Family dysfunction is often more spiritual than relational, despite how regular tension and conflict might make it feel. Satan rejoices when homes are ruined. He fights to make families feeble. The weaker the family, the stronger his rule and the more his course advances.

Satan uses instruments, human means, in the battle. He often works through flesh and blood. Nevertheless, we do not fight against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12). Instead, we rely on flesh-and-blood relationships as we fight against him in our homes.

Corporate Worship and Warfare

Which relationships do we need to rely on? What alliances will help us defeat Satan as he attacks our homes? Our great alliance is with our brothers and sisters in the church. They are our fellow soldiers fighting the same war — and unity is key. We work together and depend on each other for lasting triumph.

“Satan rejoices when homes are ruined. He fights to make families feeble.”

The church is the army in the great spiritual war. While every family faces its individual battles, warfare is also a corporate endeavor. We wrestle together against a common enemy, Satan. We can see this reality especially in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, where the apostle envelops instructions about family relationships (Ephesians 5:22–6:9) between corporate worship (Ephesians 5:18–21) and corporate warfare (Ephesians 6:10–20). This structure shows that family relationships flow from, and depend on, the corporate worship and warfare of God’s family.

God’s family, the church, provides the source of power, the pattern, and the means of protection for our individual families. If we want to guard our families from the attacks of the devil, we will find our shield in the church.

Walking Home in the Spirit

Prior to his instructions on the family, Paul explains how we are to live and worship corporately (Ephesians 5:15–21). Walking in wisdom, he writes, entails being filled with the Spirit by speaking and singing truth to Christ and one another in corporate worship. In this way, the Spirit fills God’s gathered family and empowers them to live out the gospel, claiming victory in their homes. When God’s people are filled with the Spirit through corporate worship, wives submit to their husbands, husbands love their wives, children obey their parents, fathers tenderly train their children, servants obey their masters, and masters do good to their servants.

“If we despise the family of God, we will not survive in the effort to establish ours.”

The connection between the sections on corporate worship and the home is even clearer in the Greek. Ephesians 5:22 does not have the word submit; we only understand the implied verb by looking back at verse 21, where Paul uses the participle submitting. Paul uses unusual grammar to tie the two sections together, thus linking the family relationships in Ephesians 5:22–6:9 to the gathered family of God, the church, as the source of families’ strength. In other words, our individual family lives are an overflow of the life in the gathered family of God.

When filled with the Spirit, God’s family becomes not only the power but the pattern for our own individual families. Wives submit as the church submits to Christ. Husbands love as Christ loved the church. Children obey parents in the Lord, as God’s children also obey him. Fathers take their cue from the heavenly Father in exercising gentleness. Servants obey as they would Christ. Masters treat their servants respectfully because both masters and servants have one Master. Thus, the church’s relationship with her Lord and heavenly Father becomes the pattern for a Spirit-filled family. Sinclair Ferguson rightly says,

My family needs the church family for its own growth and health. No single family possesses all the resources it needs to be a truly and fully Christian family. We need support, friendship, example, wise counsel and much else from the church family. . . . Two Christian parents are not in themselves adequate to rear one child for Christ — they were never meant to be. (Devoted to God’s Church, 7)

Beyond Flesh and Blood

Having called specific members of the church to walk by the Spirit, honoring Christ in their respective callings, Paul draws the church to the armor that will keep its individual families firm in the path before them. Every family member — husbands, wives, parents, children, servants, masters — must be strong in the Lord to “stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11) and “withstand in the evil day” (Ephesians 6:13), clothed with the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:14). Throughout this section, Paul uses the second person plural, referring to the entire church. Corporate war is the means by which individual families stand against the schemes of the devil.

One of the devil’s schemes, against which the church must stand, is the temptation to devalue the place of God’s family for our individual families. Many Christians today fail to see corporate worship and warfare as indispensable. The gathering of the church is optional; we easily forsake the gathering for other pursuits, when we should let go of every other pursuit to gather with the church. When the devil separates us from the army of God, he has better chances for victory against our families.

Any military commander would be a fool if he sent his men into battle detached from each other. A commander who separates one man from the team may, in effect, send that soldier to his death, as David did to Uriah (2 Samuel 11:15). If an army is divided among itself, how can it stand? It can be a crime in the military to desert your team or to forsake a wounded member of the team. You fight for your country; you fight with each other; you protect each other. Care for one another is central. When believers forget and forsake the rest of the military, the church, they give an advantage to the devil.

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but we need flesh and blood for the war against the devil. No family feud is only relational; there is always more going on than meets the eyes. Eve’s disobedience and Adam’s passivity may have appeared as just as a flesh-and-blood issue if Moses had never led us behind the scenes to see the schemes of the devil. The counsel of Job’s wife, as the waves of trials swept over them, may have seemed simply like the words of a troubled soul (Job 2:9). But the author of Job lifts the curtains and shows us that behind those words lay an evil force. Job’s battle was not against flesh and blood; it was spiritual.

Full Armor for the Family

How do we fight these spiritual wars? In part, we do so corporately. We stand in whole armor Christ has won for us, and we fight with the word of God (Ephesians 6:13–18). The pieces of armor Paul lists are not different from the truth we corporately confess and sing to each other in corporate worship. Being strong in the strength of the Lord is similar to being filled with the Spirit, who “strengthens with power” in the inner man (Ephesians 3:16). We put on the whole armor when we address each other with the truth of the gospel, our true righteousness in Christ, and the gospel of peace, strengthening each other’s faith in the gospel, singing of our great salvation, joining in songs that are rich with the word, which is the sword of the Spirit. Corporate worship itself is corporate warfare.

While these pieces of armor can be put on at the individual level, the corporate dimension is vital. For example, as individuals, we may not always have our shields up. But in corporate warfare, when a husband’s shield falls, others can gather around him and protect him with their own shields, praying and encouraging him back to the battle. Victory for individual families comes as we are engaged in God’s local family, where we wage the war with others against the schemes of the devil.

This reality also places a burden of responsibility on local churches, since the health of her families, in large measure, depends on the strength of a church’s worship and warfare. What the gathered family does with the truth determines the health of its individual families.

We Fight Together or Fail

Corporate worship and warfare are indispensable for our marriages and families. If we despise the family of God, we will not survive in the effort to establish ours. Your family needs God’s family. Your marriage needs God’s marriage. Your parenting needs God’s fatherly relationship with his people. We fight together or we fail.

If we isolate ourselves from the community of God’s people, we will inevitably fall in the battle, with none to lift us up. God has not designed us to live that way. The health of your family is the project of God’s family. We worship together, we war together, and by God’s grace, we will win together.

Audio Transcript

We end the week talking providence. We started the week talking providence, in explaining the pains of life to children. Today, a question comes from a grieving young woman, a new believer, and a listener to the podcast who is now struggling to process a very deep trial. We don’t have her name, but here’s her email: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for APJ! I write because last year someone very close to me was assaulted and murdered. At the time of the tragedy, I had not devoted my life to Christ. The pastor at the funeral service said, ‘I don’t think it was God’s plan for this to happen.’ I remember feeling so lost and angry. I gave my life to Christ a few months later. But I still don’t understand why my loved one would be murdered if God is omnipotent. Does God allow sin to roam unchecked? Does the Bible say anything about God allowing such awful sin to happen, and why? I am a new Christian with a lot to learn.”

