Last year, eighteen more people died climbing Mount Everest, the most lives the great mountain has taken in a single year. The eighteen brought the tragic total to more than 340 in the last century — and the death toll is manifestly rising. Climbers die from falls, from avalanches, from frostbite and other health crises, from serac collapses (a house-sized block of ice that breaks off from a glacier). The dangers are every bit as enormous as the peaks.

So, why are more people dying now than ever before? Well, because so many more are climbing. In the nineties, less than a hundred brave souls reached the summit each year. Today, the number has crested six times that figure — even while the deaths multiply. Why would that be? Why would someone pay $100,000 to spend two whole months climbing this mountain of death? Because the human soul is inescapably drawn to grandeur. Call it “adventure” or “challenge” or “triumph” — I call it glory, and Everest threatens us with 29,000 feet of it.

J.I. Packer once called Romans 8 “the Everest of the New Testament and a high peak of all biblical writing” (Atonement, 2). John Piper climbs up alongside Packer and says,

Romans chapter 8 is so dense and so constant with good news, good news that is so great and so glorious and so vastly superior to all the good news in this world — whether health good news, or family good news, or church good news, or job good news, or political good news, or international good news, or financial good news — so vastly superior to all earthly good news and so relentless, that you can scarcely feel the full force of it until you take virtually every verse and restate it as the good news that it is.

This October, our team at Desiring God will be your happy sherpas, leading you up the cliffs and around the turns to the breathtaking views in this greatest of all chapters. The journey weaves through eight articles spread throughout the month.

Mountain Climbing with Desiring God

At Desiring God, our team of teachers — John Piper, David Mathis, Tony Reinke, Jon Bloom, Greg Morse, Scott Hubbard, and myself — think, pray, and work hard together to craft our teaching strategy across all our channels. All of that dreaming and planning is shaped by our mission:

As a Christian Hedonist publishing platform, persuaded by the indispensable biblical reality that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, we exist to move people to live for the glory of God, by helping them be satisfied in God above all else, especially in their suffering, by communicating the truth, and beauty, and worth of all God is for us in Christ, grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures.

That sentence (one of my favorite sentences in all the world) is the highway that guides all we say and do as a ministry — and I’m so eager to spend my life on that highway.

“Our suffering, even severe suffering, will not and cannot sever us from the promises we enjoy.”

At the center of our article strategy, in particular, is a monthly theme — an issue, topic, biblical chapter, or doctrine that we take up as a team and attempt to cover more thoroughly. Months in advance, we brainstorm the persistent needs we see and what we might tackle next. In that triage, we gladly and heavily lean on our Desiring God Affirmation of Faith. We prayerfully choose a theme for each month, and then we sketch out articles to cover that theme (we usually develop thirty to forty ideas and then select eight to ten to prioritize from that larger group).

For the next several months, we’ve lined up themes on the local church, the names of Christ (for Advent), and practical helps for prayer. For this month, we’re strapping on our harnesses and braving that great mountain of sovereign grace, Romans 8.

Peeks Inside the Peak

When you begin scaling this chapter, you don’t have to go far to see serious glory. In fact, the first six words explode with majesty: “There is therefore now no condemnation” (Romans 8:1). Later this week, our first leg of the climb will focus on the wonders of our justification in Christ. Believers still experience painful discipline from our Father this side of heaven, but we will never taste a drop of divine judgment.

Further into the month, we’ll be reminded that Christ himself lives in us by his Spirit. What does that indwelling mean, and how does it transform our ordinary, difficult lives? We’ll also look at how to walk by that Spirit who lives in us, putting to death the deeds of the body with supernatural power and resolve. Jon Bloom will take on the groaning of verses 17–25, showing us how our suffering, in God’s gracious hands, leads to our exaltation in the end, a future glory we cannot now imagine. At the end of the month, we’ll spend an article looking at the ways Romans 8 has been misunderstood and misapplied, including that most famous promise: “All things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

In addition to our teaching team, we’ve asked Joni Eareckson Tada, Joshua Greever (associate professor of New Testament at Bethlehem College and Seminary), and Clinton Manley (the latest addition to our editorial team) to take the climb with us and serve as fellow guides, so you’ll see new articles by each of them along the way.

Costly Climbing

The glories of Romans 8 are obvious when you see them, but they’re not all easy to see or understand. No one tries to climb Everest without the right gear and a good guide, and that’s the kind of help we hope to provide in this series: to give you better sight lines into the life-changing, soul-stabilizing, joy-inflaming realities rising out of these 39 verses.

Like the Christian life, this climb won’t be easy. Paul asks at one point, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Romans 8:35). And why does he ask that? Because Christians suffer and even die from each of those afflictions. If we follow Christ, we will suffer trials of various and serious kinds. But our suffering, even severe suffering, will not and cannot sever us from the promises we enjoy.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37–39)

Come along with us if you dare, and see again what glory this great Everest holds.

This time of year, as the leaves begin to change color and normal schedules emerge and blossom again, we often stop to make plans for the months ahead. The slower pace and irregular rhythms of summer are giving way to the steady beats of work, school, and church life. This changing of the seasons presents a crossroads where it’s natural to stop and revisit what, why, how, and how often we do all that we do.

And it’s good to plan. “The plans of the diligent,” God himself tells us, “lead surely to abundance” (Proverbs 21:5). He sends us to study the ant:

Without having any chief,     officer, or ruler,she prepares her bread in summer     and gathers her food in harvest. (Proverbs 6:6–8)

In other words, she plans and works ahead, like any wise person will.

And yet our planning, even our careful and intentional planning, can be quietly wicked. It might look like we have everything figured out and put together, but in reality our plans are foolish and offensive. Listen to the apostle James’s warning:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13–15)

Good and Wicked Planning

In this part of his letter, James confronts the seemingly successful men of his day. In the next few verses, he goes on to say, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. . . . You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence” (James 5:1, 5). But before he gets to their greed and self-gratification, he exposes their arrogance. Their success has made them think they know and control their futures.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.” (James 4:13)

What are these men doing wrong? They’re presuming to know where they will do business, and how long their business will prosper there, and how much profit they’ll make in the process. They’ve done this all before, after all, probably dozens of times, and so they’ve grown comfortably accustomed to success — so comfortable that they’ve started to presume success.

Before we scoff at them, though, we might ask how often we’re lulled into similar temptations. We may not be traveling to trade in foreign markets, but we all can begin to assume that God will do this or that — in our work, in our marriage or parenting, in our ministry — and fall into some kind of spiritual autopilot. James presses on that tendency toward autopilot until we see the impulse for what it really is.

You ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:15–16)

James calls this kind of planning evil. Even if they were right about what would happen, their plans were wrong, terribly wrong.

Three Remedies for Arrogance

James doesn’t merely confront these arrogant men with their arrogance; he also applies what he knows about God to invite them into the paths and plans of humility. And what he shares, in just a handful of phrases, speaks as loudly to our temptations to presumption as it did to those in his day. He reminds these men what they do not know (and cannot know), what they cannot do or control in their own strength, and (more subtly) the one thing they can always do when setting out to plan another season of work, life, or ministry — in fact, the one thing they must do.

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW

Again, he begins, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring” (James 4:13–14). You think you know where you’re headed, and how long you’ll spend there, and how much money you’ll make, but you don’t know anything — at least not with any of the certainty you now feel. You can plan and prepare all you want, but reality might depart dramatically from what you’ve imagined.

“Our planning, even our careful and intentional planning, can be quietly wicked.”

The business might crumble into bankruptcy — or God might suddenly quadruple your projections. The family might unexpectedly flourish — or some unthinkable tragedy might strike. Your personal ministry might experience an extended drought despite intentionality and effort — or you might see fruit you’ve never seen before. You cannot guarantee, much less control, what will happen this fall, or this fiscal year, or five years from now. You do not know — do you know that?

Given how easily and subtly pride swells in us all, it’s deeply good, spiritually and eternally good, to be reminded just how much we do not know.

WHAT YOU CAN’T CONTROL

In addition to not knowing all we do not know, we can’t do or control nearly as much as we tend to think. James sobers us in the next verse: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). These “successful” businessmen were looking at their track record and profit reports and coming to some horrible conclusions. Instead of seeing the sovereign and generous hand of God, they thought more highly of themselves. Instead of falling to their knees in awestruck gratitude, they stood a little taller, admiring the strength and ingenuity they saw in the mirror.

