“Embroiled in petty priorities.” It was a devasting observation, and I resonated with it.

I came across these words recently from an evangelical statesman saddened to watch some Christians “responding with increasing nationalism, sometimes with almost frightening ethnocentrism.” They are “caught up in a flag-waving nationalism,” he said, “that puts the interests of my nation or my class or my race or my tribe or my heritage above the demands of the kingdom of God.”

His tone was hopeful, even as he spoke with seriousness about those who had “become embroiled with petty priorities” — trivialities, he said, “that constitute an implicit denial of the lordship of Christ.”

Most surprising of all to me was that these words had been written more than thirty years ago.

‘World Christians’

That evangelical leader is Don Carson, and he was writing in the early 90s. In the final chapter of The Cross and Christian Ministry (1993), he sounds a call for “world Christians,” that is, genuine believers in Jesus who

(1) self-consciously set their allegiance to Christ and his kingdom “above all national, cultural, linguistic, and racial allegiances,”

(2) commit themselves “to the church everywhere, wherever the church is truly manifest, and not only to its manifestation on home turf,”

(3) see themselves “first and foremost as citizens of the heavenly kingdom and therefore consider all other citizenship a secondary matter,” and

(4) are “single-minded and sacrificial when it comes to the paramount mandate to evangelize and make disciples” (116–117).

I first read Carson’s words about ten years after their publication, but now, another two decades later, they feel even more prescient. The need remains. Seasons of flag-waving come and go, but the New Testament vision of world Christians endures.

How might we, then, evaluate ourselves and whether we are such “world Christians”? Has our world’s course and patterns and “cultural moments” dulled the global scope and Great-Commission interests of our faith? How might we freshly check our own souls — particularly in the hype of an election year — whether we are world Christians or worldly ones?

The New Testament’s key texts on heavenly citizenship come from three different epistles and authors: Paul to the Philippians, the first letter of Peter, and the epistle to the Hebrews. To linger over these key texts, let’s ask four questions to gauge if our sense of heavenly citizenship is alive and well.

1. How singular is my citizenship?

First comes a question about identity and primacy. Sometimes we hear the language of “dual citizenship” — that Christians, in this life, are both citizens of heaven and citizens of our earthly nation. At one level, of course, this is true. Our various earthly citizenships are real and consequential, and so too, if we are in Christ, and have his Spirit, we are truly citizens of heaven as well. For that, the go-to banner is Philippians 3:20: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

At another level, however, the “dual citizenship” language can be misleading. “Dual” might give the impression of equal priority and weight. But for the relative importance of these citizenships, try this: evaluate the significance of earthly alongside heavenly, and of momentary alongside eternal. Philippians 3:20 says nothing about duality of citizenship. It mentions but one citizenship: heaven’s. Paul does not pause to emphasize that Philippian believers are Roman citizens as well, with all the attendant rights and duties of that citizenship. Rather, the apostle dares to declare to believers in Jesus, living in the Roman colony of Philippi, “our citizenship is in heaven,” with no qualifications about their earthly status besides.

“Our life-orienting allegiance is not to an earthly fatherland but to our heavenly Father — and to his Son, at whose name every knee will bow.”

And if so with Roman citizenship two millennia ago, then so too for whatever earthly citizenry we find ourselves born or received into today. If we are in Christ, our most fundamental identity and allegiance is to Jesus and his church, far above and beyond any earthly nation. Our citizenships are starkly asymmetrical. In light of eternity and the preciousness of Christ, we are Christians first, and a thousand times Christians, before we are Americans or Canadians or Filipinos. World Christians, Carson writes, see themselves “first and foremost as citizens of the heavenly kingdom and therefore consider all other citizenship a secondary matter.”

In Christ, our life-orienting allegiance is not to an earthly fatherland but to our heavenly Father — and to his Son, at whose name every knee will bow, beginning with ours.

2. What’s my default perspective?

Second comes a question about recurring perspective. We might say, Do you intentionally and regularly reset your mind and heart to the values and interests of heaven or of earth? And where does your soul habitually default?

In contrast to the citizens of heaven, Philippians 3:19 says this about earthly citizens: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” It’s one thing to deal with “earthly things.” We all live in this world and unavoidably engage with the things of earth. But it’s another thing to set our minds on earthly things, to default to them, to reset and recalibrate our energy and attention over and over again to the world’s standards and priorities and interests, rather than heaven’s.

In similar language, Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” The question isn’t whether “earthly things” come into our daily purview, and indeed occupy, in various degrees, much of our waking hours. The question is perspective and mindset. Do we engage the countless things of earth with heaven’s vantage and values? Do we reset and return to Christ’s own perspective through rhythms of hearing his voice in his word, having his ear in prayer, and belonging to his body in the covenant fellowship of the local church? Or do we default to news and politics, ESPN, the market, the weather, the latest obscure digital updates on the lives of friends and family?

However earthy our lives and callings, in Christ we “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). With our eyes regularly glancing upward, we actually will be more effective and fruitful down here, navigating life with heavenly wisdom and proper perspective, rather than being swallowed up in petty priorities. Those concerned most about God’s global cause will do the most and best at home. Hearts in tune with the Great Commission will make us far more effective, not less, in our local context.

3. Do I profess (and practice) a ‘stranger’ status?

Some are strangers and don’t know it. Others know it but try to hide it. In the great faith “hall of fame” chapter, Hebrews 11, the author speaks of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, and all the pre-Christ examples of faith, saying,

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. (Hebrews 11:13–14)

Not only were they “strangers and exiles,” but they acknowledged it. How so? Not simply in their own hearts, but they said it out loud (“people who speak thus”). They were not heaven’s citizens in camouflage, living and looking just like their fellow earthly citizens. Rather, they were different to the core, knew it, owned it, lived it, and said it.

So, ask yourself, Am I a stranger here on earth in any real senses, and am I willing and eager to make that known? Do others know that I’m different than the rank and file, and how do they know that? To draw in 1 Peter, do I, as a sojourner and exile here, abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against my soul, and is my conduct in the world honorable, so that even those who speak against me see the genuine good I do (1 Peter 2:11–12)?

4. Where, really, is the source of my hope?

Sadly, some profess Christian faith, yet manifestly find their day-in, day-out animating hope elsewhere. This gets to the heart of Carson’s concern thirty years ago, and the ongoing need in our day.

This world is clearly no utopia. We all long for change, but where, really, do we look for that change? What or who will bring about the changes we ache for? At bottom, what is our heart’s driving hope for the changes we so desperately need in our own lives and in our world?

Healthy humans can’t help but hope — whether it’s politics and parties, human intellect and progress, wealth and riches, work or escape from work, we hope in something, or someone. The question is whether your hope, my hope, is a distinctively Christian hope or just a small variation on the world’s unbelieving dreams.

For Christians, Hebrews 13:14 says, “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” That city to come is “the heavenly Jerusalem,” “the city of the living God” (Hebrews 12:22), made not with human hands but the hands of God himself (2 Corinthians 5:1), and prepared by Christ (John 14:2–3). In the end, this holy city, the new Jerusalem, will come “down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2).

With this city in view, we are dissatisfied with any and every mere human nation. We “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” knowing our God “has prepared for [us] a city” (Hebrews 11:16). And from that city, the citizens of heaven await our Savior (Philippians 3:20). This is our primary identity, our default perspective, our glad profession, and our orienting hope as world Christians not “embroiled in petty priorities.”

Which is closer to the center of your life as a Christian: what you’re doing for God, or what God has already done for you through Jesus Christ? Which one grounds your identity more deeply, affects your mood more frequently, rouses your passions more highly?

Your answer to these questions will deeply shape the stability, tenacity, happiness, boldness, and humility of your Christian experience. Jesus wants to provide you grounds for unshakable joy.

Joyful Return

There’s a moment in the Gospel of Luke when 72 of Jesus’s disciples return from a ministry trip. They’ve been healing the sick, casting out demons, and proclaiming the coming kingdom. Now they’re back, overflowing with excitement. They say,

Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name! (Luke 10:17)

As the rest of Luke’s Gospel makes clear, demons are powerful spiritual beings opposed to Jesus. So, it’s remarkable that they’re subject to Jesus’s followers in Jesus’s name. Imagine discovering that a fierce, rampaging lion will meekly obey your verbal commands. You would be amazed.

Better Than You Think

Jesus doesn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the returning disciples. In fact, his first response is to inform them that things are even better than they think.

He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18)

In other words, it’s not just the demons who are subject to Jesus but also their leader. The ministry of Jesus and his followers cripples Satan’s influence. The death of Jesus robs Satan of all grounds for accusing sinners before God. The resurrection of Jesus defeats death itself. Satan’s downfall is inevitable.

And that’s not all. Jesus goes on:

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. (Luke 10:19)

Not only has Jesus given his followers authority to win a decisive victory over their spiritual enemies (symbolized by serpents and scorpions); he also guarantees that nothing, absolutely nothing, will hurt them. He doesn’t mean they’ll never get sick, suffer, be persecuted, or die (Luke 6:27–29; 9:23–24). But he promises to keep them safe from every spiritual attack as they trust in him.

In essence, Jesus says to his joyful followers, “What’s happening is better than you imagine. My victory is more comprehensive than you realize. You’re safer and more secure than you know.”

Well-Grounded Joy

At this point, we might expect Jesus to call his disciples to rejoice not merely in the subjection of the demons (as they’re already doing) but also in the role they’re playing in defeating Satan himself. But that’s not what Jesus does. In fact, he begins by telling them not to rejoice in the demons’ subjection.

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you . . . (Luke 10:20)

Jesus isn’t saying that their ministry is unimportant. He isn’t saying that we should never rejoice when ministry goes well — the apostle Paul did exactly that (Romans 16:19; 2 Corinthians 7:9). But he is calling us to root our joy in something deeper than what God is doing through us. He takes us to that deeper place in one short phrase:

. . . but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10:20)

Here is solid ground for durable joy. Here is a firmer foundation than the greatest possible spiritual successes, a ground of joy more stable than even the astounding victories of Jesus’s first followers. We’re saved. God did that.

Written by God

When I walk into the gymnasium of our local middle school to vote in primaries or general elections, I come to a table in front of the voting booths. A volunteer sitting behind the table asks my name and then checks to see if I’m recorded on her list. Only if my name is there can I vote.

Whenever our family boards an airplane, I hold onto our tickets even after we’ve settled into our seats. Why? Because if someone else boards after us and claims the same seats, I want to be able to prove they belong to us. Our names are on the list!

“Imagine being able to rejoice on your worst ministry day and to remain humble on your best.”

