Audio Transcript

How do I know if my good deeds are vain — or if they are eternally relevant? Just because we act in ways that look sacrificial to the world does not mean those works are virtuous. It’s an essential point made by Jesus when he contrasts the Pharisee and the tax collector. There he introduces us to a very moral teacher, a man who is not an extortioner, not unjust, not a scandalous sinner, not an adulterer. No. In fact, he fasted twice a week and tithed off everything he got (as we are told in Luke 18:11–12). And it was all vain. All of it. And yet, said Jesus, our own righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 5:20). So there’s a sacrifice worth noting here, even if it’s proven vain in the end.

How do we escape the Pharisee’s vain sacrifice? It’s the question Pastor John took up in one of his early sermons, way back in 1980, specifically answering the question: How do we do good works so that God gets the glory? Here’s the answer from rookie pastor, John Piper, 42 years ago, just a couple weeks into his new pastorate.

It’s possible to be a kind of do-gooder, a kind of philanthropist, a benefactor, who (for one reason or another) uses his or her money to alleviate suffering, and not even believe in God, let alone do it all for his glory. And that creates a kind of problem. Can’t just be merely good deeds then, can it, that gives God glory?

When Jesus said, “You are the light of the world,” he didn’t just mean the bodily motions through which you go in doing good deeds. He meant you — your attitude, your motive, the spirit that you exude in those good deeds. That’s what it means to let your light shine. There is a way to do good deeds that will bring glory to God, and doing it that way, in that spirit, will be the shining of the light that Jesus is talking about, which is why I entitled this sermon, “How to Do Good So God Gets the Glory,” not just “Doing Good So God Gets the Glory.”

Don’t content yourself that you have done many good deeds in your life. It might be a pile of rubbish in God’s sight. There is such a thing as works and Phariseeism. So we must ask the next question, which comes from 1 Peter 4:10–11, how shall we do good deeds? How shall we serve so that not we, but God, gets the glory?

In the Strength He Provides

Probably no other book in the New Testament, besides the book of James, reflects a greater acquaintance with the teachings of Jesus than 1 Peter.

For example, in 1 Peter 2:12, you have a very loose quotation of the very text we’ve been looking at, Matthew 5:16. It says there, “Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles so that when they speak against you as evil-doers, they might see your good deeds and give glory to God on the day of visitation.” It’s the same idea exactly as Jesus’s teaching because Peter, of course, was a very close apostle.

But in 1 Peter 4:10–11, we have probably the clearest word in the Bible about how it is we must do good deeds if God is to get glory,

As each has received a gift, employ it for one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. Whoever speaks, let him speak as one who utters oracles of God. Whoever renders service, let him render it as one who renders it by the strength which God supplies in order that in everything God might be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

“For God to get glory in our lives, the good we do must be done in dependence upon the strength which he gives.”

There is no clearer answer in the Bible to the question, how we shall serve or do good deeds so that God gets glory. And the answer, very simply, is that, for God to get glory in our lives, the good we do must be done in dependence upon the strength which he gives and not our own. Not mere good deeds, but good deeds done in a spirit of humble reliance and joyful dependence on the provision of God.

The Proud Servant

I want you to picture two people this afternoon. These two people are trying to decide whether to come to F.A.C.T. tomorrow night (Fun All Cleaning Together). Going to clean up the church.

Now, one of these fellas is a younger man and he’s strong and virile, works a lot around the church. He’s pondering, “Shall I go or not to help? Oh, I suppose I’ll go. Might be worth a few brownie points with the leadership. They might serve snacks. Besides, I know how to do all that stuff really well. I can give a few pointers and that’s always fun.” And so he comes and he grumbles about the tools that are there, and he criticizes the way things have been planned, and he talks on and on about his experience. He gets a lot done, does a lot more than lots of other people, gets a lot of corners spick and span. A lot of employers would go after that man because many employers are only interested in productivity and efficiency.

“Every piece of resolve that we can muster to do good is a gift of God.”

God looks on that man’s heart and his assessment of his contribution is this, “I got no glory from that effort because it was not done in reliance upon me. It was not done in a spirit of humble trust and joyful acceptance of life and gift from me.”

The Humble Servant

Then there’s another person. Now, this person’s a little bit older. He’s worked a lot in the church too, but he’s been ill for a while now. The knees are real stiff and give a lot of pain. Arthritis, I suppose. And he wants to come. He would love to come. He’s always enjoyed working at the church, and he never made any big to-do about inconvenience or sacrifice or any of that stuff. He was just there putting in the hours.

He says, “O Lord, I would just love to be there. Maybe I could just encourage some of the down-hearted. Maybe I could just keep the coffee warm, but it would be sure great to be there with your people in your house.” He makes a special effort and praise. “Just this once, let me wake up in the morning with no pain in these knees, and I’ll go,” and low and behold, he wakes up with no pain.

He gets on the phone to Flossy, “I’m coming down there. I’m going to do whatever you need done.” And so he’s there, and he works, and he doesn’t get so much done because his knees start to ache a little bit, but he’s there with bells on. He exudes a kind of joy and gratitude for life, and everybody’s attention through him is appointed to God from whom he has acknowledged receiving this help. His whole bearing and his whole demeanor exude that God is getting the credit for his being there, and God is getting the credit for every little swipe of the rag or push of the broom. That’s what it means to let your light shine (and not just to be there), right?

What Have You Not Received?

But here’s the hook. Every single one of us is in that category, not just the guy with bad knees. Every single one of us, all the strength we have is from God. All the fibers of our brain and our intelligence are a gift from God. Every piece of resolve that we can muster to do good is a gift of God. “What do you have that you did not receive,” Paul said to the Corinthians, “If you received it as a gift, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Why do you get haughty and arrogant and braggy? We are all crippled apart from the grace of God — and worse than crippled, apart from his sustenance. We would degenerate into nothing or into devils without his grace.

Oh, how differently we would serve and do good if this truth would hit us with all its force: how utterly dependent we are on God for life and breath and everything. We would not boast in our achievements. We would not criticize the speck in our brother’s eye. We would not grumble about inconveniences, and we would not be presumptuous as if existence itself could be taken for granted. It cannot. A person who truly owns up to the fact that he exists by the word of God, and that all his strength and moral resolve comes from God, is going to be a humble and lowly and grateful and joyful person in all the good deeds that he does. And in serving that way, God, and not himself, will get glory.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15136033/is-christ-selfish-to-die-for-his-own-joy

ABSTRACT: The Puritans wrote dozens of books on faith and assurance, seeking to clarify and apply these doctrines for the members of their churches, and especially for the weakest of the sheep. Among all the Puritans’ writings, chapter 18 of the Westminster Confession of Faith captures their pastoral wisdom on assurance in four clear, succinct paragraphs. Here, the Westminster divines clarify the hope of assurance, the ground of assurance, the means and fruits of assurance, and the loss and recovery of assurance — all with an eye toward offering wise pastoral counsel for all the believers in their flocks, whatever their spiritual circumstances.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Joel Beeke, President and Professor of Systematic Theology and Homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, to offer lessons from the Puritans on assurance in pastoral practice.

With regard to Christian doctrines, the Puritans were not, for the most part, great innovators, but they were great appliers. Generally speaking, they were thoroughly Reformed and intentional in their theology. As with their theological forbears, the Reformers, the Puritans resolved to be thoroughly scriptural and happily stood on the shoulders of the Reformers and taught the same biblical doctrines to their generation. But they did so with a great deal more emphasis on application.

This ought not be surprising. The Reformers were occupied largely with hammering out great cardinal doctrines such as justification by faith alone, how to worship God publicly, God’s irresistible free grace versus human free will, and more — much of which is summarized in their five major solas: sola Scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, sola gratia, and soli Deo gloria. Thus, the Puritans, having the luxury of the Reformers’ biblical treatises before them, could afford the time to address the “how-to” questions of application: How does Bible doctrine apply to daily life? How can I live soli Deo Gloria as a godly husband, a godly wife, a godly child?

