My grandfather is no longer here for Christmas.

I scarcely remember one without him, and yet now his absence is becoming the new normal. We no longer gather in his living room to read Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth, sing “Joy to the World,” open presents together, or eat the Christmas dinner he prepared. His chair, once so full of fondness, infectious laughter, and gentlemanly repose, now sits silent, full of memories.

A new sensation now dines with me during my favorite time of year. As the dining table crowds with new faces, new grins, and new babies, nostalgias of past Christmases unfold in the background. Here, more than at any other place or time, days past and days present meet. Here I behold fresh holiday scenes with old eyes. So much is the same, and so much is different.

Loss has made me older.

I look around the table at the bright eyes of the children, and see a joy unburdened. The Christmas they have known is the same today. They can’t see what their parents see. They cannot detect the soft-glowing faces or hear the unspeaking voices. To them, chairs aren’t empty, they’re yet to be filled. They don’t know the ache in our celebration, the wounds that never fully heal.

I now know Christmas as my grandfather had for years — as a mixture of gladness and grief, gratitude and regret, Christmas now and Christmas then. I could not discern the others who dined with us around the table from another life ago — parents, friends, his beloved wife. I never realized his Christmases filled with more than just that single Christmas. I now see the unspoken dimension. I better understand that weathered smile, brimming fuller, yet sadder than once before.

Suffice it to say, Christmases these days aren’t quite the same.

Out with the Old?

With this new experience of Christmas with an empty chair, comes certain threats and temptations.

Jesus once warned about sewing a piece of new cloth onto an old garment; or putting new wine into old wineskins. The wineskins might burst, he taught; the cloth might tear. But here we are. In the mind of the man or woman who has lost, the new is patched with the old; new wine pours into old family wineskins.

Perhaps you can relate. The pressure of sitting and eating and singing where he or she once sat and ate and sang can tear at the heart. You may have lost more than a grandfather. The strain of grief you feel around the holidays nearly concusses. The spouse whose name inscribed upon the ornament is no longer here. One stocking is missing. The beloved child you watched run down the stairs Christmas morning has not made it down for some years now. Christmas, this side of heaven, will never be the same.

I do not pretend to know such depths of despair. But I do know twin temptations that greet those of us who have lost someone. I hope that naming them might help you this Christmas.

Past Swallows Present

The first temptation is to the variety of grief that kidnaps us from life today. This bottomless ache comes when we begin to stare and stare at the empty chair. The grief overwhelms all gladness; the past swallows the present. The good that arrives is not the good that once was, so all current cause for happiness becomes spoiled or forgotten.

This is to step beyond the healthy grief and remembrance of our losses. It poisons the heart by entertaining the question the wise man bids us not to: “Say not,” he warns, “‘Why were the former days better than these?” For, he continues, “it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). This grief poisons the what is with the what used to be. It hinders the ability to go on.

Grief threatens to lock us in dark cellars of the past, keeping us from enjoying the child playing on the floor or the new faces around the table.

Over-the-Shoulder Guilt

Second is the temptation to bow to the over-the-shoulder guilt bearing down on us. Lewis captures this in A Grief Observed:

There’s no denying that in some sense I “feel better,” and with that comes at once a sort of shame, and a feeling that one is under a sort of obligation to cherish and foment and prolong one’s unhappiness. (53)

“The empty chair can threaten to overwhelm all joy in this Christmas or shame us for feeling any joy this Christmas.”

This temptation sees the empty chair frowning at us. “Why aren’t you sadder? How can Christmas still be merry? Didn’t you love him?” The memory, not remaining in its proper place, looms over our shoulder, patrolling our happiness in the present. This shame is a sickness that tempts us to hate wellness.

So, the empty chair can threaten to overwhelm all joy in this Christmas or shame us for feeling any joy this Christmas — both must be resisted.

Melt the Clouds of Sadness

So what do we do? There the empty chair sits.

Fighting both temptations, I need to remind myself: Christmas is not about family around a dinner table, but about Jesus. And Jesus has promised that for his people — for my grandfather — to be absent from the Christmas table is to be present with him.

I ask myself, Should I wish my grandfather back? Would I, if it stood within my power, recall him from that feast, reunite his soul with his ailing body — reclaim him to sickness, loneliness, sin — summon him from the heaven of Christ himself to a shadowy celebration of Christ on earth?

Somedays I half-consider it.

But I know that if I could speak to him now, he wishes me there. The empty chair heaven longs to see filled is not around our Christmas dinner, but the empty chairs still surrounding Christ. Our places are set already. Better life, real life, true life, lasting life lies in that world. That empty chair of our loved ones departed is not merely a reminder of loss, but a pointer to coming gain.

“That empty chair of our loved ones departed is not merely a reminder of loss, but a pointer to coming gain.”

This place of shadows and darkness, sin and Satan, grief and death, is no place yet for that Happy Reunion. The dull Christmas stab reminds me that life is not what it should be, but it can also remind me life is not what it will soon be for all who believe.

Jesus will come in a Second Advent. He will make all things new. Christmases with empty chairs are numbered; these too shall soon pass. And the greatest chair that shall be occupied, the one that shall restore all things, and bring real joy to the world, is Jesus Christ, the baby once born in Bethlehem, now King that rules the universe. He shall sit and eat with us at his eternal supper of the Lamb.

And until then, while we travel through Christmases present and future, I pray for myself and for you,

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;Drive the dark of doubt away;Giver of immortal gladness,Fill us with the light of day!

We focus our attention this Advent on Luke 2:10–11: “The angel said to [the shepherds], ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord’” (Luke 2:10–11). And the question for us is this: how does the Lordship of this newborn baby boy make possible the fearlessness and greatness of your joy this Christmas and as 2022 begins?

And I do mean you — not just the shepherds — because it is clear from this context and this gospel, as we will see, that the fearlessness and the greatness of the joy is not just for the shepherds. It is for everyone who says, “Jesus is Lord!” and is glad to have it so. We know this because of the word for at the beginning of Luke 2:11. This word signals that calling Jesus “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28) is the foundation of Christian fearlessness and great joy.

Luke 2:10 tells us that fearless, great joy is coming into this world, and Luke 2:11 answers the questions, How can it come? How can it be sustained in such a world? Because this baby boy is not only a Savior — not only the Christ, the Messiah — but is the Lord.

What makes the fearlessness and the greatness of your joy possible in 2022 and beyond is not just that this baby boy will be a Savior, and not just that he will be the long-awaited Messiah, but that he is the Lord. This is the foundation of your fearlessness and the greatness of your joy this Christmas and in the coming year.

Imagine someone says to you, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling! It’s falling on your family. It’s falling on your church. It’s falling on your city. It’s falling on your nation. It’s falling on the world. Don’t you realize the sky is falling?” What will be the foundation of the fearlessness and the greatness of your joy as you go merrily on your way to do more good until Jesus comes?

So that’s our question: How does the Lordship of this newborn baby boy make possible the fearlessness and greatness of your joy this Christmas and in the coming year? Here are six wonders of Jesus’s Lordship that answer this question.

1. Jesus the Divine Lord

The fearlessness and greatness of your joy is possible because Jesus is a divine Lord. When we say, “Jesus is Lord,” we mean no less than “Jesus is God.” Luke says this in many ways in his gospel. I’ll mention only four.

God from God

First, Luke uses the word Lord interchangeably with God in reference to Jesus. Take just the first two chapters for example. The word Lord occurs twenty-seven times, with twenty-five of them referring to God.

Look right here in our text: “An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them” (Luke 2:9). Two verses later he says, “Unto you is born Christ, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). No hesitation. No qualification. The Lord (God) sent his angel, and the glory of the Lord (God) shone — and the child born is the Lord.

In Luke 2:26, Jesus is called “the Lord’s Christ,” and here in Luke 2:11 he is called “Christ the Lord.” That’s virtually the same as the apostle John saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Jesus is “the Lord’s Christ,” and Jesus is “Christ the Lord.”

