If you have strained or broken relationships with parents (even deceased ones), how can you forgive them for their sinful failings and defects? How can you learn to view them through gracious lenses?

I’m not a trained counselor, but I had a strained relationship with my dad (who died in 1984), and over the last few years I have walked a slow journey toward understanding, mercy, and forgiveness. So let me try to answer these two questions by sharing some parts of my story. My story is unique, as is everyone’s. But perhaps, as you consider the path God has led me down, your own next steps will become clearer.

How Can I Forgive?

Let’s start with the question of forgiveness. It’s easier to forgive when we can see some of the benefits a bad experience brought. Since my father did not abuse me or harm me in the ways we sometimes read about in newspapers — others have it tougher — I eventually realized that my father’s defects actually made my life easier in three ways: easier to feel successful, easier to do what I wanted, and easier, through God’s grace, to profess Christ.

Good from the Bad

It was easier to feel successful because, as I grew up, my mother constantly disparaged my father, essentially labeling him a lazy loser. That wasn’t fair: he worked consistently for forty years, didn’t get drunk, and didn’t beat her — but he was also an underachieving Harvard graduate. She didn’t respect him because he didn’t get the respect she thought he deserved.

The other day, half a century after seeing it in a theater, I streamed Love Story, set at Harvard. A successful student-athlete there has an ultra-strained relationship with his father, an old-money, elite lawyer who competed in the 1928 Olympics. The son, who calls his dad “Sir,” has a high bar to leap and feels he can never meet Sir’s expectations. I, on the other hand, could feel successful by leaping over a low bar. That’s not bad.

My dad was not absent, but he was distant. I suffered in some ways as a result, but I also gained independence by not caring much what my father thought. I left Judaism at age fourteen without worrying about his disapproval. Later I could tell him about my coming to faith in Christ and my upcoming marriage to a shicksa, a non-Jew, without concern about his disapproval.

I believe I’d have had the guts and good sense to marry Susan regardless, but a few Jews with good paternal relationships become petrified at that point. More are lassoed by Jesus but keep tugging on the rope — or they at least keep their changed thinking secret to avoid upsetting parents. That’s not sensible, since Yeshua proclaimed his Jewishness as he said he’s the Christ. Either way, I never had that problem.

Unseen Sacrifices

Forgiveness in Christianity, of course, means more than relenting in resenting: it involves sacrifice. God forgives us because of Christ’s supreme expression of love. The famous line in Love Story is “love means never having to say you’re sorry,” but I truly love my father only by sacrificing my pride and being sorry for never thanking him for all he did for me.

“Forgiveness in Christianity means more than relenting in resenting: it involves sacrifice.”

His gift started with giving me life, of course, and continued to his material provision for me. I was able to graduate from an expensive college with almost no debt. My father had no car until he was thirty, but I grew up with driving privileges and did not have to pay for them. He grew up poor during the Depression, but he made sure his family had a home. We never went hungry.

The intangibles, though, are now more tangible to me. My research into his experiences leaves me 80 percent sure that he faced abundant anti-Semitism as a teenager. He never told me about that. I’m 90 percent sure that immediately after World War II he saw concentration camps while working as a translator and expediter for survivors and refugees. He never talked about that.

What if, as I was growing up, my father had embedded in me the gruesome detail he almost certainly saw while sweeping up the ruins of the Third Reich? What if he had told me how some of my great-grandparents probably received bullets in the head from Nazi soldiers and collaborators?

As I wrote in Lament for a Father, a book published earlier this year, I grew up without consciousness of anti-Semitism. It was undoubtedly there, but I was unaware. What if my father had rat-a-tat-tatted into my brain a sense that the world was against me? For a decade in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I went seriously astray but retained an overall optimism unmarred by nightmares about Holocaust horrors. I regret as an adult not pressing my father further for information about his past, but I now see method in his reticence.

I suspect my father, like a murder detective who doesn’t tell his wife what he saw that day, also spared my mother the specific detail. But as those law-and-order TV shows have frequently informed us, there’s a cost to the person who psychologically isolates himself to keep the virus of pessimism from spreading. My father was hostile to Christianity and its central theme of supreme sacrifice for others, but he did sacrifice — and I belatedly thank him for that.

How Can I Show Grace?

To address question two: Is that viewing him through gracious lenses? If we say in a secular way, “Give me grace,” we mean, “Understand what I’m going through.” I can imagine what a blow it was when my father changed his theology to one acceptable at Harvard, only to be kicked out of Harvard’s graduate school when he didn’t fit socially. I can imagine what it was like to see Jewish corpses stacked up like logs in Germany. I can imagine what it’s like to be deeply disrespected by a wife — and then disrespected by his sons. Those are three strikes, so no wonder he struck out.

Understanding can also mean seeing parallels. My grandfather probably disappointed his father by heading to America and never again seeing him. My father disappointed my grandfather by leaving Orthodox Judaism and embracing Jewish Reconstructionism, which is like a fundamentalist joining today’s Episcopal Church. I disappointed my father by believing in Christ. My research into the past helped me see that I’m a family traditionalist.

How then should I react? Psychiatrist Abraham Twerski said, “Human beings need four things: air, food, drink, and someone to blame” (quoted in Prager, The Rational Bible: Genesis, 53). People angry with absent fathers tend to think of them as stick figures rather than complex humans, so researching a father’s life fleshes him out. It may knock out the blame game and create opportunity for a good relationship if the father is alive, and more understanding if he’s not. Regardless, God commands us to honor our fathers and mothers for their sakes and our own. It’s the only commandment that comes with a gift certificate: obey it so “your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12; see also Ephesians 6:2).

Again, I’ve had it easy: my father was distant, not devilish. Either way, we need to realize that we all fall short — in different ways and to different degrees, yes, but all without exception. Fathers often aspire to do better for their children than their fathers did for them, often by giving them what they wanted to get and did not — but the children may want something different from what the fathers provide. The road to reconnection starts with the realization that we’re all sinners, and that we should condemn not, lest we be condemned (Luke 6:37).

Breaking the Iron Chain

So I can certainly forgive my father his sins, and hope others will forgive mine. I can view him through gracious lenses only because God gave me glasses, and because God in his infinite mercy views me graciously. Otherwise, we just pass on original sin in our natural wretchedness. At first glance, an iron chain binds generation to generation. Yet sometimes, with God’s grace and mercy, that iron chain becomes a readily breakable daisy chain.

