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.

On some nights, as the lights go off and the house grows quiet, a restful hush seems to descend on everything around us — but not on us. We lie on our bed like Gideon’s fleece, the only dry spot in a world bedewed with sleep.

A thousand thoughts may keep us awake when all around us rests. Thoughts of work unfinished and questions unanswered. Thoughts of living sorrows and dead comforts. Thoughts of last day’s regrets and next day’s needs.

Falling asleep may seem simple enough. “All it takes,” writes sleep researcher Nancy Hamilton, “is a tired body and a quiet mind” (The Depression Cure, 207). Yet the second half of that equation sometimes feels like a wish beyond reach. We might sooner touch the moon.

Our Lord “gives to his beloved sleep,” Solomon assures us (Psalm 127:2). But on nights such as these, we can hold the gift in helpless hands, wondering how to unwrap it.

Calm and Quiet Mind

The psalmists knew just how easily cares, sorrows, and mysterious causes could chase the sleep from their eyes. They, like us, had lain for long hours on their beds, thoughts churning (Psalm 77:1–3). They had watched many moons roll slowly across the sky (Psalm 22:2). They knew that sometimes, for good and kind reasons, the God who gives to his beloved sleep also takes from his beloved sleep.

And yet, Solomon and David and the other psalmists also knew that sleep really was possible, even on the most unlikely nights. Even when hunted in the wilderness (Psalm 3:5), or sunk down in sorrow (Psalm 42:8), or consumed with thoughts of life’s half-finished buildings (Psalm 127:1–2), they had experienced the wonder of laying their cares before their God, and laying themselves down to sleep. The psalmists knew that a quiet mind could be theirs, even when a quiet life was not.

No doubt, a quiet mind comes, in part, from simple wisdom: if we drink coffee in the late afternoon, or try to sleep in the afterglow of our smartphones, we should not be surprised to find ourselves still awake at midnight. But ultimately, the Psalms remind us that a quiet mind comes from the hand of our sleep-giving God, who nightly draws near to our beds as the Lord who is our shield, our shepherd, our comfort, our life.

The Lord Is Your Shield

I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. (Psalm 3:5)

The David of Psalm 3 had every reason to be anxious, every reason to lie down on a bed of cares. Chased from Jerusalem by a treacherous son, he now ran through the wilderness, hunted like a beast (Psalm 3:1–2). I can scarcely imagine a scenario less hospitable to sleep. Yet sleep David did, and apparently without much trouble: “I lay down and slept,” he says (Psalm 3:5). But how?

David’s words just before these shed particularly helpful light on the faith that sent him to sleep:

I cried aloud to the Lord,     and he answered me from his holy hill. (Psalm 3:4)

David, king of Israel, was used to reigning on the holy hill of Jerusalem. He once sat atop that hill with tremendous authority, royal power. Yet David knows that even when his own throne sits empty, or occupied by a rebel son, God’s throne is always and ever full. David didn’t need to reign on his throne in order to sleep; he just needed God to reign on his. If only God was on his holy hill — his character sure, his covenant firm — then David could sleep in the wilderness.

“Our cares may be many and close; our God is mighty and closer.”

We may lie down tonight in some wilderness of helplessness, hunted by cares far beyond our control. We may feel utterly vulnerable before some dark and brooding uncertainty — some coming diagnosis, some job insecurity, some relational conflict with much at stake. But even then, our God still sits with crown and scepter, his holy hill untouched. He is, by night, “a shield about me,” and by morning, “the lifter of my head” (Psalm 3:3). Our cares may be many and close; our God is mighty and closer.

The Lord Is Your Shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.He makes me lie down in green pastures. (Psalm 23:1–2)

In his helpful little book And So to Bed . . ., Adrian Reynolds notes that sheep lie down for only one reason: to rest or sleep (35). Picture, then, those familiar green pastures of Psalm 23 dotted with mounds of dozing wool, at rest beneath a shepherd whose faithful care assures them, “I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).

How many restless nights find their source in the deep-down fear that we shall, in fact, want — that the new morning will not bring new mercies, that tomorrow’s bread will not come? How often does our lonely ruminating suggest that we do not trust the Lord to be our shepherd? How strange and sad it would be to see a sheep anxious and fearful beside the rod and staff, bleating as if it walked alone. Yet so I often am.

On such nights, we could hardly ask for a better bedtime confession than “I shall not want” — nor for a better assurance of that truth than “the Lord is my shepherd.” Especially when tomorrow seems filled with daunting needs, with wants beyond the strength of sheep, these words may become the staff that leads us to green pastures, the shepherd’s hand that lays us down.

If the Lord really is our shepherd, then our wants do not require a worried and wakeful heart. He can do far more in our sleeping than we can do in our waking. And whatever needs tomorrow holds, his provision will prove equal to the task.

The Lord Is Your Comfort

He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. (Psalm 147:4)

Among the many kinds of restlessness the psalmists bring to their beds, the restlessness of sorrow may be the most common. Throughout the Psalms, we read of midnight weepers (Psalm 30:5), of wakeful, comfortless souls (Psalm 77:1–2), of saints whose tears stain their sheets (Psalm 6:6). Sorrow often makes for a sleepless heart.

In such moments, God’s voice in creation joins his voice in Scripture to speak comfort over our pain. Turn, then, and look out your window. Can you see a hundred burning stars — and imagine beyond them billions more? Your God “determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names” (Psalm 147:4). Such a thought might, at first, make us feel smaller than ever, our broken hearts too humble for God’s notice. But the psalmist draws the opposite application: if God names the very stars — these background props of creation — then he has certainly not lost sight of his dear people’s sorrows (Psalm 147:3; Isaiah 40:26–27).

“As surely as God knows the name of every star, he knows our hidden sorrows, our unseen aches.”

God’s exhaustive awareness of heaven’s hosts is meant to assure us not of our insignificance, but of his attention — and his attention particularly to our pains: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds,” the psalmist says (Psalm 147:3). As surely as he knows the name of every star, he knows our hidden sorrows, our unseen aches. And he is, for all his people, the great Healer of hearts and Binder of wounds.

Such a promise, shining from every star above, can become the song that sends us to sleep.

The Lord Is Your Life

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness. (Psalm 17:15)

Someday, if Jesus should tarry, we will shut our eyes one final time, never to awake again in this world. The psalmists keenly felt the coming of this last sleep. But they were also given glimpses, however small, of something past this sleep. When David sings of a waking that will show him “your face . . . your likeness,” he sings of a waking beyond this world, a morning only heaven could make (see also Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2).

It was a precious glimpse, but still just a glimpse. You and I see more. For David’s Son has now come, bringing a dawn beyond death’s night. For two days he lay down in the tomb, and then on the third, he woke. The apostle Paul draws the line between Jesus’s great and final sleep and ours:

God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (1 Thessalonians 5:9–10)

As we go to sleep tonight, our Lord’s hands are ready to hold us safe. And in the hollow of his hands is a quiet that can calm the loudest mind, waking or sleeping, living or dying. Because even if this sleep should be our last, our eyes will open once again — not now upon the face of spouse or children, but upon the face of him who for ten thousand nights has been our shield, our shepherd, our comfort, and now our everlasting life.