Born of a Virgin

Second, the divine lordship of Jesus is the point of the virgin birth. Look at Luke 1:31. Gabriel tells Mary she will have a child. Mary asks how that can be (Luke 1:34). Here’s how the angel answers in Luke 1:35: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God.”

This is not the crass slander of Christianity that claims God the Father had sex with Mary, and that’s why Christians call Jesus the Son of God. This is the Holy Spirit making clear that no human father will be needed because he is going to work an unfathomable miracle in Mary’s womb so that there will be a child with two natures, divine and human: Jesus the God-man, Jesus the Lord.

Greater than David’s Son

Third, in Luke 20:41–44, Jesus will go on the offensive to challenge the Jewish leaders with his identity. He says, “How can they say that the Christ is David’s son? For David himself says in the Book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?”

No answer. Because the point was that already, in the Psalms, the Holy Spirit was pointing to the fact that the Messiah, the Christ, would be vastly more than a human son of David.

Worthy of Worship

Fourth, where does the Gospel of Luke leave us at the end? What are we doing as we walk away from this inspired display of the Lord Jesus? Luke 24:51–52: “While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” They worshiped him! That’s the point of Luke’s Gospel: Worship him with great joy! Cherish him as your greatest treasure!

So, the fearlessness and greatness of your joy this Christmas is possible because Jesus is a divine Lord. “Jesus is Lord” means “Jesus is God.”

2. Jesus the Historical Lord

The fearlessness and greatness of your joy is also possible because Jesus is a historical Lord. What I mean by this is that the accounts of Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection are not mythical. They are not like Greek mythology. They are rooted in world history — the kind of history you can read and know about whether you are Christian or not.

The life of Jesus does not take place in Middle-earth or in a galaxy far, far away. It takes place “in the days of Herod, king of Judea” (Luke 1:5). Mary was from “a city of Galilee named Nazareth” (Luke 1:26). She came with Joseph to Bethlehem, a town about five miles outside Jerusalem, because “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:1–2).

And John the Baptist began his ministry “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene” (Luke 3:1–2).

What’s the point of all these secular, historical references? The point is that Jesus was just as real as if he had been born when Joe Biden was president of the United States, when Tim Walz was governor of Minnesota, and when Jacob Frey was the mayor of Minneapolis. He was not, and is not, mythical.

So, the fearlessness and greatness of your joy is possible because Jesus is a historical Lord.

3. Jesus the All-Governing Lord

The fearlessness and greatness of your joy is possible because Jesus is an all-governing Lord. From a boat during the storm, his disciples cry out, “‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased . . . and [his disciples] marveled, saying to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?’” (Luke 8:24–25). The answer is obvious: the one who made them.

Then there were the demons: “Demons also came out crying, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak” (Luke 4:41). And then there were the diseases of every kind: “All those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them” (Luke 4:40). No failures.

What about our great enemy, death? “[Jesus] came up and touched the [casket] . . . And he said [to the dead man], ‘Young man, I say to you, arise.’ And the dead man sat up and began to speak” (Luke 7:14–15). What about the so-called “self-determination of the human will” in coming to know Christ? “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Luke 10:22).

Jesus the Lord governs all natural events. No demons can do anything but by his permission. He can heal any disease. He can and will raise the dead. And it is he who opens the blind eyes of the human heart to know God.

Luke loves the all-governing Lordship of God, which is shared by the God-man Jesus Christ. Why else would Luke begin his gospel with God’s amazing reversal of the butterfly effect? The butterfly effect is the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil may cause a tornado in Oklahoma because of a thousand unknown links working in a causal chain. But God reverses the butterfly effect, using something as massive as a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico to cause a single Chinese university student in Beijing to stumble into Christian fellowship and be saved.

So, don’t you think Luke was smiling as he began his Gospel with this story? God chose a virgin, and her betrothed, who were living in Nazareth. Their family line was from Bethlehem, where the Messiah must be born. To get this virgin to the proper birthplace, he puts it in the mind of Caesar Augustus — the most powerful person in the world, living over a thousand miles away — to call for empire-wide registration, involving millions of people, at exactly the moment when it would get this one obscure, pregnant Jewish girl from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

“The events of history are not about nations and industries. God governs the world for the sake of his children.”

God did all this to fulfill his prophecy. That’s amazing. That’s our all-governing God, and that’s the Lord Jesus. And he is doing that today. Do you think the great events on the stage of world history are about nations and industries? They’re not. They are about you. God governs the world for the sake of his children. Jesus governs the world for the sake of those who say, “Jesus is Lord!” and mean it.

4. Jesus the Everlasting Lord

The fearlessness and greatness of your joy is possible because Jesus is an everlasting Lord. As the angel Gabriel said to Mary in Luke 1:31–33,

You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

He will reign forever. His kingdom will have no end. If you are the subject of his Lordship, you will live forever. He will raise you from the dead. He will bring you with him into everlasting life. His power to govern all things for your good will never end. Never. You can never be lost if you are his.

5. Jesus the God-Glorifying Lord

The fearlessness and greatness of your joy is possible because Jesus is a God-glorifying Lord. Look at these five verses in Luke:

The lame man who Jesus healed, after the man was lowered through the roof, “went home, glorifying God” (Luke 5:25).
The crowd who saw Jesus heal him “glorified God and were filled with awe” (Luke 5:26).
When he raised the widow’s son from the dead, “fear seized them all, and they glorified God” (Luke 7:16).
The woman whose back had been bent over for eighteen years was straightened, “and she glorified God” (Luke 13:13).
When the blind beggar received his sight, he “followed [Jesus], glorifying God” (Luke 18:43).

We don’t need to make our way through the rest of Luke’s Gospel to see the God-glorifying purpose of the birth of this Lord.

In Luke 2:12, the angel gives the shepherds a sign. The angel says, “This Savior, this Christ, this Lord — you will find him ‘lying in a feeding trough.’” I cannot help but think that the shepherds, at that point, would have been totally confused: Savior, Christ, Lord — plus dirty, smelly feeding trough. But before they can venture to ask this angel for clarification, the sky fills with armies of angels praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14).

“The mission of the Savior is to show the world that God is infinitely great, beautiful, and valuable.”

The Savior is born. The Messiah is born. The Lord of the universe is born. And before you can layer your perplexed interpretation on top of it, Mr. Shepherd, here’s the point: “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14). The point of this birth is that God is glorious. The mission of this Savior and this Messiah and this Lord is to show the world, and the powers of darkness, that God is infinitely great and beautiful and valuable. Glorious.

But we should ask a question. Since God has sent a Savior to save man, and a Messiah to fulfill all the promises made to man, and a Lord to rule all things for the good of man — why don’t the heavenly armies say, “Glory to man in the highest”?

Why not? Because the universe was created to display and uphold and communicate the glory of God. If we displace God as the ultimate end and goal of creation, history, and redemption, we don’t gain status. We lose God. And then, losing God, we lose joy. Great joy. This brings us now to the sixth wonder of the Lordship of Jesus.

6. Jesus the Happy Lord

Finally, the fearlessness and greatness of your joy is possible because Jesus is a happy Lord. Not only this, but he is the perfect embodiment of his Father’s happiness. When the angels say, “Glory to God in the highest!” (Luke 2:14), they are obeying God — that’s what he wants said! — and it is a happy shout. This is a glad night. And the gladness started in heaven.

Luke completes the picture of God’s gladness later in his Gospel. Only Luke records the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (Luke 15), and Jesus tells all three parables to explain why he eats with tax collectors and sinners. He does it because he embodies his Father’s happiness in saving sinners.

Here’s Luke 15:9–10: “When she has found [her lost coin, representing Jesus finding a lost sinner], she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’” And Jesus adds, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Look carefully to the wording. It doesn’t say, “There is joy among the angels.” It says, “There is joy before the angels,” joy in their presence. This is God’s joy. That’s God’s happiness.

Then comes the parable of the lost or prodigal son. He has squandered all the father’s inheritance. He heads home, hoping to be a taken-care-of slave. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). And then the Father says, “‘Bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.”

