I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. (Ezekiel 22:30 NIV)

I do not have a “life verse,” or even a favorite Bible verse. That is not a criticism of those who enjoy such blessings; it may even be a confession that in some domains I have a short attention span. But I would find it easier to list a hundred (or a thousand!) verses that have shaped my life in some significant way than to list one that can claim exclusive influence.

Often these verses have come to me at a well-defined period of my life, and have consequently “spoken” to me with particular clarity and unction. For example, when in recent years I’ve engaged in evangelistic preaching in a hostile context, I’ve often pondered Psalm 36:1 (NIV): “I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

From my days as a seminary student, I’ve often pondered Revelation 19:6–7 (NIV): “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.” Doubtless I join millions of other believers in listing Lamentations 3:21–24 (NIV): “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”

Yet one verse in particular played a significant role in my calling to vocational ministry.

Will I Wish I Had Given More?

At the time I was studying chemistry at McGill University, and enjoying the work well enough. For a few months I found myself in Ottawa, in a chemistry lab operated by the Canadian federal government, focusing on air pollution. I was thoroughly enjoying my life and labor.

At the same time, I was devoting some of my energy, especially on the weekends, to helping a friend plant a new church a little farther up the Valley. It was not long before I began to wonder if I should be considering vocational ministry. I could not shake off a chorus I learned in Sunday school:

By and by when I look on his face —Beautiful face, thorn-shadowed face —By and by when I look at his face,I’ll wish I had given him more.

Of course, I understood, even then (more than fifty years ago), that some people are called to be chemists, others teachers, workers in waste management, and so forth: for them, the “more” of the chorus includes such vocations. But still, I could not erase that chorus from my mind, and the sense that “more” for me was leading somewhere else.

Standing in the Gap

In September of that year, on a Sunday evening back in my home church in Montréal, I heard a missionary to Haiti, one Richard Wilkinson, give an address on Ezekiel 22:30 (NIV), where God tells the prophet, “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one.”

And my whole being cried out in response, “Here am I! Send me!” (see Isaiah 6:8). The context of Isaiah 6 shows that Isaiah’s volunteering was simultaneously the product of contrition and of presumption; I certainly did not escape the latter.

Nevertheless, that sermon based on Ezekiel 22, where God testifies that he looked for someone to “stand in the gap” before him but found no one, was one of the providential pieces that God used that year to direct me away from chemistry and toward vocational ministry.

How Might the Verse Apply to Me?

I come from a Bible-reading home. We kids were early taught to pay attention to context. As I read God’s words in Ezekiel 22:30, it was clear to me that he was not promising wrath to sinful Canadians in the 1960s, but was threatening wrath on Judea about six centuries before Jesus: that was when no one showed up to “stand in the gap” before God so that he would not have to destroy his covenant people.

“God seeks someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people today.”

To apply it to myself, I implicitly deployed an argument by analogy: just as God sought someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people more than two and a half millennia ago but found no one, so too God seeks someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people today.

Will he again find no one? It is a powerful appeal. I found it so as a young man, and still find it so today.

Standing Through Prayer

Many more years of Bible reading have brought me to think about a number of additional textual details.

Almost two decades later, I heard another preacher expound Ezekiel 22:30 and some related passages. This too occurred during a Sunday evening service, but the location of the church was in Cambridge, England. The preacher was Theo Donner, originally from the Netherlands. After securing a doctorate at Cambridge, he and his Scottish wife went to Medellin, Colombia, as missionaries, where they have served with distinction ever since. The sermon to which I am referring was delivered during one of his periodic sojourns back in Cambridge.

I do not remember all the points he drew from the text, but I recall how he focused our attention on several relevant passages. On the one hand, when the covenant people confess their sin to Samuel — the sin of wanting a king so as to be like the pagan nations around them — Samuel reassures them that “the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own.” Then Samuel adds, “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:22–23). In other words, intercessory prayer on behalf of the people of God was part of Samuel’s calling.

On the other hand, a different dynamic is disclosed in Amos. When God threatens catastrophic judgment, Amos intercedes with the words, “Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!” The biblical text goes on, “So the Lord relented. ‘This will not happen either,’ the sovereign Lord said” (Amos 7:2 NIV; cf. 7:5–6 NIV). But eventually, God declares, “I will spare them no longer” (Amos 7:8 NIV). The time for intercessory prayer has passed.

Elsewhere, we are told that Samuel is not even to mourn over Saul, once the Lord has rejected him (1 Samuel 16:1). In other words, Ezekiel 22:30 is just one passage that depicts the complex web by which God orders the lives of his people through God-mandated (or even God-forbidden!) prayer. For those drawn to meditate on the mysteries of providence, there is much grist for the mill in Ezekiel 22 and parallel passages.

Standing in the Darkness

Next, the preceding verses of Ezekiel 22:30 show that the sins and failures of the people were widely distributed.

The princes conspire together to “devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her” (Ezekiel 22:25 NIV); the priests “do violence to my law and profane my holy things” (Ezekiel 22:26 NIV); the officials “are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain” (Ezekiel 22:27 NIV); the prophets “whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says’ — when the Lord has not spoken” (Ezekiel 22:28 NIV); and the people “practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice” (Ezekiel 22:29 NIV).

“The need to stand in the gap before God is as urgent now as it was six hundred years before Christ.”

That is the context of darkness in which God declares, “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one.”

There are many biblical passages in which God seeks out and appoints prophets, priests, kings, apostles, gospel heralds. In the context of Ezekiel 22, however, God is looking for an intercessor who by God’s own appointment blocks God’s way, as it were (not unlike Moses in Exodus 32–34).

With this verse, set in the context of Ezekiel and in the context of my own life, God challenged me to think more carefully and prayerfully about what he wanted me to do with my life. And the need to stand in the gap before God is as urgent now as it was six hundred years before Christ.

Audio Transcript

What would it look like in your life to know that God loves you — I mean to know that he really loves you? Would that love be proven in a new job? Or maybe a better job? Would it be an open door that will allow you greater financial independence? Maybe it would be to find a spouse. Or maybe deliverance from chronic pain that depletes your energy. Or maybe it would look like being delivered from the consuming demands of a special needs child. What would prove God’s love to you? And what if the answer to that question was something altogether different than what we expected? What if, instead of any of these things, God showed his love to you by letting you die in sickness? Crazy, right? Totally counterintuitive. And yet this is exactly what we read about in John 11:1–44. Listen to this extraordinary story, because in it we find a life-changing lesson God wants all of us to grasp. Here’s Pastor John to explain, in one of his sermons from 2001.

