Christ does not call us to scrape by spiritually year after year.

He can handle our down seasons and weak times. Jesus is gentle and merciful when our souls seem to be running on empty. He will not snuff us out when smoldering, or break us when bruised. And he is gracious enough to not leave us stuck forever in the state of “just enough”: believing just enough, hoping just enough, loving just enough to scrape by.

Jesus does not abandon his own when our spiritual tanks are low — and he bids us not to settle for threadbare spirituality or devotional minimalism. He invites us to more, and promises more, and empowers more.

Mature, healthy Christianity is maximalist, not minimalist. Those who are born again long for more of Jesus, not less. They’re not occupied with meeting bare minimums but want to see more, know more, enjoy more of Jesus, and then believe more, hope more, and love more, to his honor.

“Mature, healthy Christianity is maximalist, not minimalist. Those who are born again long for more of Jesus, not less.”

In time, the heart indwelt by the Holy Spirit recovers from its ebbs and cries more, more, more — not less, less, less — to see Jesus more clearly, love Jesus more dearly, follow Jesus more nearly.

So as an old year passes, and the new dawns, we don’t try to grope our way to find minimums of Bible intake, prayer, and covenant fellowship in the local church. We want to make the most of a new year.

We want more of Jesus in 2022.

Christ Honored in Death — or Life

Few passages shine with as much maximalist impulse as Philippians 1:22–26. Paul, in prison of all places, writes with confidence of his coming deliverance. Soon a verdict will come down, and either he will be released from prison or, through death, be released from this life. Paul is not anxious though: to die is “far better” because that is “to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:24).

His first desire, and personal preference, is to be as proximate to Jesus as possible — and so, “to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Yet Paul sees in Christ himself that personal preference doesn’t carry the day — at least not as a rule.

Paul has gladly dedicated his life to the advance of the gospel, not the advance of his own preferences. Nice as it would be, in his reckoning, to “depart and be with Christ” right now, Paul expects God’s work through him on earth isn’t yet complete. The very pattern and example of Christ’s own life did not move immediately toward his own immediate preferences but often laid them aside for the good of others. Paul anticipates that this too will be his call, for now: to “remain in the flesh” and “continue with you all” for their “progress and joy in the faith” (Philippians 1:24–25).

How, then, in his new, post-prison life to come, will Paul seek that Jesus “be honored in my body . . . by life”? What will “to live is Christ” mean for him in this new season? The dawning of a new year may be as good a time as any to rehearse Paul’s own vision of maximalist Christianity in Philippians 1:22–26.

Fruitful Labor

First, Paul highlights fruitful labor: “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me” (verse 22). This is not a manifestation of pride — as if Paul thinks so highly of himself as to presume effectiveness. Rather, this is a humble recognition of Christ’s call and the Spirit’s power: ongoing life in this age is an invitation to fruitfulness for Christ’s kingdom — perhaps particularly for an apostle, but no less so for the rest of us. As Paul writes to a young pastor and protégé, “Let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14). He dreams, and plans, and teaches toward not only fruitful apostles, but a whole church of fruitful laborers.

Fruitful labor isn’t magic, though it is supernatural. Christ calls his people, in the grip of his grace, to give themselves to the good of others, and to learn to do it, including the ups and downs of real-life trial and error. We cannot produce genuine spiritual fruit in our own strength, nor do we presume it will happen through us at the drop of a hat, in our own timing.

But we can learn. This is where genuine labor comes in. It is work. We engage. We invest energy and effort. We take modest and patient steps and over time devote ourselves to various initiatives and acts for the good of others, knowing that Christ means to empower our labor by his Spirit and make them fruitful in his timing.

Others’ Progress and Joy

Paul then spells out further, in verse 25, what this “fruitful labor” will be: “your progress and joy in the faith.”

In our day of self-focus, and shameless self-promotion, how refreshing to see the marked other-ness in Paul’s ambition. Modern ambition — and perhaps American ambition in particular — can subtly seep into our souls and color our seemingly Christian ambitions. But Paul’s perspective is that he remains in this life, as long as he remains, for the sake of others.

He resolves to honor Christ through his ongoing life by giving himself to the progress and joy of others’ faith. Paul’s life, as long as he lives, is dedicated to the glory of Christ through advancing others’ joy in Christ. Paul is not scraping by. He is not groping for spiritual minimums. He is not focusing his planning on a single act or word or two. He means to abound in doing good (2 Corinthian 9:8). He hopes for his life to overflow in countless acts and words for the good of others. His impulse is not only maximalist but others-oriented.

Ample Cause to Glory

Finally, we find one further degree of specificity in verse 26. The apostle will remain, for now, in this life, for the advance and joy of others’ faith, “so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.”

When released, Paul means to make another visit to Philippi, and his intentions are plainly maximalist. He means not only to give them a cause, or some cause, to glory in Christ. Rather, his plan, God helping him, is to live in such a way among the Philippians that they will have “ample cause to glory in Christ” when Paul comes to town. Ample cause. Literally, “so that your boast may abound in Christ Jesus because of me.” Not threadbare boasting in Christ, but boasting that abounds. And not minimal effort and energy on his part to provoke it, but maximal.

“If we content ourselves with just scraping by spiritually, we deprive not only ourselves of joy but also others.”

Which might inspire us to have such hopes and dreams, and pray such prayers, for a new year. If we content ourselves with just scraping by spiritually, with angling to just get by, do just enough, we deprive not only ourselves of joy but also others. Not only is our own boasting in Christ diminished, but also others boasting in him. Observe, then, the contagious power of joy in Christ. When our gaze attends to Jesus, and we devote our remaining lives to his honor, we give others not only cause to rejoice in Christ, but ample cause — boasting in Christ that abounds — to the honor and praise of our Lord.

