In all likelihood, no song had ever touched the walls of this cell or drifted through its bars. Moaning, cursing, yelling — these were the usual sounds rising from the dark heart of the prison. Not singing.

And especially not at midnight. Here was the hour of gloom, the first long hallway in the mansion of night, darkness without the faintest shade of dawn.

The other prisoners couldn’t mistake the sound. Some had woken under the strange melody, certain they were lost in a dream. Others, catching the first notes, lay wondering whether madness had seized the two men. It had seized many a man in chains before. These, however, were not the howling strains of the mad.

Midnight made its lonely march, and still the men went on: beaten, bloodied, cuffed — and singing.

How Could They Sing?

The events of that day make the song of Paul and Silas all the more surprising. A mob had attacked the two missionaries after Paul cast out a demon from a slave girl (Acts 16:16–21). The city magistrates, dispensing with due process, stripped the men and oversaw their public beating before delivering them to the city’s jailer, who “put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks” (Acts 16:24).

Darkness fell, and then that strange sound rose:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. (Acts 16:25)

Praying we can fathom. Who among us would not cry out for deliverance from such an unjust dungeon? Yet Paul and Silas not only prayed, but sang. They tuned their heartache with a hymn, and met the darkness of midnight with a melody.

And as they did, they joined a great chorus of saints who sung by faith and not by sight. They joined King Jehoshaphat, who walked into war with praises rising (2 Chronicles 20:20–21). They joined Jeremiah, who gave his most bitter lamentation a tune (Lamentations 1–5). They joined psalmist after psalmist who, though feeling afflicted and forgotten, raised a “song in the night” (Psalm 77:6).

Again and again, the saints of God meet sorrow not only with prayer, but with song. So what did Paul and Silas see that freed their hearts to sing?

‘Our God still reigns.’

From one perspective, Paul and Silas’s day was a picture of perfect mayhem. Their spiritual power was slandered; their gospel trampled by a mob; their innocence silenced by injustice. They appeared like two victims caught in the chaos of a merciless, purposeless world.

But such was not their perspective. For Paul and Silas, all the day’s sorrows rested in the hand of a sovereign God. God had called them to Philippi through a midnight vision (Acts 16:9–10). Was he now any less sovereign in a midnight prison? God had used them in Philippi to save Lydia and her household (Acts 16:11–15). Had he discarded them now? No, prison could neither thwart the plans of God nor remove them from his sight; of this they were sure.

Years later, locked in yet another jail, Paul reminds the Philippian church of God’s surprising sovereignty:

I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. (Philippians 1:12–13)

God had taught Paul and Silas to see his good purposes wherever they looked, even when they looked through the bars of a prison cell. And he taught them not only to see those purposes, but to sing of them. And so he does with us.

“Songs send rhythm and order, harmony and progression into the suffering we do not yet understand.”

Even apart from the words, the very act of singing in sorrow defies the unbelief that would see no meaning in such pain. Songs send rhythm and order, harmony and progression into the suffering we do not yet understand — and so they testify, even in our deepest confusion, that our God still reigns.

‘Our God will deliver.’

If God reigns, then he can also rescue, no matter how protected the prison or how fast the chains. “Suddenly,” in the middle of Paul and Silas’s song, “there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened” (Acts 16:26). The Philippian authorities did not know, it seems, that the God of Paul and Silas had once shattered a prison far stronger than theirs.

Notice, however, that the men sang not after God shook the earth, but before. Why? Because they had rooted their deepest joys in a deeper deliverance. Consider what the imprisoned Paul goes on to write to his Philippian brothers:

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. (Philippians 1:18–20)

Paul knows God will deliver him — but the deliverance he hopes for rests on something deeper than “life or . . . death.” What kind of deliverance does he have in mind? Not first and foremost deliverance from sorrow, but deliverance from dishonoring Christ in his sorrow. Whether freed or chained, exonerated or executed, Paul was sure of this: by the Spirit’s power, “Christ will be honored in my body.” Therefore, he says, “I will rejoice” — and even sing.

God can deliver us from the sorrows that wrap round us like chains. He can heal diseases, restore relationships, save loved ones, and bury depression once for all. Yes, he can, and we rightly pray that he would. But we need something greater than deliverance from our sorrows — we need deliverance from dishonoring him in our sorrows. And in Christ, this is the deliverance he ultimately promises us here. So in every lonely midnight, we can sing of certain rescue: whether with a sound or broken body, whether in happiness or heartache, whether through life or death, sorrow will not steal our satisfaction in Christ.

“One day, we will sing to Jesus, unchained from every sorrow. Today, we sound his worth by singing even in our chains.”

One day, we will sing to Jesus, unchained from every sorrow. Today, we sound his worth by singing even in our chains.

‘Someone is listening.’

As Paul and Silas prayed and sang, Luke tells us, “the prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25). Perhaps they listened with annoyance, perhaps with surprise, perhaps even with wonder. Whatever the case, they listened. And soon, another person joins their song.

Once God shakes the prison, opens the doors, and unfastens the chains, the jailer falls down before Paul and Silas. “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). Paul and Silas reply, “Believe in the Lord Jesus.” Believe in the Savior worth singing to in sorrow. Believe in the Christ who gives midnight songs. Believe in the Lord who reigns and rescues. And so we read, “He rejoiced along with his entire household” (Acts 16:34). A new house sang Paul and Silas’s song.

Luke doesn’t tell us whether the jailer himself had heard the men singing, but the point is incidental. He could sense the men had singing hearts. And so with us: whether our literal songs reach the ears of others or not, they will hear what kind of hearts we have. Our friends and family, coworkers and neighbors will hear the difference between an inner grumble and a melody, between a sufferer caved in on himself and one who, miraculously, lifts his voice to God and his hand to others.

Everyone in the world knows something of sorrow. And oh how desperately they need to hear how God can fill our sorrows with song.

Suffer with Him in Song

Those who sing with Paul and Silas join a great chorus of saints, from Jehoshaphat and Jeremiah to Asaph and David. But the greatest in that chorus is Jesus.

On the night of his betrayal, after he had broken the bread and shared the cup, after he had washed his disciples’ feet and handed their hearts to the Father, he led the twelve in singing a hymn (Mark 14:26). He sent a melody into the darkest night; he wrapped his sorrow with a song. Nor did he stop singing, even as the mob cried “Crucify!” and injustice pierced his hands and feet. As he hung on the cross, he bled Psalms (Matthew 27:46; Luke 23:46; John 19:28).

Singing in sorrow, then, is one more way God conforms us to the image of his beloved Son. Here, as we suffer with him in song, Jesus teaches us to say, “Our God still reigns. Our God will deliver. And someone needs to hear of his surpassing worth.”

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.

Since we live in a complex, highly charged, contentious historical moment, when cultural and political issues stretch and tear not only the social fabric of a nation, but also the unity between Christians in many of our churches, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this two-sentence statement by Jesus:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35)

It’s an important statement to meditate upon because Jesus spoke it in a complex, highly charged, contentious historical moment. Moreover, he spoke it to his small band of closest disciples the night before he died, knowing his death and resurrection would only increase the complexity and contention of their world.

