In all likelihood, no song had ever touched the walls of this cell or drifted through its bars. Moaning, cursing, yelling — these were the usual sounds rising from the dark heart of the prison. Not singing.

And especially not at midnight. Here was the hour of gloom, the first long hallway in the mansion of night, darkness without the faintest shade of dawn.

The other prisoners couldn’t mistake the sound. Some had woken under the strange melody, certain they were lost in a dream. Others, catching the first notes, lay wondering whether madness had seized the two men. It had seized many a man in chains before. These, however, were not the howling strains of the mad.

Midnight made its lonely march, and still the men went on: beaten, bloodied, cuffed — and singing.

How Could They Sing?

The events of that day make the song of Paul and Silas all the more surprising. A mob had attacked the two missionaries after Paul cast out a demon from a slave girl (Acts 16:16–21). The city magistrates, dispensing with due process, stripped the men and oversaw their public beating before delivering them to the city’s jailer, who “put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks” (Acts 16:24).

Darkness fell, and then that strange sound rose:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. (Acts 16:25)

Praying we can fathom. Who among us would not cry out for deliverance from such an unjust dungeon? Yet Paul and Silas not only prayed, but sang. They tuned their heartache with a hymn, and met the darkness of midnight with a melody.

And as they did, they joined a great chorus of saints who sung by faith and not by sight. They joined King Jehoshaphat, who walked into war with praises rising (2 Chronicles 20:20–21). They joined Jeremiah, who gave his most bitter lamentation a tune (Lamentations 1–5). They joined psalmist after psalmist who, though feeling afflicted and forgotten, raised a “song in the night” (Psalm 77:6).

Again and again, the saints of God meet sorrow not only with prayer, but with song. So what did Paul and Silas see that freed their hearts to sing?

‘Our God still reigns.’

From one perspective, Paul and Silas’s day was a picture of perfect mayhem. Their spiritual power was slandered; their gospel trampled by a mob; their innocence silenced by injustice. They appeared like two victims caught in the chaos of a merciless, purposeless world.

But such was not their perspective. For Paul and Silas, all the day’s sorrows rested in the hand of a sovereign God. God had called them to Philippi through a midnight vision (Acts 16:9–10). Was he now any less sovereign in a midnight prison? God had used them in Philippi to save Lydia and her household (Acts 16:11–15). Had he discarded them now? No, prison could neither thwart the plans of God nor remove them from his sight; of this they were sure.

Years later, locked in yet another jail, Paul reminds the Philippian church of God’s surprising sovereignty:

I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. (Philippians 1:12–13)

God had taught Paul and Silas to see his good purposes wherever they looked, even when they looked through the bars of a prison cell. And he taught them not only to see those purposes, but to sing of them. And so he does with us.

“Songs send rhythm and order, harmony and progression into the suffering we do not yet understand.”

Even apart from the words, the very act of singing in sorrow defies the unbelief that would see no meaning in such pain. Songs send rhythm and order, harmony and progression into the suffering we do not yet understand — and so they testify, even in our deepest confusion, that our God still reigns.

‘Our God will deliver.’

If God reigns, then he can also rescue, no matter how protected the prison or how fast the chains. “Suddenly,” in the middle of Paul and Silas’s song, “there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened” (Acts 16:26). The Philippian authorities did not know, it seems, that the God of Paul and Silas had once shattered a prison far stronger than theirs.

Notice, however, that the men sang not after God shook the earth, but before. Why? Because they had rooted their deepest joys in a deeper deliverance. Consider what the imprisoned Paul goes on to write to his Philippian brothers:

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. (Philippians 1:18–20)

Paul knows God will deliver him — but the deliverance he hopes for rests on something deeper than “life or . . . death.” What kind of deliverance does he have in mind? Not first and foremost deliverance from sorrow, but deliverance from dishonoring Christ in his sorrow. Whether freed or chained, exonerated or executed, Paul was sure of this: by the Spirit’s power, “Christ will be honored in my body.” Therefore, he says, “I will rejoice” — and even sing.

God can deliver us from the sorrows that wrap round us like chains. He can heal diseases, restore relationships, save loved ones, and bury depression once for all. Yes, he can, and we rightly pray that he would. But we need something greater than deliverance from our sorrows — we need deliverance from dishonoring him in our sorrows. And in Christ, this is the deliverance he ultimately promises us here. So in every lonely midnight, we can sing of certain rescue: whether with a sound or broken body, whether in happiness or heartache, whether through life or death, sorrow will not steal our satisfaction in Christ.

“One day, we will sing to Jesus, unchained from every sorrow. Today, we sound his worth by singing even in our chains.”

One day, we will sing to Jesus, unchained from every sorrow. Today, we sound his worth by singing even in our chains.

‘Someone is listening.’

As Paul and Silas prayed and sang, Luke tells us, “the prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25). Perhaps they listened with annoyance, perhaps with surprise, perhaps even with wonder. Whatever the case, they listened. And soon, another person joins their song.

Once God shakes the prison, opens the doors, and unfastens the chains, the jailer falls down before Paul and Silas. “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). Paul and Silas reply, “Believe in the Lord Jesus.” Believe in the Savior worth singing to in sorrow. Believe in the Christ who gives midnight songs. Believe in the Lord who reigns and rescues. And so we read, “He rejoiced along with his entire household” (Acts 16:34). A new house sang Paul and Silas’s song.

Luke doesn’t tell us whether the jailer himself had heard the men singing, but the point is incidental. He could sense the men had singing hearts. And so with us: whether our literal songs reach the ears of others or not, they will hear what kind of hearts we have. Our friends and family, coworkers and neighbors will hear the difference between an inner grumble and a melody, between a sufferer caved in on himself and one who, miraculously, lifts his voice to God and his hand to others.

Everyone in the world knows something of sorrow. And oh how desperately they need to hear how God can fill our sorrows with song.

Suffer with Him in Song

Those who sing with Paul and Silas join a great chorus of saints, from Jehoshaphat and Jeremiah to Asaph and David. But the greatest in that chorus is Jesus.

On the night of his betrayal, after he had broken the bread and shared the cup, after he had washed his disciples’ feet and handed their hearts to the Father, he led the twelve in singing a hymn (Mark 14:26). He sent a melody into the darkest night; he wrapped his sorrow with a song. Nor did he stop singing, even as the mob cried “Crucify!” and injustice pierced his hands and feet. As he hung on the cross, he bled Psalms (Matthew 27:46; Luke 23:46; John 19:28).

Singing in sorrow, then, is one more way God conforms us to the image of his beloved Son. Here, as we suffer with him in song, Jesus teaches us to say, “Our God still reigns. Our God will deliver. And someone needs to hear of his surpassing worth.”

In a world of tolerance and pluralism, few truth claims taste as sour as this one: Jesus is the only way to God. Or as the apostle Peter so boldly says,

There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

Just one name for eight billion people? Just one Savior for almost seven thousand people groups? Just one heavenward path for men and women, young and old, urban and rural, Asian and American and African and European?

Peter, apparently, felt unashamed of the claim. “Let it be known to all of you,” he began (Acts 4:10). But what Peter proclaimed, many of us whisper, especially among those who take offense. “No other name” may sound fine in small group, but our voices can crack at a neighbor’s kitchen table. Embarrassment, not boldness, might mark even the lovers of Jesus’s name.

