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

We’re now about a dozen years into the podcast — or eleven and a half years of podcasting, to be more exact. We have talked a lot about work over those years. We have talked about career building and finding our vocational calling, how to glorify God at work, and on the issues of when to leave a job and how to avoid overworking and idolizing a career, and issues of laziness and personal productivity, and how you define all those things — many huge issues now covered, and I tried to write those up into a digest in the Ask Pastor John book on pages 67–94 if you want to see the ground that we’ve covered.

In that section, and in this podcast, we’ve also taken up the question of what vocations are worthy of the Christian and which ones are not worthy of the Christian. A marketer at Nike once emailed in to ask if his job marketing luxury goods to people who don’t need them but want them — was that life vain? You might remember that episode, APJ 1519. That comes to my mind.

We’re back on a similar topic in today’s question from an anonymous man. “Hello, Pastor John! I am a building contractor. And in my region recently I was asked to join up with a construction partner I have worked with before, and one I really like and enjoy working with, to help complete one of their own projects. The project is a Mormon temple. Is this out of the question for a Christian who leads a construction crew to consider working on such a project like a temple like this, or even a mosque or casino or other things like that? How should I think through making this moral decision on behalf of the crew I lead?”

Probably I should start where I’m going to end — namely, by saying that this is the kind of question that has enough layers of ambiguity that I should not be dogmatic but admit that good Christians believing the same Bible may come to different conclusions. There are just so many aspects to take into consideration. But having said that, let me spell out maybe four or five principles or thoughts that I hope will give some guidance to the consciences of God’s people.

Ethics in Light of Eternity

The first thing I feel constrained to say is that believing in the reality of hell the way Jesus does — and he’s more explicit on this in the Bible than anybody — gives a kind of seriousness to most questions, especially questions like this. It just makes things so serious, and I mention this because Christians who keep the reality of hell out of their minds and sometimes are not even sure they believe in it — those folks simply won’t feel the weight that I feel in answering a question like this. Because when I think of a question like this, one of the questions I ask is this: Is this building that I’m working on going to be devoted to beliefs and activities that lead to eternal destruction?

Some people don’t even raise that question in trying to do ethics. I’m asking the eternal question about what becomes of human beings when they participate in what this building is for. A person who doesn’t think about hell just won’t take it that seriously, and therefore the question doesn’t have the same weight that it does for me. That’s the first thing I think I should draw attention to.

Many Works of Darkness

The second thing would be to draw attention to the fact that there are many more applications for the ethical issue at stake here than just building a Mormon religious house. What about building an abortion clinic for Planned Parenthood? What about building a mosque for Muslims? What about building a brothel in a red-light district? What about building a casino in northern Minnesota that you know is going to soak the meager savings of many poor people and continually divert their attention away from a healthy, productive life?

“If you don’t know what the building is for, you are probably not guilty for doing a good job in building it.”

What about building a room in somebody’s attic without taking out a permit, so that they can avoid fees from the city? What about building a meeting space for the central committee of the political party that makes child killing and homosexual behavior a matter of celebration? What about building a bar and a nightclub that includes striptease performances? What about providing fixtures, doors, countertops, lights, tile for any of those structures?

And the list goes on and on. So, this question has a much broader relevance and layers of complexity than one might think.

Incidental and Integral Evil

Another thing to take into account here is the degree to which the structure you’re working on not only will be the place where evil happens, but also the place designed and intended for evil to happen. That’s the purpose of the structure. Evil is not incidental here, but integral. Now, hardly any building anywhere is free from evil, right? I mean, you can’t build anything where evil’s not going to happen. Evil happens everywhere in every structure.

So, the morally relevant question when it comes to participation in the building of structure is whether that’s the intention of the structure; that’s the reason it exists.

Degrees of Responsibility

Here’s another factor to take into account: To what degree does the person involved in building the structure know what is involved in it, know what the intention is? Or to say it differently, given what a person knows — a builder knows, a construction worker knows, a provider knows — how clearly and substantially does his work add to the construction of the structure he disapproves of?

Now, that’s complicated. Let me illustrate. If you work in a factory that makes windows — we have got a big one in Minnesota here — you may have no awareness at all as you do your work in that factory that some of these windows are being sold to a mosque or a casino or an abortion clinic. It’s just not in your mind at all as you go to work every day and make a window. The causal connection between your daily work and the purposes of those structures is so remote that I think it is of little moral significance.

