I sometimes think I could be very holy if, after doing my morning devotions, I just stayed in my room all day long. I find that patience, for example, comes easier by myself. Peace, too. I feel a general kindness and goodwill when I’m alone. I imagine myself ready to bear others’ burdens.

But then I leave my room and begin interacting with some of those “others” face to face. And before long, I wonder where my holiness went. Patience now feels fragile; peace goes on the retreat. My theoretical kindness finds itself unprepared for real annoyances, and my shoulders seem too weak for real burdens. People, it turns out, have an irritating way of poking the spiritual fruit on my table, only to reveal just how many of those apples and pears are plastic.

I might prefer holiness to be a more private affair, a halo that hangs over my solitary head. But “holiness,” John Stott helpfully reminds me, “is not a mystical condition experienced in relation to God but in isolation from human beings. You cannot be good in a vacuum, but only in the real world of people” (Message of Ephesians, 184). True holiness may begin between God and the soul, but it finds full expression in community with other people — other wonderful, glorious, frustrating, and sometimes offensive people.

“True holiness may begin between God and the soul, but it finds full expression in community with other people.”

Which explains why, again and again, the New Testament describes the authentically holy life using two simple words: “one another.”

The One-Anothers

Around fifty times in the New Testament, Jesus and the apostles tell us to feel, say, or do something to “one another.” We are to care for one another and bear with one another, honor one another and sing to one another, do good to one another and forgive one another. And then there is the grand, overarching, most-repeated one-another, the command that “binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Colossians 3:14): “Love one another.”

The one-anothers do not exhaust our obligations to other Christians (many communal imperatives do not include the phrase “one another”), but together they offer a brilliant picture of life together under the lordship of Christ — and not only under the lordship of Christ, but also in the pattern of Christ. For, rightly grasped, the one-anothers are nothing less than the life of Christ at work in the people of Christ to glory of Christ.

Consider, for example, how even in a community-oriented passage like Colossians 3:12–17 (which includes three one-anothers), Paul can’t stop talking about Jesus. Our new character — compassionate, kind, humble, meek, patient (verse 12) — reflects “the image of its creator,” Christ (verse 10). We forgive “as the Lord has forgiven [us]” (verse 13). Our unity reflects “the peace of Christ” (verse 15); our words flow from “the word of Christ” (verse 16). In fact, whatever we do in community, we do “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (verse 17). For here, “Christ is all, and in all” (verse 11).

The one-anothers, then, are earthly dramas of heavenly realities; they are the love of Christ played out on ten thousand stages. So, with this pattern in mind, we might fruitfully consider the one-anothers in five categories: have his mind, offer his welcome, speak his words, show his love, and give his grace.

1. Have His Mind

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count [one another] more significant than yourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. (1 Peter 5:5)

We might easily launch into the one-anothers wondering about all we should do for our brothers and sisters in Christ — and indeed, the one-anothers call us to do much. But before we say or do anything for one another, God calls us to feel something toward one another. “Have this mind among yourselves,” he says, “which is yours in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). And this mind, or attitude, can be captured in one word: humility.

It is possible — frighteningly possible, I’ve discovered — to externally “obey” the one-anothers with a mind utterly at odds with Christ. It’s possible to greet one another with a smile that hides bitterness; and encourage one another with a grasping, flattering heart; and bear one another’s burdens with a messiah complex. In other words, it is possible to turn the one-anothers into subtle servants of Master Self.

Humility, however, clothes us with the others-oriented attitude of Christ. Humility puts a pair of eyeglasses on the soul, allowing us to see others without the blurring of selfishness. And humility, in its own miniature way, follows the same descent Christ took when he “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8). It goes low to lift others high — and doesn’t scheme for how it might lift self too.

In a Spirit-filled community, we all (no matter how tall) look up at each other, not down; we jostle to kneel and hold the towel; we choose the seat of the last and the least — because we remember how Jesus did the same for us.

2. Offer His Welcome

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. (Romans 12:16)

Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. (Romans 15:7)

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)

The one-anothers, having begun with a humble mind, now move outward to eyes, mouth, and outstretched hand. The “mind of Christ” led our high and holy Lord toward us, not away. He came to us with a welcome, drawing us near through the door of his humble heart. His was a fellowship-creating love, a love that turned strangers into brothers (Ephesians 2:14–17). And now we, his people, walk in that same love and offer that same welcome.

“Welcome one another” (Romans 15:7), like all the one-anothers, sounds nice in theory. But the real-life application of this command may stretch our preferences and personalities beyond the breaking point. For “welcome,” of course, means more than “nod and say hello,” and “one another” means more than “those others whom you like.” Rather, the command calls us to warmly embrace, gladly associate with, and readily invite into our homes every other in our church — including those who seem “lowly” (Romans 12:16), and those we feel strongly tempted to judge or despise (Romans 14:3).

But if Christ left heaven to welcome sinners like us, then we can cross the church foyer to welcome difficult saints. And if he opened his heart to let us strangers in, then we can open our homes to others, no matter how strange. And if he greeted us in our lostness, then surely we can greet others in their loneliness.

3. Speak His Words

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. (Colossians 3:16)

Encourage one another and build one another up. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

Exhort one another every day. (Hebrews 3:13)

Christians are a word people, a speaking people. Brought to life ourselves by “the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23), we now seek to bring that life to others through our Word-shaped words. And we employ the whole range of our tones and vocal cords to do so: we not only speak, but teach, instruct, admonish, encourage, exhort, comfort, honor, stir up, and even sing. Whether pastors or not, we all are stewards of God’s life-giving word; we all have something to say.

So, as we welcome one another, we look for opportunities to take some portion of God’s word and apply it in a way that “fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). We are people with a Bible always open on the table of our hearts, ready to “stir up one another to love and good works” with a well-timed word (Hebrews 10:24). So, even as we laugh and exchange small talk, a current of holy intentionality flows through our conversation: we know that God intends to use what we say to work wonders in each other’s lives.

Which means, of course, that we are also a listening people. For, first, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, we can speak “the Word of God” faithfully and accurately only when we listen “with the ears of God” (Life Together, 76) — patiently and attentively tracing the contours of a brother’s or sister’s heart. And then, second, we also listen to the words that others have for us. No one in any local church, including its pastors, is only teacher, but always teacher and disciple, speaker and listener, exhorter and exhorted.

4. Show His Love

Always seek to do good to one another. (1 Thessalonians 5:15)

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another. (1 Peter 4:10)

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)

As important as words are for a healthy Christian community, no community lives on words alone. Jesus did not just speak to people during his earthly ministry; he healed them and touched them and delivered them and ate with them. And so we, his disciples, are not mere mouths to one another, but also hands and feet and shoulders. We not only speak his love, but show it.

Now, service may often feel like a costlier form of love than speech. It’s one thing to speak comforting words; it’s another to sit for long hours as a comforting presence. It’s one thing to encourage someone carrying a heavy burden; it’s another to bend your shoulder to the load. This kind of love interrupts the day’s plans with untimely requests and lays hands on evenings and weekends.

“Let . . . the greatest account it their greatest honour to perform the meanest necessary service to the meanest of saints,” John Owen writes (Works, 13:81). In the one-another kingdom of Christ, pastors count it their high honor to visit shut-in saints. Busy fathers set up chairs before the Sunday gathering. Tired mothers listen over children’s background chaos to the quiet tears of a younger woman. College students give their Saturdays to helping church members move houses.

And all of us, like the woman in Mark 14, gladly break our precious alabaster flasks — our time, our gifts, our money, our homes — to anoint the body of Christ.

5. Give His Grace

[Bear] with one another in love. (Ephesians 4:2)

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

The humble mind of Christ, the warm welcome of Christ, the stirring words of Christ, the helpful hand of Christ — these show, marvelously, what the Spirit of Christ can do in a community. But none displays our Lord quite so clearly as the forgiving heart of Christ. Christian communities are built, through great disappointment and heartache, in the shape of a cross.

Therefore, we never have a better opportunity to show the glory of Christian community than when Christian community feels hardest. Get close enough to any group of recovering sinners, and they will poke and prod your patience. They will say things that baffle and offend you. They will wound you without even knowing it. The worst of these moments can leave a smoking crater in our souls. But they can also become ground zero for something beautiful and new: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

This love will hurt. Oh will it hurt. To forgive completely — not counting others’ sins against them, not holding onto it, not allowing it to become the lens through which we see them? This love feels, in some small measure, like Calvary love. And it shines with Calvary splendor.

One Another for the World

Why, we might ask, did Paul, Peter, James, and John lay such stress on Christian community? Why did they stack up so many one-another commands in their letters, rather than promoting a more private piety?

