What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

What is the difference between patriarchy and complementarity — and which is the better term for capturing the full vision of Christian manhood and womanhood? Most complementarians steadfastly avoid the word patriarchy, wanting to distance themselves from any associations with oppression and prejudice. On the other hand, critics of complementarianism are eager to saddle their opponents with the charge of defending patriarchy. The terms often function as a way of communicating, “I’m not that kind of conservative Christian” — to which the reply is, “Oh yes, you are!” So what is the most accurate term for those who want to recapture a lost vision of sexual differentiation and order?

Defining, to everyone’s satisfaction, terms like patriarchy and complementarity is nearly impossible. I’ll do some definitional work in a moment, but I don’t want this article to become a tedious, academic inquiry into the usage and history of these terms. I also don’t want to define the terms so that complementarity becomes a convenient gloss for “good male leadership” and patriarchy ends up meaning “bad male leadership.” To be sure, that distinction isn’t totally misguided, but if that’s all I said, my argument would be entirely predictable.

And a bit superficial. As I’ll argue in a moment, there is nothing to be gained by Christians reclaiming the term patriarchy in itself. In fact, reclaim is not even the right word, because I’m not sure Christians have ever argued for something called “patriarchy.” Complementarity is a better, safer term, with fewer negative connotations (though that is quickly changing). I’ve described myself as a complementarian hundreds of times; I’ve never called myself a patriarchalist.

Yet there is something in the broader idea of patriarchy — no matter how sinister the word itself has become — that is worth claiming. If the vision of male-female complementarity is to be more than a seemingly arbitrary commitment to men leading in the home and being pastors in the church, we cannot settle for a proper interpretation of 1 Timothy 2. Of course, careful exegesis is absolutely critical. But we need more than the right conclusions. We need to help people see that our exegetical conclusions do not just fit with the best hermeneutical principles; they fit with the way the world is and the way God made men and women.

Complementarity and Patriarchy

The idea of complementarity — that men and women were designed with a special fittedness, each for the other — is not new. The term complementarianism, however, is relatively recent. In their seminal 1991 work Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John Piper and Wayne Grudem deliberately termed their recovery mission “a vision of biblical ‘complementarity’” because they wanted to both correct the “selfish and hurtful practices” of the traditionalist view and avoid the opposite mistakes coming from evangelical feminists (14).

No one committed to intellectual honesty and fairness should treat traditionalist, hierarchicalist, or patriarchalist as synonyms for complementarianism. In coining the term complementarian, Piper and Grudem explicitly rejected the first two terms, while the third term (patriarchalist or patriarchy or patriarchal) is never used in a positive sense in the book. “If one word must be used to describe our position,” they wrote, “we prefer the term complementarian, since it suggests both equality and beneficial differences between men and women” (14). Thirty years later, this vision of complementarity is still worth carefully defining and gladly defending.

The term patriarchy is much harder to define. Strictly speaking, patriarchy is simply the Greek word meaning “father rule.” There is nothing in its etymology to make the term an epithet of abuse. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are often called “the patriarchs” (Romans 9:5, for example). The spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church is the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In a generic sense, every Christian believes in patriarchy because we affirm the rule and authority of God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Despite these positive associations, as a sociological and historical category, patriarchy is almost always used in a pejorative sense. Here, for example, is the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry on patriarchy.

Patriarchy is an institutionalized social system in which men dominate over others, but can also refer to dominance over women specifically; it can also extend to a variety of manifestations in which men have social privileges over others to cause exploitation or oppression, such as through male dominance of moral authority and control of property.

In this one (long) sentence, we have a host of pejorative words: dominate, dominance (2x), exploitation, and oppression. No one is expected to read this definition and think of patriarchy as something good, or even something that could possibly be good.

In a recent longform article in The Guardian, Charlotte Higgins argues that at its simplest, patriarchy “conveys the existence of a societal structure of male supremacy that operates at the expense of women.” Higgins admits the patriarchy is virtually dead as an academic idea — too blunt and monolithic a concept to be useful — but in popular usage the term has experienced an unprecedented revival, one Higgins supports. “Only ‘patriarchy’ seems to capture the peculiar elusiveness of gendered power,” she writes. Higgins’s street-level definition is helpful insofar as it reveals that for most people, including most Christians (I suspect), patriarchy is shorthand for all the ways our world promotes male supremacy and encourages female oppression.

If that’s patriarchy, the world can have it. It’s not a term you’ll find in Christian confessional statements from the past. It’s not a term you’ll find employed frequently (or at all) in the tradition of the church as it defends biblical views of the family, the church, and society. As a conservative, Reformed, evangelical Christian, I applaud the vision of “equality with beneficial differences” and stand resolutely opposed to all forms of domination, exploitation, and oppression.

Cost of Dismantling Patriarchy

Why not end the article right here? Complementarianism is good; patriarchy is bad. Case closed. Enough said, right?

Not quite. We should be careful not to banish patriarchy to the ash heap of history too quickly. For starters, we should question the notion that patriarchy equals oppression. In his book Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe, Steven Ozment argues that family life, even in the patriarchal past, is not wholly different from our own age. Parents loved their children, husbands performed household duties, and most women preferred marriage and homemaking to other arrangements.

History is complex and rarely allows for meta-theories and monocausal explanations. If women had fewer opportunities and rights in the past (almost everyone had fewer opportunities and fewer rights), women also lived enmeshed in stronger communities, and their roles as wife and mother were more highly honored. Accounting for differences in economic prosperity, it is entirely debatable (and, perhaps, ultimately unknowable) whether women are happier in the present than they were in the past. As Ozment puts it, “For every historian who believes that the modern family is a recent, superior evolution, there is another who is ready to expose it as a fallen archetype” (45).

Second, we should question the unstated assumptions that hold together the pejorative understanding of patriarchy. If sexual differentiation, subordination, and role distinctions are prima facie evidence of exploitation, then patriarchy, of any sort at any point in history, is going to be undesirable. Writing over forty years ago, Stephen B. Clark noted that feminist social scientists “apply liberally such terms as ‘dominance,’ ‘oppression,’ ‘repression,’ ‘inferiority,’ and ‘subservience’ to men’s and women’s roles.” These terms did not come from dispassionate historical observation. As Clark puts it, “This terminology, based on a political power model of social analysis derived from modern political ideologies, is designed to make all social role differences appear repulsive” (Man and Woman in Christ, 475).

The rhetorical deck has been stacked. To defend patriarchy, as presently and popularly understood, is to defend the indefensible. And yet, most complementarians do not realize that in rejecting patriarchy, they have, according to the contemporary rules of the game, rejected the very reality they thought they could reclaim by an appeal to complementarity.

Most importantly, and along the lines of the last point, we should be careful that in dismantling patriarchy we don’t end up kicking out the cultural ladder from underneath us and then hoping that people can reach the right conclusions by jumping to extraordinary heights.