Along with these disciples, nearly every new disciple after them would live in a wide variety of complex, highly charged, contentious historical moments. In fact, it would be a rare exception when a disciple wouldn’t live in such a moment. Therefore, all disciples who would hear or read Jesus’s two-sentence statement would need to ask themselves these two questions:

What does it mean to love one another as Jesus has loved us?
Do outside observers actually recognize us as Jesus’s disciples because of the distinctly Jesus-like ways we love one another?

And so, these are the questions for us to ask ourselves.

Serious About Obeying Jesus

As soon as we ask these questions, however, we realize that, though they are generally the right questions, they aren’t quite sufficient.

Asking, How do we love one another in ways that are recognizably Jesus-like? is like asking, How do we love our neighbor as ourselves? The answer is, “It depends.” There are endless possible answers. A specific answer to the question requires a specific context for the question. That’s why when a lawyer queried Jesus on neighbor-love, he answered with the Good Samaritan story to illustrate what it looks like in a specific situation (Luke 10:25–37).

This is the genius of Jesus’s two-sentence love command: it’s endlessly applicable. But it requires us to be serious enough about obeying it to press these two questions into our specific contexts.

So, what is our context? What’s causing the fabric of Christian unity in some places to stretch and tear much like the social fabric of the wider culture? Here, each disciple or local-church family of disciples must do the hard work of pressing these questions into their unique contexts, since each will have unique differences.

But still, like Jesus, who provided the lawyer an example in the Good Samaritan, it’s helpful to look at an example. One good example is Richard Sibbes.

Another Contentious Age

Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) was a prominent Puritan pastor who ministered during a time when, in England (as in all of Europe), the ecclesiastical and political ramifications of the Protestant Reformation were being worked out in tragically bloody ways. There was no separation of church and state. For reasons of mutual conviction or convenience, monarchs allied themselves with powerful Christian institutions.

This meant Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Nonconformist Protestants were, willingly or not, entangled in high-stakes struggles for political and religious power. Especially toward the end of Sibbes’s life, how one spoke of the Lord’s Supper, the Book of Common Prayer, or apostolic succession could get one imprisoned or killed. Suffice it to say, it was a complex, culturally contentious, frequently brutal historical moment. Strife was rife. Professing Christians said and did horribly offensive things to each other.

Yet in this environment, Richard Sibbes became renowned for his compassionate care of anguishing souls and his ability to help his hearers (and readers) encounter in Scripture the tender love of Jesus, the beloved Servant who would not break “a bruised reed” (Isaiah 42:1–4; Matthew 12:18–21). Not surprisingly, that phrase became the title of his best-known book: The Bruised Reed.

And in that book, Sibbes proposed one specific way Christians living in contentious times could love one another in a recognizably Jesus-like way.

The Christian’s ‘Good Strife’

Sibbes wrote,

It were a good strife amongst Christians, one to labor to give no offense, and the other to labor to take none. The best men are severe to themselves, tender over others. (The Bruised Reed, 47)

Having witnessed much evil strife between Christians, Sibbes proposed that, if Christians are going to strive with one another, then let them strive, let them labor, let them exert great effort, let them do everything in their power to not give or take offense. Let them strive to cultivate the spiritual discipline of being hard on themselves and tender toward others — or as Jesus put it, let them address the logs in their own eyes before addressing the specks in others’ (Matthew 7:3–5).

Now, even though we live in a different day, doesn’t Sibbes’s pastoral counsel sound remarkably relevant? What sanctifying, joy-producing good would it work in our souls, what would it do for the health of our local churches, what would it say to a watching world about Jesus, if we Christians today engaged in this good strife of doing everything in our power to not give or take offense?

Put It to the Test

Sibbes’s “good strife” proposal is an example of just one specific way Christians in conflict can obey Jesus’s love command in John 13:34–35. But it is a good one. We can test it out with our two application questions from Jesus’s love command, each of us filling in the blanks with our contextual specifics.

Question 1

What does it mean for us to love one another as Jesus has loved us given our context?

Sibbes’s (and the apostle Paul’s) answer: it means we labor to give no offense and take none by doing everything in our power

to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think (Romans 12:3),
to outdo one another in showing honor (Romans 12:10),
to never be wise in our own sight (Romans 12:16),
to give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all (Romans 12:17),
to never repay evil for evil (Romans 12:17),
to bear with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other, as the Lord has forgiven us (Colossians 3:13), and
to let no corrupting talk come out of our mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear (Ephesians 4:29).

Is this the expression of Jesus-like love most called for in our specific situation? If so, we have a roadmap for what obedience looks like. If not, we need to keep prayerfully pressing the question until we get a specific answer.

Question 2

Do outside observers recognize us as Jesus’s disciples because of the distinctly Jesus-like ways we love one another?

Since this second question is really an evaluation of how well we’re obeying the first, we can’t answer it until we’ve been walking in obedience for a while. But using Sibbes’s “good strife” example, there’s no question that if we as individuals and as churches become characterized by the conduct described in the bullet statements listed above, most outside observers will recognize that we really do follow Jesus’s teaching.

Which means, regardless of whether the “good strife” is the best application of Jesus’s love command in our complex, culturally contentious historical moment, it is a strife we are nonetheless called to engage in as Christians. It is part of our call to follow in the footsteps of our great Servant-Lord, the Son of God, who also lived in brutally contentious times and knew when to hold his peace that he might not break bruised reeds.

How “good and pleasant” it would be for brothers and sisters to pursue this dimension of unity (Psalm 133:1) and share together in the blessing given to the sons of God, who learn how to make peace (Matthew 5:9) by counting it a glory to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19:11).

Audio Transcript

In 1 Kings 18, we read the amazing account of God’s defeat of Baal’s prophets. The story is unforgettable. At the time, Israel was torn. Should it follow Baal or follow the living God? As it stood, the people of Israel were “limping between two different opinions,” as Elijah said (1 Kings 18:21). So there came an ultimatum. God’s people would climb Mount Carmel to witness two sacrifices laid out: One sacrifice with a bull would be set on logs by Elijah. Another bull on logs would be assembled by the prophets of Baal. Equal offerings. Then the prophets would call down divine fire to light the sacrifices. Baal’s 450 prophets went first and called out and called out. Crickets. Nothing from their god.

Then Elijah, God’s lone prophet on the scene, set up his sacrifice, had it doused with water three times, and then called for God to act, as we read in 1 Kings 18:36–39. In the words of Elijah:

“O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.”

Powerful. So what’s the takeaway? We heard it in verse 37. Here it is again: “that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Verse 37 needs to be thought about, and that’s what we will do today. A few moments later, after this dramatic event, Elijah goes up to Mount Caramel. Here’s Pastor John to explain.

Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel. And he bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees. And he said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.” And he went up and looked and said, “There is nothing.” And he said, “Go again,” seven times. And at the seventh time he said, “Behold, a little cloud like a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” And he said, “Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you.’” And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel. And the hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. (1 Kings 18:42–46)

Elijah didn’t limp. You don’t limp when you follow Jesus. I don’t care if you’re in a wheelchair: you don’t limp when you follow Jesus; you run. He ran before the rain. He didn’t limp; he didn’t hobble — he ran. Now that’s the story.

Ruler of Every Heart

Let’s step back and ask, So what’s the main point — the one that everything else is supporting and leading toward? And I mentioned as we were going that I think it’s in verse 37, because Elijah himself says, “This is what I want the people to know.” Not all stories are this clear, but the prophet himself opens his mouth and gathers the whole thing together and says, “God, make them know this. Make them know this about all this.” So what is that? Verse 37: “Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know.” Know what? Two things:

“That you, O Lord, are God.” You are God. You’re not an idea, you’re not a memory, you’re not a tradition, you’re not a religion, you’re not a projection of our imagination, you’re not a force, you’re not an archetype, and you’re not a symbol. You are God — the living, active, fire-sending, sin-hating, idolatry-destroying, prayer-hearing, personal God. That’s number one: make them know, let them know, you are God. That’s really the basic need of all of us.
“That this people may know . . . that you have turned their hearts back.” The NIV says, “that you are turning their hearts.” Cause your people to know this. This is where I’m landing here. Cause these men to know this. I think that’s God’s will for you from this text. It should be my prayer for you: I pray that these men, from this story, would discern that you, the sovereign God, are the one who turns human hearts to God.

“You are God. You’re not an idea, you’re not a memory, you’re not a tradition, you’re not a religion.”

So their hearts had betrayed God, spurned God, belittled God, devalued God, loved other things more than God, and this entire event on Mount Carmel is aiming to make God’s people know that if anybody turns to God, God turned them to God. That’s the point of the story. So when the people cry from the heart, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God,” God did that (verse 39). God did that. It’s true, the Lord rules fire. It’s true, the Lord rules the flesh of the bull, the wood on the altar, the rocks. He rules the rain — he makes it rain when he wants it to rain.

But this text is mainly about how God rules the heart. He turns hearts. The Lord rules the human heart: “Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back” (verse 37). “Know this, Israel.” He doesn’t want to just say it’s a fact. He wants them to know it. He’s praying that God would cause them to know it.

God Must Do It

There must be a value for you this afternoon, tomorrow, ten years from now. There must be a value for you to know this: that if anybody’s heart turns to God, God has turned the heart. There must be a value, a thrilling value, for you to know this, that Elijah would pray it as the capstone of the event: “Let them know this.”

“If anybody turns to God, God turned them to God.”

I mean, there are people all over the world who would say, “Wow! Fire falling from heaven, consuming bulls and water and wood and stones — that’s impressive!” Elijah didn’t pray that they would know that; he prayed that they would know, if your heart, at this moment, is getting really serious about God, God is doing that.

As an American who grew up in the South, where a kind of decisionism was so dominant and rampant, I never heard this emphasis in my childhood — never heard it. When it came to a heart moving from unbelief to belief, you do that. You do that. Nobody stressed, “God, do it. Do it in this room. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done.” That’s what Elijah is pleading for.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:1–2)

Bible readers young and old have wondered why John begins his Gospel referring to Jesus as “the Word” that became flesh (John 1:1, 14). The Greek term for “word,” logos, is common enough in Greek. It appears over three hundred times in the New Testament, with different meanings in different contexts. But when understood in relation to Christ, the word has been furiously debated.

Yet Christ being the Logos is cause for more than debate; it is cause for worship. As Christians, we insist upon certain truths concerning Jesus as the Word to better appreciate the beauty of his person and work.

Divine Identity

John may have used logos in connection with the common Aramaic language he used himself. The Aramaic Targums (loose translations and expansions of the Old Testament scriptures) often refer to the “word [memra] of the Lord.” Hence, “Israel is saved by the Memra of the Lord with an everlasting salvation” (Isaiah 45:17).

Moreover, the standard Hebrew of Hosea 1:7, “I will save them by the Lord their God,” is paraphrased in the Aramaic Targum as, “I will redeem them by the word of the Lord their God.” So the “the Word” is a way of saying the Hebrew name of God (YHWH), such as in Numbers 7:89, where the Palestinian Targums say, “From there [between the cherubim] the Word spoke to him [Moses].” God spoke to Moses, but specifically the Logos spoke to Moses.

“Referring to Christ as ‘the Word’ is a virtual assertion of his divinity.”

Referring to Christ as “the Word,” then, is a virtual assertion of his divinity because of how the Aramaic Targums make use of this title. We rightly take the immediate context of John 1 as evidence for the preexistence of Christ, yet we must also see John’s designation of Christ as “the Word” as evidence for the deity of Christ, since Aramaic-speaking Jews would have understood the terminology as such in their first-century context.

Divine Self-Expression

In addition, logos often designates a word or the act of speaking (Acts 7:22). More specifically, logos can have in view God’s revelation, his divine self-expression (Mark 7:13).

The personification of God’s words to humanity are principally and majestically summed up in Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh (John 1:14). The Word is with God, the Word is God, and the Word became human, revealing (unlike any other) the glory of God (John 1:1–2, 18). All things were created through the uncreated Word (John 1:3) for the Word (Colossians 1:16).

Jesus, as the Word, is the Word of life (John 1:4); he gives light to the world and overcomes the darkness. But shockingly, the Word who has life in himself (John 5:26) experiences death on the cross. Through both his death and his resurrection from the dead, “He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God” (Revelation 19:13). Jesus as the Logos is not just the divine Son but the creating, saving divine Son, who reveals God and his purposes.

Logos and Creation

We are missing out on the glory of this title of Christ if we fail to go back to the beginning — an oversight John is careful to avoid, taking us back to the very beginning in his prologue. The distinction in Genesis 1 between God and his creation is clear. Moreover, the Logos is not only the Creator of all things, but the sustainer of all things as well (Hebrews 1:3). The Bible knows nothing of a God who creates and does not also at the same time powerfully sustain his creation by his providential control over all things.

God’s outward works follow a basic pattern: they are from the Father, through the Logos (Son), in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 8:6). Genesis 1 also makes clear that God is a speaking God (“And God said . . .”). The psalmist tells us, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made” (Psalm 33:6). When God creates, he also reveals, which is why the Son is properly called the Word of God. God does not speak to the creation unless through the Logos.

All truth comes from the Logos, for he is the sacred repository of all truth. The Logos provides the basis for God’s revelation to be communicated to humanity. Quite apart from his role as the Mediator in salvation, he is also the Mediator of all revelation, whether in creation or Scripture. The Logos creates, sustains, and speaks, communicating to all creatures some resemblance of God. He is God’s most powerful self-expression, which is precisely why John personifies the Word in order to highlight God’s ultimate self-disclosure. Apart from the Logos, we could know nothing of God.