“Into this world of curse and sin, where half our house hangs over the cliff edge of judgment, God has given a name.”

Perhaps, then, we need help feeling the wonder that there is any name at all. Into this world of curse and sin, where half our house hangs over the cliff edge of judgment, God has given a name.

World with No Name

By all just reckonings, we ought to live in a world with no name.

We ought to walk east of Eden, with no promise of a coming son. We ought to toil under Pharaoh, with no outstretched arm to rescue. We ought to tremble before Goliath, with no David to sling his stones. We ought to hang our harps in Babylon, with no hope of a future song.

On our own, of course, we struggle to consent to such dismal oughts. We feel, even if we do not speak, not that we ought to perish, but that God ought to save. We sense that heaven, not hell, is humanity’s default destination. We talk of a hundred paths up the mountain because we assume, deep down, that most (if not all) deserve to reach the top.

Yet we feel, sense, and assume like this only when we feel, sense, and assume that our sin is smaller than God says. To those with slight views of sin, little could be more offensive than there being only one name. But for those who, like Job (Job 42:6), or Isaiah (Isaiah 6:5), or Peter (Luke 5:8), or John (Revelation 1:17), have found themselves thrust into the presence of the Holy One, little could be more wonderfully surprising.

Why should God send a sunrise to pierce our chosen darkness? Why should the Father rise and race to meet his wayward son? Why should Christ become our Hosea to redeem us from the brothel? Why should heaven’s blood be shed to win back heaven’s haters? Why should Jesus give his name to rescue crucifiers?

Only because the reckonings of heaven reach beyond mere justice.

There Is a Name

Now, hear again the words that so often offend or embarrass:

There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

The exclusivity of Jesus Christ does indeed sit at the center of Peter’s words, like a stone of stumbling or a rock of offense (Acts 4:11; Romans 9:33). Yet strewn around that stone are jewels so beautiful that Peter’s claim, so far from offending or embarrassing, ought to break the hearts of sinners and unloose the tongues of saints.

Name Given

There is . . . [a] name . . . given.

When the Son of God was born in Bethlehem, he was born into a world without a saving name. No name among Greece’s wise philosophers could save. No name in Rome’s expansive pantheon could save. Israel, of course, had long taken refuge in the name of Yahweh (Exodus 34:6–7). Yet even Yahweh waited for the day when he would give his name in a new way — and through it, a salvation far beyond the Jews’ imagination (Jeremiah 23:5–6; Joel 2:32).

Then on that lonely night, the God of heaven gave a name to lost and dying sinners. Unto us was born that day in the city of David a Savior, named Jesus Christ the Lord (Luke 2:11). Take heart, exiles of Eden. Have courage, slaves of Pharaoh. Lift up your heads, soldiers of Israel. Play your harps, prisoners of Babylon. Your God has come, and he has given you a name.

Under Heaven

There is . . . [a] name under heaven given among men.

God could have given this name to the Caesars and Herods of the world. He could have handed it to the wise and powerful. Or most likely of all, he could have entrusted it to the Jews alone. Instead, he gave a name under (all) heaven, among (all) men.

“Jesus’s name will meet the eastern sunrise. Jesus’s name will watch the western sunset.”

Wherever men and women live under heaven, however far the image of God has wandered, there this name must go. It must run beyond Jerusalem; it must reach past Judea; it must fly outside Samaria to find the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). As the psalmist sings, “From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised!” (Psalm 113:3).

So it is and will be in Jesus. His name will meet the eastern sunrise. His name will watch the western sunset. And everywhere in between, all people “will be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed” (Psalm 72:17).

For Salvation

There is . . . [a] name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

God has given a name. This name is for everyone under heaven. And here is God’s purpose, God’s desire, in giving that universal name: my people must be saved (Acts 2:21).

God saw fit to wrap salvation in the syllables of this name. “You shall call his name Jesus,” the angel told Mary, “for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). “God sees,” “God sympathizes,” “God strengthens” — any of these names would have been wonderful. But Jesus, “God saves” — or more literally, “Yahweh saves”? No wonder Mary marveled (Luke 1:46–55).

God did not send this name into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through it (John 3:17).

What a Glorious Name

So then, in Jesus, we hear the only name that saves. We can, if we want, nurture offense or embarrassment about God’s giving only one name. Or we can thank God for that name, treasure that name, and join God himself in spreading that name wherever it is not sung.

If we do, we join a mission that cannot fail. Hear God Almighty take up the longing of Psalm 113:3 and turn it into a prophetic promise, sealed twice over:

From the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:11)

His name will be great: in Zambia and New Zealand, in India and Iceland, in China and Colombia, and in the darkened streets of our own cities. And to that end, God has made us stewards of his sacred name. In Christ, we can shine the light that splits the darkness (Luke 1:78–79), lower the hand that lifts the fallen (Psalm 40:2), raise the snake that heals the bitten (John 3:14–15), and say the name that saves the sinner.

There is no other name given among men by which we must be saved. And oh what a glorious name it is.

A graduate student sits at a booth with friends, his second drink near empty. “Can I refill you?” the waiter asks.

A mother sees the chocolate as she reaches for her youngest’s sippy cup. She tries not to eat sugar in the afternoons, but she’s tired and stressed, and the children aren’t looking.

A father comes back to the kitchen after putting the kids down. Dinner is done, but the leftover pizza is still sitting out. The day has drained him, and another few pieces seem harmless.

Compared to the battles many fight — against addiction, against pornography, against anger, against pride — scenarios such as these may seem too trivial for discussion. Don’t we have bigger sins to worry about than the gluttony of secret snacks and third helpings?

And yet, food is a bigger battleground than many recognize. Do you remember Moses’s terse description of the world’s first sin?

She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6)

Murder did not bar Adam and Eve from paradise — nor did adultery, theft, lying, or blasphemy. Eating did. Our first parents ate their way out of Eden. And in our own way, so do we.

Garden of Eating

Food problems, whether large (buffet binging) or small (hidden, uncontrolled snacking), go back to the beginning. Our own moments before the refrigerator or the cupboard can, in some small measure, reenact that moment by the tree. And apart from well-timed grace from God, we often respond in one of two ungodly ways.

“Our first parents ate their way out of Eden. And in our own way, so do we.”

Some, like Adam and Eve, choose to indulge. They sense, on some level, that to eat is to quiet the voice of conscience and weaken the walls of self-control (Proverbs 25:28). They would recognize, if they stopped to ponder and pray, that this “eating is not from faith” (Romans 14:23). But they neither stop, nor ponder, nor pray. Instead, they tip their glass for another drink, snatch and swallow the chocolate, grab a few more slices. Wisdom’s protest avails little against the suggestion of “just one more.”

“Since Eden,” Derek Kidner writes, “man has wanted the last ounce out of life, as though beyond God’s ‘enough’ lay ecstasy, not nausea” (Proverbs, 152). And so, the indulgent drink and grab and sip and snack, forgetting that their grasping leads them, not deeper into Eden’s heart, but farther outside Eden’s walls, where, nauseous and bloated, they bow to the god called “belly” (Philippians 3:19; see also Romans 16:18).

Meanwhile, others choose to deny. Their motto is not “Eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19), but “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch” (Colossians 2:21). They frantically count calories, buy scales, and build their lives on the first floor of the food pyramid. Though they may not impose their diets on others, at least for themselves they “require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3) — as if one should see Eden’s lawful fruit and say, “I’m good with grass.”