“I can view him through gracious lenses only because God gave me glasses.”

Those who see the miraculous transition cry out joyfully, as the apostle Paul did, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24–25). When we have faith in God, we can look squarely at our own sin because nothing is a surprise to God. We learn that we’re worse than we have imagined but more loved than we could have hoped for.

I love my father, who was wounded — as was my mother, as was her father, as is everyone. But no wound is too deep for Christ to heal.

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.

Audio Transcript

Today’s question is about the divided heart. The heart, even of the believer, puts up resistance against God. It’s frustrating but not unusual, and it leads to a great question from an anonymous man: “Dear Pastor John, hello. In the episode titled ‘Why Is My Delight in God So Short Lived?’ you suggested one way to make our delights in God last longer. You said, ‘When you read your Bible every day, pause before you read and earnestly, with as much heartfelt longing as you can muster, pray to God that he would come and meet you in the reading of Scripture, and open the eyes of your heart, and show you what is really there, and make himself real, and bring about amazing changes in your life.’ However, when I muster a longing that God would come and meet me, I find my heart is unwilling to welcome God. It seems afraid of meeting God. It does not want to be with God, and this upsets me. On one hand, I want myself to be willing to meet God sincerely and enjoy the sweet time with him. On the other hand, my heart opposes that. Such chaos! What can I do when I find my heart is resisting?”

Let me repeat the key issue as I hear it. He says, “When I muster a longing” — that’s a significant phrase — “that God would come and meet me, I find my heart is unwilling to welcome God. It seems afraid of meeting God. It does not want to be with God. . . . What can I do when I find my heart is resisting?”

So, this is clearly a divided heart. It’s not a heart that’s entirely welcoming, and it’s not a heart that’s entirely resisting. He says, “When I muster a longing for God” — so there is a longing. But he also says, “When I do this, I find my heart unwilling to welcome God.” This heart is in some measure a longing heart for God, and in some measure a resistant heart to God.

Now that’s important for him and for us to see. If we don’t see this division in the heart — that it’s a divided heart — we might overstate the problem and think there’s no real root of desire for God in me. Or we might understate the problem and think that our resistance is no big deal. “It can’t be that; I can’t be resisting God,” those who understate the problem might say.

It seems to me that this embattled heart is typical of the Christian life even if we don’t all describe it the way he does, with the language of longing and resisting. None of us as Christians has a consistently united heart in longing for God.

I.O.U.S.

I have often tried to help others in their prayer lives by sharing what helps me — namely, the acronym I.O.U.S. I would commend this acronym to our friend with a focus on the letter U, which is the letter that usually doesn’t get a lot of focus. I’m usually focusing on the S, the O, and the I, but this man needs the U.

“The embattled heart is typical of the Christian life. None of us has a consistently united heart in longing for God.”

Let me work through the other letters quickly first. The letter I stands for incline. “Incline my heart to your testimonies,” we pray with Psalm 119:36. We ask God to take away resistance. We ask God to incline us toward God and his word instead of away from God. And so we admit all our inclination toward God is a work of God.
The psalmist would not be praying like this if the inclination was ultimately within our own power. If it were, he wouldn’t be asking God to incline his heart. We plead with God to take our hearts in his hands and to incline them, bend them, toward his word.

Then the letter O stands for open. Psalm 119:18 says, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” We need God to work a miracle on the eyes of our heart so that we can see the truth, beauty, value of who he is right there in his word. If we are left to ourselves while meditating on God’s word, we will see nothing of his spiritual beauty and worth.

And then comes the third letter, U, which in this case is going to be especially important. It stands for unite. Psalm 86:11 says, “Unite my heart to fear your name.” What an amazing prayer: “Unite my heart.” So what’s the problem that this psalmist is praying to solve? The problem is a divided heart.

That’s what we’re dealing with here in this question. This man has a longing for God, and he has a resistance to God. His heart is divided, and it needs to be united in its longing for God. So I would say to our friend, “Recognize that you have a divided heart, and plead Psalm 86:11 in prayer: ‘O God, unite my heart to fear your name.’”

Fear as Friendship

To fear God’s name doesn’t mean to feel a resistance to God coming near to you because you’re afraid of him. It’s just the opposite. We fear running from him. What we fear when we fear God is that we fear resisting him. We fear pushing him away. We fear the horrible outcome of hardening our hearts against the sweetness of his fellowship.

God’s chosen people, those who embrace Christ as their treasured Savior, are the apple of his eye. They are his loved ones. As the psalmist says, “The friendship of the Lord is for those who” — surprisingly — “fear him” (Psalm 25:14). Do you hear the connection between Psalm 86:11 and Psalm 25:14? “Unite my heart to fear your name” and “the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him.” The fear of God does not drive us away from God. The fear of God drives us into God, where there are the pleasures of his friendship.

“The fear of God drives us into God, where there are the pleasures of his friendship.”

So, pray Psalm 86:11, “Unite my heart to fear your name,” and then preach to yourself Psalm 25:14: “The friendship, the sweet private councils of the Lord, are precisely for those whose hearts are united to fear God’s name.” Then preach to yourself the promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 32:39, where God says, “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good.” Essentially, God is saying, “I will give them a single, united heart — that they may fear me forever.”

Blood-Bought Promises

Now we have not only the prayer that our hearts would be united in the fear of God, and not only do we have the promised result of that fear — his friendship — but we also have Jeremiah 32, the new covenant, which is Jesus’s blood-bought promise that God himself would take out the heart of stone and give us a single, united heart instead: “I will give them a heart to fear me.”

So when you find division in your heart, and a resistance begins to rise up that pushes out the welcome and the longing, declare this to yourself, and to your sin, and to Satan: “This resistance is not the new-covenant work of Jesus that he bought for me. No, it’s not. The new covenant work that he bought with his blood is a single, new, united heart that fears God, welcomes God, enjoys the friendship of God.”

Our new heart is united in its love for God, and so you throw this truth of the blood-bought, new-covenant promise in the face of the deceiver. And then you meditate perhaps on James 1:8 (“A double-minded man [is] unstable in all his ways”) and James 4:8 (“Purify your hearts, you double-minded”). And when you read these verses, you call down all the purifying power of the blood of Jesus.

