indispensable. The prophet Hosea said, “My people [perish] for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). And he pleaded, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). So, the faculty of knowing is first and foremost essential for knowing God. Let us know God. Let us press on to know God.

I think Jesus made that plain when he said about the Great Commandment in Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Now, I take loving God with your mind to mean use your mind. Use your thinking faculty, your capacities for knowing. Use your mind in order to stoke the fires of love for God in your heart.

If the heart burns, the kindling is thrown by the mind. The mind works hard. It goes out and it finds the truth, the kindling of truth, and it throws it on the furnace of love in the heart. Put your mind at the service of your heart in loving God. That’s the ultimate purpose for having the capacity to think and know.

Again and again, I am bowled over by the sheer reality that the Creator of the universe has communicated himself to us in a book. We have a book, and the book is the very word of the Creator of the universe. One of the reasons that bowls me over is because it implies that the main way we know God is by reading or listening to someone who has read. If you’re preliterate and you have to depend on orality, someone speaking to you, they have to read the book or somebody has to read the book.

So, reading and listening are fundamentally processes of thinking. To read is to think. God has ordained to make himself known and to make a relationship with him possible through a book, which means we have to learn how to read. Learning how to read means learning how to think, which makes thinking indispensable.

I conclude with exactly what Sarah said: thinking is not just dangerous; it is indispensable.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Here we talk every so often about wartime living. And we talk about minimalism, too. But those are not the same thing. The Christian life is not simply about decluttering our closets and living a simpler life. No. We aim at wartime simplicity, which is a more specific goal, a material simplicity in this world that’s on mission, not simply happy with being more organized. You can see how Pastor John has distinguished the two — wartime simplicity and minimalism — in the APJ book on pages 98–101.

Today we look at a new angle to the topic in an email from a woman who listens to the podcast from China. Here’s the email from our friend: “Dear Pastor John, hello to you from Hong Kong, and thank you for this podcast. My question is that my unbelieving husband has the habit of hoarding. He keeps boxes, newspapers from years back, packaging — all the things that average people may regard as garbage once their expected usage is over — all that accumulates in our home. I tried to throw away some things, but it caused disharmony in our relationship. I feel like I live in a rubbish dump. How do I deal with the problem biblically?”

Well, let me admit right away, I am not an expert in either understanding hoarding or counseling hoarders. So, you might say, “Well, why are you even trying to answer this question?” And I’m trying to answer it because it’s so hard. I feel like, as a pastor, I can’t ignore things that I just have not given a lot of thought to. But frankly, I have seen enough of this in the last forty years that I’ve thought about it some. So, don’t take this as a final word — just take it as “Maybe there’s something here that would help me.” And if there’s not, you haven’t wasted too much time.

So, let me at least try to share the kinds of things that I have thought over the years, and then call them together here to show what you can do if you have a friend or a relative or married someone who lives in the chaos of hoarding. And the reason I say chaos is that we almost never speak of a person as a hoarder who saves everything but keeps it in perfect order on shelves, in the attic, in closets. We don’t call that person a hoarder. The house is neat; it’s orderly. Life is functional.

The hoarder is a person who has gotten out of proportion to his ability to manage what he’s saving, and disorder and encroachment is making life almost unlivable. I view hoarding as on a continuum with degrees of messiness, and we are all messy a little bit — some a lot, some a little bit. I think there’s a continuum here.

Why Some Live in the Chaos

So, what are the factors that move people along this continuum to full-blown, almost incapacitating, depressing hoarding?

1. They might not have the inclination to organize.

The first thing I would say is that many people grow up in homes where they do not see or hear anyone modeling or expressing the value of orderliness, or neatness, or cleanliness, or beauty. They may enter adult life with no built-in instinct toward keeping a room or a home orderly or neat or beautiful. It’s just not their natural impulse. It wasn’t built into them either genetically or the way their parents raised them.

2. They might not have the necessary attention.

This lack of any natural impulse toward orderliness may go hand in hand with a kind of attention deficit. As much as we may overdiagnose our children with attention deficit disorder, attention deficit — whether you call it a disorder or not — is a real thing. If you were to ask somebody why they don’t put this or that away — they just leave it there — one honest answer they might give to you is, “It doesn’t register. I don’t even see it.”

