When Jeremiah doubted, he did not try to solve his problems on his own. Instead, he committed his cause to the Lord. For him, this meant praying that his cause would be vindicated. Our case may be different, but the principle is the same: if we believe that God is with us and has the power to help us, then we should ask him for the help that only he can give.

Jeremiah 20 is the prayer of a suffering believer. Imagine the prophet in solitary confinement—weakened with physical pain, exhausted by emotional turmoil, fearful of what tomorrow might bring. Now hear the first words out of his mouth. They come in the form of an invocation to Almighty God. “O Lord,” the prophet cries. “O Lord!” (Jer. 20:7).
God always invites us to take our troubles straight to him. This is what godly people have done throughout history. It is what Job did on the ash heap, when he was grieving the death of his loved ones (Job 1:21). It is what David did in the cave, when he was hiding from King Saul (Ps. 57). It is what Jonah did in the belly of the great fish, when he ran away from God (Jonah 2). It is also what Jesus did on the cross, when he was suffering for our sins and felt separated from his loving Father. “My God!” he cried out. “My God, my God” (Matt. 27:46).
Even when we think that God is the problem and not the solution, as Jeremiah did—even when we think he is incriminated by what we are experiencing—we should talk things over with him. In every dark night of the soul, we should take our troubles to the secret place and meet with God in prayer. Where else can we open our hearts so freely? Who else could possibly address our concerns? There is never any need for us to hide our feelings. We can always take our struggles to the Lord in prayer.
Praying and Praising in Prison
Something amazing happened to Jeremiah as he prayed that night in prison: he began to take heart. Somehow, the Holy Spirit was ministering to his soul. Suddenly—and totally unexpectedly—
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We can pray for the help of the Holy Spirit. We need God’s help to believe God’s word. One of the most important claims the Bible makes about itself is that it was “breathed out” by God the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16; cf. 2 Pet. 1:21). The Spirit of God is not a subjective feeling but a living, supernatural person—someone who has the divine power to confirm our minds and hearts in the truth of Scripture. John Calvin wrote beautifully about the Spirit’s work in his famous Institutes.

When We Have Doubts
If we are honest, we have to admit that what happened to Eve is a temptation for us as well. Sometimes we have our doubts about the stories we read in the word of God, about its moral convictions and the promises it makes.
We know how truly human the Bible is, and we wonder if it is also fully divine. We question whether Adam and Eve were the parents of the entire human race. Can we square biblical teaching with scientific evidence? Our culture struggles with the Bible’s sexual ethics, and maybe we do as well: two sexes, two genders, and one definition of marriage, in which a man and a woman are united in a lifelong covenant. Is the Bible right about the sanctity of life inside and outside the womb? Is it for or against women? Does it have a righteous view of justice, including racial justice? Does it give us a true perspective on the fundamental unity and the eternal diversity of humanity? Is it really true that our bodies will rise again and that we will all stand before God’s throne for judgment?
In the face of such questions and objections, many skeptics believe (!) that the Bible is “scientifically impossible, historically unreliable, and culturally regressive.”1 Most of us can relate. If we read the Bible carefully, eventually we encounter something we find hard to accept, and maybe difficult to believe at all. The question is this: What should we do when this happens?
By way of answer, here are several practical steps we can take to give us growing confidence in the word of God.
First, we can confess that we are not neutral observers but are predisposed not to believe what God says. This is one of the sad results of humanity’s first, morally fatal transgression. As soon as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they hid from God—a clear sign that they were no longer aligned with his divine holiness. God called to Adam and said, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). This showed that the first man had ended up far from God. Adam’s sin has noetic effects on all of us; in other words, it distorts our spiritual ability to reason. Spiritual doubt comes more naturally to the fallen human heart than genuine faith does. Missiologist Lesslie Newbigin reminds us: “We are not honest inquirers seeking the truth. We are alienated from truth and are enemies of it.”2 If this is true, then we need to doubt our doubts and stay skeptical about our skepticism.