Catalyzing Joy

Living to the glory of Christ is not just for Jesus and me, but also includes others — not just that they would see our lives and give God glory, but also that our lives would become part of catalyzing joy in Christ in them, such that they too would live to Christ’s glory and so multiply our life being poured out for Christ.

So 2022 provides a fresh opportunity to make such Pauline resolutions. Rather than the often self-focused mood of new-year resolves, what if we kept in mind how the joy of others is critical, for the fullness of our own joy, and for the maximizing of Jesus’s honor through us?

Our Lord has more grace to give — to empower us to thrive and not merely survive. And he is worthy of our earnest, humble resolves. Such maximalist Christianity could only be unattractive if we have a minimalist view of the value of Christ.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14977247/a-new-argument-for-how-to-live

Audio Transcript

Today’s email is from a friend of ours, a listener named Matthew who lives in San Antonio. He has thought up a creative way to get us into the tricky thicket of end-of-life decisions. Here’s what he wrote: “Pastor John, thank you for this podcast. I know from listening to the podcast for years that you are very hesitant to speak to specific end-of-life decisions because they require so much wisdom from medical professionals and because every life is so different. But we have nearly endless medical advances we can take advantage of now to prolong life. So I’d like to ask my question strictly within a hypothetical I made up:

Imagine a forty-year-old, middle-class Texan who is a regenerate, Bible-believing Christian man and has been married to a godly Christian woman for eighteen years. He’s diagnosed with aggressive terminal cancer and has two options before him, neither of which he likes or favors, but one of which he must choose.

1. If he does nothing, he lives a relatively normal life for one more year.2. With aggressive treatment and three surgeries, he will live for four years, and those years will be less than pleasant.

He has modest life insurance. His gracious employer will continue to employ him and pay his salary, plus one year after he passes. So he will have two to five years of income. He has two kids, ages sixteen and twelve, and it’s unclear if they’re believers. What, if any, biblical principles would inform your own choice between these two options?

As I have reflected on this hypothetical, I think it sounds very plausible, very real. I’m sure it’s happening multiple times every day like this. I have seven observations or principles to take into account when facing these two scenarios that he laid out.

1. Pray for Healing

First, I would pray. I would ask my friends to pray in either the one-year scenario or the four-year scenario. I would ask them to pray for my healing. I would not ask for this, probably, if I were eighty-five, because in this fallen world the death of an octogenarian is more or less normal — that is, it’s God’s plan that we die rather than live forever in this age. But at forty, death is much more unnatural and intrusive, and therefore it is more fitting, it seems to me, to seek God for the miracle of healing.

The decision to pray for healing does not dictate whether I choose to get the aggressive treatment or not, because God can heal me without it, and he can heal me through it. So the choice to pursue aggressive prayer for healing does not decide which option I go with. I would pursue prayer for healing in either case.

2. See Prognosis as Probability

Then I would keep clearly in mind that both scenarios — the one-year and the four-year — are human probabilities, not certain destinies. If you choose the one-year scenario, you might feel miserable instead of good for the entire year. If you choose the four-year scenario, you might feel better than you ever dreamed you could for those four years, in spite of all the surgery and chemo. You are only dealing with human probabilities.

“Prayer is the glorious wild card, and God may answer in dozens of ways we don’t expect.”

And when you stir in prayer, you are opening yourself to the fact that God may turn the one-year scenario into a four-year scenario, and he may turn the four-year scenario into a one-year scenario. Prayer is the glorious wild card, and God may answer in dozens of ways we don’t expect. So when I say that both scenarios are only probabilities, I am saying that not only may humans be wrong, but doctors may be wrong. But God has infinite options at his disposal for how you spend those years.

3. Face Death with Trust

Next, I would remind myself that both death and suffering for the Christian can be for our good. They are evil in themselves in the sense that they are contrary to God’s original perfect design, but in God’s providence both death and suffering serve his children.

Death serves his children by introducing them to immediate fellowship with Christ, which Paul says is far better (Philippians 1:23). And not only that, but facing death joyfully, square in the face, may be a compelling witness to our family, to our children, and to others. It might bring them to Christ.

“Facing death joyfully may be a compelling witness to our family, to our children, and to others.”

Suffering, like Paul’s thorn in the flesh, can serve us by keeping us humble, deepening our reliance on the Lord Jesus, and enabling us to glorify his power in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:7–9). Like death, suffering endured with deep, joyful, tearful confidence in Christ may be a compelling witness to our family and to others.

So, it’s important not to play death and suffering against each other, as though one is intrinsically more likely to be a blessing than the other. We don’t know that. Either one may be a greater blessing than the other in our lives and in the lives of our family.

4. Commend Christ’s Sufficiency

Both the one-year scenario (feeling good and dying early) and the four-year scenario (feeling bad and living longer) could be used by God for the salvation of our children, the strengthening of our wives’ faith, and the magnifying of Christ among medical professionals, church members, and lost neighbors.

We cannot predict with any certainty whether our willingness to face death early or our willingness to suffer long will have the greater force in commending the all-sufficiency of Christ to sustain us. We don’t know. God could use either one to save our children and others.

5. Fight Satan with Grace

Neither the one-year scenario nor the four-year scenario need be presumptuous, as though we are taking God’s prerogative into our own hands by choosing. We will need God’s help in both scenarios.

Satan will threaten us in the shorter scenario with fear, anger, and worldliness in how good we feel. He will cause us to focus on the coming day of our death next year. He will tempt us to be bitter and angry, and our faith will not survive without the sovereign help of the grace of God.