Logos and Redemption

The Puritan Stephen Charnock speaks of the Logos as the one who makes continued declarations of God to humanity:

As the beautiful image of reason in the mind, breaking out with the discovery of itself in speech and words, is fittest to express the inward sense, thoughts, conceptions, nature, and posture of the mind, so the essential Word of God clothes himself with flesh, comes out from God to manifest to us the nature and thoughts of God. He which is the word of God is fittest to manifest the nature of God. (Works of Stephen Charnock, 4:132)

“God’s best declaration, his best words to humanity, come (fittingly) through the Logos.”

The Logos has the perfect ability to declare the revelation of God, for his “great end” is to reveal God (Matthew 11:25; John 1:18), whether to angels or men. Indeed, Charnock writes, even for the angels, when they looked upon Christ crucified, stricken by the Father, buried in the tomb, raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven to be enthroned forever as King of kings and Lord of lords, “they learned more of God and his nature, more of the depths of his wisdom, treasures of his grace, and power of his wrath, then they had done by all God’s actions in the world . . . in all those four thousand years wherein they had remained in being.”

In the Logos, all of God’s attributes are manifested and glorified. Natural theology offers sinful man a dim knowledge of God, but because of the Logos, the attributes of God “sparkle” since they have redemption in view. “Christ is the stage,” says Charnock, “wherein all the attributes of God act their parts.” God’s best declaration, his best words to humanity, come (fittingly) through the Logos.

In sum, by calling the Son the Logos, John is offering us a glimpse into not just the nature of Jesus (the divine revealer of God), but also the purpose of Jesus: he is the revealer of redemption, which ultimately comes not only through words but through actions. As the one who conquered death, he is the Logos of God, the only one in whom there is redemption. And this one in whom we have redemption — the Logos — is Yahweh himself.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14909708/the-fruit-and-root-of-bitterness

He was 31 years old. Born in modern Algeria, from all accounts he had an ambitious streak that could border on ruthlessness. But it was matched by a probing intellect and a thirst for reality that had the potential to unbalance him or even lead to perpetual disappointment. The combination had taken him to great cities and led him to inquire into world religions and philosophies. But now, barely into his thirties, he was on the verge of despair so extreme that one day, despite his pleasant surroundings, he could scarcely sit still or stem the flow of tears. And then he heard two Latin words — Tolle lege — that changed everything.

At first, he thought the words must be part of a child’s game. But he knew no game that included the mantra “Take it and read it.” But by what John Calvin would later call “a secret instinct of the Spirit,” he reached out for the copy of the Scriptures that lay beside him. Opening it randomly — as people in antiquity did, hoping for divine direction — he read the words that brought him to faith in Christ.

You likely have guessed his identity. Perhaps you recognized him from the first sentence: Aurelius Augustinus — Augustine. But do you know where the Scriptures “randomly” fell open, and the words that changed everything? Romans 13:14: “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

Augustine would ponder and seek to apply these words for the rest of his life. For all the profundity of his grasp of God’s grace, he could doubtless say of them what he wrote of the mystery of God’s sovereignty: “I see the depths, I cannot reach the bottom” (Works of Saint Augustine, 3.2.108).

Gospel Grammar

Underlining the significance of Paul’s words from the vivid context of Augustine’s conversion hopefully serves to secure them in our minds and hearts — “like nails firmly fixed . . . given by one Shepherd” (Ecclesiastes 12:11). In fact, the words are so pointed that repeating them a couple of times may fix them permanently in your memory banks. And they need to be well secured there because they enshrine key biblical principles for living to the glory of God.

Paul’s words contain two imperatives. What is particularly striking about them is that they not only tell us what to do, but the first imperative contains within itself the indicative that makes possible the effecting of the second imperative. Their importance can be measured by the fact that the effect of Romans 13:14 on the history of the church through Augustine is rivaled only by the effect of Romans 1:16–17 on the church through Martin Luther.

“The biblical gospel has a grammar all its own.”

The biblical gospel has a grammar all its own. Just as failing to properly use the grammar of a language mars our ability to speak it, so an inadequate grasp of the grammar of the gospel mars what the older translations fittingly called the “conversation” of our lives. It results in lives that reflect Christ in a stilted manner.

So how are the substructures of gospel grammar illustrated in Romans 13:14?

The Balance

First, the emphasis on the positive (“put on”) is matched and balanced by an emphasis on the negative (“make no provision”). This is characteristic of Paul. Think of Galatians 5:24: “Those who belong to Christ [positive] have crucified the flesh [negative].” Or consider Ephesians 4:21–24: you were taught

as the truth is in Jesus . . . to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires [negative], and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness [positive].

Perhaps the clearest and fullest example is in Colossians 3:1–12. Those who have died and been raised with Christ, those whose lives are hidden with him and who will appear with him in glory, are to “put to death whatever is earthly [negative]” and to “put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience [positive].”

The grammar lesson? There is no growth in holiness unless both the negative and the positive elements are present.

More Than Mortification

None of us is by nature “normal” or “balanced.” We sinners are inherently lopsided. Each of us has a natural bias either to the negative or the positive. If we have not discovered that, we probably have not yet come to know ourselves adequately. Thus, some of us tend to think of sanctification largely, if not entirely, as a battle against sin. John Owen’s eighty pages on The Mortification of Sin is the book for us! (In the circles in which I moved as a teenager, not to have read Owen on mortification was tantamount to apostasy! And after all, the addresses that lay behind it were probably first preached to teenagers — students at Oxford University.)

The mortification of sin is indeed vital. Owen was right: if we are not killing sin, it will be killing us. His memorable one-liner comes as a shock to much modern Christianity: “Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts” (Works of John Owen, 6:14).

But sin is never truly mortified by mortification alone. To borrow from our Lord’s parable, if we only empty the house (mortify sin) without filling it (putting on graces), the devils will simply return in greater force (Matthew 12:43–45). We need to furnish our lives with the fruit of the Spirit. Repentance involves conversion; conversion means a reversal. So, we need to put on as well as put off.

Making no provision for the flesh (mortifying sin) by the power of the Spirit is not an end in itself. It is not the Spirit’s ultimate goal; in fact, on its own, it is not sanctification. It is a vital means to a greater end — and that end is that we may live in unclouded fellowship with our holy Lord.

Holiness Is Christlikeness

So, Paul always balances his emphases. We need to put on as well as put off. The works of the flesh need to be superseded by the fruit of the Spirit. This is the point of Thomas Chalmers’s famous sermon on 1 John 2:15, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.”

“Sanctification is not merely the process of overcoming our sin; it is, ultimately, becoming like the Lord Jesus.”

Sanctification is not merely the process of overcoming our sin; it is, ultimately, becoming like the Lord Jesus. For this is the goal of the Father who has “predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). He will be content with nothing less. This is also the passion of the Holy Spirit, by whom we “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). For it is this — Christlikeness — that constitutes the “holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). A staggering thought, but a wonderful motivation: nothing in us that is un-Christlike will be able to last in the presence of God!

Therefore, any less goal than pursuing the knowledge of Christ and growing into his likeness is not worth living for. Only that in you that reflects him will last forever. But it will last forever.