Hence, the Puritans wrote at least thirty books on how to live to God’s glory in marriage and family life. They wrote at least forty books on how to meditate. They added more volumes on how to do our daily work to God’s glory, how to live a godly life in our secular professions, and how to live zealously for the glory of God in every area of life.

How Can I Find Assurance?

The Puritans also wrote extensively on the practicalities of living by faith, practicalities that boiled down to this: How can I live so fully by faith that I may know with certainty that I have saving faith — that is to say, how can I be assured in the depths of my soul that, in union with Christ, I have been regenerated and adopted into God’s family, and will be with Christ forever in heaven? Hence, they wrote dozens of books on faith and assurance, and called their hearers to practice self-examination to “make their calling and election sure” (2 Peter 1:10).

The Puritans did not write extensively on assurance of faith because they wanted to be excessively introspective or “navel-gazers,” as they have been accused by some who have, for the most part, not read their books. Rather, they wanted to trace out in detail the Holy Spirit’s saving work in their own souls in order to (1) give glory to the triune God for his mighty and miraculous work of salvation in them, (2) do good to their own souls by building up their convictions about God and their own salvation, and (3) assist weak believers who needed pastoral advice and assistance to grow in their knowledge and assurance of Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord, and through this precious Mediator, to grow in their knowledge of each divine person of the Trinity.

Look with me especially at this third point as we address the question, How did the Puritan pastors use their doctrine of personal assurance of salvation to assist believers in living the Christian life? And what lessons can we learn today from their pastoral specialization in the vast field of experiential Christianity connected with the assurance of salvation?

An exhaustive article on this subject would certainly turn into a book, as there are scores of areas that could be discussed. Rather than skate over the surface, I want to address twelve of the most important pastoral ways that Puritan pastors, as physicians of souls, assisted the members of their flocks, helping them to gain robust measures of full assurance of faith. We find the most important confessional chapter ever written on the subject in the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 18, “Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation.” I will provide three pastoral helps from each of these four paragraphs (hereafter: WCF 18.1–4).

WCF 18.1: Hope of Assurance

Although hypocrites, and other unregenerate men, may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favour of God, and estate of salvation (which hope of theirs shall perish): yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus and love Him in sincerity, endeavouring to walk in all good conscience before Him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.

Pastoral Help 1: An important distinction exists between the false hopes and carnal presumptions of the unbeliever on the one hand, and the true assurance and well-grounded hope of the believer on the other.

To make this distinction clear, Puritan pastors distinguished for their church members the difference between what they called historical and temporary faith on the one hand, and saving faith on the other. The former ultimately rests on self-confidence born merely out of intellectual convictions (historical faith) or emotional joy (temporary faith) — as, for example, in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:20–21) — while the latter humbles us before God and teaches us to rely wholly on the righteousness of Christ alone for salvation.

Pastoral Help 2: Some degree of assurance of salvation is biblical and normative in the lives of God’s people.

Pastorally, this helped Puritan pastors maintain in their people the conviction that though full, robust assurance of salvation may not be common to all believers, some degree of assurance is (even if it is only in seed form) and is always inseparable from saving faith in Christ. Every part of WCF 18.1 is connected with Jesus: believe in him; love him; walk before him. By maintaining this conviction, Puritan pastors sought to avoid the problem of a two-tier Christianity in which few in the first tier ever make it to the second. This emphasis also encouraged believers, whatever degree of assurance they may have possessed, always to strive for more, so that they might grow in the grace and knowledge of their Savior.

Pastoral Help 3: Assurance of salvation is not essential for salvation or for the being or existence of saving faith, though it is essential for the well-being of faith.

The Puritans made this distinction so that weak believers or newly saved believers would not despair if they did not yet possess full assurance of salvation, but also that they would not rest content without full assurance of salvation. This kept believers biblically balanced in recognizing that though it is possible to be saved without assurance, it is scarcely possible to be a healthy Christian without assurance.

In Puritan thinking, this also implies that believers may possess saving faith without the joy and full assurance that they possess it. This helped Puritan pastors deal with the reality that some believers seem to possess a great deal more faith and assurance than they realize, whereas other believers seem to more easily become fully conscious of possessing a full assurance of faith. In this, the Puritans followed Calvin, who said in his Commentary on John 20:3 that the disciples seem to have had saving faith without awareness that they had it as they approached the empty tomb.

WCF 18.2: Grounds of Assurance

This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption.

Pastoral Help 4: Assurance of salvation is grounded in the promises of God and buttressed by personal sanctification and the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.

The proper starting point for all true assurance of salvation is “the divine truth of the promises of salvation” set forth in Holy Scripture, “the promises of God” sealed with God’s own “yea and amen” in his Son, Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1:19–20). Puritan pastors taught their hearers that though self-examination is important, they should nevertheless take ten looks to Christ for every look they take to their inner spiritual condition. They taught that as assurance grows, God’s promises become increasingly real to the believer personally and experientially, as they experience the truth and power of those promises. The promises ground our assurance, and our assurance emboldens our faith to make further appropriation of the promises, which brings us into fuller, more intimate communion with Christ.

“Though full, robust assurance of salvation may not be common to all believers, some degree of assurance is.”

Further to encourage believers pastorally, the Puritans stressed that the more we know experientially of all three kinds of assurance, the more robust our assurance will be and the more we will live entirely for God. Happily, the Puritans taught their parishioners that the Holy Spirit, upon whom we are dependent for all our assurance, is more than willing to work all three kinds of assurance in us — in fact, without him, we would lose all genuine assurance, and even faith itself.

Pastoral Help 5: Assurance of salvation is strengthened by the Spirit shedding light on the believer’s biblical marks of grace — such as the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22–23, and the various evidences sprinkled throughout 1 John — so that the believer can clearly see at least some of these saving marks of grace being worked out in his or her own heart and life by the very grace of that same Spirit, and thus cannot but conclude he or she is a child of God.

The Puritan pastor would tenderly advise the church member longing to grow in assurance of salvation, “Turn to the evidences of grace that are laid out for us in Scripture; ask the Spirit to shed light on them for you; then, as you examine yourself, if you can say with assurance that even one of these evidences is your experience, you can be assured that you are a child of God — even if you can’t see other evidences in you.”

Pastoral Help 6: Assurance of salvation is also strengthened by the direct witnessing testimony of the Holy Spirit himself speaking in God’s word.

A number of Puritans (such as Thomas Goodwin and Henry Scudder) taught that a direct witness of the Holy Spirit to the believer’s soul through the word can give a substantial increase to a believer’s assurance and comfort, especially in times of great need. For example, when the Spirit applies to the soul a special promise, such as, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee” (Jeremiah 31:3 KJV), with considerable power and sweetness — such that the believer enjoys a profound experience of communion with God and of his love and a profound sight of the beauty and glory of Christ — that immediate or direct witness of the Spirit to the believer can give a large boost to his or her assurance. At such times, the believer feels that the intimately personal application of the word to his soul seems to be the most suitable text in the entire Bible for his particular need.

WCF 18.3: Means and Fruits of Assurance

This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. And therefore it is the duty of every one to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure, that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience, the proper fruits of this assurance; so far is it from inclining men to looseness.

Pastoral Help 7: Though God remains sovereign in granting various degrees of assurance, assurance of salvation usually grows by degrees within believers in conjunction with the growth of knowledge, faith, and experience, especially through trials.

To encourage young believers who struggled with acquiring larger degrees of assurance, the Puritans stated that “a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of” assurance (WCF 18.3), but the relationship between faith and assurance usually strengthens over time, “growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance” (WCF 14.3). Grace usually grows with age, and as faith increases, other graces increase. Age and experience, however, do not guarantee assurance. And it is possible for God to plant faith and full assurance simultaneously.

By maintaining the normativity of assurance growing over time through exercises of faith and various trials in the daily experience of life, and yet allowing for young believers at times to have large dosages of assurance, the Puritans aimed to minister pastorally to their people, encouraging them to press on to make their calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:5–10).

