Things fall apart. It’s the second law of thermodynamics. It’s Romans 8:20 happening all around us. It’s a reality I increasingly experience in my body as I pass through the second half of middle age. Cracks permeate everything — including every church I’ve known.

Christian relationships encounter all the temptations common to man. That’s why Christian churches will rarely experience a kind of unity that knows no conflict or struggle.

But an absence of conflict and struggle is not what God has in mind for Christian unity in this age. As I’ve explained more thoroughly elsewhere, God gives unity as part of our inheritance in Christ (Ephesians 1:5, 11), but Christian oneness has a participatory dimension through which God accomplishes some glorious work in us and the world. So when God, through Paul, commands us to eagerly “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3), he intends for this endeavor to be hard — for some very good reasons.

But more than that, God intends our churches to experience seasons of noticeable disunity. In fact, these seasons are necessary, because they bring to light some very important realities. The old hymn pinpoints it well:

Tho’ with a scornful wonderThe world sees her oppressed,By schisms rent asunder,By heresies distressed.Yet saints their watch are keeping;Their cry goes up, “How long?”And soon the night of weepingShall be the morn of song.

“An absence of conflict and struggle is not what God has in mind for Christian unity in this age.”

When it comes to Christian unity in this age of things falling apart, the reality we experience is “sorrowful” over our frequent factions, “yet always rejoicing” over the future grace of perfected unity set before us (2 Corinthians 6:10).

By Schisms Rent Asunder

Church schisms happen, as we all know. And they get a lot of bad press from Christians and non-Christians — often much deserved, as we also know. But schisms perform necessary functions in the church by revealing numerous areas requiring attention. Let me address three types of division in the church.

1. Fleshly Schisms

Paul illustrates the first type of schism in his blunt reproof of the Corinthian church:

I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? (1 Corinthians 3:1–3)

Fleshly schisms plagued this church. They were divided into partisan loyalties and impressed by worldly wisdom and rhetoric (chapters 1–3), easily swayed by those who slandered Paul in his absence (chapter 4), tolerating shocking sexual immorality (chapter 5), suing each other in civil court (chapter 6), damaging each other’s faith over issues of Christian freedom (chapter 8), and more. Paul didn’t call them false Christians; he called them fleshly Christians — people governed more by carnal discernment and desires than by the Spirit in numerous areas.

“True Christian unity can be experienced and maintained only where Christlike love governs.”

True Christian unity can be experienced and maintained only where Christlike love governs — the kind Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. Therefore, it’s a much-needed mercy to bring our unity-killing fleshliness into the light so we can see it and repent. And church schisms often perform that function.

2. Maturity Schisms

A second type of schism overlaps with the first, but its function is distinct enough to highlight. I call them maturity schisms.

Any healthy, evangelizing, disciple-making church will have differing levels of maturity among its members. And when people of diverse maturity levels come together, conflicts will erupt. Different life experiences, scriptural knowledge, and overall sanctification will stretch the church.

Differences in maturity run many different ways. A younger person might have more life experience in a certain area than an older person. Or someone who’s been a Christian a long time might be more governed by the flesh than a newer convert. Or a less formally trained saint might have a more profound, life-transforming grasp of Scripture than a seminary-trained saint. On top of that, some members who “ought to be teachers” may have regressed in maturity by habitually indulging sin, and so they need milk again (Hebrews 5:12).

Here’s my point: the maturity diversity that’s part of normal, healthy church life produces a complex relational recipe for a lot of misunderstanding and plenty of pride-fueled conflicts. Positively, this gives us all opportunities to learn from each other and grow in grace. Negatively, we don’t always seize these opportunities, and sometimes they grow into various schisms.

3. Necessary Schisms

Paul also addresses a third type of church schism in 1 Corinthians 11:19:

There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

As Jesus taught in the parable of the weeds in the wheat (Matthew 13:24–30), our churches in this age will remain a mixture of Christians and non-Christians, no matter how seriously we take membership. Some weeds, thankfully, will become wheat by the end. But some are weeds, and often it’s schisms — factions — that reveal them.

And some of these weeds grow into a league of their own, as we know from urgent apostolic warnings of false teachers:

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. (Romans 16:17–18)

You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. (Jude 17–19)

These false Christians are “fierce wolves” that prey on the flock of God, “men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:30), causing distress in our churches by their heresies. And one clear way we can recognize that they are not genuine is by the disunity they create due to “contrary doctrine” and “ungodly passions.”

Gifted Unifiers

In addressing church unity, Paul explains why godly, mature, loving, wise, Scripture-soaked, straight-talking leaders in various roles are such valuable gifts to any church. They

equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11–13)

This is a hard calling, requiring proven character, wisdom, knowledge, and a track record of “walk[ing] by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16). Therefore, church leaders must not be spiritually immature (1 Timothy 3:1–7) lest they pour the gasoline of fleshliness on the flames of emerging church schisms rather than the water of sacrificial love and godly wisdom.

Mature leaders foster cultures in their churches that help saints pursue “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” And they’re not naive. They know that factors like fleshliness, maturity diversity, and false Christians make this corporate pursuit hard. But they also know it’s necessarily hard. In this age.

‘How Long?’

But this age isn’t forever. An age approaches when weeds will not grow among the wheat, when our sinful flesh will no longer influence us, and when whatever different maturity levels may exist will no longer result in conflicts. “We [will] all [finally] attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). We will all experience the unity that is our inheritance in Christ, and all be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one (John 17:21).

Till then, let’s not give up the fight to be one. In this fight for unity, we experience numerous aspects of the Father’s varied grace. Forced to wrestle with our own sin as we pursue unity, we experience much-needed sanctification by the Spirit. And as we struggle to attain and maintain unity, we discover and experience priceless dimensions of the love of Christ and display it for the world (John 13:35).

And our desire to experience the “not yet” promise of the completed, perfected, harmonious oneness of the body of Christ causes us to long, groan, and pray for the age to come. It keeps us saints watching and crying out, “How long, O Lord?” And the promised joy of perfected unity set before us fuels our hope that “soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.”

When it works as it should, marriage is a tragedy.

I have seen the quiet courage it takes for a widow to walk to her pew as the funeral begins. Once she entered the sanctuary as the radiant bride, and all eyes were upon her in her glory. Now she enters as the bereaved, and all eyes are upon her again, watching to see how she will hold up. I have seen the children of the widower worry as their dad made his precarious way to his funeral seat. Once he was the beaming groom watching for the first sight of his bride. So proud, so strong, his life before him. Now he shuffles. But he has resolutely rejected that blasted walker. He’ll go unaided, once more, for her.