This is John 11. I have used this text now in about five settings in the last couple of months because no other text has gripped me like this in driving home this central point.

Love and Glory

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. (John 11:1–2)

This is clearly a picture of sweetness and love. Mary loved Jesus, and Jesus loved Mary. Mark that word love. It will show up several more times.

So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (John 11:3–4)

So now you have two profound realities on the table: love and glory — the love of Christ and the glory of Christ. My question is, How do they relate to each other? Verse 5:

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

“Until Christ becomes our treasure, we don’t know what it is to be loved by God.”

Notice three things: (1) Jesus chose to let Lazarus die. (2) He was motivated in this by his zeal for the glory of God to be manifest. (3) This motivation is love.

Do you see the word so, or therefore, at the beginning of verse 6? Do you see what it’s preceded by and followed by? It’s preceded by the fact that Jesus loved Martha; Jesus loved Mary; Jesus loved the dying man, Lazarus. Therefore, he did not go heal him but stayed two days longer where he was and saw to it that he died.

Why Do You Want to Be Loved by God?

Now, what on earth could possibly turn that into love? Verse 4: This is not going to end in death. This is all about the glory of God, “that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

So here’s my definition of the love of God based on this text: God’s love is his doing whatever needs to be done, at whatever cost, so that we will see and be satisfied with the glory of God in Jesus Christ. Let me say it again: the love of God is his doing whatever needs to be done, at whatever cost to himself or to us, so that we will see and be satisfied by the love of God in Christ forever and ever.

Let me confirm this with John 17:24. Here’s Jesus praying for us, and he loves us in this prayer — oh how he loves us in this prayer. John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” If Jesus loves you and prays for you, do you know what he finally asks for you? That you may see him. The ultimate answer to the prayer of love is, “Show them my glory, Father. Show them my glory, and they will have arrived at ultimate satisfaction.”

Why do you want to be loved by God? Yes, not to perish. Yes, not to go to hell. Yes, not to have a guilty conscience anymore. Yes, to have the marriage put back together. But if that’s all you want, you don’t know him. You don’t know him. It’s for life. And what is life? It is to know him and his Son. It’s to fellowship with him. It’s to behold him. It’s to be satisfied with him. It’s to enjoy him. Until Christ becomes our treasure, we don’t know what it is to be loved by God.

Why are you thankful for the love of God today? I hope, before we’re done, God will have worked in your heart so that you see enough of God the Father and enough of God the Son, Jesus Christ, so that you will know and feel that it is not finally for the relief of your conscience, it is not finally for escape from hell, it is not finally for health in our bodies, or reconciliation among our family members; it is finally to bring you home to God, where you can see him and enjoy him forever and ever and ever.

Seeing and Savoring Forever

I want to know: Do you want this? Do you want this? Do you want to be loved by God for God? Do you want to be loved by God for God? Or do you only want to be loved by God because it feels good that he seems to make much of you? Have you taken the American definition of love — being made much of — and so twisted God to fit that definition that the only way you would feel loved by God is if he makes much of you, when, in fact, the love of God is working so as to change you so that you enjoy making much of him forever and ever and ever? And that’s the end of your quest. There isn’t anything beyond it.

“You will be satisfied when you forget yourself and are swallowed up in Jesus Christ, and he becomes your treasure.”

I do believe that is in every heart in this room. And we are all fallen, and we are all sinners. I know that every person in this room has a distorted desire for God, and it’s on the way to being purified. And it’s being tricked. You’re being tricked, many of you, into thinking that the satisfying thing in life is to be made much of: “If I could just get some people to clap for me, to like me, to approve of me, to give me a raise, or to give me an advancement. If I could just get someone to pay attention to me, I would be satisfied.” You wouldn’t. I promise you, in the name of Jesus Christ Almighty, you wouldn’t.

You will be satisfied when you forget yourself and are swallowed up in Jesus Christ, and he becomes your treasure, and he becomes your delight, and he becomes what you cherish and what you value, and you spend the rest of your eternity growing in your capacity to see and savor, to know and to delight in him forever and ever — and it will get better and better and better.

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.

If you search Scripture for examples of godly marriage, you may be surprised just how rare they are. Even couples that shine in some respects — Jacob and Rachel, Abraham and Sarah, David and Abigail — often have glaring indiscretions or outright failures.

The Bible gives us plenty of teaching about marriage, but very few actual marriages to imitate. That makes a love like the one between Boaz and Ruth all the more beautiful. Of all the marriages in the Bible, is any more commendable than the brief glimpse we get of this righteous son of Judah and his Moabite bride?

When Boaz found his future bride lying at his feet in the dark of night on the threshing-room floor, he said, “Now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you ask, for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a worthy woman” (Ruth 3:11). Through her fierce loyalty, her undaunted courage, her Godward dependence, and her submissive initiative, Ruth had proven herself a worthy woman — worthy of respect and admiration, and worthy of a husband’s devotion.

As we wander through the worthiness of Ruth, however, we meet a man of equal worth, the kind of man a woman like her could trust and follow.

Dating Oak Trees

Now, in holding up Ruth and Boaz as a model bride and groom, it should be said that we only get five verses describing their actual married life together (Ruth 4:13–17). This brevity may, however, strangely accentuate the lessons from their love for today — for marriage, yes, but all the more for the pursuit of marriage in dating. We can assume a great deal about who Boaz and Ruth were in marriage because of what see of them before they were married.

Scripture holds up Boaz and Ruth as a man and woman worthy of a lifelong covenant, as the kind of people a godly person should want to marry. Their love reminds us of a vital and unpopular piece of wisdom: Who our significant others are before marriage will be, in significant measure, who they are in marriage. Many foolishly marry unworthy men or women, hoping the altar will somehow make them worthy; the wise know that vows alone cannot alter anyone’s character.

“Who our significant others are before marriage will be, in significant measure, who they are in marriage.”

Oak trees grow from acorns, not thorns. None of us is as worthy when we marry as we will be years into marriage, and some unworthy spouses will be wholly transformed by God after getting married. But generally speaking, an unworthy boyfriend will prove to be an unworthy husband, and an unworthy girlfriend, an unworthy wife. While God may sometimes miraculously raise an oak tree out of thorny ground, we should not wed ourselves to thorns, but wait for God to bring an acorn — a worthy man or a worthy woman, a Ruth or a Boaz.

So, for any woman in search of her acorn, what made Boaz a man worthy of a woman like Ruth?

