At present, I’m enjoying a slow walk through Middle-earth. We first toured some of this terrain together almost six years ago, as I read aloud The Hobbit to our twin boys. Now, they’re almost twelve. Harry Potter is behind us. The boys are almost teens, more grown-up, with maturing palates ready for richer fare — and the patience that Tolkien requires. At long last, we journey to Mordor.

The Lord of the Rings is striking for its contrasts. Suffocating darkness, then stunning bursts of light. Brooding evil, and resilient good. Yes, this tale has its greys — perhaps the most common color named in the trilogy. Yet beneath its cloaks is a marked world of stark contrasts. From the beginning, this is not a journey Frodo started from some deep urge for adventure. He doesn’t choose to go; he signs no contract. Pursued by Black Riders who have breached the Shire, he is forced to run, with life and death — and the whole world — in the balance.

When all the world is so quickly at stake, diverse races soon divide between Mordor and the West. Even Elves and Dwarves join together in the Fellowship. The horror of the White Wizard’s change in allegiance is that the chasm between Evil, and those who would resist it, is so stark. And in the meantime, one who is Grey is shown to be White.

This is one reason Lord of the Rings is a welcomed influence in many Christian homes. We teach our children first and foremost from Scripture that the real world is one of stark contrasts, with many voices vying to paint it all in shades of grey. Cloaked as it may be for now, ours is a world of darkness and light, of evil and good, of wrong and right. We need eyes for biblical reality — what God himself says about our world through the apostles and prophets and climactically in his Son — and we are happy to be helped along by some great stories, and wise voices, that echo the contrasts of Scripture.

God Put Roses on Briers

One such wise voice is Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). No, I am not yet reading him aloud to my children, but I dream of the day. At least I hope some of his spine will come to them through their father.

Edwards, says biographer George Marsden, “saw all created reality as bittersweet contrasts, dazzling beauty set against appalling horrors, ephemeral glories pointing to divine perfections” (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 136). And what is at the center of that contrast-filled reality and beauty?

At the core of Edwards’ outlook is a rigorously unsentimental view of love. . . . Edwards’ universe was similar to that of many of our own moral tales, from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings to countless lesser entertainments. (137)

Star Wars may be a stretch, but the point is well-taken in terms of contrasts between light and dark. Often we need to go back — to Tolkien and Lewis seventy years ago, to Edwards in the early 1700s, and most of all to the Scriptures — to escape the gently disorienting breezes of our own day, feel the great directional gusts of reality, and remember that life and death are at stake. The atmosphere of secularism rests so heavy on us that we are prone to take eternity so lightly. But the real world is one of briers and worms, of snakes and sharks, of death and hell.

“The atmosphere of secularism rests so heavy on us that we are prone to take eternity so lightly.”

In Scripture, God shows us the glory of his light against the backdrop of darkness. Slavery in Egypt accents the glory of his deliverance. His people regularly falling under foreign powers accents his rescues under the judges. The destruction of Jerusalem, and the horrors of exile, accent the glory of return and restoration. The death of his own Son precedes the glorious rush of resurrection life; and our own sin, the stark contrast of grace and the gift of new life. In it all, we learn our need for God, and learn to marvel in his light.

As Edwards wrote in one of his earliest entries in his journal,

Roses grow upon briers, which is to signify that all temporal sweets are mixed with bitter. But what seems more especially to be meant by it, is that true happiness, the crown of glory, is to be come at in no other way than by bearing Christ’s cross by a life of mortification, self-denial and labor, and bearing all things for Christ. (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 11:52)

Our Trouble with ‘Love’

Another voice unafraid of God’s stark contrasts and God’s unsentimental love — and this one from our own day — is Don Carson.

In the opening chapter of his Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, Carson five times uses the words “sentimental” or “sentimentalized” to characterize the prevailing notions of love in our age — in contrast to the rich, multi-dimensional portrait of God’s love in the Scriptures. Which means that when biblically-shaped Christians speak about the love of God today, we “mean something very different from what is meant in the surrounding culture” (10). What is more, writes Carson:

I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God — to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity. (11)

“When we listen to God’s own words, we do not find a portrait of his love that is simple or tame.”

Some today flinch at divine sovereignty — and divine wrath all the more. And set against these suspicions are shallow and sentimental notions of his love. Of course God will forgive me, it’s assumed, That’s his job. But when we listen to God’s own words, we do not find a portrait of his love that is so simple, one-dimensional, tame, or boring.

Unsentimental Love

How, then, is God’s love “rigorously unsentimental”?

God’s love toward sinners comes on quite different terms than his love for his Son. Carson points first to God’s intra-Trinitarian love with which he loves his worthy Son. But we are mere creatures, and fallen, and undeserving. God loves us not because of our worth, but despite it. Our sin deserves the justice of eternal separation. His love toward sinners shines out for what it is against the backdrop of our rebellion, and the hell we deserve. His love for us demonstrates, at bottom, his value and worth, against the common assumption that it preeminently echoes how valuable we are.

And divine justice and wrath are satisfied in the death of God’s Son. His is bloody, deadly, unsparing love — the kind that makes people squirm and some utter horrible phrases like “cosmic child abuse.” The hubris is staggering. Still, he tells us that he loved the world in this way: “he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). How does God show his love for us? “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). How do we know that he is for us, and no one, Satan included, can be successfully against us? God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).

Carson also observes God’s providential love — he makes his sun rise on the just and unjust — and his yearning love, holding out open hands to any sinner who will bow and received Jesus as his treasured Lord. But sinners, on their own, do not repent without God’s elective love — his special love for his people, his sheep, his bride. And just as unnerving as election, if not more so for some, is God’s provisional love, which is conditioned on obedience.

Twenty-first-century, Christ-haunted Westerners have their sentimental slogans, that God’s love is unconditional, or that he loves everyone the same. It is true that his elective love is unconditional, but certainly not his provisional love. And he does love everyone, in some respect, with regard to his providential love and yearning love, but certainly not in his elective love. As Carson writes, “What the Bible says about the love of God is more complex and nuanced than what is allowed by mere sloganeering” (24).

News Worth Sharing

In such biblical tensions, we find the deep and complex love of our God — his unsentimental love — a love which is not weaker than the world’s version, but stronger. The edges and hard-to-stomach truths do not dilute divine love; they distill it.

God does not promise his people temporal comforts and ease. Nor did he promise, and give, such to his own Son in the days of his flesh. Divine love, in this age, is not simple, sentimental, or predictable. Owning this now, before the next time this world roughs us up, will help us be ready to suffer well, for the joy set before us.

So, we relish contemporary voices with backbone. And we go back a century for Tolkien and Lewis, or back three centuries for Edwards, and four for the Puritans. And best of all, by far, we build our lives daily in this modern world in the firm words and stark contrasts of the Scriptures, as faithful Christians have for two millennia. Then we watch with compassion as our world tries to satisfy itself with a cheap, thin, sentimental counterfeit.

