Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. On Monday, last time, we looked at a duality at work in our Bible reading, of how God encourages us and then warns us. There’s a healthy balance of encouragement and warning that we need in the Christian life, and we get that balanced diet as we read through the entire Bible as a whole. And that leads us nicely into something else we are going to encounter in the Bible as we read, and we’re actually going to encounter this together over the next two days in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan.

We are going to be reading together Philippians 3:8–11. As we do, it reminds me of a couple mistakes to avoid in the Christian life, specifically about our precious Savior, Jesus Christ. One mistake is to simply emphasize him as the victor — as the King who is enthroned in heaven, resurrected, shining, sovereign over the universe, triumphant. On the other hand, we can overemphasize Jesus as victim — as the suffering servant, only as the bleeding Lamb who died for us on the cross. In Philippians 3:8–11, Paul holds together both of these glorious realities — of Christ’s weakness and his power — and then he braids them together into our experience of the Christian life. It’s a remarkable example of theology in application, as Paul wants us to experience Christ in “the power of his resurrection” as we “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” In other words, we experience his victorious power not by escaping the suffering of this life, but by enduring the suffering of this life. Pastor John, do what you do so well, and just walk us through this text and explain how Paul pulls this off.

In 1992, I listened to one of J. Oswald Sanders’s last messages. He was 89 and a great missionary statesman. He told the story of an indigenous missionary who walked barefoot from village to village, preaching the gospel in India. After many miles, he comes to a certain village, he tries to speak the gospel, but he’s spurned by the leaders and the people in this village. So, discouraged, exhausted, he goes to the edge of the village and lies down under a tree and sleeps.

When he wakes up, the whole town was gathered to hear him. And the head man of the village explained that they had come out while he was asleep to look at him, and they saw his blistered feet. And they concluded that he must be a holy man and that they had been wrong to reject him, and they were sorry and they wanted to hear the message that he was willing to suffer so much to bring them.

Upside-Down Logic of Salvation

Now, that kind of story can be repeated again and again in the history of the church as Christians fulfill Colossians 1:24, which says that we complete in our own sufferings what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ — namely, a personal, individual, flesh-and-blood presentation in our own bodies, our own suffering, of the love of Christ and the power of Christ. So, from the beginning of Christianity in the ministry of Jesus to this very day, people have failed to recognize what I would call (and you’ve pointed out now in Philippians) the precious upside-down logic of salvation — namely, that power comes through weakness. The power of Christ comes through our weakness, and salvation comes through our suffering.

“Jesus was able to save others in spite of their sin because he refused to save himself in spite of his righteousness.”

Do you remember the chief priests as they saw Jesus hanging on the cross? They mocked him and said, “He saved others; he cannot save himself” (Matthew 27:42). What they failed to see, and so many people fail to see it today, is that it was precisely by refusing to save himself that Jesus was able to save others. Or to say it another way, Jesus was able to save others in spite of their sin because he refused to save himself in spite of his righteousness.

As you said, Tony, this weaving together of weakness and power, suffering and salvation is carried right through the Bible. And Christ suffered not to spare us in this life our suffering, but to show us how to suffer, to give us power to suffer — and in our suffering to experience the triumph of his salvation, both for ourselves and for others through suffering.

Knowing Christ in Two Ways

Let’s read it and then make a couple of comments. This is Philippians 3:8–11:

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that I may know him . . .

Pause. So, now that he’s clothed with a righteousness from God that is not his own — by being in Christ, having union with Christ — Paul says that, with this already-salvation that he’s tasted (as being clothed with the righteousness of God in Christ), he says his aim is to know God or to know Christ in two ways.

And here they come. First, that I may know “the power of his resurrection.” And second, that I “may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” — in other words, “that I may know a share of his sufferings in my own life” — “that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

So, Paul put together these two great Christian aspirations: “I want to know his power, the kind of power that raises the dead, and I want to live and minister in that power. And I want to embrace a life of sacrifice and suffering as God wills in the service of his mission: the salvation of sinners, the building up of the church.”

Our Death, Your Life

What confuses a lot of people and creates the prosperity gospel is that the only conception we have, many of us, of resurrection power is that of course it will keep Paul from suffering. That’s what power is for, right? What else is resurrection power for except to protect us and keep us from suffering?

And the answer is no, that’s not the way. It’s upside down. Not in this life for Christians living for the salvation of others — that’s not what resurrection power is mainly for. The power of Jesus was not used to escape the cross. And in Paul’s life and our lives, the present power of the resurrection gives life to other people through our sacrifices. And then, in the end, Paul hopes through that to attain the resurrection from the dead.