Your part is so remote that there is little moral connection between them. Your part in the window factory is not going to be seen as morally implicated by the evil purposes of the buildings down the economic chain, far out of your sight, than if it were part of what you’re immediately intending to help construct.

How Much Do You Know?

The principle that is most explicit in the Bible, I think, and most helpful in all of this, is in 1 Corinthians 10:27–28, which may not sound like a building text. Listen carefully:

If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience.

In other words, if you don’t know that the food involves you in the support of a pagan ritual, you can eat it. But if you do know that this pagan ritual is what the host intends, you won’t eat it. So, whether you eat or you don’t eat depends on whether you know what the eating signifies about the false religion.

It seems to me that this same principle applies to building something that is devoted to a false, destructive religion or lifestyle. So, if you don’t know what the building is for, you are probably not guilty for doing a good job in building it. You’re just doing the job to the glory of Christ as best you can. But if you know that you are involved in promoting a destructive religion or practice, then your participation may well be wrong. In fact, my inclination would be to encourage the Christian builder and construction worker or provider not to be part of a building that is widely known to be explicitly anti-Christian.

Building Wisely

So, I’m going to end where I began. In general, I want to encourage builders and workers not to contribute to structures devoted to anti-Christian beliefs and practices. But I realize that the complexities of various situations are such that we should be very careful not to pass judgment on a brother’s effort to make a biblically informed, conscientious decision.

The subordinate goal of this message is to explain and defend the claim that truth triumphs through pleasure. The ultimate goal of this message is that you, and your people through your ministry, would feel — and forever feel — the greatest pleasure in God through Jesus Christ.

To say that the ultimate goal of this message is a heart-experience — an enjoyment, a spiritual emotion — in you and your people is not a contradiction of the universal biblical teaching that the ultimate goal of all things (including this message!) is the fullest exhibition of the glory of God, filling the new creation without rival. And the reason it’s not a contradiction is because God’s ultimate goal for all things will not be reached until the bride of Christ experiences her fullest possible pleasure in her beloved Jesus Christ, who is God, blessed forever. Amen (Romans 9:5).

I’m an Edwardsean lover of the glory of God down to my toes. When Edwards speaks of
God’s glory as the goal of all things, my heart soars:

It appears that all that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works is included in that one phrase, “the glory of God”; . . . In the creature’s knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged; his fullness is received and returned. Here is both emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair. (The End for Which God Created the World, 526, 531)

Amen. Could anything be more God-centered, God-exalting, God-entranced! And yet tucked away in that God-besotted paragraph is an explosive statement worth giving your life to: “In the creature’s . . . rejoicing in . . . God, the glory of God is exhibited.” That is, “In the creature’s pleasure in God, the glory of God is exhibited.” If that is true, then truth triumphs through pleasure. And for you and your people to attain that pleasure is to share in the triumph.

So, to explain and defend this claim from Scripture, I will try to clarify four connections.

The connection between truth and ultimate reality
The connection between ultimate reality and God
The connection between God and preciousness
The connection between preciousness and pleasure

1. The Connection Between Truth and Ultimate Reality

The biblical words for “truth” (emet and amunah in Hebrew and alētheia in Greek) are used with many different connotations and nuances. When you preach, you don’t take a definition from Piper or MacArthur at a conference and lay it on that text. You pay close attention to the peculiar usage of the word true or truth in that text to see that it carries its own weight.

What I’m going to do here is take hold of two of those many connotations in order to draw out the point that’s relevant for this message, especially the connection between truth and ultimate reality.

First, then, most commonly we speak, and the Bible often speaks, of “truth” as a characteristic of things we say, a characteristic of assertions or statements or propositions. For example, Proverbs 12:17: “Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit.” When we think of truth in this way, it means that our statements correspond to reality. If I say, “My wife is 5 feet, 7 inches tall,” that would be true. But if the reality is that she is 6 feet tall, that statement would not be true. It would not correspond to the reality.