And, as if to make it crystal clear, the father says to the grumbling older brother: “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).

In Luke’s inspired view of the all-glorious, God-glorifying God, what makes God happy? What makes the Lord Jesus happy? The joy of his people as they rediscover the happy goodness of their Father. This is a parable about the glory of the Father and the awakening of a blind son to that glory — namely, the beauty of his Father’s happy goodness.

Fearless (and Happy) Under Fallen Skies

When the angels say, “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14), this is not at the expense of God’s people. This story is the joy of God’s people. Seeing and savoring and being caught up into this glory is the salvation of God’s people. This glory is the fulfillment of all the messianic promises. This glory is the overflow of the happy Lordship of Jesus.

Bethlehem’s mission statement didn’t come out of nowhere: “We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” We got it, in part, from Luke’s Gospel: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). God gets the glory. We get the peace. We get the fearlessness of great joy within his glory.

“The Holy Spirit frees us from the deceit that self-lordship is the path of joy.”

As the angel says, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). Will the fearlessness and the greatness of this joy be yours this Christmas? You can’t take away your own fear, and you can’t create your own joy. The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” It is a divine miracle when a sinful, self-exalting human being says, “Jesus is Lord!” and means it.

The Holy Spirit works this miracle by the word of God. This is why our submission to the Lordship of Christ is a free act. The Holy Spirit opens the eyes of our hearts and frees us from the slavery, from the deceit, that self-lordship is the path of joy. He fixes our gaze on Christ and causes us to leave our fears and leap for joy. Great joy.

So, if someone says to you, “Don’t you know the sky is falling?” you will say, “Perhaps, and if it is, my divine, historical, all-governing, everlasting, God-glorifying, happy Lord Jesus — he is in charge of the sky falling. And he will make it serve the great and fearless joy of his church. So why don’t you come on in? Everyone is invited: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

Audio Transcript

Christmas is Saturday. It’s a great time to take a fresh look at Christmas, particularly in what Christ’s birth represents in the big picture. As the apostle Paul says of us, Christians are those “on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). The end of the ages has come upon us, and the end of the ages has come upon us by the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

This is a big concept — a hard one. But it’s worth our time. Theologian Richard Gaffin has developed this point well in a really good book, his magnum opus coming out next year, which is titled In the Fullness of Time: An Introduction to the Biblical Theology of Acts and Paul (Crossway, May 2022). There he describes why the apostle Paul was so amazed that he — and us — is one upon which “the end of the ages has come.” Paul, he writes, is

deeply conscious of living in “the fullness of time,” when, at last, God has sent his Son and when the new creation has already dawned. His vantage point in history is characterized by the fact that he is privileged to be able now to look back on the climactic events of the history of redemption, the [birth and] death and resurrection of Christ, as having occurred. Using a sometimes-cited analogy from the Second World War, Paul knows himself to be among those for whom the great D-Day kingdom battle is over, for whom the era of conflict between the kingdom of God and the dominion of Satan is in the past and has been decisively resolved; the redemption of God’s people is an accomplished and secure reality.

D-Day is done. V-Day is yet future, in the second coming. Nevertheless, D-Day, the decisive battle, is over. It has been won. The kingdom has dawned. In other words, Gaffin writes, “God’s revelation in his Son, in his incarnate person and work . . . has a finality that cannot be superseded or surpassed.”

That’s the significance of the incarnation. The new creation has arrived. The kingdom of God has dawned. The future full arrival of the kingdom and the new creation, or V-Day, is now inevitable and unstoppable because there is a finality to redemptive history at Christmas. Paul never lost his amazement that something climactic, something decisive, something marking the end of time happened in a dusty manger in Bethlehem.

To use the apostle Paul’s very words: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4–5). That first Christmas marked the fullness of time. Or to say it another way, history ended on Christmas, as John Piper explains in this clip from his 1981 Christmas sermon, preached forty years ago. Here he is.

The meaning of Christmas was a total blur for some thirty years until the apostles broke through to this insight: “Oh, this is the first half of the final act of redemption, and the second half will only come later.” When they finally saw that, God counted them prepared to interpret Christmas for us. And that’s what they did in the New Testament, interpreting the incarnation in view of the second coming.

“The apostles do not treat Christmas as another bend in redemptive history. History ended at Christmas.”

Everything they wrote in their interpretation of the incarnation has a trademark about it. It’s a very unusual trademark that stamps it as apostolic, the words of the apostles. The trademark is that even though the apostles look forward to the second appearance of the coming of the Messiah, they nevertheless called the first appearing of the Messiah the end of the ages. History ended at Christmas. That’s the trademark of the apostles. They do not treat Christmas as just another bend in the river of redemptive history. With Christmas comes the end.

Christ’s Birth, Time’s End

Let me show you some examples of where this trademark is found. In 1 Corinthians 10:11, the apostle Paul says that all the events of the Old Testament “happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” That’s Paul speaking two thousand years ago: “The end of the ages has fallen upon us.”

Do you remember what the apostle Peter said when he stood up on Pentecost to interpret what was happening in the fall of the Holy Spirit? Quoting Joel, he said, “This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit’” (Acts 2:16–17). Those were the last days.

Again, the apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:20 that “[Christ] was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you.” Christ was made manifest at the end of the times. The appearing of Jesus at Christmas marked the end of the times — or, as Paul called it, “the end of the ages.”

Here’s one more text, Hebrews 9:26–28. It is especially important because, here, the two comings of the Messiah are held side by side, and still the first one is called the end. The text says,

[Christ] has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:26–28)

What this text shows is that even though time had elapsed between Christmas and the writing of Hebrews, and the author looked forward to another uncertain elapse of time until that second appearing, nevertheless he still looked back and said that Christ’s first coming was the end of the age.

That’s the trademark of the apostles. That’s the way they thought about Christmas. And I think the Holy Spirit preserves that trademark for us because there is a tremendously important truth in it. Namely, don’t trivialize Christmas into just another great event in the stream of redemptive history.

How Christmas Tastes

Creation out of nothing was an awesome event. I try to imagine what the angels thought when matter, the universe, flashed into existence at the word of God. They never could have imagined such a thing, and there it was. The fall was an awful event that shook creation. The exodus was an amazing display of power and love. The giving of the law, the wandering in the wilderness, the conquest of Canaan, the rise of the monarchy, the prophetic word — all great demonstrations of the power of God along the river of redemptive history.

But don’t align Christmas on the same continuum with those great events. We trivialize the incarnation if we make it just another stage along the way to the end. It is the end of redemptive history, and I think the analogy of the river helps us see how.

Picture the Mississippi River, running all the way to the Gulf. Picture redemptive history now, flowing from creation right on through as a river. Picture the ocean into which it is flowing as the final kingdom of God — eternal and glorious beyond all description. At the mouth, or the end, of this river, the ocean presses back with its salt water some way up into the river. I’ve always wondered what kind of fish live in this no man’s land, where the freshwater and the salt water are mingling, where the river meets the ocean.

“Taste Jesus Christ. Taste his birth, life, death, and resurrection. Has not the kingdom arrived?”

Therefore, at the mouth of the river there’s a mingling of freshwater and salt water. One might say that the kingdom has pressed its way back up into the stream of history a short way. It has surprised the travelers on that river very, very much. They can taste it if they put their oar down into the water. They can smell it. They can see the seagull circling the deck. The end has come upon them, even though they’re still on the river.

Christmas is not just another bend in that river. Christmas is the arrival of the salt water of the kingdom, backing up into the river for some way. That salt water is beckoning us, welcoming us, alluring us out into the deep. Christmas is not just another great bend in the river. It is the end of the river.

Let down your oar. Taste Jesus Christ. Taste his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection. Has not the age to come fallen upon us? Has not the kingdom arrived? Do you not taste the powers of the age to come? I think those who can taste it lift up their eyes, and they see a big blue bow on the horizon between sky and ocean. And they are hankering and longing to go out of the delta, out of the mouth of the river, into the ocean.