One of my great concerns — which, sadly, seems to be coming more and more true with each passing year — is that complementarianism, for many Christians, amounts to little more than a couple of narrow conclusions about wives submitting to husbands in the home and ordination in the church being reserved for men. If that’s all we have in our vision for men and women, it’s not a vision we will hold on to for long. We need to help church members (especially the younger generations) see that God didn’t create the world with one or two arbitrary commands called “complementarianism” to test our obedience in the home and in the church. God created the world with sexual differentiation at the heart of what it means to be human beings made in his image. We cannot understand the created order as we should until we understand that God made us male and female.

Like and Unlike Adam

The creation story is so familiar to most of us that we overlook the obvious. God could have created human beings to reproduce on their own. God could have created every subsequent human being out of the ground, just as he created Adam. God could have created a group of male companions to hang out in Adam’s man cave so that Adam wouldn’t be alone. God could have given Adam a golden retriever or a gaggle of little Adams to keep him company.

But God created Eve. God made someone from Adam to be like Adam, and God made that same someone from Adam to be unlike Adam. According to God’s biological design, only Eve (not another Adam) was a suitable helper because only Eve (together with Adam) could obey the creation mandate. That’s why she was “a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). Only as a complementarian pair could Adam and Eve fill the earth and subdue it. Different languages and cultures and peoples will come later in Genesis — and these differences will be, in part, because of sin (Genesis 11). But the differences between men and women were God’s idea from the beginning. To ignore, minimize, or repudiate the differences between men and women is to reject our creational design and the God who designed it.

“To ignore, minimize, or repudiate the differences between men and women is to reject our creational design.”

At the level of common sense, most people know to be true what social-science research and biology tell us is true: sex differences are real and they matter. There is a reason that humor regarding men and women has often been a staple of comedy — whether in sitcoms, in standup, or in informal conversation. Most people know by intuition and by experience that a host of patterns and stereotypes are generally true of men and women.

In his book Taking Sex Difference Seriously, Steven Rhoades argues that traditional patterns of male initiative and female domesticity have been constant throughout history because the most fundamental human passions — sex, nurturing, and aggression — manifest themselves differently in men and women (5). One-day-old female infants, for example, respond more strongly to the sound of a human in distress than one-day-old male infants. Unlike their male counterparts, one-week-old baby girls can distinguish an infant’s cry from other noise (25).

According to Leonard Sax, a medical doctor and PhD, no amount of nurture can change the nature of our sexual differentiation. In his book Why Gender Matters, he writes that girls can see better, hear better, and smell better than boys. Conversely, boys are hardwired to be more aggressive, to take more risks, and to be drawn to violent stories.

Sax — who is not a Christian (that I can tell) or even particularly conservative when it comes to insisting on traditional moral behavior — criticizes those who think sex differences are simply the result of prejudice. Sax chides gender theorist Judith Butler and her followers for showing no awareness of sex differences in vision, sex differences in hearing, sex differences in risk-taking, or sex differences in sex itself (283).

Moreover, these differences cannot be laid at the feet of environment and social engineering. “The biggest sex differences in expression of genes in the human brain occurs not in adulthood, nor in puberty, but in the prenatal period before the baby is born” (208). Or as Moses put it, “Male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Embracing Reality

Everyone can see that, on average, men are taller and physically stronger than women. Most everyone agrees that men and women have occupied different roles in the home, in religion, and in the world for most (if not all) of human history. Virtually everyone would also agree that boys and girls don’t play the same or develop in the same ways. And nearly everyone would agree that men and women — taken as a whole — tend to form friendships differently, talk to their peers differently, and manifest different instincts related to children, sex, and career. Almost everyone sees these things.

What we don’t see in the same way is how to interpret these phenomena. The question is whether we view these distinctions as reflecting innate differences between men and women — differences not to be exploited or eradicated — or whether the distinctions we see are the result of centuries of oppression and ongoing prejudice. This brief article is written in hope that Christians might consider the former to be truer than latter.

In 1973, Steven Goldberg published The Inevitability of Patriarchy, a book he claims was listed as a world record in Guinness for the book rejected by the most publishers before final acceptance (69 rejections by 55 publishers). Building off that earlier work, Goldberg released Why Men Rule in 1993, arguing that given the physiological differentiation between the sexes, men have always occupied the overwhelming number of high-status positions and roles in every society (44). In other words, patriarchy is inevitable. Decades later, Rhoades said the same thing: “Matriarchies — societies where women have more political, economic and social power than men — do not exist; in fact, there is no evidence that they have ever existed” (Taking Sex Differences Seriously, 151).

We are told that dismantling patriarchy is one of the chief concerns of our time. Surely, Voltaire’s battle cry Écrasez l’infâme! (Crush the infamy!) is no less suitable for the ancient regime of father rule. Except that where patriarchy is already absent, dysfunction and desperation have multiplied. That’s because patriarchy, rightly conceived, is not about the subjugation of women as much as it is about the subjugation of the male aggression and male irresponsibility that runs wild when women are forced to be in charge because the men are nowhere to be found. What school or church or city center or rural hamlet is better off when fathers no longer rule? Where communities of women and children can no longer depend upon men to protect and provide, the result is not freedom and independence. Fifty years of social science research confirms what common sense and natural law never forgot: as go the men, so goes the health of families and neighborhoods. The choice is not between patriarchy and enlightened democracy, but between patriarchy and anarchy.

Observations like these sound offensive to almost everyone, but they don’t have to be. If patriarchy (as a descriptive rather than a pejorative term) reflects innate differences between the sexes, then we would do well to embrace what is — while fighting the natural effects of sin in the way things are — rather than pursuing what never will be. You can sand a piece of wood in any direction you like, but the experience will be more enjoyable — and the end product more beautiful — if you go with the grain. As Goldberg puts it, “If [a woman] believes that it is preferable to have her sex associated with authority and leadership rather than with the creation of life, then she is doomed to perpetual disappointment” (Why Men Rule, 32).

“Women were made to be women, not a different kind of man.”

Women were made to be women, not a different kind of man. The stubborn fact of nature, almost never mentioned, is that men cannot do the one thing most necessary and most miraculous in our existence: they will not nurture life in the womb; they will not give birth to the propagation of the species; they will not nurse an infant from their own flesh.

Deep down, men are aware of these limitations of manhood, which is why they feel the urge to protect women and children and why in every society, Goldberg writes, “they look to women for gentleness, kindness, and love, for refuge from a world of pain and force, for safety from their own excesses” (229). When a woman sacrifices all this to meet men on male terms, it is to everyone’s detriment, especially her own. Men and women are not the same, and if we want to acknowledge that in the home and in the church, we need to acknowledge it in all of life and in all of history. The biblical vision of complementarity cannot be true without something like patriarchy also being true.

In most cases, cruelty — not wisdom — would have told them to cut the baby in two. How many kings in history would have had the sword brought, not to draw out the true mother, but to violently end the matter? Who would have imagined that thousands of years later, we’d still hold up such a brutal scene as a beautiful model to imitate — as a masterclass in conflict resolution?

Two women came to King Solomon, like so many others, to settle a dispute. They were both prostitutes, so deciding whom to trust wouldn’t be easy. Both had recently given birth to sons, within just a few days of each other. One boy was now dead because of a horrible accident. His mother woke to find she had smothered him while the two were sleeping. Can you imagine the horror when she realized what she had done?