What is your life? Are you able to hear the pastoral heart behind such bluntness? “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). And what can a mist do? On a particularly hot day, a mist might bring refreshment for a moment — if it lasts that long. But a mist does almost nothing. Compared with the infinite mind and power of God, we can do nothing.

One way God guards us against arrogance is to remind us of our mistiness. Everything that feels so big, important, and impressive in our earthy lives right now will vanish and vanish quickly. We’re just a tiny burst of moisture, one that will evaporate almost immediately. God, on the other hand, knows everything there is to know, and he can do all things. He invented mists, and work, and us.

WHAT YOU CAN ALWAYS DO

We don’t know all we think we know about the future, and we can’t control all we pretend to control, so can we do anything now when it comes to the next months and years? Is it futile for us to try to plan the future? No, listen to how James guides them out of arrogance and into planning that glorifies God:

Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13–15)

He doesn’t tell them to stop planning. He tells them to stop planning without accounting for God. Stop planning without any reference to the most important part of planning. Positively, make your plans — all your plans — under God. The most obvious way to do this is to pray.

It’s simple and yet supernatural. It’s quiet and yet so countercultural. As you make your plans for another year or season, kneel beneath the meticulous and pervasive sovereignty of God. Remember that you won’t go anywhere or accomplish anything unless he wills. You won’t live unless he wills. Does any rhythm or habit in your life say that you believe that? Is that banner still waving over all you want to do this year?

Wicked Passivity

James strikes one last (seemingly strange) note in this paragraph on ungodly planning: “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17). How does that relate to the verses we just read? After telling them what to stop doing, he turns here and ends with a verse about the dangers of passivity.

Given what we’ve already seen, it seems like the first right thing to do would be to acknowledge God in all we do — and not only to acknowledge his sovereignty over our lives, but to actively seek his help and guidance in them. Prayer is not a passive acknowledgment of God. Prayer is anything but passive. Through prayer, we actively and persistently invite the sovereign God to actually do what he’s said he’ll do. And very often (can you believe this?), he chooses to accomplish those infinite, eternal plans by our small, modest, and secret prayers.

However, this verse is about more than prayer (as glorious and powerful as prayer is). When James says, “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it,” he’s talking about every kind of sinful inactivity. He’s already warned us about an evil kind of proactivity — making plans and attempting work without reliance on God. Now he warns us about an evil passivity — knowing the hard things God has called us to do and yet refusing to do them.

Fullhearted faith in the sovereignty of God over all doesn’t lead to retreat or inaction. No, this kind of faith sets a life on fire with purpose, conviction, and determination. So, what hard thing has God called you to do this year? Where are you tempted to shy away from a fuller, more costly obedience to him — in your work (or studies), in the local church, in evangelism and discipleship, in marriage and parenting? Resolve now to do the right things you know to do, and do them — at every step — in prayerful dependence on God.

Today is the ninth anniversary of our wedding day, April 10, 2015. As I’ve thought back over these last nine years of God’s faithfulness and kindness to me and Faye in our marriage, a story came to mind about a particularly terrible fight we had. And that felt relevant for my assignment:
“wisdom in relationships.”

Our first year of marriage was hard. I don’t know if it was harder than yours or harder than most (because I’ve never been married to anyone else, much less to any of you). But it was hard. We fought way more than either of us expected. We were very in love and made lots of good memories too. But we were also very different and still deeply sinful. For my part, I was naive and selfish and not ready to lead her well.

On top of all that, she was from sunny, warm Los Angeles, and so she was now 1,900 painful miles away from everything and everyone she knew and loved. So we fought — a lot. And it came to a head that first fall. I knew how homesick she was, how much she missed her family and friends and the beach, and so I decided I would send her back to California — without me, less than six months into marriage. Already a bad idea.

I also decided to surprise her — an even worse idea. So, on the day of her flight, she thinks we’re just picking up friends from the airport, but when we pull up to baggage claim, I have her open the trunk — and there’s her luggage, already packed for her with a sign saying, “You’re going to California!” I even had my phone out to record just how happy she was.

She was not happy. As soon as she saw the sign, she said, “No, no, no, no, no . . .” through tears — lots of tears.

I said, “Oh no . . . you don’t have to go . . .” So, we got back in the car, and I started driving around the terminal. I figured she just needed more time to process what was happening. But she didn’t. She just got more sad and more angry: “Why do you keep driving in circles? You said I don’t have to go!” I decided to stop circling and parked in short-term parking — my 25th mistake so far (if you’re counting). By now, she’s had enough, so she says, “Alright, if you want me to go, then I’ll go!” She storms out of the car and into the airport — no bag, no boarding pass, no idea which airline or where to go.

I followed her into the terminal, now pleading with her to come back home with me. And then a police officer stops me. “Sir, you stand over there.” “No, officer, we’re really OK.” “Sir, stand over there. . . . Ma’am, is this man hurting you?” I’m thinking, here I am trying to bless my wife and send her on a nice trip to California, and I’m going to end up in jail tonight. And I’m supposed to lead small group in thirty minutes.

After further investigation, the officer decided I wasn’t a serious threat. Faye and I got back into the car, and we spent the night at home together. When she opened her luggage, she realized it was 60 percent bathing suits, and the rest were mostly dirty clothes — and no underwear (remember, this was our first year, and I didn’t have any sisters). That night, though, ended up being strangely sweet as Faye talked about all the reasons she didn’t want to leave me for the weekend, even for California — how this was her home now. And I talked about how much I just wanted to bless her and refresh her. We confessed, we forgave, and we went to God together.

Now, why do I share that story? Well, because I think it illustrates our desperate need for wisdom in relationships. Even at their best and most well-intentioned, relationships can be deeply confusing and painful. For one reason, we’re all sinful. I hate to be the one to tell you that, but you’re still sinful, which means you’re still hard to love at times. Maybe you’re being hard to love today. We’re also not God, so when it comes to these hard moments in relationships, we don’t know what he knows, and we can’t do what he does. And so, we constantly need wisdom, wisdom we do not have on our own.

Wisdom for Relationships

When President Tabb sent the invitation, I asked him if he had any particular kinds of relationships in mind. Did he want me to talk about dating? Or marriage? Or friendships? He replied, “You could reflect on lessons the book of James gives us for cultivating wise relationships with significant others, friends, church members, neighbors, extraterrestrials.” Okay, I added that last one. Basically, “Can you share any practical wisdom for whatever relationships matter most to each of us?”

I thought about the kinds of wisdom I need in relationships. I thought about the kinds of wisdom Faye and I have sought out from older, wiser believers. I thought about the kinds of questions younger friends in our church and community ask us. And so many of those questions — certainly not all of them, but so many of them — were rooted, one way or another, in conflict. How do I relate well to someone I love who’s driving me crazy right now?

“Fighting within and fighting with God spills over into fighting in marriage, friendships, churches, and workplaces.”

So, I walked slowly through James several times, on the lookout for especially practical help for the kind of conflict we all experience with those we love. (I couldn’t help but think mainly of my marriage, but the principles here really do apply to every other relationship we have — maybe even to aliens.) I made a list of twelve, which is way too many for chapel, so I tried to pare the list down to just the essential ones — and I ended up with eleven. So, I did another, more cutthroat pass and landed on five.

1. At the root of your conflict is conflict with God.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. (James 4:1–2)

Do you want to know why we fight with those we love? At its root, it’s because one or both of us want the wrong things. In that moment, we want something other than God more than God. Usually, we want something from God more than we want him. That’s what sin is. These are “passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). These desires start a war within us (which means we’re already at war with ourselves), but they also put us at war with God. And because we’re at war with ourselves and at war with God, those wars very often spark wars with others. Fighting within and fighting with God spills over into fighting in marriage, friendships, churches, and workplaces — and James says all of that hostility is rooted in wanting the wrong things. So, what should we want?