If our God-given appetites are a stallion, some let the horse run unbridled, while others prefer to shut him up in a stable. Still others, of course, alternate (sometimes wildly) between the two. In Christ, however, God teaches us to ride.

Appetite Redeemed

Paul’s familiar command to “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1) comes, surprisingly enough, in the context of food (see 1 Corinthians 8–10, especially 8:7–13 and 10:14–33). And the Gospels tell us why: in Jesus, we find appetite redeemed.

“The Son of Man came eating and drinking,” Jesus says of himself (Matthew 11:19) — and he wasn’t exaggerating. Have you ever noticed just how often the Gospels mention food? Jesus’s first miracle multiplied wine (John 2:1–11); two of his most famous multiplied bread (Matthew 14:13–21; 15:32–39). He regularly dined as a guest at others’ homes, whether with tax collectors or Pharisees (Mark 2:13–17; Luke 14:1). He told parables about seeds and leaven, feasts and fattened calves (Matthew 13:1–9, 33; Luke 14:7–11; 15:11–32). When he met his disciples after his resurrection, he asked, “Have you anything here to eat?” (Luke 24:41) — another time, he took the initiative and cooked them breakfast himself (John 21:12). No wonder he thought it good for us to remember him over a meal (Matthew 26:26–29).

And yet, for all of his freedom with food, he was no glutton or drunkard. Jesus could feast, but he could also fast — even for forty days and forty nights when necessary (Matthew 4:2). At meals, you never get the sense that he was preoccupied with his plate; rather, God and neighbor were his constant concern (Mark 2:13–17; Luke 7:36–50). And so, when the tempter found him in his weakness, and suggested he make bread to break his fast, our second Adam gave a resolute no (Matthew 4:3–4).

Here is a man who knows how to ride a stallion. While some indulged, and others denied, our Lord Jesus directed his appetite.

Meeting Eden’s Maker

If we are going to imitate Jesus in his eating, we will need more than the right food rules. Adam and Eve did not fall, you’ll remember, for lack of a diet.

No, we imitate Jesus’s eating only as we enjoy the kind of communion he had with the Father. This touches the root of the failure at the tree, doesn’t it? Before Eve reached for the fruit, she let the serpent cast a shadow over her Father’s face. She let him convince her that the God of paradise, as Sinclair Ferguson writes, “was possessed of a narrow and restrictive spirit bordering on the malign” (The Whole Christ, 80). The god of the serpent’s beguiling was a misanthrope deity, one who kept his best fruit on forbidden trees. And so, Eve reached.

But through Jesus Christ, we meet God again: the real Maker of Eden, and the only one who can break and tame our appetites. Here is the God who made all the earth’s food; who planted trees on a hundred hills and said, “Eat!” (Genesis 2:16); who feeds his people from “the abundance of [his] house,” and gives “them drink of the river of [his] delights” (Psalm 36:8); who does not withhold anything good from his own (Psalm 84:11); and who, in the fullness of time, withheld not even the greatest of all goods: his beloved Son (Romans 8:32).

“We eat, drink, and abstain to the glory of God only when we, like Jesus, taste God himself as our choicest food.”

Unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus ate (and abstained) in the presence of this unfathomably good God. And so, when he ate, he gave thanks to the Giver (Matthew 14:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24). When he ran up against his Father’s “You shall not eat,” he did not silence conscience or discard self-control, but feasted on something better than bread alone (Matthew 4:4). “My food,” he told his disciples, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). He knew there was a time to eat and a time to abstain, and that both times were governed by the goodness of God.

We eat, drink, and abstain to the glory of God only when we, like Jesus, taste God himself as our choicest food (1 Corinthians 10:31; Psalm 34:8).

Direct Your Appetite

Admittedly, the line between just enough and too much is a blurry one, and even the most mature can fail to notice that border until they’ve eaten beyond it. Even still, between the overflowing plate of indulgence and the empty plate of denial is a third plate, one we increasingly discern and choose as the Spirit refines our heart’s palate. Here, we neither indulge nor deny our appetites, but like our Lord Jesus, we direct them.

So then, there you are, ready to grab another portion, take another drink, down another handful, though your best spiritual wisdom dictates otherwise. You are ready, in other words, to reach past God’s “enough” once again. What restores your sanity in that moment? Not repeating the rules with greater fervor, but following the rules back to the mouth of an infinitely good God. When you sense that you have reached God’s “enough” — perhaps through briefly stopping, pondering, praying — you have reached the wall keeping you from leaving the Eden of communion with Christ, that Food better than all food (John 4:34).

And so, you walk away, perhaps humming a hymn to the God who is good:

Thou art giving and forgiving,Ever blessing, ever blest,Wellspring of the joy of living,Ocean depth of happy rest!

This is the Maker of Eden, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if the real God is this good, then we need not grasp for what he has not given.

In the late summer or fall of 1525, sheets of thin sewn paper bounced across the English Channel, hidden in bales of cloth and sacks of flour. They passed silently, secretly, from the Channel to the London shipyards, from the shipyards to the hands of smiths and cooks, sailors and cobblers, priests and politicians, mothers and fathers and children. De-clothed and un-floured, the first lines read,

I have here translated (bretheren and sisters most dear and tenderly beloved in Christ) the new Testament for your spiritual edifying, consolation, and solace.

And then, a few pages later:

This is the book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son also of Abraham . . .

Here was the Gospel of Matthew, translated from the original Greek into English for the very first time. The entire New Testament would soon follow, and then portions of the Old Testament, before its translator, William Tyndale (1494–1536), would be found and killed for his work.

Reforming English

For centuries past, a normal Englishman might have thought God spoke Latin. England’s only legal Bible was a Latin Bible, translated over a millennium prior by the church father Jerome (who died in 420). For them, the Psalms were simply the songs of a foreign land. The Ten Commandments rumbled toward them with no more clarity than Sinai’s thunder. They knew, perhaps, that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us — but apart from bits and snatches, they had never heard him speak their language. Until now.

Over the following years, some would burn this book, and some would be burned for it. Some would smuggle this book into England, and some would cast it out. But the book itself, once translated, could not be forgotten. Illegal or not, the English Scriptures would find their way into English pulpits and English hearts, reforming England through its mother tongue.

And along the way, another reformation would take place — a reformation often overlooked, and yet, one could argue, just as far reaching. Tyndale’s translation would reform not only England, but English; it would shape the future not only of English religion, but of the English language. As biographer David Daniell writes, “Newspaper headlines still quote Tyndale, though unknowingly, and he has reached more people than even Shakespeare” (William Tyndale, 2).

Dangers of Translation

From a distance of five hundred years, we may struggle to grasp how the English Christian church could possibly oppose the English Christian Scriptures. For, amazingly enough, it was the church that banned and burned this book. The Catholic authorities of Tyndale’s day offered at least two reasons.

First, translation is inherently dangerous. In the early 1400s, a generation after John Wycliffe (1328–1384) had published the first English Bible (translated from the Latin Vulgate, however, rather than the Hebrew and Greek), the Constitutions of Oxford declared,

It is a dangerous thing, as witnesseth blessed St. Jerome, to translate the text of the Holy Scripture out of one tongue into another, for in the translation the same sense is not always easily kept. . . . We therefore decree and ordain, that no man, hereafter, by his own authority translate any text of the Scripture into English or any other tongue . . . and that no man can read any such book . . . in part or in whole. (God’s Bestseller, xxii)

“They could burn the book, and they could even burn the man, but they could not burn away the words so many heard.”

