John Piper

Is My Child Transgender Because of Me?

Audio Transcript

One of the great anxieties that parents face is the fear of what our own sins could do to corrupt our kids. It can be a paralyzing anxiety, one that has come up on the podcast in many different forms.

It’s the fear of those who believe in God’s judgment on generational sins, sins of the past being visited on future generations. More commonly, it’s the fear of young men and women born out of wedlock, or born into dysfunctional homes, who wonder if their past dooms their future family to a similar broken fate. It’s the fear of Christian parents of prodigals who are left wondering what they did to mess up their children so badly. It’s the fear of young men and women awakened to the potency of sin in their own hearts, and afraid to even have children because of what their own sins could do to corrupt those future kids. In each of these scenarios, we find the same haunting question lurking behind it all: Did my sin — or will my sin — ruin my child? In our new APJ book, you can see these scenarios on pages 192–93.

And the same question echoes in this heartbreaking email from a broken dad. He writes in anonymously. “Pastor John, my wife and I have four sons, ranging from twenty to eight. We recently found out our twenty- and fifteen-year-olds both claim to suffer from so-called ‘gender dysphoria.’ The twenty-year-old is walking with the Lord and knows it’s wrong, fighting his temptations, and trying to dwell in God for strength, and attends a solid, Bible-believing church. But he’s in college two hours away, and we are still worried for him.

“Our fifteen-year-old is not a believer. He’s in a public school, and we are now looking to move him to private Christian school and will continue to help support him. But he has been cold and not receptive. We have talked to our pastors and asked for prayer, but we feel so broken and so alone and so helpless in this season. What do we do to fight against the despair we face every day as failed parents? How did we fail them? Please help us, Pastor John. We are so torn and heartbroken.”

As I have thought and prayed more than usual about this question and this situation — which, of course, is multiplied ten thousandfold for Christian parents across the world — there are ten suggestions that I have for parents to consider (and I just say consider) when a child moves away from obedience to Jesus. It might be completely away; it might be partially away — whatever form it takes.

Here they are.

1. Grieve with hope.

Grieve deeply but not despairingly. Grieve while holding fast to the sovereign goodness and wisdom of God. Be like Job, who fell on the ground, tore his robe, shaved his head, no doubt wept his eyes out at the loss of his children, and said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). So, grieve deeply but not despairingly.

2. Look to the God of the impossible.

Do not assume while your child lives that he will not return to the path of obedience. “What is impossible with man” — and it surely seems impossible at times — “is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Look to the God of the impossible.

3. Do not assume you’re decisively at fault.

Do not assume that your imperfections as a parent were decisive in causing this disobedience in your child. Don’t assume that. Read Ezekiel 18:1–32. I’ll sum it up:

Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die. If a righteous father begets a son who is violent, a shedder of blood, though the father himself has done none of these things, that son shall surely die. His blood shall be upon himself. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father for the iniquity of the son.

The father shall not suffer, the mother shall not suffer, for the iniquity of the son. In other words, we cannot draw a straight line from our own parenting to our children’s sin or righteousness. The refrain running through the Bible is that failing parents can have good children, and good parents can have failing children. So, repent of all remembered sin, but don’t assume that was the decisive cause of your child’s disobedience.

4. Love your children on God’s terms.

Resolve to love your children on God’s terms, not the world’s terms. That is, love them with a readiness to sacrifice your life while standing for what God calls right and what God calls true, not what the world calls right and true. The effort to be loving by forsaking God’s way of truth and righteousness — which many are trying to do today — is to fail in love. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” Jesus said in John 8:32. God’s truth is the path to love.

5. Speak truth to your child.

Whether in person or in letters or emails, speak truth to your child. Tell them what you believe, why you believe it, and why you believe it’s the path of love. Do not withdraw into self-pity or anger. Lean in with truth; speak to them. Once this is done, then wait. Don’t nag — don’t harass — but be sure you have spoken to them the fullness of the truth you believe is the path of love.

6. Communicate your love.

Communicate your love — the love that is willing and ready to go anywhere, do anything, at any cost to your life for the sake of the life of your children. Now, they may think that the truth you embrace cannot be loving because it does not affirm them in their sin, but they know in their heart when you are ready to give your life for them and that you are not selfish. They know. Your commitment to the Bible has made you ready to die for the good of others, especially your children. Communicate that readiness to them.

7. Pray without ceasing.

Pray without ceasing in the confidence that God is sovereign and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. And gather some friends — whether in person or in other ways — and join in prayer for each other’s children. Trust God as you pray that he will give good things to those who ask him, because that’s what it says in Matthew 7:11: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Expect him to give good things as you pray.

8. Discern how often to address the issue.

Measure — with prayerful, Bible-saturated wisdom — how often to address the issue with your child. I said a moment ago, “Don’t nag — don’t harass.” Some will be utterly closed to any communication. That’s tragic, but it’s real. So, rarely intrude where you have been forbidden. (Rarely — I didn’t say never.) Others will be more open. God will give you discernment. That’s what I trust. God will give you discernment — “wisdom from above,” as James calls it in James 3:17.

Sometimes you will just send a note of affection. “I love you.” That’s the text: “I love you.” Sometimes notes mentioning something precious about the Lord Jesus that you just read in your devotions. Maybe, “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him” (Psalm 103:13 NKJV). You just say that. Sometimes the note will simply say, “Just thinking about you today.” That’s all.

9. Make the central gospel plain.

Periodically, make the simple, central gospel plain to the distant prodigal — the child who’s moving away. Make the central gospel plain. In other words, from time to time — God will make it plain how often (Once a year? Once every six months?) — remind them there’s always a way out, a way home to God and to you, because there may come a point when they want out.

They want out of their disobedience, but Satan is blinding them to any hope that it could happen, telling them there’s no way out; there’s no way back. And they may need help remembering what they once knew so well and has become cloudy. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

10. Press on with indomitable joy.

Press on with your ordinary life with brokenhearted but indomitable joy, and deny Satan the triumph of paralyzing you in your path of righteousness because of your child’s path of unrighteousness. Satan would love to take out two people with one bullet. Deny him that.

Yes, your child needs to see that you are not blithely indifferent to his disobedience. But just as important, he needs to see that Jesus is your supreme treasure and that the solar system of your life does not revolve around your child. He is not the sun in your solar system. Christ is. He doesn’t need you falling apart, retreating in self-pity, pouting. That’s not helpful. He needs you weak and triumphant in Christ.

