A dear and discouraged friend lamented to me recently, “How do we minister in this climate?” He wasn’t talking about the humid subtropical weather pattern of the Carolinas (which is generally quite pleasant). He was referring to the ministry environment of the younger generation in the early 2020s.

A few conflicting responses arose within me.

Feeling the Pain

My first response was, essentially, I feel your pain.

The ministry I work with, Campus Outreach, focuses on life-on-life evangelism and discipleship. In my two-plus decades in campus ministry, I have not encountered a moment quite as challenging as this one. I believe that a conflation of cultural factors (COVID, technology, and modern philosophies, to name a few) has brought us to this place. While every individual and subculture is distinct, I have an educated hunch that most ministers in the Western world are experiencing many (if not all) of the following challenges on some level.

1. Fear of the Social Unknown

For the past two years, I haven’t witnessed much direct fear of COVID from young people. I have witnessed, however, their sheer terror in the face of new social situations. The trend was alarming in the years immediately preceding COVID (though I think it may have been more akin to FOMO in the 2010s), but it’s off the charts now.

The fear of being seen and known, of connecting with and building close relationships with others, while not remotely a new fear, has been given fresh license in the sanctioned isolation of the last two years. So, an invitation to any organic, communal platform for relationship — a retreat, a conference, even an ultimate frisbee game — is met with more reluctance than I have ever previously encountered.

2. Isolation in Public

To quote Tony Reinke, “The smartphone is causing a social reversal: the desire to be alone in public and never alone in private” (12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, 124). There have been venues where this reversal was already coming to fruition, even as far back as twenty years ago: the gym and the airplane, for example. But the social acceptability of a screen in hand (and eyes on it) means that gaining access to a person’s eyes implies interruption. The screen (and headphones!) is a social stiff-arm, a means of saying, “Don’t talk to me!” without having to be rude.

The wide world, therefore, becomes an extension of the living room, where risks have been minimized and the channels of communication are tightly controlled. Few truly experience what Bilbo spoke to Frodo about in The Fellowship of the Ring: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” It’s a wonderful quote, but it may have been rendered moot. If we can find a way to bring our recliners with us, the transformation will be complete. And the living room has always felt too personal to invade.

3. Loss of the Moral High Ground

Historically, my evangelistic interactions, whether with strangers or friends, have elicited a “should” factor from the recipients of the gospel. Their resistance to Jesus was often met with a counterbalancing sense that Christianity was nevertheless the right way. The moral way. But the current zeitgeist associates Christianity with ignorance, bigotry, and oppression. So now, we aren’t simply trying to convince people that life surrendered to Jesus is better than whatever the world of sex and money and power offers; we are trying to convince them that Christians aren’t inherently racist, sexist, and abusive.

4. Loss of the ‘Villain’ Category

In recent years, you may have noticed the preponderance of films, especially in the Disney canon, that tell the backstory of a classical villain (Maleficent, Cruella, Joker, to name a few). In each of the stories, the villain is portrayed as misunderstood and deeply wounded. To be fair, generational sin in a broken world is complex. But the contrast between the portrayal of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty and in the more recent film where she is the titular character is striking.

Therapeutic language, with all of its benefits and drawbacks, has won over our society in a comprehensive way (I heartily recommend Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self for a thorough treatment of this trend). Twenty years ago, some pastors and theologians were vigorously countering the gospel of self-esteem. Today, many are rightly acknowledging and resisting previously overlooked abuses, but I am afraid that, in the process, the old self-esteem has entered through the back door.

A pastor I admire once presented the alliteration “Villain, Victim, Victor” to capture the categories in which all followers of Christ simultaneously find themselves. We are perpetrators of sin against God and others (villains), recipients of the sins of others (victims), and overcomers of sin through the finished work of Christ on the cross and the daily work of the Holy Spirit within (victors).

“The only doorway to the kingdom of Christ is through acknowledgment of personal villainy.”

In my experience, the personal category of villain has been largely erased. The category of victim is assumed, and affirmation of victory, even in the context of failure, is a given (“We’re all winners!”). But the only doorway to the kingdom of Christ is through acknowledgment of personal villainy. When there are widely accepted philosophical defenses to keep us from darkening that doorway, ministry is significantly more challenging.

5. Endless Buffet of Distractions

Life-on-life discipleship takes hours, days, months, and even years of commitment. It requires sustained scriptural focus. It takes single-mindedness and intentional relationships — qualities more easily attained without a constant barrage of stimuli, whether for entertainment (Netflix, YouTube, TikTok), human connection (Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook), or information (podcasts, TED talks, articles — yes, I see the irony). Those distractions have drastically diminished the felt need for true community, for the discipline of silence and solitude, and for a true Paul to one’s Timothy.

Spoiled to Inflated Expectations

So, my first response was, I feel your pain. But then my second response was this: we have been spoiled.

American gospel ministry in the last half-century, especially on the college campus, has been nearly unparalleled in its fruitfulness. I sat in a room of more than seven hundred Campus Outreach staff in 2013, and the meeting host asked all who had come to faith in college through the ministry to stand. Some three-fourths of the room left their seats.

These staff had mostly attended college in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when ministry numbers were booming. As a student, I was part of a ministry that comprised nearly 10 percent of the entire enrollment of a “secular” college. The harvest of millennials was ripe on America’s campuses. Meanwhile, across the world, faithful missionaries were battling to translate the Scriptures, learn cultures, and hopefully see a convert or a few over years of ministry. They still are.

“We need to recapture the wonder of a single heart made new.”

With a background in such manifest fruitfulness, I have found, at least for myself, that I need to recapture a healthy theology of the cross, whereby we are poured out, sometimes agonizingly, for the formation of disciples (Galatians 4:19). We need to recapture the wonder of a single heart made new (Ezekiel 36:26). We need to recall the counterintuitive contentment that comes from seemingly fruitless ministry (1 Corinthians 15:58), and even the strange joy of suffering shame for the name of Christ (Acts 5:41). Which leads to my third and final response.

Hasn’t It Always Been Tough?

From feeling the pain, to needing to recalibrate assumptions, I also asked, Hasn’t it always been this way in some form or another?

In other words, is it possible that hitting the panic button during any given cultural moment is a bit reactionary? Our commitment to biblical Christianity requires us to believe that the Scriptures are sufficient to equip us to address the challenges of modern life and ministry (2 Timothy 3:16–17). It can only follow that they are timeless, implying that both the human condition in the twenty-first century and the cultural challenges of our day have not strayed too far from those in biblical times. I find it incredibly helpful to recall timeless spiritual realities when ministry moments seem bleak.

All still have the hardwired inclination to exchange the truth of God for a lie in order to worship and serve the creature (or the self) rather than the Creator (Romans 1:24–25). Christ crucified is still the stench of death to those who don’t have the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 2:15–16). And the ministers themselves still flag at times, struggling to continue to speak the aromatic gospel of Christ, always needing renewed faith, hope, and love.

People back then had a God-shaped void in their hearts. They were made for intimacy with God and with their fellow man, even as they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. They longed to know and be known and were simultaneously terrified of that intimacy.

So, to quote Ellis in No Country for Old Men, “What you got ain’t nothing new.” In a foundational sense, in the ways that matter most, the resistance was exactly the same in AD 50 as it is in 2022. Daunting indeed.