Second, we can keep studying the Scriptures. When we do, we will find out how reliable they are. The Bible is easily the best-attested text from the ancient world. We have—by far—more well-preserved manuscripts of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments than we do of any other history book or sacred text from antiquity. We know what the Bible says.
Furthermore, the general trajectory of biblical scholarship is to confirm rather than to deny biblical history. To cite one notable example, some scholars used to cast doubt on the historicity of David, despite all the biblical evidence to the contrary. Those aspersions were set aside for good when archaeologists discovered a stone artifact at Tel Dan in 1993 and saw “the house of David” among its inscriptions. This proved that David’s reign was engraved in stone as well as written in Scripture. Or consider Luke’s assertion that Jesus was born “when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:2).
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There’s a beauty to the holiness of God. There’s a beauty when God exercises his righteousness. There’s a beauty to the love of God and the mercy of God. As we see God exercising those attributes in his relationships to human beings and what he’s doing in the world.

An Attribute and a Characteristic
Is beauty an attribute of God? Yes, and . . . . Beauty is clearly an attribute of God. That’s why the psalmist sometimes uses the term “beauty” to describe God. The beauty of God in his sanctuary in Psalm 96, or very famously in Psalm 27 when the psalmist expresses this desire to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to see him in his temple.
The Bible doesn’t hesitate, on occasion, to use the word “beauty” to describe God. So you can put beauty on your list with the goodness of God, the love of God, the mercy of God, and the righteousness of God.
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If the Bible stipulates certain things as beautiful, then there really is beauty in the eye of the Beholder, with a capital B. Almighty God is inexpressibly beautiful in his own being. One early theologian thus described him as “the all-beautiful,” “the superabundant source in itself of the beauty of every beautiful thing.”4 Beautiful in himself, God has also promised to “set beauty in the land of the living” (Ezek. 26:20). Whatever God sees and says is beautiful is beautiful! The Bible tells us so.

The Beauty of Eternity
Where have you seen the beauty that God is bringing into the world?
I have glimpsed it in a flaming meteor streaking across the August sky and disappearing with a flash over a darkly shimmering lake. I have heard it in the laughter of a baby girl climbing up into a chair for the first time and chortling over her unexpected little triumph. I have seen it in the face of a radiant bride on her wedding day and the irrepressible tear on the cheek of her beloved groom.
I have also seen beauty rising from the ashes of a burning world. Pastor Steve Wood bore witness to such beauty as he surveyed the ruins of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 2018. After a long legal battle, the congregation finally had secured possession of its church building. Then disaster struck. A few hours before worship services were scheduled to begin one fine Sunday morning, fire ravaged the church. Although rescue workers salvaged the cross, the baptismal font, and the Communion table, the building was a total loss. Yet as Pastor Wood stood in the smoking ruins, he said to a reporter, “The Lord promises to bring beauty out of ashes. And we’re taking Him at his word.”1
Beauty out of ashes. The promise that Pastor Wood had in mind comes from Isaiah the prophet, who foretold a suffering Savior, anointed by the Spirit to
provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty      instead of ashes,the oil of joy      instead of mourning,and a garment of praise      instead of a spirit of despair. (Isa. 61:3 NIV)
Even when his culture was crumbling, Isaiah had the faith to see beauty rising. He knew that one day God would restore his people to their forgotten splendor.
There is beauty all around us in this grace-filled, sometimes smoldering world, if only we have the eyes to see it. There is a basis for it in the beauty of our triune God and in what he calls beautiful. There is a purpose for it too. Beauty is our destiny. We were born to be beautiful—to behold the beauty of our God and to be so transfixed and transformed by it that we become beautiful ourselves.
What Is Beauty?
My simple goal is to awaken a longing for beauty and the eternal love of God that can be fully satisfied only in the face of Jesus Christ. My hope and prayer is that you will be able to look toward eternity and say, in all sincerity, what David said:
One thing have I asked of the Lord,      that will I seek after:that I may dwell in the house of the Lord      all the days of my life,to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord      and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)
Whether we know it or not, David’s one desire is also our deepest longing and enduring destiny. 