Perhaps for the same reason Jesus said to his disciples,

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35)

“This Lord reconciles us not only to himself, but to each other, creating one-another love out of one-another pain.”

We live in a world with its own set of one-anothers: one-another brokenness, one-another enmity, one-another manipulation, one-another selfishness. And local churches exist to show a different way of life — a different Lord of life. This Lord reconciles us not only to himself, but to each other, creating one-another love out of one-another pain.

As such communities move out into the world — into parks and coffee shops and sports teams and neighborhoods — and as they invite outsiders in, such relational glory will not go unnoticed. “By this all people will know . . .” And therefore, Christians walking in the one-anothers not only have Christ’s mind, offer his welcome, speak his words, show his love, and give his grace. They also advance his mission.

Say you have a friend whose approach to the Christian life seems somewhat extreme. Too strict. Overly disciplined.

You heard him say something the other day about beating his own body — figuratively (you think), but still. In fact, the way he talks often makes you squirm a little bit. Strain, agonize, struggle, labor, strive — these are common words for him. Maybe too common for someone saved by grace.

Then again, he does regularly celebrate God’s grace — more than you do, actually. He’s a joyful, worshiping man, not gloomy or obsessive in the typical sense. His seriousness is almost always tinged with something merry, and for all his drive he seems marked by unusual peace. He’s warm toward you, friendly.

But still, the man never seems to let up. He reads his Bible, and prays, and speaks of spiritual things with an earnestness that embarrasses you. He talks of fighting sin as if he had a sword strapped to his thigh. He denies himself many innocent pleasures (without expecting you to do so) because, he says, they “slow his pursuit of Christ.” You can’t help but feel a touch kittenish in his presence, your Christianity more purr than roar. So you wonder.

Is this legalism? Asceticism? An attempt to be superhuman?

And then, once again, you remember that this friend is the apostle Paul.

Pauline Paradox

Now, if the apostle himself had overheard our concern, he may have sympathized, at least a little. For Paul had known the dangers of discipline. Hebrew of Hebrews, law-keeping Pharisee, zealous persecutor, Paul ran harder and faster than most (Philippians 3:5–6; Galatians 1:14). Yet his disciplined feet only carried him farther and farther from Christ (1 Timothy 1:13). He was rigorous, precise, self-denying, and lost.

“When Paul lost his legalism, he did not lose his discipline. Not even a little bit.”

Yet, remarkably, when Paul lost his legalism, he did not lose his discipline. Not even a little bit. God transformed him, instead, into a stunning apostolic paradox: He preached justification by faith alone, and he pursued holiness with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12–13). He worshiped God for his grace, and he “worked harder than any” (1 Corinthians 15:10). He boasted of Christ’s sufficiency, and he beat his body lest somehow he should fail to finish the race (1 Corinthians 9:27).

We struggle to live such paradoxes. The grace of God, for many of us, seems to produce a more casual Christianity, a faith without a sweat. But when Paul’s own discipline passed through the fires of grace, it emerged on the other side not consumed but refined — free from the dross of self-righteousness, aglow with the Spirit’s flame.

Redeeming Discipline

Mentions of discipline lace Paul’s letters. We could consider his toil in teaching (Colossians 1:29), his striving in prayer (Romans 15:30), his refusal to use his full apostolic rights (1 Corinthians 9:12), or that startling statement already mentioned: “I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave” (1 Corinthians 9:27 NIV). But we may hear the heartbeat of Paul’s discipline most clearly in Philippians 3:12–14 and its context:

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul the persecutor died on the Damascus road — and in his place arose a man who pressed and strained for Christ. A mighty discipline still drove him forward, but a discipline far different from the one he had known. A new power, new purpose, and new pleasure now gripped him.

New Power

Paul had known something of power in his pre-Christian life, but it was power “from a self-strength,” as John Owen puts it (Works, 6:7). The source of Paul’s unredeemed power was Paul; he relied on self, not the Spirit, for his strength. Not only did such power prove powerless against sins of the heart (Romans 7:7–8), but also, being an offspring of the flesh, it could never please God (Romans 8:8).

But then, Paul says, “Christ Jesus . . . made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). And with Christ’s presence came Christ’s power — power from above and beyond him, and yet power now dwelling within him. And so, Paul saw former sins, once unconquerable, fall dead at his feet (Romans 8:13). He “pressed” and “strained” with a new kind of strength (Philippians 3:13–14). And he worked as one who knew “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

With Paul, disciplined Christians do not run on the strength of self-resolve; they know and fear the manufactured power of the flesh. But they also take seriously those four familiar, radical words: “God works in you.” God works in you — and therefore you are not bound to the narrow limits of your self-strength. God works in you — and therefore laziness is not a celebration of his grace but a tacit denial of his presence. God works in you — and therefore every resistance is an opportunity to prove his power.

New Purpose

The power behind Paul’s discipline, then, was decidedly different after Damascus. And so too was the purpose or aim of his discipline. Once, Paul ran to attain “a righteousness of my own that comes from the law” (Philippians 3:9). But then, blinded by the risen Christ, he realized there was only one righteousness worth having, and it was one that discipline could never win: “the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:9). So, in a moment, Paul stopped running for righteousness.

But he did not stop running. For though he already wore the robe of Christ’s righteousness, another robe still awaited: the robe of resurrection. “The resurrection from the dead” was the “it” he pressed on to make his own, the “prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:11–12, 14). By discipline, Paul reached to share his Lord’s undying life.

Paul knew, of course, that discipline could not earn his resurrection — nor was he ultimately uncertain about reaching that land beyond death. He could already feel the hand of Christ upon him; he could already say, “Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). And yet, Paul also knew that God-empowered discipline — pressing on, straining forward — was Christ’s way of bringing his people to glory. In a world where many professing Christians give up after making a good start, discipline keeps the righteous running till resurrection.

By discipline, we throw off every hindrance that slows our pace toward heaven. We shake off every hand that wraps around our ankles. We set our gaze ahead, where Christ himself awaits us. And with holy resolve we say, “By the power of God within me, I won’t allow sin to keep me from him.”

New Pleasure

Perhaps Paul once saw discipline as many of us have: as a purse-lipped virtue, a grim necessity, a healthy fruit with sour taste. Discipline is an alarm at 5:00am; it is wind sprints and diets and long hours over dull books. Yes, Paul may have seen discipline as such. But then he saw the face of Jesus, and discipline became filled with new pleasure.

What spark lit the fire of Paul’s resolve? What gunshot sent him racing toward resurrection? This spark, this shot:

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. (Philippians 3:8–9)

“The surpassing worth of Christ has captured our hearts, calling forth our own surpassing work.”

Christian discipline may press and strain. It may rise early to read and pray; it may fast and go willingly without; it may say many a painful no. But not from any barren sense of oughtness. Rather, the surpassing worth of Christ has captured our hearts, calling forth our own surpassing work.

Not that we always feel the same sense of Christ’s worth. Sometimes, discipline is the song of living longing; other times, it is the prayer of longing lost. But whether discipline moves mainly from desire or for desire, its sights remain set on him whose presence is our pleasure. Out, then, with any thoughts of stern and frowning resolve. The only discipline worth the name runs under the banner of delight.

From ‘Done’ to ‘Do’

So, say you have a friend whose approach to the Christian life seems somewhat extreme. Too strict. Overly disciplined. So you wonder. Doesn’t the gospel cry “Done!” rather than “Do!”?

Indeed it does (John 19:30). But as you watch your friend more closely, you realize that on the other side of the gospel’s “done,” there is another kind of “do”: not the doing that strives for God’s favor or adds anything to Christ’s cross, but the doing that rises from fresh power, resurrection purpose, and a new and deep pleasure in God.

So, by grace, you start running harder. You pray and press on; you trust and strain forward. And you begin to discover that God’s grace is a bigger wonder than you once thought. Not only does grace grant our forgiveness and win our worship, but it works — hard. And to top off the paradox, it keeps us happy while we work.

Some sorrows run so deep, and last so long, that those who bear them may despair of ever finding solace, at least in this life. No matter how large a frame they put around their pain, the darkness seems to bleed all the way to the edges.

Perhaps you are among those saints whose lot seems to lie in the land of sorrow. You have not taken the bitter counsel of Job’s wife — “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9) — and by God’s grace, you will not. Yours is not a fair-weather faith. You know that God has treated you with everlasting kindness in Christ. You cannot curse him.

But still, with Job, you stare at the fallen house of your life, where so many dear desires lie dead. And even with faith larger than a mustard seed, the brokenness seems unfixable in this world. The wound incurable. The grief inconsolable. The darkness defies the largest frames we could build.

