Audio Transcript

Back to questions about our perfectionistic tendencies, today and Monday. Many of us struggle here. Next time we look at how perfectionism makes us indecisive in life decisions. But first a question from a student. When are good grades good enough? Here’s the email: “Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for this podcast. I’m a female high school student in Minnesota, a senior taking five college classes, so technically a full-time college student as well. This last year, in my online classes, teachers would prohibit the use of textbooks during midterms and finals. But my friends would use their books anyway. I was tempted to cheat like this, too, but didn’t. I studied longer. Had I cheated, I would have had more time to study my Bible and to hang out with my family and attend church youth group events. I know I cannot cheat and honor God.

“But is overdoing my studies honoring to him either? How important is it to strive for As, if achieving them takes me away from more important things? I’m wired to be a perfectionist. But perhaps it is wiser to settle for Bs and for second best in school or in work to preserve my time for other things that are equally or more important. How do you weigh the pros and cons of excellence when settling for very good seems wiser? When are Bs wiser than As?”

When I saw this question earlier and had a chance to think about it (and even think whether I want to tackle answering it), I spent a long time pondering, How do you give counsel not only to this kind of question but to this kind of person? And by that I mean that she said, “I’m wired to be a perfectionist.” So, we have a person — and she’s, of course, not unusual — with a perfectionist bent wrestling with, you might say, good grades versus good deeds. That’s one way to say it.

Wisdom for Perfectionists

Almost everybody would agree that taking the time to save a person’s life is more important than getting an A. No question. Almost everybody would say (probably) that going to a party with your friends is not worth lowering your school performance for. But in between those two more or less obvious choices, there are dozens and dozens of gradations that a perfectionist is going to struggle with — especially a perfectionist.

And as I thought of particular pieces of advice that I could give, I realized that at every point, certain personalities, certain perfectionist types — I think I include myself here, probably — would likely take the advice and obsess over it and make the solution that I’m offering part of the problem. For example, if I said, “Read your Bible and pray so that you’ll have wisdom,” a perfectionist will ask, “How many hours a day should I read my Bible? How many hours a day should I pray?” You got yourself in a deeper hole now.

“Associating with wise people makes us wiser. To be around healthy people is to become more healthy.”

So, the question I’m asking myself is, What can I say that would point a person to the path of becoming a healthy person? And by “healthy person” I mean a person who is not tormented by questions for which there’s no clear biblical answer. The Bible simply does not tell a student how many hours to study and how much Christian service to do or how much time to spend cultivating friendships. A healthy person recognizes the complexities of such questions and humbly seeks a transformed mind and heart, which is able to spontaneously and without fixations and obsessions make healthy choices.

The Path to Healthy Living

Here’s the path I want to commend toward being a healthy person and making healthy choices when the Bible does not prescribe which choice to make. And I just have one piece of advice and then some explanations for why I say it. The advice is to seek to be a part of a community of healthy people. That’s my advice. And by healthy I mean spiritually and psychologically mature, Bible-saturated, wise, steady, sober-minded, balanced, joyful, humble, courageous, loving people — really healthy, strong saints.

Now, why would I suggest this? What’s the biblical warrant for giving that kind of advice to a perfectionist? Why do I hope that simply being around healthy Christians will have a healthy effect on perfectionistic people? Here are my three biblical answers to that question of why I’m giving this advice and why I think it will have a profound effect if we follow it.

1. The wise make us wiser.

The Bible teaches that association with wise people makes us wiser. Proverbs 13:20: “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise” — that’s an amazing statement — “but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” Healthy ways of seeing the world and living wisely rub off. You can’t program it; you can’t itemize it; you can’t package it. And most of the time you can’t even point to when it happens. It’s relationally organic; it’s natural and it’s wonderful. So, the psalmist says in Psalm 119:63, “I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts.”

Or another way to say the same thing is that Paul says at least six times that his churches should imitate him. This is real, life-on-life watching and imitating. And the book of Hebrews says the same thing. It tells us, “[Be] imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:12). In a healthy community, this just happens. Sometimes it’s more intentional, but most of the time it’s just spontaneous. It’s caught rather than taught. To be around healthy people is to become more healthy.

And this is especially true, I think, for those who struggle in unhealthy ways with choices for which there’s no clear, biblical, step-by-step direction. It has to come from a healthy internal orientation to the world, and that we absorb in large measure from healthy people who are around us.

