Newly engaged, I was searching for a good book on marriage. I remember coming across one, commended as a modern classic, with this memorable question on the cover: “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than make us happy?”

Hmm. I didn’t like that way of framing it. Why pit holy against happy? Granted, it’s a “what if” teaser on the cover. Still, this didn’t seem like a worthwhile risk to me, even if the tagline was taking aim at a common idol in our generation.

Of course, at one level, I understand, and grant, that many people have a superficial definition of, and associations with, happiness. To the degree that “happiness” refers to our experiencing momentary, superficial, comfort-based, suffering-free, pleasant feelings — and requires no new birth — then yes, true holiness, on God’s terms, will often (if not relentlessly) be at odds with such “happiness.” However, I’m not ready to cede the word happiness to such thin, shallow assumptions. That is not what we find when we come to the Scriptures. Nor do we find a holiness in tension with true happiness. In fact, the two are tied together intimately.

Strange Notions of Holiness

Some of us, favored beyond words to be raised in Christian families and faithful churches, have needed to have our concept of holiness renovated after coming to genuine faith as teens or adults. Looking back, and being sober-minded, the fault was likely not our parents’ or our church’s (for many of us) but our own: we were dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5), alive in the flesh but lifeless in spirit; we needed to be born again. And when God made us alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:5), we began to see our Creator and his world with new eyes, and eventually also his holiness, and our call to be holy as he is.

The challenge to come awake to real holiness is not unique in our generation. Three hundred years ago, a young Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) encountered such a barrier, and found it, with God’s help, to be surmountable. Writing about the 16-year-old Edwards, biographer George Mardsen says,

Self-discipline had failed as much as it had succeeded. Self-examination was not encouraging either. As early as he could remember, he had resented much of the endless tedium of his parents’ teaching and discipline. Holiness seemed “a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing.” He did not find delight in lengthy church services. He still had a rebellious nature. He was proud. He had a difficult and unsociable personality, and he did not have signs of charity that were evidence of grace. He struggled with sexual lusts which, despite prodigious efforts, he could not wholly control. (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 36)

Here Marsden surmises Edwards’s thoughts as a teen (in quotes) based an admission Edwards made later in life, when writing on “the beauty of holiness”: “We drink in strange notions of holiness from our childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 13:163).

Edwards is not alone, in his generation or ours. Many of us, in our own unbelief, have imbibed “strange notions of holiness” that seem at odds with happiness, however thinly sliced and temporal our idea of happiness. Having been born again, we need to consider holiness afresh, starting with God’s own holiness, then ours.

Holiness Himself

Holiness begins with God. He is its epicenter. In fact, we might think of holy as an adjective for God himself. We would be hard pressed to take our bearings from any place better than Isaiah’s astounding glimpse of God in his holiness in Isaiah 6. In God’s presence, we overhear the seraphim call to each other, ascribing to God his infinite worth,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3)

Perhaps you’ve heard that God’s holiness refers to his otherness or separateness — that he is set apart from his creatures and their sin and their world. They are common; he is holy.

Otherness does get at an important aspect of God’s holiness, but it doesn’t include a vital dimension of what holiness is, as seen in the worship of the seraphim. When they say, “Holy, holy, holy,” they are not just crying, “Separate, separate, separate.” They call out in worship; they are praising God as holy, and delighting in him as holy. They are not disinterested. He is not just other, but good. The seraphim have seen and perceived God’s infinite intrinsic value and worth, and now declare, in the awe of glad worship, “Holy, holy, holy.”

And before the seraphim, and redeemed humans, see and perceive it, God himself perfectly sees and perceives his own value and worth. In other words, God is happy in himself. He is the blessed, happy God (1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15). As Edwards, having put away his formerly “strange notions,” came to see it,

God’s holiness is his having a due, meet, and proper regard to everything, and therefore consists mainly and summarily in his infinite regard or love to himself, he being infinitely the greatest and most excellent Being. (Works, 20:460)

“In Scripture, we do not find a holiness in tension with true happiness. The two are tied together intimately.”

At the heart of God’s own holiness is his perfect regard or love to, or happiness in, himself. Before God is holy with respect to his creation, he is holy with respect to himself — meaning he perfectly sees, perceives, enjoys, loves, and delights in own perfections as “infinitely the greatest and most excellent Being.” Far from holiness in God being in tension with his own blessedness or happiness, they are inextricably linked. The holy God is first and foremost happy in himself.

Heart of Holiness

What about “holiness,” then, in us, his creatures? Unavoidably, holiness refers to our living in this world, our words, our actions, and whether they accord with the value and worth of God. However, we should ask, What is the heart from which springs such external manifestations of creaturely holiness? The essence of holiness in redeemed humans is the heart that regards, loves, and delights in God according to his worth.

The process we call “sanctification” (meaning, to become more holy, to grow in holiness), writes John Piper, is “the action by which we bring our feelings and thoughts and acts into conformity to the worth of God” (Acting the Miracle, 36). Holiness in us, as God’s finite creatures, begins with our truly perceiving and duly prizing God’s excellence and value.

So, not only does true holiness give the greatest happiness, but happiness in God is the heart of holiness. As Piper says elsewhere, “Try to explain holiness without happiness, and you will fail. The essence of holiness is happiness in God.”

And holiness does not end, or stayed contained, in the human soul.

Holiness with Hands and Feet

Holiness also is to be lived in the world. The holiness that has its essence in our hearts is to be expressed and extended into words and actions that make God’s otherwise unheard and unseen value known to other humans. Just as God’s own happiness in himself “went public” in his creating the visible, audible, tangible world, so God means for our happiness in him to “go public” in his created world through our audible words and visible, fruitful lives.

True happiness in God is the heart of true holiness in us. And genuine holiness in us, soul and body, begins with souls happy in God, leading to bodily words and works that conform and testify to his worth.

Happy and Holy

Back to that book tagline that seemed to play off holiness against happiness. I wanted to ask, Why split friends into enemies? Why give place to that ancient scheme, that what God requires of his creatures must inevitably soil our happiness?

“To be truly holy in the world, we must be truly happy in God. And those truly happy in him will be holy.”

There is a kernel of truth we can acknowledge: God cares more about our holiness than the “happiness” that comes from mere temporal comforts. If our definition of “happiness” takes its bearings from secular society, as merely our experiencing momentary, superficial, comfort-based, suffering-free, pleasant feelings that require no new birth, then yes, God does indeed care more about our holiness than that. But I’m not ready to let the world have the word happiness without a fight.

When we see true happiness as deep, thick, enduring, God-rooted joy in God — dazzling in the radiance of the person and work of Christ — we find that such happiness, far from having nothing to do with holiness, is the heart of what it means to be holy. Which dispels our strange notions of holiness as melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant. Come, see holiness as beautiful, desirable, and wonderful.

True holiness in the world begins with true happiness in God. And those truly happy in him will be holy.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15049059/submit-to-one-another-full-of-the-spirit

Athanasius of Alexandria (died AD 373) was a larger-than-life figure living in a momentous century. During his time, Constantine came to power and legalized Christianity, rapidly changing the fortunes of the church within the Roman Empire. Constantine was also responsible for convoking the first Council of Nicaea in AD 325. If granting Christianity licit status sparked the public institutional growth of the church over the next decades, the Nicene Creed sparked a flood of theological discourse that soon engulfed the century.

Athanasius was present at the Council as secretary to the bishop of Alexandria. Three years later, he was elected bishop himself, becoming one of the most important — and controversial — ecclesiastical and theological leaders of the fourth century.

Against the World

Ecclesiastically, Athanasius was famously exiled five times from his episcopal see. Theologically, he sharpened his rhetorical swords against Arians (see especially his Orations Against the Arians, written between 339–343), who denied the full equality of the Son with the Father, and later Pneumatomachians (“Spirit fighters”; see his Letters to Serapion, written ca. 357), who denied the full equality of the Spirit with the Son and the Father. Athanasius’s thick ecclesiastical skin, as well as his unrelenting courage in opposing theology that did not properly honor the Son or the Spirit as God, earned him the moniker “Athanasius contra mundum” (Latin for “against the world”).

