ABSTRACT: The small group has not always been a feature of Christian church life, even for Protestants. Among evangelicals, the small group traces its origins to two parallel lines of development in the sixteenth century. In Germany, the Lutheran Pietist Philipp Jakob Spener used small groups to revive experiential faith in Christ. In England, the Anglican Anthony Horneck employed them to channel the zeal of earnest young men. The small group later became a vital means in the movements of the Moravians and Methodists and, partly because of them, throughout the churches of the First Great Awakening. Alongside its role in fostering awakening, the small group realized the Reformation ideal of the priesthood of all believers, inviting ordinary Christians to meet, sing, pray, and mutually encourage each other’s faith.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Bruce Hindmarsh, professor of spiritual theology at Regent College, to trace the origins of the evangelical small group.

One warm Sunday morning in July 1669, a 34-year-old minister mounted the pulpit in the principal church in the city of Frankfurt and looked out over a congregation that seemed to have the form but not the power of godliness. Young as he was, he was the senior Lutheran pastor in this important city of fifteen thousand people, and he supervised a number of congregations and at least eleven other ministers. As he stood in the pulpit that morning, though, he longed for a deeper spiritual renewal of the people gathered there. They seemed sermon-proof.

The glory days of Martin Luther and the German Reformation were long past, and for a whole generation now there had been bitter religious strife between Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics. The strife led to a war in Europe that had lasted most of his life and had only recently ended with an uneasy détente. It left Frankfurt a divided city with a merely superficial Christian faith. The old strategy of enforced uniformity and top-down reform, imposed by civic rulers and ministers, was clearly not going to work. One could no longer hope to achieve conformity to high religious standards through law, custom, and sermon-scolding. And in any case, doctrinal rectitude and moral propriety were not the essence of religion. A second Reformation was needed, one that would reach the heart.

So, instead of using the old ways, this young minister reached out on this particular Sunday morning with a daring proposal. In his student days, he had been part of a small group that met for Bible study and hymn-singing, and he knew about various house groups common in other places. How about if here in Frankfurt, then, after Sunday service, a group of friends might meet for convivial conversation, but instead of drinking and playing cards, they might read devotional books together or discuss the sermon? They could “speak with one another about the divine mysteries, and the one who received most from God would try to instruct his weaker brethren.”1

By the following year, these weekly private meetings were established and began to attract women and men from all classes of society in growing numbers. It was the beginning of small-group ministry within the church.

‘Ancient and Apostolic Church Meetings’

The pastor’s proposal sounds so humdrum today, when most of us take small groups for granted. But as implausible as it seems, this moment was a watershed. Until then, small groups or private house meetings tended to be regarded as schismatic, and they were looked upon as the sectarian resort of mystics and radicals. Now it was suggested that these groups could serve as little renewal cells within the church itself. It would take some discipline to make sure they didn’t sheer off into separatist conventicles, but why not keep the fire in the fireplace?

The proposal offered to the Frankfurt congregation that morning marked the start of a practice of incorporating voluntary small groups into the ongoing life of the church as a means of spiritual vitality. These were sometimes described in Latin as ecclesiola in ecclesia, or “a small church within the church.” They were also described as collegia pietatis, or “gatherings for religious devotion.” Those small groups among university students were later called collegia philobiblicum, or “gatherings for the love of all things biblical.” It is perhaps ironic that a practice that would become so popular among ordinary believers began with so many academic-sounding titles. Essentially, these were seventeenth-century home groups.

The minister who rose to preach that July morning in 1669 was Philipp Jakob Spener (1645–1705), and he had been raised and trained as an impeccably orthodox Lutheran. His concern for renewal within the church by such means as these small groups channeled a general “movement for piety” into the more formal Pietist movement in Lutheran Germany. The manifesto was a little book that Spener produced in 1675, six years after the sermon. It expanded on his program. Entitled Pia Desideria (Heartfelt Longings), it presented his hope for “a more extensive use of the word of God among us.”2 In other words, he wanted to see Scripture used in ways beyond the Sunday sermon. How could the power of God’s word be truly released through the priesthood of all believers in a way more extensive and personal? How might the word of God stimulate spiritual renewal?

Spener reminded his readers that this was Luther’s chief concern and the reason he translated the Bible into German in the first place. Luther did not want people reading even his own writings to the neglect of Scripture. So, Spener proposed that families regularly read Scripture together in the home, and he thought it would be good to read book by book through the Bible in church services too. But then listen to how he describes what today we might just call a home Bible study: “It would perhaps not be inexpedient (and I set this down for further and more mature reflection) to reintroduce the ancient and apostolic kind of church meetings.” He must have been thinking of passages such as Colossians 4:14, where the apostle Paul sends greetings to “Nympha and the church in her house,” together with 1 Corinthians 14:26–40, where Paul instructs believers to speak one at a time when exercising their gifts. Spener suggested, accordingly, that

one person would not rise to preach (although this practice would be continued at other times), but others who have been blessed with gifts and knowledge would also speak and present their pious opinions on the proposed subject to the judgment of the rest, doing all this in such a way as to avoid disorder and strife.

This was clearly not the place for a theological brawl: there had been enough of that in the past. Here, instead, laypeople and minsters would together “take up the Holy Scriptures, read aloud from them, and fraternally discuss each verse in order to discover its simple meaning and whatever may be useful for the edification of all.” As Spener said, “Not a little benefit is to be hoped for from such an arrangement.”3 So it proved.

Small groups have been a part of Protestant evangelical religious life ever since. When I was a young person involved in high school and college ministry in the late 1970s and 1980s, I was trained to lead small-group inductive Bible studies by a leader from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I still have a little book from those years, Leading Bible Discussions, that I just pulled off my shelf. It was originally published in 1967, but as I leaf through it now, the continuity with Spener’s program is remarkable. Group Bible study and prayer would, it says, open up the group “to a deeper work of the Holy Spirit in promoting obedience to Jesus Christ.” I did not know I was part of a collegia philobiblicum. Evidently, three hundred years after Spener’s original proposal to his Frankfurt congregation, there was still the expectation among evangelicals in my generation that “not a little benefit is to be hoped for from such an arrangement.”

Wesley’s Fetter Lane Society

Spener’s program soon expanded. Sixty years later, on the evening on January 25, 1736, an earnest 32-year-old Anglican minister named John Wesley was on board a ship in the North Atlantic, bound for Georgia along with a group of mission-minded, German-speaking believers. He was intrigued and was teaching himself German to be able to converse more with them. On this evening, however, the third in a series of violent storms descended upon them all with such fury that the sea broke over the deck, covering the ship from stem to stern, and splitting the mainsail. People screamed, cried out, and trembled, and even Wesley later confided to his diary, “storm very high . . . a little afraid.”4 Yet, he noticed that throughout the panic the German believers maintained their calm and continued singing hymns and praying together. There was something about the quality of their shared life and simplicity of their faith that was different. It was deeply attractive to Wesley.

The believers Wesley encountered were the Renewed Moravian Brethren, a group of erstwhile central European exiles who had come together under the guidance of Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf on his estate in Saxony nine years earlier, near where today the borders of Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic meet. The godson of Spener, Zinzendorf shared many Pietist ideals, but what emerged under his leadership was new. The Renewed Moravian Brethren, as a distinct movement, came out of a revival in 1727 among these refugees. A church service on August 13 turned into a kind of Protestant Pentecost, where the many became one.

“Across the North Atlantic, small-group devotion was at the heart of the awakening.”

Spiritually, this dynamic drove the Moravian Brethren in two directions: inward, in an intensity of community life together; and outward, in missionary enterprise to places like Georgia and the American frontier. Although they differed with their Pietist forebears over various theological issues and were more ecumenically minded, they carried forward the ideal of small-group fellowship and heartfelt, personal devotion to Christ. At the core of their common life were small bands of perhaps eight to ten believers, meeting together for fellowship. When Wesley encountered them, he thought maybe he had discovered a kind of pure remnant of the early church. He would in turn carry forward their devotional ideals in English Methodism.