You know this: We should want God. We should count everything else as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. We should gladly lose anything else if that’s what it takes to gain Christ and be found in him (Philippians 3:8–9). So, when the fight comes, we might stop and ask,

What am I wanting so bad right now that’s not him?
What am I demanding that God hasn’t promised me yet?
If I really believed that in Christ all things are mine — this world and the next, life and death, the present and the future — how would I respond to this conflict?

We could ask James, then, What resolves quarrels and fights between us? What stops many of them before they even begin? A mutual treasuring of Jesus — when both of us desire him above all the things (and there are so many things) that might separate us and turn us against each other.

2. You won’t have wisdom if you don’t ask.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. (James 1:5)

If any of you lacks wisdom, it’s available to you. Think about that. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God . . . and it will be given him.” Some of you are nodding along, yes, of course. God gives wisdom; I know that. Others of you, though, aren’t so sure. You’re quietly desperate for wisdom right now, and I mean desperate. You’re stuck in some situation or with some decision, and you feel like you’re out of options. You feel like you’re in a dark, cold room feeling the walls for a way out. You know full well that you don’t know what to do next.

Listen to what James says here one more time: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God . . . and it will be given him.” It will be given to you. It might not be the wisdom that you wanted. And it may not come as quickly as you wanted it to come. But God promises you here that he won’t leave you in the dark in these relationships — if you ask.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God.” The only people who get wisdom are people humble enough to ask. And notice: it’s not those who know to ask him, but the ones who actually do it (and then keep doing it).

At a school like this, I know that you know to ask God, but are you still asking? It’s amazing, isn’t it, how we get into these relational tensions, sometimes over weeks or months or years, and we think and stress and argue, and we even go ask other people what they think — but how often do we forget and neglect to ask God? To stop, to kneel down, to bow our heads — our thoughts, all our potential solutions and next steps — down before him, and then simply ask: God, would you show me what to do now? Would you open up a path that I can’t see yet? Would you break in here and miraculously mend this relationship?

It’s not too late to ask him.

3. Our words often do the most harm.

The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. (James 3:6–8)

You can feel James reaching for words and imagery to try and pry our eyes open to this reality — flames and stains, bears and sharks, snakes and poison. We don’t think of words like this. Sticks and stones — that’s where the real harm is. That’s the secret Satan’s been dealing out all these years. He knows that words are way more likely to hurt us in the places that really matter. If he wants to start a fire in a home, he reaches for the tongue — and too often, we’re all too glad to give it to him, aren’t we?

There have been times — again I’m thinking primarily in marriage — when I’ve remembered this just a moment too late. I said something impulsive, emotional, and then almost immediately remembered that words hold this staggering power. For a split second, I’d forgotten, and then a fire broke out. Words feel so small and safe in those moments, like a birthday candle and not like an inferno. They come so easily, especially the sinful ones.

Words have an enormous potential for harm, but they have just as much power for good. They can set a home on fire, and they can be a cool, gentle stream of blessing. So, what kind of tongue do you bring to conflict? As you think about the rhythms of your communication in these sensitive or difficult relationships, ask God to make your words a stream and not a flame.

4. Your anger won’t solve this.

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19–20)

Now, this doesn’t mean it’s not right to be angry at times. “Be angry,” the apostle Paul says, “and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26–27). I had to learn this in my first years of marriage — that some anger is good anger, that it was right for Faye to be angry with my sin. James 1:19–20 doesn’t mean we don’t get righteously angry at the right times; it does mean we don’t put our hope in anger. And it’s so easy to hope in anger — isn’t it?

Why do we overreact and lash out at our spouse or roommate? Why do we yell at our kids when we shouldn’t? Because somewhere deep inside of us, we think our anger’s going to make this right. If I can just raise my voice high enough, or glare hard enough, or withdraw far enough, then they’ll shape up and submit, and everything will be alright again.

Unrighteous anger is an attempt to control what we can’t control and produce what we can’t produce. It’s an attempt to be God, which is the very definition of foolishness, instead of rejoicing that God is God, which (as we’ve already seen) is the heart of wisdom.

Our anger doesn’t produce the righteousness of God, so how does wisdom respond in this kind of conflict? James goes on to tell us in 3:17–18: “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

5. The wise don’t fight alone.

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. . . . My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:16, 19–20)

This last chapter in James gives us some glimpses into the corporate dimensions of wisdom, the togetherness of wisdom. Yes, the wisdom we need will ultimately come from God, but again and again, we see that the best place to hear from him is in meaningful community with other believers — the kinds of believers who know our particular weaknesses and temptations because we’ve confessed our sins to them; the kinds of believers who know us well enough to know how to pray for us (and then actually and consistently pray for us); the kinds of believers who, if we ever started wandering away from Christ, would climb over mountains and swim across oceans to bring us home. We need those brothers and those sisters all the time in the Christian life — “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’” (Hebrews 3:13) — but especially when we’re in the dangerous and disorienting fires of some conflict.

Pastor John has said that eternal security is a community project. Well, conflict resolution often is too. So, who are those courageous climbers and swimmers for you? Whom could you exhort, even today? Whom do you know who might need that little push to go and make peace with someone they love? The wise don’t fight alone.

We don’t win fights in these relationships by winning the argument or getting our way. No, we win the fight when we fight like someone who loves Jesus — when we humble ourselves to ask God (and others) for help, when we make peace even when we’ve been wronged, when we put a guard over our mouths and correct one another with gentleness, when we can rejoice even while relationships hurt us because we have our Treasure in the field, our better and abiding possession — in other words, when our conflict bears the unusual, even paradoxical, marks of grace. That’s how we win a fight.

Thanking God for Bethlehem

Last week, I was appointed President & CEO of Desiring God. Had I known I’d be starting a job like this the week before this chapel message, wisdom might have declined. I’m so thankful I said yes before I knew, and I’m so thankful to be in this room just a week into my new role. Here’s our mission statement at Desiring God, what I take to be my job description:

As a Christian Hedonism publishing platform, persuaded by the indispensable biblical reality that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, we exist

     to move people to live for the glory of God,     by helping them be satisfied in God above all else, especially in their suffering,     by communicating the truth, and beauty, and worth of all God is for us in Christ,     grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures.

Now, I grew up in a marketing home, so I know full well that according to “best business practices” that’s an absolutely terrible mission statement. And I love it so much.

“The only people who get wisdom are people humble enough to ask.”

And the roots of my love for it — for the glory of God, for our joy in him, for the worth of Christ, for the beauty of the gospel, for the centrality of Scripture, for this big, sovereign, satisfying vision of God — are here, in chapels like these and in classrooms like yours, over assignments like yours, under professors like yours, next to classmates like yours. I really believe any qualification and enthusiasm I have for this work is owing, under God, to Bethlehem College & Seminary.

And so, I wanted to take this moment to thank God for this school. To ask the one who gives generously to all without reproach to pour out his grace all over this place and to provide for all you need and more as you spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. And I also want to plead with you, students: Soak up all that you can while you’re here. Ask God for the hunger and stamina to make the most of these classes and assignments. As I’ve learned firsthand over the last couple of months, you really don’t know what God might be preparing you for.

I know it’s hard. I know you’re tired. I know there might be a dozen things you’re really excited to do when school’s over. But you’ve been given an extraordinary gift to learn in a place like this, and for just a few short years. What you’re learning, the tools you’re being entrusted with, will prepare you well for situations and responsibilities you don’t even know are coming — in relationships, in your future work, in the local church, wherever you go.

When Jesus went to the cross for you, you were not worth dying for. It wasn’t something in you that convinced him to bear the nails, the thorns, the wrath.

We’ve heard so much about his real and wondrous love for us that we might forget his love is wondrous precisely because we were not. Because, when he set his loving eyes on us, we were corrupt, defiant, repulsive. We were the treacherous wife prostituting herself out and then spending the husband’s money on other lovers. We should have been swallowed by holy rage, not by his mercy.

And yet he died for us, even us. “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. . . . God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6, 8). Do you know that God loved you before there was anything in you to love? Do you know that Christ died for you when you were still at your worst, when your black heart had wandered its furthest and hardened near to cracking?

Good Friday bids us to stop and remember just how sinful we were — just how bleak it was for us before that darkest day in history — and to remember the wild and tenacious love with which we’ve been loved.