Voting and flying are small privileges. How much better to have your name recorded on the census list of heaven. Jesus says the names of God’s people are already written down, meaning our eternal future with God is guaranteed. Notice too that Jesus says the disciples’ names “are written.” It’s a passive verb — what many theologians call a divine passive. No human being — however gifted, kind, accomplished, impressive, educated — gets to write his own name in heaven. Only God does that. Imagine God writing your name.

Some years ago, I received handwritten notes from the editor of a writing project I was working on. The editor was J.I. Packer (1926–2020). I treasured those notes! But here is something infinitely better: God himself has recorded in heaven the name of each follower of Jesus. He knows us personally. He will keep us eternally. Our future with him is guaranteed.

Off the Performance Seesaw

Jesus’s teaching spares us grief and offers us grace. When we root our joy in ministry success, we’re likely to experience what a friend of mine calls the “performance seesaw” — feeling good about ourselves when our ministry visibly flourishes but insecure and inadequate when it doesn’t. That seesaw will go up and down from one day (or hour) to the next, leaving us dizzy, disoriented, unstable, and unhappy (trust me, I’ve spent some time on it).

We can ride this seesaw even when we acknowledge that God ultimately gives ministry success. After all, the disciples recognized that the demons were subject to them in the name of Jesus, but still, Jesus called them away from ministry as the ground of their joy.

In addition to putting us on the performance seesaw, rooting our joy in ministry success may create distance between us and our ministry friends by tempting us to compare accomplishments, which leads to feelings of either inadequacy or superiority (or both). Like a skyscraper built on unstable ground, everything may look fine for a while, but that building will eventually begin to lean.

Through Success and Failure

Jesus gives his disciples solid ground that will sustain their joy through spectacular success or seeming failure. Imagine being able to rejoice on your worst ministry day and to remain humble on your best. Jesus gives us that. He invites us to experience the joy of our salvation, the gladness that flows from what God has already done on our behalf.

Because this foundation is the work of God, it isn’t contingent on us. Because it’s God’s already-accomplished work, it doesn’t depend on our future victories or failures. Moreover, it unites us with every other Christian because — no matter our intelligence, accomplishments, productivity, or education — the common ground of our deepest joy is the same: God’s saving work for us through Christ.

So, which is closer to the center of your Christian experience: what you’re doing for God, or what God has already done for you through Jesus Christ? Jesus himself invites us to stand together on the ground of unshakable joy that he offers.

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.

Most missionaries get extensive training before beginning cross-cultural ministry. They read missionary reports and biographies. They may take short-term mission trips or vision trips. They often attend Bible college or language school or other similar programs. They know many things as a result of all the training and preparations. And such knowledge is valuable (Proverbs 8:10). But sometimes a dissonance remains between what we know and what we expect.

We know that building cross-cultural relationships is challenging, but we may expect to develop deep relationships quickly.

We know that learning a new language takes time, but we may expect to have deep spiritual conversations with people our first term.

We know that living in a less-developed country is difficult, but we may expect the joys to outweigh the difficulties.

In other words, we know that missionaries experience suffering and trials, but we may still expect to thrive — to be happy and successful and doing well (according to our own definitions of those words). That was certainly the case for us and for many missionaries we know.

Unmet Expectations

In the Western world, we expect to thrive. Comfort, circumstantial happiness, and success are assumed to be worthy goals and may even be viewed as rights. When we are not thriving, we often believe something is amiss or that we are failing in some way. Missionaries, and Christians in general, can fall into the same ways of thinking. We may even believe that it is God’s will for us to thrive in these ways.

But is such an expectation biblical? From a certain angle, we might describe the Christian life as a thriving life — but the kind of thriving Scripture speaks of differs greatly from our typical definition. On page after page, the New Testament teaches us to expect something different.

Paul writes, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3–4). Jesus warns his disciples, “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:17–19). James tells us to “count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2–3). And Peter says that to endure suffering for doing good “is a gracious thing in the sight of God” (1 Peter 2:19–20).

We may know we will experience suffering and trials. But what do we expect in the midst of them? And more importantly, what does God expect of us?

Note the twin threads of endurance and joy woven through the above passages. Scripture treats endurance as a bridge between suffering and joy, as a God-appointed means by which suffering is transformed, by our gracious Father, into hope and life. Or to put it another way, true thriving happens most often through patient endurance of suffering, not careful avoidance of suffering.

Four Strategies for Endurance

Especially in a cross-cultural setting, where trials take on new dimensions and missionaries can easily question God’s call, we need to learn the discipline of joyful endurance. Here are four of the strategies our family has learned to cultivate joyful and patient endurance for the sake of the gospel.

1. Encourage your heart through God’s word.

God carefully designed his word to encourage and give us hope. Paul links endurance with such Bible-based encouragement in Romans 15:4: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

God designed our bodies to require daily sustenance, and he designed our souls to require the same. If you desire spiritual health, if you want to endure with joy, then stand fast in your commitment to feast on God’s word. Resist giving up if you don’t find sweet sustenance immediately. Press on. Keep reading. Keep eating. Day in and day out. Trust that God is feeding your soul as you read his word (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4).

“True thriving happens most often through patient endurance of suffering, not careful avoidance of suffering.”

Daily meditation on God’s word has been an ongoing source of strength and renewal in our own missionary service. But sometimes special feast days are necessary. When we feel most apathetic, most discouraged, and most like giving up in our ministry, we have found it helpful to take a spiritual retreat. Taking time away from the press and the pressure of ministry — whether in a hotel, a friend’s guest room, a campground — with our Bibles and notebooks has been a key component to our ongoing endurance on the field.

Make these scheduled times to feast on God’s word a regular practice. Treat them as critical elements of your work, remembering that you cannot live on bread alone.

2. Engage with God’s church.

Being a cross-cultural missionary can get lonely — especially if you labor in a context without a Bible-believing church. But even if there are few (or no) believers where you live and work, you are still part of God’s global church. Ask your sending church to pray for you and to encourage you through God’s word. Engage with your friends and prayer partners honestly and openly. Share your struggles and your doubts and your worries.

Before we left for the field, our sending church wisely required us to gather a small group to act as our primary prayer and care partners. For years, these faithful friends have met together monthly to pray with and for us. We are completely transparent with them; they share in our trials and our triumphs, our sorrows and our successes. Their endurance alongside us in prayer has served as sweet fuel for our own endurance. We would encourage all cross-cultural missionaries to build a team like this.

Remember also that you are not suffering alone. While your particular circumstances are unique, your sufferings as a missionary are not — this is no strange thing happening to you (1 Peter 4:12; 5:9). Take comfort from the fact that you are enduring the same sufferings other missionaries — past and present — have also experienced.

Sometimes we need a tangible reminder of this truth. After a particularly challenging term on the field, our family attended a weeklong debrief in our home country. Having the chance to share and hear stories with fellow missionaries was incredibly encouraging. We met people from widely different contexts and ministries, but we connected on a deep level almost immediately. We understood each other; we “got it” in a way that no one else could.

Such deep connections with fellow missionaries served to point us to the deep connection we have with Jesus himself — we experience sweet fellowship with him not in spite of our sufferings, but because of them (2 Corinthians 1:5; Philippians 3:10). This debrief was perhaps the main reason we returned to the field able to endure with joy once more.

Consider attending a debrief workshop, especially if you are in a particularly difficult season of suffering, to process some of your losses and sufferings in fellowship with other missionaries who “get it.” It may be just what you need to revive your journey of joyful endurance.

3. Examine the lives of steadfast saints.

Studying the lives of steadfast saints can help us to persevere in our calling. As we examine their endurance and how they put their faith and knowledge into practice, we can be both inspired and equipped to endure with joy.

Paul says that Timothy followed and studied his teaching, his conduct, his aim in life, his faith, his patience, his love, his steadfastness, and his persecutions and sufferings (2 Timothy 3:10–11). Timothy was wise to do so, for Paul’s example would keep him from error and help him to continue in what he had learned (2 Timothy 3:14).

Many missionaries — such as Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, John Paton, and William Carey — have endured in ministry despite incredible trials and challenges. Carey specifically described himself as a “plodder” and ascribed whatever success he may have achieved to this ability to plod and to endure (Memoir of William Carey, 623). As you examine the lives of steadfast saints and missionaries, you too will be encouraged to endure, to plod on in your calling.

4. Embrace the goal of endurance.

The author of Hebrews writes, “[We] have need of endurance, so that when [we] have done the will of God [we] may receive what is promised” (Hebrews 10:36). Embracing endurance as a God-given goal will help us endure. We do not have to escape a challenge or a trial immediately. God may be using it not to redirect our path but to build our character and to reveal his character.

Before God called us to cross-cultural missions, I spent a decade working as an engineer. Success was defined by producing products and improving processes — tangible and visible results that took at most two or three years to achieve. Unfortunately, these cultural definitions of success do not transfer well to cross-cultural ministry. We may spend decades faithfully planting seeds but see little fruit from them. It took years for me to adjust my definition of success and to embrace the God-given goal of endurance. But when I did, God graciously gave me a deep sense of peace and a joyful, settled conviction to continue in our challenging ministry for as long as he calls us.

God leads us through trials because he aims for our joy — a joy far better and deeper than the superficial “thriving” we may have once expected. May these strategies for perseverance serve, by the grace of God, to strengthen you “with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11).

Audio Transcript

‘White-hot worship.’ What is it? Pastor John likes to use the phrase. And for those of you from a certain charismatic background, it’s a phrase that carries all sorts of unintended baggage, things Pastor John doesn’t intend by it. So, what is ‘white-hot worship’?

Lisa asks the question today: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast! I’m currently listening to your audiobook Reading the Bible Supernaturally. Wonderful book, thank you! Dozens and dozens of times throughout the book you mention ‘white-hot worship.’ When I hear that phrase, certain images come to my mind. I come from a Pentecostal background where this was the focus every Sunday morning, expressed with jumping up and down, screaming, running around, waving flags, twitching, falling to the ground, shaking, making unnatural sounds, speaking in tongues, and, yes, feeling for angels and electricity in the atmosphere. This is how thousands of us have always understood ‘intense worship.’ When you saw someone ‘going crazy’ it seemed they were deep in the Spirit, worshiping intensely.

“Now I have left that mindset and practice behind, and I know this is not at all what worship is about. Can you explain what you mean by ‘white-hot worship’ for those of us coming from this background? And thank you for always making Scripture clear!”

Well, thank you, Lisa, for reading Reading the Bible Supernaturally. I think your question is a very, very important one flowing from that book and gives me a chance to make some important distinctions.

