On the night before he died, as Jesus looked at his twelve men and, beyond them, the billions who one day would follow him, he prayed for a oneness that would make the world take notice: “[I ask] that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you” (John 17:21). Father, take Jews and Gentiles, men and women, old and young, and make them one. Heaven-sent unity was his great prayer for us.

And yet, just moments earlier, he voiced another request that gives Christian unity a tension and a tang: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). Father, take these disciples, and bind them by your word. Spirit-given truth was also his great prayer for us.

Jesus wants his church to be one, and to be wise. He wants us to love all his people, and to treasure all his word. He wants us to offer an earthly illustration of Trinitarian unity, and an earthly witness to Trinitarian truth.

Few Christians and churches naturally maintain a balanced grasp on both prayers; on our own, we tend to drift toward a “unity” that erodes truth, or a “truth” that destroys unity. And so, we often need recalibrating: our inner ecumenist needs more backbone; our inner watchdog needs less bite.

To that end, one ancient tool, rearticulated and clarified in recent decades, may help: theological triage.

What Is Theological Triage?

Theological triage — a term coined by Albert Mohler in 2005 — seeks to organize Christian truth on different tiers, ranging from essential doctrines to more peripheral teachings. In a helpful recent book, for example, Gavin Ortlund offers the following fourfold model:

First-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel itself.
Second-rank doctrines are urgent for the health and practice of the church such that they frequently cause Christians to separate at the level of local church, denomination, and/or ministry.
Third-rank doctrines are important to Christian theology but not enough to justify separation or division among Christians.
Fourth-rank doctrines are unimportant to our gospel witness and ministry collaboration. (Finding the Right Hills to Die On, 19)

Rightly handled, theological triage does not justify indifference to doctrines below the first tier. All Scripture carries God’s breath (2 Timothy 3:16), and so, when Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified “in the truth,” he meant all of it — every iota (Matthew 5:18).

Nevertheless, Scripture itself treats some doctrines as more foundational than others, and theological triage seeks to follow suit. As Jesus spoke of “weightier matters of the law” (Matthew 23:23), and as Paul spoke of the gospel as “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3), so theological triage seeks to differentiate the weightiest, most important doctrines from those with less urgency. (Hence Mohler’s triage image: ER doctors treat gunshot wounds differently from sprained ankles.)

The main benefit, as we’ll see, is balance and wisdom in our pursuit of unity. We don’t minimize mountains, and we don’t magnify molehills.

Science and Art

As in a medical context, the process of triage is often complex. We will not always discern immediately whether a doctrine fits on the first tier (dividing Christians from non-Christians), the second tier (dividing local churches, denominations, or ministries), or the third tier (dividing nothing). Triage is both science and art; it requires both intellectual perception and spiritual wisdom; it runs on both careful judgment and godly instinct.

“Triage is both science and art; it runs on both careful judgment and godly instinct.”

The same doctrine, for example, may fit into a different category depending on the situation. As Ortlund observes, the issue of spiritual gifts sometimes fits on the second tier — but not always. Currently, a convinced cessationist gladly worships in the continuationist church where I serve.

Cultural or missiological contexts also influence the practice of triage. New churches on unreached frontiers, along with some missionary teams, may lower some typical second-tier doctrines to the third tier. In America, a church’s elders might limit membership to those who have been baptized as believers; in Afghanistan, the elders might not, or might not yet (and wisely so).

At times, even evaluating first-tier disagreements calls for wisdom. One person may reject justification by faith because he doesn’t understand it; another may reject the doctrine because he understands and hates it. The first situation calls for careful teaching and further evaluation, while the second does not.

More complexities could be mentioned (see Joe Rigney’s article “How to Weigh Doctrines for Christian Unity”), but these suffice to show the need for humility, patience, and collective wisdom rather than individual reflex. We read of a plurality of local-church elders in the New Testament, and for good reason. Theological triage happens best in a group of spiritually discerning pastors, men who have their eyes on the flock and are wise to the needs, dangers, and opportunities of their local context.

Just as ER doctors need more than medical knowledge to practice triage well, a church’s elders need more than scriptural knowledge to do the same. They need to know not only the canon of Scripture, but also the case before them and the context around them. They need to ask, “All things considered, is this doctrine worth dividing over now?”

Three Triage Tests

In his book When Doctrine Divides the People of God, Rhyne Putman offers three tests to aid the discernment process (220–39):

The hermeneutical test: the clearer the Bible teaches a doctrine, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
The gospel test: the more central a doctrine is to the gospel, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
The praxis test: the more a doctrine affects the practice of a church, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.

These three tests won’t answer every question, but they do offer a start. Consider where some common doctrines fall after running them through hermeneutics, gospel, and praxis:

Doctrines like the deity of Christ and the Trinity (clear hermeneutically and central to the gospel) belong on the first tier.
Doctrines related to baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the callings of men and women (less clear hermeneutically, but still near the gospel and shaping a church’s praxis) typically belong on the second tier.
Doctrines like the age of the earth or the nature and timing of Christ’s millennial reign (less clear hermeneutically, less connected to the gospel, and less important for a church’s praxis) typically belong on the third tier.

Again, however, each category admits of complexity, requiring churches to practice triage in light of individual cases and their broader context.

Why Practice Theological Triage?

If theological triage involves such complexity, why practice it? Because, in all likelihood, only a habit like this one will keep our heartbeats in rhythm with Jesus’s John 17 prayer. Only as we distinguish doctrines will we learn to avoid the dangers of theological maximalism, theological minimalism, and what we might call unconscious triage.

Theological Maximalism

Theological maximalists, or theological sectarians, may differentiate doctrine to a degree — they may not equate Christ’s deity and a church’s form of government, for example. But they tend to raise third-tier doctrines to the second tier, and second-tier doctrines to the first tier. And in so doing, they often separate when they should tolerate, divide when they should bear with. Afraid of wolves, they attack other sheep.

Maximalists rightly sense that protecting sound doctrine sometimes calls for strong words; like Jude, they “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” But as Ortlund points out, they do not necessarily share Jude’s eagerness to celebrate “our common salvation” (Jude 3). And so, failing to distinguish the weightiest from the less weighty, they can end up cutting at the limbs of Christ’s body.

Theological Minimalism

Theological minimalists also struggle to speak of “weightier matters” — not, however, because they raise so many doctrines to the higher tiers, but because they raise so few there. If pressed, they may agree that an anti-Trinitarian cannot be a Christian, but only if pressed. On their own, minimalists tend to lower first-tier doctrines to the second tier, and second-tier doctrines to the third tier. And in so doing, they often say, “Unity! Unity!” when there is no unity (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11).

“True unity requires an immovable core of conviction; otherwise, what are we even uniting around?”

Minimalists seek to embody the seventh beatitude — “Blessed are the peacemakers” — but they rarely or never take stands strong enough to embody the eighth: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:10–11). They struggle to see that true peace, true unity, requires an immovable (and sometimes offensive) core of conviction; otherwise, what are we even uniting around?

Unconscious Triage

Perhaps the best reason to practice theological triage, however, is because we already functionally do. We can’t help but treat some doctrines as weightier than others. And unless we have carefully considered which doctrines really are weightier, our approach to triage likely will be shaped less by Scripture and more by a mixture of personality, background, and whim.

Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for “straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matthew 23:24), and many of us, though less hypocritical, need to hear the same warning. Naturally, we are peculiarly attuned to some gnats and strangely dense to some camels: some vehemently contend for a young or old earth but breeze past justification; some attack complementarians or egalitarians as Athanasius attacked Arius, but dismiss Trinitarian controversies with a wave. We cannot abide the gnat in our stew, but we can stomach the camel in our meatloaf.

Theological triage, then, helps us weigh not only doctrines, but ourselves. It exposes our own besetting tendencies, and it invites us to recalibrate our unconscious models according to Scripture’s own example.

Loving Unity, Treasuring Truth

How will we know if we are growing to weigh doctrines as God himself does?

Those who tend toward theological maximalism will find themselves enduring disagreements when they would have broken fellowship beforehand; those who tend toward theological minimalism will find themselves ruffling more feathers than none. Maximalists will not treat second- and third-tier doctrines as unimportant, but they will learn to lower their voice when they talk about them; minimalists, meanwhile, will not roll their eyes when they see a brother or sister contending for precious truth. Minimalists will learn to fight more; maximalists will learn to fight themselves more.

And all of us, wherever we naturally tend, will hear ourselves praying more often, “Father, make us one” — then, in the next breath, “and bind us by your truth.”

