The most morally beautiful, winsomely attractive command Jesus ever uttered also happens to be the most difficult to obey:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37–40)

It’s a breathtaking statement. All that God requires of us, everything Scripture contains regarding “life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), summed up in two simple commands.

“In their simplicity, these two commands encompass everything. Obeying them, however, is anything but simple.”

In that simplicity, these two commands encompass everything. Obeying them, however, is anything but simple. And there’s the rub. Because these commands are so sweeping, they can feel overwhelming — in fact, impossible. As a result, we can assume that we’re not required to take them all that seriously. This is a serious mistake.

Is Love Even Possible?

We might wrongly assume that while obeying these commands was once humanly possible in Eden, and will once again be humanly possible in our glorified state, they are humanly impossible now in our fallen state. And so they’re really more like lofty ideals, ones we don’t need to think hard about. We might even assume their purpose is to merely reveal our inability to fulfill them and our need for Christ (Romans 7:22–25), and that as part of Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, Jesus obeyed these commands perfectly on our behalf (Romans 8:3–4). Therefore, Jesus doesn’t really expect us to obey them now.

While it’s true that Jesus purchased our justification through his perfect obedience, what Paul wrote in Romans 13:9 and Galatians 5:14, and what James wrote in James 2:8, make it clear that the apostles believed Jesus expects us to seriously seek to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves — now, in this age, even today.

Who Models Discipleship for You?

The community around us either confirms or confronts our faulty assumptions about love. We often allow our peers to inordinately determine for us what discipleship looks like. If many Christians around us assent to but don’t rigorously apply these two great commands, their example can influence us to implicitly assume Jesus wants us to affirm his commands’ ideal rightness, but doesn’t really expect us to work hard in consistently living them out.

But as Paul’s rebuke of Peter in Galatians 2 illustrates, peer influence can lead us into serious disobedience. The whole New Testament witness bears out that it’s precisely the radical way we live out Jesus’s love commands, all of which are essentially expositions of these Great Commandments, that demonstrate we are his disciples (John 13:35).

“The most morally beautiful, winsomely attractive command Jesus ever uttered also happens to be the most difficult to obey.”

No, we must not allow these facts — that these commands are difficult to obey, that we aren’t ultimately justified by our obedience, or that others around us fail to obey them — to form our assumption that Jesus doesn’t expect us to seriously obey them. Because he does. In fact, he expects us to structure our lives around obeying them.

How in the World?

This brings us back to how overwhelming these commandments can feel. If we take them seriously, they force us to ask, How in the world am I supposed to obey them? That’s exactly the right question to ask ourselves.

Have you ever spent serious time meditating on these commands to love?

I don’t mean merely listening to sermons, lectures, and podcasts about them, or reading numerous books and articles about them, and forming the right theological answers. For Christian teachers who produce such resources (I’m preaching to myself as I write this), I don’t mean merely putting in the arduous work of historical-grammatical and hermeneutical research and developing effective homiletical or literary communication skills in order to accurately understand and teach this text within your systematic theological framework. Don’t misunderstand me: these are important. But they don’t necessarily result in rigorous real-life obedience.

I mean, have you ever spent hours seriously pondering and working out specifically what it means for you to intentionally pursue loving God with your whole being in the tiny part of the world where God has placed you, and loving your neighbor as yourself among the eternally significant souls whom God has placed there too — especially needy ones, perhaps even an “enemy” (Matthew 5:44), maybe one you come upon along the road, so to speak (Luke 10:25–37)? Jesus doesn’t mean for us to be paralyzed by these all-encompassing commandments; he means for them to form our fundamental approach to life. He means for each of us to seriously ask how in the world we are to obey them and put in the rigorous effort of prayerfully discerning what obedience might specifically mean for us.

And he has by no means left us without help. He has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide us (John 16:13), the gift of the New Testament to provide plenty of examples of breaking down these sweeping commands into specific applications, and the gift of one another in the church to assist us in pursuing this “more excellent way” of life (1 Corinthians 12:31).

Count the Cost

It isn’t until we have pondered what these commandments truly demand of us that we can determine if we’re truly willing to pay what it costs. Jesus says as much:

Which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:28)

Jesus said this after declaring what his commandments cost his disciples: they must renounce everything. It’s a high cost.

But the cost itself is an expression of love. Our renunciation isn’t primarily about how much asceticism we’re willing to endure for Jesus’s sake; it’s about where our treasure is and how much we love it (Matthew 6:21). Which is why Paul wrote, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Jesus’s call, to paraphrase Jim Elliott, is for us to give up what we cannot keep, to gain what we cannot lose.

If You Love Me

Jesus’s commands to love — these most morally beautiful, winsome imperatives — are the most difficult, most costly words to obey.

That’s why at the end of his Sermon on the Mount, after giving specific examples of what a life of love looks like, Jesus says, “The way is hard that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14). And it’s why one of the last things Jesus said to his disciples before his crucifixion was John 15:12–13:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

When we read that statement, especially in the light of something he said just minutes before — “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15) — we can hear both the echo of Jesus’s two great commandments and his expectation that we take them with the utmost, life-shaping seriousness.

For those of us aspiring to pursue “radical discipleship,” it really doesn’t get more radical than Christlike love.

Most people do not want to be thought of as lazy — as a person averse to hard work. We all know laziness is a vice — a corrupting and addicting use of a good gift: rest. Leisure in proper doses is a wonderful, refreshing gift of God. But habitual indulgence in leisure to the neglect of God-given responsibilities brings destruction, both to ourselves and to others.