What a grievous plight! A couple cleaves together for fifty or sixty years. They learn to know each better than anyone else. They communicate often without words but still with clear understanding. For some twenty thousand days and nights, they have given themselves to each other, died for each other, and lived for all the life that came from their love. Then, just as nerve fails and frailty rises, one of them dies. One is left to carry on alone, just when the deceased is most needed. One endures, heartbroken but resolute to live from love and vows pledged so long ago.

As Aragorn tells Arwen in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, “There is no comfort for such pain within the circles of this world.”

Aragorn and Arwen

I don’t remember reading the appendix of The Lord of the Rings before I was married. The saga of destroying the Ring and setting right Middle-earth had been enough for me. But early in our years together, Rhonda and I read the trilogy aloud. We didn’t want it to end. So I paged through the extras and stumbled on the history of the relationship between Arwen, the undying elf princess, and Aragorn, the rugged Ranger who was heir to the throne of Gondor.

Tolkien pierced me with beauty and sorrow in places of my heart I didn’t even know I had. I still can’t read those few pages without, at some point, popping tears. But neither can I stop returning to this story so filled with not only the sorrow, but also the choice and the hope of every enduring love. Following it will lead us to a set of the most beautiful and true sentences ever written.

The Meeting

As a young man of 20, Aragorn walks one evening in the woods of Rivendell, one of the fair realms of the elves. He sings as he wanders, taking up the ancient lay of Beren and Luthien, a man who dared to love an elven princess and she who gave up immortality to marry him. Just then, he sees Arwen walking among the birch trees. Smitten by her graceful loveliness, Aragorn feels he is living inside the song. For Arwen is the daughter of Elrond, the elf lord who rules that land. With confidence beyond any renown he has yet earned, Aragorn approaches Arwen. His heart is hers.

But the future appointed for them seems a block to any relationship. Though young in appearance, Arwen has already lived the years of many human lifetimes. Her destiny is to sail at the end of the age with her father and kin to the undying lands of the West. Aragorn has yet to win his way through the battles with the Shadow and undertake the near-hopeless quest to see the Ring of Power destroyed. Elrond will permit no talk of union with his daughter until Aragorn has proved himself faithful and victorious.

Decades pass. Then it happens that in Lothlorien, another edenic woodland of the elves, Aragorn comes again upon Arwen under the trees. This time, she loses her heart to him, seeing him grown into the fullness of manhood. For some days, they walk and talk together blissfully. Yet both know that the Shadow of Sauron deepens. His malevolence threatens the world. Great struggle lies ahead. Victory seems unlikely. Choices must be made. Will Aragorn forsake the war, withdrawing with his beloved as long he can? Will Arwen choose to depart for the West, mysteriously referred to as the Twilight, safe from war but never able to return to Middle-earth except in memory?

The Choice

In the moment of choosing one another, they also pledge their lives to the desperate struggle for the renewal of the world. “And the Shadow I utterly reject,” says Aragorn. Arwen replies, “And I will cleave to you . . . and turn from the Twilight [though] there lies . . . the long home of all my kin.” Their lives together will be in the mortal realm, where evil must be fought and a kingdom built through faithful service.

The more Rhonda and I have personally pressed into the depths of living from Christ and for Christ, the more we have realized our call to fight the evil one through our love. Trust in Jesus’s promised future fuels us to live in hope, even as the days seem to grow darker. We realize our marriage is a weapon against the unraveling of the world. Fidelity, forgiveness, hearing one another, giving grace — these are militant choices for love.

“Our marriage is a weapon against the unraveling of the world.”

In cleaving together as Christians, we renounce the Shadow — understood as living for ourselves, merely to consume what we can of the good life. We also decline the Twilight — understood as withdrawing from the struggle and snatching as much peace alone together as we can afford. Of course, challenges to this vision enter every life stage. The time of our parting will, no doubt, nudge our faith toward despair. But courage can be found in the rest of Aragorn and Arwen’s story.

The Hope

Against all odds, Aragorn wins through. On midsummer’s day after the Ring is destroyed, Aragorn and Arwen marry. They have more than a century together while the kingdom flourishes. But at last, the time comes for parting. Though long lived, Aragorn still has to face the doom of men. On his deathbed, he says to his beloved the words already quoted: “I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of this world.” Only long and joyful love could grow such sorrow.

It seems a rotten system. This sorrow can tempt us to give up. To curse God. To be cynics. To declare love only an exercise in futility. The pain in parting becomes the fiercest challenger. So Aragorn continues, “But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring.” All love in this world still languishes under the “futility” of our mortality and our ever-more-apparent “bondage to decay” (Romans 8:20–21). The choice for hope takes continuing effort. The vocation of committed love to bless the world demands renewed engagement of the last enemy’s challenge, especially when strength fades. Right in the teeth of the pain ahead, we look death and evil and sorrow straight in the face and nevertheless renounce selfishness and sin. We reject withdrawal into the shadows, and choose to love to the very end.

“Only long and joyful love could grow such sorrow.”

So we come to Aragorn’s beautiful sentences: “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory! Farewell!”

Within the world we experience, nothing now can remove the pain when two so interconnected must part. But that is not the final word! Reality is not limited to this world of time and space. We go to something more. Something more than oblivion, that awful emptiness of the atheistic future. Something more than a shadowy existence, that underworld the ancients perceived as the realm of the dead. Something more than merely living on in another’s memory, or as an impersonal part of the vast universe. Rather, something more real, more us, than ever before. Something founded on the rising of Jesus, who burst through these mortal constraints into an embodied and relational eternity.

Beyond the Circles of the World

Tolkien detested allegory and eschewed any one-to-one correspondence between the characters in his fiction and the people we meet in Scripture. Yet his faith undergirded all he wrote. Tolkien explored these underpinnings in his essay “On Fairy-Stories.” He wrote that great stories fully acknowledge the sorrow and the failure in the world, and even the fear that these will be all that’s left. Yet the Christian story “denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat . . . giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

For Tolkien, this hope flows from the veracity of Jesus’s resurrection. Christ has conquered death and so altered the future of the world. “The story begins and ends in joy. . . . There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true.” This great turn toward joy against impossible odds is the enduring beauty in The Lord of the Rings, and on his deathbed, Aragorn became the spokesman for the faith that joy wins out. We cling to this.

How much did Tolkien believe his character? How deep did his faith run that in the world he created he was rendering truths from Christ’s redemptive reality? Ronald and Edith Tolkien share a headstone in Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford. I think it’s quite telling that under her name is etched “Luthien.” Married 55 years, she was his elf princess, his Arwen and true love. Under his name, “Beren” is carved, for he won her heart and proved his troth through the decades. Now they know that we are not bound forever to the circles of this world. Beyond them is more — oh, so very much more.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15573902/who-is-pauls-joy-christ-or-the-church

Sinners rescued from the road to hell love to rehearse and celebrate the mercy of God. Where would we be today without mercy? Where would we be for eternity without mercy?