But, second, what is not as common in our speech, but is also a view of “truth” in the Bible, is that the reality to which true statements correspond is called “truth.” For example, when Peter was being delivered by the angel from prison in Acts 12, Luke writes, “[Peter] went out and followed [the angel]. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real [or true], but thought he was seeing a vision” (Acts 12:9). Or Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:8, “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true.” Meaning: We are not fake apostles. We are real.

This is the meaning of truth that I want to take hold of and press into. Truth not only states reality; it is reality. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). “I am . . . the truth.” And Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 1:9, “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” — the real God, the God who is reality. And Jesus Christ is the truth not only because he speaks the truth, but because the ultimate reality about which he speaks is himself.

So, two things have become clear. One is that the Bible uses the word truth or true to refer to what is real, not just statements about what is real. What is real? Truth refers to reality. Truth is not just the opposite of a lie; it is the opposite of an illusion, the opposite of the unreal.

And the second thing that has become clear is that we are confronted with the question of ultimate reality, that is, ultimate truth. When Jesus said, “I am . . . the truth,” and Paul said you serve “the . . . true God,” both are pointing us to the fact that there is such a thing as ultimate reality.

So, we turn to our second point.

2. The Connection Between Ultimate Reality and God

This is the most obvious. But we need to see it and say it to get us where we are going — to preciousness and pleasure. What is ultimate reality? Which we have seen is the same as asking, What is ultimate truth? I think the most fundamental response that God ever gave to that question is found in Exodus 3:13–14.

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”

The very least God intends to communicate when he says, “I am,” is “I! A personal being! I am talking to you. I am a person. This is not wind. Or thunder. Or an earthquake. Or a waterfall. I am talking to you. And I am about to electrify you with this truth, this reality: ‘I am who I am.’”

And the next most obvious thing he means is, “I exist. I am real. I am not a myth. I am not imagined. I am not an opiate for the masses. I am not a Freudian projection of wish-fulfillment. I am real. I am more real than the ground you stand on, more real than the sun in your solar system, the skin on your bones, the galaxies at the end of the universe. And the reason I am more real than they are is because their reality is dependent on my reality. Their being depends on my being. Only I can say, ‘I am who I am.’ Everything else must say, ‘I am because he is.’”

This is the way ultimate truth talks: “I am who I am.” Ultimate truth says,

Nobody made me this way. I simply am. I never had a beginning. I never became. I simply was, from all eternity. Nor will I ever end. I depend on nothing to be what I am — no cause, no support, no counsel. Instead, everything depends absolutely on me. Everything is secondary to me. The universe is infinitesimal to me. I carry it in my pocket like a peanut. I never develop, and I cannot be improved. I am absolute fullness, perfection. I conform to nothing outside myself, and therefore I am the standard and measure of all truth and goodness and beauty. There are no constraints from outside me to prevent me from doing what I please. My actions are always free, never dictated from outside. The good pleasure of my will always holds sway. I always act in perfect conformity to the infinite value of my inexhaustible fullness. I am who I am.

For many years I have circled back to this text like a lightning bug staring at the sun and have found it to be electrifying — that God simply is. Explosive. Wild. Untamable. A brightness that changes absolutely everything. God is ultimate reality. That is, ultimate Truth.

Which brings me now to the third point.

3. The Connection Between God and Preciousness

So, step one was that one biblical facet of truth is that it refers to reality, and we are led to see that there is an ultimate reality. And the second step was that this ultimate reality is God, absolute reality, “I am who I am.” And now step three: the connection between God (reality, truth!) and preciousness.

Is ultimate reality ultimately valuable? Is ultimate reality of infinite worth? Is ultimate reality ultimately precious? Let me ask the questions in another way (and then tell you why I’m doing it): Is ultimate reality ultimate value? Is ultimate reality infinite worth? Is ultimate reality ultimate preciousness? Perhaps you see what I’ve done. I’m going beyond saying God has value, has worth, has preciousness, and I’m pushing it further to say that God is value, and God is worth, and God is preciousness. Worth and value and preciousness are intrinsic to God. They are aspects of who he is.

Here’s why I go there. The vast majority of human beings are not born again. Our calling is to do what we can to win them. They are perishing. And we do not want them to perish. “Though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. . . . I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:19, 22).