But before there was Athanasius contra mundum, there was the Athanasius who wrote On the Incarnation. On the Incarnation was the second part of a twofold work (the first part is titled Against the Greeks), likely penned soon after he became bishop of Alexandria (ca. 328–335). The book does not possess the polemical tone of his later works, nor the obvious theological targets (Arius is not mentioned, for example). It is, rather, a straightforward yet elegant theological meditation on the divine Word made flesh.

Toward the end of the work, Athanasius makes his purpose clear: to provide “an elementary instruction and an outline of the faith in Christ and his divine manifestation to us” (56). It is the kind of work a new pastor might pen in order to orient and encourage his people in matters of first importance.

Redemption in Four Pairs

Athanasius’s teaching in On the Incarnation contains several pairs that he often plays off one another in a fruitful dialectic. Consider four of these pairs, the first being Creator-creation.

Creator-Creation

On the Incarnation begins by reasserting the power of God in creation. This creative power is an ingredient in sanctified logic that, for Athanasius, moves inexorably to God’s work in salvation through the incarnation of the Son of God. In other words, redemption through the Word flows logically from his prior relation to the creature in the work of creation. When the Word became incarnate for the salvation of his people, he did not do so from an inherent necessity in his nature, but neither did he act arbitrarily. No, Athanasius reasoned, since the Word fashioned the world, it was not “inconsonant” for God to bring salvation to the world through the same One with whom he fashioned it (1).

Goodness-Grace

As Athanasius follows the biblical narrative out of the first two chapters of Genesis, he treats the fall. The corruption of death enters the world through humanity disobeying God’s law in the garden. As a result, death gains a legal hold over humanity, and wickedness spreads as the clarity of the image of God is lost. As Athanasius gets to this low point, however, he turns to the goodness of God and its inherent logic: God is a good God, and he has instilled goodness in his creation. While absolutely distinct from his creation, God is positively postured toward his handiwork, especially toward humanity, whom he made in his image for a blessed relationship with him. It would be unseemly, then, to let all of humanity slip into absolute corruption.

For Athanasius, God’s power and goodness compel him not to leave humanity in ruin — his power because to do nothing to rescue his good creation would show weakness, and his goodness because it would be improper to leave all humanity wallowing in ruin when he has the power to do something about it. But how will God help humanity’s plight in line with his justice? Athanasius considers mere human repentance as an option, but shows it to be insufficient since it does not “recall human beings from what is natural, but merely halts sins” (7). The gravity of the situation calls for the Creator, the Word of God, to be the “re-Creator,” who is sufficient to suffer on behalf of all since he made all. It was the goodness of God that compelled him to do so. In other words, God’s goodness stands behind his grace.

image–The Image

As Athanasius turns to the work of Christ in On the Incarnation, he brings particular attention to his reversal of the loss of the image of God. Humanity has continually rejected divine resources, leaving it bereft of the knowledge of God. It has rejected revelation in nature, and it has rejected revelation in word through the Jewish Law and Prophets. This loss is especially seen in the darkening of the prime location for human knowledge of God: the image within. Again, Athanasius asks, was God to leave humanity in this state?

“Seeing that humans lowered their eyes from the divine and wallowed in their senses, the divine took on flesh.”

By sending to his creation the actual Image in which humans were created, God renewed the part of humans by which we can know God. Seeing that humans lowered their eyes from the divine and wallowed in their senses, the divine took on flesh, according to Athanasius, in order to “return their sense perception to himself” (16). By this the Word brings the knowledge of God, making it accessible through the renewed image, which perceives the invisible God by means of the visible works of the incarnate God.

Corruptibility-Incorruptibility

The final and culminating pair from On the Incarnation is corruptibility-incorruptibility, which Athanasius considers from the moment of Christ’s incarnation to his resurrection. The basic structure of this pair is given a directional cast: the incorruptible Word came down and entered the corruptibility of creation in order to turn humanity from its corruption back up to God. Through taking on a body with the incorruptible Word, corruption can be reversed in humanity. But a debt must also be repaid, and this can be done only by the death of Jesus Christ and the “grace of the resurrection” (9).

“Through taking on a body with the incorruptible Word, corruption can be reversed in humanity.”

Death and resurrection reveal the real power of the corruptibility-incorruptibility pair. The death of Jesus Christ paid the debt for the ultimate end of corruptibility — death — and finally released humanity from its curse. The resurrection of Jesus Christ shows victory over death and is a witness to the incorruptibility available to all.

Athanasius puts this directionality memorably in a famous line: “He was incarnate that we might become god” (54). He does not mean that human beings lose their nature and transgress the Creator-creature divide. He has invested too much in the Creator-creature distinction for that to be true! Rather, he means that if we have faith in the one who conquered death, we gain his incorruptibility, delivered in eternal life. We gain by grace what the Son has by nature, which releases resurrection power into the believer’s life. Indeed, as Athanasius closes On the Incarnation, he points to changed lives and a changed world as blessed evidence of the truth of the incarnation.

What the Son Must Be

Thousands of writers in the history of the church have touched on the incarnation. That subject matter alone is not what has made On the Incarnation a Christian classic. Its enduring quality stems from the lucid logic Athanasius applies to one of the central mysteries of our faith. Athanasius simultaneously upholds the utter mysteriousness of God and his ways with the world and their inescapable reasonableness. The coherence of Athanasius’s thought is owing to this reasonableness, which shines through from creation to re-creation, from God’s goodness to his grace, from the loss of the image of God to its restoration in the Image, and from the corruptible made incorruptible. The whole work possesses a bracing unity, leading C.S. Lewis to call it a “masterpiece.”

While modern theology often breaks apart the doctrines of God and salvation, Athanasius treats them as a unified whole. In later works, he gives direct attention to the divine status of the Son, but in On the Incarnation the status of the Son is often entailed in what he is able to do. If the Word creates, and the Word re-creates, then the Word does what only God can do. A Son who can take what is corruptible and unite it to the incorruptible is a Son who is himself incorruptibly divine.

While On the Incarnation is edifying devotional reading, it is also a wonderful introduction to classical Trinitarian theology that developed and took shape in the fourth century. For the believing church, Trinitarian theology has never been concerned with merely the status of the Son or the Holy Spirit. It has been concerned with what must be true if Christian worship is to have integrity, and what must be true if our salvation is to be anchored in heaven. By tethering our salvation to the incarnate Son who has risen and ascended to the right hand of the Father, Athanasius firmly anchors our greatest hopes in God himself.

Audio Transcript

Why did God need part of Adam to make Eve when he made Adam from the dust? It’s a Bible question from a female listener to the podcast. We don’t have her name, but we have her question: “Hello, Pastor John! I was just wondering why God chose to do surgery on Adam to remove one of his ribs to craft Eve when, as God, he could have just made Eve entirely from dust in the same way he made Adam. I am very intrigued by this fact in Genesis and wonder if you have any thoughts to explain why it was done this way, and if it carries a particular meaning that he did it this way. Thank you.”

Well, it is intriguing, and there are things to see in the text that we might miss that would make it even more intriguing if we didn’t read more slowly. So, let’s read the passage that she’s referring to, and then I’ll point out some maybe surprising conclusions.

Parade of Beasts

“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Genesis 2:18). So, God is going to finish his creation so as to make it completely good. That’s the setup at the beginning of the paragraph: “I’m going to make this completely good. It’s not yet finished. I will make him a helper fit for him.” That word fit means suitable, proper, corresponding to.

I think it’s important to notice that he’s looking for a helper fit for Adam to complete his creation, and he starts by making from the ground animals of the field and every bird of the heavens. “Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast . . . and brought them to the man to see what he would call them” (Genesis 2:19). So the man’s going to name these animals in order to discern their nature, which means their fitness for being a suitable counterpart to him, and he’s going to wind up naming this woman as well. So we’ve got this parallel between, “Let’s start with the animals and see what happens and then move from there.” “And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19).

The man names the beast, discerning its nature — its fitness to be his partner. “The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:20). So the first step that he took was to produce a suitable helper in animals, and that totally failed. We need to ask, Why would God do that? Why would God enter on a process of making animals when he knew that’s not going to work — that’s not going to find a suitable partner?