Oh, how I wish I knew your name so that I could speak to you very personally and directly, but let’s do the best we can.

I am very sorry that you lost this close friend of yours — especially in such a brutal way. But it’s good for me to know this because I can tell that your question is not theoretical. Lots of people ask this question in a very antagonistic and theoretical way. But yours is very personal, very urgent, and that’s the kind of question I like. I think it’s the kind of question that God is very willing to hear.

Perfectly Sovereign, Wonderfully Good

It’s difficult for me to know what the pastor at your friend’s funeral meant when he said, “I don’t think it was God’s plan for this to happen.” Maybe all he meant was that God never does anything wrong and never sins against anyone. But it’s one thing to say that God never does wrong, and it’s a very different thing to say that God does not govern or oversee or direct or control the wrong that happens in this world. If that’s what the pastor meant — that God doesn’t do that — I think he’s mistaken, because the Bible teaches from cover to cover that God does, in fact, govern all the details of the world, including the bad things that happen to us and to our friends.

That, in fact, I would argue, is what it means for God to be God. I say that because Isaiah 46:9–10 says,

I am God, and there is no other;     I am God, and there is none like me,declaring the end from the beginning     and from ancient times things not yet done,saying, “My counsel shall stand,     and I will accomplish all my purpose.”

So God’s counsel, God’s wisdom, God’s purpose always comes to pass. That’s what it means to be God. Not the devil, not nature, not fate, not chance, not sinful man — nobody and nothing can thwart the plan of God.

Job 42:2 says, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
The apostle Paul says in Ephesians 1:11 that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” All things includes the largest things, like the rise and fall of nations, and the tiniest things, like the fall of a bird out of a tree or the roll of the dice.
Daniel 2:21 says, “He removes kings and he sets up kings.”
Jesus said in Matthew 10:29, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”
Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast in the lap [which is an old-fashioned way of saying that the dice are thrown on the table], but its every decision is from the Lord.”

In other words, from the tiniest, most insignificant happening, to the largest global happenings, God governs all things.

Alongside that absolute sovereignty of God over all things, we need to embrace the teaching of Scripture that God is always just, always good. For example, there is a beautiful statement in Deuteronomy 32:4: “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.” That’s beautiful. Psalm 34:8 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” He is good. He is wise. He is faithful. He is just. He’s upright. There is no iniquity in him, no darkness in him at all.

Purposes in Suffering

We naturally ask (and this is why I said your question was so good and right at the beginning), “Why does God permit so much suffering and evil, if in fact he’s in control?” Now the Bible gives numerous answers to that question. If you go to Desiring God’s website and just type in the search line What are the purposes for suffering?, you will find several articles right at the top of the list that point to those answers. But let me mention two of them, two answers just briefly.

One of God’s purposes for suffering is to show all of us the horror of sin. Suffering entered the world when mankind fell into sin (Genesis 3). Suffering is a trumpet blast to all humanity that, just like pain is an outrage to the human body, so sin is an outrage against God’s character and glory. The horrors of physical suffering are an echo of the horrors of humanity’s belittling of God by our disobedience and unbelief.

But maybe what’s most important for you, as a newer Christian, is to focus your attention on the death of Jesus. I assume that, not long ago, because of what you said, God opened your eyes to see the death of Jesus on the cross for your sins as a compelling and true and beautiful reality, and you believed. You are saved today from guilt and from wrath and hell and meaninglessness because Jesus suffered on the cross in your place.

Now put the death of Jesus together with God’s sovereignty. That’s what Acts 4:27–28 does. The early church prayed in those verses like this:

Truly in this city [Jerusalem] there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

So Herod, Pilate, Gentile soldiers, Jewish mobs — all of them combined to kill Jesus. The murder of Jesus was like the murder of your friend, only worse because Jesus is the very Son of God. The Bible says that the sins of his murderers — Herod, Pilate, soldiers, mobs — their sins in murdering Jesus were predestined and planned by God. He did this, God did this, without himself sinning. He can govern, rule, oversee, control, guide, the evils of the world without being evil.

Point of Greatest Love

If God had not planned the death of his Son, neither your sins nor mine would be forgiven. God orchestrated the worst sins that ever happened in the murder of his Son so that you and I, and millions of those who believe on Christ, would be saved from destruction and given eternal joy. Romans 5:8 says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” which means that we simply could not know the depths of God’s love without the death of Christ. There would be no death of Christ without sin and suffering and the sovereignty of God.

So, when you feel that you can’t understand why God does what he does, let your heart rest here: the worst suffering and the deepest sovereignty meet at the point of greatest love — the cross of Christ. So rest there.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14879785/how-not-to-go-to-bed-angry

The racing heart, the watering eyes, the abrupt disinterest withering the world outside. The carnivorous appetite, the volatile urge. The hungry stare. The inner burn (1 Corinthians 7:9). The dry mouth, the blinking eyelids, the jittering hands. The hidden force. The haunting whispers. The inescapable desire. The sweet slavery. The roaring drumbeat silencing music. The fight to death, a civil war. The silent suspicion of inevitable defeat; the dark desire for your downfall. Lust.

In a world coursing with sexual temptation, who can walk through unharmed? Who wants to? This enemy, so cherished and beloved by its victims, holds such a place in our affections that when God calls us to drive the stake through our passions, many ignore the threat or laugh it off.

“In a world coursing with sexual temptation, who can walk through unharmed?”

Sexual lust, even for those awake to their consciences, is often the tiger one wishes to leash but not kill. When told about chastity — an old word tasting of stale bread and smelling of their great aunt’s perfume — I’ve had decent men by worldly standards open their mouth and gasp, “How could anyone live without sex?” Air, food, water, and sexual gratification — the bare necessities of life.

Lay Lust on the Altar

Men should gasp at what God requires. William Gurnall puts the heavenly expectation vividly:

Soul, take thy lust, thy only lust, which is the child of thy dearest love, thy Isaac, the sin which has caused most joy and laughter, from which thou hast promised thyself the greatest return of pleasure or profit; as ever thou lookest to see my [God’s] face with comfort, lay hands on it and offer it up: pour out the blood of it before me; run the sacrificing knife of mortification into the very heart of it; and this freely, joyfully, for it is no pleasing sacrifice that is offered with a countenance cast down — and all this now, before thou hast one embrace more from it. (The Christian in Complete Armor, 13)

Gurnall comments,

Truly this is a hard chapter, flesh and blood cannot bear this saying; our lust will not lie so patiently on the altar, as Isaac, or as a “Lamb that is brought to the slaughter which was dumb,” but will roar and shriek; yea, even shake and rend the heart with its hideous outcries.

Our lust shrieks when injured. It roars, shakes, angers, and gives hideous outcries. But God calls us to kill it before him, joyfully, freely, now — before we take another embrace of it.

But how? cries the weary voice of many.

Help For Sexual Sinners

Perhaps you (both men and women) have tried and tried again.

You’ve cut off hands and gouged out eyes that tempt you (Matthew 5:29–30), but they regrow like Hydras’ heads. You succeed to put to death what is earthy in you (Colossians 3:5), but only for a time. You know this sin threatens ultimate harm, waging war against your very soul (1 Peter 2:11). You know to indulge is to sin against your own body (1 Corinthians 6:18), undermine your profession (1 Corinthians 6:8–9), and contradict the explicit will of God for your life (1 Thessalonians 4:3–5). But the madness returns, leaving remorse and shame.