And if we choose the longer scenario, more life could mean more misery. Satan may have a field day causing our bodily and mental weaknesses to make it almost impossible for us to do the kind of spiritual warfare we have to do in order to persevere to the end. We will not make it through this suffering to the end without the sovereign grace of God sustaining us and carrying us.

6. Be Fed by Friends

In both scenarios, I would mobilize a team of trusted and loved Christian friends who would pledge, as much as they’re able, to walk with me through either scenario to the end. I have in mind not only daily prayer for me — that my faith not fail, the pain not overwhelm me, the absence of pain not result in my worldliness — but also that these friends would feed me the word of God regularly, whether through emails, mail, texts, phone calls, or visits.

As Matthew 4:4 says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” That’s especially true as we walk up to the edge of eternity. I will need the word of God. I need somebody to look me in the eye and say to me, in the name of God: “God has not destined [you, John Piper,] for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for [you] so that whether [you] are awake or sleep [you] might live with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).

7. Treasure Christ in Life

And finally, I would keep in mind that neither of these choices is a choice to hate life, or to commit suicide, or to allow anyone else to perform euthanasia on me. Life is a glorious thing — now and after death and, best of all, after the resurrection in the new world with Jesus.

But even so, I would cherish the gift of life now, and I would seek not to waste it. Whether for one year or four years, whether I’m feeling good or feeling miserable, whether death is tomorrow or years away, I would seek to treasure Jesus Christ above all things and to bring as many people with me as I can into the everlasting enjoyment of his presence.

Whoever you are, wherever you live, in whatever age you live, you either live to please man or you live to please God. And if you think it’s possible to serve both, you’re likely living to please the former, not the latter.

God is rightly and lovingly jealous for our first and fullest devotion. And every meaningful relationship we have will vie, whether overtly or subtly, to dethrone him. That’s why Jesus says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). Sin has a way of making the love and approval of people seem more thrilling and fulfilling than the love and approval of God.

The apostle Paul knew the seduction of the fear of man, and he had learned that no man could serve two masters.

Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10)

“If we live to have the praise, approval, and acceptance of others, we cannot belong to Jesus.”

The dichotomy is as striking as it is frightening: we cannot strive to please people and still serve Christ. Now, of course, even Paul himself can say, “I try to please everyone in everything I do” (1 Corinthians 10:33), but only because that love is an expression of his greater allegiance to pleasing God (1 Corinthians 10:31, 33). If we, however, live to have the praise, approval, and acceptance of others, we cannot belong to Jesus.

So do we recognize this deadly temptation in our relationships? Have we, like Paul, died to the approval of man? His letter to the Galatians gives us a tour of the battlefield and some weapons for the fight.

Well-Acquainted with People-Pleasing

Paul can talk personally and intimately about the fear of man because he had once pursued the approval of others. These are the confessions of a former people-pleaser:

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. . . . For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. (Galatians 1:10, 13–14)

His former life illustrates just how destructive the fear of man can be. As he persecuted the church violently — mocking, attacking, imprisoning, even killing believers in Jesus — he garnered a little more attention, a little more approval, a little more praise than his peers. Of course, he would have said he was only striving to please God, and he maybe even thought he was striving to please God, but he sees his hidden motivations more clearly in hindsight.

When Paul says, “If I were still trying to please man. . . ,” the still really matters. He had served the god of people-pleasing, for years and years, and he found him to be a cruel master, a stealer of life and love and joy, a dead end. And in Galatians, he writes to a church tempted to serve the same god.

God of Looking Good

How specifically was people-pleasing infiltrating the church in Galatia? False teachers had crept in, teaching the Gentile believers that they needed to practice the Jewish laws to be saved. We learn, however, that their real concern was not for the church, but for themselves.

They wanted to avoid the Jewish persecution that might come if the Galatians confessed Christ but refused to practice circumcision, dietary regulations, and other distinctly Jewish laws. They also wanted the recognition and praise of the Jewish authorities for converting Gentiles to Judaism. In other words, they feared the rejection and hostility of certain people, and craved their approval and applause. Paul explains,

It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. (Galatians 6:12–13)

Their duplicity is evident. They don’t even keep the law themselves, but they require it of others, because the compliance of others makes them look good. And looking good is their real god.

First Trap: Flattery

Knowing the temptations firsthand, the apostle recognized the influences that were corrupting and undoing the church in Galatia. The false teachers, who were themselves enslaved to the fear of man, were now preying on the Galatians’ desire for acceptance and affirmation. Watch carefully as Paul describes their strategies, because they’re the primary strategies of an awful lot of what we see and hear in the world today.

They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. (Galatians 4:17)

They begin with flattery, an effective tactic in persuading people-pleasers. As warm as flattery may sound and feel at first, though, flattery is always selfish and always destructive. It distorts reality, erodes trust, and indulges itself at the expense of someone else (Proverbs 26:28). “They make much of you, but for no good purpose.” They sweeten their words to win you without any real concern for you and your good.

The gospel says, “You are worse than you realize, but God’s grace is greater than your sin.” Flattery says, “You’re better than you think, and you’re certainly better than those other people.” If we live for the approval of man rather than God, we make ourselves all the more vulnerable to flattery. People will be able to influence and manipulate us by gratifying our thirst for affirmation.

One way to discern this danger in our personal relationships might be to ask, Do the people who affirm me also regularly challenge me? If they are eager to praise me, are they also willing to correct me?

Second Trap: Rejection

The false teachers used two very different strategies to prey on the Galatians’ fear of man (which reveals how subtle and complex this war can be). Both strategies seize on insecurity, but in opposite ways.

