http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15626508/feed-other-souls

Outline:

The Grace of God
The Means of Grace
The Habits of Grace

1. The Grace of God

Grace Justifies

Romans 3:23–28

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. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Romans 4:4–5

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Titus 3:4–7

When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Matthew 11:28–30

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Grace Sanctifies

Titus 2:11–12

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

1 Corinthians 15:10

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Philippians 2:12–13

My beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Grace Glorifies

2 Thessalonians 1:11–12

May [God] fulfill [your] every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:4–7

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

2. The Means of Grace

How do we put ourselves on the path of God’s grace? The three crucial power sources for the Christian life:

hear his voice (in his word)
have his ear (in prayer)
belong to his body (in the fellowship of the local church)

Acts 2:42–47

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Hear His Voice

Hebrews 3:7–8

As the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion . . .”

Hebrews 4:12–13

The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Hebrews 12:25

See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.

Have His Ear

Hebrews 4:14–16

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 10:19–22

Brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Belong to His Body

Hebrews 10:23–25

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Hebrews 3:12–13

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

3. Habits of Grace

Hear his voice.

the Word: incarnate, Scripture, the gospel, written
read, study, meditate
begin with the Bible, move to meditation, polish with prayer

Have his ear.

private prayer, flowing from meditation
“without ceasing” and with company
accompanied, on occasion, with fasting

Belong to his body.

covenant membership and fellowship
church life as a means of grace: corporate worship, preaching, baptism and the Table

The End of the Means of Grace

John 17:3

This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Philippians 3:7–8

Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

While I often shrink back when I think about future suffering, pain has consistently pulled me into the heart of Christ, an unforgettable place of mystery and wonder. As I share in Christ’s suffering, I find an unusual closeness to Jesus that offers a rare glimpse of his glory.

The apostle Paul talks about sharing in Christ’s sufferings, wanting to know him and the power of his resurrection (Philippians 3:10). That is, to know by experience, to know personally and intimately, not merely intellectually. Suffering brings an intimacy with God, a mysterious and sacred fellowship that cannot be captured in words.

Somehow, suffering can transport us into the throne room of God, where we feel the tenderness of his embrace, an otherworldly sense of joy, and a fellowship unlike anything else we’ve ever known. For a moment, an awareness of his presence can so completely envelop and overshadow our pain that we become immersed in fellowship with Jesus, unaware of anything around us. Knowing Christ this way has changed me. It’s impossible to forget that closeness, even after the suffering has passed. It has marked me.

“Suffering brings an intimacy with God, a mysterious and sacred fellowship that cannot be captured in words.”

Admittedly, I still don’t welcome the suffering that draws me that close, often preferring to know about Christ’s sufferings intellectually rather than through experience. Even in the midst of it, I’m begging for relief, wanting the pain to go away. But as I submit to him through suffering, something shifts in me. My heart becomes more aligned with his. My union with Christ, a reality for every believer, melts into sweet communion in my pain.

Meeting Christ in Suffering

Jesus fully understands me, but I can understand only the mere edges of him. Yet as I identify with his suffering and yield more fully to him in my sorrow, I possess more of him.

Whatever you are dealing with, you can find your suffering in Christ’s. He knows what it’s like to hunger and thirst, to endure sleepless nights and exhausting days, to experience agonizing pain, and to pour himself out for others who are hostile in return. His cousin was murdered, his family misunderstood him, his hometown rejected him, and he watched as a sword pierced his mother’s soul. People used Jesus, flattered him, criticized him, lied about him, betrayed him, abandoned him, mocked him, humiliated him, whipped him, and watched him die an excruciating death.

So where can you identify with him in your suffering? If you have ever been betrayed by a friend, someone you loved and trusted, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering. Or if you have ever begged God to remove your anguish, and God denied your desperate request, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering. Or if you have experienced tormenting, all-consuming physical pain with no relief, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering.

There is no suffering we can experience that our Lord cannot relate to. And as we experience a portion of what he did and yield to him in it, we find a precious intimacy with him.

When the Worst Pain Comes

Joni Eareckson Tada understands this sacred experience, as she lives with crushing pain on top of her quadriplegia. In her latest inspiring book, Songs of Suffering, she tells of a friend who has become my friend as well. Barbara Brand, who has MS and brain lesions that cause excruciating pain in her head, gets regular injections into her skull and neck (about forty at a time) just to relieve the uncontrollable pain and nausea. Barbara, who is mostly bedridden, says of these injections,

Whenever the needles sink deep into my head, the extreme pain brings into sharp focus Jesus and his crown of thorns. The image calms my heart, but best of all, it binds me to his love. I picture my Savior yielding to the spike-like barbs, wholly embracing his own suffering to rescue me. So when needles plunge into my skull, my heart is cheered knowing that he is beckoning me into a deeper sanctum of sharing in his sufferings. Wonder of wonders, in some small measure, lowly me gets to identify with and enter his grief. The Bible tells me to be an imitator of God, so I get to imitate Jesus and his glad willingness to submit to the Father’s s terrible, yet wonderful, will. It’s the only way I can, through Christ, do everything. Even these awful injections. (115)

“As I submit to him through suffering, something shifts in me. My heart becomes more aligned with his.”

This is sharing in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. We want to know that Jesus understands our suffering, which he does, but there is an even deeper fellowship when we understand a little of his. And when we can, like Barbara, imitate Jesus and his glad willingness to submit to God, we experience a profound kinship with him.

Not Only in Suffering

As we share in Christ’s sufferings, we also share in his comfort (2 Corinthians 1:5), not a thin set of platitudes that make us feel better in the moment, but an explicable fellowship that carries a sturdy peace. The weightier the suffering, the greater the comfort, the richer the fellowship, and ultimately the deeper the joy. And that joy will only increase when his glory is revealed (1 Peter 4:13).

Furthermore, the more we share in Jesus’s sufferings, the more we understand the power of his resurrection, and the more we can see his glory. Suffering can open our eyes to God’s glory — we see and experience it rather than learn what glory means intellectually. And as we behold God’s glory, we are being changed into his image (2 Corinthians 3:18), becoming more like him. Even more mysteriously and astonishingly, sharing in Christ’s sufferings means we will one day share in his glory, a glory that will make today’s sorrows seem light and momentary (Romans 8:17–18; 2 Corinthians 4:17).

If you are in a season of deep pain and loss, you have a particular opportunity to know the Lord Jesus more deeply. To know him by experience and not just academically. While we can know more about Jesus through Bible study, small groups, books, and sermons, some of the richest dimensions of our relationship with him will be forged through suffering. That relationship bound through sorrow offers not only comfort and communion, but also a glimpse of glory that will transform our faith, make us more like him, and prepare us for the unspeakable glories that await in eternity.

Audio Transcript

Good Wednesday, everyone. Thanks for listening. We’re in a season on the podcast of looking at darker issues. That’s not by design. It just ended up that way providentially based on the questions that have come to us.

