It might be hard to imagine that a phrase like soli Deo gloria could be misunderstood or misapplied. To God alone be the glory. What could be unclear or mistaken in those six simple words?

Fortunately, the main burden of the phrase is wonderfully and profoundly clear. Our generation (and, to be fair, every generation before us and after us) desperately needs to be confronted with such God-centered, God-entranced clarity. The clarion anthem of the Reformation has been the antidote to what ails sinners from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. We fall short of the glory of God by preferring anything besides the glory of God above the glory of God. That’s what sin is.

We want the credit, the appreciation, the praise for any good we’ve done (and pity and understanding for whatever we’ve done wrong). We were made to make much of him, but we demand instead that he make much of us. That is, if we think much of God at all. John Piper has been waving the red flag for decades.

It is a cosmic outrage billions of times over that God is ignored, treated as negligible, questioned, criticized, treated as virtually nothing, and given less thought than the carpet in people’s houses. (“I Am Who I Am”)

God’s glory gets less attention than the fibers under our feet — and we wonder why life feels so confusing and hard. Five hundred years ago, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and other reformers recovered the priceless medicine: soli Deo gloria. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory” (Psalm 115:1).

To Us Be the Glory

The Reformers were living in a spiritual pandemic of compromise and confusion. As they walked through the darkness and corruption, they stumbled into the holy pharmacies of Scripture. And what did they find in those vials? They found, above all else, the glory of God. And that startling light became the North Star of all their resistance. They would not settle for any religion that robbed God of what was his and his alone.

Justification — what makes us right before God — had been distorted and vandalized in ways that uplifted our work, our self-determination, our glory. God’s justifying act was no longer found by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but in significant measure, muddied by our efforts. And that emphasis on what we do in salvation siphoned off glory from the gospel. To us, O Lord, and to our name, be some of the glory.

The stubborn word of God would not surrender glory so easily, though. “I am the Lord,” the Reformers read; “that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols” (Isaiah 42:8). “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25). Then four more times in just three short verses:

For my name’s sake I defer my anger;     for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,     that I may not cut you off. . . .For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,     for how should my name be profaned?     My glory I will not give to another. (Isaiah 48:9–11)

The only God who saves is a God rightly, beautifully jealous for glory. He plans and works all things, especially salvation, “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). Our only hope in life and death is that God will do whatever most reveals the worth and character and beauty of God. All our efforts to find glory beside him or apart from him only lead us further away from him and into sin. Any news that says otherwise, whether from a pope in Rome or an angel from heaven, is a curse, not a gospel.

Does God Get All Glory?

How, then, might soli Deo gloria possibly go awry? If we wrongly assume that God’s ultimately receiving all the glory means his people receive none. No, if God alone is glorified in our salvation, Scripture promises, then we too are and will be glorified. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). God himself glorifies someone other than God — to the glory of God.

“God himself glorifies someone other than God — to the glory of God.”

As the apostle Paul unfolds God’s plan in that greatest of all chapters, he says more: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for . . .” For what? For the appearing of Christ? For the renewed creation? No (not here anyway). “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:18–19). The creation pants to see us — what we will be. Why? Paul goes on, “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). When the creation sees us as we will be, it too will be set free.

For us to live in a paradise where fullness of joy lives — where God himself lives — we have to be something more than we are. Piper writes, “You can’t put the jet engine of a 747 in a tiny Smart Car. You can’t fit the volcano of God’s joy in the teacup of my unglorified soul. You can’t put all-glorious joy in inglorious people” (“Soli Deo Gloria”). We will be made glorious enough to swim in the wells of the greatest happiness ever conceived. The oceans, mountains, and stars are lined up outside to get a glimpse of that transformation — of our glory.

God Will Make You Like God

This thread in Scripture is as stubborn and stunning as the one beneath soli Deo gloria. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Even now, here on earth, we’re growing in degrees of glory. And then one day we’ll close our eyes for the last time on earth, and the next time we open them, we’ll barely recognize ourselves: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). When glory finally comes, it will not merely be a wonder to see, but a wonder to be.

“When glory finally comes, it will not merely be a wonder to see, but a wonder to be.”

What will happen when Christ returns? “The dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:52–53). Or as he says a few verses earlier: “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power” (1 Corinthians 15:42–43). We’re destined to live on a real earth like ours, with real bodies like ours, surrounded by blessings and experiences like ours, but without the weakness, mortality, and sin that plague all we know and enjoy now. That world will be like ours, but glorious. We will be ourselves, but glorious.

One of the most staggering and scandalous claims of Christianity is that God not only loves shameful, undeserving sinners, but shares his glory with them. He not only allows them to live in his presence, but he makes them like his Son.

To God Alone Be Glory

In a man-centered age like ours, it seems right that the overwhelming focus of our theology be away from self and on God. Thirty years ago, John Piper lamented, “I find the atmosphere of my own century far too dense with man and distant from the sovereignty of God” (The Pleasures of God, 2). I assume the pounds per square inch are even higher today (and many more miles farther from heaven). Soli Deo gloria is a precious, God-breathed chorus for our self-sick generation. We’re not in need of many articles exalting our glory.

We might need more than we have, though. Ironically, discovering all that we are and will be in Christ may be one key to escaping the cold cells of man-centeredness. Because anything glorious we discover about ourselves — and we will be glorious — is a mere reflection of him. We don’t receive any glory that does not whisper his glory and therefore glorify him all the more. We are “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9–11). If he makes us wise, he is always wiser. If he makes us strong, he is always stronger. If he makes us happy, he is always happier. As brilliant as the stars are — each of them blazing fires so bright they’re seen across galaxies — their Maker eclipses them all.

At our very, most glorious, nearly unimaginable best — sinless, painless, fearless — we’ll always still be candles lit by a far greater light, the Glory of glories, God himself.

Many of us today take for granted the hard work of making bread.

Each week, we simply grab our pre-baked, pre-cut, mass-produced loaf and roll along to the next aisle to find some “fresh” salsa or a box of Cheerios. We rarely give a second thought to how this loaf came to be (unless, perhaps, like me, your intestines start a street fight with the gluten that makes bread so delicious). In Jesus’s day, however, bread was not nearly as convenient or effortless. The making of bread was an essential and time-consuming part of everyday life (and the bread was likely a lot better for it).

So how was it made?