So, here’s an illustration of how this worked in Paul’s life. This is 2 Corinthians 4:8–10, 12:

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. . . . So death is at work in us, but life in you.

In other words, Paul’s suffering, his carrying the death of Jesus in his scars, is the way the power of the resurrection brought life to other people. “Death is working in us; life is working in you — through our suffering, through our sacrifices.” The power of the resurrection did not keep Paul from sacrifices. It turned his sacrifices into manifestations of life-giving power in the salvation of sinners. And as he said in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “[Christ’s] power is made perfect in [my] weakness.”

What Wins People to Christ

We all know this is true when we think about it, just from our own experience. People don’t fall in love with the worth and beauty and greatness of Jesus because they look at rich, healthy, comfortable Christians. They don’t. If that’s all they see, why wouldn’t they just conclude that we live for the same worldly things they do? If that produces conversion, it’s not conversion to Jesus, but to more money. What wins people to the infinite beauty and worth of Jesus is that they see people for whom Jesus is so precious that they are willing to endure suffering to follow him.

So, when Paul says in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know him in these two ways: his power that gives life and his sufferings that cost life,” he wasn’t confused. He had been mastered and formed by Jesus, who saved us with his omnipotent power through suffering and death.

Audio Transcript

Comforted, warned, threatened. Comforted, warned, threatened. Comforted, warned, threatened. Does your Bible reading feel like an emotional roller coaster? Mine does a lot of times. And I know that is not my experience alone. So, is this experience by design? Another really important Bible question today that you have sent to us. And we’ve had a lot of those over the years, as you can see in the APJ book on pages 1–46 — the longest section in the book — talking about Bible reading and Bible memorization.

This next Bible-reading question is from a young man who listens to the podcast. “Hello, Pastor John! Every day I seem to get happy and feel comforted. And every day I feel sad and worried. Almost like it switches in a moment. The reason for this is the words of comfort and warning from Jesus and Paul. For instance, I’m happy to hear Jesus say, ‘Whoever comes to me I will never cast out’ (John 6:37). But then I hear him say, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’ (Luke 9:62). Then I hear Jesus say to the seemingly mature church of Ephesus that if they don’t repent, he will take their lampstand out of its place (Revelation 2:1–7). Is it right to feel sort of emotionally pushed back and forth like this so regularly in my Bible reading? Is this healthy and normal for the Christian life to feel like this — comforted, then warned, then threatened? Is the Christian life in this fallen world meant to feel like this by design?”

That’s such a good question. There are over four hundred imperatives in the writings of Paul, over a thousand in the four Gospels. Now, what this means is that when Paul says in Romans 8:29 that God predestined Christians to be conformed to the image of Christ — that is, to be holy like he’s holy, to love like he loves, to be morally perfect as he’s morally perfect — the means by which God brings that about, that predestined reality, is by hundreds of commands given to those predestined saints. That’s the key thing. He uses commands that we must take seriously because they are his appointed means for our moral perfecting, our glorification.

Commanding the Justified

There are people who think that because we are justified by faith alone, there are no imperatives that we must obey in order to show that our justifying faith is genuine and that we’re true Christians. But in fact, the way God brings us to the final state of glory, moral perfection, is by means of commanding us to stay on the narrow way that leads to life. The fulfillment of these commands is rooted in the fact, now, that we are already justified, already forgiven, already accepted because of what Christ has done for us and our attachment to him by faith. But it is unbiblical to say that because we’re already forgiven, already accepted, there’s no need for God to command us to do anything. That’s unbiblical to say that.

It’s unbiblical and foolish to say that God gives no threats of destruction for disobedience. That’s not true. God’s means of bringing about what he has predestined to take place — namely, our holiness, our glory, our perfection — is to command us to be holy and then, by the Spirit, enable us to do what he commands us to do. St. Augustine was right when he prayed, “Command what thou wilt, O God, and give what thou commandest” (Confessions 10.29.40).

New-Covenant Commandments

And here’s what our friend, who sent this question, is drawing our attention to: God uses both promises and threats to motivate that obedience to his commandments. Lest anybody say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t even need the word commandments. We shouldn’t even use the word commandments in the New Testament. That’s an Old Testament idea. We don’t live by commandments in the New Testament. That’s law. We live under grace.” To that I respond,

“By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3).
“Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 3:24).
“This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).
Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

“The Christian life in this fallen age is a pattern of continuous confident faith and occasional threatened fear.”