Which is why, when God speaks to such saints in Romans 8, he does not bid them to merely look harder here below, squinting for a silver lining. Instead, he gives them a frame far larger than this life.

Groaning Bodies, Groaning Earth

When we think of Romans 8, we may remember only the series of triumphant trumpet blasts sounding through the chapter: “No condemnation.” “Abba! Father!” “All things work together for good.” “Who can be against us?” “More than conquerors.” But even as Paul takes us to the heights of Christian joy, he also leads us through the depths of Christian sorrow. For the mountaintop glory of Romans 8 rises from the valley of deep and desperate groaning.

“The whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now,” Paul writes. “And not only the creation, but we ourselves . . . groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22–23). This earth, for all its beauty, lies like a mother on her back, miserable and aching for the cry of new life. And God’s people, for all our blessings in Christ, stumble through this world like children far from home, waiting for our Father. And as we wait, “we . . . groan.”

We groan because we, sons of the Second Adam, still suffer and die like sons of the first — ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We groan because legs and lungs fail, because eyes grow dim, because paralysis lames and Alzheimer’s erases the face of dearest loves. We groan because the tribulation and distress of this age sometimes feel like nightmares brought to life (Romans 8:35), like burdens beyond the strength of our frail shoulders. We groan because hope deferred makes the heart sick, and the sickness sometimes feels terminal (Romans 8:24–25). We groan because “the sufferings of this present time” can veil the Christ we love (Romans 8:18).

We should beware of papering over such groanings with platitudes (however well-intended). The saints may find themselves, at times, so perplexed, so oppressed, so utterly weak that our mouth, opened for prayer, forms no words. “We do not know what to pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). And so we gaze speechlessly ahead, the horizon of this life shrouded in one incoherent groan.

At the same time, however, we should beware of allowing “this present time,” these seventy or eighty years, to set the boundaries of our hope, our joy. “For,” Paul tells us, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Into this world of deep groaning, glory is coming.

Glory Will Come

We do not groan, then, as those who have no hope. For these pains, though they last all our life long, are “the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22), not the pains of death. “The sufferings of this present time” end in glory, not a grave. And the glory to come will be big enough, incomparable enough to answer the double groaning of this age: the groaning of these broken bodies, and the groaning of this broken earth.

Renewed Bodies

For now, your identity as God’s beloved child lies veiled beneath a weak body and a pain-ridden life. Your body breaks like every other body. Your life trips and bleeds on this world’s thorns like every other life. In fact, just as onlookers esteemed Jesus “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4), so may you seem: like a sheep led to slaughter (Romans 8:36), you may appear, to the natural eye, Godforsaken. You may, at times, even appear so to yourself.

“Glory will be the balm you longed for but never found here, the cure that felt a world beyond reach.”

But not forever. One day soon, your true self, hidden for now in Christ (Colossians 3:3), will be seen. Then will come “the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19), “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21), our “adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). Your status as God’s child will become manifest not only to the eye of faith, but to the eye of sight, as you shed this death-bound body and, like a brilliant flower born from a dirty seed, rise up resplendent. Imperishable, powerful, glorious with Christ’s glory (1 Corinthians 15:42–43; Philippians 3:21), you finally will look like the child you are.

And finally you will see what glory can do with this life’s shattered pieces. Like the palm of our Lord Jesus upon the sick, glory will restore every part of you still broken and blind, still leprous and lame, healing all your unhealable places. Glory will be the balm you longed for but never found here, the cure that felt a world beyond reach. For Glory himself will touch you with his own hands, and his scars will banish ours forever (Revelation 21:4).

Renewed Earth

His scars will banish ours — and not only ours. The creation, too, waits for glory, its current brokenness a consequence and reminder of our own. “The creation was subjected to futility”; it lives “in bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:20–21). But oh how it yearns for freedom, waiting “with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19). The sea, even now, is ready to roar, the trees are poised to clap their hands, and the song of the hills hangs on inhaled breath (Psalm 98:7–8; Isaiah 55:12).

With us, creation too will descend into the grave, and rise again transfigured. It too, seed-like, will sprout into a beauty beyond imagining, its freedom and glory an echo of our own — and both an echo of Christ’s (Romans 8:21). Meanwhile, the creation groans for this transformation, aching to become the mirror of the children’s glory, the fitting frame for our own endless joy.

Creation looks to the day when its stones will run like streets of gold, when its trees will bear fruit for our healing, when every bird will sing the song and every flower waft the fragrance of God’s all-conquering love in Christ (Romans 8:37–39).

Glory Is Already Here

Glory, then, is rushing toward this world like a river from the throne of God, like light from the lamp of the Lamb, like the Spirit blown over Ezekiel’s valley, ready to come and dig a grave for all our griefs. And yet, even now, in this present age of groaning, the guarantee of that glory lives and dwells within us.

“Some wounds never heal fully in this world. Some hopes follow us, still deferred, into the grave. But glory is coming.”

If Christ is yours, then “the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Romans 8:9). The same Spirit who raised and glorified Jesus has made your heart his home (Romans 8:11), his presence a promise that your groans will turn to glory (Romans 8:23, 30) — and a promise, too, that glory can even now enter your groans.

Whenever you walk “according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:5), you feel the beat of glory’s undying heart. Whenever you put to death some deed of the body (Romans 8:13), or respond to heartache by crying, “Abba!” (Romans 8:15), or love Christ in the midst of deep loss (Romans 8:35–39), you hold, like Noah, an olive leaf of the coming glory, a little piece of the land beyond sorrow.

Some pain fills the whole frame of this life. Some wounds never heal fully in this world. Some hopes follow us, still deferred, into the grave. But glory is coming — and the Spirit of glory lives, even now, as our inseparable friend. And the sufferings of this present time, however high and wide and deep and long, are not worth comparing with him.

Some spiritual darkness feels so woven into the fabric of our souls, so enmeshed in our personality and wiring, so deeply rooted and subtle, that escaping it can feel like trying to run from our own shadow. An ingrained and abiding lack of assurance, a distorted relationship with body image or food, the twisting temptations of unwanted desire — such darkness has a way of hounding at the heels.

Perhaps you feel, as I have, like “a man in a shipwreck who sees land and envies the happiness of all those who are there but thinks it is impossible for him to reach the shore,” as Henry Scougal once described the experience (The Life of God in the Soul of Man, 108). You see clearly enough what a life free from your darkness would look like, but every attempt to reach that happy shore has left you wave-tossed and battered upon the rocks. So you look wistfully from the deeps, still desiring deliverance, but no longer trying so hard. You settle into a life of treading water.

Some years ago, as this fatalistic spirit began to settle on me, I struck upon a piece of counsel that offered a mighty and needed shake. John Owen (1616–1683), addressing spiritual doubters in particular, writes,

Be not . . . heartless or slothful: up and be doing; attend with diligence to the word of grace; be fervent in prayer, assiduous in the use of all ordinances of the church; in one or other of them, at one time or other, thou wilt meet with Him whom thy soul loveth, and God through Him will speak peace unto thee. (Works of John Owen, 6:614)

“Up and be doing.” Certainly this is not the only counsel the spiritually stuck need to hear (nor is it the only counsel Owen offers). But in my own entrenched struggles, I have found great help from this gentle but firm hand on the shoulder, this kind but resolute look in the eye, this warm but weighty voice telling me I am no prisoner to my past or present and bidding me not to grow weary in seeking God.

‘Up and Be Doing’

Perhaps you read counsel like the above and sigh. “Read the Bible more? Pray more? Go to church more? I’ve already tried all that.” A similar sigh has passed through my own lips more than once. I’ve already asked, sought, and knocked, I’ve thought to myself, but it just hasn’t worked. Eventually, however, my mind drifts back to Scripture’s own examples of long and earnest seeking, and the words “I’ve already tried that” fall limply to the ground.

We could consider the Old Testament refrain to seek the Lord “with all your heart and all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29), or the prophets’ resolve, come what may, to “wait for the God of my salvation” (Micah 7:7), or the psalmists’ example of crying out “day and night before you,” even from the deepest, longest darkness (Psalm 88:1). But perhaps the Gospels offer the most powerful call to rise, lift up our heads, and seek God with fresh diligence.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you,” Jesus tells his disciples. Fewer words hold more promise for those seeking a deliverance as yet ungiven. Fewer too hold more challenge. For when Jesus illustrates the kind of asking, seeking, and knocking he has in mind, he offers the parable of the impudent friend, that noisy midnight knocker who wouldn’t leave without his loaves (Luke 11:5–9). Of the various charges that might be brought against my own prayer life, I fear impudence is rarely one of them.