Christ died that we might have a single heart for him, so don’t give up. I’m saying this now to our friend: Don’t give up. Don’t surrender to a divided heart. Resist your resistance of God. Call out to God for a single heart, and fix your mind on the promises — namely, that the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and that he will give a single, united heart to his blood-bought people. And then the S, the lonely letter at the end of our I.O.U.S. acronym, will come to pass: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love” (Psalm 90:14).

ABSTRACT: Some Christians presume the story of evangelicalism in America to be one of steady decline, from the robust faith of the founding generation to the increasing secularism of today. In fact, America was far more evangelical in 1860 than it was in 1776. The Second Great Awakening of the mid-1800s brought a surge of new members into the nation’s churches, especially its Methodist and Baptist churches, both of which sought to reach the masses on the frontiers and among the slave populations. Whether America on the eve of the Civil War can be called a “Christian nation” is doubtful; nevertheless, in 1860 the nation was more deeply influenced by evangelical faith than it ever had been before, or ever has been since.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Thomas Kidd, Vardaman Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, to trace the development of evangelical faith from America’s founding through the Second Great Awakening.

Brilliant as he may have been as a writer, Thomas Jefferson was a lousy religious demographer. In 1822, he wrote to his friend Benjamin Waterhouse about the future of American religion, and his preference for a non-Trinitarian, naturalistic version of Christianity. After denouncing the “demoralizing dogmas of Calvin,” the former president issued a bold prediction: “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the U.S. who will not die a Unitarian.”1 If there were a list of the all-time worst religious predictions in American history, this would have to be at the top of it.

“By the eve of the Civil War, America was as deeply influenced by evangelical faith as it ever had been before.”

Even as Jefferson wrote — much to his chagrin — the Second Great Awakening was turning America into a heavily evangelical nation. By the eve of the Civil War, America was as deeply influenced by evangelical faith as it ever had been before, or ever has been since.

Scarce Among the Founders

Evangelical Christianity was not inconsequential at the time of the American founding, of course. For example, we can thank evangelical Christians, especially Baptists, for many of the Revolutionary-era gains in religious liberty. Non-evangelical politicians such as Jefferson and James Madison depended on rank-and-file Baptists to pressure state governments to drop their official state denominations, or “establishments” of religion. Virginia abolished its official tie to the Church of England (or Episcopal Church) in 1786, guaranteeing all Virginia citizens liberty of conscience. This created a veritable free market of religion in the state. Virginia’s move was a critical precedent for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with its prohibition on a national established denomination, and its promise of “free exercise of religion” for all. It was not only evangelicals who wanted full religious liberty, but it would be hard to imagine America achieving religious freedom to the extent that it did without the aid of evangelical Christians.

Yet evangelicals did not have anything like the dominant religious and cultural position in 1776 that they would enjoy by the 1850s. Among the major Founders, evangelicals were rare. To find clear examples of evangelical believers, one has to look to lesser-known leaders such as John Jay of New York, author of a few of the Federalist essays, and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Then there’s the devout Roger Sherman of Connecticut, the only person to have signed all four great state papers of the American founding: the Continental Association,2 the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Among the most recognizable Founders, there were moderate but deistic-leaning Anglicans such as George Washington, wandering and reticent figures such as Alexander Hamilton,3 Unitarians such as Jefferson and John Adams, and self-described deists such as Ben Franklin. Dyed-in-the-wool evangelicals were scarce.

Born out of the Great Awakening in the 1740s, the evangelical movement was growing across America in 1776, but it remained a minority within most segments of American Christianity. The dominant denominations in America prior to 1776, including Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, usually had a conflicted attitude toward the revivals and revivalists of the First Great Awakening. Church of England officials had an especially rocky relationship with George Whitefield, the leading evangelist of the Great Awakening, who died on his last visit to America in 1770. By the mid-1740s, many Congregationalist ministers in New England also had denounced Whitefield as a rabble-rouser. These “Old Light” Congregationalists had their counterpart in “Old Side” Presbyterians, who worried that revivalists would splinter the churches and bring established ministers into disrepute.

Even many of the pre–Great Awakening Baptist churches in America opposed the revivals. But the Separate Baptists changed that stance. The Separate Baptists were former Congregationalists who not only supported the revivals, but who questioned the validity of infant baptism. Separate Baptists started to become the most dynamic evangelical group in America during the mid-1740s. By the 1750s, they transported their fervor from New England, where they originated, to the southern colonies. This began the century-long transformation of the South into America’s “Bible Belt.”

Rise of Methodism

Arguably the key factor in the story of American evangelical ascendancy was Methodism. Going back to his student days, Whitefield was considered a type of Methodist, because of his association with John and Charles Wesley, and with the so-called Holy Club of pious students at Oxford. But the Wesleys spent little time in America, and John Wesley and George Whitefield had a terrible split during the Great Awakening, due to differences over their respective Arminian and Calvinist beliefs. For a quarter century, they would struggle even to get back on speaking terms. Thus, Wesleyan Methodism had almost no impact on American revivals until the 1760s, when Wesleyan preachers began to appear in Virginia and Maryland.

In the early 1770s, John Wesley vociferously opposed the burgeoning American Patriot movement. The small numbers of Methodist preachers in America accordingly had to lay low, or return to Britain, during the American Revolution, for fear of Patriot reprisals. After the Revolutionary War (1775–1783) ended, Wesleyan Methodists came to the fore again. Wesley granted the American Methodists their functional independence in 1784, ensuring that the denomination would remain nimble and responsive to local American conditions. By the mid-1780s, the Methodists were seeing massive numbers of conversions and new church members, especially in the mid-Atlantic states.

One of the Methodists’ converts-turned-preachers was the former slave Richard Allen, who would go on to become one of Methodism’s most formidable leaders and the organizer of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Bethel was one of the founding churches of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first African American–led denomination in the country. Few African Americans were affiliated with any churches at all during the American colonial period. By the 1780s, groups such as the Methodists and Baptists began to make great evangelistic inroads among African Americans. They were especially effective when these groups employed blacks such as Allen as preachers and evangelists. When most enslaved African people had arrived in America, they had no Christian background whatsoever. The Second Great Awakening represented a major pivot in the mass conversion of most of the African American population, at least nominally, to some kind of Protestant faith.

“The Second Great Awakening represented a major pivot in the mass conversion of most of the African American population.”