And so on. People need to read their Bibles and not just make theological pronouncements about what the Bible means without paying close attention to texts. The difference between the old covenant and the new covenant is not the absence of commandments, but the presence of power to keep them. “I will write my law on your heart and cause you to walk in my statutes” (see Jeremiah 31:33). That’s the heart of the new covenant. Obedience to commandments is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of faith. Paul calls it “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5).

Promises and Threats

What our friend is pointing out is that God motivates us to this obedience by using promises and threats. And his experience is that threats make him feel sad and worried, while promises make him feel happy and comforted. And he wonders if this is normal. Is it the way God designed the Christian life to be in this fallen world? Now, I can’t get inside his head or heart to pass any judgment with any confidence on whether this particular Christian experience of his is healthy and normal. It might be, so I’m not going to base my counsel on his experience, but on the biblical pattern.

The biblical pattern is that God motivates positively with promises and negatively with threats and warnings. The positive pattern looks like this: God’s promise leads to confident faith, which leads to obedience. And the negative pattern looks like this: God’s threat leads to fear, which drives us back to confident faith, which leads to obedience.

Here’s an example of the positive. Hebrews 13:5–6:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said [here comes the promise], “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

So, the promise is this: “I will help you and never forsake you.” The confident faith: “So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear.’” And then the obedience: we stop loving money by believing that promise.

And here’s the negative side. Romans 11:18, 20–21:

Do not be arrogant toward the [broken-off Jewish] branches. . . . They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.

So, the threat is this: God won’t spare breaking off your branch if you are arrogant. That causes fear. I don’t want to be a broken-off branch. This fear drives you away from boastful self-exaltation and self-reliance and leads you back to humble faith in Christ. And then the obedience is that you stop boasting over Jewish unbelievers.

How Faith and Fear Relate

Here’s what’s important to see about the way the two emotions relate to each other — confident faith on the one side, fear on the other side. They’re not equal or balanced in the Christian life. Confident faith is the continuous, lasting, normal condition of the Christian heart in this age. But because of sin, God also uses fear as a temporary warning to drive us back to Christ, his cross, his forgiveness, his acceptance, his love, and faith when we’re tempted to sin.

But that’s not the only difference between these two emotions. It’s not just that faith is to be continuous and fear is to be temporary, but also that a confident feeling of faith is the end, and a threatened feeling of fear is a means to drive us to the goal. So, continuous versus temporary is one difference, and end versus means is another difference.

So yes, the Christian life in this fallen age is a pattern of continuous confident faith and occasional threatened fear. This is the way every healthy family raises kids. We want our kids to be overwhelmingly, dominantly happy and confident that there’s an ongoing, continuous trust in the goodness and helpfulness of their parents. But we also want them to know the boundaries — where they could get themselves killed in the street or in an electric socket — and for their own good they don’t cross the boundaries. They feel fear of the discipline that’s going to come to them if they cross the boundaries and are tempted to cross them.

God is a good Father toward us. He knows how to bring his predestined children home to glory, and he uses both confident faith and the feeling of fear that comes through his warnings.

Audio Transcript

Boredom and purpose are the two themes we’re talking about this week. They’re related. Last time, on Monday, we looked at God’s purpose in our boredom — basically, that God plans for human beings to be frustrated by their experience in this world until they realize that they were made for God. It’s a really helpful reminder.

And today we continue talking about purpose as we seek to find and follow God’s will for our lives. We’re on the topic because tomorrow, in the Navigator’s Bible Reading Plan that we’re reading together, we launch into Philippians and study one of the key, essential texts for learning to discern God’s will. I’m talking about Philippians 1:9–10. Read those verses especially carefully, because in them we learn that following God’s will requires that we “approve what is excellent.” In other words, we taste test our way to discerning God’s will. He intends that we have a faculty, a palate, for tasting what is true and what is pleasing.

The question today is from a podcast listener named Tenielle. She asks about another text, but Philippians 1:9–10 is going to factor in here. Here’s the question: “Pastor John, Romans 12:2 says, ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ Pastor John, what does Paul mean when he says ‘by testing’?”

That is a really, really good question. I love it because it means she is really paying attention. She is looking at the book, and she cares about the words, and I love people who care about the words of Scripture. And she is obviously reading from the English Standard Version, I think, because that phrase is translated in different ways. Let me just give it again: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.”

Spiritual Litmus Test

“By testing.” Now, that phrase — “by testing you may discern” — is the translation of one Greek word, dokimazō. The standard lexical definition goes like this: “to make a critical examination of something to determine genuineness, such as metals by fire.” And interestingly, it is used in 1 Corinthians 3:13, where it says, “Fire will test [and that is the word, dokimazō] what sort of work each one has done.” So, our works at the last day are going to be tested by fire.