We’ve looked at whether we can be angry at God when life doesn’t turn out the way we hoped it would. That was two Mondays ago, in APJ 1828. Then we looked at how to overcome anger in the home in APJ 1829. Then a wife asked about how to address her husband’s ongoing sin patterns in APJ 1830. Then last time we addressed a wife who was betrayed. Her husband left her for another woman. How does she process the ongoing pain of that desertion? That was APJ 1831.

Today I want to build off Monday’s episode. Because in speaking to that mom of three young girls, now abandoned by her husband, Pastor John applied the category of “enemy” and spoke of “enemy love.” Those are Jesus’s words. “Love your enemies,” right? He commanded that to us in Matthew 5:44, a text Pastor John spent years studying. He published an entire book by the title: Love Your Enemies — it’s his doctoral dissertation.

So if that “enemy” category fits a former spouse, it raised a question in my mind as I listened Monday, and maybe in your mind, too. Who else qualifies as our enemy? How broadly does this category stretch? That exact question is answered by Pastor John in his 1995 sermon on Matthew 5. Here he is.

Around this globe today, there are tens of thousands of Christians suffering, and some of them laying down their lives, just to believe and to be obedient to Jesus Christ. So the first meaning of enemy is those who persecute you like that. Love them. Love them.

Enemies of God

The next meaning of enemy is less dramatic. In verse 45, about halfway through, it says, “[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). So here you have evil people and unrighteous people. And this morning, it was already getting light at 4:45 a.m. He’s making the sun rise on all the evil people in the Western Hemisphere. From Argentina to the Hudson Bay, there are millions upon millions of people who scorn the name of God, and he made the sun come up on them this morning, and he gave them breath, and he gave them life, and he held the planet in being. And he restrained anarchy. And he graced them with warmth on their skin, breezes on their faces, and green in the trees and grass under their feet, and birds singing in the trees.

And you know what was happening when that happened? The heavens were telling the glory of God, and the firmament was declaring his handiwork (Psalm 19:1), so that you here would hear this message before you got here. And that’s what I was praying for you this morning. I looked outside and I said, “God, you’re already preaching it. Preach it — preach it! Would you please open their hearts? Don’t let them turn on the TV and just start watching stuff. Would you turn on their hearts? Would you cause them to reach up and turn on the dial of the sky and say, ‘Do it! Say it! Say it to the city! Say it loud!’”

Nobody deserves what happened this morning at five o’clock — nobody. And he made it happen. He just brought it up — and look, he’s still doing it. He’s still doing it. There are people who didn’t give him a rip this morning. They didn’t give him the time of day. He doesn’t get two seconds of their day, and he’s just gracing them, hugging them, caressing them all day long today. They’ll go to lakes and they’ll take walks and they’ll ride bicycles, and he’ll be saying, “I love you. Come to me. Look at me. I’m a glorious God. I can do this for eternity for you, if you’ll have me.” And they don’t pay any attention. We need to witness to the Witness.

“Your enemy is anybody who resists you, who contradicts you, who crosses you, who antagonizes you.”

The enemy in this context is those who resist God, who disobey his laws, who ignore him. So if you translate that down into our situation, your enemy is anybody who resists you, who contradicts you, who crosses you, who antagonizes you, who makes life hard for you. Which means that the command “love your enemy” has an application to rebellious children, ill-tempered and insensitive and non-listening husbands, neighbors who complain about your dandelions. You may not call them enemies, and they don’t call themselves enemies, but that’s the kind of illustration we’ve got here. Most people don’t think of themselves as enemies of God, and yet God uses them as illustrations of how he graces people who are not whole toward him.

Passerby Enemies

A third illustration of what enemies means comes in Matthew 5:46–47: “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?” So who’s the enemy here? Why is he using this in the context of enemy love? And the answer is your enemy is somebody who doesn’t love you. “If you love only those who love you” — meaning you should also love those who don’t love you. Or “if you greet only your brothers” — meaning you should also greet those who are your non-brothers. So enemy here in this paragraph is big. It starts with persecution and it ends with people who don’t greet you. They’re not your brothers; they just kind of pass you by. He says, “If you only greet your brothers, then you don’t know enemy love.”

“If you only greet your brothers, then you don’t know enemy love.”

So I ask now, in a summary fashion, Who are the enemies — who’s this text about? This text is about anybody that crosses your path. Love them and don’t stop loving them. Even if they offend you, even if they dishonor you, even if they anger you, disappoint you, frustrate you, threaten you, or kill you, don’t stop loving them. And if you just look in the mirror for a moment, the mirror of this word here, you will feel like, “I am spring-loaded to return evil for evil.” We feel it in our families especially. People we know best can irritate us the most. And just like that we’re returning evil for evil. A harsh word gets a harsh word, a criticism gets a criticism, a complaint gets a complaint — just like that. We’re just wired to return evil for evil, which means this call is for a very profound change, isn’t it?

“May these precious seasons make me fruitful.” These words, found in the diary of a certain Isaac Staveley, who worked as a clerk for coal merchants in London during the 1770s, were written after he had celebrated the Lord’s Supper with his church, Eagle Street Baptist Church, in 1771.

In the rest of this diary, Staveley makes it evident that the celebration of the death of the Christ at the Table was a highlight of his Christian life. In the evening of March 3, he recorded that he and fellow members “came around the table of our dear dying Lord to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body, show his death afresh, to claim and recognise our interest therein, to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body as happy members of the same family of faith and love.” How many today view the Table this way?

Packed into these few words, Staveley reveals his conviction that the Lord’s Supper was a place of communion — communion with Christ and with his people. It was a place of spiritual nurture and of witness. And it was a place of rededication, both to Christ and to his church family.1

Unprized Means of Grace

I suspect that Staveley’s words sound strange to the ears of many modern evangelicals, who might think they are reading the diary of a Roman Catholic or High Anglican, not that of a fellow Reformed evangelical from the eighteenth century. Indeed, the oddity of Staveley’s words to the ears of evangelicals today reveals how much we have lost over the last two centuries. We are out of touch with a tradition that highly prized the ordinances as vehicles of spiritual grace.

“We are out of touch with a tradition that highly prized the ordinances as vehicles of spiritual grace.”

It is not simply that we have come to use mainly the word ordinance for the Lord’s Supper and baptism, rather than the word sacrament, whereas many Baptists like Staveley would have been quite comfortable with the latter term in the eighteenth century. Rather, under the impress of the rationalistic mindset of Western culture, we have lost a sense of mystery about the dynamics of the Table.

John Calvin (1509–1564), who stands at the fountainhead of the tradition of which Staveley was a part, was quite content to leave it as a mystery as to how the emblems of bread and wine are employed by the Holy Spirit to make Christ present at the celebration of his Supper. And roughly down until the opening of the nineteenth century, anglophone evangelicals followed in his stead, treasuring the presence of Christ at the Table without feeling pressured to explain exactly how this worked.

Diluting the Wine

How did this understanding of the Lord’s Supper lose its way?