While You Were Weak

While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)

When Jesus went to the cross for you, you were weak — and not a little tired or flawed, but lame and helpless. Incapacitated. This word for weak is the same word used for the crippled man whom Peter and John met on their way to the temple in Acts 3. He was lame from birth, and had to be carried to the temple gate every day so that he could beg for enough to survive another day. That’s the kind of weak you were when Jesus found you.

In fact, Jesus died only for weak people. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” he warned those who thought themselves strong. “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31–32). “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). He loves whom he loves to show us just how shortsighted all our “wisdom” really is and to expose the sickly frailty of our so-called “strength.”

While You Were Wicked

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

You were not only weak and helpless, however, but also thoroughly wicked. Your heart was deceitful and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). Can you see that kind of darkness in your former self? Even your very best deeds were as filthy rags, because they were polluted with selfishness and pride. “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Everything you thought or said or did was an act of defiance. “Terribly black must that guilt be,” J.C. Ryle observes, “for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could make satisfaction” (Holiness, 8–9).

“When Jesus went to the cross for you, you were not worth dying for.”

“Do not be deceived,” the apostle warns us. “Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). And lest we think he has other, especially wicked people in mind, he says in the next verse, “And such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11). All of that nasty, ugly evil was who you were, at least some of you.

And who you were was who Christ came to save. “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15).

While You Were Hostile

If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)

In our wickedness, we sinned not just against the laws of God, but against God himself. All of our sinfulness was (and is) intensely personal. Your life apart from Christ was one prolonged act of divine hostility.

When King David slept with another man’s wife, impregnated her, and then had her husband murdered, notice how he confesses his sin to God: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:3–4). How could he say that? What about Bathsheba? What about righteous Uriah? What about the precious infant son who died because of his sin?

His prayer doesn’t diminish the awful sins he committed against the husband, the wife, the child — he sinned grievously against each — but it reminds us that the greatest offense in any sin is the offense against God. As awful as adultery and murder are at a human level, they’re a thousand times worse at a heavenly one. To be an unforgiven sinner, even a polite, socially acceptable sinner, is to be “alienated and hostile in mind” (Colossians 1:21).

And yet, while you were hostile, Christ died for you. In love, he walked directly into the arms of your animosity and bore its curse for you on the cross. He made his perverse and ruthless enemies his friends, his own brothers.

While You Were Dead

You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. (Ephesians 2:1–2)

You were not merely weak and wicked and hostile, though. You were dead. Sure, you may have been moving and breathing and eating and talking, but in all the ways that matter most, you were empty, barren, cold. You weren’t gasping for air or hanging on in a coma. The doctor had called it. And while you were lying in your lifeless blood, Jesus stopped beside you. And he not only stopped, but he chose to bleed and die so that you might stand up and live. Christ took the awful thing that killed you — your sin — and then breathed his own life and joy into your unmoving heart.

“Do you know that God loved you before there was anything in you to love?”

Who would die for a dead man? The one who died for you. Who would die for his enemy? The one who died for you. Who would die for a sinner? The one who died for you. He found you at your very worst, saw all of you at your very worst, and then he made himself your worst, so that in him you might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

There Is a Remedy

One reason we lack the depth, faith, and joy we long to experience is that we fail to confront the sinfulness of sin — specifically, the sinfulness of our own sin. When Ryle wrote his classic book on holiness, he believed he had to begin here, with our weakness, wickedness, hostility, and ruin:

Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies, and false doctrines of the present day. If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies. (Holiness, 1)

Why do people wander after false gods and false gospels? Because they don’t take sin seriously enough. If they saw sin for what it is — crippling our souls, corrupting and twisting our minds, seeding hostility, and breeding death — then they would see that the cross is the only cure. Then they would find in Jesus a God more lovely than they are wicked, more alive than they are dead, more forgiving than they are guilty.

There is a remedy revealed for man’s need, as wide and broad and deep as man’s disease. We need not be afraid to look at sin, and study its nature, origin, power, extent, and vileness, if we only look at the same time at the Almighty medicine provided for us in the salvation that is in Christ Jesus. (Holiness, 12)

So, this Good Friday, look deeply again into the awful weight of sin — and then look even more deeply into the loving eyes of the sinless Man of Sorrows, crucified and crushed for you.

A few weeks ago, my seven-year-old informed me that he wanted to be eight — but not any older than that. “Buddy, why don’t you want to be any older than that?” I asked. “Well, because when you get old, you die.” Fair enough. Eight seemed safe and exciting enough, I guess (he has some eight-year-olds in his class), but nine — now nine was a different story. Who knows what might happen then? Better stick with eight.

It’s a sobering thing, isn’t it, to watch your children begin to wrestle with a reality like death (and then to force you, as a dad or mom, to try and explain something like death). I think our verses this morning are a great help to dads and moms (and teenagers and twenty-somethings and sixty-somethings) in answering the biggest questions we ever ask. What’s going to happen when we die? What does it mean to really live?

A couple of years ago, on June 28, 2021, my (then) 64-year-old dad had a heart attack. I’ll never forget the moments I spent beside his hospital bed that week, as he waited for quadruple-bypass surgery. I felt my own mortality, watching the strongest man I’d ever known now fighting for his life. I know some of you have experienced this. When you’re growing up, Dad is the embodiment of strength, almost immortal. I mean what can’t Dad do? A toy breaks? Oh, Dad will fix it. Want to know what makes an airplane fly? Dad will know that. My three-year-old’s been worried that skunks are going to get into her room at night (longer story there), but I’ve said to her, “Honey, I promise, Daddy won’t let any skunks in your room.” And she believes me! Because I’m Daddy.

And then dads grow older, and their arteries fail — or they get really sick, or their minds begin to go. Slowly, they’re a little less superhero, and a little more human. And in the process, we realize just how human we are.

By God’s grace, my dad’s doing really well, but I thought of him leading up to this message because our conversations over these last couple of years (one in particular) remind me of these verses. He told me that he’s more aware than ever that every day he has is a day he’s been given for Christ, that however many days he has left — whether hundreds or thousands or just one — he wants them to honor Jesus. My dad came close enough to death to be able to remind his son how to live.

And that’s what we have in Philippians 1:19–26: we have a man, a spiritual father, who has come close enough to death that he’s able to tell us (whether we’re 8 or 38 or 68) how to live and die well.

The Happy, Driving Passion

As we’ve learned over the last several weeks, Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome. The situation’s serious enough that his friends in Philippi are worried if they’ll ever see him again. And on top of the dangers and hardships of his imprisonment, he had enemies (even in the church) trying to make things even worse for him.

“Death, for believers, is better than life because death finally gives us Christ.”

I don’t want it to be lost on us over these next few months in Philippians that the most joy-filled letter in the New Testament was written in horrible circumstances. That tells us something, doesn’t it, about how much joy we can expect to experience even on our hardest days. Look how joyful he is even now, even in prison! And they tell us about how much we can still help others enjoy Jesus — even on our hardest days.

As Pastor Jonathan showed us last week, Paul responds to all of this — imprisonment, mistreatment, betrayal — in an otherworldly way, because he had a different passion than the world. And what was that passion? The glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel. That passion is why he can rejoice while his enemies preach Christ (verses 15–18). That’s why he can rejoice even while he sits in prison (verses 12–14). That’s why he prays like he does (verses 9–11). That passion is why his love for these people runs deeper and richer than many of our relationships (verses 3–8). And now, in our verses this morning, he’s going to tell us about that passion. He leans in, after all of that, as if to say, Do you want the secret? “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

What Kind of Deliverance?

Our passage begins in verses 18–19:

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance.

Now, right away, what kind of deliverance do you think he’s talking about? What’s he going to be delivered from? Is he talking about deliverance from prison (which is what we probably assume) — or is he talking about some other kind of deliverance?

Let’s keep reading: “I know that . . . this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (verses 19–20). Why do I expect that all of this will turn out for my deliverance? He doesn’t go on to talk about judges changing their minds, or about him developing some goodwill with the jailers, or about a large group of Christians putting together a petition.