Without mercy, we would be dead in our sin, a death worse than death. Mercy called us from the tomb. Mercy lifted us out of the pit. Mercy opened our blind eyes. Mercy gifted us with faith, repentance, and joy. We deserved every possible ounce of rejection, punishment, wrath, but God gave forgiveness, love, and life instead. All that we have, we have by the mercy of God. Is there any other god, in all the religious imaginations on earth, who deals so gently and compassionately with sinners?

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” Jesus says, “for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). Knowing how we’ve treated him, all the endless ways we’ve each ignored and insulted him, he has every righteous reason to be severe and merciless, but he’s gentle with us. He stoops low to receive and restore us. Jesus recites these precious lines from Isaiah about himself: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench.” Who could know himself a redeemed sinner and not love the kindness and tenderness of such mercy?

And yet mercy doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s another side of this king — a holy, majestic, jealous, even vengeful side, a side sinners like you and me are often far less likely to rehearse and celebrate.

Bruised on the Battlefield

When Jesus drew near to bruised reeds and smoldering wicks, he did not coddle or compromise with sin. His mercy mingled with justice:

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen,     my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased.I will put my Spirit upon him,     and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. . . .a bruised reed he will not break,     and a smoldering wick he will not quench,     until he brings justice to victory. (Matthew 12:18–20)

He came to establish justice, and he wouldn’t stop until he saw it to the finish. We might imagine these bruised and vulnerable reeds hiding safely in backyards and community gardens, but here they’re crouching on the battlefield of a cursed world.

Why else is the reed bruised and the wick smoldering, if not because they’re caught in the awful, ordinary crossfire of sin? We all relate to that thin, fragile blade of grass because we’ve felt like that at times, if not often. We’ve all felt the sting of sins against us, and we’ve all watched, with sorrow-filled anger, as sin has torn apart marriages, families, friendships, communities, even whole nations. With our hearts aching with confusion and grief, we’ve cried out for justice. We’ve groaned, with creation, for a better world than the one we have.

Until Justice Is Done

Jesus came to bring that better world, to pour out justice like Niagara in spring, to declare war on all who opposed him, to put a certain end to centuries of rebellion. And yet, as he wages his holy war, he kneels down, with infinite strength, taking fire from every direction, to lift and support the weak, humble, trusting souls in his path. Toward his enemies, he’s severe, unyielding, terrifying. Toward his own, however, he’s gentle and lowly.

On that battlefield, his justice is not some dark cloud casting a shadow over his mercy; it’s the sunless, moonless night which makes his mercy shine. His justice and mercy are two parts in one holy symphony. Isaiah 30:18, for instance, plays the harmonies, mingling the tenderness of God’s mercy with the promise of his justice:

The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.

Mercy and justice are not at odds here, but beautifully joined together. Because he is just, God will be merciful to you, in his perfect timing. His grace to you, in Christ, is justice. The purest enforcement of justice ever conceived or executed delights to show mercy.

God of Against

This mercy does not blunt the force of his justice. The justice of God is a soul-shaking, pride-shattering justice. Right before Isaiah 30:18, the Lord confronts Israel for desperately turning to the armies of Egypt for rescue:

Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant; and its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a shard is found with which to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern. (Isaiah 30:12–14)

Notice, the mercy of God doesn’t keep him from severity. Is the God you worship one who ever smashes rebellion against him? When you close your eyes to pray, is there ever a sense that he could, right now, righteously decimate billions of people for refusing and insulting him — that sin really is that repulsive and insidious? Some regular awareness of his holy furor against injustice, especially all our injustices against him, is vital to a healthy life of worship. The God of all comfort, after all, is also a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29).

For the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up — and it shall be brought low. . . . And people shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth. (Isaiah 2:12, 19)

“The God who stoops, in Christ, to gently lift you out of your sin will one day terrify the nations again.”

This is not a cruel God left behind in the Old Testament. This is the God of infinite mercy. The God who stoops, in Christ, to gently lift you out of your sin will one day terrify the nations again. His justice may be hidden, for a time, beneath his staggering patience, but its devouring fire will soon consume his enemies.

Justice Fueling Mercy

All of that makes his mercy all the more stunning. The terrifying flames of justice don’t undermine his mercy, but illuminate and enflame it. “The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice.” But they were despising his word and trusting in oppression and perverseness — how could he be both just and gracious to them? How could he bless the ones who cursed and despised him?

By becoming the curse they deserved. Revel, again, in the familiar and shocking story of how justice and mercy meet:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:23–26)

“The wooden beams outside Jerusalem frame the wondrous marriage between justice and mercy.”

The wooden beams outside Jerusalem frame the wondrous marriage between justice and mercy. Through the cross, God is both just and justifier, both just and merciful. On that dark and bloody hill, the terrifying justice of God became a servant of mercy for all who would believe. In Christ, justice is no longer a threat, but a refuge. All the sovereign power that would have ruined us now promises to protect us. “‘In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you,’” Isaiah 54:8 says, “‘but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord, your Redeemer.”

How could we feel the full weight of his mercy toward us if we tend to ignore or marginalize the fury of his justice?

Justice and Mercy for Me?

We know all of this about our God, and yet some reading this still struggle to believe that God will be so merciful. The guilt and shame they carry make everyday life feel heavy. They hate their sin, and have made efforts to be done with it, but are back on their knees, again and again, bearing the same painfully familiar confessions. The mercy they thought they’d found feels further and further from reality. Could God really forgive and love someone like me?

Others reading this, however, struggle to believe justice really will be done. Some days, it feels like their whole lives have been one long heart-rending headline. They watch the godless enjoy comfort, success, and prosperity, while they suffer for their faithfulness. They cling to the promise that everything will eventually be made right, but they search the corners and crevices of their lives in vain for evidence it might be so. And if they muster the courage to raise their eyes above their own plight, they see many more suffering in horrible, unjust ways. Could God possibly make anything good of all this pain and injustice?

We struggle to embrace the justice of God because we don’t trust him to fully deal with sins against us. We struggle to embrace the mercy of God because we don’t trust him to fully deal with sins done by us. To both groups, the bloody cross and the empty tomb stubbornly say, he can, he has, and he will. He will surely bring justice to completion. No stone in your life will go unturned. Every sin against you will be brought into the light and made right. Justice himself will call wickedness to account until he finds none (Psalm 10:15).