During the nineteenth century, church services became primarily places of evangelism. But the Lord’s Table was not a converting ordinance, and thus great evangelistic preachers like Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) — though not C.H. Spurgeon (1834–1892), it needs to be noted — came to regard the Table as a rite of little import in the Christian life. The emergence of the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church — with men like John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and John Keble (1792–1866), who revived the doctrine of transubstantiation — also served to push evangelicals toward downplaying the importance of the Lord’s Supper.

Finally, the revivalist nature of much of evangelical life in the nineteenth century, shaped as it was by altar-call preachers like Charles Finney (1792–1875), Phoebe Palmer (1807–1874) and D.L. Moody (1837–1899), served as another key factor that led to the loss of a richer view of the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, for some, the altar call became an alternate ordinance/sacrament (in fact, Finney posited it as such, as part of his so-called “new measures”). Rather than the Table being the place where sinners met with God and heard reassuring words about the saving work of Christ that dealt definitively with their sins (making the Table a place of rededication), it was the altar call that came to function as such.

Retrieving the Old Tradition

These events in the nineteenth century reveal how we came to the point where the Table is no longer a significant part of the spiritual life of many evangelical churches. Yet how desperately we need to confess our sins together with God’s people and hear afresh, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). In the busyness of Western culture, and even church life, do we not long for an oasis of quiet, where we can commune with Christ by his Spirit with our brothers and sisters? Indeed, I would say, with Calvin and Spurgeon, that this needs to happen on a weekly basis (but be that as it may).

“Do we not long for an oasis of quiet, where we can commune with Christ by his Spirit with our brothers and sisters?”

One of the richest texts from our past as evangelicals is the Second London Confession of Faith (1677/1688), which was drawn up by the English and Welsh Particular Baptist community and was based on the Presbyterian Westminster Confession (1646) and the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration (1659). This confession not only served as the main confessional text of the Particular Baptists in England, Wales, and Ireland into the nineteenth century, but it was also adopted by the oldest Baptist associations in America, where it became known as the Philadelphia Confession (in the north) and the Charleston Confession (in the south). Indeed, it was the Charleston Confession that was used to draw up the confession of faith — the Abstract of Principles — of the seminary where I serve, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

In Chapter 30.1 of this Baptist confession, it is stated,

The Supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by him the same night wherein he was betrayed, to be observed in his churches unto the end of the world, for the perpetual remembrance, and shewing forth the sacrifice of himself in his death, confirmation of the faith of believers in all the benefits thereof, their spiritual nourishment, and growth in him, their further engagement in, and to all duties which they owe unto him; and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him, and with each other.

Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper for five reasons, according to this paragraph. The Supper serves as a vivid reminder of and witness to the sacrificial death of Christ. Then, participation in the Lord’s Supper enables believers to grasp more firmly all that Christ has done for them through his death on the cross. In this way, the Lord’s Supper is a means of spiritual nourishment and growth. Fourth, the Lord’s Supper serves as a time when believers recommit themselves to Christ. Finally, the Lord’s Supper affirms the indissoluble union that exists, on the one hand, between Christ and believers, and, on the other, between individual believers.

Rich Means of Grace

One cannot come away from reading these paragraphs on the Lord’s Supper without the conviction that those who issued this confession were deeply conscious of the importance of the Lord’s Supper for the Christian life.

The London Baptist preacher Benjamin Keach (1640–1704), who signed this confession, speaks for his fellow Baptists when he states, probably with reference to the Quakers, who had discarded the observance of both baptism and the Lord’s Supper,

Some men boast of the Spirit, and conclude they have the Spirit, and none but they, and yet at the same time cry down and vilify his blessed ordinances and institutions, which he hath left in his Word, carefully to be observed and kept. . . . The Spirit hath its bounds, and always run[s] in its spiritual channel, namely the Word and ordinances.2

In other words, the Spirit uses the Scriptures, the word of God, and baptism and the Lord’s Supper to strengthen his people on their spiritual pilgrimage in this world.

In this hearty appreciation of the Lord’s Supper, these early Baptists were firmly in the mainstream of Puritan thought. The Puritans generally regarded the Supper as a vehicle that the Spirit employed as an efficacious means of grace for the believer. The seventeenth-century Baptists and their heirs in the eighteenth century, like Isaac Staveley, would have judged the memorial view of the Lord’s Supper — the dominant view among today’s evangelicals — as far too mean a perspective on what was for them such a rich means of grace.

Indeed, in seeking to articulate a richer and more biblical view of the Lord’s Table, contemporary evangelicals may do no better than to listen afresh to what is written in chapter 30 of the Second London Confession.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15610916/prayer-is-not-one-and-done

ABSTRACT: Reformers like John Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other author outside Scripture. They celebrated, among other qualities, how he championed the truth that God saves sinners not on the basis of their works but by his grace. When it came to the doctrine of justification by faith, however, the Reformers did not find the clarity they wanted in the great church father. Augustine never offers a systematic treatment of the meaning of justification, and a careful reading of his works reveals ambiguities in his treatment of the doctrine. Nevertheless, he speaks of justification mainly in terms of God making sinners righteous rather than declaring sinners righteous. To the Reformers, then, his way of expressing the doctrine obscured, even if it did not deny, Christ’s righteousness as the sole ground of a sinner’s justification before God.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Zach Howard, assistant professor of theology and humanities at Bethlehem College & Seminary, to explore Augustine’s doctrine of justification.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) championed the truth that God saves sinners not on the basis of their works, but by his grace alone. Even faith in God is itself a gift from God, Augustine frequently observed, citing Paul’s question in 1 Corinthians 4:7: “What do you have that you did not receive?”1 The Reformers saw this same biblical doctrine of salvation by grace alone and, with Augustine as a patristic champion, sought to recover and proclaim it against false teaching and practices in their own day. Indeed, Augustine provided so much rich theological insight that Reformers like John Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other author outside the biblical text.2

Nevertheless, Calvin and most other Reformers did not cite Augustine when they proclaimed the related doctrine of justification by faith alone. They celebrated with Augustine that the method by which God justifies man is through the gift of faith, not through the merit of works, from texts like Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:20. But when it came to describing the meaning of justification from a text like Romans 4:5 — God “justifies the ungodly” — and distinguishing it from the process of sanctification, Augustine and Reformers like Calvin thought differently. For many readers of Calvin or Luther or later Protestant theologians, this may come as a surprise given the central place of justification in Scripture and Augustine’s significance for Reformed soteriology. This essay, therefore, seeks to answer a question that naturally follows: How did Augustine understand the meaning of justification?

“Augustine never systematically stated what he thought justification by faith means.”

There is a significant challenge to answering this question. While the Pelagian controversy that dominated the last twenty years of Augustine’s life echoed in sixteenth-century theological debates, there was no similar crisis around the meaning of justification by faith in Augustine’s day. So, perhaps because there was no crisis driving his theological reflections on the meaning of justification, Augustine never systematically stated what he thought justification by faith means. Rather, his view emerges in response to questions on related controversies of his day and in his preaching on relevant biblical texts. This challenge makes it important to begin by situating Augustine’s understanding of justification within his wider theological reflection on salvation.