Meanwhile, the Gospels give us living portraits of the same point: women who break through crowds to touch the hem of his garment (Mark 5:27–28), fathers half-beaten by unbelief who nevertheless carry their sons to Christ (Mark 9:24), mothers who persist in their petitions, undaunted by refusals, until they receive their request (Mark 7:24–30). Such desperate souls asked and sought and knocked — and asked and sought and knocked again — until the gift was given, the treasure found, the handle turned.

Compared to such as these, how much of my own seeking has happened from half a heart, from a split soul, with one foot stepping toward God and one dragging lazily behind?

Draw Near to God

To be sure, Jesus does sometimes surprise his struggling people and, quite apart from our diligent seeking, grant the deliverance we need. Our Christian lives began when he raised us, Lazarus-like, from the tomb — and sometimes, our Christian lives progress when he blesses us unsought, or sought only feebly.

But we have no warrant for presuming he will do so. The spiritual world, like the physical world, has its causes and effects, its means and ends, its principle that “whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Neither creation nor Scripture gives us a category for a sanctified sluggard, whose spiritual crop grows without diligent plowing and planting, weeding and watering. Our Spirit-dependent efforts cannot earn God’s blessing — only Christ can — but very often they are the divinely appointed means of experiencing his blessing.

Knowing that God uses our diligence as a means of deliverance, we might ask questions like these when darkness persists:

Am I actively killing every known sin, including those that seem unrelated to my main struggle, and by comparison small (Romans 8:13)?
Have my prayers for deliverance looked anything like that holy impudence that knocks and knocks again (Luke 11:8)?
Do I meditate upon God’s word day and night (Psalm 1:2) — and in particular, am I intimately acquainted with passages that address my struggle?
On Sundays, do I listen to sermons and take the Lord’s Supper expectantly, looking to my Lord “as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master” (Psalm 123:2)?
Have I kept pursuing Christian community, surrounding myself with Spirit-filled people rather than shrinking away into the shadows (Hebrews 10:24–25)?
Have I sought specific counsel from wise and trusted saints, inviting them to take a flashlight into the cellar of my soul?

Questions like these make me mindful of God’s mercy, which so often has met my half-hearted seeking with wholehearted kindness. He is a blessed and blessing God, always “ready to forgive” and give more than we ask (Nehemiah 9:17; Ephesians 3:20). Yet as I think about my own persistent struggles, these questions also remind me just how much territory remains to be explored in the promise of James 4:8: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

Seeking from the Depths

We should beware, at this point, of reducing the deepest struggles to a mere matter of trying harder. Nor would I wish to imply that all who have sought some deliverance unsuccessfully have simply not sought earnestly enough. Sometimes, the shore remains out of reach not because we haven’t swum hard enough, but because the sea is long. Jesus promises that those who seek will find; he does not promise they will find immediately. So, in reality, our seeking may last much longer, and our progress may advance much slower, than we hoped.

“Sometimes, the shore remains out of reach not because we haven’t swum hard enough, but because the sea is long.”

Spiritually speaking, we may feel somewhat like the woman with the twelve-year flow of blood, stuck in a place of undesired darkness despite our best efforts. Why did God let her sickness linger for twelve years instead of ten — or two? We don’t know. We do know, however, that in the fields of God’s kingdom, no seed of diligence, buried and watered with patient perseverance, remains fruitless forever (Galatians 6:9). God has never told his people, “Seek me in vain” (Isaiah 45:19). Nor does he show us the happy shore to merely tantalize us in the water. He shows it because it really can be ours — maybe not immediately or all at once, but really.

So, in the midst of long seeking, don’t lose heart. Your God sees you. His ways may soar high above your understanding, but they are never unwise or unkind (Isaiah 55:8–9). And if you go on seeking him, if every time you fall you rise up again and be doing, the sun will sooner drop from the sky than you be put to shame (Isaiah 49:23).

Our Hand on His Hem

Diligent seeking also holds its dangers, of course. And chief among them may be this: as we pray, and read, and gather with God’s people, and hear counsel, we may rely more on these means than on the One who made them. We may hang our hopes for deliverance not upon Christ, but upon all our efforts to seek him, like travelers too focused on the road to see their home.

Here again, a mind immersed in the Gospels may be our best guide. For in all our seeking, we are doing spiritually what so many Gospel characters did physically: getting as close to Jesus as we can, certain that he is our only hope.

“All our best efforts are only the hand on the hem of Christ’s garment, and all the blessing belongs to him.”

Our prayers may rise like Bartimaeus’s cry, but they are not the voice that bids us see. Our Bible reading may kneel us like the leper before Jesus, but it is not the touch that heals us. Our Sunday worship may stretch out an arm like the sick and anguished woman’s, but it is not the power flowing. All our best efforts are only the hand on the hem of Christ’s garment, and all the blessing belongs to him.

But oh, what blessing awaits those who do cry out and keep crying, kneel and keep kneeling, reach and keep reaching. In all our hardest wrestlings, we are not bound to the narrow fences of our own personality, our own power, our own past: we are bound to Christ himself. And in him, the long and desperate darkness can finally begin to lift, and the shipwrecked saint can finally draw near to shore, carried on the waves of his strength.

In the church’s mission against the gates of hell, one of our main weapons is the familiar, often unremarkable, easily underestimated act of teaching.

Jesus taught (Matthew 4:23; 9:35), and he called his apostles to teach (Matthew 28:19–20). The apostles taught (Acts 5:28; 28:31), and they equipped local pastors to teach (1 Timothy 3:2; 4:13). Now, pastors teach (2 Timothy 4:2), and they raise up faithful men (2 Timothy 2:2), as well as all the saints (Colossians 3:16), to continue the teaching task. Through teaching, God lights up the darkness and lifts up his Christ, he frees Satan’s captives and makes them his sons, he hammers hell’s gates and wins back the world.

But not just through any teaching. Thoroughly Christian teaching is a bigger, broader task than many assume, especially in an age of abundant online content. Throughout the New Testament, the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, and then the church, assumes a certain context, flows from a certain character, comes with a certain content, and aims toward a certain completion.

And perhaps nowhere do we see these features more clearly than in Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:18–35). How did Paul teach the Ephesians so as to “open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18)? And how might pastors, missionaries, and other teachers model him today?

Context: All of Life

The word teaching, for us, likely evokes images of academia: classrooms and desks, lectures and note-taking. Paul certainly had a category for formal public teaching, as when he taught in the Ephesian synagogue or reasoned in the hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19:8–10). But for the apostle, teaching was also woven into all of life.

Paul “lived among” the Ephesians for three years; his “students” were those “among whom I have gone about” (Acts 20:18, 25). Paul knew the Ephesians deeply, and the Ephesians likewise knew Paul. He had taught not only in public but “from house to house” (Acts 20:20); they had seen not only his talk but his tears (Acts 20:31). In his teaching, Paul clothed abstract principles with his own lived example. He had not only told them the words of the Lord Jesus, that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but he had “shown” them (Acts 20:35).

Andrew Clarke, in a review of Claire Smith’s study Pauline Communities as ‘Scholastic Communities’, describes Paul’s teaching method this way: “Close, authoritative relationships invited the imitation of modeled lives, and not merely attendance at formal discourse.” Discipleship, Paul knew, is less like learning physics and more like learning carpentry, and disciples are less like students and more like apprentices. And so, Paul spoke to all of the church’s life with all of his life, joining doctrine and devotion, precept and pattern.

“Paul spoke to all of the church’s life with all of his life, joining doctrine and devotion, precept and pattern.”

Understandably, then, Paul was not content with distant, disembodied teaching — at least, not as his primary mode of teaching. Even when Paul wrote letters, he longed to turn pen and ink into flesh and blood (Galatians 4:20; 1 Thessalonians 2:17–18; 2 Timothy 1:4), and he often sent his written teaching with those who could model “my ways in Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:17).

Today, we rightly leverage our digital technologies for teaching (as I am now). But as we turn away from the Internet and toward our real-life churches (ideally our primary teaching context), can we say with Paul, “You yourselves know how I lived among you” (Acts 20:25) — because, indeed, we have enfleshed our teaching in everyday life?

Character: All of Christ

Given this all-of-life context, Paul’s teaching required a certain character. If teaching included imitation and not just information, the teacher needed more than true ideas; he needed a holy life. So, as Paul reminds the Ephesian elders of his ministry among them, he says as much about his manner as he does about his message.

Paul had served with humility, taught with tears, suffered with patience (Acts 20:19). He preached Christ as altogether worthy and then showed his willingness to die for his name (Acts 20:24). He taught the whole counsel of God with courage (Acts 20:27). And he displayed a manifest freedom from greed and laziness as he commended the Servant Savior (Acts 20:33–35). As he taught in all of life, he modeled — as much as an imperfect saint can — all of Christ.