In fact, four years after that terrible storm at sea, Wesley was back in central London and working with the Moravian Brethren to establish a religious society at 33 Fetter Lane (near the Chancery Lane Tube station). Spener would easily have recognized their program. Several years ago, I looked at a manuscript record of the original rules of this society, kept in the Moravian records in Germany. The front cover says, “Rules & Orders of a Religious Society meeting in Fetter Lane, 1738, May 1. Brethren and Methodists.” A 25-year-old Moravian minister named Peter Boehler was the guiding spirit, but the initial members listed, in addition to Wesley, eight working men: a brasier, a poultry-seller, a clog-maker, a bookseller, a wine dealer, a barber, and an attorney — all members of the Church of England. This was a typical size for a Moravian-inspired band, or small group. They soon expanded to form multiple bands, including some for women.

It was quite moving for me to read the first few rules this group set for itself, and to see how earnest they were. “That they will meet together once a week, to confess their faults to one another, & pray for one another, that they may be healed.” It appears they met in the evening for about two hours. The rule was, “That each person in order speak freely, plainly, & concisely as he can, the state of his heart, with his several temptations and deliverances, since the last time of meeting.” Corresponding to this level of sharing was a commitment to confidentiality: “That nothing which is said in this conference be by any means mentioned out of it.” All this was bookended or contained by prayer: “That every meeting be begun & ended with singing & prayer.”5

Moravians and Methodists

Parallel lines of development converged in this Fetter Lane Society. There was the line that can be traced from Spener through Zinzendorf to the Moravian Brethren. But there was another remarkably similar line of development in England itself. Here we must pause and go back again to the seventeenth century, before returning to Wesley and the story of Fetter Lane.

Only four years older than Spener, Anthony Horneck (1641–1697) was born about twenty miles from Frankfurt. He was raised Reformed, rather than Lutheran, but he shared many of Spener’s ideals and carried these in his luggage, as it were, when he moved to England in 1661 and became an ordained Anglican minister. About the time that Spener’s Pia Desideria was having an impact in Germany, Horneck’s heart-searching sermons in London caused a spiritual awakening among a large number of earnest young men who were “touch’d with a very affecting sense of their sins.”6 Horneck knew exactly what to do. He organized them into small groups and gave them rules to order their common life together. This was to do for the Anglican church what Spener did for Lutheran church. If anything, though, it was more tightly mortised to a high Anglican ethos, and the focus was upon the quest for holiness. We would not go too far wrong to describe it as a kind of high-church Anglican pietism.

These were not separatist Puritan conventicles; they were renewal cells or ecclesiolae subject to the authority and sacramental life of the church. But they became popular. A contemporary wrote, “Many, in and about London, began to meet often together, both for devotion and for their further instruction: things of that kind had formerly practiced only among the puritans and dissenters; but these were of the Church, and came to their ministers to be assisted with forms of prayer and other directions.”7 The heightened moral concern of these small groups is reflected in their first rule, “that all . . . should resolve upon an holy and serious life.”8 Another clue to the ethos of these groups can be inferred from a popular spiritual handbook written by Horneck during these years with the splendid title The Happy Ascetick (1681). The so-called “holy club” that Wesley formed at Oxford in 1729 was in continuity with these disciplined Anglican religious societies that go back to the ministry of Horneck. Since at least 1725, Wesley had himself been one of these young men on an earnest quest for “an holy and serious life.”

However, the Fetter Lane Society, with its small groups, was formed later, at a critical period in early May 1738. It owed something to both the Pietist¬ and Anglican ideals for small-group devotion, and it outwardly looked a lot like the bands organized by Horneck. But this was the very month that John Wesley and his brother Charles would each experience a crisis that led to a profound evangelical conversion. They came to realize that no amount of moral earnestness would be enough to bring them peace with God. John Wesley went along to a religious society meeting in London on May 24 and “felt his heart strangely warmed” as someone read from Luther on the meaning of faith in Christ. Wesley said, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins.”9 His brother had a similar spiritual breakthrough three days earlier.

Nerve Center of Spiritual Awakening

It was this Wesleyan and Moravian dynamic of evangelical conversion that turned Fetter Lane into the nerve center of spiritual awakening across London and beyond in the late 1730s and the 1740s. As the fires of evangelical revival spread, the fervor of small-group religion branched out too. As one historian observed, “Certainly the cell, the koinonia, the society, was at the heart of the Revival.”10 And in the newly expanding social space of a democratizing world, these voluntary groups had great appeal. In 1745, Wesley reminded his Methodist followers that a distinguishing feature of their societies is that they were freely gathered together and they “do still subsist without Power.”11

“As the fires of evangelical revival spread, the fervor of small-group religion branched out too.”

From this point forward, the eighteenth-century evangelical awakening in the North Atlantic, as in the earlier Anglo-German context, would have a local cellular structure. Whether in the Methodist band meetings, or the Moravian Singstunde or quarter-hour meetings, or the lay prayer meetings in the parishes of Congregationalists in New England, the ideal of the ecclesiola spread far and wide. It was a vital expression of evangelical devotion. As the single mother Margaret Austin wrote to Charles Wesley in 1740 after evangelical preaching touched her conscience, “I had a strong Desire to get into the Bands: I went to the Reverend Mr John Wesley and he admitted me. And the first night we met, hearing the others tell the State of their Souls — it was of much strength to me to speak of the State of mine.” Almost immediately after Sarah Osborn’s conversion in Newport, Rhode Island, across the Atlantic, she began to meet with a number of young women who were spiritually awakened to a concern for their souls, and, as she later put it, they would “converse on vital and experimental religion.” John Newton described the believers in his Anglican parish in the English Midlands in Pietist terms as “Ecclesia intra Ecclesium [sic],” adding, “and it is much the same in all the parishes where the Lord has placed awakened ministers.”12 Across the North Atlantic, small-group devotion was at the heart of the awakening.

Newton wrote a hymn to dedicate a new meeting place for his religious society, and its first stanza communicates something of the hopes for these small groups. It was a prayer for a deep experience of peace with God and spiritual communion with other believers:

Within these walls let holy peace,And love, and concord dwell;Here give the troubled conscience ease,The wounded spirit heal.13

It is a lovely picture of the small group as a place for the healing of wounds and for mutual concord. His friend the poet William Cowper wrote a hymn likewise for opening a new place for prayer, and he recognized that women and men genuinely encountered God here, outside of the church building:

Jesus, where’er thy people meet,     There they behold thy mercy-seat;Where’er they seek thee thou art found,     And every place is hallowed ground.14

We could continue to trace the history of small groups and voluntary societies down the centuries into the era of home and foreign missions and the expansion of evangelical faith across the globe, up to the Chinese house churches in the East and the Alpha course in the West. But this is enough to get a sense of the origin of the “small church within the church” and the critical role these groups played in the rise of evangelicalism.

Leaders such as Spener knew that the dynamism of lay voluntarism released in these small groups could overspill the container. The fire could break out of the fireplace. Small groups could become dangerous or schismatic. As William Cowper once put it, “Instrumentality is generally taken up with some reluctance, and laid down with a great deal more.”15 In other words, it might be hard to get lay people going, but it can be even harder to get them to stop. Still, Spener and Wesley and all these others thought it was worth it. The water of the Spirit could be kept flowing within the high banks of the church. And the possibilities for spiritual vitality were endless.

Realizing Luther’s Ideal

In conclusion, we might ask what some of the qualities were that marked these groups distinctively and made them a spiritual powerhouse for the reviving of vital faith in Christ. We can identify several features just in outline. Probably most importantly, these groups were clear in their aims to foster a real, lived experience of the Christian faith. These were not book clubs, lifestyle enclaves, or discussion groups. These were places for those who were serious about the life application of the teaching of Scripture. To this end, these groups invited honest sharing of personal successes and failures in the Christian life. Absolute confidentiality was the corollary of this honest sharing and essential to building trust in one another. The freedom of the individual was contained within a structure of accountability and discipline, with high expectations of one another. Thus, almost all of these groups set out their own ground rules in one form or another. Still, the experience of a shared spiritual life meant that these groups were not simply an adjunct to real church, but the deep bonds of spiritual kinship that were forged made these groups a profound manifestation of the church.