The priests and magistrates of Tyndale’s day enforced such laws with a vengeance, sometimes burning Christians alive simply for possessing the Lord’s Prayer in English. An English Bible, of course, posed more danger to a corrupt church than to a common Christian. Even still, such was their position: translation was simply too dangerous.

Our Rude and Rusty Tongue

Apart from translation itself being seen as dangerous, however, the idea of an English translation was considered “ridiculous.” “The English language, when Tyndale began to write,” says Daniell, “was a poor thing, spoken only by a few in an island off the shelf of Europe. . . . In 1500 it was as irrelevant to life in Europe as today’s Scots Gaelic is to the city of London” (The Bible in English, 248).

Though English sufficed for everyday communication, Latin dominated the highest spheres of life. Magistrates wrote in Latin. Professors wrote (and taught) in Latin. Literary works appeared in Latin. The clergy conducted their services in Latin. How then could the Bible be translated into English?

A poem from John Skelton, written in the early 1500s, captures the supposed absurdity of an English translation:

Our natural tong is rude,And hard to be enneude [revived]With pullyshed terms lusty;Our language is so rusty,So cankered and so fullOf frowardes [awkward words], and so dull,That if I wolde applyTo wryte ornately,I wot not where to fyndTerms to serve my mynde. (273)

Such a rude and rusty tongue could not carry the oracles of God. Or so the authorities thought.

Bible for Plowboys

William Tyndale grew up, along with every other boy his age, hearing the word of God in Latin. The Lord’s Prayer did not begin, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” but “Pater noster, qui es in caelis.” And like some other boys his age, he spent his school days preparing to speak that Latin word as a priest to the next generation.

But he never did — or at least not for long. We know few of the reasons Tyndale grew weary of a Latin-only religion and began to burn to read the Bible in English. Perhaps he noticed that, of all Europe in the 1520s, England alone had no legal vernacular translation (Bible in English, 249). Perhaps he heard about — and even read — Martin Luther’s groundbreaking German Bible, published in 1522. Perhaps he noticed all the Catholic corruption that only a mute Bible could endorse. And perhaps, as an extraordinary linguist himself, he heard far more potential in our English tongue than did the church of his day.

We do know, however, that when twentysomething Tyndale heard a certain man say, “We were better be without God’s law than the pope’s,” he answered, “I defy the Pope and all his laws. . . . If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough, shall know more of the scripture than thou dost” (William Tyndale, 79). The gospel of the Scriptures, Tyndale knew, “maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy” (123). But how would the plowboy sing if he understood not a lick of that gospel?

And so, Tyndale began to translate. He went first to London, to see if he could find any support for his work close to home. Finding none, he left London for the continent, and there set to work on a translation that would give the plowboy not only the Bible, but the Bible clothed in an English so fair it would endure for centuries.

Tyndale’s Translation

In the judgment of one scholar, Tyndale “was responsible almost single-handedly for making the native language, which at the start of the sixteenth century was barely respectable in educated circles, into the supple, powerful, sensitive vehicle it had become by the time of Shakespeare” (The King James Version at 400, 316). Another goes so far as to say, “There is truth in the remark, ‘Without Tyndale, no Shakespeare’” (William Tyndale, 158). Under Tyndale’s pen, English grew from callow youth to mature man, capable of expressing the subtleties and profundities of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

But how did he do it? By focusing all of his linguistic genius toward two great goals: “First,” Daniell writes, “to understand the Greek and Hebrew of the original Bible texts as well as it was then humanly possible to do. Secondly, to write in English that above all, and at all times, made sense” (92). Accuracy and clarity were Tyndale’s hallmarks, and they made for an English at once strangely new and strikingly familiar.

Moses Speaking English

First, Tyndale’s commitment to accuracy gave his English a strange newness. A foreign flavor clung to his English phrases, as if his language traveled abroad and came home with a new accent.

Sometimes, readers felt the change in the totally new words Tyndale coined to capture the meaning of the text. Intercession, atonement, Passover, mercy seat, scapegoat — these are all Tyndalisms, the work of a wordsmith in his forge. Alistair McGrath comments, “It can be seen immediately that biblical translation thus provided a major stimulus to the development of the English language, not least by creating new English words to accommodate biblical ideas” (The Word of God in English, 61).

Tyndale forged not only new words, however, but a new style, especially in his translations of the Old Testament. Striving for literalness, he crafted a kind of Hebraic English, as if Moses should speak English in the patterns of his native tongue. For example, strange as it may seem, the simple construction “the+noun+of+the+noun” — “the beasts of the field,” “the birds of the air” — came into English through Tyndale’s translation of a Hebrew form called the construct chain (William Tyndale, 285). Tyndale could have fitted this Hebrew form into existing English syntax; instead, he invented a new English form, and thus adorned our English with Hebrew robes.

“Following the syntactic contours of the Hebrew,” Robert Alter writes, “achieved a new kind of compelling effect, at once lofty and almost stark” (The King James Bible and the World It Made, 136). And more examples could be listed. The influence of Hebrew on our language (and to a lesser extent Greek), Daniell argues, is nothing short of “immense” (William Tyndale, 289) — and the credit is largely due to Tyndale. By grasping the original languages so tightly, he brought much of them back into English, to our great enrichment.

Scripture in Plain Language

Alongside that strange newness, however, was a striking familiarity, born from Tyndale’s commitment to clarity. His English may have traveled abroad, but it never lost touch with its roots — and particularly its Saxon roots.

Latin, as we’ve seen, dominated the respectable discourse of Tyndale’s England. Yet even when an author did write something important in English, he typically adopted a Latinate style, an English filled with abstract, polysyllabic words in complex syntax. As an example, Daniell offers the following excerpt from Lord Berner’s 1523 translation of a French history:

Thus, when I advertised and remembered the manifold commodities of history, how beneficial it is to mortal folk, and else how laudable and meritorious a deed it is to write histories . . . which I judged commodious, necessary, and profitable to be had in English . . . (Bible in English, 250)

Of the 46 words in this partial sentence, 11 consist of three syllables or more, 6 of those 11 reach into the four- or five-syllable range, and most of them lie under a fog of abstraction. Turn to Tyndale, either in his prose writings or his Bible translations, and you enter a different world — a world more Saxon than Latin, populated with short words and sentences that evoke images of real life. Here we find light, not illumination; eat, not ingest; grow, not cultivate; burn, not incinerate.

Latinate words have their place in English, of course, but Tyndale knew that “a homespun Anglo-Saxon vernacular” not only matched “the plain diction of the Hebrew,” but also that it spoke to the hearts of English readers and hearers (King James Bible, 137). He translated “in the language the people spoke, not as the scholars wrote” (William Tyndale, 3) — as, for example, in the familiar Christmas story of Luke 2:

And there were in the same region shepherds abiding in the field, and watching their flock by night. And lo: the angel of the Lord stood hard by them, and the brightness of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them: Be not afraid: Behold I bring you tidings of great joy, that shall come to all the people: for unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:8–11)

Of the 87 words in this passage, only one reaches three syllables (abiding). Here was a language familiar and warm, a world of words where even a plowboy could feel at home. And yet, at the same time, here was a beautiful language, a “fountain from which flowed the lucidity, suppleness and expressive range of the greatest prose thereafter” (William Tyndale, 116).