Tidal Wave of Grace

Now, there are so many other things besides these ten things to say. When I finished them, I just kept thinking of others. We have to stop. But these are the thoughts that come to me just now as I was praying and preparing for this. So, let’s pray for each other, and may the Lord bring the day when there is a tidal wave of grace that sweeps thousands of precious prodigals into the arms of their parents and of the Lord Jesus.

Is My Child Transgender Because of Me?

How can parents resist the despair that comes from feeling like failures? Pastor John offers ten words of hope for parents of prodigals.

The ‘Ask Pastor John’ Book Is Here

Audio Transcript

In January of 2013, we launched a little podcast into the world. We called it Ask Pastor John. We slapped a jingle on the front end and hit publish on a temporary podcast meant to last us fifteen months or so to fill a short need we had here at Desiring God. And Pastor John, here we are, two thousand episodes later.

I can’t even remember those days.

I know. It seems like a distant memory. And I think I used to call you up on your phone. You used a landline phone for those early years. Do you remember that?

Yep. Down in Tennessee.

Two thousand episodes later, we’re now into our twelfth year. And today we look back. We look back at what God has done in the past years of APJ. And we look forward, with prayers for the future and prayers for what God might do in a new APJ book. That book releases today. More on that in a moment. As we start off, Pastor John, tell us how this podcast fits within your ministry legacy. How do you think of it now, twelve years in?

Bible-Saturated Legacy

My parents built into me from the time I could read — that’s about six years old, when we moved into the house I’m thinking about — a passion for legacy. And I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know what legacy was, but that’s what it was, because hanging on the wall in our kitchen — and it hangs behind me right now where I’m standing in my study — was this motto: “Only one life, ’twill soon be passed. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” That’s legacy talk.

So I believe, Tony, that you and I have produced Ask Pastor John for Christ. “Only what’s done for Christ will last.” And we didn’t do it for ourselves. We did it for Christ. We’re doing it for Christ. Your book will be, I believe, part of the fulfillment of the second half of the motto: “What’s done for Christ will last.”

“Almost every episode is a careful expression of about an hour and a half of study and thought and prayer.”

You know well, Tony, that I have my favorite hyphenated phrases: God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated. And I think that’s what Ask Pastor John is; that’s the legacy: God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated counsel for people who are in need. And I would underline Bible-saturated, because many podcasts are enjoyable conversations that people have online. That’s not what we’ve done for ten years. Almost every episode is a careful expression — well-prepared and a lot of thought gone into it — of about an hour and a half of study and thought and prayer, saturated with the Bible.

So I think, Tony, our legacy will be this: “They were God-centered; they were Christ-exalting; they were Bible guys — with a strange twist called Christian Hedonism because they believed that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” I think that’s the way I would express the legacy.

Distilling the Archive

Amen. May it be! That has certainly been our prayer from the very start of this podcast. And if you want the full backstory of where it came from and how it’s tied to the unique ways that Pastor John is gifted to answer questions, I tell that backstory in the introduction to my brand new book, just mentioned. It’s titled Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Most Important Questions. That new book launches today. It’s the point of this special episode to announce the new book, Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Most Important Questions.

People hearing about it for the first time ask me, “What is it, Tony? Why did you write a book about a podcast, especially when the whole archive is transcribed; it’s online; it’s just a Google search away for anyone who wants it?”

Really the genesis of this new book came years ago when friends of ours, ministry partners (donors), would email me, asking about some pressing question that has come up in their life, their family, their church — asking me for one APJ episode that could answer a dilemma. And I think the archive is intimidating for a lot of people. I think we’re up to about 250 hours of content now. And that grows by the week. That’s a lot of content to sift through.

So, what I would do is I would take the question from the donor, dive into the archive, and always find multiple episodes on a topic, and respond with an email that was basically a digest of all those episodes that I found — or even just parts of an episode that I found — that I thought could help answer a given challenge from different angles, explaining why each episode I found was uniquely valuable in answering the question.

And over time, those little digests just seemed to prove useful. As they did, I collected them into one document on my computer, and at some point I realized I could do this with the broader archive. So, I set aside two years of my book-research-and-writing time. I identified our most popular episodes from our first decade. That was the easy part. This type of podcast really offers us a feedback loop like no other — the audience asks the questions, and then the audience responds to the episodes we record. It’s very easy to see what topics most resonate with our audience.

So, I isolated our 28 most popular topics, and basically just created 28 huge digests of 750 episodes, in one comprehensive guide, to help find the episodes that you need when you need them. It was a huge project. There were times early on when I wondered if this was a good idea or not.

Book for Every Home

But now it’s done. And I have high hopes that this book will prove useful. Sinclair Ferguson, in his kind endorsement, likened it to Richard Baxter’s classic, massive book, A Christian Directory. It’s an amazing comparison for those of you in the Reformed world who know what that huge book is like. And then Dr. Ferguson called the APJ book “one of those rare contemporary books that can be described as ‘should be in every Christian home.’” My jaw dropped when I read that. I mean, that is an amazing endorsement of the book, but even of your deep labors in this podcast too, Pastor John, each episode being that careful expression of about an hour and a half of your study and thought and prayer, saturated with the Bible. That’s a huge investment. A ringing endorsement of your labors.

And then Kevin DeYoung, another friend of ours, said, “I can’t imagine any Christian who wouldn’t be helped by and fascinated by the hundreds of topics covered in this amazing resource.” Again, that highlights the value of having a printed guide you can easily thumb through and browse. It’s a unique way, I think, to appreciate such a long-running podcast like APJ.

So, if these kind words are accurate — and I have high hopes that this book is going to serve listeners to help them benefit from the archive in the years ahead — I can’t wait to see what the Lord does with this. Pastor John, as you consider what this new book will offer the podcast in the near future and in the distant future, what would you add to this conversation?

Trembling and Rejoicing

When people say nice things about our teaching, we could easily overlook what makes us tremble in this project — namely, James 3:1: “Not many of you should become teachers . . . for you know that we who teach will be judged [that means judged by God] with greater strictness.” Wow. But you and I involved in this constant teaching ministry take heart from God’s word to Isaiah: “This is the one to whom I will look [declares the Lord]: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2). So, we believe God will look to us — he will smile upon us because of Jesus and because we don’t play fast and loose with his word. We tremble at the very privilege of knowing his word and speaking his word.

Teaching is what we do. It’s our calling. It’s a dangerous work. It’s a trembling work. But oh, what a happy work! It’s a happy work because we get to spend untold hours immersed in God’s word for the sake of God’s people. And Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you . . . that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). And then he told us to go share what we’ve heard and added, “It is more blessed [more happy] to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). So, it’s been a happy work.

