Many a man has asked the question, “Am I called to pastoral ministry?” And many a wise leader has counseled him to place the matter upon the three-legged stool of aspiration, affirmation, and opportunity:

Do you aspire to the office (1 Timothy 3:1)?
Do others (especially your current pastors) affirm you as a faithful man who will be able to teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2)?
Has God given you an opportunity to shepherd a particular flock (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:2)?

These are clarifying questions — but they do not clarify everything. Many who sit on this stool find that one leg seems to wobble. One man may aspire to pastor and have an opportunity, but others have voiced reservations about his readiness. A second man may aspire and receive affirmation, but God has not yet provided an opportunity. And a third man may receive affirmation and have an opportunity, but he wonders if his desires for pastoral ministry really rise to the level of godly aspiration.

For some time, I found myself as the third man. I felt a desire for ministry, but I wondered if it had been shaped too much by others’ expectations. I also wondered how much ungodliness was mixed in my motives; maybe what I really wanted was a seat at Jesus’s right hand (Mark 10:37). And I felt the weight of the question. As David Mathis writes in his book Workers for Your Joy, “The good of the church is at stake in the holy desire of its pastors. They will not long work well for her joy if it is not their joy to do such work” (47).

How can men in this position discern whether they truly aspire to shepherd God’s people? We might find clarity by asking three diagnostic questions, drawn from Peter’s charge to the elders in 1 Peter 5:1–4.

Shepherd the Flock of God

Before we turn to Peter’s diagnostics, consider what kind of calling the apostle had in mind when he addressed “the elders among you” (1 Peter 5:1) — lest we aspire to an eldership of our own imagining. Peter writes,

I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight . . . (1 Peter 5:1–2)

Shepherd the flock of God. A pastor may find himself with a host of responsibilities, but at the heart of his calling is this charge to shepherd God’s precious sheep. And at the heart of shepherding is teaching.

Peter had learned the shepherd’s teaching task first from his Lord. He had noticed how Jesus, seeing a crowd wandering “like sheep without a shepherd,” did what a true shepherd would: “He began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). He had heard how this good shepherd taught and kept teaching, and how the sheep heard his voice (John 10:27–28). And then, of course, he had received his Lord’s threefold command to feed his sheep (John 21:15–17) — a feeding Jesus had already linked with his words (John 6:57–58, 63).

And so, following Jesus’s ascension, the apostle-shepherd taught and taught and taught — among the eleven (Acts 1:15), to the crowds (Acts 2:14), all through Jerusalem (Acts 5:28–29), across the Jew-Gentile divide (Acts 10:34–43), and then eventually by letter, including to those “elect exiles of the Dispersion” who received 1 Peter (verse 1). For Peter, to shepherd Jesus’s lambs meant, preeminently, to feed them Jesus’s words.

Now, the word shepherding does not exhaust an elder’s job description. Elders also “exercise oversight,” as Peter says — governing the church’s structures, guarding the church from threats, guiding the church through difficult decisions. Even here, however, teaching saturates the pastoral task, for how else will elders govern and guard and guide except by God’s word?

“Pastors are first and foremost Bible men — men who preach and teach and counsel God’s word.”

Pastors, then, are first and foremost Bible men — men who preach and teach and counsel God’s word in public and private, from the pulpit and the hospital chair, in season and out. At its core, this is the “noble task” to which we aspire (1 Timothy 3:1).

Three Tests for Godly Aspiration

With the what of eldership in view, Peter proceeds to describe the how in three pairs of “not this, but that”:

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. (1 Peter 5:2–3)

Here, Peter points us to where our aspiration comes from, where our aspiration aims, and what shape our aspiration takes.

Where does your aspiration come from?

Shepherd the flock of God . . . not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.

For some years now, perhaps, the word pastor has seemed stamped on your future. Maybe your father pastored. Maybe friends and mentors have encouraged you to pastor. Maybe you’re currently a seminary student. Either way, pastoring has become entwined with both your own sense of identity and others’ expectations. But now you wonder whether you really want to do this work.

“Jesus wields the rod and the staff with his whole soul, and he looks for men who will embody that same shepherd’s heart.”

In Peter’s day, it seems, some men were tempted to become elders “under compulsion” — prodded by others’ wishes or a mere internal sense of oughtness rather than propelled by their own wants. Such an impulse is understandable — but, Peter writes, it is not “as God would have you” shepherd his people. Jesus, the church’s first and chief Shepherd, does not lead his sheep under compulsion. He wields the rod and the staff with his whole soul, and he looks for men who will embody that same shepherd’s heart to his sheep. So, Mathis writes, “Christ grabs his pastors by the heart; he doesn’t twist them by the arm” (46).

Christ looks for willing men. Of course, even men who shepherd “under compulsion” do so willingly in one sense. But Jesus wants a willingness that goes deeper than “Everyone else thinks I should pastor” or “I can pastor if no one else will.” He wants a willingness that reaches for the staff (rather than simply receiving it when asked) — and a willingness that keeps a man from tossing the staff when trouble comes.

Where does your aspiration aim?

Shepherd the flock of God . . . not for shameful gain, but eagerly.

Shameful gain refers, most directly, to money. (In Paul’s letter to Titus, the same word as here appears — translated “greedy for gain” — in place of the phrase “not a lover of money” in his letter to Timothy.) Those who pastor for shameful gain do so mainly because pastoring provides a paycheck — and maybe they can’t imagine how else they would make money. Ministry has lost its God-centered, Christ-exalting, soul-saving focus, and has shrunk to the size of a 401(k).

Of course, the pastorate also offers other types of shameful gain besides money. Pastoring may bring discomfort and criticism and the burden of others’ expectations, but it can also bring honor in a community, a measure of power, and, for some, a flexible work schedule without much oversight. These too are kinds of shameful gain that might draw a man to ministry. But whatever the kind, Peter buries them all beneath the word eagerly.

Eagerly overlaps some with willingly, both of them putting their finger on the animating principle in a pastor’s soul. But given the contrast with shameful gain, eagerly seems to suggest not only a deep willingness to do the work, but also a decided lack of calculation in the work.

The godly elder does not tally what he can get from the ministry and then labor (or not) accordingly. He throws himself into the work, come what may: large paycheck or small, honor or suspicion, influence or weakness, difficulty or ease. For him, the work offers its own rewards in the heavenly currency of preaching Christ and helping to lead his flock to glory. Vocational pastors will get paid for their work, as they ought — “the laborer deserves his wages” (1 Timothy 5:18) — but however much they receive, the godly know their pockets are already lined with better treasure.