But it’s destructive for a deeper reason than the obvious detrimental impact of work done negligently, or not done at all. At the deeper levels, laziness robs us of happiness by decreasing our capacity to enjoy the deepest delights. And on top of this, it leaves us failing to love as we ought.

“Laziness robs us of happiness by decreasing our capacity to enjoy the deepest delights.”

Since all of us are tempted in different ways to the sin of laziness, it’s helpful to keep in mind all that’s at stake — and why, over and over throughout the Bible, God commands us to pursue the virtue of diligence.

Virtues and Vices

For Christians, a virtue is moral excellence that, if cultivated into a habit, becomes a morally excellent character trait. We become more conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29) and experience an increased capacity to delight in what God has made good, true, and beautiful. We see scriptural examples in 2 Peter 1:5–8:

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue [aretē in Greek, referring to all the virtues] and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Conversely, a vice is moral corruption that, if cultivated into a habit, becomes a morally corrupt character trait. We become more conformed to the pattern of this fallen world (Romans 12:2) and experience a decreased capacity to delight in what God has made good, true, and beautiful. We see scriptural examples in Galatians 5:19–21:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do [prassontes in Greek, meaning “make a practice of doing”] such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Why Diligence Is a ‘Heavenly Virtue’

In the fifth or sixth century, many in the church included diligence on the list of the seven heavenly virtues to counter sloth (the old English word for laziness), which it had on its list of seven deadly sins. But saints throughout redemptive history have always considered diligence a necessary virtue. Both the Old and New Testaments consistently command saints to be diligent, and warn against the dangers of being slothful.

Here’s a sampling:

Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. (Deuteronomy 4:9)

The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing,     while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. (Proverbs 13:4)

You have commanded your precepts     to be kept diligently. (Psalm 119:4)

Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. (Romans 12:11)

If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. (2 Thessalonians 3:10–11)

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. (2 Peter 1:10)

As these passages show, diligence is a “heavenly virtue” because it is a means of cultivating godliness — increased capacities to deeply delight in God and his gifts. Cultivating the “deadly sin” (or vice) of sloth, on the other hand, is a means of cultivating ungodliness — decreased capacities to deeply delight in God and his gifts.

Wearing Our Love on Our Sleeve

But when we speak of pursuing diligence as a way of cultivating godliness, there’s an additional dimension besides developing a strong work ethic for the sake of experiencing greater joys. Since “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and since love fulfills his law (Romans 13:10; Galatians 5:14), growing in godliness means we grow in some aspect of what it means to love. What makes the virtue of diligence distinctly Christian is that it is one of the ways we love God supremely and love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39).

“How we behave reflects what we believe; what we do reflects what we desire; our labors reflect our loves.”

God designed us such that our actions bring into view the real affections of our inner being. To put it very simply (and admittedly simplistically): how we behave, over time, reflects what we believe; what we do reflects what we desire; our labors reflect our loves.

Now, I realize I’m touching on a complex issue. Our motivating beliefs, desires, and loves are not simple, nor are the contexts in which we behave, do, and labor. Nor are the neurological disorders and diseases that sometimes throw wrenches into these already complex gears.

That said, it remains true that our consistent behaviors over time reveal what we really believe, desire, and love. This is what Jesus meant by saying we can distinguish between a healthy (virtuous) tree and a diseased (corrupt) tree by its fruit (Matthew 7:17–20).

And of course, the “fruit” is seen not only in what we do, but in how we do it. And here is where our diligence or laziness often reveals what or whom we truly love. Since we seek to take care of what we value greatly, it’s usually apparent when others put their heart into what they’re doing and when they don’t. Or as Paul said of some who were “lazy gluttons” in Crete, “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works” (Titus 1:12, 16).

In what we do and how we do it, in our diligence or laziness, we come to wear our loves on our sleeves — whether we love God (John 14:15) and our neighbor (1 John 3:18), or selfishly love ourselves (2 Timothy 3:2).

Be All the More Diligent

So, there’s more at stake in our diligence or laziness than we might have previously thought.

Yes, diligence is important for the sake of doing high-quality work, which is beneficial in many ways. But hard work, by itself, does not equal the virtue of diligence. As Tony Reinke points out, “Workaholism is slothful because it uses labor in a self-centered way to focus on personal advancement or accumulated accolades” (Killjoys, 50).

When Scripture commands us to “be all the more diligent” (2 Peter 1:10), God is calling us to work hard toward the right ends (growing in godliness), in the right ways (what God commands), for the right reasons (love). The more this kind of diligence becomes characteristic of us, the more we become like Jesus: we increasingly delight in what gives him delight, and increasingly love as he loves — which is true virtue.

For many Christians, the term Scripture memory means rote memorization of Bible verses. And this conjures up feelings of past failure (over how often they’ve tried and given up), or futility (over how little they recall of what they once memorized), or fear (over memories of having to publicly recite verses).

Who wants to pursue Bible memory if it means more failure, futility, or fear?

No one, if that’s what Bible memory means. But that’s not what it means. It means so much more than rote memorization. And it’s crucial that we see the bigger picture of Bible memory so we understand why it’s so important to the Christian life — why God repeatedly commands us to remember.

Here’s how I describe it:

Bible memory means stockpiling your God-given memory with God-breathed truth (2 Timothy 3:16) so that your God-given imagination can draw from it to construct a more accurate understanding of God-created reality, enabling you to live in “a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

Let me try to briefly unpack this.