Though I do not take Romans 7 to be describing a Christian indwelt by the Spirit, his anguished statements under the law certainly capture the experience of besetting sexual sin,

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . . . I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. . . . Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:15, 21, 24)

If you have, like me, jumped Lilypad to Lilypad in the swamps of sexual sin, hopefully I can contribute one emphasis that could make all the difference: focusing not so much on the how of sexual purity, but the why.

Highest Good in Purity

Covenant Eyes, passwords on computers, strong accountability, not kissing until marriage, daily check-ins, canceling phone internet, not living alone — I have heard (and used) many wonderful hows to make no provision for the flesh. By all means, devise a plan.

But in this article, I seek to travel further upstream. Why might we, along with Job, make a covenant with our eyes not to look lustfully at a woman (Job 31:1)? Or why with the Psalmist, should we store up God’s word in our heart that we might not sin against him (Psalm 119:11)? To avoid confessing the sin again during men’s group? To spare yourself a guilty conscience? To avoid hell?

These certainly motivate, but for lasting victory we need a bigger gun. Namely, to realize God’s highest good for sexual purity: God himself.

To See God

Did Jesus say, “Blessed are the pure in heart so that you save yourself embarrassment at accountability group?” No. He began his sermon, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Only later does he arrive at the cutting off of hands and the warning against hell.

To see God. What have you seen of God, learned of God, loved about God lately? This remains the question for devotions.

Notice how the story ends:

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. (Revelation 22:3–4)

After all uncleanness goes extinct, a throne will stand before us, and pure eyes will have their desire: to behold him.

“Father,” Jesus prayed on the eve of his death, “I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Lust is simply the anti-prayer.

Gazing at the Sea

“If you want to build a ship,” the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said, “don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Scripture certainly tells us to chop wood and heed orders, but it also unmistakably shows us the endless immensity of the sea: our God.

“As sure as lust distorts the world, purity reenchants it.”

Abstinence, self-control, chastity, cleanness of eyes and heart — for their own sake — are too small a reward. The appropriate end of boat-crafting is not to admire vessels sitting on dry land. Not work and discipline for their own sake. God means for us to sail. He means for us to feel the sea wind in our faces, to gaze upon the headwaters of all life and beauty himself, to see sunsets we’ve never seen before — and realize far more beauty remains to be seen.

Christian, God offers you something higher: to see his glory. As sure as lust distorts the world, purity reenchants it. As lust dims beauty and hides God’s face in night; purity cleanses our vision and dawns day upon the face of Christ for us to behold him. Our eyes cannot serve to masters.

Is seeing him robed in his splendor, shining like the sun, why you desire to be pure?

Audio Transcript

Jesus was sinless. “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth,” says Peter (1 Peter 2:22). And he remains sinless today. “In him there is no sin,” says John (1 John 3:5). This glorious truth forms the basis of his substitutionary atoning work for sinners. But his sinlessness also forms the basis of why he is qualified to sympathize with us as sinners. And on that point comes a controversy. If Jesus is sinless, doesn’t that mean he never really tasted the power of temptation? How can a perfect man who never sinned — a man who never struggled to get free from a sin habit — how can he truly feel the power of temptation?

This line of thinking is wrong. It’s wrong because you’re not struggling with sin if you’re continually giving in to sin. In other words, the pressure of temptation is felt most strongly by those who most earnestly resist giving in to the sin. And if that point sounds familiar, it should. We covered that theme several times on the podcast already, particularly in episodes on lust like APJ episodes 291, 804, and 963. The pressure of temptation is felt most strongly by those who most earnestly resist giving in to the sin. Pastor John explains in this clip, from a 1996 sermon.

I apologize for about a minute of static in the middle of it. But the clip is too good, and the point too important, not to share here on the podcast. Here’s Pastor John, 25 years ago, preaching on Hebrews 4:15, a text that tells us our high priest can sympathize with our weakness, because he never sinned.

Now, look at verse 15. In spite of the fact that verse 14 presents a magnificent and lofty great high priest, verse 15 describes him in another way.

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Notice three things: (1) he was tempted like you are; (2) he never gave into temptation, never sinned; and (3) he is very sympathetic with us in our weaknesses.

Temptation’s Full Force

Fifty years ago, C.S. Lewis was pondering this text, and he heard an objection raised by a scoffer, and the objection went like this: “If Jesus never sinned, he can’t know what real temptation is like. He can’t sympathize, he can’t empathize with me because he’s never tasted the full force of temptation.” And this is what C.S. Lewis wrote in response:

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. . . . A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.

And I might add: or a lifetime later — like hanging in there with a tough marriage and resisting the temptation to bail out, or hanging in there against sexual temptation and resisting the temptation, not just five minutes or one hour, but year in and year out, decade in and decade out, until Jesus comes or calls. Talk about knowing the force and power of temptation — only those who do that know the full force. Lewis continues,

That is why bad people in one sense know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. . . . Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist. (Mere Christianity, 142)

“Jesus was ‘tempted as we are, yet without sin,’ and therefore he knows the full force of what it is to be tempted.”

Don’t you ever think that because you have lived a life of sin that you know more about temptation than the godly person who has walked that razor’s edge of the straight and narrow, gritting his teeth in the power of the Holy Spirit and saying, “No, no, no, no, no,” and fighting his way through every day with righteousness, and laying his head down, and feeling the force of evil upon him day after day after day, and triumphing over it in God. Don’t you ever think that you know more of evil than that person, or that you know more of evil than Jesus Christ. Jesus was “tempted as we are, yet without sin,” and therefore he knows the full force of what it is to be tempted.

In Every Way as We Are

Let me illustrate for you.

Jesus was tempted to lie to save his life. Would you not, surrounded by soldiers, spears, a cross in the corner, nails on the floor, hammers over there, having seen what it was like when they asked you, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the living God?” be tempted to lie?

He was tempted to steal to help his mother when his father died, I do not doubt. There were at least five kids in that family. Widows don’t make it easy. Joseph disappears off the scene early. Jesus was tempted to steal. Jesus was tempted to covet all those things, those nice things that Zacchaeus had. Even after he gave away half his goods, he was a rich man, and Jesus walked out owning nothing. Do you think he was not tempted to covet a home for himself, a place to lay his head down every night?

He was tempted to dishonor his parents when they were tough on him and told him what was right and wrong and set limits, perhaps more than the other boys in Nazareth. He was tempted to take revenge when he was wrongly accused. So often they said lies about him. And with one word, he could have made fools out of them.

He was tempted to lust when Mary knelt down, leaned over, and wiped his feet with her hair. He was tempted to murmur at God’s sovereignty when his friend and colleague and brother, John the Baptist, was beheaded at the whim of a dancing girl. “Where are you, God?” He was tempted to gloat over his accusers when they couldn’t answer his questions.

He knew the battle, folks, and he triumphed over that monster every day, all day, for thirty-three years. And when it crescendoed at the end, he never ever gave in.

Who Will Help the Helpless?

Now, let me close by pointing you to verse 16. The conclusion that we draw from all of this — that we have a great high priest, that he is the Son of God, that he has passed through the heavens with God, that he is sympathetic with us — the conclusion to draw is that we can draw near to God for grace.