The idea is that the genuineness of something — in this case, the will of God in Romans 12:2 — is found out by an appropriate test. For metals, it is often fire. For genuine ripeness in fruit, it would be like tasting. And for genuine health in a horse, you might look at his teeth. And here, interestingly, powerfully, in Romans 12:2, the thing to be recognized is the will of God — namely, “what is good and acceptable and perfect.” And the question is, So, what is the test? Do you look at the teeth of the will of God? Or do you put your tongue on the behavior you are testing? Do you put some match to it? What is the test? And Paul answers, “The renewal of your mind is the test. By the renewal of your mind, you will be able to discern by testing what is the will of God.”

Here is the picture I have in my mind: my renewed mind — renewed by the word of God, renewed by the Spirit of God, renewed by soaking in the revealed nature of God in Scripture — is litmus paper that turns green when the good and acceptable and perfect will touches it. Green: go for that. And it turns red when it considers some act that is not the will of God. It is not good. It is not acceptable. It is not perfect.

So, my mind is being shaped by God into the kind of mind that, when it contemplates a behavior or an attitude or a word, there is something that reflexively says no or yes to it, because of the way our mind has been formed.

Approve What Is Excellent

Here is a great example that shows you how the mind is being renewed for this very purpose. It is Philippians 1:9–10, where Paul is praying that this would happen. He prays like this: “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve [now, there is the word] what is excellent.”

“The renewed mind has the spiritual taste so that when something is seen to be of God, it tastes good to us.”

So, he is saying that what happens to your love is that love gets more knowledge in Scripture, and love gets more insight in Scripture, and love gets more of everything it needs to be the kind of litmus paper it needs to be, so that when you are out there in the world, and you are navigating at work every day, and you don’t have your little lists in your pocket to say, “Oh, where is a list I can consult?” — well, you can’t consult a list for every decision you have to make. I would say 90 percent of the decisions we make through the day don’t have a list that applies to them.

You have got to make judgment calls over and over again as to what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect. And that is why our minds are being renewed day by day.

Delightful Taste

Let me say one more thing that I think is crucial here. The translation “discern by testing” might give the impression that all that is implied is, well, you test, you discern, and you know that is the will of God. You don’t like it, but you do it anyway.

That is not what is going on. The word dokimazō doesn’t just mean to prove and discern. It means to prove, and then when something is found to be genuine — approve of it. We know that because in Romans 1:28, it says the sinners did not approve to have God in their knowledge. And that is the word, dokimazō. They didn’t want it. They didn’t love it.

And so, the renewed mind is the mind that not only has the mental or intellectual or knowledge or insight capacities to discern something that is good and acceptable and perfect, but it also has the spiritual taste so that when something is seen to be of God, it tastes good to us. We delight in it. We approve of it.

Audio Transcript

We’ve talked a lot on the podcast about escaping a life of triviality, escaping this desire to be entertained to death. Twenty-five or so episodes in archive now prove that this is a major theme on the podcast, Pastor John. I summarized those episodes in the APJ book on pages 291–307. But here’s a unique question on the topic with a little twist, and it comes to us from an anonymous young man. “Hello, Pastor John!” he writes. “With your emphasis on Christian Hedonism, my question is about how you think of boredom. I often find myself wondering what it is exactly, and why God created the world with boredom as a main feature of daily life — at least in this age, post-fall. I’m not talking about depression, but the general ennui in this life, common to all of us.

“We stay busy with work and family and hobbies not to feel it. But it’s always there. A moment of downtime and it finds us again. Such boredom in this world seems to lead to all sorts of behaviors that Christians deem sinful: drug use, overindulging in smartphones and social media and entertainment and gaming, illicit relationships and affairs, gossiping and idle conversation. It has always puzzled me that God, at least in terms of his sovereignty over fallen man’s daily experience, has us experience a seemingly constant desire to be entertained or to otherwise ‘escape’ from reality by going to concerts, movies, playing board games, etc. At root, what is boredom? What causes it? What does it signify? And do you think God has a purpose in it for his children?”

I really enjoyed thinking about this question, partly because I’ve never thought about it before. I’ve never considered how the word (or the experience of) boredom is handled in the Bible. Isn’t that amazing? I don’t think I’ve ever asked myself that question until getting ready for this APJ. So I had never done a word search on boredom in the Bible, so this was not boring to me, which tells us something right away about the meaning of boredom — namely, it has to do with monotony. It has to do with dull repetitions that have no interest for us. So the reason thinking about boredom was not boring for me is because it was not monotonous or dull or repetitious. I’ve never done it before, and I wanted — and that’s a key word for non-boredom — to know what the Bible has to say.