2. The Bible assumes spending time together.

Here’s the second way the Bible gives us warrant for this kind of advice. The New Testament uses the phrase “one another” 99 times, including — I’m not even counting the phrase “each other”; just “one another” in the ESV — “love one another,” “fellowship with one another,” “greet one another,” “serve one another,” “show hospitality to one another,” “pray for one another,” “confess your sins to one another,” “encourage one another,” “stir up one another,” “exhort one another,” “welcome one another,” “do good to one another,” “admonish one another,” “bear with one another,” “care for one another” — and the list goes on and on.

In other words, God’s plan for the healing of our personality defects — and everybody has them; I’m not picking on this girl, all right? Everybody has them. His plan for the maturing of our relational skills, and his plan for our ability to make wise choices, and his plan for all of our growth in how we serve and love each other — his plan for all these is that we spend time together, and for the more mature to become natural influences on the less mature.

3. God designs us for the common good.

Here’s one more way the New Testament commends this kind of advice. When discussing spiritual gifts and their use in the church, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” “Varieties of gifts,” “varieties of service,” “varieties of activities,” all of them with this goal: the common good (1 Corinthians 12:4–7). Or you could say “the common psychological and spiritual health,” “the common psychological well-being,” “the common capacity for making wise and peaceful decisions about school grades in relation to other good things.”

So, I’m saying to our Minnesota high school senior — who may well be in my own church, for all I know — that the long-range, lifelong answer to your question is to spend time with psychologically and spiritually mature, healthy people. Be in a healthy church. I know this is not a satisfactory short-term answer for specifics this semester. I know that. But it is what all of us need for the rest of our lives.

Audio Transcript

What future judgment will Christians face? The apostle Paul, writing to a church of believers, said to them, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10). To Christians he said that. And he included himself — “we must all appear”! In another place, he interrogated Christians by asking them, “Why do you despise your brother?” Despising other believers is ridiculous. Why? “For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God,” again speaking of believers and including himself here — “we will all” (Romans 14:10). Those pointed texts arrest our attention and cause us to think about a future judgment to come for Christians. So, no surprise, come loads of questions to us about these and other texts, like this email from a listener named Mae: “Pastor John, can you explain what kind of judgments Christians will face when Jesus returns?”

Well, let’s start with the absolutely glorious news about the judgment that we will not face. I mean, the accomplishment of Christ in dying for us and rising for us can be stated positively and negatively. Positively, he died to “bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). The enjoyment of the presence of God forever is the positive achievement of the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus.

No Longer Under Wrath

But the New Testament reminds us over and over again that we can state the good news negatively as well as positively — namely, we do not come under the wrath of God. He achieved a negative thing. This is not going to happen. Christ bore our sins. We won’t be punished for them. John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has [that’s now] eternal [that’s forever] life. He does not come into judgment” — whoa — “but has passed from death to life.” What a verse.

That doesn’t mean we don’t go to court in the last day. It means we won’t be condemned in court in the last day. We’re already acquitted, and the court will prove it. Romans 8:1: “There is . . . now” — and forever — “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Or Romans 8:33: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.” There will be no successful charge against us at the judgment — none. First John 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life.”

“If we are believing in Jesus, his death was our death. His punishment was our punishment.”

So, the judgment of wrath and punishment and final death are passed. They’re over for us. Jesus endured all of that for us if we are in Christ. If we are believing in him, united to him, his death was our death. His punishment was our punishment. God’s wrath was exhausted on him toward us. Therefore, Paul exults (with the verse I go to sleep on almost every night), “God has not destined us for wrath” — sweet — “but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.” I love those two verses. That’s 1 Thessalonians 5:9–10.

How God Judges Christians

So, if there is a judgment that will not condemn Christians, what other kind of judgment is there for us? That’s what’s being asked, I think. There is a dimension to the judgment that does not call into question our eternal life but determines what varieties of blessing or reward we will enjoy in the age to come.

And I know this can be disturbing to some people because “varieties of rewards” sounds like some people are going to be happy and others are not. But it’s plain from the Bible: there will be no unhappiness in heaven — none — no unhappiness in the age to come. Everyone will be as happy as he can be — all tears wiped away in the presence of the all-satisfying God (Revelation 21:4). But some people will evidently have greater capacities for happiness or greater avenues of happiness. Now, why do we think that? Why do we talk like that? We talk like that because the Bible teaches that we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and we will be rewarded differently, yet everybody will be perfectly happy. That’s why we talk like that.