Now, those folks leave a trail of things that belong in a drawer, or on a shelf, or in a cabinet, or in a closet, but they don’t put them there for the two reasons we’ve seen. One, partly because there’s no natural impulse toward orderliness, and partly because it just doesn’t grab their attention. They don’t see it. It is as if they are blind to it.

3. They might procrastinate.

There is the complicating factor of procrastination. A person opens a package, takes out the content, and leaves the packaging on the chair or on the counter. “I’ll deal with that later. I fully intend to.” They don’t. So, now you have three factors at work: the absence of a bent toward orderliness, a deficit of attention as though things just don’t even get noticed — they don’t register — and you have procrastination that intends to do the right thing and put something away, and never gets back to it. Now, the effect of those three factors is a room or a house of increasing disorder or messiness or chaos.

4. They might not think to make a plan.

The fourth complicating factor has to do with why it’s so hard to tackle this mess and clean it up once it’s accumulated; namely, many people’s minds simply do not function in a way that makes planning for cleaning and ordering natural. It doesn’t come naturally to formulate a goal. “Okay, this is going to be cleaned up in three weeks.” Conceive of steps to get to that goal. “Okay, I’m going to have my friend and I — we’re going to work on it about one hour a day every morning.” Plan for those times. “Okay, we’ll do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

That way of thinking seems so natural to some people — it does to me — and it’s quite unnatural to others. They just don’t think that way. If you talk to them about that kind of planning, they might say something like, “I just do things. I don’t live my life that way. I don’t even think that way. It’s a strain on my mind to even hear you talk about it that way.” In other words, they’re not walking through their lives formulating goals, identifying steps to reach those goals, planning how to take those steps. They just don’t approach life that way.

“God in Christ is ultimately the source of our well-being — not orderliness and not messiness.”

Therefore, what seems like a simple cleanup project to some, to them seems absolutely daunting, which means now that if all those factors come together — absence of any natural bent toward orderliness, a deficit of attention, a bent toward procrastination, the absence of any natural inclination to form a plan in handling the growing chaos — the effect is discouragement, hopelessness, paralysis, isolation (nobody is going to come to their house) and sometimes depression.

5. They might be inclined to collect things.

Which brings us now to the final complicating factor of this tendency toward hoarding. On top of an ever-increasing chaos of things that never get put away, you have this added impulse to collect things and rarely throw them away. I don’t think hoarding is a separate and distinct tendency from all those other things that I’ve just mentioned. I think they’re all interwoven in greater or lesser degrees.

What Feeds the Impulse to Hoard

As I’ve tried to understand this impulse of hoarding that gets added into the mix, it seems to me there are two general ways to describe what’s feeding this impulse.

1. We can find our identity in our possessions.

One is a deep, distorted association in a person’s mind between having and being. Now, that may sound a little philosophical, but it’s not. Everybody can understand this. Let me try to explain. To have stuff is to be okay. “I’m okay. I’ve got my stuff I have, and so I am okay.”

The reason I say it’s distorted is because all of us experience some measure of good feeling that comes from just having, right? This is not weird. We all do this. We collect coins or baseball cards or butterflies or antiques or books. There’s a satisfying sense of well-being that comes from just having a thing, having a collection. What is that? Well, there it is. It’s universal. Most people experience having as part of their well-being.

But with the hoarder, this has been distorted so that the person’s sense of significance and well-being is preserved not by an isolated healthy collection, but by a life dominated by collection. It feels good. It feels significant to have more stuff, even if it’s old newspapers or tools or wrapping paper or buttons or scrap metal. I’ve seen people collect and fill their houses with the most bizarre things.

2. We can find it too painful to discard our possessions.

The other thing that feeds the hoarding impulse is the anxiety caused by getting rid of stuff. Now, this is just the flip side of the good feeling that one has by gathering stuff, but experientially it’s a different feeling. And so, there are two impulses, not just one. Once you have comforted yourself with some acquisition — “I’ve got a lot of stuff that feels good. I feel secure. I feel content. It does good for me” — and you surround yourself with this stuff, then that sense of peace is jeopardized (there’s an anxiety that comes) if you contemplate getting rid of any one piece of the stuff.

It might be the one piece that you’re going to need to complete your well-being, and a huge anxiety is created by thinking, “I don’t think I can give that away because if I give that away, then I might give all this away. And if I give all this away, I have no idea how we’ll feel good anymore about my life.”

How to Help a Hoarder

So, what do you do if you must deal with a friend or a roommate or a relative or a close relative, like a spouse? Here are five suggestions (very briefly).