What shape does your aspiration take?

Shepherd the flock of God . . . not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

If the word shepherd echoes Jesus’s charge to Peter on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the word domineer recalls another striking conversation:

Jesus called [the twelve] to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over [or domineer over] them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you.” (Mark 10:42–43)

Peter never forgot these words. More importantly, he never forgot the one who spoke them: the Lord who did not lord his authority over his people, but served and died as if he were a slave (Mark 10:44–45). However much Peter may have been tempted toward Gentile-like lordship in the years following, the power of that temptation had bled dry on the cross of his King.

So, when Peter calls the elders to set an example, he wants them to serve not only as model sheep, but also as little lower-case reflections of the chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4). Christ left the highest heaven to find his sheep and bear them home upon his back, and the thought of imitating his regal humility, his lordly lowliness, makes the hearts of godly shepherds beat faster.

Do You Love Me?

Having pointed us backward, forward, and around, Peter ends his charge by lifting our eyes up:

When the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. (1 Peter 5:4)

Self-examination has its place on the path to eldership, and in eldership. We need some knowledge of our own hearts to sincerely aspire to the office. But the aspiration itself comes from the upward, not the inward, look.

So as we seek to discern whether our desires for eldership match God’s pattern for eldership, we may do well to return often to those Galilean shores, where before Jesus issued his threefold charge he asked his threefold question: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (John 21:15–17). Do you love the voice that bid you fish for men? Do you love the glory shining on the mount? Do you love the hands that washed your feet and took your nails? Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Willingness, eagerness, and the desire to set a Christlike example rest and rise on a daily and deepening yes.

The doctrines of Calvinism have a way of both wounding and healing the human heart. They are sword and balm, stumbling block and safety net, thundercloud and rainbow.

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) once described Calvinism as a lamb in wolf’s skin: “cruel in the phrases,” but “full of consolation for the suffering individual.” The words unconditional election, for example, can feel rough on the surface; they can seem to snarl and bare their teeth. Yet as countless Christians have discovered, beneath Calvinism’s wolfish exterior is the softness of a lamb.

Some, however, have seen in the phrases of Calvinism not a lamb in wolf’s skin, but just a wolf (or just a lamb). How many have felt Calvinism’s offense (you’re calling me totally depraved?) and missed its comfort? And how many, alternatively, have reached for Calvinism’s comfort (“once saved, always saved”) without receiving its offense?

For some time now, Calvinistic Christians have captured the doctrine of salvation in the acronym TULIP (summarizing the 1619 Canons of Dort):

Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints

These phrases celebrate the saving, sovereign grace of God — the grace that offends and the grace that comforts. But in order to grasp both the offense and the comfort, we may do well to consider what these phrases do not mean, what TULIP never taught us.

Utter Depravity

Unfortunately, some people’s exposure to Calvinism begins and ends with the phrase total depravity. What do some people hear in those two words? As sinners, we are as fallen as we possibly could be. Nothing we do can be called good or kind or noble in any sense. The most wicked impulses stomp and strain like stallions within, restrained by the thinnest of reins. We are utterly depraved.

“Total depravity was never meant to teach utter depravity.”

No wonder some hear total depravity, imagine their sweet but unbelieving Aunt Susie, and toss TULIP aside. But total depravity was never meant to teach utter depravity. Rather than claiming we are as fallen as we could be, the doctrine simply claims that every part of us is fallen. As the Canons of Dort put it, when our first parents fell,

they brought upon themselves blindness, terrible darkness, futility, and distortion of judgment in their minds; perversity, defiance, and hardness in their hearts and wills; and finally impurity in all their emotions. (III/IV.1, emphasis added)

Paul offers a similar testimony in Ephesians 2:3:

We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

By nature, we carry out (with our wills) the fallen desires of both body and mind. In other words, when sin entered the door of human nature, it made a home in every room. As a result, we are born “dead” to the things of God (Ephesians 2:1), spiritually helpless and unable to turn to him on our own.

Scripture uses stark language to describe human sinfulness: “Every intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5); “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). Yet the image of God remains in fallen humans (Genesis 9:6; James 3:9). Unbelievers are capable of showing “unusual kindness” (Acts 28:2). Pagan poets can pen truth (Acts 17:28).

Even though these acts fall short of pleasing God — since “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23) — they nevertheless reflect the power of God’s common grace to keep the totally depraved from becoming utterly depraved.

Unconditional Salvation

Calvinism offers deep, unshakable security for fragile people — but not the kind of security we sometimes imagine. Many of us, for example, assume that for our salvation to rest secure, it must be unconditional. If we must do A, B, or C in order to finally be saved, then it can feel like our little house of faith rests in a land of violent earthquakes.

We may hear the word unconditional in TULIP, therefore, and take a deep breath. Salvation doesn’t require anything of me, we may think. The U of TULIP, however, stands not for unconditional salvation, but for unconditional election — a doctrine Paul articulates in Romans 9:11–12 (among other places). Referencing Jacob and Esau, he writes,

Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad — in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls — [Rebekah] was told, “The older will serve the younger.”

Notice the distinct lack of conditions in God’s choice to call Jacob rather than Esau. Jacob was not more deserving and Esau less deserving, for God’s election took place before the brothers had done anything “either good or bad.” In the words of Dort, God saw both men lying “in the common misery” (I.7). His choice, therefore, was unconditional.

But apart from election, salvation does indeed include conditions. Justification requires faith (Galatians 2:16). Sanctification requires striving (Philippians 2:12–13). Forgiveness requires forgiving (Matthew 6:14–15). And heaven requires holiness (Hebrews 12:14).

And yet, under the glorious promises of the new covenant, we can still take a deep breath; our house of faith can rest secure. Because when God elects someone, he not only calls him but keeps him, all the way to the end (Romans 8:30). As Dort puts it, God “chose us from eternity both to grace and to glory, both to salvation and to the way of salvation” (I.8).

In other words, unconditional election does not exempt us from all future conditions; it rather guarantees that we will fulfill all future conditions by the power of God’s Spirit. If God has elected us, we will trust and keep trusting, we will strive and keep striving, we will forgive and keep forgiving, even through many sins and lapses and valleys of doubt.