And in the meantime, he will not break a bruised reed. He won’t quench a smoldering wick. His mercy is as wide and deep as you are sinful. Our God is far more just than we realize, and far more merciful than we can now imagine.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. We start this new week off with a solid Bible question from a listener named Andrew. “Pastor John, hello to you! My question is about who will judge the world finally — Jesus, the Father, or the word of Christ? Of course, John 3:17 and John 12:47 tell us that Jesus did not come into the world the first time to play the role of judge. I understand that. That comes later. And as John 5:22 says it, it’s not the Father who judges in the end, but Christ. But then other passages, like 1 Peter 1:17, seem to actually say, no, the Father judges in the end. And then John 12:48–49 says final judgment comes from the word of Christ, under the authority of the Father. Can you help me understand all this? In the end, who judges the world?”

I think if you put all the pieces of the New Testament together, the answer goes something like this (it’s kind of a complicated answer, but I’ll unpack it): God the Father judges the world through Jesus Christ, the God-man, sharing that judgment in appropriate ways with apostles and Christians and with the confirming indictments of sin and truth. So that’s the sentence that answers the question as I see all the pieces going together. But before I give the building blocks and unpack those pieces, let me say why I think this is worth talking about.

“Every single human being will be held personally accountable before the Maker of the universe.”

I mean, I think this is really important. And the reason is because every single human being, every single individual listening to our voices, will be held personally accountable before the Maker of the universe for the way each of us has responded to the measure of revelation that each of us has concerning God, concerning his ways in the world, and for the way we have lived our lives — including our attitudes and our words and our actions in response to the witness of God in nature, in Scripture, in our own conscience (which is just another witness to God’s reality). “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God,” Paul says in Romans 14:10.

So that’s why it matters. And I think there should be a kind of trembling seriousness about it over against the superficiality of most of what happens in the world.

Judged by Father and Son

Now, here are the building blocks of that complex answer that I summed up in that sentence about who judges the world. There are biblical passages that say, plainly, that God judges the world — the Father judges the world. First Peter 1:17: “If you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.” So there it is, clear. The Father judges, impartially, all of us. Or Romans 3:5–6:

If our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world?

So that’s the first building block. The Father judges the world.

Here’s the second one. You have biblical passages about Christ judging the world. So, 2 Timothy 4:1 says, “. . . Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom” — he judges the world. So, you have Christ at his second coming described as the judge of the living and the dead.

Judged Through the God-Man

And then, if you ask how these two threads of Scripture — that talk about Christ and talk about the Father judging the world — fit together, how those threads are woven together, the clearest answer is that God the Father judges through God the Son, the God-man, Christ Jesus. And the New Testament expresses that relationship between the Father and Son in different ways.

For example, Luke in the book of Acts expresses it by saying that God appointed Christ to be the judge of the world. “[Christ] is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). We see the same thing in Acts 17:31: “[God] has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” So that’s about the clearest statement you could get of God judging by a man, Christ Jesus. So God judged through Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus expresses this relationship between the Father and the Son in judgment with the same kind of emphasis, with focus on the God-man — that God intends to do his judging through a man, an incarnate Son. John 5:27: “[God] has given the Son authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.”

So, I think when Jesus says in John 5:22–23, which is just a few verses earlier, “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” — I think when he says that, he doesn’t mean that the Father is not involved at all in judgment, but that he’s not involved in judgment without the Son. “The Father judges no one” means, I think, “The Father judges no one apart from the Son.”

And I say that because eight verses later, Jesus says, “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30). In other words, both God the Father and God the Son say, “I don’t judge anyone without perfect harmony between my will and my Father’s will,” or “my will and my Son’s will.”

Judged by Apostles and Saints

Now, besides the judgment of the world through the Father and Son, the New Testament also speaks of the involvement of the apostles and the saints in the judgment of the world. This is really amazing. For example, Jesus says to the twelve apostles in Matthew 19:28, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” And then Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:2–3 to the church, the whole church,

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!

Now, if that sounds incredible, which it does, it gets even more incredible in Revelation 3:21, where Jesus says, “The one who conquers [that is, the one who triumphs over persecution and temptation by keeping the faith — the one who triumphs], I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” That’s just breathtaking.

“To be part of Christ’s body, his bride, is to be part of his rule.”

In other words, to be part of Christ’s people by faith — simple, childlike trust in the infinitely worthy Christ — to be part of his body, his bride, is to be part of his rule. That’s what he said. And part of his rule includes part of his judgment. So, if we sit with him on his throne, in some sense sharing in his rule, we then share in his judgment, just like Paul said.

Judged by Sin and Truth

Now, there are two more building blocks in that sentence that I gave. So besides God, Christ, apostles, and Christians, listen to the way Jesus describes the judgment in John 3:19: “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” In other words, it is our own sin, our own love of darkness, that will be our judge at the last day.

And then Jesus says in John 12:48, “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.” In other words, at the last judgment, the truth that Jesus spoke — and that we knew and did not follow — will rise up as our judge. So, the truth and our sin will also be our judges.

What Judgment Means

Now, let me draw in one last cluster of a different kind of building block to use when we’re building our biblical theology of divine judgment. There are not only six judges, so to speak: God, Christ, apostles, Christians, truth, sin. There are at least six meanings of the word judgment. And we should ask, each time we’re talking about it, Which one are we talking about?

Judgment is an expression of the highest and final authoritative decision about our destiny by God (Romans 3:6).
Judgment is an expression of the immediate execution of the act of judgment (Acts 17:31).
Judgment is an act of final and decisive separation from God for non-Christians (Matthew 25:32).
Judgment is an act of meting out various rewards to Christians (1 Corinthians 3:15).
Judgment is any effect of truth that has been believed or rejected (John 12:48).
Judgment is an effect of sin in response to truth (John 3:19).

So, we should always clarify what we’re talking about when we ask about particular texts concerning God’s judgment.

Christ Judged for Sinners

So, to give the summary answer once more: Who will judge the world? God the Father judges the world through Jesus Christ, the God-man, sharing that judgment in appropriate ways with apostles and Christians, and with the confirming indictments of sin and truth.

And I think, Tony, that the note we should end on is the distinctive Christian reality. Lots of religions believe in the final judgment of God. There’s nothing distinctively Christian about final judgment.

The distinctive Christian reality is that God’s Son came into the world in order to take on himself the judgment that we deserve when he died on the cross, so that these words from Jesus in John would be gloriously true. He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). That’s the distinctive Christian message.

“I am afraid of your love,” Bishop Ignatius wrote to the early church in Rome, “lest it should do me an injury” (Epistle to the Romans 1.2). It is hard to imagine more ironic words.