Someone Like Adam

“So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs” — the word can mean side, so not from his foot and not from his head, but from his side — “and closed up its place with flesh” (Genesis 2:21). So, he really did surgery. He opened the skin and took out a rib, and he closed it.

“And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made” — literally he built — “into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called . . .’” — and that’s reference back to the naming of the animals. “So I found now an essence, a reality, a character, a being like me.” “She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2:22–23). She shall be called ishah, because she was taken out of ish, in the Hebrew. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:24–25).

No Helper Among the Animals

Now, our friend asks about the significance of the woman being made from the man’s side or rib and not from the ground, and I would say that’s not an incidental part of the text. She’s right to ask. To see the significance, we need to follow what’s happening.

First, Adam is said to be alone, and that’s not good, so the text is designed to tell us how God makes his creation finally good — namely, with Adam not being alone. But the next thing that happens is odd — namely, making all the animals (or pointing out that God had made all the animals) and bringing them to the man. So note three things:

He says explicitly that they were made from the ground (Genesis 2:19).
They were brought to the man for naming (Genesis 2:19).
His naming is connected with whether the animals are fit or suitable helpers for him (Genesis 2:20).

“The text is designed to tell us how God makes his creation finally good — namely, with Adam not being alone.”

So Adam, in naming the animals, is in fact identifying their nature, their fitness or suitability for him as a kind of partner that would make creation finally and fully good. And one might ask, Why did God parade the animals before Adam in search of a helper fit for him since God knew he wouldn’t find one?

And my answer is that he did it precisely because he knew he wouldn’t find one. In other words, he did it to make crystal clear to Adam, “What I have designed for you in my mind — you’re not going to find it among the animals. Don’t even think that you could find what I have prepared among the animals. The kind of helper that I have in mind for you, Adam, isn’t that kind.” “But for Adam there was not found” — among all those animals — “a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:20).

Perfect Complement

So, having made that crystal clear, God puts Adam to sleep and really does surgery. He opens his side, takes a rib, closes up the side, and then it says that God built the rib from his side into a woman, and the word is ishah, and the generic word for Adam is ish — man, ish.

Then it says — and here he uses the very same words from earlier when he brought the animals to Adam to be named — he “brought her to the man” (Genesis 2:22). And so we wait to see what he will name her — that is, what nature he will find in her that corresponds to his own nature or not. And here’s what he says: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ishah, because she was taken out of ish” (Genesis 2:23).

“Eve is like Adam and yet perfectly unlike Adam so as to be the exact suitable counterpart for Adam.”

So, unlike the naming of the animals, this creature’s name shows she is of the very nature of the man. The animals were not of the very nature. “And that’s probably why he took them out of the ground and took her out of me,” Adam said. “Therefore, I name her ishah, because she was taken out of ish.” That is, “She is the suitable helper. She fits, she corresponds, she is not an animal. She’s my unique kind, she’s human like me. She’s one flesh with me. Therefore, this concept of helper is not impersonal like an animal, like oxen can be helpers to farmers. She’s different. She will be essentially personal and human like me. She is like me and yet perfectly unlike me so as to be the exact suitable counterpart for me.”

I think that is true not only anatomically for the sake of sexual relations, but far deeper than that in profound personal, psychological ways. They are each other’s perfect, God-designed complement. Together they are good. Now it’s good — creation is good — that man and woman are now both created in the image of God, of the same human nature, “bone of my bones,” “flesh of my flesh,” and he could have said a lot more, I think.

Bone of Bone, Flesh of Flesh

Then the next verse takes this complementary, perfect correspondence into marriage and says that, therefore, because they were made bone of bone and flesh of flesh, this profound oneness of nature is going to be found in marriage. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). So he just said, “She is bone in my bones, flesh of my flesh.” And now in marriage, they become one flesh. The marriage union takes the unity of male and female to its deepest physical, psychological, personal level, and that becomes a picture — a drama, the New Testament says — of Christ and the church.

Now, there’s a lot more to say about the implications of man being made first, the woman being made from man and as his perfectly suited helper, and the woman becoming, in Genesis 3:20, “the mother of all living,” and Paul draws out these implications in 1 Corinthians 11:8–12. But for now, I would say God’s aim in not making the woman from the ground, like the animals, but from Adam’s rib, his side, was to make clear to him and to us that she is radically, gloriously, profoundly human, like Adam, over against all the animals, who were utterly unsuited for man.

The secret to happiness, some have wisely said, is to want what you already have.

How many of us can truly say with C.S. Lewis’s character in Shadowlands, “You know, I don’t want to be somewhere else anymore. I’m not waiting for anything new to happen . . . not looking around the next corner and over the next hill. I’m here now. That’s enough.”

Instead, unhappiness finds us wanting a life we don’t have. If this, this, and this happens, then I’ll be content. The easiest loves are the ones we don’t have. Our neighbor’s grass grows greener as we keep staring at it. If our desires could remain on our own property, we would be happier. We would better love the life we have.

This secret to happiness is not a new one. Centuries ago, puritan Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646) wrote in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment that “A Christian comes to contentment, not so much by way of addition, as by way of subtraction” (45). He meant that the Christian achieves happiness not by adding more to life to satisfy his gaping desires, but instead by subtracting from his desires, bringing them down to the situation God has placed him.

Paul practiced this when he sought to curb young Timothy’s desires for money, reasoning that we come into the world and leave it with nothing and that many have apostatized by this love. The apostle gives us a window into his own happiness, saying, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:8). With just the basics of what we need for an adequate human existence, Paul will find what many kings with lavish palaces could not: contentment.

You Shall Not Covet

Long before Burroughs, the great Architect of man’s happiness wove this happiness principle into creation itself. He etched instructions for his creatures’ gladness in stone, saying, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17). In other words, keep your desires at home, want what you have, not what your neighbor has.

And he reiterates this word to the Church, yet adds something we cannot afford to miss. The writer of Hebrews begins with the command,

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.” (Hebrews 13:5–6)

Here again, want what you already have. Don’t slave to make your bank account rise to match your desires, but bring your desires down to match what God has put in your bank account. He reminds us that the answer to happiness is not bigger and better, but simpler and more grateful. “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.”

Be Content with Who You Have

But the verse continues:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)

You might need to read the verse again. Did you see the shift?

God changes the focus for the Christian from what he has, to who he has. God tells us to do more than match our desires to our circumstances; we reconsider our circumstances based on the promise of enduring relationship with our God: I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Dissatisfaction has a voice. You should have that car. . . . You would be happy with his job or her husband. . . . If only you made double what you make now. . . . To this internal proposal, God means to add his own voice: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

When discontent suggests, Your current job is okay, but you would be happier to have one that grants more recognition. . . .

God says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Your car does fine, but imagine how you would look if you had that one. . . .

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

This church is technically faithful, but the pastor could be more entertaining — and the children’s program . . . .

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Why don’t I have a husband or children like she has?

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

When we hear temptations to desire more and better, which voice do we listen to?

Shallow Wells

Now, getting a new job, a new car, or even a new church — or longing to be married and have children — these are not the issue. The issue is the internal restlessness and misguided search that leads us to climb from hill to hill expecting happiness just atop the next one. As we ascend the hill called “prestigious career,” or “beautiful wife,” or “bigger house,” we keep climbing, keep mumbling, keep searching for what we haven’t found.

“God gives himself as the grand punctuation to end our search for more.”

And while the world, the flesh, and the devil tempt us to chase and chase, God offers himself as the end of our satisfaction. He gives himself as the grand punctuation to end our search for more. Wonder of wonders, God does not merely say to his child, “The secret to happiness is to want what you already have.” He says, “The secret to happiness is to want what you already have in me.”

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus promises, “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:13–14). The only search that remains is to go deeper in communion with him.

All We Could Want

As sons and daughters of Adam, we ache under the dim memory of a forgotten past. A time when man walked with God, communing with him in perfect fellowship. Of gardens full of fruit, of a mission bestowing purpose, of pleasure and delight and satisfaction — none more than in the King of that realm.

“God says, ‘The secret to happiness is to want what you already have in me.’”

And though we have exchanged such knowledge and such glory for mere trifles of earth, for a life elsewhere, it has not worked. We look this way and that in vain for the kind of happiness our sin and Satan promised. In such condition it is not enough to scale back our desires to our circumstances. The darkness, the thirst, the sense of something else, the lost stare out the window will not subside on their own.