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We cannot bear to look at the crucifixion any more than we can bear to look at the worst sins and most painful sorrows in the world—or to look inside and see the darkness of our own depravity. The old, ugly cross therefore serves as a proof that Jesus did what he meant to do and put an end to all our sin.

Yet at the center of God’s plan for the beautification of the cosmos is an act of appalling ugliness and degrading humiliation that nevertheless took place according to “the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). I refer, of course, to the cross where Christ was crucified, as well as to what the Scripture says about the physical form of our Savior. If God is beautiful, if people made in his image are beautiful, and if the life of the Son he sent into the world is beautiful, then why does the Bible explicitly tell us that the Messiah, Jesus, was not beautiful? The prophet Isaiah could hardly be clearer on this point:
He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.Isaiah 53:2
The promised Christ was unattractive in his appearance. Indeed, the prophet says that Jesus “grew up” this way (Isa. 53:2), which implies that our Savior was more homely than handsome. Certainly, in his sufferings and death, Jesus became so physically disfigured that he was socially rejected. The horror of his cross thus screams against every sensibility of the divine aesthetic. It was so hideous that even the Father (in a manner of speaking, during the dark hours that his Son bore the guilt of our sin) looked away. Nevertheless, the Bible still tells us to look to Jesus on the cross for our salvation (e.g., Heb. 12:2).
Here we confront the paradox of the crucifixion, which was both the ugliest sin ever committed and the most beautiful sacrifice ever given. When we look at “the Passion and crucifixion of the Lord of glory,” writes Thomas Dubay, we witness “consummate splendor in monstrous horror.” There “at one and the same time we find supremely horrific ugliness and supremely divine and loving beauty.”1 In this paradox we also find our salvation, for the crucifixion of the Christ was the ugly sin that alone had the power to make this world beautiful again.
Why So Ugly?
To understand this shocking paradox, it will help us if we linger at the foot of the cross. Before rushing on too quickly to Easter Sunday and the triumph of the resurrection, we need to take a closer, harder look at the sufferings of our Savior.
What they did—what we did—to Jesus was ugly. It was ugly to betray that innocent man with a Judas kiss, ugly to put him— wrongly—on ecclesiastical and political trial, ugly to parade false witnesses against him and condemn him to die for crimes he did not commit—crimes that were not even crimes at all. It was ugly to mock him royally for claiming to be the King, to crown him with bloody thorns, to beat him, strike him, and spit in his face. Ugly too were the nails that pierced his hands and his feet, the game of chance to steal his last garment, the dark insults hurled against him in his dying hours, and the absolute agony of gasping for every breath—naked and afraid—as his life bled away.
According to the prophet Isaiah, these travails were so repulsive that people could not bear to look but despised the crucified Christ by hiding their faces (Isa. 53:3). This prophecy is especially profound when we consider how much Isaiah said throughout his writings about beauty and splendor. Of all the prophets, he was the most sensitive to beauty as the destiny of the people of God (see Isa. 62:3). Yet when he came to the saving work of the suffering servant, Isaiah saw it as so ugly that he turned away.
How ugly was the cross? It was as ugly as what Jesus was dying to deal with—as ugly as sin and death.
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You can be as “lucky” as the penitent criminal was, although the Bible teaches that salvation is not a matter of luck. Salvation is a matter of God giving his grace. You can receive that grace. You can meet Jesus at the cross the way the penitent criminal did. But you have to admit that you are sinful and confess that Jesus is sinless. You have to ask Jesus for the eternal, personal salvation that he offers.

The thief on the cross had to be the luckiest man alive. He was nothing more than a lowlife criminal, a loser. He had com- mitted a crime. He was convicted for it, and he was crucified for it. So he had no future; he was going nowhere; or, worse, he was going to hell. Yet of all the criminals, on all the crosses, on all the hills in the Roman Empire, he was crucified next to Jesus Christ.