Before the Civil War, some of those African American Christians attended black-pastored churches such as Richard Allen’s. In the South, it was more common for black Christians to formally attend white-pastored congregations. There were also functionally independent (and often secret) “brush arbor” meetings, held by enslaved people in isolated groves on the plantations. We often think of early America as a time of pervasive Christian commitment, but that was decidedly not the case for the enslaved population of the colonies. But the Second Great Awakening began to change the religious character of the American enslaved population. By the 1840s, the evangelization of the African American population (free or slave) was hardly complete, but the church had already become the most important social institution in the African American community.4

Methodism experienced the most remarkable growth of any of the evangelical churches between the Revolution and the Civil War. Methodist organizers such as Allen, Francis Asbury, and countless other itinerants and “circuit riders” kept up with the breakneck pace of population growth in the early American republic. Their tireless evangelistic and church-planting efforts explain much of the Methodist surge during the era. By 1784, there were around 15,000 American Methodists. Within six years, that number had increased fourfold to 60,000; by 1810, there were some 150,000 Methodist adherents in the nation. By the 1840s, as the sectional crisis over slavery loomed, the Methodist Church had become the largest denomination in America.5

Revived Baptists

Were it not for the Methodists, we might regard the Baptists’ expansion before the Civil War as the most remarkable story of religious growth in American history. The Baptists had an older history in America than the Methodists did, dating back to the early colonial period. Some of the Regular Baptists did support the Great Awakening, at least tentatively, but the Separate Baptists put the denomination on a path of massive revivalist increases on the trans-Appalachian frontier. Baptists claimed about 35,000 members as of 1784, but grew to 170,000 by 1810. The Methodists soon exceeded Baptist membership, however, only to be overtaken again by the Southern Baptist Convention as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination during the mid-twentieth century.

As of 1800, almost all Baptists were moderate or strict Calvinists.6 The new Freewill Baptist denomination had begun to challenge Calvinism’s supremacy among the Baptists, however. By the 1820s, doctrinaire Calvinism waned among many mainstream Baptists. Hard Calvinist conviction became more characteristic of the Primitive Baptists, who also opposed newfangled national missionary societies, such as ones sponsored by the Baptists’ Triennial Convention. The Primitive Baptists regarded these missionary societies as unbiblical and elitist.7 Many Presbyterian and Congregationalist pastors remained Calvinists, though, and revivalist Christianity and Reformed theology found important institutional homes in new schools such as Andover Theological Seminary (1807) and Princeton Theological Seminary (1812). Older divinity schools such as Harvard’s came under the influence of Unitarian and Transcendentalist thought.

Arminian Popularity

Overall, evangelicals during the Second Great Awakening took a big step toward becoming more theologically Arminian, due especially to the increasing dominance of Wesleyan Methodism. This is an aspect of the Second Great Awakening that Reformed or Calvinist readers might well view with concern and ambivalence. The evangelical faith of the First Great Awakening in America (less so in Britain) was almost uniformly Calvinist. That of the Second Great Awakening was a mix of Calvinist and Arminian convictions. If Jonathan Edwards’s theology was representative of the First Great Awakening, John Wesley’s was more typical of the Second. Calvinist revivalism certainly retained an important place on the Anglo-American religious scene, but Calvinism’s former dominance was becoming increasingly contested by Arminian perspectives on free will, the atonement, and other doctrinal issues.

This turn toward popular Arminian theology was capped by the enormous success of Charles Finney in the northern states in the 1830s. Finney was not the most precise or consistent theologian, but there can be no doubt that his philosophy of revival was more human-centered than Edwards’s. It clashed with Edwards’s well-known emphasis on the sovereignty of God in conversions and awakenings. Finney’s wildly popular Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835) reviled the notion that people needed to wait on God to do anything in revival. God had given churches and ministers all they needed to see revival happen; the only contingency was whether people would obey God by praying for and preaching revival. With Finney, the concept of a planned revival, foreign to Edwards’s view of the “surprising” nature of true awakening, became a standard feature of American evangelical culture. “Religion is the work of man,” Finney explained. “It is something for man to do.” Finney regarded the notion of the church waiting on God to send revival as devilish. Instead, God was waiting on the church to obey him in seeking revival.

Finney became famous (or notorious, in critics’ eyes) for his use of “new measures” to induce revival, such as protracted, multiday meetings. The characteristic new measure was the “anxious seat” or bench, where men or women wishing to break through to assurance of salvation could come to the front of a sanctuary and receive prayer and exhortations to believe. Finney also followed John Wesley in his emphasis on holiness, and the prospect that devout believers could achieve a virtual state of sinless perfection in this life. This state did not necessarily last forever, or render it impossible for the believer to sin. Yet Finney and his followers taught that God’s call to holiness was not impossible to meet. After conversion, there was an opportunity to consecrate one’s life entirely to God, and to live for stretches of time with no taint of sin at all.8

Women Leaders

The evangelical movement always had powerful female figures, such as Whitefield’s patron Selina Hastings, or Sarah Osborn, whose small home became the epicenter of a remarkable revival in Newport, Rhode Island, in the 1760s. Limited numbers of women were chosen as deaconesses or eldresses in certain Baptist congregations in the mid- to late 1700s. But virtually all evangelicals understood that there were biblical and historic limits on women’s formal authority in congregations. Most obviously, women were not permitted to become ordained ministers. The Arminian proponents of revivalist Christianity — again following the example of John Wesley — tended to be more open to informal speaking and offices for women than were traditional Calvinists. These roles even led occasionally to arguments for the legitimacy of women serving formally as pastors and preachers.

One such advocate for female preaching was Jarena Lee. Lee, born to free African American parents in New Jersey, worked as a domestic servant in Philadelphia, and experienced conversion under the preaching of Richard Allen. She was baptized in 1807. Lee was inclined toward charismatic piety, and she believed that God called her in a vision to become a preacher. She requested that Allen and the Methodists appoint her as an evangelist, a request that Allen denied. This did not stop her from becoming a sought-after exhorter and an independent Methodist itinerant. Allen later relented and ordained her in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Lee wrote, “If the man may preach, because the Saviour died for him, why not the woman? seeing he died for her also. Is he not a whole Saviour, instead of a half one?”9 Despite such occasional protests, it remained far more common for evangelicals to adhere to limitations on women’s public teaching, guided by passages such as 1 Timothy 2:12 or 1 Corinthians 14:34–35.