Describing Augustine’s View

Augustine’s enduring influence on Christian theology is largely due to the unified vision of salvation he articulated throughout his ministry. More than any of his post-biblical predecessors, Augustine integrated the biblical witness to defend and explain what it means that God through Christ saves sinners. Augustine performed like a choir director, conducting a chorus of biblical voices to harmonize around the truth that God saves sinners not on the basis of their works but by grace through faith in Christ — and that such faith results in a life of good works culminating in unmediated communion with God when Christ returns.3 Our aim is to listen carefully to notes sounding the theme of justification within that larger choir. We will see that Augustine imagined the meaning of justification in at least the following three ways: as a healing of man’s broken nature, as a transformation of the ungodly, and as both an event and a process.

Justification as Healing Man’s Nature

How Augustine understands original sin guides his interpretation for how man can be justified before God. Interpreting Romans 5:9, Augustine writes, “Because they were clothed with the flesh of [Adam] who sinned in his will, they contract from him the responsibility for sin . . . just as children who put on Christ . . . receive from Him a participation in justice.”4 Original sin is not just the act of Adam and Eve’s first sin in the garden, but it is also the result that mankind’s nature is corrupted.5 As a polluted body of water infects everything downstream, so Adam’s sin corrupts all of mankind. For Augustine, then, original sin corrupts man’s very nature such that all mankind is guilty before God even before they choose to commit any specific sins on their own.

“Augustine integrated the biblical witness to defend and explain what it means that God through Christ saves sinners.”

This problem of original sin frames the solution of justification. For Augustine, justification must address not just specific sinful acts by individual people but also the essential corruption of human nature. If justification is about restoring a right relationship with God, Augustine understood such a right relationship as possible only by a change in human nature brought about by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Justice before God must include not just a change in status (as in “not forgiven” to “forgiven”) but primarily a change in nature (from diseased to healed).

One of Augustine’s favorite analogies for describing this reality is Christ as the doctor and us as his patients. When man recognizes that he cannot heal himself — that he cannot justify himself — he turns to the divine doctor, placing complete trust in him to heal his disease. The doctor removes the original cause of the disease and then prescribes medicine to bring about a full recovery. Justification for Augustine is faith in the doctor such that you turn to him for medical intervention, and it is also faith in the doctor such that you follow his prescription for a full recovery.6

Therefore, when Augustine describes God’s act of justification as a gracious gift rather than an earned reward, he identifies the act of justification with the gift of the Holy Spirit, who heals man’s will.7 “[Christians] have been gratuitously justified by his grace (Romans 3:24). . . . The law shows that our will is weak so that grace may heal our will and so that a healthy will may fulfill the law, without being subject to the law or in need of the law.”8 Augustine imagines the meaning of justification as a healing of man’s will — and the rest of his nature — so that he may love God and neighbor, which is what it means to fulfill the law.9 This healing begins with the forgiveness of sins yet continues throughout a Christian’s earthly life. And the healing is miraculous because the patient is not just sick but spiritually dead.10 Thus, for man to be right with God — to be iustus — God must change not only man’s legal status but also man’s nature by healing his will.

Justification as Making the Ungodly Righteous

That Augustine believes God’s solution requires that man’s nature be transformed is not surprising. His every articulation of salvation casts the solution ultimately as transformative since Scripture teaches that we are “being transformed into [Christ’s] image” (2 Corinthians 3:18). What is surprising for modern Protestants is that Augustine associates such a transformation specifically with the term justification and not salvation more generally. Nonetheless, he does so for a specific linguistic and exegetical reason: he understood the Latin term used for justification in the Bible to mean “made righteous,” not “declared righteous.”

Augustine’s Old Latin Bible translated the Greek term dikaioō as iustifico, and he took this term literally.11 “Relying strictly upon the Latin translation,” one scholar explains, “Augustine misunderstood Paul to be saying that the person who was unjust was made to be just.”12 Commenting on Romans 4:5, Augustine explains this understanding of iustificatio in his The Spirit & the Letter: “What does ‘justified’ mean other than ‘made righteous,’ just as ‘he justifies the ungodly’ means ‘he makes a righteous person out of an ungodly person’?”13 Augustine’s misunderstanding of Paul’s term dikaioō leads him to interpret justification in primarily a transformative sense (as God making the ungodly righteous) rather than a declarative sense (God acquitting the ungodly).

Yet later in the same section from The Spirit & the Letter, Augustine acknowledges a different meaning for justified — namely, “counted righteous.”14 He offers an alternative reading of justified this way: “It is certainly true that they will be justified in the sense that they will be regarded as righteous, that they will be counted as righteous. In that sense scripture says of a certain man, But wanting to justify himself (Luke 10:29), that is, wanting to be regarded and counted as righteous.” Augustine then makes a comparison to how readers understood the word sanctify to mean both “make holy” (what God does to us) and “declare holy” (what we say to God in Matthew 6:9). His point in the comparison is that the word sanctify can connote both make and declare. So too can the word justify mean both make and declare. Yet in this passage and elsewhere, he does not elaborate on why this distinction matters, develop its implications, or connect it to other passages in Scripture.

It is appropriate to conclude, then, that although Augustine allows for a declarative sense of justification, his primary understanding of justification is that God makes the ungodly person righteous by healing his nature. And this raises a question: If Augustine means by justification “made righteous,” and to be “made righteous” requires an inner transformation that occurs over time, then, according to Augustine, is man not fully right before God until he is fully remade in Christ’s image?

Justification as Event and Process

One way to answer that question is to describe Augustine’s view of justification as both an event and a process.15 We see both event language and process language in how Augustine distinguishes between the beginning of faith and the progress we make in faith.16 Augustine makes such a distinction frequently.17 In his exposition on Psalm 67, for instance, Augustine reminds his listeners of “the priority of faith over works”: “In the absence of good works a godless person is justified by faith [per fidem iustificatur], as the apostle says: When someone believes in him who justifies the ungodly, that faith is reckoned as justice to the believer (Romans 4:5), so that afterward faith may begin to work through love of choice.”18 Augustine carefully distinguishes works as the grounds of being justified from works that follow being justified. This is not a passing sentence, either: it defines Augustine’s entire paragraph such that he describes the life of a Christian as a journey of faith working through love in order to make the point that “this journey begins from faith.”19

A second example comes from a sermon on Romans 8:30–31, where Augustine declares, “We have been justified; but this justice can grow, as we make progress.”20 By justified, Augustine understands Paul to mean that we have been “already established in the condition of justification.” Such a condition occurs “by receiving the forgiveness of sins in the washing of regeneration, by receiving the Holy Spirit, by making progress day by day” (alluding to Titus 3:5). Justification is a condition we already have, yet also a condition in which we can make progress day by day. In other words, for Augustine, we can have justice and grow in justice.