The Order

In addition to balance in Paul’s words — negative and positive — there is also order in his gospel grammar. It is not always the order of his words, but it is always the order of his logic. For gospel logic, and therefore gospel grammar, never changes. It has a fixed order. And as it happens, Augustine’s text is particularly helpful here because the order of the literary grammar is identical with the logic of the gospel’s grammar. Not only are putting on and putting off balanced, but putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is primary and foundational. It is always the first principle in Paul’s theological grammar when he writes about our sanctification.

But why? The answer is embossed on the pages of Scripture. Our fundamental need is not for “mortification” or even for “sanctification.” It is for the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Mortification and sanctification are but the pathway to “Christification”! And as Abraham Kuyper shrewdly put it, there are no other resources in heaven or on earth for the Holy Spirit to employ to make us Christlike outside of Christ himself. Only in him are there resources appropriate and adequate to transform sinful humans into Christlike ones. Sanctification is not deification, but it is transformation into the likeness of the holy humanity of our Lord Jesus, and glorification is the end of the process. For then “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

Only when we are “in Christ,” only when we have “put on Christ” — “who became to us . . . sanctification” (1 Corinthians 1:30) — and have taken him as ours, receiving him as our clothing, wrapping ourselves in him, does becoming like him begin. Otherwise, we are merely seeking to remake ourselves according to the pattern of moral ideals (even if they are those of the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount). We are missing the point. For our chief need is to “be found in Christ” and to “know him and the power of his resurrection, and . . . share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible [we] may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:9–10).

So, all we need is found in Christ. Everything you need is found in Christ. Mortification, sanctification, and glorification all begin and end in Christ alone. When he fills our horizon, all the other elements in sanctification make grammatical sense: mortification and vivification are balanced in our “conversation”; sanctification develops like a well-crafted sentence. Yes, there will be punctuation marks, and perhaps even unfinished sentences (Paul knew all about that). But if we look elsewhere, our lives will not speak clearly of our Savior and Lord.

Give Me Christ

This was what Augustine saw — the very man who once prayed, “Give me continence, but not yet.” He had things the wrong way around. He needed first to say, “Give me Christ.”

This has perhaps never been better expressed than by the Reformer who wrote (albeit not completely accurately!) that Augustine was “totally ours” — namely, John Calvin. His words make a fitting closing meditation for us:

When we see salvation whole — and every single part — is found in Christ, we must beware lest we derive the smallest drop from somewhere else.

If we seek salvation, the very name of Jesus teaches us that he possesses it.

If other Spirit-given gifts are sought — in his anointing they are found.

If strength — in his reign; purity — in his conception; tenderness — expressed in his nativity, when he was made like us in all respects, that he might learn to feel our pain.

Redemption when we seek it, is in his passion found; acquittal — in his condemnation lies; and freedom from the curse — in his cross is known.

If satisfaction for our sins we seek — we’ll find it in his sacrifice; and cleansing in his blood.

If reconciliation now we need, for this he entered Hades; if mortification of our flesh — then in his tomb it’s laid; and newness of our life — his resurrection brings; and immortality as well comes also with that gift.

And if we also long to find heaven’s kingdom our inheritance, his entry there secures it now with our protection, safety too, and blessings that abound — all flowing from his kingly reign.

The sum of all for those who seek such treasure-trove of blessings, these blessings of all kinds, from nowhere else can now be drawn than him; they’re found in Christ alone. (Institutes 2.16.19)

So, let us “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

Audio Transcript

Does holy anger kill our delight in God? It’s a good question from Matt, a listener in Wisconsin. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast! I think we are living in an age where Christians are taking hard stances on just about anything and everything, making decisions about vaccines and politicians and masks — decisions all held with unflexing, biblical conviction. And then those staunch positions, and the resulting strong language, is justified by Christians in terms of righteous anger — like Jesus flipping tables and not sinning.

A long time back, in an episode on abortion, APJ 672, you made a case for using righteous anger to call out the evil of killing the unborn. It witnesses to the world the degree of such an injustice. But later you were asked about the distinction between unholy anger and holy anger. That was in APJ 1100. And there you said,

I was much more optimistic about a righteous place for anger when I was 30 than I am now. I have seen the destructive power of anger in relationships, especially marriage, to such a degree over the last forty to fifty years that I am far less sanguine about so-called righteous anger than I once was. Anger is not just a relationship destroyer; it is a self-destroyer. It eats up all other wholesome emotions.

I’m wondering if that last phrase is connected to your overwhelming emphasis in your ministry on delighting in God and desiring God. Were you there suggesting that ‘righteous anger’ tends to ‘eat up’ the proper, more dominantly necessary emotions of delight and satisfaction in God? And where are you at now in life with the value or dangers of righteous anger?”

I’m glad to address this again. I feel very strongly about it. So was I suggesting that righteous anger can become a destructive anger that eats up the God-glorifying emotions of joy and peace and delight in God? Yes, absolutely, I was suggesting that and believe it. Anger of a certain kind and a certain duration will not only eat up all God-glorifying emotions, but it will eat up virtually all emotions and leave a person with an outward, plastic, superficial personality or persona, and an inward, easily offended cauldron of suppressed anger. I have seen it in life. I see evidences of it in the Bible.

So let’s look at a few passages for why I see things this way and feel as strongly as I do, and perhaps I can give some help not to go there.

Slow to Anger

You have this famous statement in James 1:19–20:

Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Now notice the logic, the logical connection: be slow to anger because the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. So a quick-tempered person is generally experiencing anger that is not of God. And that’s the logic: It is simply man’s anger. Quick anger is regularly man’s anger, not God’s anger. It’s not righteous. It’s destructive. Now listen to these proverbs to see where James has rooted all this. I think James is the closest thing we get to the book of Proverbs in the New Testament. I don’t doubt that he was deeply schooled on Proverbs.

Proverbs 14:17: “A man of quick temper acts foolishly.”
Proverbs 14:29: “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”
Proverbs 15:18: “A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.”
Proverbs 16:32: “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”
Proverbs 19:11: “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”

Wisdom from Above

So then you go over to James 3. I think it is really important to align James 1:19–20 with James 3:14–18, and you see the heavenly alternative to the merely human anger that does not produce the righteousness of God. Here’s what it says.

The wisdom from above [it’s heavenly; not just from a man] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

And remember that James 1:20 said that anger does not produce the righteousness of God. So here you get a harvest of righteousness, and this harvest is sown in peace by those who make peace — in other words, the opposite of anger. Anger seldom accomplishes the good ends that James is after — namely, a harvest of right, good, wholesome, just, loving behavior. It may. I’m going to get to the fact that there is such a thing as righteous anger, but it is really rare, I think, and therefore, James says, “Be slow to go there — very, very slow to get there.”

So the very least we can say from James is that if anger should come, it should come slowly — not necessarily temporally slowly, though that’s probably the case ordinarily, but rather in this sense: It’s got to go through some real serious filters in your soul. It’s got to go through the filter of humility, and through the filter of patience, and through the filter of wisdom, and through the filter of love, and through the filter of self-control. And if it comes out on the other side, it might be righteous anger. It should be slow in the sense that you put it through the paces. Don’t just go there.