But if we ask any of those people, before they are born again, whether ultimate reality (God) is valuable, the only categories they have in their minds (the mind of the flesh) for assessing value are the categories that make themselves the measure of God’s value. So, they might say, “Well, if there is ultimate reality, I would hope that he or she or it would help me with my marriage, or my job, or my health, or my children, or my finances. That would be valuable.” In other words, the measure of God’s value would be the measure of his usefulness in helping them attain the pleasures that this world provides.

“If the kingdom of heaven is a precious treasure, it’s because the King is a treasure.”

Some of those people come to your church. And many of your people are talking to them every week. I’m suggesting that this new set of questions might jar them loose from the limits of their categories. (It might jar you loose!) Is God ultimate value? Is God infinite worth? Is God ultimate preciousness? Not just, Does God become useful to me? but, Is God in himself infinite worth and value and preciousness?

I think if we don’t answer that question with a resounding yes, either explicitly or implicitly, our theology, our worship, and our obedience tend to go off the rails. Profound things are at stake here in the way we live, in the way we do ministry.

So, let’s look at some Scriptures to see whether or not we have biblical warrant for giving that resounding yes.

Matthew 13:44

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

If the kingdom of heaven is a precious treasure, it’s because the King is a treasure. Heaven will be heaven because God is there. That is the ultimate promise: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). That’s the consummation of the kingdom, and that is ultimately why the kingdom is a treasure. God is a treasure. God is infinite preciousness.

2 Corinthians 4:6–7

God . . . 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.

The glory of God in the face of Christ is treasure in the jar of clay. The presence of God is the presence of infinite preciousness.

2 Peter 1:3–4

[By God’s] glory and excellence . . . [God] has granted to us his precious and very great promises.

The promises of God are precious, because they ultimately hold out to us the presence of God, the presence of Christ. Here’s what I lay myself down to sleep with each night: “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:9–10). The end and goal of all the promises is “live with him.” We know that “in [his] presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

1 Peter 1:18–19

You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

The blood of Jesus is not precious because it saved us. It saved us because it’s precious. And it’s precious because he’s precious.

1 Peter 2:4–6

You come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious. . . . It stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,     a cornerstone chosen and precious.”

This is God’s evaluation, not man’s: in God’s sight God the Son is precious.

Revelation 21:10–11

He . . . showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare [precious] jewel.

The glory of God filling the city is the city’s preciousness.

Revelation 5:12

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,to receive power and wealth and wisdom and mightand honor and glory and blessing!

To be sure, the creative power of the Lord and the saving deeds of the Lord are sometimes given as reasons for why we praise him as worthy. But oh, how artificial it would be, especially in view of this text, to abstract the deeds from the Person, and to say that his actions create his worthiness, rather than that his worthiness is being shown through his actions. No. No. “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain” means worthy is the Lamb, and therefore he was slain, and accomplished everything, because he is infinitely precious.

“The promises of God are precious because they ultimately hold out to us the presence of God.”

From these texts and many others, I can conclude infinite worth, and infinite value, and infinite preciousness are in God. God the Father enjoys God the Son as infinitely precious (1 Peter 2:4–6). Preciousness is in the Trinity. Preciousness is from eternity. It belongs to the nature of God.

Which brings us now to our fourth and final connection.

4. The Connection Between Preciousness and Pleasure

So, the first point was that one biblical facet of truth is that it refers to reality (not just statements about reality), and we are led by Scripture to see that there is an ultimate reality, ultimate Truth. Second, this ultimate reality is God. Absolute personal reality. “I am who I am.” Third, this God is infinite worth. He is in his very nature infinite preciousness.

Now, how does pleasure connect to this preciousness and bring about the triumph of truth? We see the answer when we ask the Bible, “What is the fitting response of a human soul to infinite preciousness?”
You decide what the answer is from four clusters of biblical texts.

Matthew and Hebrews

First, we go back to Matthew 13:44.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field [a very precious discovery], which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

The human response that correlates with treasure is joy. A joy that is so deep and comprehensive that it prompts one to happily lose everything to get the treasure — to get the preciousness.

Then we see this lived out in Hebrews 10:34 with a beautiful sacrifice of love:

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 [more precious, more lasting].

And the human response that correlates with that more precious, more lasting possession was joy: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property.”

Philippians and Habakkuk

The second cluster of texts is from Philippians and Habakkuk. Twice in Philippians Paul says to rejoice: “Rejoice in the Lord” (Philippians 3:1), and then doubly, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Why is that so fitting? Why joy?