Audio Transcript

Well, as most of you know, maturing in our knowledge of the Bible means facing the hardest questions it raises. On the podcast, we’re working through three of those hard Bible questions, prompted by your reading in the first two chapters of 2 Thessalonians. Namely, is God present or is he absent in his eternal judgment? Second Thessalonians 1:9 seems to say he’s absent. We addressed that question in APJ 1801. Then many of you have asked about the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2. Who is it? That was a week ago, in APJ 1803. And now finally, the third question, one about God sending strong delusions into the world. Does he still do that today? If so, how so? And what does it mean? That’s a question raised by 2 Thessalonians 2:11. That one is on the table today.

Pastor John, on Monday, in that man of lawlessness episode (in APJ 1803), you read our text for today, 2 Thessalonians 2:11, that God “sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false.” We’ve never addressed this text on APJ. But it’s been asked several times. Particularly from two listeners. Deborah asks this: “Pastor John, hello. Can you explain God’s providential work in 2 Thessalonians 2:11, and his sending of ‘a strong delusion’ on those who do not love or obey the truth? I stumble over this text. Thank you.” And David writes in to ask it this way: “Hello, Pastor John. Can a professing, nominal Christian who doesn’t think they’re saved ask God for them to be able to love the truth, when they’ve previously not embraced it in faith? Or would such a one be given to ‘strong delusions’ like we read about in 2 Thessalonians 2:11? In fact, what does that phrase even mean?”

So both Deborah and David are asking about the meaning of God’s sending a “strong delusion” on people at the end of the age, in connection with the man of lawlessness and the great deception that Satan worked through him just before the Lord’s coming. And David more specifically is asking about whether a person in the midst of this kind of deception can cry out to God with any hope of acceptance that God would enable him to love the truth, when in previous times he stiff-armed it.

Deception and Delusion

So let’s get the text in front of us. It really is a sobering text, and in some ways a surprising one in the way it talks about deception and truth and pleasure. At least, I’ve learned a lot about the nature of saving faith and the nature of deception in this text. So, here are the few verses:

The coming of the lawless one [that would be the final manifestation of antichrist just before the return of Christ] is by the activity of Satan with all power and lying signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception [of unrighteousness] . . . (2 Thessalonians 2:9–10)

Now, that’s not yet the strong delusion from God, but rather the deception from the lawless one, because we haven’t even gotten yet to God’s kicking in with deception. Here you have the Satanic deception for those who are perishing.

. . . because [that’s important, because this is happening before God’s strong delusion] they did not welcome the love of the truth in order to be saved. Therefore [and that’s crucial], God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:10–12)

Refusal to Love the Truth

Now, let’s see if we can put some of these pieces together. It’s true that there are passages in the Bible that ascribe to God the right and the power to decide from eternity who will believe and who will not. But this is not one of those passages. This passage only traces unbelief back to the resistance of the human heart to welcome a love for the truth. Now that’s a strange phrase, “welcome a love for the truth.” But it’s a literal translation. Verse 10 says they are “perishing because they did not welcome a love [or ‘the love’] of the truth in order to be saved.”

In other words, this is a worse indictment than saying, “They did not welcome the truth in order to be saved.” They were not just resistant to the truth; they were resistant to a love for the truth. This is a love issue in the human heart. They didn’t want truth in their head. They didn’t want love for truth in their heart. They were totally resistant. It reminds us of Ephesians 4:18, where Paul traces unbelief down, down, down to the bottom of the human problem, which is not ignorance, he says, but hardness. This is what Ephesians 4:18 says: “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from life of God because of the ignorance that is in them [and then he goes deeper], due to their hardness of heart.”

“They were not just resistant to the truth; they were resistant to a love for the truth.”

So here in 2 Thessalonians, Paul is describing that hardness as a refusal to welcome a love for the truth. It’s as if love for truth is being offered, and the human heart says, “No, no. Not only do I not want truth, I do not want to love the truth. I don’t want truth in my mind. I don’t want love in my heart.” And that condition — that deep resistance to truth, to God, to gospel, to reality, and to love for truth, and love for the gospel, and love for God — is described as the reason for both Satan’s deceiving and God’s deluding. It says that Satan, in the form of this lawless one, comes with “deception of unrighteousness for the perishing.” And then it says, “because they refused to love the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). And verse 11 says, “God sends a strong delusion” because they refuse to love the truth.

Handed Over

Now, Paul doesn’t explain how God does this — that is, how he sends this delusion. It may well be that God does it by means of removing all the barriers to that satanic deception. There are many places in the Bible where God governs the acts of unrighteous men and demons in order to achieve his righteous purposes. So this is not unusual. It’s as if God would say, “Okay, if you want to love falsehood and love unrighteousness instead of loving the truth, I’ll see to it that your delusion is overpowering.”

In other words, God gives them up to their own mind, just like Paul says in Romans 1:28. He says, “Since they did not approve of having God in their knowledge . . .” That’s so close to what 2 Thessalonians is saying. They refuse a love for the truth. They don’t want God in their knowledge. They don’t want to love God. Therefore, “God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:28). That would be a great delusion.

So their deception comes not only as their crime, but also as their punishment for the crime.

Our Pleasure in Sin

I said a minute ago that this text is surprising to me in the way it talks about deception and truth and pleasure. Looking at this idea of pleasure helps get at David’s question — his other question that we haven’t touched on yet about whether we can pray to God to deliver us from deception and delusion when up till now we haven’t welcomed the love of the truth. We’ve been resistant to it. Are we hopeless?

What’s surprising is the way pleasure figures into this text. Verse 12 says that the reason people are condemned is because they “did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” What an interesting contrast: believing versus pleasure. It’s full of implications. Back in verse 10, their deception is called “deception of unrighteousness.”

So I put it together like this. Their unwillingness to welcome a love for the truth was owing to their love for — that is, their pleasure in — unrighteousness. “I love it. I love it. I find pleasure in it.” This was their most basic condition: deep, deep heart love, heart delight, heart pleasure in unrighteousness. And since the truth stands over against unrighteousness, that more basic love for unrighteousness prevented them from loving the truth.

“At the root of our human condition is a strong pleasure in sin — a strong preference, gladness, delight.”

So, at the root of our human condition is a strong pleasure in sin — a strong preference, gladness, delight. Oh, how delectable is selfishness and self-exaltation and pride. Sin feels good at the depth of our being, and that pleasure in unrighteousness prevents a welcome of a love for the truth, and surprisingly prevents belief in the truth, as he says in verse 12.

Our Hope in the Sovereign Savior

So here’s David’s question. Can a person pray in that condition? Can a person pray for deliverance from deceptive bondage to pleasure in unrighteousness, which prevents love for the truth and belief in the truth? And my answer is yes. In fact, the bondage is so great that God is the only one who can cause a reversal of this dreadful bondage. That’s what has to happen. And so that’s how we ought to cry out in desperation for God to act in our lives and in the lives of those we love who are blind to this.

Remember in the book of Lamentations — oh my goodness, this is encouraging. Lamentations is the most horrible book in the Bible in one sense, because of the descriptions of the devastation of the apple of God’s eye, Jerusalem. It says in Lamentations 1:5, “The Lord has afflicted [Jerusalem] for the multitude of her transgressions.” So you would think this is hopeless. She’s under judgment. But here’s how the book ends: “Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!” (Lamentations 5:21). What a prayer! That’s the same way people pray in Jeremiah 31:18: “Bring me back that I may be restored.” Same thing in Psalm 80:3: “Restore us, O God.”

Ultimately, I don’t think it matters whether Satan is deceiving or God is deluding. It’s not hopeless to cry out, “O God, I cannot change my heart. It’s hard. It’s lifeless. It’s cold. And it takes pleasure in unrighteousness. O God, do anything — do whatever you have to do to take out my heart of stone. Cause my heart to find pleasure in your truth, your gospel, yourself. If you don’t do it, O God, I am undone.” I don’t think that’s a hopeless prayer.

ABSTRACT: The book of Genesis was not written to teach us the age of the earth, and so it can legitimately support either a young-earth or an old-earth view. Evidence from astronomy and various earth sciences, however, suggests that our universe and our earth are billions of years old. In the absence of a clear biblical stance on the issue, Christians should be willing to consider interpretations of Genesis 1 that fit with an old creation.

We asked professors Wayne Grudem and Jason DeRouchie to offer arguments for their respective old-earth and young-earth views, and then respond to each other. Access the full set of articles and responses on the “How Old Is the Earth?” series page.

I do not believe that God intended in Scripture to tell us the age of the earth. In the following material, I will explain the factors that led me to this conclusion about Scripture and then summarize some scientific indications of the age of the earth.1

Meaning of the Word Day

The word day as used in Genesis 1 translates the Hebrew word yôm, which often refers to 24-hour days, but in other contexts clearly refers to an unspecified period of time. We see this in the immediate context, in Genesis 2:4: “. . . in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” Here, day refers to the entire creative work of the six days of creation.