But if the resistance is fundamentally the same, so too is the Spirit who indwells us with divine power. The word of the cross has never ceased being folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it has never stopped being the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18). He has never stopped using foolish things to shame the wise, jars of clay to carry treasure (1 Corinthians 1:27; 2 Corinthians 4:7). And if that is true, then there will be a multitude that no one can count from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation who surround the throne of the Lamb (Revelation 7:9).

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). So, no matter the spiritual climate, we offer him to the world with hope.

Audio Transcript

We end the week with episode 1800. It’s an incredible benchmark for us, and it’s only possible because of you. So thank you for a decade of support and for your encouragements, email questions, and 250 million episode plays — and for hundreds of thousands of subscribes over the years. This podcast happens because you invest time with us — precious time that we don’t take for granted. That’s why we don’t have ads or sponsors, and it’s one of the reasons we don’t dillydally around with windy introductions. So, moving on to the episode.

Today’s question is a great one, Pastor John. Scripture gives us a constellation of ways to think of the Christian life. And a listener to the podcast named Jason wants to know how they relate. Here’s what he asks: “Pastor John, hello! Can you help me figure something out? Is the key to personal sanctification more about ‘looking to Jesus,’ as Hebrews 12:2 says? Or is it more about being united ‘to him who has been raised from the dead,’ as Romans 7:4 puts it? Or is it mostly about ‘beholding’ Christ’s glory, as 2 Corinthians 3:18 puts it? Or is it more about just obeying and doing the ‘work of faith,’ as 2 Thessalonians 1:11 says?

“I know the answer is likely going to be, ‘Yes, it’s all of those!’ But I am trying to connect them all in a way that is practical to teach and live. I find myself jumping from one to the other as though they are multiple things. Surely there are logical connections that make them all one and the same.” Pastor John, how would you put this puzzle together for Jason?

Wow, I just love this kind of a great question — not only this kind of question, but just this way of thinking. Taking different parts of Scripture — they use very different language — and asking, “Are there deep, common, unified, coherent realities here?” That is so helpful to do.

So let’s see if I can weave these four strands together into some kind of cord that the Lord might use to bring us along in our pursuit of sanctification. That’s what they’re designed for, and I think the Lord is very pleased when we try to put the different parts of his word together in order to see the common realities behind them, even when different words are used to describe those realities.

One Great Work of God

The realities in these four passages of Scripture would include these (I just made a list of them as I read these passages):

God
word of God
Christ
death of Christ
glory of Christ
law of God
faith in Christ
faith in his word
hope
joy
Christian freedom
the Holy Spirit
human resolve

All of those are realities, and they are all at work in these passages, and they are not doing contradictory things.

“There is one great work of God weaving all these realities together in the process of making us holy.”

There is one great work of God weaving all these realities together in the process of making us holy, making us sanctified, more Christlike. Different texts focus on different ones of these realities, but none of them leads us in a direction that would in any way contradict the other passages. We’ve misunderstood the text if one text is sending us off in a direction that flies in the face of the other passages. So, let me take them one at a time and just see if I can draw out some of the common connections.

Looking to Jesus

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)

So in this text, “looking to Jesus” is given as the means by which we run our race with endurance. That race, of course, includes becoming holy, staying on the narrow racetrack to the end. And when we look to Jesus, we see three things that affect our running.

First, he’s called “the founder and perfecter of our faith,” which means he has done the decisive work in dying and rising and sitting down at the right hand of God. Because of Christ, our faith is well-founded and well-finished. It’s as good as done. In other words, because of Christ, we’re going to make it to the finish line. He founded our faith. He’ll finish our faith.

“Because of Christ, we’re going to make it to the finish line. He founded our faith. He’ll finish our faith.”

Second, we look to Christ as inspiring our endurance because of his endurance — enduring the cross. He ran his race successfully through suffering. This emboldens us to run our race through suffering.

And third, when we look to Jesus, he shows us how he ran his race. He says he ran it “for the joy that was set before him.” Therefore, the key to our endurance is to stand on that finished work of Christ and be confident that all-satisfying joy is just over the horizon. He’s going to finish it. He’s going to bring us great joy. That’s how we keep going, because that’s how he kept going.

So this confidence in the joy that is set before us is called, in Hebrews, faith. In the chapter just before, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the joy hoped for. Faith is the foretaste, the substance (Hebrews 11:1). Right now you can taste it — the foretaste of the joy of the promise of God, over and over. In Hebrews 11, the saints obey by faith — that is, this faith, this confident hope of a joyful future, is the key to their obedience, just like it was the key to Jesus’s obedience. So that’s the picture, and that’s the reality of how we are sanctified, in Hebrews 12.

New Way of the Spirit

Now here’s Romans 7:4, 6:

You also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. . . . We are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Now, the new reality that Paul introduces here that wasn’t in Hebrews 12 is the fact that when Christ died, we died. Specifically, we died to the law. We were released from law-keeping as the way of getting right with God, as the way of ongoing fellowship with God.

That’s new, right? Nothing was said about the law in Hebrews 12:1–2. So Paul is coming at sanctification with a different problem in view: not the need for endurance through suffering — that’s the issue in Hebrews; that’s not the issue here — but the need for liberation from law-keeping. That’s the issue here. How do we relate to God? How do we become holy without law-keeping as the foundation for our lives (because that we died to)?

And the other new reality that Paul introduces in Romans 7:4 is the Holy Spirit. He says that we “have died to the law . . . so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Romans 7:6) And that wasn’t in Hebrews.

And I would say that this new way of the Spirit is precisely the way of Hebrews 12, describing the Christian life — namely, the life of faith in the promises of God to fulfill us, to fill us with hope for future joy. That’s the new way of the Spirit in Romans 7. That’s the alternative to law-keeping as a way of walking with God. So, they are complementary texts, coming at sanctification from two very different angles.

Beholding the Glory of Christ

Third, Jason introduces, or he brings up, 2 Corinthians 3:18. In this text, Paul combines the reality of the Holy Spirit (mentioned in Romans 7) and the reality of looking to Jesus (mentioned in Hebrews 12). And he adds the realities of glory and freedom, neither of which had been mentioned explicitly in those other two texts, but are mentioned here. So he says,

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17–18)

What this text adds to the “new way of the Spirit,” described in Hebrews 12 and Romans 7, is that looking to Jesus in Hebrews 12 means not only seeing him as enduring the cross, but seeing him as glorious in all that he’s done.

The focus is on how beautiful and glorious and magnificent he is — and finding that glory so riveting, so satisfying, that it has the effect of transforming us. We tend to take on the traits of those we most admire. This is freedom, because it happens by the Spirit as a natural process.

This is what Paul called “bearing fruit for God” in Romans 7. Faith and hope and joy are not mentioned in 2 Corinthians 3, but I would say that they are implied in the phrase “beholding the glory of the Lord.” I think that transforming “beholding” is the sight of faith. That’s the way faith sees Christ. Faith beholds the beauty of Christ. Faith finds joy in him when it looks at him and all that God promises to be for us in him. And by beholding him that way, faith transforms. And that’s sanctification.