Splits and Sects

Biblicism was a defining mark of the evangelical movement, but as seen in Jarena Lee’s struggle to preach, or in Wesley and Whitefield’s feud over Calvinism, biblicism did not end disagreements among evangelicals regarding what the Bible taught. This problem became more acute during the Second Great Awakening. American evangelicals grew more individualistic, and confident about the power of reason to interpret Scripture, without the aid of creeds, confessions, or church tradition. This kind of populist biblicism led to an incredible proliferation of new denominations and sectarian movements in the first half of the nineteenth century. The end of established state churches also fueled the centrifugal trend within evangelicalism. Before the Revolution, the established Church of England, and the Congregationalist churches in New England, kept a lid on disruptive church practices or aberrant theology, and they could employ the force of the state to suppress dissent. Now, the same freedom that allowed for the phenomenal growth of the Baptists and Methodists led to the virtually unchecked work of other new religious movements, prophets, exhorters, and visionaries.

Some of these movements developed jarringly innovative theology, and in the case of the Mormons, entirely new scriptures. Other movements, such as the Churches of Christ, would go on to become standard fixtures of the American Protestant landscape. The Churches of Christ, led by figures such as Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, were the ultimate products of the evangelical “Bible alone” ethos. Stone and Campbell imagined that through an unaided, plain reading of Scripture, they could take their movement back to the simple purity of the New Testament church. This effort led to distinctive priorities such as prohibiting the use of musical instruments in worship services. Not even members of the Churches of Christ could agree whether such strictures were truly biblical, however, leading to a split that divided the Churches of Christ from the Disciples of Christ in the late nineteenth century.10 Evangelicals were finding that sola scriptura, while an indisputable first principle of Protestants, was more difficult to practice in a unifying fashion when it was unmoored from Christian history and creedal traditions.

Reaching the Masses

For better or worse, then, the Second Great Awakening was arguably more formative than the First in American religious and cultural history. The first reason for its massive impact is that by the mid-1800s, white and black Americans were far more “churched” than they had been in 1776. In 1776, church life in America was more urban-centered and exclusively white than it was by 1860, when evangelical churches had made much progress in reaching frontier white populations and the African American community, both free and enslaved. Whites remained the leaders of most churches and denominations, yet African Americans not only were surging into Baptist and Methodist congregations but sometimes led their own churches and even denominations, as Richard Allen did. The vast church-planting initiative led by Baptists and Methodists not only facilitated the conversion of untold thousands of Americans, but it also provided basic social structure to the burgeoning frontier. For many frontier settlers or enslaved people on plantations, the church was the only social support outlet they had.

“The Second Great Awakening was arguably more formative than the First in American religious and cultural history.”

The second reason that the Second Great Awakening was so consequential was that it led to a range of ambitious missionary and moral reform initiatives. The formal evangelical missionary movement had begun in Britain in the 1790s, but American evangelicals readily adapted to missions too, initiating evangelistic works in city slums, in Native American villages, and to the ends of the earth. Through agencies such as the American Bible Society (founded in 1816), evangelicals made physical copies of the Bible nearly ubiquitous in American homes. Finally, Christians in the Second Great Awakening era took on moral reform causes, such as ministering to the homeless and to prostitutes, curbing alcohol abuse, and opening countless schools and colleges. Some evangelicals engaged in antislavery activism, too, though their influence among evangelical whites was exceeded by proslavery sentiment, especially in the South.

Christian America?

To conclude, let’s return to Jefferson’s faulty prediction. Unitarianism may have been growing in 1822, but on the broader American religious landscape, it was hardly the main event. Americans, especially devout Protestants, tend to recall the American founding as a time of intense Christian fervor, and maybe even evangelical dominance. Sometimes they imply that American history has been a story of decline and decay from that idyllic origin of 1776. As usual, the historical truth is more complicated. America was far more churched and more evangelical in 1860 than it was in 1776.

Did this mean that America was a “Christian nation” by 1860? The brutal nature of chattel slavery, and the ruthless expropriation of Native American lands, should give us pause about making unequivocal claims to Christian identity for the nation, even by 1860. In terms of religious adherence, however, America on the eve of the Civil War was probably as Christian as it ever has been in its history. Indeed, the era of the Second Great Awakening demonstrates the incredible capacity of churches focused on the Great Commission to transform the religious character of a nation.

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In one very tense discussion with the Pharisees, Jesus uttered some of the most important words ever spoken about the importance of the words we speak:

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:34–37)

What an unnerving thought. The words we speak (and type!), whether we think so or not, are reliable revealers of what our hearts truly value. And someday, when we stand before the “judgment seat of Christ, [to] receive what is due for what [we have] done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10), our own words — even careless ones — will be brought forth as witnesses.

What Words Reveal

When Jesus said we speak out of the “abundance” of our hearts (Matthew 12:34), what did he mean? The best way to answer this question is to look at the context.

Jesus had just delivered a man from demonic oppression. And the crowd who witnessed this wonder couldn’t help but ask if Jesus were the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of David. The Pharisees, doing everything they could to stamp this idea out, had a ready answer: “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons” (Matthew 12:24).

Jesus responded with one of his most forceful rebukes, exposing the blatant hypocrisy in the Pharisees’ accusation, warning them of the terrible danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31–32). And then he made his point about what words reveal.

Jesus turned the Pharisees’ words back on them to expose the evil power that was fueling them — the evil in their own hearts. They had chosen their words carefully and deliberately to achieve a desired end: to sway public opinion against Jesus by sowing seeds of suspicion in people’s minds through this unsubstantiated accusation. In doing so, they intentionally called evil the “good fruit” Jesus was bearing by releasing a man from demonic oppression, while not recognizing the “bad fruit” they were bearing by using dishonest means to discredit Jesus (Matthew 12:33).

The Pharisees were so blinded by their own evil pursuits that they didn’t recognize the spiritual danger they were in; they didn’t discern the demonic influence moving them to call the Holy Spirit’s power demonic. They were speaking words out of the abundance of evil treasure in their hearts.

Even Careless Words

At this point, everyone listening might have felt like taking a few steps back from the Pharisees, just in case lightning struck. But then Jesus’s warning about words suddenly broadens out to include everyone:

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:36–37)

The Pharisees’ accusation against Jesus doesn’t seem to be an example of careless words; they crafted their accusation carefully. But Jesus wanted them — and us — to know the abundance of our hearts is revealed not only in our careful, deliberate words, but in our careless ones as well. This takes matters to a wholly different level.