Tony, you can bear your own witness to the joys of facing, amazingly, two thousand episodes of APJ, and selecting and distilling them into a usable manual of Christian counsel. But I want to bear witness to the joy of watching that happen. It really has been astonishing to watch. For ten years, I have watched you evaluate questions by the thousands, record answers, edit recordings, record or host a podcast, and schedule the episodes.

Now, that’s one source of joy (and it’s big and solid), just watching those competencies that God has given you put into action for his glory. But the skill that our readers are going to see in this book — this synthesizing skill — is of another order. Weaving hundreds of thousand-word answers into topical, coherent, readable chapters has inspired — still inspires — my happy admiration and thankfulness to God.

So thank you, Tony, for the investment of ten years of your life on the podcast and two years of your life on the book. It has been a precious partnership. Clearly you and I both believe in the value of the written word and the spoken word. You’ve reminded me of that over and over again — about the peculiar nature of this audible conversation that we have. We’ve seen lives captivated for Christ through both writing and speaking. We pray for that to continue to happen through both.

You and I both love to write. We are writers. We get our thoughts out on paper with joy. It is in our God-designed bones. But neither you nor I will surrender the living voice, because the living voice carries the affections of the heart more effectively than the written word. And we believe that new Christ-exalting affections of the heart are the goal of this ministry, the goal of books, the goal of speaking, the goal of Desiring God. I believe it’s the goal of the Bible — new Christ-exalting affections.

So, Ask Pastor John — the book and the podcast — aim to impart new affections. That’s what we want to happen. We aim at a miracle. We hope that you, our listeners, will hear and read our hearts. There is a happy melody there in our hearts — a God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, happy melody — and we hope that you hear it, and that it becomes the melody of your life.

Two Prayers for Listeners and Readers

Well put! Thank you, Pastor John. I appreciate that. We want the living voice captured in this podcast to bless people around the world for years and decades to come. To that end we have two prayers with this book.

First, we pray this book helps you who are listening to us right now. We want you to better navigate our over two hundred hours of audio, to find episodes you need when you need them, and the episodes your friends need when they need them. I think we can help you better serve others if we can help you find your way around the archive better. That’s prayer one.

“The book and the podcast aim to impart new affections. That’s what we want to happen. We aim at a miracle.”

Prayer two is for future listeners to this podcast, those who are not listening right now. They can’t hear me right now; they’re not listening to me; they haven’t even started listening. Imagine an audience of people who have never listened to APJ that will come online and listen to our content in future years and decades. Millions of people right now — that’s not an overstatement — don’t know that this podcast exists: people in our churches, people in our neighborhoods, people at work, people wrestling with suffering, people asking the most important questions in life. And I want them to see quickly the ground we’ve covered in the first ten years of the podcast so that they can benefit from the archive immediately.

So, those are our two prayers. And I put them in the introduction to my new book when I wrote this: “As we build this podcast into a single content library, our first decade lays the groundwork for everything else to come. For current listeners, the book rehearses key highlights from the past. For future listeners, the book is an on-ramp to summarize the ground we’ve already covered. The book will immediately serve thousands of current listeners who found their way from the podcast to the book.” That’s you if you’re listening, hearing about the book for the first time; you’re moving from the podcast to the book.

“But perhaps, if the Lord is gracious, the current will reverse in due time, and thousands of readers will find their way from this new book to the podcast. That’s our prayer. As you gift this book to not-yet-listeners, you’re helping us fulfill this dream in answer to that prayer. Think of this book as a podcast promo made of paper and ink that you can physically hand to others” (xxviii).

That thought thrills me. I can’t wait to hand out copies of this book to introduce new listeners to the podcast, to share with others this happy melody — this God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, happy melody of what this podcast is. What a joy! What an honor to be able to do that.

Okay, so where can you get copies? To launch this new, big, red Ask Pastor John book, we are again partnering with our friends at Westminster Books. Support a wonderful Christian bookstore, and get discounted copies of Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Most Important Questions right now at wtsbooks.com.

I have been honored to be your podcast host for over a decade from behind a microphone. And now to be your podcast host in a new book format is a new joy for me. Whether by microphone or by book, I am your host, Tony Reinke. See you next time.

The ‘Ask Pastor John’ Book Is Here

After ten years and two thousand episodes, Tony Reinke has distilled the best of ‘Ask Pastor John’ in a remarkable new book.

Is Obedience Without Affection Still Love?

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. We’re going to start the week with a doozy of a question: Do we love God only by obeying him, or do we also love him verbally by using affectional language about him and to him? A hugely important question today that gets at the very heart of what we call Christian Hedonism.

The question is from an anonymous listener. “Pastor John, hello to you! My pastor recently admitted that he does not love God, or Christ, emotionally. He said he loves God, or loves Christ, by keeping his commandments. Obedience is love, he claims, returning often to 2 John 6 — ‘This is love, that we walk according to his commandments.’ And to 1 John 5:3 — ‘For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.’ I’ve known many other Christians in my life who seem to have no place for emotional or affectional language for God. They like to relate to him merely in similar categories of obedience. Is this healthy? How important is it to cultivate affectional language for God as God? And what would you say to those who are uneasy with such language for their relationship with God and only ever use this obedience language?”

Okay, I hear three questions.

1. Is it healthy to relate to God only in categories of obedience but not affections? Answer: no, it’s not healthy. It’s confusing at best, deadly at worst. I’ll come back to that.

2. How important is it to cultivate affectional language for God? Answer: it’s very important. However, language is not the ultimate issue. The reality of our hearts’ affections for God is the ultimate issue. The language of affections is important only because the heart reality is important.

3. What would you say to those who are uneasy with affectional language for their relationship with God and only use this obedience language? I would say, “Get over your uneasiness with affectional language, because the Bible is full of it — full of it — toward man and God.” You’re uneasy with the Bible. That’s your problem. And I would say if your heart is really emotionally dead toward God, repent and cry out for life.

Confused or Dead?

Now, we need to be careful here with our words, because it may be that this pastor is not denying that he has real and strong affections for God; he’s just denying that he should call them love, maybe. Love for God, he’s saying, is something else — namely, love is obedience. Now, if that’s what he’s saying, then he may be a good Christian and just biblically confused. In other words, his heart may be right, but he’s naming things in unbiblical ways, and probably he’s confusing his people in the process. It sounds like it from this question.

“God commands that we feel affections for God.”

On the other hand — this is more scary — it may be that he really doesn’t have any affections for God, and in that case he needs to be born again. If there is not even a mustard seed of delight in God, thankfulness to God, hope in God, satisfaction in God, desire for God — if none of those emotions is in his heart for God and Christ, he’s not a Christian. So, let me try to address both of those kinds of people at the same time.