Pastoral Help 8: God normally uses the spiritual disciplines he has appointed for his people as the means to grow assurance of salvation.

The Puritans are abundantly clear in stating that the believer “may, without extraordinary revelation [contrary to Roman Catholicism], in the right use of ordinary means, attain” to assurance (emphasis mine). Four means are predominant in Puritan thought: God’s word (read and preached and meditated upon), the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), prayer (personal, domestic, and public), and affliction (including conflicts, doubts, trials, and temptations). By stressing these spiritual disciplines as means that the Spirit uses to grow assurance, the Puritans were teaching their people that it is every believer’s duty to pursue assurance diligently, and how best to do it.

In short, God commands us to pursue assurance prayerfully, obediently, and fervently, promising that his normal way is to bless these endeavors. Then too, the Puritan stress on duty reinforced the conviction that assurance must never be regarded as the privilege only of exceptional saints, but that at least some degree of it is normative for every believer.

Pastoral Help 9: Assurance produces God-glorifying, delightful fruit.

The Puritans conclude WCF 18.3 by stating that these fruits are such that the believer’s “heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience.” They taught that assurance elevates God-glorifying and soul-enlarging affections. It produces holy living marked by spiritual peace, joyful love, humble gratitude, cheerful obedience, and heartfelt mortification of sin.

In a word, assurance enables faith to reach greater heights, from which all other aspects of Christian character flow. This invigoration of faith results in a new release of spiritual energy at every point in a person’s Christian life. All of these fruits helped the Puritan pastor make assurance of salvation appear most desirable, and certainly worth the effort of pursuing and cultivating with all of one’s soul, mind, and strength.

WCF 18.4: Loss and Recovery of Assurance

True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which woundeth the conscience and grieveth the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God’s withdrawing the light of His countenance, and suffering even such as fear Him to walk in darkness and have no light: yet are they never utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived; and by the which, in the mean time, they are supported from utter despair.

Pastoral Help 10: Assurance of salvation may be disturbed, diminished, or even lost for a time, in the experience of a believer, due to his or her own fault or due to God’s sovereign withdrawal.

WCF 18.4 stresses that the reasons for a loss of assurance are found primarily in the believer. They include negligence and spiritual slothfulness, falling into sin, or yielding to some temptation. The Puritans are clear here and elsewhere in teaching pastorally that the Christian cannot enjoy high levels of assurance while he persists in low levels of obedience. They stressed this linkage between assurance and obedience in very practical ways, stating that the believer ought to lose his assurance when he backslides and starts acting like an unbeliever. For example, if you are unfaithful to your spouse, you had better lose your assurance that you have a wonderful marital union in which you both are assured of each other’s love. The Puritan pastor used this truth to encourage believers to walk in faithfulness before God in accord with his word, and to avoid every backsliding as a serious offense to God and as destructive to their own soul.

“The Christian cannot enjoy high levels of assurance while he persists in low levels of obedience.”

A second reason for the loss of assurance is not in the believer as such but in God. For the Puritans, this point is preeminently pastoral, because each minister would have believers in his flock who at times would seem to lose ground in growing their assurance even when they were diligently engaging in the spiritual disciplines. How encouraging then it was for the believer to hear from his pastor that, according to his sovereign and mysterious will, God may withdraw the light of his countenance, or permit a believer to be tried with vehement temptations or intense afflictions that do violence to his peace and joy. The Puritans taught that this may actually benefit believers, as it may have the purpose of allowing them to taste the bitterness of sin, or to grow in humility, or to treasure the gift of assurance more, or to depend more fully on the grace of Christ and endeavor after a closer walk with God. God’s withdrawals and his placing of trials in the path of the believer are motivated by his fatherly discipline, which teaches them to walk uprightly; by his fatherly sovereignty, which teaches dependence; and by his fatherly wisdom, which teaches that he knows and does what is best for his own. God ordains these trials for his glory and the benefit of his elect, so that they learn, like Job, to trust in a withdrawing God as our greatest friend, even when he seems to come out against us as our greatest enemy (Job 13:15).

Pastoral Help 11: Happily, assurance of salvation can be revived.

The Puritans stress in WCF 18.4 that even in the believer’s darkest struggles for assurance of salvation, the Holy Spirit abides in him and bears him up, keeping him from “utter despair.” Indeed, the child of God may be losing assurance even while he advances in grace. This is because the grace and essence of faith abides with the believer even though he is blind to the acts and practice of faith. This gracious preservation of faith offers hope for the revival of assurance, for the flame of God’s life within the soul can never be completely snuffed out. The embers burn, although barely and subtly at times, but can be fanned into the full flame of assurance by the persevering use of God’s appointed means.

Pastoral Help 12: Assurance is revived the same way it was obtained the first time.

“If Job and David recovered from their loss of assurance, why shouldn’t the believer today?”

Believers should review their lives, confess their backsliding, and humbly cast themselves upon their covenant-keeping God and his gracious promises in Christ, being sure to engage continually in fresh acts of ongoing conversion through faith and repentance. If Job and David recovered from their loss of assurance (Job 19:25–27; Psalms 42:5–8; 51:12), why shouldn’t the believer today? The loss here is only for a short time; soon we will have perfect assurance and perfect enjoyment of God forever in the eternal Celestial City.

Physicians of Souls

The Puritans fleshed out the doctrine of assurance of salvation in WCF 18 with pastoral precision to undeceive the false professor of faith, to awaken the unsaved, to mature the young in grace, to comfort the mature in faith, to arrest the backslider, and to provide wise pastoral counsel for all believers in their flock, tailored to each one’s spiritual circumstances. The terminology they developed, their treatises on assurance, their pastoral compassion for the weak in faith, and their pressing admonitions and invitations to grow in faith showed their great appreciation for vital union and communion with Christ.

Their laudable goals can still help pastors today to assist their church members in developing assurance, all the while recognizing the individuality of each one. As with the Puritan pastors, God calls pastors today to be wise physicians of souls who prescribe the right medicines for each believer — medicines that the Holy Spirit uses to lead them to cultivate and grow in the assurance of their salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If you are a Christian man, I know something about you. I know you want more.

You want more thrill in your walk with Jesus. You want more life, more wakefulness, more awe and wonder, more heavenly ambition, more consistency, more urgency, more sin lying slain at your feet. You want more of an inbreaking sense of God’s utter immensity, his total majesty, his relentless love for you by name. You want fewer clichés and unrealities, and more of the real thing.

You want to live for more, with more power and purpose. And if you have a family, you want more skill to lead them to Christ. You want to live in a world of worship and mission with them. You want your wife to increasingly blossom as she beholds more of Jesus. You want to hear your kids singing to Jesus. You want to pray real prayers together, and face difficulties as a family, saying as Jehoshaphat did to God: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). And you want to see him answer mightily.

In other words, you want true, living, family religion that spills into your neighborhood and your local church. But is it possible? This desire, perhaps now neglected and starved, only visits with whispers of guilt as you look around at what your life is really like: a fight for survival. Maybe you have conceded to a listless and half-living expectation: just get through the day, enjoy a little entertainment in the crevices, sleep, and then repeat.

But just as you want more for yourself and your family, God wants and promises more too.

Family Alive to God

Christian man, you have a delightful duty to provide for your household, both physically and spiritually. Such a privilege was long foretold, given not just in the cultural mandate (Genesis 1:28) but in the great command to God’s covenant people:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4–9)

“Christian man, you have a delightful duty to provide for your homes, both physically and spiritually.”

This vision for the family could not be higher: nothing less than a world submerged with God. God raised the ultimate banner, “Love the Lord with everything,” which is to fly in the wind over everyday life. He meant for all facets, every corner of family life, to be inscribed with reminders of God and his unchanging worth. He meant to be supreme in all things for the joy of all his people and their families.

Parents diligently passed this passion along to the next generation, praying that God would give new birth. The truth that made one wise for salvation was to be repeated, again and again, as a man strikes a blade repeatedly to sharpen it, in hopes that God would fashion children who also love him with their all.