Destiny of Worship

You’re right — the phrase “white-hot” occurs in that book 27 times. I counted them. And it’s important that I give you a couple examples, because the context matters in the way I think about that phrase.

“I have proposed that our ultimate goal in reading the Bible — according to the Bible itself — is that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation” (102). So, notice the phrase “ultimate goal.”
“God created human emotion for the ultimate purpose of white-hot worship of his worth and beauty. In this ultimate experience, we will be supremely satisfied, and he will be supremely glorified” (104).
“The cosmos will reach its final purpose when the saints enjoy God in it and through it and over it with white-hot admiration for the Creator and the Redeemer” (174).
One more: “Seeing and savoring Christ . . . [is] the key to the transformation that prepares the bride for her destiny of white-hot worship . . . moving ever closer to the white-hot intensity we will know when we see face-to-face and know even as we are known” (225–226, 348).

So, the main reason I read all those quotes is to give the context that my emphasis on white-hot worship is when it reaches its fullest experience in the age to come. For now, in this age, we see in a glass darkly; then we see face-to-face. Now we know in part, then we will know fully, even as we are fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). So, for now, our worship is often frustratingly inadequate to what we know he deserves. But when we have our new minds, our new hearts, our new bodies, our new emotions, then the worship will be as it ought to be.

Why Use ‘White-Hot Worship’?

There are at least three reasons why I use the phrase “white-hot” to describe our final aim in worship.

“God is infinitely worthy of our fullest responsiveness from mind and heart.”

First, simply to emphasize the fact that authentic worship is in fact a matter of the emotions as well as the intellect. Thinking right thoughts about God is not in itself worship. Feeling intense emotions that are not rooted in a true sight of the way God really is, is also not true worship. We worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). We worship with lips and heart. So, that’s the first reason — to stress the emotional reality that worship includes.

Second, I use the phrase “white-hot” to emphasize the fact that a lack of earnestness or a lack of intensity or a lack of zeal is a detraction from the beauty and worth of God. He is infinitely worthy of our fullest responsiveness from mind and heart. “White-hot” calls attention to the full, intense engagement of our emotions as we respond to him with the joy of admiration.

The third reason for using the term “white-hot” is to try to capture what the Bible itself is getting at when it says, for example, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” That’s Romans 12:11. That phrase “Be fervent” literally means boil. It’s the word for boil. Simple, straightforward, “boil in the spirit.” Now, my phrase “white-hot” is an effort to capture the meaning of boil; boil in the spirit.

Or Matthew 24:12 warns about a time when lawlessness will be increased, and the love of many will grow cold. So, the Bible itself puts our love on the scale of hot and cold, and warns about cold and pleads for hot. Like Revelation 3:16: “Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

And surely Jesus is getting at the same thing when he sums up all of Godward living with the Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). I think these all’s — all your heart — mean nothing less than a white-hot engagement of the heart with God.

Discerning Genuine Worship

Now, Lisa wants to know what the difference is between my meaning of “white-hot worship” and her past experience of people “jumping up and down, screaming, running around, waving flags, twitching, falling on the ground, shaking, making unnatural sounds, speaking in tongues, and yes, feeling for angels and electricity in the atmosphere.”

“For emotions to have spiritual significance, they have to be stirred by truth about God, not just music or hype.”

My first response is to point out that the actions of the body are no sure sign of any intensity in the heart. That’s a big mistake people make — that if the body can somehow feel a certain thing physically, that the spirit is, therefore, more engaged with spiritual intensity. That’s just not true. There’s no necessary correlation between what the body does and what the spirit does. Surely the body is going to be affected, but the body can do many things that are peculiar without it being any sure sign of a spiritual reality.

The second thing I would observe is that the movements of the emotions themselves are no sure sign that God is being worshiped. For emotions to have spiritual significance, they have to be stirred by truth about God, not just music or hype. Romans 10:2 says, “They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” In 1 Corinthians 14:19, Paul says, “In church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.”

And the third thing I would say is that we should want our corporate gatherings not to be so chaotic that people would say, “You’re all out of your mind.” First Corinthians 14:23: “If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?” He doesn’t want that to happen, so he regulates how tongues and prophecy are to be used.

Maybe the best guideline I can give to help us distinguish between intensity, hotness, that honors God and intensity that doesn’t honor God is the guideline Jonathan Edwards gave himself in his preaching. And I’ve always felt this is a healthy, wise, biblical guideline. He said, “I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections” — and he means spiritual emotions — “of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with” (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 4:387).

So, that’s the guideline I think would help guide all of us as we try to discern what aspects of corporate worship are helpful in honoring God with our intensity, and what aspects are not helpful.

Austin Duncan: I want to welcome you to our Q&A session with pastors John MacArthur and John Piper. There is something wonderful about this opportunity. Both of these men are known for their deep well of biblical and theological knowledge. Their years and years of pastoral faithfulness have prepared them for moments like these. They both have a burden to answer people’s questions.

Dr. MacArthur, you have had hundreds of sessions with your local church where you’ll just open up the microphone on Sunday night and answer people’s questions — and they’ll line up. Two weeks ago, you answered questions for two hours regarding what was on people’s hearts.

Dr. Piper, you have a podcast called Ask Pastor John. It’s incredibly helpful as the dear Tony Reinke asks you so many questions. The podcast has produced a book. It’s called Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Most Important Questions. It’s sold out in the book tent already. It disappeared quickly. You can get it online. I recommend that to you, men. And obviously, Dr. MacArthur’s years and years of answers to Bible questions are at gty.org.

I think that’s where I’d like to start. Why is it so important for the pastor to be accessible to ask and answer questions, to be there for people’s needs? Why has that become such an important part of your ministries?

John MacArthur: Well, because you don’t want to spend your whole ministry telling people what they don’t want to know.

John Piper: Sometimes we do.

MacArthur: Yes. But I said you don’t want to spend your whole ministry . . .

Piper: That’s true.

MacArthur: You want to spend some of your ministry telling them what they don’t want to know.

Piper: Touché.

MacArthur: But you also want to spend a lot of your ministry telling them what they desperately want to know — the cries of their heart, the dilemmas that they face. And you want to do it particularly in a pastoral role where there’s trust. You don’t have to sort of give an apologia for every answer you give because you’ve built trust by feeding them the word of God.

I think Paul set me on that course when he dialogued (diálogos) and talked back and forth with the people he ministered to, in order to answer their compelling questions. For him, it would’ve been more difficult because all they would’ve had at most would be the Old Testament. For us, we can direct them to the New Testament. But this has always been a vital part of our ministry. And I think what I hear from deconstruction people, the “exvangelicals,” is that they went to a church but they never got their questions answered. There’s no reason for that. We have the answers.

Duncan: So, it’s about the contemporaneity of those questions, it’s what’s on people’s hearts, and it’s also about the sufficiency of Scripture. What’s the burden behind your desire to answer people’s questions, Dr. Piper?

Piper: Well, at my stage in life, I don’t have a local church anymore that I oversee as the pastor. Look at the Book, which is the other little thing I do online, has kind of replaced my preaching role, and Ask Pastor John has replaced my counseling role. So, I get to do all my pastoral work online. That’s one way to look at it.

The other thing is that the pulpit of John MacArthur and John Piper is not exactly the same as the Q&A of John Piper and John MacArthur. At least that’s what people tell me about you, and I think that’s what I’ve found. They say you’re a bulldog in the pulpit. And then they say you’re the kindest, gentlest, most gracious person in conversation. I’ve seen both of those. Now, I have no idea whether I’m viewed as a bulldog or a kind person, but I think I am viewed as a different person.

I think that your flock needs to know you both ways. It is not a bad thing to be a prophetic authority in the pulpit. That scares the heebie-jeebies out of people. And it’s not a bad thing to be a lowly servant, quiet listener, who gets your arms around people out of the pulpit.

MacArthur: You preach with boldness, and you give an answer with meekness and fear.

Duncan: We’ve highlighted before in Q&As with the two of you how different you both are. You have different personalities and are wired in different ways. I think that’s something that we thank God for in the way he makes people different. But there’s something that has been noticed at this conference, and it’s that you two have an unusual bond. People are taking pictures of you two greeting and hugging each other and talking together and posting them online and just talking about how encouraged they are by the bond and friendship that the two of you share.

I really want this Q&A to be helpful to these pastors that are watching and listening to this. I think there’s something that you could teach us about why relationships with another pastor are so important. What is it about friendship that will enhance a man’s pastoral ministry? We’ve heard a little bit about that in this conference, but speak experientially to these brothers, and help them think about the pastor and friendship.

Piper: I’ve heard people say that your best friends are going to have to be outside of the church, not within your own church, your own staff, or your own elders and deacons. I did not find that true. And I don’t think it’s healthy to talk that way. For 33 years, I considered my staff my best friends.

MacArthur: Yes.

Piper: The elders were absolutely trustworthy with my life. If Noël and I were having problems, I didn’t try to hide it from anybody on the staff. They were my closest friends. They are still today, the ones that I still have around me. That’s the first thing I’d say. Don’t feel like, “Oh, you can’t have a good friend inside the church because you can’t really be honest with them.” Baloney. You really ought to be honest with the people closest to you and those who work with you. We need to know each other through and through. For whatever reason, Jesus had his Peter, James, and John. And he had his 12, and he had his 70. There are concentric circles of intimacy, it seems, that mattered to him. They certainly matter to me. To this day, I meet with two guys every other week, and they know me like nobody else knows me. That keeps me accountable. That’s a big deal today, accountability. But it never feels quite that way if you’re with really good friends.

“How do you even function in the midst of slander unless you love heaven, unless you believe in the world to come?”

So, that matters. They know me, they can speak into my life. And those friends need to not be yes-men. They need to be fearless around you and speak into your life without feeling like they’re going to be squashed because you have more authority than they do. So, I think it makes a huge difference whether you’re accountable, whether your heart is open, and whether they can bear your burdens that you share with them and pray for you at the deepest levels where very few other people are praying for you because they don’t know what you’re dealing with.

Duncan: Dr. MacArthur, what would you add about friendship?

MacArthur: Well, let me talk about John. I was asked, “Why would you have John Piper at the conference?” My immediate answer was, “Because one, I love him; two, he is as formidable a lover of Christ as there exists in the world today; and three, because he feeds me.” I don’t get a lot of time with John, but I did get a thousand pages plus of Providence delivered to me through your mind and your heart. Your face is on every page because I know you. I’m reading but I’m hearing you. And I know you well enough to know what went on for you to be able to produce such a massive work. I don’t know that there’s more than a handful of modern people who have had that kind of biblical effect on me. I mean, you probably read more old authors than current authors, like I do.