Hyper-Calvinism

Limited atonement may be the phrase of TULIP most prone to misunderstanding. And unfortunately, some Calvinists have played into the misunderstanding by accenting the word limited. In their zeal to defend the special love of Christ for his people, and the effective power of his redemption, some have spoken or acted in ways that suggest a narrowness to what Jesus purchased and a reluctance to publish it from the housetops.

Rightly taught, limited atonement says that even though the death of Jesus “is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world” (as Dort says, II.3), Jesus had particular people in mind when he climbed Calvary’s hill. He died for his sheep (John 10:15), his friends (John 15:13), his bride and church (Ephesians 5:25) — or to pair the L with the U, he died for those whom the Father had unconditionally elected. As such, limited atonement emphasizes not the limited nature of Jesus’s death, but its purposefulness. (Hence why many Calvinists prefer the terms particular redemption or definite atonement.)

Historically, some Calvinists have moved from a true statement (Jesus died for his elect) to a false conclusion: Christians should offer Christ to others only when those others show signs of election. Sometimes called hyper-Calvinism, this position is a fine illustration of cart-before-horse syndrome, since the elect appear precisely by how they respond to the offer of Christ. Throughout Acts, for example, we find no apostle hesitating or tiptoeing before preaching Christ fully and freely. The apostles rather publish the gospel without distinction; only afterward do they discern who among the crowds was “appointed to eternal life” — because these elect ones “believed” (Acts 13:48).

Far be it from anyone, then, to take limited atonement as a reason to limit the precious value of Christ’s blood or the worldwide offer of that blood to any and every sinner, however non-elect he or she may appear at the moment.

Hard Determinism

Many who hear of Calvinism, with its depraved humanity and sovereign God, struggle not to see the world it presents as a puppet show. This was certainly my biggest struggle. Calvinism can seem to suggest, “Yes, people may appear to desire and love and decide on the stage of human life; they may appear personally responsible for their actions. But above lurks the Grand Puppeteer, raising arms and legs by invisible strings.” The phrase irresistible grace can seem to endorse the image. We, mere puppets, go wherever God’s strings pull us.

The original framers of the five points were sensitive to the struggle. “This divine grace of regeneration,” they wrote, “does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; nor does it abolish the will and its properties or coerce a reluctant will by force” (III/IV.16). Well, what does irresistible grace mean, then?

The doctrine does indeed teach that God is the first and decisive actor in the miracle of salvation — and that it must be so, given the fallen will’s inability to seek God or submit to God (Romans 3:11; 8:7). As in the beginning, God and not man is the one who says, “Let there be . . .” And yet, those so wrought upon by God are neither blocks nor stones nor puppets. For, in regeneration, “God infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant” (III/IV.11). When God saves a person, he does not drag him against his will; rather, he “penetrates to the inmost being” so that he becomes wonderfully, happily willing to be saved. Irresistible grace refers to the healing of the human will.

“God’s decision to save us enables rather than cancels our own decision to be saved.”

The I of TULIP, then, echoes the prophetic promise that God will write his law on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33) and even “remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). Puppeteers may tug on strings; God resurrects hearts. And that means his decision to save us enables rather than cancels our own decision to be saved. As Sinclair Ferguson writes, “The choice is made for us even as it is made by us.”

Once Saved, Always Saved

The divines gathered at Dort were keenly aware that some “Calvinists” would live in such a way that Calvinism would appear as “an opiate of the flesh and the devil” (“Rejection of Errors,” V.6). Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in TULIP’s fifth point, perseverance of the saints, popularly paraphrased as “once saved, always saved.”

Now, understood rightly, “once saved, always saved” accurately captures the Calvinistic doctrine. Our God finishes every good work he truly begins (Philippians 1:6); he glorifies all those whom he justifies (Romans 8:30). But in popular practice, “once saved, always saved” often means something different: once you have made a decision for Jesus, you will be saved no matter what.

Such a doctrine would indeed function as an “opiate of the flesh” — and has. How many have walked fearlessly on the wide way to destruction because of the hour they spent upon the narrow road? How many have comfortably bowed the knee to their lusts because they once bowed the knee to Christ? How many have found their security in a past decision for Jesus rather than in present love for Jesus?

Perseverance of the saints, however, takes seriously that word perseverance. Yes, God forever saves those whom he has once saved, but he does so by enabling us to “continue in the faith, stable and steadfast” (Colossians 1:23). Yes, Jesus keeps his sheep safe in his hand, but he does so by keeping them from becoming goats or wolves (John 10:28).

God’s persevering people, then, are not marked by a casual, drifting approach to the Christian life. They take seriously the warnings of Scripture, aware that those who “live according to the flesh . . . will die” (Romans 8:13). They take pains to enjoy God through his appointed means, knowing that whoever does not abide in Jesus withers and burns (John 15:6). They work out their salvation with fear and trembling, confident that their work is evidence of the God who works within them (Philippians 2:12–13).

Grace’s Sword and Balm

In his book Grace Defined and Defended, Kevin DeYoung writes,

At their very heart, the Canons of Dort are about the nature of grace — supernatural, unilateral, sovereign, effecting, redeeming, resurrecting grace, with all of its angularity, all of its offense to human pride, and all of its comfort for the weary soul. (25)

The grace of God is not simple or one-dimensional. It has angles. It startles and delights, offends and comforts, cuts and cures. It can seem rough as wolf’s skin at first, but then we feel the wool.

Few doctrines are more humbling than those captured in TULIP. Born depraved in mind, heart, and will; chosen not for anything in me; rescued and kept despite daily offenses to my God — these will lay a person low. But they will also lift him up to behold and be healed by a God worthy of the acclamation, “Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Psalm 3:8).

He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. (Hebrews 7:25)

Some phrases carry such strong comfort, such enduring consolation, that they ought to be engraved on the walls of the heart. Airplanes ought to write them daily in our spiritual sky. They ought to be carved on every tree in the forest of the soul. “To the uttermost” is such a phrase.

Jesus is able to save to the uttermost. “That word ‘uttermost’ includes all that can be said,” John Newton once wrote. “Take an estimate of all our sins, all our temptations, all our difficulties, all our fears, and all our backslidings of every kind, still the word ‘uttermost’ goes beyond them all.” The word carries the idea of both fullness and finality: Jesus is able to save completely, and he is able to save forever.

And the reason he is able to save his people so fully, so completely, is because “he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). In a world of ever-present danger, we have an ever-praying Savior.

Our Praying Savior

For many, a mist surrounds the present ministry of our exalted Lord. We know Jesus as a past Savior who lived, died, and rose for us. We know him as a future Savior who will come again for us. But now, between the two trumpet blasts of his resurrection and return, we can struggle to speak of him in the present tense. What is Jesus doing right now?