And we stand ready with such good news to share about the love of our God.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15193980/should-we-be-motivated-by-degrees-of-reward

“Only remember me,” Joseph requested, “when it is well with you, and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house” (Genesis 40:14). Though he sat in prison, Joseph had just interpreted the cupbearer’s dream favorably: he would be restored to his former height in three days. “Only remember me to Pharaoh,” Joseph asked.

In three days, the cupbearer was taken from the cell as foretold. It will only be a matter of time now, Joseph thought. Three more days passed. Five days. A week. “Two whole years” (Genesis 41:1). Nothing. Once ascended to his former place, “the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him” (Genesis 40:23).

When you think of the ascended Christ, do you imagine someone like this cupbearer? Has he who once descended into our pit and suffered for our sins — only to rise to a better life three days later — forgotten us?

Perhaps you expect his attention when he returns, but until then, he basks in the angel’s praises, grips the scepter firmly in hand, and with our prison far behind him, you suspect that you remain little upon his heart.

Sympathy of the Prince

William Gurnall (1616–1679) gives a moving illustration in reply:

Suppose a king’s son should get out of a besieged city, where he had left his wife and children, whom he loves as his own soul, and these all ready to die by sword or famine; if supply come not the sooner, could this prince, when arrived at his father’s house, please himself with the delights of the court, and forget the distress of his family? (The Christian in Complete Armor, 31)

Right now, Jesus thinks of me, he thinks of you, as this prince who has left his bride and children behind. He has not forgotten us, coronated as he is in glory, just as any good man could not for a moment forget his family shackled in sorrows in an evil land. If we who are sinful are moved at the distress of our loved ones, how could Christ, whose name is love, disregard the sufferings of his family still on earth?

If you’re tempted to feel forgotten, be reminded that right now Christ loves his bride with a love surpassing knowledge (Ephesians 3:19). His heart toward us from heaven deserves more thought than many of us give it. Consider first how un-cupbearer-like our ascended Christ is, and then why Christ does “please himself with the delights of the court” while still not forgetting “the distress of his family” — and why that is such good news for us.

He Has Not Forgotten

Jesus, our King, has departed into glory, leaving us here on earth. And unlike the prince in Gurnall’s illustration, Jesus prays we remain temporarily apart, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15). But in order that we might not draw false conclusions, on the eve of his death Jesus also says in several ways, “I will not forget you.”

He assures them, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). He promises, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. . . . Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:18–19).

When sorrow fills their hearts at this news, he ensures that he means their good: “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). He guarantees, “You have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22).

On the darkest night in history, Christ carries his people upon his heart in prayer to his Father: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). And this he prays for you and me as well: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word” (John 17:20).

“Surely Jesus will not forget his bride, the reward of his suffering and anguish.”

These words do not pour forth from a heavenly cupbearer. We can be certain that he who said, “as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9), and whose life was summarized in those expiring hours with the words, “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1) — surely he will not forget his bride, the reward of his suffering and anguish. Nor in a real sense will he ever truly leave her (Matthew 28:20).

He Still Enjoys the Court

Suffice it to say that Jesus Christ will not, cannot, forget his beloved, even if his beloved is prone to forget that she is not forgotten. This is one problem.

But there is another: we can assume that Christ thinks only of us. The spirit of our age would have us picture a needy, codependent, lovesick Messiah. He is in heaven, not really paying attention to the glory there, doodling hearts on the margins of the cosmos with our name in the middle.

Such a spirit omits that Jesus also told his disciples, “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). We might be conditioned to believe that his world revolves around us, that he must be perpetually pained in heaven, unable to fully rejoice with his Father or receive praises or enjoy the delights of the court because we are not yet there.

When He Wrote to Her

Consider the love letter he sends from heaven to his hurting, left behind bride in Smyrna. She is a faithful local church (no censure or call to repentance appears in this letter). How does the compassionate Christ speak to his suffering church? To the angel of the church of Smyrna, he tells John, write,

The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.

I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. (Revelation 2:8–11)

What comfort does he offer? He says that he is the first and the last, the one who died and came back to life. He says he knows their tribulation and their poverty (though they are rich). He tells them that he hears the slander of their enemies who have become a “synagogue of Satan.”

But notice too how he instructs them in their persecution: “Do not fear what you are about to suffer” — Satan’s throwing them into prison will test them, and end up serving greater purposes. Jesus tells them to be faithful unto death, and that he will be waiting on the other side with a crown of life. He tells them that they must conquer so as not to be hurt by the second death, the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14).

He gives to this church what appears to be a masculine comfort, that is, comfort that retains an exhortative tone given its vision of higher priorities (1 Thessalonians 2:11–12) — namely, the church’s eternal well-being.

Christ’s words here are not those of a nursing mother with her child (1 Thessalonians 2:7), though equally full of love. Jesus comforts this church, but not by telling her he cannot enjoy heaven and his Father while she remains oppressed and apart. He does not refuse to sit on the throne before she is seated safely in glory.

Moved, but Not Injured

Jesus cares deeply about us, but not too much — is that what I am trying to say? No. He cares more deeply about his bride than we know, and he is still our God who inhabits a heaven that is bigger than us. He loves us beyond knowledge, and he does not have absolute need of us. Part of the beauty of his love is how freely given, or unrequired, it is.

As our great high priest, Christ invites us to approach the throne of grace because he is able to sympathize with us (Hebrews 4:14–16). But he is not consumed by pity, nor does he feel with us so as to sustain injury. He owns our persecutions as the head of the body — “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me” (Acts 9:4) — yet not in such a way as to be freshly pierced.

Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) describes it this way in The Heart of Christ:

These affections of pity and sympathy so stirred up by himself, though they. . . affect his bodily heart as they did here, yet they do not afflict and perturb him in the least, nor become a burden in a load unto his Spirit, so as to make him sorrowful or heavy, as in this life here his pity unto Lazarus made him, and as his distresses at last, that made him sorrowful unto death. (47)

“Jesus is provoked to help us; he draws near, moved by our hurt, while not being hurt himself.”

Jesus Christ, once a man of sorrows, has risen and ascended; he is not in heaven sunken that his bride is not yet there. Goodwin claims that the glorified Christ has “no tang of disquietment” or “afflicting affections,” though his “perfection does not destroy his affections.” He is provoked to help us; he draws near, moved in measure by our hurt, while not being hurt himself.

He Sees the Day

This is good news for us, for Christ loves his people without unbraiding all reality by loving them above his Father and his glory. The Son invites us into his eternal, Trinitarian love, without making us the primary focus of that eternal love. He loves us without making us God.

Our final joy and eternal well-being are certain. Jesus has no guesswork as to our fate. While far from unfeeling, he is not tossed by the waves, as we are this side of heaven.

Jesus is the Shepherd of the sheep, the Groom of his bride, guiding us home through a world of distress to springs of living water, promising to soon wipe away every tear from our eyes (Revelation 7:17; 21:4). While he tarries, he can and does enjoy “the delights of the court,” while not forgetting “the distress of his family.”

As we read through the New Testament, we encounter a unique connection between the Holy Spirit and joy. I’ll give you a few examples. Luke tells us how at one point Jesus “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21) and Paul tells us how the Thessalonian Christians had “received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 1:6–7). In Romans, Paul instructs us that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).