The first kind is the Christian who is confused about the affections that he genuinely has for God and simply doesn’t know whether to call them love or not. And second is the person who thinks he’s a Christian when he has no emotions in his heart for God and Christ at all; he’s just dead emotionally toward God.

Affections in the Christian Life

Now, here’s the main thing to say about the confusion of claiming to love God with obedience but not with heart affections: that’s like affirming fruit but denying apples. I’ve said this so many times. Affirming obedience and denying affections is like affirming fruit and denying apples, because obedience means doing what God commands, and God commands affections. It’s confusing, it’s contradictory, to say, “I obey God, but I don’t have any of the affections that God commands me to have.” That’s just really confusing and contradictory.

1. God commands affections.

For example, Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord.” Now, that’s a command. So, a pastor who says he’s obedient to God’s commands would be obedient to the command to delight himself in the Lord. Now, he might not call it love — though I think he should, but he might not. (And I’ll show in a minute why I think he should.) That’s not a deadly problem. To get your language confused is not a deadly problem. Not to have any delight in the Lord is a deadly problem.

But for now, whether he calls delight in the Lord love or not, he is commanded to have delight. And it is simply confusing and contradictory to say he obeys God but does not relate to God with his emotions, because those emotions are commanded. And if he doesn’t have them, he’s disobedient to the command. We can add to Psalm 37:4 the command in Psalm 32:11: “Be glad in the Lord.” And Philippians 3:1: “Rejoice in the Lord.” And many others.

2. The godly model affections.

Not only are affections for God commanded, but that way of feeling in the heart is held out to us as an example — not just a command, but an example — of how godly people relate to God. For example, in Psalm 43:4: “I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy.” Or Psalm 84:2: “My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.” Or Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you. . . . Your steadfast love is better than life. . . . My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food . . . when I remember you upon my bed” (Psalm 63:1, 3, 5–6).

3. We are to pray for affections.

And not only are affections for God commanded and given as examples of how godly people relate to God, but we are taught to pray for those affections. This is what we ought to do if we don’t have them. Psalm 90:14: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.” This is a cry to God to give us the affections for him that we ought to have and may not at the moment have.

And on top of all that, Jesus warns against outward obedience where the heart feels nothing. Matthew 15:8–9: “This people honors me with their lips,” — so, lips are moving; that’s outward obedience — “but their heart,” he says, “is far from me; in vain do they worship me.” “In vain”: that’s a big, terrible, horrible statement. Without heart, our outward obedience is nothing.

So, I conclude that it is confusing and contradictory to say that you obey God’s commands, but that you don’t pursue the very affections for God that he has commanded.

Love Worthy of Christ

Now, one last thing. Why should we use the word love for these affections for God? Now, I’m not saying that love for God is only affections. The Bible talks about love in a very broad way. But I am saying that love for God is not less than affections for God. Now, why would I say that? And I’ll give just one reason: because of Matthew 10:37. Jesus said this: “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.”

Now, in that sentence, love for Jesus cannot mean obedience to Jesus’s commands, because he’s comparing love for Jesus with love for our children. “Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Love for our children does not mean obedience to our children. So, the point is, we must love Jesus with the kind of love we have for our most precious family members — only more so — and that is an affectional love.

So, I hope the pastor who said, “I love God by keeping his commandments, not with my affections,” will realize that God commands that we feel affections for God. And I hope that this is just a confusion of language and not a case of real deadness of heart.

Is Obedience Without Affection Still Love?

If we obey God outwardly but feel no affection for him inwardly, is our obedience still love? Pastor John takes us to the heart beneath God-pleasing obedience.

Leaders in the Church: Speaking and Living God’s Word

In this message, we are going to dig into the biblical teaching about leaders in the church — who they are and what they do. So, I invite you to come with me through five steps.

Step 1: I will try to show that it is God’s will that there be leaders in all Christian churches.

Step 2: I will try to formulate a brief definition of what this leadership is, or what leaders do.

Step 3: I will point to some biblical cautions about leadership.

Step 4: We will zero in on how leaders lead successfully. What’s the basic prescription for effectiveness?

Step 5: We will flesh that out with two practical implications for the pastor.

If you are helped by one-word summaries: We will deal with the justification of leadership, the definition of leadership, cautions about leadership, the implementation of leadership, and some illustrations of leadership.

Step 1: Justification of Leadership

It is God’s will that there be leaders in all Christian churches. We know this because God himself uses at least seven different words for these leaders as the New Testament describes them in the churches.

First is the very word “leader,” the present participle of hēgomai, hēgoumenos. This is the same word that Matthew 2:6 uses, where Micah’s prophecy is quoted: “From you, [Bethlehem], shall come a [leader] who will shepherd my people Israel.”

Then the word is used in Hebrews 13 for church leaders.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Hebrews 13:7)

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

The second word for leaders is translated in various ways. The idea is “one who stands before” the people (proistēmi).

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you. (1 Thessalonians 5:12)

Let the elders who rule [or govern] well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. (1 Timothy 5:17)

The third word is “overseer” (episkopos).

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to [shepherd] the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. (Acts 20:28)

An overseer, as God’s [household manager], must be above reproach. (Titus 1:7)

The fourth word, as we just saw, is “household manager” (oikonomos).

The Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager [of the household], whom his master will set over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time?” (Luke 12:42)

An overseer, as God’s [household manager], must be above reproach. (Titus 1:7)

The fifth word is “shepherd,” both as a verb (poimainein) and as a noun (poimēn).

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to [shepherd] the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. (Acts 20:28)

I exhort the elders among you . . . shepherd the flock of God that is among you. (1 Peter 5:1–2)

[Christ] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers. (Ephesians 4:11)

The sixth word is “elder” (presbyteros).

They had appointed elders for them in every church. (Acts 14:23)

This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might . . . appoint elders in every town as I directed you. (Titus 1:5)

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. (1 Timothy 5:17)

The seventh word is “teacher” (didaskalos).

[Christ] gave [to the church] the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers. (Ephesians 4:11)

An overseer must be . . . able to teach. (1 Timothy 3:2)

So, I conclude that it is God’s will that there be such leaders in all the churches. They go by different names to connote different emphases of their role:

“Leader,” connoting direction and guidance for the people.
“One who stands before,” connoting a chairman-like governance.
“Overseer,” connoting a watchful supervisory role.
“Household manager,” connoting administration, organization, stewardship.
“Shepherd,” connoting protecting, nourishing, guiding.
“Elder,” connoting mature, exemplary responsibility.
“Teacher,” connoting the impartation and explanation of truth.