Ignatius, a disciple of the apostle John, was nearing seventy years of age when he sent the letter ahead of him on August 24 (somewhere between AD 107 and 110). He told them he remained “afraid” of the believers’ love — meaning he was afraid that they would keep him from martyrdom, that they would “do him an injury” by keeping him from being torn apart by lions.

Ignatius sent a total of seven letters to seven churches en route to the Colosseum. This letter to the church in Rome gave his thoughts on martyrdom and extended a special plea for their non-interference in his. Instead of asking for whatever influence the Roman believers may have had to release him, he bids them stand down.

In his own words,

For neither shall I ever hereafter have such an opportunity of attaining to God; nor will ye, if ye shall now be silent, ever be entitled to the honor of a better work. For if ye are silent concerning me, I shall become God’s; but if ye show your love to my flesh, I shall again have to run my race. Pray, then, do not seek to confer any greater favor upon me than that I be sacrificed to God. (2.2)

And again,

I write to all the Churches, and impress on them all, that I shall willingly die for God, unless ye hinder me. I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. (4.1)

Martyr or Madman?

Michael Haykin’s assessment seems conclusive: “In the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch we possess one of the richest resources for understanding Christianity in the era immediately following that of the apostles” (31). Surveying Ignatius’s letters to the seven churches on the road to Rome, Haykin summarizes three concerns weighing heavily upon the bishop’s mind: (1) the unity of the local church, (2) her standing firm against heresy, and (3) non-interference in his calling to martyrdom (32). The first and second are unsurprising, but what are we to make of the third?

What do you think of a man saying, “May I enjoy the wild beasts that are prepared for me; and I pray that they may be found eager to rush upon me, which also I will entice to devour me speedily. . . . But if they be unwilling to assail me, I will compel them to do so” (5.2)? Who is this Daniel praying not for rescue but looking forward to the lion’s den?

“Christians had been killed in the past, but few with as much enthusiasm.”

Some scholars, Haykin notes, have called him mentally imbalanced, pathologically bent on death (32). Christians had been killed in the past, but few, if any, with such enthusiasm. What right-thinking Christian would write, “If I shall suffer, ye have loved me; but if I am rejected, ye have hated me” (8.3)? Was he a madman?

‘Sanity’ to Ignatius

Did he have an irrational proclivity for martyrdom? Can his death wish fit within the bounds of mature Christian life and experience? If you were his fellow bishop and friend — say, Polycarp (later a martyr himself) — what might you say if you desired to dissuade him?

You might call his mind to the holy Scripture — for example, Jesus’s prophecy of Peter’s own martyrdom (which happened years earlier in Rome). Jesus foretold, “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).

The apostle Peter did not want to go and stretch out his hands in his own crucifixion. He did not want to be dressed by another and “carried” to his death. Granted, he wanted that end more than denying his Master again, but it stands to reason that if he could have ended differently, he would have chosen otherwise.

Or you might consider the apostle Paul and his second-to-last letter before he too was likely beheaded in Rome. “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:1–2). He exhorts that prayers be made for rulers that Christians might lead quiet and peaceful lives. Pray for your leaders, in part, that they might be saved — and thus not given to killing you “all the day long” for public entertainment (Romans 8:36).

Ignatius to ‘Sanity’

“But,” the well-taught bishop might have responded, “did not Peter write much of suffering and necessary trials as tests to our faith? Does not God place our faith in the fire (or the Colosseum) that it might be found to result in praise and glory and honor at Christ’s revelation (1 Peter 1:7; 4:12)? Or did Peter not put forward the suffering servant, Jesus Christ, as our example to follow? Or is it not a ‘gracious thing in the sight of God’ to endure suffering for righteousness’ sake — something we are ‘called to’ and blessed in (1 Peter 2:20; 3:14)? And further, did Peter not tell the church to ‘arm’ themselves with this thinking (1 Peter 4:1), and to rejoice insofar as they share in Christ’s sufferings, evidence that the Spirit of glory rests upon them (1 Peter 4:13–14)?

“And what to say of our beloved Paul? Was it not he who was hard pressed to stay, even when fruitful labor awaited him? Did he not inscribe my heart on paper when he said, ‘To live is Christ, and to die is gain,’ and that to be with Christ is ‘far better’ (Philippians 1:21, 23)? And was it not also the case that, knowing he was walking from one affliction to the next, he walked the martyr’s path — against the behest and weeping of fellow Christians who threatened to break the apostle’s heart (Acts 21:12–13)?

“‘Constrained by the Spirit,’ did he not go forward (Acts 20:22)? He testified that he did not count his life of any value nor as precious to himself, if only he could finish his race and ministry to testify to God’s grace (Acts 20:24). He assured crying saints along the violent road that he was ready not only to be imprisoned but to die for the name of Jesus (Acts 21:13). They eventually submitted and said, ‘Let the will of the Lord be done’ (Acts 21:14). Will you not imitate them, beloved Polycarp?”

This imagining is to help us get into the mind of the “madman,” as well as to warn us from drawing hasty applications. Though most will not consent so insistently and passionately to a martyr’s death, some will pass by other exits on the way to testifying to the ultimate worth of Christ.

Messiah’s Madmen

What might we, far from the lions of Ignatius’s day, learn from the martyred bishop of Antioch? I am challenged by his all-consuming love for Jesus, a love that the world — and some in the church — considers crazy.

Let fire and the cross; let the crowds of wild beasts; let breakings, tearings, and separations of bones; let cutting off of members; let bruising to pieces of the whole body; and let the very torment of the devil come upon me: only let me attain to Jesus Christ. (5.3)

“If we are madmen, let it be for Christ.”

If we are madmen, let it be for Christ. Should not Paul’s words be stated over our entire lives? “If we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you” (2 Corinthians 5:13). If we are crazy, it is because of Christ. If we are in our right minds, it is for others to be won to the same madness we have. The love of Christ “controls us” (2 Corinthians 5:14).

Oh what a beautiful strangeness, what a provocative otherness, what an unidentifiable oddity is a Christian who loves Christ with his all and considers death to be truly gain. Such a one can see, even behind the teeth of lions, an endless life with him.

Here in Rome, Italy, near the heart of Roman Catholicism, it is not unusual to pass by one of the city’s countless Catholic churches and see people prostrate on the floor or on bended knee as the priest carries around the bread of the Eucharist.

This is a pinnacle moment in the life of Catholics. They claim to be worshiping the actual body and actual blood of Christ, which have taken over the elements of the bread. As The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) reads,

In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by . . . genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration. (CCC, 1378)

In the Eucharist, they believe, Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross is made present, perpetuated, and reenacted. This understanding of the Eucharist depends on the Catholic Church’s teaching of transubstantiation, which has a central place in the Catholic faith.

