ABSTRACT: The two major positions on lying (lying as communicating contrary to neighbor love and lying as communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows), while offering helpful insights, do not fully account for the biblical data. A Christian ethic of truth-telling begins by defining truthfulness and lying in conformity with God’s character as the primary principle, allowing the previous emphases on love for neighbor and conformity to thought to function as regulating principles.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Daniel R. Heimbach (PhD, Drew University Graduate School), retired senior research professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, to explain how Christians have approached the ethics of truth-telling and to assess how those positions align with the complexity of biblical testimony.

Augustine once said, “Whether we should ever tell a lie if it be for someone’s welfare is a question that has vexed even the most learned.”1 And that is because, while the Bible shows that God demands truthfulness (Exodus 20:16; Zechariah 8:16; Ephesians 4:25), it also shows that God expects less than complete candor in some circumstances (1 Samuel 16:1–5; 2 Kings 6:14–20), that he uses lies for divine purposes (1 Kings 22:19–23; 2 Thessalonians 2:11), and that he commends people who demonstrate faithfulness to God by misleading enemies of God (Joshua 2:4–6; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25).

These anomalies have led Christians to formulate two quite contrary positions on how best to interpret what the Bible says on the ethics of truth-telling: the first, formulated by the early church, views lying as communicating contrary to neighbor love; the second, first formulated by Augustine, views lying as communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows.2

The first position holds that communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows is sometimes right and true, because what makes communicating wrong and untrue is betraying a relational trust. According to this tradition, communicating in ways driven by neighbor love is right and true even if one’s words do not always align with what one thinks or knows is true.

The second position holds that communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows is necessarily wrong because inconsistency between what is communicated and what one believes to be true is always wrong. According to this tradition, speaking in line with what one thinks or knows is always right, even at the cost of betraying good people and allowing bad people to do wicked things.

I believe both traditionally held positions are partially right but also fall short of what the whole word of God says about communicating faithfully. In this essay, I aim first to review what the Bible says on this important subject and then argue for a position that helps resolve some of the tension between the traditionally held views.

Six Observations from Scripture

We can make at least six important observations concerning what the Bible says about communicating truthfully and being true.

1. God is the standard of truth.

First, the word of God identifies speaking truthfully with God and speaking untruthfully with opposition to him. God declares, “I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right” (Isaiah 45:19). God not only speaks truthfully but is the source and measure of truth. God is essentially “righteous and true” (Deuteronomy 32:3–4 CSB). He does not measure up to truth but rather is Truth Itself. When the Bible says God is “the God of truth” (Isaiah 65:16), it means not just that he is truthful, but that he is the standard to which everything true aligns.

Thus, everything God says is necessarily true (2 Samuel 22:31; Psalm 119:160), everything he reveals is necessarily true (Proverbs 30:5), everything he does accords with truth (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 25:10; 145:17), and he can never be untrue (Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2). When God says he delights in truth (Psalm 51:6) and commands us to speak truthfully (Zechariah 8:16; Ephesians 4:25), he calls us to be like him (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Peter 1:16).

2. The Bible sometimes commends misleading speech.

Second, while the Bible stresses the sanctity of truth and condemns what is untrue, it also includes passages in which communicating contrary to what is known so as to mislead bad people is treated either without disapproval or with commendation.

The Hebrew midwives deceive Pharaoh to save babies (Exodus 1:15–21).
Rahab deceives a king to save spies (Joshua 2:1–7; 6:17, 25; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25).
God orders Israel to ambush the men of Ai (Joshua 8:3–8).
Jael deceives the Canaanite general Sisera (Judges 4:18–21; 5:24–27).
God develops a cover story to deceive Saul (1 Samuel 16:1–5).
Michal deceives Saul to protect David (1 Samuel 19:12–17).
David tells Jonathan to cover his absence by deceiving Saul (1 Samuel 20:6); Jonathan then deceives Saul to protect David (1 Samuel 20:28–29).
David deceives Ahimelech the priest about the mission he is on (1 Samuel 21:2).
David deceives the people of Gath by feigning madness (1 Samuel 21:13).
David deceives Achish about where he was raiding (1 Samuel 27:10).
David deceives Achish about his real allegiance (1 Samuel 29:8–9).
David tells Hushai to deceive Absalom by giving bad advice (2 Samuel 15:34); Hushai then deceives Absalom this way (2 Samuel 17:5–13), and God ensures Absalom is ruined by Hushai’s deceitful advice (2 Samuel 17:14).
A woman deceives Absalom’s men to save David’s men (2 Samuel 17:19–20).
Elisha deceives Syrians sent to arrest him (2 Kings 6:14–20).
Jeremiah deceives people to keep secret God’s message to Zedekiah (Jeremiah 38:24–27).
God says he will himself deceive false prophets (Ezekiel 14:9).

In these passages, bad people are misled, and Scripture treats these episodes either as if nothing wrong happened or as if the deceptions were good. While God never is false and never wants us to be, the Bible shows that God sometimes wants good people to mislead bad people.

3. God’s speech fits the worthiness of the recipient.

Third, God himself is not always straightforward. In several places, the Bible refers to God sending “a lying spirit” or “strong delusion” by which bad people are led to think and believe something untrue (1 Kings 22:19–23; 2 Chronicles 18:20–22; 2 Thessalonians 2:11). In such scenarios, theologians debate whether God uses the sinfulness of bad people against them or whether he deceives them himself. However these passages are interpreted, Psalm 18:25–26 indicates that God adjusts how he communicates to fit the worthiness of those addressed.

There David says, “With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; with the purified you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you make yourself seem [something else].”3 Translators struggle with that last word. The Christian Standard Bible and the New International Version use “shrewd,” the English Standard Version uses “tortuous,” the New American Standard Bible uses “astute,” the King James Version uses “unsavory,” and the New Revised Standard Version uses “perverse.” No English word easily captures what it means.

“The Bible never separates communicating truly with being true.”

But the core idea is plain: God communicates clearly with people who want to hear and accept what is true, and he communicates in ways hard to grasp when speaking with people who do not want to hear and accept what is true. Some people, it would seem, are not worthy of receiving clear communication. Nothing God says is untrue (Psalm 25:10), but he adjusts how he communicates to fit the worthiness of those to whom he speaks.

4. God’s ways transcend our comprehension.

Fourth, the Bible insists God’s ways are beyond human ability to fully comprehend. God is infinite. Everything he does or says has dimensions transcending human comprehension. For God, communicating truly is not the same as communicating exhaustively (and that is true for us as well). So, when interpreting what the Bible says about the ethics of faithful communication, we accept what we read, even if it does not fit what we expect or what we think it should say.

So, if someone explains the biblical truth ethic in a manner that makes perfect sense to us, we do well to suspect either that the explanation is wrong or that it distorts how God defines truth-telling in some way. When Scripture says, “God is not man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19), it suggests that God’s definition of truth and the truth ethic is not affected by human conventions and that none of the ways humans define or interpret truth-telling on their own are entirely correct.

5. Truth is practiced, not just spoken.

Fifth, the Bible never separates communicating truly from being true. God not only communicates truly but is Truth Itself. He is the essence, measure, origin, and definer of truth. He is the one without which nothing is true. As we communicate truly, we become more godly; as we become more godly, we communicate more truly.

First John 1:6 expresses this reality: “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” John later adds that “when [Jesus] appears we shall be like him,” and “everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2–3). In other words, the truth ethic is something practiced, not just verbalized.

6. Communicating accurately is sometimes wrong.

Sixth, in two places the Bible treats communicating accurately as morally wrong. The first is where Doeg the Edomite betrays David (1 Samuel 22:9–10), and the second is where Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus (Matthew 26:21–25). Each speaks in line with what he has in mind and states facts accurately, and yet the way each speaks is viewed as untrue in the sense of being morally wrong.

As James explains, communicating truthfully the way God defines it depends more on a speaker’s heart condition than on mere self-consistency or neighborliness. “If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. . . . For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:14, 16). A bad heart can make what one says ethically false even if it is factually correct, aligns with what one thinks, and is considered neighborly in some way.

Anthropocentric Divide

Although both traditional explanations are able to account for some of the above observations, neither has been able to draw all of them into a coherent ethic of truth-telling. The reason seems to be that both approach the matter from an anthropocentric posture. One measures truth by consistency with human neighbors and the other by consistency with what a person has in his own mind.

By contrast, the Bible treats truthful communication in a theocentric manner and assumes that anything else distorts the biblical norm. Thus, in order to account for all six observations, we could describe lying not as communicating contrary to neighbor love or communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows, but as communicating contrary to God. This third position understands that what biblically true communication requires cannot be grasped apart from God. In this view, truth is not something by which we measure God, but something by which God measures us.

Division between the inherited traditions reduces to different ways of conceiving the wrong that occurs in untrue communication. If truthfulness means preserving relational trust (position one), the wrong of untruth occurs in betraying a trust relationship, as measured by others trusting us. If truthfulness means accurate alignment of words with thoughts (position two), the wrong of untruth arises in discord between them. If truthfulness means fulfilling a mission assigned by God (position three), however, the wrong of untruth occurs in hindering a divine mission or purpose, however words align with thoughts and however they affect those trusting us for their own reasons.