Breadmaking for Beginners

The ingredients, of course, have always been simple enough: just wheat, water, and fire. The process, however, was much more involved. The only “machine” available was a large round rock laid on another large round rock, called a millstone. No, like so few things today, this was all done by hand.

To make bread in that day, someone had to first harvest the wheat (again, an entirely different exercise before the gas engine invaded our fields). Harvesters typically used a sickle, a sharp handheld tool used to cut husks of wheat. Someone had to separate the wheat from everything else and then pluck the edible seeds, one by one, from the husk. Next, someone took the seeds and ground them into a fine dust, called flour (with the previously mentioned millstone).

Then, someone had to mix the right amount of flour with the right amount of water to create the dough (can you imagine making this discovery?). Finally, after the dough sat for some time to rise (another major discovery along the way), someone bakes the dough over fire to make bread (almost certainly the most significant breakthrough in culinary history).

So, on the night he was betrayed, when Jesus broke and blessed the bread, his hands were not the first to touch that loaf.

What Jesus Does with Human Hands

Surely Jesus could have turned stones into some delicious rolls for his disciples, but he didn’t. No, someone had worked hard to make that simple, climactic, even cosmic meal possible. Peter Leithart writes of the Lord’s Supper,

When bread is set on the table, an agricultural and culinary science and technology lies in the background. . . . Mankind is given the creation not only to use its products in their natural state but also to transform them for the enrichment of human life; he is not only guardian of what is but is creator of what is not yet; making is not only to eat but to bake. The bread-maker is the creature who builds cities, sends probes to the edges of the galaxy, transforms sand into silicon chips. (Blessed Are the Hungry, 169)

“Jesus could have picked wheat and grapes, but he chose bread and wine, both products of human creativity and toil.”

Has any single moment paid greater tribute to the toil and labor of humanity, to the everyday work we each do to contribute to society? Jesus chose to serve bread for his great Supper — a product of labor and human effort. If Jesus could use wheat and water to feed and lead the church over millennia, what spiritual good might he do through the work of our hands? He could have picked wheat and grapes (or anything else from the garden), but he chose bread and wine, both products of human creativity and toil. Remember, Jesus knew well what ordinary work was like. His calloused hands bore the proof. He was driving nails long before they were driven into him.

By breaking bread, he dignified what fallen man could do with his hands — what you can do with your hands — and he anticipated what a redeemed humanity might be capable of.

Not So Ordinary Meal

Now, it must be mentioned, when Jesus serves bread and wine at the Last Supper, the menu didn’t come out of left field. Bread and wine had thick threads of meaning through Jewish history, specifically together in the Passover (which we’ve traced elsewhere), but even then, it seems significant that God served a meal made by normal human hands.

And not an elegant or extravagant meal, but an unbelievably ordinary one. How many times had Jesus eaten bread with his friends? They had it with every meal — literally hundreds and hundreds of times, multiple times in a day. As they ate that night, they did something utterly familiar, even mundane, and yet now scandalous and marvelous. Again, Leithart comments,

It is significant that Jesus chose as the sacrament of his kingdom one of the most common of human activities. . . . This suggests that the kingdom does not involve a cancellation of this-worldly concerns; it is not another world but rather this world transformed and transfigured. (165)

Jesus could have chosen any number of rituals by which we could have remembered his life, death, and resurrection, but he chose something we do (more or less) three times each day. And in doing so, he infused our ordinary lives with the supernatural: “Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46). He also punctuated everyday life with an anticipation of the never-ending feast to come (Revelation 19:9).

In the Lord’s Supper, we eat the same kind of meal we’ve always eaten to remember that the short, simple, unremarkable life we have is fused with a profound and hidden purpose and potential. And we do so to remember that when paradise comes, it’ll be filled with hints of the short, simple, and beautiful lives we had here on earth. Heaven will be more like earth than we think (in only the best ways).

Why Not Water?

If this was meant to resemble an ordinary meal, why wine and not water? Why serve wine and not just some fresh grapes off the vine? Again, like bread, the choice dignifies what mankind can do and make — the process is every bit as involved and much longer, at least when done well — but we taste some distinct notes in the wine.

While bread has been an ordinary meal for centuries, wine has been preserved and served for special meals — for feasts. Wine pairs best with singing and dancing. “You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:14–15). When Israel was starving in the wilderness, God let bread fall from heaven; but when Jesus welcomes us to the marriage supper of the Lamb, he’s pouring wine: “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). Leithart writes,

Jesus did not give his disciples grapes, but the blood of the grape, which is the creation transformed by human creativity and labor. Like bread, wine assumes a degree of technological sophistication, as well as a measure of social and political formation. Wine, however, is a drink of celebration and not mere nutrition. If Jesus had wanted to depict man’s relation to creation and to God in purely utilitarian terms, bread and water would have sufficed. This Bridegroom, however, changes water to wine, and in doing so, clarifies man’s purpose in the world. (170–171)

“Cup after cup reminds us that the Lord’s Supper is not a eulogy, but a toast.”

What’s that purpose? In both work and rest, to enjoy what God has made and done. Ultimately, to enjoy God himself (Psalm 43:4; 1 Peter 3:18). Cup after cup, the wine reminds us that the Lord’s Supper is not a eulogy, but a toast. It drowns the thorns and thistles we battle, and symbolically washes away the sin and shame we carry. The wine plays an old, raucous, and beloved chorus: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Meal Worthy of a God-Man

When Jesus served the Supper, he was not throwing a pity party for all he would lose and suffer; he was setting the table for all we would gain and enjoy forever. This meal, like all great meals, deserves a certain weight and seriousness, but all the weight and seriousness serves the main course: a full-hearted, rest-filled, grateful joy.

By choosing bread, Jesus embraced the very basics of what it means to be human — the food that sustains ordinary lives like ours and the labor that puts that bread on the table. By choosing wine, Jesus anticipates the best of human life — the sweet rest that comes after a full day of hard work done well. Together, they’re the kind of meal worthy of a God-man, the kind of feast we could eat forever and yet always hunger for more.

What particular abilities has God given you? When God wove you together before you were born, and when he made you new in Christ, he chose gifts for you — special resources, experiences, and abilities for you to steward and practice. Do you believe that? If so, do you know what they are? Can you name some specific ways you’re striving to use them and grow in them?

If you believe in Jesus, he has given you something of his power and ability. Whoever you are, and however “gifted” you feel compared to others, you have abilities from God that are meant to make a difference in the lives of others.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:4–7)

In everyone means “in you.” To each means “to you.”