Desperate, she added horror to horror. She took the living son from her roommate’s breast, and laid the cold body of her carelessness there instead. She stirred the heavy storm of guilt into a hurricane. When the other woman woke up, she found the child at her side was dead. After examining the baby more closely, though, she discovered what evil had happened (like any mother would). But how could she prove it? She couldn’t; they “were alone” (1 Kings 3:18). So the two went to court, both declaring, “The living child is mine, and the dead child is yours” (1 Kings 3:22).

We know what the king does next — the jarring way he uncovers the truth. Who would have guessed he’d threaten to have the child cut in two? When Israel heard of the judgment Solomon rendered, they stood in awe of him, perceiving that the Spirit of God was in him (1 Kings 3:28). Can you explain, however, why he was wise to reach for a sword?

Needful Conflict

We might say Solomon was wise because it worked. The true mother proved herself by pleading that the boy be spared, even if that meant he would be raised by another woman (1 Kings 3:26). Likewise, the selfish response of the other woman exposed her treachery. That it worked, however, doesn’t explain why the king was wise (only that he was). Surely the same strategy would have failed in lots of other crises.

What made Solomon wise, in this case, was that he knew to lean into the conflict between them to prove who was who. He pressed on the sensitive issue at hand until each woman revealed what kind of woman she really was. The apostle Paul offers a similar piece of wisdom to the church when he writes,

When you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. (1 Corinthians 11:18–19)

There must be factions among you. In other words, some conflict is necessary for churches to remain healthy. Why? Like Solomon with the prostitutes: to prove who is who. Who’s really here to worship, obey, and enjoy King Jesus — and who’s here for some other reason?

Isn’t Division Bad?

Aren’t all divisions in the church to be avoided, though? After all, the apostle himself says (earlier in the same letter, even),

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)

I appeal to you that there be no divisions among you — not some or few, but none. And then later in the same letter (just a few verses after chapter 11, in fact),

God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. (1 Corinthians 12:24–25)

So God himself has built the body in such a way as to avoid and remove all division. Elsewhere, Paul calls division a “work of the flesh” (Galatians 5:19–20). He says to those who cause and stoke such conflict, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21).

How then could he possible say, “There must be divisions among you”? The answer lies in the rest of the verse: “There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1 Corinthians 11:18–19). To prove who in the church is really the church. The conflict that inevitably comes in the life of any church serves to confirm and refine those who are really his. In this way, like so many thorns we suffer, it’s both an awful consequence of sin and a precious instrument of mercy.

What Does Division Prove?

But how would division in a church prove anything good about anyone? In the way the sword did for the mothers. It drew coldhearted selfishness out of the grieving woman, and warm-hearted selflessness out of the other. This is what conflict does: it draws out whatever’s inside of us — for better or worse. This is true in churches, in marriages, in friendships, in any relationship. The fires of strife will make those enslaved to sin act all the more sinfully, and those captive to grace act all the more graciously. This makes division a revealer and a purifier.

“This is what conflict does: it draws out whatever’s inside of us — for better or worse.”

What sets the godly apart in these divisions? A few verses after Paul warns us about the weeds of divisiveness, he tells us what grows in gardens watered by the Spirit: love, not loathing; joy, not grumbling; peace, not agitation; patience, not irritability; kindness, not cruelty; goodness, not corruption; faithfulness, not flakiness; gentleness, not harshness; self-control, not indulgence (Galatians 5:22–23).

And the presence (or absence) of any of these qualities is felt more acutely in conflict, isn’t it? We may not really notice love or peace until they’re surprising. We may not appreciate someone’s patience until we expected them to be impatient, their kindness until we expected them to be harsh, their faithfulness until we expected them to give up and walk away. Division harvests whatever has been growing within us, whether good or bad, and displays it for others to see.

Preciousness of Genuineness

We need to see what conflict reveals (“there must be factions among you”). Sometimes, we’ll discover that someone we thought was genuine was not. Even this is a mercy, though, because it allows us to lovingly confront that person and call them to believe and repent. If someone has been captured by sin, and no one around him knows, how will he be set free? How will he taste the grace he can only pretend to know? Conflict will draw sin out of all of us that we can help one another put to death (Hebrews 3:12–13).

But conflict will also uncover secret beauty. It will prove the genuineness of the genuine — the hidden holiness we may not always notice in one another. Isn’t God kind to give us glimpses of the good he’s doing in us? This is why followers of Jesus can rejoice even in the midst of our trials:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials [could this have included relational conflict within the church (see 1 Peter 1:22; 3:8; 4:8)?] so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6–7)

Why has God allowed for conflict in the church? In part, so that we might see the gold he’s beautifying within her. How dull might the gold of genuine faith seem without a fire to refine and illuminate it?

Factions Can Strengthen Families

Over time, division in healthy churches produces unity, not division. Don’t let the good fruit of conflict silence the apostle’s clear charge: “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.” Christians don’t aim for conflict; we aim for agreement and harmony in Christ. We can’t let the usefulness of divisions make any of us divisive.

“Over time, division in healthy churches produces unity, not division.”

After all, Paul’s comment — “there must be factions among you” — comes clothed in a vision for togetherness. He’s writing about the Lord’s table (1 Corinthians 11:33–34). There is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Table — so put away whatever is separating those that God has joined together.

Factions will come, and they must, but they come as catalysts to a deeper, more meaningful sense of family. So as far as it depends on us, let’s pursue togetherness in the truth — and receive church conflict as an invitation to explore and experience more of the oneness we have in Christ.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back this Monday morning. We begin our new week together asking whether we should encourage non-Christians to pray for faith. Or is a faithless prayer like that basically pointless? Here’s the question: “Dear Pastor John, my name is Jeff, a PhD student in Los Angeles. My question is about faith. Many times, I have been evangelizing my friends and they say that they admire my faith, but they don’t possess faith like mine. They have difficulty believing themselves. I always tell them that God generously supplies faith, and it’s not something I mustered up myself. I might show them 1 Peter 1:3: ‘He [God] . . . caused us to be born again.’ Or 1 Corinthians 2:11–14: ‘We received the Spirit . . . that we might understand.’ What should I tell someone who realizes that God gives us faith, but who feels stuck, waiting for God to give them that faith? The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God until they’ve been given the Spirit. Or should a faithless person not pray at all? Do they simply wait until God may (or may not) give his Spirit?”

Well, first let me agree with Jeff that saving faith is humanly impossible. The fallen, sinful, spiritually dead human soul does not have the moral ability to believe. They have the mental powers, they have the powers of volition, but the heart is so bent away from God, it cannot make itself prefer God. You can’t make yourself love God; you can’t make yourself treasure God; you can’t make yourself rely upon God if you are dead and bent away from God.

Dead, Blind, Unable

When the rich young man turned away from Jesus and refused to follow him, in love with his money, Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of [heaven].” And his disciples threw up their hands and said, “Well, who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:24–25). And Jesus didn’t respond by saying, “Oh, you overinterpreted my words.” He didn’t say that. He said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

And Paul underscored this condition of the natural human heart with the words, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to [he cannot] understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). In Romans 8:7, he said, “The mind of the flesh [that is the natural mind, the unregenerate, unconverted, non-born-again mind] is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” Or again, Ephesians 2:5, “We were dead in our trespasses” — and that’s how God found us and made us alive.