The main difference between the first and second positions has to do with how communicating truly and lying are defined. What Christians held before Augustine was not precise, but they generally aligned communicating truly with neighbor love, thus making it relational. During the early years of persecution before Constantine (AD 35–313), they justified communicating contrary to thought in order to save innocent people. The weakness of this approach is that neighbor love can be interpreted in subjectively sentimental terms.4

Augustine meant to purge the church from ethical relativity and generally did so by applying Scripture. But when it came to interpreting the sanctity of truth, he started with definitions of truthfulness and lying that came from Greek philosophy and not actually from the Bible itself. Thus, neither of the traditions dividing Christian ethics on this point actually defines truthful communication in biblically grounded, God-centered terms.

Theocentric Solution

Although Christianity has historically been divided on the ethics of truth-telling, God’s ethical reality is not. The coherence of God demands a single, coherent answer, and there are just three possibilities: (1) lying as communicating contrary to neighbor love; (2) lying as communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows; or (3) a category that transcends both — one that defines truthfulness and lying in ways that are neither neighbor-focused nor self-focused, but rather God-focused.

Ultimate Truth is a person (John 14:6); therefore, the sanctity of truth is ultimately personal and relational, not abstract and impersonal — not a concept, principle, or rule standing off by itself over and against God. All truly true truth comes from, relates to, and serves God (Romans 11:36); therefore, the obligation to communicate truly and to be true reduces to fidelity to God. In other words, moral communication primarily concerns fidelity to the One who is Truth Itself.

How this communication relates to neighbors, thoughts, or facts is secondary. While fidelity to our neighbors, our own thoughts, and to facts makes good sense, this fidelity is not an absolute in its own right. What it means and requires in any given situation depends on what the word of God says. After all, God is he who “[declares] what is right” (Isaiah 45:19), and fearing God is the only way to avoid “perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13 CSB).

Jesus declares that he is himself “the truth” (John 14:6), and John says he is “full of . . . truth” (John 1:14). Jesus did not measure up to any humanly conceived notion of truth. Rather, being God, he was and is the source, measure, and end of everything true, including truthful speaking. He is not an instance of truth conceived in terms other than himself, but rather is Truth Itself.

When Jesus said, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice,” Pilate asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:37–38). Pilate understood Jesus to be saying something momentous. Jesus was claiming that all true communication and being true, all accuracy and meaning, all genuinely reliable existence, behavior, understanding, and conveying of information one to another is of and through himself — and that conceiving otherwise is false.

The lying as communicating contrary to God position subordinates, but does not discard, the traditional positions. It allows the other positions to serve subordinate roles. That is, loving neighbors and self-consistency can be viewed as regulating principles pointing toward what faithful communication most often requires. Pleasing Christ is the only absolute governing the biblical truth ethic. The regulating principles tell us what that ethic usually requires. But where the word of God says otherwise, we must follow. The primary principle of cohering to God himself supersedes the regulating principles of loving neighbors and self-consistency.

In the Bible, obligation to communicate truly and be true has two dimensions: one vertical in relation to God and one horizontal in relation to others. Communicating truly and being true involves both God and others. They are unconditional in relation to God, but they are conditional in relation to others, always depending on how they affect fidelity to God. The Bible refers to this condition as “the fear of God.”

Scripture tells us that “to fear the Lord is to hate . . . perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13 CSB), and then it also tells us the Hebrew midwives and Rahab communicated as they did because they “feared” God (Exodus 1:17–21; Joshua 2:9–11). Because of this, and because Scripture regards the act by which Rahab protected the spies as a good example of faith pleasing to God (Hebrews 11:31), we should stop treating these accounts as “difficult” and should instead accept them as places where God explains how the way he defines communicating truly and being true differs from what we expect.

God uses these accounts to show that communication must be unconditionally true and faithful to himself and conditionally true and faithful to anyone or anything else. The midwives and Rahab demonstrated truthful communication the way God defines it.

The God Who Is Truth

Ethics is, at heart, a matter of worship that leaves two options. We can worship God or some guise of the devil; there is no middle ground. “Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). We communicate either in step with God or in step with the devil. Conceiving of truth any other way skews or ignores the essential ethical questions at the heart of all truly true truth: “True by what measure?” or “True to whom?”

You cannot be true to the devil and to Christ at the same time, and you cannot communicate truly with both, in reference to both, or with the emissaries of both at the same time. Fidelity to ultimate truth requires infidelity to ultimate falsehood. Which is to say, communicating truly comes from Christ (1 Peter 3:15–16), and communicating untruly comes from hell (James 3:6).

This third position resolving the divide between self-consistency and neighbor love agrees with Allen Verhey’s caution: “God is Truth, but truth is not a second god.”5 There is a connection between God and truth, but it is not reciprocal. What we know of truth says something of God. But what we think of truth does not define God. Our understanding of truth does not limit God; at best, it only reflects God. To know truth truly, one must focus on God as he has revealed himself. Faithful communication depends on him and centers on him, not on us.

This study of the truth ethic reveals how God’s ordering of ethical reality is at once highly complex and united by a deep simplicity centered on God himself. It also demonstrates the paradoxical nature of revealed ethics. The biblically revealed ethic of communicating truly and being true, while consistent, absolute, universal, and unvarying, also runs contrary to human expectations. It is not self-contradictory but has marks of a mind transcending our own. It is not what most people think because it is more complex, deeper, and measured by a higher standard than most expect.

Yet at the same time, it is easy enough for anyone believing in the One who transcends human understanding to grasp, plain enough to convict sinners of deserved judgment, and sufficient to guide what we say and do in all situations arising in this fallen, fallible world.

Spirit-filled preachers revel in the wonder of a mere mortal speaking for God. Of course, neither the privilege nor the sufficiency to do so rests with the preacher. And yet, the wonder and the terror of proclaiming God’s life-giving word, in the power of the Spirit, to souls redeemed by Christ fuels the preacher’s desire to hone his craft.

Today’s preachers have two thousand years of theoretical know-how and fine-tuned practical wisdom concerning the art of preaching. How well we steward this vast wealth is debatable, but preaching theory has certainly advanced to levels of sophistication unknown in earlier centuries. Further, technological innovations enable us not merely to read a renowned preacher’s sermons but to hear his recorded voice deliver them.

So, with all these resources at our fingertips, why bother with the preaching ministries of ancient pastors like John Chrysostom (347–407)? After all, John’s homilies exist only in written form. They lack many of the structural features today’s homileticians deem important. They were addressed to an audience with whom we share little in common. They were framed for a cultural milieu unlike our own. So, why consider John’s preaching?

First, for these very reasons. Despite the historical and cultural chasm that separates our day from his, patristic scholars still specialize in studying John’s ministry. Sixteen hundred years removed, his 640 extant sermons still yield gold to those who mine them.

Second, God used John’s preaching to awaken love for the Scriptures and to change lives. John preached the same word we preach. He was filled and used by the same Holy Spirit that empowers biblical preachers today. This word-centered, Spirit-enabled dynamic ties us to John as much as to any scheme or school of wisdom on sermon-craft we encounter today.

Monk Turned Preacher

John ministered in the eastern theater of imperial Rome during the post-Nicene era of church history. Christianity was legalized in 313, and the first ecumenical council set forth an orthodox Christology at Nicaea in 325. This means John ministered in the heady days of the church’s fresh liberation from persecution and exponential growth. Across the empire, pagan temples were converted to church buildings that teemed with professing Christians — many of them, however, still tethered to their pagan proclivities.

John was born into a moderately wealthy home in the cosmopolitan city of Antioch. Here he received a superb education, but he abandoned a promising legal career to become a monk, much to the dismay of his renowned tutor, Libanius (313–393).

For six years, John lived in the hills above Antioch, mostly among other hermits, but also with several lengthy stints of total isolation. This period of intense spiritual formation aided John’s quest against sexual temptation. It also ruined his health.

John returned to Antioch, where he ministered under the tutelage of Archbishop Flavian and Bishop Diodore. These men equipped John to defend Nicene orthodoxy against Arianism, and to embrace the Antiochean school of biblical interpretation vis-à-vis the Alexandrian school’s more allegorical methodology.1

John ministered faithfully in Antioch for two decades. By age fifty, he was a wildly popular preacher and author, seemingly positioned to complete a long, distinguished career in the city of his birth.

Unlikely Reformer

When the bishop of Constantinople died, however, eastern emperor Arcadius devised a ruse to all but kidnap John and make him the next bishop of that second-most important see in Christendom. Arcadius and his influential wife, Eudoxia, valued John’s orthodox Christology and gifted preaching, warmly receiving John as their spiritual advisor. It appeared a match made in heaven.

As bishop of Constantinople, John oversaw one hundred thousand parishioners and hundreds of church officials. He was tasked with adjudicating church matters locally, as well as cases brought to him from realms beyond his see.

Primarily by means of his sermons, John endeared himself to his parishioners. Such loyalty, however, was not forthcoming from the ecclesiastical or imperial power brokers in Constantinople. Palladius, a sympathetic historian, summarizes John’s agenda as “sweeping the stairs from the top.”2 In other words, the erstwhile hermit, the man committed to sexual purity, the austere, Bible-loving, zealous champion for Christ had landed in decadent Constantinople intent on cleaning house. The city teemed with church officials who did not share John’s passion for holiness. He arrived like an Amish farmer entering a nightclub.