“No,” he says, “I’m confident this will turn out for my deliverance because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will be honored in me.” That phrase — “whether by life or by death” — is the biggest reason I don’t think he’s talking mainly about being delivered from prison. He can’t die in prison and be delivered from prison. “I might die here in prison,” he’s saying, “but I’ll still be delivered. Even if I’m never released from these chains, I’ll still be set free.” How could that be? How could he be delivered without being delivered?

I think that question is massively relevant for us, because some of you are praying for deliverance right now. Not from prison (because you’re here) — but what you’re suffering might feel worse than prison some days. Intense, prolonged conflict with someone you love. Hostility where you work. Cancer. A child who’s walked away from the faith — and maybe from you. By the end of this sermon, I’m praying that you’ll be able to say, to anyone who cares about you, “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that this pain, this conflict, this cancer will turn out for my deliverance” — not mainly because the pain might finally let up in this life, or because the relationship will necessarily get better, or because the cancer will go into remission, but because I believe my life, and my suffering, and even my death will say something true and beautiful and loud about how much Jesus means to me. About how much he’s done for me. About how much I’m dying to go and spend the rest of my life with him.

What kind of deliverance is Paul expecting? Not mainly deliverance from prison (although, as we’ll see, he clearly expects that too). No, deliverance from spiritual ruin, from the intense temptations that come with suffering, from walking away from Christ. “I’m confident I will be delivered,” he says, “because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will look great — and that’s all I really want.”

“I count everything as loss,” he’ll say in chapter 3, “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (3:8–9). That’s what deliverance looks like, the most important kind of deliverance, the kind we all need, especially when suffering comes.

These next verses, then, are a mural of the delivered life — the life freed from self and sin and death, and filled with Jesus. Again, they teach us how to live and die well: “I know that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.” Verse 21: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” We know that verse, and we think we get it — but do we really get it? Could you explain it to a seven-year-old? These next verses help us see both sides of this precious, life-altering (and death-altering) verse.

To Die Is Gain

Let’s start with death, though, with the second half of the verse: “I know that . . . Christ will be honored in my body . . . by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” How is Christ honored in a dying person’s body? Our death honors Christ, he says, when we begin to see our death not as loss — not as the end, not as defeat, not ultimately as a tragedy — but as gain.

So how could Paul look at death, even a death alone in horrible circumstances, and see victory, see reward? The next verses take us deeper. Beginning now in verse 22: “If I am to live in the flesh” — to live is Christ — “that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

“Jesus is not just the only way to heaven; he is what makes heaven worth wanting.”

Now, of course, Paul doesn’t really get to choose. “Which of you by being anxious,” Jesus asks, “can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Luke 12:25). Paul’s not actually choosing life or death here; he’s just letting us see what he wants. “I am hard pressed between the two,” he says. “A big part of me wants to stay and live a little longer here with you” — and we’ll see why in a minute — “but if I’m honest, I’d rather go home. I’m so ready to feel my last aches and pains, to have my last hard conversations, to wipe away my last tears. More than anything, though, I’m so ready to finally, at last, see him, to set aside this old, foggy mirror and look at him face-to-face: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace in the flesh — the seeable, huggable, high-five-able God. To get to know him, to know Jesus, as well as he’s known me all these years (1 Corinthians 13:12).

“Oh, how badly I want to stay,” Paul’s saying, “and help you see more clearly, and understand more deeply, and love more fully, and obey more joyfully, but it will be so much better for me if this apostle left you (for now) and went on to be a kindergartner, a beginner, in glory.”

Better Than This World’s Best

Notice, he doesn’t diminish the goodness of this earthly life. From an earthly perspective, Paul’s life wasn’t all that great (it was horrible) when he wrote these verses — and he still wanted to stay. God has filled this broken, sinful world with people and pleasures and experiences — with really good gifts — that hint at heaven and help us long for heaven. I have three small kids, and there are moments every week when I stop and think, I just want this to last forever. (There are plenty of other moments when I think, When will this ever end? But there are so many moments I want to hold onto.) When we tickle them and they giggle until they cry. When they say certain words really wrong. When they learn how to do something for the first time, and then do that same thing a thousand times every day for a week. When they come, snuggle up next to you, and tell you they love you for no reason at all.

Having a Philippians 1:21 heart doesn’t mean you despise the God-given joys and giggles of life on earth — it means you realize that another life’s coming, another world, one that’s better than this one, even at its best. And not better by a little, but better by far. “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (verse 23).

And what’s the better? It’s not weeks without work or years without taxes. It’s not endless tee times on the golf course or more girls nights with your best friends. It’s not your favorite foods at your favorite restaurants (and you never have to wait or pay). (I, for one, by the way, believe all of that will happen in heaven, and that it’s all going to be better than we can even begin to think or imagine. Believe me, nothing you enjoy here is going to get worse in heaven.) He tells us what the best better will be, though, in the same verse: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” He puts a face to the gain. Death, for believers, is better than life because it’s death that finally gives us Christ — all of Christ, with all our senses, meeting all our needs and satisfying all our lingering, gnawing desires. He is our gain.

In college, I read a paragraph that I’ll never forget. It still haunts me, in the very best way. It goes like this:

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. (God Is the Gospel, 47)

I still remember where I was on campus when I read that chapter. It felt like I had stumbled into a land I had never seen before, an ocean I’d never sailed before, a favorite meal I’d never tasted before. I really believe those were the moments when God became heaven for me. When he was no longer the God who makes heaven, or who lets sinners like me into heaven, but the God who himself is what makes heaven heaven — that he would always be (even after thousands and thousands of years) the best part of living there. This Jesus is not just the only way to heaven; he really is what makes heaven worth wanting. He is the great meal. He’s the ocean. He is the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price.

Doorway to Deepest Gain

And if that’s true — if we really think that way — how awesome will he look when we die? While everyone around us in the hospital clings to the last days they have here — while they scramble to try and make it to a couple more things on their bucket lists — we’re going to be the really strange people who have this deep and abiding peace, who talk about how much better life’s about to get, who feel free to spend the last days and hours we have on other people and their needs, who still smile even through horrible pain. We’re going to be the strange and beautiful people who use our last breaths — on the hospital bed, in hospice care, covered in wires and monitors — to sing. When we die like that, what will that say about Jesus? You know if you’ve ever seen a saint die well. In those moments, Jesus looks more valuable than anything life could ever give — or that death could ever take. Don’t you want to die like that?

As we turn to the first half of verse 21, then, I want us to see the relationship between these two phrases: “to live is Christ” and “to die is gain.” We’re about to see what “to live is Christ” means as a way of life — what strange people like this does with the weeks and months and years they have. But before we even get to that, to the kinds of things they do, we’re already seeing who they are — we’re seeing their heart, their passion. You see, the kind of people who honor Christ with their life will always be the kind of person who sees death as better than this life. They glorify God with their life because they want Jesus more than life. I first learned this, like many of you, from John Piper: “God is most glorified in us — in life and death, in joys and sorrows, in marriage and parenting and singleness — when we are most satisfied in him.” God will be most glorified in our lives when death is gain, when we know that the day we die will be the greatest day we’ve ever lived — yet.

To Live Is Christ

Now, in the next couple verses, he turns to explain “to live is Christ.” How does he explain that? He’s already said, in verse 22, “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.” Fruitful labor — that’s the first part of our answer. But what does “fruitful labor” actually mean?

He goes on to tell us: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account” (verses 23–24). It would be better, far better, to go and be with Jesus, but I’m convinced it’s more necessary, for now, that I stay and keep laboring among you. And what is the labor? What does he need to stay and do for them?

Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith. (verse 25)

The fruitful labor Paul stays to do is to work for others’ progress and joy in the faith. He stays to help them grow in their faith in Jesus (progress), and to help them find greater joy in that faith. If we live for another day or month or year, it’s because someone needs help believing in and enjoying Jesus. That’s how Paul thinks about his life — and yours. This is why you’re alive: to help someone else keep believing in Jesus. Do you think about your life that way? Do you look at your days, or weeks, or decades of life as a gift God has given you to give other people God? To live is Christ — to hold up Christ for one another.

But what does it really mean, practically, to live for someone else’s “progress and joy in the faith”? Does Paul give us any hints about what we’re supposed to actually do? He gives us lots of hints. His letters are filled with this kind of life. But we’ll limit ourselves to just Philippians for now. What does it look like to live for one another’s “progress and joy in the faith”?