Let me pose a problem, as we close, that has kept many people away from Jesus. And I want to make sure nobody falls for this, because there are so many people — I’ve talked to so many. I’ve heard of so many who get to the crisis point of whether to embrace Christ as their high priest, their Savior, their Lord, their King, their guide, their friend, and they push it away.

Here’s why many of them do: everybody in this room knows that you need help.

We need help with our bodies.
We need help with our minds.
We need help with our jobs.
We need help with our spouses.
We need help with our kids.
We need help with our finances.
We need help with our choices.

Everybody knows we need help. And there’s a second thing everybody in this room knows in your most honest moments: you don’t deserve help. John Piper doesn’t deserve any help from anybody. Why? I’m a sinner. I deserve one thing: judgment. I don’t deserve help. So here I am. I need help to live my life and cope with eternity, and I don’t deserve help.

Grace for the Least Deserving

Now, what are you going to do? This is the trap that keeps many people away from Christ. You’ve got maybe three or four options.

You can deny it all and say, “I’ll be a superman or superwoman and rise above my need for help.” And that might last a year, a decade, and then you’d break.
Or you could say, “I can’t deny it all, but I can drown it all,” and you throw your life into a pool of sensual pleasure.” That’s a possibility.
The third option is very common. It’s looking here: “I need help with my life. My life doesn’t work. I’m not in control. I especially can’t handle my sin and my eternity.” And over here: “I don’t deserve help. Nobody owes me anything, because I’m a sinner. I have wrecked things so many times, and my attitude stinks, and I don’t love God the way I should.” Paralysis and hopelessness. And when you present the gospel to a person like that, if they don’t have ears to hear, they just say, “There’s no way. There’s no hope for me.”
But now there’s a fourth option. And that’s what the Bible is about, that’s what the history of Israel is about, that’s what this text is about. And the option is this: There is a high priest who is the Son of God, who takes the blood of his own death into the presence of God. And he enables us to say, “Yes, I need help — and yes, I don’t deserve it. But no, I will not be paralyzed, because there’s a mediator, and Jesus came to give the undeserving help.”

“The throne of grace is God meeting the need of undeserving people.”

What do you call that? The throne of grace. The throne of grace is God meeting the need of undeserving people. You’ve got to hear that now. I want you to take that out of here in about one minute. Grace comes into your life when you are paralyzed with the sense that you need help and you don’t deserve help, and therefore, you feel hopeless, and you’re either going to superman it out or drown it out or be paralyzed with depression.

And grace comes in and says, “Yes, you’ve analyzed that rightly: you need help. Yes, you’ve analyzed that rightly: you don’t deserve a thing from God. But no, you don’t need to be a superman. No, you don’t need to drown it. And no, you don’t need to be paralyzed. The fourth option is this: “I paid for that sin, and while you don’t deserve any help, God will give you help if you come through a high priest.”

ABSTRACT: The Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, is the best of gifts from the best of Fathers. But how can Christians begin to understand the person and work of the Spirit, including before and after Pentecost? Perhaps the best starting point is the life of Christ both before and after his resurrection. During his earthly ministry, Jesus lived as the perfect Spirit-filled man, the paragon of humanity as God created it to be. Even still, after his resurrection, Jesus received the Spirit in a new way: as the royal inheritance of the ascended King. And in the new covenant, the King has begun to share his spoils with his people.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Dan Brendsel (PhD, Wheaton), pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Hinckley, Minnesota, to provide Christological bearings for understanding the person and work of the Spirit.

If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Luke 11:13)

“Teach us to pray,” the disciples ask Jesus (Luke 11:1). It is a terrific request. And Jesus is happy to oblige. First, he tells them what they are to pray (verses 2–4). But Jesus would have his disciples be much more than informed about right content in well-ordered prayer; Jesus would also have his disciples be eager and expectant in prayer. So to instruction on the content of prayer, he adds two encouragements meant to sustain fervent prayer: (1) persistence pays off (verses 5–10), and (2) our heavenly Father gives good gifts (verses 11–13). Jesus’s aim is to inspire committed, fervent prayer, so in the latter instance he speaks of the best “good gift” he can think of to showcase the Father’s astounding kindness and generosity — namely, the Holy Spirit.

Appreciating this best of gifts from the best of fathers is, to say the least, no trivial matter. Faith in the God who lays hold of us in Christ through the power of the Spirit should zealously seek to grow in understanding of this same Spirit. Unfortunately, the task is fraught with difficulty, the way is paved with distractions, and the questions needing to be answered are copious and complicated.

Challenging, Complex Questions

The Spirit is, arguably, the most nebulous member of the Trinity: a Father I have categories for, a Son I can easily envision, but where do I begin to make sense of a Spirit?1 The Spirit is, arguably, the most avoided member of the Trinity, at least at a popular level: I would wager that, outside of Pentecostal traditions, most churchgoers have never sat under a sermon series or Sunday school series exploring the person and work of the Holy Spirit.2 And when Christian reflection on the Holy Spirit’s ministry is pursued, it often happens in the context of controversy (e.g., disagreements about the so-called “charismatic spiritual gifts”), and finds itself, arguably, too ready to allow controversy to dictate the shape and focus of the treatment.

In addition to these realities, complicated biblical-theological questions arise concerning the nature of the Spirit’s work. We speak of the Spirit being “poured out” at Pentecost: does this mean he was somehow absent and inactive beforehand? After all, John 7:39 says that the Spirit was not given until Jesus was “glorified.” What do we make of such a statement? How shall we truthfully articulate the difference that Christ’s work and the event of Pentecost make? What does it mean for Christians to have and enjoy the gift of the Holy Spirit, the very treasure of the kingdom given from the ascended King’s throne? These are challenging questions, but they must be attended to if we would know aright the gift of the Father won for us by Christ.

“Jesus’s life is from beginning to end (to new beginning) saturated with the Spirit.”

Given the challenge and complexity of the matter, it can be constructive to narrow our focus. Rather than trying to tackle all or even several areas of concern, in this essay we will zero in on just one limited but strategic starting point. Specifically, we will consider the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ. We will, in other words, seek out some Christological bearings for pneumatology. This is a strategic point of departure not only because, as we shall see, Jesus’s life is from beginning to end (to new beginning) saturated with the Spirit to the point that the Spirit can be called the very Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9). To know Christ aright is necessarily to know something of the Spirit (and vice versa). But more pointedly, Christological cues in understanding the Spirit’s work in the new age are especially helpful since Christ’s own life and labor exhibits both continuity and discontinuity in the experience of the Spirit, which serves as a paradigm for proper biblical-theological understanding of the work of the Spirit through the ages.

Perfect Spirit-Filled Man

We regularly affirm (in the Western church) that the Spirit proceeds from the Son,3 but we must also say that the Son came into the world in the incarnation by the power of the Spirit. In Luke 1:35, the angel Gabriel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will “come upon her,” and the power of the Most High will “overshadow” her. The result? She will bear one who will be called “the Son of God.” But in Scripture, many figures are called “son of God” (e.g., Israel in Exodus 4:22–23, Israel’s king in Psalm 2:7, angels in Job 1:6, peacemakers in Matthew 5:9). In what sense would Luke have us understand Jesus to be “the Son of God”?4

The meaning is clarified a couple of chapters later at Jesus’s baptism. In Luke 3:21–22, the Spirit is again present and active in Jesus’s life, coming down in the form of a dove upon him, anointing him for his God-given task. The Spirit’s anointing is coupled with a verbal declaration of Jesus’s identity: he is God’s “beloved son” (verse 22). Immediately after this, seemingly out of nowhere, Luke shifts genres from narrative to genealogy (verses 23–38). But the train of thought is clarified when we come to the end of the genealogy: “. . . Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God” (verse 38). Adam was the first son of God in the biblical story line. Jesus is the second; which is to say, he is a second Adam.