I think it would be fair to say, to most of you in this room right now, “That’s who you are.” And therefore, the rest of this message should be of the highest relevance to you.

Step 2: Definition of Leadership

So, from those seven descriptions of leaders in the church, what can we infer about the nature or the definition of leadership? Three things.

First, when you see that these designations include guidance, governance, supervision, organization, modeling, and the application of truth to people’s lives, it’s obvious that the meaning of leadership is getting people from where they are to where God wants them to be. Moving toward a goal is implied in all these words. God does not put leaders in a group in order for them to aimlessly go in circles. He puts leaders in a group to take them from where they are to where he wants them to be — in their thinking, in their feeling, in their action, maybe in their geographic location. Leadership implies that there’s a goal and a movement of people toward a goal.

Second, when you see that these seven designations of leadership involve watchful supervision, governance, administration, organization, protection, nourishment, teaching, and being mature examples, it becomes obvious that God has certain ways, means, and methods for getting people to his goal. Christian leadership does not look mainly to the world for how to lead people. It looks mainly to God. What has God said? Not only “Where is he taking his people in faith and holiness and maturity and love and fruitfulness?” but also “What has he said about how leaders are to get them there? What are God’s methods for taking a people to his goal?”

Third, even though it is not explicit in any of these seven designations of leaders, there is a biblical banner flying in 1 Peter 4:11 over all Christian service — including leadership — which makes it explicit that Christian service is done in reliance upon God’s power, not our own.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:10–11)

So, essential to Christian leadership is God’s gifted leader, God’s goal, God’s methods, and God’s power. And we really should add one more thing to those components that is obvious but unmentioned — namely, that there are followers.

“Effective Christian leadership speaks the word of God and lives the word of God.”

I am not a leader if I know where I want people to go and nobody’s following — nobody’s looking to me for guidance or finding help in my ministry. And I’m not a leader if everybody’s following me, and I don’t have a goal for where they should go. And I’m not a Christian leader if the place I want them to go is not where God wants them to go, or my methods of getting them there are not God’s methods, or the strength I depend on is not God’s strength.

So, here’s my definition of Christian leadership:

Christian leadership is knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative to use God’s gifts and God’s methods to get them there in reliance on God’s power through Christ, with God’s appointed people following.

Whatever God calls his people to be, you get out in front of them and take them there.

If God calls them to trust the promises of God in the best and worst of times, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to have unshakable hope in the face of cultural collapse, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to be radically God-centered and Christ-exalting and Bible-saturated, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Christ, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to be happy in all their suffering, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to love their neighbors and make sacrifices for the needy, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to be pure and holy and separate from the world, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to be self-controlled and dignified and sober-minded, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to be childlike and meek and gentle, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to be as bold as a lion, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to be generous and sacrificial in their giving, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to be world Christians with a global mindset and a heart for unreached peoples, you get out in front and take them there.
If God calls them to lay down their lives for Christ, you get out in front and take them there.

Christian leadership in our churches is knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative to use God’s gifts and methods to get them there in reliance on God’s power through Christ, with God’s appointed people following. God’s gifted leader, God’s goal, God’s methods, God’s power, God’s appointed following.

Step 3: Cautions About Leadership

The first caution is about my own wording: “Get out in front and take them there.” “Get out in front” is a metaphor, not a geographical mandate. Because, in fact, the effective leader might be behind them, giving them a necessary push. Or he might be beside them, protecting them from assault on their flank. Or he might be underneath them, building foundations to hold them up. Or he might be hovering over them, saying, “Up here! Up here! Look up!” Or he might be smack-dab in the middle of them, suffering everything that they suffer. So, “get out in front,” means “embody the goal, and do whatever you have to do, and go wherever you have to go in God’s way, to get the people to where God wants them to be.”

The second caution comes from Jesus. He gives this warning more than once — namely, the warning not to use the position of leadership as a way to gratify the desire for self-exaltation. I’ll just mention one example:

A dispute also arose among [the apostles], as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest [the desire to be recognized as greater than others]. And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” (Luke 22:24–27)

The unmistakable point of Jesus’s words is this: “Let the leader become as one who serves.” That is, the aim of the leader is the good of the people, not the glory of his own name. He’s not out to be “regarded” as great (verse 24) or to be “called” a benefactor (verse 25). He lives for the good of his people — the temporal good and especially the eternal good.

Paul gave his commentary on Jesus’s words “exercise lordship” (kyrieuousin, verse 25) in 2 Corinthians 1:24: “Not that we lord it over [kyrieuomen] your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.” Paul, the leader, has a goal: the joy of your faith! And Paul, the leader, has a God-appointed method. And it is not lording it over them, but taking the form of a servant and working with them for their joy.

But before I leave the cautions, let me give a caution about the cautions. Luke 22:26 (“Let the . . . leader [become] as one who serves”), which is meant to make leaders humble and loving, is sometimes used to make leaders fearful and silent. The “Me Too” movement, multiple pastoral abuses, the indiscriminate disparaging of all biblical headship as toxic masculinity — these forces in our time are turning servant leadership into all servant and no leadership. When Jesus bound himself with a towel and got down on his knees and washed the disciples’ feet — like a servant — nobody in that room doubted for an instant who the leader was.

If you are in a staff meeting, or a meeting with the elders, or a congregational meeting, and a controversial issue arises, and someone goes to the microphone and gives an argument, and the argument is based on factual mistakes, or incomplete information, or unbiblical assumptions, or illogical reasoning, or emotional manipulation, and the congregation is being swayed by this presentation, your silence, pastor, meek as it may seem, is not servanthood. It’s either a failure of discernment or it’s cowardice. It is not leadership.

Your job at that moment is to go to the microphone and say to the person, “These two parts of what you said are true, but here’s the problem with what you said.” And you set the record straight with facts, biblical truth, and clear thinking. You will feel the people shifting back from error to truth. Dozens of godly people out there who could smell the error but couldn’t name it will be thankful for you, because you rose to the occasion as a leader, and you named the error so that people could see it. You served them well.

If you sit there and think, “If I stand up and correct this person, they will very likely accuse me of shaming and abusing them,” and you let that fear cause you to be silent in the name of humble, caring, servant leadership, you have failed your flock and acted like a hireling. Jesus told us, “Blessed are you when others revile you . . . and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). So, the caution about the caution is this: Don’t let the spirit of the age define leadership. Trust God and be biblical.