“Our great Moses upon the mountain, our true Aaron within the veil, Christ ever keeps us on his heart.”

He “is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34). Though exalted in glory, the head has not forgotten his body, nor the bridegroom his bride, nor the older brother his little siblings. Our great Moses upon the mountain, our true Aaron within the veil, Christ ever keeps us on his heart. He prays for us.

We may wonder, however, what his intercession really means. Does Jesus literally pray to the Father, vocally asking for our deliverance, forgiveness, protection? Some theologians (like Stephen Charnock, 1628–1680) think so, while others (like John Calvin) argue that he intercedes metaphorically, his glorified scars (representing his death) serving as our eternal plea. Either way, how intercession works matters less than what intercession is: at every moment, the living Jesus applies the power of his past sacrifice for our present help.

Like Israel’s high priest of old, who would enter the temple wearing stones upon his chest and shoulders that represented the people (Exodus 28:15–30), so Jesus carries us and our concerns into the very heart of heaven. As Michael Reeves writes, “God the Son came from his Father, became one of us, died our death — and all to bring us back with him to be before his Father like the jewels on the heart of the high priest” (Delighting in the Trinity, 74). Because he died and rose then, Jesus represents us in heaven now, able and willing to save us to the uttermost.

To get a sense of the height and length and breadth and depth of that word uttermost, consider three promises guaranteed by the present prayers of Jesus for his redeemed people.

1. Your faith will not fail you.

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. (Luke 22:31–32)

At the dawn of Good Friday, the streets of Jerusalem were stained with the apostle Peter’s tears. The same man who had once leaped from his boat to follow Jesus, and raised his voice to confess Jesus, and walked on the water to meet Jesus somehow, someway found himself denying Jesus. Satan had taken the rock and thrown him like a pebble.

Yet even then, somehow, someway, Peter’s faith did not fail — not completely. Unlike Judas, he would meet Jesus once again by the sea, and once again he would leap from his boat to follow him (John 21:7, 19). And why? Five simple words from Jesus: “I have prayed for you.” Satan may sift you, Peter, but still I will save you.

We, like Peter, may sometimes find our faith spilled upon the ground. But for those who truly belong to Jesus, a deeper magic moves beneath our midnight weeping. Our faith lives on through our Lord’s intercession, and in time it will rise.

“It is Jesus who protects us, rescues us, quickens us, turns us, restores us, strengthens us, keeps us.”

If only we knew how often his prayers have rescued us — how often their heat has kept our embers burning, how often their voice has called us home, how often their hands have weaved the rope that lifts us from the pit. If we are his sheep, it is Jesus who protects us, rescues us, quickens us, turns us, restores us, strengthens us, keeps us. For it is Jesus who prays for us, always and forever.

2. Satan cannot condemn you.

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Romans 8:33–34)

The same devil who sifted Peter is called “the accuser of our brothers,” and so he does. “Day and night before our God” he prosecutes his case, dragging our sins up to heaven so he might drag us down to hell (Revelation 12:10). Who hasn’t heard the dark whisper? There’s no mercy for a wretch like you. Your sins are too scarlet to be washed white.

We may default in such moments to remembering the death of Christ, saying with Paul, “Christ Jesus is the one who died” (Romans 8:34). How often, however, do we move from Christ’s death to the “more than that” of his resurrection and the “indeed” of his intercession? How often do we follow our Lord from the cross to the tomb, and from the tomb to God’s right hand? Charnock writes,

His death is not such a ground of assurance as this, because that is past; but when we consider how the merit of his death lives continually in his intercession, all the weights of doubts and despondency lose their heaviness; faith finds in it an unquestionable support.

In the prayers of our interceding Christ, the power of Good Friday lives on today, even right now. The same Calvary love still beats in his risen heart; the same scars still say, “It is finished”; the same merit that emptied the tomb still answers, moment by moment, every accusation. So even when the devil heaps up condemnation, we can sing with the hymn,

My name is graven on his hands;My name is written on his heart.I know that while in heaven he stands,No tongue can bid me thence depart.

No tongue can bid us thence depart, for the only tongue heaven hears continually bids our welcome.

3. The Father will always be for you.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. (1 John 2:1)

Our faith will not fail us, Satan cannot condemn us — but what of the Father? How do we know he will not send us away someday, weary of our wavering love? We know because Jesus intercedes not only for us, and not only against the devil, but also “with the Father” (1 John 2:1). And as long as he intercedes for us, the Father will forever be for us.

If our advocate in heaven were someone other than Jesus, we would have no room for hope. Let Mary sweetly whisper all her grace, and Peter speak his boldness — let James and John thunder forth, and Gabriel implore with the angels — still the gates of heaven would stay fast shut to the likes of you and me. But oh, if only Jesus says the word, we are the Father’s forever.

No angel, and no mere saint, could work so great a wonder. But Jesus can. He is none other than the Father’s “beloved Son” (Mark 1:11), whom heaven always hears (John 11:42). He is “the righteous” one, “the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1–2), whose wounds and words satisfy every claim of justice. And best of all, he is the advocate of the Father’s own appointing. It was the Father who sent Christ, the Father who raised Christ, the Father who installed Christ as our everlasting advocate. All the intercession of Christ, then, only echoes his own heart-love.

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1) — and kept children of God by the advocacy of his interceding Son.

Christ a Complete Savior

When John Bunyan (1628–1688) wrote a little book on the intercession of Christ, he titled it Christ a Complete Savior. Without his present intercession, Jesus would still be a Savior, but a partial Savior rather than a complete one. He would be the founder but not the perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), the beginner but not the finisher of salvation’s good work.

With his intercession, however, our Lord is a complete Savior, a Savior who rescues us not only in the past and the future, but in the moment-by-moment present. As Bunyan puts it, Christ is Lord “of salvation throughout, from the beginning to the end, from the first to the last. His hands have laid the foundation of it in his own blood, and his hands shall finish it by his intercession” (Works of John Bunyan, 1:215).

Or as Hebrews puts it, “He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him” (Hebrews 7:25). To the uttermost. Such a phrase silences the objections, calms the fears, and resurrects the hopes of Christ’s believing people. There is no height, nor depth, nor breadth, nor length beyond the reach of the uttermost — because there is no height, nor depth, nor breadth, nor length beyond the prayers of our ever-living, always-interceding Christ.