Luke 3:22 and 38 (see also 4:3, 9)5 are the most contextually important indicators of what the word to Mary in 1:35 means. To be “son of God” is to be a new Adam. Indeed, the first Adam is the only other human in history who was without a human father, but who instead was breathed into human existence directly by the breath (Spirit) of God (Genesis 2:7). The virgin conception by the power of the Holy Spirit is, therefore, not just a guarantee of Jesus’s divinity. It is also and especially in the biblical narrative a way of underlining Jesus’s true and full humanity as the new Adam who brings with him the beginnings of the new creation.6

Jesus is the quintessential Spirit-filled man, who does everything he does by the power of the Spirit. He was anointed as the new Adam and the Davidic King by the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:21–22; Matthew 3:13–17) and then driven into his holy war with the devil by the Spirit (Mark 1:12–13). Jesus’s public ministry begins by the Spirit’s empowerment (Luke 4:14, 18). He goes about “doing good and healing” in the power of the Spirit (Acts 10:38; also Matthew 12:28). His prayers and affections are drenched with the Spirit (Luke 3:21–22; 10:21–22). He suffered righteously unto death through God’s eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14).7 It was through the power of the Spirit of holiness that Jesus was raised from the dead (Romans 1:4)8 and thus vindicated from the world’s verdict of guilty (1 Timothy 3:16).9 And when the vindicated Son of Man ascends to the right hand of God to take up his rightful throne, he comes “on the clouds,” enwrapped or borne, we might say, by the glory-cloud which is the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:9; cf. Daniel 7:13–14).10 Everything Jesus did, he did in submission to his Father’s will by the power of the Holy Spirit, not so much proving that he is God (which, of course, he is) but demonstrating his true humanity. Jesus is the perfect Spirit-filled man, the fullness of what humans were intended by the Creator to be.

“Everything Jesus did, he did in glad submission to his Father’s will by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

So the one who ascends to his rightful throne in Acts 1 is a human king, the new Adam who has ruled and subdued the way God intended from the beginning, the new and true Davidic king promised to Israel, the ruler and pioneer of a recreated humanity. He has won the great and final victory over his foes. And he has received his prize, the spoils of his victory as conquering and enthroned king.

His Royal Inheritance

What is the prize? The answer is suggested in an astounding, yet easy to miss, statement from the apostle Peter at Pentecost:

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. (Acts 2:33)

The brevity and syntactical subordination of the participial clause can obscure its glory: Peter leads us, in Sinclair Ferguson’s words, “momentarily behind the events of history to give us a glimpse of a transaction between the Father and the Son-Mediator.”11 Specifically, Peter highlights that the ascended Christ himself first receives the gift of the promised Spirit from the Father, before he pours it out on the church at Pentecost. But we have seen scriptural testimony in abundance that Christ’s life was shot through with the Spirit from the very beginning. So what could it mean that the ascended Christ now “received” the Spirit?

I propose that Christ did not, until after his resurrection (kingly victory) and ascension (kingly enthronement), have the Spirit as the officially bestowed royal inheritance.12 There’s a difference between an anointed king who has not yet been crowned, and a crowned king who has full authority to rule the kingdom. There is a difference between, on the one hand, young David, already anointed by Samuel, who exercises king-like character and duties (e.g., in 1 Samuel 17) but who will not cut down Saul because Saul is the rightfully enthroned king, and on the other hand, mature David, who rules the kingdom as its publicly installed king. To change analogies, there’s a difference between a son who has the rights to the inheritance and who may even benefit from the inheritance ahead of time (e.g., live on the land, receive an allowance), and a son upon whom has finally been bestowed the full inheritance to do with as he pleases.

This is to suggest that the difference of Jesus’s experience of the Spirit pre-resurrection and ascension and post-resurrection and ascension is less spatial (absence vs. presence) and more legal (kingly prize, covenantal inheritance), less quantitative (less vs. more) and more theo-dramatic (the beginning of a new act in the salvation-historical drama, with the launching of new covenantal callings).13 A change in status, and with it a change of epochs, has occurred, which is evidenced by Christ’s ascended reception of the promised Spirit. In this way, Christ’s reception of the Spirit as ascended Lord on the throne is qualitatively different from even what he enjoyed of the Spirit in his Spirit-drenched life before his resurrection and ascension.

Treasure of the Kingdom

One of the first royal acts of this ascended King from his throne is, according to Ephesians 4:7 (quoting Psalm 68:18), to give gifts to his kingdom: “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” The King shares the spoils of his kingly victory with the people he rules; he gives generously to his redeemed. The gifts that Paul has in view are what we call spiritual gifts (Ephesians 4:11), gifts wrought by the “one Spirit” (verse 4) given to Christ’s kingdom. The Holy Spirit, the prize or the inheritance given to the victorious King, is what the King upon his enthronement shares with all his subjects. We might even say that to have the Spirit is to have the kingdom won by the King. For example, Luke’s language in Luke 11:13 and 12:32 veritably equates the Father’s giving of the Holy Spirit with his giving of the kingdom:

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit [ho patēr . . . dōsei pneuma hagion] to those who ask him! (Luke 11:13)

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom [ho patēr . . . dounai . . . tēn basileian]. (Luke 12:32)

It is sometimes insinuated, or outright asserted, that for new-covenant believers to have the Spirit is to be privy to a power or access to some substance that was, for all practical purposes, unavailable in prior ages. On this line of thinking, because early Christians had access to a power previously unavailable, they were able, for example, to be much bolder and more confident than old-covenant believers, with boldness such as that displayed in the book of Acts. “Peter used to be cowardly, as when he thrice denied the Lord,” so the thinking goes, “but because he got the Spirit at Pentecost, he could courageously take his stand against rulers and authorities.” To simply leave matters there obscures and distorts at least as much as it expresses a slice of truthfulness.

We may suggest a better way forward, taking Christ’s experience of the Spirit before and after his resurrection and ascension as paradigmatic of the continuity and discontinuity of the Spirit’s work in believers before and after Pentecost. Jesus did not get “more” of the Spirit after the ascension, and neither, I argue, do Christians now enjoy “more” of the Spirit than old-covenant believers. But Christ did receive the Spirit in a new way — or better, in a new act of the drama. Again, we must think in legal-covenantal and theo-dramatic terms.

Christians in the Final Act

Kevin Vanhoozer argues that emotions (like courage) should be understood as “covenantal concern-based theodramatic construals.”14 In simplified terms, emotions are a matter of narrative construal (i.e., how we narrate the reality of which we are a part) and of convictions about our covenantal place in that narrative (i.e., our judgments about our location, standing, and role in the drama). On this line of thinking, the emotions surrounding courageous boldness are not owing to bare substances or powers and chemical reactions inside us. Rather, courageously bold Christians are those who construe situations in which they find themselves as fearful yet hopeful for the sons and daughters of the kingdom.