Words and works could not be separated in the apostle’s mind. Faithful teaching called for faithful living — not only because a faithful life would illustrate and embody the teaching, but also because it would guard the truth in a teacher’s heart. “Pay careful attention to yourselves,” Paul told the church’s elders. And why? Because “from your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:28, 30). Before a teacher speaks “twisted things,” the desire to draw others after himself captures his heart. Twisted teaching comes from a twisted soul, a twisted life.

The church father Gregory Nazianzen once said of his friend Basil that “his speech was like thunder because his life was like lightning” (Pia Desideria, 104). Likewise with Paul. So, when the apostle instructs Timothy to raise up more teachers, he tells him to look not merely for “able” men — men who can and want to teach — but for “faithful men” (2 Timothy 2:2), men whose words thunder because their lives blaze.

Content: All of Scripture

If the context of Paul’s teaching was all of life, and the character was all of Christ, then the content was all of Scripture, with a special focus on Jesus’s person and work. He taught the whole Christ from the whole counsel of God.

Twice, Paul mentions his refusal to pick and choose from God’s word:

“I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable” (Acts 20:20).
“I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

How tempting to “shrink” before some uncomfortable word from God rather than, like Paul, “declaring” it. How tempting to minimize, sidestep, muffle, ignore, or twist the toughest texts. Yet Paul knew that all God’s words were “profitable,” no matter how painful they landed at first, and that he as God’s steward would be judged by how faithfully he taught his Master’s message (Acts 20:26–27). And so, he didn’t shrink from proclaiming every promise, telling every story, witnessing to every warning, and declaring every command.

At the same time, he spoke especially “of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21), or what he calls “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24) — or most succinctly, “the word of his grace” (Acts 20:32). Of all that was profitable, the gospel was most profitable; among the whole counsel of God, Christ was the climax. Every promise pointed to his person and work, and every command flowed from his cross.

Completion: All He Commanded

Finally, as Paul taught, he aimed toward the grand ambition of the Great Commission: “. . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). The end of Christian teaching is not understanding but obedience — what Paul elsewhere calls “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5).

“Oh, how good it would be if our own teaching were washed in the tears of holy love.”

Paul yearned to see the word of God’s grace “build . . . up” believers into Christ-loving, word-obeying, devil-shaming disciples (Acts 20:32). So, he not only explained and applied God’s word, but even “admonish[ed] everyone with tears” (Acts 20:31). Oh, how good it would be if our own teaching were washed in the tears of holy love. With Paul, such leaders live and weep and teach to kill anger and birth gentleness, to clothe the proud with humility and the sorrowful with praise, to take people curved toward themselves and open them up to a broad new world, to heal fractured relationships and create communities so satisfied in Christ they confound the devil’s kingdom.

Such a mission, of course, is impossible apart from God. Who can open the eyes of the blind, or break the iron chains wrapped around the will, or deliver those enslaved to the ancient lie? Only the Spirit of the living God. Paul knew it, and so we read, “When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all” (Acts 20:36).

Teaching may be the church’s sword, but it cuts only when wielded by the Spirit. Without him, our best words are a dull and broken blade. So, before we teach, and after we teach, and perhaps even as we teach, we pray, “Father, take these feeble words, this little teaching, and win back more of your world.”

Twenty-five years. Three hundred months. One thousand three hundred weeks. Nine thousand one hundred twenty-five days. That’s how long Abraham waited between hearing God’s promise and holding his son (Genesis 12:4; 21:5).

We can read Genesis 12–21 in one sitting. Abraham and Sarah lived it day by day, nine thousand mornings and more. Three times we’re told God appeared to Abraham to reaffirm his word (Genesis 15:5; 17:16; 18:10). Otherwise, he and Sarah carried the past promise in a land of present silence, waiting with open hands and an empty womb.

Abraham, “the father of us all” (Romans 4:16), was a waiting man; his faith, a waiting faith. As his seventies turned to eighties turned to nineties, he waited. As he moved through Haran to Canaan to Egypt and back, he waited. As his body weakened and his wife grew gray, he waited.

God could have brought Isaac sooner, or he could have given the promise later. Instead, he sent Abraham into the wilderness of waiting for twenty-five years. Waiting was part of God’s good plan for Abraham. And so it is with us.

Wait for the Lord

Like father, like sons: the children of Abraham have always been, and are still, a waiting people. We often walk with empty hands, the womb of our hopes still aching for life.

“Like father, like sons: the children of Abraham have always been, and are still, a waiting people.”

Perhaps, with David, we sit in some spiritual or relational pit, waiting for God to draw us out (Psalm 40:1–2). Or maybe, with Jeremiah, we lie in a ruin of our own making, waiting for God to rescue and redeem (Lamentations 3:25–26). Or possibly, with Isaiah, we walk before the hidden face of God, waiting to see him again (Isaiah 8:17). Either way, we have asked but not yet received, sought but not yet found, knocked but not yet been answered (Matthew 7:7–8). God has promised; we have prayed; still we wait.

Meanwhile, the questions can multiply, captured in the words of waiting Asaph:

Will the Lord spurn forever,     and never again be favorable?Has his steadfast love forever ceased?     Are his promises at an end for all time?Has God forgotten to be gracious?     Has he in anger shut up his compassion? (Psalm 77:7–9)

When the hours roll by and the sun refuses to rise, the waiting heart can nearly break. And yet, break it does not — at least not when held by God’s own hand. For as so many saints have discovered, God knows how to make rivers run through the wilderness of waiting, daily refreshing our driest hopes. We read that Abraham “grew strong in his faith” as the childless years unfolded (Romans 4:20). And so may we, if we know where to look in our waiting: not only at our own barren life, but up to God, back to his faithfulness, forward to his promise, and down to his path.

Look Up to God

For many, the deepest pain of waiting lies in the sense that God, who once seemed so near, now feels so far away. We may find ourselves saying with David, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). The heavens were once a window; now they seem more like a wall.

Remarkably, however, Israel’s psalmists and prophets did not take God’s felt absence as reason to turn away from him. In their waiting, they kept a fundamentally Godward posture, their eyes lifted and prayers ascending to the God they could not see. The prophet Micah speaks for many:

As for me, I will look to the Lord;     I will wait for the God of my salvation;     my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7)

Though the skies look black as lead, and the heavens seem silent as the grave, yet I will pray to God, my only hope. I will lift my hands to him. I will pour out my heart before him (Psalm 62:8). And though I cannot see his face, yet still I will show him mine.

Look Back to His Faithfulness

After looking up to the God they cannot see, the waiting then routinely look back to God’s former faithfulness. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord,” Asaph tells himself (Psalm 77:11). Similarly, Jeremiah answers his own anguish by saying, “But this I call to mind” (Lamentations 3:21). When the present seemed a desolate land, they plundered the past for hope.

Psalm 89 may offer the most remarkable example of letting the past be heard. Ethan, the psalmist, finds himself in a desperate present, reflected in the outpoured grief of verses 38–51. Yet even as that sorrow churns within, he spends the first 37 verses of the psalm patiently walking the paths of past redemption. Before he laments, he remembers:

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever;     with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. (Psalm 89:1)

“When the present seemed a desolate land, they plundered the past for hope.”

Back then he goes: to the exodus, to the promised land, to the covenant with David (Psalm 89:9–10, 15–16, 19–37), each an immovable monument to God’s unchanging faithfulness. Given Ethan’s knife-edge agony, Derek Kidner rightly calls these first 37 verses “a miracle of self-discipline” (Psalms 73–150, 356).

God still gives that miracle today. He still takes people like us, bowed down and barely able to lift our heads, and bids us look back. With Ethan, then, trace the ancient paths. Remember again God’s wonders of old. Sit beside miraculous pregnancies and split seas, a Christ born and a cross carried. And in it all, refuse to allow present pain to set the boundaries of your future hopes.

Look Forward to His Promise

With God’s past faithfulness fresh in our minds, we can dare to the look toward the future with hope. We can take our stand like a watchman on the walls, and say with defiant faith, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope” (Psalm 130:5). God’s promise now no longer seems like an empty word, a fragile wish: it will come as surely as the dawn (Psalm 130:6).

Abraham shows us the same orientation toward God’s promise in his own long wait:

No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:20–21)

A vague sense of God’s faithfulness was not enough to sustain Abraham’s faith: he clung to a particular promise. He remembered how God had lifted his eyes toward the starry sky and said, “So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:5). Abraham treasured every letter of that pledge as the years marched on. He carried the promise in his coat pocket like a soldier far from home, stealing glances through the day, sure that his children would one day rival the skies.