A Truly Worthy Man

The first time we meet Boaz, we’re prepared for the kind of man he will show himself to be:

Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. (Ruth 2:1)

Before Ruth and Boaz even see each other, we are told that this man is a worthy man — a man worthy of trust and respect who will act honorably in any circumstance, care for those entrusted to him, and protect the vulnerable, rather than take advantage of his wealth or power for selfish and sinful gain or pleasure.

For a truly worthy man is as worthy in secret as he is when others are watching — and Boaz was just such a man.

A Protecting Man

The worthiness of Boaz begins with how he cares for Ruth, a vulnerable widow far from home, even when there was no benefit in it for him. When he meets her in the field, he says to her,

Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? (Ruth 2:8–9)

Having only just met her, he immediately took responsibility for her well-being. He made sure, as far as it depended on him, that no one would harm her. And he didn’t wait for something to happen in the field, but went to the men first and charged them not to touch her. Good men are vigilant enough to foresee what threatens those under their care, and they are courageous enough to do what they can to thwart those threats.

So, do the men you want to date or marry protect the women around them? Do you see them making proactive efforts to guard women, especially single women, from danger or harm? One way a man can demonstrate this worthiness in dating is by clearly expressing his interest and intentions (or lack thereof), instead of indulging in ambiguity and flirtation. Does he leave a trail of confused and wounded hearts behind him?

A Providing Man

This commitment in Boaz to protect is welded to a lifestyle of provision. Men who will protect and provide for a wife well in marriage are men who protect and provide for others outside of marriage.

“Now, listen, my daughter,” he says to Ruth, “do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. . . . And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn” (Ruth 2:8–9). He saw a hungry woman, and made sure she had something to eat. He saw a thirsty woman, and made sure she had plenty to drink. He did not (like so many men would) ignore the need before him, or assume someone else would take care of it, or make excuses about not having enough for himself, but gladly and quickly stepped in to provide.

Now, most single women are not gleaning a neighbor’s field for their next meal, so does that make this quality in Boaz irrelevant for today? Certainly not. Worthy men are providing men in any context, and they notice and anticipate the needs of their particular context. As you watch the men you might marry, do you see them overflowing — time, money, work, attention — into the needs around them? Or do they seem to do just enough to provide for themselves?

Is this the kind of man that will not only make enough money to put food on the table (which is important), but will also consistently, even if not perfectly, provide for you and your family through prayer, through listening, through effective planning and communication, through teaching and discipline in parenting, through opening God’s word with you? Is he the kind of man who provides gladly, from a renewed heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion?

A Kind Man

The care and protection Boaz showed Ruth were both expressions of unusual kindness. When Naomi hears how Boaz received Ruth gleaning in his fields, she says, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” (Ruth 2:20).

“Good men are strong, courageous, and hard-working, but they are every bit as kind.”

And like today, his kindness stood in stark contrast with many of the men around him. People were not surprised when men were selfish, or harsh, or when they took advantage of women — why else would Boaz have to order his men not to touch her? But Boaz was not like those men. He was strong enough to provide, tough enough to protect, but also kind enough to care, to sacrifice, to love. Good men are strong, courageous, and hard-working, but they are every bit as kind.

“The Lord’s servant must be . . . kind to everyone,” Paul says (2 Timothy 2:24). They must be kind because God says so, yes, but also because they have been drawn under the waterfall of his kindness (Ephesians 2:7). Kindness is who men of God are, because they know where they would be without his kindness. Friends of ours wisely chose this verse for their wedding text: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

Is the man you might marry capable, with God’s grace and help, of this kind of kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness? Has he been humbled and softened by the devastating kindness of God?

A Redeeming Man

The worthiness of Boaz, like the worthiness of any husband, is a worthiness of reflection. The glory of Boaz is a light reflected from the Son, the Christ who would one day redeem his bride.

When Ruth approached Boaz, she said, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer” (Ruth 3:9). At that time in Israel, a “kinsman-redeemer” was a relative who paid to redeem a family member from servitude or to buy back land that had been sold or forfeited because of poverty (see Leviticus 25:23, 47–49). Boaz was not the closest redeemer, but he was the closest one willing to marry the widow and perpetuate her husband’s line (Ruth 4:5–6).

And so Boaz declares, for all to hear, “Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife” (Ruth 4:10). He redeemed her from her grief and poverty as a picture of how Christ would eventually redeem sinners like us from a far worse fate. The worthy Boaz rose to fulfill the charge Paul would one day give every Christian husband:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25–27)

A Blessing Union

As is the case with any good marriage, the blessed union between Boaz and Ruth almost immediately spills over in blessing to others. First came their son, Obed: “So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son” (Ruth 4:13). We don’t hear much of Obed’s story, but I can only imagine the immense blessing of being raised by such a father and mother.

We do see, however, how their marriage blessed Ruth’s mother-in-law: “The women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age’” (Ruth 4:14–15). When Naomi arrived in Bethlehem, she said, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me” (Ruth 1:20). But through Ruth and Boaz, her mourning was turned to dancing. Death and despair had given way to new life and hope. What the Lord had taken, he had returned and far more through a healthy, overflowing marriage.

Most important of all, though, the fruit and blessing of their love would spread much farther and wider. “They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David” (Ruth 4:13–17) — and through David, we now know, the Christ. A redeemer fathered the Redeemer, whose wings would shelter the nations. Their union (eventually) produced the seed that would crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). And while our faithful marriages will not bear another messiah, they can breed and spread the redemption, healing, and love our Redeemer bought for us.

So, as you pursue marriage, look for a spouse that will help you build a blessing marriage — a marriage so happy in God that it spills over to meet the needs of others.

Audio Transcript

We seem to be hardwired to root our happiness in our circumstances. It comes naturally to us. We are happiest when things are going well; we are saddest when things are going badly. Our mood is determined by the up-and-down roller-coaster of life’s ever-changing circumstances. We do it at age 4. We do it at age 24. We do it at age 44. And we do it at age 14. Today I want you to meet Tessa. She is a 14-year-old listener to the podcast who writes us today. “Dear Pastor John, hello! Thank you so much for this podcast and for the ministry of Desiring God. All of it has been a huge blessing in my life. Recently, I have been feeling more and more that my happiness depends on the circumstances around me. Will you please offer me biblical guidance on how I can root my joy in Jesus instead?”