The Pietist small groups in particular witnessed to the power of reading Scripture with others, sharing insight mutually together, as something spiritually enlarging and “for the edification of all.” With the Moravians and Methodists, these groups were also harnessed for mission and service, looking outward and not just inward. And even though these groups were typically small in number, it seems that they almost always sang hymns together, incorporating worship and prayer into their common life. In sum, these groups were a realization of Luther’s ideal of the priesthood of all believers. We can minister God’s grace to one another.

“These groups were a realization of Luther’s ideal of the priesthood of all believers.”

Finally, it is good to remember that there may come a day when the small group is all we have. In the period between the beginning of Spener’s reform and Wesley’s, there is an important story about small groups sustaining the faith of a repressed people. Silesia is a region that today overlaps the Czech Republic and the area bordering it in Poland. This area was at one time ruled by Protestants, and the Pietists had a huge influence there. When their rulers were replaced by a harsh Catholic regime, the Protestants lost almost all their churches overnight.

All of a sudden, the small home groups that were meant to help keep church life vital were all you had. Your Bible study was your underground church. Itinerant leaders connected these home groups, and out of this hard-pressed community of beleaguered Protestants came a revival in 1718 that spread down the Oder River valley. It began with small groups of children of about middle-school age, gathering at intervals during the day to pray and sing. The parents would form a ring on the outside and watch on in tears as the children prayed. It was families and individuals connected to this revival who ultimately would end up on Zinzendorf’s estate as exiles. This was in fact one of the taproots of the evangelical revival across the whole North Atlantic. As in time past, small groups may yet prove to be more important than we ever imagined.

Audio Transcript

We close the week with a question from me, Pastor John, about one of Paul’s most profound statements of applied theology — and it’s too often overlooked. It’s on my mind because I heard you recently explain it off-air. You were leading us in a devotional at a Desiring God Leadership Team meeting, something we do to open every meeting together. We gather and begin with a brief devotional and pray together, to focus our minds and hearts before we go on to plan and dream and make decisions.

And last time we met as a Leadership Team, you led us in a study of Galatians 4:4–7. It was a great little devotional. The guys in the room were all met pretty powerfully there, as you explained this cry: “Abba! Father!” And as soon as you were done, I was like, “Wow, I want that recorded and shared with the APJ audience.” So here we are. “Abba! Father!” What exactly is this experience? What’s happening to us — and in us? Is this “Abba! Father!” cry my own cry? Is it the Holy Spirit crying in and through me? Explain that. And then, does this text apply to struggling believers? How so? Explain all this for us on the podcast if you would.

What I have found, Tony, over the years is that being a Christian Hedonist — that is, being a person who believes that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him — what this has done to me is make me hungry for experiential theology. In other words, I have a discontent with theology that floats in the air above my life with no connection to my living now or living forever. So, I am on high alert when I read the Bible for statements that are intensely theological and intensely experiential.

Inward, Experiential Reality

One of those texts that took hold of me months ago is Galatians 4:4–6. So let me read the text and break it into four parts, and then I’ll address some of those things you ask.

The first part: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law . . .” So there’s the incarnation and the life of Jesus, lived perfectly under the law in fulfillment of the law.

Then the text goes on part two: “. . . to redeem those who were under the law . . .” So when Jesus died, a redemption price was paid to set free slaves of sin and death, slaves of law-keeping. A kind of legal transaction happened by which the Father satisfied all the demands of his own justice and purchased for himself a people.

Third, the text goes on: he redeemed those who were under the law “so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Now, the effect of that legal redemption, that price that was paid, was that God now legally possesses a people for himself — he bought them. They are legally his, his children. He’s adopted them, paid the necessary price for them. They are sons of God.

“Because we are legally sons, God gives us the experience of sons.”

Now, the last part, verse six: “And because you are sons” — so the legal transaction has taken place at the cross — “God has sent the Spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Now, this is where that magnificent, glorious theology in the first three parts of those verses becomes intensely experiential. Until now, we have incarnation, we have redemption, we have legal transactions on the cross securing our adoption. All of that is historical, outside of us. That’s not inside of us. This is different. Now, he says, our hearts are in view — our hearts, the place of spiritual experience, the experience of perceptions and the experience of affections. Because we are legally sons, God gives us the experience of sons. The Spirit of the Son of God is sent into our hearts, and he cries in our hearts, “Abba! Father!”

Cry of Every Christian

Now that should shake everybody up and make every Christian say, “Have I experienced that? Am I real?” Now, Paul had already said just a few verses earlier: “You are all sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:26). So, there are at least three ways that we can talk about becoming sons of God. One, Ephesians 1:5 says, “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Christ Jesus.” Number two, Galatians 4:5 (we just read it) says, “. . . to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” And third, now Galatians 3:26 says, “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”

Predestination is not an experience in the heart. Redemption is not an experience in the heart — it’s on the cross. But faith is an experience in the heart. And that’s what Paul is describing when he says that God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

Let’s think about this experience for just a moment. Every Christian has experienced this. And if that shakes you up and you say, “I can’t remember when I got the Spirit, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” well, just listen carefully. Every Christian has experienced this, at least in some measure. Some of us have been so badly taught or not taught at all that we experienced this — we really did — and we had no idea what was happening to us. No one ever explained it to us. Oh, how keenly interested we should be in understanding what has happened to us to make us Christians and how we should understand our experiences as Christians. Paul is not saying that God sent the Spirit of his Son into a few special Christians — like pastors — crying, “Abba! Father!” That’s what he does to all the redeemed sons of God.

The Spirit Gives Us Our Voice

So, what is it like? What is this experience of the Spirit of the Son of God crying in our hearts, “Abba! Father!”? To answer that question, let’s bring in the really close parallel from Romans 8:15–16:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

In Galatians 4:5, Paul says the Spirit is poured into our hearts, he himself crying, “Abba! Father!” But in Romans 8:15, he says we have received the Spirit, and we cry, “Abba! Father!” So, is this an experience of us crying, “Abba! Father!” from our heart, or the Spirit crying, “Abba! Father!” in our heart?

And then Romans 8:16, the next verse, gives us the answer: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” We don’t hear a voice inside of us saying, “Abba! Father! Abba! Father!” as though we were separate from the experience, watching it happen and then deciding whether we like it or not. That’s not at all what’s happening here. This is the Spirit of the Son of God taking possession of God’s child and giving voice.

He’s giving voice to the child, his Spirit witnessing with our spirit — a voice, our voice, inside our heart. It’s a voice of recognition, a voice of affection, a voice of joy. It says something like this: “I have God as my Father. He has paid for me. He has adopted me. He cares for me. He wants me. He loves me. He protects me. He provides for me. He has made me an heir of all that he owns. God is my Father.”

Jesus’s ‘Abba’

Now, the word crying — crying, “Abba! Father!” — doesn’t mean lament. I mean, in English, the word cry so often has been connected with weep. That’s not the meaning here. This is a cry of joy — unspeakable joy. It’s the same word used when the children back in the Gospel said, “Hosanna to the son of David!” (Matthew 21:15). They were crying that, and that’s the way we should hear the word crying here — not weeping, but crying, “Hosanna! Father! Abba! I can’t believe I’m a child.”

That’s the spirit of this cry. And the word abba is the Aramaic word used by Jesus himself in speaking to his Father in Mark 14:36. When Paul chooses to use this Aramaic word, taken over into Greek — it isn’t a Greek word — he takes it straight over and transliterates it in Greek as abba. When he does that, he makes clear that we are being drawn into the very experience of the Son of God. The Son of God called his Father, “Abba! Father!” and that word stuck with the early church because the Holy Spirit creates the very experience of the Son of God toward his Father in our heart so that we are sensing the same kinship with God that the Son of God has as our elder brother in the family.