What Is Transubstantiation?

The Catholic Church teaches that during the Eucharist, the body of Jesus Christ himself is truly eaten and his blood truly drunk. The bread becomes his actual body, and the wine his actual blood. The process of this change is called transubstantiation:

By the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation. (CCC, 1376)

To explain this phenomenon, Catholic theology presses Aristotelian philosophy into service. A distinction is made between substance and accidents. The substance of a thing is what that thing actually is, while accidents refer to incidental features that may have a certain appearance but can be withdrawn without altering the substance.

During the Eucharist, then, the substance of the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, while the accidents remain the same. The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ, it is claimed, but maintain the appearance, texture, smell, and taste of bread and wine. The Catholic Church does not claim that this is a magical transformation, but that it is instead a sacramental mystery that is administered by those who have received the sacrament of order.

Where Did Transubstantiation Come From?

Like many aspects of Roman Catholic theology and practice, it is difficult to point to one definitive person or event to explain how transubstantiation entered into Catholic Church. It was more of a gradual development that then reached a decisive moment at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, where the teaching and belief were officially affirmed. However, by the second century, the view that the bread and wine are in some unspecified way the actual body and blood of Jesus had already surfaced. This is evidenced, for example, in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (died around AD 108) and Justin Martyr (died AD 165), though their references to the nature of the Eucharist are somewhat ambiguous.

It is also true, however, that the early church fathers were countering certain gnostic teachings that claimed that Jesus never had a real human body but was only divine in nature. It was not possible, said the critics, that his body was present during the Eucharist. In response, some early church fathers insisted on the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament. Moreover, both Origen (185–254) and Cyprian (200–258) spoke of the sacrament as a eucharistic sacrifice, thus unhelpfully introducing sacrificial language into the Lord’s Supper. Ambrose of Milan (died 397) understood the Eucharist in these sacrificial terms, as did John Chrysostom (died 407). Jesus’s words in John 6:53–56 appeared to provide the biblical framework they needed to make their argument: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (verse 53).

Over the centuries, this belief developed until it eventually became official church dogma. It would not be without its challengers, however. Ratramnus (ninth century) and Berengarius (eleventh century) are notable examples of those who did not accept the claim that the substance of the bread and wine change in the Supper.

“To say that transubstantiation teaches that God is eaten is not an exaggeration or a misrepresentation.”

Transubstantiation would receive its greatest challenge in the sixteenth century from the Protestant Reformation. During the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which was the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church renewed with great enthusiasm its commitment to the doctrine, and thus to the conviction that during the Eucharist, God incarnate is indeed eaten. Matteo Al-Kalak — a professor of modern history at the University of Modena-Reggio in Italy — affirms that this concept is still fully embraced in a recent book titled Mangiare Dio: Una storia dell’eucarestia — Eating God: A History of the Eucharist. To say that transubstantiation teaches that God is eaten is not, then, an exaggeration or a misrepresentation.

His Sacrifice Cannot Be Repeated

The Protestant Reformation rightly rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. In the Old Testament, the priests entered the tabernacle repeatedly in order to offer blood sacrifices for the sins of God’s people. Christ, however, by means of his death and resurrection, entered into heaven and mediates on our behalf once and for all (Hebrews 7:27). His is not a sacrifice that needs to be or even can be repeated (Hebrews 9:11–28). It is sufficient. It is final (John 19:30). If, however, the bread and wine of the Eucharist indeed undergo a change of substance and become the real body and blood of Christ, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is neither sufficient nor final; instead, it is continually re-presented and made present. Thus, transubstantiation undermines the clear teachings of Scripture.

“Christ’s is not a sacrifice that needs to be or even can be repeated. It is sufficient. It is final.”

In response, Martin Luther (1483–1546) proposed a somewhat confused alternative with his doctrine of what came to be called consubstantiation. He taught that Christ’s body and blood are substantially present alongside the bread and wine. This was different from transubstantiation in that there was no change in the substance of the bread and wine itself. Luther’s theory, however, was susceptible to similar objections to those of transubstantiation. Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), another Reformer and contemporary of Luther, promoted the idea that the Lord’s Supper is symbolic and is solely a memorial of Christ’s work on the cross. Zwingli’s view is widely accepted in many evangelical circles today.

Transubstantiation receives its most helpful answer and alternative, however, in the classic Reformed view of the Lord’s Supper, deriving from John Calvin (1509–1564). The Reformed view promotes the understanding that while there is no change of substance in the sacrament, Jesus Christ is nonetheless present in a real way by means of his Holy Spirit. In observing the Lord’s Supper, Christ does not come down to the faithful in his body and blood; instead, the faithful are lifted up to him in spirit by the Holy Spirit.

As truly as the faithful eat in faith the bread and drink the wine, so they spiritually feed on Christ. The physical and spiritual are not merged, as they are in transubstantiation, nor are they completely separated. Instead, they are distinct but at the same time, through the ministry of the Spirit and the exercise of genuine faith, inseparable.

On the night our Lord was betrayed, he prayed “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). As his cross loomed before him, our unity was on his heart. And the unity he was praying for must be visible: “. . . so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Something glorious is at stake in our public unity as Christians: our witness to Jesus as the One sent by God.

Our diversity as Christians is also glorious. We rally around Christ our Lord as Anglicans and Baptists and Presbyterians and many others, with our wide-ranging musical styles and liturgical practices and missional emphases, with fascinating splashes of human color and variety, each enriching the whole body of Christ (Revelation 7:9–10).

“Something glorious is at stake in our public unity as Christians: our witness to Jesus as the One sent by God.”

Nearly fifty years ago, in 1974, I remember seeing the worldwide church on display at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Switzerland. Christians from all over the world came together, as they were, true to themselves and true to Christ. It was a foretaste of heaven. And whoever you are, I hope you feel fully authorized in Christ to be yourself, in your culture, standing tall in Christ by his grace. If you love him, you belong. Amazingly, so do I.

But it is our unity — our surprising solidarity, our heartfelt oneness, our tenacious stick-together-ness, our shared beauty together — that makes it easier for others to believe in Jesus as sent from God. And I don’t think many of us prize our unity as much as we should.

Unity Is A Doctrine

Is our unity as Christians a hill we’ll die on? I look at us on social media, in our churches and denominations, in our marriages and families and friendships, and I have to wonder, Do we revere our unity — or do we vaporize our unity as a creedal abstraction? In practical reality, are we “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3)? Sometimes it appears we might even be suspicious that “unity” is theological compromise sneaking in to ruin us.

“The unity of the church does not threaten doctrine; the unity of the church is a doctrine.”