Work of Faith

One more. Jason refers us to 2 Thessalonians 1:11, where Paul says, “May [God] fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.” So in the process of sanctification, we do make resolves. Yes, we do. We intend things. We will things. We exercise our will. But Paul says that all of these volitional actions are works of faith by God’s power. In other words, we are back in the realm of God’s empowering Spirit. We work by trusting God’s promise that he is at work in us.

So, Jason, good question. I think if you bore into the actual reality of these four descriptions of sanctification, you will find they are deeply unified and mutually illuminating. It’s a thrilling thing to meditate on the realities of Scripture until we see how beautifully they cohere.

The day began bright with hope and promise. This day was the nearest to Eden man had been since the fall: the dwelling place of God was again with man.

The tabernacle stood within Israel’s camp, and now Yahweh was set to appoint his priests. Israel gathered in breathless expectation as Moses publicly ordained Aaron and his four sons — Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar —to serve as priests of the Most High God.

In that first appointment to holy service, blood was spilled, animals fell slain, anointing oil was poured, special garments were bestowed, a covenantal meal was consumed. The proceedings kept in careful step with the drumbeat “as the Lord commanded” (Leviticus 8:4, 9, 13, 17, 21, 29, 36). So far, so good.

The first worship service in the tabernacle then commenced immediately after the ordination. Turning to the people, Aaron and his four sons offered sacrifices for themselves and for the people, and he blessed them. The Lord added his “so far, so good” by providing the grand finale:

The glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. (Leviticus 9:23–24)

The Lord approved the ordination and showed his pleasure at their worship.

But the weather soon changed.

Wailing in the Camp

Imagine the scenario. As you sit by your tent with your family later that day, you begin to hear what sounds like loud cries heading your way. You hear shrieks and screams. As the crowd comes closer, you wonder: What could possibly bring such sorrow on a day like this?

Sobs swell in your ears as the entourage draws near.

Is that Mishael and Elzaphan from Aaron’s family? Why is their walk belabored? What is that they’re carrying between them? The smell of burnt flesh begins to fill the air — a bull?

Then you see it, the motionless heap they carry slowly through the camp and out to where the scraps of sacrifices go: the garb that so recently dazzled in the sunlight — the coverings, the sashes, the hats of a priest. It cannot be! Nadab? And Abihu too?

These — no, not these.

These just celebrated this morning — ordained of God; these, the eldest sons of Aaron, next in line to lead us; these, who went up by name to sit with the elders and see the very face of God upon the mountain (Exodus 24:1)? It could not be these who had just assisted Aaron as the glory of the Lord fell and we all collapsed in worship.

No, not these, who were just washed clean with water, clothed with coats, tied with sashes, bound with caps; not these, who so recently laid their hands upon the offerings; no, not these, who were just touched with the blood of the sacrifice upon their ear, thumb, and big toe, consecrated unto Yahweh. Not these.

Were they ambushed? Had someone defiled the tent with murder? Or has the Lord himself, so recently setting them apart, now dismissed them with fire?

Sins of Nadab and Abihu

Many wonder what exactly Nadab and Abihu’s sin entailed. Some think, with the immediate reference prohibiting drunkenness (Leviticus 10:8–11), that they offered incense while intoxicated. Others wonder (perhaps in addition to this) whether they attempted to go into the Holy of Holies (Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?, 147).

Whatever the list of crimes, we know that Nadab and Abihu offered “unauthorized fire before Yahweh, which he had not commanded them” (Leviticus 10:1). Which the Lord had not commanded them. The sevenfold refrain of “as the Lord commanded” came to a fatal halt. They went forth of their own initiative to draw near to God as they saw fit.

And the retribution was swift, and nothing less than just. They took liberties as they gripped their censers of incense, “and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord” (Leviticus 10:2).

Worship Is Not Safe

With many today, it appears, worship of the Almighty is slight and carefree. Some women give more thought to their makeup, and men to the game after service, than that we have gathered to meet with God.

The assumption seems to be that the Deity is content — thankful even — that we have set aside our precious time on our Sunday to give him some of our attention. He is ever-smiling, even when some barely bother to rise from their beds, happy to “worship” virtually week in and week out with their “online churches.” They wouldn’t engage with the mailman with so slouched and slovenly a disposition, but here they are worshiping before God. Many approach the burning bush every Sunday with their sandals (or bedroom slippers) still upon their feet, spiritually and otherwise.

“With many today, worship of the Almighty has become slight and carefree.”

What happened to reverence? When did it become an endangered species? Has God not the right to ask many professing Christians today, as he did the negligent priests of Israel, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear?” (Malachi 1:6).

And I ask this not to the bizarre outliers given to almost unbelievable forms of irreverence, like spraying the congregation with water guns, drive-thru “means of grace,” and dance contests in the worship service. I ask this to the normal, seemingly respectable church-attender, flippantly going through the motions: Do you approach the Lord with fear and trembling? And I ask this of myself, Do I consciously worship every Sunday before the Holy God, the untamable Lion of Judah?

In light of Nabad and Abihu, it stands to reason that, for thousands who gather every Sunday, the safest place for them to be would be absent.

Reverance Lost

The lightning strikes of judgment — in the old covenant with Nadab and Abihu, and in the new with the likes of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11) — ought to cause the same response it did for the early church: “And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:11).

I sigh that I don’t often have this fear or due reverence in the worship of God. In his presence, Isaiah cried, “Woe is me! For I am lost” (Isaiah 6:5). Job cried, “Now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6). Peter cried, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). The beloved disciple writes, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).

Granted, these are not to be the only or primary experiences of God day-to-day — but do we ever respond this way?

Sermon of the Dead

How would our worship services change if the Nadabs and Abihus of our day were struck dead and carried out through the aisles of our churches?

If wails of horror resounded and scorched sermons read,

Here, O Christian churches, are two corpses of those who trifled with the Consuming Fire of heaven and earth. Two men of high rank, two men of great promise, two sons of Aaron himself, consumed in judgment. Behold them. Wail for them. Learn from them.

Read the sermon text written upon their lifeless frames:

“Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Leviticus 10:3).

Ministers, you who draw near to God in service today, behold them drunk upon my wrath. Will you dare toy with the shepherd’s crook? Will you wander before me with the strange fire of false teaching? Have you not been warned of stricter judgment? Have you not been commanded to watch over yourself and your doctrine and my sheep carefully? Have you not been charged — in my presence — to preach my word, not your own? The pulpit is a false hope for protection.

Or to those strolling into worship every Sunday with an irreverence, a negligence, a fatal familiarity that I did not command: Behold the bodies of my chosen servants. If I treat these with righteous impartiality, shall you escape?

With Fear and Trembling

The towering love of God, the warm compassion of Christ, the blessed name “Immanuel” (God with us), does not permit creatures to approach him with irreverence. Boldly we can approach the throne of grace through our better High Priest, Jesus — but never apart from him and never in ways disobedient to his command.

“Do we worship a Holy God, the God of Nadab and Abihu?”

Worship today is to be no less weighty than in Israel, because the God we worship has not lessened in holiness. Joyful, triumphant, consoling — but never flippant. He will be glorified. As Matthew Henry soberly comments on this text, “If God be not sanctified and glorified by us, he will be sanctified and glorified upon us. He will take vengeance on those that profane his sacred name by trifling with him.”