Well, I feel so thankful for this from a 14-year-old. When I think back on the things that I struggled with when I was 14, I don’t think I posed the question the way I should have. So let me just encourage you that your very way of asking this question is a sign of significant, growing spiritual life and maturity, for your age especially. So take heart: from where I sit, it looks to me like God is at work in your life, and that is always a wonderful miracle.

Lifelong Labor

Before I give you some suggestions from the Bible for how you can shift your circumstance-dependent happiness onto Jesus-dependent happiness, let me also say that this battle that you feel right now, you will be fighting sixty years from now if you’re still alive and Jesus hasn’t come back. Because that’s how old I am.

“God is much more committed to building godly joy into his children than we are committed to finding it.”

Actually, I’m one year older than that — 75, not 74. And I have to address this issue of where my joy is rooted every day — every morning in battle against the devil and the world and the flesh — rather than letting the old nature, which the Bible calls “the flesh,” lure me away from Jesus to earthly things as more valuable. Every stage in life — a 14-year-old stage and a 75-year-old stage — has its unique allurements away from Jesus-dependent happiness to world-dependent happiness. It does. So, you’re going to have to fight this all the way to the end, so it’s good to get a good start now and learn your battle strategy.

Four Ways to Root Your Joy in God

So, let me make four suggestions for how to root your joy in Jesus and not in circumstances.

1. Get to know God’s purpose for the troubles in your life.

God is much more committed to building godly joy, happiness, into his children than we are committed to finding it. And one of his ways of doing this is by seeing to it that we walk through enough trouble to make us give up on finding our joy in a trouble-free life. Get to know the passages in the Bible that teach this. For example, Romans 5:3–5:

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

In other words, the joy of hope is intensified when our faith endures through trouble. Or in 2 Corinthians 1:8–9, Paul says,

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

In other words, the joy of complete reliance upon Jesus is God’s purpose when he brings us to the very brink of death. So, suggestion number one: Get to know this biblical teaching for the rest of your life. It will serve you very well.

2. Form the habit of finding God everywhere.

It’s a little unusual. Think it through with me. I suggest that you take all the natural pleasures that God gives you, which are not sinful, and make the conscious effort to see and to savor, or taste, God himself in and behind those pleasures. In other words, the best way to keep a God-given pleasure from becoming your God is to push into the pleasure and through the pleasure to the Giver of the pleasure, who is trying to show you something about himself and how satisfying he is.

So for example, the Bible says that God’s word is sweeter than honey (Psalm 19:10). And the Bible says that Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12). And the Bible says that he’s like living water (John 4:10–14). So when you taste anything that is really delicious, or when you pass out of a scary darkness into some beautiful light and brightness, or when you really, really, really are thirsty and you drink a glass of cold water, at every one of those points, say to yourself that Jesus is sweeter than honey, and he wants me to taste him in the gift of honey. Say to yourself that Jesus is brighter than this beautiful light, and he wants me to enjoy him in his brightness. And say to yourself that Jesus is more satisfying than this great thirst-quenching water, and he wants me to be satisfied in him like I feel right now with this water — only better.

In other words, form the habit of finding God everywhere that there is goodness in this world. This will keep you from treating the goodness as God, and it will keep you from scorning the goodness of God by rejecting the gifts. All God’s good gifts are meant not for idolatry; they are meant to give us a taste of the one who created them and to show us something of himself.

“Form the habit of finding God everywhere that there is goodness in this world.”

And I find it helpful to add this: since I’m a sinner and deserve nothing from God but judgment, therefore, every good thing that comes to me as a child of God was purchased for me by the blood of Jesus, without which I would only be condemned. I would base all that on Romans 8:32. Therefore, every good thing not only points me to the goodness of the Giver, but it points me to the infinite price that was paid by Jesus so that I could have the gift and the Giver. This helps me love him as I ought. I hope it does you too.

3. Make Bible reading personal.

Make your Bible reading every day very personal. Don’t just think about learning how to live from guidelines in the Bible, which are important, but every day, think about what you can know of Jesus, the Son of God, and God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit — what you can know about them as persons. In other words, read the Bible to get to know the person of God. Always think: I love a person. I love a person. God is admirable. God is strong. God is wise. God is kind. God is patient. God is just. God is merciful. And as you see these traits in God, love him because of them. Find the person himself to be your treasure. Make Bible reading personal.

4. Remember your coming death.

And finally, even though you’re only 14, keep death regularly in your mind — not all the time; just regularly return to the thought that you’re going to die. And the point of this is not to make you scared. It’s not to make you sad. It’s not to make you morose. Just the opposite. Everybody is going to die unless Jesus comes back first. It might happen when you’re 15, it might happen when you’re 95, but it is going to happen.

And when that time comes, everything but Jesus will lose its comforting power. All our possessions, all our accomplishments, all our personal looks and intellect, all our family and friends, all of them will fail as a foundation for hope and joy in our dying. But if you know Jesus personally, the day of your death will not be a day of just leaving things behind that you’re familiar with, but it will be a day of stepping into the presence of the one that we care about most.

So thank you for asking such a very good question at age 14. I’m really excited about what God is going to do in your life between now and when you’re 24.

“God gave us plurality because he’s a big fan of humility.” I was struck by how often Dave Harvey mentions humility in his new book The Plurality Principle on building and maintaining church leadership teams.

It’s not a new thought that a plurality — a team of pastor-elders, as opposed to just one — both requires and encourages humility. But what I did not expect is how often Harvey would sound the refrain for the pride-crucifying, humility-cultivating power of team leadership.

Harvey, like many of us, has seen and heard a lifetime’s worth of pastoral shipwrecks in recent years. Some of these leaders were formally peerless in their churches and ministries, but many others had fellow pastor-elders in name, and functionally little accountability, operating with special privileges and a long leash. In the end, too often one man was at the helm, when it could have been a team, and in time, the church, its witness, and the pastor himself came to suffer because it.

“When difficulties arise, do the elders suspect themselves first, not others, and serve others first, not themselves?”

“All Christian community tests our humility,” Harvey writes, “but being part of a leadership team is like sitting for the bar exam” (127). Then he observes, “Humility must be learned over time as individuals both suspect themselves first, not others, and serve others first, not themselves.” Suspect self first. Serve others first. That’s insightful, and a watershed of good leadership in the church: When difficulties arise, do the elders suspect themselves first, not others, and serve others first, not themselves? And what will determine which way the pastors will go?

“Humility is the oil that lubricates the engine of plurality,” writes Harvey. “If you want to know the foundational secret that lies beneath great teams, meetings marked by unity, personal elder care, and lovingly accountable relationships, it’s this: humility” (98).

