Ever since Eden, God has given children a crucial role in the coming of his kingdom. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring,” God told the serpent (Genesis 3:15). And so, ever since Eden, there has also been a long and desperate war on children.

The biblical story shows us just how ruthless this world’s anti-child forces can become: Pharaoh casting Israel’s sons in the Nile (Exodus 1:22). Demonic “gods” bidding parents to pass their children through fire (Jeremiah 19:4–5). Herod slaughtering Bethlehem’s boys (Matthew 2:16).

Our own society is not above such bloodshed: more than sixty million invisible headstones (from the last fifty years, and still counting) fill America’s fields. Much of the modern West’s aversion to children appears, however, in subtler forms. Today, we are having fewer children than ever, later than ever. We diminish, and sometimes outright despise, stay-at-home motherhood. And too often, we treat children as mere accessories to our individualism: valuable insofar as they buttress our personal identity and further our personal goals — otherwise, inconvenient.

As Christians, we may be tempted to assume that this war on children exists only out there. But even when we turn from the world of secular individualism and carefully consider ourselves — our hearts, our homes, our churches — we may find strange inclinations against children. We may discover that anti-child forces can hide in the most seemingly pro-child places. And we may realize, as Jesus’s disciples once did, that children need a larger place in our lives.

Pro-Child on Paper

As with most Christians today, the disciples of Jesus grew up in a largely pro-child culture. Their views of children may not have been as sentimental as ours sometimes are, but they knew kids played a key role in God’s purposes. They remembered God’s promise to send a serpent-crushing son (Genesis 3:15). They regularly recited the command to teach God’s word “diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9). They cherished God’s faithfulness to a thousand generations (Exodus 34:7).

But then, one day, some actual children approach the disciples. And as Jesus watches how his men respond, he feels an emotion nowhere else attributed to him in the Gospels: indignation.

They were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant. (Mark 10:13–14)

The disciples likely had the best of intentions. To them, these children (or their parents) were acting inappropriately; they were coming at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Not now, children — the Master has business to attend to. They were about to discover, however, that far from distracting the Master from his business, children lay near the heart of the Master’s business.

In the process, they also warn us that claiming a pro-child position does not mean living a pro-child life. You can theoretically value children and practically neglect them. You can say on paper, “Let the children come,” while saying with your posture, “Let the children keep their distance.” You can look with disdain on the anti-child forces in the world and, meanwhile, overlook the precious children in your midst.

We, like the disciples, may hold pro-child positions. Our churches may have pro-child programs. But actually being pro-child requires far more than a position or a program: it requires the very heart and posture of Christ.

Heart of Christ for Children

“Jesus loved children with a grand and profound love,” Herman Bavinck writes (The Christian Family, 43). And do we? Answering that question may require a closer look at our Lord’s response when the little children came to him.

How might we become more like this Man who made his home among the children, this almighty Lord of the little ones? Among the various pro-child postures we see in Mark 10:13–16, consider three.

1. Presence

First, Jesus created a warm and welcoming presence for children.

Something in the demeanor of Jesus suggested that this Lord was not too large for little children. Young ones apparently hung around him with ease, such that he could spontaneously take a child “in his arms” while resting with his disciples in Capernaum (Mark 9:36). Later, as Jesus enters Jerusalem, children gladly follow him, shouting their hosannas (Matthew 21:15–16). And then in our scene, parents and children approach him apparently without hesitation (Mark 10:13).

“Something in the demeanor of Jesus suggested that this Lord was not too large for little children.”

What about Jesus communicated such an unthreatening welcome? We might note the times he helped and healed children, like the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:41–42) or the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:14–15). Yet these stories are also examples of a far larger pattern in Jesus’s ministry, which was noticeably bent toward those the world might consider “little”: lepers, demoniacs, tax collectors, prostitutes. He was not haughty, but associated with the lowly (Romans 12:16). And children, seeing this lover of lowliness, knew they were not too lowly for him.

If we too want to become a welcome presence for children, we might begin by bending ourselves toward lowliness in general. Upon entering our Sunday gatherings and small groups, and as we move through our cities, do we see the lost and lonely, the bruised and broken? Do we wrap gentleness around vulnerability and bestow honor on weakness? If so, children are likely to notice our humble, bent-down hearts, a presence low enough for them to reach.

2. Priority

Second, Jesus made children a practical priority, giving them generous amounts of his time and attention.

If anyone had good reason to shuffle past the children — “Sorry, kids, not now” — it was Jesus. No one had higher priorities or a loftier mission. No one’s time was more valuable. Yet no one gave his priorities or his time so patiently to those we might see as distractions. On his way to save the world, our Lord paused and “took [the children] in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them” (Mark 10:16). His life and ministry were full, but not too full for children.

In our own lives, prioritizing children calls for active planning, a willingness to devote portions of our schedule to play and pretend. But as Jesus shows us, prioritizing children also calls for responsive receiving, or what we might call living an interruptible life.

Children are master interrupters. Tugs on the jeans and cries from the crib, impulsive addresses and immodest stompings — kids have a way of ruining well-laid plans. The more like Jesus we become, however, the more readily we will embrace our ruined plans as part of God’s good plan. And we will remember that if Jesus could pause to linger with little children, then we too can pause our own important tasks, bend down on a knee, and give children the eye-level attention of Christ.

3. Prayer

Third, Jesus prayed and pursued children’s spiritual welfare.

When the children came to Jesus, he not only received them and held them; he not only looked at them and spoke to them. He also laid his hands on them and, in the presence of his Father, bestowed a benediction upon their little heads (Mark 10:16).

We don’t know how old the children were, but they were young enough to be brought by their parents (Mark 10:13). They were young enough, too, that the disciples apparently saw little spiritual potential in them. Not so with Jesus. The Lord who loves to the thousandth generation sees farther than we can: he can discern in a child’s face the future adult and budding disciple; he can plant seeds of prayer in fields that may not bear fruit for many years.

Do we invest such patient spiritual care in children? When we pray for our friends, do we bring their little ones, by name, before the throne of grace as well? Do we find creative ways not only to joke and play with the kids in our churches, but also to share Jesus with them in thoughtful, age-appropriate ways? And do our evangelistic efforts take into account the not-yet-believers walking knee-high among us?

Oh, that each of us, parents or not, would join the mothers and fathers in Mark 10, desperate to hand our children into the blessed arms of Christ. When we hear him say, “Let the children come,” may we respond, “We will bring them.”

Posture, Not Programs

If our treatment of children looks more like the disciples’ than our Lord’s, then our problem, at heart, is that we are not yet children at heart. “Let the children come to me,” he says, “for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:14–15). We have become too big; we have outgrown grace. For the doorway into the kingdom is small — so small that we can enter only if we kneel to the height of a little child.

To oppose the anti-child forces in this world, we need more than a pro-life position, a high view of motherhood, and a robust Sunday school program. All these we may have and more, and yet still become the objects of Jesus’s indignation.

We need a posture, a spirit, a kinship with the living Christ, who left the highest place for the lowest, who became a child so we might become children of God. The more we love Jesus, the more we will love children. The more like him we become, the more powerfully will our presence, our priorities, and our prayers say, “Let the children come to him” — and the more the children will come.

Imagine that you receive a word from a trustworthy prophet. It begins hopefully enough: “You will live long and die in peace, and your name will be remembered for centuries.” But then comes a turn: “A few generations after you die, devastation will visit your family and your church. Your descendants will lie in ruins.” How might you respond?