So, as the bodies pass us by in Leviticus 10, making their way out of the camp, they press on us a question to consider today: Do we worship the Holy God of Nadab and Abihu?

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15387138/sex-money-praise-power-no

We live in times of polarization and fragmentation. In many places, the ties that have historically bound societies together are coming apart.

Our own society has been brewing a strong and growing distrust of everything under the sun. We don’t trust many of our elected leaders and government officials. We don’t have high confidence in our medical and health authorities. We have doubts about the agendas and intentions of large corporations. Our suspicions about media and news outlets have reached new heights. We have been let down by our educational systems at nearly every level. And the church has not been immune to our cynicism. We have even approached the bride of Christ with wariness and uncertainty.

All this fear is exacerbated, of course, by the Internet and the 24/7 news cycle. Social media, in particular, amplifies our distrust and rewards our outrage. As a result, many of us are less happy, less trusting, and more angry than ever. Division and angst have become like oxygen. Over time, it can feel like any remnant of hope might be slowly eroding, like a sandcastle at high tide.

Painful Polarity in the Pews

As I said, the church has not been immune to the polarization. Congregations have had to navigate higher levels of conflict, controversy, and contentiousness. The pain of divisions in our pews is disheartening. Here we are, the blood-bought people of God, united by Christ, but divided over so much else. This state of affairs has some of us wishing we were still arguing over whether to sing contemporary worship songs or what color carpet to lay in the sanctuary.

As a pastor of a church, a church I love to pastor, I would personally be glad to never have to talk about COVID, vaccines, social distancing, and the efficacy of masks ever again. While it was a privilege to shepherd our people through a pandemic compounded by political and social turmoil, it was also punishing at times. I’ve now added “global-health crisis,” “mass protests and riots,” and “the threat of nuclear war” to my list of “things I never learned in seminary.”

It’s good to be reminded that polarization in the church is not new. In fact, it’s a problem as old as the church. Already in Acts 6, the Greek-speaking Jews complained that their widows were being neglected (Acts 6:1). Paul admonishes another church for its divisions, quarreling, jealousy, and strife (1 Corinthians 1:10–11; 3:4). They found superiority in their allegiances to either Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, forgetting that Christ is all in all.

Again and again, through Scripture and church history, when sinful people consistently gather, they consistently sin against one another and eventually turn on one another.

Paradox of Christ

The writer of Hebrews tells us to cast off our sin that clings so closely, and instead look to Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1–2). By looking to Jesus — and his paradoxical qualities — we find help to navigate our polarized age.

“Jesus doesn’t fit into any of our neat and tidy categories or tribes.”

Jesus doesn’t fit into any of our neat and tidy categories or tribes. He is pro-justice, pro-mercy, and pro-life. Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart, and he also will return to make war against his enemies. He is the meekest man that ever walked on earth, yet he will strike down the rebellious nations and tread the winepress of God’s wrath (Revelation 19:11–15). He will save to the uttermost with unparalleled grace and mercy, and he will rule with a rod of iron.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) draws out Jesus’s unique and paradoxical qualities in a famous sermon: “The Excellency of Christ.” Jesus is both lion and lamb. He possesses lionlike qualities: ferocious, powerful, regal, and appropriately terrifying. He is full of power, glory, and dominion. A lamb is quite the opposite: gentle, vulnerable, an animal of prey. How can Jesus be both? How is he both judge of all creation and a friend of sinners? How is he both priest and atoning sacrifice? How is he both strong and gentle, worthy and lowly, infinitely holy yet merciful toward his enemies?

This is the wonderful paradox of Jesus. He holds together seemingly opposite excellencies in one God-man.

His Excellencies Undo Us

Typically, we gravitate to the ways Jesus is more like us; we align with those excellencies more natural to our personality and wiring. Who he is, however, admonishes us all to not be one-sided or one-dimensional. Jesus’s example and teaching cuts both ways, admonishing us and encouraging each of us to be more Christlike than we are.

For example, tender believers may be quick to revel in the compassion of Christ: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). They may resonate deeply with Jesus’s weeping outside Lazarus’s tomb (John 11:35). Meanwhile, zealous-for-truth believers might admire his woes to the Pharisees. They may resonate more with Jesus’s rebuke of Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23).

Those of us who are naturally inclined toward compassion and sympathy need to learn from his courageous conviction. We need to beware of minimizing the whole counsel of God to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or drawing harsh criticism. We will want to unashamedly portray the truth of Christ accurately — all of it — even as we comfort and care for hurting people. And we might be slow to condemn those contending for truth in the public square who don’t do it exactly the way we would. The gospel will necessarily offend some, and standing for truth in a world set against the truth will require courage and boldness, and may even appear quarrelsome in some eyes.

The same is true for those who speak the truth more freely. Some of us are quite gifted at saying the hard thing, but need to grow in doing so with love. If we can speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, we are noisy gongs and clanging cymbals (1 Corinthians 13:1). We will pray for greater compassion and sympathy, being quick to listen and weep with those who weep. Proverbs reminds us, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). Do our words, and the hearts behind those words, consistently reflect the priorities of Christ? We want to become the kind of paradox that we treasure and follow in Jesus.

As you study him, watch where you lean and where you lean away, and then deliberately lean into the diverse excellencies of Christ. Find courage in his example. Where you are prone to wander, work to realign yourself more and more to our North Star.

Truly Great Excellencies

Excellencies is an old-fashioned word meant to ascribe extreme value to someone or something. Royalty would be addressed as “your Excellency.” For Jesus, however, it’s not just a title, but a true and accurate description of all that he is. He excels in his love and grace, in his compassion and justice, in his rule and reign.

“Jesus has no blind spots, weaknesses, or deficiencies. He is all glorious in his diverse excellencies.”

Short of glory, we’re all in process. We’re finite. We’re sinners being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). Our instincts are being honed by God’s word and the power of his Spirit. And as he conforms us to himself, our glorious Savior — the Lion and the Lamb — lacks nothing. In every circumstance, our paradoxical Savior speaks the perfect word. He never lacks compassion, and he never shrinks back from a rebuke. He has no blind spots, weaknesses, or deficiencies. He is all glorious in his diverse excellencies.

Therefore, strive to think, feel, speak, and do more as Christ would in this polarized world, and delight yourself in daily receiving his all-surpassing glory and goodness.

Audio Transcript

Today on the podcast we look at God’s love to us. And we are going to look at his love to us when life hurts the most. This is one of those areas that proves especially challenging for us to grasp. But we must learn this lesson. And we do in the life and ministry of our Savior. Because it’s relatively easy to see and feel God’s love when things are going well in life. But what about when sickness hits? What about when we feel weak? What about when we come to the end of our resources? Even as we approach the end of life, how do we feel God’s love and his purposes in our pain?

For that answer, we turn to Jesus and watch how he handled the sickness of his good friend Lazarus in John 11:1–6. There are lessons here for all of God’s people. To explain, here’s Pastor John from a 2019 sermon, preached in Northern Ireland.

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. (John 11:1–6)

Special Bond

Focus on John 11:1–2, just for a moment: “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with her ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.”