Where Abilities Wither

The reality is that while all of us have particular potential for good, not all of us realize that potential. Some squander the miraculous and personal gifts of God. They sit, as it were, on shelves in the basement, decorations of a life focused elsewhere.

The apostle Paul charges the church in Rome, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Romans 12:6). So what keeps us from using our gifts well? What keeps you from putting to work the grace-filled abilities God has given you? When we squander our God-given resources and abilities, we often don’t realize we’re squandering them. This is part of Satan’s craft. If he can’t convince us to reject God altogether, he’ll draw us away from him in a hundred smaller ways. He’ll embed some subtle temptation, barely discernible, that slowly corrupts our impulses and buries our potential.

“Most spiritual gifts die not by outright rejection, but by distraction.”

Most spiritual gifts die not by outright rejection, but by distraction. These temptations become spiritual cul-de-sacs, comfortable places to live, but leading nowhere. Paul passes by four of these cul-de-sacs in Romans 12.

Selfishness Street

Perhaps the most common way we waste these gifts is by assuming they are about us and not about meeting the needs of others. Paul’s charge to use our abilities comes directly after this remarkable statement of our identity:

As in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. (Romans 12:4–5)

The abilities God gives us are not mainly for advancing our careers or unlocking favorite hobbies or giving us a sense of achievement or fulfillment; they’re for blessing and supporting the body of Christ, the church. You’re good at what you’re good at because the church needs that, in some way, shape, or form — because the church needs you.

This is not how the world thinks. What are gifts if they’re not mine to use and spend however I want? Like the 5-year-old hovering over his host of Matchbox cars, we survey our abilities, resources, and time, and declare, “Mine!” God sees gifts so differently. What are gifts, he asks, if they die on the vines of self? No, gifts are only truly experienced and enjoyed when we hold them loosely and gladly say to God, “Yours!”

Pride Boulevard

Beyond a selfishness that blinds us to the needs of others, we might squander our gifts because we think too highly of ourselves. A couple of verses earlier, Paul writes,

By the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. (Romans 12:3)

Sometimes gifts spoil because we’re too focused on self; other times, because we think the needs we might meet are below us. We assume we’re too gifted for quiet, ordinary, thankless love. Pride inflates our heads, lifting us out of reality and making real needs seem small, even trivial, next to our conceited priorities. God-given abilities, however, suffocate at that elevation. They breathe and flourish when they’re rooted in real, ordinary lives with real, ordinary needs. Our gifts won’t reach the heights of their potential if we refuse to use them on our knees.

“Our gifts won’t reach the heights of their potential if we refuse to use them on our knees.”

Paul tucks a weapon against this gift-smothering pride in the verse quoted above: think sober thoughts about yourself, he says, “each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” The abilities you have are assigned by God. Even the faith you have is assigned by God. “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Anything you do well, remember, you do well only by the creativity and generosity of God.

Worldliness Lane

A third cul-de-sac may be the most prevalent and subtle: worldliness. We waste or misuse our gifts because we prize and prioritize what the world does, rather than seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matthew 6:33). It’s far too easy to fall in line with the crowds casually strolling away from the cross. “Do not be conformed to this world,” Paul warns, “but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

What does the wrong kind of conformity look like? We spend the best parts of ourselves at the office, rather than at home and in church. We’re more excited about our hobbies than we are about heaven. We find the most comfort and “rest” by scrolling through the leftovers of others’ lives on social media. We stay up to date on our favorite shows and movies, but struggle to find time to sit and meet with and enjoy God.

When our hearts are in all the wrong places, it’s no wonder when our gifts — our time, our attention, our resources, our abilities — consistently land in the wrong places too (or never land at all). Those who use their gifts well reject what the world would teach them to do with their gifts. They carry and spend their gifts where God leads them through his word, prayer, and the fellowship of other believers.

Passivity Circle

The last cul-de-sac along this narrow path of faithfulness brings us back to Romans 12:6: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.” Like an especially fertile weed, passivity poisons the gardens of giftedness.

How many God-given abilities shrivel because we’re too preoccupied or insecure or lazy to even try? We had an impulse to serve in this way or that, but we kept putting it off. We knew that person might need a call or a visit, but we assumed someone else would reach out. We heard the church was looking for someone to cover that base, but we kept finding excuses to stay in the dugout. Paul says to the church — young and old, male and female, new believers and older saints, healthy and hurting, outgoing and shy, musical and, well, not — “You have abilities (yes, even you), so use them.” Find some way, any way, to use whatever you do well to care for someone else.

Being gifted in these ways doesn’t mean you’re more gifted than everyone else or that God doesn’t expect us all to teach and serve and exhort (and give and lead in various ways); it just means that there’s evidence God has given you greater measures of grace in certain areas to meet the needs of others. “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10). Whatever experience or ability God has assigned to you, start using it.

Wait, What Are My Gifts?

Some, however, still may not know what their gifts are. Perhaps you’ve never really thought of yourself as “gifted,” and can’t point to any particular skill or knowledge you would consider a gift. How does someone begin to uncover his or her gifts?

In Romans 12:6–8, Paul does give us a few examples: Some are gifted to teach, so find someone to teach, even if it’s three or four 6-year-olds in Sunday school. Some are gifted to serve, so find someone to serve, even if it’s helping out around the house for a widow who sits a few pews away. Some are gifted to exhort — to encourage, to challenge, to correct, to inspire — so find someone to exhort, even if it’s the guy faithfully teaching three or four 6-year-olds.

A lot more could be said here, but you might start with a simple question: What do you enjoy doing well that a ministry or family in your church might need? What do other people thank you for doing? It could be teaching, or encouraging teachers. It could be leading music, or setting up equipment. It could be serving meals, or cleaning up meals. It could be hosting big gatherings, or befriending lonely people. It could be greeting guests as they come in on Sunday morning, or faithfully praying for fellow members. Every church, however small, has real and significant needs. Sometimes the needs are even bigger in smaller churches because there are fewer leaders and resources. What’s something you do well that meets the needs of others?

If your gifts have wandered into a cul-de-sac and begun to wither, it’s not too late to revive them and put them to use. Lay aside the pride, selfishness, worldliness, and passivity that devour what God has given you. Liberate your gifts from the cul-de-sacs that suppress them. Identify something you do well by God’s grace, and ask him to help you find a need to meet.