1. Don’t get angry.

Get beyond anger. The Bible says that the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God (James 1:20). It is so easy to get frustrated and angry. And you will discover that’s not going to help. That’s not working righteousness for anybody. We have to find a way to subdue the anger that rises so that we can talk and relate in a way that doesn’t come from anger.

2. Try to talk about it.

With as much patience and kindness as you can, see how far your friend or relatives will let you draw them into a conversation about what you perceive as a problem. They may not. They may. They might admit it’s a total problem. They might not see any problem at all. Don’t go first to the problems that it creates. “The chaos is killing you.” “It’s going to make a fire hazard.” “It’s unhealthy.” Don’t go there first.

First, go to the kinds of things that may help you understand them. How did it get to be this way? What’s driving them? And they might be helped by your suggesting some of those five things that I mentioned earlier. See if they recognize themselves in any of those traits.

3. Consider how you can compromise.

See if they are willing to think in terms of a both-and, a kind of compromise with you, where both of you can accomplish some of what you desire. I knew one family, for example, that basically solved the problem (more or less) by making one room in the house total chaos. And nobody gave a thought to it; nobody attempted to fix it. If you’re going to store something, throw it in there. And if you opened that, you’d say, “What is this?”

I remember doing that — and it was far away from Minneapolis, so I won’t identify anybody. But I thought, “This seems like a normal house, and that one room is absolute, bizarre chaos. What is that?” It’s a compromise is what it is. They found a way to live together. And I thought, “Okay, that’s what it has to be.” So, that’s number three. See if you can get a both-and — a compromise of some kind. That may not be it, but something like that.

4. Suggest seeing a counselor.

If the problem seems severe enough to be hindering friendships and hindering health, putting life at risk, you might ask the person to see a counselor with you and get more help than I can give. And I don’t mean that there are any magic bullets. I just mean sometimes a third person listening carefully can help both of you talk more clearly, more fairly to each other, and so move you forward toward a solution.

5. Seek your ultimate fulfillment in God.

Finally, God in Christ is ultimately the source of our well-being — not orderliness and not messiness. So, seek together to find your deepest sense of identity and well-being and happiness in him.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. 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. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

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, 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. (2 Corinthians 4:1–18)

Let’s walk step-by-step through the chapter and see if we can follow the train of Paul’s thought as the argument unfolds. Then we will step back and focus on the main point and the primary supporting arguments. And I promise you that the main point is going to be personally and culturally very relevant for your life and ministry, and the seven supporting arguments are going to be very powerful to help you not to lose heart.

Verses 1–2: ‘Do not lose heart, but refuse to tamper.’

Verse 1: “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.” We are going to see this again in verse 16: “So we do not lose heart.” What is it that, at this point, might make Paul lose heart? In 2 Corinthians 2:15, he had said that his ministry is the aroma of Christ, and to some it is an aroma from death to death. He preaches, and the effect is that the deadness of some is simply confirmed with death. Sometimes the gospel meets with deadness and becomes a sentence of death.

And then, in chapter 3, even though he celebrates the superior glory of the new covenant ministry, in which the Spirit lifts the veil so people can see the glory of God — nevertheless, he says in 3:14–15, “For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.” An aroma of death and an unlifted veil before the preaching of Paul. It can be discouraging. One can easily lose heart. We’ve all tasted it.

But as soon as Paul says that he does not lose heart, he immediately shows us that this is not merely a statement about his emotions, but about his trustworthiness, as a minister of the word. Follow the logic: “We do not lose heart. [Verse 2:] But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word.” What’s the implication of saying it that way — not lose heart but refuse to tamper?

The implication is that a very tempting way to deal with discouragement when your preaching is not producing as much life and is not lifting as many veils as you would like, is to tamper with the message to make it more palatable to the unbelieving mind. Let’s read it all (verses 1–2):

We do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. 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.

Our message, our gospel, is an “open statement of the truth.” There’s no cunning. There’s no tampering. There’s nothing underhanded. We’re not slippery. There’s no double-speak. There’s no clever attempt to hide difficult doctrines or tough moral positions. What we believe is open and clear. Everybody can see it for what it is. Our discouragement with results has not driven us to become wishy-washy with God’s truth or turned us into man-pleasers.

Verses 3–6: ‘Only God can save, and he saves through means.’