I call this connection unique (and worthy of further reflection) because the New Testament pairs joy with the Holy Spirit in a way it doesn’t with other affections. For instance, we don’t read of people experiencing the “sorrow of (or in) the Holy Spirit” or the “anger of (or in) the Holy Spirit,” even though it’s clear the Spirit can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30) and angered (Romans 1:18).

So, why does the New Testament uniquely tie joy to the Holy Spirit? To explore this question, we’ll briefly look at who (and what) the Holy Spirit is, what it means for us to experience this Spirit-empowered joy, and what difference it makes in the Christian life.

Spirit of Joy

Two qualifications before I delve in further. First, the few words I’m about to share on the nature of the Holy Spirit are, I believe, foundationally helpful to understanding the joy that the Holy Spirit produces in us. I don’t have space here, however, to offer a full treatment of that complex reality, so if you’d like to explore this further, this sermon by John Piper and this article by Scott Swain are good places to start.

Second, it’s helpful to keep in mind that while Scripture describes the Holy Spirit as a divine person distinct from the Father and the Son (John 15:26), it also describes him as the Spirit of the Father (Matthew 10:20) and the Spirit of the Son (1 Peter 1:11). In one place, Paul refers to the Spirit in all three Trinitarian ways in the space of three verses (Romans 8:9–11). As we talk about the joy of the Holy Spirit, we need to remember the oneness of God.

Now, let’s probe deeper into the nature of the Trinity as it relates to joy. Citing New Testament texts such as 1 John 4:16 — “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” — theologians at least as far back as Augustine have understood the Holy Spirit to be the living, personified love flowing between the Father and the Son (John 17:26). John Piper says it this way — and note the connection between the love of God and the joy of God:

God the Holy Spirit is the divine person who “originates” (eternally!) from the Father and the Son in their loving each other. And this love is not a “merciful” love as if they needed pity. It is an admiring, delighting, exulting love. It is Joy. The Holy Spirit is God’s Joy in God. To be sure, he is so full of all that the Father and Son are, that he is a divine person in his own right. But that means he is more, not less, than the Joy of God. (“Can We Explain the Trinity?”)

Piper goes on to say, “This means that Joy is at the heart of reality. God is Love, means most deeply, God is Joy in God.” If an essential dimension of the Spirit’s nature is that he is “God’s Joy in God” personified, that helps us understand what makes the joy he produces in us a distinctive joy.

God’s Joy in Us

When we experience the joy of the Holy Spirit, we taste the joy that is at the core of ultimate reality. For when we are born again by the Spirit (John 3:6–7), we receive the astounding, incredible, empowering, priceless gift of the Holy Spirit who resides in us, just as Jesus promised:

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. (John 14:16–17)

And when the Holy Spirit dwells in us, the Father and the Son dwell in us — and we in them (John 17:20–21):

If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (John 14:23)

Given all that Jesus says about the Spirit in John 14–16, we know that the Spirit factored significantly in what he meant when he said,

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:11)

“When we experience the joy of the Holy Spirit, we taste the joy that is at the core of ultimate reality.”

For the only way we can abide in the Son (John 15:4–5), the only way the Son and the Father can abide in us (John 14:23), the only way the Son’s words can truly abide in us (John 15:7), and the only way the Son’s joy in the Father and the Father’s joy in the Son can abide in us is by the Helper, the Holy Spirit, dwelling in us.

This is why Jesus said our experience of the Holy Spirit would be like having “rivers of living water” within us (John 7:38–39). The Spirit is the indwelling wellspring of joy in God that we experience as we “live by faith in the Son of God” (Galatians 2:20).

Joy of Believing

This brings us to the unique experience of joy that a Christian experiences by the power of the Holy Spirit in this age. We see it all over the New Testament, but Paul captures it beautifully in Romans 15:13:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Paul describes the ground of this Spirit-empowered, joy-producing hope in Romans 5:

Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. . . . And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1–2, 5)

And Peter describes the ineffable joy produced by the love we experience for the now-unseen Jesus, in whom we believe because of his Spirit-revealed word:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:8–9)

This is how the New Testament typically describes the joy we receive from the Holy Spirit: hope in the glory of God’s grace, received by faith, fills us with deep joy in the Spirit.

He was watching the Father, by the power of his Spirit, reveal the gospel of the kingdom to “little children,” and fill them with hope in the glory of God’s grace toward them as they believed in it, that moved Jesus to “rejoice in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21). It was hope in the glory of God’s grace toward them that filled Gentile disciples “with joy and with the Holy Spirit” as they believed the gospel (Acts 13:52). And it was hope in the glory of God’s grace toward them that filled the Thessalonians “with the joy of the Holy Spirit” as they believed the gospel message, even though they received it “in much affliction” (1 Thessalonians 1:6–7).

Joy to Pursue

We all know from personal experience and observation that Christians are not always filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit. The fact that the New Testament repeatedly draws our attention to specific instances when believers experienced this joy shows that the early Christians didn’t always experience it either.

“This Joy of God is an eternal joy — it will outlast death and only increase in us forever.”

But Paul said that “joy in the Holy Spirit” is a crucial dimension of the kingdom of God (Romans 14:17). It is something we are to pursue. For Joy is at the heart of reality, and if the Spirit dwells in us, we have the one who is ultimate Joy dwelling within us. So, to experience the joy of the Holy Spirit is to experience the joy of “life indeed” (1 Timothy 6:19 NASB).

Not only that, but it is to experience indomitable joy. For this Spirit-empowered joy can’t be destroyed by persecution (Colossians 1:24), suffering (Romans 5:3–4), various trials (1 Peter 1:6–7), sorrow (2 Corinthians 6:10), or a sentence of death (Philippians 1:21). In fact, it is the hope of this joy set before us that helps us, like Jesus, endure all manner of adversity, suffering, and death (Hebrews 12:2). And that is because this Joy of God is an eternal joy — it will outlast death and only increase in us forever (Psalm 16:11; Mark 10:21). Indeed, it is the hope of this eternal joy set before us, which we lay hold of by faith, that makes us “more than conquerors” over any would-be obstacle to the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:35–39).

And so, “May the God of hope fill [us] with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit [we] may abound in hope.”

Audio Transcript

Happy Friday, everyone. Today, we have a question from a listener named Mary. Actually, I should say we have several questions wrapped into one, from Mary. “Pastor John, hello! I have a hard question, and I’ll articulate as best as I can. The apostle Paul commands Christians to ‘put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.’ We are to put these sins to death because, as Paul says, ‘on account of these the wrath of God is coming’ (Colossians 3:5–6). We are commanded to die to sin impulses that remain in us. So, something earthly remains in us, and yet these same sin impulses, things like ‘evil desires,’ warrant God’s eternal wrath.

“So, is the ground of judgment the acting out of sins, beyond merely harboring the impulse within? Or is this very tendency in us, a diminished but still present earthly desire towards sin’s allure, also ground for eternal judgment? Or is putting to death sin the complete eradication of evil desires from in us? Or is it (by grace) tamping down those desires that will always be there, but not acting out consistently on those impulses? If so, how would that apply to not just the acted-out sins, but specifically to ‘evil desires’?” Whew! What would you say to Mary?