Do the promises of God find such a welcome home in your waiting heart? Whatever your need, God has spoken. He may not have promised a particular gift you long for — a son like Abraham’s, perhaps — but he has not left you promise-less. Comfort for the comfortless (Isaiah 40:1), help for the helpless (Isaiah 41:10), provision for the needy (Philippians 4:19), an answer to our knocking (Matthew 7:7–8) — all these and more he pledges to his waiting people. With Abraham, then, turn away from your own frailty, and fix your eyes on God’s promise.

Look Down to His Path

We have looked up, we have looked back, and we have looked forward. Still, however, we find ourselves in the wilderness of waiting. Maybe quiet years still stretch before us, or maybe our wait is nearly over. Either way, we have today to live. And today, we wait.

We might be tempted on a day like today to see life as somewhere in the future, waiting for us at the end of this wait. But then we hear a prayer like waiting David’s:

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;     teach me your paths.Lead me in your truth and teach me,     for you are the God of my salvation;     for you I wait all the day long. (Psalm 25:4–5)

David looked not only up, back, and forward, but down to the path God had set before him today. “Lord, teach me today, lead me today, help me today. Let today be marked by present obedience, joyful submission, even as I wait for you.”

Today may feel like a wasteland and a blank, a parenthesis between a lost past and a longed-for future. But today, even today, the God of waiting has good works for you to walk in. So rehearse his promises and say your prayers. Do your work and serve your family. Love your neighbors and share the gospel. And trust that one day soon, you will join Abraham and Sarah, Moses and David, Ethan and Jeremiah to sing, “None who wait for you shall be put to shame” (Psalm 25:3).

Our typical images of romantic, married love picture a couple facing each other, eyes locked in mutual affection. And for good reason.

Adam’s first words to Eve were a serenade. In the Song of Solomon, the whole world serves as backdrop to the beauty of the beloved. And one day, our Lord Jesus will “present the church to himself in splendor” (Ephesians 5:27), a bride adorned and deeply adored. While friends typically stand “side by side, absorbed in some common interest,” C.S. Lewis writes, “lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other” (The Four Loves, 61).

And yet, as most couples know, marriage calls for more than tender clasping. In fact, the inward gaze, if allowed to exclude all else, will turn sick; the Solomonic song will spiral out of tune. For from the beginning, God built into marriage another gaze, another song.

When we hear the Lord God say, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” we may assume the not good refers to a relational lack, an emotional hole in Adam’s heart. No doubt Adam felt that lack, that hole. But God’s next words turn our eyes, surprisingly, to Adam’s vocational need: “I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). God had given Adam an outward mission (Genesis 2:15–17), and Adam needed help. He needed not only a face before him, but a shoulder beside him.

Marriages today still need a mission. And that means men today still need a mission.

Woman and Helper

This dynamic picture of marriage, this inward and outward posture, finds beautiful expression in Eve’s two titles in Genesis 2. She is, one the one hand, woman. When Adam awakes from his deep sleep, and finds his rib returned to him transfigured, he breaks out in verse:

This at last is bone of my bones     and flesh of my flesh;she shall be called Woman,     because she was taken out of Man. (Genesis 2:23)

Lest we imagine marriage as a union of mere usefulness, a practical arrangement for the doing of tasks, God shows us the first husband singing the wonder of his wife. Here, standing before him, is woman — his own humanity refracted through the prism of triune diversity. She answers the longing of his heart, and he hers.

Yet Eve is, on the other hand, helper. When she enters Eden, she meets a man already on a mission to work and keep the garden under the authority of their Maker (Genesis 2:15–17). And then, together, she and her man receive the commission to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). By God’s good design, the mission of the garden required not just one, but two; not just man, but woman. Adam needed a compatible co-regent, a queen to assist in his reign, a helper of the highest honor. Together, in complementary glory, they would garden the world.

In the pattern of Genesis 2, then, a husband loves his wife as woman, and he leads his wife as helper. He waxes poetic about her beauty, and he labors with her beside him. He rises up to praise her (Proverbs 31:28–29), and he empowers her dominion (Proverbs 31:11–27). He embraces her as lover, and they stride forth as fellow rulers. Their inward romance, like the trunk of a great tree, branches up and out, bearing fruit for outward mission.

Marriage on Mission

Men today, of course, do not receive a direct, specific mission from God as Adam did. Nevertheless, God’s original pattern of creating a man, giving him a mission, and then granting him a wife as both woman and helper tells us much about God’s lasting designs for marriage.

Today’s Adams may not have a literal garden to work and keep, but we have our own spheres for mission: homes to manage, children to father, churches to love and lead, jobs to work, and neighborhoods to reach for Christ. Each is a field to de-thorn and un-thistle, to plow and sow, to take dominion (Genesis 1:28) and make disciples (Matthew 28:18–20). And any honest man, gazing upon those fields, will agree with God’s ancient verdict: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”

Some men, like the apostle Paul, will advance their mission unmarried, with the help that comes from friends and fellow laborers rather than a wife. Most, however, will follow the creation norm, and with their wives they will expand the garden of God’s kingdom in their surrounding spheres. Together, he and she will look with longing — at each other, and also at all the land around them, waiting to be claimed for Christ.

Too often, I fear, I act as if the mission of marriage were simply marriage — that merely a happy home, and not also a happy world, were God’s aim in our union. I live like an arrow at home in the quiver, forgetting the feel of the bow, the rush of outward flight.

How, then, might men like me recover, in Christ, the lost design of Genesis 2? How might husbands live with our wives as treasured women and as precious helpers, together building something beyond ourselves? I find help from a simple three-part framework: dream, draw, do.

Dream

Adam’s leadership began with a vision of what could be: a garden worked and kept, an earth filled and subdued (Genesis 1:28; 2:15–17). A husband’s leadership, likewise, often begins with a dream. He looks out upon home, children, church, neighborhood, imagining what they might look like under the total lordship of Christ — and what he and his wife might do about it. How might they disciple the kids better? How might neighborhood hospitality become more routine? How might the family join the church for corporate prayer more often?

Unlike the sluggard, who “does not plow in autumn,” and therefore “will seek at harvest and have nothing” (Proverbs 20:4), he takes thought for the future long before it comes — anticipating needs, discerning opportunities, noticing possible threats, and learning to plant and plow more faithfully in autumn. And as the seasons of family life change — as new children are born, as the kids grow, and as normal years run their course through spring, summer, fall, and winter — he keeps dreaming, developing fresh vision for the family’s various spheres.

Any godly wife, of course, will do her fair share of dreaming too. She will feel a holy discontent and imagine better ways the family might fulfill their callings. A godly husband will cherish such dreams. As head of the home, however, he also will feel his special responsibility to take the family forward, rather than waiting for his wife to lead the charge. And so, he dreams — and as he dreams, he labors to draw her.

Draw

If the responsibility to dream counteracts the passivity in a man, the calling to draw undermines any tendency he may have toward domineering leadership. As with Adam and Eve, God intends a couple’s mission to be theirs and not just his. So, with patience and tenderness, with wisdom and humility, a man draws his wife in and out.

“God intends a couple’s mission to be theirs and not just his.”

In drawing her in, he welcomes his wife into his dreaming — gathering her impressions, asking for her feedback, hearing her counsel. He knows his dreams are often incomplete and immature without her complementary perspective. He knows, too, that her dreams may often surpass his own in sound judgment. Like the Proverbs 31 woman, “she opens her mouth with wisdom” (Proverbs 31:26) — and he is not too insecure to hear it.

In drawing his wife out, he imagines how their mission together might make full use of her abilities. How might he draw out her strengths rather than diminish them, unleash her potential rather than cage it, see her bloom and flourish rather than wither? Or as Herman Bavinck writes, how might he help her assist him “in the fullest and broadest sense, physically and spiritually, with her wisdom and love, with her head and her heart” (The Christian Family, 6)?

Do

Finally, having dreamed for his family and drawn his wife, a husband does — he acts — taking the first steps toward the garden’s uncultivated edge. Practically, as John Piper has said, he seeks to be the one who says “let’s” most often: “Let’s gather the kids for family devotions.” “Let’s plan a block party for our neighbors.” “Let’s get away just the two of us.” “Let’s go early to serve at church this Sunday.”

Some of us may find dreaming and drawing easier than actually doing. Adam seems to have: though he knew his mission and drew Eve into it, he failed to actually do it in the face of opposition (Genesis 3:6). Doing lays a burden on a man in the most inconvenient hours, attacking his laziness and selfish use of time, calling for energy after long workdays, bidding him rise and step when he would rather sit. I need help remembering that family leadership is not a one-time vision, a momentary inspiration, but a day-in, day-out pursuit, a fashioning of dreams from difficult moments.