So, verses 3–4 give the real explanation for why not everybody believes when Paul preaches.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

What’s the point? The point is that the unbelief of those who remain veiled when Paul preaches is not owing to lack of openness and clarity in Paul’s message. He is not responsible for their unbelief. There has been no cunning. No tampering. No subtlety. No half-truths. No concealing of what is utterly important. The ultimately decisive factor if the gospel remains veiled (for the rest of their lives) — having no saving effect — is that God has given them up to their own hardness and to the blinding effects of Satan (verse 4). They are among the perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18; 2 Corinthians 2:15–16).

Then, verse 5 adds this argument:

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

In other words, the failure of people to see the glory of Christ in our preaching (verse 4) is not because we don’t preach Christ. It’s not because we’re inserting ourselves in some confusing or obscuring way into the gospel. “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.” Our message is Jesus Christ and his lordship. Yes, we ourselves, in our bodily existence, are very much a part of this proclamation. But the way we figure in is that we are your servants (douloi), your slaves. Our verbal message and our bodily ministry are not the reason the veil is still over the gospel.

Then Paul completes the argument like this in verse 6:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

In other words, the reason we preach Christ, and embody the servant-like, suffering ministry of Christ, is that when God sovereignly shines with his saving light into the veiled and dead human heart, what he enables people to see in the gospel we preach and the Christ we embody is the glory of God in “the face of Jesus Christ.” Paul and his message are the face of Jesus. He ministers in the double way of verse 5 — proclaiming and serving — because when God lifts the veil, that’s what people see.

So, the point of verses 1–6 is that Paul does not let possible discouragement (verse 1) lead him to tamper with the gospel (verse 2) or to pull back from being a Christlike servant. Rather, he takes his encouragement from the fact that, ultimately, it is God who decides who is being saved and who is perishing (verse 3), and from the fact that, when God sovereignly creates light in a blind heart (verse 6), he does it by means of Paul’s Christ-exalting preaching and his self-sacrificing ministry (verse 5). The fact that Paul has this ministry as a gift of mercy to him (as verse 1 says) is added reason for why he does not lose heart.

Verses 7–12: ‘I, Paul, preach Christ with my afflictions.’

Now, verses 7–12 focus on the sacrificial, suffering, servant-like aspect of Paul’s ministry (from verse 5b). Remember how he said in verse 5 that his ministry has these two dimensions: “[1] For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, [2] with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” First dimension: Paul proclaims Jesus Christ with the authority of heaven. But — second dimension — he also gets down low like a slave, underneath, and serves his people, forgoing rights, forgoing privileges, forgoing remuneration, forgoing sleep and safety and esteem.

“Don’t lose heart in your ministry, and don’t protect yourself from losing heart by tampering with God’s word.”

That second dimension of Paul’s ministry is what verses 7–12 are about. So, he’s carrying forward the argument that he is anything but cunning and manipulative and underhanded and disgraceful. Not only does he not tamper with the word. He doesn’t tamper with the example of Jesus’s sacrificial love. He lives it. He commends his message to our conscience, and he commends his life to our conscience. He speaks a crucified Christ and he lives a crucified Christ. He tells the sacrifice of Christ and he embodies the sacrifice of Christ.

Verses 7–12 show how he does that, and why. Verse 7:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

I take the “treasure” to be the miracle of verse 6 — that God has shone in Paul’s life to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But the main point is that Paul is a clay pot. I don’t think we need to speculate about what that means. It’s spelled out in verses 8–9. This is the form of his slavery (from verse 5).

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

To be a clay pot is to be vulnerable to affliction, perplexity, persecution, and being knocked down. This is what Paul meant in verse 5 when he called himself their “servant.” He’s saying, in essence, “I will endure anything for you.”

And then in verses 10–11 he connects that servant-like suffering to how he reveals Christ:

. . . always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

“Carrying in the body the death of Jesus” is being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down for Jesus’s sake. Paul is embodying, for the world to see, what Jesus was like in suffering and dying for them. So he says, “The life of Jesus is being manifested in our bodies, our mortal flesh.” This is why, in verse 6, when God shines into veiled, blind hearts, what they see is the face of Jesus Christ. And they see it in the verbal preaching and the bodily sacrifices of Paul.