More than simply passing truths along, however, we see how a faithful man creates an atmosphere into which he draws his children. The home stood as a place where discussions of God continue:

as you sit down
as you walk by the way
when you lie down
when you rise up

When at home, or when traveling away from home — from the early morning to the laying down at night — conversation was to revolve around God. Israel even decorated themselves and their world with physical reminders of God’s word: “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes,” and, “You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

I tremble myself to write this to you in Christ: Not a day should pass when God’s ways, God’s gospel, and God’s return should go uncontemplated and unspoken in our families.

Men with Burning Hearts

The point is that this vision for family religion wasn’t something to check off a list; it was a lifestyle. Not merely a devotional squeezed in the cracks, but a consistent disposition to worship. The God worthy of our all devotion fills the believer’s sphere, especially his household. A vision that matches the secret desire.

If you are a Christian man, you especially bear the responsibility of this — and again, you desire it, heavy as it is.

How do I know? Because the text says so.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

“This vision for the family could not be higher: nothing less than a world submerged with God.”

You will be convinced — Christian father, Christian son, Christian brother — to give yourself to cultivating a world full of God, whether or not you have your own family yet. And not because you read an article or good book, but because God has inscribed his great blazing commandment on your heart. No one needs to twist your arm to want to live for Christ to greater and greater stature. “For they shall all know me” (Jeremiah 31:34).

Does Your Spirit Burn?

In the old covenant, getting the commandments on one’s heart entailed memorization, meditation, prayer, obedience. In the new covenant, these means are likewise employed but from a very different starting place:

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33)

Does your spirit not burn within you? You may feel guilt for past laziness, you may feel convicted about current neglect, you may need to fall to your knees and beg God’s forgiveness for leaving him forgotten in the attic, but one thing is sure if you know Christ: You long to provide spiritual blessing to your home. Perceive the Lord Jesus extending more grace and providing fresh opportunity. No longer resist plunging into this promised sea of blessing: “those who honor me I will honor” (1 Samuel 2:30).

If you are real, brother, his law is already etched on your heart: You want to care for your family. You want to put away trivialities and live for Christ. You want to build your home and fill it with great thoughts and loving deeds. You want Bethlehem’s star resting above your roof, indicating the King’s presence. You want to provide spiritual meat and everlasting drink to those you love most. You want to truthfully and continually say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Audio Transcript

We open the week with a pretty raw email from a hurting man — a hurting dad. He’s sad over the brokenness of the world. And that brokenness hits home for him. Here’s his story, sent in as an anonymous email.

“Dear Pastor John, to be totally truthful and honest with you, I struggle to believe the Lord is completely ruling his world today. It’s impossible to believe simply because of the state of the world today — or, I should say, his world today. Not only has our nation gone down a slippery road of immoral self-destruction, but our economy is faltering. National debt is skyrocketing. The unborn are massacred daily. Murder rates in America are swelling. In Chicago the crime rate has escalated to such a high degree that I’m beginning to believe it is safer in Iraq or Afghanistan than it is in the South Side. Most children sleep under their beds in fear they may become victims of gun violence.

“The struggles hit home for us, too, a family of four. We have a son born with ADHD, and this has created a life of pure frustration, pain, sorrow, and sometimes even despair. One night while attempting to do his school homework across the kitchen table, he told me, ‘Dad, I hate going to school. Even the teachers make fun of me. I hate ADHD and this medication that makes me sick to my stomach.’ Pastor John, if God is in charge, why is there so much suffering all around?”

Well, the most grievous thing this dear man says is “It is impossible to believe.” And so I’ve been praying — I pray now — that God might perhaps use something I say to make it possible again. We’ve tried to address this question many times at Desiring God and in Ask Pastor John. But when I saw the question, I thought, I really do want to address this again.

World of Pain

I feel the gut-wrenching pressure of the problem, not just because of the way this man so effectively articulated it, but also because a while back, Noël and I watched a three-part documentary called Pain, Pus, and Poison. And in the second episode, about the history leading up to the discovery of penicillin and the emergence of antibiotics in the twentieth century, I was almost overwhelmed with the thought of how many thousands of years the world languished horribly under the most horrific diseases with no medical defense whatsoever — and in fact, with medical procedures that often made matters worse.

For example, the night before George Washington died, they bled four pints of blood from his body. Four pints. That’s almost 40 percent of his blood. That second episode showed pictures of people dying of horrible open infections and little children covered with smallpox sores as I watched their mothers fanning the flies off of them just waiting for their children to die. When I saw them, my wife looked away. She couldn’t look. And I just felt myself gasping, saying, “No! What if I were there? What if I were the parent fanning this horribly deformed child, hideously covered with smallpox sores, and just waiting for a miserable death?” And that happened millions of times in the history of the world.

Most of us in the West have been spared any immediate contact with the most gruesome, ghastly, repugnant forms of infection and disfigurement and writhing pain. And I felt the force of the question, “God, what does this mean about you? What are you doing? What are you saying?”

And I’m aware from this man’s question, and from thousands of others, that such experiences of unimaginable suffering and hideous disfigurement have confirmed countless people in unbelief. They would say, as he does, “It’s impossible, Piper. It’s just impossible to believe anymore, simply because of the state of the world today.” That’s his quote — only I’m saying the problem is worse. It’s horribly worse, because between 1900 and 1977, 300 million people died of smallpox. Then, with a massive global vaccination effort in 1977, it was gone — and today, nobody. Think of it: from 300 million to nobody. Nobody gets smallpox. Nobody gets polio.

The problem with suffering is not that the world has gotten worse. Oh yes, it’s plenty bad, and he documented its badness. It’s plenty bad. But the worst problem is that for thousands of years, the world had it so much worse than it is today in terms of horrific suffering. So how do I, John Piper, stay a believer when the little suffering that I have been exposed to, directly and indirectly, takes my breath away? Here’s my witness. I think I’ve got three thoughts here.

Scripture Is Not Naive

One, the first thing that grips me is the absolute realism of the Bible. I spent several years writing a book on providence, and month after month I was stunned at how candid and open and blunt and even gory the Bible is in presenting God’s judgments upon the world, especially his own people. Just a taste from Deuteronomy 28:

The Lord will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. . . . And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth. . . . The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed. The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind . . . because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God . . . because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things. (Deuteronomy 28:22, 25–28, 45, 47)

“The Bible doesn’t shrink back from any horror or injustice in this world.”

Now, my point here is simply that our objections to God’s ways are not because we have seen things more clearly or honestly than the Bible sees them. The Bible doesn’t shrink back from any horror or injustice in this world. That’s my first step. I can’t throw away the Bible because it’s naive or deceptive or a whitewash of the miseries that God himself ordains.

Suffering Witnesses to Sin

Here’s my second step: I would say that the physical horrors in the world can make sense to us and have meaning and eventual righteous resolution only if we come to embrace the biblical reality that sin against an infinitely wise and just and good God is a moral outrage greater than the physical outrage of centuries of global suffering. Let me say that again, because it is the heart of the matter, and it is very difficult for people without the Holy Spirit’s massive work to embrace: the physical horrors of suffering in this world can make sense to us and have meaning and eventual righteous resolution only if we come to embrace the biblical reality that sin against an infinitely wise and just and good God is a moral outrage greater than the physical outrage of centuries of global suffering.

I’m not saying that each experience of suffering corresponds to each person’s particular sins. If that were true, we’d all be in hell. As far as I can tell, and as far as the Bible reveals, there is no clear correlation between the extent of an individual’s suffering in this world and the extent of their guilt. What I’m referring to is what Paul means in Romans 8:20–23, when he says,

The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. [It’s like the earth is pregnant and screaming with birth pains.] And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

The universal groaning of creation, the agonizing of all creation in suffering, is owing to what verse 20 calls “subjection,” the creation’s subjection, and what verse 21 calls “bondage to corruption.” And this subjection and corruption is owing to the one who is subjected it “in hope” — namely, God.