Yes, the Judaizers fawned over these Christians with flattery, but notice how they also threatened to exclude those who didn’t comply. They tried to convince these new believers that they had to adopt certain Jewish laws to be in God’s inner circle. “They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them” (Galatians 4:17). They’re trying to establish a special and exclusive group of “true” believers. They lure you in by making you feel left out. Did we think cancel culture was new with us? Satan knows that as much as people-pleasers crave the approval of others, they often fear their disapproval even more.

So where are we vulnerable to this fear of exclusion? One way to test ourselves would be to ask, What Christian beliefs are we tempted to hide — about abortion, about sex and sexuality, about ethnicity, about whatever — to fit in with the crowd whose approval we crave? (Note: This could be a crowd in the world or a crowd in the church.) Does our desire for acceptance make us ashamed of anything God says in his word?

Flattery preys on our craving to be admired. This second pressure preys on our fear of being excluded, of being left behind — ultimately, of being alone.

The World Died to Me

So how do we escape these twin traps that the fear of man lays? Having broken free himself, Paul charts a course for those similarly tempted. Freedom from unhealthy people-pleasing requires two great deaths:

[The false teachers] desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:13–14)

First, the world must die to me. What does that mean? When Paul was converted, and left behind his people-pleasing ways, nothing changed in the world. All the same pressures tried to intimidate him into conformity. All the same social expectations rose up around him. All the same risks threatened to isolate and afflict him (or worse). And yet he can still say that one day he met Jesus and the world died before his eyes. The world — all the worldly opinions, desires, applause, and criticism of mere humans — suddenly lost its power over Paul. It was if everything that once controlled him had been nailed to a cross and left there to die.

“For the world to lose its power over us, we have to surrender our craving to please the world.”

How does the world lose that kind of power over us? Through a second, more painful death: I must die to the world. For the world to lose its power over us, we have to surrender our craving to please the world. To follow the crucified Son, we have to crucify our former master (whatever sin had its hold on us). To experience the joy of life in Christ, Paul had to first die to being admired and praised by his peers. He couldn’t enjoy both. “If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” So he refused the master that bred fear while stealing life, that increased guilt while decreasing peace, that amplified insecurity while muting love. He chose the better master.

Choosing to live for the approval of God, and not of man, will be costly in this life. Paul was hunted, beaten, robbed, imprisoned, and stoned nearly to death for his choice. And yet he could say, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Not worth comparing. That is the key to overcoming the fear of man. We will die to the comforts of people-pleasing when we realize, with Paul, just how much more satisfying it is to suffer for pleasing God.

Christian Hedonism emphasizes the importance of feelings. The Bible commands us to delight in the Lord, to love mercy, to fear God, to rejoice in hope. Emotions are essential to the obedient Christian life.

At the same time, Christian Hedonism recognizes that not all emotions are godly emotions. Not all feelings are faithful feelings. Not all affections are holy affections. Emotions aren’t always our friends. Far from serving worship of God, they can hinder and undermine it.

“Not all feelings are faithful feelings. Not all affections are holy affections.”

It’s my growing conviction that we need to develop (or recover) a more robust vocabulary for describing various categories of feelings and emotions. In particular, it seems good to distinguish between immediate and impulsive feelings that are rooted in the soul but closely tied to our bodies, on the one hand, and deeper, more stable emotions that are exercises of our will, on the other. The former we can call passions; the latter we can call affections. With a little help from the apostle Peter and C.S. Lewis, we can see the value of making this type of distinction between immediate (and superficial) passions and deeper (or higher) affections.

Set Your Hope on Grace

First, consider Peter’s exhortation in 1 Peter 1:13–16.

Preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

Notice the three phrases in verse 13: (1) “preparing your minds for action,” (2) “being sober-minded,” and (3) “set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you.”

The first phrase literally means “girding up the loins of your mind.” To use a modern image, we might say, “rolling up the sleeves of your mind.” Peter calls them to get ready to do some serious mental work, the kind that takes effort. This isn’t roll-out-of-bed-in-your-pajamas work. This is get-your-work-clothes-on, make-sure-your-shoes-are-tied, get-your-game-face-on work.

The second phrase refers to the opposite of drunkenness. Be sober-minded. Now, drunkenness impairs our perception, our judgment, our reaction times. So the opposite of drunkenness is an alertness, a clarity of mind, a steadiness. So roll up the sleeves of your mind, get clear and steady, and then what?

The final phrase calls for a particular affectionate response. Hope is a future-oriented affection. It is a glad-hearted expectation of something good that is coming. We don’t yet possess it; we don’t hope for what we already have. And Peter knows it is far too easy to be distracted by the cares and anxieties of this world, to look to the future with fear rather than faith. And so he exhorts us: Roll up the sleeves of our mind, get clear and steady, and then set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you. You’ve been born again to a living hope, an imperishable inheritance (1 Peter 1:3–5). Now set your hope fully on the tidal wave of coming grace.

What Are Passions?

Now, why is setting our hope in this way so necessary? The next verse expresses the danger. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14).

Passions are the immediate and intuitive and impulsive exercises of the soul that are closely tied to the body. Passions can be good. Paul desires to depart and be with Christ (Philippians 1:23), using the same word translated as passions in 1 Peter 1. However, frequently the word passions in the Bible refers to sinful and ungodly passions. Elsewhere in 1 Peter, they are called “passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). They are linked with vices like sensuality, sexual immorality, drunkenness, and lawless idolatry (1 Peter 4:3). As human passions, they are opposed to the will of God (1 Peter 4:2). And these passions want to lead. They want to take us somewhere. If we follow them, then we indulge or gratify our passions, and they begin to conform us to their image.