Raising small children, as any parent knows, can be a little like trying to train an unruly herd of squirrels — on a small, motorless boat, during a mild-to-severe hurricane. They’re small enough and cute enough to seem mostly harmless, but that’s what they want you to think.

I remember a day in our first several years when it was raining squirrels. That afternoon, I had gone to wake one of our children from their nap. Before my hand touched the doorknob, I smelled trouble on the other side. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill parenting smell; this was something more sinister. I opened the door to discover that a soiled diaper had quietly become a painter’s palette. No surface was safe. Quite proud of the work, the culprit stood tall in a now graffitied crib and smiled at me, as if I might consider purchasing the masterpiece.

After a bath (and 78 Clorox wipes), we settled down for dinner and family worship. The artist was quite hungry as I recall. We put the kids down for bed, prayed against any further creative endeavors, and went to sleep. A couple hours later, we woke to another distraught child who had peed the bed for the first time in months. Count it all joy, fellow parents, when you meet moisture of various kinds. After a bath (and a few less Clorox wipes), this child too was clean and back in bed again. It was a little after two o’clock in the morning.

I crawled back into bed, closed my eyes, and started inventing a preemptive snooze button. Seconds later, the painter started crying again. I took a deep breath and swung my feet out of bed. As I approached, I could smell trouble again, but not the same trouble. My child had, as kids are strangely wont to do, eaten too much, too fast, causing a digestive uprising. Cue the Clorox wipes.

As my wife, Faye, and I laid back in bed, somewhere between two and three in the morning, knowing we’d have to get up and feed the squirrels in a couple hours, we couldn’t help but laugh. Bleary-eyed and defeated, we looked at each other, smiled, and agreed, “Want to have another one?”

Children Need Us to Struggle

Every parent has stories like mine. Raising children is predictably hard in unpredictable ways. We rarely know what hard will look like tomorrow, or next week, or in five years, but we can be reasonably sure it won’t be easy.

This is obviously intentional on God’s part. He knows what our kids need most is not parents who parent relatively easily, but parents who must rely on God each day. They need to see parents of clay, regularly tiring, sinning, confessing, repenting, pleading for forgiveness, strength, and help, while still trusting and enjoying God. They need to see how we endure hard with hope in him.

Satan, however, preys on all the painful aspects of parenting. He has studied our vulnerabilities and waits to attack in our weakest moments. He makes it all seem so trivial, so unrewarding, so futile. When his temptations come (and they will come), it’s important that another voice rings louder than his in our frustrated and exhausted ears.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,     the fruit of the womb a reward.Like arrows in the hand of a warrior     are the children of one’s youth. (Psalm 127:3–4)

1. Does Parenting Feel Trivial?

This may be the loudest lie about children in our society today: There are so many bigger, more productive, more important things you could be doing than raising kids. Parenting is too small for you.

Parenting is small in many everyday ways, but it’s enormous in the ways that really matter. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord” — a gift, an inheritance, a legacy. We should pay close attention to what God calls a heritage because he claimed one for himself: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!” (Psalm 33:12). We are his heritage — “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). And children — biological, adopted, or spiritual — are our heritage.

Whenever God gives a child, he’s entrusting us with a precious and eternal heritage — a new life that will never end, and that, Lord willing, will grow to change and shape the world in all kinds of ways (maybe even having children of their own). Their impact on eternity will easily outweigh whatever work the world holds up as more meaningful and consequential.

2. Does Parenting Feel Futile?

Maybe parenting doesn’t feel small at all; maybe it feels big and overwhelming and, at times, demoralizing. She’s still not potty-trained. He still won’t sit still. She throws her food on the ground nearly every meal. He throws a fit whenever mom says no. They still can’t play together for three minutes without fighting. Is anything I’m doing making a difference? Am I doing more harm than good? Is all this effort just a colossal failure?

“In God’s eyes, children are some of the most effective weapons for the most important battles.”

Kids can make life feel like a sack race through a thick forest. That’s what we see and feel (and often smell). But what does God say? “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.” From the high ground of heaven, we see that children are not distractions from the war or weights around our ankles; they’re sharpened shafts of victory waiting to be unleashed for good. In God’s eyes, children are some of the most effective weapons for the most important battles. That’s why, when God made the world and put that first man and woman to work, he didn’t say find a career or build a business, but, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

Fill the earth with what? With faithful, wise, joyful arrows. Nothing could be more spiritually effective or significant than having children and preparing them well for eternity.

3. Does Parenting Feel Unrewarding?

Parenting can feel, at times, like all cross and no reward. Our sin says, What am I getting out of all this work and sacrifice and dirty laundry? What do I have to show for all I’ve given? The Lord says, “Behold” — look! — “children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” — a prize, an honor, a bounty. Children are the reward for having children.

“Children are the reward for having children.”

We miss the reward in raising children when we start looking for the reward somewhere other than children. We want efficiency. We want accomplishment. We want a salary. We want recognition. Instead, God gives us eternal souls to steward and shepherd. He doesn’t reward us according to the desires of our fallen, misguided, restless, earthly hearts; he rewards us according to reality. While millions are feverishly building towers that will crumble and fall in a generation, the wise are receiving and raising souls who will live forever.

When your career has come to a close, would you trade any amount of success or fame for even just one of those souls? The reward may seem small when you’re drowning in bottles and diapers, but, like our babies, it won’t seem small for long.

Blessed Is This Man

As I write, we’re waiting to meet another arrow in a matter of days, the third in our filling quiver. He elbows me when I hold Faye’s belly (I assume out of an already budding and abiding affection). As we’ve prayed for him, it’s dawned on me, with greater and greater meaning and joy, that he’ll be our first to be born in a post-Roe America. His life will be something of a memorial to a long and awful regime of death. Maybe abortion will become unthinkable in his lifetime.

We don’t know how many lives will be saved by the Dobbs decision, but we can rejoice that abortion will be that much more difficult for many. Having a baby seems like one especially fitting way to celebrate. Despite what our society has screamed for decades, it’s a deeply happy thing to have a baby:

Blessed is the man     who fills his quiver with them!He shall not be put to shame     when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127:5)

This happiness isn’t light and fragile like worldly happiness. Children sweeten a father’s life and work, for sure, but they also arm him to keep living and working and loving. They give him a more durable and resilient joy. Those who oppose him can’t upset him as easily or take advantage of him anymore. Satan himself shudders before our sons and daughters. After all, he knows just how much good a child can do.