The effect of Paul’s clay-pot, servant-like weaknesses in being afflicted and crushed and perplexed and struck down, is threefold. (1) The life of Christ is manifested (verses 10–11). (2) This leads to new life in believers. Verse 12: “So death is at work us, but life in you.” And (3) since God is the one who creates that new life through Paul’s clay-pot-weakness, God gets the glory. Verse 7: “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

Verses 13–14: ‘I’m not the first to suffer and stay true.’

And then surprisingly, in verses 13–14, Paul steps back and aligns himself with the psalmist who wrote Psalm 116. It is as though he wants to say, “I’m not the first person who has embraced suffering and stayed true to the message God wants me to speak without tampering with it.” And by aligning himself with the psalmist in Psalm 116, he argues that, just as the psalmist looked to God for life beyond the suffering, “so do I.”

2 Corinthians 4:13–14:

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written [Psalm 116:10 LXX], “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.

Here’s Psalm 116:3–10:

The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: . . . You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed [that!], and therefore I spoke [LXX of verse 10].

Paul knew that often in the Old Testament, those who suffered gained strength by believing in fellowship with God after death. “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” And so Paul says, “In the same way, I press on in my painful, often disheartening ministry, because [2 Corinthians 4:14] I know that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and bring us with you into his presence.”

Verse 15: ‘When people get grace, God gets glory.’

Then, in verse 15, Paul adds two more arguments for why he continues to speak and continues to suffer without tampering with the word or tampering with the example of Jesus. He says (verse 15), “For it is all for your sake so that, as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.”

In other words, his ministry of truth and love, word and deed, speaking and suffering, is in fact leading people by grace out of death into life and God-glorifying thankfulness. And since God’s surpassing power (verses 6–7) is what makes it happen, he gets the glory. So, the two added arguments of verse 15 are (1) people are getting grace and (2) God is getting thanks — glory. People get grace; God gets glory.

Verses 16–18: ‘So do not lose heart. Rather, look ahead.’

Therefore, in verse 16, as the final paragraph begins, Paul returns to his first point (from verse 1): “So we do not lose heart.” And he says this knowing full well that his kind of ministry is costing him his life. “Though our outer self is wasting away . . .” I know that’s true for all of us, but if you minister like Paul — he goes faster. If you say, “This ministry is killing me,” that’s not a reason to leave the ministry.

He finishes the chapter by explaining why this wasting away does not cause him to lose heart. First, it’s because he experiences an inner renewal every day. Verse 16b: “our inner self is being renewed day by day.” How does that happen? It happens because he is totally convinced that (verse 17) “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

For Paul to call his countless lifelong afflictions “light and momentary” is astonishing. But it shows how heavenly-minded he was. He always thought of this life in comparison to the next. “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Compared to eternity, these afflictions are momentary. Compared to the weight of glory that’s coming, these afflictions are light.

Then he ends by telling us his secret to experiencing daily renewal, namely, verse 18:

We look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen or transient, but the things that are unseen or eternal.

Where was his gaze? What was he looking at? What was unseen?

This chapter (chapter 4) began with the word therefore. Verse 1: “Therefore . . . we do not lose heart.” Which links back to these words in the preceding chapter and verse (3:18): “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

So, when Paul says at the end of chapter 4 that his inner self is being renewed, day by day, by looking at the eternal and the unseen, I think he has in mind (at least) this: “We look to the glory of the Lord, and the effect is that we are being transformed, renewed, strengthened, enabled to go on in the ministry day by day and not to lose heart.

Paul’s Double Main Point

Now, let’s step back and make the main point of this chapter as clear as we can and summarize its supporting arguments. And let’s do all of this now in application to our own souls and our own ministries.

Twice Paul says, “We do not lose heart” (verses 1, 16). I think everything in this chapter is designed by Paul to support that statement. Some of the greatest realities in the world are harnessed to pull that statement into reality. I think if Paul were looking down from heaven right now on this conference, he would say, “As you leave, brothers, preach to yourself, ‘I will not lose heart in my ministry.’”

But I also think that if Paul were looking down from heaven, he would tap me on the shoulder and say, “Be sure to draw attention to the connection between verses 1 and 2.” It’s really a double main point. The double main point is this: “Don’t lose heart in your ministry, and don’t protect yourself from losing heart by tampering with God’s word.”

In other words, be a man of total truthfulness. Put the open Book in front of you, and say with an open and clean conscience, “Thus saith the Lord.” Have an open life of humble service in front of the people and say, “Thus is Christ,” fallible as you are.