My goodness, those are five good questions. She’s really overflowing with questions, and they really are quite good questions. She asks, “Is putting to death sin the complete eradication of the desires?” And I think I would start with that one because that one’s easy. The answer is no. No, it’s not. If that were the case — in other words, if by the first prayer, by the first act of holiness or act of obedience, we totally eradicated all evil desire in our lives — this passage would read very differently than it does.

Paul would not be writing to Christians to get on with their warfare against sin if that were the case. Colossians 3 is not written as if during your first week as a Christian, you put a sinful desire to death, and then for the rest of your life, you never deal with it. That’s not the way the New Testament reads at all. But to see that, we’d better read these verses.

Away with the Old

Let me read Colossians 3:5–10. “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” — now literally, it says, “Put to death your members that are on the earth,” which is very odd. What it means is that, to the degree that your tongue or arm or sexual organ is about to be taken over by a sinful impulse, treat it as dead and unresponsive. So, let me start over.

Put to death therefore [your members on the earth]: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must [here’s the imperative] put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed [not a done deal] in knowledge after the image of its creator. (Colossians 3:5–10)

“The Christian life is to become what we are — to become in desire and in practice what you are in union with Christ.”

There is a new self — that’s what it means to be born again, to become a new creation in Christ, to be united to Christ so that his life is our life. This is a done reality for all true Christians. And the rest of the Christian life is to become what we are — to become in desire and in practice what you are in union with Christ. Or as Paul says here in Colossians 3, to put off the old self and put on the new self, or put to death the old and to walk in the newness of life.

But there’s no thought here that the absoluteness of the new self implies an absoluteness of emotional or behavioral perfection in this life. So, that question we can just put aside. There is a complete eradication of sinful desire, but that will happen when we die and go to be with Christ, or if he comes back during our lifetime. It’s not going to happen while we’re living in this fallen age.

Behaviors and Desires

Now, the next question that I think is also relatively easy to answer that she asks is this: Is the wrath of God a response to the behavioral outworkings of inner evil desire, or do the desires themselves bring down the wrath of God?

I assume the reason this question feels urgent to Mary is that my answer to the first question, which I think she already knows and agrees with, implies that we still have those old desires that have to be battled with, which raises the question whether the wrath of God is going to come down upon us because of the desires that God hates rising up in us.

Now, the answer to the first part of that question is yes, the wrath of God comes upon both behavioral sin and upon sinful desires that lie beneath those behaviors. And I say that simply because that’s exactly what the text says in Colossians 3:5–6. It says, “put to death,” and then it names five things:

sexual immorality — various acts of the body contrary to the will of God; sinful sexual bodily actions
impurity
passion
evil desire
covetousness, which is idolatry

And then it says that “on account of these” five realities — both the actions and the desires — “the wrath of God is coming.” These refers back to all five of those things, the behavior of sexual immorality and impurity, and then three references to desires — passion, evil desire, and covetousness. All three of those last desires precede, and are beneath, behaviors.

And Paul says, “On account of these” — both the behaviors and the desires — “the wrath of God is coming.” Which brings us then to the most urgent question, which I think is implied in what Mary’s asking — namely, “Well, if evil desires continue to rise up in the hearts of born-again people, how will we escape the wrath of God, which is coming up against such desires?” And the answer has two parts.

Evil Desires Forgiven

First, becoming a Christian means that God unites us to Christ by faith so that his death, Christ’s death on the cross, becomes the payment for all of our sins and the ground of all of our total forgiveness for all the sins we will ever do, whether desires or actions.

Just a few verses earlier, Paul said this: “God made [you] alive together with [Christ], having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13–14). So, the entire record of debt for all the sins that we will ever commit — that’s behavior sins and desire sins — was nailed to the cross. That’s just breathtakingly wonderful.

“Wrath comes upon unforgiven evil desire. Christ bore the wrath for forgiven evil desire.”

So, the first answer to the question of why the wrath of God will not fall upon us for the sins of our remaining evil desires is that Jesus paid the penalty for them and secured complete forgiveness. Wrath comes upon unforgiven evil desire. Christ bore the wrath for forgiven evil desire. Therefore, it won’t come upon us because we are forgiven.

Evil Desires Fought

Now, the second part of the answer for why the wrath of God will not fall upon Christians, even though we have remaining sin in us, is just as essential, though not as foundational. The wrath of God will not fall upon true believers because we confirm our union with Christ — and our state of acceptance with God and our forgiveness — by the war we make on our sinful desires.

Many people do not understand this. They think that if they are secure in Christ, then the battle against sinful desires is not essential. Now that’s wrong. It is essential; it’s necessary, because if the battle is forsaken, and we make peace with sin in our lives, then we fail to confirm that we are united to Christ. We fail to confirm that we are a new creation because the new creation in Christ was created for good works, for holiness (Ephesians 2:10). Therefore, the failure to pursue good works, the failure to fight sin in ourselves, to fight for holiness, shows that a person is not a new creation.

Here’s the way Paul says it in Romans 8:13: “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” In other words, if the Holy Spirit dwells in you, you will make war on sin in your life, and the result will be the escape from wrath and the enjoyment of everlasting life — not because the warfare against sin provides forgiveness (it doesn’t work like that), but because it shows that we are forgiven, we are in Christ, we are a new creation.

So in summary, no, there is no eradication of all evil desire in this life. Second, yes, wrath is coming upon both sinful behavior and sinful desire. Third, that wrath will only come upon unforgiven sinful behavior and desire, and we confirm that we live in the safety of God’s forgiveness by hating and making war on our sinful desires by the Holy Spirit.

While you may not recognize the name Henry Van Dyke Jr., most spouses are well-acquainted with his work. It comes up in that dreaded moment when you realize an attempt to pursue and bless your spouse didn’t land. And by “didn’t land,” I mean, when it landed, it landed like a bomb, not a blessing. In moments like these, spouses have looked for solace, again and again, in the timeless wisdom of Van Dyke Jr.: “It’s the thought that counts.”

The original quote was this: “It is not the gift, but the thought that counts.” While this maxim may have some value when a genuinely thoughtful gift misses the mark, the sentiment shouldn’t become a target for anyone pursuing a spouse. In fact, it’s quite ironic that a pithy statement centering on the word thought is, in reality, often used to excuse away thoughtlessness.

Thoughts That Really Count

Imagine if my wife, Julia, were to buy me the nicest hairbrush (I’m bald), and then spend hours knitting me the most comfortable Duke Blue Devil blanket (I’m a Tar Heel). After she presents her gifts, I sit in dumbfounded silence until she breaks in: “Well, it’s the thought that counts!” As I’m uploading the pictures of my newly acquired items to eBay, I would say (in the most loving way), “Well, those were some bad thoughts!”