In an individualistic society like ours, whose generational vision has grown dim, many may indulge the same thought that passed through King Hezekiah’s heart when he received a similar prophecy. “Hear the word of the Lord,” the prophet Isaiah told the king. One day, the treasures of Israel will adorn the palace of Babylon — and some of your sons will serve, castrated, their captors’ king. Your throne, Hezekiah, will belong to your family no more. The prophecy placed the king on a thin threshold between a lost past and a mutilated future (2 Kings 20:16–18). For now, however, he was safe.

We might expect sackcloth and ashes, confession and earnest prayer — the same kind of desperation Hezekiah had showed before (2 Kings 19:14–19). Instead, we hear a sigh of relief: “Why not,” the king asks himself, “if there will be peace and security in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19). Dead men don’t feel pain. Why worry about an army marching over your grave?

The world today knows many such leaders, who live for their own passing lives with little care for the generations to come. Our families and churches, however, desperately need leaders who will live for the welfare of days they’ll never see.

Hezekiah Syndrome

No doubt, the individualistic air we breathe in the West reminds us of some important truths. God knit together every person uniquely (Psalm 139:13). We must respond, each one of us, to the preaching of the gospel (Romans 10:9). We will stand as individuals “before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

“Our families and churches desperately need leaders who will live for the welfare of days they’ll never see.”

Yet that same individualistic air can have a way of choking precious virtues, virtues that would have been assumed in biblical societies (despite the occasional Hezekiah). Biblical saints saw themselves as branches on a tree whose roots stretched farther than memory and whose limbs would keep growing long after they were gone. They walked, self-consciously, in the land between “our fathers” (Psalm 78:3) and “the children yet unborn” (Psalm 78:6). And at their best, they lived to pass on the godly legacy of their parents to descendants they would never meet (Psalm 78:5–7).

We, however, tutored by individualistic impulses, so often act like plants whose roots begin at our birth and whose fruit will die when we will. In both family and church, we struggle to live in light of a future we won’t personally experience.

In the family, many in our generation need to be convinced that kids, especially several kids, are worth the present cost. Under our breath, we ask questions prior generations rarely would have. Why give our twenties and thirties — decades of peak energy and strength — to rocking sleepless infants and pushing tricycles? Why build a family when we could build a career — or take on dependents when we could travel the continents? Generational legacies are buried, increasingly it seems, beneath today’s priorities.

In the church, too, we may subconsciously wonder if the benefits of patient, next-generation discipleship really outweigh the costs. Yes, we could train others to teach — but then we wouldn’t teach as much. Yes, we could find our Peter, James, and John and devote our days to discipling them — but only by devoting less time to our own discipleship. Yes, we could give others leadership and a platform — but only at the expense of our own.

Sometimes, this prizing of me today over them tomorrow happens innocently, with the best of intentions. Other times, the individualism around us becomes an excuse for the selfishness within us, and we forgo a Christlike legacy for the sake of present comfort, freedom, or power. Personally, I fear I have been shaped much by this Hezekiah spirit. I need another leader to follow.

Living for a Legacy

We need not scour the Scriptures to find men and women free from Hezekiah Syndrome. The Bible is filled with fathers and mothers, prophets and pastors who aimed to build a legacy that would outlive their little lives and names. Such leaders cared greatly about whether grass or thorns grew over their graves — about whether, long after they left the land of the living, the sun shone upon a world better off because of them.

Consider Abraham, for whom one hundred years well lived was not enough. He yearned for a son — and, beyond him, the promise of offspring greater than the stars, more numerous than the sand (Genesis 15:1–6). We call him father Abraham, and rightly so, for faith-filled fatherhood was his greatest gift to the world.

Consider Moses, who on the eve of his death implored God to “appoint a man over the congregation” so that the people “may not be as sheep that have no shepherd” (Numbers 27:16–17). The thought of a leaderless nation, vulnerable and lost, tore at the dying prophet’s heart.

Consider Rebekah and Ruth, Hannah and Elizabeth, mothers who ached and prayed for children to carry on the name of Israel. They gave their best years and their very bodies to bearing sons and daughters who would, in turn, make way for the one who would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15).

Consider Paul, that childless apostle who nevertheless fathered many (1 Corinthians 4:15), and who could not separate his heavenly crown from the children God had given him (1 Thessalonians 2:11, 19–20). Under the shadow of martyrdom, he rejoiced at the thought of being poured out for their faith (Philippians 2:17).

Or consider Jesus, the God-man himself, whose soul was satisfied, even on the cross, by the prospect of “many . . . accounted righteous” (Isaiah 53:11). If ever there were a life worth saving, an influence worth protecting, or a platform worth preserving, it was his. Yet these he gladly laid down to bring “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10).

Such saints lived and died for “the children yet unborn” (Psalm 78:6). They could not meet those children yet; they would never embrace them in this present age. But they built legacies as men of old built cathedrals: looking beyond the boundaries of their life, they smiled at the beauty their grandchildren would enjoy.

Leaders Lost and Found

Perhaps we see clearly all we would lose by living for such a legacy — and we would indeed lose much. Pastors who devote themselves to appointing more elders lose much time and, if successful, a degree of personal power over the church. Spiritual fathers and mothers who disciple younger Christians lose energy they could devote to their own spiritual growth — or just to relaxing more. Physical fathers and mothers who add more children lose their free time precisely when they have the most strength to enjoy it; they may also lose career opportunities that will never return.

But oh, how much they gain in the losing. In the long term, of course, they gain something that will outlive them. They bear children, spiritual and physical, to bless the world. They plant fields that will feed generations.

Even in the short term, however, such leaders gain far more than they give up. Simply consider how living for a legacy brought the best out of biblical saints. We have Paul’s brilliant epistles only because this father in Christ burned for the welfare of his spiritual children. We read of Hannah’s fervency and faith only because she longed for a son who would build up her people. And two thousand years later, men and angels still stand — and will forever stand — in awe of Jesus, who taught and healed and died and rose for the children his Father had given him (Hebrews 2:13). The most beautiful life ever lived is the one he laid down for future generations.

“‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ — in part because we find ourselves in the giving.”

“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35) — in part because we find ourselves in the giving. So, though modern-day Hezekiahs may have short-term comfort on a short-term timeline, they do not have themselves. They are a ghost of who they could be. For God made women to have full wombs and tired arms; he made men to carry daughters on their backs and wrestle sons on the floor. And beyond the home, he made leaders to expend their best energy, to flex their strongest muscles, to take the beauty of their youth and the vigor of their best days and stack them as so many stones that raise a staircase for others.

Futures Dearer Than Our Own

If today we have any stability in life, and any maturity in Christ, we can likely trace these blessings to mothers and fathers, pastors and others who counted our futures dearer than their own. Personally, I can’t separate who I am today from a few key people — certainly my father and mother, and then, alongside them, a college-ministry leader who gave many hours to developing a once-insecure, inconspicuous young man.

As a pastor with a young family, he wasn’t searching for ways to fill his time, much less with teenagers and twentysomethings who could offer little to him personally. But fill his time with me he did. And slowly I grew.

We live far apart today, his massive investment in me no longer a direct benefit to his ministry. But the legacy of his leadership lives on in my family, my friendships, my church. When I left Colorado for Minnesota, I left far better for having known him.

Now as a father and pastor myself, his example walks with me, reminding me that we cannot stay here long. Our names will soon be forgotten, our little lives gone with the grass. But we can live now so that we leave a Christlike legacy, one that may bear fruit far beyond us, even into eternity.

A TV with no remotes. A theater with no exit. A dream with no waking. Such can the imagination seem in the midst of lustful temptation.