“Careless” is a good translation of the Greek word argon. Careless words can be flippant, idle, off-the-cuff words. They can be words we spout off when we lose our patience or words we use to pontificate on matters we haven’t thought about much. They can be angry, crude, insulting words we say over issues we feel strongly about — whether publicly or privately. And, while far rarer for human beings, careless words can also be patient, kind, honoring, peaceable, and humble.

“All our words matter. All will be called to witness for or against us.”

Jesus’s point is that all our words matter. All will be called to witness for or against us. What we say is so connected to our hearts that even our careless words are telling. And what often makes careless words revealing is that we speak them when our guard is down.

Painful Parable

A parable of the revealing power of careless words recently played out in the popular media when Jon Gruden’s remarkable and lucrative career in the National Football League suddenly ran off the rails.

In October 2021, two high-profile newspapers published exposés regarding numerous emails Gruden wrote between 2010 and 2018, prior to his becoming head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. These were words he clearly (and mistakenly) assumed would remain private. As one news site summarized, the emails revealed a “pattern of homophobic, misogynistic and sexist insults, as well as pictures of topless Washington Football Team cheerleaders.”

October 11 in particular became a day of judgment for Gruden in the court of public opinion, when he was roundly condemned by his own, as one sportswriter put it, “stupid and careless” words. And as a result, he resigned as the Raiders head coach.

This gives us a little picture of what Jesus meant when he said,

Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. (Luke 12:3)

Anyone facing prosecution in the U.S. court system is warned, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Jesus is warning us that everything we say can and will be used for or against us when we stand before his judgment seat.

Given all we’ve said in the dark and whispered in private rooms, all the stupid and careless words we’ve spoken that could be damning witnesses against us, the wisest step we can take is to “come to terms quickly with [our] accuser” before we reach the court (Matthew 5:25), and pray with the psalmist,

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,     O Lord, who could stand?But with you there is forgiveness,     that you may be feared. (Psalm 130:3–4)

For our Judge is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

Bridle Your Tongue (and Fingers)

But part of repentance — in fact, evidence that repentance is real — is actively pursuing transformation in the power of the Holy Spirit. And when it comes to all our words, and perhaps especially our careless ones, repentance looks like putting a bridle on our tongues, which obviously today includes our fingers and thumbs.

“Repentance looks like putting a bridle on our tongues, which obviously today includes our fingers.”

I’m drawing this metaphor from the apostle James who, in his strong warning about the tongue, uses three helpful analogies: (1) a horse’s bridle, (2) a ship’s rudder, and (3) a flame (James 3:1–6). Each of these, like the tongue and fingers, is a small object with great power. The first two illustrate controls that produce great good: a small bridle controls a powerful horse, and a small rudder steers a powerful ship. But the third illustrates how the lack of control — let’s call it carelessness — can wreak great destruction: a small flame sets a whole forest ablaze.

The point is clear: words under control can do great good. They can be for others “a tree of life” (Proverbs 15:4) and “give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). But uncontrolled, foolish words can burn friendships, families, churches, and careers to the ground (James 3:9–10). The question is, What bridles are we putting on our words to control them for good?

24-Hour Rule

Let me share just one personal bridle I’ve been using: the 24-hour rule. Before responding to someone whose words stir up anger, frustration, or defensiveness in me, I wait at least a day. I’ve found most situations do not require an immediate response, even if someone wants one. And almost always, after 24 hours, the emotions most likely to ignite my heated reply have dissipated, and I’m able to respond with more measured, loving words. Not only that, I often see the person’s perspective more clearly than I initially did. This rule is very helpful for finger speech, but it works with tongues too. I know when I use this bridle as a husband and father, it invariably produces a more constructive result.

We each must find the bridles that most effectively work for us, and it’s crucial that we do. Those who are willing to do the hard work of bridling the wild horse of our words, for Jesus’s sake, demonstrate their love for him (John 14:15) and their desire to love their neighbor as themselves (Matthew 22:39). For those who don’t bridle their tongues and fingers, their words can and will be used against them on the day of judgment.

Whether or not we take Jesus’s words about our words to heart says something very important about our hearts.

Audio Transcript

Well, it’s never a bad time to soak in the glorious truths of Psalm 16. And that’s what we are going to do today in a clip from 2015. This clip comes from a memorable sermon titled “The Path to Full and Lasting Pleasure.” The clip begins where the sermon begins, with John Piper walking out on stage at a Shane & Shane conference. There Pastor John recited Psalm 16 from heart. This text and this sermon come in light of pretty deep sorrow for the Bethlehem community, making for a clip and a sermon that have impacted many of you. Without any further introduction, here’s Pastor John reciting Psalm 16.

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;     I have no good apart from you.”

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,     in whom is all my delight.

The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;     their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out     or take their names on my lips.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;     you hold my lot.The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;     indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;     in the night also my heart instructs me.I have set the Lord always before me;     because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Therefore, my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;     my flesh also dwells secure.For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,     or let your holy one see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life;     in your presence there is fullness of joy;     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:1–11)

“God will bring you into everlasting pleasure if he is your sovereign Lord and supreme treasure.”

If you have a Bible, I want you to open it to Psalm 16, which I just recited. Let me set the table for you before I pray and ask God to come and do mighty things among us. The reason I anticipate that he’s going to do remarkable things is because of the way he has set up this evening.

Numbered Days

Two weeks ago, I was in the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, fishing with my son and six others. One of those others was a twenty-year colleague whom I love, who has been the worship leader at our church for twenty years. When we got back to the outfitters, he was to call home. The phone call was that his son had died at 22 without the slightest history of health troubles. He was in Northern Ireland doing a mission trip and simply fell over, and with his sister at his side, he met Jesus.

The funeral was last Friday, four days ago. Little did we know that Alex, before he had left for Northern Ireland, had told his small group what he wanted at his funeral. He didn’t think he was going to die, but he said, “Here are the songs, and here’s the text that I want — Psalm 16.” We sang all the songs that he chose, and Psalm 16 is the passage that I was asked to speak on months ago at this event.

And so last Friday, in front of about a thousand young people mainly, I was doing what I just did, praying Psalm 16 over those people. Now I’m here speaking to several thousand people, probably not too much older than Alex, on Psalm 16. And in my judgment, God set this up to burden me for you in a way that he wouldn’t or couldn’t in any other way. You have no idea whether you will live out this week. None. Alex had no troubled medical history whatsoever, and to this moment we do not know why he died.