Perhaps no believer has ever occupied a more powerful position in both church and government. But John’s efforts to overturn the status quo alienated him from the luminaries of man’s kingdom. Through a series of dramatic plot twists, enemies prevailed over John’s reformational efforts and political obtuseness. He died in 407 during a second torturous exile, orchestrated by the same emperor and empress who had brought him to the city. His last words were “Glory be to God in everything.”3

Lessons from the Golden Mouth

The moniker “Chrysostom” (Greek for “Golden-Mouthed”) was ascribed to John two centuries after his death. Despite his reform efforts and capacities as an overseer, theologian, and imperial delegate, he is remembered most for his preaching.

By today’s standards, John’s homilies evidence little structure — no obvious central theme, proposition, or outlining, for example. They are largely running commentaries of passages with fewer than fifteen verses. Yet they remain a source of timeless instruction for today’s preachers. Among the wealth of worthy lessons, consider the following five.

1. Know why you preach.

John’s preaching targeted the glory of God and the edification of the saints.4 He saw preaching as a labor to fuel holiness by transforming heart affections through biblical doxology. He preached to shepherd his hearers one step closer to truth, to godliness, to Christ. John confessed that he struggled with pride in the pulpit. Yet his congregation knew that his preaching was all about God and the good of God’s people, not about himself.

2. Capture the author’s meaning.

John Calvin considered John “the greatest exegete of either the Greek or the Latin Church” and consciously emulated his practice of lectio continua. On occasion, John delivered a topical sermon, such as on a saint’s feast day or during a political crisis. But his mainstay was “continuous exposition of complete books of the Bible.”5

A medieval tradition posited that while preaching through Paul’s epistles, John received a vision in which the apostle explicated his writings to the bishop.6 We may infer from the myth that John never used Paul’s words as a springboard to say what he wished, nor did he pretend to supply some advance on Paul’s meaning. John so channeled Paul that it seemed the apostle whispered in his ear as he preached.

John’s fidelity to the biblical text is evidenced in his practice of pointing the church’s attention to a single word or phrase in order to emphasize or preserve its meaning. This habit can become tedious if overused. But strategically applied, it teaches a church how to read the Bible and to respect the divine origin of every word.

3. Explain complexities as succinctly as possible.

John’s sermons provide repeated examples of stating a debated point and then succinctly explaining his position. Quite willing to acknowledge and interact with conflicting interpretations, John was averse to losing his audience in detailed minutiae.7 He knew that lengthy, detailed theological argumentation in sermons typically creates as much confusion as clarity.

4. Use vivid illustrations and analogies.

These sermons pulsate with riveting imagery and illustrative material. These elements never overwhelm the biblical content; they only color and enliven it. For instance, during a season of political pressure on his church at Constantinople, John rallied the assembly with vivid metaphors:

On every side wolves surround you, but your flock is not destroyed. A surging sea, storms, and waves have constantly encircled this sacred ship, but those who sail on it are not engulfed by the waters. The fires of heresy threaten with their encircling flames on every side, but those who are in the midst of the furnace enjoy the blessing of a heavenly dew.8

He habitually employed such riveting language to help his congregation see and feel the point at hand.

5. Develop provocative, concrete applications.

John did not dabble in generalities or broker in indirect speech. He spoke directly to his hearers in a conversational tone, always willing to improvise as he persuaded them to honor God.9 Even in written form, one easily imagines the striking effect of his exhortations. In one moment of pointed application, for example, John contends against sexual impurity with bold specificity:

If you see a shameless woman in the theater . . . flaunting her soft sensuality, singing immoral songs, throwing her limbs about in the dance, and making shameless speeches . . . do you still dare to say that nothing human happens to you then? Long after the theater is closed . . . those images still float before your soul, their words, their conduct, their glances, their walk, their positions, their excitation, their unchaste limbs — and as for you, you go home . . . but not alone — the whore goes with you . . . in your heart, and in your conscience, and there within you she kindles the Babylonian furnace . . . in which the peace of your home, the purity of your heart, the happiness of your marriage will be burnt up.10

No theatergoing man left church that day wondering what the sermon had to do with him!

Treasure Trove for Preachers

While few preachers today will find opportunity to read all of John’s sermons, they stand as a treasure trove of instruction for anyone willing to wade into them. Taken together, they display painstaking efforts to achieve a deep understanding of the texts he preached, a loving zeal for the holiness of his flock, and a singular devotion to Christ that fueled great courage.

We aspire not to be remembered as the “Golden-Mouthed.” Yet as we consider one who was so recognized, may we also rejoice to hone the craft of proclaiming God’s word in the power of the Spirit, for the joy of his people.

Part 10 Episode 230 How much are you currently relying on the nourishing milk of the word? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Hebrews 5:11–14 to help us understand just how much we need the Bible in order to grow to maturity.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to another week on the Ask Pastor John podcast. In our Bible reading this week, we’re in the thick of it, reading through Leviticus — a notorious book that ends a lot of well-intended Bible readers in the month of February — a book that includes hard texts like Leviticus 21:16–24, forcing Bible readers to ask, “Why did God shun the disabled in the Old Testament?” We looked at that question last time, on Thursday.

Today we talk about personal suffering and the meaning-full-ness of Christian suffering. So often suffering feels meaning-less, and we can get disheartened and feel like giving up, leading to today’s question from Samuel. “Hello, Pastor John. The apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7–9 that he was ‘afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken.’ What does he mean that he was persecuted but not forsaken? When I imagine the sufferings of Paul hitting my life, I would be immediately tempted to think that such harsh persecution would make me feel completely crushed and abandoned by God. Much lesser pain in my life brings me to the brink of this already. So, how did Paul endure such pain without feeling totally defeated? And what has faith looked like in your life when your life was its hardest?”

Here’s the text that we’re being asked to get inside of: 2 Corinthians 4:7–9:

We have this treasure [namely, this treasure of vital faith in Christ, who is the image of God] in jars of clay [that is, fragile bodies and minds], to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

And Samuel is asking, “How did Paul endure this — this being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down? How did he endure this the way he did?” And he has in mind the magnitude and frequency of Paul’s sufferings.

I doubt that most of our listeners have an immediate consciousness of how terrible that was for Paul. So, I’m going to read it. This is one of the most surprising and staggering and appalling statements of Paul’s life in the Bible. He endured

far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. (2 Corinthians 11:23–28)

And we complain.

Samuel’s question is relevant because of how easily we grumble about our own circumstances when in fact none of us — I’m willing to say this to everybody listening to me — has endured what Paul did. So, Samuel asks, “How did Paul endure such pain without feeling totally defeated — indeed, abandoned by God?” That’s what he asks, and I think Paul would give three answers.

1. ‘I endured by God’s keeping.’

Number one, I think he would say, “I was miraculously kept faithful by the Lord Jesus. It was a gift; it was a miracle; it was a work of God to keep me. That’s why I didn’t give in.” His perseverance was a gift. Here’s what he says in 2 Timothy 4:16–17:

At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.

That’s his basic answer to how he endured. The living, sovereign Lord Jesus Christ stood by Paul when nobody else did. He did not infer that because everybody abandoned him, God’s not real. Since Christians are all a bunch of fakes, Jesus isn’t real. He never went that direction, which so many people do today.

In 1 Corinthians 1:8–9, he said that Christ sustains us “to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom [we] were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” So, Paul enjoyed fellowship with Jesus. That’s the key: fellowship with Jesus. And God held on to Paul and sustained him and preserved his faith through everything by giving him the enjoyment of fellowship with Jesus through it all.

God began the work in Paul on the Damascus road. And according to Philippians 1:6, he believes God will finish the work. So, God calls, God keeps, God establishes, God glorifies. This is God’s work. If any of us endures to the end as a believer through suffering, it’s God’s grace that we endure. It’s a gift. It’s a supernatural work. So, that’s Paul’s first answer.

2. ‘I endured by sound teaching.’

As a second answer, I think he would say, “God preserved me, Jesus saved me and kept me, by means of teaching me a true and robust theology of Christian suffering.” And in that theology of Christian suffering, which kept him, was the conviction of God’s absolute sovereignty over Paul’s suffering — and that God is not only sovereign, but he’s good and he’s wise. Nothing befalls Paul but what God sends for his good purposes. “If the Lord wills,” James says (and Paul agrees), “we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). If he doesn’t, we won’t. We are immortal till God’s work for us is done. God is sovereign. That is basic to Paul’s and our endurance.

In the first days after his conversion, remember that even before his blindness was removed there in Damascus, Ananias was sent to Paul, and he was sent with this message: “I will show him,” Christ says, “how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). In other words, from the beginning, God made it clear to Paul, “To serve me is to suffer.” Suffering’s not a detour. It’s part of the path, part of the calling.

God’s Loving Discipline

Paul knew that all of God’s wrath had been absorbed by Jesus when he died. So now, there’s no condemnation for Paul (or for us) in Christ. None of these horrible things that are happening to Paul is owing to God’s wrath. What a relief! They were all part of God’s fatherly, loving, disciplining, ministry-advancing purposes for Paul, for the church, for the world.

“If any of us endures to the end as a believer through suffering, it’s God’s grace that we endure.”

Some of his sufferings, he says, were the refining of his own faith. Second Corinthians 1:8–9 is amazing. He says, “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” That was God’s purpose: to help Paul trust utterly in God by knocking all the props out from under his life so that there was only one place to fall — on God who raises the dead. And he trusted God. He trusted this profound knowledge of the role of suffering in the life of the believer.

No Wasted Pain

Another part of his theology of suffering was that no pain here is wasted, because it’s producing a weight of glory beyond all comparison. “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). In other words, even in those last horrible days and weeks of suffering before death — they seem so meaningless — even in those hours, nothing is wasted because they actually are producing a greater weight of glory after death.