That deadness included a blindness to the glory of Christ: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Christ does not look glorious or supremely valuable or desirable to the fallen human heart. A new birth is needed, a spiritual resurrection.

God Does the Impossible

Yet the command remains for unbelievers to believe. God has the right to require from humans what they ought to render to him, even if sin has made that rendering humanly impossible. We are responsible to do what we ought to do, even if we are so bad we won’t — and thus can’t — do it.

For example, in Acts 16:30–31, the jailer cried out, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they say, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” And Paul isn’t the first to command the impossible. Ezekiel looked out on a field of dry bones and prophesied, “Hey, dry bones, live.” And they did (Ezekiel 37:4–6). Jesus did the same in John 11 with Lazarus. He spoke to a dead man, “Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43). And he did.

“Human evangelism is indispensable in the miracle God works to raise the spiritually dead and give them saving faith.”

And Jesus sends us — he sent Paul and us — out to do the same impossible thing. He said in Acts 26:17–18, “I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.” Human evangelism is indispensable in the miracle that God works to raise the spiritually dead and give them saving faith. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Humans plant; humans water — absolutely essential. And God does the impossible — he gives life.

And the reason faith is impossible for spiritually dead sinners is not that spiritually dead sinners can’t make decisions, but that faith is more than a decision. Saving faith is a treasuring faith, a treasuring trust. Faith involves seeing Christ not just as useful for getting out of hell or getting well or getting rich. Saving faith sees Christ as glorious — better than any other treasure in the world. That’s why faith is not possible for sin-loving, self-exalting humans, unless they are born again. We must be born again.

Born Again by the Word

But Peter says — and now we’re getting close to the issue that was raised — Peter says the miracle of the new birth comes by the word. In other words, alongside 1 Peter 1:3, which Jeff quotes — “[God] . . . caused us to be born again” — we must put 1 Peter 1:23–25:

You have been born again . . . through the living and abiding word of God. For “all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

Now that implies two things in answer to Jeff’s question about what to say to an unbeliever who listens to all of this and feels paralyzed, as if the only thing he can do is simply wait — like lie in bed, sit in a chair, and wait — for a gift of faith.

The first thing it implies is that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17 NKJV) — or to use Peter’s words, new birth comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Therefore, the absolutely key thing to say to the unbeliever is, “Keep reading the word of God. Keep listening on your app to the word of God. Keep pondering the word of God. Don’t be passive. Here’s a book. Read it. Be greedy, greedy, greedy for understanding the word — as greedy as you are for silver and gold.”

This is how faith is sustained for believers; this is how faith comes into being and is awakened for unbelievers: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” New birth comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Keep exposing yourself to the word of God in whatever way you can. And believer, keep putting it forward.

“Keep exposing yourself to the word of God in whatever way you can.”

The other thing implied in 1 Peter 1 is that we should encourage the unbeliever to call out to God for eyes to see and ears to hear and a mind to understand. Remember the man who cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief” in Mark 9:24? I think he could have said, “O God, help my unbelief!” In the Old Testament, several times we are taught that those who feel unable — in other words, paralyzed, trapped in their own inability, in their own sin — to return to God should cry out. This is an exact quote from Lamentations 5:21: “Cause me to return, and I will return, O God.” Isn’t that an amazing prayer? “Cause me to return, and I will return. Enable me, and I will be able. Make me come, and I will come. Do whatever it takes, God.” So we encourage the unbeliever to pray.

Christ in Our Concern

Besides keeping the word before unbelievers and encouraging them to pray, I would mention one more thing. Keep leaning in to their lives personally with care. Keep communicating, not to make yourself a nuisance — you need spiritual discernment to know when that’s happening — but to show them that you really do want them to believe and be saved, to be your everlasting brother or sister with God forever in joy. Just as God may open their eyes to see the glory of Christ in the gospel, he may also open their eyes to see the love of Christ in your concern.

When I was a kid in the seventies, we often sang a song at church events and camps with this lyric:

We are one in the Spirit;We are one in the Lord.And we pray that all unity will one day be restored;And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

I remember thinking it was a bit corny; then as a teenager, I blew it off as clichéd as well as stylistically dated. But looking back now, I can see this lyric is actually quite profound, reflecting in simple words the sophisticated theology of Christian unity.

It’s a strange logic: in Christ, we’re already one, but we’re not yet one, so we must strive to achieve, maintain, or restore our oneness, until we finally attain our perfect, eternal oneness.

Strange Logic of Heaven

What makes this unity logic strange is that it begins with the assertion that we’re already one — otherwise, it follows a natural logical progression. But that’s just the thing: this logic is not natural; it’s supernatural. It’s the logic of heaven.

And it isn’t applied only to unity. We see this logic throughout the New Testament. The kingdom of God has come (Luke 17:20–21), and at the same time the kingdom of God is in the process of coming (Matthew 16:28). Christians have “been saved” (Ephesians 2:8), and at the same time we are in the process of “being saved” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Christians “have been sanctified” (Hebrews 10:10), and at the same time we are in the process of “being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

“In this era, our status as redeemed saints is complete, but our experience of redemption is partial.”

So, when it comes to Christian unity, it shouldn’t surprise us that we’re told we “are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28), while at the same time becoming one (Ephesians 4:13). This logic reflects the nature of this awkward age between the inauguration and the consummation of Christ’s kingdom, which Christian theologians call the era of the already–not yet. In this era, our status as redeemed saints is complete, but our experience of redemption is partial. We are becoming what we are.

But as strange as this heavenly logic might sound, it makes very practical sense in our day-to-day lives as Christians. Here’s how.

‘Already’ Fuels ‘Not Yet’

God’s inexpressible gift of salvation in Christ is something we inherit from our Father as his adopted children (Ephesians 1:5, 11). But this inherited gift has a participatory dimension:

Our justification (Romans 3:23–25) and the faith to receive it are given to us by God as a free (inherited) gift of his grace, and
the evidence that this grace-gift is at work in us comes through our (participatory) “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5).

It’s the participatory dimension of our inherited gift of salvation (and countless facets of this gift, like Christian unity) that explains the New Testament’s teaching on grace and works. The New Testament teaches that we are saved by God’s grace alone (Ephesians 2:8–9), and that works are necessary to our salvation (James 2:24). This can sound like a contradiction, but it’s not. Our works are not necessary in the causal sense — we don’t merit salvation by our works. Our works are necessary in the evidential sense — the fruit of works organically grows on branches that by faith abide in the “true vine” (John 15:1, 5).

This is the new-covenant reality of “by grace through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). We are saved by grace alone through the gift of faith alone, and the observable evidence that we are heirs of God’s gracious gift of salvation is manifest through our “work[s] of faith and labor[s] of love” (1 Thessalonians 1:3) — our obedience of faith. That’s what Jesus was getting at when he said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And it’s what his brother, James, was getting at when he said, “I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18).