Piper: Yep.

MacArthur: But for a current author, you’ve delivered your soul to me in so many ways. I remember we were at the Sing! conference one year, you might not remember this, and you were speaking at the early session. It was about 8:00 a.m. I was in the green room when you showed up, and you said, “What are you doing here?” Do you remember that?

Piper: No. But I’m eager to hear.

MacArthur: I said, “What do you mean what am I doing here? You’re speaking.” You said, “You came to hear me speak?” I said, “Of course.” I mean, you’re processing, “You flew from California last night and got in late. It’s 7:00 a.m., which is 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. for you.” I wait for the Lord to use you to bring me what I need for my heart and soul. So, anytime I can do that, I’m going to be there.

Piper: Well, you’re kind. C.S. Lewis made the distinctions about the four kinds of love. Eros is where lovers are looking at each other in the face, telling each other how delicious they are.

MacArthur: No, it’s not that kind of love, John.

Piper: Don’t — don’t interrupt. I’m getting there. And philos is friendship, and you’re not facing each other. You’re facing a passionate goal, shoulder to shoulder. And you’re not doing a lot of intimate talk. I started with the intimacy piece of those guys who know me through and through, but what makes it friendship is the shoulder-to-shoulder pulling in a worthy, great cause you’re willing to die for. And when you sense in another person that you’re pulling in the same reins — in the same yoke — then you feel like, “We could die together. This would be good. This would be good.” That’s the kind of friendship you want. You want a shoulder-to-shoulder, common goal, a common vision.

This might be a good place to say this. I don’t believe it’s a good goal to have a theologically diverse staff. I’ve heard pastors say, “Oh, we don’t need to agree on all the theological things on the staff.” I say baloney. You have to lead your people together. You have to lead. So, when you’re shoulder to shoulder, you know what the other person is thinking, you know what the other person is feeling. And, oh, the camaraderie that brings you. When the church gets into a crisis, oh my goodness, how glorious is it to have a few close friends that you absolutely know are going to be standing by you through the crisis?

MacArthur: That’s a great answer.

Duncan: That’s why J.C. Ryle said, “Friendship is that gift from God that doubles our joys and halves our sorrows.” That’s what you men are sharing with us, and that’s why pastors need Christ-honoring, Christ-centered, Christ-pursuing friendships.

Piper: Can I say one more thing? If you’re really bound together deeply — theologically and spiritually — you don’t have to spend a lot of time together. I mean, I have a few friends I see once a year or so. I see him less often than that probably. And when you get together, you just pick up where you were. That’s the way it was with those people. For years, I’ve related to some people that way. It’s like a once-a-year friendship, but it feels deeper than some people you see every week because the shoulder-to-shoulder, common convictions and goals are so deep. So, don’t feel like you can’t have significant friendships with people that you knew in college or you knew in seminary. You keep up with them at a distance.

MacArthur: You know, I had that kind of relationship with R.C. Sproul. We were on opposite coasts, and we spent some time together, maybe once or twice a year. And yet, there was this shoulder-to-shoulder attitude that we knew if we ever were in a severe battle, we needed to be together. And that’s where we were at ECT. That kind of defined that relationship. People said, “How could you have such a friendship when you had different theological views on certain things?” It’s right back to exactly what John said. R.C. would always say, “When I’m in a foxhole, I’m going to call you.”

Piper: That’s good.

Duncan: Let’s talk about the flip side of this, which is the deepest and darkest part of friendship — when a friend fails us. We’ve all had that experience of betrayal. Maybe there’s a friend that drifts into error or a friend that drifts into sin. Maybe you could help the pastors here process what was a common experience for the apostle Paul and for the Lord Jesus — when friends fail you. When that happens, how do you continue to pour yourself into the lives of people? How do you ensure that you don’t become self-protective but you continue to invest and pour in and love your friends, even when friends fail? Talk a little bit about that experience in ministry.

MacArthur: For me, it goes back to our Lord and Judas, or it goes back to Paul and Demas. The best of the best of the best of the best are going to be betrayed. And the more you invest in someone, the more potential they have to devastate you. So, you can be gun-shy. My dad told me when I was just starting out in ministry, “Don’t make close friends with the people you serve with because you’ll find yourself being so terribly disappointed.” I usually took my dad’s advice but I never took that advice because it was overpowered, for me, by the experience of Christ, not only with Judas but even with Peter. If he was disappointed with Judas, who was a devil, how much more disappointed was he with Peter, who was a true believer?

So, who am I to expect loyalty from everybody all of the time? And we know what Paul endured, whether it was John Mark or Demas or whatever, and who knows all the other stories. He said, “All in Asia have forsaken me” (see 2 Timothy 1:15). How can you come to the end of your ministry and say, “Everybody has forsaken me”? How is that even possible? You’re the apostle Paul. You’re the reason that anybody is even a Christian.

But you have to understand that goes with the territory. That’s part of it. You do some inventory in your own heart and ask, “Could I have done something different?” But for me, the Lord has always balanced that with many more who are faithful over the long haul. I focus on that and rest in the fact that if it was true of the apostle Paul and of our Lord, I should probably expect a whole lot more disloyalty than I get.

Piper: There’s an interesting connection that I didn’t see until about three years ago in the Demas text. Second Timothy 4:7–8 says,

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

And two verses later, he says Demas disappeared in love for the world. So, I think one answer to the question of how you survive Demas is by loving the second coming, which means something like this: This world is one conveyor belt of disappointments. Every day has a disappointment in it. Some situations don’t go the way you want. Somebody lets you down. Life is disappointing, and some of them are awful. Demas probably broke his heart. But he so loved Christ and he so loved the second coming and he knew everything was going to work out. It’s all going to be okay.

So, I think we need to have a heavenly mindset, which is the way Jesus told us to deal with slander in Matthew 5, right? When they say “all kinds of evil against you falsely,” “rejoice and be glad” (Matthew 5:11–12). Why? “Great is your reward in heaven.” So, how do you even function in the midst of slander unless you love heaven, unless you believe in the world to come? That’s one piece.

Another piece I’d say about betrayal is don’t become embittered. Lean into reconciliation possibilities. It might seem absolutely impossible that this relationship could be fixed. You might think, “It’s just not going to happen. It’s just so ugly.” Don’t believe that. God does miracles. The worst betrayal I ever experienced was 1993. There was a seven-year adultery from a man I’d worked with for 10 years, which devastated the church. There were 230 people who left in those days. I think we had an attendance of about 1,200 people in those days, and 230 people walked because they didn’t like church discipline.

I had dinner with that man 10 years later, and we wept. We held each other. I attended his funeral, hugged his wife, and we made it okay. It was okay. We’re going to be in heaven together. And that’s possible, guys. It’s really possible. Your job is to believe that and not to be the one who’s just sneering and saying, “You just get out of my life and you stay out of my life because of what you wrecked in this church or what you wrecked in my relationships.” So, believe the miracle is possible — that reconciliation could happen.

MacArthur: You know, building on that, I think you also have to look at that person as an instrument through which the Lord is perfecting you.

Piper: That’s right.

MacArthur: Those are the best times for your spiritual benefit. They tear down your pride and self-confidence and sense of privilege and expected rights. And if you will look at the person that hurt you the most as the instrument that God used, then you’ll understand what Paul was talking about when he wrote to the Corinthians about the thorn in the flesh. The Lord said, “I’m not going to remove it because when you’re the weakest, you’re the strongest” (see 2 Corinthians 12:9–10). We’re never going to be too weak to be effective.

Piper: Right. That reality of chapter 12 really runs through all of 2 Corinthians, doesn’t it? The pastoral suffering is for the sake of their people. It’s just all through the book. It starts off in 2 Corinthians 1, saying, “May you be comforted with the comfort with which you have been comforted by God” (see 2 Corinthians 1:3–5). So, if you wonder why you’re going through the hell you’re going through right now, it’s for the sake of your people. God wants to do something in your shepherd’s heart that will make you a more wise, compassionate, loving, insightful, caring shepherd.

Duncan: You both have battled for truth and various difficult doctrinal controversies. You’ve battled for truth in ethical matters where someone drifts into error. I think both of you model being warriors for the truth. And this conference is about the triumph of truth. How do we think about battling for truth and maintaining that full awareness of grace? Another way to say it is, how do we differentiate, in our battling for truth, between contending and being contentious? How can we be bulldogs and followers of the Lamb?

Piper: Yeah, that’s good. You should be a preacher. You sound like H.B. Charles. I love John Owen and I love Machen, so I did this little book years ago called Contending for Our All. R.C. Sproul wrote something for it. He liked it. And that made me feel really good. But here’s the one quote that made all the difference for me, and it’s been a goal. I don’t know if I’ve achieved it, but Owen said that we should “commune with the Lord in the doctrine for which we contend.” Now, here’s what that means to me. Let’s say I’m fighting for justification, say, with N.T. Wright, or I’m fighting for Calvinism against Roger Olson or whatever. I know these guys. I’ve communicated with them. It’s not like throwing hate bombs over the fence.

My desire is that I would be authentic with them and real with them, and that I would not be contentious, but when it’s justification or the sovereignty of God, as I go into battle, whether it’s over lunch or in a book, I’m saying, “Lord, I don’t want this to be a game. I don’t want to have a little tiff here. I don’t want to play word games or doctrine games or proposition games. I want to know the sweetness of justification. I want to know the preciousness of the sovereignty of God. That’s the only reason I want to defend this. I don’t want to win anything. I’m not out to get strokes or be famous. I want to enjoy you.” I think that’s what Owen meant. I want to enjoy God in the doctrine for which I contend. I think that changes the spirit from contentiousness to a humble, holy, courageous contending. That’s one factor.

MacArthur: I think that’s true. That will prevent you from being angry or being hostile, because if you love that truth, that basically takes over your heart. That is the first thing. This is a truth you love, not a club with which you want to beat people.

The second thing is that this is a person that you love or that you care about, so your attitude is going to be the combination of how you feel about the truth and how you feel about the person. And if you lose it on either side, if you’re trying to win an argument, you’re going to be cantankerous. Or if you’re indifferent to the person, you’re going to become frustrated with dealing with the person, and you’re going to lose the tenderness and persuasiveness that the Spirit of God would want you to have while you’re trying to convince them.

Duncan: That’s very helpful.