Step 4: Implementation of Leadership

How do leaders lead successfully? Let’s zero in on the heart of the matter. When you take the seven designations of New Testament leaders (leading, governing, overseeing, managing, shepherding, modeling, teaching), every one of them cries out for God to speak:

In leading, I need to know from God where he wants his people to be.
In governing, I need to know from God how to govern.
In overseeing, I need to know from God what I am watching for in my supervision.
In managing, I need to know from God what I am organizing this people for.
In shepherding, I need to know from God what I should feed my sheep and what I need to protect them from.
In modeling, I need to know from God what kind of example I am to set.
And in teaching, I need to know from God what I am to teach.

Which brings us to my main text, Hebrews 13:7:

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.

This author draws out two things about these leaders and holds them up for us to see and imitate. First, they spoke the word of God. “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.”

Second, their way of life was such an exemplary walk of faith that its outcome was glorious and, therefore, worthy of imitation. “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life [which probably means that they stayed true to Christ all the way to the end and died well], and imitate their faith.”

So, my summary for us would be this: effective Christian leadership speaks the word of God and lives the word of God. Your calling as leader in the church is to speak the word of God and live the word of God.

And so, I turn finally to illustrate this leadership of speaking the word of God and living the word of God.

Step 5: Illustrations of Leadership

Let’s flesh out this way of leading with two practical implications for the pastor.

Knowing Ultimate Reality

First, if effective leadership speaks and lives the word of God, your lifelong, unwavering vocation, your lifelong priority, is to handle God’s word, the Bible, in such a way that you penetrate through its carefully construed sentences to the reality it is meant to communicate. The ultimate thing about the Bible is not that God spoke sentences and paragraphs (which he did), but that with sentences and paragraphs God revealed reality. Rightly understood propositions and narratives are a window onto reality, what really is.

And the main reality that the Bible reveals is God. “The Lord appeared . . . at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:21). Brothers, do you realize what a glorious calling you have? To spend all your life beholding ultimate reality, beholding God, through his word! Knowing God, knowing ultimate reality, through his word!

Or consider Ephesians 3:4: “When you read this [Paul’s letter], you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ.” When you move into the sentences of Ephesians and through them into ultimate reality, you perceive the mystery of Christ and how it relates to all things.

“If you know ultimate reality, you know the most important thing about all reality.”

Knowing the ultimate reality of God and Christ through the word of God, on the one hand, and being formed in your mind and emotions and actions by that reality, on the other hand, are not separate acts of the Christian leader. Why? Because you become what you behold. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

And four verses later, Paul tells us where we behold this ultimate reality, this glory. Second Corinthians 4:4 says that, when satanic blindness is removed, we see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” We behold God in Christ in the gospel — that is, in the word of God. This is the lifelong vocation of the Christian leader: penetrating through the propositions and narratives of the Bible to ultimate reality — God in Christ, and how he relates to everything. Then speaking it and living it before your people. A glorious calling!

Applying Ultimate Reality

Second, we need to realize that what we know and become through this lifelong encounter with ultimate reality through God’s word is very limited in this life, yet it is without limit in its relevance and application to everything. What does that mean?

During my 33 years as a pastor, few things threatened to paralyze me in ministry like the endless stream of proposals for how I should do ministry. A constant stream of articles and seminars and lectures and courses and degrees and programs and books and videos and conferences, not even to mention the whole universe of knowledge of culture and politics and business and industry and education and philosophy and geography and anthropology and history and physics and chemistry and astronomy and sociology and psychology and literature and entertainment and medicine and and and . . .

Do you realize that, compared to what can be known, we don’t know anything? This is demoralizing and paralyzing for a leader whose job is to take his people where they’re supposed to go.

Except for this. And this is what kept me going for 33 years, and keeps me going today: Our encounter with ultimate reality through God’s word is without limit in its relevance and application to everything.

If you know God through his word and have insight into the mystery of Christ, then what you know and what you are becoming is without limit in its relevance to everything. Why is that?

Because ultimate reality relates to all reality. Ultimate reality is the most significant thing about all reality. Ultimate reality is the most important factor to know in relation to all reality. If you know ultimate reality, you know the most important thing about all reality. Which means you can walk into any conversation, anywhere in the world, about any topic in the world, and have the most important thing to say in that conversation.

They might be talking about the microscopic machinery inside the human cell. They might be talking about the mathematical calculations that enable you to land a rover on Mars with pinpoint accuracy. They might be talking about bizarre cultural customs of a tribe you’ve never heard of. Do you think you are a small player in those conversations?

If you have penetrated through the Bible into ultimate reality — to God and his creation and providence and Christ and redemption — you know the most important thing in every conversation on any topic anywhere in the world. Here’s what you can say:

God made this. He made it to reveal his glory. His aim is that it move you to worship him. If you don’t see it, it’s because you are blind in your sin. God has made a way so that this blindness can be forgiven and removed. Jesus Christ died and rose again for that. So, if you embrace him as your Savior and Lord and Treasure, you can know what these cells and equations and customs are ultimately about, which means your work can have ultimate meaning. You can turn your entire science and enterprise into an act of worship.

Take heart from this, glory in this, that what your people need from you is not that you know all reality, but that you know, and are formed by, ultimate reality — that you know what God has revealed about himself in his word, and that it has shaped your life. Your leadership is to speak that reality and live that reality — to speak the word of God and to live the word of God.

Spend your life this way, and someone will say of you someday, “Remember your leader, the one who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of his way of life, and imitate his faith.”

How Preachers Grow Graceless

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Well, coming up soon — I believe on Wednesday of next week — as we read the Bible together, we read the first section of Matthew 23, where Jesus confronts the religious rulers of his day. And to anticipate that text — which is itself loaded with a full day’s worth of reflection — we have a cluster of thoughts and questions from a listener named Jim who lives just outside of Nashville.

“Pastor John, hello to you. I’m a bi-vocational elder and sometime preacher at my little church,” Jim writes. “I have always been drawn to Jesus’s words about the Pharisees in Matthew 23:1–5. The text is instructive to me about preaching and personal holiness. It seems to suggest at least four things.

“(1) Hypocrites can preach truth. Jesus says these Pharisees are truth-tellers; therefore, ‘observe whatever they tell you’ (verse 3). That line is startling. There’s an obligation to obey the truth of what they get right, even though they, the Pharisees, are hypocrites. Does that hold true today? Irrespective of whether we know a preacher is truly obedient in private, we receive the truth of their preached words. It also seems to apply to men who are later disqualified for sin, and people are left wondering about all the truth they learned from that preacher over the years.

“(2) It seems to speak to a preacher’s assurance. It suggests that preachers who preach truth well do not find in that homiletical skill the grounds of their personal assurance if their private life does not measure up. Is that true?