Tucked away in my computer files is a little document named “What to Do with Doubt.” A remnant from a darker time.

The document was a note to self, an effort to look myself in the eyes and practice the soul-talk of the psalmist. Why are you doubting, O my soul, and why are you divided within me?

The suggestions begin fairly predictably. “Seek God,” the first one reads, followed by several verses. Or the fourth: “Don’t trust in yourself.” They begin to range toward the end, though. The sixteenth and nineteenth read, “Think of the prophecies Jesus fulfilled” and “Think of great saints.” Those who walk in the dark are glad for any starlight.

Such a document may seem strange to those who have never dealt with serious doubts — about God, Scripture, the gospel — and therefore have never wondered what to do with doubt. But then there are the Thomases of the world, people who, by some sad mixture of personality, background, and indwelling sin, have found themselves prone to saying, “Unless I see . . .” (John 20:25). We take our place among Christ’s disciples, but our faith can sometimes feel embattled, our souls divided.

We believe, but oh how we need help with our unbelief (Mark 9:24).

In Two Minds

Strangely enough, I never doubted the truth of God’s word during my nearly two decades as a nominal Christian. Only after the first joys of genuine faith, the first rush of deliverance, the first sights of Christ’s glory did I feel the first shadow of doubt. It came with the sudden violence of a mugger, and with similar effects: I lay for a while on the ground, bloody and wondering why.

Where did doubt come from, and why did it pick me? I have not a clue. I only know that one day in college, prior certainties began to shake, seemingly uncontrollably. Unwelcome, unlooked-for questions somehow gained entrance into my mind, and I found myself on the defense. Can Scripture really withstand scrutiny? the strange voice asked. And in darker moments, How do you know God even exists? I would fall asleep, night after night, debating the darkness, and morning by morning the questions returned.

The title of Os Guinness’s 1976 book on doubt captures the experience well: In Two Minds. Doubt divides and doubles you, Jekyll-and-Hydes you, splits you in the most uncomfortable places. With one mind, I only wanted to “trust in the Lord with all [my] heart, and . . . not lean on [my] own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5), but another mind called that intellectual escapism. With one mind, I read the Bible searching for sights of the Lord I loved, and with another mind I cast a skeptical eye. With one mind I trusted; with another mind I doubted. I was, as James says, “a double-minded man” (James 1:8).

It can make you desperate, doubt can. For almost two years, I burned through notebooks, journaling anguished thoughts and pleading prayers. I listened obsessively to sermons, searching for some voice that could cast away the demon. I contacted apologetics ministries on more than one occasion, once even calling at midnight. In a more charismatic strain, I felt an impulse one miserable night to read the entire book of Proverbs and pray for deliverance (I made it somewhere near the middle). And then, of course, I developed a document like “What to Do with Doubt.”

Desperate men in darkness grasp and stumble wildly. And sometimes, in the kind providence of God, they strike upon a path.

Paths Beyond Doubt

Just as the pathways into doubt are many and mysterious, so too are the pathways out. Jesus, for example, responded to diverse doubts with diverse mercies, as Jon Bloom observes: to John the Baptist he gave a gentle reminder (Matthew 11:2–6), to Peter a questioning reproof (Matthew 14:28–33), to Thomas a painful delay (John 20:24–29). Jesus is, as always, our best and only infallible guide out of doubt.

Nevertheless, doubt carries enough common elements that one doubter may say a few words to another. The following, then, are some of the paths I stumbled upon in the dark. None led me out instantly (deliverance from doubt rarely happens in a moment). But over time, they together became like “the path of the righteous [that] is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” (Proverbs 4:18).

1. Normalize doubt as a trial of faith.

Doubt came, as I said, with the unexpectedness and disorientation of a mugger — partly because, during all my years as a nominal Christian and my few months as a real one, I had never heard anyone talk about it. Lust, pride, greed, self-reliance, anger, impatience — these were known enemies, planned for and expected. Doubt was not. I was a bullet-wounded soldier who had never heard of guns.

Much of doubt’s power lies in this ability to dismay and disorient — to make us feel beyond the pale of normal Christian experience. How heartening it was to slowly grasp the truth: doubt, though unique in some ways, is a normal trial of faith, faced by saints throughout the ages. One of the devil’s first temptations (Genesis 3:1), doubt remains a favorite still.

I remember at one point in my doubts reading the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga describe doubt as simply another manifestation of the old self’s ongoing influence (Ephesians 4:22). Our old self is by nature unbelieving, trusting our own words over God’s. No wonder, then, that we who still possess “this body of death” sometimes still deal with doubt and unbelief (Romans 7:24).

Indeed, some of God’s people always have. Doubt may not be the most prevalent besetting sin among saints, but the likes of Moses (Exodus 3:13), Asaph (Psalm 77:7–9), Habakkuk (Habakkuk 1:2–4), Zechariah (Luke 1:18), John the Baptist (Matthew 11:2–3), Peter (Matthew 14:31), and Thomas (John 20:25) all battled versions of the dreaded foe. Doubts, then, do not send us beyond the pale. They do not render us automatic unbelievers. They instead rouse us to join the ranks of former saints, who responded to doubt as they responded to all other temptations and sins: with resistance.

2. Find some friends to confide in — dead and alive.

Treating doubt as an anomaly wounded me in more ways than one. Not only did I feel alone, in a dark world beyond the sun, but I hesitated to talk about it with anyone. I expected to find misunderstanding, befuddled glances, wary responses that suggested, “I don’t know what to do with you and I wish you wouldn’t have said that.” Instead, when I finally did share, I found mercy (Jude 22).

I know not everyone shares this experience. Not everyone gets to confide in friends so sympathetic. Yet I imagine that many silent doubters would be surprised at what they find should they speak. The shoulders of the saints, built to bear burdens (Galatians 6:2), are not too weak to carry our doubts. And either way, the risk is worth it, for doubt is too disorienting, too deceiving, too mind-darkening to escape on our own.

Alongside saints alive and nearby, we might also search for some dead or far-off. For me, the hymns of Red Mountain Church, the music of Andrew Peterson, the poetry of George Herbert, and the books of C.S. Lewis kept me company when others could not. These were kindred spirits, friends who knew how to articulate doubt’s inaudible agony (when I could not), and also how to apply God’s fathomless grace (when I dared not). They helped me imagine a life beyond doubt.