How Plurality Humbles

Unlike the world’s vision of leadership as self-actualization and the accrual of privilege, a Christian vision of leadership has God, not self, at the center. Pastor-elders are not in it to build their own sense of confidence and self-worth. Rather, their calling is to make additional sacrifices, to bear extra burdens and costs, to point our fellow church members Godward in Christ.

Our need for humility grows the more we are surrounded by other people, especially when yoked in a calling to lead together. While humility is first and foremost a creaturely virtue in relation to our Creator, many of the great texts on humility come in the context of community (Philippians 1:27–2:5; Ephesians 4:1–3; 1 Peter 5:5–7).

Consider four ways, among many others, that team leadership humbles us.

1. Teams expose selfish desires and unholy ambitions.

The apostles warn us of the dangers of “selfish ambition” (Greek eritheia). James writes, “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16; also James 3:14). Paul lists selfish ambition as one of “the works of the flesh” alongside “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, . . . dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19–21; also 2 Corinthians 12:20; Philippians 1:17; 2:3).

“Selfish ambition,” or “self-seeking” (Romans 2:8), is tragic in any human, and any Christian, and all the more in Christian leaders. And it is a special threat for lone rangers. Who will smell it out, and can challenge it, even in its subtle forms? Teammates. Men who are peers, of the same standing and similar perspective, and can tell when directions and decisions are self-seeking, rather than church-seeking.

There is often a fine line between putting self forward and the willingness to serve in visible, celebrated positions of leadership. Good pluralities (teams not just in name but in function) tend to expose such selfish desires and unholy ambitions and challenge them before they become deep-seated. As Harvey writes,

If you’re new to working with a team, you’ll soon see how often plurality uncovers and forces you to deal with the heroic dreams and fleshly desires you have for ministry. . . . To serve as part of a healthy elder plurality, a pastor must know his role, be willing to come under authority, learn humility, traffic in nuances that are neither black nor white, and be willing to think about his gifts and position through the lens of what serves the church rather than his personal agenda. Leading in community puts us under the spotlight. (29–30)

2. Teams encourage the right kind of disagreement.

Disagreements are inevitable in the church, and in every sphere of life. The question is not if they will come, but when and how. Healthy teams encourage the right kind of disagreements to happen early and often, in the context of trusting, regular relationships. Better to first hear the opposing perspective in private, from a brother and peer who manifestly loves you, than publicly, or from a tense call or letter, after a rash decision has been implemented.

It is humbling to hear a brother you admire and respect disagree with you. Then, it’s additionally humbling to realize you were short-sighted, or wrong, and to admit it. Leadership pluralities encourage healthy disagreement, in the right time and context.

3. Teams show us the joy of not doing it all.

It’s one thing to admit, as a leader, that you’re human and can’t do it all (in theory); it is another to go about your daily and weekly work as if you can indeed do it all. Teams play out that humbling truth before our eyes, moving it from theory to reality in our own heads and hearts.

For team leadership to thrive over time, writes Harvey, “Each man must believe that he needs the other men.” And seeing our need for each other, lived out before our own eyes, serves to dispel pretenses in us that we deserve the credit for ministry successes.

4. Teams try our patience, and produce better results.

Team leadership is typically not efficient, but it is effective — which is how God wants his church to be led.

“Team leadership is typically not efficient, but it is effective — which is how God wants his church to be led.”

When the “senior pastor” is essentially the church’s CEO, decisions and next actions can happen very fast. Teamwork, on the other hand, takes time. We need to synch schedules, have conversations, provide rationale, answer objections, write drafts, add appropriate nuances. Team leadership is typically not efficient.

But apparently, God isn’t all that interested in efficiency in local-church leadership. Which is worth pondering carefully in our day, when other organizations in society emphasize efficiency, not without good reasons. Yet not so with the church. The clear, unified testimony in the New Testament to plurality of leadership in the local church signals that Christ is more interested in effectiveness than efficiency in his body. Again, Harvey writes,

God loves unity, so he calls us to a team — a place where we must humbly persevere with one another to function effectively. God loves making us holy, so he unites us to men who will make us grow. God loves patience, so he imposes a way of governing that requires humble listening and a trust that he is working in the lives of others. God loves humility, so he gave us plurality. (99)

Harder, and Better

Teamwork in ministry is a precious gift. Surely, thousands of solo pastors around the world long for fellow elders and do not yet have them. May God be pleased to answer their prayers and steady their hands. There is grace too for a lonely calling.

Those of us who do enjoy the priceless gift of teammates, it can be all too easy to take them for granted. Team leadership is not always easy. Often it doesn’t feel efficient. Fellow leaders can feel inconvenient. At times, it may seem like leading alone would be better.

But leading together challenges and chastens our pride. It costs us personal comforts and convenience, but the gains for the church, and for our own long-term joy, far surpass the discomforts.

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

This brief sentence at the end of the eighth Screwtape letter may not be as life-changing as other sentences have been for me, but it has certainly been faith-sustaining. I realized this recently when I noticed just how frequently I return to it. I quote it twice in my book on Narnia. Whenever I give a talk on C.S. Lewis, I find myself quoting it (even when I haven’t planned to). In counseling sessions with students or members of our church, the words frequently roll off my tongue. Most importantly, I know how often I preach it to myself in the midst of dry times.

Law of Undulation

The sentence appears in a letter from Screwtape to Wormwood about “the law of Undulation.”

Undulation is a fancy word for “wave-like rhythm.” The law of Undulation refers to a permanent feature of human life in our mortal condition. Screwtape derisively refers to humans as amphibians, creatures with one foot in the spiritual world (like angels) and one foot in the material world (like animals). As spirits we belong to the eternal world, but as animals we inhabit time.

“In all areas of our life, periods of emotional richness are regularly followed by periods of dryness and dullness.”

While our spirits can be directed to an eternal object, our bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual flux. The result is undulation — “the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.” In all areas of our life, periods of emotional richness and bodily vitality are regularly followed by periods of dryness, dullness, numbness, and poverty.

Peaks and Valleys

Screwtape explains why God has subjected human beings to the law of Undulation. Fundamentally, God aims to fill the universe with little replicas of himself. He intends for the lives of his image-bearers to be a creaturely participation in his own life as our wills are freely conformed to his will. God wants us to be united to him and yet distinct from him.