Our Wonderful Tyndalian Tongue

In 1611, 86 years after Tyndale’s partial New Testament was smuggled into England, a new English Bible appeared, a Bible that would so win the hearts of English-speaking Christians that, for three centuries, you could almost call it the English Bible. And yet, remarkably, most of the King James Version belongs to Tyndale’s pen: 84 percent of the New Testament comes from his translation, along with 76 percent of the Old Testament books he finished before he died (God’s Bestseller, 1). The translators of 1611 were so indebted to his pioneering work that C.S. Lewis could say of the KJV, “Our Bible is substantially Tyndale” (Word of God in English, 60).

“With Tyndale’s Bible came reform — theologically and spiritually, but also linguistically.”

No wonder Daniell writes, “Tyndale’s gift to the English language is unmeasurable” (William Tyndale, 158). Through his own translation, and then through the KJV, Tyndale — a hunted, solitary translator eventually martyred for his work — would tutor poets and playwrights, politicians and pastors, in “the sounds and rhythms as well as the senses of English” (2). Tyndale gave us an English worth speaking and writing, and not only in everyday conversations and informal documents, but in the most precious matters of life and death.

Still today, we feel his driving influence whenever we read or hear the English Standard Version, whose translators note that “the words and phrases . . . grow out of the Tyndale–King James legacy.” But his influence goes far deeper, down into the instincts and thought worlds of all English speakers. We speak English like fish swim in water, rarely noticing the qualities of the language in which we live and move and have our being (there’s a Tyndale phrase, Acts 17:28). As David Norton writes, “It is difficult to imagine how our language would have been without the Tyndale tradition embodied in the KJV — in large part because we are so accustomed to the language we have and therefore find it difficult to observe” (King James Version, 21).

We do know, however, that English is no longer the rude and rusty tongue John Skelton thought it was. With Tyndale’s Bible came reform — theologically and spiritually, but also linguistically. They could burn the book, and they could even burn the man, but they could not burn away the words so many heard. Under God, Tyndale gave the English-speaking world the gospel of justification by faith alone, and in doing so, he gave us a new tongue to sing of it.

If you are in Christ, you have been justified — eternally, irreversibly, gloriously.

God has spoken his everlasting sentence over your soul. Through faith alone (Romans 5:1), on the basis of the death and life of Jesus Christ alone (Romans 5:9), you are not guilty, but righteous; not hell-bound, but heaven-bound; not condemned, but justified. You need no longer wonder what judgment day holds. Though men, devils, and a disordered conscience may accuse, there is therefore now no condemnation for you (Romans 8:1). Let your soul sigh with relief: you have been justified.

And yet, surprising though it may sound, you also will be justified. As the apostle of justification himself writes, “Through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Galatians 5:5) — a statement that seems to suggest some future dimension to the righteousness God reckons to us in Christ. In him, we have righteousness, and we hope for righteousness; we have been justified, and we will be justified.

For many, I suspect, the future dimension of justification startles us at first, like a constellation we’d never noticed before. But rightly understood, it makes the sky of our heavenly hope burn all the brighter.

Salvation Already — and Not Yet

To say we both have been and will be justified may sound like double-talk. How can justification happen in both the past and future tense? But the New Testament authors, and Paul especially, talk this way all the time.

We have been adopted (Romans 8:14–16) — and we will be (Romans 8:23).
We have been resurrected (Ephesians 2:4–6) — and we will be (1 Corinthians 15:22).
We have been redeemed (Colossians 1:13–14) — and we will be (Ephesians 4:30).
We have been sanctified (1 Corinthians 1:2) — and we will be (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
We can even say we have been glorified (Romans 8:30; 2 Corinthians 3:18) — and we will be (Colossians 3:4).

“If you are in Christ, you have been justified — eternally, irreversibly, gloriously.”

We tend to cast the benefits of salvation in chronological order: we have been justified, we are being sanctified, and we will be glorified, for example. But as Sinclair Ferguson writes, “We cannot think of, or enjoy, the blessings of the gospel either isolated from each other or separated from the Benefactor himself” (The Holy Spirit, 102). In other words, the benefits of salvation are less like links in an abstract chain and more like spokes attached to the hub of Christ himself (see Saved by Grace, 16, for a helpful visual). “Every spiritual blessing” lives in Christ (Ephesians 1:3), and because we ourselves are in Christ, every spiritual blessing in one sense is already ours.

And in another sense, every spiritual blessing is not yet ours. “In the New Testament,” Ferguson continues, “there remains a yet-to-be consummated aspect to every facet of salvation” (102–3) — justification included.

Future Justification

Speaking of future justification calls for care, of course. So much of justification’s power lies in the past tense. “We have been justified” (Romans 5:1), Paul says — and he means it. And yet, some future dimension of justification awaits.

We have already noted, for example, Paul’s words in Galatians 5:5: “We ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” We might also mention Paul’s teaching (echoing Jesus) that everyone, believers included, “will stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10; see also 2 Corinthians 5:10). If God’s justifying verdict were only past, why would Christians need to appear at God’s judgment seat? More than that, we have another biblical clue that justification is, in one sense, still future — a clue that may seem surprising: our bodies still decay and die.

In the beginning, Paul reminds us, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12). Death is not the natural end to life’s natural process. Death is penalty and punishment, the unnatural end to life under sin. Every headstone stands as a silent witness to God’s judicial sentence over sinful man: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

In other words, death is the just end of the unjustified. And though, in Christ, we really have been justified, we still die as if we haven’t been, as if we were still under the same sentence of condemnation. Our bodies, “dead because of sin” (Romans 8:10), await the day when we who have received “the free gift of righteousness” will “reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17).

Raised and Justified

The connection between death and condemnation deepens the darkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Every drop of blood from the cross, and then every hour in the tomb, seemed to confirm the Pharisees’ claim that “this man is a sinner” (John 9:24). “As long as he remained in a state of death,” Richard Gaffin writes, “the righteous character of his work, the efficacy of his obedience unto death remained in question, in fact, was implicitly denied” (Resurrection and Redemption, 121). If the stone had never rolled away, Jesus would have remained slain among the unjustified.

But the stone did roll away, such that Paul can sing, “He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit” (1 Timothy 3:16). The word vindicated here is the same word for justified, suggesting that, in a sense, Jesus’s Spirit-wrought resurrection served to justify him — to declare to all that the so-called “sinner” on the cross was in truth “the Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14). Despite his enemies’ slander, Jesus never sinned. Therefore, Peter says, “It was not possible for him to be held by [death]” (Acts 2:24). Death, unable to imprison a sinless man, was forced to bow before Christ’s resurrected feet.

Resurrection, then, testifies that the Genesis 3 death sentence no longer rests over a person, that he or she is now in the right with God, and therefore fit to dwell with him in the land of the living. In Christ, of course, we too have been resurrected (Ephesians 2:4–6) — but only in spirit, not yet in body. Which means our justification is both already and not yet. As Gaffin writes,

As believers are already raised with Christ, they have been justified; as they are not yet resurrected, they are still to be justified. . . . “The outer man,” subject to decay and wasting, mortal and destined for death, still awaits justification in some sense. (By Faith, Not by Sight, 98–99)

For now, God’s justifying verdict lies veiled beneath our bent and broken bodies. But one day, “when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:54), our justification will become plain to all.