Jesus himself must be the Vine to withering branches, Living Water to parched places, Bread of Life to starving souls, Resurrection to lifeless bodies, the Way to lost wanderers, the Truth to deceived minds, the Shepherd for missing sheep, our Light in this present darkness. The secret to happiness is to be in union with this Christ, forgiven by this Christ, welcomed and forever belonging to God in this Christ. A Christ who promises that he will never leave us nor forsake us nor ever tire of being all we could ever want.

My wife and I raised perfect children.

By the time they were ten years old, they had memorized the New Testament. They came each morning to the family breakfast table with cheerful songs on their tongues, the melodies caressing their freshly brushed teeth. At an early age, they volunteered to launder their own clothes and never once complained about their studies.

They never used a whiny tone of voice with their mother, and they affectionately call me “dearest father” to this very day. I can’t recall correcting them. They were thrilled to share their belongings with each other. We never heard a mumbling word.

Yeah, right.

There are no perfect children. Vicki and I didn’t raise any, and my parents didn’t raise any either. Neither did yours. We live on a fallen and cursed planet. You are a sinner, and your children are too. They not only fall short of the glory of God, but they fall short of the expectations of their inglorious dads.

“Don’t give up on fatherhood just because perfection seems continually out of reach.”

But all is not lost. Fathers, don’t give up on fatherhood just because perfection seems continually out of reach. God extends more than enough grace to compensate for our shortcomings as dads. Children of defective parents — your children — can end up relishing God.

When Dreams Hit Reality

Expectations breed strong emotions, and unmet expectations even stronger ones. When our expectations collide with real life, the mismatch can erupt in a whole range of emotions — from dismay to sorrow to fuming anger. Mostly fuming anger. That’s what happens when people do what you don’t expect them to, or don’t do what you do expect them to.

Desires launch assumptions, which are then fueled by narratives we have subtly adopted. Such as:

Unlike other children, my children will never make a big mess or be fussy in church.
I will lose standing in the community if my kids don’t go to college.
My children will replicate only my good traits and not my flaws and sinful attitudes.
My kids will be spiritually advanced for their age.

Acting wisely and avoiding emotional hijacks requires winning the crucial battle — an unceasingly ongoing one — to align your expectations with reality. Those children you love dearly will sin dreadfully. As you have. Observe the one reality you cannot avoid in your parenting: you and your sinful nature. Your children not only live with your sin — they inherit it.

“Those children you love dearly will sin dreadfully. As you have.”

But parenting is not to be dreaded. To dread parenting exposes a misplaced love that you perceive to be in danger — like a love for your reputation if your kids mess up, or a love for your schedule if your kids make a mess when you’re already running late. The steadfast love of God is never in danger, and if your aim in parenting is to draw attention to his love, you have nothing to dread on that score.

Safe Expectations

Some expectations, however, will certainly come to pass.

You can plan on the fact that your parenting will never go exactly according to your plan. Your parenting plan isn’t perfectly wise, because you are not perfectly wise. My wife has a placard that says, “Man plans. God laughs.” In contrast to our plans, God’s plan for your parenting is perfectly wise. You are not sovereign. He is. And in his perfection, he assigned your children their father — namely, you.

Parenting is nevertheless a humbling experience. Your parenting won’t be flawless any more than your marriage has been without disappointments. You will face regret — regret that you weren’t a better parent, that you passed on your imperfections to your children, that you displayed anger at them for being like you, that you didn’t know as much as you had hoped you would.

My kids are now middle-aged themselves, all of them parenting their own unique God-given brood. And one of the disappointments I didn’t expect early on is that they haven’t passed along to their own children some of the lessons I insisted on giving to them.

For example, when my children were still living at home, I led family discussions about everything from Charles Finney’s approach to confessing sin, to how eye traps work (seductive clothing), to the value of singing together. As a grandparent, I don’t hear those lessons emphasized in the same ways in their homes. Meanwhile, they love their children deeply, and point them to Jesus in other ways I never did.

So there’s another side to this expectation coin. God provides occasions when your children exceed your expectations, times when you wish you were like them. Some of our children treat every day as a new day, forgiving yesterday’s offenses. Some are generous to a fault. Some seem impervious to peer pressure.

In a crucial sense, your children grow you. That is, they are God-sent instruments for your growth in maturity, your sanctification, your alignment with God’s plan for your Christlikeness.

Questions for Fathers

With some safe expectations in place, what steps might dads take to remove some of the imperfections from their imperfect parenting?

Fathers who rightly relate to God are on firm footing for rightly relating to their children. So how is your own relationship with your heavenly Father? Do you “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” trusting that “all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33)? Would people who know you best say that you truly want what God wants for your children? Would you say it about yourself? Would God say it about you?

How do you parent today in relation to how you were parented? Are you replicating the errors of your own mom or dad? Are you motivated to avoid repeating the same errors? Once grace enables you to become aware of their errors, that same grace can enable you to break from those errors in your own parenting. Generational sins can be broken: “Now suppose this man fathers a son who sees all the sins that his father has done; he sees, and does not do likewise” (Ezekiel 18:14).

Ask God to help you seek his kingdom first in your family, especially in those places where you are tempted to repeat the errors of the past.

Humble Fatherhood

Perhaps most of all, however, we dads need humility. Even if your way of raising children is a good way, beware of concluding your way is the best way, much less the only way. In other words, remain teachable. One day it dawned on me that my small children could teach me a few lessons about my parenting. That was God whispering to me through my children.

Fathers, your offspring won’t admire everything about you. They’ll learn stuff you didn’t teach them. They’ll be better than you at some skills and more developed in certain character qualities. Your personal flaws will exert lingering influence on them. Pray for mercy.

They may or may not follow your preferred career for them. They will not develop uniformly without setbacks, nor be identical to their siblings. Recognize individuality.

Even though you work at it — and you are wise to do so — you will not always have your wife’s enthusiastic support in every aspect of parenting, from bedtimes to how much should be spent on gifts. Be gentle. Be humble. Seek God for more grace. Although not all of your expectations will be fulfilled in fathering, you can continue to grow and step into God’s great privilege of being their dad.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15042930/give-thanks-for-everything-really

ABSTRACT: In John 7:39, the apostle John writes, “As yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” The Spirit, though active in the lives of old-covenant saints, was given to God’s people in a radically new way following Jesus’s ascension and the event of Pentecost. Experientially, the Spirit illuminates the glory of the crucified Christ and reveals the Father’s love. Ecclesially, the Spirit transforms all of God’s people — men and women, young and old — into the temple of God. And eschatologically, the Spirit drafts Christians as witnesses in God’s end-time lawsuit against Israel and the nations. In these three ways and more, to have the Spirit of the risen King is to have the very treasure of the kingdom.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Dan Brendsel (PhD, Wheaton), pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Hinckley, Minnesota, to explore the new work of the Spirit after the ascension of Jesus.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, says our Saviour. . . . The treasure itself, is the Holy Ghost himself, and joy in him.

—John Donne1

Our task is to deepen understanding of the kingdom treasure that is ours in Christ as a result of the Father’s love — namely, the presence and power of the Person of the Holy Spirit. We have, in a first installment, considered some necessary Christological cues toward a proper understanding of the church’s great Pentecostal privilege. We can depict with a picture what we will attempt to do in this second installment. Let us think of the kingdom treasure that is the Holy Spirit as a brilliant and priceless diamond. Part 1 sought to showcase the diamond best by attention to its proper setting, taking care to balance it properly in the Light. We are thus prepared now in part 2 to propose and appreciate three facets of the newness and glory of the Spirit’s work after Pentecost.

Already in part 1 we began touching upon the difference that Christ’s ascension and the event of Pentecost make for the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of God’s people. It is, we might say, the difference between having the inaugurated kingdom, and having only the promise (given by the Spirit) of its inauguration. It is the difference between resting in the accomplishment of the King’s victory, and hoping in the prophetic word (inspired by the Spirit) about the King’s victory. Toward a fuller appreciation of the kingdom treasure we have been given, the diamond which is enjoyment of the Spirit after Pentecost, we must further consider specific facets. In what follows, I offer three such considerations, in particularly Johannine and Lukan hues.2

Experiential Facet

John 7:37–39 is an important text in thinking about the gift of the Spirit, but it poses a challenge:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and 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.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

This text asserts that the Spirit was not given before Christ was “glorified.” As we’ve labored to show in part 1, this cannot mean the Spirit was absolutely “not yet given” before Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension. What, then, can John mean?