Let’s settle one thing right now. The unity of the church does not threaten doctrine; the unity of the church is a doctrine. The Bible teaches, clearly and emphatically, “There is one body and one Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4–6). Our unity bears witness to the gospel, because our unity is part of the gospel. Are we as doctrinally pure as we claim to be?

Isn’t Unity Essential?

What else does the Bible say? Notice how the little word all is sprinkled through the New Testament, nudging us toward a shared mentality:

May the God of peace be with you all. Amen. (Romans 15:33)

To those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. (1 Corinthians 1:2)

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14)

Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. (Ephesians 6:24)

Think too of the New Testament’s explicit appeals that we come together, strongly and decidedly, in unified resolve:

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. (1 Corinthians 1:10)

Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. (2 Corinthians 13:11)

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. (Philippians 1:27)

Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. (Philippians 2:2)

Isn’t our unity, therefore, essential to biblical Christianity?

Warnings Against Divisiveness

Let’s not overlook the biblical warnings against division and faction and aloofness:

If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23–24)

(Maybe the most disobeyed verses in all the Bible every Sunday!)

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. (Romans 16:17)

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. (Titus 3:10–11)

And from the Old Testament, the wise old voice of Proverbs alerts us to the sickened revulsion God feels about our violations of unity:

There are six things that the Lord hates,     seven that are an abomination to him:haughty eyes, a lying tongue,     and hands that shed innocent blood,a heart that devises wicked plans,     feet that make haste to run to evil,a false witness who breathes out lies,     and one who sows discord among brothers. (Proverbs 6:16–19)

When the Old Testament uses this literary pattern, X // X + 1, “six // seven,” it is the last item added at the end of the list that explains the others. So, what the Lord detests about haughty eyes, and all the rest, is how they sow discord. Our Lord above hates it when we so betray trust that we destroy friendships, often permanently. He abominates such destructive evils among us. How could it be otherwise? If Jesus died to bring us together in harmony, then our sowing discord says to him, “You don’t matter. What matters here is my grievance. Get out of my way, Jesus, while I make these wretched Christians feel the pain they deserve!”

Disagreeing for God’s Sake

Naturally, you might already be objecting, “But Ray, what about the biblical calls, like 1 Timothy 4:2, to rebuke people as part of legitimate gospel ministry?” Good point. (Indeed, this article is something of a rebuke!) Here are three ways I would respond.

One, if a Christian is guilty of serious evil, and his or her guilt is a properly established fact, then a heartbroken and even angry public rebuke, to preserve Christian integrity, might be right and re-unifying. We are morally serious people, following a morally serious Jesus.

If a powerful Christian is found to have abused someone, for example, it is right for abuses of power to be called out. Silence could add a layer of hypocritical complicity on top of the already heinous sin. I don’t see enough of this kind of careful, solemn rebuke. But just blurting out grievances, especially online — we do too much of that. We would be more compelling as a Christian community if the mature among us would stick their necks out and bravely guard our integrity with appropriate rebukes. To those of you who do so, thank you.

Two, before we vent our personal frustrations, let’s be humble enough to stop and ask, “Who is even asking for my opinion? Is this urge to speak up just me being pushy?” Arrogance doesn’t ask, “Why does my pronouncement even need to be heard?” On the other hand, I am sure that the body of Christ in our generation is far less injured and divided than it could be, because so many humble Christians really are being modest, self-aware, restrained.

Three, I am myself rebuked and helped by this wise caution from Francis Schaeffer:

We should never come to [differences] with true Christians without regret and without tears. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Believe me, evangelicals often have not shown it. We rush in, being very, very pleased, it would seem at times, to find other men’s mistakes. We build ourselves up by tearing other men down. This can never show a real oneness among Christians.

There is only one kind of man who can fight the Lord’s battles in anywhere near a proper way, and that is the man who by nature is unbelligerent. A belligerent man tends to do it because he is belligerent; at least it looks that way.

The world must observe that, when we must differ with each other as true Christians, we do it not because we love the smell of blood, the smell of the arena, the smell of the bullfight, but because we must for God’s sake. If there are tears when we must speak, then something beautiful can be observed. (The Mark of the Christian, 26–27)

Do We Really Want Unity?

Whatever the controversy of the moment might be, do we express our differences with such care that a reasonable unbeliever could say, “There is no bloodlust here. This is different. There is sincerity of heart here, even beauty”?

But if we are so angry and so sure of ourselves that we don’t even want to be the answer to our Lord’s prayer for unity, then let’s admit it. And let’s have the honesty to stop attaching ourselves to the name of Jesus. We don’t love him.

But if we do love him, then let’s join him in his heartfelt prayer for unity. And let’s go do something about it — starting with that one Christian we have been avoiding.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15568824/pauls-extraordinary-affection-for-believers

In the summer of 1782, Charles Simeon (1759–1836) was invited to fill the pulpit of St. Edward’s, Cambridge, for the vacationing Christopher Atkinson. At the time, Simeon was only 22 years old, had come to faith in Christ just three years before, and, by his own admission, “knew not any [sincerely] religious person.”1 Despite these limitations, God used Simeon to pack the pews of St. Edward’s, rivet his hearers, and lead the venerable John Berridge of Everton to compare the sight of this weekly phenomenon to “opening night of a London play.”

That summer was one of adulation and affirmation for Simeon. So one would expect both to follow him to his new appointment just blocks away at Holy Trinity. But they didn’t. For Simeon, the first twelve years there were filled with stiff and steady opposition from the leaders as well as the laity. And over his remaining years at Holy Trinity, 54 in total, Simeon faced a barrage of other challenges, each one formidable enough to potentially end his ministry. Through these very challenges, however, God shaped Simeon into the great gospel influence that he was then and remains now.

Appointment and Opposition

While still a Cambridge undergraduate, Simeon was named a fellow at King’s College, ordained as a deacon in the Church of England, and blessed with his blockbuster summer at St. Edward’s. In November of that year, the pastor of Holy Trinity, Henry Therond, died. Soon thereafter, the Bishop of Ely, James Yorke, appointed the young Simeon as Therond’s successor.

Despite Simeon’s triumph earlier that summer, the people of Holy Trinity quickly rose in opposition to the bishop’s choice. Their man of choice was the more experienced and politically savvy John Hammond. The bishop would not budge in his selection of Simeon, but neither would the people in their preference for Hammond. So, exercising their prerogative, the people hired Hammond as their afternoon lecturer.2 Then, those parishioners with rented pews locked them so that any Sunday-morning churchgoers (those who wished to hear Simeon preach) had to sit on benches rented at Simeon’s expense.3 Finally, after multiple attempts by Simeon to start a Sunday-evening service, the church wardens locked the building altogether, thereby prohibiting any kind of nighttime gathering within the walls of Holy Trinity.