Your Amazing Memory

Your memory is amazing. If you’re thinking, “No, it’s not,” you’re probably overly aware of your memory weaknesses. And you probably measure yourself against people with extraordinary memories, like Charles Spurgeon, who, as J.I. Packer described, had “a photographic memory, virtually total recall, and as he put it ‘a shelf in my mind’ for storing every fact with a view to its future use” (Psalms, 4).

“Bible memory means so much more than rote memorization.”

But don’t let phenomenal memories blind you to the marvelous gift of God that is your own memory. Your ability to recall information to your conscious mind is just one function your memory performs. But it does far more than that.

Your memory is a vast library, far more sophisticated than the Library of Congress, where you’ve been collecting information since before your birth. In that three-pound lump of wet grey tissue inside your skull, in ways that remain largely mysterious despite wonderful recent advances in neuroscience, you have stored enormous amounts of information in the form of impressions, sensations, sights, sounds, smells, cause-and-effect observations, propositional statements, stories, and dreams, as well as real, unreal, or anticipated experiences that produce joy, sorrow, pleasure, anger, delight, horror, desire, fear, and on and on. And you draw from this mental library all the time, every day, consciously and unconsciously, to do everything you do.

And more marvelous still is how your memory works with all levels of your consciousness to allow you to imagine.

Why You Understand Anything

By imagination, I’m not talking about our ability to create fantasy worlds in our minds. I’m talking about our ability to draw from our vast store of information and construct an image (or model) of reality, and then draw implications for what it means. That is the primary function of our imagination. It allows us to conceptualize things we learn are true, but cannot see. Which is crucial for those of us called to “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:18), to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

And what empowers our ability to imagine is our memory.

Augustine, in his jaw-dropping meditations on the human memory in book 10 of his Confessions, explained it this way:

From [my memory] I can picture to myself all kinds of different images based either upon my own experience or upon what I find credible because it tallies with my own experience. I can fit them into the general picture of the past; from them I can make a surmise of actions and events and hopes for the future; and I can contemplate them all over again as if they were actually present. If I say to myself in the vast cache of my mind, where all those images of great things are stored, “I shall do this or that,” the picture of this or that particular thing comes into my mind at once. Or I may say to myself “If only this or that would happen!” or “God forbid that this or that should be!” No sooner do I say this than the images of all the things of which I speak spring forward from the same great treasure-house of the memory. And, in fact, I could not even mention them at all if the images were lacking. (215–16)

It’s our immense memory that provides our creative imagination the information from which to make sense of reality and draw the correct implications. And we can’t imagine anything that isn’t meaningfully present in our memory.

This is why Bible memory so important.

‘You Shall Remember’

Have you ever noticed how often the Holy Spirit inspired biblical authors to stress the importance of memory? Over and over God commands us to remember his word (for example, Numbers 15:40; Psalm 103:17–18; Isaiah 48:8–11; Luke 22:19; 2 Timothy 2:8). In fact, it would be worth a week of your devotional Bible reading to look up all the texts that mention these words as they relate to what God has revealed to us: memory, memorial, remember, remembrance, remind, call to mind, recall, forget, forgot, and forgotten.

To re-member is to call to mind something we’ve previously learned, something that exists in our memory. We can see such remembering in Lamentations 3:21–23, written while the author was experiencing terrible distress and suffering:

But this I call to mind,     and therefore I have hope:The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;     his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning;     great is your faithfulness.

The truth that the author called up from his memory, which sustained him in great need, was something he learned prior to his need. And it was something he was learning in more profound ways at that very moment.

That’s Bible memory: calling to mind and keeping in mind biblical truth we’ve learned, so that it expands and deepens our understanding over time, and continues to shape the way we live.

Meditation’s Servant

That’s perhaps why the Bible doesn’t say much about rote memorization, but it says a lot about meditation, because meditation is the way we both learn and remember. If you take that week of devotional exploration, it will add to your understanding of how meditation relates to remembering if you look up all the texts that mention these words: meditate, meditation, understand, understanding, know, knowledge, wise, and wisdom.

Biblical meditation (or reflection, rumination, contemplation) takes place when our God-given imagination processes the God-breathed information we store in our God-given memory in an effort to understand, or further understand, God-revealed reality, so that we might live wisely. We can see this process at work in Psalm 119:97–99:

Oh how I love your law!     It is my meditation all the day.Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,     for it is ever with me.I have more understanding than all my teachers,     for your testimonies are my meditation.

Implicit in this text on meditation (and most others in Scripture) is repetition. We all know from experience that repetition is what drives most information into our long-term memory. And this is the great value of memorization — it is a servant of meditation.

That’s certainly been my experience. Few practices have helped me meditate on Scripture more than memorization. The method I’ve found most effective has me repeating the same section of text over many days. This repetition not only has driven these texts into my long-term memory, but it has given my imagination the opportunity to ruminate on them.

As a result, I’ve gained a deeper, richer understanding of these texts and how they relate to other Scriptures and the world. That’s been the greatest benefit for me. Even though I don’t retain perfect conscious recall of many Scriptures I’ve memorized, meditating on them has woven their meaning and application into the fabric of my understanding. And they do come to mind much more readily, especially in times of need.