So, this experience is the inner voice of the Spirit-indwelt child of God. It’s the experience of God’s Spirit causing to rise up in us a spiritual sight of God’s blood-bought, fatherly care and a spiritual taste of the sweetness of Christ’s own love for his Father. It’s the Spirit of the Son crying, “Abba! Father!” in and with our spirit.

Now, let me make one more connection that I had never seen before when I was thinking about this a while back. In John 7:37–39, Jesus stood up, and it says, he “cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”’” And then he adds this: “Now this he said about the Spirit.” So, believing is described as the thirsty soul coming to Jesus to drink. And the effect of that drinking, that believing, Jesus says in John 4:14, is that we will never be thirsty again. The water will become a spring, a spring of water, ever self-replenishing.

And then, he says in John 7:38, “No, more than a spring — a river.” And then he adds, “This is the Spirit.” This is the experience of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Son of God, the Spirit of the risen Son of God: the sight and the taste of God becoming our all-satisfying Father through Christ.

Word to Strugglers

So, you asked, Tony, “How does this apply to a struggling believer?” So may I put it like this? Jesus was trying to help his disciples experience the loving provision of God as their Father in Matthew 6, remember, where he said, “Don’t be anxious about anything. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”

“God is very patient with his children as they grow up into the wonders of what their adoption really means.”

He’s trying to persuade these disciples, “If you follow me, come to me, trust me, God almighty will be your all-providing Father.” And then he says, “O you of little faith” (Matthew 6:30). So, I take that to be the struggler. I mean, what else is struggle except, “I hear John Piper talk about this — I don’t know if my faith reflects what he’s just described”? That’s who I’m talking to right now. So what did Jesus say when he said, “O you of little faith”? “Get out of here I’m done with you”? Thank God he doesn’t do that. Instead, he gave them eight reasons to trust their heavenly Father. He didn’t throw them out. He named them as little-faith strugglers, and then he kept on pleading with them, “Listen to me. Listen to me. I’m talking about the birds; I’m talking about the lilies.” There are eight reasons to trust him as our Father.

So, I would say to all strugglers: Get to know what has happened to you. Get to know it. You’ve got to learn it from the Bible. You can’t learn it any other way. We can’t interpret what has happened to us if we don’t read our Bibles through and through. Get a biblical understanding of how you came to faith, because you probably don’t know how you came to faith, if nobody’s taught you truly.

Get a biblical understanding of all those emotions in your heart. You can’t even name them. You can’t describe them. You don’t know what’s going on inside of you when the Holy Spirit is stirring you up from within. God is very patient with his children as they grow up into the wonders of what their adoption really means.

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

For a forgiven people, we can still be terribly bad at coping with our imperfection. I can be terribly bad at coping with the fact that, though redeemed, I am still deeply and pervasively imperfect.

My remaining imperfections regularly, even daily, disrupt and corrupt my thoughts, decisions, and conversations. How do you respond when you’re forced to see those same sins in the mirror again — the ones you have confessed, fought, and even overcome — only to have to rise, confess, and fight again? As God mapped out our narrow paths to glory, he chose that imperfection would be our constant (and unwanted) companion.

When I say imperfection, I’m not talking about unrepentant sin. “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil. . . . No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God” (1 John 3:8–9). Unrepentant sin should disturb us until we genuinely repent and receive mercy. It should unnerve us enough to keep us awake at night. It should ruin our mental health. God will not abide in any soul where sin still reigns.

He does, however, live in souls where sin remains. In fact, every person he chooses is still darkened by some imperfection. Our remaining sin is forgiven and expiring — the day we die will be the last day we sin — but our remaining sin is still very real, and powerful, and ugly. Almost unbearably ugly at times. How could this selfishness, or impatience, or lust, or laziness, or envy possibly still entangle me?

Because God has chosen, for now, that the forgiven still be imperfect.

Well Acquainted with Imperfection

So what does a godly life of imperfection look like?

The apostle Paul was aware of his own imperfection. “Not that I have already obtained this” — the resurrection of his glorified body — “or am already perfect. . . ” (Philippians 3:12). Even as an apostle, he was acutely aware of just how not-yet he was. He knew he was an unconditionally elected, irresistibly loved, blood-bought, Spirit-filled work-in-process. An unfinished apostle. Paul was fully aware that he was not yet what he would soon be.

He was aware of his imperfections, but not paralyzed by them. “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). He didn’t just sit back and wait for his resurrection to come, but pressed on to make it his own, from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18). Knowing that God would one day make him fully righteous at the resurrection, he was all the more hungry to grow in righteousness until that day. He worked out his salvation — he really, diligently worked, with fear and trembling — for he knew that God was at work — really at work — in him (Philippians 2:12–13).

Forgiveness, for Paul, was not an excuse to make peace with sin, but drove him further into war against sin. He didn’t see his imperfection as a reason to settle for less righteousness; he saw his imperfection as motivation for more righteousness — for more of Christ. And so he pressed on to have it, to have him.

Ambitious Imperfection

In the next two verses, the apostle draws us further into his earnest, focused, and imperfect pursuit of holiness:

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. [I am not the glorified man I want to be.] But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13–14)

What does he do in the face of all his many imperfections? He presses on. “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on.” This is a picture of godly and ambitious imperfection in Christ — not clinging to a sense of self-righteousness or wallowing in the pit of self-pity, but pressing on to know more of Christ, to enjoy more of Christ, to live more like Christ.

To press on is unavoidably uncomfortable. It means meeting and overcoming resistance. The same word is used (in the same chapter) for persecution (Philippians 3:6). This pursuit of holiness is a steady, and at times aggressive, pursuit, a resilient pursuit, a determined pursuit. It’s not surprised by opposition or undone by setbacks. It’s a straining forward, he says. It keeps taking the next step toward godliness, even when the steps sometimes feel small or slow or sideways.

This resolve to press on is clarified and intensified by three life-changing mindsets — a disciplined forgetfulness, a focused longing, and an ambitious sense of security.

Disciplined Forgetfulness

We don’t often associate forgetfulness with faithfulness. Yet Paul says he presses on, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” The word for forgetting is the same word used in Matthew 16, when the disciples forgot to bring bread on one of their trips with Jesus (Matthew 16:5). Paul’s forgetting, however, is no accident; it’s deliberate.

So what does Paul deliberately forget? Earlier in the chapter, he catalogues his proud attempts at self-righteousness, the ways he mocked God by trying to please God on his own (Philippians 3:5–6). He knows how sinful he once was: “I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (1 Timothy 1:13). But grace broke through his hardness, interrupted his defiance, and led him to Jesus (1 Timothy 1:13–15). So what would he do now with the evil he had done? He consciously leaves it behind.

Everyone forgiven by God carries the memories of awful, shameful sin. Our past apart from Christ, whatever past we have, is dark enough to make any of us despair. And Satan fights hard to see that it does. He’s an accuser by vocation (Revelation 12:10). He wants us to forget all that would lift and satisfy our souls — and to remember anything that makes us question God’s love for us. And we each give him plenty to work with.

To defy him, we have to learn to forget what God has forgiven — like the loaves of bread the disciples left behind. We can’t let the sins of our past, or even the sins we’re presently battling, keep us from stepping forward, by the Spirit, into greater obedience and faithfulness today.

Focused Longing

One way to forget the regrets that would undo us is to focus on what God has promised to those he has forgiven in Christ. “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

“The strength to endure imperfection comes from treasuring the one who died for our imperfection.”

What does lie ahead for the imperfect but forgiven? What is the prize of the upward call of God? The not-yet perfect apostle tells us earlier in the chapter, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Knowing Jesus is the blazing fire under Paul’s persistent pursuit of holiness. Every other prize pales next to having him. Christ himself is the prize of the Christian life, the one reward worth all our obedience and sacrifice, our pearl of great price. The strength to endure imperfection comes from treasuring the one who died for our imperfection.