(In our social-media age, a brief caveat may be in order: confiding in face-to-face friends is far better than indiscriminately posting online. Doubts are not for hiding — but neither are they for publishing in real time. In all likelihood, our own perspective is too distorted, and social-media counsel too unreliable, for public sharing to be fruitful.)

“Doubt is inherently isolating. It can feel especially shameful, and sometimes impossible to explain.”

Doubt is inherently isolating. It can feel especially shameful, and sometimes impossible to explain. But seclusion does us no favors — and fellowship can work slow wonders.

3. Take time away from doubt.

Because doubt wraps its fingers around the very throat of faith, it has a way of demanding attention. A man being throttled struggles to consider other matters. Ironically enough, however, one of the worst things we can do — one of the worst things I did, anyway — is focus obsessively on doubt. For doubt, like some other enemies, often dies slant.

Of course, finding direct answers to our most vexing questions can bring relief, sometimes great relief. I can remember finding several solutions to my doubts, in books or sermons or conversations with friends, that pried a finger or two off the throat. But direct answers were only part of the solution to my doubts — and not, I would venture, the most important part.

Looking back, I can see that many of my attempts to overcome doubt were like a man trying to change his appearance by staring harder and harder in the mirror: they only curved me more deeply inward. I needed to pray about more than my doubts; I needed to read and watch more than apologetics resources; I needed to journal about more than my own internal afflictions. Doubt needs sunshine, full and clear, and my grapples with doubt often took me to the cellar.

What then can doubters do beyond seeking answers? Sit long under the sky of God’s glory, breathing deeply creation’s soul oxygen (Psalm 19:1; Psalm 104:24). Escape self by weeping and rejoicing with God’s people (Romans 12:15). Sit in the gathering and sing of glories far above you and problems not your own (Colossians 3:16). Find mind rest in the hard labor of a worthy vocation (Colossians 3:23). And above all, slowly, prayerfully, and longingly consider Jesus (Hebrews 3:1).

4. Keep seeking God.

Doubt for long enough, and you may begin to despair of ever escaping doubt. This is just who I am — the way I’m wired, you may think. I can remember days or weeks in my deepest season of doubt where a kind of fatalism set into my bones. Fighting felt like little use. The deep internal division seemed unbudgeable. I began recasting my future in terms of doubt.

Mercifully, God always roused me after a time, reminding me of a simple truth that doubt — or any long struggle — easily overshadows: God saves. The living God is a rescuing, delivering God, who enters in from the outside and shatters the bars of our expectations. He is a Pharaoh-crushing, sea-parting God; a sky-splitting, earth-shaking God; a Christ-giving, tomb-emptying God — and his hand cannot be stayed. For him, the impossible is only a word away.

And therefore, Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:7–8 put an end to all fatalism:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

“In defiance of the darkness, ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking.”

Doubt may feel too entrenched to dig out. Its shadows may seem to cover too much of the soul. Even still, in defiance of the darkness, ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking. For at one time or another, in one place or another, with one word or another, the threefold promise will come to pass: “It will be given to you . . . you will find . . . it will be opened to you.”

5. Wait patiently for deliverance.

We may, however, need to wait a while. “Ask, and it will be given to you” — but he doesn’t say how much time may separate the first asking from the final giving. And for some, the time may linger long.

How instructive to remember Thomas’s story:

“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later . . . (John 20:25–26)

Eight days later. Why eight days? If locked doors couldn’t keep Jesus from reaching Thomas (John 20:26), surely time was no obstacle. The risen Lord was not hindered. He tarried on purpose, allowing Thomas to wait not for an hour or an afternoon, but for eight anguished days.

He has his reasons, as always. We don’t know all of them. But we do know that when Jesus waits to rescue his people, mercy governs his waiting. For doubt not only tempts and tortures; it teaches. Here in the waiting, we learn, with Thomas, just how fragile our faith is unless God upholds it. We learn the necessary virtue of self-distrust (Proverbs 3:5). We learn to sympathize with others’ weaknesses. And we learn to seek God in the face of the despair that says, “You will not find him.”

My Lord, My God

The delays of Jesus toward his people are merciful delays, ever and always. And in time, those who wait faithfully will feel the truth in William Cowper’s hymn “Jehovah Jireh — The Lord Will Provide”:

Wait for his seasonable aid,And though it tarry, wait:The promise may be long delay’d,But cannot come too late.

For those who stay near Jesus while they wait, we have good reason to hope they will eventually say with Thomas — knees bent, heart awed, doubts hushed — “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

In all your questions, then, bend your ear to hear the voice of Jesus. Strain your eyes to see him. Pray that he himself will come, speak peace, and lead you to the land of light, beyond all darkness and doubting.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15634825/better-to-have-a-burden

On the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus wanted to give his people a sign of his covenant love. As God had once assured Noah with a rainbow, and lifted Abraham’s eyes to the stars, and sanctified the Sabbath for Israel, so now Jesus wanted to give his disciples, and us, some tangible token of his promises, some visible seal of his faithfulness. And so, he broke a loaf of bread, and he poured a cup of wine.

Bread and wine, loaf and cup: in these two ordinary elements, our crucified, risen, and reigning Lord declares to us his victories. He tells us who we are. And he gives us a taste of his coming kingdom, when once again he will preside over a supper, this time with no coming sorrow.

And yet, if we are going to receive Christ’s covenant love in this meal, and not just bread and wine — or crackers and juice, as the case may be — we need the meaning of the elements clear in our minds. As John Calvin writes, “Assuredly this is the chiefest thing in all sacraments, that the word of God may appear engraven there, and that the clear voice may sound.”

What word, then, has Jesus engraved upon the bread and the cup? What voice sounds forth from the Supper?

Bread and Wine

When Jesus took up the bread and the cup of the Last Supper, he was handling objects thick with associations from Israel’s past. Bread and wine appear regularly, together and apart, throughout the Old Testament and Jesus’s own ministry. Here was bread long baked, and wine well aged.

At the most basic level, bread and wine sustained the life of God’s people (Genesis 27:28; Leviticus 26:26). Both were staples of Israel’s diet — bread because of the simplicity and reliability of grain, and wine because water could be so scarce in the ancient Near East.

For that reason, bread and wine were also valuable gifts of friendship and hospitality, first from God to man (Psalm 104:15), and then from man to his neighbor (Genesis 14:18; Ruth 2:14).

In similar fashion, bread and wine reflected the blessings and curses of God’s covenant with Israel. When the nation walked closely with their God, then they ate bread and drank wine in abundance (Deuteronomy 7:13); when they strayed after other gods, famine struck their fields and vineyards (Hosea 2:9).