After five years, Hammond left his position as afternoon lecturer. But instead of appointing Simeon as Hammond’s replacement, the congregation hired Butler Berry. Ultimately, in 1795, the people of Holy Trinity replaced the departing Berry with their pastor of twelve years. Simeon was now the minister of Holy Trinity in name as well as in spirit. More than a decade of deep-seated opposition was over. But Simeon’s challenges were not.

Ongoing Challenges

The list of Simeon’s ongoing challenges ranges far and wide, from Cambridge, community, and church to illness, loss, and battles with his own indwelling sin.

Even though Simeon worked for the University of Cambridge, he faced opposition from the university at large,4 as well as members of his own college.5 On at least three different occasions, Simeon was stridently opposed from the pulpit and in print for matters relating to biblically orthodox sermons he had preached before the university.6

Simeon faced opposition not only from inside the university, but from outside of it as well. In 1812, Simeon wrote to Thomas Thomason about two men who were disturbing a pair of religious societies for which Simeon was responsible.7 Five years later, Simeon again shared with Thomason about “a most malignant attempt to injure my character”8 from those in the community.

While Simeon was deeply devoted to the Church of England, he also faced opposition from some within it. In 1808, Bishop Yorke, the one by whom Simeon was appointed pastor at Holy Trinity and with whom he very much got along, died. From that time on, Yorke’s replacement, Bishop Dampier, became a perennial opponent to Simeon.

Simeon was saddled with a pair of enduring physical challenges. He struggled with his speaking voice from his late thirties to his early sixties — at one point leaving him with the feeling that he was “more like one dead than alive.”9 As Simeon was finally resolving his vocal issues, he began struggling with gout, a condition that he first described as a “bruised foot,” but later as “a very long step towards the eternal world.”10

Simeon bore up under the emotional challenges that come with the death of close family and friends — his brothers Richard (1782) and Edward (1813), as well as his close friends and former curates Henry Martyn (1812) and Thomas Thomason (1829). By 1817, Simeon himself was much aware of his own mortality, writing, “I feel that I am running a race against time; and I want to finish my work before ‘the night cometh, in which no man can work.’”11

Finally, Simeon faced lifelong challenges against his own anger and pride. These two tendencies were well-known both to others12 and to Simeon himself.13 As late as 1827, less than a decade before his death, Simeon admitted that he was still working on matters related to his temper.

Example and Lessons

What are some ways Simeon endured these challenges — such that he not only remained in ministry, but did so for 54 years and left a legacy that still bears fruit today? And what lessons might his example have for pastors today?

Attend to your own soul.

In the first place, Simeon endured his many challenges by attending carefully to his own soul. He learned a dictum early in his life that “to soar heavenward” one must “grow downwards in humility.”14 So, Simeon spent long hours every day in God’s word and prayer. In fact, he went to bed early so that he could get up early and give unhurried time to his Lord in these ways.15 He referred to prayer as the “grand means” for one’s “growth in grace,”16 while “a devout reading of Scripture . . . qualifies [one] to speak to others.”17

“Simeon endured his many challenges by attending carefully to his own soul.”

Simeon also attended to his soul by engaging in rich fellowship with others. For example, he was sincerely and deeply devoted to the Reformed content and rhythms of the Church of England, and the weekly worship of his church greatly sustained him. He was also an active part of the Eclectic Club, a group of pastors who regularly met for mutual theological edification. Finally, Simeon convened an annual weeklong retreat for ministers and their wives that was devoted to rest, Bible reading, and extended times of conversation and fellowship. These retreats were of such spiritual encouragement that he reflected on one as follows:

For half a day perhaps I have often known times as precious; but never for nearly three days together. The solemnity, the tenderness, the spirituality, and the love were equal to anything I have ever seen. God was truly in “the midst of us.”18

By diligently pursuing these means of grace, Simeon remained spiritually nourished and up to facing the challenges of ministry.

Attend to the souls of others.

Simeon endured his many challenges by attending not only to his own soul but also to the souls of others. He devoted himself to many projects — all focused on Scripture — that no doubt kept his personal challenges in perspective.

Simeon’s aim for Holy Trinity was to nurture his people by regularly and faithfully preaching the Bible. His aim for Cambridge undergrads was to teach them how to reason according to Scripture (which he did at Friday-night tea parties held in his rooms), as well as how to faithfully exposit the Scripture (which he did at Sunday-afternoon sermon classes also held in his rooms). Simeon’s aim for Britain and beyond was to put the Bible into the hands of as many people as possible. This led to his part in the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Simeon also worked to send faithful Bible teachers to as many places as he could. So he established the Society for Educating Pious Men for Ministry, of which William Wilberforce was a trustee.19 He also established a trust dedicated to purchasing pulpits throughout England into which biblically orthodox preachers could be placed.20 Finally, Simeon played an integral part in founding the Church Missionary Society21 as well as the Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews.

“Simeon’s long-term investment in a variety of Bible-focused projects led to a life of ministry stability.”

Simeon’s long-term investment in a variety of Bible-focused projects led to a life of ministry stability. So, for example, instead of being entirely consumed by his early difficulties at Holy Trinity, Simeon spent those years also initiating and developing his missionary interests in India, his sermon classes among undergraduates, and his earliest printed edition on preaching. These efforts beyond the parish kept the challenges at Holy Trinity from holding Simeon back in his overall desire to spread the word of God. Throughout the years, as Simeon faced setbacks in one area of ministry, his progress in others provided encouragement to press on.

Endurance in Every Challenge

Throughout his five-and-a-half decades of pastoral ministry, Simeon’s character was shaped by many of the same challenges that pastors face today. The following questions, each forged on the anvil of Simeon’s life and ministry, can help pastors reflect on our own work and, in doing so, further build up our endurance for a long life of effective ministry.

Like Simeon, do I habitually give myself to the word and prayer? If not, then am I doing what it takes to make the word and prayer a priority in my daily life?

Like Simeon, do I sincerely view my church’s liturgy (whatever form that may take) as a source of spiritual nourishment? If not, then what measures can I take to be fed by it rather than merely preside over it?

Like Simeon, do I regularly take time away for personal edification and encouragement? If not, then with what group of like-minded pastors or gospel workers can I associate for spiritual development and refreshment?

Like Simeon, do I creatively leverage my work in a variety of ways? If not, into what added areas could I extend my gospel burden, my sermons, and my experience?

As long as we pastor imperfect saints, in a fallen world, from a broken body and embattled soul, we will face challenges — some of which may tempt us to give up ministry altogether. But as with Simeon, God has more than enough grace to sustain us as we attend carefully to our own souls, the souls of others, and the Christ who saves us both.