It looks like praying for one another, and especially for each other’s souls (1:9–11).
It looks like calling one another to obey Christ, to live a life worthy of the gospel (1:27).
It looks like meeting practical needs for one another, as this church did for Paul (4:14).
It looks like honoring one another, as Paul honors Epaphroditus (2:29).
Sometimes it looks like warning one another: “Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh” (3:2).
It looks like reconciling believers with one another when there’s conflict or division, as Paul does in 4:2: “I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord.”
It looks like reminding one another of heaven: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (3:20–21).
It looks like, get this, just having more conversations about Jesus.

Any of you can do all those things. These aren’t things only apostles do, or even things only pastors do; these are things Christians get to do for one another. We live, for however long we live, for one another’s progress and joy in the faith — to live is Christ.

Paul strikes one more note here, in verses 25–26: “I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.” “If I live,” he’s saying, “I want to give more reasons to worship Jesus — and not just a few reasons, but plenty of reasons” — “so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus.” Paul’s not living for a bare-minimum Christianity, a bare-minimum spiritual influence on others. No, day by day, he wants to pile on the reasons, as many as he possibly can, for those he knows and loves to trust and enjoy Jesus.

So, when God brings others into your life, are they better off spiritually for being there? Are they a lot better off spiritually for being there? What if you started looking at your relationships — family, community group and life group, neighbors, coworkers, friends — and tried to give them ample cause to love and glorify Jesus? How much more spiritual good could you do? How might the good you do then multiply through them into all of their relationships?

“If we live for another day or month or year, it’s because someone needs help believing in and enjoying Jesus.”

Again, notice he says, “I am hard pressed between the two.” So even though to depart and be with Christ is far better, Paul really does want both. It’s gain to die, no question, but it’s not loss to stay and live for Christ. To live for Jesus — despite how much it cost him, despite how little fruit he saw at times, despite the fact that he might live the rest of his life in prison — to live for Jesus was its own reward. Therefore, he could gladly say, To die is gain for me, and to live is Christ for you, my joy and my crown (4:1).

Because You Pray for Me

Before we close, then, I want to go back briefly to the beginning of our passage and look at how this kind of Christ-honoring life and this kind of Christ-honoring death happen. If God delivers us from walking away from Christ, from giving into temptation, from slowly drifting into worldliness, if he helps us honor Christ until the very end, how does that happen? Where do we get the strength and focus we need to keep going? Paul gives us two quick glimpses (so quick we might completely miss them), but I think they’re too good to pass over as a church. You’ve already heard these verses, but we need to hear them one more time:

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance. (verses 18–19)

Why is Paul so confident that he’s going to make it to the end, that he’ll keep honoring Christ, even in prison, even under persecution, even if it costs him his life? What does he say? Because you’re praying for me.

Do you ever pray like this church prayed for Paul? Does anyone pray like this for you? If we commit to praying like this for one another, Cities Church, we’ll be able to say things like we heard Paul say in verse 6: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” — because we’ve prayed for you. I know you’ll honor Christ, whatever happens to you, because we’ve prayed for you. Or, as in verse 19, “I know this horrible circumstance will turn out for my deliverance” — because you prayed for me. Prison can’t overcome these kinds of prayers. Cancer can’t overcome these kinds of prayers. All the armies in the world couldn’t overcome prayers like these.

Why? Because God answers prayers like these — and he doesn’t answer from afar. No, he comes and helps us from inside of us, by his Spirit (“through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”). His Spirit lives within us. And as he does, his strength becomes our strength, his peace becomes our peace, his love becomes our love.

By the Spirit, right now, in whatever callings you have been given, you have everything you could possibly need to honor Christ — whether by life or by death — because that Christ lives in you. He’s going to help you.

Five years ago, I was diagnosed with a severe sensitivity to gluten. As my poor wife can testify, I fought the diagnosis for months, but I eventually cut it out of my diet. And I felt better.

A year or so ago, I started experiencing similar pain, sometimes over multiple hours, so my doctor referred me to a specialist. We ran some tests and he asked me a bunch of questions. At one point, he asked me about the kinds of things I drink. I told him I had cut back on coffee and cut out soda completely, but that I still drank a fair amount of sparkling water. “Yeah, you should probably cut that out too,” he said. He went on to explain what should have been obvious, that pouring carbonation on a sensitive GI tract is likely to enflame your system, causing even more irritation and discomfort.

Unfortunately, I (like many of you) had always heard that if I had an upset stomach or tummy ache, I should drink a little Sprite or Ginger Ale to “settle my stomach.” So, for that whole year, whenever I would start to feel some kind of discomfort, I would go to the fridge and grab (you guessed it) a sparkling water, expecting it to make me feel better — and then wondering, completely confused, why I felt even worse.

Well, I cut out sparkling water, and my issues immediately stopped. Within days, my whole body felt lighter and healthier. And six months later, I’m still not having the same issues. So why am I telling you all of this? Because the more I look back and watch myself pouring sparkling water on my pain over all those months, the more I see how often we do the same with sin. Amid some pain or frustration or discouragement or exhaustion, we reach for some besetting sin, expecting it to make us feel better — and then wonder, completely confused, why we feel even worse.

Satan Hunts the Hurting

Satan knows how prone we can be to turn to sin in our suffering — and he preys on that weakness. The apostle Peter writes his first letter to believers in intense affliction. They were suffering fiery trials of various kinds (1 Peter 1:6; 4:12). In particular, many of them were being slandered and maligned for following Jesus (1 Peter 3:16; 4:4). People were saying awful things about them. Listen how he counsels them to suffer well:

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (1 Peter 5:8–10)

“How often do we live as if the devil isn’t real, as if there isn’t a real spiritual war being waged against our faith?”

Now, the devil prowls around all the time, and would love to devour any of us at any time, but the apostle sees a particular vulnerability in suffering. He knows, from personal experience and from ministering to others, that Satan hunts among the hurting.

Peter has seen how seductive sin can be when life gets difficult and painful, and he’s heard the bad excuses we make for ourselves, so he presses three realities on the fragile hearts of sufferers.

1. You have a disturbing and hidden enemy.

One way Satan distracts us from his malicious power and influence in our lives is by introducing the turbulence of suffering. If he can shake our plane enough to bring the seatbelt lights on, he knows we might focus on our trials and forget he’s even there.

Peter warns us, however: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” You have an adversary, and he’s not some stray cat chasing mice; he’s a 500-pound lion, the king of the pride, and he’s stalking souls like yours and mine. And yet how often do we live as if the devil isn’t real, as if there isn’t a real spiritual war being waged against our faith?

The apostle Paul pulls back the curtain:

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

When trials come, of various kinds, we need to be reminded that we have a serious enemy, that malice waits in our shadows to attack us at our most vulnerable.

2. You are not as alone as you feel.

When suffering comes, we need to be reminded that we have an enemy. We also need to be reminded that we’re not as alone as we tend to feel. Listen again to what Peter says: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8–9).

How do we resist our awful enemy? One way is to remember that many brothers and sisters in Christ are suffering in the same kinds of ways — and not just suffering, but suffering well. By God’s conquering grace, they’re enduring suffering and overcoming suffering (and some of them are surely suffering more than you are right now). Seeing the armies of God’s people braving intense trials should strengthen our souls to keep fighting for another day, another month, another year, if necessary.

Peter knows how isolating suffering can be. Many sufferers feel like no one else is going through what they’re going through, that no one knows their pain. He also knows that what we feel in suffering is not always reality. We need to be reminded to look up and see God comforting, strengthening, and satisfying his embattled church all over the world.

3. Whatever your pain is, it will end soon.

Before you shrug this off as trite, remember that the man writing this letter was persecuted, threatened, imprisoned, and eventually crucified upside down. His suffering was not short or infrequent or minor, by any measure. And yet he can say, next verse:

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (1 Peter 5:10)

After you have suffered a little while. . . . Some of you are tempted to scoff. You’ve had the pain you bear for years, maybe even decades (and it’s not letting up). I won’t pretend to know what it’s like to suffer like you have. But I will promise you, the apostle did not misspeak, even in your case.