Now here comes Ephesians 4. That’s the only other text we will look at in a significant way.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (Ephesians 4:26–27)

So James says, “Be . . . slow to anger.” And Paul says, “Be quick to stop being angry.” That’s really significant, isn’t it? Paul puts a high premium on the duration of anger. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Be done with it by sundown. It’s dangerous. And the danger is the devil. So, James and Paul treat anger as a hot potato: Be slow to catch it. And if you’ve got to catch it, toss it quickly to somebody else — or better, toss it in the river.

Now, why? And Paul gives the reason why it’s so dangerous. He says, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Get rid of it quick. Don’t give place to the devil.” So to go to bed seething, to go to bed with a grudge, to go to bed with anger that’s not dealt with — not forgiving people, holding a grudge — is an invitation as you go to sleep to the devil to come on in. And it seems that the devil specializes in moving into this deadly work, his deadly work, where anger is held onto day and night.

So one of the signs of righteous anger is that it comes slowly, and it leaves quickly. It does not dominate. It does its work in the moment, and it doesn’t stay around to contaminate. It doesn’t give place to the devil. And what I’ve been saying for years is that what the devil does, when you give him place by holding onto anger longer than you should, is eat up every alternative, good, God-glorifying emotion. And I would add from what I’ve seen in recent days, that he not only eats up good affections and emotions, but that, in the absence of those affections, he eats truth. He distorts true perceptions. We don’t see things as clearly when anger eats us up.

Consumed Affections

I have seen it. I’ve seen people move from the most mild assessments of someone’s error to damnation. I mean, you wonder, Where did that come from, that they would move to the point of actually damning another person for what started out to be a relatively minor fault? And I think part of the answer is that anger eats up love, anger eats up affections, anger eats up thankfulness, and anger eats up true perceptions of reality. So the point is this:

The devil hates joy in God.
The devil hates tenderhearted compassion.
The devil hates us to be kind to suffering people.
The devil hates sweet affection for our families.
The devil hates it when husbands and wives are tenderhearted and kind and forgiving to each other (Ephesians 4:32).
The devil hates wonder and admiration at the beauties of nature.
The devil hates all the fruit of the Holy Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, meekness, faithfulness, self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).

He hates them all. And when we give him place in our hearts at night, going to bed with anger, the jaws called anger consume, over time, all those precious affections.

So the present state of my mind here — he asked, “Where’s your mind presently on this issue?” The present state of my mind, both biblically and culturally on this question about anger, is that anger is a dangerous emotion — not necessarily sinful. God, by the way, is the only person who is holy enough to manage it really well. And he does get angry, and he never sins. But we, however, being fallen and sinful, must consider it much more dangerous for us than it is for God. It’s not dangerous for God. Nothing is dangerous for God. It has a proper place, therefore, only when it comes slowly, leaves quickly, and in between, is truly governed by a love for people and the glory of God.

Joyfully Overwhelmed

So, let me end the way Paul does, following up on his admonition not to go to bed angry. He says in the next verses,

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger [now we’re told that not only do you give place to the devil, but you grieve the Spirit, if you hold onto anger] and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:30–32)

And there’s the key, isn’t it? We must let our affections be joyfully overwhelmed that, while we deserve wrath and anger from God, amazingly, we have been forgiven by the death of the only innocent person who ever lived. That state of mind and heart — being forgiven and amazed at our forgiveness, like John Newton in “Amazing Grace” — will keep anger from rising too quickly or staying too long.

ABSTRACT: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were united through a common university (Oxford), a common writers’ group (the Inklings), and many common interests (mythology, philology, and theology). From the late 1920s on, their many similarities forged a friendship that would deeply influence both men and, through their writings, millions more. Without Lewis, Tolkien would never have finished Lord of the Rings; without Tolkien, Lewis may never have become a Christian and written Chronicles of Narnia. Their honest, faithful, realistic affection for each other tells the story of one of the world’s great literary friendships.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Devin Brown, professor of English at Asbury University, to tell the story of the friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

On December 3, 1929, C.S. Lewis began a letter to Arthur Greeves, his boyhood friend from Belfast. Having just turned 31 and in his fourth year as an Oxford don, Lewis described how he had gotten “into a whirl” as he always did near the end of the term.

“I was up till 2:30 on Monday,” Lewis wrote, “talking to the Anglo Saxon professor Tolkien who came with me to College from a society and sat discoursing of the gods and giants and Asgard for three hours, then departing in the wind and rain. . . . The fire was bright and the talk good.”1

This was Lewis pre-conversion and Tolkien before The Hobbit, two men virtually unknown outside their small circle at Oxford. Years later in The Four Loves, Lewis would note how great friendships can often be traced to the moment two people discover they have a common interest few others share — when each thinks, “You too? I thought I was the only one.”2 For Lewis and Tolkien, it was a shared interest in old stories.

Beginning of a Friendship

The two had met for the first time three and a half years earlier at an English faculty meeting. Not long afterward, Tolkien invited Lewis to join the Kolbitar, a group that met to read Icelandic sagas together. But Lewis’s suggestion that Tolkien come back to his rooms at Magdalen on that blustery December night marked a pivotal step in their friendship.

During their late-night discussion, Tolkien came to see that Lewis was one of those rare people who just might like the strange tales he had been working on since coming home from the war, stories he previously considered just a private hobby. And so, summoning up his courage, he lent Lewis a long, unfinished piece called “The Gest of Beren and Luthien.”

Several days later, Tolkien received a note with his friend’s reaction. “It is ages since I have had an evening of such delight,” Lewis reported.3 Besides its mythic value, Lewis praised the sense of reality he found in the work, a quality that would be typical of Tolkien’s writing.

At the end of Lewis’s note, he promised that detailed criticisms would follow, and they did — fourteen pages where Lewis praised a number of specific elements and pointed out what he saw as problems with others. Tolkien took heed of Lewis’s criticisms, but in a unique way. While accepting few specific suggestions, Tolkien rewrote almost every passage Lewis had problems with. Lewis would later say about Tolkien, “He has only two reactions to criticism: either he begins the whole work over again from the beginning or else takes no notice at all.”4

And so began one of the world’s great literary friendships.

‘Has Nobody Got Anything to Read Us?’

While millions worldwide have come to love and value Tolkien’s stories of Middle-earth, Lewis was the first. His response, exuberant praise as well as hammer-and-tongs criticism, would also be the pattern for their writing group, the Inklings. And this blend of encouragement and critique provided the perfect soil in which some of the most beloved works of the twentieth century would sprout.

The informal circle of friends would gather in Lewis’s rooms on Thursday nights. Lewis’s brother, Warnie, provides this description of what would happen next:

When half a dozen or so had arrived, tea would be produced, and then when pipes were alight Jack would say, “Well, has nobody got anything to read us?” Out would come a manuscript, and we would settle down to sit in judgement upon it — real, unbiased judgement, too, since we were no mutual admiration society: praise for good work was unstinted, but censure for bad work — or even not-so-good work — was often brutally frank.5

“While millions worldwide have come to love and value Tolkien’s stories of Middle-earth, Lewis was the first.”