Can we not bear imperfection a little longer, and keep battling our remaining sin a little longer, if we know that at the end of our short, hard race here on earth is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11) — a wreath that will always satisfy and never perish (1 Corinthians 9:24–25)?

Christ Made You His Own

A third life-changing mindset, and the most crucial, is hiding in verse 14: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Two verses earlier, he says, “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” The redeemed life of imperfection is a captured life of imperfection.

We can keep striving to lay hold of holiness only because we know that Holiness himself has laid hold of us — and he will never let go. If you belong to him, your imperfections are imperfections purchased and cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Any not-yet-ness you find in yourself is an opportunity to remember what he paid to make you his own — as you are, sins and all — and to remember that everything ugly about you, your sins and all, will one day be made whiter than snow and brighter than the sun.

“To be sure, you are not what you will be, but even as you are, Christ has made you his own.”

In the next verse, verse 15, the apostle writes, “Let those of us who are mature” — or “perfect,” same root word as in verse 12: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect” — “Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you” (Philippians 3:15). In other words, let those of you who are complete in Christ know you are incomplete. Let those of you who are mature know you are imperfect — and chosen, and bought, and captured, and loved. To be sure, you are not what you will be, but even as you are, Christ has made you his own.

So press through your imperfections into holiness, forgetting what lies behind and pressing forward toward all that lies ahead, so that you might experience and enjoy more of Jesus.

Audio Transcript

This podcast often addresses gospel boldness, risk-taking, and personal suffering. On occasion, those three themes — boldness, risk, and suffering — merge together, like they do in today’s sermon clip from the ministry of John Piper. Today, we look specifically at how the assurance of the hope of heaven releases us for radical, risk-taking love that makes people look at our lives and ask for “the reason for the hope that is in you,” as Peter says it (1 Peter 3:15). So, how do we escape the natural love of safety? Here’s Pastor John’s answer, from thirty years ago, in a sermon on Revelation 21.

Richard Baxter was a very effective pastor in the seventeenth century in England. He’s well known for his book The Reformed Pastor. Not many people know, however, that Richard Baxter labored for all the years of his life under tremendous pain. He had frequent nose bleeds, constant cough, headaches, digestive ailments, kidney stones, gallstones.

He believed in supernatural healing, and he testified several times that God had delivered him out of a deadly disease to keep on ministering via direct intervention. In fact, he told the story one time of entering the pulpit, and he could see in the looking glass a big cancerous tumor on the back of his throat that vanished while he was preaching and testifying to the grace of God.

Preciousness of Heaven

And yet, all his life, from the age of 21 on, he testified that he was “seldom an hour free from pain.” One of the effects on Richard Baxter’s life is that it made him keenly aware of how short life is, how certain death is, and how precious heaven is. When he was 35 years old, he became what he thought was mortally ill. And he was on his bed, and he thought he was dying.

And he formed a habit, which as it turned out, lasted for forty years, because he didn’t die. The habit was meditating a half an hour a day on the glories of heaven. The reason he formed this habit and maintained this habit is because of the profound effect that it had on his life, keeping him awake to the things of God and to the brevity of this life. He wrote down those reflections in those days, and they became a book called The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, which is still in print three hundred years later to testify to the power of this man’s vision of what he had seen of God’s glorious hope for the believer. He commended it to us, that we would take time each day to set our minds on heaven.

This is the way he said it:

If you would have light and heat, why are you not more in the sunshine? For want of this recourse to heaven your soul is as a lamp not lighted, and your duty as a sacrifice without fire. Fetch one coal daily from this altar, and see if your offering will not burn. . . . Keep close to this reviving fire, and see if your affections will not be warm.

Set Your Mind on Things Above

Now, that’s good advice. I think it’s the same advice that Paul gave in Colossians 3. He said, following up on last Sunday’s message, as it were,

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

“How frequently do you set your mind on things that are above and dwell there?”

Now, I want to ask you, do you do that? Do you obey that? How frequently do you set your mind on things that are above and dwell there? How frequently do you seek the future? Do you seek the age to come? Do you look to where your life is hid with Christ in God and anticipate the glory that will be you when you come with him, and you in your true life are revealed?

We are so addicted to the world. So, I just want to invite you, with Richard Baxter, to do what he did, and every day to set your mind on things that are above. And I want you to repudiate with me a lie that goes like this: “Well, if you spend time thinking about heaven, if you dwell on the age to come, and the glories of your hope, you are going to become of no earthly good whatsoever.” Now, that’s a lie. It’s a common one.

Risk-Taking Hope

I think exactly the opposite is the case. It’s the people who know their hope, who know that their destiny is rock-solid and sure, who know that their destiny is glorious, who are free to take risks of love, free to “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still.” I’ve got a destiny. I’ve got a future. I cannot die. Mark it. It is not the people who have that hope, who have that security, who live in that confidence, who live their lives gathering treasures on earth and ignore the needs of people.

It’s people who are free, who don’t need money, who don’t need comforts, who don’t need worldly acclaim because they’ve got it all in Jesus, who are free to take risks for others. First Peter 3:15 says, “. . . always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Now, have you ever had anybody ask you a reason for the hope that is in you? Have you had anybody look at your behavior and say, “My, what hope must be behind that behavior?” I ask you, what kind of behavior would that be?

If somebody jumps out of an airplane, you don’t jump out behind them with no parachute. Two dead people aren’t better than one. So, if somebody falls out of an airplane with no parachute on, you might jump out after them, if you have a parachute on, and you try one of those bullet dives to catch them. So they’re falling kind of loose and stopping a lot of air, 110 miles an hour, maybe, and you go bullet-like, 150 miles an hour, maybe. You might do that, because the security and the hope of this parachute free you for that kind of love — free you for that kind of risk-taking. So, if somebody’s in the airplane, and they see you about to jump, and they ask you, “What’s the reason for the hope that you have, to jump out of this airplane to try to catch somebody? What’s the reason for your hope?” You say, “The parachute. It’s called the hope of glory. The parachute, that’s my hope.” And then you jump.

Free to Change the World

Now I want to ask you, what kind of lifestyle will move people to ask you questions like that about your hope? Gathering money? No, because they’ll assume money is your hope. Gathering comforts? Comforts are your hope. Spending all your time watching television? No, television is your hope. Hope frees for a radical new lifestyle.

“People in love with heaven are the ones that are free to change this world.”

So, I want to call you with Richard Baxter, and I want to call you with the apostle Paul, if you have been raised with Christ, if your life is hid with Christ in God — out there secure. It’s done. Absolutely. You cannot die. You cannot lose. If it’s that sure, I want to invite you to set your mind on things that are above. Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated. Let your mind dwell on the glories of the age to come.

And you know what’ll happen? You will become a free person. And free people are dangerous people to the kingdom of Satan, because they don’t ask cautionary questions about what it will cost in this life. They throw that to the wind, and they love, and they sacrifice, and they go, and they serve, and they change the world — this world, of all things. Of all things, can you imagine that? People in love with heaven are the ones that are free to change this world.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Little did they know how well they spoke — not only for themselves, but for the whole human race.

John 12:20 reports that “some Greeks” had come to worship in Jerusalem for that fateful Passover leading up to Jesus’s crucifixion. They approached his disciple Philip, who told another disciple, Andrew. Together, the two came to their Master with the request of the Greeks “to see Jesus” — to which Jesus gave this spectacularly unexpected response:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

That was not the answer they were expecting — the disciples or the Greeks. But their wish to see Jesus was not rejected but redirected. It was an admirable wish, profoundly so — and if they remain in Jerusalem for the week, they will soon see the most important sight of him, crushing as it at first will be. His time has come to be “glorified” — which will not mean leading a charge to overthrow Rome and seize the crown, but laying down his life. Like a grain of wheat, he will not bear much fruit unless he first dies.