Remember Jesus’s parable? For example, the king goes away and then he returns, and he gives different rewards to those who invested his money differently. This is Luke 19:16–19. The first servant came to him, saying, “Lord, your mina . . .” Now, a mina is one hundred drachmas, and a drachma is about the price of a sheep. “Your mina has made ten minas more.” And he said to him, “Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.” And a second came to him saying, “‘Lord, your mina has made five minas.’ And he said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’” Now, that’s a picture, I think, of differing rewards in the last day of how we stewarded our lives for Christ in this world.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4:5, “Do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.” So, the judgment will take into account our heart motivations, not just our outward deeds themselves.

In Ephesians 6:8, Paul says one of the most amazing things about the final judgment for believers. He says, “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.” In other words, every single large or tiny good thing you have ever done as a Christian, whether any other human knows about it or not, will come back to you for good at the last day. “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.” What a great incentive not to worry about who sees us in what we do or what rewards we get in this life. Everything’s written down, and God will make sure that any good deed we’ve ever done, seen or unseen, will be properly rewarded.

God’s Response to Our Evil

Then in 2 Corinthians 5:10, Paul says, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” And that last word, “evil” — whoa! What does that mean? The new question that text raises is, What does Paul mean when he talks about us receiving what is due for evil things we’ve done? Now, if our sins are forgiven, which they are, and we’re acquitted in the court of heaven, which we are, does this mean there will be punishment to Christians for sins they’ve done? That doesn’t make sense, right? No, it doesn’t mean that.

I think Paul explains what he means in 1 Corinthians 3:11–15. It’s a very familiar text, but let me suggest this angle on it.

No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw — each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day [that is, the day of judgment] will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

What I think Paul meant when he said in 2 Corinthians 5:10, “each one [will] receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” — what he meant was that the way one receives evil is by having his bad deeds burned up, meaning, he loses the reward he would have received if he had acted otherwise. This is not viewed by Paul as punishment but as loss of reward. It’s not owing to God’s wrath against his child. Mark that: It’s not owing to God’s wrath against his child. It is simply a fact that it would be unfitting for God to reward the sins of his children. They know that, we know that, Paul knew that.

Now, mark this: True Christians, when that happens — when some of their life is burned up because it was worthless — when that happens, true Christians will not begrudge God for this loss. They will rejoice in the grace that they do receive, and their cup of blessing will be full.

So, that’s my sketch of the coming judgment. We will not enter into condemnation or punishment, but we will receive varieties of blessing, varieties of reward, different avenues of joy, different sizes of cups — but every cup full.

What is Look at the Book?

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

Audio Transcript

How much money does an American need to retire? That question was in the air this spring after the Wall Street Journal featured a piece by Andrew Biggs titled “You Don’t Need to Be a Millionaire to Retire” (April 18, 2024). In part, he wrote that “according to a new survey from Northwestern Mutual, the average American thinks he’ll need $1.5 million in savings to be financially secure in old age. If that were true, it’d be bad news. As USA Today recently reported, the average U.S. adult has saved only $88,400 for retirement. . . . Among those with [between] $50,000 to $99,999 in savings — a small fraction of what retirees are told they need — 3% found it hard to get by, 11% were just getting by, and 86% were either doing okay or living comfortably.” A big disparity here in the numbers.

Obviously, on this podcast, we don’t get into specific numbers, Pastor John. But you have fielded a lot of questions about retirement, as can be seen in the APJ book on pages 429–439. In building out this theme comes this question from Linda, a podcast listener who is in her late fifties. She wants to know if you have any guiding thoughts on this question.

“Pastor John, hello. Can you share any wisdom for thinking about how much money I should be putting away for retirement? I’m trying to balance being responsible in providing for my future, while walking in faith, and giving generously towards mission, beyond my tithe. I’m a natural saver but also have a tendency towards hoarding money that can be easily provoked when I read that I need to have $1.5 million dollars saved or invested before I can retire. I’ll never reach that level. What would you say to an American in my situation, about seven years from retirement age?”

I think the first thing I would say is that I’m not a trained financial planner, and I am sure there are aspects of finance that I don’t know about and don’t understand, and that, therefore, to give any specific counsel, especially at a distance, would be foolhardy. And I would add how deeply thankful I am that I have trusted advisers around me in my life to help me with these things. I’m not talking just now that I’m an old man and I need some guidance for the last chapter of my life and how to do finances here. I’m talking about all my life.