The striking thing about verse 2 is that that hasn’t happened yet in the Gospel of John. That’s odd. That’s going to happen in John 12:3, one chapter later — Mary’s going to anoint the Lord with her hair. And he says to the reader, “This Mary who’s asking him to come, that’s the Mary who did that. Now, I haven’t told you she did it yet. That’s the one I’m talking about.” What’s the point of that?

That’s the first instance in this text of how John is going to draw out the endearing, special, sweet, deep, precious relationship between Jesus and this family. He’s reaching forward to get a remarkable moment in the life of this woman, who’s going to love Jesus like that, and he mentions her that way here. So we can conclude, at least, that this is special between Jesus and this family, especially Mary.

Now, John 11:3: “So the sisters sent to him, saying, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’” So this is now, I would say, the second instance of drawing out that he loves this family. Now he’s mentioning Lazarus in particular. This man loves this family, and Jesus is underlining it. He loves them, and he makes it explicit. He’s not dealing with a casual acquaintance, saying, “Please come. He’s sick.”

Glory of the Son

John 11:4: “But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness is not going to lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’” So the first thing Jesus does is connect the news of Lazarus’s sickness with the glory of God. Not many people think this way, and we need to. He put it in relationship to the glory of God. It’s about the glory of God. It’s about the glory of the Son of God, who’s going to be glorified through it.

So, “Take a deep breath, Mary and Martha. This is all about my glory. It’s not going to go the way you think, and it’s not going to go the way you want. It’s about my glory.” “This illness does not lead to death [the point of this illness is not death]. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

You probably remember chapter 9, the blind man, and the disciples say, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answers, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:2–4). All these years of blindness are about glory.

Same thing here. He’s going to die, and Jesus knows he’s going to die. He’s going to let him die intentionally. We’ll see that in just a minute. And it’s all about glory.

Love of the Son

Here comes the third mention of love, in John 11:5: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” So there it is the third time. He loved her. Loved Mary. Loved Lazarus. Loved Martha. “Now Jesus loved Martha.”

So I’m overstating it, aren’t I, when I say it’s all about glory? No, it’s not all about glory. It’s largely about love. And that’s what clobbered me in this text, right? This is about underlining three times, “He loved them. He loved them. He loved them.” He let him die. That’s what’s striking.

“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” So surely John the writer is writing this to help us come to terms in our experience with what the love of God is like for you. What is it like to be loved by Jesus? It’s like this. Love is not a minor theme in these six verses. It is a major theme. Three times he’s saying, “He loved them. He loved them. He loved them.” He doesn’t want you to miss that. And he wants you to put yourself in that situation and say, “Okay, I’ve been told that since I was little. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me.”

“The world has no categories for understanding this kind of love.”

And these texts — this one in particular — is in the Bible to help turn our world upside down when it comes to understanding the love of Jesus, because the world doesn’t get this. The world has no categories for understanding this kind of love that we’re about to see, but you should. Apart from the Holy Spirit, this text is in inexplicable.

Lazarus’s Resurrection and Our Own

Here’s the second thing to think about. I think John, in writing chapter 11, is intentionally inviting us to see our own resurrection in relationship to Lazarus’s, our death and our resurrection as parallel to Lazarus’s.

Why do I think that? You might want to drop your eyes down to John 11:23–26. See if you think I’m right about this: “Jesus said to her [to Martha], ‘Your brother will rise again.’” So when he gets there, he gives them the hope he’s going to rise again. “Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’”

Now here’s the connection: Jesus could have said, “Yes, and isn’t that wonderful news?” What he said was, “I am that resurrection of the last day. I just showed up. That resurrection is coming to the world — that power, that control, that life-giving force is me. And I’m here. And let’s show you right now what that’s going to be like because I want you, Martha, and all of you, to put the connection between Lazarus’s experience and what you will experience.”

So he continues. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26). In other words, “My raising your brother from the dead will be what will happen to you.” Which means that the way to think about Lazarus’s death is as a forerunner, a little trailer, of ours — our death and our resurrection.

So now as you step back and think, “Lazarus has died, and Jesus didn’t go, and he let him die because he loved him,” you shouldn’t whitewash that, diminish that, minimize that by saying, “Oh, he is going to raise him four days later” — because he’s going to raise you, too. And the distance between your death and the coming of Jesus, when the resurrection will happen, is a length of time that compares to four days as nothing compared to eternity — as nothing.

So your death and resurrection and Lazarus’s death and four days later rising are virtually the same — except yours is better. You never die again. Poor Lazarus; he had to go through this twice. So if you’re going to minimize Lazarus’s experience, you better minimize your own, and say, “No big deal to die; I’m going to rise in four days anyway” — I mean, more or less.

And you don’t do that. You know you don’t do that. You don’t minimize your death. You don’t minimize your loved one’s death. You take it seriously. You groan and you grieve. You ache. And that’s the way we should feel this.

How Is This Love?

So let’s look again at the logic of verse 5 and 6, because this is the main point I want you to feel, because it turns your world upside down. Verse 5: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Therefore . . .” Because of that love — you with me logically? I don’t want to add anything here; I don’t want to make anything up. “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” Therefore, because of love, “he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:5–6).

And that’s what we have to understand. How is that love? How is it love? That’s what we’re supposed to see. John intends, Jesus intends, for everybody who reads this to ask that about your experience. He loves them; therefore, he does not heal them. He loves them; therefore, he does not save him from death. John intends, Jesus intends, for us to ask this about ourselves. How are we loved when we’re dying? He doesn’t heal him. He just lets him die. How is that love?

The answer is given, I believe, in verse 4. You just have to think a little bit. “This illness does not lead to death.” In other words, he’s going to die, but that’s not the point. What is the point? “It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” So the point of his death is not death. The point of his death is to reveal the glory of God, and particularly the glory of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

So now you step back and you say, “Okay, the so at the beginning of verse 6 says that the meaning of the delay and the death is love. And verse 4 says that the meaning of the delay and the death is the glory of God.” And what would you do? I mean, how would you preach the sermon from here on out? What would you draw out for your life? Here’s what I draw out.

Show Me More Glory

The world doesn’t understand what love is. What is love? Love is doing what you need to do in order to reveal most fully and most durably the all-satisfying glory of God in Jesus. To be loved is to be shown glory — the glory of God. If we’re not a God-centered people, who see God himself in his Son as the greatest treasure, the most beautiful reality, the most all-satisfying friend, experience, and Father — if we’re not that way, that makes no sense.

“If God is the supreme treasure of life, then to have more of him is to be loved.”

You go out and do an average interview on the street with any unbelieving person in Belfast and say, “What is love?” They won’t go here. They won’t say to love is to have anything happen to me — life, death, sickness, anything — that will show me more of God. Nobody’s going to say that.

That’s true. If God is all to you, it’s true. If God is minor, if God is marginal, if your life is your most important thing, if your kids are your most important thing, your marriage is most important, your health is most important, that won’t make any sense. But if God is all, if God is beautiful, if God is the supreme treasure of life, then to have more of him is to be loved. That’s the point of the so at the beginning of verse 6.

So, here’s my definition of love based on this text: love is doing whatever you have to do, or whatever God has to do, at whatever cost, in order for the glory of God to be shown.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15382210/gospel-authenticity-proven-and-pure

Every week at our church, our worship service closes with these words:

We have been the church gathered for worship. We are now the church sent out on mission. In the words of Jesus, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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.”