This is what I’m referring to when I say that the sin that came into the world through Adam and spread to all people is a moral outrage greater than the physical outrage of suffering, which means that seeing and believing the goodness and justice of God assumes a Copernican revolution of our mind and heart. If we’re going to see God as good and just and wise, we have to undergo such a profound mental and spiritual Copernican revolution of mind and heart so that God ceases to be a planet circling the sun of humanity and becomes the massive, blazing, glorious sun at the center of the solar system of all things. God becomes supreme reality. His being becomes the supreme worth and treasure of the universe.

“All human suffering is a screaming witness to the greater horror of human sin.”

Only in this way will the moral outrage of sin be seen as worse than the physical outrage of suffering, which means very practically that when I gasp at the hideous pictures in the documentary and find myself inevitably saying, “Oh God, oh God, what does this mean?” the answer I hear is “All human suffering is a screaming witness to the greater horror of human sin.”

Christ Died for Sinners

Finally, the third thing that keeps me believing is that God sent his Son into this world, sent his very self, to suffer a moral outrage greater than the outrage against his Father by all his people in their sin. For the infinitely pure and good and wise and strong and holy Son of God to descend to the degradation and torture of a Roman crucifixion is enough suffering, enough indignity, to cover all the outrage of all the sins of all who believe.

Therefore, all who believe will have eternal life; all who believe will have eternal joy. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). So I don’t claim that such faith is simple or easy. It is a gift, and I am simply bearing witness to how it is that I am still a Christian.

It is one of the most audacious, and awe-inspiring, moments in all of Scripture.

In the wake of Israel’s shocking rebellion against God — blatantly violating the covenant God just made with them — Moses humbly dares to mediate between God and his people. At the climax of his intercession, and his careful yet determined dialogue with the living God, Moses makes what is perhaps the greatest, and most perceptive, petition a creature can of his Creator.

And it is, after all, a prayer — a modest yet bold request, made by man, to God Almighty: “Please show me your glory.”

That this is, in some sense, a special moment is plain. We do not stand in Moses’s sandals. We are not prophets called to mediate a covenant, nor do we live under that Sinai pact. Yet Moses’s prayer still functions as a model for the godly after him. It will not be the last prayer in Scripture for a sight of God’s glory, and rightly do the faithful echo it today. What might we who are in Christ learn about our own prayers from the amazing sequence of Moses’s pressing into God in Exodus 32–33?

Can and Will God Forgive?

Before wrestling with the prayer itself, we need to first acknowledge Moses’s haunting question: Could and would God forgive the people such a horrific breach of the covenant? Moses was not yet sure. He heard stories of his forefathers, encountered God at the bush, and witnessed the plagues in Egypt and the rescue in the Red Sea. Moses knew a powerful God who had delivered his people, but would he also forgive them?

At first, it looked like he wouldn’t. When God first informed Moses, on the mountain, that the people had “corrupted themselves,” by making and worshiping a golden calf (32:7–8), God had said, “Let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. . .” (32:10). As Moses began to plead that God withhold destruction, it was far from clear that any relationship of peace could be fully restored.

God did relent of immediately consuming the people (32:14), yet the covenant remained broken. Although Moses went down the mountain, confronted the people in their rebellion, burnt the calf, disciplined the people (32:15–20), and oversaw the purging of the three thousand who led in the rebellion (32:21–29), Moses knew this did not restore what lay shattered. The next day, he returned to meet God on the mountain.

What drives Moses’s sequence of prayer in Exodus 33 is the question he begins to ask in 32:32: Can and will Yahweh forgive? Will God restore the relationship, and dwell among them, after they had worshiped the golden calf? And as we will see, God draws prayer out of Moses, and then moves to answer Moses’s question, in a way far more powerful, and memorable, than if there had not been an unfolding, developing, deepening relationship with God.

Moses, Teach Us to Pray

Exodus 33 begins with God declaring to the people that even though he will give them the land promised to their forefathers, God himself will not go up among them (33:3). They mourn this “disastrous word.” They want him, not just the promised land. They humble themselves before God, taking off their ornaments “from Mount Horeb onward” (33:6).

Even though the people heard this disastrous word, however, Moses continues to enjoy remarkable favor with God. In a tent pitched far off from the camp, God speaks with Moses (33:9), and verse 11 comments: “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” This sets the scene for Moses’s remarkable intercessory prayer in 33:12–18.

“In prayer, we respond to God. . . . First, we hear his voice in Scripture; then we access his ear in prayer.”

Observe, then, at least three lessons Christians today might take from Moses’s otherwise inimitable prayer.

1. Prayer responds to God.

The living God takes the initiative. He first announced to Moses the people’s breach of the covenant (32:7–10). And he revealed his enduring favor on Moses, prompting the prophet to reply. So too for us. We don’t just “dial up” God in prayer when we so wish. First, he speaks, as he has revealed himself in his world, and in his word, and in his Son, the Word. In prayer, we respond to him in light of his revelation to us. First, we hear his voice in Scripture; then we access his ear in prayer. We pray in light of what he has promised.

2. Prayer pleads God’s reputation and glory.

When God announces to Moses the peoples’ sin, and the intention to destroy them and start over with him, Moses’s reflex is to lean into God’s own reputation. This is a good reflex. “Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’?” (Exodus 21:12).

Moses prays for God to turn from righteous anger and relent “from this disaster against your people,” for God’s own name’s sake. Moses does not plea the people’s worth — or their humanity, made in God’s image — but God’s choice and word. He chose them as his people.

“At the bottom of prayer to a God like ours is our longing for his face, not merely the provisions of his hand.”

Today we are in good company to pray for God’s own reputation in the world, and to take notice of, and pray, God’s own promises back to him. God loves for his people to pray in light of what he’s said to us, to make our pleas in response to his promises. And praying for his glory not only concerns God’s reputation in the world, but also, and most significantly, our own knowing and enjoying him. At the bottom of prayer to such a God is our longing for his face, not merely the provisions of his hand.

3. Prayer can be incremental and sequential.

We might even call Moses’s prayer “dialogical.” It is striking how relational his process and sequence of prayer is in these chapters.

At the heart of the “dialogue,” reverent as it is, is whose people the Israelites are, a topic God introduces and draws Moses into. First, to Moses, God calls them, after their sin, “your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt” (32:7). Then God introduces the surprising tension of his ongoing favor on Moses. God will consume the people and “make a great nation” of Moses (32:9–10). This favor, combined with calling the nation “your people,” presents Moses an invitation to reply in prayer.

Moses asks to know more about this God — “please show me now your ways” (33:13) — to discern whether God will forgive his stiff-necked nation. And Moses meekly, but importantly, appends this to this first plea: “Consider too that this nation is your people.” God answers positively, though briefly: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (33:14). The short reply invites Moses to press in further, for the sake of the people. His “me” moves to “us.” He pleads for “I and your people”; then again “we . . . I and your people.” Moses identifies himself with the people, asking that God’s favor on him extend to them.

Prayer, by human persons to the living and personal God, is far more than transactional. It is relational, and often incremental, with measured, humble boldness. God leads us, like Moses, into prayer. We make our requests. He answers in time. We learn more of him, which leads us to ask to see more of him.

‘Show Me Your Glory’

Moses’s prayerful dialogue with God has become more and more daring — slowly, one incremental plea at a time: Don’t consume your people (32:11–13). Please forgive your people (32:31–32). Show me your ways (33:13). Count the people with me in my favor with you (33:15–16). And now, most boldly, “Please show me your glory” (33:18).

This short but daring plea will be Moses’s last. He will not speak again until 34:9, when he finally completes the plea for forgiveness he left unfinished in 32:32.

In Exodus 33:19, God begins to respond:

I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. (Exodus 33:19)

Moses receives his full answer, however, a chapter later in Exodus 34:7 with another revelation:

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. (Exodus 34:6–7).
The driving question has been answered, and so Moses bows in worship and prays with confidence, “O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us . . . and pardon our iniquity and our sin . . .” (34:9). Having prayed, and seen the glory in God’s declarations about his character, his goodness, his mercy, his grace, Moses is confident that God will grant forgiveness and renew the covenant.