I remember sitting at the dining-room table with a financial planner — a good friend from our church, but a trained financial planner. I had four small children, and I was asking him to help me think through my financial responsibilities to my wife and children if I die. We did that kind of thinking at every stage of our lives because that need, that financial need, changes with every stage of your life. And you try to think through at every stage, How can I be a good father, a good steward, a good caregiver when I’m gone for my wife and my children if they are bereft of the earning person in this family? So, I certainly would encourage that for others. We all seek help from Bible-saturated, wise people who know the ropes in these things.

“Christians lean toward needs, not comfort. We relieve suffering, especially eternal suffering.”

Then, besides my own limitations, we need to be reminded that there are so many variables in people’s lives that no one solution, no one pattern of handling finances applies the same to everybody. There are family variables and geographic variables and cost-of-living variables and housing-option variables in different cities and health variables. Oh my goodness, there are just so many factors that feed into our planning for how to handle what little or more finances we may have. Everyone’s situation is unique.

So, what should I say to Linda, who is in her late fifties and wants to maximize her giving to missions now, and yet knows that it is probably wise to set aside money for the season when she will not be earning like she is now? And even before I answer that question, I can’t help but say in passing that I am aware that thousands of our listeners from less-developed countries around the world can’t even dream of some of the questions we are posing here because the economic and social structures don’t even exist that allow for this kind of financial planning. But I hope that these precious listeners of ours from around the world will hear underneath what I’m about to say some biblical principles that might apply (I hope do apply) in their situation.

Self-Sustaining Principle

Perhaps the most basic principle about supporting ourselves during the last quarter of our lives is that, inasmuch as possible, we should seek by God’s grace to be self-sustaining. Consider these verses from 1 and 2 Thessalonians:

2 Thessalonians 3:7–8: “You yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.” So, that’s what Paul says they should imitate.
2 Thessalonians 3:12: “Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living” — or literally, “to eat their own bread.”
1 Thessalonians 4:10–12: “We urge you . . . to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.”

So, I draw out from those passages the principle that, insofar as we are able, we should earn our own living, pay our own way. And I think that applies from the day we start earning to the day we die. And since we know that we will not be able to continue in some jobs because of mandatory retirement ages that are imposed upon us, and we will be prevented from earning our own living sometimes because of weakening bodies, therefore, we should plan for how we will obey this principle in the last quarter of our lives — namely, to be financially self-supporting. That’s an essential part of the biblical rationale for all the financial instruments that exist for paying ahead for that season of life.

Caregiving Principle

But it is manifestly obvious that millions of people here and around the world will outlive their ability to be independent. And so, the New Testament has another principle — namely, the caregiving obligations of family and church and then (by implication, I think) the social safety net that the wider community may create. So, here’s 1 Timothy 5:16: “If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows.” In other words, they don’t have anybody, they don’t have any family to care for them, and the church is going to step in. “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8).

So, where we are no longer able to be self-providing, God has ordained that families and churches step in. And I suspect that the existence of legally mandatory social security in the wider society is owing to deeply rooted Christian influence that says we won’t throw away our old people but find a way to care for them. I think it’s possible to participate in that system. I’m in it, and still believe that the family and the church have special responsibilities. If you feel like that needs more defense, we can do that at another time.

Ministry Principle

Another biblical principle I would stress is that the Bible has no conception of what Americans typically think of as retirement — that is, working for forty or fifty years and then playing for fifteen or twenty years: fishing, golfing, shuffleboard, pickleball, yard work, travel, hobbies, bucket lists, as if heaven was supposed to begin at 65 rather than death.

This principle relates directly to Linda’s concern about money for missions now and how it relates to her post-earning years. And the way it relates is this: If God is gracious in granting basic health, then wise planning for the last quarter of your life would mean that you keep on giving to missions. It’s not like “I do it now or I don’t do it,” but rather, you keep on from your fixed income. You just keep right on giving to missions. It may not be as much, but you do. And it’s a glorious thing to be able to give at least a little bit if your income is small. You don’t stop giving.