Simply put, Augustine did not limit the term justification to a declarative event. Justification means that, by faith, we have begun a journey to God, and we will not be fully righteous or have complete justice until that day we meet God face-to-face. The journey begins with the forgiveness of sins and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, who heals man’s will such that he is able to love God even as he continues to fight sin. The journey metaphor allows Augustine to maintain the inseparable relationship he sees between the faith at the beginning and the faith along the way. It is the same faith. When he says that the faith that justifies is the faith that works through love (Galatians 5:6), Augustine is seeking to maintain a relationship between the faith that receives forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit and the faith that makes progress day by day by growing in love for God and neighbor. Therefore, to be justified by faith is to receive God’s forgiveness — indeed, to receive God himself in the person of the Holy Spirit — and yet it also means to grow in love for God from that moment onward. This is faith that works through love.

Assessing Augustine’s View

The fundamental difference between Augustine’s view of justification and the later Reformers’ view is twofold. First, Augustine understands the meaning of justification more broadly in that it refers not only to the event of God forgiving the sinner but also to the process of God transforming the sinner into the image of Christ. In contrast, the Reformers limit justification to the declarative sense and emphasize its distinction from sanctification. Second, with the term justification, Augustine focuses on the need for man to be transformed, while the Reformers emphasize the need for man to be pardoned. To be “just” for Augustine means to no longer “be a sinner” by the complete healing of man’s nature.21 To be “just” for the Reformers means to be seen as righteous in God’s sight based on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.

What should we then do with these differences between what Augustine and the Reformers meant by the term justification? We can first learn from how Reformers like Calvin interacted with Augustine and then consider the way Augustine himself addressed concerns raised in his own day.

Calvin’s Assessment of Augustine on Justification

When writing on justification, Calvin repeatedly quotes or cites Augustine to celebrate his insistence that we are saved by grace through faith, and not because of the merit of our works.22 Despite such agreement, Calvin acknowledges where Augustine differs from Scripture on justification. In his extended section on justification by faith in the Institutes, Calvin recounts how medieval “Schoolmen” like Peter Lombard (about 1100–1160) appear to follow Augustine on grace but misunderstand him. Calvin then argues,

Even the sentiment of Augustine [on justification], or at least his mode of expressing it, cannot be entirely approved of. For although he is admirable in stripping man of all merit of righteousness, and transferring the whole praise of it to God, yet he classes the grace by which we are regenerated to newness of life under the head of sanctification. Scripture, when it treats of justification by faith, leads us in a very different direction. Turning away our view from our own works, it bids us look only to the mercy of God, and the perfection of Christ.23

Calvin cannot approve of Augustine’s “mode of expressing” justification because it does not properly distinguish between justification and sanctification. He notes in his commentary on Romans that “it is not unknown to me, that Augustine gives a different explanation; for he thinks that the righteousness of God is the grace of regeneration.”24 In other words, Augustine’s explanation of justification combines the grace by which we are declared righteous before God (what Calvin calls justification) and the grace by which we are made righteous for God (what Calvin calls sanctification). Calvin worries that this “mode of expressing” led to abuses in late medieval Christianity, such as the thinking that man needs to earn his salvation with works.

In distinguishing between the twofold grace of justification and sanctification, Calvin aimed to preserve the truth that the ground of man’s right relationship before God is not his new moral nature but Christ’s righteousness imputed to man’s account. Yet Calvin does not say that Augustine himself argues that way. Rather, he has been refuting a contemporary (Andreas Osiander) and a late medieval scholastic (Lombard) who had misunderstood Augustine, in Calvin’s judgment. Calvin, then, recognizes that Augustine’s “mode of expressing” justification had certain ambiguities that differed from how Scripture spoke of justification and allowed later thinkers like Lombard to wrongly appropriate him on justification.

Calvin’s assessment raises at least two questions for Augustine’s teaching on justification. What did he believe is the right way to describe how faith and works relate to our justification? And what did he think is the ground or basis of a restored relationship with God? These are good questions for Augustine — and questions he addresses when confronting two controversies in his day.

On the Inseparability of Faith and Love

Throughout his pastoral ministry, Augustine responded to the false teaching that you “could not reach eternal life without faith, but could do so without works.”25 Today, we might call this easy-believism or, more technically, antinomianism. Augustine condemned such a belief as misinterpreting Paul, specifically from 1 Corinthians 3:11–15, and advocated for an understanding of faith that is followed by works, or what he called “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). He argued that Peter, James, and Paul agreed that works are necessary for eternal life because they prove that genuine faith is present.

Therefore, when the apostle [Paul] says that he considers we are made just through faith without the works of the law (Romans 4:5), he does not mean that works of justice should be disdained once faith is accepted and professed but that everyone should know that he can be made just through faith even if he did not perform the works of the law before. They do not come beforehand, before the person is made just, but they follow afterwards, when the person has been made just.26

Augustine emphasizes here that the event of justification (the beginning of faith) cannot be separated from the result that follows (the progress of faith). So Augustine rejects “faith alone,” not in the sense that later Protestant Reformers taught it, but in the unbiblical version that motivated the apostle James to write, “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). With James, Augustine calls such “faith,” which he styles as mere intellectual assent, the “faith of demons” because it has no accompanying obedience to Christ’s commands.

We can agree with Augustine that faith and works must go together in order for us to call anyone’s faith a “living faith.”27 Augustine echoes James and Peter and Paul in proclaiming this truth in his own day. But we are still left with another question: In what sense are works necessary for salvation? Do the works that follow faith contribute to our salvation in the sense that they make God our debtor and are in any way the basis of our salvation?

On God Crowning His Own Gifts

Augustine never conclusively states whether Christ’s righteousness is the sole ground of our justification before God.28 Even as we rightly acknowledge that Augustine does not primarily write about justification in a legal framework but rather one of virtue and therefore transformation, his “mode of expressing” justification — specifically how he understands justification to mean being made righteous — obscures on what basis God sees man as righteous. We must recognize this enduring ambiguity in Augustine’s articulation of justification.

Nonetheless, Augustine does offer clarity about the nature of works that follow faith. In an important letter summarizing the Pelagian controversy, Augustine describes the significance of a Christian’s good works as God crowning his own gifts. Augustine explains,

What merit, then, does a human being have before grace so that by that merit he may receive grace . . . since, when God crowns our merits, he only crowns his own gift? For, just as we have obtained mercy from the very beginning of faith, not because we were believers but in order that we might be believers, so in the end, when there will be eternal life, he will crown us, as scripture says, in compassion and mercy (Psalm 103:4). . . . Even eternal life itself . . . is given as recompense for preceding merits, but because the same merits to which it is given as recompense were not produced by us through our own abilities but were produced in us through grace, it too is called grace for no other reason than that it is given gratuitously, not because it is not given to our merits but because even the very merits to which it is given were given to us.29

“Everything man has is a gift from God, including the good works he does after the beginning of faith.”

Everything man has is a gift from God, including the good works he does after the beginning of faith. And these works God rewards not as our debtor because he gave the grace to complete them. God crowns his own gifts. Thus, even as Augustine does not explicitly identify the righteousness of Christ as the sole basis of our declarative justification before God, neither does he teach that man must earn salvation. This side of the Reformation, we might be tempted to make Augustine answer with greater clarity, but since no doctrinal controversy drove further theological reflection from him, we cannot expect an answer in those terms.