So, when the hours of sleep are few and the number of diapers and Clorox wipes great, remember what God says about parenting. Learn to love and rejoice in your children like he loves and rejoices in you.

Sometimes God makes us wait for doors to open in ministry because unwanted waiting is some of the best preparation for ministry.

By the fall of 2008, I already knew I wanted to be a pastor. It was my senior year at Wake Forest University. I had wondered whether I might be a high school teacher, so I had tried a couple of education classes. Thinking I might go into ministry, though, I also signed up for one memorable course in the divinity school, on the apostle Paul and his letters. The course was taught by a universalist lesbian. On the last day of class, she handed back our final papers and told me she thought I should consider Christian ministry. It was almost enough to convince me not to.

No, very much despite my experience in the divinity school, I still wanted to be pastor, largely because I had watched teenagers’ eyes light up, again and again, while we read about Jesus in the Gospel of John together. I came to faith through the ministry of Young Life, and then volunteered with the ministry throughout college. I spent much of my free time at East Forsyth High School, watching JV soccer games, playing ping pong, and telling 14- and 15-year-olds what God had done for me. I never felt more alive than when I was watching God use something in his word to set the filaments of their minds on fire.

After that one class, I stayed plenty clear of the divinity school, and decided to major in business with a minor in ancient Greek (probably the only one in my class to do that). When I graduated in 2008, I knew I needed more training to learn how to handle the Bible faithfully, so I went straight to Bethlehem College & Seminary, where I graduated in 2012.

Now ten years later, I’m still not a pastor.

Humility in Ministry

Now, to say I’m not yet a pastor is not to say that God hasn’t opened real doors for ministry. He clearly has. This article itself is but one sweet and unexpected evidence. But I’m not yet leading in the ways I thought I would be by now, which has given me a chance to reflect on why that might be. Why might God give me an ambition to lead, and bring solid confirmation of character and ability, and yet withhold certain opportunities to lead?

Because sometimes unwanted waiting is some of the best preparation for ministry.

“How many men have been given too much authority, too soon, and fallen headlong into the hands of hell?”

When the apostle Paul laid out what kind of man a pastor must be, he wrote, “An overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant . . .” (Titus 1:7). Does arrogance feel spiritually dangerous, even ruinous, to you? Paul said the same to young Timothy: “He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:6). Is anything more dangerous to a ministry — or to a soul — than unchecked pride? How many men have been given too much authority, too soon, and fallen headlong into the hands of hell?

The priceless gift of unwanted waiting in ministry is humility. A ministry without humility may seem to flourish for a time, but (as we’ve witnessed again and again) it ultimately harms those it claims to serve. Pride slowly erodes a ministry until it suddenly collapses on all involved. How kind of God, then, to save churches, families, and souls, by making some men wait until they can kneel low enough to lead well?

Cheerful in the Shadows

One of the best ways we can steward a season of waiting to shepherd is to learn to be a model sheep. Pastors worth following, after all, are always examples worth imitating.

“Shepherd the flock of God that is among you,” the apostle Peter writes, “exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2–3). So what kind of example are you becoming? Bobby Jamieson offers this counsel to aspiring leaders like me along these lines:

What good deeds do you do that are seen by few or none? When did you last volunteer for a menial task? Which title means more to you, “brother,” which you are, or “pastor,” which you hope to be? Is being a servant your idea of greatness?

One of the best things an aspiring pastor can do is serve outside the spotlight. Give elderly members rides to church. Serve in the nursery. Teach children Sunday school. Volunteer to serve food at, and clean up after, the wedding reception of a couple of church members you barely know.

Everybody wants to be a servant until they get treated like one. Pastors not only are servants; they get treated like servants. Prepare yourself now for both the work and its reception by serving others. The best preparation for the spiritual trials of the spotlight is serving cheerfully in the shadows. (The Path to Being a Pastor, 134)

“One of the best ways we can steward a season of waiting to shepherd is to learn to be a model sheep.”

How are you stewarding the shadows? If we could see how well these days were preparing us for the darker days of ministry ahead, we’d treasure the quiet, hidden work God is doing in and through us while we wait.

Keep the Room Clean

As I traveled with John Piper during the years I was his ministry assistant, I heard him tell some version of one particular story many times. Each time, the scene captivated and humbled me.

A significant reason I chose to come to Bethlehem College & Seminary was to sit under and learn from him. His preaching class was all I hoped for, and more. As you might imagine, he came each day brimming with some fresh insight from his devotions, eager to wrestle with us over something God had said. He had (and has) a relentless appetite for uncovering reality in Scripture and pressing it into human hearts, especially his own. Those hours were intense and refreshing, serious and exciting. I came away wanting to see all he could see in God’s word.

So, having had him as a teacher, and having admired him as a teacher, and having wanted to be a teacher like him, I leaned in all the more when he would tell this particular story.

When I was in seminary, I said to John McClure, the head of the youth department at Lake Avenue Congregational Church, “I’m available, and I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” And he said, “Well, we need a seventh-grade boys Sunday school teacher this year.” I said, “Count me in.”

I poured my life into those boys. There were about nine of them. . . . Four hours every Saturday afternoon I worked on my lesson. And at the end of that year, I said, “Now what do you want me to do, the same thing?” He said, “No, now we need a ninth-grade teacher.” So I said, “Okay,” and I jumped over a class and taught ninth grade.

Midway through that year, the Galilean Sunday School Class of young married couples said, “We would like you to teach our class if they can do without you teaching the youth.” This is the way it’s gone my whole life. My dad said, “Keep the room clean where you are, son, and he’ll open the door when the next one’s ready.”

I would pay to watch those nine 12-year-old boys under the waterfall of a young Piper’s love for Jesus.

The story sticks with and sobers me because of how much someone as gifted as he is poured into just a few kids week after week. Hours of thinking, praying, and preparing for a tiny crowd of preteens (who could probably care less how much time he spent). I can picture what those lessons were like — John, with all he had, trying hard to creatively capture their wandering attention with the beauty and worth of God. Am I that faithful in the quiet, secret ministries God has given me?

The story inspires me, though, because it reminds me that greater fruitfulness and responsibility in ministry often grow out of faithfulness in secret places.

Are You Faithful in Little?

While I traced the threads of humility, leadership, and waiting in Scripture, it dawned on me that, in one sense, our entire lives are one brief season of training for an eternity of ministry. Listen to how Jesus explains the parable of the talents:

It will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. . . .

Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, “Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:14–21)

At the end of the age, he’ll say, “You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much.” Not, “You have been faithful over a little, and I have nothing else for you to do,” but, “You have been faithful over a little in this life, and I have so much more for you to do in the next.” Even the largest, most well-known ministries are small and brief next to all Jesus will one day entrust to us — if we’re faithful with the talents we have.

So, while you wait for some door to open, be as faithful as you can be with whatever work, however seemingly small, God has entrusted to you for now.

Sinners rescued from the road to hell love to rehearse and celebrate the mercy of God. Where would we be today without mercy? Where would we be for eternity without mercy?

Without mercy, we would be dead in our sin, a death worse than death. Mercy called us from the tomb. Mercy lifted us out of the pit. Mercy opened our blind eyes. Mercy gifted us with faith, repentance, and joy. We deserved every possible ounce of rejection, punishment, wrath, but God gave forgiveness, love, and life instead. All that we have, we have by the mercy of God. Is there any other god, in all the religious imaginations on earth, who deals so gently and compassionately with sinners?

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” Jesus says, “for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). Knowing how we’ve treated him, all the endless ways we’ve each ignored and insulted him, he has every righteous reason to be severe and merciless, but he’s gentle with us. He stoops low to receive and restore us. Jesus recites these precious lines from Isaiah about himself: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench.” Who could know himself a redeemed sinner and not love the kindness and tenderness of such mercy?

And yet mercy doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s another side of this king — a holy, majestic, jealous, even vengeful side, a side sinners like you and me are often far less likely to rehearse and celebrate.

Bruised on the Battlefield

When Jesus drew near to bruised reeds and smoldering wicks, he did not coddle or compromise with sin. His mercy mingled with justice:

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen,     my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased.I will put my Spirit upon him,     and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. . . .a bruised reed he will not break,     and a smoldering wick he will not quench,     until he brings justice to victory. (Matthew 12:18–20)

He came to establish justice, and he wouldn’t stop until he saw it to the finish. We might imagine these bruised and vulnerable reeds hiding safely in backyards and community gardens, but here they’re crouching on the battlefield of a cursed world.

Why else is the reed bruised and the wick smoldering, if not because they’re caught in the awful, ordinary crossfire of sin? We all relate to that thin, fragile blade of grass because we’ve felt like that at times, if not often. We’ve all felt the sting of sins against us, and we’ve all watched, with sorrow-filled anger, as sin has torn apart marriages, families, friendships, communities, even whole nations. With our hearts aching with confusion and grief, we’ve cried out for justice. We’ve groaned, with creation, for a better world than the one we have.

Until Justice Is Done

Jesus came to bring that better world, to pour out justice like Niagara in spring, to declare war on all who opposed him, to put a certain end to centuries of rebellion. And yet, as he wages his holy war, he kneels down, with infinite strength, taking fire from every direction, to lift and support the weak, humble, trusting souls in his path. Toward his enemies, he’s severe, unyielding, terrifying. Toward his own, however, he’s gentle and lowly.

On that battlefield, his justice is not some dark cloud casting a shadow over his mercy; it’s the sunless, moonless night which makes his mercy shine. His justice and mercy are two parts in one holy symphony. Isaiah 30:18, for instance, plays the harmonies, mingling the tenderness of God’s mercy with the promise of his justice:

The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.

Mercy and justice are not at odds here, but beautifully joined together. Because he is just, God will be merciful to you, in his perfect timing. His grace to you, in Christ, is justice. The purest enforcement of justice ever conceived or executed delights to show mercy.

God of Against

This mercy does not blunt the force of his justice. The justice of God is a soul-shaking, pride-shattering justice. Right before Isaiah 30:18, the Lord confronts Israel for desperately turning to the armies of Egypt for rescue:

Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant; and its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a shard is found with which to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern. (Isaiah 30:12–14)

Notice, the mercy of God doesn’t keep him from severity. Is the God you worship one who ever smashes rebellion against him? When you close your eyes to pray, is there ever a sense that he could, right now, righteously decimate billions of people for refusing and insulting him — that sin really is that repulsive and insidious? Some regular awareness of his holy furor against injustice, especially all our injustices against him, is vital to a healthy life of worship. The God of all comfort, after all, is also a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29).

For the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up — and it shall be brought low. . . . And people shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth. (Isaiah 2:12, 19)

“The God who stoops, in Christ, to gently lift you out of your sin will one day terrify the nations again.”

This is not a cruel God left behind in the Old Testament. This is the God of infinite mercy. The God who stoops, in Christ, to gently lift you out of your sin will one day terrify the nations again. His justice may be hidden, for a time, beneath his staggering patience, but its devouring fire will soon consume his enemies.

Justice Fueling Mercy

All of that makes his mercy all the more stunning. The terrifying flames of justice don’t undermine his mercy, but illuminate and enflame it. “The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice.” But they were despising his word and trusting in oppression and perverseness — how could he be both just and gracious to them? How could he bless the ones who cursed and despised him?

By becoming the curse they deserved. Revel, again, in the familiar and shocking story of how justice and mercy meet:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:23–26)

“The wooden beams outside Jerusalem frame the wondrous marriage between justice and mercy.”

The wooden beams outside Jerusalem frame the wondrous marriage between justice and mercy. Through the cross, God is both just and justifier, both just and merciful. On that dark and bloody hill, the terrifying justice of God became a servant of mercy for all who would believe. In Christ, justice is no longer a threat, but a refuge. All the sovereign power that would have ruined us now promises to protect us. “‘In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you,’” Isaiah 54:8 says, “‘but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord, your Redeemer.”

How could we feel the full weight of his mercy toward us if we tend to ignore or marginalize the fury of his justice?

Justice and Mercy for Me?

We know all of this about our God, and yet some reading this still struggle to believe that God will be so merciful. The guilt and shame they carry make everyday life feel heavy. They hate their sin, and have made efforts to be done with it, but are back on their knees, again and again, bearing the same painfully familiar confessions. The mercy they thought they’d found feels further and further from reality. Could God really forgive and love someone like me?

Others reading this, however, struggle to believe justice really will be done. Some days, it feels like their whole lives have been one long heart-rending headline. They watch the godless enjoy comfort, success, and prosperity, while they suffer for their faithfulness. They cling to the promise that everything will eventually be made right, but they search the corners and crevices of their lives in vain for evidence it might be so. And if they muster the courage to raise their eyes above their own plight, they see many more suffering in horrible, unjust ways. Could God possibly make anything good of all this pain and injustice?