Few experiences are more wonderful than holding a newborn. Your heart melts with loving wonder. “You’re so beautiful. Just perfect!” Even amidst that gentle marveling, fierce-protective instincts arise. “I would give my life for you against all comers.”

How much more so for Mary as she held Jesus. In his well-loved Christmas song, Mark Lowery asks, “Mary, did you know . . . when you kiss your little baby, you’ve kissed the face of God?” Though she would have to ponder the depths of it all her days, the angel had indeed told her, “The child to be born to you will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).

This is one of the first and greatest titles given to Jesus. But what does it mean? “Son of God” comes layered with meaning.

Human, Hebrew, King

In giving Jesus’s genealogy, Luke tells us that Adam was the “son of God” (Luke 3:38). He was uniquely created, but he was also the father of the human race. So there’s a sense in which we are all sons of God. Paul affirms this universal sonship by quoting a Greek poet: “We are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:28).

But Scripture gives us another sense in which the chosen and called people are collectively God’s son. “This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22). God birthed his people in redeeming them from slavery in Egypt. Centuries later, beginning with David, the kings of Israel were considered to be the sons of God. This was a sonship by divine anointing that led to a special intimacy: “He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’ And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:26–27).

Jesus fulfilled all three of those biblical meanings of “son of God.” (1) He was born of Mary and so was (and is) truly human, a descendent of Adam and Eve, one of the image-bearing offspring of God, just like any of us. (2) Jesus was also truly a Hebrew. Luke reminds us that he was circumcised on the eighth day (Luke 2:21), marked as part of Israel, the son of God. But more, Jesus was the first of the new Israel, the founder of a people redeemed by grace and joined to him through faith. (3) Jesus was a descendent of David, and hailed as the true heir to David’s throne (Luke 1:32). Anointed by the Holy Spirit at his baptism, Jesus is the Christ, the son of God who is the everlasting king of his people.

Eternal Son in Skin and Time

However, a deeper, older, more profound sense emerges in which Jesus is the unique Son of God. Thanks to John’s Gospel, we have the privilege of overhearing Jesus’s personal prayers to his heavenly Father shortly before his arrest. We learn the extent of this intimacy between them.

Father, I desire that they also, [the people] whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24)

The relationship between the Father and the Son is eternal. Before the creation of anything, the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father — all in the personal, flowing bonds of love, the communion of the Holy Spirit. Though this mystery bends our minds, we glean that relationship is at the very heart of the being of the triune God. The child in Mary’s arms was the eternal Son of God taking up our humanity in the particular person Jesus. He has been the divine Son of God forever, and now is Son of God in skin and in time.

“Before the creation of anything, the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father.”

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus pulls back the curtain on this deep mystery and gives us a peek into eternity when he declares, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). Knowing is more than factual knowledge; this knowing is relational intimacy. It includes a continuing exchange of love between Father and Son (again, in the Spirit).

Father and Son are so close that no one and nothing can get between them. This relationship precedes all things. This knowing is the foundation of the central Christian affirmation, “God is love” (1 John 4:7). In Jesus, we witness the relationship that undergirds all creation appear before our eyes in particular flesh, blood, posture, and vocal tenor.

Sons in the Son

The marvel deepens when we realize that the incarnation means God is opening up this utterly unique relationship to include us. This passage from Paul makes for a fabulous Christmas text:

When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. (Galatians 4:4–7)

“The triune God desires to adopt us into his eternal relationship of love.”

In Christ, the triune God adopts us into his eternal relationship of love. He makes this possible not only legally, through the forensics of atonement, but experientially, through the sending of the Spirit of his Son. The eternal Son brought his relationship with his Father among us in the incarnation. Now that he has returned to heaven, he brings us into his relationship with his Father by the gift of his own Spirit within us. We don’t just get information about redemption. We cry out as the Spirit vocalizes within us, “Abba! Father!”

All believers — whether men, women, boys, or girls — are sons of God in being joined to the one eternal and incarnate Son of God, Jesus.

Fellowship with Father and Son

We may well wonder if we truly are to be included in such love. Am I one of those “to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”? What a comfort then, to read the very next words out of Jesus’s mouth: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Jesus wants us in on his relationship with the Father.

In his first letter, John says that he writes so that his readers “may have fellowship with us.” Then, he explains what that means: “Indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). Jesus is uniquely Son of God in a way no mere human, nation, or king ever could be. Yet he desires to share that sonship with us, that we might be taken into the very life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And at Christmas, of all times, this mystery, now revealed, resounds in our hearts,

Silent night, holy night,Son of God, love’s pure light.Radiant beams from thy holy faceWith the dawn of redeeming grace,Jesus, Lord at thy birth.Jesus, Lord at thy birth.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14966309/how-is-something-not-proper-for-saints

As a small index to how much our society’s attitude to Christianity has changed in the past half-century, in 1941 a Princeton University English professor published a book with Princeton University Press addressed specifically to Christian ministers. I have referenced this book throughout my half-century career as a teacher and writer, even using adaptations of its title, Poetry as a Means of Grace, to good effect.

In his opening chapter, the author offered a piece of advice for ministers (and by implication all church leaders and literary laypeople) that makes total sense: we should claim one author as our own, specializing in that author the way a literary scholar might. I would extend this bit of practical advice to include the possibility of choosing a single masterwork for detailed attention over a lifetime (though I do not thereby discourage wide reading).

With this advice in mind, I commend Paradise Lost as a candidate for lifelong acquaintance. Having written my dissertation on Paradise Lost, having taught Paradise Lost as many as two hundred times, having written articles and books on Milton, and having attended and spoken at Milton conferences, I love Milton’s masterpiece more now than ever. And it is a love I wish to share.

From Pulpit to Poetry

Paradise Lost was written by John Milton in the middle of the seventeenth century. From childhood, Milton was theoretically destined to become a minister. In anticipation of that, Milton stayed on at Cambridge University to earn a master’s degree. But then an obstacle derailed his intended clerical calling.

Milton was a Puritan by conviction, and as such he was not welcome as a pastoral candidate in the state church. Milton himself spoke of having been “church outed by the prelates,” meaning rejected for parish ministry by the governing Anglican hierarchy.

Milton scholars have long debated the question of when Milton abandoned his intention to become a minister, and the best conclusion is that he never did abandon his ministerial calling. As Jameela Lares argues effectively in her book Milton and the Preaching Arts, he simply changed its venue from the pulpit to poetry. In a prose passage where Milton discusses this, he places the vocation of the Christian poet “beside the office of the pulpit.”

And he bore some fruit of the pulpit. Out of the mass of commentary on Milton that I have read, my favorite sentence comes from the testimony of someone joining Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia who began his testimony with the statement, “I was led to the Lord by John Milton.” Paradise Lost was the work that had been instrumental in this person’s conversion.

Higher Than Real Life

Before I discuss the content of Paradise Lost, I need to begin where C.S. Lewis began his landmark book A Preface to Paradise Lost. The necessary starting point is the genre to which the poem belongs. That genre is the epic.

Epic was considered the most important literary genre from antiquity through the seventeenth century. It was an exercise in grandeur — a long narrative poem having the stature of a book. Its aim was scope — so much so that literary scholar Northop Frye dubbed epic “the story of all things” (The Return of Eden, 3). Similarly, C.S. Lewis claimed that an epic sums up what a whole age wants to say (English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama), 339).

An epic tells a story (and in fact many stories), but its way of telling a story is different from what modern readers are accustomed to. The successor to the epic as a species of long narrative was the novel, and what was particularly new about the novel was its realism. The novel gives us a slice of life in the everyday world. Epic, by contrast, is myth — a story of supernatural characters, events, and places. So the first thing we need to expect as we come to read an epic is myth rather than realism.

One further way in which epic springs a surprise on us is that it is poetry. We expect long fictional stories to be written in everyday prose. In the history of literature, that is a recent development, coming on the scene with the rise of a middle-class reading public in the middle of the eighteenth century. Epic is a hybrid of poetry and story, and we need to give equal attention to both.