Tolkien read sections of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Lewis read from The Problem of Pain, which he dedicated to the Inklings, as well as from The Screwtape Letters, which he dedicated to Tolkien. Other Lewis works debuted at Inklings meetings included Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, and The Great Divorce. Warnie read from The Splendid Century, his work about life under Louis XIV. Charles Williams read drafts of All Hallows’ Eve.

The Inklings were not without flaws. Rather than trying to help improve The Lord of the Rings, several simply disparaged it. Hugo Dyson was so negative that Tolkien finally chose not to read if he were present, saving his chapters for Lewis alone. A letter to Tolkien’s son Christopher in 1944 provides a window into what those private meetings were like, as Tolkien reports, “Read the last 2 chapters (“Shelob’s Lair” and “The Choices of Master Samwise”) to C.S.L. on Monday morning. He approved with unusual fervor, and was actually affected to tears by the last chapter.”6

Unpayable Debt

Years later, Tolkien would describe the “unpayable debt” he owed Lewis, explaining, “Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The Lord of the Rings to a conclusion.”7

Without Lewis, there would be no Lord of the Rings. We might also say that without Tolkien there would be no Chronicles of Narnia, not because of Tolkien’s literary interest in them but for a different reason. Today we know Lewis as one of the greatest Christian writers of the twentieth century, but while it was clear from the start that Lewis would be a writer, it was not clear at all that he would become a Christian. Before his midlife conversion, he would need Tolkien to provide a missing piece.

Addison’s Walk

In another letter to Arthur, this one dated September 22, 1931, Lewis tells about an evening conversation that would change his life. He explains that he had a weekend guest, Dyson, from Reading University. Tolkien joined them for supper, and afterward the three went for a walk.

“We began (in Addison’s walk just after dinner) on metaphor and myth,” Lewis writes. He then describes how they were interrupted by a rush of wind so unexpected they all held their breath. “We continued (in my room) on Christianity,” Lewis adds, “a good long satisfying talk in which I learned a lot.”8

What Lewis learned was critical. He had previously ended his disbelief and became a theist. As he states in Surprised by Joy, “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”9 After this first step — with help from Christian friends and Christian authors like G.K. Chesterton, George Herbert, and George MacDonald — Lewis began the step that would lead to belief in Christ.

Lewis explained to Arthur that what had been holding him back was his inability to comprehend in what sense Christ’s life and death provided salvation to the world, except insofar as his example might help. What Dyson and Tolkien showed him was that understanding exactly how Christ’s death puts us right with God was not most important but believing that it did. They urged him to allow the story of Christ’s death and resurrection to work on him, as the other myths he loved did — with one tremendous difference: this one really happened.

Nine days after that special night on Addison’s Walk — during a ride to the zoo in the sidecar of Warnie’s motorbike — Lewis came to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Years later he stated, “Dyson and Tolkien were immediate human causes of my own conversion.”10

‘It Really Won’t Do’

Given Lewis’s encouragement of Tolkien and Tolkien’s role in Lewis’s acceptance of Christianity, we can say, in one sense, that without the other’s contribution, we would not have Narnia or Middle-earth. But only in one sense. For while Lewis appreciated Tolkien’s stories about Middle-earth, Tolkien did not like Lewis’s books about Narnia.

“We can say, in one sense, that without the other’s contribution, we would not have Narnia or Middle-earth.”

Perhaps too much is made of Tolkien’s dislike for Narnia, particularly since Tolkien seems never to have made that much of it. While there is a good deal of speculation on the reasons for Tolkien’s disapproval, this speculation is based on secondhand reports. In Green and Hooper’s biography, we have several vague, disapproving, private comments Tolkien made about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, such as, “It really won’t do, you know!”11

George Sayer, who knew both men personally, includes two paragraphs in his Lewis biography summarizing Tolkien’s objections but offering little in terms of direct quotes. In addition to their jumble of unrelated mythological elements, Sayer claims that Tolkien thought the Narnia stories showed signs of being “carelessly and superficially written.”12

In a letter to David Kolb, we have a brief instance where Tolkien directly expresses his opinion of Narnia as he states, “It is sad that ‘Narnia’ and all that part of C.S.L.’s work should remain outside the range of my sympathy.”13 Here we find the suggestion that Tolkien’s narrow tastes may have been part of the problem. We do know that when the Tolkiens’ granddaughter Joanna was staying with them and went looking for something to read, her grandfather directed her to the Narnia books on his bookshelf.

‘I Miss You Very Much’

As the two men grew older, they were less close — another aspect scholars sometimes make too much of. Evidence that they remained friends, though in a less intense and intimate way, is found in a number of places.

In the autumn of 1949, twelve years after first starting it, Tolkien finished typing a final copy of The Lord of the Rings. Lewis, now 50, was the first person to whom he lent the completed typescript. “I have drained the rich cup and satisfied a long thirst,” Lewis wrote on October 27, 1949, declaring it to be “almost unequalled in the whole range of narrative art known to me.” Recalling the many obstacles Tolkien had overcome, Lewis declared, “All the long years you have spent on it are justified.” Lewis closed the world’s first review of Tolkien’s masterpiece with the words “I miss you very much.”14

It took more years for Tolkien to secure a publisher. In November 1952, when he learned Allen & Unwin was willing to publish the long-awaited sequel to The Hobbit, Tolkien immediately wrote Lewis with the good news. Lewis wrote back with warm congratulations, noting the “sheer pleasure of looking forward to having the book to read and re-read.”15

In 1954, after Lewis had been passed over more than once for a chair at Oxford, Tolkien played a key role in Lewis being offered and then accepting Cambridge’s newly created Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. And in 1961, less than three years before his death, Lewis was invited to nominate someone for the Nobel Prize in Literature and put forth Tolkien’s name.

In November of the following year, Tolkien wrote to Lewis inviting him to a dinner celebrating the publication of English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday — a collection to which Lewis had contributed an essay. Citing his deteriorating health, Lewis thanked him but graciously declined.

A few days before Christmas, Tolkien wrote again. We do not know the topic but do know that on Christmas Eve, 1962, Lewis wrote back thanking him for his “most kind letter.” Lewis closed by saying, “Is it still possible amid the ghastly racket of ‘Xmas’ to exchange greetings for the Feast of the Nativity? If so, mine, very warm, to both of you.”16 By the next Christmas, Lewis was gone.

Lewis died at home on November 22, 1963, a week shy of his 65th birthday. Shortly afterward, Tolkien wrote his son Michael about the loss. Although they had become less close, Tolkien stated, “We owed each a great debt to the other, and that tie with the deep affection that it begot, remains.”17 Here Tolkien, always careful with words, does not say that his tie and deep affection with Lewis remained all the way up until Lewis’s death, but that it remains. Presumably, it still does.