He answers in Philippians 3:8: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Joy in the Lord is fitting because the Lord has surpassing worth. He is infinitely precious.

He is more precious than food, and life itself, as Psalm 63:3 says, “Your steadfast love is better than life.” But this is most graphic in Habakkuk 3:17–18:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,     nor fruit be on the vines,the produce of the olive fail     and the fields yield no food,the flock be cut off from the fold     and there be no herd in the stalls,yet I will rejoice in the Lord;     I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

In other words, God himself is so precious in himself that when life has become impossible, and starvation is imminent, this man of God will rejoice. Because the proper and fitting response of the human soul to infinite preciousness is joy.

Hebrews and Psalms

The third cluster of texts is from Hebrews and Psalms. When Moses faced the choice of whether to remain in the riches and comforts and securities and pleasures of Pharaoh’s house, or lead God’s people through the wilderness at great cost to himself, here’s what happened in his soul according to Hebrews 11:25–26.

[Moses chose] rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

On the one hand I have pleasures, so goes Moses’s logic, in the land of Egypt that are fleeting. And on the other hand, I have greater wealth, greater preciousness, than all the treasures of Egypt, in the reward that is coming to me in the presence of God. The pleasures with God are greater and longer than the pleasures of Egypt, because God is a greater reward, a greater preciousness.

And David in Psalm 16 has no hesitancy to call our experiences in God’s presence pleasures.

My heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices. . . .

You make known to me the path of life;     in your presence there is fullness of joy;     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (verses 9, 11)

The gladness of the heart now is a foretaste of those pleasures, as we taste and see even now the preciousness of the Lord.

Matthew and 2 Thessalonians

The final cluster of texts to show us which human response is fitting to God’s preciousness are texts that call this response love, and bring us finally to the triumph of truth.

Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 10:37,

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

What makes this text so relevant and so radical is that the kind of love he’s talking about is not the kind of love we have for our enemies. This is not blessing those who curse us or doing good to those who hate us (Luke 6:27–28). This is the love we have for our children and our parents. It is the kind of love we have for those who are especially precious to us. To paraphrase: “Whoever loves their most precious human relationship more than Jesus is not worthy of him — won’t have him.”

We are not talking about peripheral or secondary or optional affections here. This is life and death. And the response that corresponds to the superior preciousness of God in Christ over our most precious human possessions and relations is love — the kind of love that finds greatest pleasure in the Beloved. The kind of love that says,

I love your commandments     above gold, above fine gold. (Psalm 119:127)

More to be desired are they than gold,     even much fine gold;sweeter also than honey     and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:10)

This is delight, enjoyment, pleasure. It is the fitting human counterpart to infinite preciousness.

Which brings us finally to a text that connects this pleasure with the triumph of truth.

Beloved Truth Is Triumphant Truth

In 2 Thessalonians 2:9–12 Paul is describing the final appearance of the lawless one whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth.

The coming of the lawless one is . . . with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth [the same kind of love we were just talking about] and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

They did not love the truth. They didn’t treasure the truth. They didn’t find pleasure in the truth as precious. And so, they did not believe the truth, but instead had pleasure in unrighteousness. “The truth” — here it is the word of truth, the gospel of the glory of Christ. This truth is to be loved supremely. We are to find supreme pleasure in the truth because it is the revelation of supreme preciousness.

When, in the final glorification of the saints, the bride of Christ experiences her supreme pleasure in the infinite preciousness that God is in Christ, then the supreme worth, the ultimate value, the infinite preciousness that God is will be fully exhibited in the new creation, and truth — ultimate reality, God himself, infinite preciousness — will be vindicated. Truth will triumph through the pleasure of God’s people in God. Not without it.

Audio Transcript

From dating (last time) to marriage (today). Marriage is a beautiful institution, designed by God to point the world to Christ and to his bride. One wedding at a time, marriage exists for us because God decreed that Christ would purchase his bride, the church. And because of sin, that church, that fallen bride, must be redeemed from her ugly sin and be made beautiful in holiness. It’s an amazing drama played out in history, and in our lives, and it’s a drama played out in harmonious marriages and one played out even in hard marriages too. Painful marriages are no less reflective of God’s plan. And so, we have several episodes now on marriage challenges, which you can see. I gathered up all those APJ episodes and summarized them into one digest in the APJ book, one whole section just on this topic of hard marriages on pages 197–221.