Other examples of the word day to mean a period of time include Psalm 20:1 (“May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble!”), Proverbs 24:10 (“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small”), Proverbs 25:13 (“Like the cold of snow in the time [yôm] of harvest . . .”), and Ecclesiastes 7:14 (“In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider”).

Even the first use of the word day in Genesis 1 does not mean a day of 24 hours but simply the daylight hours: “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night” (Genesis 1:5).

Genesis 1 in Light of Science

The context of Genesis 1 does not clearly require one meaning of day over another, and if scientific data, drawn from many different disciplines and giving similar answers, convinces us that the earth is billions of years old, then this possible interpretation of day as a long period of time may be the best interpretation to adopt.

For those who hold to an old earth, the situation is something like that faced by Christians who first held that the earth rotates on its axis and revolves about the sun. They needed an explanation for verses about the sun “rising” or “going down,” like Ecclesiastes 1:5: “The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.” (See also Psalm 104:22; James 1:11; and others.) They did not have to claim that the passages require us to believe in a heliocentric (sun-centered) solar system, nor did they have to say that this was the most natural or the easiest interpretation, but only that this is a possible legitimate understanding of the texts, seeing these verses as speaking from the standpoint of the observer. From there, observational evidence taken from science shows us that this is, in fact, the correct way to interpret those texts.

Answering Objections

Each of the days of Genesis 1 ends with an expression such as, “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” (Genesis 1:5). Does this require us to conclude that the days must be 24-hour days? Not necessarily, because the phrase may be simply the author’s way of telling us that the end of the first creative “day” (that is, a long period of time) occurred, and the beginning of the next creative “day” had come. In addition, alert readers would recognize that the first three creative “days” could not have been marked by evening and morning as caused by the sun shining on the earth, for the sun does not appear until the fourth day (Genesis 1:14–19). Therefore, Genesis 1 itself shows that references to “evening and morning” in the chapter do not refer to the ordinary evening and morning of days as we know them now.

Does it matter that the days are numbered? Supporters of a young-earth position sometimes argue that, while the Hebrew yôm can elsewhere refer to a longer period of time, its use in Genesis 1 is different because numbers are attached, and whenever yôm has a number attached, it refers to 24-hour days.

I do not find this argument persuasive because the requirement to consider only cases of the Hebrew yôm with a number attached acts as a filter to preselect the desired “24-hour day” answer. This is because, in the course of ordinary human life, the usual kinds of “days” that people count are 24-hour days, not longer periods of time. The creation narrative just happens to be the only context where longer periods of time are counted.

Nevertheless, interpreters who have decided that the days of Genesis 1 must be 24-hour days have another option available to them. The creation days might be 24 hours long, with many millions of years between the days. I think this must be considered another possible way to understand Genesis 1 in a manner that is consistent with an old earth.

Gaps in the Genealogies

In the 1650s, Irish archbishop James Ussher, a distinguished historian and biblical scholar, argued from the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 that the date of God’s creative work in Genesis 1 was October 22, 4004 BC. To arrive at this conclusion, he used both the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 and extrabiblical historical sources.

However, it is doubtful that God’s purpose in these genealogies was to enable us to calculate the date of creation. If that had been God’s intention, he could have done so clearly by having Moses write, “So all the years from Adam to Abraham were 2004 years” (or some similar number). But there is no such summary statement in Genesis 5 or Genesis 11.

It is certainly possible, on the other hand, that the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 contain gaps. For instance, the genealogy in Matthew 1 tells us that Joram was “the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham” (Matthew 1:8–9). But from 1 Chronicles 3:10–12 (which uses the alternate name Azariah for Uzziah), we learn that three generations have been omitted by Matthew: Joash, Amaziah, and Azariah.

So when Genesis 5 says, “When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh,” it could mean that Seth fathered someone whose descendent was Enosh. Thus Enosh in Genesis 5:6–8 could in fact be someone who came many generations after Seth. In that case, the large number of years is not meant to give us a chronology that can be added together to get the age of humanity, but rather it is given to show us the health and longevity of someone who could still beget children at more than 100 years old and could even live to 912 years.

For the God who lives forever, for whom “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8), and who delights in gradually working out his purposes over time, perhaps 13.8 billion years was just the right amount of time to wait for light from vastly distant stars to reach the earth, so that as we discover the age and size of the universe, we would be amazed at the greatness of our Creator, who made such an immense universe and whose eternal existence is far greater than even 13.8 billion years.

Scientific Evidence for an Old Earth

Different kinds of observational (or scientific) evidence from astronomy and the earth sciences seem to indicate that both the earth and the universe are extremely old (13.8 billion years for the universe and 4.5 billion years for the earth).2

Expansion Rate of the Universe

Astronomers can measure the distance from earth to various stars and galaxies. They can also measure the speed at which they are moving away from us. With those two values, they can “back up” the process to find how long the universe has been expanding. After summarizing three different methods of measuring such expansion, Hugh Ross says they show an average age of the universe of “13.79 ± 0.06 billion years,” and he adds, “The consistency of the three independent methods is remarkable.”3

Starlight from Events in the Distant Past

Many stars are so far from the earth that it would take millions or even billions of years for their light to reach us. They give us evidence that requires a brief discussion of the speed of light.

The speed of light (in a vacuum) is approximately 186,000 miles per second, and the sun is about 92,960,000 miles from the earth. That means it takes just over eight minutes for light from the sun to reach us. Therefore, when we see a sunrise or sunset, we are not seeing the sun as it is at that very moment, but we are seeing the sun as it was eight minutes ago.

“Some of the stars we can observe are so distant that their light would take 13,800,000,000 years to reach us.”

This principle also applies to light from other stars. When we look through a telescope at Alpha Centauri (the star that is closest to us, after the sun), we are looking at a star that is 4.4 light-years away, which means the light from that star took 4.4 years to reach us. Therefore, what we see is Alpha Centauri as it existed 4.4 years ago. In the same way, some of the stars we can observe are so distant that their light would take 13,800,000,000 years to reach us. This indicates a very old universe.

Young-earth supporters may respond that perhaps God created the universe with light rays already in place, so that Adam and Eve would see thousands of stars on the first night after they were created. This of course is possible. Certainly Adam and Eve themselves had an “appearance of age” (God created them as adults, not as infants), as did all the animals that God created as “grown-up” animals.

But there are difficulties with this suggestion. First, there is the existence of white dwarfs, which are formed when stars reach the end of their lifetimes and run out of nuclear fuel.4 But “a star takes millions of years, minimum, to burn up all of its nuclear fuel and become a white dwarf.”5 If the universe is only 10,000 years old, and if God created stars with light rays in place, why would he also create optical illusions that look like material from stars that died billions of years ago, when in fact those stars never even existed?

The same is true for other events that astronomers observe in space, such as the existence of supernovas, which are massive, extremely bright explosions, lasting several weeks or months, that happen when stars are about to burn out. But according to young-earth advocates, as Ross notes, “The supernova eruption astronomers claim to see in the Large Magellanic Cloud 163,000 light-years away did not occur 163,000 years ago.” In fact, according to a young-earth view, it never occurred, since nothing existed before 10,000 years ago. When astronomers see such supernovas that explode and then quickly die out, these would be optical illusions placed in outer space to make us think (wrongly) that supernovas happened hundreds of thousands of years ago. It would seem contrary to God’s character to deceive us like this.6

“The speed of light is one of the most universal constants in physics.”

Some young-earth advocates have responded that perhaps the speed of light has changed, and perhaps light traveled much faster a few thousand years ago. But the speed of light is one of the most universal constants in physics, and the need to speculate that it might have been vastly different (a million times faster?) seems to me to cast doubt on the entire young-earth viewpoint.

Ice Layers

Scientists have drilled deep into the ice layers in the central parts of Antarctica and northern parts of Greenland. They have found that “three ice cores from Antarctica . . . provide a continuous record of the past 800,000, 720,000, and 420,000 years, respectively.”7 A young-earth advocate might respond that multiple layers could be laid down within a single year, but Ross notes that “within the layers are dust signatures of known volcanic eruptions,” including eruptions of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, 472, 512, 968, 1037, 1139, 1631, and 1944. “Counting the layers between layers that contain the dust signatures of these eruption events, researchers have confirmed that each layer indeed corresponds to one year.”8

Sediment Layers at the Bottom of Lakes

Geologists Gregg Davidson and Ken Wolgemuth have written an extensively documented article showing that “finely layered sediments from Lake Suigetsu [in Japan] were deposited annually going back more than 50,000 years.” They also show that the most recent of these layers of sediment correspond closely with tree rings that go back more than 14,000 years, and that carbon-14 decay rates (measured by various samples taken at various depths of the sediment layers) “have remained unchanged.”9

Radiometric Dating of Rocks

Igneous rocks are formed when lava or magma (very hot molten material found beneath the earth) cools and changes from a liquid to a solid. Some igneous rocks consist partly of radioactive material that begins to decay as soon as a rock solidifies, and when it decays it changes into another element. For example, uranium-238 decays and turns into lead-206. But uranium-235 becomes lead-207, and thorium-232 becomes lead-208.10 For every type of radioactive substance, the rate of such decay can be measured. With that information, geologists can measure the amount of each kind of uranium and thorium isotope and the amount of each kind of lead isotope in a rock, and with that information they can determine six independent measures of the age of a rock.