These Greeks will indeed see him, and glimpse a sight far greater than they could have anticipated or imagined — far more horrible, and far more wonderful. They will witness the depths of his humiliation that will prove to be the very height of the glory of the one who truly
is David’s long-promised heir to the throne, as shocking and unexpected as it will be.

And as they see him — in his divine and human excellencies, united in one person, and
culminating in the cross and its aftermath — they will have all they wished and more in the request they made expressing the deepest longing of every human heart.

Infinite Abyss

Famously, Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensees of “the infinite abyss” in the human soul that we try to fill with all the wonders and the worst this world has to offer.

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate,
because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

So also the great Augustine, more than twelve centuries before Pascal, had spoken of the great, undeniable restlessness of the human heart, until finding its rest in God: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Moses, seeking to leverage God’s remarkable favor on him, was so bold as to ask to see God’s glory. God permitted him a glimpse of the afterglow of divine beauty, not his face, and Moses made no complaints. Yet redemptive history was not done at Sinai. Centuries would follow. The kingdom would be established in the land, and decline. Human kings would rise and fall, and the nation with them. And the same Gospel in which the Greeks expressed their wish to see Jesus opens with one of the most stunning claims possible:

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The desire to see Jesus was far more profound than these Greeks could have guessed. They wished for amazement in the presence of someone great. And what they got instead anticipated the heavenly vision the apostle John would receive while in exile on the isle of Patmos.

Behold the Lion

In John’s vision, none in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth, is at first found worthy to open the scroll of God’s divine decrees of judgment (for his enemies) and salvation (for his people). Sensing the weight and importance of the moment, John begins to weep — perhaps even wondering if his Lord, the one who discipled him, the one to whom he’s dedicated his life as a witness, is not worthy. One of heaven’s elders then turns to him, and declares, in Revelation 5:5,

Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.

Having heard the good news, John turns to look — and what does he see? Not a lion. He says in verse 6:

I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes . . . .

We might mistakenly assume this was a disappointment, that John, hearing “Lion,” experienced some letdown to see a Lamb. But that is not how John reports it. This Lamb is no loss. The Lamb is gain. The one who was just declared to be the only one worthy is no less the Lion of Judah. He is also the Lamb who was slain. The Lion became Lamb without ceasing to be Lion. He did not jettison his lionlike glories, but added to his greatness the excellences of the Lamb. He is a Lamb standing — not dead, not slumped over, not kneeling, but alive and ready — with fullness of power (“seven horns”), seeing and reigning over all (“and seven eyes”).

So too for the Greeks in John 12 who wished to take counsel with the purported Messiah and Lion of Judah. Whatever disappointment they experienced in the moment in not having their immediate request fulfilled, and whatever devastations they endured on Good Friday as they watched in horror, it all changed on the third day. Then their wish, and perceptive inquiry, was answered beyond their greatest dreams — not just Messiah, but God himself, the very Lion of heaven. And not just divine, but the added lamblike glory of our own human flesh and blood,
and that same blood spilled to not only show us glory but invite us into it — Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian.

Looking to Jesus

Plain as it may seem, the author of Hebrews provides profound direction for the human soul when he says, simply, “Consider Jesus”. This is not a one-time exhortation, but continuous counsel, for every day and at any moment. And again, at the height of his letter, drawing attention to the great cloud of witnesses, Hebrews charges us to “lay aside every weight and sin” and “run with endurance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). There is unmatched power in the Christward gaze.
As Jesus himself would soon say, in John 14:9, to the same Philip who relayed the Greeks’ request: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

Paul too, in one blessed flourish in 2 Corinthians 4, would celebrate, and commend,
the unsurpassed glory of the Christward gaze: “beholding the glory of the Lord [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” Unbelieving eyes have been blinded to “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,”
but we, by the mercy of God, have eyes of the heart opened to “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

We might here speak of the manifest Christocentrism of the New Testament, and a kind of healthy asymmetrical trinitarianism in the Christian faith — “contemplating the Trinity through a christological lens,” as Dane Ortlund writes, “and Christ through a trinitarian lens.”
We wish to see Jesus. He is the interpretative key to the Bible, the pinnacle of history, and central in Christian preaching, evangelism, and sanctification, and so we fix our eyes on him. Biblical trinitarianism doesn’t constrain us to symmetrically parcel out our attention and focus to each of the three divine Persons, according to modern notions of fairness, balance, and equality. The New Testament is far from “fair” in this way. Rather, as humans ourselves, we receive a peculiar centrality of the God-man, as the one Person of the Godhead who has drawn near in our own flesh, taking our own nature, to no diminishing of the Father or Spirit, but precisely according to their plan and work to direct attention to Jesus.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus” would be a happy refrain to echo at key junctures in the Christian life. Before morning Bible meditation: “I wish to see Jesus.” Before conversations with the unbelieving: “I wish them to see Jesus.” For pastors, preparing to preach, to imagine these words on the lips of our people: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

Made for Him

We were indeed made for God — with an infinite abyss only he can fill, with a restlessness of soul satisfied in nothing less than him. And even more particularly, we were made for the God-man — for the greatness of God himself who draws near, in our own flesh and circumstances, in the person of Christ. The lionlike greatness of God in his divine glory is sweetened, deepened, and accented by his lamblike nearness and human excellencies. And his glories as the humble, meek, self-giving Lamb are enriched and magnified in the register of lionlike poise and majesty.

We wish to see Jesus — to know him as both great and near, and enjoy him forever.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15066381/factors-feeding-a-wifes-submission

What is “grace”?

Some people today define “grace” as “God’s riches at Christ’s expense.” Others gloss it as “unconditional gift” or “undeserved favor.” Still others prefer to see it as God’s favorable disposition toward his people. However, the word grace in the New Testament (Greek charis) simply means “gift.” The content of the gift is determined by its context. For example, the definition “God’s riches at Christ’s expense” makes perfect sense in the broader context of Ephesians 2:8.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

But does that same definition fit 2 Corinthians 12:9?

[Jesus] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in weakness.”

What about 1 Corinthians 15:10?

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

The more fitting definition of “grace” in these two passages in Corinthians seems to be “power.” Grace is God’s power manifested in Paul’s weakness in the first, and in his ability to work harder than others in the second.

Do We Give Grace?

What about 2 Corinthians 8:3–4? Do the glosses “unconditional gift,” “undeserved favor,” or “a favorable disposition” work here?

[The Macedonian believers] gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor [same word for grace] of taking part in the relief of the saints.”

Grace here is not the immaterial gift of salvation or spiritual power. Rather, grace is the material gift of money or resources.

That may surprise you. Have you ever described the act of giving money as the giving of “grace”? Paul clearly does in 2 Corinthians 8–9, not just once, but six times (8:4, 6, 7, 19; 9:8, 15). The money bag he carried from these predominantly Gentile churches to the poor saints in Jerusalem is, strangely enough, “grace.”

But what is even more surprising about 2 Corinthians 8–9 is how the material grace of humans is inextricably connected to the immaterial grace of God.

Grace as a Person

To motivate the Corinthians to contribute, Paul begins 2 Corinthians 8 by speaking about the grace of God. “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given” (2 Corinthians 8:1). He then expands the definition of this grace in 2 Corinthians 8:9: “you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that although he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”

Grace, in its chief manifestation, is the gift of a person (Titus 2:11–14), our incarnate, crucified, and ascended Savior. To receive all the benefits that this gift of grace achieved, we must, as Calvin argues, receive his person: “as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us” (Institutes, 3.1.1).

In 2 Corinthians 8:9, we find that the gift of Christ’s person is given to us in the gospel — he lowered himself, so that we, through his poverty, might become rich. And this gift comes from God. It is, after all, “the grace of God” (2 Corinthians 8:1).

“Christ’s self-giving love is the paradigm for human expressions of material grace toward others.”

I find it fascinating that when Paul wants to encourage human giving in the church, he placards the divine grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the fundamental expression of giving grace as he gives himself. Paul does this intentionally to teach the church that Christ’s self-giving love is the paradigm for all human expressions of material grace toward others.