Milton’s Theological Story

In keeping with epic scope, the story that Milton tells is the entire span of history from eternity past to eternity future. The first main event is the war in heaven and the expulsion of Satan and his followers. This is followed by God’s creation of the world, Adam and Eve’s life in paradise, their fall from innocence, a survey of fallen human history, redemption in Christ as the means of reversing the destruction ushered in by the fall, and the eschaton. All of that looks familiar, of course, because it is the story of universal history as the Bible presents it.

“The story that Milton tells is the entire span of history from eternity past to eternity future.”

The first time I taught Paradise Lost, a student handed me a paperback copy of the Puritan Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in Its Fourfold State. He offered no explanation, apparently assuming that the relevance of Boston’s book would be evident to me. It was. Boston’s paradigm of human nature in its perfection, fallenness, redemption in Christ, and glorification in heaven gives shape to Milton’s story.

Milton famously said that he intended his epic to be “doctrinal and exemplary to a nation.” There is edification as well as enjoyment in reading Paradise Lost. The big ideas with which Milton’s imagination worked are as follows: the centrality and sovereignty of God; the great conflict between good and evil in both cosmic and human spheres; the necessity that all creatures choose between good and evil; humanity’s unavoidable dealings with God; obedience to God as the great requirement in life, with disobedience being the essential nature of sin; and the fact of human sinfulness and the atonement of Christ as the antidote to the fallen condition.

Those are the big ideas, but there are many localized ideas as well, such as the nature of the good life as pictured in Adam and Eve’s life in paradise.

Come and See

Many added helps for engaging this poem could be given.

I could tell you Paradise Lost is what literary scholars call an encyclopedic form — a collection of discrete units within a superstructure — and so it doesn’t need to be read straight through. Or, I could warn against discouragement from the poem’s abundant allusions to both the Bible and classical mythology, which the first-time reader may not (and need not) understand.

But my intention in this article has been to open a door and entice you to an in-depth encounter with Paradise Lost. And perhaps the final note to strike is that Paradise Lost is a world with beauty and horror to be seen.

“The literary impulse is to show rather than tell — to incarnate and embody rather than discuss abstractly.”

Milton’s epic deals with many theological ideas, as discussed above, but the literary impulse is to show rather than tell — to incarnate and embody rather than discuss abstractly. Theologian H. Richard Niebuhr correctly claimed that “we are far more image-making and image-using creatures than we usually think ourselves to be, . . . and are guided and formed by images in our minds” (The Responsible Self, 151).

This is how we need to read Paradise Lost — not as a collection of ideas but as a story with characters, settings, and events, and as poetry comprised of images, symbols, and metaphors to be seen and enjoyed. He did not expect us to read his epic in the same way we read the more than twenty volumes of expository prose (including a systematic theology) that he wrote. There is a “value added” aesthetic element to literary writing, and we need to relish it.

So will you take the effort to read it? If you do, you may share the sentiment of the towering literary scholar Frank Kermode. He wrote some fifty books on the major movements and authors (including Shakespeare) of English literature, yet reserved his highest praise for Paradise Lost, calling it “the most perfect achievement of English poetry, perhaps the richest and most intricately beautiful poem in the world” (Romantic Image, 196).

What’s your favorite charge, or piece of counsel, you have heard in a wedding homily?

Any Christian minister who has performed a wedding knows the challenge and opportunity of that moment. We have a precious few minutes to capture the moment and hang out a vision for the newlyweds to pursue for the rest of their days. On more than one occasion, I have surprised the couple with this charge: “Enjoy this day with everything you have, and when it is over, in one way, pretend like it never happened.”

You can probably imagine their facial expressions. If it weren’t such a formal moment, I’m sure they would interrupt, “What do you mean, ‘Pretend like it never happened’? We’ve been waiting for this day for so long!” After a brief pause to allow their curiosity to grow, I go on to explain the wisdom behind my intentionally provocative words. The key to understanding the charge is in the phrase “in one way.”

Kissing Pursuit Goodbye

I am not charging couples to pretend like their wedding day never happened in every way, or even in most ways. Marriage brings many new and wonderful realities that are to be embraced with joyful seriousness. That said, I have observed that kissing the bride is often followed by kissing goodbye a way of loving each other.

For so many, the wedding day marks the end of a way of relating that can be best characterized as the pursuit. While the specific practices may differ from one couple to another, the principle often remains the same: the dating days are characterized by a pursuit of the one we love, but as the months and years pass, the pursuit sadly gets left behind. It’s often replaced by a new “married” way of relating that could be characterized as existing together. This far-too-common pattern of relating can be summarized: Pursue. Catch. Exist.

“Kissing the bride is often followed by kissing goodbye a way of loving each other.”

While this dynamic of existing together often becomes the norm, what if there were another way? What if the transition from singleness to marriage should be and could be summarized differently? Consider this: Pursue. Catch. Pursue. I choose the phrases “should be” and “could be” because I am convinced that many spouses either lack a vision for why they should keep pursuing each other or they lack practical help in how to make it a reality (or both!).

Why We Pursue

Before rushing to discuss how we love one another, the Christian spouse would be well served to first clarify why. This question finds its answer in the way we are loved by God. God’s love for us establishes the bullseye for how we seek to love one another. We are called to love just as God loves us (John 13:15; Ephesians 4:32; 5:29). And this is clear: we are loved by a pursue-catch-pursue God.

David captured God’s never-ending pursuit when he declared, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow [or pursue] me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6). David rejoices in the reality that God’s pursuit wasn’t only to get him into his house, but it continues while he lives there. The apostle Paul gives an even longer view of the “hound of heaven” when he declares that for all eternity God will be showing “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). Our God is ever in pursuit, and we are to follow his lead in the way we love — and first and foremost in the way we love our spouse.

It’s worth clarifying that our goal is reflection, not perfection. None of us can perfectly love a spouse like Jesus does in all ways and at all times. While perfection is not the expectation, Spirit-filled followers of Christ should expect to consistently grow in our ability to reflect the love of God to our one and only.

Consistent over Elaborate

When I encourage couples to keep pursuing each other, I can already hear the objections, as if the idea is something out of a fairy tale, rather than one rooted in reality.

“We can’t do that.”
“We don’t have the time or the money for that.”
“We have jobs, kids, responsibilities, and more often than not feel like we are being crushed each day.”
“There’s just no way we can pursue one another like when we were dating and engaged.”

These objections might be more valid if the call were to consistently pursue each other in elaborate ways. While elaborate pursuits have their place in a marriage, that’s not the first type of pursuit that couples should focus on. To put it in a phrase: consistent is greater than elaborate.

Think about the love ethos of your marriage like building a fire. Before we add the large (elaborate) pieces of firewood, we first build a base of heat through placing many tiny sticks, twigs, and leaves. In fact, if we try to place a large piece of firewood too early, it will do the opposite of what we want. Instead of igniting the fire, it will put it out.

The same is true in our marriages. When we neglect the small and consistent daily acts of pursuit, our elaborate attempts will often backfire. (Yes, I speak from personal experience.) The marriage that keeps the fire burning through each passing age and life stage is one in which both spouses commit to consistently, even daily, pursue one another.

Little More Kindness

Many spouses think too much about pursuing in elaborate ways and too little about consistent, everyday expressions of love. Our consumer-driven society leads us to focus on holidays and special days, when what our marriages often need most is a little more kindness and thoughtfulness each and every day.

What if the missing piece in your marriage has little to do with figuring out how to love your spouse differently than everyone else? What if the secret to a better marriage is in learning to love your spouse just like you are called to love everyone else?

I have often heard people say, “The Bible doesn’t give much guidance about marriage.” While the Bible may not speak exclusively about the relationship between husbands and wives as often as we’d like, it says a great deal about how we are to treat one another in Christ. God has given us dozens of specific “one another” commands in the mouth of Jesus and the letters of the apostles. He calls us to be kind to one another (Ephesians 4:32), serve one another (Galatians 5:13), forgive one another (Colossians 3:13), encourage one another (Hebrews 3:13), honor one another (Romans 12:10), live in harmony with one another (Romans 12:16), pray for one another (James 5:16), and submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21) — just to name a few.