Many are familiar with the mumbled no, the shake of the head, the attempt to turn thoughts elsewhere. And perhaps just as many have felt the persistence of dark ideas, the return of images unwanted. We wandered into this theater of the imagination so easily, but now we can’t seem to find the way out.

How do we wake from this dream and break this imaginative spell? Many strategies may prove useful. Rehearse God’s promises, pray earnestly, sing a hymn. Or, less spiritual but still helpful, get outside, do push-ups, call a friend. Francis of Assisi once counseled a brother to throw himself into a freezing river, which he did. No doubt that would work.

Alongside these approaches, however, Scripture offers another. Instead of trying to shut down the imagination, engage it. Take this theater, which lust has so often wielded against you, and wield it now against lust.

Guard Your Mind

Perhaps no book teaches us how to wield the imagination against lust more than Proverbs does. Especially in the father’s words to his son in chapters 5–7, the book fills the theater of the mind with images designed to strip lust of its strength. Consider, for example, the father’s warning against the forbidden woman in Proverbs 7:25–27. He begins with a simple command:

Let not your heart turn aside to her ways;     do not stray into her paths.

Here is well-worn wisdom for resisting lust, wisdom we have likely heard many times before (and probably can’t hear too often). As with so many sins, the battle against lust is often won or lost at the start. Once the heart has turned aside, once the feet have strayed, we bring them back only with great difficulty. The road to the forbidden woman’s house runs downhill in every direction — and every road back is an upward climb. Far easier, then, to turn and flee at the head of her street than over the threshold of her home.

“As with so many sins, the battle against lust is often won or lost at the start.”

So far, so good. But how do we turn away at these crucial moments, as the wisp of a thought begins to form? Again, many strategies may prove useful. But here, the father bids his son to do something counterintuitive, even seemingly dangerous: imagine lust. Don’t simply look away, but look even more intently, beyond the temptation, to see what really lives behind the door of dark desire.

Theater of Faith

After commanding his son not to stray in verse 25, the father fights image with image:

For many a victim has she laid low,     and all her slain are a mighty throng.Her house is the way to Sheol,     going down to the chambers of death. (Proverbs 7:26–27)

The word for at the start tells us that what follows gives the reason, the great why, for stopping lust before the first step. And this why is not just a logical argument (though it is that too), but an image, a scene — a different story on imagination’s screen. Before, the son had seen the forbidden woman dressed scantily on the corner, her couch covered with linens, her bed perfumed — lust wearing makeup (Proverbs 7:12, 16–17). Now, he sees her black-robed and holding a sickle, her couch a sinkhole to hell, her bed an open coffin.

What is this father doing? Perhaps he remembers how, in the beginning, our first parents fell not merely by argument but by image: an image of a good tree, a wise self, and a withholding God (Genesis 3:4–6). Perhaps, closer to home, he remembers how the mighty David fell, in a moment, by a sight that remained on the surface, a figure that filled the mind (2 Samuel 11:2–3).

Either way, he knows the power of image, for both good and ill. He knows that, though imagination cannot substitute for faith, yet faith feeds on true images of God, self, and the world. Faithful imaginations remind faith what’s real — and what’s not.

Conceivably, the son in Proverbs 7 could have said no to the forbidden woman even if he failed to see the grave behind her door — just as Eve could have said no to the serpent even under the sway of his false images. The will may say no for the moment, even when the imagination is held captive. But long-term, those who say no on these conditions lose even if they win, for today’s corrupt imagination is tomorrow’s corrupt heart, corrupt will. Self-control cannot live long in a theater filled with lies. For as the imagination goes, so goes the man.

Come then, along with this father and son, and imagine.

Imagine Lust

There you are, sitting at your desk or lying in your bed, when a figure begins to call from the corner of your mind. An image flickers. A thought starts to take shape. But then you imagine: Who is this forbidden woman, this lady lust, this whisper in the dark?

Though her lips drip with honey and oil, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a sword (Proverbs 5:3–4). The very opposite of medicine, she leads with pleasure and ends with pain; she pledges healing and slashes instead. Beyond her, you see her former “lovers”: retching, writhing, bleeding, dying.

She is a hidden snare, an invisible cord (Proverbs 5:22). Carried on by “just this once” and “just a little more,” her victims find their foot caught, their wrists wrapped. They promised themselves one visit to her home. Now they find they cannot leave.

She is a butcher and a hunter (Proverbs 7:22–23), the catcher of simple animals who see the meat and miss the hook. The man who follows her path walks as vulnerable as a stag seen from the other side of a bow. “He does not know that it will cost him his life” (Proverbs 7:23).

And then, as our passage puts it, she is death’s reaper, Sheol’s usher, mistress of the grave (Proverbs 7:26–27). With every stolen pleasure, she digs your grave deeper, carves another letter on your headstone, pounds another nail into your coffin.

Wormwood and sword, snare and cord, butcher and hunter, reaper and undertaker — here is the face of this seductive killer, the true face a wise father shows his son. Of course, a man may see lust as such and still fall into her arms. But he will have a harder time imagining himself lying down on a linen-covered couch: to get to her, he will have to climb into his grave.

Imagine Purity

God made the imagination for more than grim warnings, however. In temptation, faithful imaginations will not only look past the apparent beauty of lust; they also will look past the apparent homeliness of obedience. They will imagine purity.

The father sets the two imaginative tasks side by side:

Let your fountain be blessed,     and rejoice in the wife of your youth,     a lovely deer, a graceful doe.Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;     be intoxicated always in her love.Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman     and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? (Proverbs 5:18–20)

“Self-control cannot live long in a theater filled with lies. For as the imagination goes, so goes the man.”

The antidote to sinful intoxication is not mere sobriety, but righteous intoxication. Fight imagination with imagination — and for those who are married, begin with your spouse. Imagine the beauty of your marriage bed. Remember “the wife of your youth,” whose lips drip with honey that never sours, whose hands hide no sword, whose face gets lovelier the longer you look with faithful eyes. And do this “at all times” and “always.” Keep the theater of your mind filled with an intimacy guarded by vows.

That said, not all — and not most — who battle lust are married. And what’s more, Proverbs holds out a more powerful purity even for those who are married.

Imagine Him

Alongside “the wife of your youth,” the father counsels his son, again and again, to imagine another figure — better than a spouse, more pleasurable than married love: wisdom and, beyond her, the God she gives us.

The path of God-fearing wisdom, even the path of celibate God-fearing wisdom, is “more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her” (Proverbs 3:15). She gives a smooth road, a fearless way, sweet sleep (Proverbs 3:23–24). Indeed, “her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17). Whatever road of wisdom lies in front of you, however austere it may seem, you will find in the walking of it pleasantness and peace — pleasantness like Eden’s lawful fruit, peace like quiet streams in the land of the living.

Because all of wisdom’s paths lead us to the God who made them — more than that, the God who walked them himself, pure and happy and far better than anything forbidden. He is our glory and joy, our dignity and delight, the face meant to fill the theater of our mind. His fellowship is lust’s worst loss, purity’s greatest prize. He is Jesus.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Imagine that. Imagine him.

The longer you fight against your sin, the more temptations you may face to no longer fight so hard. Once, perhaps, your zeal burned; your spiritual blood boiled. But as months passed and years rolled by, desires for a more comfortable Christianity somehow wedged beneath your armor.

Paul talks of killing sin, starving sin (Romans 8:13; 13:14), but you have begun to wonder whether a less decisive, more long-term approach may work just as well. Jesus speaks of tearing out an eye and cutting off a hand (Matthew 5:29) — you theoretically agree but, if honest, can hardly imagine self-denial so extreme.