This Great Commission is grounded in the universal authority and personal presence of Jesus with his people. All authority is his, and he is with us always. And this authority and this presence is what authorizes and enables us to accomplish his mission.

The mission of the church is to disciple the nations, to call people to trust in Jesus, to follow Jesus, and to obey Jesus. This is the what of the mission, and it is globally focused. All nations are called to the obedience of faith. But what about the how of mission? How should we accomplish this commission to disciple the nations?

Jesus gives us the how in the two subsequent clauses: We disciple the nations by baptizing them and by teaching them to obey Jesus. Discipling by teaching makes intuitive sense. A disciple is a learner, and increasing obedience to the commands of Jesus represents the life of discipleship. But why include baptism as one of the fundamental means of accomplishing this mission?

“Baptism in the triune name represents entrance into the people of God.”

We commonly say that baptism in the triune name represents entrance into the people of God. But we ought to think more deeply about how we weave together baptism, the church, and its mission.

Called into the Invisible Church

In speaking of the people of God, we often distinguish between the invisible and the visible church, as well as the universal and the local church. These distinctions are not identical. The first distinction is based on visibility, on whether you can see it. The second is based on proximity, on whether the other members are near or far.

The church as universal and invisible is one body composed of all those, in every time and place, who are chosen in Christ and united to him through faith by the Spirit. This church is not yet seen with the eyes, nor felt by the hands, but known only by God. Indeed, the invisible church is created by the invisible effectual call of God.

In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul distinguishes between the external preaching of the gospel and God’s secret work in calling sinners to himself. Paul preaches Christ crucified, which is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). In other words, some who hear the external preaching of the word reject it. However, others — whom Paul identifies as “those who are called” — hear the word and see Christ crucified, not as foolish and a stumbling block, but as divine wisdom and power (1 Corinthians 1:24).

This internal (invisible) effectual call is accomplished by the secret work of the Spirit, working through the external (visible) preaching of the gospel. We call it effectual because it effects the new birth. It creates what it commands by calling forth faith in those whom God calls. The called embrace Jesus as Lord, Savior, and Treasure, and are thereby united to him. And not only to him, but to each other as one body, the invisible church.

Baptized into the Visible Church

The church as universal and visible is composed of all those who are baptized in the triune name and do not undermine that profession by any persistent errors or unbelief that destroy the foundation of the gospel. The visible church is created and sustained by the external call, by the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments.

The visible church then gathers together at a local level. The church as visible and local (often in many local manifestations) is composed of all those in a given area who agree to gather to hear the word of God proclaimed, to engage in corporate worship, to practice the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, to build each other’s faith through the manifold ministries of love, to hold each other accountable in the obedience of faith through biblical discipline, and to engage in local and world evangelization.

How then does baptism relate to these? At Desiring God and Bethlehem College & Seminary, we define baptism as follows:

Baptism is an ordinance of the Lord by which those who have repented and come to faith express their union with Christ in his death and resurrection, by being immersed in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is a sign of belonging to the new people of God, the true Israel, and an emblem of burial and cleansing, signifying death to the old life of unbelief, and purification from the pollution of sin.

“When we’re baptized, it’s as though we’ve been issued a passport that allows us to join the embassies of God’s kingdom.”

Drawing these threads together, baptism marks entrance into the universal and visible church and is a prerequisite for membership in the visible, local church. When we’re baptized, it’s as though we’ve been issued a passport that allows us to join the various embassies of God’s kingdom scattered throughout the world.

Once and for All

Though receiving the passport and joining the local embassy frequently occur in quick succession, it’s important to keep them distinct. Baptism doesn’t mark our entrance into the local church, but into the universal, visible church. Expressing it this way accounts for the fact that Christians are not re-baptized every time they join a new local congregation. Instead, their one baptism is recognized by all subsequent congregations as meeting this requirement for membership.

Now back to our weekly commission. Every week, the visible, local church gathers to hear the word of God proclaimed and to worship him in Spirit and in truth. And then, having been gathered, we are sent out on mission, scattered by the Spirit in the world in order to be salt and light. And as we do so, we mingle with members of other visible, local congregations. Often, we link arms with them as members of the universal, visible church, marked out by baptism and increasing obedience to Jesus.

And together we seek to preach the good news of Jesus to all people in hopes that through that preaching, Jesus will draw all nations to himself and unite us to himself and to each other by his Holy Spirit.

Over the last five years, the topic of social justice has become something of a jackhammer in some churches, reducing congregations to rubble, shaking denominations, even fracturing fellowship between old friends. Online cloisters have formed in which anyone to our left must be a social-justice-warrior snowflake or a neo-Marxist. And, in other cloisters, anyone to our right is probably a white supremacist or a neo-Nazi. Meanwhile, the exhausted majority feels caught in the crossfire, hoping for some new way forward.

Many social-justice battles have reached a standoff. People are entrenched behind their respective influencers, waiting for them to hurl the next truth bomb at the other side. I’m not going to reenter the wearying fray surrounding critical race theory, systemic racism, white privilege, cultural Marxism, transgenderism, or other hot topics. (I have done so elsewhere.) Yes, there are extremely important conversations to be had, there are highly seductive false doctrines to be resisted, and there is serious biblical thinking to be done on all of those fronts, but I want to get at what I believe to be a bedrock issue underneath those questions.

In John 17, Jesus prays that Christian unity among his people would become a powerful, visible apologetic to the watching world. Sadly, what should be the beautiful tapestry of Christ’s church has been torn asunder by tribalism in many places. Some churches (thankfully not all) look indistinguishable from the broader tattered and battle-bruised culture. Consider, then, a modest proposal for a way through such schism and strife, a proposal we can sum up in three simple words:

Worship God more.

I firmly believe that worship is the issue below the issue, below the issue, below the issue in our social-justice controversies. If we all take a deep breath, and reset our collective gaze on exalting and enjoying God as supreme, what might happen? I am convinced that we will not merely survive this contentious cultural moment, but that we might actually thrive as a more unified people, a properly awestruck people who “truly execute justice” (Jeremiah 7:5).

Justice Is a Worship Issue

“What,” you may ask, “does worship have to do with justice?” To do justice is to give others their due. God is the ultimate Other. It follows that, for the Christian, true justice starts with giving God his due, worshiping the triune, sovereign Creator and Sustainer of the universe with everything we are.

“To do justice is to give others their due. God is the ultimate Other.”

When Paul explores a gruesome array of injustices in Romans 1, he does not settle for superficial explanations. He goes deep. Why all the “envy, murder, strife, deceit, [and] maliciousness”? Because “they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21). We “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). Look deep enough underneath any horizontal human-against-human injustice, and you will always find a vertical human-against-God injustice, a refusal to give the Creator the worship he deserves.

This tragedy plays out in grim detail throughout the Old Testament (and through all of human history after the garden, for that matter). Slavery, murder, rape, child abuse, theft, and other injustices happen when we bow to false gods. Refuse to give the Creator the honor he is due, and we inevitably gorge our worship-appetites on created things. We endow elephants and donkeys with ultimate value that they are not due. As G.K. Chesterton famously said, “Once we abolish God, the government becomes God.” Idolatry — worshiping created things rather than the Creator — is the carcinogenic source of every other injustice.