“Husbands and wives, you are called to ‘one another’ your ‘one and only.’”

Husbands and wives, you are called to one-another your one-and-only. These small, seemingly simple expressions of intentional and authentic interest in your spouse, expressed consistently over time, can radically alter the culture of your marriage.

First Steps Toward Each Other

Sadly, many spouses seem content to take the “one another” commands out into the world during the day, but then leave them on the front porch as they walk into the home. How tragic would it be to have a Christian home with defined callings for husband and wife but without consistent and discernible Christlike love?

God does not mean for a few explicit passages about marriage to replace all of God’s commands for how we treat one another. No, our one-and-only should be the first person we one-another. Our marriage love will be kindled by first committing to love our special one as we are called to love everyone.

For many of us, this process begins with repentance. We have demanded to receive one-and-only love from our spouse, yet neglected to give one-another love to our spouse. If this is you, seek God’s help, ask your spouse to forgive you, and find a list of the “one another” commands in the New Testament. Read prayerfully over them and look for a few that the Holy Spirit presses on your heart to begin focusing on even this week.

As you begin to one-another your one-and-only, you will be laying kindling and blowing oxygen on the fires of your marriage.

Audio Transcript

It’s hard to confirm exact numbers, but by educated guess I would safely assume that the most asked-about chapter in the Bible in our emails here at APJ is Romans 9. I know without any exaggeration that we have hundreds of questions in the inbox on this one chapter alone. Within the chapter, Romans 9:22 is very likely the most asked-about text of all the other verses in the chapter. I know of at least 65 emails just asking about this single text, a hard text. Here’s one representative question from a listener named Leslie that captures the heart of dozens of those emails: “Pastor John, hello. I could use your help in my struggle with Romans 9:22. It seems to me to imply that those who are not elect are not even given a chance to repent since they were born for destruction. Is this right, that many people are created with no chance of ever being saved?”

I’m not surprised that Romans 9 is among the texts that people have the most questions about because my own history bore that out. Just recently, I’ve been perusing some of my old journal entries from 1977 to 1979. I was in my early thirties, and almost all of my discretionary time was spent studying and writing about Romans 9, especially Romans 9:14–23.

It may interest our listeners that this text — which highlights the absolute sovereignty of God over salvation as clearly, as forcefully, as any other text in the Bible and is therefore so problematic for most of us — was the text God used on December 14, 1979, to move me from being an academic theologian, who taught for 6 years in a college, to becoming a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, where I served for 33 years.

This text moved me to become a pastor with a longing that God would use me to save lost sinners from the cradle to the grave and to grow a strong church that would send hundreds of people to the unreached peoples of the world in world missions.

So I’m bearing witness that the most controversial chapter in the Bible with regard to the sovereignty of God in saving sinners was the chapter that God used to move me out of an academic dealing with the word of God into a frontline effort to save lost sinners, and to strengthen the church, and to reach the nations. That’s important.

“Nobody who humbly wants Christ as Savior is lost.”

It’s important because people think that if you believe in the absolute sovereignty of God over the salvation of sinners, then you would be disinclined to be a soul-winning pastor and a missions-driven church. That’s not true. It had the opposite effect on me — as it did on William Carey, John Paton, Adoniram Judson, and hundreds of other missionaries and pastors who laid down their lives to reach lost people with the gospel.

Bible-Saturated Pleas

There is such a thing as hyper-Calvinism, which is not historic Calvinism. Hyper-Calvinism has always been a tiny group who have twisted the Bible by their unbiblical logic to say that the only people you should invite to Christ are those who give evidence of being among God’s elect. So if you are a hyper-Calvinist, you don’t share the gospel indiscriminately — like I do — but you wait and look for signs among unbelievers that they might be elect.

That’s absolutely wrong. It is not what Romans 9 teaches or implies. It is not what any other text in the Bible teaches or implies. The lover of God’s sovereignty who is saturated with a big, biblical view of God’s power in saving sinners says to every human being, without exception, words like these:

Come, everyone who thirsts,     come to the waters;and he who has no money,     come, buy and eat!Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,     and your labor for that which does not satisfy? (Isaiah 55:1–2)

In other words, we are pleading with them, “Come to the water of life. Drink freely, everyone! If you will receive Jesus Christ as the Son of God — crucified for sinners, risen from the dead — and put your trust in him as your only and precious Savior, you will receive with him everything that God has done through him. Everything that God is for you in him — you will have it all. Nothing good will be withheld from you. If you will have the Lord Jesus Christ, you have everything that he achieved, climaxing in everlasting joy in the presence of God.”

That’s what you say. If people will let you talk for a full minute like that, that’s what you say to every single human being.

Unpacking Paul

Now here are the words from Romans 9 that cause people to stumble. Let me say a word about them. Romans 9:18–19 says, “So then [God] has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault?’” In other words, we’re not asking a question that Paul didn’t ask. We shouldn’t be thinking, “I’ve got a question, Paul, that you never thought of.” No, you don’t.

Then Romans 9:19 continues like this: “For who can resist his will?” Paul did not say, “Well, everybody can resist his will. We all have free will. Everybody can resist his will.” That’s not the way he answered the question “Who can resist his will?”

Paul then says in Romans 9:20, “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” Now by that question, Paul did not mean we should never ask God questions. That’s not what he meant. He meant that you should never react with disapproval when God answers.

And he goes on,

Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory . . . (Romans 9:20–23)

Now, Leslie asks, “It seems to me to imply that those who are not elect are not even given a chance to repent, since they were born for destruction. Is this right, that many people are created with no chance of ever being saved?” That’s her question. My answer is no. That would not be a faithful, biblical way of stating the situation. Let me put beside each other two biblical truths that many people consider contradictory, but are not, and then I’ll draw out of those two truths an implication for Leslie’s statement.

His Sovereignty, Our Responsibility

The first truth is, from all eternity God has chosen from among the entire fallen, sinful humanity a people for himself — but not everyone. Thus, this selection is owing to no merit at all in those chosen people. God pursues their salvation not only by effectively achieving the atonement for their sin through Christ, but also by sovereignly overcoming all their rebellion and bringing them to saving faith.

Here’s the second truth: everyone who perishes and is finally lost and cut off from God perishes because of real, blameworthy self-exaltation, which is sin. Because they are hardened against the revelations of God’s power and glory in nature or in the gospel, no innocent people perish. Nobody who humbly wants Christ as Savior is lost. No one is judged or condemned for not knowing, or believing, or obeying a reality to which they had no access. All lostness and all judgment are owing to sin and rebellion against the revelation that we have.

“There will be no innocent people in hell, and there will be only forgiven sinners in heaven.”

What keeps those two truths from being contradictory is this: the moral accountability of man is not destroyed by the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation. To say it another way, God’s final and decisive governance of all things, including who comes to faith, is compatible with all humans being morally accountable to God for whether they believe or not.

Now, we live in a world that by and large refuses to embrace God’s purposeful sovereignty in all things. That is Ephesians 1:11: “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will.” People reject this largely because the only solution their minds can embrace for maintaining human accountability is the presumption of ultimate human self-determination, otherwise known as free will. But ultimate human self-determination is not found anywhere in the Bible — but God’s sovereignty is, and man’s accountability is. Nowhere are these considered contradictory.

Invited Every Day

Therefore, my response to Leslie’s statement — namely, “many people are created with no chance of ever being saved” — is to say that everyone is being wooed and invited by God every day. They are being wooed through natural revelation — the sun rising on the good and the evil, or the rain falling on the good and the bad — or through conscience, or through gospel truth. These revelations of God are their chance to be saved. It is a real invitation. It is real precisely because if they humbled themselves and received God’s grace, they would be saved.