You may have once found relish in the righteous ferocity of a man like John Owen, who wrote of walking “over the bellies of his lusts” (Works, 6:14). But some time has passed since your boots have trampled any lusts. And as another Puritan once put it, you may feel tempted to speak of your sins as Lot did of Zoar: “Is it not a little one?” (Genesis 19:20). Time makes way for many little sins — and little sins, in time, make way for larger ones.

The softening happens slowly, by degrees, as I can attest. And often, what we need most in such seasons is a righteous trumpet blast, a rousing note that shakes the bones and awakens us back to reality. Such the apostle John gives to us in his first letter:

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)

“Time makes way for many little sins — and little sins, in time, make way for larger ones.”

To the question, “Can the born again make a practice of sinning?” John responds simply, clearly, unequivocally: impossible.

Let No One Deceive You

Recent events had cast a shadow over the community that received John’s letter. We catch a glimpse in 1 John 2:19: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out.” Once, a group of seeming brothers and sisters belonged to us; now, John can speak of them only as they.

And they did not leave quietly. No, they left speaking strange new ideas about Jesus — that he didn’t really come in the flesh (1 John 4:2–3), that he wasn’t really the Christ (1 John 2:22). And with this new theology came a new and twisted spirituality. Many, it seems, professed to know God while walking in darkness (1 John 1:6), as if somehow one could be righteous without doing righteousness (1 John 3:7). They claimed new life; they kept old sins.

Some scholars call them “proto-gnostics,” forerunners of the heresy that would bedevil the church in the next century. John himself speaks with a sharper edge: they are liars, antichrists, children of the devil (1 John 1:6; 2:18; 3:10). Tough words from the beloved apostle. But the church desperately needed to hear them.

No One Born of God Keeps on Sinning

John knew the church was standing firm for the moment. In fact, he wrote his letter in large part to assure them that eternal life was theirs (1 John 5:13). Their faith in Christ was steady, their love for the brothers deep, their righteousness evident. Though not perfect (1 John 1:8–9), they belonged to God.

Yet John knew the power of flesh-pleasing lies, especially when given time to work. He knew too how demoralizing it could be to watch a brother-in-arms lay down his weapons and cross enemy lines. Perhaps the church wouldn’t embrace the heresy, but their hands might grow slack around the sword hilt. They might wonder if the Christian life really requires such ruthlessness against sin. Some might wander into a “practice of sinning,” less afraid of what such a practice might mean.

So, John writes, “Little children, let no one deceive you” (1 John 3:7). Remember, little children, that sin is lawless. Remember that Christ is sinless. Remember that you are new.

Sin Is Lawless

When a professing Christian begins to make “a practice of sinning” (1 John 3:9), a deep yet subtle change has already taken place. Somewhere along the line, sin has become less serious in his eyes: no longer black, but gray; no longer damnable, but understandable. A slow hardening has crept over his conscience. Where he once blushed, he shrugs.

John will have none of it. He had stood on Calvary. He had watched God’s wrath against sin swallow the sun — had seen the wages of sin stain the dirt red. And so he writes, “Everyone who makes a practice of sin also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4).

Woven into the DNA of sin is a lawless, traitorous, insolent, anti-Christ character. It cannot bear God’s authority; it cannot bend to Christ’s rule. And though isolated instances of sin do not amount to a life of lawlessness — only “a practice of sinning” does (1 John 3:4) — even the smallest sins are lawlessness in utero. Every sin bears some resemblance to the nails and spear that pierced our Lord; every sin sounds something like, “Crucify!” So, if nourished and cherished, if cultivated and indulged, any sin can take the heart captive to a kind of rebellion that cannot abide with Christ.

We will continue to sin this side of heaven — on that point John is utterly clear (1 John 1:8). Yet as D.A. Carson writes, sin never becomes something less than “shocking, inexcusable, forbidden, appalling, out of line with what we are as Christians.” “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil” (1 John 3:8) — and every sin, however small, beats with his lawless heart.

Christ Is Sinless

If in sin we see absolute darkness, utter lawlessness, in Christ we see absolute light, utter purity. The two are mortal enemies, opposite poles: the one crooked, the other straight; the one night, the other day; the one hell, the other heaven. And therefore, because of both who Christ is and what Christ does, “no one who abides in him keeps on sinning” (1 John 3:6).

“If we abide in him, sin cannot abide in us — not persistently, not presumptuously, not peacefully.”

Consider, first, who Christ is. “In him there is no sin,” John writes (1 John 3:5). How then can anyone abide in him — live in him, commune with him, worship him — and keep sinning as before? We could sooner light a fire under the sea or breathe deeply on the moon. Christ holds no tinder for sin; he gives no oxygen to lawlessness. If we abide in him, then, sin cannot abide in us — not persistently, not presumptuously, not peacefully.

Then, second, consider what Christ does. “You know that he appeared in order to take away sins” (1 John 3:5). Or again, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). He came, the Sinless One, to make many sinless ones — first by forgiving and justifying us, and then by gradually yet ceaselessly purifying us.

In a season of encroaching sin, then, we do well to ask ourselves, “Jesus came to destroy the devil’s works — and will I endorse them? Jesus died to take away my sins — and will I now take them back? Will I roll the stone back over his tomb; will I take down his cross?”

You Are New

So far, John has bid the church to look outside themselves. Now, however, he tells them to look at themselves. For sin is lawless, Christ is sinless, and they are new. Three times in one sentence, the apostle points to their newness in Christ:

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)

Conversion involves not just a change of mind, but a change of heart and soul — a change so great it can rightly be called new birth. And new birth brings the truth about sin and Christ down into the deepest places.

By new birth, we not only see sin as lawless, but we have hearts whose lawlessness has been replaced by God’s life-giving law (Jeremiah 31:33). The pen of the Spirit has reached where ours never could. And by new birth, we not only see Jesus as sinless, but we enjoy him as glorious, the Spirit opening our eyes to a Beauty far beyond sin (Ezekiel 36:27). We have felt, deep down, the blessing of obedience without burden (1 John 5:3), the delight of abiding in the one who knows no darkness (1 John 1:5).

Pulsing in these words of John, then, is not only a mighty cannot — “he cannot keep on sinning” — but a mighty can. However strong temptation seems, and however weak we feel, we can kill sin and cleave to Christ. We can raise these weary feet and flee again; we can lift these tired arms and strike again. We can put our face in the Bible and our knees on the ground. We can say no to the loudest urges of the flesh and yes to the quietest promptings of the Spirit.

Our ‘Truceless Antagonism’

The battle against sin lasts long, even all life long. But in Christ, we have a different disposition, a better bent, a new life that will never die. And buried deep in our spiritual DNA is a ruthless opposition to sin — a “truceless antagonism,” as Robert Law calls it.

Such antagonism will look strange and unnatural to the world around us; at our worst, we too may wonder if the Christian life can run on roads less narrow. But when we remember what sin really is, who Christ really is, and who we really are, then even seemingly small compromises — little lies, secret glances, prayerless mornings, quiet bitterness — will appear for what they are: Lawless guides leading us from Christ. Dark hands stealing our hearts. Utter contradictions of our new birth.

And then our zeal will burn again. And then our blood will boil again. And then our boots will feel again the bellies of our lusts. For “no one born of God makes a practice of sinning” (1 John 3:9). And in Christ, we are born of God — irrevocably, eternally, powerfully new.