And even more important is this: In that season, that last season of your life, you are on a mission. You’re not stopping life and starting heaven. You are on a mission. You don’t just give to missions; you become missions. You don’t think mainly play; you think mainly ministry. As long as you are able, you lean toward meeting needs. That’s what you do. That’s what Christians do. They lean toward needs, not comfort. Heaven is comfort. This world is racked with pain, suffering, calamity, and needs, and that’s what we do. We relieve suffering, especially eternal suffering. You stay zealous for good deeds right to the end. You magnify Jesus by serving. Heaven is coming. It’s not meant to drag forward. We’re not meant to drag it forward out of the future into the present. It’s meant to sustain hope and ministry.

Now, I know these principles are very general, but I think if Linda and all of us were to think in these ways about the last quarter of our lives, God in his mercy would give us all the guidance we need about the details of financial planning.

We have a mission statement at Desiring God with several lines in it. The last line goes like this: “. . . grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures.” That’s what we exist to be, and that’s what we encourage other ministries to be. So, one of the main reasons I’m here is that I believe Truth78 is one of those ministries — grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures.

When the founders of this ministry, David and Sally Michael, were my colleagues in the ministry at Bethlehem Baptist Church (where we served for decades together), this was the glorious impact that they had on me and on the ministry to our children: everything was grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures. They left a legacy not unlike that of John Bunyan.

Spurgeon loved the classic Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. He loved it because it was grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures. He said,

[Bunyan read the Bible] till his very soul was saturated with Scripture; and, though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress — that sweetest of all prose poems — without continually making us feel and say, “Why, this man is a living Bible!” Prick him anywhere — his blood is Bibline. The very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the word of God. (Autobiography, 2:159)

God-Centered Discipleship for Children

When David wrote us at Desiring God, asking me to come, he said,

My hope is that John will do what he has always done to validate the significance of faithful, God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, doctrinally grounded, mission-advancing discipleship beginning with the youngest of children.

The key to that long list of hyphenated phrases (that I love) is to realize that the phrase Bible-saturated gives rise to all the others. So, I want to try to pick one of those — namely “God-centered” — and reflect with you about its meaning, its rootedness in the Bible, and how ministry to children sheds light on it. In other words, it’s not only true that being God-centered shapes children’s ministry (which it does), but also that doing ministry to children shapes the way we think about God-centeredness. It goes both ways. Being God-centered shapes the way we do children’s ministry, and doing children’s ministry thoughtfully shapes the way we think about God-centeredness.

Beyond Contextualization

For example, what doing ministry to children clarifies for us is the limits of what’s called contextualization. Contextualization ordinarily means that you bring a truth to a culture or a group and you try to find some idea or practice or language in the group that would help make this truth understandable. Then you put the truth in the terms of something understandable in the target culture, all the while trying not to lose the truth. We all do this, for example, if we go to Germany and we have to use German in order to get our idea across.

But when children are the “target culture,” so to speak, what they make plain is that, to make truth about God understandable, we must do more than connect our ideas with concepts they already have. Because what we discover in their little minds — their glorious, Godlike little minds — is that they don’t yet have sufficient concepts for grasping many biblical realities. So, contextualization proves to be an insufficient method of communication. It’s important but insufficient. What needs to be added is this: concept creation. It’s not the adaptation of biblical reality to already-existing concepts but the actual creation in the mind of new concepts, new structures of thought, new ways of viewing reality.

Children are not unique in this regard. They are just a very special case. The Bible teaches that all human beings, apart from the renewal of the mind that comes through being born again, do not have the categories of mind for seeing reality for what it really is. For example, 1 Corinthians 2:14 says,

The natural person [what we are apart from the transforming effects of the Holy Spirit] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

So, every pastor, every Sunday school teacher, and every parent has to deal not only with levels of mental maturity but with levels of spiritual capacity. There are important biblical realities that simply will not fit into the human mind until new concepts, new structures of thought, new ways of viewing reality are created by the Holy Spirit through parents and Sunday school teachers and pastors. This is what I’m calling concept creation. The ministry to children simply makes this necessity crystal clear.

We must so teach, and so pray, as to create categories of thought that don’t yet exist, so that strange and wonderful biblical realities will make sense.

Strange and Wonderful Truth

Let me mention a few of those biblical realities that don’t fit the natural human mind.

1. God rules the world, including the sins of human beings — like Pilate’s expediency, and Herod’s mockery, and the mob’s “Crucify him,” and the soldiers’ brutality (Acts 4:27–28) — yet in such a way that God does not sin as he governs sin.

2. God governs all the steps of all people, both good and bad, at all times and in all places, yet such that everyone is accountable before him and will bear the just consequences of his wrath if they do not believe in Christ.