Those who humble themselves and receive God’s grace know that it was only the sovereign grace of God that enabled them to believe. And those who don’t do it know that it is because of their own sin. That they loved something else more than God is why they didn’t believe. There will be no innocent people in hell, and there will be only forgiven sinners in heaven.

Have you ever wondered why history began with a lonely husband?

Why did God make man, and then pause? Why did he parade “every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens” before the man, before finally giving him a bride, a helper, a queen? In a paradise filled with good, there was one glaring not-good: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

Marriage was a late arrival to the garden, and God clearly meant for it to be that way. With meticulous and patient care, he labored to set this wide and wondrous stage called earth, all so that these lines would reverberate, like a pleasant earthquake, through all he had made:

This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. (Genesis 2:23)

Marriage was the consummation, not a last-minute addition — the image of God in flesh and blood, male and female, intimacy and security and procreation. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them” (Genesis 1:27–28). God holds back marriage just long enough for us to feel how colorless a world without marriage would be. And then the wedding comes, and that mounting tension holding the whole earth hostage suddenly resolves — God makes two from one, and then one from two.

The beauty of marriage, however, wasn’t the inspiration for that first love story. God let the lonely man search high and low, near and far, all in vain, to hint at another love, a higher love, a better Groom.

Why Does Marriage Exist?

God let Adam stand uncomfortably long at the altar of creation so that we would long to meet Eve. Then he waited centuries more before sending his own Son to the altar, so that we would long to meet the Bridegroom and love him when he comes. Through the apostle Paul, God himself tells us what he was doing as he officiated that first marriage:

“A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31–32)

“Marriage doesn’t exist to remedy the loneliness of singleness; marriage exists to tell us that we need Jesus.”

Marriage doesn’t exist just to remedy the loneliness of singleness; marriage exists to tell us that we need Jesus. It’s a living exposition of Christ’s relentless and passionate pursuit of his chosen people, the church — and of the church’s restless ache for him. He would not rest until he had her; she would not rest until she had been found by him.

God calls husbands to love their wives in a way that shows the world something of Christ’s delight in us:

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. (Ephesians 5:25–27)

Likewise, God calls wives to love their husbands in a way that shows the world something of our delight in Christ:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. (Ephesians 5:22–23)

God has made each marriage a canvas for spiritual reality. A wife’s words, attitudes, actions, and decisions either honor or betray the Bride of Christ. A husband’s words, attitudes, actions, and decisions either honor or betray the Bridegroom.

My Delight Is in Her

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, when God reaches again and again for the imagery of marriage to explain the zeal and intensity of his redeeming love. For instance, in Isaiah 54:5–6:

For your Maker is your husband,     the Lord of hosts is his name;and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,     the God of the whole earth he is called.For the Lord has called you     like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit,like a wife of youth when she is cast off,     says your God.

When God conceived of husbands, he wanted us to comprehend something of what he is like. He painted weddings and marriages into his story as illustrations so that he could say to his people, “You shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:4–5).

God made husbands to delight in their wives so that we might know that God really does delight in us — that we might believe God when he promises, “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:19–20).

God Walks the Aisle

Though he never married, Jesus knew he was the long-awaited husband of history. He knew his coming was the love the world had waited for.

When the Pharisees came to him and condemned his disciples for not fasting, he said, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15). For centuries, the bride had watched and waited, wallowing in sin and shame and separation — and then he came. The seed God had planted in the garden finally sprung up in the little-known garden of Bethlehem.

Instead of removing a rib, he now took on ribs and walked the long and lonely aisle to Calvary, “taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7–8). The Bridegroom did not emerge dressed in white, but he was clothed in humility, raised in obscurity, showered with hostility, and then crucified in agony.

The first husband searched and searched to find his bride; this last husband died to have his.

Marriage of the Lamb

We know that marriage — in the garden and today — is meant to prepare us for something beyond marriage because one day marriage will end. “In the resurrection,” the Bridegroom says, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30). God placed a bride and groom at the center of creation to plant the seed of a future marriage between Christ and his church. When Jesus returns, however, the marriages we have known will give way to the Marriage for which we were made.

“When Jesus returns, the marriages we have known will give way to the marriage for which we were made.”

When Adam came to take Eve, he sang, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” When Jesus comes to take his church, the nations will sing, “like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder,”

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God     the Almighty reigns.Let us rejoice and exult     and give him the glory,for the marriage of the Lamb has come,     and his Bride has made herself ready;it was granted her to clothe herself     with fine linen, bright and pure. (Revelation 19:6–8)

An angel will declare, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9). The joy of a husband who finally finds his wife has always been a whisper of the thrill we will feel when this great and final wedding comes.

God gave us marriage so that he might one day give us to Christ. God gave us wives so that we might see something of the beauty he sees in his church. God gave us husbands so that we might see something of the courage, strength, and love in his Son.

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Romans 15:8–13)

When you read the letters of the apostle Paul, you discover that one of his trademarks is to build modest houses and then dig mile-deep foundations under them.

For example, marriage is a modest house, and the way a husband treats a wife is a fairly ordinary, everyday, modest act in that house. Paul builds that modest house in Ephesians 5, and then he digs a mile-deep foundation for it.

He says to husbands, “Here’s the foundation for your modest house called marriage: the Son of God — the second person of the infinite, eternal Trinity and the Creator of the universe — possessed, from before eternity, a predestined holy and blameless bride, the church. And to make her his own and cleanse her from all impurity, he came into the world as the God-man, and he was crucified in her place. And deeper than the mystery of Genesis 2:24, he became one flesh with her — one body — that they might enjoy each other forever.”

To this mile-deep foundation Paul adds, “Therefore, husbands, a modest proposal: this afternoon, be kind to your wife.” So Paul builds modest houses and digs mile-deep foundations under them.

Modest Conflict Reconciliation

Here’s another example from Romans 14. The vegans and the meat lovers in the Roman church are quarreling, so Paul builds a modest house. He says, “The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God” (Romans 14:6). So, get along without judging each other, says Paul.

Then he digs a mile-deep foundation under that house:

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. (Romans 14:7–9)

“One of Paul’s trademarks is to build modest houses and then dig mile-deep foundations under them.”

To which, perhaps, one of his impatient pragmatist friends would say, “Paul, we are talking about vegetables and steak! And then you bring in life and death and the crucifixion of Christ and his resurrection and his lordship over the living and the dead — good grief! Lighten up. You don’t need to get all deep and theological and heavy about everything.”

Modest Churches

Then we come to our text, Romans 15:8–15, and we notice that it begins with the word for — otherwise known as a massive drill bit for digging pilings a mile deep under modest houses.

Paul builds the modest house in Romans 15:5–7:

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

There’s the modest house: “Live in harmony. Welcome each other. Do it all to show how glorious God is.” And then he fastens the drill bit in Romans 15:8 — using the word for — and digs a mile-deep missions week text about “The Global Glorification of the Merciful God,” which is the title of this message.

This is not a message on Romans 15:5–7. It’s not an exposition of living in harmony and welcoming each other as Christ welcomed us for the glory of God. But it’s good for you to know that this mile-deep missions text about the global glorification of the merciful God was drilled to support the modest house called Bethlehem Baptist Church, who welcome one another as Christ welcomed us.

Global Missions

We often think the other way around — namely, that the church exists to support missions. There’s a sense in which that’s true, but that’s not the way Paul set it up here. Romans 15:8–13 is a mile-deep missions text about the global glorification of the merciful God, and all of this passage is dug as an unshakeable foundation under the modest house of Christian harmony called Bethlehem. God has been doing this for one hundred and fifty years — making his global mission a massive support for the church. It’s not just the other way around.

So let’s watch him drill these pilings. Romans 15:8 says this: “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised.” Male circumcision was the sign of belonging to Israel. So Paul is saying that the Son of God came into the world as the Jewish Messiah. When the high priest asked Jesus in Mark 14:61, “Are you the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus answered, “I am.”