As a younger man, I expected that leadership would mean responsibility, burden, and difficult decision-making. I didn’t know, however, that leadership would also mean a good deal of failure.

I don’t have in mind large-scale, shocking failures — the kind that disqualify a man from pastoral ministry, for example. No, I mainly have in mind more common trips and stumbles, sometimes sinful, sometimes not — the kind that leave the self-aware leader often looking back embarrassed, wishing he had done or said something different.

I have in mind sermons that come out flat and land even flatter. Bible-study discussions that whimper and die. Public jokes told unwisely; public judgments spoken hastily. New ministry initiatives that run, then stagger, then stumble, then fall. Decisions that, in hindsight, were dead wrong. Younger Christians who find more help somewhere else.

Stepping into leadership means stepping into mistakes, regrets, and many small but stinging failures. And surviving in leadership, I am learning, means stepping upward on those mistakes — owning them, learning from them, and having the stability in Christ to keep leading after them.

Leaders Fail

To some extent, of course, every fallen human is familiar with failure. Mistakes follow us from the womb; we learn regret alongside the alphabet. But for at least two reasons, leadership has a special way of drawing failure to the surface.

First, leadership provides a public platform for the kinds of mistakes we were already making. Surely Moses made blunders while building a family in Midian, and David while shepherding his father’s flocks, and Peter while fishing the Sea of Galilee. But their mistakes were more or less private — pebbles tossed into the pond, their ripples small and few.

But then Moses began building a nation, David began shepherding a kingdom, and Peter began fishing for men. And all of a sudden, their private failures became public and subject to greater scrutiny. We need not have a large leadership platform to experience the same kind of uncomfortable exposure. Once we failed behind closed curtains; now we stand upon the stage.

And then, second, leadership affords many more opportunities for failure than we had before. Among the family, among the sheep, among the fish, opportunities for failure were present but more limited. When leadership called Moses and David and Peter out of those worlds, worlds where they felt some semblance of success and control, their chances of failure multiplied.

Leadership, at its heart, involves public initiative and risk-taking. Leaders try new ventures; they aim, by God’s grace, to bring new realities into being; they call people to follow down paths not yet trod. And sometimes, the efforts of even the best leaders fall apart, and the risks return to smack them in the face.

Two Common Paths

A few failures and mistakes sting. A few dozen wound. And then, over time, as mistakes rise even higher, we may feel ourselves standing before a mini-mountain of regret — a monument, it may seem, to our incompetence. At this point, two paths may tempt a leader.

The first temptation is to protect ourselves from the vulnerability of leadership by wearing a cast-iron cloak. Criticism no longer reaches our skin. Failures no longer wound because we refuse to feel them. And slowly, the once-lowly son of Kish becomes proud King Saul, hard and high, safe from the sting of failure — and safe too from the grace of God.

The second and perhaps more common temptation is to run away. Ditch. Flee. Follow Peter back to Galilee, back to the fishing boat, back to some private sphere where no one is watching and I know what I’m doing (John 21:3). Or alternatively, keep “leading,” but stop trying so hard. Leave risks unattempted and hills untaken. Lead from the land of Safe.

“If every leader stung by failure stepped away, the church would have no leaders.”

Now, stepping away from leadership is not always wrong. Maybe, in the wake of some particularly jarring failure — or after a longer pattern of missteps — we really do need to step back for a season and find our identity again in unhurried communion with Christ. Maybe we’ll start leading again after a time. Or maybe, through much prayer and counsel, we’ll decide not to return to formal leadership. And in some cases, that would be okay. The body of Christ has many members, a handful of whom are leaders, all of whom are indispensable (1 Corinthians 12:22).

Nevertheless, if every leader stung by failure stepped away, the church would have no leaders. Somehow, then, we need another way, a way of treating mistakes like so many stairs upon which, over time, our Lord raises us into more faithful and fruitful leadership. We need grace to see not only how leaders make mistakes, but how mistakes can make leaders.

Every Failure a Stair

In his kindness, God filled his Scriptures with stories of leaders who failed but didn’t finish there, who crashed but didn’t burn. Yes, we read here of men like Saul and Judas and Demas, leaders whose failures made their graves. But we also read of men like Moses and David, Peter and the other disciples, whose maturity as leaders rose on a staircase made of failure.

“We need grace to see not only how leaders make mistakes, but how mistakes can make leaders.”

We may find help from Peter in particular. His three-part collapse may have been a bigger failure than the kind we have been considering, but his story still gives us categories for how we might step upward on our own failures, however large or small.

Own

The morning of Good Friday revealed more of Peter than Peter had ever seen. Just the night before, he swore he would die before he denied Jesus; then one, two, three: “I do not know him” (Luke 22:57). The rooster crowed. Jesus looked. And Peter, in that one swift moment, saw himself for who he was.

Instead of fleeing from such agonizing knowledge, though, he owned it. First, “he went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:60). Then he returned to his friends (Luke 24:10–12). And then, finally, on that early-morning Galilean shore, he offered no rationalization, no justification, no excuse (John 21:1–17). Failure had owned Peter on Good Friday — and here, standing before his gracious Lord, Peter owns his failure.

Sometimes, of course, our failures are matters more of weakness than of sin. Perhaps failure reveals not our guilt but our immaturity, our ignorance, our incompetence in certain areas. Either way, the process still uncovers parts of us we need to see, sometimes desperately. Therefore, fully owning our failures is still the path of humility and wisdom. Receive them. Embrace them. When others look around for someone responsible, let them see us raising our hand.

The strength for such a painful embrace comes, in large part, from the confidence that failure lies well within God’s sovereign plans for our good. Without failure, Peter would have remained self-confident and self-deceived; so would we. And so, in his sovereignty, Jesus sometimes allows his people to pass through the sift of failure (Luke 22:31–32). He does not, however, keep them there.

Learn

If we, with Peter, feel the sting and refuse to run, we will find a future beyond failure. We also will find that failures speak a thousand lessons to those who are willing to pause, look them in the face, and ask them to teach us.

Too often, I allow the pain of the present moment to keep me from learning from failure. Today, the failure hurts. Today, I feel embarrassed. Today, I would rather soothe or distract myself than take my mistakes by the hand. I forget that, in failure, God often has tomorrow in mind.

“When you have turned again,” Jesus tells Peter, “strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32). Jesus knew that when Peter turned again, hollowed and then healed, he would be a different Peter. Outside that dark courtyard, self-confidence drained from Peter like so many bitter tears. And on that Galilean shore, love for Jesus rose in Peter like a miraculous catch of fish. Failure today made Peter an apostle tomorrow — now so much stronger in Christ, now so much more wary of self. But only because he learned from failure.

Sometimes, replaying our failures leads only to a fresh sense of shame or condemnation. But what if we returned to the scene not alone and exposed, but alongside our forgiving Lord? And what if we asked him to help us review our failures with an eye toward tomorrow? We might find that errors become humility, mistakes become maturings, regrets become wisdom, self-inadequacy becomes Christ-sufficiency, and failures become reliable stairs.

Keep Leading

Having owned our mistakes and learned what we can from them, we might imagine Jesus lifting us up from the ground, looking us in the eye, and offering both a question and a call.

“Do you love me?” he asks Peter (John 21:15–17). Before the failure, Peter’s love was real but shallow; now, as his risen Redeemer restores him, his love is real and deep. Amazingly, failure can do the same for us — taking the love of Jesus from theory to reality, taking our love for Jesus from frail to strong.