Our Cosmic Acquittal

The Westminster Shorter Catechism helps us picture that day: “At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment” (answer to question 38).

God has already “acknowledged and acquitted” us on the basis of Jesus’s death and resurrection. But he has not yet done so “openly.” As Dane Ortlund writes, “The open manifestation and vindication of already justified sinners is not yet placarded before a hostile world” (“Inaugurated Glorification,” 119). For now, we live in a world that opposes and denies our justification. The devil still accuses us. Conscience unfairly condemns us. Our bodies wrinkle, weaken, and eventually die under the death penalty of sin. But not so forever.

On the day of judgment, we will stand before God and all the world, our risen bodies testifying that we are no longer dust destined for dust, but glory headed for glory (1 Corinthians 15:48–49). The “accuser of our brothers” (Revelation 12:10) will have his mouth shut, finally and forever. Conscience will no longer clamor; enemies will no longer slander. And most importantly, God himself, having already claimed us in Christ, will trumpet his righteous pleasure as far as east is from the west (Matthew 25:21). Openly and publicly, he will justify us.

That future day will not serve as a second justification, as if the first were somehow tentative and uncertain. Nor will it rest on any other basis than Christ alone — though Spirit-wrought good works will play their role as public witnesses of saving faith (2 Corinthians 5:10). That day will simply consummate the justification God has already declared over us in Christ. The song ringing in our hearts will resound throughout the cosmos (Romans 5:5).

We Eagerly Wait

In the galaxy of our heavenly hope, here is a star to see and savor. We will not only be raised, saved, adopted, and welcomed home on the last day; we also will be openly justified. Oh to say with the apostle Paul, “We ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Galatians 5:5).

“We will not only be raised, saved, adopted, and welcomed home on the last day; we also will be openly justified.”

Paul himself tells us how to join him in his eager waiting: “Through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait . . .” Doug Moo summarizes Paul’s meaning: “It is by appropriating and living out of the power of the Spirit that believers confidently wait for the ultimate confirmation of their righteous status before God” (Galatians, 329). One day, the Spirit will raise our buried bones, sew joint and sinew back together, and present us for public justification, as the universe watches. In the meantime, the same Spirit grows our confidence for that day by slowly making us more righteous now.

We will never become perfectly righteous in this world. Far from it. But the only people who “eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” are those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” to fill our words and deeds, our thoughts and feelings (Matthew 5:6). And so, as long as we live here, walking in a broken body upon a broken earth, we strive for righteousness, waiting for the day when God will openly crown us with the righteousness already ours in Christ.

Come, follow closely, and gaze for a moment upon a rare creature in his native habitat.

There he is, drooling upon his pillow an hour before lunchtime, creaking over the bedsprings like a door on its hinges. “How long will you lie there? When will you arise from your sleep?” his mother shouts from the kitchen. Quiet, now: she has roused him. Here he comes, stumbling into his chair, and begins to feed. “What’s wrong with a little sleep, a little slumber?” he mumbles between mouthfuls. A dozen handfuls later, however, he stops, his hand submerged in his cereal like a sunk boat. He breathes heavily, chin against his chest, and begins to snore again.

Meet the sluggard (Proverbs 26:14; 6:9–10; 19:24). He is a figure of “tragi-comedy,” Derek Kidner writes (Proverbs, 39): comedy, because the sluggard’s laziness makes him ludicrous; tragedy, because only sin could so debase a man. The image of God was never meant to yawn through life.

Yet those who are paying attention will also see something more in this tragi-comic sloth: themselves. We all have an inner sluggard, counseling us to sleep when we should rise, rest when we should work, eat when we should move. “The wise man,” Kidner goes on to write,

knows that the sluggard is no freak, but, as often as not, an ordinary man who has made too many excuses, too many refusals, and too many postponements. It has all been as imperceptible, and as pleasant, as falling asleep. (40)

We don’t need to look far, then, to see the sluggard in his native habitat. We only need to hear his “excuses,” “refusals,” and “postponements,” and then listen for their inner echo.

‘I need just a little more.’

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. (Proverbs 6:10; 24:33)

The words sit in the mouth of the sluggard more than once in Proverbs. They are, perhaps, his motto, his favorite response to the wisdom of the diligent. “Early to rest, early to rise . . .” they tell him; “A little sleep, a little slumber . . .” he answers.

“An ordinary man becomes a sluggard one small surrender at a time.”

Sluggishness often hides beneath that eminently reasonable phrase “just a little more.” What harm could a little do? What’s one more snooze cycle? What’s one more show? What’s one more refreshing of the timeline? Not much, in itself: but much indeed when piled atop ten thousand other littles and one mores. They may seem like “small surrenders” (to use a phrase from Bruce Waltke, Proverbs, 131) — and they are. But an ordinary man becomes a sluggard one small surrender at a time.

How do the wise respond? They know that diligent Christians are not a special species of saint. Like the sluggard, the diligent daily face unpleasant tasks. Unlike the sluggard, the diligent speak a different motto: “A little labor, a little energy, a little moving of the hands to work.” Instead of building a stack of small surrenders, they build a stack of small successes — taking little step by little step in the strength that God supplies.

Over time, how we handle little is no little matter. Little drudgeries, little tasks, little opportunities: these are the moments when the sluggard gains ground in our souls, or loses it.

‘There’s always tomorrow.’

The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing. (Proverbs 20:4)

Often enough, “just a little more” achieves the sluggard’s purpose. But if, for some reason, his conscience should protest, he has another word at his disposal that rarely fails: tomorrow.

Autumn was the season for plowing and planting in ancient Israel, and summer the season for harvest. We don’t know exactly why the sluggard took it easy while his neighbors plowed their fields. Maybe the difficulty of the task daunted him, or maybe, as the King James Version suggests, the season’s chill deterred him: “The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold.” Either way, he no doubt fell asleep on many autumn nights warmed by the thought, “There’s always tomorrow” — until one day he woke up in winter.

When the sluggard finally arrived at his chosen tomorrow, the time for plowing and planting had escaped his grasp. How often have we too discovered that tomorrow is too late? The conversation we should have initiated yesterday proves more awkward today. The essay we should have begun last week overwhelms us this week. The forgiveness we should have sought last month feels harder to seek this month. Autumn has passed, winter has come, and opportunity has slipped through our fingers.

The wise learn to take the farmer’s view of life: when the time comes to plow, a farmer pays more attention to the season than to his feelings. And when the time comes to tackle our own difficult tasks, the wise do the same.

‘I would be putting myself at risk.’

There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets! (Proverbs 22:13; see also 26:13)

Indulging a bad excuse is a little like feeding a pigeon: give bread to one, and twenty more will soon coo at your feet. Bad excuses breed bad excuses — and even worse excuses over time. And so, when a friend, family member, or boss refuses to entertain the sluggard’s littles and tomorrows, he takes more radical measures: “Haven’t you seen the lion roaming the streets? I’ll die!”