Poured Out from the Cross

There are, in fact, several interpretive cruxes in the text,3 but for our purposes, we can somewhat steer clear of the debates and simply point to something all sides acknowledge: the Spirit is given when Jesus is glorified.4 Of course, this raises the question of what Jesus’s glorification is, but there is again mostly agreement that, for John, Jesus’s glorification, or his “lifting up” (see John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32–33), includes his crucifixion. The giving of the Spirit is tightly bound to the cross. Indeed, at the climax of John, when Jesus dies upon the cross, the soldiers seek to verify that he died by piercing his side, from which flows blood and water (John 19:34). The death of Jesus provides the cleansing and life-giving blood of the covenant, and the cleansing and life-giving water of the Spirit, into which Christ’s people are baptized.5 John 7:39 at least (if not also 7:38; see footnote 3) looks directly to the cross: from the belly of the crucified Christ, the people of God receive the Spirit.6

That is to say, the King wins his victory on the cross, securing there the kingdom (the Spirit) for his people. In this connection, we can observe the striking word John uses to describe Jesus’s moment of death. John alone among the Gospel writers uses a strong, active verb: Jesus handed over (paredōken) his Spirit (John 19:30).7 From the cross, the conquering King of glory actively hands over his own Spirit for the life and joy of his people.8

Convicted of Sin

The Spirit, then, has the closest of connections to the cross. But this is so not only because the cross secures the Spirit. In addition, the Spirit’s peculiar ministry now is especially to help us see the cross for what it is. John hints at this in his narrative aside following the crucifixion.9 In particular, in John 19:37 he quotes the latter half of Zechariah 12:10: “They will look on him whom they have pierced.” In their original Old Testament context, the words John quotes follow on the heels of God’s promise to “pour out”10 on the house of David his “Spirit of grace and of supplication” (Zechariah 12:10a).11 The full promise in Zechariah can be understood thus: the Spirit will enable those who look upon the pierced one to mourn as they ought over the wonder that has occurred. The good news of Jesus Christ, as John narrates it, is that the crucifixion of the Son of God wins for us the Spirit of God, who leads us back to the cross with humility and supplication.

To put it another way, as Jesus says earlier in John’s gospel, the Spirit “convicts” us of our sin and need for a crucified Savior (John 16:8).12 In the shadow of the cross, the Holy Spirit exposes the true depth of our sin to us,13 convinces us of our wickedness and of our great need of salvation, and woos us to repentance with the word of grace. The cross is where the Spirit was won for us, and at the same time the cross is what the Spirit helps us to understand and, in our sin, to be humbled and convicted before.

Loved by the Father

We can make another observation about the connection between the cross and the Spirit. Later in John 16, Jesus makes a strange comment, perhaps first striking us as a non sequitur:

In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23–24)

Jesus says that a day is coming when we will ask nothing of him (verse 23a). Then in the next breath he says that whatever we ask of the Father in his name will be granted to us that our joy may be full (verses 23b–24). The logical connection between these assertions is hardly clear. Why encourage us to ask, right after asserting that we will never ask again? It may be that Jesus refers, first, to our asking of him and, second, to our asking of the Father. But it also may be that Jesus refers to two different kinds of asking.14 In verse 23, he refers to inquiry (erōtēsete), asking questions because of a lack of knowledge, asking for explanations to matters that confuse. That is what the disciples do in John’s Gospel. They are confused; they misunderstand; they ask questions from ignorance. Jesus promises that they will move from misunderstanding to understanding. How will they get this understanding? The Spirit, whom Jesus sends, will teach them, leading them into “all the truth” (John 16:13). In contrast to the first half of verse 23, we can interpret the rest of verses 23b–24 as referring not to inquiry but to supplication (aiteō, 3x), asking for good gifts in Jesus’s name from the Father. Jesus speaks of a coming day when inquiry will cease (for new understanding will come) as an encouragement unto supplication.

The same movement occurs in verses 25–26. What now seems mysterious and “figurative” will soon become “plain” (verse 25), indicating a deepened level of understanding. As a result, asking in Jesus’s name will become possible (verse 26). These verses reproduce exactly the development found verses 23–24: a new Spirit-wrought understanding (verses 23a and 25) leads to freedom to ask the Father for good gifts in Jesus’s name (verses 23b–24 and 26).

Can we discern in this context any specific lesson the Spirit will teach us that might embolden supplication? The key clue comes to light when pressing on the connection between verses 26 and 27. In verse 26, Jesus says again that we can supplicate to the Father in Jesus’s name, and then he immediately clarifies what he does and does not mean. By saying we can appeal to the Father in his name, Jesus does not intend to suggest that the Father will deal with us only at arm’s length, as it were, as though he welcomes Jesus but can’t stand us. We might paraphrase, highlighting with italics the glorious significance of the second person form of aitēsesthe: “You yourselves will make requests to the Father in my name, not only I on your behalf.” For the Father is not disgusted with us, but the very opposite: “for [gar] the Father himself loves you” (verse 27). This is what Jesus’s “name,” and especially his coming departure, his death, prove once and for all. The holy Father loves us, so much so that he gave his Son to perish in our place, that our sins might be forgiven and the pathway opened to his throne. With boldness we can come before the Father with our supplications, knowing that he loves us in Christ.

“The Spirit reveals the cross to us as the answer to all our doubts: the Father loves us in Christ.”

This is the sum of the “all truth” (verse 13) that the Spirit teaches us. The Spirit reveals the cross to us as the answer to all our doubts: the Father loves us in Christ.15 The Spirit persuades us of this truth, so that we cry from our depths, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). The work of the Spirit among God’s people is, indeed, radically different now than before the cross/resurrection/ascension, so different that we can speak as though the Spirit was “not given” until now. While the Spirit was already present and active in the life of the pre-ascended Jesus (and in the lives of Old Testament saints long before Christ), nevertheless until now God’s people did not know the Spirit as the gift of the crucified, conquering King. They did not know how the King conquered — namely, through being crucified. They did not know the full depth of their plight, which required nothing less than the King’s life in their place. They did not know with assurance why they, unworthy sinners, could expect lavish goodness from the holy God. They had promises to bank on, and merciful tokens of God’s grace to them in the sacrificial system, but they did not have the full demonstration of the holy God’s loving welcome of them, and of the work that secures it, until the cross. And the Spirit had no objective reality to illumine and persuade and assure them by. So truly not until the cross, where the gift of the kingdom poured forth from the side of the King, was the Spirit fully handed over.

Ecclesial Facet

There are many important observations to make about the event of Pentecost, but of particular note for us is that, in Acts 2:2–3, the Spirit’s arrival was marked by thunderous noise (rushing wind) that “filled the whole house,” and tongues of fire coming down from heaven and alighting on the disciples. God’s coming down in fire and sound to “fill a house” is exactly what occurred at the completion of the tabernacle, as the glory-cloud that came down in thundering fire at Sinai proceeded to come down still farther to the ground to “fill” the completed tent (Exodus 19:16–20; 40:34–48). It is also what occurred later at the dedication of Solomon’s temple, as fire came down from heaven to “fill the house” (2 Chronicles 7:1–3; cf. 1 Kings 8:10–11). In like manner, as G.K. Beale trenchantly argues, the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost is to be understood as the dedication of God’s new eschatological temple.16

Acts 2 narrates no mere illustration of a universal individual experience but a salvation-historical event. When the fiery Spirit comes down not on the tabernacle/temple but on disciples, a transition is effected from an architectural building to an anthropological building as the dwelling place of the Lord. Other New Testament writers assert that the church is God’s new temple.17 Acts 2 shows when its function as God’s temple was inaugurated. At Pentecost, the church became the place whereby the power of the Spirit the covenantal presence of God is encountered on the ground (see, e.g., Acts 4:31; 5:3, 9; 13:2). If we may rightly speak of the tabernacle/temple as the palatial residence of the cosmic King (see hêkāl in, e.g., 1 Samuel 3:3; Isaiah 6:1; Psalm 11:4), the place where the “footstool” under his exalted throne is located (Psalm 99:5; 132:7), then we can state it in this manner: Pentecost marks out the gathered church as the new royal dwelling from which the ascended King’s presence and rule is now exercised on earth, the new place where the King’s “feet” rest, for here is where people gladly submit to his authority (note Acts 7:46–53).