Since each of the uranium and thorium isotopes decays at a different rate, if a rock sample has all three of the uranium and thorium isotopes and all three isotopes of the resulting lead, the proportion of each kind of uranium, thorium, and lead gives us six different independent measures of the age of the rock. Ross reports that “ratios of different radiometric elements relative to the lead end products and the ratios of the different lead end products relative to one another provide consistent, accurate dates — all saying that the earth is billions of years old.”11

Continental Separation

Fossil-bearing rock fields near the coasts of Africa and South America were apparently previously joined together and then separated by continental drift as the continents gradually moved apart. In fact, anyone who looks at a globe can see that, if the continents of North and South America could be moved eastward and the continents of Europe and Africa could be moved westward, with slight rotation the continental shelves would fit together. In addition, underneath the Atlantic Ocean there is a large mountain ridge called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that follows the curved pattern of a line halfway between these continents. All this is evidence of plate tectonics, the scientific study that explains movements of the plates on which the continents rest.

Now, there are two separate methods to determine how long ago the continents separated. Taking samples from the crust of the Atlantic Ocean at the edges of the continents, “maximum ages of about 180 million years for the Atlantic Ocean crust are obtained.”12 This suggests that the continents separated about 180 million years ago, leaving the Atlantic Ocean between them. If we measure the distance from a point on the North American coastline to the corresponding point on the African coastline, the distance is 3,480 miles. If we divide 3,480 miles by 180,000,000 years, it “yields an average rate of 1.2 inches per year.”13 Repeated calculations at different points vary only slightly, from 1.1 to 1.7 inches per year.

“I do not think the Bible tells us or intends to tell us the age of the earth or the age of the universe.”

But are these continents actually moving apart at that rate? Long-term precise satellite “measurements of the relative positions of North America and North Africa document a current spreading rate of approximately 1 inch per year, a value in remarkable agreement with the radiometrically determined rates.”14 This confirms that the continents began to move apart 180,000,000 years ago — but that is impossible if the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

Conclusion: Old Earth

I realize that young-earth advocates will disagree with my assessment of this evidence. They will claim that maybe the speed of light was vastly different, maybe the rate of sediment deposit in lakes was vastly different, maybe the speed of movement of the earth’s tectonic plates was vastly different, maybe the rate of decay of radiometric elements in rocks was vastly different, and so forth. Eventually this begins to sound to me like, “If the facts were different, they would support my position.” But that kind of argument is just an admission that the facts do not support one’s position.

As for the biblical evidence, I think it can be legitimately and honestly understood to allow for either an old-earth or a young-earth view. I do not think the Bible tells us or intends to tell us the age of the earth or the age of the universe.

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.

ABSTRACT: Even if old-earth views are within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, Scripture offers several reasons for believing God created the earth relatively recently — within thousands of years rather than millions or billions. Genesis 1 portrays creation in terms of a literal workweek, the New Testament associates early human history with “the beginning,” the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 are without gaps, humanity appears in Scripture as the head of creation, and the Bible regularly associates animal death and suffering with the fall. Though none of these arguments proves conclusive, together they offer a compelling case for a young creation.

We asked professors Wayne Grudem and Jason DeRouchie to offer arguments for their respective old-earth and young-earth views, and then respond to each other. Access the full set of articles and responses on the “How Old Is the Earth?” series page.

At stake in the question of the earth’s age is faithful exegesis of the biblical text aligned with a faithful interpretation of the scientific data. Because no one but God was present at the beginning, and because the Bible is God’s inerrant word, Scripture holds highest authority in answering questions of time and space. Scripture’s teaching on a subject must bear guiding weight in assessing all matters related to the created sphere.

Let us be clear: God’s role as creator, his purpose for creation, and the historicity of Adam and Eve as the first parents are non-negotiable for Christian belief. Furthermore, evolutionary creationism (i.e., theistic evolution) of any form is unwarranted biblically. Nevertheless, while there is much at stake, the age of the earth is not among the central doctrines that should divide. Conservative Christianity has remained broad enough for both young-earth and old-earth creationism (akin somewhat to credo- versus paedo-baptism or varying millennial views). I remain a convinced young-earth creationist because of the overwhelming biblical data. However, there is no single silver-bullet biblical or scientific argument for my position, and old-earth creationists can craft legitimate, thoughtful responses to each of my claims. The weight of my case is cumulative, and I question whether every argument I make can be legitimately falsified.

Humanity in the First Week

Argument 1: Genesis 1:1–2:3 places the creation of humanity within the first week of creation. The most natural reading of the Bible’s introduction points to a young earth.

“The most natural reading of the Bible’s introduction points to a young earth.”

The use of Hebrew yôm (meaning day) with the refrain “there was evening and there was morning” (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), along with the mention of light and darkness, day and night, and the one-week structure strongly, suggests that the communicator of this revelation was portraying the equivalent of 24-hour calendar days, even though the sun is not created until day four (Genesis 1:14–19). Mankind is here portrayed as being created on day six of God’s first workweek. The day-age theory (wherein God created all of physical creation out of nothing in a chronological progression of ages spanning an indefinite period of time) does not seem to fit this context. And the gap theory (which posits a very long span between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2) does not appear to be allowed by the Hebrew text.

While later meditations on creation (e.g., Psalm 104) never refer to the “days,” the fact that Yahweh built Israel’s 6+1 pattern of life upon the pattern of the creation week (Exodus 20:11) seems best understood only if Israel was already aware of the 6+1 pattern of the creation week (see Exodus 16:23–29; compare Genesis 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12) and viewed it as an actual as opposed to figurative or analogical reality. Specifically, Israel’s call to keep the Sabbath is grounded in God’s original workweek, which is difficult to read analogically (Exodus 20:10–11): “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.”

In the Beginning

Argument 2: The New Testament closely associates the history of Genesis 2–4 with the beginning of the world. Old-earth models require either that mankind’s creation be separated from the “beginning” by millions or even billions of years, or that the Genesis 1:1 “beginning” stretched out for a period of time massively longer than all the time that has followed. The former discounts the New Testament link between the “beginning” of Genesis 1:1 and the creation of mankind in 1:26–28, and the latter forces a strange use of the term of “beginning,” wherein what happens in the ninth inning is still the “beginning.”

In the New Testament, we read that Jesus saw the institution of marriage as being closely linked to the beginning of creation (Mark 10:6; cf. Matthew 19:4, 8; see Genesis 2:21–25). He declared that Satan’s murderous activity (not just his tendencies) through his deception of Eve was closely associated with the beginning of creation (John 8:44). He linked this murderous, sinful activity with the promise that the offspring of the woman would stand in friction with the serpent and his offspring (1 John 3:8; cf. Genesis 3:1–6, 15). He saw the first human experience of tribulation as being located near the beginning of creation (likely referring to Cain’s killing of Abel) (Mark 13:19; cf. Matthew 24:21; see Genesis 4:8). He placed the martyrdom of Abel near the foundation of the world (Luke 11:49–50; cf. Matthew 23:35; see Genesis 4:8).

The writer of Hebrews also considered the “foundation of the world” to be the conclusion of the sixth day, placed humanity’s rebellion (for which Jesus suffered) very near this time, and contrasted this foundation with the “end of the ages” realized in the work of Christ (Hebrews 4:3–4; 9:25–26).

Linear Genealogies

Argument 3: The linear genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 point to a recent humanity. While some biblical genealogies are clearly selective (e.g., Matthew 1:1; 1:2–17), the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are so specific that they resist a selective reading and thus require that humanity has existed for a relatively short time.

The linear genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are unique in all of Scripture with respect to the age detail they provide (see, e.g., Genesis 5:3–11). Even if “son” at times means grandson or great-grandson (as can happen in Scripture), the specificity of the ages counters the likelihood of gaps. Moreover, a number of the seemingly “father-son/grandson/great-grandson” relationships are shown elsewhere to be just that — e.g., Adam with Seth (Genesis 4:25), Noah with Ham, Shem, and Japheth (6:10), Terah with Abraham (11:31).