Interestingly, the only two instances where the phrase “the grace of God” appears in 2 Corinthians 8–9 are when Paul speaks of God’s giving (2 Corinthians 8:1) and human giving (2 Corinthians 9:14: “the surpassing grace of God on you [Corinthians]”). What’s the connection? God’s divine gift of grace fuels the human giving of grace to others.

God’s Grace and Ours

Consider 2 Corinthians 9:7–8. After stating that “God loves a cheerful giver” (quoting Proverbs 22:8), Paul takes a step back to explain the source of one’s giving. “God is able to make all grace [divine grace] abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work [human grace].” Also, 2 Corinthians 9:11: “You will be enriched in every way [by God] to be generous in every way [toward others].” Divine grace propels human giving.

But why is this the case? Why does our human giving depend on God’s initial gift of grace? Because “all things are from him, through him, and to him. To him be the glory forever and ever” (Romans 11:36). As Paul asks the boastful Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive? Why then do you boast as if you did not?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). The only appropriate response is, “Everything is a gift from God’s hand.”

David also declared, “All things come from you” (1 Chronicles 29.14). John the Baptist also affirms what David declared: “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27). James agrees: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

But God always gives his grace to his people for a particular purpose. We see this in 2 Corinthians 9:8 above (indicated by “so that”) and 9:11 (indicated by “to be”). When people in the world give gifts, they determine the purpose of their gifts. But when God’s people steward God’s grace, the purpose of giving must align with God’s purposes.

Thanks Be to God

Why? Because our possessions are God’s. He’s the Giver and the owner of grace. We’re simply stewards who mediate his grace. In a sense, we’re co-owners, but God never relinquishes his divine right over our possessions.

This becomes evident when we discover who receives thanks for the gift that the Corinthians give to the Jerusalem saints. Paul writes,

You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!

“Ultimately, humans do not receive from, but through, other humans. The giver is God.”

Why will humans direct their thanksgiving to God rather than to the human giver? Because, ultimately, humans do not receive from but through other humans. The final giver is God. He therefore deserves the final glory.

But does this mean that when I receive a gift from another human, I should never thank that person? Of course not. John Calvin’s Geneva Catechism #234 is helpful here. He writes,

Question: But are we not to feel grateful to men whenever they have conferred any kindness upon us?

Answer: Certainly we are; and were it only for the reason that God honors them by sending to us, through their hands, as rivulets [or streams], the blessings which flow from the inexhaustible fountain of his liberality. In this way, he [God] lays us under obligation to them, and wishes us to acknowledge it. He, therefore, who does not show himself grateful to them by so doing, proves himself to be ungrateful to God.

We thank God by thanking others, remembering that his gifts come from him but through others. And so our thanks should flow through others back to God — the Father of every good and perfect gift — as Paul does when he ends 2 Corinthians 9:15 by saying, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”

More than Human Love

Recently, a close friend of mine bestowed on me a very generous gift. I was floored by his loving generosity toward me and my family, especially my mom. He loved my mom with an earnest love for widows.

But his love was no mere human love. It was divine. Not that my friend is God. But God loves through means. Ηe channeled his abundant love on us through this friend, allowing us to witness the beauty of divine and human grace for those in need. His act of generosity was simultaneously a gracious act of self-giving, and it immediately redirected my eyes and heart to the self-giving love of Christ. It was therefore more than fitting to turn to my friend and say, “I thank God for ‘the surpassing grace of God upon you’” (2 Corinthians 9:14).

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. –Psalm 16:1

This verse has become the most common prayer that I pray. I pray it both for its simplicity and its profundity. The logic of the prayer is that of a child’s: “Save me for no other reason than that I’m in danger and I’ve run to you for help.” “Keep me because I seek safety and protection in you.” Not, “Keep me because of my past or future faithfulness.” Not, “Preserve me because I’m useful or because I’m worthy.” Just, “Preserve me, because I’m frightened and I’m here and my eyes are looking to you.”

The childlike spirit of the request is reflected in Thomas Ken’s “Evening Hymn.”

All praise to thee, my God, this nightFor all the blessing of the light.Keep me, O keep me, King of kingsBeneath thine own almighty wings.

But the prayers of a child are not necessarily childish prayers. Often there is a depth and weight to such prayers which make them fitting for Christians of all ages. Meditate with me on the depth of this simple prayer.

Preserve Me from What?

King David’s prayer implies perils we must seek refuge from. There are threats, dangers, hostile forces, challenges. And there are. In the world. In the church. In your life and mine.

The psalm does not specify the dangers. But we can imagine. The dangers could be external. Enemies who plot and scheme and set traps. Wicked men who lie in wait and pursue the innocent. Liars and slanderers who utter false things against us. Disease and sickness which lay us low. The loss of wealth or job or other forms of earthly security.

All of these (and more) could be in the mind of the psalmist. More importantly, the absence of specificity allows us to fill in the gap, to supply our own dangers and threats and challenges so that David’s prayer becomes our own.

Seeking Refuge

In the face of the danger (whatever dangers we face), the response is the same: we seek refuge in God. The notion of “taking refuge” is a common one in Scripture. It means to find shelter and protection and safety in something. When the scorching sun beats down on us, we take refuge in the shade of a tree. When the icy winds and snowstorms threaten, we take refuge in a warm house.

The image often connotes a pursuer (Psalm 7:2; 17:7). If a man accidentally kills another, for example, he flees to a city of refuge in order to be kept from the avenger of blood. Or the city of Zion, founded by Yahweh, is a refuge for the afflicted of his people (Isaiah 14:32). If someone shoots an arrow at us, we take refuge behind a shield.

A refuge belongs to a cluster of biblical terms that identify places of sanctuary and strength. Psalm 18 stacks such terms one after another. “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (Psalm 18:2).

“When our self-sufficiency is proved to be the lie that it is, where do we run?”

To seek refuge means to find the place where we can let down our guard, where we don’t have to be on high alert. To find refuge is to find rest, a place where we can sleep because someone strong and secure is keeping watch. Images give the term meaning. The child, fleeing from a bully, takes refuge at his older brother’s side. The chicks, hearing a loud noise, take refuge beneath the wings of their mother. The desperate family, pursued by soldiers, finds a hiding place in the Ten Boom house.

The prayer of Psalm 16:1 poses challenging questions to us. When we face dangers and threats, where do we turn? When our self-sufficiency is proved to be the lie that it is, where do we run? When we sense danger, we all seek refuge. But do we seek refuge in God? Do we run to him? Do we hide in him? Or do we run to earthly shelters, to worldly fortresses, to false idols?

Enemy Within

There are real external dangers in the world. And when we face them, we ought to seek refuge in God and cry to him to keep us.

I am daily sensible, though, that the greatest threat to my being kept and preserved is not external opposition, or persecution by non-Christians, or physical threats, or relational conflict among former friends and colleagues, or misrepresentations and slander. The greatest threat to my being kept is my own unbelief. Not things out there; something in here. Unbelief is the greatest threat and danger and challenge that I face. Which means when I pray, “Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge,” I mean, “I take refuge in you from me.” My thoughts. My passions. My sinful desires. My doubts. My moods. My unbelief.

What’s more, I have found that frequently Psalm 16:1 is both a request and a fulfillment of the request. That is, God is answering the prayer, in part, in my praying of the prayer. He is keeping me in my prayer to be kept. The prayer itself interrupts the thoughts, passions, desires, doubts, and moods that were threatening my faith.

Rescue Me from Doubt

Consider how Psalm 16:1 interrupts doubts. There I am, living as a Christian, resting in and hoping in Christ. The risen Christ is a living assumption undergirding my life and actions, and his word and gospel frame reality for me.