It is important to clarify who is included in the “people” of the preceding sentence. At Pentecost, representatives “from every nation under heaven” were gathered in Jerusalem (Acts 2:5).18 It is a signal of where the narrative (the mission) is headed: to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). For Luke, the incorporation of Gentiles into the covenant people is part of the difference the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost makes. Whereas before the glory-cloud covenantal presence of God by his Spirit was limited to the temple located in one place on the globe (Jerusalem), now it is present, and in fact spreading missionally, all over the globe (Acts 8:14–17; 10:44–45). Whereas beforehand God reigned publicly as King over one nation, the nation of Israel, now he is present to rule over and for Gentile nations. Whereas beforehand entrance into the dwelling place of God was restricted to Israelites, now the dwelling place of God is not only open to all peoples, but by the Spirit all peoples are incorporated into it as building materials.

A related point is that before Pentecost, the Spirit’s work seemed mostly limited to key representative figures — prophets, priests, and kings; and these were almost exclusively men. There were some exceptions (e.g., Deborah the prophetess), but locating the Spirit’s presence in their lives is mostly a matter of theological inference and implication: if Deborah was a prophetess, and if other Scriptures indicate that prophetic activity is empowered by the Spirit (e.g., Isaiah 61:1; Ezekiel 2:1–7), then we can conclude that Deborah enjoyed the Spirit. But the text of Judges doesn’t make this explicit claim. In the old covenant, we are explicitly told that the Spirit filled and empowered Moses, for example, and then the seventy elders who were raised up to help govern the people. But Moses longs for the Spirit to fill still more, indeed the whole people of God, leaders and non-leaders alike, public figures and everyday folks out of the limelight (Numbers 11:24–30). The point is that in the old covenant there was not a readily apparent enjoyment of the Spirit on all the people; it was something Moses longed for and looked forward to. But now that Christ has sealed a new covenant in his blood, now that a new creational humanity is beginning in his resurrected body, now that he has ascended as King of a world-transforming kingdom, now that he has poured out his Spirit on “all flesh” (Acts 2:17a), the Spirit is the expectation and certain privilege of all the people of God, young and old, men and women (Acts 2:17b–18).19

With the coming of Christ, all nations can be reconciled to experience unity in their diversity under one true King. In Christ’s kingdom all the dividing lines of other kingdoms of the world are broken down (divisions of tongues, skin colors, blood, and birthplaces; divisions of temporal political allegiance; divisions of age, sex, and economic status). In Christ’s kingdom, diverse and seemingly irreconcilable peoples are made one. And the Spirit is the power uniting them. Where diverse and seemingly incompatible peoples join as one under King Jesus, there we can expect to find the Spirit present and at work.

Eschatological Facet

In considering the experiential facet of the diamond that is the gift of the Spirit after Christ’s ascension, our cues were Johannine. For the ecclesial facet, they were Lukan. Our exploration of the eschatological facet will involve something of a fusion of the testimonies of John and Acts, for they together indicate that receiving the gift of the Spirit from the crucified and risen Christ answers, at the same time, the questions “What time is it?” and “What are we here for?”

John: Drafted as Witnesses

In the Farewell Discourse in John 14–16, Jesus seeks to comfort his disciples with the promise of the Helper’s (the Paraclete’s) ministry among them and in them. Among other things, Jesus assures them that “when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:26–27). The Spirit’s special mission, sent from the throne of the ascended King, is one of witness. And since Jesus immediately pairs the Spirit’s witness with the disciples also bearing witness, we can safely say that the disciples by the empowerment of the Spirit will be swept into this same mission.

“The Spirit’s special mission, sent from the throne of the ascended King, is one of witness.”

“Witness” is one of the central motifs in the Gospel according to John. From the otherwise awkward twofold inclusion of John the Baptist’s mundane testimony to the Light in the exalted “Prologue” about the cosmic, eternal Logos (John 1:6–8, 15),20 to the preponderance of “witness” terminology in the Fourth Gospel (especially in comparison to the Synoptics),21 to the parade of witnesses (in heaven above, on earth below, and from the Scriptures of the past) appearing in the Book of Signs (John 1:19–12:50),22 to Jesus’s assertion that he came into the world for the purpose of witness (John 18:37), to the climactic and singular witness given at the crucifixion (John 19:35), the Gospel according to John is all about witness. But two points must be clarified about the motif of witness in John.

First, “witness” is not, for John, simply a contextless “sharing of Jesus to unbelievers,” however common that assumption might be in today’s popular Christian imagination. For John, witness is a decidedly legal activity.23 One bears testimony in court. Witnesses are needed in a trial. John’s interest in witness, and the Spirit’s activity of and empowering for witness, is owing to the reality of an ongoing trial.

Second, John arguably thinks in terms of a very particular trial that began in Jesus’s life and that is carried on through the Spirit’s post-resurrection ministry in the world. According to the prophetic expectations of Isaiah, in the last days God will put the gods of the nations on trial, exposing them to be false and empty, revealing to all that he is God and no other (Isaiah 41:21–24 is a representative passage).24 Whereas the false gods (or the nations trusting in them) are called to put forth witnesses to prove their case but are unable to do so, God raises up Israel as his witness:

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord,     “and my servant whom I have chosen,that you may know and believe me     and understand that I am he.” (Isaiah 43:10)

Sadly, as the larger context of Isaiah indicates, Israel is hardened in unbelief, frozen in fear before the nations, blind to the light. So, far from serving faithfully as God’s witness, they actually find themselves embroiled in their own ongoing legal dispute with God (for disputation between God and Israel, see Isaiah 42:18–25; 43:22–28; 50:1–3). According to Isaiah, God’s promised work of eschatological salvation will involve him taking up the roles of witness, prosecutor, and judge in trials both with Israel and with all the nations to prove to all that “I am he.” But he promises further that despite servant Israel’s disputations with him, nevertheless he will pour out his Spirit on his people as upon dry ground (Isaiah 44:3–5), and they shall spring up with words of faithful witness to the Lord’s mighty works and glorious identity (Isaiah 59:21).

What does this (far too hasty) consideration of the eschatological trials foreseen by Isaiah have to do with the end-time work of the Holy Spirit? As Andrew Lincoln especially has argued, Isaiah’s prophecy about God’s eschatological lawsuit against Israel and the nations funds John’s portrait of a two-level drama about the trial between Jesus and the world.25 In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is ostensibly on trial first before Israel and then before the world represented by Pilate,26 while at the same time, ironically and in truth, it is Israel and the world being put on trial by the true Judge, Jesus, who comes to reveal the one true God. Jesus is witness (e.g., John 3:11, 32–33; 8:14, 18), attorney (he is the “first Paraclete” alluded to in 14:1627), and judge (John 5:22, 26–27; 9:39), who convicts both Israel and the world of sin by manifesting that “I am” (note Jesus’s seven absolute [i.e., without predicate] “I am” statements in John: 4:26; 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5, 6, 8). For John, this amounts to the promised eschatological trial and work of salvation foretold by Isaiah, in which God will demonstrate to Israel and the nations that “I am he” (Isaiah 41:4; 43:10, 13; 46:4; 48:12; 52:6).28 And the giving of the Holy Spirit by the glorified Jesus is the guarantee that the trial will continue after Jesus’s departure through the empowerment of witnesses.

The Holy Spirit’s witness, and his empowering of disciples for witness, is proper to the stage of the biblical drama that has been launched with the coming and glorification of Christ. To have the Spirit is not just to be privy to an inner experience. It is less to have access to power that was not previously available. It is rather and especially a sign that we are rooted in a particular act of the drama with new opportunities and vocations fitted to that act. To receive the Spirit is to be enlisted in the eschatological trial of the whole world, in which God demonstrates the wind and emptiness of all idols and the truth of his identity made known in Christ.