Keep the Goal in Mind

If Scripture memory has negative connotations for you, don’t think of it as memorizing Bible verses. Rather, think of it as

stockpiling your God-given memory with God-breathed truth (2 Timothy 3:16) so that your God-given imagination can draw from it to construct a more accurate understanding of God-created reality, enabling you to live in “a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

“You won’t regret employing this very effective servant of meditation.”

It is a gift of God, a means of grace, to help you meditate on God’s word and bring reality to life.

As someone who struggles with memory weaknesses and who used to believe that Bible memorization wasn’t for me, I strongly recommend memorizing Scripture, especially larger sections. This is something you can do — you really can. You won’t regret employing this very effective servant of meditation.

For accurate understanding comes from careful meditation on true information. And accurate understanding results in our discerning right implications for what true information means. And when we live according to this understanding, the Bible calls it wisdom (Psalm 111:10).

This is the goal of Bible memory.

Right now, the example of a small band of twentysomething Christian women is helping me resist the many temptations I feel toward cynicism. Let me explain why.

I have been disheartened by the amount of politically/ideologically/culturally driven acrimony, leadership failures, church divisions, ethnic tensions, and relational breakdowns among American evangelicals over the past few years. I wish I could say it’s all exaggerated by media algorithms and irresponsible Christian clickbaiting. But I’ve seen too much up close.

I see evidence of Christian disunity almost everywhere I turn. The three beloved churches where I’ve spent most of my life have in the past few years all experienced significant to devastating internal conflict. Christians who are remarkably aligned theologically, and who have worshiped together for years, no longer bear with each other. Relationships that took years to bond are torn. And the resulting wounds leave a scar tissue of distrust that doesn’t seem to relationally adhere as it did before.

What is going on? A lot. Complex historical, social, cultural, political, leadership, and spiritual-warfare issues factor into this epidemic of Christian disunity. We can’t ignore them. They’re real and seriously affect real people.

But we must be careful. In our analysis and discussions and debates of the problem, we can, ironically, miss or evade the fundamental issue. For when it comes to cultivating priceless Christian harmony, or wreaking destructive Christian dissonance, the greatest causal factor, the one the New Testament far and away addresses more than any other, is love.

Jesus’s Radically Simple Solution

Try not to roll your eyes. I know when there’s a strenuous debate among Christians over something complex, there’s always a guy in the room that says something like, “We just need to love each other!” And it’s usually not very helpful.

“New Testament love is not simplistic, as in reductionistic; it’s simple, as in fundamental.”

This kind of statement comes across as naive, simplistic idealism, because we don’t just need to love each other. We need to fundamentally love each other. We need to know what loving each other means and looks like when we’re faced with a complex issue, when we view matters from different perspectives, when we have no simple solutions, and when the only way forward requires bearing with one another during the extended tension of disagreement.

And in this way, New Testament love is not simplistic, as in reductionistic; it’s simple, as in fundamental. There’s a big difference.

Neighbor as Self

The Beatles’ song-slogan “all you need is love” is naive, simplistic idealism. It sounds right because we all intuitively know love is the supreme virtue. But the statement is conceptually hollow and incoherent. It doesn’t tell anyone what love means, what it looks like when practiced, or what it costs. Consequently, this sentence hasn’t transformed anything, much less conflicts over complex issues.

Contrast that with Jesus’s great command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Do you see the difference? Jesus’s command is fundamentally simple, but not at all simplistic. It’s simple in that everyone immediately grasps the fundamental principle: love ought to be our most core value, shaping all our motives in relation to others. It’s not simplistic, because it is a one-sentence summary of an all-encompassing orientation to all our relationships, and its applications are endless.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is functionally powerful because, in any specific situation, it helps us gain at least some clarity on what love ought to look like, as well as what it will cost. It doesn’t remove complexities from relationships, situations, and issues, but if earnestly pursued, it is effective at dousing the flame of sin that turns our conflicts into wildfires — fires surrounding us in American evangelicalism.

The power of Jesus’s love command (and the many examples and expositions of it in the New Testament) has been lived out by countless saints over the past two thousand years and has transformed the world in countless ways. Which brings me to that small band of twentysomething women I mentioned at the beginning. For me, they are a picture of Jesus’s love command in action.

Taking Love to the Streets

I know most of these young ladies. Through a wonderful story of God’s providential work in their lives, they developed a deep concern over the plight of the thousands of street children in a major city of a Latin American country.

A few years ago, having gained a modicum of experience and raised enough financial support to live simply, they moved to this city and just began walking the streets and ministering to the kids and young adults they came across. These are children who, due to abuse, abandonment, excessive poverty, addiction, or the death of their parents, are forced to fend for themselves.

They sleep in culverts, under bridges, and in doorways, and they do whatever they must to find food. The streets are brutal, ruthless places for vulnerable children. Terrible things happen to many of them. Tender hearts harden and become distrustful. Danger and desperation exacerbate depravity.

But these women just began loving these kids — each one as a precious soul. They sought to love them as they loved themselves (imperfectly, they’d want me to emphasize). And they’re down there loving them right now.

They feed them, clothe them, take them to doctors when they’re sick or injured, and help many of them dealing with chemical addiction get into (or return to) treatment centers. They walk with young pregnant girls through the frightening journey of childbirth and beyond. They play Uno with kids in the parks and celebrate their birthdays with cakes and parties — something many of these kids have never experienced before. And as the Lord gives them opportunity, they share Jesus with them, pray with them, study the Bible with them, and connect them with good churches. As a result, an increasing number are coming to faith in Christ and getting baptized.