Reading Augustine on Justification for Today

As careful readers of Augustine today, we seek to understand him on his own terms and in his own time before we compare his scriptural exegesis and theological reasoning with later interpreters like Aquinas, Calvin, Edwards, and our contemporaries. And we do so for the sake of retrieving his insights for theological debate and practices today. Just as importantly, though, we carefully avoid making Augustine answer a particular question or problem that he simply did not anticipate or address.

We can celebrate with the Reformers how Augustine champions the truth that God graciously forgives sinners by grace without any preceding merit. We also can celebrate the way Augustine highlights and defends the inseparability of faith and love, or what Calvin would call the inseparability between Christ’s two graces of justification and sanctification. Even so, we recognize that Augustine’s way of expressing the meaning of justification obscures, even if it does not deny, the truth that by Christ’s righteousness alone is anyone counted righteous before God (Philippians 3:9).

Outrage against God’s men never sounded so heroic.

“You have gone too far!” they shouted at Moses. “For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” (Numbers 16:3).

The hundreds of men at the entrance lobbied for the people. They demanded notice. Far from peeking around avatars and fake names, these men confronted Moses as men — “well-known men,” in fact, chiefs in their communities, shepherds of families and clans (Numbers 16:2). Their charge: Moses and Aaron have exalted themselves; they rule with confiscated authority. Their logic: all of Israel is holy, every last person. Who is this Moses and this Aaron to speak from on high? This was “Power to the People.”

Did they have a point? Moses, after all, wrote that Israel was to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Did “kingdom of priests” actually mean “sons of Aaron”? Did “holy nation” actually mean “holy prophet”? Had not Moses and Aaron “gone too far” in asserting their authority?

Korah, the people’s champion, thought so. He placed himself at the head of this small army. Shouts swelled, “All in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and Yahweh is among them — come down from your castles!”

Moses, the meekest man on earth, gives us a lesson for today with his reply.

Motives Unmasked

Moses responds with the following steps.

First, he falls on his face. He grew weary of his life as a constant game of thrones. Would Moses have ever chosen this staff for himself? He tried his best to deny it from the start — “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (Exodus 4:13). Since then, he has heard the thankless voices repeat, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us?” (Exodus 2:14). He collapses in prayer.

Second, he challenges Korah and his company. He bows before God; he stands before men. He challenges Korah and the other sons of Levi to return tomorrow: “In the morning the Lord will show who is his, and who is holy, and will bring him near to him” (Numbers 16:5).

Third, he unmasks Korah’s motives. Here, Moses gives us our lesson. He diagnoses what Korah’s rebellion is really about — something very different than presented. Korah shouted of equality, of fairness, of removing mountains and lifting valleys. But what did Moses hear?

Hear now, you sons of Levi: is it too small a thing for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself, to do service in the tabernacle of the Lord and to stand before the congregation to minister to them, and that he has brought you near him, and all your brothers the sons of Levi with you? And would you seek the priesthood also? (Numbers 16:8–10)

The revolutionists said, “Sameness for all! All of us are holy! The Lord walks among us — why should Moses and Aaron reign?” But Moses heard, “We want the priesthood.”

Korah and his company were Levites (like Moses and Aaron) but not priests. Priesthood belonged to Aaron and his sons. The Levites helped the priests and served in the tabernacle, but they did not possess full access. Discontent festered. Those closest grasp at crowns. Moses hears envy in their talk of equality. They despised not that some were preferred, but who was preferred. They wanted all level so they could rise. Instead of Aaron, Korah.

Scolding Ingratitude

They did not admit their hunger for religious authority. And isn’t it ironic — and, as Moses says, shameful — that those already with distinction led this mutiny? He scolds their ingratitude:

Hear now, you sons of Levi: is it too small a thing for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself, to do service in the tabernacle of the Lord and to stand before the congregation to minister to them, and that he has brought you near him, and all your brothers the sons of Levi with you? (Numbers 16:8–10)

“Is your nobility too small, Korah and his complainers, that you stand here and snarl? Has God not separated you for holy service above the other tribes? Do not your sons inherit advantages by birthright?”

They said they were attempting to impeach Moses and Aaron, but again, the prophet strips them bare: “It is against the Lord that you and all your company have gathered together. What is Aaron that you grumble against him?” (Numbers 16:11). In revolting against God’s authority, Korah and his chiefs revolted against God. Moses did not exalt his brother; God did. For “no one takes this honor [of priesthood] for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was” (Hebrews 5:4).

Blurred Boundaries

Centuries and different covenants separate us from Korah. Yet while the earth swallowed Korah alive — along with his family, his people, and all their goods (Numbers 16:31–35) — the spirit of Korah and his campaign strategy endure.

“The spirit of our age feuds against God’s authorities because it feuds against God.”

The spirit of our age feuds against God’s authorities because it feuds against God. “You have gone too far,” it whispers of those above, “for all are special, every last one of us.” It triggers explosives at the base to collapse categories of parent-child, pastor-sheep, teacher-student, policeman-citizen, elder-youth, employer-employee — crumbling them to our harm. God gives us a world with order for our good — mother over the child, father over the home, king over the nation, pastors over the congregant, and Christ over all. But the Korahs cannot tolerate any Moseses and Aarons, because ultimately they want the Savior’s scepter.

Drunk on Equality

Today, as then, rebellion against God can sound so heroic. We need to be aware of equality’s dark side. This might sound strange at first. Isn’t equality always a good thing?

C.S. Lewis writes in reply, “When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget, but as an ideal, we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. That mind,” Lewis tells us, “is the special disease of democracy” (Present Concerns, 9).

By this, Lewis did not mean legal equality. Justice sings when confronting a Jim Crow South or an anti-Semitic Germany or the barbarous but now fallen Roe v. Wade. What he means is this spirit of Korah, the “man who cannot conceive a joyful and loyal obedience on the one hand, nor an unembarrassed and noble acceptance of that obedience on the other — the man who has never even wanted to kneel or to bow.” He is what Lewis labels “a prosaic barbarian.”

He goes so far as to say that God designed us to desire distinctions. Even when we overdose on sameness, our veneration always travels elsewhere:

Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison. (12)

“We resist flattening God’s good order for the home, the church, and society — especially at the flattery of Korah.”

Our society overdoses on prescription pills. But Christians have the label. We resist flattening God’s good order for the home, the church, and society — especially at the flattery of Korah. Because when we do cave, we extend the new world order designed by shadows and spirits at war with God. And as shown in Korah’s rebellion, even some who scream loudest of equality don’t want it either.

Is It Too Small a Thing?

Shapeless homes and interchangeable churches lower the drawbridge for Korah to invade. The likes of feminism, socialism, LGBTQ+, and smooth-sounding egalitarianism might tell us how special we all are, even co-opting the imago dei. But the plain instruction given to Christian husbands and wives, fathers and children, kings and citizens, masters and servants, shepherds and individual sheep survives.