Piper: I would add that joy, along with love, has a huge effect, because you can lose your joy quickly in an argument. Anger is an omnivorous emotion. It eats everything. It eats compassion, it eats joy, it eats everything. If you get taken over by anger, you lose those things. And joy is a great antidote. In your local church, there will be little controversies. We’re talking about big controversies here, public controversies. But in your church, you’ll have controversies. People don’t like what you just said or believed. I had a guy one time who did not like my eschatology. I won’t even tell you which side anybody’s on here.

I preached on a Sunday evening and I said, “I can’t imagine anybody wanting to do that.” He was at the back of the row and said, “I don’t believe that,” right out loud in the service. Now, here’s another illustration of somebody you get really reconciled with. I said to him, along with the other people sitting with their arms crossed in the back row, “I’m going to out-rejoice you and outlive you.” And I did. I was brand new. I was three years into my 33-year ministry, and we became precious friends. We never agreed, but we were precious friends. When he moved away to Iowa, later, he called me after about six years and he said his wife had died. He asked if I would do the funeral.

So, don’t think that the people who stand up and shout out in your service, saying, “I don’t agree with you, pastor,” won’t do a 180 and love you like crazy before you’re done. Because what was under that was that he loved the Bible. He loved the Bible. He thought I was unbiblical, but then, after two or three years, he said, “Piper is not unbiblical. He’s totally under this Book, and we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.”

Duncan: To think about your ministries and how they will be thought of in the future is beyond our capability as people with our limited understanding of how God works and how providence unfolds. But I think it’s not speculation to say that, though you’ve written hundreds of books between the two of you, tens of thousands of pages and millions of words, you both will be known for one book, first and foremost, that you wrote. I think John Piper will be known for Desiring God and John MacArthur will be known for The Gospel According to Jesus. Those are formative, definitive, huge-impact books that reflect the heartbeat of your ministries and the emphasis of your lives. I would like you to just consider why those books. I’m especially interested in Dr. Piper telling why that is the case for Dr. MacArthur, and Dr. MacArthur, why that’s the case for John Piper.

Piper: Oh, that’s not what I expected. You didn’t put that in the notes. That’s going to be fun. A twist. Let’s go for it.

MacArthur: I can give maybe a sophomoric answer to the question regarding John Piper. I think why that book meant so much to him was his life was revolutionized permanently by Jonathan Edwards. I don’t know a John Piper without Jonathan Edwards. This is what comes across to me and, obviously, I’m on the outside looking in. But you can’t shake this. I mean, last night, you were saying what you said 50 years ago. You can’t shake it. And somebody said, “What did you think?” and I said, “It was the best of the best of the best of John Piper.” Because it runs so deep. It’s in every fiber of his being. Everything in the Bible leads him to that pleasure. And I think God used Jonathan Edwards.

I mean, that’s all I can say, because the first thing you said last night is, “I’m Edwardsian,” by your own confession. That’s amazing with all the opportunities there are for us to be influenced by people. What was the Lord doing when he dropped Jonathan Edwards in you, in an irretrievable act you could never undo? I mean, you took Jonathan Edwards even beyond where Jonathan Edwards thought he could go. The awakening to those truths define him.

In my case and probably all of our cases, it took us longer to get on the bandwagon than it did you, even when you started it early on, saying, “This is Christian Hedonism.” I mean, you were double-clutching because you knew that sounded weird. But you won us over, John, through these years. Was that somewhat true?

Piper: Everything you just said was true. The last part, I’ll wait and see if it’s the case.

MacArthur: I can’t speak for everybody. But I’m in.

Piper: He’s already answered my half of the question by preaching the sermon he preached two nights ago. This was your theme from 40 years ago with The Gospel According to Jesus and the question, “Where’s obedience in the church today?” So, here’s my interpretation of why that took hold of him, gripped him, and held him. He’s preaching the same sermon now that he wrote in the book there. I wrote a review of that book. I couldn’t put that book down. I was so excited about it because of what I was fighting in those days, a kind of easy believism that we both considered rampant. And it’s just as rampant today. There are lots of unbelievers in the church.

What John saw were the radical words of Jesus, where he says things like, “If you don’t love me more than you love mother, father, son, or daughter, you’re not worthy of me” (see Matthew 10:37). Period. That’s just totally crazy radical, right? He is saying, “You just won’t be a Christian if you don’t love me.” And obedience flows from love. He says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say?” (see Luke 6:46). Lots of people are going to hear the word at the end and be shocked. John MacArthur saw all these radical words, and he looked out at the evangelical church, and he thought, “Do they read the same Bible I read? Do they hear the same gospel?”

So basically, that book argued that James 2 should be in the Bible. It’s not an epistle of straw. If your faith does not transform you into a person who loves other people and produces good works, it isn’t saving faith and, therefore, churches need to be confronted with the carnality that is dangerous to their souls. And that’s what I was dealing with. I’ve never considered myself to be a very effective evangelist, although I thrill with every story of anybody that gets saved, which I heard yesterday from one of you brothers. Thank you for that encouragement. But I’ve always felt myself talking to a church that doesn’t look saved, or churches that don’t look saved. Their Christianity is so lukewarm — which Jesus is going to spit out of his mouth — that I’ve wanted to do a Christian Hedonist kind of revival.

The relationship between the two books is this. When you published that and then I later published a book Future Grace and What Is Saving Faith?, I said, “All I’m doing is trying to complete what MacArthur is saying.” MacArthur is saying, “You must obey in order to have saving faith,” and I’m saying, “You know why that is, folks? Because saving faith is being satisfied in Jesus, and that changes everything.” That’s all it is. It’s hand in glove, fitting together.

Duncan: That’s good. Let’s continue to talk about preaching, and more specifically, about the act of preaching. I want you to think about encouraging these brothers in the grind of preaching — the continual, ever-present, burdensome joy of preaching the word of God to the people of God. How has your view of preaching changed since you were a young preacher? How do you think about preaching now? And maybe the question is, why do you still believe in expository preaching? And where did this commitment come from? After all these years and all these thousands of sermons, how has your view of preaching changed?

MacArthur: Well, that’s a simple question because it’s the approach by which you maximize the content of the Bible. If every word of God is pure, and if there is a milk aspect of truth, as Paul talks about, and a meat aspect of truth, that means you start somewhere and you keep going deeper. I would say now I probably love expository preaching more than I ever have, and I find it inexhaustible. By the time I get to Sunday, I could be dangerous if I didn’t preach. Do you understand that, John?

Piper: I would like to see you be dangerous.

MacArthur: I might say to my wife, “You might want to go away on Monday because you’re going to get a sermon.” It’s the inexhaustibility of Scripture — the depth and breadth and height and length. It’s the inexhaustible reality of Scripture. It reveals itself to me every single week. I feel like somebody on the shore of the Pacific Ocean with a bucketful of water. If you ask me, “Is that the ocean?” I would say, “No, it’s just one little, tiny part.” I could preach endless lifetimes and never exhaust the truth of Scripture. At the same time, expository preaching not only covers everything, but it goes in depth. It has to because you can’t get away with not explaining something. So, I love expository preaching.

One other thing that comes to mind, and I think about this a lot. I’m never trying to figure out what I’m going to say on Sunday because I’m progressing through a book, and everything is building on everything else. I wouldn’t know another way to preach, really.

Piper: The short way of saying that is you believe in expository preaching because God wrote a book.

MacArthur: Yeah.

Piper: I mean, just let it sink in. God gave us a book. What would you do? What else would you do but tell people what’s in the book? You don’t know anything. God knows everything. He’s totally smart. Just let it sink in, brothers. If you believe this, it is the word of the Creator of the universe. Why would you waste your time talking about anything else? That’s what he just said.

The other part of the question is about change. You’re asking two guys who probably, more than any other two people on the planet, haven’t changed anything. We don’t change. People ask me, “What have you changed since your theology formed?” and I say, “Yikes, I can’t think of anything.” But in regard to preaching, if I had to do it over again, I would try to be more intentional about combining careful, local, immediate, expository explanation of texts with doctrinal formation of the church. I don’t think I did that the way I would do it now. I want to do more of this.

Now, that’s dangerous to say because I know some of you may come out of confessional traditions, where you start with a system and you have to work to be expositionally faithful. And others of you start with expositional, immediate faithfulness, and you have to work to get to system and doctrine. I want to be somewhere in the middle because I think churches can listen to us do exposition and never form a framework of theology of their own without some help. That’s one change I’d probably make.

I wouldn’t necessarily preach theme sermons, like a whole series on predestination or a whole series on regeneration, though that would be great. I would do that. But, rather, as you’re going through texts and you bump into a word that’s just laden with doctrinal content, I probably would go into it more now than I would have back in the day. So, that’s one difference.

Another difference is that the actual delivery has changed in that I feel much more free to go off script, all the time. I feel the ability to look right into people’s eyes while I’m talking. That used to throw me for a loop in the first five years of preaching. If I looked at somebody, I’d lose my place. I couldn’t think. I think young preachers have a hard time being immediately, directly engaged with human beings.

Thirdly, as an older person, I feel more warranted to press into people’s consciences, even older people. I mean, a 30-year-old pastor with about one hundred 60-year-old people in his church is a little bit hesitant to get serious with them and press into their sins. I don’t care anymore. That’s one difference, I think. But in summary, where I land and where I would be happy to die tomorrow regarding preaching is that it is a combination of faithful, rigorous exposition of what’s really there, mingled with a passionate demonstration or exultation in the reality of what it’s talking about, mingled with in-your-face application to their consciences. Those three things are what I want to do when I preach.

MacArthur: It’s actually a little easier to do that on the internet.

Piper: It is?

MacArthur: It’s easier than to face the same people every week and do that. You have to come back next week, John.

Piper: You lose some and you win some, right?

Duncan: Here’s a little more about preaching. Titus 1:1–3 says,

Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior . . .

Let’s encourage these brothers in their preaching and how preaching triumphs. Talk to us about the triumph of preaching. How can you help them see that their preaching — which we’re able to forget our own sermons in a week’s time sometimes — has eternal significance and lasting, persevering power in it? Encourage the brothers that their preaching will triumph. Help them think about triumphant preaching.

Piper: Isaiah 55:10–11 says,

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven     and do not return there but water the earth,making it bring forth and sprout,     giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;     it shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,     and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

That’s just an absolutely glorious promise that God doesn’t speak in vain. And the closer you can get to his word when your word sounds, the more confident you can be that this wasn’t wasted. It may look for a moment like it had little effect. It is never without effect if you’re faithful to God’s word. So, there’s a promise where he says, “I will cause my word to accomplish my purposes.” That’s what I say to myself over and over again when I step into the pulpit.