I’ll mention one more aspect of Paul’s theology of suffering that is like a ballast in his boat to keep it from being tipped over by the sufferings. He says that his sufferings for the body of Christ were the filling up of what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ. “I rejoice in my sufferings” — which is an amazing statement in itself —“for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24).

This was not because Christ’s afflictions were lacking in any atoning merit. That’s not the issue; that’s not the problem. It was because Christ’s afflictions were lacking in personal presentation to those for whom he suffered. Paul was saying, “In my sufferings for you, I am presenting to you Christ’s sufferings for you, so that you can see and feel his love for you in my suffering for you.” And I think that’s why many pastors are called to suffer the way they are.

3. ‘I endured by God’s promises.’

So, Paul’s first answer to how he endured these crushing hardships was that Christ kept him, stood by him. And the second answer is that he kept him by means of a true and robust theology of Christian suffering. And finally, the third answer that Paul would give is this: “I was kept by the precious and very great promises of God” — promises like these:

“I’ll be with you to the end” (Matthew 28:20).
“I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
“I will work everything together for your good” (Romans 8:28).
“I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will uphold you” (Isaiah 41:10).
“In the Lord, none of your work is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
“To live is Christ; to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
“To be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).

So, these three answers to how Paul endured are our answers. I think that’s our answer as well as Paul’s answer. Paul lived his life for our sake. That’s why he endured these things — so that we could see and learn.

The Lord kept him and will keep us.
We should have a robust, biblical theology of Christian suffering.
We should live through it all by the precious promises of God.

What do you do when you are genuinely uncertain about your faith?

Some people deny that doubt can ever be sincere since general revelation makes God’s existence plain (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:19). But the Bible nowhere promises that God will be equally clear to every person at every moment.

Faith often involves moments of angst. Some coming into Christianity struggle deeply before finally breaking through. Many believers experience the “dark night of the soul” — moments or even seasons of anguish when the sense of God’s presence is removed. Think of the many psalms of lament (e.g., Psalm 22; Psalm 88) or C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed. In my YouTube ministry, I’ve discovered that many younger people feel this way right now.

The world is filled with uncertainty and gnawing anxiety. Many people are open to believing in God, maybe even desiring to believe — but they still feel stuck in uncertainty. So, what do you do when your confidence about God is above 50 percent, but under 100 percent? Or how do you help a friend in this circumstance? Let me first offer some encouragement, and then some counsel.

Uncertainty Doesn’t Mean You’re Fake

In the church, we often struggle to know how to help doubters. Sometimes we give the impression that a genuine believer won’t have any doubts. But this approach doesn’t seem to be biblical. Some of the apostles themselves doubted — even while seeing the risen Jesus (Matthew 28:17)! And Jude 22 commands us to “have mercy on those who doubt.”

“God uses our uncertainty to produce humility in us, and along with it, an awareness of our need of God.”

If you struggle with doubts, remember: Thomas was not Judas. Thomas doubted, but Judas betrayed. These are not identical.

I do not say this to minimize the significance of your doubts. Some doubt is sinful, and almost all doubt is painful. In my observation, however, some believers are afflicted with an exquisite sense of shame and self-reproach about having doubts. As a result, they might keep them secret, and they might wonder if they don’t have true faith at all.

So, remember: genuine Christians in the Bible struggled with real doubt. And Thomas was not Judas. Don’t be harsher in evaluating your spiritual status than Scripture is. In fact, if we will continue to walk in the light to the best of our ability, God can actually use our uncertainty for good.

God Can Use Uncertainty for Good

There are many pieces of advice I give to those struggling with doubts. Having a friend to talk to is crucial, for example. So is keeping up spiritual disciplines (particularly prayer, Scripture reading, and corporate worship). Our spiritual life and our community powerfully shape and reinforce our beliefs. But here let me focus on one strategy that I believe is particularly neglected: we need to reflect theologically on our uncertainty. We need to develop a working framework for how to understand doubts and their role in our life.

When I was in college, I struggled with an acute sense of frustration at the uncertainty of life. I resonated with the emphasis in existential philosophy that we are hurled into existence, but simultaneously ill-equipped for existence. No one gives you an instruction manual when you are born!

One night in December 2005, I wrote this in my journal:

The only thing worse than the pain of life is its utter randomness. We are hurled into consciousness and struggle without any explanations or answers to accompany them. Life is like a test which we are forced to take, the answers to which are impossible for us to know. The blanks with which we fill in the questions of life are at best guesses, and usually merely unexamined prejudices. Life is like a battle which we are forced to fight, but the objective of which is unclear to us. We are hurled into the contest, but unsure of what is required of us. We sense that we must strive, but are unsure to what end we strive, or by what means. The great dilemma of life is not its failure or pain, but its uncertainty and chaos.

There was one thing, however, that never occurred to me: What if this very situation, and the struggle involved in it, has a purpose?

Pascal on the Hiddenness of God

A breakthrough came when I discovered that my struggle was not new. Some of the great Christian minds of the past had agonized over it. The great seventeenth-century thinker Blaise Pascal, for example, famously emphasized the hiddenness of God and the resulting anguish:

Nature has nothing to offer me that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety. If I saw no sign there of a Divinity I should decide on a negative solution: if I saw signs of a Creator everywhere I should peacefully settle down in the faith. But, seeing too much to deny and not enough to affirm, I am in a pitiful state. (Pensées 429, quoted in Christianity for Modern Pagans, 213)

But for Pascal, this very state of affairs exists for a reason. God uses our uncertainty to produce humility in us, and along with it, an awareness of our need of God: “It is not only right but useful for us that God should be partly concealed and partly revealed, since it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness as to know his wretchedness without knowing God” (Pensées 446, 249).

According to this way of thinking, if God immediately answered our every doubt, this would not be productive for us. We might know God but relate to him in pride and complacency, which would not actually touch our area of need in relation to God — namely, our sin and resistance to him. As Pascal writes elsewhere, “God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will” (Pensées 234, 247).

Light for Those Who Wish to See

I realize this idea can be frustrating for people to hear. But think about it: How do we know that certainty is what we really need? If we are brutally honest, we will probably realize that we often fail to act on what we do know. Perhaps the nature of God’s revelation — partially hidden, yet manifest through creation, conscience, and Christ — is actually best suited to our true condition.

After all, God is interested not only that we believe in him, but how we believe. If he overpowered our resistance with frequent overt miracles, this would probably result in a “thin theism”: we would begrudgingly admit his existence while wishing it were not so. Meanwhile, for those who seek God, God has not left himself without testimony. Pascal is helpful again:

If God had wished to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, he could have done so by revealing himself to them so plainly that they could not doubt the truth of his essence, as he will appear on the last day. . . . This is not the way he wished to appear when he came in mildness, because so many men had shown themselves unworthy of his clemency, that he wished to deprive them of the good they did not desire. There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition. (Pensées 149, 69)

Walk in the Light You Have

In the meantime, what should we do? Pascal counsels us to make a choice. Make the best decision we can in light of what we do know. Make a wholehearted existential commitment to the truth as best as we can see it, walking in whatever light God has granted us, trusting that the remaining darkness will not last forever — that in fact God is at work through it.

So, Christian reader, when you struggle with uncertainty, do not lose heart. Keep pressing forward. God is at work in the midst of your struggle — and he will faithfully sustain you until the day you stand before him, face to face, with all uncertainty left behind forever.

This conference is built on the conviction that the word of God, the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ, cannot fail. Cannot. And that your life devoted to this cause cannot be wasted. Cannot.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10–11)

God’s word, God’s saving gospel, cannot fail. “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). It cannot fail because God cannot fail. He is infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, and infinitely good. He has no equal. He is, therefore, literally invincible. And the purpose of the word that he speaks is invincible. What he purposes comes to pass. That’s what it means to be God:

I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:9–10)

Only One Life

Therefore, if your life is aligned with his word, it cannot be wasted. And it is certain that if your life is not aligned with his word, it will be wasted. Young people, may I testify that you do not want to be my age and look back over your life and say, “I wasted it.” To look back over your one life — your one, single, never-to-be-repeated life — and say, “That was a waste.” Oh, how thankful I am that from age 6 to 18 I walked into the kitchen every morning and saw this plaque:

Only one life, ’twill soon be past;only what’s done for Christ will last.

I don’t remember a time when my prayer to God was not, “O God, please don’t let me waste my life. I get one shot. Then eternity. Please, Father, make it count.” I believe that if you pray that prayer from your heart, he will do it. You will not waste your life. Your life will count for eternity.

This conference is built on the conviction that the global purposes of God, worked out through his word, cannot fail — and your life aligned with those purposes cannot be wasted.

All the messages, one way or the other, are designed to show that is true. And my assignment in this message is to take you to the book of Acts in the New Testament and show you the invincible progress of the word of God in the 35 years after Jesus had returned to heaven and taken his seat triumphantly at the Father’s right hand.

Unstoppable Spread

The book of Acts picks up where the four Gospels leave off and carries us from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria, through Syria and Asia Minor into Greece, and then to Rome, with Spain on the horizon. So that Paul would say, as he made his way toward Rome, near the end of his life,

from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum [northwest Greece stretching through the Balkans to northern Italy] I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. . . . I no longer have any room for work in these regions. (Romans 15:19, 23)

That was an outlandish thing for him to say since there were thousands of people in those regions who had not yet believed in Christ. We know this because Paul left Timothy behind and told him to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5). So, it was outlandish — unless that was not in Paul’s job. Paul was not a local-church evangelist. He was a missionary, a frontier missionary — meaning (as he said), “I am called to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named” (see Romans 15:20). Timothy was not a frontier, pioneer missionary — he was not called to preach where Christ had not been named. But Paul was.