A solid explanation for the presence of specific ages in these genealogies is the messianic and missiological purposes of Genesis. Moses seems to have gone out of his way to show that God preserved the line of hope in every generation from Adam to Noah, from Shem to Terah, and from Abraham to Israel. The specified years all highlight the faithfulness of God to preserve his line hoping in the offspring promise of Genesis 3:15. As such, leaving out generations would have gone against the apparent purpose.

Adding the ages in the genealogies points to humanity being around 6,000 years old.

Climax of Creation

Argument 4: Adam’s high role as head of the first creation and mankind’s station as the climax of creation and image of God both support a young earth. It makes less sense to think that God allowed the bulk of creation to exist for millennia without its overseers.

“It makes less sense to think that God allowed the bulk of creation to exist for millennia without its overseers.”

Genesis 1:1–2:3 associates all major “rulers” of the first creation with humanity. The luminaries separate day and night and establish the earth’s calendar (Genesis 1:14), but they also serve as “signs” for humans that stress the surety of God’s promises (Genesis 15:5; Jeremiah 33:22). Humans are called to “fill the earth and subdue it” and to “have dominion over the fish . . . birds . . . and every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

Humans are the climax of creation and sole representatives of God on the earth, with some being chosen “in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him, having been predestined in love for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ . . . to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:4–6). Only on the sixth day is the definite article “the” added to the day-ending formula (“a first day, a second day, a third day, . . . the sixth day”). Day six gets the most literary space and includes the longest speeches. Only at the end of day six does God declare creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Only at day six does God declare something he makes to be “in his image,” giving humanity oversight in the world. Scripture portrays the first man, Adam, as representative covenantal head over the first creation (Genesis 2:15; Romans 5:18–19; 1 Cor. 15:45).

In addition, God’s oversight, provision, and protection of animals (Psalms 104:14, 21, 24, 27; 145:14–16; 147:9; Matthew 6:26; Luke 12:24) is significantly manifest through mankind (Genesis 1:28; 2:15; Psalm 8:6–8[7–9]).

Animal Suffering and Death

Argument 5: Scripture usually portrays the suffering and death of living creatures, including animals, as part of the curse, so millions of years of animal death and suffering pre-fall seems unlikely. God initially curses the world on account of human sin, so death and suffering in land animals and birds most likely resulted from mankind’s fall and were not present before it, as all old-earth models require.

“Scripture usually portrays the suffering and death of living creatures, including animals, as part of the curse.”

The principal consequence of humanity’s garden rebellion was human death both physically and spiritually (Genesis 2:17; 3:16–19; Romans 5:12). Humanity’s sin in the garden brought negative consequences not only on humanity, however, but also to the created world at large: God cursed the animals (Genesis 3:14). God cursed the ground (Genesis 3:17–19). God subjected the whole world to futility (Romans 8:20–21).

Scripture regularly associates animal death with curse and animal life with blessing. Both realities suggest that death and suffering in land animals and birds would have resulted from the fall and not been present before it.

First, the fact that the serpent is cursed “more than/above” (= Hebrew min of comparison) all livestock and beasts of the field implies that the land animals were indeed impacted directly and negatively by humanity’s fall (Genesis 3:14; cf. 3:1).

Second, the curse on the ground (Genesis 3:17) shapes the backdrop to Noah’s birth (5:29), and the judgment curse of the flood includes the death of all beasts, birds, and creeping things (7:21–23), save those on the ark, which were set apart to preserve non-human land creatures after the flood (6:19–20; 7:3).

Third, eight of the ten judgment plagues on Egypt included animals becoming pests to humans or the mass suffering and death of livestock in a way that negatively impacted human existence (Exodus 8–12).

Fourth, the penal substitutionary blood of the Passover lamb alone secured the lives of Israel’s firstborn among both humans and beasts (Exodus 12:12–13).

Fifth, under the blessings of the Mosaic (old) covenant, mankind would live in safety from animal predation (Leviticus 26:6) and cattle and herds would flourish and increase (Deuteronomy 7:13–14; 28:4, 11). In contrast, under curse, humans would stand in fear of animal predation (Leviticus 26:22), cattle and herds would languish (Deuteronomy 28:18), and dead human flesh would be the food of beast and bird (28:26). These realities are all affirmed in the prophets (e.g., Jeremiah 7:20; 12:4, Haggai 1:9–11, Malachi 3:9– 12; 4:6).

Sixth, in the context of his wars of judgment, Yahweh called Israel to slaughter everything that breathes, including the animals (Deuteronomy 13:15; 20:16; 1 Samuel 15:3).

Seventh, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes associates the death of animals with that of humans (Ecclesiastes 3:19–20) and unhesitatingly connects the reality of both deaths with the curse at the fall: “All are from the dust, and to dust all return” (see Genesis 3:19–20). This link strongly points to the death of both animals and humans as beginning at the same time.

Old-earth creationists struggle to clarify what actually changes in the non-human world at the curse, for they believe an extended period (even millions of years) of animal suffering and death already existed pre-fall. In contrast, Scripture points to God’s curse of the world as a decisive turning point and then commonly associates animal death with curse.

Eating Meat and the Curse’s End

Argument 6: The limiting of animal death in the eternal state as a restoring of Eden suggests that all terrestrial death began after the fall. Specifically, because eating meat likely symbolizes Jesus’s victory over the curse, the limiting of animal death in the eternal state to redeemed humanity’s consuming of meat likely signals the restoring of Eden rather than an escalation beyond it and suggests that all terrestrial death began after the fall and that, therefore, the earth is young.

Scripture explicitly connects sin, suffering, and death in all its forms only to the fall (Genesis 3:14–15; Romans 1:24, 26, 28; 8:18–23). It also highlights Christ’s death and resurrection as the only solution to the problem of human rebellion and its consequences, which appears to include all earthly evil, both natural evils like cancer and car accidents and moral evils directly related to rebellion against God. Specifically, the Bible teaches that Christ’s work was designed to restore all things (Acts 3:21), to unite all things (Ephesians 1:10), to reconcile all things to God (Colossians 1:17), to do away with death, tears, and pain (Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 21:4), and to eradicate the curse and all that is unclean (Revelation 21:27; 22:3).

This eternal redemptive reality is portrayed both as restoring the garden of Eden (pre-fall) and as escalating beyond it by completing what the first Adam failed to secure. This new/re-creation will bear elements that are similar to the original creation pre-fall (Ezekiel 36:35; Isaiah 51:3; Romans 8:20–21; Revelation 2:7; 22:1–5, 14, 19), but it will be absent of any past or potential influence of evil or curse (Revelation 21:27; 22:3), save the sustained reminder of the former rebellion of the elect in order to sustain their awe of the saving work of King Jesus. Examples of such reminders will include lament over sin (Ezekiel 36:31), the presence of salt in the bogs around the once-Dead Sea (47:11; cf. Genesis 13:10; 19:24–26), the presence of transformed multiple tongues rather than a single language (Zephaniah 3:9; Revelation 5:9; 7:9; cf. Genesis 11:6–9), and the visual identification of Christ as both sacrificial and conquering Lamb (Revelation 5:5–6, 12–13; 7:10, 14; 17:14; 19:9; 21:22–23; 22:1, 3).

In such a context of restoration, reconciliation, and eradication, it is important to recognize that predatory activity among the animal kingdom will cease and that death will be present only in relation to humans eating meat. In the present fallen age, animals’ predatory activity is part of God’s revealed purposes (Psalm 104:21; Job 38:39–41), so long as it does not threaten humans (Psalm 104:23; Deuteronomy 7:22; Judges 14:5; 2 Kings 17:25) or domesticated animals (1 Samuel 17:34–35; Isaiah 31:4; Amos 3:12). Only after mankind’s fall and the global curse did humans become a target for animal predatory activity and did God grant people permission to consume animal meat, partly in order to cause the animals to fear them (Genesis 9:2–3; cf. 1:30). In this cursed world, eating meat affirms mankind’s call to reflect, resemble, and represent God by exerting dominion (1:26, 28; cf. Psalm 8:6–8[7–9]), and it also testifies to God’s curse-overcoming power.

Specifically, from the earliest days after God exiled humanity from the garden, humans distinguished clean animals from unclean ones (Genesis 7:2–3, 8). After God allowed humans to consume animal flesh, he allowed his people to eat only the clean (Leviticus 20:25–26). Scripture treats as unclean all animals that in some way symbolically look like the serpent in the garden — whether due to their crafty, predatory, killing instincts (Genesis 3:1–5 with 2:17; cf. John 8:44; 10:10) or due to their dust-eating association with death and waste (Genesis 3:14). And it is because Christ overcomes the evil one at the cross (Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 2:15; cf. Luke 10:18; John 12:31; Revelation 12:9) that all foods are now clean (Mark 7:19; Acts 10:10–15, 28; Romans 14:14, 20; 1 Timothy 4:4). That makes the eating of all foods a testimony of Christ’s curse-overcoming power.