Pursuing Vertical Justice

If I could poll the people reading this article about what we worship, I assume almost all would happily tick the “God” box. But the heart is deceitful. It would be naive to think that our approaches to justice cannot be sabotaged by our idol-factory hearts. How could we tell if it were so? I have found this fourfold survey of the soul personally helpful, and believe it confronts and draws people to the left and right of the debates over justice. (For the record, I have failed all four, often multiple times in a day.) If we answer honestly and run to the cross of Jesus, the church will be in a better place to pursue true justice in our day.

1. The Imago Test: Are we treating opponents as image-bearers?

When we fail to give God his due, we start treating his image-bearers like abstractions, like foes to be vanquished on a culture-war battlefield, or like soulless exemplars of their identity groups.

Augustine attempted to sum up the entire Christian ethic with the famous line, “Love God and do what you want.” If I treasure God as God, that first affection should recalibrate all of my other affections. I won’t want to swindle, exploit, or oppress you, since you are a living image of the God I love most. Love God, the ultimate Other, and you will show others who bear your Beloved’s image the dignity they are due. Devalue the Original by putting something else in his place, and it’s easier to treat his images like garbage.

Try this quick thought experiment. Picture three people you staunchly disagree with on political and social-justice questions. Now, one by one, think this true thought about them: made in God’s image. Picture their faces. Made in God’s image. One more for good measure. Made in God’s image. Is that the first time you’ve thought of them that way, instead of as a nemesis in a culture war? If so, then we are hardly giving the God who said “Let us make man in our image” his proper due (Genesis 1:26). Lord, forgive us.

2. The Red/Blue Test: Are our minds hyper-politicized?

The more vertically unjust we become, the more obsessively political we become. That’s easy to do these days. The last six years, politics have dropped like a bucket of ink into a bathtub, coloring all of life red or blue. Even spheres that were mostly apolitical are now rife with political quarrels — sports, cartoons, cake-baking, chicken sandwiches, superheroes, plastic straws, bathrooms, even phrases like “beating a dead horse,” “no can do,” and “ladies and gentlemen.”

“The more vertically unjust we become, the more obsessively political we become.”

When everything is politicized, politics clouds our consciousness and erodes our lives. Are we too busy dismantling systems to do the up-close-and-personal justice of chucking a ball around with a son who is due quality time? Do we spend more time in the pointless drama of comment threads than in the great redemptive theo-drama of Scripture? Do we think more about the latest trending political hubbub than about who God has revealed himself to be? Are we more emotionally invested in the triumphs of our red or blue teams than in the advancement of the gospel to every tongue, tribe, and nation? Are we more obsessed with slaying ideological opponents than with the sin in our own hearts?

If so, then we are not giving “the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God” (1 Timothy 1:17) his proper due. Lord, have mercy.

3. The Justification Test: Are we seeking righteousness apart from Christ?

The more vertically unjust we become, the more we can be caught in a hopeless tailspin of self-justification. Picture the justice-seeker on social media. How might posting daily online outrage become a misguided quest for justification?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown cites psychological research that the kind of moral outrage we typically classify as altruistic “is often a function of self-interest, wielded to assuage feelings of personal culpability for societal harms or reinforce (to the self and others) one’s own status as a Very Good Person.” In short, our justice pursuits can become a false gospel, a way of establishing our righteousness apart from the work of Christ on the cross.

This constant imputation of guilt to others — they are the phobics and fascists; they are the snowflakes and Marxists — offers a subjective sense of goodness, but it is hardly the real thing. Do we find our moral status in Christ and Christ alone, or in our proud positions on “the right side of history”? Are we preaching the gospel to ourselves daily? Are we apathetic about telling others the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection, while ever-zealous to convert others to our justice causes? Then we are not giving the God who is “just and the justifier” of sinners (Romans 3:26) his proper due. Lord, be gracious.

4. The Fruit Test: Is the Spirit less evident in our lives?

The more vertically unjust we become, the more we are fueled by resentment, suspicion, rage, smugness, and assuming the worst of others’ motives. Oh, how easy it is for our hearts to slip back into their fallen default mode when questions of social justice arise. How easy to jump to unflattering conclusions about others.

“I believe we should have sheltered in place.” “So you’re saying you love tyranny!” “I think we should not live life behind masks and locked doors.” “So you’re saying you hate science and want more grandmas to die!” “I believe racism still exists and, as Christians, we should do something about it.” “So you’re saying you’re into critical race theory and pushing cultural Marxism!” “I don’t think racism is the best explanation for this particular disparity.” “So you don’t think racism exists or that we should do anything about it.”

Painting others in the most damnable and cartoonish light is no small matter. It is sin. It violates God’s second greatest commandment to love others as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). It also breaks the divine bans on slander and bearing false witness.

Let us ask honestly: What is our quest for justice doing to our hearts? Is it making us more distrustful, easily offended, and quicker to slander? Is it stripping our souls of the Spirit’s fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control? If so, then we are not giving the God who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6) his proper due. Lord, change our hearts.

Upward Together

Deep down, we all long for something more beautiful and hopeful than the grisly ideological battlefields of our day. Which way do we look? Alexander Solzhenitsyn closed his famous Harvard speech (appropriately titled “A World Split Apart”) with a good answer to that question:

No one on earth has any other way left but upward.

Indeed, in all the sideways social-justice drama, let’s take a breather and look upward together. Let’s recalibrate our hearts. Crack open our hymnals. Get together across our differences. Break bread. Read the word. Enjoy God together. Relish his goodness out loud and face-to-face. In the words of Deuteronomy 32:3–4, let’s join the Israelites of old:

I will proclaim the name of the Lord;     ascribe greatness to our God!The Rock, his work is perfect,     for all his ways are justice.

Audio Transcript

And we are back. Good Monday morning. We enter this new week with a great topic on the table. I mentioned it on Friday. I love episodes where we just walk through several texts that have proved most helpful to you over the decades, Pastor John. We’re doing that today, prompted by this question from a listener named Greg: “Pastor John, hello to you! I’m so thankful for Desiring God and for you and for this podcast. Here’s my question: What are your favorite verses for when you fight the enemy hardest? What are your go-to verses? I love it when the verses are just there for us, but we also have to go look for them also at times.” Pastor John, what texts would you give Greg, and all of us?

Well, the first thing is, thank you very much. There’s nothing I’d rather do than go looking for my favorite verses, because I need rehearsal just like everybody else does. And so, just giving some thought to this was simply wonderful. It’s wonderful not only because I enjoy it so much, but also because I think this is just good for our listeners. I hope they tune in now for the next ten minutes or so and just soak in the glorious parts of Scripture that are so wonderfully tailor-made for living the Christian life through all of its ups and downs.

I don’t think God wants us to live our lives with a kind of vague sense of trust — like, God is good vaguely; I have trust vaguely; I enter my day vaguely. I think he wants us to have specific promises. Now, since there are hundreds of them in the Bible, you have to make choices about which one you’re going to use like a lozenge in your mouth today. I picture my heart as a mouth with a tongue, and I put a lozenge in it of some juicy promise, and I suck on it all day long. And that means I don’t suck on fifty others, because my brain, at least, will not hold fifty things in consciousness at one time.