And today, Pastor John joins us over the phone for a question from a perplexed father who wrote us anonymously. “Pastor John, hello. I write to you because my adult son wants to get a divorce from his wife. They have been married for two years and have a one-year-old son and a newborn baby girl of only ten days old. I’m totally perplexed by the timing. I don’t understand why he feels unhappy, but he claims he is ‘no longer in love’ with his wife anymore. What would you say to someone who has ‘fallen out of love’ with their spouse, and why that’s no grounds for divorce?”

Well, what I would say to them face to face would depend partly on their demeanor. But I don’t have him face to face, and so I’m just going to say what I think he probably needs to hear. Whether I would say it exactly like this, I don’t know. But here we go.

Embracing Realism

We would be naive, I think, to suppose that people — young or old, our own children or those of others — will act on the basis of reason and biblical truth when it comes to justifying divorce. I would guess that in 95 cases out of 100 people do what they want to do and then find reasons to do it. Especially those who claim to believe the Bible will find biblical reasons to do it. They just know what they’re going to do. They want to do it. They do it. So, we should be realistic as we talk to people, and we should pray. I think that’s the greatest realism — pray and fast that God would do what our biblical arguments and reasonings by themselves could never do.

But having said that, I totally believe in speaking the truth in love because it’s God’s way, it’s God’s design, that people should know the truth and the truth would set them free (John 8:32). (And that context is free from sin, like leaving your wife.) So, I would hang my thoughts on three words: joy, significance, and ownership. I would try to make those three words as compelling and winsome as I can, but also as forceful as Jesus and the apostles did, for the sake of staying married. So, let me say a word about what I mean by joy, significance, and ownership.

Joy

Joy. I would say to this young man who wants a divorce because he’s not in love, “Oh, what joy lies ahead for those who do not break their covenant even when their hearts are broken.” And here’s what I mean. I believe that most couples who stay married for fifty or sixty years fall in and out of love numerous times. And I say that with not the slightest hint of trying to be funny. It is, in my judgment, almost ludicrous to think that we experience “being in love” for the entire sixty years what we felt at the beginning of that relationship. That’s just utterly crazy. It is naive and immature to think that staying married is mainly about staying in love.

“You are free to break your marriage covenant when Christ breaks his covenant with his bride.”

In a relationship between two sinners, forced to live as close as married couples live, it is naive to think that every season will be one of warmth and sweetness and sexual romance. That’s just contrary to almost the entire history of the world and contrary to every makeup of fallen human nature. Staying married is not first about staying in love; it’s about covenant-keeping, promise-keeping, being a man and woman of your word, a man and woman who keep the vows to be committed for better or for worse, a man and a woman of character. That’s what it’s about.

This covenant-keeping relates to being in love the way gardening in the fall relates to roses in the spring. This is why I said a minute ago, “Oh, what joy lies ahead for those who do not break their covenant even when their hearts are broken.” The modern world of self-centeredness and self-exaltation and self-expression has taken the normal fifty-year process of falling in and out of love and turned it into a fifty-year process of multiple divorces and remarriages. That pattern has not and will not bear the fruit of joy. It leaves a trail of misery in the soul and misery among the generations.

Marriage is the hardest relationship to stay in and the one that promises glorious, unique, durable joys for those who have the character to keep their covenant. So, that’s what I mean by joy.

Significance

Now, here’s what I mean by significance. God offers to husbands and wives the highest possible significance for their marriage relationship by showing them what its greatest and most glorious meaning is — namely, the replication in the world of the covenant relationship between Christ and his bride, the church. That’s what the highest meaning of marriage is. There is no higher, more glorious, more significant conception of marriage than the one that Paul portrays in Ephesians 5, a parable of the greatest, strongest, deepest, sweetest, richest relationship in the universe — the blood-bought union between Christ, the Son of God, and his bride, the church. That’s the meaning; that’s the significance of marriage.