3. Jesus Christ is one person with two natures, divine and human, such that he upheld the world by the word of his power while living in his mother’s womb.

4. The death of the one God-man, Jesus Christ, so displayed and glorified the righteousness of God that God is not unrighteous to declare righteous ungodly people who simply believe in Christ.

These kinds of mind-boggling, category-shattering truths demand our best thought and our most creative labors — especially when trying to communicate them to children (or at least to prepare children to someday be able to grasp them).

Biblical Defibrillator

Here is the way all this relates to my focus on God-centeredness. As I have tried to make a case for God-centered everything over the past fifty years, what I have found is that many Christians simply take that concept and fit it comfortably into their already-existing mental framework. They do not see how explosively contrary it is to things they hold dear but are in fact mistaken or out of proportion.

“Being God-centered shapes the way we do children’s ministry.”

I look at what the people do in worship, or preaching, or counseling, or teaching, or curriculum development for children, and I realize they don’t mean what I mean. They don’t mean what I mean by God-centeredness. It’s not having the same outcome. The phrase “God-centered” is fitting into a concept they already have, and it’s not the same as mine. I’m really not communicating.

So, I have felt that something more is needed here if communication is really going to happen. I really do need not just contextualization but concept creation. The reality I see is being adapted to another view of reality and being lost in the process, while the terminology remains the same.

What do you do to build into a person’s mind (adult or child) a reality that isn’t there? One strategy that I have used for many years is to state the reality I’m trying to communicate in such a shocking (and yet true) way that it requires either rejection or the biblical remaking of some part of the mind.

Let’s take our theme, God-centeredness, as an example. To awaken people to what I mean by God-centeredness, I have regularly used the phrase God’s God-centeredness. That phrase has a double effect. First, it’s strange: people have not used it. And second, it’s troubling: they don’t like it. Why is that? Because it implies that God does what he forbids us to do — namely, exalt himself and make himself central. It forces people to ask whether it might be right for God to do this but wrong for us to do it. And why might that be? And that is a very fruitful question. That might take us to glorious discoveries. Even our children will be troubled by the fact that God does things he tells us not to do.

So, what I’m trying to do is to create a concept, a view of reality called God’s God-centeredness, that does not yet exist in people’s minds (or in a child’s mind), so that when it takes root as fully biblical and beautiful, it makes all God-centeredness as radical as it really is.

Tour of Concept Creation

So, come with me, if you will, on a short biblical tour of how I have tried to do this kind of concept creation. This is what we have to do with our teachers in children’s ministry so that there is a trickle-down effect for the children as gifted teachers find age-appropriate ways of creating concepts in their minds.

There are about four stations on this tour.

Station 1: Awakening Through Provocation

I start with a provocative, shake-you-out-of-your-slumbers quiz to force people to face the issue of whether they will say God is God-centered or not. These questions could be adapted for different age groups, even for children.

Question 1: What is the chief end of God?
Answer 1: The chief end of God is to glorify God and to enjoy magnifying his glory forever.
Question 2: Who is the most God-centered person in the universe?
Answer 2: God.
Question 3: Who is uppermost in God’s affections?
Answer 3: God.
Question 4: Is God an idolater?
Answer 4: No, he has no other gods before him.
Question 5: What is God’s chief jealousy?
Answer 5: God’s chief jealousy is to be known, admired, trusted, obeyed, and enjoyed above all others.
Question 6: Is your enjoyment of the love of God mainly owing to the fact that he makes much of you, or is it mainly that he frees you to enjoy making much of him forever?

I press on these unusual questions because if we are God-centered simply because we believe God is man-centered, then our God-centeredness is in reality man-centeredness. But pressing the reality of God’s God-centeredness forces the issue of whether we treasure God because of his excellence or mainly because he endorses ours.

So, now people are agitated. The concept of God-centeredness isn’t fitting so neatly into their minds as they thought it would. They are troubled by the possibility that a way of thinking they’ve never dealt with might be true — namely, God’s God-centeredness.

Station 2: Validation Through Scripture

Now we flood the mind with Scripture about God’s God-centeredness. God’s eternal, radical, ultimate commitment to his own self-exaltation permeates the Bible. God’s aim to be exalted, glorified, admired, magnified, praised, reverenced, trusted, and enjoyed as a supreme treasure is seen to be the ultimate goal of all creation, all providence, and all saving acts. What I have found is that the following litany of God’s God-centeredness proves overwhelming to people, either winning them or losing them. Many professing Christians bury their heads in the sand of their own theological preferences and ignore the clear teaching of Scripture. But here’s what we find:

1. “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:5–6 my translation).