Now, here’s how heaven’s already–not yet logic works as it pertains to our inherited oneness as Christians. Believing that we’re already one fuels our faith in God’s promise that, ultimately, we will be perfectly one. And it fuels our hope that all the obedient works of faith and labors of love to achieve, maintain, or restore our unity in this partial age — as discouraging and futile as they might appear to us at times — are not in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Our Duty: Tenacious Grace

Paul employs this heavenly logic when he urges the Ephesians (and us) to pursue unity in the opening verses of Ephesians 4:

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. (Ephesians 4:1–4)

Christian unity is part of the inherited gift we receive when God, by his free, sovereign choice in election (Ephesians 1:4–6), calls us into the body of Christ. But it is also our participatory duty to “maintain the unity of the Spirit” as part of this gift of God’s calling.

To get some idea of the demanding nature of this duty, this obedience of faith, we just need to consider the little word all in Ephesians 4:2. We must bear with one another “with all humility and gentleness.” When was the last time you truly felt eager to maintain unity in a situation that required you to exercise all humility or all gentleness — in other words, in the middle of a significant, frustrating disagreement? Yeah, me too.

“This is love with rebar in its resolve; this is love with a spine of steel.”

This is nothing less than a call to tenacious grace and Calvary love. What happened on Calvary? Death. Voluntary death. Voluntary death for the sake of love. Voluntary death for the sake of love on behalf of those who don’t deserve that kind of love. This is love with rebar in its resolve; this is love with a spine of steel.

When Jesus commanded us to love one another just as he has loved us (John 13:34), this was the kind of love he was talking about.

By Our Love

That old chorus we used to sing fifty years ago ended on a convicting refrain: “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” It’s a close paraphrase of Jesus’s words in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This might be a good time to bring that old chorus back.

Repeat that refrain a few times together as a church and, if the Spirit moves among us, it will provoke some hard questions. Especially when we think of how Jesus longed and prayed for our unity:

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:20–21)

It requires the self-sacrificial love of tenacious grace to die to our own remaining sin and graciously bear with the remaining sin in other saints. But it’s this love that bears witness that we are followers of the One who laid his life down for his friends (John 15:13).

This unity is our inheritance in Christ. We are already one. Believing this fuels our faith in God’s promise that, ultimately, we will be perfectly one. And it will fuel all the obedient works of faith and labors of love that achieve, maintain, or restore our unity in this partial age. But we can’t do it alone. We need the Helper (John 14:26). For the love it requires to maintain the unity of the Spirit comes from the Spirit of unity himself.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15434495/the-ongoing-miracle-of-gods-calling

A few months into our marriage, it dawned on me: I was unprepared, as though I had studied for the wrong exam. Before our wedding, I had thought daily devotions, church and small group, and premarital counseling would sufficiently prepare me to be a godly husband. They did not.

After a short season of bliss, we began to struggle and argue. So much, in fact, that our counselor literally sat between us and warned us we were in danger of fulfilling Galatians 5:15: “If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”

My lack of preparation showed up in other ways too. I didn’t understand how to lead my wife spiritually, bring up hard conversations, or help us reconcile after an argument. My status as a seminary student and pastoral intern added layers of shame. Worst of all, I had no idea how to make our marriage better.

I now know that we were not alone in our experience. My wife and I have walked with many Christian women who are deeply frustrated by the relative lack of marriage-ready Christian men, as well as with many Christian men who either don’t know they need to prepare or have no idea how. If I could go back and give my younger, not-yet-married self some advice, I’d tell him men need a good plan as they prepare for marriage. More specifically, I’d tell him to pursue God above all else and work on growing as a leader, provider, and protector.

Pursue God Above All Else

Preparing well for marriage begins with regular encounters with God — seeing him in Scripture for who he is in all his glory, greatness, and grace. No matter how many times we’ve read through the Bible, we need to be continually captivated by God again and again. “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3). Similarly, the apostle Paul urges us to follow his example and “count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

“Preparing well for marriage begins with regular encounters with God.”

As C.S. Lewis famously phrased it, God invites us to “come further up and further in.” An ever-expanding view of God is worth more than a million tips and hacks for marriage. Most of us, however, have had the experience of reading our Bibles and feeling cold and unmoved. Therefore, we meditate on the Bible, slowing down to think about and pray over what we read. When we do, God often brings a new sweetness to our souls. As Psalm 1:1 says, “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

In our distracted age, meditation will be a battle. But we can strive to read our Bibles during our best discretionary time, the time when we are most rested and unhurried. For many of us, this will be first thing in the morning. Before you begin reading, ask God to make something glorious stand out to you. “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). When he answers that prayer, slow down and feast.

Lead, Provide, and Protect

Preparing well for marriage begins with pursuing God, but it certainly doesn’t end there. Pursuing God provides the strength and fuel men need to keep growing into God’s calling as leaders, providers, and protectors.

“Pursuing God provides the strength and fuel men need to keep growing into God’s calling.”

God clearly calls men, not just husbands, to these kinds of responsibilities in Scripture. While marriage radically narrows and heightens the responsibilities of leading, providing, and protecting, it does not create them. Before Eve’s creation or the fall, God established Adam as a leader by creating him first, as a provider by commanding him to “work and keep” the garden (Genesis 2:15), and as a protector by commanding him to avoid the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). Every man can practice and grow into these callings now, even before he gets married. In particular, the church is an especially good place for a young man to cultivate the kind of responsibility and initiative that will be required of him in marriage.

So what are ways for single men to learn to lead, provide, and protect within the church?

1. Grow As a Leader

As a husband, a man will be tasked with sacrificially leading his wife (Ephesians 5:22). God will call him to become the kind of Christlike leader a godly woman can follow wholeheartedly, even as the church follows Christ. Paul says, “The husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior” (Ephesians 5:23).

Practically, men can grow into this kind of sacrificial leadership by cultivating humble initiative. As both Lion and Lamb (Revelation 5:5–6), Jesus embodies both strength and humility. While Christian men are being renewed, we are still drawn toward arrogant initiative (like Joab in 2 Samuel 3:26–27) or selfish passivity (like Adam in Genesis 3:6). With the help of others, we can see our own particular tendencies, repent, and seek grace to grow in concrete ways. For instance, a man characterized by pride might invite trusted friends to plainly point out selfishness they observe. A man who leans toward selfish passivity might take the initiative to greet people sitting alone at church, rather than merely moving toward those he already knows.

2. Grow As a Provider

As a husband, a man will be called to another form of leadership: primary provision for his family. Paul makes this plain in Ephesians 5:28–29: “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.” Just as a man provides for his own needs, God calls him to provide for his wife. This does not mean the husband will be the home’s only breadwinner, or even that he will necessarily earn more than his wife. It simply means he will take ultimate responsibility to ensure his family’s physical and spiritual needs are met.

Unmarried men can begin applying this by working hard for the right reasons (Proverbs 14:23; Colossians 3:23–24). Are we essentially working to fund hobbies, experiences, and vacations? Or, believing God has called us to meaningful work, are we actively, tangibly using it to love him and others?