And I’ll bet our listeners have already guessed what I found — namely, that word’s not in the Bible. Boredom is not. Boring and bored are not — except if you’re going to bore a hole through somebody’s ear. You can find the word boring, but it doesn’t have the meaning of this. So it’s interesting to me that the Bible doesn’t have the word boring, and it doesn’t have the word interesting anywhere in it. It doesn’t have the word exciting. It doesn’t have the word fascinating anywhere in it. (I’m basing that, by the way, on the ESV. There may be some other English translations I’m not aware of that might have some of those words, but not the ESV.)

Book of Boredom

Even though the word boredom is not found in the Bible, there is in the Bible a whole book devoted to boredom. It’s called Ecclesiastes. Listen to this:

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. . . . A generation goes, and a generation comes. . . . The sun rises, and the sun goes down. . . . The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind. . . . All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; . . . there they flow again. All things are full of weariness. (Ecclesiastes 1:2–8)

Now, that’s probably the closest thing you get to the word boredom: “All things are weariness.” “The eye is not satisfied” — there’s another good definition, I think, of boredom — “with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be . . . and there is nothing new under the sun. . . . I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:8–9, 14). That’s a very powerful description of a life that has sought non-boredom and didn’t find it under the sun — that is, without God.

Ecclesiastes is a book of what life is like if God is not the bright sun in our sky and his word is not the charter of our lives. And I think it’s in the Bible because the man who sent us this question is right. The experience of boredom is universal — not that everybody experiences it all the time, but everybody has tasted it. And he’s right also that, by its very nature, nobody likes it. Boredom by its very nature is unsatisfying. If you’re satisfied, you’re not bored.

And he’s also right that since nobody likes being bored, we all take steps — according to our personalities and our circumstances and beliefs — to get rid of it. If we’re super energetic, we might work ourselves out of boredom or play ourselves like crazy out of boredom to get rid of boredom. And if we’re more lethargic, then we may just sit on the couch, become a couch potato, turn the TV on and try to get rid of our boredom with movie after movie, streaming after streaming.

Why Are We Bored?

So he asks, “At root, what is boredom? What does it signify? Does God have a purpose in it for his children” — and I would add, for the world?

And my answer is that, at root, boredom is the relentless experience of not finding satisfaction in this world. Something starts out being exciting, satisfying, but soon we weary of it and we need something else. We take a vacation to the Alps, stand in awe for maybe two or three days, and before a week is over, the curtains are pulled and we’re sitting in front of the TV, trying to get the stimulus we’re not getting from the Alps anymore. Even great things can become boring for the fallen human heart.

What does it signify? What’s the meaning? What did God have in mind when he ordained the universal experience of boredom in a world of sin and rebellion against God? What’s his purpose for it? I’m going to give three answers: one from the Bible, one from C.S. Lewis, and one from the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert (my favorite, I think). And they’re all the same answer in different forms.

1. Eternity in Our Heart

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Now, I don’t know all that that verse means, but the least that it means, it seems to me, is that God plans for human beings to be frustrated with their experience in this world until they realize that they were made for God.

2. Made for Another World

Here’s the way C.S. Lewis says it: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world” (Mere Christianity, 136–37). Or to say it another way (paraphrasing Lewis), if we find that nothing in this world is a long-term solution to the problem of boredom, we were probably made for another world. Boredom points to God. That’s God’s purpose for boredom in this fallen world: to point us to another world — namely, to God and his infinitely interesting and infinitely satisfying person and work.

3. The Gift of Restlessness

Here’s the way one of the greatest English poets put it in a poem called “The Pulley.” And the reason it’s called “The Pulley” is because it attempts to describe in poetic form the way God pulls people to himself. And of course, the answer is that he pulls them through boredom. But he doesn’t use the word boredom; he uses the word restlessness. And he clearly thinks that God has made us restless or bored for a reason. So here’s the poem, and I’ll close with this:

     When God at first made man,Having a glass of blessings standing by,“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.Let the world’s riches, which disperséd lie,     Contract into a span.”

     So strength first made away;Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure.When almost all was out, God made a stay,Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,     Rest in the bottom lay.

     “For if I should,” said he,“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,He would adore my gifts instead of me;And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:     So both should losers be.

     “Yet let him keep the rest,But keep them with repining restlessness;Let him be rich and weary, that at least,If goodness lead him not, yet weariness     May toss him to my breast.”

Or we might say, “If goodness lead us not, yet boredom may toss us to God’s breast.”