2. God created the natural world to display his glory: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

3. “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Isaiah 49:3).

4. “He saved them [at the Red Sea] for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power” (Psalm 106:7–8).

5. “I acted [in the wilderness] for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations” (Ezekiel 20:14).

6. After the people sinfully ask for a king, Samuel says, “Do not be afraid. . . . For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake” (1 Samuel 12:20–22).

7. “Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act [in bringing you back from the exile], but for the sake of my holy name. . . . And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name . . . And the nations will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 36:22–23).

8. “[Christ] died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

9. “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that . . . every tongue [should] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11).

10. “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake” (Isaiah 43:25).

11. “Whoever serves, [let him serve] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified” (1 Peter 4:11).

12. “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck [Herod] down, because he did not give God the glory” (Acts 12:23).

13. “. . . when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10).

14. “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24).

15. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).

Now, this Bible bath of God’s God-centeredness (God’s relentless self-exaltation) often creates a crisis, because people do not yet have a category for how God can be so self-exalting and still be loving.

Station 3: Clarity Through Objections

God’s God-centeredness is not megalomania because, unlike our self-exaltation, God’s self-exaltation draws attention to what gives us the greatest and longest joy — namely, himself — while our self-exaltation lures people away from the one thing that can satisfy their souls: the infinite worth and beauty of God in Christ. When God exalts himself, he is loving us. He is showing and offering the one thing that can satisfy our souls forever — namely, God.

Listen to how Jesus prays for us in his last hours in John 17: “He lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you . . .’” (John 17:1).

“Don’t underestimate how the Holy Spirit can use God-centered teachers to build glorious concepts into children’s minds.”

He’s asking God to glorify God by glorifying the Son. Then in John 17:24, he prays for us and draws us into this glory: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.”

Lest we think we might see him in his glory and not be able to love him and enjoy him as fully as we ought, he adds this prayer in John 17:26: “[I pray, Father, that] the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” In other words, “When they see my glory, grant them to love and enjoy it (me) with the very love and joy that you’ve had in me from all eternity.”

This is God’s radical and loving God-centeredness. And to receive it requires a profound, Holy Spirit–given concept creation, not just the adaptation of a biblical reality to a fallen, man-centered mind.

If a person has the greatest treasure in the world, and he wants to share it, most people would embrace that person as loving. But if a Person is the greatest treasure in the world, and he wants to share it, many people will reject him as an egomaniac. For that to change, the mind must be renewed. God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act, since love offers what is supremely and eternally satisfying — namely, God.

Station 4: Awakening to Happiness

If God is merciful in shaping this new mental framework that we have seen in the Bible, people awaken to the fact that the pursuit of their happiness in God is, in fact, the fulfillment of God’s purpose to be magnified. God exalts himself as the all-satisfying treasure of the universe, and we magnify that greatness by, in fact, being supremely satisfied with him. God’s pursuit of his glory and our pursuit of joy turn out to be the same pursuit.

This is what Christ died for. First Peter 3:18 says, “Christ . . . suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” And what does he intend for us to find when we are brought to God as the greatest treasure in the universe? Psalm 16:11 says, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Children can get this. Don’t underestimate how the Holy Spirit can use God-centered teachers to build glorious concepts into their minds. You say to the first and second graders in your class,

Let me tell you a story about two brothers. One brother was sixteen years old and the other was just your age. He was seven. The younger brother liked his older brother a lot. He liked him so much that nothing made him happier than to spend time with his big brother. He would rather be with his big brother doing things together than anything else.

Now, the big brother knew this. He knew that he was the greatest treasure in his little brother’s life. He knew that he had great value in his little brother’s eyes. So, on his little brother’s birthday, he gave him a box about the size of a shoebox. In the box was a note that the older brother had written. His younger brother opened it and read,

Here’s a gift to make you glad,Nothing wrong, and nothing sad.The best I have, I’m sure you’ll see:A fishing trip, just you and me.

Then you ask the kids in your class, “Do you think the older brother was bragging when he said that the best gift he could give his little brother was to give him a whole day of fishing with his big brother?”

The need is very great for the next generation to be rescued as early as possible from the natural man-centeredness with which we are born.

What is Look at the Book?

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