‘Because They Love Us’

Having won the trust of these hardened street kids through loving them with the tenacious, steadfast, faithful, self-sacrificial love of Jesus, now hundreds of hardened street kids have grown tender, loving these women back and genuinely caring for them in various ways. And of course, word on the street spreads fast, so more and more kids are seeking these women out and the modest ministry center the Lord has provided them.

Government officials are also now seeking them out to discover what they’re doing that’s so effective. These officials are also asking the street kids why they go to these women first when the government centers have more resources and programs. The kids’ answer: “Because they love us.”

Let that sink in. These women aren’t recognized experts, and they don’t have long experience, abundant resources, or PhD-designed programs. Neither do they have formal theological training. And yet they are proving remarkably effective at reaching these kids and helping them transition toward a more hopeful, productive future. From a kingdom standpoint, they are bearing more fruit in transformed lives and making more disciples than just about anyone else I know — even among a very neglected and historically difficult-to-reach group. Why? Ask the kids. They know why: “Because they love us” — each one as a precious soul.

Living Sacrifices of Love

So, what do these women have to do with the epidemic of Christian disunity in America? Answer: they are examples of taking Christian love seriously. But isn’t it apples and oranges to compare them to us? Contextually, yes, but not fundamentally.

My report of these women’s story, due to brevity, sounds more ideal than it really is. It’s hard. At times heartbreakingly hard — literal blood-sweat-and-tears hard. And it’s messy. Kids turn away. Kids disappear. Kids relapse into addiction. Kids are raped. Kids are killed. And the women make mistakes. They are misunderstood, sometimes maligned, and sometimes in bodily danger. They regularly feel inadequate, lonely, confused, grieved, bewildered, homesick, and like failures. They wonder if they’re doing it wrong. And they’re all too aware of their own sin.

“Living out Jesus’s love command seriously and intentionally will be hard, and the cost in numerous ways will be high.”

No matter the context, living out Jesus’s love command seriously and intentionally will be hard, and the cost in numerous ways will be high. We will feel the same ways in our context as these women do in theirs. That’s part of what it means to be a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1).

But this kind of love is transformational in ways that nothing else is. In our divisive and conflicted times, we urgently need to examine whether we’re seriously seeking to obey Jesus’s love command in our complex context. Our rancor, bitterness, division, and relational breakdown does not look like Romans 12–15, 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians 4, or 1 John 3. We also should examine whether we’re paying any meaningful attention to our contextual equivalent of our wounded neighbor in the street.

As He Has Loved Us

The stakes are high. A deficit of love creates relational wreckage and distorts people’s perception of Jesus. For he said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). And he raised the “love your neighbor” bar even higher than we would have thought when he said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Sometimes, when the muck is flying and the disunifying din is blaring, it helps to focus on saints who are simply (not simplistically) loving like Jesus in their difficult contexts. They can help us gain perspective on ours and remind us what, fundamentally, is most important. And they can be a blessed antidote to cynicism. That’s what these remarkable young women are for me right now.

And as I see them trying to love their broken neighbors as themselves, I hear Jesus say, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

In ancient rabbinic literature, the Psalms were referred to as tehillîm, which is Hebrew for “praises.” One of the most remarkable features of this sacred collection of praise songs is that at least one-third of them are laments. These are songs that passionately express some kind of emotional distress, such as grief, sorrow, confusion, anguish, penitence, fear, depression, loneliness, or doubt.

This is remarkable because the presence of so many praise laments implies that God knew his people would frequently be called to worship him in agonizing circumstances. The Holy Spirit inspired poets to craft “praises” that would provide us worshipful expressions of our diverse experiences of pain.

“Lament psalms teach us what acceptable worship can sound like in our suffering.”

If lament psalms are Spirit-inspired praise songs for our painful seasons, we should look at them carefully, because they teach us important lessons about the kinds of worship God receives. Some of the ways these inspired poets worshiped God in their agony might make us uncomfortable. Psalm 89 is a good example.

Leader in Lament

Psalm 89 is attributed to Ethan the Ezrahite. According to 1 Chronicles 6:31–48, Ethan was one of three clan chiefs of the tribe of Levi — the other two being Heman (Psalm 88) and Asaph (Psalms 50, 73–82) — “whom David put in charge of the service of song in the house of the Lord.” He was a high-profile leader to whom thousands looked for social and spiritual instruction and counsel. His words had gravitas.

And in this psalm, Ethan led the people in lament. Over what? Over God’s apparent unfaithfulness to his covenant with David — apparent being the operative word here.

In 2 Samuel 7, the prophet Nathan delivered a stunning promise from the Lord to David about how long his descendants would sit on Israel’s throne: “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). This became a crucial part of Israel’s self-understanding: God had planted them in the Promised Land and had given them a promised governance that would last forever.

However, something terrible happened (perhaps Absalom’s rebellion of 2 Samuel 15–18), which made it appear as if God had “renounced” his covenant and “defiled [David’s] crown in the dust” (Psalm 89:39). And in this moment of crisis, Ethan composed a psalm that gave worshipful voice to the confusion and grief that all who trusted in God’s faithfulness were experiencing.

Famous Faithfulness

In the first eighteen verses, Ethan exults in how bound up God’s steadfast love and faithfulness are with his very character.