Troughs, especially spiritual troughs, serve this larger purpose. At times in the Christian life, God makes his presence manifest and felt. He makes himself sensibly present to us, with an emotional sweetness that empowers us to more easily triumph over temptation. Obedience flows from us like rivers from a living spring. Prayer is like breathing — the most natural and normal overflow of God’s felt presence in our lives. These are the peaks of the Christian life.

But then come the valleys, the troughs. God withdraws himself, not in actual fact, but from our conscious experience, from our felt reality. In doing so, he removes the emotional support and spiritual incentives that made obedience seem so natural and effortless. In these times, God is calling us to carry out our duties without the emotional richness and relish that his felt presence provides (though not apart from his sustaining grace). In doing so, we grow into creatures whose wills are more fully conformed to his own.

Desiring Versus Intending

This brings us to the faith-sustaining sentence, “Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys” (Screwtape Letters, 42). We can break it into parts in order to understand it better.

Lewis here makes a distinction between “desiring to do God’s will” and “intending to do God’s will.” This distinction is produced by the law of Undulation. Doing the will of God feels hard in the valley. It’s heavy and burdensome because the emotional sweetness of God’s presence is not felt.

In these times, we feel divided from ourselves. At one level, there is no desire. This is the level of the passions, those almost instinctive and intuitive reactions to reality that are closely tied to our bodies. At that level, we feel no desire to do God’s will because God is sensibly absent. His presence is not felt, and so our passions (i.e., desires) are not stirred up. But at another level — the level of reason and will — there is intention. This level is higher (or perhaps deeper) than the level of passions. Here there is a deep and fundamental commitment, even a deep and fundamental and enduring desire to do God’s will.

In such moments, we are like Christ in Gethsemane, saying, “Not my will, but yours be done.” “Not my will,” that is, “I don’t want to do this; I don’t desire to drink this cup.” Nevertheless, at a deeper level, “Your will be done.” That is, “I still intend to do your will, and this intention reflects a deeper and more enduring desire in my heart.”

Gap Between Want and Ought

Lewis expresses this division elsewhere in a discussion on prayer in Letters to Malcolm. Prayer, he notes, can feel irksome. “An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome” (113). And this is deeply unsettling to us, since we were made to glorify God and enjoy him forever. “What can be done for — or what should be done with — a rose tree that dislikes producing roses? Surely it ought to want to?”

If we were perfected, Lewis says, prayer would not be a duty, but a delight. So would all of the other activities we classify as duties. In fact, the category of duty is created precisely by this gap between our spontaneous desires and our real obligations. In other words, the distance between what we desire to do and what we ought to do is what creates the whole category of moral effort.

Lewis, however, insists that duty exists to be transcended. Angels don’t know (from the inside) the meaning and force of the word “ought” (115). Someday, God willing, we too will live beyond duty. Prayers and love to God and neighbor will flow out of us “as spontaneously as song from a lark or fragrance from a flower” (114). Until then, however, we live in the realm of duty, in which our desires and our obligations are frequently divided.

Lewis knows how to encourage us here: “I have a notion that what seem our worst prayers may really be, in God’s eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling and contend with the greatest disinclination. For these, perhaps, being nearly all will, come from a deeper level than feeling” (116) — though, we should add, not from a deeper level than God’s grace.

God-Forsaken?

Returning to Screwtape, what frequently smothers our desires is that we “look round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished.” The “seems to” is crucial. Every trace of him hasn’t actually vanished. All of reality continually testifies to its Maker. The heavens perpetually declare the glory (Psalm 19:1).

But in the trough, our perception is diminished. Our felt reality is often out of accord with reality. And thus God “seems to” have vanished. This seeming is potent. We mustn’t underestimate the power of appearances, of seemings. But neither must we make our periodic (and even enduring) seemings the dictators of our actions. Lewis shows us a better way.

Acknowledging Our Valleys

What should the Christian in the trough do? Begin with honesty. Acknowledge the trough. Name the valley. If God seems absent, say so. Out loud.

More importantly, say so to God. The patient in Screwtape “asks why he has been forsaken.” He directs his observation upward, to the God who seems to have forsaken him. In doing so, he follows in a great biblical lineage.

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1)

Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Psalm 10:1)

O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? (Psalm 88:14)

In the face of (seeming) divine absence, faithful saints cry out to God and plead, “Why?” and “How long?” and “Arise, O Lord!” They echo Jesus on the cross, who himself echoed the psalmist: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1) This is what faith looks like in the trough.

“In the face of God’s apparent abandonment, the faithful Christian still obeys.”

The cry of desperation and confusion is faith in the face of felt divine absence. That’s why Lewis contends that prayers offered in the state of dryness please him in a special way. Unsupported by rich communications of the divine presence, lacking the emotional sweetness of the peaks, these prayers come from the deep places of the soul, the heart of hearts, which contains our deepest and most persistent longings and commitments.

And Still Obeys

The sentence crescendos with these final three words: “and still obeys.” In the absence of passionate desire, in the face of God’s apparent abandonment, the faithful Christian still obeys. God’s felt absence is never an excuse for sin. The poverty of our feelings, the dryness and the dullness — these can never be used to justify disobedience.

And make no mistake: that is the demonic stratagem in the troughs — to prey upon our experience of divine absence in order to lead us to abandon him altogether. Which is why the satanic cause is never more in danger than when every sensible support has been knocked out and we cling to Jesus anyway. If we, apart from eager desire to do God’s will, and with God’s felt absence pressing upon us, still cling to Jesus and seek to walk in the light, what else can the devil do?

Even more than that, such faithful obedience, over time and through the valley of shadows, is frequently the pathway to renewed experiences of God’s presence. As Lewis’s hero George MacDonald put it, “Obedience is the opener of eyes.” Faithfulness in the Master’s absence leads to the delight of returning to the Master’s presence. “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master” (see Matthew 25:21).

God never makes a mistake.

I vividly remember those words, a chapter title in Evelyn Christenson’s book What Happens When Women Pray.

Honestly, when I first read them, I was cynical. They sounded trite and naive. I arrogantly assumed that the author hadn’t struggled much in her life, or else she wouldn’t have made such a bold claim. In my mind, God was good and all-powerful, but to say that he never made mistakes had sweeping implications that seemed inconsistent with the massive evil and suffering in the world. Christenson’s statement so annoyed me I was tempted to stop reading.

As I read her book, I had just been through the fallout of a marital crisis while also pregnant with our oldest daughter. I was grateful we had put our marriage back together, but to say that God didn’t make a mistake seemed far-fetched. My life had been difficult on many fronts already. I had lived in and out of the hospital after contracting polio as an infant. I had been bullied throughout grade school. I had recently suffered three miscarriages.