The Christians in Acts could narrate their stories, and the story of reality, in a way no one before them could: theirs was the story in which sin and wrath had finally and decisively been dealt with; the story in which even death had been defeated; the story in which the idols of the world were finally being shown to be the wind and emptiness that they are; the story whose end is a victorious King, glorious in grace, seated on the throne, bestowing the spoils of his kingdom on his people. And because they could narrate the story in a different way, because they were assured of their standing in the kingdom secured in the final act of the drama, they could have a new kind of boldness. It is no accident that in Acts 4:31, the boldness of the early church is precisely a matter of boldness in speaking the word of God, a boldness arising from a biblical narration of the meaning of the events of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection (see Acts 4:24–28).

But at the same time, it was a boldness wrought by the Holy Spirit given in answer to prayer (see again v. 31 as the divine response to vv. 29–30). The heavenly Father gives good gifts to his adopted and supplicating children in Christ. He gives the Spirit who illuminates the meaning of the redemptive work of God in history for them, so that they might narrate the drama afresh. He gives them the Spirit who assures them of their new covenantal status as kingdom citizens. He gives them the Spirit who, in these ways at least, empowers them to live with a boldness in accord with the eschatological act of the drama that Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension inaugurated.

So to have the Holy Spirit indwelling us at “the end of the ages” is not best articulated as a matter of having access to a powerful substance unavailable to prior generations. Far less is the Pentecostal presence of the Holy Spirit a mere inner, ahistorical sensation or feeling. To have the Spirit from the ascended Lord Jesus, to know his indwelling presence and power and fellowship, is to be rooted in a particular chapter in the story. It is to know oneself the covenantal subject of the crucified, risen, and ascended King by virtue of that King’s work on our behalf. It is to rest secure in that King’s victory over all our foes and in the inauguration of his kingdom of justice and peace. To have the Spirit is to have the treasure of the kingdom.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14875448/how-does-anger-give-place-to-the-devil

“The church” this. “The church” that.

One way professing Christians betray a small, thin, and weak vision of the risen Christ is by dumping on “the church.” They might speak flippantly of what “the church” doesn’t get. Or what “the church” does wrong. Or the problem with “the church” in our day. They claim to know better than “the church.” If only they could fix “the church.” Having become concerned about an oversight, error, or danger they see in some Christians or churches, they’ve become careless with their words about the church — and particularly so when we consider what Christ himself says about her.

As much as we may claim to esteem Jesus, and desire to speak highly of him, we reveal gaps in our devotion when we broad-brush his bride with negativity, evidence strange biases against her, and feed into popular opinion by suspecting, seeing, spinning, and spreading the worst.

“We show how little we think of Christ by speaking endless negativity about his bride.”

Whatever the motivations (which are varied and complex), we demonstrate how subtly, and perhaps deeply, we have been shaped by, and conformed to, the course of this world, when we talk about “the church” in ways grossly out of step with our Lord. And we show how little we think of Christ, by speaking endless negativity about his bride.

Wife of the Lamb

Make no mistake, the church is his bride. How startling that Christ himself would risk such an image?

Not only did John the Baptist speak of him as such (John 3:29), but Jesus cast himself as “the bridegroom” who is taken away (Matthew 9:15; Mark 2:19–20; Luke 5:34–35), and whose return is delayed (Matthew 25:1–10). In one of Scripture’s final climactic statements, Revelation 22:17 says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come’” — meaning the church. In Revelation 21:9, the angel says, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

The church is Jesus’s bride, “the wife of the Lamb.” And when we admire a man, respect him, appreciate him, and reverence him, we are careful what we say about his wife — and all the more so in public. We check our suspicions. We are vigilant to not let personal disappointments fester into a global cynicism toward her. We go out of our way not to regard her, speak of her, or criticize her in his presence in any way that would puzzle or dishonor her husband. We show little esteem for a groom when we insult his bride.

So, those who genuinely admire and worship Christ will not only reverence his person but also his perspective. They will want to know, and remember, What does Jesus think of his church? What does Christ feel toward her? How does he talk about her?

He Chose Her

First, the great Groom’s choice of his Bride is remarkable. Not only is she “a chosen race” (1 Peter 2:9), but he chose her in her ungodliness, not because of any native beauty in her. The Father chose the church for his Son before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), writing the names of his people in “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8).

Not only did Christ and his Father choose the church for her salvation, but also to be an instrument of divine revelation in the world. And not just an instrument, but the central vessel in making God known in his world in this age. The vision of the church is astoundingly, almost uncomfortably, high in Ephesians 3.

When Paul there offers praise to God the Father, he says, “To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.” We expect “in Christ Jesus” as the focal point through which God’s glory is displayed — but here she is, his wife, side by side with Christ himself, the bridegroom: “to him be glory in the church.” This echoes the centrality of the church in making God known just a few verses prior: the manifold wisdom of God is being “made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” — and now he mentions only one instrument — “through the church” (Ephesians 3:10).

Disappointed as we may be with an unfaithful leader, or hurt as we may feel by particular people or ministries in a local community, we would do well to remember such a vision of the church — Christ’s own vision of his church. The church, worldwide and throughout the ages, is not mainly bringing reproach upon Christ. Rather, the church, alongside Christ, is bringing glory to the Father and making his wisdom known to all the powers, earthly and heavenly.

He Cherishes Her

Second, the church is not just a body. She is his body (Ephesians 5:22; Colossians 1:18, 24). “You are the body of Christ,” Paul says to the church (1 Corinthians 12:27).

In the best body reference of all, God not only has “put all things under [Christ’s] feet” as sovereign of the universe on the very throne of heaven, but also God “gave [Christ] as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22–23). Christ’s vision and concern for his body boggles, stretches, and defies human explanation. Which might, at least, correct our uncareful speech.

Jesus loves the church as his own body. He emphatically does not hate his own flesh, but he nourishes and cherishes it (Ephesians 5:29). Jesus cherishes his church. He adores her, cares for her, gladly devotes his attention to her. He has pledged his loyalty to her, to be one flesh with her, to hold fast to her, to not give up on her, to never leave or forsake her. “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).

He Cleanses Her

Jesus’s awareness of his church’s flaws and failures is far more extensive than any human’s. He knows every detail of ongoing evil. He knows the sins we try to hide. Jesus’s high view of his church is not owing in the least to his turning a blind eye to, or any codding or soft-peddling of, sin. He died to cleanse his church of her sin. He does not take her sin lightly. He is his church’s “Savior” (Ephesians 5:23). No one takes sin in the church more seriously than Jesus. He knows the depths of her sin. Yet he still loves her.

“No one takes sin in the church more seriously than Jesus.”

He not only chose her (despite her sin) and cherishes her (despite her sin), but he also is cleansing her from her sin. He died to both secure his bride and to sanctify her, to make her holy (Ephesians 5:26). And he rose, and lives, to cleanse her “by the washing of water with the word” (Ephesians 5:26). Do our words echo his? Do we join him in washing her, cleansing her, sanctifying her, building her up with our words? Or do we oppose him, insult her, sully her, tear her down by the spirit we harbor and the words we speak in the world and post on the web?

The day is coming when Jesus will “present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27) — when all will see “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). Christ is preparing his church for the wedding, purging sin, adorning his bride for that day when she will be presented to him, and every eye will see her, at last, in unparalleled majesty.