Compared with the countless years of painless bliss coming to all who follow Christ, any suffering for any amount of time is only a little while. These years will one day seem as minutes. God will soon restore you, and you’ll never be broken again. God will soon confirm you, and you’ll never feel unsure or insecure again. God will soon strengthen you, and you’ll never again stumble or faint for weakness. God will soon establish you in his presence, and you will stand — radiant, with no discomfort, no illness, no heartache — in the eternal glory of Christ forever, no turbulence, no interruption, no bad news ever again.

So, knowing what God’s about to do for you, can you suffer just a little longer?

What Secret Sin Tempts You?

This dangerous tendency in us, to turn to sin in our suffering for satisfaction and relief, reminds me of Jeremiah 2:13. God says through the prophet,

My people have committed two evils:they have forsaken me,     the fountain of living waters,and hewed out cisterns for themselves,     broken cisterns that can hold no water.

In their thirst, they’ve forsaken the fountain of living waters — “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:14) — and they’ve sucked down the sparkling water of sin instead.

Sin’s worse than that, though. The prophet describes sin as “broken cisterns” — as cups with cracks and holes. Nothing’s staying in, and so nothing’s pouring out. So, what’s that cup for you? What secret sin are you tempted to turn to when you’re feeling down, or lonely, or frustrated, or stressed out and overwhelmed? I’m not a doctor, but you need to cut that out. I promise you, the comforts of sin — the comforts of impatience, of overeating, of anger, of binging shows or movies, of anxiety, of bitterness, of lust — will only make your pain worse in the end.

And I promise you, only the comforts of Christ hold what your soul craves in the valley. We won’t find healing for our suffering or power to overcome temptation simply by refusing our besetting sin. We need to drink from a better, deeper, more satisfying well. We need to see and savor Jesus — through his word, through prayer, through one another — and all the more when suffering comes.

I gave my first sermon eight thousand miles from my home, through a translator, to a room full of pastors twenty or thirty years older than me in Vijayawada, India. The text, I’ll never forget, was 1 Thessalonians 1:4–6. I was the rookie, the intern, on a team of more veteran teachers — and I was sweaty nervous.

The message got off to a rocky start. I was going too long without a break for translation, and I was clearly using words the translator either didn’t know or couldn’t translate. After a few long minutes (which felt something like a benevolent wrestling match), the poor guy had to quit and ask an older, more experienced brother to step in. The tap out certainly didn’t help my young nerves. Fortunately, I had run out of sweat by that point.

The second translator and I slowly found a rhythm together. His confidence and patience gave me greater peace and courage, and, by God’s grace, I survived the message. And the brothers, I believe, were encouraged in their faith and ministries. (As yet another mercy, preaching a sermon back home in English suddenly felt far less intimidating.)

I’ll remember that day for many reasons, but as much as anything, I’ll remember their eyes. We had been told for months leading up to the trip about all the obstacles these men were facing where they served — intense opposition, even malice; little training or support; false teaching even among Christians; grave poverty. Then we got to witness, firsthand, just how hard it was for some. And yet their eyes told a different story.

Smile of Genuine Revival

Standing in that pulpit so far from home, I began to read the sermon text: “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you.” How could the apostle Paul possibly know that these people had been chosen by God? He doesn’t leave us in the dark:

We know . . . that [God] has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. (1 Thessalonians 1:4–5)

He feels confident in their election because he’s seeing the signs of true revival — of God coming with supernatural power by his Spirit, through his word, to inspire sincere conviction and heartfelt worship. But how could he see the Holy Spirit? How could he know that God himself was actually moving in this church?

Paul says more in the next verse: “You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 1:6). He sounds the same warm note in Romans 14:17: “The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” What gave Paul such confidence that the God over heaven and earth, without beginning or end, who created all things and will judge the whole world, had reached down and actually chosen this little group to be his children, his ambassadors, his future kings and queens of glory? Their extraordinary joy, especially through hardship. This joy was like a sun rising over all the dark horizons around them, declaring that they now belonged — body, soul, mind, and delight — to Jesus.

This joy wasn’t just any joy, though. The apostle goes on to sketch something of a portrait of Spirit-filled joy for us — a joy that gladly submits, that stubbornly endures, that steadily spreads, and that eagerly waits.

1. This Joy Submits

First we learn that this miraculous joy is under authority. “You received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 1:6). This joy wasn’t a follow-your-heart joy, but a kneel-and-obey joy.

We actually get to watch the Thessalonian church receive the word in Acts 17:1–5. When Paul came to Thessalonica, he went with Silas into the synagogues and “reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ’” (Acts 17:2–3). In other words, he preached the Bible. And how did the people respond? “Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas” (verse 4). They didn’t reject the word of God, or give lip service to it, but they received it. They were persuaded by Scripture in their minds and hearts, and so they submitted themselves to whatever they found there.

2. This Joy Endures

Their glad obedience to the word of God was all the more beautiful because they suffered for their faith. “You received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 1:6).

“The fullest joy in the universe is, for now, an incomplete joy — an anticipation of what will be.”

Again, we get to see how they suffered in Acts 17. As the word began to take hold, as they were persuaded by what Paul taught them about Jesus, “the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring [Paul and Silas] out to the crowd” (Acts 17:5). The mob was so violent that the church rushed Paul and Silas out of town (verse 10). But many Christians stayed behind and withstood the mob.

And they didn’t merely stay and keep gathering, keep preaching, keep praying, keep making disciples, but they endured much affliction with joy.

3. This Joy Spreads

When God does this kind of work, when he brings spiritual revival and exalts his Son in the hearts of a people in such a dramatic and countercultural way, news of that work inevitably spreads. Again and again, this is how God presses his fame into the hard-to-reach, often hostile corners of the world: through forgiven people rejoicing through suffering.

You received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. (1 Thessalonians 1:6–8)

Words didn’t travel easily in those days. Wherever they went, they went slowly and at some significant cost. But even then, the story of this church’s joy spread far and wide beyond their region.

This means, at one level, that widespread revival is all the more possible when our circumstances turn bleak, when opposition heats up and the costs climb, because of the testimonies that spring up from such battlefields. The book of Acts is a testimony to how the word runs through suffering (see Acts 5:41–42; 6:7), bearing the fruit of joy wherever it’s planted.

4. This Joy Waits

What specific report was sent out everywhere, though? “They themselves report . . . how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10). So, they’ve already found their treasure hidden in the field — they’ve found God their exceeding Joy, a joy strong enough to brave the mob — and yet they’re still waiting for their full reward. The fullest joy in the universe is, for now, an incomplete joy — an anticipation of what will be.

Waiting is all over this letter (see 1 Thessalonians 2:19; 3:13; 5:23). And what are they waiting for? Paul paints a picture of that coming day:

The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17)

The happiest people on earth are those who have their eyes set beyond this earth to the one who will one day bring heaven down to earth.

Beaten, Bruised, and Happy

I have many memories from that trip to India. Taking a plane, train, and automobile (literally) to get to the city where we were serving. The unbelievably warm hospitality everywhere we went, with amazing dishes I’d never tried (and still love). Almost all of our team getting seriously ill at some point during the two weeks. What I remember most, though, was how happy those embattled pastors were. I remember the brightness and warmth in their eyes.

I met men who had been beaten for sharing Jesus, and still bore the cuts and bruises. They had experienced hostility from every direction — from Muslim zealots, from neighbors on their street, even from within their own homes. Jesus warned us, “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother. . . . And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matthew 10:35–36) — and he wasn’t lying. I saw the scars.

Yet as these battered men told their harrowing stories, their eyes sang with joy. It really was the closest I’ve been to a 1 Thessalonians 1 church. They received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, relishing the chance to suffer for Jesus and eagerly waiting for his return.

I have one, and only one, experience with sailing.

In my senior of college, one of my friends invited a number of us to his family’s lake house near the coast of North Carolina for one last weekend together before graduation. The house sat on a cove tucked just off the ocean shore. Down by the water sat the family’s beautiful (and expensive) two-person sailboat, tied firmly to a post.