Seven Heart-Strengthening Realities

Paul has a particular way to keep us (and himself) from losing heart — namely, with seven arguments, seven realities.

1. Unbelief need not be your fault.

When your gospel remains veiled to people that you know and love, it need not be owing to your tampering with the truth. And if they remain hard and resistant to the gospel till they die, it will not be laid to your account. It will be said under God’s judgment, “It was veiled to those who were perishing” (verse 3).

2. Your afflictions manifest Christ’s life.

When you are afflicted in every way, and perplexed, and persecuted, and struck down, and thus carry in your body the death of Jesus, never forget this is how the life of Jesus is manifested to your people (verses 10–12).

3. People will be saved through your ministry.

In spite of the sorrows of those who don’t believe, many will see the life of Jesus in your message and in your life; they will receive grace; they will live; and they will give thanks. Your ministry will not be wasted (verse 12).

4. Clay pots were made by God for God.

Since you must take the role of a clay pot in your weakness and your afflictions, never forget that there is a design in it “that the surpassing power might belong to God and not to us” (verse 7). Become so God-centered and God-satisfied that his glory through your affliction really is sufficient to keep you from losing heart.

5. The resurrection can and will sustain you.

Never let anybody persuade you that being heavenly-minded makes you no earthly good. Paul’s heavenly-mindedness was precisely what sustained him through the Christlike sacrifices he had to make for his ministry. He believed and spoke and suffered “knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence” (verse 14). Seriously, brothers, if the hope of the resurrection is not a regular, conscious, sustaining power in your sacrifices, how will you survive?

6. The glory to come is incomparable (and accessible now).

God has for each of you a daily renewal for the inner man (verse 16). It comes from the hope of the weight of glory that makes present afflictions light and momentary by comparison. And we taste it every day, do we not, by getting alone with God and beholding the weight of glory, the glory of the Lord (3:18).

7. You are not alone.

Finally, brothers, you’re not alone. The psalmist (verse 13), the prophets, the apostles, all the thousands of saints who have lived and served faithfully, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself have gone before you. They believed, and so they spoke. And so they lived. And so they died. And today they bear the weight of glory, and their final word to you is, “Do not lose heart, and do not tamper with the word of God or the example of Jesus.”

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

Audio Transcript

Today’s Labor Day for us in the States. We’re taking a break from our work. But we can still use the day to learn new skills, specifically to become better Bible readers. Of course, we have dozens of episodes covering a host of very practical tips on overcoming the challenges of studying the Bible for ourselves. And I took all those episodes on Bible reading, Bible study, Bible memorization, even the struggle with Bible neglect — all those many episodes I put together in one big digest to show you all the ground we covered, in the APJ book in that first section, on pages 1–46. It’s the section I’ve heard the most compliments about, too.

And this episode will add to it. So, what do you do when a Bible verse doesn’t make sense on first read? The question is from Chris, and it’s specific: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. You have said in the past that you didn’t understand Matthew 6:22–23 for a long time. But then you spent more time looking at the context before, in the treasuring focus in Matthew 6:19–21, and more time after the text, in the money focus in Matthew 6:24 — those contexts helped make sense of everything in between. Also, what you learned in Matthew 20:13–15 you brought into your discovery, too.

“Can you explain how you came to understand Jesus’s teaching on the healthy and sick eye using both the close context, before and after it, and the broader context together? These seem like Bible interpretation principles we all need to master when the text in front of us doesn’t make immediate sense. Thank you!”

Well, that’s true. Matthew 6:22–23 just seemed to dangle without connections to what went before, what went after. I couldn’t see it. I mean, it was my problem, not God’s problem, not Jesus’s problem. It’s my problem. I just couldn’t see it. Then one day, as I was reading in Matthew 20 — that’s 14 chapters later — and the ESV footnote clarified a phrase I saw, I said, “Oh, that’s going to help. That’s going to help make sense back in chapter 6.”

Lamp of the Body

So, here are the verses:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matthew 6:22–23)

Now, if we just take those two verses by themselves, I think I can make sense out of them. If you close your eyes, everything is dark. But if you open your eyes, there’s light, and it fills you with light. You can walk. You can not run into walls, you can not fall off a cliff.