Finally, bread and wine could serve as symbols of Israel’s eschatological hope, when God would swallow death and spread a feast for all peoples (Isaiah 25:6–8; 55:1–2). “Behold, the days are coming,” God says through Amos,

When the plowman shall overtake the reaper     and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed;the mountains shall drip sweet wine,     and all the hills shall flow with it. (Amos 9:13; see also Jeremiah 31:12)

“Life sustainer, gift giver, covenant maker, eschaton bringer, Jesus is Israel’s God made flesh.”

More associations could be mentioned, but these suffice to give some sense of the broad background to Jesus’s own uses of bread and wine. It is no accident that, in his ministry, Jesus multiplies both (John 2:1–11; 6:1–14), likens himself to both (John 6:35; 15:1), consecrates both to serve as his church’s covenant meal (Luke 22:14–20), and promises both in the age to come (Luke 22:18; Revelation 2:17). Life sustainer, gift giver, covenant maker, eschaton bringer, Jesus is Israel’s God made flesh.

And yet, we can get more specific. When Jesus took the bread and the cup, he took up not only the broad tapestry of Old Testament history and revelation, but also a few particular threads, now amplified and fulfilled in him.

Bread of the Passover

Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper on a day already charged with tremendous significance: the Passover (Luke 22:11). For centuries, the families of Israel had gathered on Passover to eat the meat of a slaughtered lamb, along with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and to relive the night when the sacrificial blood shielded them from God’s wrath (Exodus 12:7–13, 42). God had swept his arm through Pharaoh’s land, judging his enemies and rescuing his people through a marvelous exodus deliverance. Annually, then, Israel was to remember that though they once were slaves, they now were God’s redeemed.

Yet on this Passover, as Jesus gathers with his disciples in the upper room, he looks not to the past, but to the present; he directs their gaze not upon the lamb, but upon himself. Taking up the unleavened bread, he gives thanks, breaks it, and says, “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19).

By mapping his Supper onto the Passover, Jesus does something remarkable: he gives his disciples familiar categories for understanding his covenant meal, even as he expands those categories far beyond their hopes. Like the Passover meal, the Lord’s Supper recalls a past deliverance from slavery and declares those who eat to be God’s redeemed people. Unlike the Passover, however, the lamb of the Supper is the Lord himself, whose blood protects us not only for a night, but for eternity (Hebrews 9:12). The death he dies is once for all — unrepeated and unrepeatable (Hebrews 9:26). And the exodus redemption he accomplishes rescues us not from Pharaoh, but from sin and death and hell (Colossians 1:13–14).

Whenever God’s people eat the bread, then, we say with Paul, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7), and we celebrate a festival of God’s favor that will never, ever end (1 Corinthians 5:8).

Cup of the Covenant

The cup of the Lord’s Supper, like the bread, has resonances with the Passover meal, but it also takes us to another scene shortly after. After Israel left Egypt, passed through the Red Sea, and heard God’s law at Sinai, Moses sprinkled them with sacrificial blood (Exodus 24:8). They were now God’s people by covenant, and God himself was their God (Exodus 6:7).

Jesus, recalling this covenant moment, passes the blood-red wine to his disciples and says, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Here again, Jesus explains the Lord’s Supper with familiar categories — and here again, he wondrously expands them. For his blood and covenant are far, far better.

In the cup, we receive not the blood of goats and calves, “which can never take away sins” (Hebrews 10:11), but “the precious blood of Christ” himself (1 Peter 1:19). Jesus’s blood not only purifies the flesh but cleanses the conscience (Hebrews 9:14), not only covers sin for a time but forgives it forever (Ephesians 1:7; 1 John 1:7). His blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24), for it pleads not for vengeance, but for mercy. With his blood, Jesus secured the eternal for his people: an “eternal redemption” yielding an “eternal inheritance” bound within an “eternal covenant” (Hebrews 9:12, 16; 13:20).

Or, as Jesus puts it, alluding to Jeremiah, his blood purchases a “new covenant” (Luke 22:20; Jeremiah 31:31) — and, indeed, a “better” one, “since it is enacted on better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). Under the new covenant, God writes his law not on stone but on hearts, he is known by both greatest and least, and he pledges a covenantal forgetfulness as glorious as it is divine: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:33–34).

“Jesus, our most worthy Lord, snatched the cup of judgment from our lips and exchanged it with his own cup of favor.”

And all because Jesus, our most worthy Lord, snatched the cup of judgment from our lips and exchanged it with his own cup of favor. On the cross, he drank “from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath,” the dreadful “cup of staggering” (Isaiah 51:17, 22), so that, in our hands, it might become “the cup of blessing” (1 Corinthians 10:16). And oh how it overflows (Psalm 23:5).

Our Portion and Cup

Bread and wine, loaf and cup: they could not look more ordinary, but they could not contain more glory. Small enough to fit in the palm, they are big enough to hold the world. We eat and drink them in a moment, but this moment wraps both past and future in its grasp (1 Corinthians 11:26).

And what word do we find engraved on these elements? What voice sounds forth from this Supper? In summary, this: in Jesus Christ, our Bread of Life and true Grapevine, God has shielded us from his wrath, delivered us from sin and Satan, and bound us to himself in a covenant that can never be broken.

Take, then, and eat. Take and drink. And taste the covenant love of Christ.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Tyrannosaurus Rex these days — and Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Velociraptor. I’ve also made the acquaintance of some less-familiar figures, like the long-necked, small-brained Diplodocus and the head-crested Parasaurolophus (which actually rolls off the tongue once you get the hang of it).

I’m no paleontologist or museum curator. I haven’t seen the latest installment of the Jurassic saga. I’m just dad to a 2-year-old boy. And like so many young boys, he reads, plays, and roars dinosaur.

Over the last months, his dino shirts and books (and figures and stickers) have dug up old fascinations, mostly buried since The Land Before Time and a book of Brontosauruses I thumbed through as a kid. They’ve also unearthed some new questions, especially as I try to help my son trace God’s design in the dinosaurs.

If the heavens declare God’s glory (Psalm 19:1), and his wondrous works proclaim his praise (Psalm 104:24), then surely these long-extinct giant reptiles say something spectacular about him. But what?

These Old Bones?

What we tell our children about dinosaurs will be shaped, of course, by whether we think they roamed the earth millions of years ago or relatively recently. Both perspectives have biblical merit; both also have their difficulties. I have my own leanings on the question, as most of us do, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to sidestep that matter entirely.