God’s steadfast love and faithfulness are part of the glory and might for which he is loved and praised and feared in the divine council and the great angelic host (Psalm 89:5–8).
It is through God’s steadfast love and faithfulness that he exercises his sovereign rule over all creation: the heavens and the earth and all that fills them, the “raging sea” and its most fearsome creature, Rahab, and the great mountains, like Tabor and Hermon (Psalm 89:9–12).
God’s steadfast love and faithfulness are part of the “foundation of [his] throne,” most clearly manifest (at that time) in the Davidic kingdom he had established in Israel. They are why his people shout for joy and “exult in [his] name all the day” (Psalm 89:13–16).

Ethan reminds God,

You are the glory of [Israel’s] strength;     by your favor our horn is exalted.For our shield belongs to the Lord,     our king to the Holy One of Israel. (Psalm 89:17–18)

The stakes were high. If God’s people could not hope in his steadfast love and faithfulness, how could they continue to exult in him like this?

‘You Promised’

Then in verses 19–37, Ethan at length beautifully reminds God of the promise he made to David, on which the hope of his people rested:

God had delivered this promise “in a vision to your godly one” (presumably the prophet Nathan, Psalm 89:19).
God had chosen David from the people and anointed him king, established him, and promised that his foes would not overcome him (Psalm 89:20–24).
God promised to be a Father to him and make him “the highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:25–27).
God promised to “establish [David’s] offspring forever,” and if they strayed from God’s ways, he would discipline them but would “not remove from [David God’s] steadfast love or be false to [his] faithfulness.” God would “not lie to David” (Psalm 89:28–37).

I don’t know how much Ethan discerned the Messianic dimensions of the Davidic covenant, but this section is full of prophetic pointers to Jesus, each worthy of our lingering meditation. But during this moment of crisis, it looked like God’s promise had come to an abrupt end.

Broken Promise?

Had the promise of God really failed? In verses 38–45, that’s exactly what Ethan described — to God. And he did so in no uncertain terms.

He told God, “But now you have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed,” and “you have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust” (Psalm 89:38–39).
He told God how he had exalted David’s foes by causing them to defeat Israel in battle, and how David’s walls had been breached and his kingdom plundered, making him an object of scorn (Psalm 89:40–44).
He told God how he had “cut short the days of [David’s] youth [and] covered him with shame” (Psalm 89:45).

“God hears, and receives as worship, real faith expressed in a cry of pain.”

It’s this section that might make us feel most uncomfortable. Can we really speak to God like this?

The answer is yes — and no. It’s yes if we, like Ethan, take God’s faithfulness with utmost seriousness and truly love his glory. The answer is no if we, like Israelites after the Red Sea crossing, are just “grumbling against the Lord” (Exodus 16:7).

Ethan is not shaking his fist at God in rebellion. Rather, he’s setting forth his case that God must act for the sake of his name. Ethan is interceding, not accusing. He has not lost faith in God; he’s exercising bold faith in God by calling on him to do what he promised. He still believes in God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.

‘Remember, O Lord’

That’s precisely why Ethan doesn’t end his psalm with a poetic “Forget you, God!” but with a passionate plea: “Remember, O Lord!” He devotes verses 46–52 to pouring out his heart’s desire. It’s worth reading them in full. And as you do, listen (as God does) for the heart’s desire behind the anguished words.

How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?     How long will your wrath burn like fire?Remember how short my time is!     For what vanity you have created all the children of man!What man can live and never see death?     Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah

Lord, where is your steadfast love of old,     which by your faithfulness you swore to David?
Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked,     and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations,with which your enemies mock, O Lord,     with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.

Blessed be the Lord forever!     Amen and Amen. (Psalm 89:46–52)

Do you hear his heart? Ethan longs, for himself and his people, to experience the joy of the glory of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. He knows how short life is, and does not want himself or his people to die before experiencing it again. This man is jealous for God’s fame. He does not want God’s good name, or the faithful who trust in him, to be mocked. That is what drives Ethan’s lament.

Lament Boldly, and Faithfully

As we read Psalm 89 now through the lens of the new covenant, we no doubt see clearer than Ethan did how broad the scope of God’s faithfulness to David has been. For in Jesus, this promise to David found its incredible yes (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Like Ethan the Ezrahite, however, we too experience crisis moments when it appears to us as if God is not being faithful to some promise. And it’s in such moments when we discover just how precious lament psalms like this are. Not only do they give us inspired language to pray in our pain, but they teach us what acceptable worship can sound like in our suffering.

In Psalm 89, God invites us to be bold in our prayerful laments. If our heart’s desire is God; if we long, for ourselves and our people, to experience the joy of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness; if our words are not the grumbling of unbelief but the expression of grieved faith, then it’s good to be direct with God. He hears, and receives as worship, real faith expressed in a cry of pain.

And we can trust that, at the same time, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

If you’re a Christian, no doubt you highly value God’s faithfulness, the precious reality “that what God [has] promised, he [is] able to perform” (Romans 4:21 NASB). You believe that Christ upholds the entire cosmos “by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). Therefore, all of reality, not to mention your eternal future, literally depends on God being true to his word.

True to your word. That is a concise, clear definition of what it means to be a faithful person. There is consistency between what you say and what you do, between what you believe and how you behave, between what you promise and what you perform.

“A faithful person keeps the faith of those who put their trust in him.”

When we (and the Bible) describe someone as “faithful,” we’re almost never referring to how much faith that person possesses, but to how much faith others can place in that person — how much others can trust him to perform what he promises. A faithful person keeps (cherishes, maintains, guards) the faith of those who put their trust in him.