So, Lord, I believe this is a divine appointment for many. Whether it be the case that some here will not live out the week or whether they will live sixty more years, it’s a divine appointment. And the weight I feel for this psalm to become a reality in their lives is very great.

And so I invite you, Holy Spirit, to come in the name of Jesus. I plead with you to come. Don’t leave me to my own resources. I look away from myself, and I ask that these friends would do the same. May they look away from themselves and all their performances, looking wholly to you to speak to them now, so that who David is and what he sees in this song, they would be and see and feel. I ask this in Jesus’s powerful name. Amen.

Undying Pleasure

Let me give you the main point, as I understand it, of all eleven verses in one sentence: God will bring you — body and soul, through life and death — into full and everlasting pleasure if God is your safest refuge, and your sovereign Lord, and your supreme treasure, and your trusted counselor. If he’s not, my prayer is that he would become these things for you as he speaks to you through this psalm.

A few of you who really know your Bible well might hear that one-sentence summary and say to me, “Are you going to take into account what the apostle Peter makes of this Psalm in Acts 2, in the New Testament? Peter says that verses 9–11 are a prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus, and you didn’t mention that in your main point. Why not? Because that’s the one thing he picked out of the psalm to mention.”

My answer has two parts. Number one, yes, I am going to deal with what Peter makes of this Psalm in Acts 2. Number two, the reason I don’t say that the resurrection of Jesus is part of the main point of this psalm is because I don’t think it is. Rather, the resurrection of Jesus is a massive and unshakable argument in support of the psalm’s main point.

“Again and again in the Bible, glorious realities are made to serve practical, personal main points in texts.”

If that sounds strange to you, that something as massive and unshakable and great and glorious as the resurrection of the Son of God from the dead should be an argument under a main point, supporting it, know this: one of the great and amazing and wonderful things about the Bible is that again and again and again, glorious things — massive, unshakable, beautiful, awesome realities — are made to serve practical, personal main points in texts. That’s amazing, and that’s true all over the Bible.

So yes, we will get to Peter’s application of verses 9–11 to the resurrection, and we will discover it is not the main point of Psalm 16. The main point of this text is that God will bring you — body and soul, through life and death — into full and everlasting pleasure if he is your treasure and refuge and sovereign and counselor. That’s the main point.

There are two opposite ways to change the world: our way versus the Jesus way. Our way is to get pushy, even violent. The Jesus way is to get humble, even overlooked. Both the extreme political left and the extreme political right in our nation today too often choose the foolish way. And any politics, without the beautiful humanity of the Jesus way, ends up making life worse for everyone.

Advent is a good time for all of us, whatever our politics, to slow down and stare at Jesus for a while. Doing so can only make life better for us and for everyone.

Change Through Swagger

The prophet Isaiah foresaw the only one who can change the world for the better — permanently. One of Isaiah’s favorite ways of describing Jesus was as “the servant of the Lord.” But right before Isaiah introduces him in chapter 42, he shows us another world leader in chapter 41. In the words of God himself:

I stirred up one from the north, and he has come. . . . He shall trample on rulers as on mortar, as the potter treads clay. (Isaiah 41:25)

“Advent is a good time for all of us, whatever our politics, to slow down and stare at Jesus for a while.”

God is claiming sovereignty over Cyrus the Great, the Persian warlord whose armies swept victoriously over the ancient world five centuries before Christ. Cyrus was one of this world’s typically successful tough guys. He stepped on people to get ahead (Isaiah 41:2).

And brutality is one way to change the world, I suppose. But does it work, really? One political overreach only sets in motion a pendulum swing in sharp reaction, back and forth, on and on. That’s our way.

Change Through Humility

Thanks be to God, the bullying and brutality all across the sad length of human history — our defunct strategies — are not our only hope. There is also the Jesus way of changing the world. Isaiah introduces this humble servant with words from God himself:

Behold my servant, whom I uphold,     my chosen, in whom my soul delights;I have put my Spirit upon him;     he will bring forth justice to the nations.He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,     or make it heard in the street;a bruised reed he will not break,     and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;     he will faithfully bring forth justice.He will not grow faint or be discouraged     till he has established justice in the earth;     and the coastlands wait for his law. (Isaiah 42:1–4)

The key word is justice. We see it three times. Isaiah’s Hebrew is not easy to translate. The English word justice is accurate, but the Hebrew suggests more than legal correctness.

This word is used, for example, in the book of Exodus for the plan of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:30). God gave Moses a kind of blueprint for building the tabernacle, and it came out just right. That’s the word Isaiah uses. It tells us that God has a plan, a blueprint, for truly human existence. But we can’t achieve it by fighting to get our own way. “He will bring forth justice” the Jesus way — by serving us, as an egoless nobody.

He Heals the Bruised

He was not Jesus the Great, to outmatch Cyrus the Great. He came to us as the Lord’s servant, with spiritual power not of this world. Two thousand years ago, with no fanfare, no hoopla, Jesus began a change that will not stop until all his people are healed (Matthew 12:15–21).

A world conqueror with no threats, no saber-rattling, no big-deal-ness? Jesus lived so modestly that no one paid him much attention until he started performing miracles. Even then, his miracles were always to help someone else, never himself.

“A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench” is a roundabout way of saying he will heal that bruised reed and will rekindle that faintly burning wick. Jesus restores broken people. He isn’t recruiting the heavy-hitters. He wants wounded people, exhausted people, people with doubts, people with weaknesses, injured by their own sins and by the sins of others. Those are the people he brings into his kingdom and serves.

Jesus is the only world leader who can say to us, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

He Never Grows Weary

But can Jesus handle all this human need we bring to him? What about all my need, plus yours? Does he care enough and love enough and forgive enough, to make everything right again for everyone who comes to him? Look again:

He will not grow faint or be discouraged     till he has established justice in the earth,     and the coastlands wait for his law. (Isaiah 42:4)

“Today, the risen Jesus is caring for our needs, and he is not overwhelmed.”

He is gentle, but not weak like us. We start projects with high hopes. Later, we quit. But at his cross, the servant of the Lord took all our failures to himself as if they were his own. Today, the risen Jesus is caring for our needs, and he is not overwhelmed. He doesn’t need to get away from it all for a few days. Right now, as you’re reading this, Jesus is not tired, and he is not tired of you.