I won’t mind much whether my son embraces a young-earth or old-earth view of creation; I will mind greatly whether he sees dinosaurs (and all the earth) in relation to the God who made them. And the most important lessons dinosaurs teach, it seems to me, have little to do with the age of their bones. Whether they lived in the Mesozoic Era or the days of Noah, much remains the same: Many were fierce. Many were fantastical. And many were absolutely enormous.

What then can we learn from such incredible creatures? Among other lessons, consider three.

Trust the God of Wisdom

Steve Brusatte’s popular 2018 book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs tells an absorbing history of the dinosaurs’ reign. Unfortunately, it also represents and reinforces the popular view that dinosaurs have nothing to do with God. Naturalistic evolution plays the deity in Brusatte’s telling — a blind and brainless force somehow endowed with tremendous foresight: “evolution created” beasts like the behemoth sauropods (108); “evolution assembled all of the pieces [and] put them together in the right order” (117); T. Rex and his ilk were “incredible feats of evolution” (225).

The naturalistic worldview may be relatively new; the underlying impulse on display here, however, is anything but. God’s people have always needed to confess God’s handiwork over against popular myths. In the ancient world, Israel’s Canaanite neighbors considered the tannînîm (fearsome sea creatures, sometimes translated as “serpents,” “dragons,” or “monsters”) to represent “the powers of chaos confronting Baal in the beginning” (Derek Kidner, Genesis, 54). Moses, meanwhile, writes in Genesis 1:21 that “God created the great sea creatures [tannînîm].” The Canaanites can say what they want. We know that even the monsters are God’s masterpieces.

In similar fashion, God’s final speech in Job takes a massive land animal, Behemoth, and a fierce water beast, Leviathan (another monster of Canaanite lore), and describes them as God’s creatures: “Behold, Behemoth, which I made” (Job 40:15); “Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine” (Job 41:11). Nor need we wonder if God would say the same of dinosaurs. Many scholars identify Behemoth and Leviathan with the hippopotamus and crocodile, but the poetic descriptions take on monstrous proportions. Behemoth and Leviathan could easily be mistaken for a sauropod or tyrannosaur.

“Divine wisdom adorns every creature, down to their very bones.”

Children growing up in a naturalistic age need to hear, often and joyously, the psalmist’s creation creed: “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24). Divine wisdom adorns every creature, down to their very bones. In the first place, then, dinosaurs invite us to name and trust their true Maker.

Fear the God of Power

Imagine the largest of elephants, seven tons of flesh and bone spread from trunk to tail. Now imagine, if you can, a creature seven times this elephant’s weight and three or four times its length, lumbering across the land with a towering neck, barrel belly, and tree-trunk tail. You now have some faint sense of Argentinosaurus, probably the largest land animal ever discovered.

Now consider another creature, far smaller than Argentinosaurus, but also far more ferocious. At the same tonnage as our elephant (yet ten feet longer), he romps around on thighs thick with muscle, his massive head holding a jaw that snaps with six tons of pressure — literally car-crushing in its force. You now have some dim idea of T. Rex, probably the fiercest land animal ever discovered.

Now picture yourself standing before such beasts. We would be right to say of them, as God says of Leviathan, “None is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.” And we would be right to draw the corresponding conclusion: “Who then is he who can stand before me?” (Job 41:10).

Dinosaurs ought to make us tremble — but not mainly before dinosaurs. Like a hurricane, they preach the power of the living God, the very God in whom we live and move and have our being, and before whom one day we will stand. As Matthew Henry says of Behemoth, so we might say of every dinosaur:

Consider whether thou art able to contend with him who made that beast and gave him all the power he has, and whether it is not thy wisdom rather to submit to him and make thy peace with him. (An Exposition of the Old and New Testament, 223)

God made every tooth in T. Rex’s mouth; he added every ton to Argentinosaurus’s frame. Though dead, their bones still speak, and teach us not only to trust their Maker’s wisdom, but also to fear his power.

Praise the God of Wonders

In Christ, however, the most fearsome displays of God’s power become occasions for praise. Faith transfigures the terrifying into awe-inspiring: thunder becomes the voice of God (Psalm 29:3), the vast cosmos his finger-work (Psalm 8:3), the raging sea a pavement for our Lord (Matthew 14:25), the fiercest beast a glint of his glory.

The children of God know how to look at Leviathan (and, by extension, dinosaurs) and see not only his beastliness, but his “goodly frame” (Job 41:12). They can sit inside his footprint and worship the God of wonders (Psalm 104:31–32). They can trace his scales and, like King David beneath lightning, cry, “Glory!” (Psalm 29:9).

Psalm 104 gives a good sense of what dinosaur-inspired praise might sound like. Here, the psalmist marvels not only at the gentle beauty of God’s creation — flowing streams and singing birds — but also at its harder edges: the young lions roaring for prey and, strikingly, even Leviathan himself sporting in sea (Psalm 104:21, 26). Some may hold the bones of long-lost species and see only “a meaningless swarm of life,” Derek Kidner writes. But the psalmist teaches us to see them “as giving some inkling of the Creator’s wealth, and the range and precision of his thought” (Psalms 73–150, 405).

“Rightly held, the fossils of these ancient beasts are tuning forks for songs of praise.”

Paleontology allows us to sing Psalm 104 with a cast of characters perhaps unimagined by the psalmist, but long enjoyed by God and long awaiting our discovery. Rightly held, the fossils of these ancient beasts are tuning forks for songs of praise.

Evangelical Chisels

In the century before the first dinosaur discoveries (around 1820), pastor and nature lover James Hervey (1714–1758) responded to the new, Newtonian science of his day by saying, “We should always view the visible System, with an Evangelical Telescope . . . and with an Evangelical Microscope” (The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism, 150). Study the stars if you’d like: chart their courses; measure their distances. Study too the cells: mark their features; describe their functions. Yet study both as the handiwork of God.

In an age of dinosaur discoveries, we might add to Hervey’s evangelical telescope and microscope an evangelical chisel. Study the dinosaurs: learn their names; consider their age; read a few dozen children’s books about them. Yet don’t neglect the even larger lessons they teach.

My son’s dinosaur-mania may fade. But in the meantime, we’ll be tracing the wisdom of God in his Ankylosaurus figure, and the power of God on his T. Rex T-shirt, and the praise of God in his 2-year-old roar.