And so, the eye is like a lamp. I get that. I like that, that it’s a lamp. And when it’s lit and burning, you can see where to go. If your eyes are shut or if your eyes are sick, if you have cataracts or something, then you can’t see where you ought to go. So, if the body is going to not kill itself by running into the wrong thing, it needs a healthy eye. “The eye is the lamp of the body.” I get that. That’s a good image.

But what puzzled me was that it just seemed to come out of nowhere. Why are you saying that here, especially in the sequence of these sayings?

Considering the Context

Before those two verses comes the familiar saying about not laying up treasures on earth:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19–21)

“Pray for eyes that look upon the things of this world as ways of serving God and loving people.”

So, before the saying about the good eye and the bad eye comes a saying about money — laying up treasures in heaven and on earth. Don’t hoard money here as though your life and your security were in money. Use money here in ways that piles up treasure in heaven. Use it in acts of love. Then, with no explicit connecting word, Jesus simply says, “The eye is the lamp of the body” (Matthew 6:22). And I just found that puzzling. Why do you follow up “lay up treasures in heaven” with “the eye is the lamp of the body”?

And then, after these puzzling verses — 22 and 23 — comes the saying, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). So, the sayings before and after the words about the good and bad eye deal with treasure or money. That seems significant to me.

So, the one in the middle seems like it should have something to do with that. But as far as I could see, the good and the bad eye don’t have any clear connection to money. So, the saying seemed to just dangle there, and I didn’t get it for a long time. And Chris, in his question, is right to notice a principle of interpretation that’s driving me here, and you can hear it’s been coming out all the way along.

I really don’t like it when I can’t see an author’s intention in how his words are connected to each other. Seeing connections in a paragraph, in a chapter, is really important. I don’t think I’ve got a good handle on what the author is communicating if I can’t see how his connections are working. So, why does Jesus link these two sayings about money with a saying about a good eye and a bad eye?

The Key That Unlocked the Meaning

Then I stumble upon the key in Matthew 20:15. Jesus had just told the parable of the workers of the vineyard, and some of them, you remember, had agreed to work from 6:00 in the morning till 6:00pm for one denarius, a day’s wage — a fair wage, a good wage. Others were hired at 9:00am. Others were hired at noon. And finally, he hired some at 5:00pm. All he had to do was work an hour.

And when the day was done at 6:00, he paid all the workers the same thing, a denarius each. In other words, the master was lavishly generous to those who worked only one hour, and he paid a fair, agreed-upon wage to those who worked twelve hours. But those who worked all day, it says, “grumbled at the master of the house” (Matthew 20:11). They were angry that those who had worked so little were paid so much. They didn’t like the master’s generosity. They did not like grace.

Then the master used a phrase about the bad eye, which is just like the one in Matthew 6:23. He said, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” That’s Matthew 20:15. Now, that last phrase, “Do you begrudge my generosity?” is not a literal translation; it is a very loose paraphrase. And fortunately, the ESV gives the footnote and gives you the literal translation, which is, “Or is your eye bad because I am good?”

Oh my goodness, that made bells go off, right? Oh, the bad eye back in chapter 6. The bad eye here parallels the bad eye in Matthew 6:23, the verse I was puzzled about. So, what does the bad eye refer to in Matthew 20:15? It refers to an eye that doesn’t like generosity. It doesn’t like grace. It’s greedy. It’s a greedy eye. It’s a kind of eye that would treasure up things on earth. It’s the kind of eye that would serve money over God.

Pray for Good Eyes

So, if we interpret the bad eye in Matthew 6:23 the same way as in 20:15, the connection starts to make sense. The flow of thought would go like this. Matthew 6:19: “Don’t lay up treasures on earth. Lay up treasures in heaven. Show that your heart is fixed on the value that God has for you.” Now comes Matthew 6:22–23: “Make sure your eye is good and not bad. That is, make sure your eye is not greedy for earthly gain. Make sure that you see with this eye. See heavenly treasure as more precious than earthly, material treasure.”

When your eye sees things this way, you’re full of light. You know how to walk without falling off the cliff of greed. And if you don’t see things this way, you will, as Matthew 6:24 says, serve money instead of serving God. You will seek money, not God, as your treasure.

So, the bottom line lesson for us is this: pray for good eyes, healthy eyes — namely, the eyes that don’t disapprove of generosity or disapprove of grace. Pray for eyes that don’t look upon the things of this world with greediness, but look upon them as ways of serving God and loving people. Pray for eyes that see God as your supreme treasure.