I think that is God’s design in this universal experience of boredom: to point us to the origin of everything interesting, to the world where no one will ever be bored again — God’s presence through Jesus Christ.

Audio Transcript

Several decades ago, preaching was defined as an act meant “to disturb the comfortable and to comfort the disturbed” (Campus Gods on Trial, 102). You’ve heard that definition before of preaching. Disturbing the comfortable remains one of the great challenges faced by the preacher and the evangelist and all of us who seek to share the gospel in the prosperous West today. Because to be comfortable in sin, apart from Christ, is the deadliest place to be.

With that concern comes this question from a listener named Matt. “Hello, Pastor John! As an evangelist, what have you done to try and convince people who have their material needs met of their need for Christ? I have a wealthy brother who has no interest in the gospel or spiritual matters. I’ve been praying for him for years to be saved and I just don’t know how to break through all the comforts of his life that make him feel confident and assured and safe.”

This question resonates deeply with me, not only because of people I know who are outwardly quite content and yet are lost, but also because my father was an evangelist who saw thousands of people come to Christ through his ministry, and he said to me when I was a boy, “Johnny, getting people saved through the gospel seems not to be the hardest thing in my ministry. But getting them lost so that they know they need to be saved — that’s the hardest thing.” So, this question is not new to me. It’s been around for a long time. I suspect it’s not unique to our time.

Alternative Gospels

The thing that this question is getting at is that most people do not feel any need for the most important thing that Jesus accomplished and offers. And add to that the tragedy that so many Christians, and even some preachers, in our day have altered the message of the gospel so that the main thing — the most important thing Jesus accomplished by dying and rising again — is not the most important thing being offered when people share the gospel. Rather, there’s a constant effort to make the message fit the felt need, which drastically alters the message from something infinite and ultimate and glorious and precious to something temporal and far less important.

The prosperity gospel, of course, is the most egregious example of this, as prosperity preachers try to sell Jesus as a kind of magical force in your life that will make things go better in this world. But there are less egregious forms of prosperity-gospel distortion, which do the same thing at a lesser level, that is pretty much infecting the American church. We create alterations of the gospel as we try to persuade people with our own seemingly innocuous version of the prosperity gospel — by mainly referring to the fact that your psychological state or your marriage or children or finances or health will improve if you accept Jesus.

Death and Judgment

Now, my father was a very happy man. He knew the wonderful effects of God’s forgiveness and justification by faith and the hope of eternal life. He knew the wonderful effects here and now of being a Christian. He was a happy, well-rounded, balanced Christian. I think that’s probably why I’m a Christian today. I never saw in my father or my mother any reason to jettison what they were so authentically changed by. My father wrote a little paperback. Most fundamentalists don’t write books like this — and he was one, a very happy one. I have it on my shelf: A Good Time and How to Have It.

And yet he also knew that most people thought they were having a good time and the gospel would just get in the way. That was the problem. That’s what he had to overcome. Therefore, what I remember most clearly in his preaching is the flame in his eyes of mingled kindness and severity when he quoted Hebrews 9:27: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” Oh, I can just hear him say it. I can see the look on his face.

“At the bottom of all other problems is the problem that we are under the wrath of God.”

Sometimes we joke and say, “Well, two things are unavoidable in life: death and taxes.” Well, that’s not true. Taxes are avoidable. You can just go to jail. But there are two things that are unavoidable without Christ: death and judgment, death and hell. The main thing Jesus came into the world to accomplish was to make it possible for human beings, under the just sentence of death and hell, to escape that eternal condemnation and live forever, glorifying God by their happiness in him. That’s what he came to do — centrally at the bottom of all other things.

Solving Our Biggest Problem

What God sent Jesus into the world to do was to solve every human problem eventually. The problem that has to be solved at the bottom of all other problems is the problem that we are under the wrath of God. That’s humanity’s biggest problem. No matter how rich we are or happy we are — or healthy or famous or strong or beautiful — we are all sinners. We have belittled the glory of God by making so little of it, and we deserve eternal condemnation. Romans 5:9 says, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” And 1 Thessalonians 1:10 says, “[God] raised [Jesus] from the dead, . . . who delivers us from the wrath to come.” And Romans 2:5 says, “Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”

This is the problem at the bottom, under all other problems, and this is the main problem for people who feel they have no problems and don’t need the gospel: the rich, the comfortable, the content; the poor, the comfortable, the content.