In view of the full redemptive work of Christ, the restored new creation and new covenant will extend to the beasts, birds, and creeping things, resulting in global safety (Hosea 2:18; Isaiah 35:9), as the once-predatory animals (perhaps a picture of hostile nations) become vegetarian and dwell peacefully alongside lamb and the child king, so that no creature need fear them (Isaiah 11:6–9; 65:25; cf. 9:6–7). In that day of consummation, God will put down all enemy oppression, abolish all human disease, suffering, and death, and make an end of the curse (Isaiah 25; 65:17–25; Revelation 21:3–5; 22:3).
In the new heavens and new earth, humans will never fear predators, and terrestrial creatures will not be the diet of one another. These realities are part of Christ’s fixing what went wrong at the fall and help identify the return to the pre-fall state rather than an escalation beyond it.

Furthermore, as a sustained testimony that Christ has fully overcome the curse, humans will continue to eat animals in the new heavens and new earth (e.g., Isaiah 25:6, 8; Ezekiel 47:9–10; Matthew 22:2–4; Luke 22:15–18, 29–30; Revelation 19:7, 9; 21:1, 4, 10; cf. Luke 24:41–43; John 21:12–13). Because God allowed humans to eat meat only post-fall, and because eating that meat testifies to Christ’s curse-overcoming victory, which culminates in Jesus’s triumph over the unclean serpent at the cross, the restriction in the eternal state of animal death to redeemed humanity’s meat-consumption points to the absence of animal death before the fall and, therefore, to a young earth.

Conclusion: Young Earth

The biblical data supports the belief that the earth is young. We see this (1) in the way Scripture portrays creation as a literal work week, (2) in the way the New Testament links the early history of mankind with the beginning, (3) in the unlikelihood that there are time gaps in the linear genealogies of Genesis, (4) in the way the Bible consistently portrays humanity as head of terrestrial creation, (5) in the fact Scripture regularly associates animal death and suffering with curse and makes it unlikely that such was happening before the fall, and (6) in the way human meat consumption in the eternal state testifies to Jesus’s curse-overcoming work.

Audio Transcript

We go to school to learn. And when it comes to prayer, we sometimes need to be enrolled in the school of prayer — God’s school of prayer. And that school of prayer is described for us in the Old Testament, in a book we don’t go to very often: the book of Zechariah. It is there that we find a key text in John Piper’s understanding of how we learn to pray: Zechariah 13:8–9, a text never mentioned on this podcast — until today. Here he is to explain the importance of this text in a sermon he preached to his church in the final days of 2008, looking ahead to the new year of 2009. Here’s Pastor John.

Okay, Zechariah. Do you know where that book is? Second-from-the-last book of the Old Testament. If you go to the end of the Old Testament and flip back about four pages, you’ll be there. Zechariah 13:8–9, and we’ll wrap it up here with this. What did I get hit with in Zechariah that gave this message the twist it’s now getting on prayer? I don’t think I’d ever seen this before.

Refined by Fire

This is a couple of verses about God’s school of prayer. If you’re not praying the way you should, then probably he’s going to sign you up for this. Let’s start at verse 8: “In the whole land, declares the Lord, two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive.” So stop there. Don’t worry about when this happens in history right now. Just leave that one aside. Just look at how God works.

He takes the whole, and two-thirds of them perish. They get wiped out. God saves a third. So you’re in that third if you’re a Christian. Symbolically, you’re in that third. God’s remnant — faithful, imperfect, weak, lousy pray-ers — he saved them.

What’s God’s remedy for their weaknesses? What’s his school of prayer? Verse 9: “And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested.” Now notice carefully what’s happening, because this is surprising. In his great love, he rescues them from the whole and he includes them in his elect third (symbolically third). He’s got a third, and he loves them. He saved them. He didn’t let them perish. And then he takes his loved ones, his cherished, the apples of his eye, and he puts them in the fire.

“God rescues us from the flames of hell and puts us into refining flames.”

Why? Now, this is normal Christianity. Do you think, “Well, that’s the Old Testament; he doesn’t do that anymore”? Listen to 1 Peter 4:12: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” That’s crystal clear. This is normal, not strange, Christianity. God rescues us from hell and puts us in fire. Got that? That is normal Christianity. God rescues us from the flames of hell and puts us into refining flames. Why?

School of Earnest Prayer

Now I don’t want all the answers from all over the Bible. I just want the answer from verse 9 — and it’s crystal clear, and it’s simple, and narrow, and small, and big, and huge, and glorious. It’s about prayer. So let’s finish reading verse 9: “I will . . . test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them.” That’s all. Nothing about getting their sex lives burned clean, nothing about getting their money mismanagement burned clean, nothing about getting their power struggles and relational mess-ups fixed. Just this: “Then they’ll call on me, and I’ll answer.”

God puts us in the fire to awaken earnest prayer. This is a plea now. I’m pleading with you. This verse is in the Bible to help this plea that I’m about to make to you come true. I can’t make it come true. This verse — by God’s grace, with his power — can make this come true. I plead with you not to be among the number who gets sent to this school, which is designed to awaken prayer, and the school becomes the very reason you abandon prayer.

“God puts us in the fire to awaken earnest prayer.”

Thousands go to this school and turn on prayer. “If he treats me like this, I’m not going to ask him for anything, because I asked him to keep me out of this, and he didn’t do it.” The very school designed to produce depth, trust, and God-focused, man-diminishing, worshipful prayer is turned on its head, and the school is hated. I’m pleading with you: this verse is in the Bible to help that not happen. That’s why it’s here, so that when you look around you, and the flames are burning, and you wonder, “God, what’s up?” — this is up. This is up. Don’t teach him how to teach. Submit.

Enfeebled by Prosperity

Let me close with a quote from John Calvin. I read Calvin on this text, because next year is his five hundredth birthday, so I’m poking in Calvin a lot these days. This is what he said, and it’s more true today than it was when he wrote it: “It is therefore necessary that we should be subject from first to last to the scourges of God [the fire] in order that we may, from the heart, call on him, for our hearts are enfeebled by prosperity, so that we cannot make an effort to pray.”

If that’s not the American church, I don’t know what is. We are enfeebled by prosperity so that we can scarcely make the effort to pray, because so many other good things, prosperous things, right things, fill our powerless lives.

So would you resolve with me that this simply will not happen to you in 2009 — “this” meaning that our hearts are enfeebled by prosperity so that we cannot make the effort to pray? Would you resolve with me that that’s not going to happen? I’m not going to let that happen, whatever it takes. I’m not going to be enfeebled by my prosperity. I will put in place whatever it takes.

May the Lord be gentle with us in the fires of 2009, because they will come. I hope you don’t turn on him when they come.

Why is unity in the church so hard? If you’re like me, this question can prompt tears.

Mentioning tears tells you I’m not talking about disunity in the church in general. I’m talking about disunity in churches we know and love, and between Christians we know and love.

And for the most part, I’m not talking about disunity fueled by higher-level disagreements over primary Christian doctrines (ones that define the bounds of Christianity) or even secondary doctrines (ones that define, say, the bounds of a denomination). I’m talking about the far more common kind of disunity fueled by the endless variety of conflicts that break apart relationships, and even whole churches, because earnest, sincere Christians fail to humbly, gently, patiently “[bear] with one another in love” and cease being “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1–3).

If you’re like me, you’ve seen too much of this, and you wonder, sometimes with tears, “Why is unity in the church so hard?”

But, if you’re like me, this question might also reveal misguided assumptions we have about what Christian unity is supposed to be like. What I found lurking behind my question (and I don’t think I’m unusual here) was this assumption: unity between Christians who love and trust Jesus, are filled by his Spirit, and largely agree theologically, should not be this hard. It seems reasonable on its face. But a reasonable assumption doesn’t make a right assumption, especially when the Bible doesn’t support it.

Unity Has Always Been Hard

Don’t get me wrong: God is all for unity between God’s children. Scripture describes the experience of unity as “good and pleasant” (Psalm 133:1), and it commands all Christians to diligently pursue “being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord” (Philippians 2:2).

“The Bible nowhere promises that the pursuit of unity won’t be as hard as it often is.”

But nowhere in the Bible does God promise that the pursuit of unity, even among real, Spirit-filled, earnest Christians, won’t be as hard as it often is — any more than it promises that battling our indwelling sin won’t be as hard as it often is, or that suffering won’t be as devastating as it is, or that the whole endeavor of Christian love (of which pursuing unity is one aspect) won’t be as costly and humanly impossible as it is.