The picture may be silly (unless you live in North Carolina), but the point isn’t. The thoughts that really count in marriage are not random thoughts that misfire, but informed thoughts that land as pleasant to our spouse. The apostle Peter charges husbands, “Live with your wives in an understanding way” (1 Peter 3:7). Good intentions are important, but in marriage in particular, as we model Christ and his church, we should want to aim higher than good intentions.

“Stop trying to love and pursue more. Instead, aim to love and pursue better.”

Most spouses are overwhelmed at any suggestion that they are not doing, loving, or pursuing enough. If that’s you, this is meant to be an encouragement: Stop trying to love and pursue more. Instead, aim to love and pursue better. We’re in need of a love like the one the apostle Paul prays for in Philippians 1:9: a love abounding “with knowledge and all discernment.” The call is not merely to love more, but to love in better, wiser, more discerning ways. If there is any earthly relationship that should model this kind of love to the world, surely it’s the marriage covenant.

With each passing year, we can love our spouses with an ever-increasing knowledge of who they are. This results in spouses who are consistently learning, and then seeking to love each other in light of what they’ve learned. These are thoughts that truly count.

Love in an Understanding Way

Again, this vision to love and pursue in light of what you have learned about your spouse is explicitly given to husbands: “Live with your wives in an understanding way” (1 Peter 3:7). Husbands, live with your wives. This is not a distant or passive word. Peter is calling husbands to be present in the home with their eyes and mind and heart open — like a student sitting in the front row, fully present and eager to learn about this beautiful gift called “wife.”

The word understanding in verse 7 is literally “according to knowledge.” Most husbands actually do love their wives according to knowledge; unfortunately, it’s a knowledge of ourselves and not of them. Julia and I now laugh at the many times I was baffled when a pursuit I thought was amazing landed in the exactly opposite way. Looking back, they were indeed amazing pursuits — that is, if I were pursuing myself. Husbands, the kind of love and pursuit in the home that God calls us to simply cannot be accomplished by going through the motions. He’s calling for a genuinely engaged husband who is regularly learning and then loving his wife in light of what he learns.

While Peter focuses here on husbands, and while the weight of pursuit rightly and beautifully falls more heavily on husbands, who imitate the Christ who laid down his life for the church, the practical principle is a good one for wives too. It’s hard to overstate the blessing that can result when both husband and wife seek to bless each other in ways that land as pleasant — when we, as spouses, “outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10).

Loving Different People Differently

As with all aspects of the Christian life, Jesus models loving others according to an accurate knowledge of who they are. Jesus consistently engages needy people in unique and personal ways. Following the death of their brother Lazarus, Mary and Martha both have an encounter with Jesus. It’s interesting to note that while the sisters say the same words to him initially — “If you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21, 32) — Jesus responds to each differently.

He immediately comforts Martha with truth: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26). Jesus then asks her, “Do you believe this?” inviting her to lean on this truth. His words gave Martha a place to stand in her heartache, and it seems to have landed as pleasant to her.

Moments later, when Mary speaks the same words, we might expect Jesus to respond the same way he did to Martha. Instead, he allows her space to weep. After they show him Lazarus’s tomb, he weeps as well (John 11:35). Two women in the same devastating circumstances at the same moment, and yet Jesus engages them differently — because they were different.

Now, neither of these is in the context of marriage, but the interactions paint a picture of what it looks like to pursue in an understanding way — in a way that lands. These are thoughts that count: intentional, sacrificial initiative shaped by insights into who this particular person is.

Every Marriage Grows and Changes

What benefits come when we begin loving in an understanding way? For starters, as the marriage gets older, it will never get old. The joy of learning does not end. The future years will bring limitless opportunities to understand our spouse better.

“With each passing year, we can love our spouses with an ever-increasing knowledge of who they are.”

It doesn’t take long in marriage before you begin to discover that with each passing age and life stage, the ways we feel loved will often change. Julia used to love it when I would surprise her with a late-night date to see the newest movie. Now, twenty years and five kids later, taking her to a late movie is essentially an expensive nap in uncomfortable clothes. But you know what? I have learned that she loves when I immediately help clean up after dinner so that we can take a walk in the neighborhood, holding hands and talking about our day. For my wife, that’s a pursuit that lands.

Over the years, we have experienced how toxic it can be when we belittle one another based on our differences in design and desires. It was common for us to make the other person feel like differences were actually deficiencies (sadly, we often thought they were). This all began to change as we committed to learn each other’s unique design and desires, and attempt to love in light of what we learned.

Julia learned that taking the time to write an encouraging note and stick it to the bathroom mirror is a pursuit that lands as pleasant to me. I, on the other hand, learned that taking the time to actually clean the mirror is a pursuit that lands as pleasant to her. We found so much joy and peace when we began to celebrate who each other is, before complaining about who each other is not. Over time, these are the thoughts that count.

Learning Each Other for Life

While spouses often feel an initial wave of excitement as they embrace this kind of informed pursuit, a word of caution is wise. This commitment can be made in an instant, but the real impact will not happen overnight. The process of learning who your spouse is, and loving in light of what you learn, will take time — and a willingness to make (and receive) a lot of mistakes along the way.

Julia and I just entered our third decade of marriage, and, by God’s grace, we both joyfully remain students at heart, eager to learn and then love in light of what we learn. We have gained so many individual and informed thoughts about each other (and our kids!), and trust me when I say, those thoughts have really counted.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15189491/every-christian-serving-with-the-whole-soul

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers; and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!” And God granted what he asked. (1 Chronicles 4:9–10)

Perhaps you’ve heard of Jabez. If not, maybe it’s time for his story.

Just over twenty years ago, few other than careful readers of Old Testament genealogies would have known his name. Then that changed almost overnight. Still today, the mere mention of Jabez among older Christians may elicit quite a range of responses.

The full story is longer than I know well or wish to tell, but author Bruce Wilkinson — who cofounded, with his mentor Howard Hendricks, the ministry Walk Thru the Bible in 1976 — published the 90-page The Prayer of Jabez in 2000. In it, he tells of hearing a moving message in the early 1970s, while a seminary student, from pastor Richard Seume (1915–1986). (Interestingly enough, John Piper sat under Seume’s preaching at Wheaton Bible Church in the late 1960s when Piper was a college student. He says, “I recall how Pastor Seume would take the most obscure texts and find in them diamonds to preach on.”)

That one sermon on Jabez, from 1 Chronicles 4:9–10 — the only two verses in the Bible that mention Jabez — left such an impression on Wilkinson that he began to pray Jabez’s own words for himself on a daily basis. When he published the book in 2000, he had been doing so every day for thirty years. Rehearsing the Jabez prayer daily seemed to Wilkinson to release (a word repeated in the book) the floodgates of God’s blessings on his life and ministry. The book quickly became a runaway bestseller, and is one of only a few Christian books of all time to have sold more than ten million copies.

I read Wilkinson’s short book as a college student when it came out in 2000 (about the same time I was first exposed to Piper and Desiring God). I don’t remember in detail how reading Jabez landed on me then. I do recall some enthusiasm, and remember echoing the prayer at times as my own. For whatever reasons, though, I didn’t form the habit of praying it daily. The flash soon faded. So, I have not prayed Jabez’s prayer every day for the last twenty years, though I expect the book (and that brief season) did have some lasting positive impact.