Did any sluggard ever attempt such an excuse? Maybe. “Laziness is a great lion-maker,” says Charles Spurgeon. “He who does little dreams much. His imagination could create not only a lion but a whole menagerie of wild beasts” (“One Lion: Two Lions: No Lion at All”). For our own purposes, however, we can consider a tamer version of the sluggard’s beast: “I would be putting myself at risk.”

To our inner sluggard, a scratch in the throat is cause for a sick day, a little tiredness is reason to nap instead of mow, and a long day at work is justification for skipping small group. After all, our bodies and minds need the rest, don’t they?

Care is required here, of course. Some people really do work their bodies into the dust, forsaking the rest God gives and “eating the bread of anxious toil” (Psalm 127:2). The sluggard, however, is prone to label as “anxious toil” any work that meets with inner resistance. He forgets that overcoming such resistance is part of what makes diligence diligence.

God made our bodies to bend and strain, our minds to crank and labor, our souls to strive and press. The lion called “Lazy” will counsel us to avoid the strain, but diligence will slay the lion.

‘What do you know about the pressures I’m under?’

The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly. (Proverbs 26:16)

Confront a sluggard in his sluggishness, and you may find that he has a penchant for euphemisms. “He has no idea that he is lazy,” writes Kidner on Proverbs 26:13–16.

He is not a shirker but a “realist” (13); not self-indulgent but “below his best in the morning” (14); his inertia is “an objection to being hustled” (15); his mental indolence a fine “sticking to his guns” (16). (Proverbs, 156)

Our own sluggishness, then, often appears in our defenses against the charge. Once, as a single man, I told a mentor, “I need more time to myself.” “You don’t need it,” he responded. Immediately, I raised the drawbridge, manned the ramparts, and launched inward mortars against the attack. What could he, a husband and father of three, possibly know about the pressures I was under? The self-defense is laughable now, but back then, wise in my own eyes, I couldn’t accept that much of what I called “alone time” was better labeled “sluggishness.”

The sluggard sees his own work as the hardest work, his own excuses as the best excuses, his own diversions as the most reasonable diversions — no matter what his friends, wife, or pastor may say. But the wise learn to develop a self-distrustful posture. Rather than responding to requests or challenges with an inward Don’t you see my burdens? they remember their proneness to folly, and learn to call the sluggard by his real name.

The Christian and the Sluggard

Between the Christian and the sluggard, Spurgeon says, “there should be as wide a division as between the poles.” He’s right. “Christian” and “sluggard” go together like “husband” and “playboy,” like “judge” and “thief”: the latter destroys the integrity of the former.

“In Christ we find our pattern for work. In Christ we find our power for work. And in Christ the sluggard dies.”

And why? Because Christians belong to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was not sluggish. He was no workaholic, of course: he could feast, rest, sleep, and develop deep relationships. But oh did he work. In the Gospels we find not the sluggishness but “the steadfastness of Christ” (2 Thessalonians 3:5): the diligence of one who never entertained “just a little more” or “tomorrow,” but worked while it was day (John 9:4). He plowed in the autumn cold of life, forsaking every excuse not to save us. And he never cried “lion!” though he walked into the den (Psalm 22:21).

Therefore, the apostle Paul can say to the sluggish, “Such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work” (2 Thessalonians 3:12). In Christ we find our pattern for work. In Christ we find our power for work. And in Christ the sluggard dies.

“The child of God has two great marks about him . . .” So writes J.C. Ryle in his classic book Holiness. How would you finish the sentence?

Faith and repentance? Love and hope? Praise and thanksgiving? Humility and joy? I’m not sure what I would have said before reading Ryle, but I know I would not have finished the sentence as he does:

The child of God has two great marks about him. . . . He may be known by his inward warfare, as well as by his inward peace. (72)

Warfare and peace. Combat and rest. The clash of armies and the calm of treaties. The Christian may have more marks about him than these two, but never less. He is a child in the Father’s home, and he is a soldier in the Savior’s war.

That sentence would play no small role in saving me from despair.

Parachuting into War

When I entered the Christian life, I had no idea I was walking into war. I felt, at first, like a man parachuting over the glories of salvation — finally awake to Christ, finally safe from sin, finally headed for heaven. But soon I landed in a country I didn’t recognize, amid a fight I wasn’t ready for.

The conflict, of course, was within me. I had never felt such inner division: my soul, which for a few months had felt like a land of peace, became a field of war — trenches dug, battle lines drawn. I found myself assailed by doubts I hadn’t faced before: How do you know the Bible is true? How do you know God is even real? The more I killed sin, the more I seemed to discover hidden pockets of sin — subtle, camouflaged sins crawling through forests of tangled flesh: self-flattering fantasies, knee-jerk judgments against others, unruly and sometimes wicked thoughts, fickle affections for God. I still enjoyed a measure of peace in Jesus, but it felt now like peace under siege.

“The same gospel that brings peace with God brings war with sin.”

Something must be wrong, I thought. Surely a Christian wouldn’t face darkness this black, division this deep. Surely, then, I’m not a Christian. For a season, I no longer called God Father, fearful of presuming that such an embattled one as I might belong to him.

Christianity Fights

Then came Ryle. In a chapter simply and aptly titled “The Fight,” he proved to me, with arresting intensity, that “true Christianity is a fight” (66), and every saint a soldier. “Where there is grace, there will be conflict,” he wrote with his manly matter-of-factness. “There is no holiness without a warfare. Saved souls will always be found to have fought a fight” (70).

A battery of biblical texts followed — texts I had known on some level, yet clearly hadn’t known on another.

“Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12).
“Put to death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13; see also Colossians 3:5).
“Put on the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:11).
“Abstain from the passions of your flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11).
“Watch and pray” (Matthew 26:41).
“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3).
“Wage the good warfare” (1 Timothy 1:18).

The same gospel that brings peace with God brings war with sin. For to say, “Jesus is Lord” is also to say, “And sin is not” — and to follow Jesus is to walk in high-handed rebellion against the devil. So, the same Spirit who wraps us with heavenly comfort also clads us with the armor of God.

Ryle’s chapter filled me with strange comfort. For months, I had felt like a civilian who had somehow walked into battle; now I felt like a soldier deployed. My war was a normal war — and more than that, a good one.

Normal War

If “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh” (Galatians 5:17), then what could be more normal than for Christians to feel divided, split, torn asunder in our inner being — or as Ryle says, to feel that we have “two principles within us, contending for the mastery” (72)? As long as we carry both Spirit and flesh, war will be normal.

We should not be surprised, then, when we find within us a dreadfully strong pull not to pray when we know we need to pray. Or an aching longing to satisfy some craving — for food, sleep, drink, sex, entertainment — that we know we should refuse. Or a heavy lethargy when the Spirit bids us to share the gospel or serve our family. Or a fickle forgetfulness that dulls the morning’s zeal by early afternoon. Or a driving compulsion to lean on our own understanding rather than the revealed word of God.

“The presence of inner division and opposition does not mean we’ve lost; it means the war has begun.”

We should not be surprised in such moments, any more than an army should be surprised by enemy fire. Rather, we should take courage. “We are evidently no friends of Satan,” Ryle writes. “Like the kings of this world, he wars not against his own subjects” (72). The presence of inner division and opposition does not mean we’ve lost; it means the war has begun.

Good War

The Christian fight is not just any war, but the best war the world has ever known. “Let us settle it in our minds that the Christian fight is a good fight — really good, truly good, emphatically good,” says Ryle (80). Yes, the war is fierce. The battle sometimes beats and bloodies us. At our lowest, we can feel tempted to despair. Even still, oh how good is the Christian fight.