If anything, the fact that the New Testament records so many Christians struggling and failing to be unified should tip us off that unity is anything but easy. We only need to read through the letters of Paul to see this. Here’s just a small sampling of how often he addresses the issue of unity:

He reproves the Corinthians for their “quarrelling” and “divisions” (1 Corinthians 1:10–11).
He warns the Galatians against the dangers of “rivalries, dissensions, divisions” (Galatians 5:20).
He entreats “Euodia and . . . Syntyche [in Philippi] to agree in the Lord” and pleads with others to intervene (Philippians 4:2).
He instructs the Colossians, “Forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you” (Colossians 3:13).
And he exhorts the Ephesians not to indulge in “corrupting talk” so as to “not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” and to put away “all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander . . . along with all malice” (Ephesians 4:29–31).

I could quote many more. Which is why I say that the Bible doesn’t support our assumptions that Christian unity shouldn’t be as hard it is to attain and maintain. It’s been this hard since the earliest days of the church.

Why Unity Is Hard

Okay, so God doesn’t promise that unity won’t be hard — and, apparently, it’s always been hard. But that still leaves us with the question, “Why is unity in the church so hard?”

There are, of course, an endless number of factors. Consider that at any given time a church may be under heavy spiritual assault (Ephesians 6:12), infiltrated by wolves in sheep’s clothing (Acts 20:29), plagued by “rivalries, dissensions, divisions” stirred up by unbelievers who think they’re Christians (Galatians 5:19–21), trying to tempt immature believers to engage in partisan quarrels (1 Corinthians 3:1–4), and on and on.

But I’ll give two important high-level reasons we glean from Scripture for why unity in the church is as hard as it is — indeed, why, for our ultimate joy and his glory, God designed it to be as hard as it is.

Our Unity Refines Us

Scripture tells us that Jesus “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). In other words, Jesus’s substitutionary, atoning death purchased the gift of our forgiveness (he “bore our sins”) and the gift of our holiness (“that we might die to sin and live to righteousness”). Our holiness is a gift of God’s grace. Which means anything God designs to transform us into the likeness of his holy Son is a great gift. But sanctifying gifts tend to arrive in painful packages, because learning to die to sin and live to righteousness is almost always hard and often painful.

“Our pursuit of unity is designed to give us many opportunities to die to our own sin and bear with the sin of others.”

That’s why “maintain[ing] the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) is usually hard. Paul says it requires that we “put off [our] old self, which belongs to [our] former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires” — die to sin — “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” — live to righteousness (Ephesians 4:22–24). Our pursuit of unity is designed to give us many opportunities to die to our own sin and bear with the sin of others.

Our Unity Exalts Christ

What image comes to mind when you hear Jesus’s words, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35)? I tend to imagine some kind of idyllic Christian community of love — a kind of Christian community I’ve never seen, even in Scripture, even in those first sweet chapters of Acts.

What image did Jesus have in mind? We can see it in the previous verse: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). Jesus was about to “lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And he told his friends (all of us) to love one another “just as I have loved you.” Jesus was envisioning a cruciform community of Christians whose sacrificial love for one another frequently required them to take “the form of a servant,” pick up their cross, and “count others more significant than [themselves]” (Philippians 2:3, 7).

The pursuit of unity is hard because the love of God is costly. The love of the Father and the Son was most clearly and climactically displayed on the cross, and so our love for one another is designed to publicly display Godlike love in the world. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16). That’s how all people will know we’re Jesus’s disciples.

Never Give Up

The pursuit of Christian unity in a local church is a high calling. It’s a means of our growing in Christlikeness through sanctification, and it’s a means of proclaiming the otherworldly love of Christ through demonstrating the otherworldly love of Christ in a love-starved world.

It can be a heartbreaking pursuit in view of how often we fail. But let’s keep it in perspective. It’s no less surprising that we too frequently fail to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, than that we too frequently fail to continually abide in Jesus (John 15:4), strive for holiness (Hebrews 12:14), pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), love our enemies (Luke 6:27), bless those who persecute us (Romans 12:14), or count it all joy when we experience various trials (James 1:2).

Let’s not allow our failures to obey to become excuses to keep disobeying. Let’s put the 1 John 1:9 grace of God on public display by confessing and repenting of our sins and receiving God’s and one another’s forgiveness. And then let’s put the tenacious, gracious love of God on display by resolving to never give up, “so far as it depends on [us]” (Romans 12:18), seeking to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Christian unity is a high call, and a hard call. In fact, it’s impossible apart from “the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:19), for apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5). But that’s the way it’s supposed to be. For unity is not about fulfilling our idyllic expectations, but about displaying the reality of the redeeming, sanctifying love of God.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15413778/ministry-like-a-nursing-mother

It was a rousing mid-sermon rebuke — the kind to make you sit up in your pew.

“Jesus, being made perfect,” the preacher continued, “became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. And this Jesus, was, of course, designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. . . .”

The congregation doesn’t hide puzzled expressions. He pauses.

Melchize-who? Their sleepy faces wondered.

“Order of Melchizedek. . . .

. . . The King of Salem . . . “King of Righteousness”?

. . . Priest of the Most High who blesses Abram?

. . . In whose line the Messiah will serve as priest forever?

Maybe if he said, “Order of the Phoenix,” some might have recollected better, but “Melkitsadek” garnered little familiarity.

At this, he departs from his manuscript, walks around his pulpit, and looks them in the eye:

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. (Hebrews 5:11–14)

These grown men and women, Christians for some time now, started off well (Hebrews 10:32–34), yet still needed doctrinal milk, and not solid food. Although by now they should have been sharp on how the Christian should read the Old Testament, their dull ears (literally “sluggish”) made them perpetual students taking the same courses over and over. The author of Hebrews expected them to uncover Messianic treasures, pointing irreversibly to Jesus, in the deeps of God’s word; instead, they were still treading water on the surface.

Believers on the Bottle

Do texts like Hebrews 5:11–14 not vindicate for all time the careful study of God’s word, a hearty adherence to the whole counsel of God, a glad obedience to the fullness of its teaching? If the specifics of an enigmatic figure in Genesis 14 and Psalm 110 — one who many today might be tempted to deem obscure or irrelevant — has its proper place in the Christian mind, how much more the more conspicuous points?

Yet how many small groups or Sunday schools or Bible studies around the Western world today know much (if anything) about Psalm 110:4 and the priestly order of Melchizedek? Of its significance compared to the Aaronic order? The question grows sharpest, however, when we ask, How many want to know? How many of us, through disobedience and stagnancy, become “dull of hearing”?

Some modern minds seem to enshrine ignorance of finer points of Christian thought and doctrine as a Christian virtue. Particulars of Christian dogma they see as only useful to fracture, puff up, or make one useless in this world. Seminaries, in their view, are better called “cemeteries,” for higher education is where passion and love go to die.

God’s truth — that stubborn and imperishable reality that shall outlive the stars — has fallen on hard times with them. They do not wish to draw unwelcome lines, and what’s more, they believe this to be a very charitable and beautiful thing in the world. They seem altogether proud of their non-denominational, non-doctrinal, non-distinctive, and non-divisive faith. This, they say, is Christianity at its finest. Death, they cry, to circling round and round in endless debate over texts and theological jargon. Back to what Jesus gave us: a religion of love.

So much fighting exists already; they preach unity. Everywhere they see bitterness and rage; why should they argue? The most expedient thing to do, in a world of conflicting opinions — especially about religion — is to cast particularities of Christian interpretation, and in some cases, religion itself, overboard.

Lovers of First Grade

“Carried away by a fancied liberality and charity,” J.C. Ryle wrote in 1877, “they seem to think everybody is right and nobody is wrong, every clergyman is sound and none are unsound, everybody is going to be saved and nobody going to be lost. Their religion is made up of negatives; and the only positive thing about them is that they dislike distinctness and think all extreme and decided and positive views are very naughty and very wrong!” (Holiness, 278).

What it means that God predestines unto salvation, that Christ is the only way, that you must be born again, that by works of the law none will be justified, that God’s design entails differences between men and women — seem so small from their lofty perch. Faintly they hear the combatant chirping over particular views, but what is that to them? Catholic, Protestant, “spiritual, but not religious” — they see nothing really all that different in the end. Different shades of gray, they might call it.

They love doctrinal milk, love the first grade. Their vague creed of love sends them away from controversy, away from laborious study, away from loving God with “all their mind,” away from such “trivialities” as the order of Melchizedek, indeed, away from the Bible itself, beyond a favorite verse or two. And some take this to be more Christlike because it fosters unity better, or it is thought, than a religion filled with doctrinal detail.

Good Vibes Christianity

Christian teaching does divide. It separates “self-made religion” from heavenly, all other gospels from the true one, the proud from the humble, the false from the true, the goats from the sheep, the unsound from the sound, the passing away from the eternal, the teachings of demons and the teachings of Christ.