The question also sets Peter, and us, on firmer ground. If leadership is mainly about us — our praise, our validation — then failures will either send us running away or wrapping that cast iron around our hearts. But if leadership is ultimately about Jesus — his worship, his worth — then we can make ourselves vulnerable again for him. Yes, we have failed. Yes, we may fail again, and feel again all the pain of falling on our face. But we love him. And love can risk being broken.

Finally, having asked us the question, he bids us to respond again to the call we heard so long ago: “Follow me” (John 21:19). Prepare the next sermon. Plan the next meeting. Chart the next course. And by a miracle of grace, keep leading.

For a certain kind of Christian, assurance of salvation can feel as fickle as a winter sun. Here and there, the sky shines blue and bright, filling the soul with light. Far more often, however, the days are mostly cloudy, the sun shadowed with uncertainty. And then sometimes, the sky goes gray for weeks on end, and the heart walks heavily under the darkness of doubt.

From the outside, such Christians may seem to bear much spiritual fruit: friends may mark the grace in their lives, accountability partners may encourage them, pastors may find no reason to question their faith. But for those under the clouds, even healthy fruit can look pale and sick. So even as they read their Bible, pray, gather with God’s people, witness, and confess their sins, they usually find some reason to wonder if they really belong to Christ.

How does assurance sink into the heart and psyche of those prone to second-guess? The Holy Spirit has many ways of nourishing confidence in his people — not least by teaching us to recognize the fruit he bears. But for the overly scrupulous among us, for whom personal holiness always seems uncertain, the Spirit also does more: he lifts our eyes above the clouds to show us God’s unchanging character.

Among the divine qualities he uses to nurture our assurance, we may find one surprising: God’s infinite commitment to his glory.

For the Sake of His Name

At first, God’s commitment to his glory may seem to weaken, not strengthen, a doubting Christian’s assurance. If God does everything “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:14), for the fame of his name, what hope do we have — we who daily fall short of that glory, who often dishonor that name? We would need to find assurance elsewhere, it would seem.

Yet those who pay attention will find God’s zeal for his name running like a silver thread of hope through all the Scriptures. When Israel’s army fell before Ai, “What will you do for your great name?” was Joshua’s cry (Joshua 7:9). When the nation sinned by demanding a human king, Samuel assured the fearful, “The Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake” (1 Samuel 12:22). When, later, Israel teetered on the brink of exile, Jeremiah pleaded, “Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake” (Jeremiah 14:21). And when the nation languished in Babylon, Daniel grounded his bold prayers on “your name” (Daniel 9:19).

Again and again, the guilty people of God appeal not only to God’s mercy, but to his unflinching allegiance to his glory. Save us, restore us, keep us, defend us — and do it for the sake of your name! So what did they know about God’s name that we may not?

His People, Their God

First, they knew that God, in unspeakable mercy, had condescended to put his name upon his people (Numbers 6:27). By making a covenant with Israel — taking them as his people, pledging himself as their God — he wrapped up his glory with their good; he wove his fame together with their future.

The surrounding nations knew, as Daniel prayed, that “your city and your people are called by your name” (Daniel 9:19). And so, when God lifted up his people, he lifted up his name; when God helped his people, he hallowed his name. Through Israel’s welfare, he trumpeted his own worth, showing himself as the only living God in a world of lifeless idols.

No doubt, God’s name proved useless to those who presumed upon it, who chanted “The Lord! The Lord!” so they could keep sinning in safety (Jeremiah 7:8–15). When Israel’s unrepentant ran to God’s name for refuge, they found the door locked. But for the humble repentant, God’s name stood like the strongest tower (Proverbs 18:10). They might be sinful and unworthy in themselves, but God had given them his name — and for the sake of that name they found mercy, forgiveness, safety, and help.

“The name of God is the hand of God reaching down to helpless sinners, bidding them to grab on and not let go.”

John Owen writes, “God in a covenant gives those holy properties of his nature unto his creature, as his hand or arm for him to lay hold upon, and by them to plead and argue with him” (Works, 6:471). The name of God is the hand of God reaching down to helpless sinners, bidding them to grab on and not let go.

The Lord, the Lord

Second, these saints knew something about God’s name that would have been too wonderful to believe if God himself had not revealed it: at the heart of God’s name is not only the glory of greatness, but the glory of grace.

When the Lord himself “proclaimed the name of the Lord” to Moses (Exodus 34:5), here is what he said:

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. (Exodus 34:6–7)

To be sure, God is zealous to display the glory of his greatness — his holiness, his power, his authority, his eternity. When he raised up Pharaoh, for example, “so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth” (Exodus 9:16), he wanted all nations to tremble before the plague-sending, tyrant-crushing, slave-freeing God of Israel. He is “the great, the mighty, and the awesome God” (Deuteronomy 10:17).

Yet, as God reveals to Moses, he is not content merely to show the glory of his greatness; he also exalts the glory of his grace — his kindness, his patience, his abounding love and faithfulness. Unlike so many gods of the nations, mercy, and not only might, sits on the throne of his glory. Well then might we say with Micah, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression” (Micah 7:18) — and who glorifies his name by showing grace?

But we can say even more. For in the fullness of time, God lifted up his name in a way wholly unexpected, altogether glorious: by lifting up his Son.

Assurance in Every Syllable

When God sent his Son into the world, he sent him with a name — with many names, in fact. And in his mercy, God was pleased to inscribe assurance in nearly every syllable.

Some of Jesus’s names do speak directly of his greatness, calling forth fearful awe. He is the Lord who commands creation, the King who rules the nations, the Judge who sifts men’s hearts, the Holy One who terrifies demons. But in line with the revelation of God’s name to Moses, so many of Jesus’s names testify to the glory of his grace.

For how will he get glory as Savior unless he saves the utterly lost to the uttermost? How will he get glory as servant unless he bends to wash our filthy feet? Or how will he get glory as redeemer unless he sets the captives free?

As Lamb of God, his glory rests on cleansing the worst sins with his most-worthy blood. As bridegroom, his glory shines in the forgiven splendor of his bride. And as the way, his glory leads lost sinners home.

Now, as heavenly advocate, he glories to bear our names in his scars. As head of the body, he gloriously nourishes and cherishes his members below. And as founder and perfecter, his glory redounds when he finishes the faith he begins.

“This Jesus will not lose one jewel in his crown of names.”

We could go on, showing how the glory in the names propitiation, bread of life, light of the world, and more is a glory made for sinners’ good. This Jesus will not lose one jewel in his crown of names. He will not let his glory as mediator be diminished by one lost case, or his glory as shepherd be tarnished by one devoured sheep, or his glory as high priest be brought low by one needy, trusting sinner left without help.

Such names shine like so many suns in the sky above, each a burning assurance meant to chase away our clouds.

His Glorious Grace

Now, knowing that God saves sinners for his name’s sake may not resolve all our doubts. After lifting our eyes to such unclouded skies, we may lower them again upon a world of gray, wondering if God is saving us for his name’s sake. So how might this sight of God’s character help the hesitating soul?

First, simply fixing our gaze on God rather than self may do much to nurture spiritual health. If we often live in the cellar of the soul, trying to judge our spiritual fruit in the dim light of scrupulous introspection, long and regular looks at God may lift us into sun-lit skies, where for a few wonderful moments we forget ourselves, and then perhaps dare to believe that the light of this God can swallow any darkness, even ours.

Second, meditating on God’s grace-filled commitment to his name may remove the deep, subconscious suspicion that God’s glory and our salvation are somehow at odds. We may begin to feel, and not only say, that this shepherd would rejoice to carry us home upon his shoulders, that this father would run to see our silhouette on the horizon.