So, at the end of Acts, Paul is heading for Rome, hoping against hope that he might be sent on his way to Spain and the rest of the Roman empire. And they killed him. Others would be raised up — like you at a Cross conference — to take the gospel to the remaining peoples and places where no church-base of evangelism has been planted.

Everything Aids the Advance

In the book of Acts, as the gospel spreads invincibly from Jerusalem to Rome, there are at least fifty points of opposition described. One of the purposes of this book is to show that none of that opposition succeeds in stopping the invincible word of God. But that’s not the only point, or the deepest point, that Luke wants to make in writing this book. He also wants to show that God makes human sin and satanic opposition serve the advancement of the gospel.

Human sin and satanic opposition to the gospel are ultimately planned and designed by God to accomplish his saving purposes. If you want to be aligned with the purposes of God, so that you don’t waste your life, you need to grasp this fundamental biblical reality. Both globally and personally in your life, God makes sin and satanic opposition serve his good purposes for you. Satan is not a free, autonomous, self-determining agent in this world. He’s on a leash. He does nothing apart from God’s infinitely wise purposes.

Do you remember Paul’s thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12? It’s called “a messenger of Satan” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Satan’s design was to make Paul miserable and ineffective with this thorn. But Jesus told Paul, No, God’s design is to protect you from pride, and to make you holy, and to show you that the grace of Christ is sufficient for you (2 Corinthians 12:7–9).

“The word of God, the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ, cannot fail — and your life devoted to this cause cannot be wasted.”

Young people, if you get ahold of this now, at this stage in your life, how powerfully it will serve you for decades to come, both personally and globally. All the losses of your life, all the sorrows, hardships, the tragedies of your life — the loss of your mother to cancer; the loss of your brother in a car accident; the loss of your friends at school who you thought were on your side, and now they’ve been talking about you behind your back; your disappointments with your looks and your abilities as you compare yourself with others — all these discouragements, which Satan aims to use to make you miserable and ineffective so that you waste your life, are ultimately God’s plan to make you strong.

As he sends you into battle against sin and Satan and unbelief, wearing all the armor of God, he says, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Ephesians 6:10). God is sovereign over Satan and sin. He is sovereign over suffering. If you trust him, he turns everything for your good and for the fruitfulness of your life.

If you get this, you will be an invincible Christian (perhaps an invincible missionary), just like the word of God was invincible in the book of Acts, because God makes human sin and satanic opposition serve the advancement of his saving purposes in the gospel, personally and globally. So, for the purposes of getting strong in our souls, and steel in our backbone, and fiber in our faith, and courage in our witness, and ballast in our boats, let’s watch God do this in the book of Acts.

Sin and Satan at the Cross

The most important event in the book of Acts where God makes human sin and satanic opposition serve the gospel is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ — the very creation of the gospel. When Jesus died, he paid the penalty for all the sins of God’s people for all time. Anybody and everybody, anywhere in the world, who believes in Jesus will be forgiven all their sins and will have eternal life with God. This moment, this event — the death of Jesus for our sins — is the foundation of all the good news throughout the book of Acts, throughout all history, all missions. How did it come about?

Satan enters into the heart of Judas in order to maximize the suffering of the Son of God and, if possible, divert him from his task (Luke 22:3). Then the mockery of Herod kicks in, and the expediency of Pilate kicks in, and the mob joins in with “Crucify him!” And the soldiers finish it with spikes and a spear. And all those actions — by Pilate and Herod and the mob and the soldiers — were sin, human sin. The worst sin. To murder the Son of God is the worst sin. And all of it was predestined and planned by God for the triumph of the gospel.

Listen carefully to Acts 4:27–28, where the Christians cry out to God:

Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

Therefore, my young friends, let this be the ballast in your boat, your strength, your staying power, your invincibility: the sovereign God of the universe predestined and planned satanic opposition and human sin in the creation of the gospel — and henceforward in its invincible spread. Keeping this ballast in your boat will be the key to staying afloat and not wasting your lives.

Sent by Suffering

Now, let’s watch God act on this principle in the book of Acts — the sovereign God making satanic opposition and human sin serve the advancement of the gospel across the Roman empire.

At the end of chapter 7, Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit and faith and grace and power (Acts 6:5, 8), closed his long message before the council in Jerusalem with this indictment:

[Your fathers] killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered. (Acts 7:52)

When they heard this, Luke tells us, “They . . . stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him” (Acts 7:57–58). His last words were, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). Stephen was the first Christian martyr after Jesus.

Then came one of those inevitable, humanly unintended consequences for being faithful to God’s word amid demonic opposition and human sin. It’s described in the first verse of chapter 8:

There arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

Do you know how many people that is, who were driven out of their homes in Jerusalem because they were Christians? Acts 4:4 says, “Many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men [males] came to about five thousand.” That’s five thousand men, not counting women and children. Conservatively, then, that’s at least ten thousand people on the run for their lives. There’s nothing romantic about this. It is terrifying; it is painful. To be a refugee, then and now, is heartbreaking.

“God has no equal. He is, therefore, literally invincible.”

So, here’s what happened. A Spirit-filled, Bible-saturated message is delivered by a godly man, Stephen. Then Satan fills the listeners with rage, and a mob kills him in a brutal act of stoning. And the effect of the stoning is to unleash on Jerusalem a deadly persecution that drives ten thousand Christians from their homes.

Persecution Leads to Preaching

Do you think God was wringing his hands in heaven, as if this satanic opposition would discourage the boldness of witness and the advance of the gospel? No, he was not. Here’s what God was doing. Acts 8:4 says, “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.”

The word for “preaching” here is euanggelizomnenoi, which always means “speak good news.” The thousands of persecuted refugees, in flight for their lives, were speaking the good news of Christ wherever they went. They were not saying, “What’s good about this news? It doesn’t even spare us from persecution. Where was God when Stephen was killed?” Instead, they were so thrilled that their sins were forgiven, and that they had the hope of eternal happiness with God, that they spoke of it everywhere they went — in the middle of homelessness and pain.

And what was the effect of that speaking? Acts 11:19–21 gives the answer:

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen [the homeless refugees] traveled as far as . . . Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them . . . who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

This was a historic missionary breakthrough. Up till now, as far as we know, no Christians were taking the gospel to the Gentiles (non-Jewish people), in spite of Jesus’s command to do so. So, the sovereign God said, “By the death of Stephen and the persecution of my precious people in Jerusalem, I will get my people moving to the nations.” Global missions was the result of persecution and displacement — forced emigration. In other words, God makes satanic opposition and human sin serve the advancement of the gospel.

Appointment in Prison

It happened again in northern Greece, where Paul was powerfully preaching the gospel in a city that had never been reached, Philippi. His ministry was so effective that it liberated a slave girl and caused her owners to be furious at Paul and Silas. They dragged them before the rulers, and Acts 16:23–24 says,

When they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.

And what was Paul’s response? “God, I thought you were sovereign. I have been serving you as faithfully as I can. And I get reviled, or beaten, or whipped, or imprisoned almost everywhere I go. We were making amazing progress in this city. And here I sit in a dungeon with welts on my back because of my faithfulness — to you.”

That was not Paul’s response. Ever. And it shouldn’t be yours. Here’s what Paul was doing in the dungeon. “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25). One of the purposes of this message is to turn you into that kind of person.

So, what is the sovereign God doing? Jesus had said, “I have other sheep that are not of this [Jewish] fold. I must bring them also” (John 10:16). The jailer in this prison was one of those sheep. And Jesus meant to save him. So, there was an earthquake. All the doors opened, and the bonds fell off. And that night, salvation came to the household of the jailer. So, why had the mob succeeded in beating and imprisoning Paul and Silas? Because there was a jailer to save (Acts 16:26–31). God makes satanic opposition and human sin serve the advancement of the gospel.

Waste Not

So, we end where we began: this conference is built on the conviction that the word of God, the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ, cannot fail — and that your life devoted to this cause cannot be wasted.

But what we have seen in the book of Acts is even deeper and more amazing than that. The sovereign God of the universe predestined and planned satanic opposition and human sin in the very creation of the gospel — the death of Jesus. And from that day forward, this same sovereignty has made the powers of hell and human sin serve the invincible spread of that gospel — to every people and tribe and tongue and nation.

Here is my closing plea: Align your life with God’s sovereign, saving, global purposes. Let this be the ballast in your boat. This is how you will stay afloat in the coming decades. This is how you will not waste your life.

Luckily for Jesus, the disciples were there that day to provide some public-relations help.

The sheep huddled together and devised a question: “Excuse me, Jesus . . . um, Rabbi . . . uh, Master . . . do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard your teaching?”

Jesus hadn’t thrown the first punch. The Pharisees, activists of “cleanliness is next to godliness,” had complained of the disciples’ unwashed hands. “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat” (Matthew 15:2). Without flinching, Jesus counters with a right hook: “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:3).