“I don’t think God wants us to live with a kind of vague sense of trust. I think he wants us to have specific promises.”

So, here are some of my most common go-to lozenges or passages that I find help in through all kinds of situations. I’m going to just pose a question about a situation that I face and then give you the go-to promises. I think I might hit eleven of these, so I’ll try to go quick.

Lust

I’ll start with lust, the sin of lust. So here I am searching Google, or I’m on some news site, and there’s this sexually titillating link — not to pornography (that’s really not a big temptation for me; I’ve never been to a pornographic site), but just this sexually titillating picture over here where you can go and see more of what that might be about. Will you click through?

And here are my three go-to passages that persuade me, “Don’t do that. That’s not going to be good for you.” One is a warning (which is a negative promise), one is a positive promise, and one is a provision. So first, the warning, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29). I’ll tell you, that’s a very powerful disincentive from clicking through to sexually titillating stuff.

And then there’s this positive promise — and this is even more powerful: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). I want to see God. And I know if I linger over some presumably innocent sexual stimulation, the defilement of my mind will obscure the sight of the living God. I know it will.

And then the third thing is the provision: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). And I say to myself, “Christ suffered horribly on the cross so that I would not click on sexually stimulating material, and I don’t want to hammer another nail into his hand.”

Affliction

I am facing some affliction. It’s sickness, maybe — maybe small, maybe big — or some loss. And oh, how precious has Psalm 34:19 been to me: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” Now, the reason that’s especially encouraging is because it says that the righteous are in affliction. In other words, it’s not necessarily owing to my sin that I’m in this affliction. And it says I’m coming out in God’s good time.

Injustice

Now — revenge, anger at the way I’ve been mistreated by somebody. Somebody said something false about me. How can I have peace while injustice against me has been done? Answer: the promise that God will be the avenger. “John Piper, love your enemies. You do not need to get the last word here. God will settle things in due time.” So, here’s Romans 12:19–20:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

“John Piper, leave the repayment to God.” Oh, how many times I have been set free from bitterness that way.

Weakness

I feel weak. I feel inadequate. I’m facing a situation and I’m just not up to it. Isaiah 64:4: “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you” — well, what’s so unique about him? Here’s what it says: “. . . who works for those who wait for him.” That’s absolutely amazing. Glorious. The glorious uniqueness of our God is that he works for us instead of recruiting slave labor to work for him. Amazing.

“The glorious uniqueness of our God is that he works for us instead of recruiting slave labor to work for him.”

And listen to how 2 Chronicles 16:9 says it: “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is [whole] toward him.” God is looking for people for whom, with omnipotence, he can work today. “Can I work for you today?” I’ll sign up God to work for me today. “So, I want to be strong for you today. Will you trust me?” I’ll tell you, that’s amazing.

Need

What about when I don’t have what I think I need — enough money, enough time, enough help? What if I lead a ministry, and they look to me for hope? Now there are two go-to verses I’ve used hundreds of times. Philippians 4:19: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” That’s mind-blowing. Both the promise and the resources are mind-blowing. The “riches of glory” is how much he has with which he can help me.

Every need will be met. How many times did I say to our leaders at Bethlehem, while I was a pastor, coming to the end of a year with finances almost always falling short — and I say to them, “Guys, God will give us everything we need. He will. It says so. Period. Let’s go home and sleep.”

And then there’s Hebrews 13:5–6: “Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’” That’s as sweet as it gets.

Anxiety

Does he care? You come into moments where you say, “Yeah, I know all the big promises: he’s powerful; he’s wise. But does he care?” Does he care about me personally? I’m such a little teeny-weeny human being, and the universe as big. How could God possibly care for me?

First Peter 5:6–7: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God” — yes, yes, of course we know that; that’s our theology — “so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” I’ve said that little phrase walking into situations so many times. “He cares for you. He cares for you. He’s God, and he cares for you.”

There is a mighty hand, and there is a caring heart. So he says, don’t shrink back from humility, thinking that you’re going to be too vulnerable if you’re humble. But rather, remind yourself, “No, every single anxiety goes onto his broad shoulders because he cares.” He cares for you.

Insecurity

How much does he care? Is this a mild care? Is this kind of a begrudging care? “Yeah, God’s a God of love, and therefore Jesus died. So he has to care for me.” Oh my goodness, how horrible can our minds talk to us? How much does he care?

Luke 12:32: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It’s his good pleasure. He loves to care for you. Or better than this is Jeremiah 32:41 (this is God talking): “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” What more can God say than that he loves, he rejoices, to do good to us with all his heart and all his soul? There isn’t anything conceivably bigger than all of God’s heart and all of God’s soul. And that’s what he says is behind his doing good for us.

Fear

Will he help me in this crisis that I am feeling very afraid of right now? This is probably the verse that I have gone to, Tony, more than any other verse in all my 76 years of life. And I’ll bet lots of people who’ve listened over the years would already know what verse it is. It’s Isaiah 41:10: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” The reason that verse is number one for the struggle with fear, which is almost every day — something fearful happens every day (little fears, big fears) — is because it’s not general. It’s the voice of God himself speaking with a direct, “I will, I will, I will.”

Spurgeon said, “I love the ‘I wills’ and ‘I shalls’ of God.” Me too. The “he wills” (“He will help”) — those are good. But “I will” — when I step into the pulpit anxious that God act in spite of my inadequacies, and I hear him say (because I’m preaching it to myself by his authority from his word), “I will help you,” that’s just glorious, because you actually hear God by his word say it to you.

Depression

What about depression? What about melancholy? Times of deep, deep discouragement? Countless times. We used to have a sign on the side of the building because I quoted this so often — back in the days when people thought, “This is the ‘Hope in God’ church,” because of the sign. “There it is on the side of the wall. Why did they put that up there?” They put it up there because they have a depressed pastor who needs encouragement as he walks to church.

And here’s what I go to: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” So you’re preaching to yourself, right? John Piper’s preaching to himself. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:11). Oh my goodness. I have preached that to myself in low times, hundreds and hundreds of times.

Death

We’re almost done; just two more quick ones. Death. Okay, I’m old, right? Age 76 is old. I think I just read somebody died yesterday at 76. Every time I read that, or 74, or 63, or 42, I think, “Wow, I’m living on borrowed time.” It could be any night, right?

So, what do you say to yourself when that fact overwhelms you? For months I have recited this to myself before I go to sleep every night (maybe one or two exceptions). First Thessalonians 5:9–10: “God has not destined you [John Piper] for wrath, but to obtain salvation through [your] Lord Jesus Christ, who died for [you] so that whether [you] are awake or asleep [you] might live with him.” Tony, that’s going onto my gravestone, unless I change my mind.

Promise of Promises

Now, the last one. And this I’ve saved for last because it’s all-encompassing. In other words, it provides foundation for all the promises, and it is the Vesuvius of all the promises. And you probably know what it is. Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son [think of it] but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” In other words, because Christ died for us, God will give his children everything — absolutely everything — we need to be supremely holy and happy forever.

So, thank you, Greg, for the question. May the Lord grant to all of us the faith to live joyfully, boldly, lovingly by these amazing treasures.