3. Grow As a Protector

In marriage, God calls men to accept danger, as necessary, to protect their wives, a third critical dimension of a husband’s calling. Jesus set the ultimate example for men by giving up his life on the cross for his bride’s sanctification (Ephesians 5:25), thereby protecting us from God’s eternal judgment (John 3:36). This does not mean men are fearless or more courageous than their wives. Instead, it involves a willingness, like Jesus in Gethsemane (Luke 22:40), to protect others even if we’re afraid ourselves.

Christian men will not need to search very far for opportunities to practice protection. We are surrounded by injustice and people at risk. It’s easy — like the Levite and priest in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) — to look the other way, but godly men learn to step in. One man I know, for example, keeps granola bars in his car for homeless people, and looks for opportunities to serve and engage them. You might also take the risk to speak up on behalf of others who are being slandered or treated unfairly because of their Christian beliefs.

More than that, however, godly men understand protecting others from an eternity without Christ is the greatest service they can render. Such spiritual protection requires a deep belief in God ourselves, and a willingness to accept resistance when we speak the truth in love — as, for example, when we gently warn non-Christian friends of their spiritual danger (1 Peter 3:15) or confront other Christians about their sin (Matthew 18:15–17).

Find a Husband to Follow

While seeking God first and leaning into his callings for us as men is critical, it’s immensely helpful to find a godly married man to disciple you (1 Corinthians 11:1; 2 Timothy 2:2). Proactively find someone you admire who’s willing to be transparent, and ask to spend time with him and his family. Ask him what he’s learned from the successes and failures in his marriage, and consider how you might incorporate those lessons even now.

As men, all of us are called to run hard after Christ (Philippians 3:8–12), regardless of whether we marry one day. But as we pursue Christ and grow as leaders, providers, and protectors, we will be more prepared to date — and ultimately, marry — a godly woman, if God wills.

It was a late night at the Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting, almost twenty years ago. The day’s formal schedule was done, and a couple dozen young, impressionable seminarians gathered chairs around a few veteran scholars to pepper them with questions.

Among the handful of established professors, two in particular shone as the brightest lights in the room. Hands down, these two had published the most books, and had the most recognizable names beyond academic circles. When these two spoke, the room listened most intently.

By the end of the evening, however, a striking difference had emerged between the two lights. As they contributed answers to question after question, one defaulted, quite conspicuously, to quoting Westminster, and little Scripture. The other shared very little, if any, Westminster — but text after text from the Bible. I suspect it went unnoticed, at first, but eventually the pattern became pronounced. More than a handful of us had taken notice by the end.

On that night, the two Reformed lights ended up with mostly the same answers to our battery of questions, but the way they arrived at those answers exposed different instincts. One defaulted to Westminster; the other, to Scripture. It left a lasting impression on me. I knew which one I wanted to imitate. And while I couldn’t find any passage in Westminster commending the first approach, my mind did immediately run to one passage in Scripture, among others, that commends the second.

Born (Again) in a Small Town

In Acts 17, having been chased from Thessalonica by an angry, envious mob, Paul and Silas come to a small town called Berea. They start with the synagogue, as was their practice. Luke then marks a contrast with these Bereans:

Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. (Acts 17:11–12)

Clearly, Luke is not just reporting. He is commending. “Oh, for all hearers of Christian preaching,” he would say, “to follow in the steps of these small-town nobles!” Luke highlights two particular aspects of what made this response “more noble.”

Like Hungry Children

First, he says they “received the word with all eagerness.”

Paul and Silas came to Berea to herald a message, a word, not their own, but from God, through Christ. They came to give what they themselves had not created but received. The noble Berean response began with openness, even readiness, to receive — to take the gospel of Jesus Christ as objective and given and unalterable and, with open hands, receive it.

And Luke doesn’t leave us guessing as to how they received it. He says “with all eagerness.” This word, from God himself in Christ, was not received with hostility, or with apathy. However much Luke commends this synagogue in Berea for an objective, level-headed examining of Scripture, let us not presume that “receiving the word” implies doing so dispassionately or with coolness. They received it eagerly. As Ajith Fernando comments, “Their nobility lay in their willingness to acknowledge their need, resulting in an eagerness to hear from God and to receive what they heard. . . . Like hungry children in need of food, they sought God’s Word” (Acts, 469).

Like Careful Prosecutors

Second, then, Luke also reports what form this eager reception took: “examining the Scriptures daily.”

Doubtless, first-century Jews did not have Christian creeds and confessions to consult, but they could have been greatly tempted to turn to a host of secondary sources: whether the Mishnah, or oral law, or the Jewish common sense and assumptions they were raised in, or the growing corpus of Second Temple literature. Like us, they had plenty of other seemingly noble sources to turn to other than the Scriptures themselves. They could have defaulted elsewhere to check the validity of Paul’s message, but by God’s grace, these Jews turned precisely to where they needed to turn: God’s own word, not human formulations.

Paul had started them in the right direction by his own practice. When he came to preach in synagogues, “he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ’” (Acts 17:2–3). Paul pointed them in the right direction. He set up his listeners to check his message in Scripture by first reasoning with them from Scripture.

“They wanted to know the truth and the true God, and neither apathy nor gullibility would benefit the pursuit.”

So, following Paul’s lead, these noble Bereans examined the Scriptures for themselves. Eagerness and examination were not at odds; Luke commends both their heartfelt concern and their deliberate care. Noble indeed, they wanted to know the true God and his truth, and neither apathy nor gullibility would benefit the pursuit. And pursuit it was. This was no mere moment or flash in the pan. They endured in their careful search. They made eager reception, with scriptural examination, a daily practice.

Reformation Warning

In our own day, we too know the temptation of defaulting to voices other than Scripture to tell us what Scripture says. We have access to a stunning (and growing!) wealth of secondary literature, old and new. And best among it all are our creeds and confessions. They are precious — to be cherished far above the latest title off the press. Too few modern Christians appreciate the wisdom and value of the ancient creeds and faithful confessions like Westminster and others in its wake. And particularly those of us who gladly profess ourselves to be “Reformed” and unashamed sympathizers with the Reformation and its legacy.

“Do we daily, with eagerness, examine the Scriptures for ourselves?”

However, as those who rally to sola Scriptura — Scripture alone as our supreme and final authority — we do well to regularly check our practice with those noble readers in Berea. Do we daily, with eagerness, examine the Scriptures for ourselves?

Our best creeds, if we’ll let them, will remind us precisely of this, and encourage us to make a practice of this, even as useful as confessions can be when checking our work.

Keep Searching the Scriptures

For instance, the first section of the Desiring God Affirmation of Faith, though recognizing that “limited abilities, traditional biases, personal sin, and cultural assumptions often obscure biblical texts,” commends “humble and careful effort to find in the language of Scripture” itself what God has to say to us through his prophets and apostles (1.4).