So Peter depicts a conflict between an affection (hope) that requires serious mental effort, and the fleshly passions that wage war against our soul. And this is where Lewis is so helpful.

Blitz Against Belief

Lewis knows that the human mind is not completely governed by reason. There’s often a conflict between what we know to be true and what our emotions (or passions) and our imaginations tell us is true. He says once someone has accepted the gospel, here’s what will inevitably happen:

There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments when a mere mood rises up against it.⁠ (Mere Christianity, 140)

Lewis knows that our moods pose a real danger to our faith. Elsewhere he says,

Our faith in Christ wavers not so much when real arguments come against it as when it looks improbable — when the whole world takes on that desolate look which really tells us much more about the state of our passions and even our digestion than about reality. . . . When once passion takes part in the game, the human reason, unassisted by Grace, has about as much chance of retaining its hold on truths already gained as a snowflake has of retaining its consistency in the mouth of a blast furnace. (Christian Reflections, 43)

In the grip of passions, all sorts of dubious and preposterous arguments begin to seem plausible. Our moods really do affect our faith, and our moods are frequently influenced by our bodies — what we’ve eaten, how well we’ve slept, whether we’ve exercised — as well as by our circumstances or even the weather. In my own life, I’ve regularly had to face these kinds of unbelieving moods, these foggy clouds of vague unbelief that seem to settle over my soul.

Steering Elephants

How do Peter and Lewis help me in the face of these moods? First, by enabling me to recognize them as passion-driven moods. This sort of unbelief is a fog that clouds thinking. That’s why we have to roll up our sleeves and clear our heads in order to set our hope.

Second, they encourage me to pray for the gift of faith, for “the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth” (43).

“Faith is the art of holding on to what we’ve believed in the face of our changing moods.”

Now faith, or what Peter here calls “setting your hope fully,” is the art of holding on to what we’ve believed in the face of our changing moods. There’s a kind of rebellion of our moods against our real self. Our sinful passions wage war against our souls. Our lower, superficial, and immediate feelings seek to grab the steering wheel, leaving our higher faculties to trail along behind.

To use an image from Jonathan Haidt, it’s a bit like trying to ride an elephant. The elephant (our passions and moods) is strong and powerful and lurches left and right. But if we roll up our sleeves and stay clearheaded and steady, we can, by grace, learn to steer the elephant. We can tell our moods where they get off.

Stubborn Faith

Lewis calls this “practicing our faith.” Repeatedly engaging in the practice of our faith turns that practice into the habit of faith, a kind of persevering dedication and affectionate commitment to the truth that we’ve received. True faith is a stubborn thing.

Cultivating this habit is no easy task. It requires ongoing effort. It’s why we daily seek to bring the truths of Scripture before our minds. It’s why we labor to pray consistently and constantly, thankfully and humbly calling on God as our Father for help. It’s why we gather with other believers to encourage each other in the faith and stir one another up to love and good deeds. These habits of grace are ways that we roll up the sleeves of our mind and soberly set our hope on future grace.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14973303/how-to-escape-the-coming-wrath-of-god

Closed for Christmas. No birth in history has changed the world like that quiet, unsuspecting night in Bethlehem. Two thousand years later, no day marks as many calendars, determines as many schedules, pauses as many businesses, and draws together as many friends and families.

No prophet’s or great teacher’s origin, no king’s or president’s birth, no other single event in the history of the world transcends tribes and nations, continents and hemispheres, epochs and ages, liberal college campuses and secular places of employment, as the birth of one Jesus of Nazareth. Even the annual calendar at Hogwarts is set in time with Christmas Day.

And this peculiar influence is no accident of history. When we pause to ponder the surprise that this “present evil age,” at least for now, nearly shuts down for Christmas, we see the wink and smile of God. Rightly has no birth story, the world over, been rehearsed even nearly as often as the day that God himself, in the person of his Son, was born among us as one of us, fully God and fully human, to save his people from their sin.

God and Man in One

Of course, to mark the birth of “God himself” is far more controversial than just “Jesus of Nazareth.” Historically, the birth of the latter is hard to deny with a level head. Yet, the heart of the Christian faith pulses with “Jesus of Nazareth” as “God himself.”

“On Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of ‘the God-man’ — man like every other, and God like no other.”

On Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of “the God-man” — man like every other, and God like no other. A long history of devout and deliberate thought and tense dialogue has taught us to call him, among countless other names, “the God-man.”

Names from Scripture

Most of our many names and titles for Jesus come from the Scriptures themselves: He is “the Word,” the eternal, uncreated Logos who was in the beginning with God, and through whom God made the world. He is the long-promised, singular “seed of the woman,” who crushes the serpent’s head. He is the prophesied Son of David, anointed heir to Israel’s throne, the shoot and branch that grow again from the severed tree, and stump, of exile. As David’s son, he is “son of God” as Israel’s king, and “Son of God” as the eternal Son of the divine Father.

Veiled in flesh, he moved among us as the enigmatic “Son of Man,” manifestly human, but also harkening to Daniel’s shadowy figure approaching the throne of heaven to receive worldwide dominion from the Ancient of Days. He comes as Alpha and Omega, yet Suffering Servant and Lamb of God, giving himself to rescue sinners. And most shockingly, breathtakingly, awe-inspiringly, as the apostles make plain, he is God himself, not only divine in some general sense but specifically, and even more daringly, as Lord (kurios), somehow Yahweh himself among us, as one of us.