Christ, Our Moses

For Christians today, any Moses-like leveraging of God’s favor we know to be firmly grounded in his favor on Christ. More significant than our echoes and imitations of Moses is the fulfillment of his intercession, and final mediation for God’s people, in Jesus.

We may indeed glean some categories and concepts from Moses’s prayers. Yet, as we come in Christ to Exodus 32–33, we identify not only with the prophet, but with the people. They are “stiff-necked.” Rebellious. Deserving of divine justice. Desperate for mercy and grace. But in Christ, we have one far greater than Moses who intercedes for us, leveraging his own perfect favor with God on our behalf.

Jesus, our great high priest, “has passed through the heavens,” and calls us to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, [to] receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14, 16). And he does so not only as new-covenant mediator and intercessor, but also as the very one in whose face we see the glory of God. What was unique in ancient Israel — speaking to God “as a man speaks to his friend” — is offered to all who are in Christ.

God now invites us to come to him as Father, and to come to Christ as husband — the deepest and nearest of human relationships — not to make requests, get what we want, pivot, and go back to life apart from him, but to come closer, and nearer, through prayer, and discover again and again that he himself, in Christ, is the great reward.

Aspiring missionaries are often the kind of Christians who ask questions like “How do I humble myself?” They have read their Bibles, and have sat under faithful preaching, and have noticed that, from beginning to end, God commends humility and condemns pride. For instance,

“Seek humility” (Zephaniah 2:3).
“Put on . . . humility” (Colossians 3:12).
“Have . . . a humble mind” (1 Peter 3:8).
“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5).
“Humble yourselves . . . under the mighty hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6; James 4:10).

And so the kinds of Christians who tend to make good missionaries genuinely want to be more humble, and they ask questions like, “How do I humble myself?” And when we turn to the places in Scripture that talk about self-humbling, what we find is that the answer itself is humbling.

Let’s look at what may be the two most instructive passages in the Bible about self-humbling. The first is in Exodus; the second, in Philippians.

Will You Refuse to Humble Yourself?

The first mention of humbling in the Bible is in Exodus 10, with Moses standing before Pharoah. Let’s set the scene with Exodus 5:1–2 as Moses first approaches him and speaks on God’s behalf:

Moses says, “Thus says the Lord [Yahweh], the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go. . . .” To which Pharaoh replies, mark this: “Who is [Yahweh], that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know [Yahweh] . . .”

Okay, Pharaoh. You may not yet know Yahweh. But just you wait. You will know him, and perhaps all too well. Note here, as Pharaoh rightly perceives it, this is about obedience: He says, “Who is [Yahweh], that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?”

Then, as you know, ten terrible plagues follow as Yahweh makes himself known as judge to Pharaoh, and as savior to his own people, as he rescues them from Egyptian oppression.

Now, fast forward from Exodus 5 to Exodus 9:17, just before plague number seven. God says to Pharoah, “You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go.” In refusing to obey God’s voice, Pharoah is “exalting self” — which is the opposite of “humbling self.” God then makes that explicit in the next chapter, before the eighth plague. He says again to Pharaoh in Exodus 10:3,

How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?

And this is the first mention of humbling self in the Bible. So, let’s pull together what we’ve seen in Exodus. Though Pharaoh pretends to be divine, the true God and Creator speaks to him as a creature. “Obey my voice. Let my people go.” And God refers to Pharaoh’s refusal as “exalting yourself” and instructs him to “humble yourself” in response to these painful, humbling plagues. That is, obey God. Acknowledge, Pharoah, that you are not God. He is God.

We might say that the basic confession of humility is “You are God, and I am not.” First, God acted; he humbled Pharaoh through plague after plague. Then, the question comes to Pharaoh, Will you humble yourself? Will you pretend that you are God and challenge or ignore Yahweh, or will you admit, “He is God, and I am not,” and obey?

God Acts First

This is the paradigm that then echoes throughout the Scriptures (especially in 2 Chronicles, and in the teaching of Jesus, Matthew 18:4; 23:12; Luke 14:11; 18:14), and is true for us today. God may not confront us with a knock at the door from a prophet like Moses, but God does confront us. He takes the initiative. His humbling hand descends. A family member, or brother or sister in Christ, confronts us. Or sickness in ourselves or in a loved one. Or death. Or the loss of a job. Or a breakup. Or whatever obstacles you will encounter on the mission field, or on your way to the mission field — and you will encounter them.

God takes the initiative in humbling us, and then the question comes: Now, will you humble yourself and receive what God is doing in your discomfort and pain, or will you push back?

Humility says, “He is God, and I am not.” Uncomfortable and painful as my circumstances are, I receive them as his humbling hand. That doesn’t mean I don’t pray for rescue. In fact, praying for rescue can be precisely the kind of self-humbling we’re taking about.

“The kinds of Christians who tend to make good missionaries genuinely want to be more humble.”

So, How do I humble myself? is a good question for aspiring missionaries to ask. And it has a humbling answer. We don’t just up and humble ourselves when we’re good and ready. We don’t take the initiative. Self-humbling is not an achievement. Rather, our self-humbling begins with God’s initiative. He takes the first step and humbles us. Then the question comes, Will you receive his humbling and humble yourself?

Jesus Humbled Himself

Now, let’s go to Philippians 2 and see it play out, in three great steps, in the greatest missionary who ever lived.

He Became Man

First, before he humbled himself as man, he first had to become man. Which is said to be an emptying of himself.

[being] in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:6–7)

His emptying of himself was not an emptying of divine attributes, as if that were possible. It was an emptying of privilege or comfort — the privilege of not becoming man and not being subjected to the finitude and pain of human life, and the difficulties of living in our fallen world. And Jesus’s emptying here, Paul says, was not a losing but a taking: “taking the form of a servant.”

So, first, God the Son becomes man.

Obedient to Death

Then, second, once human, Jesus fulfilled the human calling before God: “he humbled himself.”

being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:8)

What did Jesus’s self-humbling involve? He humbled himself (1) by becoming obedient. We saw with Pharaoh the issue of human obedience to God’s will. Jesus, as man, obeyed God. As much as his humanity wanted to avoid death, and avoid bearing our sin (having none of his own), and feeling forsaken by his Father, he prayed in the garden, “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). And he was obedient, Paul says, (2) “to the point of death.” He endured. He didn’t hit eject when obedience got hard. He obeyed all the way through. And this self-humbling obedience to death went so far as (3) “even death on a cross.”

Exalted for Humility

Now, third and finally,

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name . . . (Philippians 2:9)

As man, Jesus humbled himself in obedience to the divine will, and went to the cross — and God, in his perfect timing, three days later, raised him, and, forty days later, exalted him at his right hand.

Welcome God’s Humbling Hand

Let me close with two final words to you as 18–25 year olds at the CROSS conference:

First, your process from CROSS, to actually getting there — on the ground, into the cross-cultural ministry you aspire to — likely will take longer and be a more trying and patience-testing process than you imagined. God means to humble you along the way. And he means, as you seek to become a missionary — high a calling as it is! — that you learn obedience and humility, that you do not, in pride, jettison the call of Philippians 2:3–4, which verses 6¬–9 uphold, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Finally, my prayer for you is that you prepare ahead of time, daily and weekly, for God’s many humblings, for your good, before they come:

Humble yourself daily by sitting under (not over) his word and bowing before him in prayer;
And humble yourself weekly by sitting under faithful preaching and submitting yourself in covenant/committed fellowship in a faithful local church.

“Ask God to work a posture in your soul that is ready to receive, even welcome, God’s humbling hand.”

Ask God to work a posture in your soul — through his word, prayer, and covenant fellowship to his people — that is ready to receive, even welcome God’s humbling hand, painful as it may be when it descends.

Answering his call to invest your life directly in the Great Commission work of crossing oceans and borders and languages and cultures with the gospel won’t mean you avoid his humbling hand. It might mean, in his great mercy, his humbling hand descends in your life all the more. Read missionary biographies. Were they kept from his humbling hand? No, they were not.