We struggle to embrace the justice of God because we don’t trust him to fully deal with sins against us. We struggle to embrace the mercy of God because we don’t trust him to fully deal with sins done by us. To both groups, the bloody cross and the empty tomb stubbornly say, he can, he has, and he will. He will surely bring justice to completion. No stone in your life will go unturned. Every sin against you will be brought into the light and made right. Justice himself will call wickedness to account until he finds none (Psalm 10:15).

And in the meantime, he will not break a bruised reed. He won’t quench a smoldering wick. His mercy is as wide and deep as you are sinful. Our God is far more just than we realize, and far more merciful than we can now imagine.

“Don’t go to bed angry.” How many times have you heard some version of this marital proverb? Many bright-eyed couples hear it in premarital counseling and happily nod along in agreement. Those who’ve been married for a while may chuckle at the naivete. We’ll see if they’re still smiling and nodding in a few months.

Once you’re married, the counsel quickly becomes more complicated, uncomfortable, and costly. Sometimes, dealing with anger before bedtime can feel like finishing the basement before bedtime. My wife and I know firsthand, having fought hard over seven years to subdue our anger before exhaustion subdues us. Achieving a cheap, superficial peace may be easy enough, but meaningful reconciliation typically takes meaningful time and energy and, well, work.

The counsel really is good counsel, though, because it’s God’s counsel: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). The command covers all relationships, but marriage may be the hardest place to apply it. For many of us, marriage carries the most potential to make us most angry (or at least angry most often).

Counsel for Couples Battling Anger

This heightened tendency toward anger isn’t a defect in marriage. It’s actually a consequence of what makes marriage beautiful. Marriage has a higher and more consistent capacity for anger because marriage has a higher and more consistent capacity for intimacy. Sin hurts more when we’ve opened and entrusted all of ourselves to someone. The proximity and vulnerability can make even small sins feel like acts of war.

So how can couples fight to put their anger to bed? While many (rightly) turn to Ephesians 5 for a vision for marriage, the verses immediately before that chapter also hold valuable weapons in the fight to love each other well.

1. Anger is a good emotion that we often express sinfully.

Be angry. (Ephesians 4:26)

You won’t often hear those two words together in premarital counseling (or any counseling, for that matter). Before we try to put away our anger for the night, we need to remember that anger can be a healthy and godly response to evil.

“Many marriages suffer because we assume that anger is always bad — or that our anger is always justified.”

Many of us have developed a map of our emotional life in which anger is always out of bounds. We tend to assume that anger — especially any anger directed at us! — is unwarranted and wrong. This was my bent coming into marriage. God’s word to us, however, is not, “Never be angry,” but, “Be angry, and do not sin.” Has your marriage made room for some righteous anger over an offense? Does either of you ever say, “I was wrong. I sinned against you. And it’s right for you to be angry about that”?

Many marriages suffer because we assume that anger is always bad — or that our anger is always justified. Often, we assume the former when it comes to our spouse’s anger, and the latter when it comes to our own. The rest of chapter 4, however, puts checks on the anger that inevitably arises in marriage.

2. Strive to put away all anger.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. (Ephesians 4:31)

Wait, isn’t this a blatant contradiction? Didn’t Paul just say, “Be angry, and do not sin”? There is a tension here, but not a contradiction. Much of maturity and wisdom in marriage (and in the Christian life in general) is found in the ability to know when to apply seemingly opposite commands — when to correct offenses, and when to overlook them; when to speak, and when to stay silent; when to be angry over sin, and when to put away anger.

“Be angry over the sin in your marriage, and don’t go to bed angry.”

The message should be clear: anger has a place in healthy hearts, but it’s a limited and temporary place. It’s right to feel angry over evil, but only within a life that’s actively, persistently laying anger aside — and not just most anger, but all anger (“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger . . . be put away from you”). God gives even our righteous anger an expiration date — and that expiration date is today.

3. The 24-hour day is a mercy for marriages.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. (Ephesians 4:26)

Have you ever wondered why God made each day 24 hours long? Surely there are hundreds of good reasons, but he himself tells us at least one of them here: because it checks our anger and keeps it from breaking into a quiet wildfire. In this way, the 24-hour day is a great mercy for marriages. As the sun crosses the sky each day and begins to bury itself on the horizon, it steadily carries us toward reconciliation. It draws a line in the sand that forces us to choose between submitting to God and seeking reconciliation or refusing his counsel and coddling our hurt.

Many marriages suffer because we let offenses harden into bitterness that slowly erodes trust and intimacy over days, or weeks, or even months. Trust is the currency of intimacy. Spouses can squander that trust in big, obvious ways that we could all name. Trust is also squandered in more subtle ways, though, and perhaps the most common way is by carrying and stoking offenses. The initial hurt or anger may have been completely warranted, but the warrant has long expired, and yet the bitterness quietly remains and wounds and separates. So God pushes the sun around the earth, each and every day, to give us a golden opportunity to put away all our anger.

Let me add one important qualification here: full reconciliation may be unrealistic some days. Releasing our anger does not mean all is well in the relationship. That’s why in our home we talk about pursuing meaningful reconciliation before bed. A little bit of time and sleep can actually be great allies in the process. Insisting on full reconciliation in a short time often will just prolong the pain and discord (again, I’ve learned this firsthand). That doesn’t mean, however, that we should allow ourselves to harbor anger or settle for less than real forgiveness and reconciliation. It just means we’ll have to be patient at times for the warmth and harmony to fully return. The important lesson here is that both spouses resolve to regularly, even daily, put away all anger.

4. Unresolved conflict opens a door for the devil.

Be angry 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)

Maybe we would be quicker to resolve conflict in our marriages if we could see what Satan can do with unresolved conflict. It’s not simply that he can poke and stir unresolved conflict and make it worse over time; it’s that unresolved conflict gives him access to every other area of our marriages. An open wound in one area eventually bleeds onto every other area. Sleeping together gets harder. Praying together gets harder. Parenting together gets harder. Scheduling together gets harder. Serving together gets harder. Just existing together gets harder.

Many marriages suffer because they ignore the spiritual war against marriage. “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood” — including the flesh and blood lying beside us in bed — “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). Every marital battle is first and foremost a spiritual battle, and we’ll inevitably lose that battle if we think we’re only fighting each other.