Hard Words of Love

Here we might ask about Jesus’s own hard words for his bride. Isn’t it the Bridegroom himself who says these devastating words in Revelation 3:15–16? “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Love for the Bride of Christ does not mean silence about the sins of particular churches and specific saints. But it does mean that we take care how we speak about those failures.

Part of cleansing the church means correcting her, but correcting her does not mean despising her, or painting her sins in broad strokes. When Christ confronts the churches in Revelation 2–3, he addresses specific churches with their own failures. And in correcting them, he also woos them back to himself. Notice even in Revelation 3:

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:19–20).

Jesus doesn’t sit back in his armchair issuing criticisms about the church, however much indwelling sin remains, for now, in his people. He “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14). He is redeeming his church from her sin, purifying her as a people for himself. There is no place for hopelessness about the future of the church. Jesus will build his church (Matthew 16:18), and he will cleanse her.

He Covenants with Her

Finally, Jesus makes lifelong — eternity long — promises to his bride. He covenants with her.

He will provide for and protect her. The gates of hell will not prevail against her (Matthew 16:18). “The righteous” — his church — “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). Stunningly, Jesus will “dress himself for service and have [his people] recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37). And not only will he come to them; he will bring them to himself, to sit with him on his very throne: “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21).

For now, tears remain. We face death, battle remaining sin, endure mourning and crying, persevere in pain. Yet he promises, to his church, to “wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore” (Revelation 21:4). And this when we hear a loud voice from the throne saying,

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21:3).

And so we, his church, will receive the fulfillment of Scripture’s great, long-running promise: He will be our God, and we will be his people. He has pledged himself to us. We will have him. We will know him. We will enjoy him. We will dwell with him, forever.

His church is the people he has chosen to be among for eternity.

Would You Insult His Bride?

Jesus chose his wife before the foundation of the world. He cherishes her with energy and attentiveness. He cleanses her and prepares to present her pure and beautiful to himself. And he covenants to be hers, and with her, for all eternity. The Lord of heaven loves his bride. Does that not make you love her all the more? Does that not make you want to keep from carelessly speaking ill of her?

We do not whitewash the flaws of particular church leaders, or particular tendencies in sinful hearts. We do not cover for evil. Nor do we broad-brush the church, pretending to see and know flaws that are beyond our vantage nationwide, not to mention worldwide, and across the ages. And we don’t pretend the church is yet fully cleansed. Christ is still working on her.

When tempted to dump on “the church,” we who claim Christ will do well to remember his perspective, and his heart, and to speak with the grace and truth of our Savior toward his bride.

Audio Transcript

How do we shepherd small children through the pains of life? The question comes to us from a mom in Baltimore named Taylor. She writes, “Hello, Pastor John! My husband and I have been deeply encouraged and greatly challenged by this podcast and through all the Desiring God resources. Thank you! I just started your new book, Providence, and it is stirring my heart with great affection toward our God. Thank you for helping to align my emotions through your writing with the reality that is ours. This past fall, my husband was in a serious car accident. He walked away from it with just a concussion, but our car was totaled. When we shared this with our 3-year-old, in an age-appropriate way, he was greatly affected by this, even angered. We tried to explain how God had allowed this and protected Daddy through his providence, but he had two responses: asking when God will ‘make Daddy dead,’ and showing anger toward God and wanting to ‘beat him up.’ How would you explain suffering in light of God’s providence to a toddler, and help him to love God more for it?”

There are two principles that need to be taken into account when choosing what to say about God to a particular audience or child. One principle is whether they are open and mature enough to understand the truth. The other principle is whether we have spoken the truth clearly and boldly enough so that a real judgment can be formed about it.

Is Our Audience Ready?

Two passages of Scripture relate to that first principle. Jesus said, “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you” (Matthew 7:6). I’m not saying you should think of your 3-year-old as a dog or a pig — although his responses were the kind of responses Jesus had in mind when he gave that principle: “I’m gonna beat God up.”

Rather, the point is that there are audiences or children that are so spring-loaded to reject the truth that Jesus warns us not to bring reproach on the truth by having it trampled under their feet. Your 3-year-old may show himself to have such an attitude toward God’s providence that you should measure your teaching by what he can hear. You don’t substitute falsehood for truth; you simply decide how much and when you can share.

Now the other passage is 1 Corinthians 3:1–3:

I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

Here the problem is not with swinishness but immaturity: “I . . . could not address you as spiritual people, but . . . as infants.” That’s the first principle: Is the audience or the person, the child, open enough, mature enough to receive the particular truth you’re talking about?

Have We Spoken Clearly?

Here’s the second principle — namely, whether we have spoken the doctrine clearly and boldly enough, so that the people have a real sense of its truth and worth and beauty. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:2,

We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

An “open statement of the truth” — that’s what’s needed for a clear grasp of the doctrine, and a sense that it is good and wise and just and beautiful. You can see how this is almost the exact opposite of the first principle. In that case, we might say too much, and in the second case, we might say too little, or hedge the truth a bit.

Now what I have in mind in this second case, this second principle, is perhaps being so cautious, or so hesitating, or so qualifying in our talk about God’s sovereignty, that a child may pick up, in the way things are explained, or the tone of voice, that Mom and Dad are not exactly excited or joyful about God’s providence.

The child may hear, in the explanation, a kind of permission not to like this doctrine. A lot of people talk that way about God. They are so ready to excuse anger at God that they talk about his sovereignty as though it actually invites anger. I think anger at God is always wrong — always. If you feel it, of course, you should say it. But to feel anger at God is sinful. So I don’t think our tone of voice or the way we talk about God’s providence should sound like it invites disapproval.

I don’t know which of these two principles — say less, say more — should govern these parents right at this moment with this child. But I’m very surprised that a 3-year-old feels free to talk about beating God up. It surely sounds like God has been presented to him in a way that God is too small, too humanlike. But I’m not there, and I can’t say with any certainty.

Four Ways to Teach Providence

What about the last part of the question: How would you explain God’s providence to a toddler and help him to love God more for his providence? Here are four suggestions.

1. Illustrate God’s merciful providence.

First, tell him stories that illustrate how bad things are often God’s wise and merciful way of doing good to us. For example, I know several stories where a serious injury happened to a person, and it was the way the doctors found the cancer in the lacerated leg, which then enabled the doctors to start therapy that saved the person’s life. Then you can teach the child: “That’s always true. That’s always true when bad things happen to God’s children. He always does good through them, even if we can’t see it.”

“Bad things are often God’s wise and merciful way of doing good to us.”

Another example is this: When you go to the doctor, he pokes at you; or when you go to the dentist, he drills on you; or a doctor cuts you to have surgery to save your life. He hurts you to save you. The doctor’s always doing that for our good. So you tell those stories to children to build in the truth so that they can grasp that bad things, hurtful things, painful things are not unloving things from God. They can get that very early.

2. Explain that suffering is normal.

Second suggestion: weave into your teaching, again and again, the passages that say suffering is necessary for Christians and designed by God. Teach a child that suffering is normal, not exceptional, for Christians.

Matthew 5:12; 24:9
John 15:20
Romans 5:3
James 1:2, 12
1 Peter 1:6; 4:12

And on and on and on. Saturate your kids with this doctrine.