In Christ, we do not chafe at this. Of all people, we best love just sovereigns, good heads, righteous authorities and their rule. We will not follow Korah’s sweet talk into the earth’s core. If tempted by his rhetoric, hear Christ himself ask us, “Is it too small a thing to you that the living God has loved you, chosen you, redeemed you, and graced you to rule with me in the endless world to come?”

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning. Thanks for joining us again. Well, we happen to be in a season on the podcast looking at some mature issues, and those issues are rather bleak. Not by design — it just ended up that way providentially in the questions we have on the table. Last Monday, we looked at whether we can be angry at God when life doesn’t turn out the way we hoped it would. That was APJ 1828. Then we looked at how to overcome anger in the home. That was APJ 1829. And last time, on Friday, a wife asked about how to confront some deep, ongoing sin patterns in the life of her husband. That was APJ 1830.

And that brings us to today. A young wife writes in. She was betrayed. And now she endures the lingering pain of a husband who left her for another woman. Here’s what she writes: “Pastor John, hello, and thank you for taking my question. I’ve been struggling for two years to find the right biblical approach to this, and hope that perhaps you can afford me some clarity. My husband, once a professing believer in Christ, left our three young girls and me for another woman. He divorced me a little over a year ago. Throughout this journey, I have struggled with an appropriate, God-honoring response to his ongoing sinful and hurtful behaviors toward our daughters and me. I am torn between a righteous anger and ‘tough love,’ as Jesus showed by turning tables in the temple, and an unconditional grace, as in turning the other cheek, loving my enemies, and 1 Peter 2:23. What is the biblical approach to responding to such betrayal and unrepentant sin?”

Let’s start with some things that Jesus says about forgiveness and about loving our enemies.

Full Forgiveness and Enemy Love

Forgiveness in its fullest form involves two parties, one of which has sinned against the other and is repenting and asking for forgiveness. And the other was sinned against and is graciously granting the forgiveness being sought through repentance. We see a picture of this in Luke 17:3–4: “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
So that’s a picture of the two-way street: wronging and repenting, and forgiving. And forgiveness in the fullest sense is only possible when there is that kind of repentance.

Then we ask, “Well, what’s required of us if the person who has sinned against us does not repent?” And the answer is that we are called to love our enemy. In a sense, you could call this a kind of forgiveness because forgiveness in its essence means letting something go. Don’t use it to return evil for evil or to hurt another person.

But this one-sided mercy is not forgiveness in the fullest sense. And so the New Testament has other ways of describing how we relate to people who wrong us and either don’t care (they’re just thumbing their nose at us), or they don’t think they wronged us. We call this different names. The New Testament calls it patience, long-suffering, forbearance, or enemy love.

And to be clear, when Jesus speaks of loving our enemies, he doesn’t have in mind warm feelings of admiration or approval. Instead, Jesus gives three examples — or maybe better, three explanations — in Luke 6:27–28. He says that loving our enemies involves this: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” So three things: do good, bless, pray for.

So what we’re called to do toward those who have wronged us or continue to wrong us is to wish their ultimate good — which might involve temporary pain, like prison. I mean, he’s not saying there’s no consequences for sins and crimes — it might be some discipline from the church or some justice in society. But he is saying, “Wish their ultimate good.” That’s what bless means, and that’s what we pray for. And then put that into action by doing good — that is, seeking to treat them in ways better than they deserve.

Four Objections Overcome

Now, I can think of numerous objections that might come up of why such forgiveness or love toward people who have wronged you, like this particular betraying of a husband that is so painful, why it would be so hard. Or maybe we would feel it to be even wrong to treat a person as well as Jesus says we should.

So let me address four of those objections that might arise, particularly for this wife. And I think maybe even this will even clarify what’s really involved in such a relationship of betrayal and forgiveness.

No Injustice in Eternity

Here’s the first one. It just seems unjust that, in a sense, the guilty person has gotten away with so much, a great wrong, without paying any serious price, while leaving a lot of devastation in the wake. Now, the biblical answer to that objection and that heartfelt concern is that God, in his universe, never lets anybody get away with anything — never. Nobody gets away with anything. The way we can sleep at night, knowing that it seems like someone has gotten away with murder, is this promise in Romans 12:19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

Now that’s a promise: “I will repay.” What that means is that God will settle all accounts with absolute justice, and nobody ever gets away with anything when you take all of eternity into account. When we refuse to enact vengeance ourselves, God takes up our cause and performs, eventually, everything that needs to be done so that there’s perfect justice. Therefore, we dare never say, “Well, I guess they just got away with it.” Nobody ever gets away with anything. But the burden of settling accounts is lifted. It’s lifted from us and put on God’s shoulders, who does all things well. He will settle accounts either in hell, or he has settled accounts on the cross. Nobody gets away with anything. That’s the first objection that God overcomes with this promise of justice.

Forgiveness Versus Trust

A second objection to this kind of forgiveness that feels so hard — or this enemy love — is that we simply cannot trust the person who has wronged us. Now, the answer to this objection is that forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. You can genuinely forgive while not yet trusting again.

“Forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. You can genuinely forgive while not yet trusting again.”

I don’t say this will be easy. It won’t be easy. A person might say, “You have not really forgiven me, because you’re holding this over my head in not trusting me.” But the response to that is this: “I’m not holding the guilt of past acts, or sin, or hurt over your head. I forgive you for that, and I pray God will, and I wish you well. What I am dealing with is not a past guilty act but a present concern that your character does not warrant a present trust. You may gain that trust eventually, but it has not yet been established.”

That’s my answer to the objection “It’s just too hard to trust.” And I’m saying forgiveness and trust aren’t the same.

Love and Abhorrence

A third objection to forgiveness and love that’s so hard is that the action, the wrong, was so abhorrent to your heart — that is, you still recoil inside with disgust or abhorrence toward it. Now, the answer to that objection is that genuine love and abhorrence of evil are not mutually exclusive, not even in the same heart at the same time. I’ve always been amazed at Romans 12:9, at what Paul puts back-to-back. He says this: “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil.” That’s amazing that he would put love and abhorrence next to each other in the same command, in the very same verse, back-to-back. “Let love be genuine. Abhor . . .” — it’s a big word. I mean, it’s not the word hate. It’s really emotionally a strong word in Greek.

“It is possible to bless, and pray for, and do good to a person whose destructive attitudes and actions we abhor.”

It is possible to bless, and pray for, and do good to a person whose destructive attitudes and actions we abhor. That’s my answer to the third objection.

Deep Wickedness, Glorious Forgiveness

Finally, a fourth objection might be, “Look, Pastor John, my children, who’ve been abandoned and betrayed by their dad, need to know how evil the action of their father was, and that doesn’t seem loving to him or maybe to them to tell them.” Now, I think that’s one of the hardest issues in dealing with a divorce while trying to maintain some kind of relationship between the children and both parents, especially when one of them has grievously, maybe abhorrently, sinned. So much will depend on how old the children are, and how much they can understand, and what their own spiritual maturity is.