And I would just say to this young man that you are acting, or about to act, on one of the lowest views of marriage — not one of the highest, but one of the lowest, views of marriage. If you divorce because you don’t feel love anymore, there is nothing noble, nothing great, nothing beautiful, nothing high, nothing truly significant about such a motive. What does it say about Christ, the model of a man’s commitment in marriage? What does it say if he forsakes his wife because he doesn’t feel like staying anymore? What does it say about Christ? That’s the issue.

Marriage is an act of worship. It’s a display of the price and the preciousness of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. Covenant-keeping in marriage glorifies Christ and the blood he shed to possess a bride forever. We cannot even conceive of a greater significance of marriage than the one God has given.

Ownership

And lastly, the word ownership. What do I mean by ownership? What I mean by ownership is that the union between a man and a woman isn’t theirs to break. They didn’t create it; they can’t break it. It’s not theirs. Jesus said, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6).

It’s another sign of the man-centeredness and contemporary self-centeredness of Christianity that a young couple would have the mindset that they created the union called marriage, and therefore they can break it. They didn’t create it; they can’t break it. God made it; God breaks it with death. Or as I think Paul would say, “You are free to break your marriage covenant when Christ breaks his covenant with his bride.”

So, for the sake of maximum long-term joy, and for the sake of the deepest and highest significance, and for the sake of the Maker and Owner of your union, keep your covenant. Oh, what joy lies ahead, beyond anything you can presently imagine, for those who keep their covenant even when their hearts are broken.

Audio Transcript

It’s been almost three years since our last episode on dating, Pastor John. You’ve briefly mentioned dating in a couple of episodes since, but there have been no episodes devoted to the topic for a long time — our longest drought ever for such a major theme on the podcast, which you can begin to appreciate by scanning my digest of all those many episodes in the APJ book. I titled that section “On Dating, Romance Idols, and Fornication” (pages 141–65). Much has been said already, but not everything — no. Because you all surprise us with great questions, like this one today: Can a single pastor date within his local church? Should he? Why wouldn’t he?

Here’s the email: “Pastor John, hello! I’m a 23-year-old pastoral intern and MDiv student preparing to enter full-time pastoral ministry soon, sooner than I expected. I’m a single man and find it challenging to date while being on this pastoral track. First, I find many young women intimidated by the stereotypes of the pastor’s wife — stewarding a meager income, maintaining a pristine public image, and ministering to the women in the church. All lofty callings. Second, due to the busy amount of work and school, I meet very few women outside my church. Third, I hesitate to date inside my church, due to my position on the pastoral team. What’s your advice for someone in my situation? Is it appropriate for pastors to use dating apps? And if this is even remotely possible, how would a pastor wisely date within his own church? The closer I get to becoming a pastor, the smaller the possibility of marriage appears to me. Your wisdom and encouragement would be greatly appreciated.”

Well, I’m just smiling here, because I think 95 percent of our listeners are not in this category of being a pastor (or almost a pastor) who would like help in finding a wife, but I’m betting 90 percent of them are not going to turn this off. They wonder, What is Pastor John going to say? And so I’m wondering that too. Only I get a chance to turn this off and think about it.

I’m going to focus on the young pastor himself, not just the seminary student or the apprentice. I know that’s where he is, but I’m just thinking about a young pastor. He comes right in — maybe he’s an associate or a youth pastor, or maybe he’s the senior pastor at age 27 or 28 — and he’s single, and he’d like to be married. What do I have to say to him? And I’m going to start and end with the glorious truth of God’s mysterious providence.

1. Believe in God’s providence.

There are two mysteries of God’s providence that I never cease to be amazed at. I’m amazed at all of them, but these two just blow me away. One is the mystery of how God in his providence calls people into full-time, vocational, Christian service in the church or on the mission field. How does that happen? This strikes me as astonishing and glorious. One year, here’s a person studying in school — maybe a junior, senior, or maybe high school, or maybe serving in a trade or a profession selling shoes, for example, like one of our missionaries did. And then ten years later, there they are — a devoted, full-time, lifelong missionary in a distant, hard place. How in the world did that happen? What did God do to make that happen?

The other mystery is how God in his providence brings a man and a woman together from who knows where — a thousand miles apart, ten thousand — in such a way that they come to know each other, trust each other, love each other so deeply that they get married and live together for sixty years. I look back on how I came to meet and fall in love with Noël, my wife, as a totally unexpected, undeserved, inexplicable gift of providence.