Just before he died, just before he plunged into the abyss of eternity, at the last possible instant, he received the gift of eternal life. If he had died on any other cross, at any other time, in any other place, he would have been forgotten forever. But he did not die on any other cross, at any other time, in any other place. He died at the Place of the Skull, outside Jerusalem, on a cross right next to the cross Jesus died on. Because he died on that cross, he was able to ask for eternal life and hear the beautiful words that Jesus spoke from the cross: “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” He not only heard those words—he went to heaven that very day and has been there ever since.
If that sounds pretty lucky, you can be just as “lucky.” That penitent thief did not get anything from Jesus that you cannot get from him. You can meet Jesus at the cross the same way he did. You do not even have to be crucified for your troubles. But you do have to do three things this bandit did.
Facing Up to Sin
First, you have to admit you are a sinner. Salvation is for sinners. By sinner, I mean someone who lives life in rebellion against God. That rebellion includes everything you might think of as sin—like lying, stealing, adultery, and hypocrisy—and a few things you might not think of—like impatience, greed, pride, unforgiveness, and prayerlessness.
You might think it would be easy for a convicted criminal, dying on a cross, to admit that he is a sinner living in rebellion against God. Not so. There were two criminals who were crucified with Jesus, one on either side of him, but only one of them repented. The other criminal refused to admit he was a sinner. The Bible says, “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at [Jesus]: ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!’” (v. 39). There was no way he was going to admit he had done anything wrong. He was the kind of man who always looks for someone who is in worse shape than he is, someone he can kick when he is down. Even when he was dying a death by slow torture, he took advantage of his opportunity to pour abuse on the Savior of the world.
It is not easy for sinners to admit that they are sinners. It can be the hardest confession a sinner ever makes. We usually try to make ourselves feel better by finding someone who is worse than we are so we do not have to deal with our own guilty consciences. The minds of sinners are confused. They cannot see clearly into their own hearts. They do not realize how rebellious they are. They do not understand how much God hates sin.
That is what makes the confession of the penitent criminal, the criminal who became Jesus’s friend, so amazing. He said to the unrepentant criminal who was hurling insults at Jesus, “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.” He admitted he was a sinner. He admitted that it was right for him to die for his sins. He admitted that his crucifixion was only a matter of getting his just deserts.
He also admitted that his sins were an offense against God, not just an offense against humanity. Dying on a cross put the fear of God into him. It should have, because a sinner who lives in rebellion against God ought to be afraid of God. Your own con- science will tell you that you ought to be afraid of God . . . if you listen to it. This man listened to his conscience, and he was moved to admit that he was a sinner who deserved to die for his sins. He knew that he deserved not only a physical death at the hands of Rome, but also a spiritual death at the hands of God.
You cannot take your sins with you to paradise. If you want to go there, you have to admit that you are a sinner and thus take the first step to having them removed through faith in Christ.
Confessing That Jesus Is Sinless
You will also have to confess that Jesus was not a sinner. That is the second thing the penitent criminal did: he confessed that Jesus is the perfect Son of God. “We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41). Even though he himself was a sinner, he could tell that Jesus Christ was sinless. It was obvious to him that Jesus had done nothing wrong.
He seems to have figured that out while he was dying on his own cross. Remember the first thing Jesus said on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
The penitent criminal heard those words, and he must have been moved by the forgiving heart of God that was revealed in Jesus’s prayer. He rightly concluded that a man who could pray for his enemies like that must be a perfect man.
In any case, what the penitent criminal said about Jesus was true. Jesus was innocent. He was illegally incarcerated, falsely accused, wrongfully convicted, and unjustly executed. It was the greatest miscarriage of justice the world has ever known. Study the teachings of Jesus, and you will see how good and true all his words were. Examine the biography of Jesus, and you will see how right and perfect all his actions were. The more you get to know Jesus, the clearer it becomes that he was the perfect Son of God. You must confess that Jesus is sinless if you want to get to paradise.