You see, some Pharisees in that day ran a little religious hustle, giving his money “to God” instead of his parents, whom God commanded they support. Jesus unmasks them:

God commanded, “Honor your father and your mother,” and, “Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.” But you say, “If anyone tells his father or his mother, ‘What you would have gained from me is given to God,’ he need not honor his father.” So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. (Matthew 15:4–7)

He catches these Holy Handwashers with their arms down. As they stumble back, Jesus presses his opponents into the corner:

You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

“This people honors me with their lips,but their heart is far from me;in vain do they worship me,teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” (Matthew 15:7–9)

Finally, he calls the people over to give the ten count:

He called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” (Matthew 15:10–11)

As the Pharisees exit the ring enraged, the disciples, stunned at the first-round finish, ask Jesus, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” (Matthew 15:12).

Mannerly Messiah

Had we been there, I imagine most would have been tempted to wonder something like this: “Does he know he comes off a little strong?” “Was his manner of bluntness all that it could have been?” “Was that really the most persuasive manner for handling that theological disagreement?”

And I imagine how we might expect a godly leader to answer our concerns: “You know, you’re right. I did not need to embarrass them like that. I did not have to draw the crowd to myself or brand them with Isaiah’s confounding prophecy or apply the fifth commandment so nakedly. I did not have to oppose their traditions with such combativeness. I could have reasoned more and corrected less, and done so less publicly.”

But Jesus answers distinctly. He knows his speech offended the Pharisees, and he does not mind. He doubles down, as we say. And he does so proverbially: “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit” (Matthew 15:13–14). What does he mean?

Uprooting Sensibility

Jesus leans on divine sovereignty in this tense situation of his own making. If they are not of his Father — saved by the Father, chosen by the Father — they will be uprooted. His bluntness, his directness, his risking offense — these were not the issue. The issue was not what he said (for it was perfect), but how they responded. The wind was not to blame but the plant’s roots. Jesus entrusted not only himself, but his teaching, to his Father’s care.

The same word that caused them to stumble could have caused them to repent. The same flame that burns the chaff refines the gold; the same wind that tests the oak uproots the weeds. The Gentile woman of the very next scene seeks healing for her demon-possessed daughter and ends up astounding Jesus as her roots withstand the gust of being called a “dog” (Matthew 15:21–28). Yet the Pharisees blow away. “Leave them alone,” Jesus says. The blind lead the blind into pits. They would repent or they would be offended, but he would speak as his Father taught him without losing sleep at their anger.

“Jesus, if on earth today, would uproot much of our sense and sensibilities.”

Am I wrong to think we need such Christlike men willing to speak plainly and risk offense? Jesus, if on earth today, would uproot much of our sense and sensibilities. His words would be quoted with scorn online. Many frail plants would be uprooted; a politically correct cross would be raised. He came as a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling, and so he remains (Isaiah 8:13; 1 Peter 2:7–8).

Deputy Politeness

What’s the point?

Many Christians today, including pastors, need to be more comfortable giving plain statements that displease, true assessments without the sugary coating. And, like Jesus, remain unmoved when they are received unfavorably. My aim here is category-creation, not precise application. The categories Jesus creates confront the spirit of our age by teaching:

If men are offended, it is no sure proof that sin has been committed.
Such offense is no proof you lack Christlikeness.
At times (even if at seldom times), risking offense is not just permissible but righteous.

A broad space exists between the Citadel of Comfort and the Wilderness of Sin — a tristate area of Rebuke, Admonishment, and Correction. Many prophets, apostles, pastors, and saints have lodged there to the benefit of their hearers, and often at great cost to themselves.

But the enemy of souls would not have any men of God dwell there. He sends deputies called Politeness and Niceness to apprehend and evict. At the sound of lawful reproofs, especially of a creative variety, even the meekest men need to be arrested for that plainness of speech that brings weight to correction. Now, lords Smooth-Tongue and Tickle-Ear enshrine euphemisms, allowing sin to escape while cuffing plainspoken confronters. But Richard Baxter captures the courageous response:

When reproofs themselves prove so ineffectual, that they are more offended at the reproof than at the sin, and had rather that we should cease reproving than that themselves should cease sinning, I think it is time to sharpen the remedy. For what else should we do? To give up our brethren as incurable were cruelty, as long as there are further means to be used. (The Reformed Pastor, 4)

Let’s reclaim this timeless remedy. I hear a description of pastors we need today when Merry speaks of the now heightened Gandalf the White: “He has grown, or something. He can be both kinder and more alarming, merrier and more solemn than before, I think” (Two Towers, 590).

Going Viral

Good men can be more influenced by this embargo than they know. Some grow offended (often on another’s behalf) and quote the apostle with perfect accuracy: “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), and “correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:25). These texts mean something and instruct the Christian. Many of us are agreed that we want our speech to adorn and not hinder the advance of the gospel and the salvation of souls.

But the application of these texts must follow the dictates of holiness, not likeability or our untethered sense of things. Did Paul mean to cast shadows upon the credibility of those fiery arrows shot by the likes of Moses, David, Nathan, Elijah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Jude, James, Peter, and Jesus himself? Or take Paul himself as an example. To those insisting on circumcision for right-standing with God (and so undermining the gospel and ruining eternal souls), he is not content simply to charge them with error or challenge them to a carefully moderated debate. In at least one place, he fires stronger ammo: “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” (Galatians 5:11–12).

Graphic. Personal. Direct. Offensive. Inspired. The cross has its offense (Galatians 5:11). Wishing that false teachers would castrate themselves contains another (Galatians 5:12).

Burning Speech

I am simply trying to move the border further from any assumption that truly godly talk is always smooth, polished, palatable, somewhat predictable. No thorns. No sharpness. No use of the two-edged sword. Only Nerf weapons. For years, what I considered godly speech was calibrated more by a trivial and sin-loving world than by a jealous and sin-hating Spirit. I did not yet appreciate, as John Piper writes,

Sometimes spiritual sleepers need to be shocked. If you want them to hear what you have to say, you might even need to scandalize them. Jesus is especially good at this. (Desiring God, 77)

Giving offense is not an aim of our ministries. But holiness is. God’s glory is. Eternal happiness for immortal souls is. Jesus cared about the crowds and would not have them deceived. Jesus cared about his disciples and would not have them enslaved to man’s tradition or the Pharisees’ umbrage. Jesus cared also about the Pharisees and would not let them perish in silence. He cared too about his Father’s commands and, in speaking, sought the glory that comes from God, not man.

Are we like that? A flesh-indulging mannerliness moves softly through many churches. A spirit of Eliab chides godly zeal as impertinence: “I know your presumption and the evil of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.” And some earnest men sigh with David, “What have I done now? Was it not but a word?” (1 Samuel 17:28–29).

Have you ever felt like David, surrounded by Eliabs? In sermons, in small groups, they seem to know the evil and presumption of our hearts if we raise our voices, make people uncomfortable, transgress iron laws of likeability. Yet pressures come from without and from within. Baxter identifies the Eliab of our own pride as accomplice to filing off the roughness:

When God chargeth us to deal with men as for their lives, and to beseech them with all the earnestness that we are able, this cursed sin [pride] controlleth all, and condemneth the most holy commands of God, and saith to us, “What! will you make people think you are mad? Will you make them say you rage or rave? Cannot you speak soberly and moderately?” (The Reformed Pastor, 125)

I know that inner voice well, the one that concerns itself not with bringing to bear what God thinks of some sin, but what they will think of me. When pride governs our counseling or ailing accountability, sin is to be nodded at respectfully, thoughtfully, and then asked questions — endless questions — but not confronted directly. Yet I know that when I am deeply concerned with souls (which is too seldom), I wonder at the deceit of sin, the subtlety of Satan, the horror of falling away from Christ. How can I be silent? The closed mouth becomes a shut vent, fuming (Psalm 39:2–3). The mind kindles flame. But what of God? What of eternity? What of your soul?

Redrawing the Boundaries

Let me venture a few applications. To those who hear offense at nearly every uncomfortable word spoken, inhale and remember the line of godly men who spoke in ways and with tones that would provoke equal, if not greater, dismay. Pray for Scripture to govern your sensibilities. As Spurgeon requests from this text,

Do not . . . be needlessly alarmed about our ministry. Just give us plenty of elbow-room to strike right and left. Let not our friends encumber us. Whether they be friends or foes, when we have to strike for God and his truth, we cannot spare whoever may stand in our way. To our own Master we stand or fall, but to no one else in heaven or on earth. (The Weeding of the Garden)

To those frontiersmen always pressing at the boundaries, ensure that prayerfully profitable and not technically permissible is still the aim. To our own Master we stand or fall, and Christ will judge every careless word (Matthew 12:36).

And to all of us, may God give us grace to hate sin more than rebukes for sin, grace to love the Lord Jesus Christ and the souls of men more than the hellish treaty of nominal politeness. “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27:5–6).

I grew up on grass and turf. What did kindergarten-me want to be? A professional soccer player. Where did I spend most evenings as a teen? My club’s soccer complex. How did I choose a college? Division I soccer or bust.

Eventually, my left knee would be the one to bust (twice), but not until I’d devoted nearly twenty years to the game. Looking back on the cotton-tee rec leagues, the pricey club seasons, the long-awaited college career, the coveted national team camps — I see, sharp as a whistle, how God used soccer to increase my wonder of him. But what I also recognize (more painfully than two ACL tears) is how little I guarded myself against sins common to sport.

For every chance to worship God through exercise and competition, there is just as great a risk that we will “love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15). Surely, sports can inspire worship. But often even more so, they can divert our hearts from heaven, casting them instead onto the fleeting rewards of fitness or fame.