So, that’s where I’m starting. And I just want to say to young pastors, single pastors, believe that. Believe in the providence of God. He is up to something. Yes, he is, in ways you can’t even see.

2. Seek a ministry-minded woman.

The next thing I would say to this young pastor or aspiring pastor is that if a woman is put off by the thought of being a part of your full-time ministry, she’s not the right woman. You want a woman who will not just tolerate your calling, your burden, your passion, your risks in ministry, but a woman who loves the thought of throwing her life into that with you. This is what God has been making her to be. She wants to share that kind of life, walking on the edge of eternity — with all of its difficulties and risks and challenges.

And you can believe — yes, you can — God is raising up many such women in our day. He’s always been doing this — women who want to find and be found by a trustworthy, strong, kind lover of God who wants to live his life radically in the service of Christ. That’s what they want. She’s been dreaming about this. She wants to live that kind of life herself, and she would love to do it with a like-minded husband. Believe that; wait for that. She’s out there.

3. Ask for help from your church.

The third thing I would say is this: be realistic and mature and candid with your fellow church leaders — the older, mature, trusted fellow pastors or laypeople. Tell them how you’re thinking, how you’re feeling, how you’re hoping, and ask them to partner with you in praying and working toward a happy outcome of finding God’s woman for you. Now, if this sounds pragmatic rather than romantic, it is. Finding a compatible Christian spouse ought to be a practical community project involving family and church, not a secretive solitary quest. Just get over that. That’s not the way you need to think about it.

When I say “ask for their help,” I mean ask them first to pray. Oh my goodness. Over the last fifty years, I have prayed specifically with many young men especially. They’re the ones who feel most free, I think, to come forward after a service and tell me, “I want to be married. Would you pray with me?” And I prayed with them. All the ones I can remember are married. There’s no shame in this to go to a friend or a pastor and say, “Pray that God would lead me to the woman that I could spend my life with.”

“Lots of couples meet because they follow their ministry heart on some venture and discover each other in the process.”

And besides prayer, I mean ask your leaders for their counsel. Ask them to keep their eyes open in regards to their near and far networks. My wife kept her eyes open at our church for husbands, for example, for her sisters. And she introduced three of her sisters to the men they married at our church, and she did it very intentionally. This was quite intentional. Yes, it can be awkward, but it can be glorious. It can be glorious. Be a mature, confident young man. This will not be your last brush with awkwardness. So grow up, put your big boy pants on, and be confident that these folks are for you and can help you in this process.

4. Consider apps with caution.

The fourth thing I would say is that I’m not opposed in principle to dating apps. How you go about meeting a person is not nearly as crucial as how you go about discerning that person’s character. That’s another challenge, and it’s not going to happen on an app. But I would offer this caution: it seems to me that a pastor is a fairly public person, and the secrecy surrounding the use of dating apps could tarnish your reputation as one who wants to be totally candid with his church and especially with his leaders. Now, that’s not a veto — I don’t have a veto vote here against dating apps — but it is a caution. I would give preference to the open networks that you have rather than to secret ones.

5. Give yourself to ministry.

The fifth thing I would say is this: pursue various ministry ventures, like short-term mission trips (you might lead them or just go on them) or mercy-ministry ventures (hurricane in New Orleans, and your church packs a bus full and goes down to help put sandbags up or rescue houses) or educational tours where the nature of the venture might be self-selecting. In all these ministries that you go on, they might be self-selecting for the kind of woman that would go on it too. Lots of couples meet because they follow their ministry heart on some venture and discover each other in the process.

6. Rest in God’s providence.

And finally, I would return to God’s mysterious and wonderful providence.

I have seen God lead two people together in the most unlikely ways. For example, two people at our church both wanted to be in missions, both were single, and both wanted to be married. They didn’t know each other. They surrendered. They just said, “Okay, it’s over. We probably won’t get married.” They gave themselves utterly to the mission. Both of them were sent by various missions, posted to one of the hardest places on the globe. And guess what? They discovered each other there after they had basically surrendered and said, “Well, it didn’t happen at home. It’s sure not going to happen on the mission field.” And that was not true.

So, trust God’s mysterious providence. Focus on doing your ministry with all your might. Walk through the doors he puts in front of you. Pray without ceasing. And trust God’s good timing.