“Christian teaching separates the goats from the sheep, the unsound from the sound, the passing away from the eternal.”

Christians ought to be Berean, lovers of God’s word, lovers of steak. What is true of the nobler Jew has been true of the noble Christian throughout history: “they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

But what of our unity? It is precious, “good and pleasant” (Psalm 133:1), a gift from above not based on vague spiritualism or good vibes; real unity does not seek to discover how little can be believed. No, we embrace and teach and love the whole counsel of God. Love for others is nourished by doctrinal meat; by Scripture, all of Scripture — without abridgment or apology. As we confess in the Desiring God Affirmation of Faith, “Our aim is to encourage a hearty adherence to the Bible, the fullness of its truth, and the glory of its Author” (15.2). This alone “stabilizes saints in the winds of confusion and strengthens the church in her mission to meet the great systems of false religion and secularism.”

We will not agree to a man on every point; some distinctions will separate some of us from the particulars of weekly fellowship. But even then, as the Church, our superseding oneness in Christ makes our unity stronger than it ever could have been in untruth, error, and apathy, in clawing for the least common denominator, rather than turning our souls to God’s word as supreme, and then finding who are our fellows.

Need of the Hour

Our souls need more than little-truth, little-light, little-belief. Our souls need a feast of pure meat and holy potatoes to gird us up for life’s hardships. Milk-and-water theological minimalism may sustain infants, but not for long.

“Our souls need more than little-truth, little-light, little-belief.”

“We must charge home into the consciences of these men of broad views,” as Ryle put it, “and demand a plain answer to some plain questions. We must ask them to lay their hands on their hearts, and tell us whether their favorite opinions comfort them in the day of sickness, in the hour of death, by the bedside of dying parents, by the grave of beloved wife or child. We must ask them whether a vague earnestness, without definite doctrine, gives them peace at seasons like these” (31).

And our neighbors, coworkers, and family members need to be met with weighty-truths, broad-shouldered beliefs, and a living faith in the living Savior. All of which give us reason to smile, not frown.

What Ryle calls that spiritual “colorblindness” that “fancied liberality,” that “boneless, nerveless, jellyfish condition of soul,” that “pestilence which walks in darkness . . . a destruction that kills at noonday” (328) — cannot be the religion that turned the world upside down.

Mark what I say. If you want to do good in these times, you must throw aside indecision, and take up a distinct, sharply-cut, doctrinal religion. . . . The victories of Christianity, wherever they have been won, have been won by distinct doctrinal theology; by telling men roundly of Christ’s vicarious death and sacrifice; by showing them Christ’s substitution on the cross, and his precious blood; by teaching them justification by faith, and bidding them believe on a crucified Savior; by preaching ruin by sin, redemption by Christ, regeneration by the Spirit; by lifting up the brazen serpent; by telling men to look and live — to believe, repent, and be converted. (328)

Dare then, Christian, to have decided beliefs in this world. Satan and his demons are decided. The world is concrete in its creed. False teachers are bold in their belief. Those attempting to uncreate God’s reality are firmly concluded. Will we not be?

And in such courage, we will not find ourselves alone but flanked — by real fellows, with whom we will then taste true unity.

Audio Transcript

And we’re back again for another week and for another Fourth of July on the podcast. I think it’s the fourth time an episode has landed square on the holiday — at least our fourth. So happy Independence Day for those of you here in the States. If the inbox is any indicator, questions over politics, patriotism, and the pulpit are perennial concerns. When better to broach the topic than on a day like today?

Jamison, a pastor in Virginia, writes in to ask this: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast! I admire your approach to politics and patriotism. You seem to be very careful here. Even when the heat is turned up in election times, and pastors feel social pressure to endorse specific candidates, you notoriously refrain from participating. As you have watched this impulse in American Christian life for many decades, this impulse among Christian leaders to periodically endorse candidates and to get involved in politics, what observations have you drawn from your decades of refraining?”

Maybe the most important or helpful thing that I can do in response to this question is to point to passages of Scripture that capture the emphasis I think is needed, not just in the American church, but in the global church, the church around the world. Because the tendency to confuse and combine Christian identity and its earthly expression, the church, with political identity, ethnic identity, national identity, or any other earthly identity — that conflating tendency is so strong, and I think so destructive to the radical call of the gospel, that it needs steadfast resistance generation after generation.

Christian Identity in a Politicized World

So my burden is to join forces with the Bible (as I understand it), and millions of faithful Christians, to encourage and nurture a faithful Christian identity that will survive and thrive with faith and hope and joy and love and purity, whether America survives, or Brazil survives, or Britain survives, or China survives, or Russia survives, or India survives — or not.

So let me point to six kinds of passages that shaped my passions in that direction.

1. Not of This World

Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36). From which I infer that we’d better be very, very careful before we undertake any processes that involve force or coercion to put the kingdom of Christ in place. Any identity that we can put in place by force or weapon or law is not the kingdom of Christ. In this age, King Jesus is creating a people a very different way. That’s number one.

2. Hidden with Christ

Paul said in Colossians 1:13, “[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” And again,

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1–4)

“Our most fundamental and defining identity and location is the kingdom of Christ, not any kingdom on earth.”

So our most fundamental and defining identity and location is the kingdom of Christ, not any kingdom on earth. It is the right hand of God, not the right hand of any earthly power. Our most essential life is Christ, and only when he comes will we be openly known for who we really are.

3. Citizens of Heaven

Philippians 3:20–21:

Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

So no earthly citizenship, whether American or Russian or Chinese, has any ultimate allegiance over those who are in Christ Jesus. Our political allegiances are to Jesus. No party, no nation, no ethnicity, no ideology has any ultimate claim on us. Our decisive constitution is the word of God, and no human document.

4. Chosen Race, Holy Nation

Peter says in 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” These are ethnically and politically shattering words. Born-again Christians, real Christians, are a chosen race (genos eklekton), a holy nation (ethnos hagion). The kind of human we are and the kind of nation we belong to is not any longer our essential identity. We are a new kind, a new nation. None of the existing human realities, ethnic or national, is God’s chosen and holy people. Christians are a new thing, a new reality, a new people, a new nation, a new ethnicity and race. And we should bear witness to it.

5. Resident Aliens on Earth

Therefore, Peter says in 1 Peter 2:11, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” Christians are not first Americans, or Canadians, or British, or Russians, or Nigerians. In every nation, we are exiles. Let that sink in. I want to scream that from the top of the buildings to every nationalistic tendency. In every nation, we are exiles.

Jesus said, “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19). If you are going to run for office, be sure to inform your constituency that you are a resident alien. Your primary citizenship and allegiance are the kingdom of Christ.

6. Servants of God

Peter said in 1 Peter 2:13–16,

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.

“We belong to God. We are slaves of God, not any man. We are his servants. He owns us. We do his bidding.”

In other words, realize as Christians that you are free — free from emperors, free from governors, free from presidents, free from worldly powers and parties. We belong to God. We are slaves of God, not any man. We are his servants. He owns us. We do his bidding. And when the human state tells us to pay our taxes and keep the speed limit and shovel the snow off of our sidewalks, we do it, not because the state is our authority, but because God is. We submit for his sake and in his limits.

7. People from All Nations

Jesus said in Matthew 28:19–20,

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Now that does not mean, “Go and turn pagan cultures into whitewashed tombs with the paint of so-called ‘Christian’ externals.” We know that. We know it doesn’t mean that, because Jesus defines “discipling nations” — which is the neuter plural Greek word ethne, “nations” — by “baptizing and teaching them,” and the “them” is masculine plural. That’s crucial. You don’t disciple political entities. You don’t disciple ethnic corporate realities. You disciple “them” — autous, plural in Greek — people that you can baptize.

In other words, our job is to so magnify Jesus and his saving work, among all the peoples of the world, that individual human beings are brought from death to life and formed into the image of Christ. In every race, ethnicity, nation, this new people, this chosen race, this holy nation among all the nations are to let our light so shine before others that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:16). “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12).

You Don’t Need to Know It All

Now I have no illusions, Tony, that until Jesus comes, Christians will ever agree on precisely what it looks like in professional life, and political life, and cultural life for the church to be the kingdom of Christ — a kingdom, Jesus says, that’s not of this world.

But my encouragement to pastors is that you don’t need to figure that out. You don’t need to figure that out for all of your amazingly diverse people invested in a thousand ways, in all kinds of cultural and professional and political endeavors. You don’t need to be the expert to figure all that out. We’re not smart enough. Speak these biblical truths and others that you see as relevant from Scripture. Call your people to radical allegiance to King Jesus. Set them on a quest of lifelong learning, and trust the Spirit of God in their lives.