Rather, his humbling hand kept them from vanity, from shallowness, from being ineffective, from laboring in vain, from walking away from Jesus, from being choked out by the cares of this life. God’s humbling hand was a painful and merciful means of his grace in sustaining and strengthening the souls of his missionaries, and in working through them to do his humbling and rescuing work in the lives of those they were sent to reach.

In many ways, we were a natural fit. My would-be husband and I both loved Jesus, studied his word, cherished worship through song, desired many children, longed to be hospitable, and valued the home and the wife’s joyful place in it. We both had Scandinavian heritage and understood the barbs that flew between Swedes and Norwegians. We both prized hard work — with an openness to risk-taking endeavors.

As an engaged couple, with all we had going for us, it was hard for me to imagine what bumps we might face as we started down the road together. But that’s only because I underestimated how real and stubborn indwelling sin is. I thought external bumps in the road would be the obstacles — circumstances like finances or health issues or job difficulties — when really it was our own flesh that presented the biggest problems.

Reflecting back on the first years of marriage and family, I commend three principles to ease the bumps and grease the wheels of joy in Christ in your marriage and family.

1. Let God Define ‘Normal’

We all come from unique backgrounds. Even two people who share a similar heritage, like my husband and I, have had vastly different childhoods. I grew up with 27 first cousins. I became an aunt at 14 and can’t really remember a time we didn’t have young children around our home (even though I was the youngest child in my family). My husband had four cousins and had rarely encountered an infant or toddler at close range prior to marrying into my family.

This made for very different ideas of what “normal” felt and sounded like. I grew up on an acreage in a blue-collar town that bordered several rural communities. My mom grew up on a farm. My husband grew up in a first-ring suburb of a major metropolis. His dad grew up in the big city. We had very different conceptions of what the “outdoors” was for. For him, it was mainly for recreation and enjoyment — for hiking or biking or kayaking. For me, it was mainly for work — for mowing or burning the burn pile or doing animal chores.

Our former “norms” can enrich our marriage, adding interest and laughter and providing opportunities to take something that’s been passed down and make it new. Or they can threaten the allegiance of our hearts. If what was normal to us in our childhood becomes the ultimate standard for our marriage, we have misplaced our loyalties. We need to be led by the only authoritative and inerrant guide to life and marriage that we have:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16–17)

Including every good work in the sometimes thorny first years of marriage.

In marriage, God is making something new: a new one-flesh union, that is, a new family. And when a husband and wife let God’s word define normal, the wife willingly comes under the leadership of her husband in submission, as Scripture directs her to reflect Christ’s church (Ephesians 5:22–25). Her family of origin may aid that process or hinder it, but in either case, a reprioritizing happens. For the husband, it means looking to Christ as the standard by which he loves and leads his wife, and adopting his previous family’s practices only inasmuch as they accord with Christ.

“If God’s word is the norm, the authority, you will have solid common ground on which to stand, come what may.”

When I was young, my mom gave me one primary piece of advice when it came to choosing a husband: “God’s word must be his authority.” It’s key advice for men and women, and I gladly pass it along to you. If God’s word is the norm, the authority — not the culture, not your friends’ opinions or your family’s traditions, not Netflix or social media — you will have solid common ground on which to stand, come what may.

2. Stay in Step with the Spirit

Paul tells the Galatians, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (Galatians 5:25–26). It may seem unlikely for two people who love each other and have committed their lives to one another “for better or worse” to fall into conceit, envy, and provocation of one another — and yet it’s common enough in marriage.

The lies of the world have primed us to believe that men and women are on two separate teams in life. Team Women must advocate for women, and Team Men (in a bit of irony) must also advocate for women (although many rebel against this). This means that, at least for those of us raised in the United States or the West, women are expected to compete with men. From a young age, girls are taught that how they rank is a function of whether or not they are beating the boys. This way of thinking infects both boys and girls.

And while that attitude may lie dormant during dating or courtship, it will rear its head if not dealt with. In a husband, this can look like unrealistic expectations for his wife — treating her like another man who shouldn’t have any significant differences from him. For example, he may expect her to earn what he earns, or overlook the inherent vulnerability of pregnancy and caring for small children. In a wife, this can look like pulling out the measuring stick to keep track of all the ways she’s getting a raw deal compared to him. For example, she may envy the occasional out-to-eat work lunches while she eats with the kids at home, or she may resent that the care of small children falls mainly to her.

These are deadly attitudes to maintain in a marriage. When we marry, the Spirit of God does something amazing: he makes us part of a new team. I was blessed to join Team Dodds — not Team Women, or Team Men, or Team Me. When something wonderful happens to the husband, the wife rejoices as though it has happened to her, because it has. When something difficult happens to the wife, the husband nurtures and defends her as though it has happened to him, because it has.

How do we keep in step with the Spirit in marriage? By prayerfully and regularly confessing our sins, and by setting our minds on the things of the Spirit, with a special focus on Christ — his life, his words, and his ways (1 John 1:9; Romans 8:5). We walk in the Spirit of Christ when we conform to the way he’s designed the marriage: “‘a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:5–6).

3. Share Your New Life with Others

My husband and I were married in June 2002. By October, we were taking a class to join our local church. At the same time, we opened our home (the upstairs of a duplex) to host a small group of singles and couples. I was 21 and still finishing college. It may have seemed a bit premature for us to join a church we were so new to, or to host a small group made up of mostly strangers, but the church had a need and we were eager to help. We didn’t join the church or host a small group primarily as ways to establish a stronger marriage, but looking back, they were important in shaping the patterns and priorities of our life.

“The hospitable people I know are hospitable with little and with much, in small spaces and in big.”

Many young families think that hospitality will sprout when the timing is right — when they get a bigger place, or when the kids aren’t so little, or when the finances aren’t so tight, or when they get that one room cleaned out. I’ve never seen it happen that way. The hospitable people I know are hospitable with little and with much, in small spaces and in big, among babies and boomers, in a dirty kitchen and a clean one.

Sharing your home with others — making food for them, stretching your grocery budget on their behalf, letting them into your bathroom, cleaning up after their messes, inviting them into your thoughts through conversation and listening to theirs — is shockingly intimate in a world where embodied presence is becoming rare. Paul tells the Thessalonian church that “being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). When we invite others into our home, we give them a bit of “our own selves.”

When a husband, wife, and their children offer their home and their “own selves” to others through hospitality, they are not robbing time or resources from each other; they are gaining by giving. Hospitality forms a family identity that is not navel-gazing, but focused on sharing the love of God in practical ways with others. I can think of little else that will form and establish a Christian family to be joyful and robust in the Lord for decades to come than to practice sharing your life with others. Don’t let your home or marriage or family be only private.

“Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7). A husband and wife who have made God’s word their norm and who are keeping in step with the Spirit will have much to share with others. Open your doors and welcome many to come taste of Christ’s goodness at your table.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15130549/first-the-church-then-marriage-follows

I can remember exactly where I was sitting, wrestling with guilt and shame and regret over failed relationships and sexual sin, wondering if I would ever overcome my broken history, when a friend recited Micah 7:8–9 from memory:

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;     when I fall, I shall rise;when I sit in darkness,     the Lord will be a light to me.I will bear the indignation of the Lord     because I have sinned against him,until he pleads my cause     and executes judgment for me.He will bring me out to the light;     I shall look upon his vindication.

God pleads my cause. The one I betrayed kneeled down to appeal for me. His gavel landed, not on me, but on his Son. Having lived and hidden in darkness, I found a home in the light. The purity I thought I had lost was now suddenly and undeservedly possible.

As we raise up younger men in the church, and encourage them toward becoming men of God, how can we call them into the kind of freedom and purity God gave me in Christ?

Set an Example in Purity

Of course, raising up godly men is about far more than sexual purity. A man of God is more than his self-control in dating relationships. He’s more than his last Internet accountability report — far more. When grace grips a man, it more than curbs his lust for porn; it lights fires for good under every area of his life. And so, young men need strong, dynamic, ambitious pictures of what they might become in Christ.