Gospel of Jabez?

Looking back now (and admitting that hindsight is far clearer), I would summarize the Jabez phenomenon like this: imbalances in the book led to greater imbalances in many readers, especially those less anchored in Scripture. Many readers assumed they had found some long-overlooked prayer to unlock God’s blessings. As I reread the book recently, I found that the book did leave this door open, and even subtly tipped in this direction, at times. (As an editor myself, I wonder what role the coauthor played in making Wilkinson’s message punchy, jettisoning nuance, and stretching it for a broad-as-possible audience. The coauthor’s name did not appear on the original cover, or in the book at all, but now appears in tiny letters on the new cover.)

From the first lines of the preface, seeds are sown with words like “always” and “the key” — words we would be wise to use sparingly in a generation of language inflation like ours:

I want to teach you how to pray a daring prayer that God always answers. It is brief — only one sentence with four parts — and tucked away in the Bible, but I believe it contains the key to a life of extraordinary favor with God. This petition has radically changed what I expect from God and what I experience every day by His power. (7, emphases added)

I could pick at similar overstatements and imbalances throughout the short book. I also could point to some gold (which would have been easier to celebrate in 2000 before seeing the widespread effects on readers). For one, Wilkinson qualifies the word bless as “goodness that only God has the power to know about or give us” (23). In Wilkinson’s own words, he is not teaching name-it-and-claim-it theology, and he clearly disclaims what we now call “the prosperity gospel” (24). He also admirably mentions living by God’s will and for God’s glory (32, 48, 57) and raises this question about “the American Dream”:

Do we really understand how far the American Dream is from God’s dream for us? We’re steeped in a culture that worships freedom, independence, personal rights, and the pursuit of pleasure. (70)

Such a challenge emerges on occasion, yet it’s clearly not the emphasis. And many readers seemed to capture the drift and skip the disclaimers. They followed the “always” and “the key” and the many examples of temporal blessings, and did not find in Jabez a call to new desires, a new heart, and new birth — to become a new person and so offer new prayers in new ways that turn many natural expectations upside down.

Pray on Repeat?

While I could say more about both the good and the bad, let me boil it down to what may have been the chief imbalance in the book: the final chapter and charge.

Perhaps the biggest problem practically is taking a potentially good sermon on Jabez that might otherwise inform a dynamic, authentic, engaging life of prayer and ending with the charge “to make the Jabez prayer for blessing part of the daily fabric of your life” (87). This may be all too predictable in the genre of self-help, but it’s hard not to see an obvious imbalance when it comes to Scripture. Should we raise any passage to the level of “pray this daily,” not to mention two verses “tucked away” in a genealogy? Wilkinson continues, “I encourage you to follow unwaveringly the plan outlined here for the next thirty days. By the end of that time, you’ll be noticing significant changes in your life, and the prayer will be on its way to becoming a treasured, lifelong habit” (87).

Here, at least, is a serious problem of proportion — first to this prayer (and what of Scripture’s far more prominent prayers?) and then to doing so daily, and then following this plan unwaveringly. And with it, the promise that “you’ll be noticing significant changes in your life” in just thirty days.

In the end, we might say a serious flaw in this Christian book is how easily it accommodates unregenerate palates, appealing to mainly natural desires, even among the born again. Also sorely and startingly lacking is a scriptural vision of life’s pains and suffering in this age. (For those interested, Tim Challies tells the story of Wilkinson’s Jabez-fueled “Dream for Africa” and its “abject failure” a few years after the book’s “success.”)

Can We Pray with Jabez?

What are we to do today, some twenty years later? The antidote to vain repetition of Scripture would not be to throw out Scripture! Rather, we want to have all the Bible, and all its prayers — not just one or two — inform and shape our lives of prayer for a lifetime. With regards to Jabez’s prayer, we might ask what we, as Christians, indeed can glean from an inspired genealogy not by way of a mantra to repeat but through timeless principles to guide and energize a dynamic life of prayer.

Jabez’s story does jump out at us from its surroundings. It’s easy for me to imagine taking these two verses as a sermon text, as Seume did, to celebrate biblical principles found here and elsewhere in Scripture and seek to inform the whole of a Christian’s prayer life. One important reality that Wilkinson does not draw attention to — but makes Jabez’s story, and his prayer, perhaps even more inspiring — is its context in Judah’s line. This is the line of the kings. Jabez is surrounded by regal ancestry and contemporaries, and yet he was born in pain, as the name Jabez (similar to the Hebrew for pain) commemorates. Noting this context might go a long way in helping us see the effect on the original readers; read the story in light of redemptive history, culminating in the Lion of Judah; and receive today and learn from the prayer in balance.

Consider, then, what lessons we might take from Jabez, alongside the full testimony of Scripture, for our own prayer lives.

1. God Rescues from Pain (in His Timing)

His mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.”

We are not told what the particular pain was. There’s beauty in that. Such unspecified pain invites us to identify with Jabez, and imitate him, whatever our pain might be. We all, after all, are born in pain (Genesis 3:16), born into a sin-sick, pain-wracked world, being sinners ourselves and “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3).

Whatever the source, Jabez’s life started hard. But apparently he didn’t wallow in it, or resign himself to victim status. Nor did he seek to make up for it with his own muscle and determination. Rather, he turned to God. “Jabez called upon the God of Israel,” and in doing so, he directed his focus, and faith, in the right direction.

“Many of the most admirable saints have endured great pains the whole of their earthly lives.”

Our God is indeed a rescuer. He does not promise to keep his people pain-free, but he does delight to rescue us from pain once we’re in it. And that, importantly, not according to our timetable, but his. Some divine rescues come quickly; many do not. Many of the most admirable saints have endured great pains the whole of their earthly lives.

2. God (Often) Grows Faithful Influence

Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border . . .

It is good to seek God’s blessing, and, in particular, to do so on God’s terms. And seeking to enlarge one’s border, or expand space and influence, is deeply human by God’s design from the beginning: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28). Christ himself commissioned his disciples to enlarge the borders of his kingdom, making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19).

Even one so exemplary, and humble, as the apostle Paul would testify to his holy ambition, under Christ, to enlarge the borders of his influence, going through Rome to Spain (Romans 15:23–24). Paul also writes candidly to the Corinthians about his team’s “area of influence among you” being “greatly enlarged, so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you” (2 Corinthians 10:15–16). God does mean for his people to pray for the enlarging of their influence, not for personal comforts, but for gospel advance, for the strengthening of churches, for the serving of Christ’s great mission and purposes in the world.

And these are prayers God often answers — but not always. Oh, what difference lies in such little words! And once we have prayed for the figurative enlarging of our borders, for Christ’s sake, we are wise to be ready for God to do very different reckoning and measuring than we might expect.

3. God (Often) Provides Strength When Asked

. . . and that your hand might be with me . . .