Acts: World on Trial

While several have recognized something of the Isaianic background and eschatological significance of the trial motif in John’s Gospel, outside of a suggestive 1990 article by Dennis Johnson,29 few have commented on how a similar point comes to the fore in the book of Acts.30 In Acts, as in John, a preponderance of trial material appears, especially in the final third of the book (but note also Acts 4:1–22; 5:17–42; 6:8–7:60). In Acts 21–28, the Apostle Paul repeatedly appears before judges and magistrates (the Sanhedrin in ch. 23; Felix and Festus in chapters 24–25; Agrippa in chapters 25–26; and the book concludes with Paul awaiting a hearing before Caesar31). The bulk of these chapters is given over to (1) accusations made against Paul, and especially (2) Paul’s repeated defense speeches. More generally, technical or semi-technical legal terminology abounds in the narrative.32 Trial and defense is front and center and belabored in the final chapters of Acts. In this light, Luke Timothy Johnson asks exactly the right question:

Something more than the desire for historical or biographical plentitude is at work. Luke, after all, has shown himself elsewhere to be perfectly capable of passing over years of busy activity with a one-line summary (18:11; 19:10). He could easily have passed over the embarrassment of Paul’s captivity with an equally brief allusion, and moved on to the excitement of the sea voyage to Rome. Why does he linger here?33

In terms of the narrative plotline of the book, this focus on trial and defense is perhaps not surprising since what is arguably the theme verse of the book, Acts 1:8, informs us that this is a story about Spirit-empowered witness (again, witness is at home in a legal context).34

Additionally, it seems certain that Luke would have us identify Paul’s life as, in a manner, a recapitulation of Jesus’s life and mission: as in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’s public ministry gives way to extended trial scenes before a parade of authorities (first the Sanhedrin, then Herod, then Pilate), so also in Acts Paul’s missionary journeys give way to extended trial scenes before a parade of authorities (the Sanhedrin, Felix and Festus, and Agrippa). In Paul’s life, Christ is, we might say, continuing by his Spirit the work and experience he began in his earthly ministry (see Acts 1:1). So Paul’s experience on trial mirrors that of Jesus.

But there is one glaring difference between Jesus’s trials reported in the Gospel and Paul’s trials in Acts. Whereas Paul repeatedly offers long and pointed defense speeches, Jesus appears unwilling to defend himself. He offers little-to-no defense or testimony, but either simply confirms (or ambiguously restates) the accusations brought against him (“You have said so”) or remains altogether silent (see Luke 22:67–70; 23:3, 9). In David Peterson’s words, “At the time of his trial, Jesus was clearly more restrained than Paul in dealing with his accusers (cf. Lk. 22:63–71; Jn. 18:19–23).”35 Might we look for something to account for this difference?

“To have the Spirit is to find ourselves in the last hour, drafted as witnesses to the resurrection.”

Peterson’s following comment points toward an answer: “He [Jesus] submitted to injustice without complaint to accomplish the redemptive work prescribed for the Servant of the Lord (cf. Is. 53:7–8, cited in Acts 8:32–33).” Isaiah prophesied that God’s work of eschatological salvation would center on a Servant who was silent for the sake of sinners. But as we have seen, Isaiah’s prophetic hope also included a day when those sinners would no longer be silent regarding God. Because of the work of the silent Servant, God’s people would have the Spirit of God fill their mouths, emboldening them to speak (Isaiah 59:2136). There are many reasons for thinking that Isaiah’s prophecy played a major shaping role on the narrative of Acts.37 I suggest that, though little commented upon, the detailed and extended trial scenes in Acts are such a reason. In Acts, Paul (and Peter, and Stephen, and the whole church) is repeatedly on trial, for it is the time of the Isaianic end-time lawsuit against Israel (Jerusalem) and the nations (the ends of the earth), exposing the world’s idols to be impotent and deceptive, proving that the identity of the one true God is revealed in the risen and ascended Christ. Paul may be ostensibly awaiting a hearing before Caesar at the end of Acts, but there is a kingdom (Acts 28:23) over which Caesar does not have authority and whose King holds Caesar and the world accountable. In truth, it is the time when Caesar and all the world must stand before the Judge, must respond to the witnesses the Judge is raising up. And it is the time when the Spirit, as was promised long ago, has finally been poured out to empower such faithful witnesses for mission “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).38

This, too, is part of the difference Christ’s ascension and the event of Pentecost makes. To have the Spirit is to find ourselves in the last hour, drafted as witnesses to the resurrection in God’s final legal actions against the world. It is a dangerous mission, a way marked with suffering and persecution, as the church in Acts quickly discovers. But it has a saving aim (Acts 2:21). And our kind Father and victorious King has well equipped us for it, handing over nothing less than the treasure of the kingdom: “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (Luke 12:11–12).

Audio Transcript

Well, Why do we thank anyone? It’s a great question, really. Candace writes in to ask it: “Hello, Pastor John and Tony! Thank you for this podcast. It has been a great help to me. And thanking you two plunges us right into my question: How can we genuinely thank anyone but God? If God is sovereign over all things, what role do people themselves play? I just listened to APJ 1195, “How Does God’s Sovereignty Not Violate Our Decision-Making?” but as these truths are new to me, I think I could really benefit from your answer to this specific question: If you go to a restaurant and are served by a waitress, God gives the waitress all the abilities required to do her job, the opportunity to do her job, maybe the willingness to do her work diligently, and her very life and breath and existence. Since she is working, it seems right to thank her for her efforts, but since the Lord gives us everything, it seems right, in another sense, only to thank him. How do you process this?”

Well, I think this is a very good question, even though some people probably will think it’s totally unnecessary since a spirit of thanksgiving seems like such a healthy trait in a Christian soul. Why would anybody ever question it? One of the reasons why it’s such a worthy question is because — now this is going to surprise a lot of people — I’m not aware of any single place in the Bible at all where one human being explicitly thanks another human being for anything. Isn’t that amazing?

I mean, I could be wrong, so if our listeners find an exception to that, they should write you, and you can forward it to me if you think they’re right. That’s where I am right now. So when I hear this question, I say, “Yeah, I’ve got to come him to terms with that.” I know a very godly Christian scholar who sees that, what I just pointed out, and he infers that that’s his duty. He does not thank people for anything. He thanks God for people, and he may tell them that.

Thanks Be to God

So, it may seem like an unwarranted question, but really it’s not. Now, my own conviction and practice is to say thank you a lot. I say thank you a lot to a lot of people — or something like, “I really appreciate that,” or, “You have encouraged me so much. Thank you.” Candace is asking the question like this: Since God is the ultimate giver in the end — through all things, in all things — why would it ever be appropriate to thank anyone but God?

So, Paul says, “From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36). He says, “Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25) So, if I’m served well at a restaurant, God created the server, God gave the breath, and God inclined the heart to courtesy. God gave everything that makes my meal pleasant, so God be thanked, not the waiter or the waitress or the server.

“In all of our thankfulness, we should have God ultimately in mind as the giver.”

Of course, that’s true. God did give everything, and God should be thanked. In all of our thankfulness, we should have God ultimately in mind as the giver and sustainer and the providential guide in every good that happens to us — indeed, in every bad thing that happens to us, which God turns for good if we’re Christians. Which is why Paul says, by the way, “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18), and, “[Give] thanks always and for everything” (Ephesians 5:20).

Instruments in God’s Hands

But here’s why I don’t think any of those truths means we should not thank other people for benefits we receive through their hands. I think we all would agree that human beings become instruments in the hands of God for doing many good things that God wants done.

So, for example, Jesus says about Paul when he commissioned him, “He is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15). Then he says to Paul, I am sending you “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins” (Acts 26:18). And of course, this is the way God has worked ever since the beginning. He gives commandments, he gives promises, he gives warnings, he gives help, but there is no doubt that human beings are God’s primary created instrument for accomplishing in the world what he wants done.