And I would say this: Lasting effect doesn’t come from homiletical cleverness, meaning acronyms or how this conference has all Ps. How you ever did that, I have no idea. I said, “That’s cool. How did they do that?” That has zero effect on the lasting nature of your sermons. You need to know that. And when you come up with an acronym and you use Cs in your sermon — like compassion, whatever, and wherever — that has zero effect on the lasting nature of your sermons.

That will help you remember his outline for about three days, but we’re talking about three million years. That’s all we care about. What will affect people in three million years in your sermon is whether they were born again and whether the Holy Spirit convicted them of a sin in their lives, and they killed it, and they walked in holiness until they saw Jesus. In other words, the lasting effect of preaching is the work of the Holy Spirit.

So, you do the best you can with your acronyms, and you do your best you can with stories, and you do your best you can with H.B. Charles’s amazing ability to put these little things together. You just say, “That’s great. How did you do that?” You do the best you can, and it holds people’s attention, and that’s good, but in the end, you’re talking about what’s going to be true in ten years. And the answer is only if they were born again and if some major mental structures in their life just turned 180 degrees, like the sovereignty of God, free will of man, regeneration, etc. These are massive alterations in their thinking. That’s what you’re after, and that’s the work of the Holy Spirit through a faithful rendering of his word.

MacArthur: I would agree with all that. I would simply say that effective preaching is a journey. You start somewhere and you’re going somewhere. John illustrated that last night. You told us where you were going to go. You were going to get us to pleasure and we bought into that, so we followed the journey. The four points, whatever you called them, weren’t the reality of the message; they were just the progression to get to the main point. I always think of an outline or any kind of structure as the necessary, logical chronology to get you to the main point. One of the things with preaching is people have to be willing to stay with you till the end because they know that they’re going to be given some precious reality if they’ll stay.

I think you handle the Scripture in a progressive way that keeps them involved in that journey. It could be mnemonic devices or whatever you use. Preaching is not just shooting out one idea and another idea and another idea and another idea and an emotional thing and a story. It’s going somewhere. It’s a crafted argument, and it has all the necessary devices to hold them to that. You have to shift and change and pace all of that. But if they’ll stay on the journey, they’ll learn eventually in your preaching that the finish is worth the trip.

Duncan: I think that’s what makes both of your preaching so similar is that it’s driven and logical and focused on the text. Though you sound different, when we have our seminarians listen to the same passage from John MacArthur and listen to the same passage from John Piper, the central truth is the same. It’s the same passage, it’s the same meaning, because that’s what Paul said. But the way you get there is different. John Piper moves a lot more than John MacArthur in the pulpit. But it’s driven by logic, right? Both of you are so fastidious and logical and movement-oriented toward, “This is the meaning of the text and how it needs to be brought into light and life.”

Talk a little bit about each other’s preaching. What is it that you see in MacArthur’s preaching that is of such preciousness to you? And what do you see, Dr. MacArthur, about John Piper’s preaching that you love?

Piper: I’m not going to say anything that we don’t all say. Dr. MacArthur’s preaching is incredibly clear. It is so clear. It doesn’t fumble around to get to the clear point. As I’m listening, I think, “He’s not wasting any words here. He’s not blowing smoke.”

And then, the second thing is I think, “That’s really there in the text. That’s really there. Look at that.” And people love that. I love that. I think, “Tell me what the text says. I want to know what God says.”

Third, he has the ability to relate the immediacy of the text to doctrinal concerns or cultural concerns without getting off on a tangent that gets you bogged down in excessive application, but rather you feel the force. You think, “That’s relevant. Right now in this situation, that’s relevant.” Those three things, at least, that strike me, attract me, and draw me in. I want to hear clarity. I want to see what’s really in the text. I want it to be relevant to my life in this culture right now.

And there’s just plain earnestness. A lot of preachers are playful. I mean, we all know one preacher who crashed and burned a while back, and he said, “The main model you should have are stand-up comedians.” That’s what he said. He said that should be the main model. He said, “Do you want to learn how to communicate? Watch stand-up comedians.” John MacArthur doesn’t watch many comedians.

MacArthur: And neither do you.

Piper: I don’t. I don’t even have a television.

MacArthur: I would say the same about John for the very same reason. He has clarity in giving the meaning of the text and the doctrinal implications. I like to think of it this way: Application is one thing and implication is something else. There may be a thousand applications, but there’s usually just a few implications that just are so pervasive it changes how you approach life.

John is a genius at the implication of a given text without saying, “This is what you do on Tuesday afternoon when this happens and this happens and this happens.” It’s the power of that implication drawn because you know the text said it, and you understand the bigger picture of the theology that undergirds that specific revelation. I want to feel the implication, I want to feel the burden of that text, and I want the people to feel that burden. I don’t want to over-define it on a practical level, lest I leave something out.

Duncan: What you just heard was not me trying to get them to compliment each other. I’m being serious. This is a good word for young preachers. And you’ve both poured your life into training men. Immature people are drawn to personality instead of truth. They’re of Paul, they’re of Cephas, they’re of MacArthur, or they’re of Piper. That was a master class for young preachers to learn what they have to prioritize. And it’s not style. It’s substance and truth and a focus on the text. And that’s what we’re so grateful for in you men and your impact in our lives because of that, and the model you have shown.

Piper: Here’s just one caution. The fact that I love to hear that kind of preaching is owing to the fact that I’m born again and have spiritual taste buds on my tongue. His preaching is going to alienate a lot of people and so is mine. Almost everybody in this room likes everybody, right? This is a nice group to be among. But you’re going to have churches where you preach like he does or like I do, and they will not hear it because they’re not thinking, “Give me more Bible. I want to hear more of the Bible.” That takes a spiritual mind. So, that’s why prayer, which H.B. reminded us of, is absolutely essential. We pray for our people to have ears to hear.

Duncan: Here’s a final question. Our culture idolizes the young. The Bible reveres the aged. Old age in the Bible is a gift from God; it’s a blessing attributed to divine favor. It’s a cause for honor, respect, and blessing. You both, if I could say it with all the force of what the Bible is saying, are old. And we love you. We love you old. At 78 and 84, you are modeling for all of us, if the Lord gives us that many breaths, what it looks like to age in a way that honors Christ. So, let’s talk about that for just a few more moments here. Talk about aging as a believer and as a pastor. How do you think about growing old, in your experience, to honor Christ and serve his church?

MacArthur: Well, I don’t know that I’ve created a paradigm in which to think about myself. I just do what I do. Old age has its issues, like putting on your socks and getting a longer shoehorn every year. But I don’t know if I even think about that. I’ll tell you what I do think about is, “Lord, please keep me faithful.” I just don’t want to say something somewhere or do something that would undo a lifetime of endeavoring to be faithful. I trust the Holy Spirit. I don’t fear. I’m not afraid to live my life. I trust the Spirit of God. I love the Lord and I love his word, but I’m not invincible.

The second thing is that I pray, “Lord, don’t let some people say things about me that aren’t true and that are destructive.” Because I don’t ever want to be in a position to have to defend myself because that’s so impossible. But I seek to take heed to myself and my doctrine and stay faithful. I pray, “Lord, protect me from my enemies who could undo so much if they were believed when they said things that weren’t true.”

Piper: So many things to say. That prayer, “hold me,” is something I pray. “He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. For my Savior loves me so. He will hold me fast.” There’s no hope without it. Because if you think sanctification is progressive in the sense that there’s no battle after age 70 of walking with Jesus, you’re not thinking straight. The danger of the sins of lust, sloth, and doubt at age 78 is just as serious. When Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course,” he meant, “to the end, until they cut my throat because, on the way to the gallows, I could betray him” (see 2 Timothy 4:7). I mean, my view of eternal security, which is a Romans 8:30 kind, is it’s a community project and it is to be fought for. That’s the way God keeps you. He keeps you.

So, I just fully expect that as long as I have a brain, it has to be engaged in praying, “Keep me. Don’t let me do anything stupid to undermine the ministry. Don’t let me betray my wife. Don’t let me give up on prayer. Don’t let me become superficial. Don’t let me cave in to just watching videos every night. O God, protect me from the world and the worldliness that can creep into a 78-year-old heart.”

I don’t know if you thought this way, but I used to think that since sanctification is progressive, that my 30-year-old patience would be 40 years more patient now. It didn’t work. That might be just absolutely self-indicting for me to say, because progressive sanctification means you ought to be a more holy person at 78 than at 38, and it doesn’t feel quite like that. I’m an embattled soul. These arrows just keep flying, and you need the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit every day. If you think you’re going to coast someday, you’re going to be destroyed, because there’s no coasting in this life.

“O God, protect me from the world and the worldliness that can creep into a 78-year-old heart.”

Here’s a caution. I know that we are going to get to the point where we can’t preach. I mean, would that we could die before we get there. But that’s up to God. We don’t believe in mercy killing. No matter what California or Oregon or Minnesota says, we don’t believe in that. God will decide if we have to sit in a nursing home and not have all our faculties. That’s going to come if we don’t die. And the question is, will we be able to be faithful? So, don’t hear this as a kind of triumphalism: “Yeah, strong old people!”

However, I sat under the ministry of Oswald Sanders at age 89. He was 89 and I was 50-something. And he said, “I’ve written a book a year since I was 70,” and I just thought, “Yes, that’s what I want to be like.” Now my new model is Thomas Sowell, who’s 93, right? When he turned 90, the interviewer asked him, “How is it that you’ve written a book every 18 months since you were 80?” So I said, “Great, life begins at 80.” I have two years to run up to it and then we take off.

The way that balances out with the fight is that you shouldn’t view aging as so embattled, so beleaguered, and so difficult with aging that you give up. The outer nature is wasting away. Believe that while you have life, you have ministry. I hate the American view of retirement. I think it’s totally unbiblical. I think it destroys souls. Ralph Winter used to say, “Men in America don’t die of old age; they die of retirement,” meaning, they lose heart. They lose purpose.

So, pastors, you don’t have to do like he does and stay in the pastorate forever. You don’t have to do that. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. I stopped at age 67. I’m not sure I should have. I don’t have total confidence about that. But I’ve tried to be useful. I’ve tried to be useful from 67 to 78. All that to say, be so reminded about the battle and be hopeful and optimistic and energetic about what God might call you to do between 65 and 85.

Duncan: This Q&A was not brought to you by AARP.

Piper: I have never responded to one of those 10,000 envelopes. Never.

MacArthur: Me neither.