If you want a deeper sense of assurance, then, by all means keep killing your sin and pursuing the holiness “without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). But also labor to travel often above the clouds, where you remember that God created this world not only “to the praise of his glory,” but “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6, 14). And therefore, all of God’s zeal for his glory, all of God’s love for his name, stands behind the sinner who casts his soul on Christ.

“Do you ever remember your mom helping you put your clothes on?”

The question came from my wife, a mother of two young boys who have not yet mastered the art of getting dressed. I thumbed through the files of those early years and came up blank, the thousands of pant-pull-ups and shirt-put-ons lost to conscious memory. My wife came up blank too.

It was a humbling moment, as we imagined our boys, thirty years from now, remembering almost nothing of these everyday routines. It was also a moment — and they seem to come often these days — that put motherhood in a new and hallowed light.

“The wisest of women builds her house,” Solomon tells us (Proverbs 14:1) — and house-building, I am learning, is both beautiful and forgettable. Essential and often unnoticed. One of the world’s most important tasks, and one of the most easily overlooked. Clothing children, feeding children, teaching children, disciplining children — this is brickwork: painful and painstaking, slow going and mundane.

But if you follow godly men and women back to their beginnings, you will often find a mother pulling a foot through a pant leg, reciting a psalm from a smudged index card, and through ten thousand other small moments, building a house whose walls gleam with godly wisdom and whose floors rest on the fear of the Lord.

Two Women, Two Homes

The book of Proverbs, like much wisdom literature, describes two ways to live. And at the heart of these two ways are two women and two homes: Lady Wisdom and “her house” (Proverbs 9:1), Woman Folly and “her house” (Proverbs 9:13–14). Both women call out to the simple (Proverbs 9:3, 15); both invite the young and immature to “turn in here” (Proverbs 9:4, 16). But while those in Wisdom’s home find life (Proverbs 9:6, 11), Folly’s door leads to death (Proverbs 9:18).

We might assume these women are no more than creative literary devices, personifications of two life paths. But Proverbs invites us to see more. In this book addressed mainly to sons, one of the greatest recurring dangers appears in the figure of the “forbidden woman,” a real-life temptress who seduces simple men (Proverbs 7:5, 21). Proverbs portrays her as Folly incarnate (Proverbs 7:11; 9:13), the ruin of many sons (Proverbs 7:26).

Meanwhile, however, Lady Wisdom also appears in bodily form, ultimately in the figure of the godly wife. Just as wisdom crowns a man (Proverbs 4:9), so too does an excellent wife (Proverbs 12:4). Just as “whoever finds [wisdom] finds life and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 8:35), so “he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22). Proverbs ends with a poem portraying such a woman, who not only “opens her mouth with wisdom” (Proverbs 31:26) but is Lady Wisdom in wifely form (Proverbs 8:11; 31:10).

Yet before a man meets Lady Wisdom as wife, he is meant to meet her as mother.

Mother Wisdom

The book of Proverbs culminates with a mother’s teaching to her son (Proverbs 31:1). Long before Proverbs 31, however, the book teaches us to see a godly mother as Lady Wisdom’s first embodiment. Note the similarity between Proverbs 9:1 (about Lady Wisdom) and Proverbs 14:1 (about wise mothers):

Wisdom has built her house. (Proverbs 9:1)

The wisest of women builds her house. (Proverbs 14:1)

“More is happening in the small moments of motherhood than meets the eye.”

More is happening in the small moments of motherhood than meets the eye. As an imperfect but God-fearing woman builds her house, she becomes for her children Wisdom’s first face, first voice, first touch. Through her daily presence, children learn what Wisdom looks like and feels like; through her daily words, children hear Wisdom’s plea: “O sons, listen to me. . . . Leave your simple ways, and live” (Proverbs 8:32; 9:6).

At the crossroads between life and death, then, Proverbs would have us picture a woman, a mother, teaching and calling and living such that her children choose the fear of the Lord, choose wisdom, choose life. Her voice may not sound as loud as Woman Folly’s (Proverbs 9:13); she may often be hidden from public view; her work may sometimes seem as forgettable as fastening a Velcro strap on a toddler’s shoe. But over time, her home becomes the very womb of Wisdom, forming children who scorn the house of Folly.

Heart of the Family

Of course, a father stands at the crossroads between life and death as well. Much of the direct teaching in Proverbs, in fact, comes from a father to his sons. Like Lady Wisdom, he too instructs and warns and pleads with his children to choose life (Proverbs 3:13–18), and he appears throughout chapters 1–9 as the family’s primary teacher and exhorter (Proverbs 1:8; 3:12; 4:1; 6:20). Even still, Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman and then embodies her in the real-life figures of wife and mother. Why?

Surely in part because a father’s influence in the home, though deep and foundational, is also limited by the typical calling God places upon him. In Proverbs 31, the husband and father is standing “in the gates” (Proverbs 31:23), away from home, while the wife and mother “looks well to the ways of her household” (Proverbs 31:27).

This father, no doubt, spends much time at home — and this mother, we know, is not afraid to venture into the marketplace (Proverbs 31:18, 24). But in the complementary union of husband and wife, his daytime calling leans more toward society, while hers leans more toward family. And therefore, as home-builder, home-maker, home-keeper, she is wisdom’s steady presence through so many hours when her husband cannot be.

“Day by day — at mealtimes and nap times, through tantrums and tears — she is wisdom’s beating heart.”

Even in families where a mother sometimes works outside the home, Herman Bavinck’s observation still often holds true: “Far more than the husband, she lives along with all her children, and for the children she is the source of comfort amid suffering, the source of counsel amid need, the refuge and fortress by day and by night.” Indeed, “if the husband is the head, then the wife is the heart of the family” (The Christian Family, 95–96). Day by day — at mealtimes and nap times, through tantrums and tears — she is wisdom’s beating heart.

A mother’s profound influence on her children, then, comes not in spite of her seemingly small work in small places, but precisely because of it. Each jacket zipped with cheerfulness, each cracker or Cheerio served with love, each promise of God whispered over little beds adds another brick upon the wall of wisdom’s house, and gives children another reason to follow in her steps.

When Her Children Rise

My young sons do not yet grasp the gift God has given them in this mother “who fears the Lord” (Proverbs 31:30). In all likelihood, they will not remember how she lifted them onto the potty or gently sang God’s praises this morning. But day by day, they are feeling the touch and hearing the voice of Lady Wisdom. And when, God willing, they learn to embrace her for themselves (and the Christ she represents), they will no doubt add their voices to the children of the wise:

Her children rise up and call her blessed;     her husband also, and he praises her. (Proverbs 31:28)

The praiseworthy hero, as often happens in God’s kingdom, is not the one our society would expect: not the big, but the small; not the well-known, but the obscure; not the woman wrestling men in the movies, but the woman wrestling a T-shirt over a toddler’s head. When we rise up and call her blessed, we anticipate the day when everything hidden will be revealed and the forgotten labors of every wise mother will be proclaimed from the housetops.

“The wisest of women builds her house,” Solomon tells us. And our wisdom is to rejoice in such a woman.

Perhaps, as you woke up this morning, you found yourself in a place you desperately want to leave.

Maybe you moved here for school or work (or your spouse’s school or work), but your heart still lives in the place you left. You think of all the family and friends and familiar comforts back there, and you struggle to imagine how here could ever feel like home.

Or maybe you have been here all your life, but for some time now you’ve been itching for elsewhere. You feel bound by the narrow limits of a town you know too well. You’ve traced every crease and corner of these streets; nothing seems left to discover.