We all want to think of ourselves as faithful, but we all fail at different times and in different ways. As a character quality, as a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), faithfulness is all too often in short supply. It always has been, which is why this proverb is in the Bible: “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?” (Proverbs 20:6).

So, beginning with ourselves, how might we resolve to become more faithful disciples of Jesus? One way we can do so is by meditating on this crucial verse:

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. (Psalm 37:3)

Graze on Faithfulness

Psalm 37 was written by David, whom God “took from the sheepfolds . . . to shepherd Jacob his people” (Psalm 78:70–71). David’s experience as a shepherd might explain his choice of the phrase translated “befriend faithfulness,” although the English Standard Version doesn’t convey to us modern readers the full meaning of what the Hebrew words rə‘êh and ’ĕmūnāh meant to David and his original readers. No translation does. Here’s why:

The word rə‘êh, which the ESV translates as “befriend,” can mean “feed, graze; drive out to pasture; shepherd, protect, nourish” (ESV OT RI).
The word ’ĕmūnāh, which the ESV translates as “faithfulness,” can “steadfastness; trustworthiness, faithfulness; firmness, security; honesty” (Ibid.).

This phrase is a translation challenge because David used a nuanced pastoral allusion — an allusion that his original readers would have intuitively understood (given how familiar they were with sheep), but one that is lost on the majority of us today. So, translators work hard to interpret and convey his meaning in a way we understand. Which explains the variety of different attempts (besides “befriend faithfulness”):

“Verily [truly] thou shalt be fed” (King James Version).
“Feed on His faithfulness” (New King James Version).
“Enjoy security” (Revised Standard Version).
“Cultivate faithfulness” (New American Standard Bible).
“Enjoy safe pasture” (New International Version).

Perhaps we’d get closest to what David meant if we could somehow infuse the NASB’s “cultivate” with the NKJV’s “feed,” such that we’d come away with a sense of “diligently cultivate [by grazing on] the virtue of faithfulness” (Keil & Delitzsch, 5:283).

But “cultivate,” “feed on,” and “befriend” all give us some sense of what David wants us to do: devote ourselves to developing faithfulness until it becomes part of us.

How to Grow Your Faithfulness

David’s command fits with how the Bible instructs us to pursue all aspects of godliness. We are called to build ourselves up in our most holy faith (Jude 20). And the way we build ourselves up spiritually is similar to the way we build our capacities for anything: we exercise what we want to grow.

Bodily strength is increased through the exercise of bodily strength. If we want to grow strong in our muscles or our minds, we must exercise them. We must push against internal and external resistance. We must endure the discomfort and persevere with the limitations of our current capacities until the discomfort decreases and our capacities increase. And we must not give in to the part of us that offers all kinds of reasons for why we should give up.

We all like the idea of stronger, trimmer bodies, but we all find it hard to work out and eat healthier. We all like the idea of growing more proficient in our skills, but we all find it hard to keep practicing and studying. We all like the idea of building new, healthy, fruitful habits, but we all find it hard to consistently perform the habit until it becomes part of how we function.

“The only way to become more faithful is to practice faithfulness, to cultivate faithfulness, to feed on faithfulness.”

Likewise, we all like the idea of becoming more faithful with our talents and more trustworthy to those we are called to serve and serve with, but we all find it hard to “discipline [ourselves] for the purpose of godliness” in this area (1 Timothy 4:7 NASB). But the only way to become more faithful is to practice faithfulness, to cultivate faithfulness, to feed on faithfulness, to befriend (make a companion of) faithfulness, to devote ourselves to developing faithfulness until it becomes part of us.

Begin with What You’ve Been Given

The wonderful thing is that we don’t need some special faithfulness gym membership to begin growing our capacity for faithfulness. We have everything we need right now, right where we find ourselves. Jesus tells us, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much” (Luke 16:10). And so, if we draw strength from Jesus to be faithful with a little, he will entrust us with much (Matthew 25:23).

The best place for us to start is by identifying the people and responsibilities that Jesus has entrusted to us. And then remember David’s exhortation:

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. (Psalm 37:3)

The people and responsibilities in front of us are where God wants us to trust him. This is the “land” where he wants us to dwell, at least for now. These are the people to whom he wants us to do good. This is where he calls us to practice, cultivate, graze on, and befriend faithfulness.

If we are ever going to be men and women who are more consistently true to our word, for whom there is less discontinuity between what we say and what we do, between what we believe and how we behave, between what we promise and what we perform, we will become so here, in the land where God has placed us.

And if we devote ourselves to faithfulness here, someday we will hear our Master say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23).

The soul is measured by its flights,Some low and others high,The heart is known by its delights,And pleasures never lie.

I was 25 years old when John Piper’s book The Pleasures of God was first released in 1991. My wife and I had been attending Bethlehem Baptist for two years and had read John’s book Desiring God, which unpacked what he called Christian Hedonism. His fresh emphasis on the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him was working its way into our spiritual bones.

But as I read the introduction to The Pleasures of God, the one-sentence poem above crystalized the truth of Christian Hedonism for me, opening my mind to the role delight plays in the Christian life.

One Sentence Begets Another

John wrote that life-changing sentence as a kind of exposition of another life-changing sentence he had read four years earlier. In fact, the whole sermon series that birthed the book was born of his meditation on that sentence written in the seventeenth century by a young Professor of Divinity in Scotland named Henry Scougal.