The Jesus Way to Change

A new world of perfect justice, created the Jesus way, is not an ideal we must attain. It is a promise of God that he will fulfill.

Even “the coastlands,” Isaiah says, will wait eagerly for his new way of life. And the coastlands were the most remote areas Isaiah could think of. The complete triumph of the gospel is not a hot trend to hit the big cities but leave out the boondocks. There’s just no pride in Jesus at all. His heart is moved for you, wherever you are.

This world will never change by our tribe, whoever that might be, finally winning so big that the victory can’t be reversed. Our tragic world has already begun to change for the better — the Jesus way. Here we find the delight of God, the Holy Spirit, humble modesty, gentle healing, faithful resilience — all of this in Jesus Christ crucified, risen, reigning, and returning.

Advent reminds us not to stake our hopes for the future on worldly strategies. Let’s dare to follow the Jesus way. It’s how his new world appears even now.

What have Christians been known for in 2021? What has marked the church?

Jesus has commissioned his followers to represent him in this world. When nonbelievers look at our lives, we want them to see people distinguished by Christlike character. When they look at churches, we want them to see outposts of God’s heavenly kingdom, early installments of the new creation. And in particular, whether they look at individual Christians or churches, we want them to notice three dominant graces: faith, hope, and most of all, love.

The gospel creates people who are filled with faith in Christ, captivated by the hope of eternal life, and overflowing in love for God and neighbor. In fact, at least nine passages — scattered throughout the letters of Paul, Peter, and Hebrews — mention this trio of Christian graces (1 Corinthians 13:13; Galatians 5:5–6; Ephesians 4:2–5; Colossians 1:4–5; 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 5:8; Hebrews 6:10–12; 10:22–24; 1 Peter 1:21–22).

If you could travel back in time and ask New Testament believers how they live the Christian life, I expect that you would hear the same answer again and again: we aim to abound in faith, hope, and love.

Greatest of These

First Corinthians 13:13 is the most well-known passage that highlights this trio. Paul tells us, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” His claim raises an important question: Why is love “the greatest” of these graces? After all, we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8), and we continue to grow as believers through faith in Christ and his promises. Likewise, as we look forward to Christ’s return with eager anticipation, hope fills us with joy and empowers us to persevere through suffering (Romans 12:12). Yet Paul tells us that love holds the highest place in this holy triad. So why is love the greatest?

Let’s answer that question by approaching 1 Corinthians 13:13 in three contexts. We’ll begin with the larger context of Paul’s letters, then focus more closely on this section of 1 Corinthians (chapters 12–14), and finally zero in on the immediate context in 1 Corinthians 13:8–13. As we do so, my hope is that our hearts will be stirred up to love one another, so that our homes, our churches, and our neighborhoods would be saturated with love that spreads the fame of Christ.

Faith and Hope Produce Love

Several passages in Paul’s letters show us that both faith and hope produce love. We can see this connection between faith and love in Galatians 5:6: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” Though we are justified by faith alone, the kind of faith that justifies never remains alone; it always works through love for others. God does not save us in order that we might remain indifferent to the needs of those around us. Rather, as the Holy Spirit begets faith in our hearts, he intends for that faith to produce countless deeds of love.

Similarly, the hope that is ours in Christ leads us to love one another. In Colossians 1:4–5, Paul tells the Colossian believers about his gratitude for them, “since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” The Colossian Christians loved their fellow believers, Paul says, because they knew they had a glorious hope awaiting them in heaven. They knew they would spend eternity in the presence of Christ, and this hope freed them to give of their time, their possessions, and perhaps even their lives to serve their fellow believers.

Faith and hope are, in one sense, means to an even greater end, without which they would be incomplete: they transform us so that our lives overflow with Christlike love.

Love Builds Up the Church

Now we’ll narrow our focus to the section of 1 Corinthians in which Paul says that “the greatest of these is love.” In 1 Corinthians 12–14, Paul is teaching the church about spiritual gifts. As he sorts through issues such as the variety of gifts in the church and the use of what we might call “miraculous gifts,” his great concern is for everything to be done for the building up of the church. When Christ’s people meet together for worship, everyone may bring something to contribute with this goal in mind: “Let all things be done for building up” (1 Corinthians 14:26).

“What makes the difference between fruitless religious activity and church-strengthening service? Love.”

When Christians worship God together, it’s possible for them to exercise their spiritual gifts in ways that do not build up the rest of the body. God has no desire for the church to be filled with exciting manifestations that glorify those with the gifts but fail to edify the church. And what makes the difference between fruitless religious activity and church-strengthening service? Love.

Earlier in the letter, Paul wrote that “love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). In the context of 1 Corinthians 12–14, Paul’s famous words about love in chapter 13 reveal that love is what makes the difference between Christians whose gifts build up the body and those who are just “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

Because Jesus loves his church with a love “that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19), he desires for the members of his body to build up one another — and in order to do that, we need not only faith, and not only hope, but love.

Love Will Be Greatest for Eternity

A third reason why love holds the highest place in the trio of Christian graces is found in the second half of 1 Corinthians 13. In verses 8–13, Paul says that spiritual gifts such as prophecy, tongues, and knowledge are temporary provisions for the present age. In contrast, when he writes in verse 13 that “faith, hope, and love abide, these three,” he shows us that these graces are superior to the gifts because they will endure forever. In the new creation, we will continue to have faith in God and his promises, and we will continue to look forward to the future with hope. But most of all, the life of the new creation will be characterized by love, flowing through us from the God who is love (1 John 4:16).

“As followers of Jesus, we rejoice in the hope of spending eternity in a world saturated with pure love.”

In 1738, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon entitled “Heaven Is a World of Love.” He pointed out that since heaven is God’s dwelling place, “this renders heaven a world of love; for God is the fountain of love, as the sun is the fountain of light. And therefore the glorious presence of God in heaven fills heaven with love, as the sun placed in the midst of the hemisphere in a clear day fills the world with light” (Works, 8:369). Furthermore, “love reigns in every heart” in heaven, as the saints abound in love for God and for one another (8:373).

As followers of Jesus, we rejoice in the hope of spending eternity in a world saturated with pure love. And as our lives are filled increasingly with love here, we reflect the new creation in the present, and our churches fulfill their callings as outposts of the kingdom of heaven. Our lives and our churches spread the sweet aroma of heaven as we love God and one another, for “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

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