Then doubts come crashing into that normal Christian life. Perhaps doubts about my eternal state. Or perhaps doubts about the reality of God and the truth of the gospel. The bedrock conviction of life feels shaken. Faith feels fragile, and I wonder whether I’ll be kept. In those moments, “the God question” can easily become all-consuming. Unbelief and skepticism become the default posture of the soul, and the mind revolves endlessly on itself, looking for a way out. In other words, I’m seeking refuge.

“God is not a puzzle to be solved, but a person to be sought.”

In those moments, Psalm 16:1 is both a prayer and a means of deliverance. The prayer reframes the doubts and the questions because Psalm 16:1 is both a description and an enactment. I don’t just ask him to keep me because I’ve sought refuge in him in the past. I am seeking refuge in God now, in the present, by asking him to keep me now, in the present.

In praying the psalm, I turn from thinking about God as an intellectual puzzle from a posture of unbelief. Instead, I am addressing God as a person from a posture of desperate and child-like faith. And that difference is crucial. God is not a puzzle to be solved, but a person to be sought.

Preserve Me, O God

Psalm 16:1 interrupts my doubts by awakening me to the reality that we never talk about God behind his back. Our thoughts and deeds, our desires and doubts, our questions and moods — all of these are conducted in his presence, before his face, at his right hand.

The prayer of Psalm 16:1 is a prayer of faith, since I am no longer attempting to reason about God in his absence but addressing him as Father in his presence. And through such awakenings and interruptions, God answers my prayer. He keeps me, because I seek refuge in him.

Yes, Psalm 16:1 is as profound as it is simple, as simple as it is profound. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. And therefore, I encourage you, in the face of dangers and enemies, anxieties and fears, doubt and unbelief, make Psalm 16:1 your prayer.

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you had an edifying weekend. We start the week with a missions question, and it’s this: Did the apostle Paul say the gospel had already reached the ends of the world in his own lifetime? It appears he did, and that raises implications about the urgency of the Great Commission today.

Here’s the question. “Pastor John, hello! My name is Kevin, and I live in Chicago. My question has to do with Paul’s words in Colossians 1:6, where he speaks of the gospel that has ‘come to you, as indeed in the whole world.’ He maybe suggested that the gospel had already reached the whole world in his lifetime. It seems clearer in Colossians 1:23. There Paul speaks of the hope ‘of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven.’ Wow. So what does Paul mean when he says that the hope of the gospel has already been proclaimed in all creation? I feel an urgency to unreached nations. But these texts have dampened that urgency in me some. Can you explain what Paul means here? Thank you!”

Well, bless you, Kevin, for the sense of urgency that you feel. And yes, I think I can explain it, and I hope I can not only explain it, but explain it in a way that intensifies your commitment to reach the nations rather than dampening that commitment. So, let’s take these two passages one at a time.

Gospel on the Move

Colossians 1:5–6 says, referring to “the hope laid up for you in heaven,” “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing — as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.”

Now, notice what that text does not say. It does not say that the gospel has already been preached in the whole world. It does not say that the gospel has reached to the ends of the world. It simply says that the gospel, which has come to you Colossians, is the very gospel that is bearing fruit and increasing everywhere it goes in the whole world. The point is not that he has finished going through the whole world. The point is that it’s the kind of gospel that goes through the whole world, and wherever it goes, it bears fruit and increases.

Now, to underline that we’re on the right track in saying that, we just need to remember that Paul himself said later in Romans 15:20–24,

And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation. . . . This is the reason why I have so often been hindered from coming to you. But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while.

“Paul had no notion that the gospel had already been preached throughout the whole world.”

In other words, Paul knew very well that the gospel had not reached Spain, at least to any significant degree, because he wants to preach the gospel where the gospel has not been preached. That’s why he’s going to Spain. Paul had no notion that the gospel had already been preached throughout the whole world. So, the really crucial question in Colossians 1:6 is why Paul went out of his way to say that that very gospel, which had come to Colossae, was also making its way fruitfully through the whole world. Why did he say that?

Good News for All Peoples

I think there are three reasons. Number one, the gospel is not merely local, not merely tribal, not parochial, not limited to any one tribe or class or ethnicity or language or culture or city like Colossae. The point is that this gospel that you have believed, you Colossians, in your little out-of-the-way town of Colossae, is a triumphant, global gospel laying claim on every single person and people group in the whole world, wherever it goes. Don’t think you’ve embraced a little thing — that’s number one.

Number two, Paul said this — namely, that it’s spreading throughout the whole world and increasing — to underline the fact that there is a great, glorious Creator God behind the gospel who is laying claim on the entire creation. He’s not a tribal deity. When you believe the gospel, you believe in the God of the universe who has no serious rivals. Wherever you go, you won’t ever run into another religion, anywhere in the world, that can nullify the gospel, compromise the gospel.

“When you believe the gospel, you believe in the God of the universe who has no serious rivals.”

And the third reason, I think, he talks this way and stresses the global dimension of the gospel for the Colossians is to show that it is the power — this gospel has power — to change people of every kind, all kinds of people. It’s not just effective among one kind of humanity but will bear fruit among every single kind of humanity that it runs into — all the unimaginable differences in the world that there are today and that there were then. Therefore, it is a great gospel. That, I think, is the point of Colossians 1:6, when he says, “. . . as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing.”

More Places to Reach

Now let’s look at Colossians 1:23. I’m going to read the ESV. I think this is a bigger problem for most people than verse six, but it has a very simple solution if we could just get everybody to translate it the same way. Here’s verse 23: you have been reconciled to God “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven” — yikes — ”and of which I, Paul, became a minister.”

Now, that’s a real stumbling block for lots of people to read in their translation in verse 23, that the gospel in the first century, halfway through the first century, “has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven.” And it’s amazing to me how many commentators try to squeeze that stunning statement into the first century and say something like, “Well, really the gospel had reached to what the first-century people assumed was all creation under heaven.” To which I delicately say, “Baloney.”

I say that not only because they weren’t that ignorant — they really weren’t that ignorant of the rest of the world — but I say it mainly because Paul himself (we already saw this) said in Romans 15 that he was intending to proclaim the gospel in a vast region of Gaul, called Spain, where there hadn’t been yet the preaching of the gospel. So, he didn’t believe that the gospel had been preached in all creation under heaven.

‘Has Been Proclaimed’?

So what’s the solution? The solution is that the translation “which has been proclaimed,” is not at all the most natural translation. It baffles me why translations give it that meaning, a temporal meaning, “which has been proclaimed.” That’s translating two Greek words, “the proclaimed” — tou kērychthentos. That’s all it’s translating: “the proclaimed.”

It is a straightforward aorist passive participle in agreement with the word gospel. Both of them are genitive singular, and thus clarifying. It clarifies and defines the kind of gospel we’re talking about. With the article the in front of the participle, it is not an adverbial participle telling when. There’s nothing temporal about it. It doesn’t say “has been proclaimed.” That’s not in the word at all. Very literally it would read like this: “. . . the gospel that you heard, the proclaimed one in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.”

So the solution is that Paul is not saying anything about when the gospel is proclaimed in all creation. Rather, he’s saying, “That’s the kind of gospel it is — that’s what’s happening. It is the kind of gospel that is proclaimed under all creation under heaven.” In other words, the meaning is virtually the same as chapter 1:6: “. . . as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing.”

Paul is emphasizing the fact that the gospel embraced by this little group of people in this little town of Colossae is the very gospel that is proclaimed in all creation under heaven. God is laying claim on the entire creation, and you are being swept up into that glorious plan. It does not say, “has been proclaimed” — it “is proclaimed in all creation.” Everywhere it goes, it is being proclaimed, and it is bearing fruit.

Don’t Forsake Your Urgency

So, Kevin in Chicago, don’t lose your sense of urgency or your sense of confidence that the gospel you believe can be taken — should be taken, must be taken — to every people group on the planet.

It will be as relevant there as it is in your own heart, with tremendous power. It is a gospel bearing fruit in the whole world. It is a gospel proclaimed in all creation under heaven. And when that’s finished, Jesus says, “The end will come” (Matthew 24:14).