But nowhere in Scripture do we hear, in as many words, that he is “God-man.” When we call him that, and mark Christmas Day as the birth of such, we are not repeating strictly biblical terms. Rather, we are drawing on the fruit of theology. We are benefiting from the sweat and blood of centuries of faithful voices who responded to those who erred in trying to bottle up the mystery.

Enter God-Man

For the apostles, and first Christians, it was very clear that Jesus was fully human. None doubted it in that first generation. His mother knew it; she birthed him. His brothers and sisters knew it; they lived with him, ate with him, touched him, heard his voice. So too his disciples who walked with him for three years, and saw his undeniable humanness in public and private. Large crowds witnessed his teaching and miracles, saw him ride into Jerusalem on a humble steed, stand trial, endure slander, carry his own cross, and die on it horrifically under a sky that went black. And Paul writes that “more than five hundred brothers at one time” (1 Corinthians 15:6) saw Jesus alive again after his crucifixion.

But what wasn’t yet plain — and what his disciples progressively came to realize, all too slowly, during his life and ministry, and then climactically with his resurrection from the dead — was that this Jesus was no mere human. Human he was, without dispute. But somehow Yahweh himself had come in this man, not figuratively but literally — not just “in spirit” but actually in the flesh, truly man, with a reasoning soul and body.

The disciples, and those being added to their number, came to worship Jesus, as first-century Jews otherwise could not fathom. Jews inarguably did not worship Moses. They did not worship David. They did not worship Elijah. But remarkably, Jewish though they were, the risen Christ they worshiped (Matthew 28:9, 17; Luke 24:52).

So, the first question of Jesus’s disciples and their contemporaries was not, Is he human? but, Is he God? That question came to be answered by the resurrection.

Can God Be Man?

Consider, then, how this changed in subsequent generations, at least among those who confessed “Jesus is Lord,” as the starting place of their faith and worship. For later Christians — who worshiped him, but did not hear him, see him, touch him for themselves — his Godness was the given; his humanity might be less certain. Some were prone to ask, Can the one who is God be truly man?

To far oversimplify, but give some sense of the challenges from all sides, Greek influence led to Gnostic claims that Christ couldn’t really be man, but only seemed to be (Docetism), while the heights of Hebrew monotheism led to Ebionite claims that he couldn’t really be God. And as test after test arose in those first centuries, the central truths about who Jesus is were not developed as much as defended.

The church and her councils did not provide further revelation about Jesus — the apostles did not waver on his humanity or deity. Rather, the Fathers and creeds sought to protect the faith once for all delivered to the saints. No ecumenical council made Jesus the God-man in a way that he wasn’t already in the apostolic writings and at the Father’s right hand.

Can Man Be God?

When third-century Arians asked, Is he truly God and not just God’s first and greatest creature? the council at Nicea (325) answered, He is truly God: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence as the Father.” Then subsequently, when Apollinaris of Laodicea, renowned defender of Christ’s deity, raised new questions about the extent of his humanity, the council at Constantinople (381) answered, Jesus is fully man, including a human mind in addition to the divine.

Later, when the influence of Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople, led some to question, Is he really one person, or two? the council at Ephesus (431) answered, He is one person indeed. And when Eutyches of Constantinople and others, in response, so emphasized Christ’s oneness to question, Does he have two natures? the council of Chalcedon (451) answered, He is fully God, and fully man — one person with two complete and uncompromised natures: “inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.”

Jesus was not first declared to be the Son of God at Nicea in 325. He went fully public as divine Son by his resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4). The church received him as such, then and there, and so became the church. The entirety of the New Testament documents received him as such, not only by the prose of direct assertion but through a web of poetic hints, divine overtures, frank acknowledgment, and glimpses of peculiar glory that stretch across and attach to every page from Matthew to the book of Revelation.

Made for Christmas

On Christmas Day, we celebrate a great heritage in remembering the birth of the Lord God Almighty. Jesus is Lord: preexistent, uncreated, God himself and fully God. Jesus is Savior: fully human, all the way from humble birth to sacrificial death, assuming our human body, emotions, mind, and will to save us. And he is Treasure: fully God and fully man in one spectacular, risen, reigning person. He is the Pearl of Great Price (Matthew 13:46), the Surpassing Worth (Philippians 3:8), who not only satisfies all that God requires of man, and satisfies the requirements of divine justice in view of our sin, but uniquely satisfies the human soul with his unique human-divinity.

“We were not only made for God; we were made for the God-man.”

We were not only made for God; we were made for the God-man.

Which may help explain why his birth still stubbornly haunts the calendars of the professing secular today. Perhaps it’s more than just historical and practical. Perhaps the goodness that Christmas whispers not only closes businesses on December 25 but lingers in the subconscious,
leaving even calloused hearts longing for such a rescue.

The God-man has come, for us and for our salvation.

“Who is this Son of Man?” From the moment he first appeared in the world, on a desperate night in a crowded town, Jesus has provoked this question.

The shepherds must have asked it in awe when gazing upon this swaddled newborn “lying in a manger,” whom the holy herald angel said was “Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:8–20).
The magi must have asked it in wonder when the star led them to the Child who was “born king of the Jews,” living in the humble dwelling of a peasant family (Matthew 2:1–12).
The disciples asked it in fear when they witnessed a storm obey Jesus’s command (Luke 8:22–25).
The Jewish leaders asked it in outrage when Jesus claimed authority belonging only to God (John 8:53).
The crowd asked it in confusion when Jesus and his teaching did not match their messianic expectations (John 12:34).

“Who is this Son of Man?” It has become the great question of history regarding the One whose birth became the dividing point of all history.