“(3) It speaks to the calling of pastors to preach holiness. In verse 4, it seems the calling of others into personal holiness and living out personal holiness go together for a preacher. Would this make a preacher hesitant to preach holiness because his life doesn’t measure up in private? How far does his life need to measure up until he’s a hypocrite? Do I repent for myself every time I call for holiness from the pulpit? These questions haunt me, a preacher with remaining sin within me.

“(4) It speaks to all our service. If we serve only so others see us serving, that service is rendered vain (verse 5).

“Many thoughts and questions intertwine for me over this text. What do I get right and wrong on Matthew 23:1–5?”

Well, first of all, I just commend Jim for reflecting so profoundly on this text.

Let me give quick, short answers to those four questions — especially the last one, I think, was more of a comment — and then step back and see how those words of Jesus are so relevant for all of us.

Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees

Here are the words from Jesus. Jesus said to his disciples,

The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. (Matthew 23:2–5)

1. Hypocrites’ Teaching

So, the first question Jim asks is, What should we do with the true teaching of hypocrites — preachers who preach true things and live a double life, denying by their private lives what they preach in public? There are three responses to that.

First, when duplicity is discovered in a pastor, the pastor should be removed from his service, according to the qualifications given for the elders in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–16.

Second, truth is truth even if a donkey or a heretic or the devil himself speaks it, just as when the demons called out to Jesus, “[We] know who you are — the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24). Then Jesus wouldn’t let them talk, it says in Mark 1:34, “because they knew him.” They got part of the truth right, but they hated it. So, we must not make a preacher’s sins the only measuring rod of all that he teaches. He may say true things and hate them, and we should believe the true things and not hate them.

That doesn’t mean, by the way, that Jesus’s words about knowing them by their fruits (Matthew 7:20) are wrong, because there is always plenty about a false teacher that is false and misleading and needs to be recognized — even if many of his doctrinal sentences are true.

Third response to that first question: no, you do not have to assume that, when a pastor is discovered to be guilty of ministry-disqualifying sin, you need to reject all the truth that he’s taught you over the years. You don’t have to go back and say, “Well, I guess everything he taught me for all those years was false.” You don’t have to do that.

“Let us put to death immediately every temptation to love the praise of man.”

However, it will always be good to reassess that teaching in retrospect and see if there were omissions or imbalances in it — true as it was — that we can see in retrospect were owing to his hidden sin. He skipped things, he didn’t say certain things, and he rode this hobbyhorse all the time. And you see now in retrospect why he was skipping them, why he was riding his hobbyhorse.

That’s my response to his first question.

2. Oratory and Assurance

Second, he asks how the preaching gifts (the skills) of a pastor relate to his assurance. Now, part of the answer is that no public rhetorical skills can atone for private reprehensible sins. It is possible to be a great orator and a lost sinner. The blood of Jesus and its effect in our holiness is the source of our assurance, not our rhetorical skills. Which means, yes, that true, godly, humble, Christ-exalting preaching will be part of that holiness — and thus, in that sense, part of a pastor’s assurance.

3. Preaching Holiness

The third question Jim asks is, How holy do you have to be to preach holiness? That’s a good question. The way I would answer would be this: not perfect and not careless. Or to say it another way, humbly penitent for remaining failings but vigilant to gouge out your eye rather than sin and bring the gospel and your church into disrepute. According to 1 Timothy 4:15, your people need to see you passionate in your pursuit of holiness.

4. Serving for Praise

And the fourth question Jim asks is, If we serve to get the praise of man, is our service ruined before God? And the answer is yes, our service is ruined if we live for the praise of men.

So, those are my brief answers to the questions, but let’s step back and see how these words of Jesus relate to all of us.

Practice of Pharisees

I think it’s always helpful when you see a text like this to break it down into pieces, and then see how the pieces relate to each other. So, there are three steps that I see in Jesus’s exposure of the scribes and Pharisees.

One, they use the truth to cover their own sin. It says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat” — that is, they teach what the truth of the law of God says — “so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice” (Matthew 23:2–3). So, they cover their non-practice with teaching Moses’s law. They use truth to cover sin.

Two, they do not accompany that teaching with any God-dependent doctrine of enabling grace. They don’t teach people how to avail themselves of God’s grace to help them obey. They just leave people with burdens — heavy, weighty, crushing burdens of God’s commands — to do with no help at all. They won’t lift a finger to help people obey. “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger” (Matthew 23:4). There’s no doctrine of sanctifying, enabling, empowering grace.

And the third step in exposing these rascals is that they love the praise of man more than God or his truth. That’s the deep, deep desire, pleasure, treasure of their lives. It’s the governing principle of their lives. “They do all their deeds to be seen by others” (Matthew 23:5).

Fruit from a Poisoned Root

Now, here’s the key question: How do those three indictments relate to each other? Here’s what I would suggest, and this is how they become so relevant for all of us. I’m going to go backward and show how they build.

Number one, Jesus has put his finger on the deep desire of their lives — the deep love of their lives. What do they love? What do they desire? What’s the passion and the treasure of their lives that’s driving their decisions, their behaviors? And the answer is the praise of man. They taste how delicious is the pleasure of self-exaltation that comes through other people’s praise. That’s number one.

Number two, now we move backward (or forward) toward the next effect of that. What is the effect of loving the praise of man on the doctrine of grace in living a godly life? And the answer is that it cancels grace. Grace that enables a person to obey God’s law means we don’t get the praise — God does. Grace does. Grace is a breaking gift; it’s a humbling gift. They cannot embrace God-exalting grace because it contradicts their self-exalting love of human praise. So, they load men with burdens of duty and tell them, in essence, “Be self-sufficient like us” — implying that you’ll get some praise for your moral achievement like we get praise for our moral achievement.

And then finally, if they love the praise of man, and that keeps them from embracing God’s enabling grace for obedience, what do they do with truth, the truth of Moses’s law, when they sit on Moses’s seat? And the answer is that they don’t love the truth; they use the truth. Bible words become a cloak for hidden sin. They turn Moses’s seat into a place where they get human praise.

That is a warning to all of us, not just pastors. Let us, all of us, put to death immediately every temptation to love the praise of man. Instead, let us love the Christ-exalting, self-humbling grace of God through Jesus Christ to help us do what we need to do, and then let us use truth to stoke the fires of love for God and love for people.

How Preachers Grow Graceless

How do preachers guard themselves from hypocrisy? Pastor John traces double-faced preaching to its deepest root: the love of human praise.