Whether you’re young and yet to blow out a knee, a backward-looking athlete like me, or the person who simply loves sports, let’s wonder together at the God enthroned above every beautiful game. And let’s beware together the dangers lurking behind all the practices and tournaments, the social media feeds and TV screens.

Embracing Frailty

We live in an era of “easy everywhere,” as Andy Crouch puts it in The Tech-Wise Family. At the flex of a foot, we can travel from Connecticut to California by car. Our thumbs wiggle, and a friend in the Netherlands instantly knows how we are. Press a button, turn a knob, and lights flicker, water spouts, food warms, pictures snap, books play, music stops, presidents speak, gifts and ambulances and flowers and repairmen arrive. Everywhere we look, life is easy.

Because we can accomplish much while moving little, we tend to see ourselves as masters over matter, rather than creatures under a Creator. The ease with which so many exist can obscure our need to receive “life and breath and everything” from the God who first made and now upholds us (Acts 17:25).

But there is something about dripping sweat and feeling faint, leg muscles refusing to move much faster than a brisk jog, that pushes us to acknowledge our dependence on something outside ourselves. Whether it’s water or electrolytes, a quick banana or half a pizza, fifteen minutes of ice or ten hours of sleep, a teammate or a surgeon, sports make us feel the kind of needy we always are.

Mindful Christians can turn the likes of wind sprints and long recoveries into opportunities for spiritual humility, as we remember that we are weak because we are creaturely — and created to submit our bodies, hearts, and lives to our Creator.

Searching for Fool’s Gold

Unfortunately, sports often rush us headlong in the opposite direction, tempting us to worship “the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). When we watch LeBron James dunk, we may be more likely to exclaim, “He’s a basketball god!” than “How awesome is the God who made such an athlete!”

“Christian athletes fight an uphill battle to satisfy themselves in God alone, to pursue his glory alone.”

And that’s just the way the sports world would have it. College programs, ESPN, betting apps — what is “the glory of the immortal God” to them (Romans 1:23)? Usually, nothing more than a detour from the track on which they run: the worship of “mortal man.” As we engage with sports, we would be naive to think that they won’t make unending grabs for our gaze, our hearts, even our very persons, as “followers of [select one of a million players, teams, or leagues].”

The danger isn’t confined to leagues we stream on TV. Sports tempt us to worship ourselves alongside the games and elite athletes who play them. Because of the fall, anywhere we set foot, our sinful flesh starts digging for the fool’s gold of human glory. The rec center’s basketball court is no exception. Sports, whatever the scale, can stoke our millennia-old longing to sparkle in others’ eyes.

In my experience, athletes crave all kinds of self-exalting glitter. There’s physical dominance, which men tend toward, and then there’s physical perfection, more of a female problem. As we mold our bodies into one ideal appearance or another, we simultaneously wield them for other worldly ends, like winning for winning’s sake and success for man’s approval.

Immersed in an arena that not only values but requires physical fitness, Christians can be tempted to care more for the body than the heart — a mistake so common that God would issue a warning as early as three thousand years ago (1 Samuel 16:7). Centuries later, he would remind us again through Paul, “While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8).

Along with the body, sports culture obsesses over here-and-now victory and applause. Christian athletes fight an uphill battle to satisfy themselves in God alone, to pursue his glory alone, to seek his kingdom alone, and to believe his word above every other: “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave” (Matthew 20:26–27).

Grasping the Unseen

While sports can distract us from spiritual realities, they can also expose them. Throughout his letters, Paul uses athletic imagery to illuminate unseen, eternal truths (2 Corinthians 4:18).

For example, in 1 Corinthians 9:24 Paul asks, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it [that is, eternal life].” When I read passages like this, I thank God for athletic competition. In the golden age of participation certificates and star-shaped stickers, we hear time and again that there’s no such thing as not reaching our potential. There are no losers, only people doing their best to be themselves (which, of course, they’ll succeed at being, what with no external standard to reach).

But as Paul reminds us, the Christian life is not the free 5k we like to know about but never run. No, the Christian life is the Pikes Peak Ascent, the Boston Marathon, the Summer Olympics. Meaning: to finish, we must run. And not only run but train, disciplining ourselves “that by any means possible [we] may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:11). As J.C. Ryle puts it,

It would not be difficult to point out at least twenty-five or thirty distinct passages in the epistles where believers are plainly taught to use active personal exertion, and are addressed as responsible for doing energetically what Christ would have them do, and are not told to “yield themselves” up as passive agents and sit still, but to arise and work. A holy violence, a conflict, a warfare, a fight, a soldier’s life, a wrestling, are spoken of as characteristic of the true Christian. (Holiness, xxiii–xxiv)

To say with Paul, “I press on to make [eternal life] my own” (Philippians 3:12) doesn’t mean that eternal life is earned. This life is graciously given. Even still, that does not make it a given. Like the most serious of runners, Christians race heavenward — Bibles in our hands, prayer on our lips, church by our side — because we know that fervent, frequent Godward movement confirms that he has already obtained us: “I press on to make [eternal life] my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

How remarkable that we might perceive grace and faith more clearly, simply because Paul reminds us “that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24). Some unseen things shimmer better when we sweat.

Competing Ends

Yes, we do well to look and move heavenward through our beloved tracks and fields. But as we do, we should again remember that athletics may actively hinder our ability to live like Christians. The players we watch aren’t pastors. Many coaches we play for don’t pray. By and large, sports culture is thoroughly, proudly, and profitably secular.

Which means it operates under its own moral code: win, usually at any cost. As believers who play or follow sports, we can struggle to resist the pressure to prioritize first place above honoring God and his word.

Imagine it’s the last five minutes of a tie game. Whether playing or watching, most unbelieving coaches, teammates, and fans want you to do or say whatever you can to get the win — even if it means disobeying God. We know he not only commands slowness to anger and self-control, but he also commends them as more rewarding than strength and success (Proverbs 16:32). Still, there’s a game on the line. So, from overly aggressive fouls to jeering at refs, as long as the behavior helps to take the win by might, your team and fans will likely applaud. After all, you’re just being competitive.

Oh, what Christians might communicate instead. What if we walked away without retaliating, faced defeat with calm and even contentment, and experienced sports as a gift meant to reveal the Giver? In doing so, we would express how incomparably pleasing it is to belong to God, not the game.

At their best, sports are an exercise in worship and witness. We have only to believe that Jesus is worthy in every loss and worth more than every victory (Philippians 3:8), and then train and play and watch and cheer like it.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back! In the next two episodes, we’re talking about personal suffering. Suffering so often feels meaningless; suffering feels pointless — “feels” being the key word. But no matter how our suffering feels to us, it’s not meaningless. Not for the Christian. That’s our topic next time, on Monday.

But today, if you’re reading your Bible along with us using the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, for the second half of February we’re in the thick of it, reading through Leviticus. It’s a hard book — a notorious book that ends a lot of well-meaning Bible readers at this point in the year. But stick with it. It’s worth it. And as you stick with it, in our reading tomorrow, we read Leviticus 21:16–24, a difficult text that makes any Bible reader scratch his head and wonder, Why did God shun the disabled in the Old Testament? One such Bible reader is a listener named Gina.

“Hello, Pastor John. I’m reading through Leviticus in my Bible reading plan. One thing that has confused me is why God would not allow people with physical defects to approach the altar in Leviticus 21:16–21. The tone changes drastically in the Gospels. There Jesus, the true Temple, welcomes the blind, the lame, and the diseased right into his very presence. So, why would God in the Old Testament not allow them near the altar? It seems sad to me, and it compounds their suffering. Those people would have felt worse for it, and likely experienced heightened social alienation, too. I’m thankful for the New Testament because there are so many of us with physical defects. But why this discontinuity? To what purpose?”

Good, good, good, good question. Leviticus 21:16–24 deals with whether priests — it’s about priests, but her question is still really valid — who have physical disabilities or deformities can enter the Holy Place to do the work of a priest. I think Gina is probably right that, in reality, when priests with facial defects or crushed genitals or injured feet or a hunched back or scabby skin were forbidden from parts of the priestly service — not all of them, but some of them — probably they would have felt sad and discouraged at times, and maybe even resentful. That would be a normal human response, at least in our culture. We sure feel that. And my guess is that’s pretty basic to human nature.

“God has provided a way, by Jesus Christ, to have the very perfection that we must have to approach him.”

Gina asks, “Why does God in the Old Testament apply such external restrictions for the priesthood, and in the New Testament we don’t have that same kind of restriction? They don’t assume the same excluding effect.” Let me try to give an answer that I think honors the intention of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, because I think both are the inspired word of God, and what God did when he did it was right to do when he did it, and he had reasons for doing it, and it may not be right for us to do it today because such profound things have changed. But let’s look at the key passage. There’s a ground clause that helps us crystallize the issues.

Perfect God, Unblemished Sanctuary

Here’s Leviticus 21:16–24 with just a few verses left out. I’ll collapse it down so you can see the clause.

No man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord’s food offerings; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God. . . . He shall not go through the veil or approach the altar, because [and our ears should perk up] he has a blemish, [in order] that he may not profane my sanctuaries, for I am [Yahweh] the Lord who sanctifies them.

In other words, God says, “I am the one who sets priests apart for my service; I sanctify them. I have ordained — I have decreed or instituted or decided — that a blemished priest will not blemish or profane my sanctuary.” In other words, God wants to make the perfections of the sanctuary so symbolically and visibly clear that he establishes a correlation between the deforming of the physical body and the deforming of the sanctuary. Or, to say it another way, he insists that there be a correlation between the perfections of those who approach the sanctuary and the perfection of the sanctuary itself, which is a reflection of his own perfection.