Yes and amen to asking God for his hand to be with us — his hand, meaning his power and strength and help. It is significant that Jabez didn’t just want a big, upfront donation from God to then turn and cultivate in his own strength. Rather, Jabez acknowledges that his own strength will not be sufficient. He needs God’s help every step along the way.

Perhaps his humbling and painful beginnings taught him this lesson earlier in life than most. Jabez was “honored” (more so than his brothers) not because of his noble birth, great wealth, and manifest ability, but because he owned his own weaknesses and limitations and asked for God to be his strength. That Jabez surpassed his brothers displays God’s strength. Jabez pleads that God’s hand be with him, and in doing so, Jabez admits (as every human should) that his own power and skill are not adequate.

4. God Keeps Us from (Some) Harm

. . . and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!

Finally, Jabez asked for God’s protection. It is good to pray to our God that he keep us from harm and pain — even as we know that he at times leads us, as he did his own Son, into the wilderness, and into the valley of the shadow of death.

“Who can fathom what temptations and harm countless saints have been spared because they humbly asked their Father?”

Jesus too taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:4), and in the garden, the night before he died, he instructed his men twice, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Luke 22:40, 46). God really does keep us from some temptations in response to our prayers. Prayer matters. The sovereign God chooses to rule the universe in such a way that, under his hand, some events transpire (or not) because his people prayed. Who can fathom what temptations, and what harm, countless saints have been spared because they humbly asked their Father?

And our God does not promise to keep us from all harm, or from all temptations. In fact, we are promised that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). So, we do not presume such protection, nor is it wasted breath to ask.

God Gave What He Asked

That God granted what Jabez asked doesn’t mean God did it in the way Jabez envisioned or in the timing Jabez hoped. So too for us. God does delight to answer the prayers of his children, but we do not presume that he does so when and how we prefer. He is “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). And he answers and exalts his faithful “at the proper time” (1 Peter 5:6) — and on his terms, not ours.

When his children ask for bread or fish or an egg, our God does not give them a stone or a serpent or scorpion (Matthew 7:9–11; Luke 11:11–13). He does not give them, in the end, worse than what they asked. But better. He knows how to give good gifts to his children, and far more than we typically ask — and climactically, he gives us himself. But not on our cue. And not in response to parroting biblical words.

Jabez’s prayer is no promise that God will do what we ask and when. However, 1 Chronicles 4:9–10 is a rousing call to the prayerless, and to the pained, to draw near to Judah’s greatest descendant. Our God does redeem his people. He brings joy to the bitter. He brings honor to the pained. He exalts the humble. He gives the crown of glory to the shamed. He raises his crucified Son. In Christ, God turns us and our world upside down, including our prayers.

Audio Transcript

We are far too easily pleased. That’s the problem in America. We are not too hedonistic, too pleasure-centered. No. We are not pleasure-centered enough. We settle for the world’s paltry joy at the expense of giving our lives to pursue our deepest and most lasting joy. And in settling for the trivial pleasures of the world, we undermine both of our chief callings in life, the two great love commandments that we have: to love God with everything we have, and to love others as ourselves. In fact, it is only as we pursue our highest joy that we are driven to enact these loves — an essential but counterintuitive point we make in Christian Hedonism.

And it was a point Pastor John was making back in 1983, as he was first putting that Christian Hedonism into a sermon series for his church. From that essential series would come the book Desiring God, and this entire ministry. Today, I want to share a clip from his sermon “The Labor of Christian Hedonism,” preached on October 2, 1983. Have a listen.

If you and I don’t pursue our ministry because we expect to find great joy in it, then we don’t pursue the command of God.

There’s another verse. This one is so familiar you don’t need to look it up. It’s Acts 20:35. And strikingly, it’s Paul’s address to another group of elders. Listen to how he motivates those elders to care for the weak: “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

“If you don’t pursue ministry because you expect great joy in it, then you don’t pursue the command of God.”

Now, when Paul says, “remember this; keep it in your mind,” he must mean that when it’s in your mind, it functions rightly as a conscious motive for ministry. He must mean that the moral value of our generosity in ministry isn’t ruined when we pursue it hedonistically, like so many people think it is. It is not wrong to desire and to pursue the blessedness that Jesus promised when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” He didn’t say, “Now this is the truth, and get it out of your head as soon as you can, lest you do it.” Pursue the blessedness that comes from giving.

Content with Broken Cisterns

Which brings us back to where we were last week — what’s the hindrance to love in the church? It’s the same hindrance to worship. The thing that keeps us from obeying the first vertical commandment is the same thing that keeps us from obeying the second horizontal commandment. And it is not that we are all trying to please ourselves, but that we are far too easily pleased.

We don’t really believe Jesus when he says, “There’s more joy, more blessedness, more full and lasting pleasure, in giving, in a life devoted to helping others, than there is in a life devoted to our material comfort.” We don’t believe it. And therefore, the very longing for contentment that, according to Jesus, ought to drive us to simplicity of life and labors of love, contents itself instead with the broken cisterns of American prosperity and comfort.

The message that needs to be shouted from the top of the IDS Tower and the city center to pleasure-seeking Americans is this: “Hey, Americans! You’re not nearly hedonistic enough. Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal. Go for broke. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where no moth and rust corrupt, where no thieves can break in and steal. Quit being satisfied with little 5.25 percent yields of pleasure that get eaten up with the moths of inflation and the rust of death (Matthew 6:19–21). Invest in the blue-chip, high-yield, divinely insured securities of heaven.”

A life devoted to material comforts and thrills is like throwing money down a rat hole. But a life simplified for the sake of love yields dividends unsurpassed and unending. Hear the word of the Lord, O Americans: Sell your possessions. Give alms. Provide for yourselves purses that do not grow old, and treasures in the heavens that do not fail. Come on. Become real hedonists. Wake up.

“It is more blessed to love than to live in luxury.”

That’s the message. We’ve got gospel. We’ve got good news to share with the world. Leave the broken cisterns of temporary, unsatisfying pleasures. Come to Christ, in whose presence there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). Join us in the labor of Christian hedonism. For the Lord has spoken, “It is more blessed to love than to live in luxury.” Oh, that we believed it — that the Lord’s word were believable to us.

Love Better Than Life

Turn to Hebrews 10. I am just amazed at what I’ve seen in Hebrews 10, 11, and 12. He is so amazingly consistent in his Christian Hedonism — it’s phenomenal. Hebrews 10:32–34:

Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

You see the situation? Some Christians had been arrested and put in jail. The other believers were facing a moral dilemma: “Do we go underground and pray for them, or do we express our solidarity with them and risk losing our homes?” And the text says that their joy in God’s reward overflowed in love.

Here’s what they did, if I can reconstruct the situation. They looked at their own lives and quoted to themselves Psalm 63:3: “Your steadfast love is better than life.” Then they looked at their houses with all of their furniture passed down from their grandmother — precious vases. And they said to themselves, “We have a possession in heaven that is better and longer lasting than any of this. ‘Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.’” And they went with Jesus to the jail, and they lost their possessions.

And what does it say they felt as they went? Joy! Christian Hedonists, through and through. They knew where their treasure was, and they didn’t have to act according to any sterile sense of duty. They just glutted themselves on the joy of love.