But this question hasn’t gone unanswered. And of all the Bible’s answers to that question, one of the most glorious and mind-bending comes in the book of Revelation. Here the Father and the Son answer together, in Revelation’s first chapter and last:

First, the Father’s answer: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty’” (Revelation 1:8).
Then the Son’s answer: “Behold, I am coming soon. . . . I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:12–13).

Taken together, the Lord God and the Lord Christ provide an awesome single, twofold answer:

Like eternal Father, like eternal Son;Spanning endless ages, two divinely one.Alpha and Omega, both the first and last;Eternally existing, present, future, past.

He Who Is

Like God the Father, God the Son is also one “who is and who was and who is to come.” This is to us a strange chronology — first present, then past, then future. We might wish to correct the divine self-description to say he “who was and who is and who is to come.” But this would be a mistake.

“The greatest, most fundamental reality in existence is that God is.”

The greatest, most fundamental reality in existence is that God is. In fact, the most sacred name God revealed to his first-covenant people, his most holy self-disclosure, is the one he spoke to Moses: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14; also 33:19; 34:6). That’s why in the divine chronology, the fact that God is comes first.

Time is a mystery to us, so it is no surprise that how God interacts with time is a mystery to us. But we can safely assume that when God speaks of time in ways we at least partly comprehend, he is graciously condescending. So, when he tells us that he “was” and he “is to come,” it is to help us time-bound creatures understand that “from everlasting to everlasting” he is God (Psalm 90:2). And it is to help us understand that Jesus, like his Father, “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He always is.

And yet, mystery of mysteries, the eternal Word of the Father entered the world in space and time, the world he himself had made (John 1:10) “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In appearing among us, God the Son revealed marvelously who he is:

“I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).
“I am from above” (John 8:23).
“I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29).
“I am in the Father” (John 10:38).
“I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

An even more wonderful and simultaneously damning self-revelation occurred during Jesus’s trial. When asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus’s glorious, lethal answer was, simply, “I am” (Mark 14:61–62).

Who is this Son of Man? Like eternal Father, like eternal Son. He is the “I am.” He is the Son of the Blessed Father. He is the Lord Christ, who, like the Lord God, always is.

He Who Was

That the Son always is implies the Son always was. For some, this is the most difficult concept of God’s existence to comprehend.

“God is not wholly understandable to us because he is holy.”

The difficulty is wholly understandable. We are created beings trying to comprehend an uncreated Being, not to mention a triune uncreated Being. God is not wholly understandable to us because he is holy — nothing else in existence shares his uncreated existence.

But Jesus takes our struggle to a whole new level, when in the incarnation, the Creator becomes creature:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. . . . And the Word became flesh. (John 1:1–3, 14)

Mercifully, much like the way God revealed himself in the Old Testament, Jesus revealed this aspect of his glory progressively.

One of the first to see Jesus’s preexistent glory was John the Baptist, Jesus’s older cousin who nevertheless said, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me” (John 1:15).

But as the time drew near for Jesus to fulfill the redemptive purpose for which he came, he revealed more of his preexistent, always-existent nature, as he did in this famous discussion with the Jewish leaders:

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:56–58)

So unique, so holy is God the Son, that his nature breaks the conventions of human grammar. He uses a present-tense verb in a past-tense context to communicate his Christological point. Later, the apostle Paul would do the same thing when he declared that Jesus “is before all things” (Colossians 1:17).

Who is this Son of Man? Like eternal Father, like eternal Son. He is the Alpha. He is the beginning. He is the one who always was.

He Who Is to Come

That Jesus always is also implies that Jesus always will be — he is the one who is to come. This he revealed with unmistakable and glorious clarity.

In describing the end of this age to his disciples, he said,

Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matthew 24:30–31)

He declared this same coming to the Jewish leaders during his trial, after proclaiming himself the “I am”: “You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62).

These Jewish listeners knew exactly what Jesus meant. He was identifying himself as the “son of man” prophesied by the prophet Daniel, whom “all peoples, nations, and languages [would] serve,” and who would receive from Almighty God “an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and [a] kingdom . . . that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13–14).

But Jesus wasn’t merely issuing a warning. He was expressing his great longing, the purpose of his incarnation, the culmination of history, and the reward of his suffering.

The kingdom! The time when, at last, God himself will dwell with man; the time when our waiting will be over, and God will “wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore”; the time when “the former things [will] have passed away”; the time when God will make “all things new” (Revelation 21:3–5).

The kingdom! The “blessed hope” of all who have loved “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13; 2 Timothy 4:8). And of the fulfillment of this blessed hope, our great God and Savior, the prophesied Son of Man, has promised, “Behold, I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:12).

Who is this Son of Man?

Like eternal Father, like eternal Son;Spanning endless ages, two divinely one.
Alpha and Omega, both the source and sum;
He who is, he who was, and he who is to come.

And so shall the great question of history receive its climactic answer when the Lord God sends the Lord Christ to bring to a close history as we’ve known it and inaugurates his everlasting kingdom. All we who wait for this blessed hope say, “Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus.”

Audio Transcript

Happy Christmas Eve, everyone! Thank you for joining us on the podcast. Pastor John, in the last episode I shared a clip from you preaching on Christmas 1981 — forty years ago, at the youthful age of just 35. The clip is older than you were when you preached it! It’s amazing to hear your voice as a rookie pastor.

But we’re now zoomed into real time in the studio. You are 75 now, and Christmas 2021 is tomorrow. For a lot of Christmases, you’ve been thinking about the implications of Christ’s coming. Over these past several weeks, I know you’ve been giving a lot of thought to the holiday this year in particular. Tell us why. And what’s on your mind this Christmas Eve?