3. Remove any sense of entitlement from God.

Third, and related to that second suggestion: teach your child that we are sinners and that we don’t deserve anything good from God. The surprising thing in a world of rebels like us is not pain; the surprising thing is pleasure. God is super, overly abundantly good to his creation, giving us better than we deserve every day — all the time, better than we deserve.

“The surprising thing in a world of rebels like us is not pain; the surprising thing is pleasure.”

In fact, everybody gets better than they deserve once you understand the nature of sin. God is never unjust in the suffering of this world — never. We don’t deserve better than we get, ever; we always deserve worse than we get. Every good thing is grace, grace, grace. Teach a child grace as undeserved favor. Strip a child of all sense of entitlement before God.

4. Look always to the cross.

Finally, point the child over and over again to the cross of Christ — where the worst suffering happened in the world — and explain how the death of his Son was planned by God (Acts 4:27; Isaiah 53:4–10). This is where the child will see how bad his own sin is, because when he asks, “Mommy, Daddy, why would God do that to his own Son?” the answer is that Mommy’s and Daddy’s sin, and your sin, is that bad, and takes that much suffering and love from God.

I think if those four suggestions are followed, children will be more able to submit to God’s providence and feel thankful for everything that God turns for good.

I recently had the incomparable joy of visiting the Grand Canyon. Though visit isn’t quite the right word, I suppose. You don’t just visit the Grand Canyon — you marvel at it, stand in awe of it, catch your breath before it, and find yourself transfixed and transformed by it. You come away “canyoned” by the juxtaposed emotions of feeling smaller and bigger at the same time. As a Christian, I reveled in knowing that the Creator of such beauty also happens to be the Savior of my soul.

I believe gospel-shaped humility can have similar effects. It makes us feel smaller and bigger at the same time. But only if we have a proper understanding of humility, carefully defined, delineated, displayed, and distinguished — that is, only if we move past some common confusions about humility.

Humility Confused

I’ve heard some Christians say things like, “I’m nothing. I’m just a worm.” Or, “I didn’t do a thing. I’m just an empty vessel.” I don’t think such statements reflect a healthy view of humility. The New Testament calls us saints and God’s children and goes out of its way to declare just how loved, redeemed, and blessed we are. Our new identity cannot square with “I’m nothing.”

It’s easy to get confused about humility. Consider how C.S. Lewis put these directions into the mouth of Screwtape, the senior demon in charge of training a new tempter:

Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? . . . Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove! I’m being humble,” and almost immediately pride — pride at his own humility — will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt — and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humor and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed. (The Screwtape Letters, 69)

Humility Defined

Merriam-Webster defines humility as “freedom from pride or arrogance.” But that leaves us needing another definition — one for pride. And we need the Bible’s authority, not the dictionary’s, to help us most.

“Humility is not thinking of yourself more highly than you ought but with sober judgment, according to what God says in his word.”

I suggest this definition adapted from Romans 12:3: humility is not thinking of yourself more highly than you ought but with sober judgment, according to what God says in his word. Thus, growing in humility is a lifelong venture as you increase in knowledge of God’s word and in appreciation for God’s work through Christ.

Humility Delineated

Clear thinking about humility is on display in Andrew Murray’s classic short book Humility: The Beauty of Holiness. He starts with this insight: “There are three great motives that urge us to humility. It becomes me as a creature, as a sinner, as a saint” (10).

First, we should be humbled by the fact that we did not create ourselves or have any say in the specifics of our birth. How is it that you weren’t born in the 1300s in an obscure, poverty-stricken, disease-ridden village? Can you provide breath at any given moment? Which talents came from your blueprint, and not God’s? Consider Paul’s insightful question, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

Second, humility befits our fallenness. We’re sinners, rebels, transgressors, and worshipers of false gods. Reflect on Paul’s recounting of our before-salvation résumé: “We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3).

Third, we are saved by grace, “not because of works done by us in righteousness” (Titus 3:5) “so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:9).

Humility Displayed

Humility’s central text is Philippians 2:1–11, where Jesus is lifted up as the perfect example of humility. It’s easy to zoom in on verse 5, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,” and think, “I should be humble like Jesus was humble.” He is indeed our supreme example.

But we can follow his example only because he was also our supreme sacrifice. Don’t race past the first phrase of this chapter: “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ . . . .” It is your union with Christ that transforms you into a new creature who can “consider others better than yourself,” and “look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:1–4 NIV).

Humility Distinguished

Humility, as the Bible puts forth, must be distinguished from vague ideas apart from the specifics of the gospel. Humility is not feeling bad about oneself. Humility is not comparing ourselves to others. And humility isn’t merely the absence of boasting. (What goes on inside our heads can be disgustingly self-exalting even while we keep our mouths shut.)

“Humility shaped by the gospel shows us just how bad we are and, at the same time, just how great God’s salvation is.”

Humility shaped by the gospel shows us just how bad we are and, at the same time, just how great God’s salvation is. It chastens while it emboldens. It puts us in our place, which, amazingly, is a place of both contrition and confidence. It is a proper and complete understanding of who we are — created, fallen, redeemed, and blessed. We live out our lives in humble boldness, knowing we deserve wrath instead of grace, judgment instead of justification, separation from God instead of the indwelling of his Spirit.

Humility Pursued

Note what immediately follows Philippians 2:1–11. Verse 12 begins with “therefore” and goes on to tell us to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling.” We do have a part to play in pursuing humility. Consider some practical suggestions.

Bodily Prayerfulness

The position of our bodies can make a difference in our prayer lives. Kneeling while interceding, raising our arms while praising, and opening our palms while giving thanks can intensify the blessings received through prayer. And it can help us grow in humility before God. It’s hard (although not impossible!) to feel self-empowered while kneeling.

Rigorous Confession

I’ll let C.S. Lewis present this case for me. He writes in The Weight of Glory,

I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing.

Forgiveness says, “Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” But excusing says, “I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.” If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites. (178–79)

Humility makes a regular practice of asking God, and others, to forgive us instead of excuse us.

Regular Periods of Fasting

Simply put, fasting makes us feel physically weak. That’s a good state for trusting entirely in God’s provision for everything. Fasting can take all sorts of forms and varieties. All of them can help in growth toward humility.

Outward-Facing Intercession

Jesus told us to include “our daily bread” (the most basic unit of physical sustenance) as well as “your kingdom come” (the most expansive scope of church growth) in our prayers. Prayer guides like Operation World (both the book and the app), which inform us how to pray for gospel advance in every country, help us see our individual needs on a larger canvas and forge humility.

Others-Centered Conversation

Many so-called dialogues are really simultaneous monologues. A gospel-humbled conversationalist can allow the interchange to be unbalanced — in the direction of the other person. Asking questions to draw more out of the other person can display Philippians 2 humility in tangible, practical ways.

Bowing Low, Standing Tall

Some might say standing before the Grand Canyon should have made me feel like “nothing.” But that wasn’t my experience. To be sure, I had no doubt that the nearly two thousand square miles of a mile-deep chasm dwarfed my 5-foot, 9-inch frame. If I did not know the Creator of both the physical universe and my physical body, I would have felt like dust.

But standing before an even greater wonder — the cross, where we are “united with Christ . . . in the comfort from his love . . . with the fellowship of the Holy Spirit . . . with tenderness and compassion” (Philippians 2:1 NIV) — forges a gospel-humility that bows us low and stands us tall.