It’s a warning worthy of sounding at not only the outset but the conclusion. The fifteenth and final section reprises the confession,

We do not claim infallibility for this affirmation and are open to refinement and correction from Scripture. Yet we do hold firmly to these truths as we see them and call on others to search the Scriptures to see if these things are so. As conversation and debate take place, it may be that we will learn from each other, and the boundaries will be adjusted, even possibly folding formerly disagreeing groups into closer fellowship. (15.4)

For now, we see much in the Scriptures dimly, not yet as we will (1 Corinthians 13:12). Young and old, we’re all to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, as given in his word (2 Peter 3:18). How tragic would it be, then, in self-identifying as “Reformed,” to keep Scripture at arm’s length in our admiration for those who so memorably championed Scripture, whether Luther, Calvin, Owen, Edwards, Westminster, or the Second London Confession.

So too, cutting the other way, as those genuinely eager to “receive the word” and “examine the Scriptures daily,” we do well to beware of letting sola Scriptura be a cloak for our own personal interpretations. Remembering those noble saints in Berea can renew in us the resolve to hold looser to human opinions and assumptions, especially our own. It’s a subtle but real and well-worn danger: we can fly the banner of “sola Scriptura” as a guise for rejecting the time-tested wisdom of creeds and confessions in service of our own personal instincts and interpretations.

Default to God’s Own Words

Those who teach faithfully and fruitfully in the church in the coming generation, as in the past, will be eager to herald scriptural truth, and they also will be eager to keep learning and growing themselves. No pastor or Christian leader has arrived, and the best know it well. Good pastors and teachers are ready to stand for what they know Scripture to teach, and yet are humbly willing to grow, and be shown to be wrong from Scripture.

However much we cherish and rehearse and draw wisdom from time-tested creeds and confessions, we learn to default to Scripture itself. We relish the very words of God even more. Not just in theory. In daily practice. In eager daily examination.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. This week we’ve been looking at what it means to follow God’s will. On Monday, we looked at the key to following God’s will. Without this in place, following his will will prove impossible. That was APJ 1807. And then on Wednesday we put that principle into practice, looking at one example of how to proceed with confidence in a real-life decision, knowing you are, in fact, following God’s will. That was in APJ 1808 on Wednesday. Today we end the week with an email from a listener and a super busy Christian man. How should this man prioritize his life when there isn’t time to do everything?

That busy man is Steve, and Steve lives in Sacramento, California. “Dear Pastor John, I work as a physician, and I feel that my work demands too much of my time, much more than most other full-time jobs. Because of this, I never seem to have enough time to pray or study God’s word. I also feel that because of my work, I do not have much time to devote to my family or to church. I know that the Bible has numerous passages about the importance of working hard for the Lord, such as Colossians 3:23: ‘Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.’ And Proverbs 22:29: ‘Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.’

“However, I also know that there are numerous passages about the importance of spending time in prayer and studying the word. How do I balance the importance of working hard for the Lord, while still having enough time for God, spiritual growth, and my family, when my job won’t allow it? Should I accept that I will have to sacrifice much for my work, consider a career change, or do something in between?”

Besides the three possibilities that Steve holds out, there might be another way to think about the challenge he faces. And I’m going to get there in just a minute to suggest that he consider a fourth way. I do start with the assumption that, except for rare seasons, he really should prioritize daily communion with God in the word and prayer, as well as leading his family in daily focused attention to God’s word and in family prayer, and in seeing to it that they are serious participants in their local church. And now Steve may listen to me say that and say, “Did you even hear my question?” Well, yes, I did. So let me clarify one thing, because I was listening carefully.

Working for the Lord

One thing that Steve said twice — and I just want to make sure that before I make my proposal to him, we get this clear, because it really does affect everything we do. He referred to “working hard for the Lord.” That’s his exact phrase, “working hard for the Lord.” And when he says that, he is referring to his medical work, not to any particularly focused Christian activity, like personal evangelism or something like that. He’s talking about doing a good job in his medical work, which in fact he should do. He’s basing it on Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do [like being a doctor], work [hard or] heartily, as for the Lord.” That’s where he gets the phrase.

So, I’m not criticizing the phrase, I’m just waving a flag that it could easily be misunderstood. I just want to make sure that when Steve or any of us speaks of “working for the Lord,” we realize that any true biblical conception of human beings working for the living God, or the Lord Jesus, means something fundamentally different than working for a human being. In three ways at least, it’s different — radically different.

One, when we work for man, we really do add value to man’s business or project or ministry. He is the lesser if we do shoddy work or no work. He is dependent on us, or somebody doing what we do, to have something he would not otherwise have. Working for God is never like that. We don’t add anything to God. He is not dependent on us. He can raise up from stones anything or anybody he wants.

Second, when we work for man, we really do earn just payment. Our employer owes us wages. Our work for him puts him in our debt. He commits a crime if he doesn’t pay us. That’s never, never the case with God. We never put God in our debt. He never owes us anything.

Third, when we work for man, we rely upon ourselves, not on our boss, for the capacity to do what he hired us to do. That’s never the case with God. We always are dependent on God for life and breath and mind and heart and emotions and intellect and energy and willpower to do what we’re called to do.

From Him, Through Him, to Him

Now, the basis for those three distinctions between working for man and working for God is Romans 11:35–36: “Who has given a gift to [God] that he might be repaid?” And the answer is nobody. Impossible, inconceivable. Who has given a gift to God that he might be repaid? Why? “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” You can’t give God anything in order to be repaid because he owns everything, including you. You are made by him, sustained by him. You exist for his glory.

And the other basis for this distinction between working for man and working for God is 1 Corinthians 15:10, where Paul says, “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 . . .” And I don’t doubt that Steve could say something like that, probably. “I worked harder than any of them.” And then Paul adds, and Steve should add, and we should all add, “. . . though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” We do work hard. It’s right to work hard as Christians. And when we work for God, we ought to realize that we are the receivers when we work for God; we are the ones being blessed.

“We are the receivers when we work for God; we are the ones being blessed.”

God is not being enriched by our work for him — we are. We are not earning anything — if we gain an inheritance through our work, which we do, it’s all of grace. And in the process, we rely on the supply of God’s sustaining grace at every moment. Working for God and working for man are fundamentally different. And Paul does call us to work for God in all our working for man, which really is a miraculous, amazing, profound transformation of all human life.

Praying for the Impossible

Now, against that backdrop, here’s my suggestion for Steve to consider. It comes mainly from the Bible and partly from my own experience. In my seventy years of being a Christian — this year I will mark being a believer for seventy years — one thing I have learned is that, from time to time, no matter how carefully we plan, we come to a point where we are expected to do something, and we look at the amount of energy that we have, and the amount of time we have, and the resources we have to do it, and we say, “That’s impossible, I can’t do it.”

Now sometimes, that’s true. And you simply have to call your supervisor or a friend and tell them, “Find somebody else.” But it’s not true as often as we think. And here’s why, and I’ve discovered this over and over: God can do more in us and through us in five seconds than we can do in five hours without his help. Five seconds. Yes, he can. Or, same principle: God can do more in us in five hours than we can do in five days.

“God can do more in us and through us in five seconds than we can do in five hours without his help.”