I learned back in October that I’d be preaching at my own church — at Bethlehem — the Sunday before Christmas. From that time in October until now, the wonder of Christmas that has taken hold of me in a fresh and powerful way is the amazing reality that the personal, infinite, eternal, holy Creator of the universe sent his Son into this tiny speck of human habitation called Earth in order to be condemned to death in my place.

Sometimes we just have to do what Psalm 46:10 says: “Be still, and know that I am God.” In other words, we have to just pause and let staggering reality sink in. Christmas Eve is a really good time, I think, to do this.

“The Creator of the universe sent his Son to this tiny speck called Earth to be condemned to death in my place.”

So what reality do we need to let sink in today? Reality like this: reality before, above, and outside of all created reality, reality outside of the entire scope of the universe, with its countless light-years of expanse. Outside of all that, there is and always has been a personal, infinite, eternal, holy God. He is absolute reality. He is the most real. The most ultimate thing he ever said was, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). He is simply there. He’s there, like Francis Schaeffer said. He’s the God who is there — above, before, outside all reality.

Think of it. Eternal reality could have been a gas. Nothing could have existed before the original reality to make it what it was. It just was. Only we discover it’s not an “it.” Ultimate reality is a Person. This is just mind-boggling.

“I am who I am,” he says (Exodus 3:14). In other words, we don’t create him; we don’t define him; we don’t counsel, help, enrich, or initiate anything with him. He reveals himself. As Hebrews 1:1–2 says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” We must be still today, it seems to me, and let this sink in.

When God Sent God

From all eternity, the infinite, eternal, personal, holy Creator has existed as Father and Son and Holy Spirit. What could that possibly mean? It means that God has always had a Son. This is the kind of mystery that makes Christmas breathtaking. God has a Son. He has had a Son forever. The Son never came into being. He is not created. There never was a time in the infinite eternity past when he did not exist.

“This is the kind of mystery that makes Christmas breathtaking. God has a Son. He has had a Son forever.”

The apostle John helps us as our mouths are agape with astonishment. He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Word was with God, and the Word was God. So God was with God. And the God who was with God — the Word — was the Son of God.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). We mark this moment when God sent God into the world with a celebration called Christmas.

We have one day a year to be still and know that, from all eternity, God had a perfect image of himself — a perfect radiance of his glory, a perfect essence of his nature. This God who was with God was the Word and was the Son. And as Paul says in Galatians 4:4, when the time was full and perfect to accomplish all God’s eternal purposes for humanity, God sent God the Word, God the Son, to this tiny speck of human habitation called Earth, and the foundations of Christmas were laid.

Why God Sent God

Now the question is, Why? The answer God himself gives — the one that I have been so sweetly captivated by since October — is Romans 8:3: “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son . . .” — that’s Christmas. Romans 8:3 is Christmas.

Here’s the rest of the verse: “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin” — and here it comes — “he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). God sent God as the God-man, the flesh-God, to be condemned in his mortal flesh, and the one who condemned God was God. God condemned sin in the death of the God-man, Jesus Christ. And Jesus didn’t have any sin. Jesus was the one person in the world who didn’t deserve to be condemned. The rest of us did.

John Piper has accumulated almost 76 years of sins — thousands upon thousands of sins, any one of which is offensive enough against a holy God to plunge me into eternal ruin. I don’t stand a chance on my own to be acquitted before a God of justice. I am under condemnation, and justly so. The righteous law of God that I have broken hangs over my head like a curse.

What hope is there then for me? In a very short time, John Piper, aged 75 now, will stand before God to give an account of his life. So what hope do I have? My hope is this: “Be still, and know the meaning of Christmas.”

God has done what the law, hanging over me like a curse, could not do. The law can’t pay for my breaking the law. So from all eternity, God planned to send God the Son, the God-man, so that in his mortal flesh — without any sins of his own at all — he might bear the condemnation I deserve. “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Or to paraphrase Paul in Galatians 3:13: “Christ became a curse for John Piper.”

How Christmas Feels

What does Christmas feel like for me? It feels like a man standing on the gallows with the rope around his neck, and the king’s son steps forward, takes the rope off my neck, puts it on his own, looks me in the eye, and — just before he drops to his own death in my place — says, “I love you. I love you. Go show what I’m like now to the world.”

What does Christmas feel like for me? It feels like a man drowning in the icy Atlantic after the sinking of the Titanic, desperate to be taken into a lifeboat, but being refused. Why? There’s no room in the lifeboat. It’s full. And a man — the wealthiest, healthiest, most influential man on that ship — pulls me in as he jumps overboard to make room for me. He looks up as I float away in safety and says, “I love you.”

What does Christmas feel like for me? It feels like I’m in a courtroom where my life hangs in the balance. The prosecuting attorney is the unassailable law of God, and the defense attorney does not exist. There is no defense. It is manifest to everyone in the courtroom that all evidence is against me, and the judge, the son of the king of the realm, brings down the gavel: “Guilty.” I’m sentenced to execution and everlasting ruin. And as they leave the courtroom with me in bonds, the son-judge follows me out, pulls me aside, and says, “I’m going to take your condemnation. You go now, and show the wonder of this moment to the world. I love you.”

So that’s where I’ve been during these months leading to this moment on Christmas Eve. I have been in Romans 8:3: “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son [that’s Christmas] in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned [my] sin in the flesh.”

What Christmas stands for is infinitely precious. It is. I would simply plead with all our listeners: Come to Jesus Christ this Christmas. If you will embrace Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as your precious Savior, all that God is for you in Christ will be yours in him. You will have no condemnation ever. And it will be a very merry Christmas.

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.