‘Much Good’

At the close of his biography, Alister McGrath seeks to explain Lewis’s enduring appeal, especially in America. McGrath proposes that by “engaging the mind, the feelings, and the imagination” of his readers, Lewis is able to extend and enrich their faith. Reading Lewis not only gives added power and depth to their commitment but also opens up a deeper vision of what Christianity is.18

I know this was true for me. Lewis was able to help extend and enrich my faith at a time when help was desperately needed. For those like me, Lewis’s books become lifelong companions, reminding us again and again of who we are and why we are here, seeing us through difficult times, and helping to shape and add meaning to our experience.

Tolkien wrote in his diary, “Friendship with Lewis compensates for much, and besides giving constant pleasure and comfort has done me much good.”19 Today, on the anniversary of Lewis’s birth, people all over the world, from all walks of life and stages in faith, would agree. Yes, it does. And yes, it has.

“Find a piece of paper and something to write with.” With a smirk, my wife complied and braced herself for what might follow.

The task was simple: Take ten minutes and write down as many names or descriptors of Christ as we could each recall. After ten minutes, we returned together with our lists. As we shared together, we began to worship as the Jewel of unending generations turned and turned and turned before our eyes of faith. Each name, worth a lifetime’s reflection.

Messiah. Master. Teacher. Creator. Friend.

Bridegroom. Savior. Lord. Mediator. Redeemer.

Beloved. Worthy. Our blessed hope. Our propitiation. The Good Shepherd.

Wonderful Counselor. Prince of peace. Image of the invisible God. Ruler of the kings on earth. The Door. The True Vine. The Bread of Life. The Lamb of God. The Way, the Truth, the Life. The rock of offense. The Morning Star. The Holy One. The Beginning.

The King of glory. Lord of the Sabbath. The faithful witness. The Head of the Church. The Lion of Judah. The Suffering Servant. The Prophet greater than Moses. The One who loves us.

The Light of the World. The Author and Perfecter of our faith. The Great High Priest. The Son of David. Son of Man. Son of God. Our Wisdom. Our sanctification. Something greater than Solomon. The firstborn from the dead. The Resurrection and the Life.

The Alpha and Omega. Almighty God. Man of Sorrows. The radiance of the glory of God.

To give just a few.

The One Above His Names

The exercise revealed one simple thing: Jesus Christ lives beyond each sacred name. The Spirit inspires so many names because the reality of Christ towers above each descriptor individually (and as I am hinting, collectively as well). Though Jesus is known truly through human language, he transcends human language.

Take the ancient poets, take the epic storytellers of our time — spare no crafters of language — employ them all, young and old alike, in the singular task of telling the full value and merit of Christ to us, and they shall fail — as children fingerpainting stars fall far below the glory of the galaxies.

“The most excellent language we have cannot capture his excellencies.”

He is he of whom there can be no exaggeration: His worth, his significance, his relevance, his power, his kindness, his command, his faithfulness, his beauty soars above human language as the seraphim above the ladybug. The most excellent language we have cannot capture his excellencies.

And that is no slight to the words God himself has given to us.

Christ Beyond Vocabulary

The excellency of language can take us many places: from the frontlines of World War II, to a hobbit hole in the Shire, from plantations in the antebellum South, to a cave in the mountains overlooking Whoville, into the very throne room with John and Isaiah. Language can cause us to feel deeply: from compassion to bravery, from disgust to horror, from love to hatred. Language is a tool, a divine brush that can color transcendent realities within our imaginations and conceptions. God wrote a book.

But with regards to Christ, we fumble with candles in the dark — he is like this, like this, like this. He stands outside the full reach of the vocabulary of this world, dazzling with the strength of ten suns. He is more holy than we can conceive the word “holy” imparts. More lovely than the scent “lovely” can give. Our language, too enfeebled to capture his might, is too hushed to convey his full glory. We truly gaze through faith and the Spirit to see and love him (1 Peter 1:8–9) — yet dimly.

“Our language, too enfeebled to capture his might, is too hushed to convey his glory.”

Although the Spirit employs the highest human colors our language affords — analogies, metaphors, titles, types, parables, poetry, and more — the painting is of him whose riches the Spirit himself calls “unsearchable,” him whose love surpasses knowledge (and therefore language), him of whom the world itself is too small a library to contain all the books documenting his wondrous deeds (Ephesians 3:8, 19; John 21:25).

The Stage for Self-Revelation

Now, although Christ, the Transcendent, cannot be finally portrayed or singularly named, we should marvel that God planned to reveal the marvelous names of the Son we have in Scripture.

Although God gives us some names in a moment while others took centuries to unfold in redemptive history, God held all these names in mind before he architected the world — crafting reality and human experience to give context to his Son’s glorious revelation, not vice versa.

In other words, God didn’t work with the props that already existed and do the best he could. From the beginning, God created the stage of human experience to communicate his Son to us. Marriage, as one example, exists to communicate what his Son is for the Church; who he is as “Groom” (Ephesians 5:32).

Or consider that before he created the world, John tells us, God wrote a hardcover entitled, “The Book of Life of the Lamb Who Was Slain” (Revelation 13:8). God did not fumble about and think of books and lambs and blood and sacrifice after the world and sin already existed. These entered the world because, before the world existed, God freely chose to reveal his Son as the Slain Lamb.

The point is that God created the world in order for the eye of faith to behold the Lamb. This is his story, his world — the props on stage were constructed to testify to Jesus.

What’s in a Name?

Is this good news for you? You may wonder with the love-stricken Juliet, what’s in a name?

We could speak of God’s concern for his own name — which communicates his character, his reputation, his praise, his renown — which is at the heart of our salvation:

Thus says the Lord God: “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them.” (Ezekiel 36:22–23)

Yet Christ’s names, on the ground level, provide anchors to our souls, don’t they?

How many sheep have been comforted through the valley of the shadow of death by his name “the Good Shepherd”?

How many have had a cold breeze still their mad lusts at his title “Lord”?

How many in despair have revived from the one who is “our blessed hope” (Titus 2:13), or endured persecution with eyes fixed on “the Suffering Servant”?

How many deaths has pride died before “the True Vine”? Or how many times have our heads been lifted from the dust by our “Great High Priest”? Or our fears of falling away been quieted by considering “the Author and Perfector of our faith”? How many tempests has this “Prince of Peace” calmed? How many questions does “the Ruler of the Kings on earth” solve? How many regrets and dead hopes rouse at his name “the Beginning”?

The woman with the naked finger can cling to the Bridegroom. The unloved child can grip to “the One who loves us.” The mother who visits the grave of her child, to “the Resurrection and the Life.” The pastor tempted with envy, to “the Head of the Church.” The man or woman dissatisfied with living, to “the Bread of Life.” The one feeling all alone in the world, to the great “Friend.”

His names, above all other names, are dear to us, because he is dear to us. Each provides a different angle, a different snapshot of what we can’t yet behold face-to-face. None overstate Christ. None alone capture him. When we sit on the eternal shore and drink deeply of one, the ocean is never emptied. More always to see. More always to drink. More always to know and enjoy.

The tide ever rises. Our Savior will always remain better than our best thoughts of him.