5. Treat your spouse’s sin as Christ has treated yours.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

How many marital crises and divorces might have been averted if these fifteen words had really taken hold?

Notice, Paul doesn’t merely say, “Be kind and forgive one another,” but “Forgive as God has forgiven you in Christ.” God didn’t just overlook our sin and begrudgingly move on; no, his Son bore our griefs, he carried our sorrows, he received our thorns, he was crushed for our iniquities, he was wounded to heal our wounds, he was cursed, all so that we might be forgiven. So forgive as you’ve been forgiven. Nothing you or I suffer in marriage will ask or demand more of us than what Christ bore for our sake on the cross.

Many couples who have practiced this verse have made a startling discovery: conflict is actually an unusual opportunity for intimacy. Why? Because when we treat each other’s sin as Christ has treated ours, we both get to see and experience more of him. For sure, we get to see and experience him on the days when we get along, but how much more present and real does he feel when we extend and receive meaningful forgiveness, when we receive harshness with kindness, when we stay and love when we could reasonably leave?

The moments in marriage that make us most angry can become the clearest pictures of Christ and his church. What else could make a husband so kind, even now? What else would compel a wife to forgive him — again? Where else would a love so selfless, so patient, so resilient even come from?

So, husband and wife, be angry over the sin in your marriage, and don’t go to bed angry.

Few realities in human life are as captivating, fulfilling, and elusive as friendship. Most of us have tasted its deep and dynamic potential for good at some point along our journeys, and yet most of us can also testify to having neglected friendship, maybe for years. Maybe for decades. As Drew Hunter observes, “Friendship is, for many of us, one of the most important but least thought about aspects of life” (Made for Friendship, 23). How much time do you spend thinking about your friendships?

Many of us give our friendships less attention than they deserve, and we suffer for it. The absence of good friends slowly starves everything else we do. A husband without good friends will be a worse husband. A mother without good friends will be a worse mother. A pastor, a doctor, a teacher, and an engineer will all be less effective at their callings without the support and camaraderie of friends. And this thread weaves quietly through Scripture. How many saints can you think of who do something worth imitating while friendless?

To be sure, Jesus stormed the grave by himself. It had to be so. And yet even he spent most of his life and ministry with a handful of guys. And as the cross drew near, he said to them, “No longer do I call you servants . . . but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). He may have died alone, but he lived among brothers, because friendship is an essential part of being fully human.

Unnecessary and Vital Love

That being said, friendship is an unusual relationship because it’s not essential to existence. It’s why friendship is so often neglected — and, ironically, why it holds so much power and potential.

C.S. Lewis writes, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival” (Four Loves, 90). We spend tens of hours a week on work because we would die without food and shelter. Friendship isn’t feeding the kids or paying the mortgage. But it can make parenting richer and more bearable, and make a home feel a lot more like home.

We may be able to live — to eat, drink, work, sleep, and survive — without friends, but what kind of life would that be? The truly good life, we all know by experience, is a shared life. Lewis goes on,

Our ancestors regarded Friendship as something that raised us almost above humanity. This love, free from instinct, free from all duties but those which love has freely assumed, almost wholly free from jealousy, and free without qualification from the need to be needed, is eminently spiritual. It is the sort of love one can imagine between angels. (98)

“We may be able to eat, drink, work, sleep, and survive without friends, but what kind of life would that be?”

Unnecessary and angelic — this describes the mysterious reality of friendship. It raises, or even removes, the ceiling on all our other experiences. Most of what we love to do, we love to do all the more with friends. Those who find meaningful friendship experience a nearly super-human life. Why? Because they get to see more of God, and because they get so much more done, together.

Personal Windows into God

How does Christian friendship raise us above the unremarkable rhythms of our humanity? First, by intimately introducing us to more of God’s creativity and supremacy. Those who see him together will see more of him. Lewis captures this capacity of friendship when he writes,

Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. . . . The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have. (79)

The beauty and worth of God cannot be exhausted by one pair of eyes, by one finite mind and heart. Therefore, two really can see more than one. The more we share of him, the more we have of him. Surely, this is one reason why God plans to redeem people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, right (Revelation 7:9). Because whatever makes each of them unique prepares them to notice and treasure dimensions of Christ that millions of others might miss.

So it is in friendship. As we gaze at God together, over months and years and longer, walking through joys and sorrows, victories and losses, blessings and adversity, we get to see him through each other’s eyes. Worship is communal and contagious. Every human life has the potential to be a unique window into the divine. Because that’s who God is — Father, Son, and Spirit forever adoring and glorifying one another.

Courage in Flesh and Blood

As friendships help us see more of God, though, they also unleash us to live more radically for God. What good have any of us done in the world without the help or encouragement of friends? As you take yourself back through anything you’ve accomplished in life and ministry, and then allow yourself to look around for a minute, what do you see? For many of us, we see faces. The most defining moments of our lives have been most defined not by addresses, degrees, or promotions, but by people — often, by friends.

Hunter highlights the unusual and spiritual productivity of friendship:

One of the greatest gifts we can offer our friends is sheer encouragement. As we listen and light up to their ideas, we stir their souls into action. We lift their hearts and spur them on. Much of what is truly good in the world is the fruit of friendship. (71)

Why did Jesus send the disciples out in twos (Mark 6:7)? Perhaps he was concerned for their safety on the road (a kind of grown-up buddy-system). It seems far more likely to me that he wanted them each to have built-in, by-their-side courage to keep going when ministry got hard. He knew they would do far more good as twelve pairs than they would on twenty-four different paths. He knew they would conquer sin and Satan together in ways they couldn’t alone.

Friendship Isn’t About Friendship

These two insights about friendship — that friends helps us see more of God and that they free us to do more for his glory — explain what makes friendship precious. And what makes it possible. Good friendships, after all, aren’t about friendship, which means we won’t experience them by focusing on them. Again, Lewis, wisely observes,

Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly every about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some interest. (78)

“Good friendships aren’t about friendship, which means we won’t experience them by focusing on them.”

Lovers often find one another looking for love. Friends find one another while chasing something else. They providentially collide while striving after God, while studying his word, while loving their families, while meeting needs in the church, while discipling younger believers, while pursuing the lost. “The very condition of having Friends,” Lewis continues, “is that we should want something else besides Friends. . . . Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers” (85).

If you want to experience real friendship, go hard after God, take bigger risks to glorify him with your life, and then look around to see who’s running with you.