But I would say that it is essential that the evil of the betrayal not be minimized, because in order for forgiveness to be as glorious as it is, evil must be as wicked as it is. Therefore, as the children are able, we try to make both of those clear: the evil of the sin, and the beauty of the forgiveness — because of how the Lord has forgiven us.

And so it may be that, in the end, even at one of the most painful points in the tragedy, the gospel can shine brightly in the lives of our children.

Raising small children, as any parent knows, can be a little like trying to train an unruly herd of squirrels — on a small, motorless boat, during a mild-to-severe hurricane. They’re small enough and cute enough to seem mostly harmless, but that’s what they want you to think.

I remember a day in our first several years when it was raining squirrels. That afternoon, I had gone to wake one of our children from their nap. Before my hand touched the doorknob, I smelled trouble on the other side. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill parenting smell; this was something more sinister. I opened the door to discover that a soiled diaper had quietly become a painter’s palette. No surface was safe. Quite proud of the work, the culprit stood tall in a now graffitied crib and smiled at me, as if I might consider purchasing the masterpiece.

After a bath (and 78 Clorox wipes), we settled down for dinner and family worship. The artist was quite hungry as I recall. We put the kids down for bed, prayed against any further creative endeavors, and went to sleep. A couple hours later, we woke to another distraught child who had peed the bed for the first time in months. Count it all joy, fellow parents, when you meet moisture of various kinds. After a bath (and a few less Clorox wipes), this child too was clean and back in bed again. It was a little after two o’clock in the morning.

I crawled back into bed, closed my eyes, and started inventing a preemptive snooze button. Seconds later, the painter started crying again. I took a deep breath and swung my feet out of bed. As I approached, I could smell trouble again, but not the same trouble. My child had, as kids are strangely wont to do, eaten too much, too fast, causing a digestive uprising. Cue the Clorox wipes.

As my wife, Faye, and I laid back in bed, somewhere between two and three in the morning, knowing we’d have to get up and feed the squirrels in a couple hours, we couldn’t help but laugh. Bleary-eyed and defeated, we looked at each other, smiled, and agreed, “Want to have another one?”

Children Need Us to Struggle

Every parent has stories like mine. Raising children is predictably hard in unpredictable ways. We rarely know what hard will look like tomorrow, or next week, or in five years, but we can be reasonably sure it won’t be easy.

This is obviously intentional on God’s part. He knows what our kids need most is not parents who parent relatively easily, but parents who must rely on God each day. They need to see parents of clay, regularly tiring, sinning, confessing, repenting, pleading for forgiveness, strength, and help, while still trusting and enjoying God. They need to see how we endure hard with hope in him.

Satan, however, preys on all the painful aspects of parenting. He has studied our vulnerabilities and waits to attack in our weakest moments. He makes it all seem so trivial, so unrewarding, so futile. When his temptations come (and they will come), it’s important that another voice rings louder than his in our frustrated and exhausted ears.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,     the fruit of the womb a reward.Like arrows in the hand of a warrior     are the children of one’s youth. (Psalm 127:3–4)

1. Does Parenting Feel Trivial?

This may be the loudest lie about children in our society today: There are so many bigger, more productive, more important things you could be doing than raising kids. Parenting is too small for you.

Parenting is small in many everyday ways, but it’s enormous in the ways that really matter. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord” — a gift, an inheritance, a legacy. We should pay close attention to what God calls a heritage because he claimed one for himself: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!” (Psalm 33:12). We are his heritage — “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). And children — biological, adopted, or spiritual — are our heritage.

Whenever God gives a child, he’s entrusting us with a precious and eternal heritage — a new life that will never end, and that, Lord willing, will grow to change and shape the world in all kinds of ways (maybe even having children of their own). Their impact on eternity will easily outweigh whatever work the world holds up as more meaningful and consequential.

2. Does Parenting Feel Futile?

Maybe parenting doesn’t feel small at all; maybe it feels big and overwhelming and, at times, demoralizing. She’s still not potty-trained. He still won’t sit still. She throws her food on the ground nearly every meal. He throws a fit whenever mom says no. They still can’t play together for three minutes without fighting. Is anything I’m doing making a difference? Am I doing more harm than good? Is all this effort just a colossal failure?

“In God’s eyes, children are some of the most effective weapons for the most important battles.”

Kids can make life feel like a sack race through a thick forest. That’s what we see and feel (and often smell). But what does God say? “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.” From the high ground of heaven, we see that children are not distractions from the war or weights around our ankles; they’re sharpened shafts of victory waiting to be unleashed for good. In God’s eyes, children are some of the most effective weapons for the most important battles. That’s why, when God made the world and put that first man and woman to work, he didn’t say find a career or build a business, but, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

Fill the earth with what? With faithful, wise, joyful arrows. Nothing could be more spiritually effective or significant than having children and preparing them well for eternity.

3. Does Parenting Feel Unrewarding?

Parenting can feel, at times, like all cross and no reward. Our sin says, What am I getting out of all this work and sacrifice and dirty laundry? What do I have to show for all I’ve given? The Lord says, “Behold” — look! — “children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” — a prize, an honor, a bounty. Children are the reward for having children.

“Children are the reward for having children.”

We miss the reward in raising children when we start looking for the reward somewhere other than children. We want efficiency. We want accomplishment. We want a salary. We want recognition. Instead, God gives us eternal souls to steward and shepherd. He doesn’t reward us according to the desires of our fallen, misguided, restless, earthly hearts; he rewards us according to reality. While millions are feverishly building towers that will crumble and fall in a generation, the wise are receiving and raising souls who will live forever.

When your career has come to a close, would you trade any amount of success or fame for even just one of those souls? The reward may seem small when you’re drowning in bottles and diapers, but, like our babies, it won’t seem small for long.

Blessed Is This Man

As I write, we’re waiting to meet another arrow in a matter of days, the third in our filling quiver. He elbows me when I hold Faye’s belly (I assume out of an already budding and abiding affection). As we’ve prayed for him, it’s dawned on me, with greater and greater meaning and joy, that he’ll be our first to be born in a post-Roe America. His life will be something of a memorial to a long and awful regime of death. Maybe abortion will become unthinkable in his lifetime.

We don’t know how many lives will be saved by the Dobbs decision, but we can rejoice that abortion will be that much more difficult for many. Having a baby seems like one especially fitting way to celebrate. Despite what our society has screamed for decades, it’s a deeply happy thing to have a baby:

Blessed is the man     who fills his quiver with them!He shall not be put to shame     when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127:5)

This happiness isn’t light and fragile like worldly happiness. Children sweeten a father’s life and work, for sure, but they also arm him to keep living and working and loving. They give him a more durable and resilient joy. Those who oppose him can’t upset him as easily or take advantage of him anymore. Satan himself shudders before our sons and daughters. After all, he knows just how much good a child can do.

So, when the hours of sleep are few and the number of diapers and Clorox wipes great, remember what God says about parenting. Learn to love and rejoice in your children like he loves and rejoices in you.