It’s entirely possible that the most godly and the most humble, deformed priests would not be offended by this divine order of things, but would gladly acknowledge that it is fitting for those who approach a perfect God to be free from outward and inward imperfections. So, I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with God’s Old Testament ordinances in this regard.

Utter Holiness, Overflowing Grace

The question is, What’s the ultimate meaning of it, especially in relation to New Testament changes? My answer goes like this.

In the Bible as a whole, there are two dimensions to God’s nature that shape the way he deals with mankind. One is unapproachable holiness. That’s one massive truth throughout the Bible. God is holy. Sinners can’t approach him. Nothing imperfect can approach him. Nothing evil can approach God without being destroyed. And so, it’s fitting that, in the presence of God, there can only be perfection — both moral and spiritual and physical — which of course means no one qualifies. It’s not like some of these priests were perfect. The other dimension of his nature is his overflowing mercy and grace.

So, those are the two: unapproachable holiness and overflowing mercy and grace, which reaches out to the physically, morally, spiritually imperfect, and finds a way in Jesus Christ to declare them to be perfect. But the resolution of these two dimensions of God’s nature is not that the first one is replaced by the second one, like holiness is kind of blunted and decreased in its importance because mercy is going to be the main thing now. That’s not what happens — as though the doctrine of justification by faith alone would be sufficient to create the new heavens and the new earth, where God is present among justified sinners without his holiness being compromised. That’s not going to happen.

No, God also undertakes, by sanctification and then by the re-creation of everything that’s broken — physical dimensions of the world and moral dimensions of the world — to make everything in his presence perfect forever. Not just justified sinners are going to be in God’s presence, but no sin is going to be in God’s presence. There won’t be any people who sin in God’s presence. There will be no defects morally, there will be no defects physically in the presence of God in the age to come.

Made Perfect Forever

So, I think God highlighted the demands for perfection in the Old Testament in an outward way so as to make really clear that no form of imperfection would ever stand in God’s presence permanently. That’s how holy he is.

He would one day not only justify the ungodly and be willing to touch lepers — reach out and actually touch lepers, God himself touching lepers in the flesh — but he would also utterly transform the ungodly into sinless, godly people, and take away every leprosy and every disease and every disability and every deformity. So, the Old Testament and the New Testament make both of these dimensions of God’s character plain (it seems to me) by putting the emphasis in different places.

“We need the Old Testament to sober us about how holy God is, and we need the New Testament lest we despair.”

The Old Testament is, as it were, standing on tiptoes, looking over the horizon of the future, waiting and wondering how God could ever create a people, all of whom could come boldly into his presence. And God had put such amazing limits in the Old Testament. So, the Old Testament rightly makes this seem extremely difficult. I think that was the point. He wanted it to look like this can never happen. You can never have anybody with an imperfection walking in here. It’s just not going to happen. God has put such amazing restrictions on it.

And then, in the New Testament, the glorious reality dawns that God has provided a way, by Jesus Christ, to have the very perfection that we must have to approach him now. And he has provided by his Spirit the sanctification and resurrection and perfection of bodily and spiritual newness in the age to come so that we can be in his presence forever.

So, my bottom-line conclusion is this: we need the Old Testament to sober us about how holy God is, and we need the New Testament lest we despair of any hope that we could survive in the presence of such a holy God, let alone enjoy him forever.

Today, some Christians seem embarrassed by the doctrine of hell. As such, they either omit discussing it, or they reinvent the doctrine and rob it of any real horror. Our Lord, however, was not afraid to talk about hell. Jesus speaks of “the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:22); the danger of the “whole body” being “thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29); “the unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43); the place where the impenitent are “thrown” (Mark 9:45), “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48).

Many Christians struggle to believe that Jesus plays an active role in the destruction of the godless. However, the Scriptures leave us in no doubt about the reality: Our Lord will, with his angels, gather all “law-breakers” and “throw them into the fiery furnace,” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41–42). Christ calls this a place of “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30). If people doubt that Christ spoke of the judgment to come, often using vivid language, they have not read the Gospels carefully (see, for example, Matthew 3:12; 7:22–23; 10:28; 11:23; 13:30, 41–42, 49–50; 23:16, 33; 25:10, 31–33; 26:24; Mark 8:36; 9:43–48; 16:16; Luke 9:25; 12:9–10, 46; John 5:28–29).

At the same time, the doctrine of hell is not merely a New Testament doctrine. Indeed, some of the language used for hell in the New Testament comes from the Old. For example, Isaiah warns the godless of “the consuming fire” and the “everlasting burnings” (Isaiah 33:14). In the last chapter, he speaks of God coming in fire “to render his anger in fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire will the Lord enter into judgment, and by his sword, with all flesh; and those slain by the Lord shall be many” (Isaiah 66:15–16). Isaiah prophesies that the righteous “shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against [God]. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24; see Christ’s use of these words in Mark 9:48).

Daniel, along with others, also refers to the final judgment: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).

Endless Punishment

There is no shortage of professing Christians who affirm a coming judgment of the wicked. Some, however, tend to think that this judgment will not be everlasting. As finite beings, we struggle to wrap our minds around the concept of eternity. But if God intended to either annihilate the wicked at death, with no future judgment, or put an end to suffering after an indefinite period of time, then he did a poor job of communicating that to us.

Scripture shows us that hell is a place of “everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46 KJV). Hell is an “everlasting fire” (Matthew 18:8 KJV) that can never be quenched (Mark 9:45), where their worm never dies (Mark 9:48). Sodom and Gomorrah were punished for their sins by “undergoing a punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7). False teachers have a place reserved in hell where the “gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever” (Jude 13). We read of the suffering of the wicked, “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night” (Revelation 14:11; see also Revelation 19:3, Revelation 20:10, “forever and ever”). William Shedd rightly notes, “Had Christ intended to teach that future punishment is remedial and temporary, he would have compared it to a dying worm, and not to an undying worm; to a fire that is quenched, and not to an unquenchable fire.”

Shedd adds that other words and metaphors could have been used to describe a long, but not endless, punishment. Indeed, if hell is not endless, the New Testament writers “were morally bound to have avoided conveying the impression they actually have conveyed by the kind of figures they have selected” (Dogmatic Theology, 892). The word used to describe “everlasting life” is also used to describe “everlasting punishment.” For example, in Revelation 22:14–15, the existence of the righteous in heaven is coterminous with the existence of the wicked “outside” of heaven (that is, in hell).

Separation from God?

Another way people try to make the doctrine of hell more palatable is to say that hell is merely separation from God. But while hell does separate the wicked from the blessed life of God in Christ, hell is still punishment. Those who hate God in this life will continue to hate him in eternity, and they will continue to face God’s wrath.

Hell is a location, a place; it is not simply a metaphor that describes inner thought processes. Acts 1:25 tells us Judas went “to his own place.” Just as there is a place for the righteous after death, so there is a place for the wicked after death. The word Gehenna refers to the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. The horrible history of this place involved, at one time, the Israelites and kings of Israel burning their children as sacrifices to the false god Molech (2 Chronicles 28:3; 33:6). Gehenna may not be a reference to a burning trash dump (as some have claimed), but it is far worse: a place where the greatest horrors take place, such as the willful sacrifice of children. Hell is a place of pure evil, destitute of all hope.

Rather than being mere “separation from God,” hell is, as the Puritan Thomas Goodwin said, a place where “God himself, by his own hands, that is, the power of his wrath, is the immediate inflicter of that punishment of men’s souls” (Works of Thomas Goodwin, 10:491). God’s power will be “exercised” as his wrath toward those who are cast away from the presence of God’s blessedness. Those in hell will receive the opposite of those in glory, but they will still be in God’s presence. Those in heaven have a mediator, but those in hell have nothing between them and an avenging God.

If the foregoing is true, we should be careful not to say (as some have) that hell is giving people what they want. In a highly limited sense, this is true. They do not want to enjoy God in this life, so they will not enjoy him in the life to come. However, given the torments of hell, no one can possibly desire to suffer at the hands of the omnipotent God, especially for all eternity. Who could possibly desire for their despair to increase as well? As the creatures in hell realize more and more that they are suffering forever, the despair of eternal judgment can only increase. Those in hell have no promises, and thus no hope, but only increasing despair.

Escape Through the Cross

Goodwin makes the solemn point that the “wretched soul in hell . . . finds that it shall not outlive that misery, nor yet can it find one space or moment of time of freedom and intermission, having forever to do with him who is the living God” (Works, 10:548). The wicked will despair because there is no end to the righteous wrath of the living God. Thus, the concept of ever-increasing despair for all eternity, whereby the creature damned to hell can do nothing else but blaspheme a living, eternal God, gives us all the reason in the world to persuade sinners to put their faith in the one who experienced hellish despair on the cross.

Our Lord shrieked with cries so that we might sing with praise; he was parched with thirst that we might drink freely from the fountain; he was abandoned in the darkness that we might have fellowship in the light; he was crushed that we might be restored; he was publicly shamed that we might be publicly exalted; he was mocked by evildoers that we might be praised by angels; he gave up his spirit that we might have our spirits saved. As real as his sufferings were, our joys will be no less real. The hellish experience of the cross is the greatest testimony to the unspeakable joys of eternal life with God.