Asking for What Jesus Offers
There is one more thing you must do, and that is ask for the salvation Jesus offers. One of the remarkable things about Luke’s history of the two criminals crucified with Jesus is that both of them asked for salvation. Have you ever noticed this? “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at [Jesus]: ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!’” This man met Jesus Christ face to face at the cross; he asked for salvation, and he did not receive it! That fact should terrify us. It is possible to meet Jesus at the cross and fail to receive salvation!
How is that possible? Both thieves were bad men, and they both asked for salvation. So why didn’t they both receive salvation? How can it be that only one thief went to paradise?
For one thing, the unrepentant criminal was not sincere when he asked for salvation. He was insulting Jesus, abusing him with sarcasm. “Aren’t you the Christ?” he sneered. He was asking Jesus for salvation with his lips, but he was not trusting Jesus for salvation in his heart. He did not accept Jesus as King.
But there was another problem with his request. He was not asking for the salvation that Jesus actually offers. “Save yourself and us!” he said. That is to say, “Climb down off that cross and get me out of this mess!” He was not asking for eternal life so much as he was trying to save his skin. He was not trying to get salvation for his soul in the life to come; he was only trying to get protection for his body in the here and now.
Jesus could have delivered that criminal from the cross, of course, but he had more important things to do, like paying for the sins of his people, winning a permanent victory over death, and opening up the pathway to eternal life.
The penitent criminal who became Jesus’s friend and was invited to paradise must have understood some of these things because he did just the opposite of what the unrepentant criminal did: he asked Jesus for the salvation Jesus actually offers. He said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
The penitent thief was asking for an eternal salvation. He was asking for something from Jesus in the future, asking that Jesus would remember him when he came into his kingdom. He was not asking to be delivered from the temporary and momentary troubles of this life. He was asking for a lasting and permanent salvation.
The penitent thief also seems to have understood that he would have to wait for that salvation until Jesus had finished his business on the cross. Jesus could not have saved anyone if he had climbed down from the cross. That was part of the unrepentant criminal’s problem: he wanted Jesus to leave the cross. But Jesus had to stay on the cross to win salvation. He had to die first before he could save anybody. Only after he had finished dying for sins could he offer salvation.
The penitent thief was also asking for a personal salvation. Notice how he addressed the man next to him on the cross. He called him “Jesus.” That is not found anywhere else in the Gospels.
Usually people addressed Jesus as “Teacher” or “Master.” But this man, convicted criminal that he was, addressed Jesus intimately by his first name. He talked to him in a personal way because he was asking him for a personal salvation.
That is the kind of salvation to ask for because it is exactly the kind of salvation Jesus offers. When we hear what Jesus said on the cross to this penitent criminal, we think the important word is “paradise.” It is true that Jesus has gone to prepare a place in heaven for every sinner who repents (see John 14:1–6), but salvation is not really about paradise. What Jesus offers is better than paradise. He offers intimacy with himself. “Today you will be with me,” Jesus said. Being with Jesus is what makes paradise paradise. As that penitent criminal hung on his own cross, he finally found the personal relationship he had been waiting for his whole life—a personal, intimate love relationship with the living God.
You can have the same thing. You can be as “lucky” as the penitent criminal was, although the Bible teaches that salvation is not a matter of luck. Salvation is a matter of God giving his grace. You can receive that grace. You can meet Jesus at the cross the way the penitent criminal did. But you have to admit that you are sinful and confess that Jesus is sinless. You have to ask Jesus for the eternal, personal salvation that he offers. When you do, Jesus will give you the same answer he gave to the criminal: “I tell you the truth, . . . you will be with me in paradise.”
This is an excerpt taken from the reprinted edition of the book The Heart of the Cross by James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken. Originally published in 1999 by Crossway. Reprinted in 2022 by P&R Publishing in hardcover. Printed with permission.
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