Good, because God assures us that he will tread down our foes (Micah 7:19). Good, because he has promised to strengthen us in the thickest parts of the battle (Isaiah 41:10). Good, because all who fall can find forgiveness (1 John 1:9). Good, because we slay only sins and devils, not men (Romans 8:13). Good, because this war restores rather than ruins our humanity (Colossians 3:5, 9–10).

And most of all, good, because we fight under, with, and for Christ. He is our great Captain and our fellow Soldier, who won us to himself by dying for us, and who vows now never to leave our side (Matthew 28:20). “Would anyone live the life of the Christian soldier?” Ryle asks. “Let him abide in Christ, get closer to Christ, tighten his hold on Christ every day that he lives” (76).

Today, then, we march forth under the banner “Christ is better,” unsurprised and undaunted by battle, swords drawn against everything within us unlike him. And we look to the day when “the two great marks” of the Christian become one, and war gives way to Jesus’s endless peace.

“Judge not.” Few words of Jesus are more familiar, even to non-Christians. And when understood, few are more devastating.

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:1–2)

In the face of others’ aggravations and sins — their thoughtless comments and annoying tones, their insensitive laughter and failures to follow through — how natural it feels to convict them in the court of our imagination. How gratifying to hear our inner prosecutor give their words or actions the worst spin, and then to close the case before the defense can even speak.

And how easy to forget that one day, the judgments we laid on others will be laid on us; the measures we used to assess others will be used to assess us. One day, we will enter the court of our imagination — and this time not as judge, but as defendant.

How many emails would be abandoned and text messages unsent, how many thoughts would be discarded and words unsaid, how many conversations would be redirected and posts unread, if only we heard our Savior say, with eternal sobriety in his voice, “Judge not”?

Wrong Judgment

Of course, “judge not” does not mean what some would like it to mean. Matthew 7:1 is the life verse of many who simply would like to live in sin undisturbed. Rarely do they read the rest of the chapter, where Jesus warns against “dogs,” “pigs,” and “false prophets” — and expects us to judge who they are (Matthew 7:6, 15–20). Rarer still do they read Matthew 7 alongside John 7, where Jesus commands, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24).

Critical thinking, discernment, and “right judgment” belong to every mature disciple of Christ. But there is another kind of judgment to which Jesus says, “Judge not” — a kind produced in the factory of our unredeemed flesh, marked by a tendency to (1) indulge hypocrisy and (2) withhold mercy.

Hypocritical Judgment

“Let me take the speck out of your eye” (Matthew 7:4). Our words of judgment, whether spoken or merely thought, may seem unobjectionable, perhaps even kind. We really do notice a speck in another’s eye — some small pattern of sin or folly that our brother has failed to see. And don’t we all appreciate the friend who points out the spinach in our teeth or the shirt tag climbing our neck?

But wait: “There is the log in your own eye” (Matthew 7:4). The spinach-noticer has ketchup smeared across his cheeks; the tag-discerner forgot to put his pants on; the speck-remover has a birch tree jutting from his left eye. In other words, “You hypocrite” (Matthew 7:5).

The faults and annoyances of others — that is, their specks — have a way of taking our eye from the mirror and putting it over a magnifying glass. In the moment of offense, how easily many of us assume, without prayer and with scarcely three seconds’ worth of thought, that we are only the observers of specks and logs, and not also the bearers of them. We hear her retort without remembering our own exasperating comment; we bristle at his third reminder while forgetting our own failure to communicate well. We quickly play the role of prosecutor, but refuse to cross-examine ourselves.

Those who “judge with right judgment” do not pass by others’ specks without comment, but they spend some time searching their own eyes before poking another’s. “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5).

Merciless Judgment

Hypocrisy, of course, is never the friend of mercy. When we spend more time noticing others’ sins than our own, we struggle to wear the “spirit of gentleness” that Paul speaks of (Galatians 6:1). Numb to our own desperate need for mercy, our judgments burn without soothing, cut without healing.

“We have a way of swelling others’ specks into logs, and of shrinking our own logs into specks.”

“With the measure you use it will be measured to you,” Jesus warns (Matthew 7:2). But in the grip of wrong judgment, we often use one measure for others, and another for ourselves. A spouse’s sharp words are plain cruelty, full stop. But our own sharp words are warranted by the circumstances — or at least excused by tiredness, stress, hunger, or provocation. We have a way of swelling others’ specks into logs, and of shrinking our own logs into specks.

John Stott writes, “The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous” (The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, 177) — or as the apostle James puts it, to show mercy (James 2:13). But generous, merciful judgment takes energy and time. It requires an eye for complexity, a willingness to give the benefit of the doubt, a self-distrusting posture and a prayerful heart. Far easier to madly swing the gavel.

Two Great Judgments

How, then, do we shut the mouth of our hypocritical judgments? How do we lay down our merciless measures and “judge not,” especially when faced with real offenses? We begin where Jesus begins in this passage and remember that we are not first the judge, but the judged. And to that end, we live today in light of two great judgment days, one past and one future.

Judgment Past

Every Christian knows something of the experience Paul describes in Romans 3:19:

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

At one point or another, we stood, mouth stopped, before the judgment seat of God. Every excuse was stripped away; every defense failed. We faced the holy, holy, holy God, and could plead only guilty.

“Mercy met us at the judgment seat of God, bidding us to go and speak a better word than judgment.”

Jesus assumes as much earlier in the Sermon on the Mount. How else would we be “poor in spirit” and “meek”? How else would we “mourn” and “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:3–6)? We remember what it feels like to be weighed and found wanting. We can’t help but remember. As Sinclair Ferguson writes, “To be silenced before the throne of God is an unforgettable experience! It shows every time we speak with and to others” (The Christian Life, 41).

But of course, we were not only silenced before the throne of God; we were also forgiven there. God’s burning coal of grace touched our lips, saying, “Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isaiah 6:7). Mercy met us at the judgment seat of God, bidding us to go and speak a better word than judgment.

When we remember judgment past, unrighteous judgments no longer rest upon our lips so easily. The pardoned criminal cannot condemn his fellows as he did before. Mercy has touched him — and mercy cannot help but beget mercy.

Judgment Coming

Jesus then lifts our gaze to the judgment yet to come:

Judge not, that you be not judged. With the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:1–2)

The day is coming soon when “we will all stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10) — great and small, rich and poor, well-known and unknown. And what will happen when we stand there? The rubric we raised against others will be raised against us.

Those who have judged without mercy, consistently and unrepentantly, will face “judgment . . . without mercy” (James 2:13). Their merciless judgments will become evidence that they never received, never treasured, the mercy of God in Christ, and so they will reap the same judgments they sowed.

Yet those who have learned, by grace and through much repentance, to take up a measure of mercy will be, amazingly, “not judged” (Matthew 7:1). Not judged on judgment day! Only the grace of a cross-bearing Christ could craft such a wondrous thought.

Those who revel in that future day now cannot help but think and speak differently now. They do not throw away discernment or critical thinking; they strive, with God’s help, to “judge with right judgment” (John 7:24). But even when they must confront, rebuke, or remove a speck from another’s eye, they do so as those who once were headed toward judgment, but now are wrapped with eternal, unchangeable mercy.