Fortunately, God gives us plenty of great lessons on manhood in his word. First Timothy 4:12 has become one especially concise and compelling picture for me:

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

The apostle Paul gives Timothy, his son in the faith, five cues for spiritual growth and development. The areas are not exclusive to men, but they are each critical for godly men. Each of those five words is a battlefield to be won, and each can become its own stronghold for holiness. Do this man’s conversations consistently say he belongs to God? Does his lifestyle set him apart from the unbelieving? Is he a man of surprising and sacrificial love? Does he fight for faith in the trenches of temptation and doubt? Is he pure?

In previous articles, we looked more closely at the first four — speech, conduct, love, and faith. Here we turn to purity, the area that may receive the most attention in young men’s discipleship (often for good reason), and yet often in ways that miss the heart of Christian purity.

In All Purity

First, what kind of purity did the apostle have in mind? The only other use of this Greek word in the New Testament — agneia — comes just one chapter later in the same letter:

Encourage [an older man] as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. (1 Timothy 5:1–2)

This suggests the purity Paul had in mind was sexual purity — a broad and consistent holiness that marks all of Timothy’s relationships with his sisters in Christ. Purity is bigger and wider than personal sexual morality, but sex and sexuality (then and certainly now) play a major role in setting followers of Christ apart from the world. Man of God, as you encourage younger women in the church, do so with purity. Don’t talk, behave, or daydream in ways that make them vulnerable to serve your lusts. Put to death sexual immorality within you (Colossians 3:5). Flee from sexual temptation (1 Corinthians 6:18). Treat young women with the respect and concern with which you would treat your own sisters — because they are (Matthew 12:50).

“Be the safest man on earth for a young woman to meet.”

And not just purity, Timothy, but all purity. Don’t treat women just slightly better than men in the world do, but wholly differently. When other men flirt with ambiguous messages and signals, be surprisingly clear and honest. When other men secretly gratify their lusts, make moments alone a training ground for self-control. When other men dishonor themselves and others through sexual sin, be a man who loves to honor and protect women. Don’t look for the lowest bar to crawl over, but be ambitiously pure — love any women God has put in your life with all purity. Be the safest man on earth for a young woman to meet.

‘Husband of One Wife’

Earlier in his letter to the younger Timothy, the apostle gives at least one other glimpse into how godly men relate to sex and sexuality.

When he names qualifications for pastor-elders, the majority of the list simply pictures a normal godly man, whether he ever serves in church office or not. He must be “sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, . . . not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money” (1 Timothy 3:2–3). These qualities mark every mature man who follows Jesus. And according to that same list, such a man is also “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2).

Now, Paul did not mean that an elder could not be single. Paul himself was unmarried, after all, and he was not only an elder, but an apostle. No, more fundamentally, this is a way of saying men of God are to be sexually pure. They are men, whether married or not, who refuse to indulge themselves sexually (in thought or action or suggestion) with any woman but their wife. “The husband of one wife” (literally, “one-woman man”) is a concise way of saying, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4).

So, do our thoughts and hands and clicks honor the spiritual wonder and purity of marriage? Or, when asked by God himself to stand guard along the walls around the marriage bed, have we instead gone missing? Worse, have we turned and fired the arrows he gave us against him and the women he has made? Have we indulged lustful thoughts, lengthy glances, wicked searches, sensual touching, sexual impatience, and self-gratification? Have we used God’s gift of sex to assault the hands that gave it?

Purity Tells the Story

Why would men of God be “the husband of one wife”? Because God has made marriage and sex an unusually compelling way of drawing attention to Christ and his love for his bride, the church.

It’s not the only way, by any means. Jesus himself never married. And single believers in Jesus often experience more of Jesus than married believers do (1 Corinthians 7:35). But from the beginning, God has joined one man with one woman, for one lifetime, to tell the world physically and relationally (though certainly imperfectly) about the depth and duration of his love for us (Ephesians 5:31–32). The fire in a new husband’s eyes is a flicker of the roaring flames in heaven. The brilliance of a bride, wrapped and radiant in white, is a glimmer of what it means for the church to be chosen, wooed, won, and made pure.

And so how men (and women!) treat sex and sexuality, whether married or not, sheds light on Christ for all to see, or obscures and slanders him. The world has found countless ways to distort, abuse, and vandalize God’s masterpiece, but the added darkness has served to make true purity a brighter and clearer picture of reality. Few phenomena are more spiritually revealing and provocative today than a man who consistently denies his sinful flesh and makes war against sexual temptation. It will make him an alien in the eyes of the world — and a king in the eyes that matter most.

Purity for Sexual Failures

What if we’ve already failed sexually? What if we’ve already spurned purity and fired our arrows back at God? Have we been dishonorably discharged and forever branded with our worst thoughts and actions? Is sexual purity possible for sexual failures?

It is — and I should know. Pornography and sexual immorality plagued me for years, even after coming to know Jesus. I know what it looks like to fire arrows at God because I was often pointing the bow. Sexual repentance, to my shame, was a decade-long war. I indulged desires outside of marriage that were meant to lead me to a bride. I flirted and dodged and disappeared in dating. I dishonored sisters in Christ, women whom Jesus had bought with his blood and who had entrusted themselves to me, a brother. With my thoughts and hands and clicks, I slandered the Lion of Judah and concealed his wondrous cross. I squandered opportunity after opportunity to be the man I knew God wanted me to be.

But God pled my cause. He brought me out into the light. After I had fired my arrows against him, he intervened and took my thorns, my nails, my wrath. “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience” (1 Timothy 1:16). By his grace, he forgave what I had done, and by that same grace, he trained my hands, my thoughts, my words for good. He made a once impure man pure — not perfectly, but genuinely.

“Stories of sexual brokenness have their own way of honoring the worth of Christ and his cross.”

Stories of sexual brokenness have their own way of honoring the worth of Christ and his cross. God wired sexual purity and marital fidelity to sing the truth about Jesus — a soaring and mesmerizing melody — but he sings something just as captivating over harlots, like me, who leave our sexual sin for him.

Pure Men Move Toward Women

One more lesson from Paul’s counsel to Timothy: setting an example in sexual purity does not mean avoiding women in the church. Notice the posture in his charge to the younger man: “Encourage . . . younger women as sisters, in all purity” (1 Timothy 5:1–2).

He could have said, “Play it safe and just keep your distance,” but instead he says, “Encourage younger women as sisters” — care for them like you would if they grew up next to you. Move toward them, Timothy. Look for ways to give courage — to strengthen their hearts in the Lord and their resolves to love. The picture here is the opposite of the kind of divide that can emerge between men and women in churches and ministries. To be sure, there may be certain women to avoid (Proverbs 5:3–8). Generally speaking, however, men of God do not sidestep their sisters in Christ, but engage and care for them in all purity. In other words, they treat women like Jesus did.

Safest Man for Women

When you stop to look, Jesus spends a surprising amount of time caring specifically and personally for women — in a day when these kinds of interactions were more socially scandalous. Even the disciples marveled at how he would stop and talk to women (John 4:27).

Listen to the warmth and tenderness in Jesus’s voice when a seriously ill woman grabs the edge of his garment: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace” (Luke 8:48). When he finds the woman at the well, with her deeply broken and painful history, he doesn’t look the other way or scramble to another well, but offers to refresh and restore her soul: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10).

When he saw the woman horribly disabled by a demon, he “called her over and said to her, ‘Woman, you are freed from your disability.’ And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God” (Luke 13:12–13). He reached out and touched her, in all purity, because that’s what a good brother would have done. When he saw a mother grieving over the death of her son, he drew near to her broken heart. “He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep’” (Luke 7:13).

And when he rose from the grave, what was the first name on his death-conquering lips? “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary’” (John 20:16). This is the truest, most manly picture of purity the world has ever seen — a man abstaining not from his sisters, but from mistreating them or neglecting their needs. A man who consistently and profoundly encouraged women in all purity.