The more experienced went out first. Several of my classmates had grown up close to the ocean, and knew how to handle a sail. They raced up and down the cove, making it look easy. When they were done, another first-timer and I stepped up to take the ropes. Once we pushed ourselves away from shore, we swung and tugged, leaned and lunged, stood and sat — and barely moved. The others, of course, took even more joy in our floundering than they had in their sailing. After a while, our titanic struggle left us tired and hungry, so we pulled the boat ashore and went in for dinner.

Early the next morning, a couple of aspiring sailors woke us, asking where we left the boat. “Down by the shore, of course. Where else would we leave it?” “Did you pull it into the grass?” “Umm, no.” “Did you tie it up?” “Umm, no.” “Well, the boat is gone.” Any experienced sailor (or just a man of common sense) knows what I learned that day: the tide rises at night, so you have to anchor your boat or it will drift away. I immediately started counting every dollar I owned. (It didn’t take long.)

A couple of us went out in the motorboat, driving up and down the shore, desperately looking for any sign of the sailboat. Surely it had been damaged, maybe even destroyed, after all these hours. After another hour or two, we’d come up empty. We saw nothing. And no one we saw had seen anything. I still remember the long ride back. I was sick to my stomach.

That boat came to mind again recently when I read Tim Keller describe a tool he used over the years to help him discern the health of a soul (and particularly the health of a person’s prayer life).

Which Boat Describes You?

Keller paints the nautical picture this way: “Imagine that your soul is a boat, a boat with both oars and a sail” (Prayer, 258). Into that scene, he asks four pointed questions: Are you sailing? Are you rowing? Are you drifting? Or are you sinking? In terms of my story, does your spiritual life resemble my master-sailor friends gliding up and down the cove, or the two first-timers working hard and going nowhere, or the empty sailboat drifting aimlessly away?

The tool’s helpful in two directions. First, it helps us assess and maintain our own boats. How often have we assumed that we’re rowing when we’re actually drifting, or that we’re drifting when we’re actually sinking? Second, the tool gives us a window into the boats of others. It’s a simple, vivid question that cuts through shallow places (where we often prefer to swim in our relationships) to the heart of a person, to how he is really doing.

Keller doesn’t attach particular texts to the four different boats, but the Psalms came to mind as potential examples because they model, with unusual vulnerability and emotion, the highs and lows of the human soul. So I’ve attempted to identify at least a few lines that give voice to each of these four spiritual conditions.

1. Are You Sailing?

When you think about your spiritual life right now, do you feel the wind at your back? Does prayer feel easier and more enjoyable than normal? Does daily Bible reading sparkle like a treasure in the field? Do you find yourself on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday actually looking forward to Sunday morning and the opportunity to sing and serve with your local church? Do you find spiritual conversation natural and gratifying?

If you’re currently in the sweet thrill of sailing, you might pray like King David does in Psalm 16:6–9:

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;     indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;     in the night also my heart instructs me.I have set the Lord always before me;     because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;     my flesh also dwells secure.

As we’ll see, David didn’t always feel this kind of spiritual high. He often struggled and had to fight hard for faith. At times, he fell into valleys of despair. In these verses, however, we can almost feel the wind lifting and driving his sails. Anyone who’s riding a spiritual breeze can identify with what he’s describing, and anyone who isn’t would want what he’s experiencing.

2. Are You Rowing?

If you’re rowing, you’re still making progress, but it’s a slower, hard-fought progress. You’re moving forward, but you’re really earning each passing wave. “Rowing,” Keller writes, “means you are finding prayer and Bible reading to be more a duty than a delight” (259). They’re chores you keep doing, but they honestly feel like chores. You keep attending worship, and discipline yourself to listen, engage, and even sing, but you often walk out distracted and tired. You want your heart to be in a different place, and you put effort into feeling differently, but you haven’t felt a strong wind in a while.

If you’re currently in the wearying work of rowing, you might pray like David does in Psalm 63:1:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;     my soul thirsts for you;my flesh faints for you,     as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

“The vast majority of drifters and sinkers drift and sink alone.”

In these verses, he’s not praying from the pleasant places of Psalm 16. Now he’s kneeling in the wilderness — “in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” But as the spiritual winds died down and the ground under him dried up, he didn’t give up and lie down in the boat. No, he kept his eyes on God and started rowing: “Earnestly I seek you.”

3. Are You Drifting?

From a distance, drifting may look and feel like rowing, but swim up closer to the two boats and you’ll notice one massive difference: effort. The drifter stops trying. You stop praying earnestly. You stop reading the Bible regularly. You stop paying attention during church gatherings (or stop attending altogether). Tired and discouraged and maybe even disillusioned, you set your oar aside and passively wait for some gust of wind to come along to save you.

This condition is probably the hardest to pair with a psalm, mostly because the psalms themselves are prayers. So even at their darkest, they model what it looks like to row in the dark — to keep praying, keep gathering, keep seeking. But in Psalm 42, dangerous circumstances have prevented the psalmist from attending the temple (“When shall I come and appear before God?” verse 2), so though he’s still able to pray, he’s cut off from other vital means of grace.

When shall I come and appear before God? . . .These things I remember,     as I pour out my soul:how I would go with the throng     and lead them in procession to the house of Godwith glad shouts and songs of praise,     a multitude keeping festival.Why are you cast down, O my soul,     and why are you in turmoil within me? (Psalm 42:2, 4–5)

The drifter has desires for more, and he can remember times when he experienced spiritual health and community, but he’s lost the will to keep fighting. His soul is cast down, and so his boat wanders aimlessly, from app to app, from show to show, from task to task, from meal to meal, from week to week. He wakes up farther and farther from where he wants to be spiritually, and yet with less and less resolve to change course.

4. Are You Sinking?

Is the boat within you quietly taking on water? You drifted for a time, but then you hit something hard — a job loss, a breakup, an illness, a death — and water started trickling in. Now, weeks or months later, your faith is gasping for air. You’re not longing for former days of stronger, more satisfying faith. You’re questioning whether it was ever real. You’re not thinking about restarting your prayer life, or looking for a Bible-reading plan, or joining a small group. You’re looking elsewhere for answers (or you’re avoiding the questions altogether).

Again, even psalmists dealt with sinking moments in the soul. Listen to the heartache and despair in Asaph’s voice when he thinks back on a dark night in his own soul:

All in vain have I kept my heart clean     and washed my hands in innocence. . . .But when I thought how to understand this,     it seemed to me a wearisome task. . . .When my soul was embittered,     when I was pricked in heart,I was brutish and ignorant;     I was like a beast toward you. (Psalm 73:13, 16, 21–22)

He remembers a time when he was living in spiritual peril. Do you feel your heart slowly growing embittered to God? Has your pain crystallized into self-pity? Has confusion mutated into bitterness and resentment? Have your doubts ripened into apathy? Is your boat filling with water?

Obviously, any boat that’s sinking needs some serious attention. One of the blessings of a tool like this is simply putting a sinking boat on someone else’s radar. How many souls sink without anyone ever knowing, at least until it’s too late?

Drifting and Sinking Alone

Later that long day, when we had nearly given up hope finding my friend’s sailboat, a neighbor from down the cove phoned. It had landed on their shore. Amazingly, no damage. The boat had drifted more than a mile.

For all our failures aboard that extraordinarily expensive piece of fiberglass, my first-timer friend and I did one thing right that day: we went out together. When it comes to our spiritual health and joy, the vast majority of drifters and sinkers drift and sink alone. And the vast majority of rowers and sailors row and sail with others.

Keller ends his book on this note:

Those who enjoy sailing might find these nautical images helpful. However, a metaphor used more often in the Bible to describe fellowship with God is that of a feast. . . . Eating together is one of the most common metaphors for friendship and fellowship in the Bible, and so this vision is a powerful prediction of unimaginably close and intimate fellowship with the living God. It evokes the sensory joys of exquisite food in the presence of loving friends. The “wine” of full communion with God and our loved ones will be endless and infinite delight. (260–61)

The image of the feast gets at the satisfying fullness of sailing. It also gets at the togetherness, though. Somebody might eat alone, but nobody ever feasts alone. And, spiritually speaking, nobody sails alone either. Richer communion with God requires richer communion with other souls, in the church.

So, if we feel ourselves drifting or worse in our walk with God, our first step to righting the ship will be to steer our boat into more crowded waters, where the sailors and rowers live.