Scougal had actually penned the sentence in a personal letter of spiritual counsel to a friend, but it was so profound that others copied and passed it around. Eventually Scougal gave permission for it to be published in 1677 as The Life of God in the Soul of Man. A year later, Scougal died of tuberculosis before he had reached his twenty-eighth birthday.

John Piper describes what gripped him so powerfully:

One sentence riveted my attention. It took hold of my thought life in early 1987 and became the center of my meditation for about three months. What Scougal said in this sentence was the key that opened for me the treasure house of the pleasures of God. He said, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” (18)

John realized that this statement is as true of God as it was of man. The worth and excellency of God’s soul is measured by the object of its love. This object must, then, be God himself, since nothing of greater value exists than God.

John previously devoted a whole chapter in Desiring God to God’s happiness in himself — the God-centeredness of God. Scougal’s sentence, however, opened glorious new dimensions of this truth for John as he contemplated how the excellency of God’s soul is measured. And John’s sentence opened glorious new dimensions for me as I began to contemplate that a heart, whether human or divine, is known by its delights.

Pleasures Never Lie

It was the last line of John’s poem that hit me hardest:

The heart is known by its delights,And pleasures never lie.

Pleasures never lie. This phrase cut through a lot of my confusion and self-deceit to the very heart of the matter: what really matters to my heart.

“Our lips can lie about what we love, but our pleasures never lie.”

“Pleasures never lie” doesn’t mean things we find pleasurable are never deceitful. We all know, from personal experience as well as the testimony of Scripture, that many worldly pleasures lie to us (Hebrews 11:25). Rather, it means that pleasure is the whistle-blower of the heart. Pleasure is our heart’s way of telling us what we treasure (Matthew 6:21).

When we take pleasure in something evil, we don’t have a pleasure problem; we have a treasure problem. Our heart’s pleasure gauge is working just like it’s supposed to. What’s wrong is what our heart loves. Our lips can lie about what we love, but our pleasures never lie. And we can’t keep our pleasure-giving treasures hidden, whether good or evil, at least not for long. What we truly love always ends up working its way out of the unseen heart into the plain view of what we say and don’t say, and what we do and don’t do.

My heart, like God’s heart, is known by its delights. I found this wonderfully clarifying. It resonated deeply; all my experience bore out its truth. And I saw it woven throughout the Bible. The more I contemplated it, however, the more devastating this truth became.

Devastated by Delight

It’s devastating because if the worth and excellency of my soul is measured by the heights of its flights of delights in God, I find myself “naked and exposed” before God, without embellishment or disguise (Hebrews 4:13). No professed theology, however robust and historically orthodox, no amount of giftedness I possess, no “reputation of being alive” (Revelation 3:1) can compensate if I have a deficit of delight in God. And to make sure I understand what is and isn’t allowed on the affectional scale, John says,

You don’t judge the glory of a soul by what it wills to do with lukewarm interest, or with mere teeth-gritting determination. To know a soul’s proportions you need to know its passions. The true dimensions of a soul are seen in its delights. Not what we dutifully will but what we passionately want reveals our excellence or evil. (18)

As I place my passions on God’s soul-scale, my deficits become clear. I’m a mixed bag when it comes to my passion for God. I can savor God like Psalm 63 and yet still sin against him like Psalm 51. I have treasured God like Psalm 73:25–26, and questioned him like Psalm 73:2–3. Sometimes I sweetly sing Psalm 23:1–3, and sometimes I bitterly cry Psalm 10:1. At times I keenly feel the wretchedness of Romans 7:24, and at times the wonder of Romans 8:1. I have known the light of Psalm 119:105 and the darkness of Psalm 88:1–3. I’ve known the fervency of Romans 12:11 and the lukewarmness of Revelation 3:15. Many times I need Jesus’s exhortation in Matthew 26:41.

“We must know our spiritual poverty before we will earnestly seek true spiritual wealth.”

It is devastating to stand before God with only what we passionately want revealing the state of our hearts, measuring the worth of our souls. But it is a merciful devastation we desperately need. For we must know our spiritual poverty before we will earnestly seek true spiritual wealth. We must see our miserable idolatries before we will repent and forsake them. We must feel our spiritual deadness before we will cry out, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6)

That’s all true. However, the longer I contemplated John’s sentence over time, the more I realized the devastating exposure of my spiritual poverty is meant to be a door into an eternal world of delight-filled love.

Pleasures Forevermore

I made this discovery in the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17–22). When Jesus helped this man see his heart’s true passions (when he exposed his spiritual poverty), the exposure wasn’t Jesus’s primary purpose. Jesus wanted the man to have “treasure in heaven,” to give this man eternal joy (Mark 10:21).

And Jesus knew the man would never joyfully sell everything he had to obtain the treasure that is God unless he saw God as his supreme treasure (Matthew 13:44). So he tried to show him by calling the man to the devastating door of exposure and knocking on it. And he grieved when the man wouldn’t open it, because the door led to a far greater treasure than the one he would leave behind.

God created pleasure because he is a happy God and wants his joy to be in us and our joy to be full (John 15:11). When he designed pleasure as the measure of our treasure, his ultimate purpose was that we would experience maximal joy in the Treasure. And that the Treasure would receive maximal glory from the joy we experience in him. It is a marvelous, merciful, absolutely genius design: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

If God has to expose our poverty to pursue our eternal joy, he will. But what he really wants for us is to experience “fullness of joy” in his presence and “pleasures forevermore” at his right hand (Psalm 16:11). And so it is a great mercy, even if at times devastating, that our pleasures never lie.