So, my father pleaded with healthy, wealthy, self-satisfied people to wake up and realize that every heartbeat could be your last, and you’re not ready to face an all-holy God. There’s only one way to be ready, and that is to be united to Jesus Christ by faith in him as our Savior and Lord and treasure. According to Romans 8:3, God condemned sin in Jesus Christ’s flesh. That is, he gave his Son to bear the condemnation of his own wrath for all who will trust him.

Or in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” My father would plead with people, “If you don’t accept the curse that Jesus came under God’s wrath against you to give, you will have to bear your own curse in hell.” That’s the one crucial message that our comfortable, oblivious friends and neighbors need to hear. There are many other good things to say; that dare not be neglected.

Warning with Wisdom and Love

We need to be deeply aware that this is a message of love about an act of love that is so great it cannot be exaggerated. Just before mentioning God’s wrath in Romans 5:9, Paul said, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). There is no greater love than that God would put his only Son through hell on the cross to save his enemies from going to hell. That’s the heart of the gospel.

So, Matt, let’s pray that God would give us tears and compassion, not just for the pains and sorrows of this life. Oh my goodness. You read the news of what’s happening around the world, and there is just so much suffering now. Yes, by all means let us weep for that, but also, may God give us tears for the pain-free people, the comfortable people, the healthy, wealthy people who are blind to what awaits them without Christ.

God will show you, Matt, when and how to give this message as you seek to lay down your life for others. He will. He’ll show you. I have seen such warnings — I mean severe, earnest, tearful warnings, from my father and in my own ministry — I have seen warnings from my father and from me bear the fruit of salvation. May God cause our love to abound with great wisdom so that we know how best to deliver this essential message.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast as we begin this June together. Pastor John, today in our Bible reading we arrive at Ephesians 2:1–10 — an incredibly important text, and one you have mentioned in your works over 1,400 times over the decades. It is a mega-text in your legacy, I would call it, one you could talk about for hours and hours on end. But it includes a curious little line that you rarely talk about, especially compared to the other glorious points Paul makes here. I’m talking about the singular title he gives to the devil — that the devil is “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2).

All sorts of interpretations have been suggested for this over the decades. Historically, back in the 1920s and 1930s, as gospel programming was first introduced to broadcast radio, one critique said that any attempt to preach over the airwaves was “doomed to fail” because such ministry “operates in the very realm in which Satan is supreme. Is he not ‘the prince of the power of the air’?” So, there’s like a cosmological dimension to his reign.

That argument is basically dead today, but questions remain. APJ listeners want to know what that means that Satan is the “power of the air”? One of our listeners, named Emon, wants to know “if this implies that Satan is omnipresent or all-seeing.” Other listeners want to know how Satan influences “the air” and how it is that his reign as “the prince of the power of the air” leads him to coerce disobedience from sinners, as Paul implies here in the broader context of Ephesians 2:1–3. What kind of power, Pastor John, is Paul ascribing to the devil in this verse?

Well, first, let me suggest a principle of interpretation that I think is really important, especially for a certain mindset that is constantly fascinated with marginal, uncertain things in the Bible instead of being thrilled with central, sure, glorious things in the Bible. The principle is this: don’t let speculations about what you don’t know control or dominate the things that are clear in the Bible that you do know. That’s the principle. We know many clear, true things about Satan and his work in the world that are stated plainly in the Bible, and it would not be wise to start speculating about what we are unsure of — namely, the meaning of air in “the prince of the power of the air” — in a way that would contradict or dominate those clear, true things.

“Don’t let speculations about what you don’t know control or dominate the things that are clear in the Bible.”

Scholars and commentators, including me, are not generally confident or certain about why Satan is called “the prince of the power of the air” in Ephesians 2:2. There are pointers — I won’t stop here; I have something to say; we’re not left in the dark about what this probably signifies — but it would be unwise to put too much emphasis on what I’m about to say, because even though it’s important (it’s in the Bible), it’s not nearly as important as other clear things, I think, even in these verses and elsewhere in the New Testament. So, that’s the first thing, a principle.

Clearing the Air

The second thing we need to do, just by way of preparation, is to clear away some confusion. To say that Satan is “the prince of the power of the air” does not mean we should stop living and breathing and speaking and looking through the air. Air is what exists between the page of the Bible and your eye. Air is what exists between the preacher’s mouth and your ear. To say that we shouldn’t broadcast the truth through airwaves would also mean you shouldn’t preach into the air or look at the Bible through the air. That’s nonsense.

There’s a battle to be fought with the prince of the air, but you don’t fight it by stopping hearing through the air or seeing through the air or moving through the air. Okay, let’s just get that out of the way. To claim that you shouldn’t do radio or Wi-Fi or something like that is to over-prove what you’re trying to do, because it’s going to cancel out all preaching and all Bible reading, which happen through the air.