“What a gift to a home — and what a reflection of Christ, when a man acts as the first mover most of the time.”

Can a wife take initiative in similar ways? Yes, she can — and sometimes should. Just because her husband says “let’s” most doesn’t mean she never does. But what a gift to a home, and what a reflection of Christ, when a man acts as the first mover most of the time.

The mission of marriage calls for all of a man. And therefore, it calls for a man to give all of his heart to God, and submit all of his life to Christ, and yield all of his will to the Spirit. Such an all-in, all-out man will embrace his wife as woman: his perfect match, his lily of the valley, his home on earth, his heart’s best song. And he also will embrace her as helper: his lover on mission, his indispensable partner, his queen with crown and scepter. And so he will love her, and so he will lead her.

A friend recently asked whether I saw myself still living in Minneapolis five years from now. I had no compelling reason to say no: no alluring job prospects, no deep stirrings for change, no clear path from here to elsewhere. I had several significant reasons to say yes: we own a home here; our children were born here; I work and pastor here. Still, I hesitated.

Others in my generation probably resonate. Unlike our grandparents (or even our parents), we grew up breathing the air of transience. As young adults, we dwell in tents, not houses, always ready to pull up the stakes, often feeling we are on our way to somewhere that is not here. The idea of settling down for fifty years in the same neighborhood, job, or church can make our clothes feel scratchy. We move among our elders as tumbleweeds through redwoods.

No doubt, there are good and godly reasons to live lightly upon the earth, prepared for God to send us elsewhere. But I wonder how often we are blown less by the wind of the Spirit and more by the wind of our endlessly unsettled age. I wonder too how a renewed mind, rooted more deeply in God’s word, might discern the spiritual wisdom of staying put.

Tumbleweeds and Trees

As we consider what Scripture has to say to our more mobile age, we do well to remember that its books were not written to people who owned cars, who bought plane tickets, who crossed countries and continents with ease. Most ancient Jews and early Christians stayed put because they had to. That’s simply what (almost) everyone did.

We also do well to recognize that Scripture often holds in high regard those who do leave home. The word go marks two of the most momentous turning points in redemptive history: the calling of Abram and the sending of the church (Genesis 12:1; Matthew 28:19). We might also recall Moses, that cross-country prophet; Paul, the hither-and-thither missionary; or our Lord himself, who traveled from city to city to teach, heal, and usher in a new age.

Yet even still, we can’t escape God’s love for local places and the people who stay there. Moses uprooted Israel from Egypt, but only so he could plant them in Canaan (Psalm 80:8), where everyone might sit under his own vine and fig tree (Micah 4:4). Paul tumbled around the Mediterranean, but building and strengthening local churches was the labor of his life (Acts 14:23; 2 Timothy 2:2). And Jesus, as much as he moved through all Galilee and Judah, was still known as “Jesus of Nazareth” (Luke 4:34; 18:37; Acts 2:22; 3:6). The incarnate Son did not consider three decades in the same quiet town a waste of time.

“Lasting fruit usually comes from lasting presence.”

Moses could have kept Israel on a constant sojourn. Paul could have called every convert to come with him. Jesus could have left Nazareth long before thirty. But trees grow shade, bushes bear fruit, and vines become beautiful only after patient years of staying put. And so with us, lasting fruit usually comes from lasting presence.

Roots for Restless Souls

Perhaps the Bible’s most explicit teaching about staying and going appears in 1 Corinthians 7:17–24, where Paul three times counsels the Corinthian believers to remain where they are:

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. (verse 17)

Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. (verse 20)

So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God. (verse 24)

Now, Paul wrote these words into a context quite different from our own. Some Corinthian believers, it seems, wondered if becoming a Christian necessitated a change in life status. Does Christian faithfulness require the uncircumcised to receive circumcision, or bondservants to seek freedom? Paul, while endorsing helpful life changes (1 Corinthians 7:21), nevertheless reassures the church that they can serve Jesus fruitfully wherever they’re found. So, three times he says, “Stay.”

Our own impulses toward moving or changing may come from different motives, but the principles Paul uses still apply. Consider, then, three steps the apostle might counsel us to take before uprooting from job, home, church, or other life situations.

1. Pay attention to providence.

In an individualistic society, we are prone to lean almost entirely on the subjective when making decisions. Do I like this job? Are we still happy in this home? Is this church still a good fit for me? Alongside these important subjective questions, however, Paul adds the objective fact of God’s providence: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (1 Corinthians 7:17). We are who we are and where we are not by chance, but by the Lord’s assignment and calling. And therefore, factors beyond our feelings are at play.

John Calvin draws out the merciful purpose of God’s providence:

[God] knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. . . . Therefore each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life. (Institutes, 3.10.6)

To be sure, the doctrine of providence, rightly grasped, does not produce passive, inert, immobile people who endure misery with a sigh of que sera sera. Calvin himself left his native France for Geneva. And Paul, after mentioning God’s assignment, still tells bondservants, “If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity” (1 Corinthians 7:21). God in his providence not only plants us where we are, but sometimes opens pathways elsewhere.

Nevertheless, those who pay attention to providence will not be quick to abandon their present place, even under the sway of strong feeling. They will pray to the God of providence, and seek counsel from his people — so often the agents of his providence — wary all the while of their tendency to leave the Lord’s sentry posts for a life of heedless wandering.

2. See the potential in your present place.

Not only has God, in his providence, brought us to our present place, but he likely sees far more potential in it than we do. We may look at our life situation and see little more than a barren field, a fruitless tree, a dry and dusty Nazareth. But God sees more.

Surely, some of the bondservants in Corinth struggled to see potential in their present station. Theirs was not an enviable position. Yet Paul writes, “He who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ” (1 Corinthians 7:22). Paul is quite happy for bondservants to find freedom if they can (1 Corinthians 7:21). At the same time, he wants them to see that even bondservice can say something beautiful about Christ: Men may call me a servant, but in Christ, God calls me a son.

Our own situations are likely far better than a bondservant’s. Yet what potential in your present place might you have a hard time noticing? Living in an inner-city neighborhood brings some level of danger, but it also brings opportunity to give the gospel to the poor. A church in conflict may not feed your soul as another would, but it can also become ground zero for a new work of the Spirit, more beautiful than what came before. The mission field may seem like a waste of gifts once used, but it can also become soil for the seed of your fallen life, precious in God’s sight and poised for much fruit (John 12:24).

Who, if not Christians, will look upon the mustard seed of our present circumstances and see the coming tree (Matthew 13:31–32)? Who will recognize in the small stone a future mountain (Daniel 2:31–35), or the age of great things in the day of small (Zechariah 4:10)? Who will behold twelve common men as the beginning of a global movement (Matthew 16:18)? Who will stand upon an apparently godforsaken place and know that here, even here, Jesus holds all authority (Matthew 28:18)?

The humblest faith can transfigure the world, turning tumbleweeds into rooted trees, content to grow in the same ground for far longer than we thought possible.

3. Live where you are with God.

That kind of contentment, however, comes not only (and not mainly) from seeing the potential in our present place, but from seeing God in our present place. “So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (1 Corinthians 7:24). Don’t simply stay put; don’t merely remain. Wherever you are, live there with God.

“Don’t simply stay put; don’t merely remain. Wherever you are, live there with God.”

If you are in Christ, then you have already found your true and eternal Home, your best and final resting place. Another job may make better use of your skills, another city may better serve your family, another church may better profit from your presence — but no new job, city, or church can give you something better than the God who is already yours (1 Corinthians 3:22–23). Those who feel as much may still decide to leave their present place, yet they will do so as Abram left Ur, or Peter left Capernaum, or Paul left Antioch: not searching for contentment, but satisfied with God.

John Piper, preaching on Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well, notes that “one of the evidences of not drinking deeply from Jesus is the instability of constantly moving from one thing to the next, seeking to fill the void.” Those who don’t have a well of living water within will seek some water without (John 4:13–14) — and when that spring dries up, on they go to the next relationship, the next job, the next hobby, the next car, the next home. But those who have drunk deeply from Jesus, those who live where they are with God, are free to stay and be satisfied.

Slow Decisions

If we take the time and spiritual energy to pay attention to providence, see the potential in our present place, and live where we are with God, we may still decide against staying put. We may discern that wisdom would have us lift these roots and plant them elsewhere. One of the defining marks of our process, however, will be that we decide slowly.

Sometimes, opportunities will come that call for quick decisions. But most of the time, we can take some weeks, months, or even years to linger where we are, living there with God, while we consider the benefits of staying or going. And if we feel we cannot take such time, we probably should slow down all the more. Quick decisions often show we want to move without thinking, praying, or hearing counsel that might contradict what we have already decided to do.