Here’s one way I’ve experienced this, for example. There have been a series of crises in the church, and I have spent so much time at the hospital and in the home of the bereaved that it is now Saturday evening, and I have no sermon prepared at all — not even an outline for tomorrow morning. I look at my energy, which is spent. I look at the time left to me, even if I stay up all night, which is physically not going to work, and I say to myself, “This is impossible. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And I get down on my knees, and I preach to myself some crazy, wonderful biblical reality.

God can feed five thousand people with five loves and two fish of my time and energy. God can make a one-hundred-year-old man and a barren woman have a baby, because the angel says, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14). Jesus said to his disciples, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Paul assures himself, “God . . . calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17), like hours in the day to create a sermon that can’t be done unless something impossible happens. I preached that to myself. I’ve done this numerous times, and I ask God for a miracle. And time and again, God has done what looked to me to be impossible.

A sermon outline with true insight into biblical texts and ample application comes before my mind — not in five hours, as it might ordinarily take, but in five seconds. It is as if the entire thing was built and then given to me complete in my mind. I go to my desk at 7:00 p.m., I ask for the miracle of wakefulness and energy, and at 11:00 p.m., a full manuscript is written. Exhausted, I set the alarm for 4:30 a.m., and at 2:00 p.m., Sunday afternoon, sitting in my chair, I look back on two services complete and wonder, how did that happen?

In other words, Steve, I’m suggesting that you might experiment with giving yourself to prayer and to your family in a way that you feel is biblically appropriate, and then asking for God to create out of nothing what you thought had to be given up at work.

One of the highlights of my job as a college and seminary president is regularly interacting with aspiring pastors at our weekly lunch-hour Table Talk.

The discussion invariably turns to matters of practical ministry in the local church. Questions about liturgy and the administration of baptism and the Lord’s Table, about the practical outworkings of our complementarian convictions, about requirements for church membership. Often, the question comes, “But is it biblical? Is it sinful to do things this way versus that way?”

Often, my answer comes back with, “This question belongs in the Prudence Bucket.”

Prudence Bucket

The Prudence Bucket is my way of referring to the reality that many aspects of local church ministry and life are matters of biblically informed prudence. In the words of both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession, “There are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed” (1.6).

The category of prudence or wisdom is built on the distinction between principles and application. On the one hand, we have general principles, derived from general or special revelation. On the other hand, we have the application of those principles in particular, concrete settings.

Solomonic Wisdom

A classic biblical example of wisdom is Solomon. There was no verse in Leviticus that told him what to do when two prostitutes show up, both claiming to be the mother of one child. Yet by the grace of God, Solomon was able to wisely apply general principles of reality (for example, knowledge of motherly affection and grief) in a very difficult situation to reveal the identity of the mother. Wisdom consisted in rightly bringing the general principle to bear on that particular circumstance.

The book of Proverbs is filled with such general principles. What’s more, the book itself recognizes the need to apply the principles in different settings. The most obvious example is Proverbs 26:4–5:

Answer not a fool according to his folly,     lest you be like him yourself.Answer a fool according to his folly,     lest he be wise in his own eyes.

This juxtaposition assumes that there are times when we should follow the first, and times when we should follow the second. These are general principles that must be wisely applied in particular circumstances. Over the last two decades, I’ve come to appreciate the need for clarity on which issues are simple matters of obedience and disobedience, and which issues belong in the Prudence Bucket.

Anything Goes?

The Prudence Bucket allows us to distinguish decisions and practices that are directly unfaithful or disobedient from decisions and practices that are simply unwise and imprudent. This is important. Some people wrongly assume that putting a decision in the Prudence Bucket means “Anything goes.” But wisdom involves a spectrum or range of options. Applying the principle may take many forms.

Some decisions are outside the spectrum; that is, they violate the general principle itself. In that case, the decision is directly disobedient. But within the spectrum, faithful Christians may arrive at different conclusions. In such cases, we frequently share the same principles, but evaluate the circumstances differently. This leads us to make different concrete applications.

But even here, there is still room for criticism. We may still evaluate decisions inside the prudence spectrum as more or less wise, even while acknowledging that faithful Christians can disagree on such matters. But with this distinction in place, our criticism can be rightly calibrated to the issue in view.

From Simple to Foolish

Even more, thinking in the category of prudence allows us to see how someone moves from being unwise to being unfaithful. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom is the opposite not only of folly, but of simplicity. That is, the wise man is contrasted with both the foolish and the simple. What’s the difference?

The simple man is immature, inexperienced, and naive. He lacks wisdom, not because of willful choice, but because he’s not yet learned wisdom by experience or heeded the counsel of the wise. The book of Proverbs is written with him in view, so that he can grow up into maturity by walking with the wise.

The fool, on the other hand, is not merely naive; he is morally compromised. His folly is willful. Not only has he failed to heed the counsel of the wise; he refuses to listen to his own experience. He persists in his folly, even as he begins to reap the bitter fruit of his decisions.

Thus, we can see that wisdom and folly are not merely a spectrum, but also a trajectory. The simple man who ignores the counsel of the wise and doubles down on his folly becomes the fool destined for destruction. What begins as naivete becomes moral failure as we refuse to grow in wisdom.

Picking Your Problems

Frequently, prudence is a matter of picking your problem. In a finite and fallen world, we will always be faced with trade-offs and difficulties. As church leaders, called to lead together in a particular locale, many of our decisions involve selecting which problems we hope to address and which problems we hope to manage over the long term.

For instance, the decision to move to multiple worship services may enable greater growth. Two services allow more people to attend and potentially join the church. On the other hand, having multiple services also increases complexity, puts strain on pastoral resources, and poses challenges for community. Navigating the potential benefits and costs (both in the short term and the long term) is what prudence does.

The same might be said about the question of multicampus churches. Multicampus churches can essentially be a slow-motion church-planting strategy. They allow for stability during an extended launch period for a new church. On the other hand, they might create bureaucratic and administrative bloat as well as limit the possibility of genuine elder oversight of a particular congregation.

Or consider elements of a church’s liturgy. How frequently should we practice communion? When should it occur during the service? What method should be employed (passing of the elements vs. intinction)? Who should distribute the elements? At our church, we share the Lord’s Table after the sermon every week, and the pastors distribute the elements to the congregation separately. In doing so, we are attempting to apply a number of key principles that we hold: we want to magnify the importance of the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace, and thus we share it weekly. We place it after the sermon so that every sermon ends with the comfort of the gospel offered to God’s people. We distribute the elements separately because Jesus distinguished between the bread and the wine. And the pastors pass out the elements to communicate the role of the shepherd in feeding the flock (through the preached word and the edible word).

Principled Prudence

In all of these areas, we are seeking to wisely bring general principles to bear in concrete circumstances. While we know that there are other ways to apply such principles, we believe that ours is a good and fitting way, and our elders would commend such practices to others. We might even believe that certain other applications of similar principles would be naive or foolhardy. Nevertheless, because we keep such matters in the Prudence Bucket, we’re able to commend without insisting that ours is the only way, and to criticize without becoming quarrelsome.

What’s more, we’re able to reason together as a plurality of elders in order to wisely shepherd the flock of God that is among us, for their joy and for the glory of God.