I had a hard time imagining that God hadn’t made a mistake somewhere in my trials.

All My Suffering?

While I struggled to believe he had never made a mistake, I did believe that God had been in at least some of my early suffering.

“God had not made a mistake in making my son, in giving him to us for a time, and in taking him back to himself.”

When I came to Christ, even at sixteen, I was already beginning to see God’s purpose in my disability. I had happened upon John 9, where Jesus tells his disciples that the blind man’s condition was not because of any sin, but so that his life could glorify God. When I read that, I knew that God was speaking directly to me. He reassured me that my suffering had a purpose, which changed how I viewed my life and my struggles.

Still, even though I had seen God use my physical challenges for good, I doubted that principle applied to all my suffering.

What God Says About Sovereignty

Despite my skepticism, since I was leading the discussion on Christenson’s book at church, I had to keep reading it. I pored over the Bible before our meeting, asking God for wisdom and guidance, and was drawn to passages on God’s sovereignty and purpose. I grabbed a concordance and made a list of Scriptures that stuck out to me, like these:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs on your head are numbered. (Matthew 10:29–30)

I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. (Job 42:2)

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. (Proverbs 19:21)

My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose. . . . I have spoken and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it. (Isaiah 46:10–11)

I kept rereading these verses even though they made no sense to me.

Truth I Could Not Shake

As the discussion began, everyone had an opinion on the same line that had arrested me: “God never makes a mistake.” Some people decidedly disagreed. It angered them. “Of course, hard things happen in the world,” they insisted, “but we shouldn’t attribute them to God.” Others shared their painful experiences and struggles with loss.

Someone said (rather matter-of-factly), “But we know Romans 8:28 says, ‘All things work together for good, for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose,’ which means that God is in control of everything and will use it all for our good.” Her cool words felt more like a platitude or cliché than the truth as they hung in the air. Her detached insistence on this doctrine, apparently without sympathy or understanding, tempted me to defend the other perspective.

Yet somehow, I couldn’t do that. Somehow, after reading the Bible carefully, I couldn’t dismiss the idea that God never makes a mistake. Somehow, deep inside me, I knew that the author’s words aligned with Scripture. Somehow, I believed this was life-changing truth. And so, I proclaimed my convictions to the group, even while I did not yet fully understand them.

Why Did My Son Die?

A few weeks later, I was asked to put my words to the test. At a routine 20-week ultrasound, we learned that our unborn baby, Paul, had a life-threatening heart problem that would require surgery. I told myself and others that God never makes a mistake. I repeated those words until they became part of my vocabulary. In an inexplicable way, God’s peace came while I declared those words, words that enveloped me throughout the pregnancy.

Paul had a successful surgery at birth and was thriving. But almost two months later, he died unexpectedly because of a doctor’s inattention. Though we were numb, my husband and I spoke at Paul’s funeral, reiterating that God never makes a mistake. We’d been helping each other find hope in the Lord through those words.

At the time, I meant those words sincerely, but weeks after Paul’s funeral, those same words once again seemed hollow and trite. Why did Paul die? Why did God permit this? This was because of a doctor’s negligence — hadn’t God made a mistake this time?

Theology — all of it — seemed empty and wooden to me. None of it made sense. The words would ricochet inside my mind and land nowhere. I didn’t know what to think or how to pray. So I didn’t. And I drifted from God.

Months later, God graciously drew me back to himself. While sobbing in my car, I encountered the radical love of God and I saw the rock-solid truth in the words I had pushed away. They were words I could build my life on. Words that could carry me through the darkest days. God had not made a mistake in making Paul, in giving him to us for a time, and in taking him back to himself. All of Paul’s life was filled with divine purpose.

God’s Plan A

After Paul’s death, I read Joni Eareckson Tada’s book When God Weeps, which further helped me see the importance of believing in God’s sovereignty. Joni says,

Either God rules, or Satan sets the world’s agenda and God is limited to reacting. In which case, the Almighty would become Satan’s clean-up boy, sweeping up after the devil has trampled through and done his worst, finding a way to wring good out of the situation somehow. But it wasn’t his best plan for you, wasn’t plan A, wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. In other words, although God would manage to patch things up, your suffering itself would be meaningless. (84)

“My suffering had meaning. All of it. I was living God’s plan A.”

Like Christenson’s chapter title, Joni’s words hit me hard. My suffering had meaning. All of it. I was living God’s plan A. Embracing and understanding her words changed my perspective on life, giving me strength to press on through the darkest trials, looking for God’s hand, grateful that my pain had a divine purpose.

Even in My Nightmares

God never makes a mistake. The phrase has shaped and reshaped my life and has anchored me through many storms. I clung to it when I was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome. And I kept repeating it after my first husband left us.

I needed the assurance that God was with me in my trials. The assurance that even when my nightmares came true, God had not made a mistake. He would use even my most dreaded outcomes for my good and his glory. Christenson says,

This is the place you reach when after years and years of trials and difficulties, you see that all has been working out for your good, and that God’s will is perfect. You see that he has made no mistakes. He knew all of the “what if’s” in your life. When you finally recognize this, even during the trials, it’s possible to have joy, deep down joy. (89–90)

I didn’t have a category for that kind of faith or perspective when I first read those words years ago. But now, over twenty years later, I am grateful for them. Grateful that the same God who walked with Evelyn Christenson through the various trials in her life, and taught her how to pray, has walked with me and taught me as well.

Most of all, I’m grateful to know that Jesus, who died that we might live, who loves us with an everlasting love, and who cares about every minute detail of our lives, will never make a mistake.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14759968/does-christ-put-pastors-in-specific-churches

Audio Transcript

Are rich Christians commanded to downgrade their living standards? It’s a question from Kevin, a listener to the podcast in South Dakota. “Pastor John, thank you for this podcast and for your ministry. And thank you for preaching against the prosperity gospel and for your personal model of contentment and generosity. All of this is prophetically needed in our age. But I also have a remaining question on wealth, specifically about 1 Timothy 6:17–19. I am a middle-class American, not fabulously wealthy according to the cultural standards of my day. But in the global perspective, and historically, I am wealthy. Whenever I hear you teach on Paul’s text, I hear you imply that the Christian wealthy are called to intentionally downgrade their lifestyles. They should live in smaller homes than they could manageably afford and enjoy the simpler pleasures of life. There’s a wonderful warning here about trusting in wealth that we should all be aware of.