As the Messiah, he said in Mark 10:45, “[I] came not to be served but to serve, and to give [my] life as a ransom for many.” As the Messiah, “[he] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). As the servant-Messiah, he became “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

But as a servant to the circumcised he was not coerced or forced: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). Christ served Israel freely. He gave his life freely. He took it back freely. He died. He rose. And thus he served.

Why? Why did he come to serve like this? Paul answers in the middle of Romans 15:8: “To show God’s truthfulness.” Here’s the entire verse: “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness” — or we might also say, for the sake of God’s truth. Christ came into the world as the Jewish Messiah to prove to the universe that God tells the truth. He only tells the truth. He never lies. Every word of God comes true.

Two Great Purposes of God

At the end of Romans 15:8 and the beginning of Romans 15:9 Paul drills down into two purposes guaranteed by God’s truthfulness. Because God is absolutely truthful, two purposes of God will come to pass. First, God’s promises made to the patriarchs are firm — they will come to pass. Second, the Gentiles will glorify God for his mercy.

Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. (Romans 15:8–9)

We might jump to the conclusion that these are two distinct purposes. Confirm promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — that’s one purpose. Bring about the global glorification of the merciful God — that’s the second purpose. But I doubt it, because God’s purpose to save the Gentiles was included in the promises made to the patriarchs.

Promises to the Patriarchs

Genesis 12:3 says, “I will bless those who bless you . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” When the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, came to serve Israel — when he died and rose again to confirm the promises made to Abraham — in that very act of confirming the promises to Israel, he secured the global glorification of his mercy among all the families of the earth. Because that’s what God promised to Abraham.

So God is true. He keeps his word to Israel, and that word promised that Israel would be blessed and that Gentiles would be blessed through Israel. Never think of the Great Commission as excluding Jewish people. Jesus came into the world to confirm the promises made to them. And those promises include a great salvation through faith in Messiah Jesus.

There are almost fifteen million Jewish people worldwide. Sixty-five thousand Jews live in Minnesota, mostly in the Twin Cities. There are twenty-four synagogues in these cities. Jesus Christ is their only hope. Every missional focus at Bethlehem includes them. God’s call is on some of you for the Jewish people. Your call is right here in this text — to join Christ in confirming the promises made to Israel.

Gentiles Will Glorify God

But let’s focus for the rest of our time on God’s second purpose — the global glorification of the merciful God.

Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, [first] in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and [second, to make explicit that it is included in the first] in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. (Romans 15:8–9)

Let’s ask three questions: Who are the Gentiles? What is God’s mercy? And, How are Gentiles to glorify God?

1. Who are the Gentiles?

Paul quotes four different Old Testament passages to support his claim that God’s purpose is that Gentiles glorify God for his mercy.

As it is written, “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” (Romans 15:9–12)

In all four quotations he mentions Gentiles. He chose these texts to show that already in God’s purposes in the Old Testament — you could say, in his promises to the patriarchs in Deuteronomy, Psalms, or Isaiah — already in God’s word to Israel, his aim was that the Gentiles would be saved. They would glorify God for his mercy.

In one of these four quotations from the Old Testament, Paul shows us what he means by “Gentiles.” It’s in Romans 15:11: “And again, ‘Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.’”

“God’s purpose is that he be glorified for his mercy among the peoples of the world.”

“Peoples” — with an s — parallels “Gentiles.” This means that Gentiles are not simply to be understood as individual non-Jews. It does have that meaning in many places, but Paul is striking another note here. God’s purpose is that he be glorified for his mercy among the peoples of the world. This is why there is an s at the end of the word people in our church mission statement: “We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.”

Therefore our calling as a church in global missions is not only to win to Christ as many individuals as we can, but also to make disciples among unreached or unengaged peoples. Or as one of our global partners emphasized yesterday, our calling is to plant biblical churches that plant biblical churches among all the peoples of the world.

2. What is God’s mercy?

In the Bible “mercy” and “grace” are overlapping realities. Where they overlap, they have the common meaning of treating someone kindly and helpfully. The difference is this: when that kindness is drawn out by a person’s misery, we tend to call it mercy, but when that kindness is drawn out in spite of the person’s guilt, we tend to call it grace.

You can show mercy to an animal because an animal can be miserable (Proverbs 12:10). But you don’t show grace to an animal because animals don’t have moral capacities that make up the basis of moral guilt.

The Bible tends to use these words interchangeably when dealing with God’s grace and mercy towards sinners because our greatest misery — namely, suffering in hell, forever cut off from the goodness of God — is inseparable from our guilt. No human being but one has ever lived whose misery was not accompanied by guilt. Therefore all of God’s mercy toward humans is gracious.

But here Paul strikes the note of mercy: “ . . . that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:9). When God came down on Mount Sinai and declared his name, he said, “I am.” He said, “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious” (Exodus 34:6). The first thing out of his mouth after his name is mercy: “My name is Yahweh! My name is Yahweh! I am merciful. I look with pity upon the miserable.”

And when Zechariah was filled with the Spirit in Luke 1:78, he exulted in why Jesus and John the Baptist had come: “Because of the bowels of the mercy of our God.” That’s a risky image. God doesn’t have intestines, but he has mercy way down in the feeling part of his being. Not just brains of mercy. Bowels of mercy. Deeply felt mercy.

When Christ became a servant to the circumcised and gave his life as a ransom for many, they sang a new song in heaven: “You were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). A tsunami of mercy was unleashed for all the peoples of the world. Missions is God’s plan to make that mercy known and glorified. There is no other plan. Therefore, it will succeed. Which brings us now to our last question: How are Gentiles — the peoples — to glorify God?

3. How are the peoples to glorify God?

Be sure you see what Romans 15:9 says. It does not say, “In order that the Gentiles might receive mercy.” It does not say, “In order that the Gentiles might glorify God’s mercy.” It says, “In order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.”

“God’s mission to the world is radically God-focused, God-exalting.”

God’s mission to the world is radically God-focused, God-exalting. The end of all things is God. And he is so glorious — so great, so beautiful, so valuable — that his glorious fullness overflows with mercy. Mercy is the stream. God is the fountain. Missions lead people to the stream and then up the stream to the fountain because the goal of all missions is that all the peoples would glorify God — glorify God! — for his mercy.

So then, how are all peoples to glorify God? The answer is found in the four Old Testament quotations in Romans 15:9–12. As I read them, you tabulate the words that describe how the peoples are to glorify God for his mercy.

“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” (Romans 15:9–12)

I think “extolling” and “praising” are basically the same, so what we have is praise, sing, rejoice, and hope. Which of these is at the bottom, giving rise to the authenticity of the other three? Here’s what I suggest.

Joy is at the bottom. Romans 15:10: “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” Joy is the root: joy in seeing and savoring the glory of God spilling over in mercy. Next comes hope: the hope that this joy will last forever, never giving out but only getting better and better. Next comes praise: praise may be unspoken or spoken. In my heart I can offer to God words of praise for his glory. And finally comes song: my inner joy in God’s glory, my hope that it will last forever and get better and better, and my heart-praise burst forth in song.

You do see what this means, don’t you? It means that the way the peoples glorify God for his mercy is by being happy in the glorious God of mercy — not just happy in the relief of misery, but happy in the glorious God who relieves the misery of guilty sinners, all because Christ became a servant to the circumcised. Gladness in God for his mercy glorifies God for his mercy.

Sustained for and by Missions

So here we are at the bottom of the mile-deep foundation for Romans 15:7: “Welcome one another [at Bethlehem] as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Then Paul fastens the drill bit and digs his mile-deep foundation for our welcoming one another: incarnation, the service of Christ’s sacrifice, the declaration of God’s truth, the confirmation of God’s promises, and the global glorification of the merciful God.

God has sustained our church for one hundred and fifty years. He has sustained us for the sake of world missions, but in this text it’s also the other way around. God’s mission to be glorified for his mercy among the peoples is the mile-deep foundation that supports the church. So may God raise up hundreds of you for the sake of the peoples and for the sake of our church.

Let the peoples praise you, O God;     let all the peoples praise you!Let the nations be glad and sing for joy. (Psalm 67:3–4)