Your Suffering Is Not Meaningless

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to another week on the Ask Pastor John podcast. In our Bible reading this week, we’re in the thick of it, reading through Leviticus — a notorious book that ends a lot of well-intended Bible readers in the month of February — a book that includes hard texts like Leviticus 21:16–24, forcing Bible readers to ask, “Why did God shun the disabled in the Old Testament?” We looked at that question last time, on Thursday.

Today we talk about personal suffering and the meaning-full-ness of Christian suffering. So often suffering feels meaning-less, and we can get disheartened and feel like giving up, leading to today’s question from Samuel. “Hello, Pastor John. The apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7–9 that he was ‘afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken.’ What does he mean that he was persecuted but not forsaken? When I imagine the sufferings of Paul hitting my life, I would be immediately tempted to think that such harsh persecution would make me feel completely crushed and abandoned by God. Much lesser pain in my life brings me to the brink of this already. So, how did Paul endure such pain without feeling totally defeated? And what has faith looked like in your life when your life was its hardest?”

Here’s the text that we’re being asked to get inside of: 2 Corinthians 4:7–9:

We have this treasure [namely, this treasure of vital faith in Christ, who is the image of God] in jars of clay [that is, fragile bodies and minds], to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

And Samuel is asking, “How did Paul endure this — this being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down? How did he endure this the way he did?” And he has in mind the magnitude and frequency of Paul’s sufferings.

I doubt that most of our listeners have an immediate consciousness of how terrible that was for Paul. So, I’m going to read it. This is one of the most surprising and staggering and appalling statements of Paul’s life in the Bible. He endured

far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. (2 Corinthians 11:23–28)

And we complain.

Samuel’s question is relevant because of how easily we grumble about our own circumstances when in fact none of us — I’m willing to say this to everybody listening to me — has endured what Paul did. So, Samuel asks, “How did Paul endure such pain without feeling totally defeated — indeed, abandoned by God?” That’s what he asks, and I think Paul would give three answers.

1. ‘I endured by God’s keeping.’

Number one, I think he would say, “I was miraculously kept faithful by the Lord Jesus. It was a gift; it was a miracle; it was a work of God to keep me. That’s why I didn’t give in.” His perseverance was a gift. Here’s what he says in 2 Timothy 4:16–17:

At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.

That’s his basic answer to how he endured. The living, sovereign Lord Jesus Christ stood by Paul when nobody else did. He did not infer that because everybody abandoned him, God’s not real. Since Christians are all a bunch of fakes, Jesus isn’t real. He never went that direction, which so many people do today.

In 1 Corinthians 1:8–9, he said that Christ sustains us “to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom [we] were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” So, Paul enjoyed fellowship with Jesus. That’s the key: fellowship with Jesus. And God held on to Paul and sustained him and preserved his faith through everything by giving him the enjoyment of fellowship with Jesus through it all.

God began the work in Paul on the Damascus road. And according to Philippians 1:6, he believes God will finish the work. So, God calls, God keeps, God establishes, God glorifies. This is God’s work. If any of us endures to the end as a believer through suffering, it’s God’s grace that we endure. It’s a gift. It’s a supernatural work. So, that’s Paul’s first answer.

2. ‘I endured by sound teaching.’

As a second answer, I think he would say, “God preserved me, Jesus saved me and kept me, by means of teaching me a true and robust theology of Christian suffering.” And in that theology of Christian suffering, which kept him, was the conviction of God’s absolute sovereignty over Paul’s suffering — and that God is not only sovereign, but he’s good and he’s wise. Nothing befalls Paul but what God sends for his good purposes. “If the Lord wills,” James says (and Paul agrees), “we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). If he doesn’t, we won’t. We are immortal till God’s work for us is done. God is sovereign. That is basic to Paul’s and our endurance.

In the first days after his conversion, remember that even before his blindness was removed there in Damascus, Ananias was sent to Paul, and he was sent with this message: “I will show him,” Christ says, “how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). In other words, from the beginning, God made it clear to Paul, “To serve me is to suffer.” Suffering’s not a detour. It’s part of the path, part of the calling.

God’s Loving Discipline

Paul knew that all of God’s wrath had been absorbed by Jesus when he died. So now, there’s no condemnation for Paul (or for us) in Christ. None of these horrible things that are happening to Paul is owing to God’s wrath. What a relief! They were all part of God’s fatherly, loving, disciplining, ministry-advancing purposes for Paul, for the church, for the world.

“If any of us endures to the end as a believer through suffering, it’s God’s grace that we endure.”

Some of his sufferings, he says, were the refining of his own faith. Second Corinthians 1:8–9 is amazing. He says, “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” That was God’s purpose: to help Paul trust utterly in God by knocking all the props out from under his life so that there was only one place to fall — on God who raises the dead. And he trusted God. He trusted this profound knowledge of the role of suffering in the life of the believer.

No Wasted Pain

Another part of his theology of suffering was that no pain here is wasted, because it’s producing a weight of glory beyond all comparison. “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). In other words, even in those last horrible days and weeks of suffering before death — they seem so meaningless — even in those hours, nothing is wasted because they actually are producing a greater weight of glory after death.

I’ll mention one more aspect of Paul’s theology of suffering that is like a ballast in his boat to keep it from being tipped over by the sufferings. He says that his sufferings for the body of Christ were the filling up of what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ. “I rejoice in my sufferings” — which is an amazing statement in itself —“for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24).

This was not because Christ’s afflictions were lacking in any atoning merit. That’s not the issue; that’s not the problem. It was because Christ’s afflictions were lacking in personal presentation to those for whom he suffered. Paul was saying, “In my sufferings for you, I am presenting to you Christ’s sufferings for you, so that you can see and feel his love for you in my suffering for you.” And I think that’s why many pastors are called to suffer the way they are.

3. ‘I endured by God’s promises.’

So, Paul’s first answer to how he endured these crushing hardships was that Christ kept him, stood by him. And the second answer is that he kept him by means of a true and robust theology of Christian suffering. And finally, the third answer that Paul would give is this: “I was kept by the precious and very great promises of God” — promises like these:

“I’ll be with you to the end” (Matthew 28:20).
“I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
“I will work everything together for your good” (Romans 8:28).
“I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will uphold you” (Isaiah 41:10).
“In the Lord, none of your work is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
“To live is Christ; to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
“To be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).

So, these three answers to how Paul endured are our answers. I think that’s our answer as well as Paul’s answer. Paul lived his life for our sake. That’s why he endured these things — so that we could see and learn.

The Lord kept him and will keep us.
We should have a robust, biblical theology of Christian suffering.
We should live through it all by the precious promises of God.

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