Or maybe, most painful of all, the homes and trees and stores of your current place daily remind you of all you’ve lost. These halls were once filled with laughter, and these sidewalks with the happy patter of children’s feet. But for any of a thousand reasons, that life is gone now, and the ground is haunted by the ghosts of better days.

Maybe you will leave someday. Maybe you will move back home, or get far from home, or start fresh somewhere else without memories. But for now, for today, you live in this place you want to leave.

To the Exiles in Babylon

The story of Scripture is, in some ways, a story of going. In creation, God intended Adam and Eve to fill not just Eden but the whole earth (Genesis 1:27–28). In redemption, God spreads his kingdom as Abraham goes from Ur (Genesis 12:1–3), Israel from Egypt (Exodus 3:10–12), the apostles from Jerusalem (Matthew 28:18–20), Paul and Barnabas from Antioch (Acts 13:1–3).

Yet alongside these memorable goings are less memorable, but still crucial, stayings. Abraham may have gone to Canaan, but Isaac stayed there. The Spirit carried Paul to Ephesus and then beyond, but the same Paul charged Timothy to “remain at Ephesus” (1 Timothy 1:3). And in one remarkable story, when God’s people longed to leave the place they were, and when some self-appointed “prophets” were saying “go,” God said “stay”:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. (Jeremiah 29:4–6)

Among the world’s undesired places, Babylon would have sat near the top for a faithful Israelite. Babylon was a step backward. Babylon was not part of the plan. Babylon was not a place to settle down and raise children. But Babylon, this place they longed to leave, was now home for seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10).

We may not be Israelites living in Babylon, but Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles still speaks to those who find themselves stuck in an undesired land.

Planted by a Master Gardener

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile . . . (Jeremiah 29:4)

The first line of Jeremiah’s letter offers something of a Godward shock. To any attentive observer, Nebuchadnezzar, not God, had sent Israel into exile (Jeremiah 29:1). Nevertheless, Jeremiah says, behind the pride and madness of Babylon’s king, God himself had sent Israel into exile. The Israelites found themselves in Babylon, ultimately, because God’s hidden hand had taken them there.

How often we need a similar reminder when we wake up far from the home of our desires. For whatever circumstances brought us here — a job offer, an urgent family need, our own birth, even our own misguided judgment — a hand beyond our own has been at work. We live where we live, ultimately, because God has sent us here, at least for today. And the providential hand of God never moves without purpose.

Samuel Rutherford, the great Puritan letter writer, once spoke of God as gardener, himself as plant:

The great Master-gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with his own hand . . . planted me here, where, by his grace, in this part of his Vineyard, I grow. . . . And here I will abide, till the great Master of the Vineyard think fit to transplant me. (Letters of Samuel Rutherford, 93)

Later, when Rutherford was confined in Aberdeen and forbidden from all public ministry, he wrote of living in “Christ’s palace at Aberdeen.” He knew that the same Christ “who sent me to the West and South [to his prior pastoral calling], sendeth me also to the North [to confinement in Aberdeen]” (119). What if we too saw our present place as a garden and a palace — not because the soil feels rich or the furniture looks elegant, but because our Father the Gardener has planted us here, and Christ the King dwells here?

We do not live where we live alone, nor is our present place the result of mere circumstances we can see. We have a Master gardener, a present Christ, even in a place that feels like exile.

Souls with Packed Boxes

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. (Jeremiah 29:5–6)

An air of restless expectation blew among the exiles in Babylon. Some claiming to be prophets spoke of an imminent return to Jerusalem (Jeremiah 29:8–9). The thought of going home so soon tugged at many, keeping their roots above ground. They slept clothed and with suitcases packed. They refused to act as if they would live long in Babylon.

But they would. Seventy years would pass before God’s people would come home (Jeremiah 29:10). So, God tells them to build and live, plant and eat, marry and parent. Settle into this place you want to leave. Sink your roots into this soil, hard as it may feel, and dare to believe that fruit can grow even here.

“Sink your roots into this soil, hard as it may feel, and dare to believe that fruit can grow even here.”

Our own desires to leave, change, move can tempt us to similarly live lightly upon the soil, our soul a tumbleweed rather than a tree. Stacks of boxes still packed may line the walls of our hearts as we hesitate to settle into this place, hoping instead we might leave soon.

In our case, of course, we really might leave soon; so far as we know, God has not given us a seventy-year sentence here. But could it be that our reluctance to treat this place as home keeps us from finding here the home we could? Might our desire for elsewhere become a self-fulfilling prophecy, a spade that continually digs up the ground and keeps us from gripping the soil here?

When I was in seminary, a classmate spoke of his wife’s hesitation to decorate their apartment, knowing they might live there only for a year or two. He told her in response, “Let’s put some nail holes in the wall.” Let’s unpack the boxes. Let’s build and plant. Let’s make this place, however unwanted, as much a home as we can make it. And maybe, in the process, we’ll find more home here than we imagined.

Stay and Make Disciples

Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf. (Jeremiah 29:7)

Exiled people, lost in a foreign land and pining for home, might understandably focus on a small set of priorities: Protect your family. Make a living. Find some small measure of happiness where you can. But God called his people to look farther and higher, beyond the walls of self and home, to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you.” Do good, even in Babylon. Seek the welfare of the place you want to leave. Pray for its peace.

The command brings to mind a scene from the Gospels, where a man formerly demonized begs to follow Jesus, his deliverer (Luke 8:38). Surely he longed to be near the one who had restored him to his right mind (Luke 8:35); perhaps he also longed to be free from the place of his former misery. But Jesus, after telling so many people to follow him, tells this man not to: “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you” (Luke 8:39). Go home, stay where you are, and speak into this place the welfare of the gospel. And so he did (Luke 8:39).

Wherever we live, there are people on our block, in our neighborhood, and throughout our city who need to hear how much God has done for us, and how much he might do for them. No doubt, people elsewhere need to hear the same; hence Jesus’s call to go (Matthew 28:19). But like the man in Luke 8, we may need to see that this place, though perhaps filled with unwelcome memories, has fields ripe for harvest — and we are the ones to work them.

In the depths of our desire to leave, we may have adopted a set of small purposes, at least functionally: Keep the kids happy. Get through today. Do your work and find some time for rest. But Jesus gives us another purpose that can transform what seems like a cracked and barren ground into a field waiting for harvest: “Declare how much God has done for you.”

Exiles Till Heaven

To all the exiles . . . (Jeremiah 29:4)

As painful as the word exile may have sounded to the Israelites in Babylon, the word welcomed them into a reality they may have struggled to remember at home: God, not Jerusalem, was their true dwelling place (Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalm 90:1). They had always been “strangers and sojourners,” even at home (Leviticus 25:23). So, though the word exile was a sting and a thorn, it was also a gift.

“One day soon, we will wake up in the place we have always longed for, and we will live there forever.”

In Christ, we too are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), even if we live in a place we love. Those who feel like exiles, then, have a certain advantage in this world: their sense of homelessness daily reminds them who they really are.

Every morning we wake up in a house we don’t like, we can remember the room in God’s house with our name written on the door (John 14:2). Every time we drive through a city we want to leave, we can look forward to the city “whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10). Every time we fall asleep feeling far from home, we can assure ourselves that we are indeed far from home, but also that home is coming quickly (Revelation 22:20).

One day soon, we will wake up in the place we have always longed for, and we will live there forever. But for now, dear Christian exile, trust the wisdom of your Master gardener. Unpack the boxes. Stay and make disciples. And love this place you want to leave.