Just as men in midlife crisis should beware of buying boats, and those in spiritual darkness should hesitate to pronounce their own doom, so those who feel an urge to move, change, leave would do well to let time do its wise and patient work. If the move really is in line with heavenly wisdom, we have nothing to fear from slowness. And we have good reason to hope we will become more like trees firmly rooted, our branches rising and shade growing for the good of our present place, and any place God may plant us next.

What is the will of God for your life? An air of mystery surrounds the question. God’s will can seem elusive, ambiguous, difficult to discern — a land without maps.

Is this the right job for me? Would God have us get married? Should our family move to the city or the suburbs? Is God leading me to full-time ministry?

Such questions send us searching for clarity — praying, thinking, pro-con listing, often second-guessing. What is your will, O God? And how do I find it? Depending on your charismatic convictions, you may do more: wait for impressions, read signs in your circumstances, lay out a fleece. I once flipped a coin.

We understandably agonize over such decisions. What job we take, whom we marry, where we live — these choices change the course of our lives. Yet because of their very importance, they also can distract us from the primary ways Scripture speaks of God’s will. Like hikers who pay more attention to each new fork in the path than to their compass, we can easily lose our basic sense of direction by fixating on one decision after the next.

Thank God, then, that in all our most difficult decisions, we have a compass:

Our Father in heaven,hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come,your will be done,     on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9–10)

This familiar prayer may not offer the direction we long for — an unmistakable nudge, a whisper from heaven — but it does offer the direction we most need.

‘Your Will Be Done’

“Your will be done” is a prayer with levels and layers of meaning, a multiple-story petition.

On one level, we ask, “Your will be done on earth.” In the broadest sense, the prayer settles for nothing less than a transformed, transfigured earth — an earth where God’s revealed will is no longer ignored, neglected, or despised, but done with the same angelic zeal, the same seraphic joy, as his will is done “in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

On another level, we ask, “Your will be done — not mine.” Here we follow the example of our Lord Jesus, who not only taught us to pray these words, but prayed them himself: “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (Matthew 26:42). We who follow Christ will never come close to the agony of this moment; like Peter, James, and John, we ever remain on Gethsemane’s edge. But in our own anguished hours, “Your will be done” is likewise for us an opening of the hands, a bending of the knees, a bowing of the head to God’s painful yet perfect plans.

And then, on a third level, we ask, “Your will be done in me.” As wide as earth and as high as heaven, the prayer nevertheless turns back to us, bidding us to ask not only that God’s will would be done everywhere out there, but also everywhere in here — right now, today, in every part of my life.

Which returns us to our beginning question: What is God’s will for my life, and how do I walk in it? Beginning from the Sermon on the Mount and broadening from there, we might answer with two simple sentences: Do the will you know. Discern the will you don’t.

Do the will you know.

We’ll see in a moment that Scripture gives direction for discerning God’s will in unclear situations. But as we’ll also see, Scripture gives a fundamental prerequisite for such discernment: attentive obedience to what God has already revealed. Doing the will you know is necessary for discerning the will you don’t.

“Doing the will you know is necessary for discerning the will you don’t.”

And not only necessary, but far more important. Consider the words of Jesus in the chapter after the Lord’s Prayer: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Heaven hangs on doing the will of God. And the will of God here is no hidden key, no secret whisper. As Jesus says three verses later, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man . . .” (Matthew 7:24). In the most basic and crucial sense, the will of God is found in the words of God.

Imagine a man who, after hearing Jesus’s sermon, says to his friend, “That’s all well and good, but I still wish I knew God’s will for my life.” His friend would be right to respond, “Weren’t you listening? God just told you his will for your life! Embrace poverty of spirit, meekness, and peace. Let your light shine. Kill anger, lust, lying, and vengeance. Pray and give and fast in secret. Don’t worry; seek the kingdom. Enter the narrow door. Build your house on the rock. That’s God’s will for your life.”

How many of us, like this will-of-God seeker, wonder what job we should have while neglecting godly diligence in our present job? How many seek his will for whom to marry while not pursuing a biblical vision of singleness in the meantime? How many ask God where they should live while overlooking neighbor love and the local obedience Scripture so clearly prescribes?

Far better to know and obey this will, always available and ever clear, than to have the greatest situational insight and neglect this will. Or as the apostle Paul might say, if we discern the right decisions to make, and if we receive all impressions and leadings, and if we gain all guidance, so as to choose the right paths, but do not obey the plain words we already know, we are nothing (Matthew 7:21).

Discern the will you don’t.

At the same time, the very Scriptures that give us God’s clear will also tell us to seek his unclear will. “Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord,” Paul tells the Ephesians (Ephesians 5:10). And then he writes in Romans,

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

And now we see why hearing and doing the will of God we know is the prerequisite to discerning the will of God we don’t. Right discernment depends not merely on a clear mind or an intelligent mind, but on a transformed mind — a mind, John Piper writes, “that is so shaped and so governed by the revealed will of God in the Bible, that we see and assess all relevant factors with the mind of Christ.”

We can see this discernment process at work even in the life of Jesus. In Luke 4, for example, Jesus decides to leave Capernaum to “preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well” (Luke 4:43). The decision was by no means a simple one: the people of Capernaum didn’t want Jesus to leave (Luke 4:42); neither did his disciples (Mark 1:36–37). But Jesus knew his Father willed for him to preach the gospel broadly (Luke 4:43). And so, after spending time in a desolate place (Luke 4:42), he applied the clear will of his Father to an unclear situation through patient, prayerful discernment.

Let the emphasis land on patient and prayerful. Discernment often will not come easily or quickly. Gathering the appropriate words God has spoken, understanding how they relate to our present situation, rightly weighing all relevant factors and friendly counsel, praying for wisdom all along the way, and obeying what you know in the meantime — this is no small task. But it is God’s normal method of guiding us through the hundreds of moments when we stand before two (or more) paths, none of which has a sign that reads, “Go this way.”

“In a world without maps, our best compass is an increasingly Christlike will, informed by an increasingly renewed mind.”

In a world without maps, our best compass is an increasingly Christlike will, informed by an increasingly renewed mind.

Led by the Spirit?

Some, at this point, will wish to say more — and understandably so. “What about the leading of the Spirit?” they might ask. “What about dreams and visions and impressions?” Three responses are in order.

First, at times, the Spirit does indeed lead his people in a more manifestly supernatural manner. In the life of Jesus, we might remember when “the Spirit . . . drove him out into the wilderness” after his baptism (Mark 1:12). Even more clearly, we might recall how God led Peter to Cornelius, and then led Paul and his team to Philippi, through visions (Acts 10:9–16; 16:9–10). And so he may sometimes lead us.

Nevertheless, these instances of striking guidance take place within the larger framework of doing and discerning. The Spirit came to Jesus in baptism (Mark 1:9–11), to Peter in prayer (Acts 10:9), to Paul on mission (Acts 16:6–8) — in other words, he met them in the midst of their present, intelligent obedience. Unless we too are willing to follow the Spirit’s more typical paths, we cannot expect him to lead us down unusual paths — nor can we assume we would recognize those paths or rightly walk them.

Second, such manifestations of the Spirit may prove dangerous if we rely on them too much. Those who say, “Lord, Lord,” in Matthew 7 did not lack powerful spiritual experiences; they did lack obedience to God’s clear will (Matthew 7:21–23). Ironically, some who are most eager for a spectacular method of finding God’s will can be most prone to neglecting the ordinary opportunities for pleasing God right in front of them.

And third, the renewed mind’s rigorous application of the Scriptures to unclear situations need not sidestep the Spirit’s ministry — not when done humbly, prayerfully, and God-dependently. In fact, as J.I. Packer writes, “The true way to honor the Holy Spirit as our guide is to honor the holy Scriptures through which he guides us” (Knowing God, 236). The Bible is no dead letter, but the living breath of the living Spirit. Those who listen well to Scripture listen to him.

Decisions from Our Knees

Lest we forget the obvious, “Your will be done” is a prayer, a request that God would do in us what we cannot do in ourselves. Apart from him, we cannot know the will he reveals, we cannot obey the will we know, and we certainly cannot discern the will we don’t know. And so, we bow our heads, lift our hands, and say, “Our Father in heaven, . . . your will be done” (Matthew 6:9–10). The best decision-making happens from a kneeling soul.

In all your decisions, then, don’t neglect to do the will you already know. Then, with that will clear in your mind and alive in your life, do the hard work of discerning, as best you can, what might please God most in your work, your relationships, your home. Weigh the factors; seek counsel; view the matter from several angles. And through it all, ask him again and again for his good, pleasing, and perfect will to be done in you.