And we can add this: the fact that Satan has some measure of authority in the air does not imply that he’s omnipresent or omniscient. We are not told in the Bible the extent of Satan’s knowledge or how a non-spatial reality like a spirit — which he’s called in this very verse, “the spirit” that is dominating “the sons of disobedience” — with no up, down, or sideways reality, positions himself in the world. But he’s not God. He does not share God’s omniscience and omnipresence, but we do know that he has many unclean spirits, demons, at his disposal, and they are deployed all over the world in the air. The air is where his flaming arrows fly, according to Ephesians 6:16.

Evaluting the Enemy

Here’s what Paul said; let’s get the text in front of us:

You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the [age, sometimes translated “the course”] of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. (Ephesians 2:1–2)

So, here are some pointers that collectively bring some clarity, I think, to this term “prince of the power of the air.”

1. Air Above Us

First, the air is simply what Paul and people in his time called the space above the earth, and they had no scientific awareness of how high the air went. As far as they knew, it just went on and on, so human life takes place in the lower part of this air where it meets the earth. That’s where we live. That’s point number one. It’s just a general statement about the sphere of our life.

2. Layers of Air

Second, in Matthew 6:26, Jesus says, “[Consider] the birds of the air.” Now, the reason that’s significant is because the word translated air is heaven. It’s translated heaven almost everywhere. The term heaven in the New Testament was very broad in its usage, referring to layers that are above the earth, sometimes called the sky. Nehemiah 9:6 refers to “heaven [and] the heaven of heavens,” where the stars are. And Psalm 148:4 refers to the “highest heavens.” In 2 Corinthians 12:2, Paul refers to “the third heaven.”

“We have the victory over this one with whom we are contending in the air.”

Since Jesus uses the word heaven interchangeably with air, where the birds fly, we can think of various layers of air or heaven. There are these heavens. In fact, the word heaven is regularly used in the plural, I think probably because it’s thought of in terms of these various layers. This is probably why Paul refers so often, like in chapter 6, to heavens where the battle with Satan happens, he says (Ephesians 6:12). So, that’s number two.

3. Seated in Heaven

Third, the term “prince of the power.” Just take those two words. “Prince of the power,” “ruler of authority” — archonta tēs exousias — is exactly the same as those two terms four verses earlier in Ephesians 1:20–21, where it says God raised Christ “and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places [the heavens], far above all rule and authority.” Now, that’s the phrase that describes the devil, “rule and authority” — “far above all rule and authority.” Far above the devil. Far above the prince of the power, the ruler of the authority, of the air.

So Satan, though he has a measure of rule and authority in the air or the heavens, is not God. He’s vastly under God. Christ is vastly superior to, over, has authority over him — so Satan’s rule in the power of the air, or in the lower air of the heavens, is not supreme. He is decisively defeated. Colossians 2:15 says, “[God] disarmed the rulers and authorities,” and that’s exactly the same phrase as “the prince of the power.” Ephesians 2:2: “The prince of the power of the air” is “the rulers of the authority of the air,” and that has been decisively disarmed at the cross.

So, he’s mortally wounded. A decisive battle has been fought, and we in Christ have a victory over him. And when it comes to Ephesians 6:12, where it says, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities” — same phrase as back in Ephesians 2:2 — “in the heavenly places,” those heavenly places are evidently layers of heavens, the layers of the air above the earth but below the highest heaven, where Christ sits supreme, governing all things. And we have the victory over this one with whom we are contending in the air.

4. ‘God of This World’

Fourth, Paul calls Satan “the god of this world” in 2 Corinthians 4:4. I think “god of this world” and “ruler of the authority of the air” are virtually interchangeable terms, with the world being the sphere in which we live and the air being the sphere in which we live. They refer to the same thing.

Live with Boldness

So, here are four implications I draw from Paul’s calling Satan the prince of the power of the air:

Satan is a spirit who is invisible like air, not like flesh and blood, according to Ephesians 6:12.
There’s no place to go while we breathe air where the flaming arrows of Satan will not fly through the air at us (Ephesians 6:16).
Any place we go where there’s air, heaven, sky, space, we will need to wear the armor of God and do battle with the word of God and the shield of faith.
Christ is exalted as King to the highest heaven, above all rule and authority. The prince of the power of the air is not sovereign. He is on a leash.

John says, “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), but those who are born of God he cannot touch; he cannot destroy (1 John 5:18). We should believe that; we should take up the armor of God and live with that kind of boldness.