Duncan: We’re well aware. We’re so grateful for God’s faithfulness on display in both of your lives. And this was a very fruitful, profitable hour. Thank you so much, brothers. Dr. MacArthur, will you pray for these men, and that God would be faithful in their ministries and lives?

MacArthur: Father, this has been such a refreshing hour together. In so many ways, our hearts have been warmed and even thrilled to feel the impulse of every heart beating in this room about ministry and preaching, so that they can embrace every thought, every answer that we tried to offer. It felt like we were giving water to their souls and strengthening them. That’s the way it came across in their exuberant response.

Lord, we ask that this might be used to raise this generation of pastors, these men who are right here, to a level of faithfulness and an endurance that will glorify and honor your name. We don’t want this to have just been a moment’s experience, as enjoyable as it was, but an experience that bears lasting power so that we’ll see a difference in the future. There are so many defectors, so many people who are superficial and shallow in their approach to ministry, and we need none of that. We need the best and the most dedicated and the most devout and the most faithful and the most powerful.

So, use this, Lord, by your Spirit in the life of everyone who’s here to make a notable, significant difference in the next decade and even beyond in the church. For your glory, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

One great feature of modernity, from Satan’s standpoint, is the sheer rejection of the soul. We live in a world stupefied by the material. Ask ten people on the street about their souls — if they don’t wonder aloud, “What does this babbler wish to say?” (Acts 17:18), they will tell you that if they do have a soul, they have not thought much about it. Even ancient pagan philosophers wrote dense treatises on the soul, but the mass of men today live as though they are soulless. And yet these same people investigate the silliest things under the sun. If anything is worth thought, is it not your soul? “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).

Yet perhaps this treacherous thoughtlessness is not so novel. John Bunyan (1628–1688) could plaster this over our age as well as his:

[The soul] is neglected to amazement, and that by the most of men; yea, who is there of the many thousands that sit daily under the sound of the gospel that are concerned, heartily concerned, about the salvation of their souls? — that is, concerned, I say, as the nature of the thing requireth. If ever a lamentation was fit to be taken up in this age about, for, or concerning anything, it is about, for, and concerning the horrid neglect that everywhere puts forth itself with reference to salvation. (The Greatness of the Soul, 105)

Hell is being filled not so much with a shaking fist as with a shrug. How little thought, how little attention, how little time or effort is paid to eternity. Many a sinner today thinks thoughts of his everlasting soul as deep as his belly button. His neglect offends both God and his own well-being — he suicides the immortal part of him by his thoughtlessness. If Jesus’s question was needed then, it is needed all the more now. Dip it in fire, carve it in granite, engrave it upon the conscience: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:36–37).

Three Lessons on the Soul

Do not pass on from his question. Answer it. What does it profit you to amass all this world has to offer you — if the genie emerged to grant your deepest wishes — if in the receiving you let slip your soul? Too many live for the world and whisper, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God will say to him on that dark day of judgment, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you” (Luke 12:19–20). If your soul be lost, all is lost, for you are lost.

Adrift in a naturalistic and atheistic West, you may need help considering the immaterial and immortal self. Satan the destroyer blinds man to the glory of Christ, but also to the glory of souls. Many do not know Jesus and do not want to know Jesus because they do not know what a soul is and what it means for it to be lost. Dear reader, do you know what it is to possess a soul? Do you know what it is to lose it? Consider then your own soul’s importance through three comparisons.

1. Your soul is greater than safety.

We need to study this before we are tested on it: your soul is worth any suffering to keep. Jesus introduces his question about soul-losing in the context of cross-bearing. He refuses to hide the cost of discipleship. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Look ahead of you; there it is, a horrid sight to the flesh: a cross. But not just any cross, an empty cross. You get closer; what sick joke is this? Your name is etched upon it.

“Hell is being filled not so much with a shaking fist as with a shrug.”

You, die that death? Impossible. By no means. Absolutely not. And yet this is the instrument Christ puts before his disciples. Nails. Nakedness. Shame. Torture. All chosen — daily (Luke 9:23). What argument can even a divine mind produce to prod trembling sheep to such a slaughter? One word: life. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

Jesus’s question — What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? — assassinates all alternatives. What does it gain us to refuse our cross, refuse his way, sidestep his suffering, to keep our brief life in this world and lose our life with him in the next? If you live for anything, live for that which will bless your soul; if you die for anything, die pursuing the good of your soul and the souls of others.

2. Your soul is greater than your body.

Local gyms, hospitals, makeup departments, medicines, and fashion all prove man cares about his physical self. A man cannot suffer a hangnail without it becoming a preoccupation. How much money must he spend to make the illness go away? How much to drink from the fountain of youth? We’ll pay it. How anxious he is to swell that bicep but a few centimeters or trim that midsection a few inches — how many hours, how much pain, what inconvenience he will endure for the body.

In all of this, we spend our focus on the wrapping paper of God’s far greater gift. The mass of humanity cares more for healthy and beautiful bodies than they do for healthy and beautiful souls. The one they can see in the mirror; the other is immaterial and, thus, to them unreal. What a tragedy. Not only is your soul that which can commune with God and that which will live forever, but it is that which will determine your resurrected body’s fate. A soul in heaven shall not have a body in hell, and the soul in hell will not have a body in heaven. The two will join: where the soul is, there the body will be also.

3. Your soul is greater than all the world.

Oh, how man excavates the ground for gold. How he crosses oceans, sails from shore to shore, sifts dirt for diamonds — in these he thinks he finds treasure. In these he thinks he finds what matters.

How differently does Jesus teach man to compute. Find the buried treasure, capture the pot of gold, unearth Atlantis, fill your barns, attain that celebrity, wealth, and status, and you will gain nothing worth considering, nothing even worth comparing to what you lose if you lose your soul. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? It profits him nothing. If the whole world could fit in your right pocket, but your soul should slip through a hole in your left, you’ve lost everything worth keeping.

In other words, you will never obtain anything in this world more valuable than what you lose by forfeiting your soul. Yet, like a madman who has escaped from the asylum, we scour the middle of the freeway looking for lost pennies. What are these compared with our very lives? What are a few gold coins compared to our souls? The world and all its desires are dust, rotten trash, a loathsome disease compared to riches you already possess by virtue of being a creature with a soul.

Lose Not Your Soul

Consider, really consider, Jesus’s second warning shot: What can a man give in return for his soul? “Return for his soul” — does Jesus not speak from the vantage point of hell? The man has lost his soul and wishes to buy it back. What can he give for its return? What would he not give for its return? Yet he does not have the funds. He sold himself cheaply and cannot buy himself back. He has hated himself. The bowl of red stew is empty; only tears remain; how foolishly does Esau barter his birthright!

What can a man give in return for his soul? Let a lost soul answer. What coin or feast or pleasure would that rich man in the torment spare to ferry his soul over that uncrossable chasm to where Lazarus sat? How vain the world now appears to him — less than a single drop of water upon his tongue to reduce his anguish. What can a man give in return for his soul? “Nothing now!” he groans through sobs.

Reader, you can lose your soul — most do. To lose your soul by thoughtlessness is an easy road and natural. To keep one’s soul in following Jesus to our crosses and beyond — this is supernatural. Do not lose your soul!

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.

I don’t believe anyone thought we took the name for our daughter, Agnes, from the then-recently released Despicable Me, but it often produced conversation. Among midwesterners, she inevitably hears, “Oh, I had a grandmother” — or great-grandmother — “named Agnes.” But few realize that the name has a distinctive Christian heritage, beginning with the early martyr Agnes of Rome.

In naming our daughter after a martyr, we were seeking to shape our (and her) imagination about the ideal Christian life. Agnes of Rome’s story, brief as it is, reminds us that gladly confessing Jesus as Lord and acknowledging our identity in Christ are the most important things about us. The martyr moment brings the good things of this earth into eternal perspective. Agnes shows the power of Jesus’s promise to the church in Smyrna — “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10) — and asks if we really believe it.

Pure Lamb

Early authors often remarked that Agnes’s life matched her name. Agnes conveys a double meaning related to the Greek word for “pure” (hagne) and the Latin word for “lamb” (agnus). In Christian art, she is always depicted with a lamb, which makes her easy to spot in an old church or an art museum. She exemplifies a young unmarried woman who died for her Christian faith.

As with many martyr stories, Agnes’s death likely occurred during the “Great Persecution” around AD 304. The Roman emperor Diocletian feared the rising Christian population and sought to unify the empire after a series of insurrections and rebellions. He closed churches, arrested church leaders, and tested the loyalty of prominent Romans by making them offer a sacrifice to the gods or else face deadly consequences.

Among those brought to trial in Rome during the persecution was a twelve-year-old girl (or possibly thirteen) named Agnes. She came from a Christian family and was probably denounced because she refused to marry the son of a Roman official.

‘New Kind of Martyrdom’

We know Agnes from two texts in the late fourth century. The first is an inscription, which still exists, in a church honoring Agnes in Rome. Damasus, bishop of Rome (AD 366–384), comments on her courage amid the degrading humiliation of being exposed before the crowd: “Though of so little strength she checked her extreme fear, and covered her naked members with her abundant hair lest mortal eye might see the temple of the Lord.” Damasus emphasizes both her vulnerability and her steadfast conviction, indeed willingness, to die for Jesus.

The second witness is Ambrose (c. AD 339–397), bishop of Milan and mentor to Augustine. He delivered an address on January 21, 377, which he notes is Agnes’s “birthday” (her martyrdom day). If she died in AD 304, Ambrose was retelling the story 73 years after the fact, approximately our distance from the Second World War. He could have known people who had witnessed the event, so his story has substantial credibility.

“A young person is never too young to testify to Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, and Treasure.”

According to Ambrose, after refusing an offer of marriage, Agnes said, “He who chose me first for Himself shall receive me. Why are you delaying, executioner? Let this body perish” (“Concerning Virgins,” 1.2.9). Ambrose praises her in the high classical style of preaching in that day: “She was fearless under the cruel hands of the executioners, she was unmoved by the heavy weight of the creaking chains, offering her whole body to the sword of the raging soldier, as yet ignorant of death, but ready for it” (1.2.7).

He marvels that one so young would die:

A new kind of martyrdom! Not yet of fit age for punishment but already ripe for victory . . . she filled the office of teaching valor while having the disadvantage of youth. . . . All wept, she alone was without a tear. (1.2.8)

In devotion beyond her age, in virtue above nature, she seems to me to have borne not so much a human name, as a token of martyrdom, whereby she showed what she was to be. (1.2.5)

That is, the double meaning of her name showed her to be a lamblike sacrifice and a pure virgin. She understood herself to be espoused to Jesus and so denied the claim of a human suitor.