Who is God? What is he like, and how do we come to know him? What is salvation?

We may be tempted to consign these questions to the first weeks of evangelistic courses or the earliest years of discipleship, yet they were central to the ministry of Cyril of Alexandria (c. AD 376–444). As a bishop and theologian with far-reaching influence, he saw the gravity of these questions, as well as the pastoral fallout if Christians thoughtlessly rattled off pat answers.

Cyril’s heart was that believers would consciously and joyfully place Jesus Christ front and center in their understanding of God and their salvation. His tenacious Christ-centeredness shaped some of the most significant all-church councils and creeds that we have inherited today.

Seeds of Scandal

In the fifth century, perhaps the most famous church in the world was the Great Church of Constantinople. Enthroned there in the heart of the “New Rome,” its archbishop carried a leading political and theological voice. In 428, the job was given to a well-loved Syrian preacher named Nestorius.

Nestorius wanted to stop all references to Mary as theotokos, Greek for “Mother of God.” The title had long been popular and had tried to express something of the wonder of the incarnation: that a human mother should give birth to God the Son in human flesh. In Nestorius’s mind, however, the title was imprecise and dangerous. His concern was not that it encouraged undue veneration of Mary (that would develop later in church history), but that it implied something about God that he could not accept.

That God should be born, naked and crying, depending on a mother to feed and wash him, was unthinkable. God, eternally unchanging and untouchable, simply could not be straightforwardly identified with the wriggling baby in the manger. No, Mary must be called “Mother of Christ,” not “Mother of God.” There had to be a clear distinction between the two. Nestorius devoted a sermon series to the subject, and his troubled colleagues began to ask, If Mary is not the “Mother of God,” then just who is her son?

Nearly seven hundred miles to the south in Egypt, Cyril, the archbishop of Alexandria, was alerted to the emerging scandal. Having spent years writing biblical commentaries and theological works on the Trinity, he knew he had to step in and challenge Nestorius. Like the apostle Paul centuries before, Cyril saw that when the identity of Jesus Christ is distorted, so is our understanding of God and what it means to know him — with devastating consequences. “Another Jesus” goes hand in hand with “another gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4).

Another Jesus

Nestorius believed in Jesus as the eternal Son and Word of God. He believed, along with the Council of Nicaea of AD 325, in the humanity and divinity of Christ. Yet the distortion of Jesus he presented threatened to undo the orthodox faith he claimed to hold.

“‘Another Jesus’ goes hand in hand with ‘another gospel.’”

Nestorius’s deepest problem was that he had his definition of God prepared long before he came to look at the person of Jesus Christ. The carpenter from Nazareth, in the manger and on the cross, could not fit with his understanding of God. Following his mentor, Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428), Nestorius taught that Mary’s son was a separate man from God the Son: a man assumed (taken up) and brought into fellowship with God. Jesus and the Word enjoyed a relationship of unique cooperation, with the Word graciously sharing the honor of his sonship with Jesus. Because of his obedience, Jesus came to earn his resurrection into a new life free from death and decay (Nestorius, Bazaar of Heracleides, 1.3).

For Nestorius, although the people of first-century Israel saw an individual human being with divine power, they were actually looking at a kind of partnership of two sons, presented in one man. A glass wall ran down the middle of Jesus Christ, shielding the eternal Word from the human experiences and troubles of the man until he was perfected. While Nestorius was happy to worship and adore the man Jesus, he did so only beside “the one who bears him” (Sermon 9.262).

Cyril could see that Nestorius’s Jesus was only a man like the rest of us, elevated to a special relationship with God. The one who suffered and died on the cross was not technically God the Son himself coming to us in the flesh. Instead, God wore gloves, as it were, to deal with sinful humanity. He promoted a man to divine dignity, setting before us a supercharged example of holiness to imitate. Nestorius’s Jesus is the perfect Savior for those who would win salvation for themselves.

The Real Jesus

In AD 431, at the Council of Ephesus, Cyril (along with most of the other bishops) opposed Nestorius’s teaching. They saw that it contradicted not only the biblical Jesus but also the biblical gospel. Leaning heavily on Cyril’s writings, the fathers of the church affirmed that while there are two natures in Christ, there is only one person.

In other words, God the Son was the person in action during the incarnation, whether he was walking on water by the Spirit or tired after a journey in his flesh. He maintained his unchanged, eternal divine nature, but had added to himself a truly human nature — along with all of its capacity to fall asleep in a boat, battle temptation, or suffer crucifixion.

“The Son of Mary was none other than God the Son himself, made known and living in human nature as well as divine.”

God the Son personally took all that we are to himself, choosing this way of being “for us and for our salvation,” as the old Nicene Creed had it. In answer to the question of the pastors of Constantinople, the leaders gathered at Ephesus were clear: the son of Mary was none other than God the Son himself, made known and living as man as well as divine.

Cyril’s Influence

In time, this picture of Christ came to be known as the “hypostatic union”: a true union of divine and human in the one person (Greek hypostasis) of God the Word. It was not an agreement between two parties with separate agendas, nor a cooperation of equals.

In fact, there was a critical asymmetry to this union, for the humanity of Jesus comprised no separate person, as Nestorius had taught, but was “personated” by the Son. Humanity had been added to a preexisting divine person. There was no Jesus to know other than the second Person of the Trinity, now made flesh. This meant that all of Jesus’s actions and words were truly the actions and words of God the Son.

Just as it was right to call Mary theotokos, so it was right to say that God the Son played in the streets of Nazareth as a child, that God the Son had compassion on lost and helpless sinners (Mark 6:34), that God the Son shed his blood on the cross for our redemption (Acts 20:28). For it was no other person, no other human, but only the eternal Word in his humanity. After all, he was Immanuel, God with us.

These biblical convictions were honed and clarified by another all-church council held in Chalcedon in AD 451. Responding to another stream of false teaching, the church again turned to Cyril’s Christology (though he had now been dead some seven years). The gathered bishops affirmed that the one person of Jesus Christ was to be acknowledged in two “unconfused, unchangeable, indivisible, inseparable” natures. They confessed that the divine and the human in no way undermined or undid one another, yet that he was nevertheless just one person: “one and the same Son” who was with the Father before all things and who was born of Mary for us and our salvation. Chalcedon rang deeply with the echo of Cyril’s theology.

God Was Pleased

Nestorius’s precooked doctrine of God meant that he struggled to get divinity and humanity in the same person. There was an unbridgeable gulf between the divine and human, and his theology left believers the task of crossing it on their own, following at a distance in the footsteps of a superman from Nazareth.

Cyril, however, began with Jesus and allowed the Son of God to reveal the nature of God (John 1:18). And the God revealed in Jesus, he saw, was pleased to draw near to sinful humanity in person (Colossians 1:19¬–20). He came in uncompromised deity, but with mind-bending condescension, to cross the divide himself. The Son stepped in, clothed in our humanity, laying down his life, and taking hold of us when we could not save ourselves. In Jesus, God truly demonstrates his love for undeserving sinners, up close and personal.