“However, Paul does not seem to say in this text that the wealthy should downgrade their personal lifestyles. I read Paul and presume that a wealthy Christian today could live in an eight-thousand-square-foot, two-million-dollar mansion, drive a new BMW, and still also have their hope set on God, the giver of all these gifts, as they magnify Christ in their honest business dealings. But in that situation of abundance, Paul would tell them: Don’t be proud. Die to self-sufficiency. Enjoy it all as a gift, and never set your hope on riches. Instead, ‘be rich in good works’ and ‘be generous and ready to share’ (verse 18). I can see him discouraging the rich from seeking greater wealth accumulation or ‘barn-building,’ as Jesus called it. But Paul also does not seem to be too concerned with calling the wealthy to purposefully downgrade their own living conditions either. Am I missing something here?”

Cultural Conditioning

Well, let’s start by saying something controversial: Not only does Paul not seem too concerned with calling the wealthy to purposefully downgrade their own living conditions, but neither does he seem too concerned with calling slaveowners to account for holding slaves. So there you go. That ought to get everybody feeling defensive.

No, I’m not equating wealth-holding with slaveholding. The point of that comparison is this: If Paul chose to explode slaveholding not with direct indictment but with theological dynamite like 1 Corinthians 7:23 — “you were bought with a price; do not become bondservants [slaves] of men” — could it be that he might take the same theological, explosive approach to weaning people away from luxury?

Now before I illustrate what I mean by that, let me clarify something that I’m very aware of: I am aware that any warnings or admonitions that I might give to someone who lives a life ten times more lavish than my own, someone could give to me whose life is one-tenth as lavish as my own. And I am aware, as an American, that this latter group, globally, who live lives that are less than one-tenth as lavish as mine, are 99 percent of the world.

Now, here’s the implication of that awareness: Either I am a first-class hypocrite, which is possible, or I am a culturally conditioned voice trying to let the word of God call Western affluence to account, including my own, in the light of Scripture, without specifying precisely what degree of affluence is destructive to spiritual life and witness.

What’s Left?

So then, how does the New Testament address the issue of luxury and opulence and lavishness and riches? Kevin, of course, is right that Paul does not speak to the wealthy in his churches with condemnation — or to the slaveholder either, by the way. The text Kevin refers to is this:

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. (1 Timothy 6:17–19)

So here’s the question: When these wealthy Christians have reckoned with the uncertainty of riches, set their hope in God, have done good, have been rich in good works, have been generous, have been ready to share, have taken hold of life that doesn’t consist in possessions, what do you think is left for them to live on?

“The New Testament relentlessly pushes us toward simplicity and economy for the sake of the gospel.”

Well, right: it doesn’t say — which is why I have never precisely specified what degree of luxury is destructive to spiritual life and witness. On the other hand, as I read the New Testament, I think it is my job, as a biblical voice trying to be faithful to what’s there, to disturb the wealthy — including John Piper, especially him — by drawing attention to the ways that the New Testament relentlessly pushes us toward simplicity and economy for the sake of gospel advance and away from luxury and affluence and finery.

So, let me push in the other direction from Kevin when he says this: “I . . . presume that a wealthy Christian today could live in an eight-thousand-square-foot, two-million-dollar mansion, drive a new BMW, and still also have their hope set on God, the giver of all these gifts, as they magnify Christ in their honest business dealings.” Now, my response to this is to push in the opposite direction, knowing that there are far more powerful ways to magnify Christ than through honest business dealings, as good as that is, and knowing that there are many other passages of Scripture that ought to get under the skin of those of us who want to surround ourselves with vastly more than we need.

Four Reasons Wealth Is Dangerous

So, here’s one way to show what I mean. Jesus said in Luke 18:24, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven!” He did not say, “How hard it will be for those who love riches to get into the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, it’s a warning about the danger of being rich, not just of wanting to be rich.

Now, why would that be? Why would Jesus say that? Why does wealth make it hard to get into heaven? Why is being wealthy dangerous? Let me mention four biblical pointers to why that would be.

1. Wealth tends to choke faith.

Jesus warns in the parable of the soils in Luke 8:14 that people are “choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life.” These are not neutral; they have a tendency to choke the vitality of radical Christian living. So, the word to the rich like me should never be merely, “Oh, you’re okay if you’re honest.” Actually, you’re not necessarily okay. You’re in danger.

2. Wealth hinders us from radical obedience.

Jesus said in Luke 14:33, “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” Now of course, from all the other texts, we know this doesn’t mean that Christians don’t own anything. It means they are radically free from the control of possessions and always ready to do the most life-threatening acts of obedience. But the more accustomed we become to the lap of luxury, the more difficult this is and the less it looks to outsiders as if we are in fact that free from things, and that ought to matter to us. It ought to matter to us what inferences people might be drawing.

3. Wealth confuses our true treasure.

In Philippians 1:20, Paul said that his goal in life was that Christ would be magnified in his body, “whether by life or by death.” In other words, he wanted to live and die in a way that would appear to the world that Christ was magnificent to him — more satisfying than possessions or life.

And to that end, he said in Philippians 3:8, “I count everything as loss [rubbish] because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” In other words, we don’t magnify Christ just by being honest in our business dealings. We magnify Christ by living in such a way that communicates to the world that Christ is more valuable to us than houses and cars and lands and life itself.

4. Wealth distorts pure motives.

Which brings us finally to the fourth pointer to why it’s hard for the rich to enter heaven — namely, whether the motives for pursuing symbols of wealth (whether we think of them that way or not, they are) are pure. It is difficult to keep them pure — very difficult.

So, back to the two-million-dollar mansion, or there is a house here in Lake Minnetonka that went on sale yesterday in my area for fifteen million dollars. Why would a Christian — whose treasure is in heaven, and whose life is devoted to doing as much good as he can, and whose desire is to show the world that Christ is more precious than things — why would a Christian want to look like riches are his treasure? What would be the motive for buying such a mansion and surrounding yourself with more and more and more than you need?

“Why would a Christian want to look like riches are his treasure?”

And maybe I should end with just one more question for the mansion owner: Who are you going to leave it to when you die? If you have experienced the miracle of treasuring Christ above all things and of living for the good of others, do you think that handing off all this wealth to others will help them experience that miracle? Do you think it will do your children good to make them wealthy or to put a palace in the hands of some ministry?

My position is this: without specifying what measure of wealth is destructive to the soul or to our witness, the New Testament relentlessly pushes us toward simplicity and economy for the sake of the gospel and away from luxury and affluence.