Hagiography

One challenge in appropriating Agnes for today is that medieval Roman Catholic writers added substantial details to her story. For instance, The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine (1275) records that the Roman prefect sent her to a brothel to be abused since she refused to recant and be married. God protected her so that when the prefect’s son approached her, he was struck dead. But Agnes prayed for the young man, and he immediately recovered. When she was sentenced to death in the fire, the flames parted so that she was unhurt. After failing to kill her in this way, the officials executed her with a sword.

This is hagiography, an expanded account of martyrdom that combines a historical core with additional (often invented) details to highlight the martyr’s heroism. We can see where the medieval authors creatively embellished Agnes’s story. While the motive may be commendable, we need to be content with the simpler accounts by Ambrose and Damasus, even if the details are not so vivid.

But what about the emphasis in all these sources on virginity? Agnes’s commitment to Christ was tested because of the advances of a non-Christian man seeking a wife. We do not know whether she refused marriage in principle or only refused to be married to an unbeliever. Either way, while we today may be hesitant to affirm the principled denial of marriage, it is important to see that the early church rejoiced in the newfound freedom of a sacred singleness exemplified by Jesus and Paul. To early church authors such as Ambrose, the refusal of marriage in this world pointed strongly to one’s belonging to Jesus Christ.

Regardless of Agnes’s exact motivation, we can agree with Ambrose that she refused the earthly good of marriage and accepted death (the end of all possibilities for good things on this earth) because she belonged to Jesus Christ. Despite the legendary facets added to this story, the main event continues to draw our attention: a twelve-year-old girl stood before a Roman official and confessed her faith in Jesus.

Not Too Young to Testify

Ambrose and others marveled at Agnes’s youth. Her story presses home that a young person is never too young to testify to Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, and Treasure. And when they do so, especially in the face of opposition, they participate in the victory of Jesus over sin, death, and hell. When teenagers today confess that their decisions and actions are motivated by faith in Jesus, they demonstrate the courage and faith that overcomes the world (1 John 5:4–5). A confession of Jesus has more significance than any accomplishment — whether in school, sports, or society.

Note how Ambrose and Damasus remind us of Agnes’s physical vulnerability as a child and a woman but then show her indomitable trust in Jesus. When Augustine reflects on Agnes, he compares her to Hercules. He overcame the lion and Cerberus the three-headed dog, but “Agnes, a thirteen-year-old girl, overcame the devil” (Sermon 273.6).

C.S. Lewis knew that simple faith possesses great power against Christ’s enemies. The demon Screwtape seethes just thinking about a godly young woman like Agnes:

[She is not] only a Christian but such a Christian. . . . The little brute. She makes me vomit. She stinks and scalds through the very pages of the dossier. It drives me mad, the way the world has worsened. We’d have had her to the arena in the old days. That’s what her sort is made for. Not that she’d do much good there, either. A two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she’d faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile. . . . Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and yet has a satirical wit. The sort of creature who’d find ME funny! (The Screwtape Letters, 117–18)

We do not know if Agnes died with a smile or laughing at the impotence of the demons, but she did die confessing her Lord. And the demons shuddered.

Raising Our Children for What?

Lewis’s imaginative description brings Agnes home to us. Are we raising children whose highest aim is to testify faithfully to their Savior, the risen and exalted Jesus Christ? Would our daughters die with a smile, use satirical wit against a demon, and even look into the face of our greatest enemy and laugh because they are so secure in their faith?

Here is where martyr stories are so helpful. The picture that comes into our minds of a successful Christian life determines to a considerable extent what our own Christian life will look like — and the kind of Christian life we will hold before our children. Agnes provides such a picture.

There is fresh talk today about generational influence and stable households. By all means, it is a blessing to provide your grandchildren with a tradition of hard work and respect for family continuity. But this desire can so easily become a temptation to aim primarily at wealth, influence, and property. The martyrs, on the other hand, remind us that, whatever we build on earth, we must be ready to say goodbye to everything and give up control over our earthly future in a moment of witness. Christian parents will do no better than to pray that they and their children display the faithful confession of Agnes and the other martyrs.

Jesus’s promise in Revelation 2:10 — “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” — does not apply only to those who face imminent execution for confessing Jesus as Lord. The language of martyrdom provides a peg, a hook, on which to hang the rest of our Christian life and the culture of Christian life we are creating as a family and church. The brief account of Agnes does not tell us everything about the Christian life, but it does illustrate the extreme situation that should anchor our expectations of life in this world.

Augustine concludes with encouragement: “Pray that you may be able to follow in the footsteps of the martyrs. It isn’t, after all, the case that you are human beings and they weren’t; not, after all, the case that you were born, and they were born quite differently” (Sermon 273.9). Indeed, Agnes’s story reminds us that all of God’s people can find the courage to confess Christ publicly based on a settled conviction that we belong to Jesus.

Audio Transcript

By far the hardest part of my work on this podcast is reading the sorrow-filled emails we get, and especially those from parents who have lost young children. Some of you who are listening are enduring tremendous pain, which is so evident in the stories you share with us. And the sorrow of losing a child is only made heavier when that loss may be connected to a parent’s own decision, as is the case in this email from an anonymous woman. “Pastor John, I have been passing through a very dark and hard time since the recent loss of my unborn baby girl. My expected delivery date passed, and I was told to go to the hospital for an induced labor. I delayed that decision, trusting that I would eventually deliver my baby girl without any forced labor needed. A week later, I was told my baby died in the womb.

“I was shattered by the news. I feel directly responsible for my child’s death. I feel God should have given me a sign or something. Why did he allow my baby to die? It’s been seven weeks, and it still feels like yesterday. The pain is fresh every day. My heart is broken. I cry whenever I remember the whole scenario. I find it hard to pray. When I do, I now doubt if God still hears me. I am weighed down to the point that I feel my faith failing.”

When I was in Africa in 1996 visiting missionaries, I met a young Quaker missionary couple who had been there for fifteen years. The year before I got there, their eighteen-month-old daughter was backed over in a car and killed by a visiting missionary in their front yard. And as I was visiting them those months later, their computer was broken, they had car trouble, their housing was being taken from them because the landlord had defaulted on a loan. And in all of that, this couple, to my utter astonishment, was radiant with hope and with the love of Jesus Christ. They had not even gone home to bury the baby. They buried the baby in Kenya and pressed on with the work.

Now, I’m very aware that this young woman who has written to us can respond to that story in two very different ways. She can be angry with me or upset, as though I were trying to shame her that she hasn’t yet felt that kind of hopeful. But she doesn’t have to respond that way to my story. She can respond by saying, “Thank you, God, that you gave to that Quaker couple such grace to survive that unspeakable tragedy and survive it in hope. I don’t feel that way, God, but I want to, and I ask for that miracle to happen in my life.” She could respond that way. I hope she does.

So, here are a few thoughts that I pray God would use to give this kind of sustaining grace to our brokenhearted mom.

1. We just don’t know.

First, we don’t know if your baby would have died anyway, and so we don’t know if you were part of the reason the baby died. We just don’t know. There are too many variables. You don’t know. As much as you feel responsible, you don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.

2. Waiting need not be negligence.

Second, you referred to your negligence. Maybe it was — I don’t know enough to pass judgment — but frankly I doubt it. I doubt that you were negligent. Millions of women have passed their due dates and waited for birth without inducement. All the Piper babies were late, some as much as three weeks. To wait for a natural readiness need not be negligence.

3. Your child’s life goes on.

Third, your baby’s life did not end. If you persevere in faith, you will be with your child in due time. I tried to spell out the reason for believing that in APJ 514. You can go listen to why I believe that. There are just many significant reasons, even biblical ones, that I think are compelling. Don’t assume your baby is dead — not ultimately and not eternally — and that you’ll never know what that baby would turn out to be as God mysteriously gives it mature life.

4. God reigns with goodness and wisdom.

Fourth, I don’t know what you have been taught about the sovereignty of God over life and death, but the biblical truth is that God is sovereign over who lives and who dies and when and how they die. James 4:15 says, “If the Lord wills, we will live.” This is why, when Job’s ten children died all at once in a collapsing house, Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground, and worshiped and said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

“God is doing a thousand things you cannot see. All of them are wise. All of them work for your good if you trust him.”

It is no true comfort to believe that death is controlled by the evil of Satan or the meaninglessness of chance. That is not a comfortable theology. What comforts us in death — ours and those we love — is that the all-wise, all-governing God has good reasons for whom he takes and whom he leaves and when he does it. Your baby did not die in vain. God is doing a thousand things — yes, ten thousand things — you cannot see. All of them are wise. All of them work for your good if you trust him.

5. God is not against you.

Fifth, even though we don’t know 99 percent of what God is doing in the calamities of our lives, we do know a few of his purposes, because he tells us in the Bible why he appoints suffering for his precious children. For example, James 1:12 says, “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.” Every loss is a test from God of our love for God. Our faith and love are being tested to prove that they are real and to make them stronger.

Paul said of his own experience of suffering, “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8–9). God has dealt you, just like Paul, a very painful blow, just like he did Ruth and Naomi in the Old Testament. But he is not against you. He wants you to trust him even more deeply than you do now or ever have.

6. Regret need not paralyze.

Sixth, it is possible to live with a lifetime of regret and not be paralyzed or miserable. The apostle Paul regretted all his life that he had been a murdering persecutor of Christians. To the end of his life, he called himself the chief of sinners because of this horrible history in his life. But instead of paralyzing him, it made him even more effective, a more effective minister of mercy because of the mercy shown to him after his sin. He wished it had not happened, because it was sin. To kill Christians is sin. But he knew God could make even a history of sin serve his saving purposes. You can read that in 1 Timothy 1:12–17.

7. God cleanses and forgives.

Seventh, whatever measure of sin or guilt attaches to you because of your child’s death, God is ready to forgive it. We don’t know. I just don’t know — and I don’t think you know — what measure of involvement was there. But you do know this: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The slate wiped clean.

8. God promises his help.

And finally, what we can know for sure in this situation is that God’s will for you is that you fight the good fight of faith and that you win — you win (2 Timothy 4:7). He promises to help you. He speaks these words over you right now from Psalm 91:14: “Because you hold fast to me in love, I will deliver you.” Or again in Psalm 32:10: “Steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.” Or once more, Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves” — he saves — “the crushed in spirit.” Or circling back to Job, who lost all ten of his children, James says this: “We consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11).

So, be steadfast. Trust him. He’s going to bring you through this humble, strong, wise, kind, confident.