So, the question becomes, How does God think about our instrumentality? What status does the instrument itself — us — have in God’s hands? Can the instrument in God’s hands be called good or praiseworthy or faithful or obedient or pleasing? Does God view the instrument in his hands as proper recipients of his rewards, his commendation, his praise? And if God does view the instruments in his hands as fitting recipients of his own commendation and rewards and praise, then what should our attitude and response toward those human instruments be?

Well, the Bible is very clear that God is the rewarder of those who seek him. Several times in Matthew 6, Jesus says that the Father will reward us for acting certain ways. He says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:12). Time after time, we are told God rewards us for the good that we do. Ephesians 6:8 is an amazing statement: “. . . knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.” Wow.

And even more than reward, Paul says that we’ll all receive our commendation — and literally the word is praise — from God (1 Corinthians 4:5). That’s almost unfathomable. C.S. Lewis calls it “the weight of glory” that we would ever hear “Well done.” How could God speak such a thing to a worm like me, right? So even though everything good that we do is enabled by God, it is sustained by God, it is made useful by God, nevertheless, God has graciously chosen to look upon obedient instruments in his hands as pleasing to him and fitting recipients of his rewards and commendations.

Voice of Humility

So, my heart inclination is to say that if God almighty — in infinite perfection and having no need whatsoever — can look with favor, and reward, and commendation, and praise upon the imperfect work of his people, might it not be fitting that I would look upon human instruments in his hand with a humble sense of expressed, glad indebtedness? That would be my definition of thankfulness: expressed, glad indebtedness to them for their instrumentality in mediating to me good from God.

“Thanking other people for the benefits they give us is a fitting, humble expression of our glad indebtedness.”

God should always be, in my mind, the ultimate giver, and he gets thanks in everything, for everything. But the role of instruments in his hands is an amazing role, and I am put in debt to that instrument as well as to God. If something good happens to me because of another person’s instrumentality in the hand of God, I am glad, and the mixture of gladness and a sense of indebtedness is what I call thankfulness.

It belongs ultimately to God continually, and I think it is fitting that this gladness find expression toward the morally responsible human instruments in God’s hands as well. In a sense, an expression of thankfulness is simply an expression of humility. It says, “I have become your debtor, and I don’t resent it as though you made me a welfare case. I receive it, and I am glad for it, and I want you to know that my gladness is owing in part to you and what you’ve done.”

So, in conclusion, I would say as long as we are not detracting from God, and we’re acknowledging him behind and in everything that comes to us, then thanking other people for the benefits they give us is a fitting, humble expression of our glad indebtedness.

The ever-growing body of literature on productivity overwhelmingly agrees with what we all know by experience: interruptions reduce our productivity. So naturally, most of the literature focuses on ways we can reduce our interruptions because they distract us from productive work.

And for good reason: many of our interruptions are distractions. But not all interruptions are distractions. Some interruptions are more important than our current productivity. The problem, however, is that we often struggle to recognize these important interruptions in the moment.

As Christians, the stakes rise when we consider that what may appear at first as a simple interruption is actually an unplanned assignment from our Lord. So, how can we discern the difference?

First, I should define what I mean by interruption, distraction, and unplanned assignment.

Interruption: An unplanned occurrence that urges you to shift your attention away from one of your responsibilities to something else.
Distraction: An unplanned occurrence that tempts you to shift your attention away from something of greater importance to something of lesser importance.
Unplanned assignment: An unplanned occurrence that calls you to shift your attention away from something you think is a good use of time as a servant of Christ to something Christ may consider a better use of the time.

“Not all interruptions are distractions. Some interruptions are more important than our current productivity.”

Of course, God has not given us a formula we can apply to all situations. In fact, an interruption that’s an unplanned assignment on one day might be a distraction on another day. In other words, this is an issue of discernment. And discernment is learned by constant practice (Hebrews 5:14) as we are transformed in Christ by the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2).

But the Bible does provide principles we can use in honing our discernment. Two stories provide needed help.

Apostolic Distraction

In Acts 6, a potentially explosive situation was developing in the new, rapidly growing church. “A complaint by the Hellenists [Jewish Christians from Greek-speaking nations] arose against the Hebrews [Jewish Christians native to Palestine] because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution” (Acts 6:1).

We’re not told why these vulnerable women were being neglected. But it’s clear the problem wasn’t being addressed, and frustration was spreading. The complaints carried strains of ethnic tension. As the past few years have reminded us all, such issues can quickly sour relationships, break trust, and sow suspicion. So, the situation was growing serious, and an appeal was made to the apostles to get involved.

This situation came as a potential interruption to the apostles’ work. Was it a distraction or an unplanned assignment?

After the apostles prayed and discussed this issue together, here’s what they discerned:

It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. (Acts 6:2–4)

The apostles discerned this was a distraction.

This example illustrates how much we need discernment. An interruption may initially appear (to us or others) as God’s unplanned assignment for us because the issue is important, and we might even bear responsibility to make sure it’s addressed. But it is still a distraction if our direct involvement is not more important than remaining focused on our primary callings. Christ has given this assignment to someone else.

Parabolic Assignment

In Luke 10, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, who, while traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, came upon a severely injured man lying in the road, a victim of robbers. This situation interrupted the Samaritan’s journey. Was it a distraction or an unplanned assignment?

Jesus’s story works as an example because all of his listeners knew it was based on real events. Jericho Road was notoriously dangerous because of robbers; real travelers came upon real injured people.

Here’s what the Samaritan man discerned:

He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.” (Luke 10:34–35)

The Samaritan man discerned this was an unplanned assignment.

This example also illustrates how much we need discernment. An interruption may initially appear to us (or others) as a distraction. The issue may be important, but it doesn’t appear to be our responsibility. And it’s going to consume precious time, and perhaps other resources, and derail or delay our plans. But it’s an unplanned assignment since our direct (and costly) involvement is more important than remaining focused on our planned work.

Discernment Principles

What principles can we distill from these two scriptural examples to help us discern what might be a distraction or an unplanned assignment? Consider three.

1. Clarify your calling.

What has God objectively called you to focus on in this season of life? It’s important to recognize what season we’re in because our callings change over time. In a different season, it was right for the twelve disciples to serve tables (remember the feeding of the five thousand). But once Jesus ascended, he left his men as specially appointed apostles, as witnesses to his life and resurrection and as his mouthpiece as teachers. Clarifying your clear (not just aspirational) calling in any given season of life can help you discern what God wants you to prioritize.

2. Seek counsel.

When you struggle to discern whether you should resist or receive an interruption that doesn’t require immediate action, seek the advice of wise, spiritually discerning counselors. The apostles had each other. Who are your trusted counselors?

3. Ask yourself, “What does love compel?”

When the Samaritan man saw the wounded man in the road, I’m sure he would have had numerous reasons to just keep going. But for the sake of love, he took up this unplanned assignment. On the other hand, it was for the sake of love that the apostles resisted the distraction of getting personally involved in making sure the widows were fed. They discerned others could address this need, but others couldn’t give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word like they could.

Martial Art of Discernment

Most martial arts teach students how to respond in self-defense when attacked. No attack situation is ever the same, so students learn techniques that can be adapted for whatever a situation requires. And they grow in their skill by continually practicing in increasingly difficult situations.

Learning to distinguish unplanned assignments from distractions is like a martial art. No interruption situation is ever the same, so we must learn techniques we can adapt for whatever a situation requires. And our “powers of discernment [are] trained by constant practice” (Hebrews 5:14).

“Clarifying your calling in any given season of life will help you discern what God wants you to prioritize.”

Rarely is it clear at first if an interruption is a distraction or an assignment. This ambiguity pushes us to pray, “What should I do, Lord?” It pushes us to embrace humility in seeking counsel from others. And it pushes us to test our hearts. Are we being governed by our love for God and neighbor or by our selfish desires? Do we see time, money, reputation, and productivity as stewardships we’ve received from our Lord to be used as seems best to him, or do we see these resources as “ours”?

Cultivate faith-filled responsiveness to God’s leading. Be willing to say no to a distraction that feels urgent to faithfully focus on your clear God-given task at hand. And be willing to say yes to an inconvenient, costly interruption to your plans to faithfully respond to a God-given, unplanned assignment.

And when in doubt, err on the choice that you discern requires you to extend the greatest love to another and exercise the greatest faith in God.